Million Dollar Monday

Get ready to be inspired by Jake and Caroline Danehy, the visionary siblings behind Fair Harbor Clothing, who transformed their shared passion for sustainability into a thriving and profitable company – not to mention earning recognition on the Forbes 30 under 30 list! Listen now to hear the dynamic duo sit down with host Greg Muzzillo and share their journey of creating a sustainable beachwear brand from scratch, scaling it to new heights, and turning it into the success story it is today.

Chapters:
1:51 - A Passion for Business and Sustainability
6:17 - From Idea to Business
8:48 - The Start of Designing and Constructing Clothing
11:46 - Trunk Shows
13:46 - Scaling the Business
16:57 - Mistakes Made and Lessons Learned
19:45 - Success Along the Way

Resources:
Connect with Fair Harbor Clothing
Website
Instagram
Facebook

Takeaways:

• We've always really had this passion deep inside of us. And this is just a way to kind of make a larger impact through the work that we're doing with the Harbor. 
• Sometimes there are no massive, big wins. There is just grinding, grinding it out. Great little decisions that at the end of the day, lead to a big business 
• If you treat a customer well and you have a great product, they'll keep coming back. 
• It got crazy. At one point, we were sending up to 500 to 1,000 orders per day from our parents' garage. 
• We'd been so passionate about this from the beginning, and that passion is what drives you to make time to see the vision through. 
• In the first four years of the company, we did over 500 trunk shows. We traveled up and down the east coast, going to small beach towns, talking to everyone and anyone who would hear our story and touch and feel our product. 
• Our mission statement in a nutshell is to create products for people that make it so they can enjoy the home that they love. 

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Show Notes & Resources
Something many of us are used to by now is attending virtual meetings. For most of us, this is due to working at home throughout the pandemic but Natalie Yeadon, Co-founder and CEO of Impetus Digital, recognized the benefits of implementing virtual technology into corporate meetings and events long before it became our reality. Yeadon sits down with host Greg Muzzillo to share how she took a leap of faith by founding a virtual-based company in 2008, and has since transformed pharmaceuticals meetings, events, and programs across the globe.

Chapters:
0:42 -Introducing Natalie Yeadon
3:26 - Navigating the World of Radiation Therapy
3:59 - Entering the New World of Pharmaceuticals
5:57 - A Revolutionary Solution
11:45 - The Conceptualization of Cutting-Edge Technology
14:18 - Having a Worldwide Impact
18:15 - Yeadon’s Vision for the Future

Connect with Natalie Yeadon 

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Podcast

Extra Resources:

• Our honourable mention in Fast Company's World Changing Ideas Awards 2021: Established Excellence (5-14 Years In Business) 
• Natalie's PM360 ELITE 2021 Entrepreneur award 
• Impetus Digital's PM360 2020 Innovative Service award 
• Our Green Business Bureau certification 
• Our Canada's Most Admired Corporate Cultures 2021 award 
• Our Great Place to Work certification 

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Show Notes & Resources
Being an entrepreneur isn’t always about making money. For LifeVac founder Arthur Lih, it’s about making a difference. What if you had already built a successful business, sold it for millions of dollars, then on the cusp of retirement, you realized you could create something that wouldn’t just change someone's life, but it could save someone's life? Would you put your life on hold to focus on the lives of others? Lih sits down with host Greg Muzzillo to discuss the story behind the creation of LifeVac, why he felt morally obligated to start the company, and the lives he’s touched along the way.

Chapters
1:47 - Arthur Lih and his first business
3:06 - From Working for someone else to starting your own business
5:22 - Retirement put on hold
8:33 -The Start of LifeVac and raising awareness
11:17 -Creating a reliable product that lasts
13:12 -The startling statistics about choking
16:24 - The Hall of Saves
19:34 -Journey to 1 million lives saved

Resource Links:
Connect with Arthur Lih:

• LinkedIn

Connect with LifeVac:

• Lifevac.net
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Facebook

Key Takeaways:

• You get frustrated with other people's decisions that you don't necessarily agree with and that you think you could do better if you had the freedom to make those decisions, and then you get the leap of faith moment where you say “I can do it, I'm going for it” 
• How could I be the only guy that could save this kid and then read about a child that died with me knowing I have something that could have saved them? So as much as I wasn't thrilled with the idea of going back and starting from scratch, there was a moral obligation to do it. And I'm grateful that I did. 
• The research really scared me. It's 5,000+ people a year choke to death. It's the fourth leading cause of accidental death; under car accidents, poisonings and slips and falls. And one child dies every five days that's recorded. 
• This is my sanctuary, like Superman Fortress of Solitude. When you walk in here and you see all these lives, regardless of how tired, or how much you want to give up, you just look at a couple of these faces and these little kids and you keep going. 
• The heroes are the parents and the EMTs and the EMS and the police and the elderly caregivers and the grandparents. Those are the heroes. And it's just neat that I gave them a tool to be that hero 

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Show Notes & Resources
Imagine quitting your job and risking it all to raise money, build a business plan on the fly , and create a company you believe can make a difference in people’s lives. Sound crazy? Well that's exactly what the bold, entrepreneur Calloway Cook did when he founded Illuminate Labs. The Founder and active President of this modern and honest supplements company discusses with host, Greg Muzzillo, the miscommunication between consumers and the dietary supplement industry, and reveals his best advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Chapter Summaries
1:58 - How Calloway Cook got his Start
4:39 - The idea behind Illuminate Labs
7:10 - Financing a Dream
9:43 - Taking the leap of faith
13:10 - What to sell and how
14:15 - What makes Illuminate Labs Special
15:40 - Operating as a B Corp
17:37 - Advice for entrepreneurs

Resource Links:
Connect with Calloway Cook:
LinkedIn

Connect with Illuminate Labs:
Website | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube

Key Takeaways:

• The learning style of sit down and shut up and listen for an hour so you can learn something just doesn't work, especially for so many people who are entrepreneurs.
• I didn't immediately start with this as a business idea, right? It started with me as a kind of frustrated consumer
• We have a great explainer video because a lot of this stuff is pretty technical. We realize we need a kind of more fun and engaging way to sell it. And we've gotten great reviews on that kind of explaining, why this type of product is necessary.
• Being a B Corp does internally structure your decision-making so that like your shareholders can't force you out or pressure you by saying, if you're making a business decision that doesn't necessarily lead to the maximum profitability, you have legal protection because of the way you're incorporated.                 
• Invest in what you know. So if you run a business, just do what you're an expert in. If  you're starting a business and you're not an expert in anything, it’s probably not going to go well.

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SHOWNOTES:
Jeopardy, the path from politics to business, and an idea that started in a college dorm room. The Co-Founder of Applecart, Sacha Samotin, discusses how the idea to build a platform that uses publicly available data to advertise came to be, what kind of business mistakes he has made and lessons learned from them, the importance of building a sustainable team of people, and more in this episode.

Chapter Summaries:

• 0:40 - Introducing Sacha Samotin
• 1:32 - Sacha On Jeopardy
• 2:56 - Dorm Room Start-Up
• 4:23 - What is Applecart?
• 6:05 - Applecart at Work
• 9:09 - Relationships and Networking
• 9:35 - Applecart's Origins
• 10:43 - Advice for Business and Dating
• 11:20 - Fundraising a Business
• 15:19 - Mistakes in Business
• 18:18 - Success in Business

Takeaways: 

• We think word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertising, but it's really difficult to sort of seed that word of mouth. And that's where we come in and are really helpful 
• You should count the number of no’s you get, not the number of yes’s. If you target a hundred no’s, you will get the yes’s you're looking for and you won't be as disappointed when you don't get a yes every time. 
• The best possible thing that happened to us is that we weren't able to raise money early because there were a lot of problems that come with raising money, when you're not really ready to spend it or know exactly what you want to do with it.   
• Growth at any cost is not the priority. You want to grow your team in a sustainable, intelligent way.

Resource Links:
Connect with Sacha Samotin:
LinkedIn | Twitter

Connect with Applecart:
Applecart Website | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

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Show Notes
”Coworking is about different personalities, different entrepreneurs, and what they are looking for,” Natasha Mohan says. “Sitting down with them, understanding their business model, understanding their business goals and needs, and making them happy to engage with a company and a team that is going to help them fulfill those.” The Founder and CEO of WorkSocial, a shared office space company, explains her take on coworking, how to scale a business in today's world, and creating “movements in happiness.”

Chapters:

• 1:48 - The Early Years of WorkSocial
• 3:37 - Creating Movements of Happiness
• 5:55 - Coworking in Today's World
• 7:12 - WorkSocial as an Office Assistant
• 10:51 - The Benefits of Flexy
• 13:19 - The Future and Importance of Coworking
• 14:59 - Happiness Hacking

Resource Links:
 Connect with Natasha Mohan:

• LinkedIn

Connect with WorkSocial:

• WorkSocial Website | Flexy Website
• LinkedIn |   Instagram   |   Facebook   

Takeaways: 

• Happiness is always a movement in life 
• When you walk into a WorkSocial environment, you're coming into a clean and very vibrant atmosphere. But at the same time, a very warm one, whether it's engaging with our team members or just with the people around you. They're all very friendly, warm people with the same goals. You're here to build a business, and so we're all learning from each other. 
• When a client walks through the door, whether they become a client or not, I'm learning about their business. I'm sitting there and, and really engaging and listening to them. What are their ideas? What are their goals? And kind of helping them design an office-based setting that's going to work for them. 
• Coworking spaces allow entrepreneurs to come in with a virtual office, a low-cost solution to being a professional business, utilizing conference rooms when they need to meet clients, getting their mail handled with a team on site, and then working their way up to a private office space. They can establish their teams and their businesses at a location that doesn't take too much of the revenue so their bottom line isn’t hindered when it comes to business and growth. 

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SHOWNOTES
“Customers today are so anxious that they’re not making a big enough impact in their day-to-day lives,” reveals Viveka Hulyalkar. “They would not only switch brands; they would even pay extra for a brand that they believe is more socially responsible.” The Co-Founder and CEO of Beam Impact shares how to turn consumer behaviors into cash to make a tangible impact. Listen to Hulyalkar’s story and valuable advice here.

Chapter Summaries:
1:28 - Introducing Viveka Hulyalkar
6:28 - Motivated by Social Change
9:39 - How to Leverage your Spending Power
16:40 - The Beginning of Beam
20:24 - It's Not Always Smooth Sailing
22:37 - Impactful Advice

Takeaways:

• And that was really the light switch moment for me, that business can be such a powerful tool to accelerate innovation. And the scale of an organization you can build really quickly can drive impact of the same scale or even larger, so much faster.
• Yep. So many people have ideas, right? They think about it even, but they don't pick up the phone because fear of rejection. And at the end of the day, what's the worst thing that happened, they don't answer the phone; they don't call you back. 
• Customers today are so anxious that they're not making a big enough impact in their day-to-day lives, that they would not just switch. They'd even pay more for a brand that they believe is more socially responsible
• I like to reverse engineer goals and make a game plan and continuously revise it rather than throwing the game plan out of the window when things change
• Listen to your customers
• I think younger people are looking to really make a big impact on the world. 
• So like you said, we're on a mission to shift $10 billion from brands to high-impact nonprofits, by making the most mission-driven brands in each category win. So the way we're doing that is we are building a platform where you can turn your spending power into direct funding for nonprofits and brands that share your values

Resource Links:
Connect with Viveka Hulyalkar:
LinkedIn |   Instagram  |  Twitter

Connect with Beam Impact:
LinkedIn |   Instagram  |  Website

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Cindy Rumpf Novack founded Candles and Supplies.com. What started as a fun hobby with her daughters has now grown into a warehouse with over 50,000 square feet of supplies and $8 million in sales. Novack sells much more than just candles and soaps, she delivers an experience for the customer and is empowering people to pursue their own dreams.

“I like the Thomas Edison approach. It's not a mistake. You're just one step closer to perfecting it.”

Chapters:

• 00:42 - Introducing Cindy Rumpf Novack
• 01:48 - Family of Entrepreneurs
• 05:54 - From Hobby to Thriving Business
• 08:56 - Omni Channel Marketing
• 11:38 - Be Careful Who You Listen To
• 14:31 - Success in the Business

Key Takeaways

• So you're actually selling to resellers and empowering people to pursue their own dreams of business ownership. 
• I love the fishing tackle business, but if it wasn't going to be my own, then you know, I wanted to have my own thing.
• But if you to listen to the wrong people, you might not have ever even started that business. People who just don't know. So we aspiring entrepreneurs have to be careful who we share ideas with and who we look for affirmation from. And sometimes we just got to go with our gut. So that's, uh, that's another great lesson from there. 
• But then, then we started doing the classes and helping people develop businesses. So that's probably my greatest success is how many people we've helped along the way.

 Social Links:

• https://www.candlesandsupplies.com/
• LinkedIn |   Instagram   |   Facebook   |  Twitter

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Steve Schulze started Nekter Juice Bar out of a desire to live a healthy lifestyle. His passion quickly turned into a business opportunity that he has grown from one store location to more than 200 locations and over $100 million in sales. Tune in to hear more about overcoming failures, valuable advice about franchising, and how to ensure long-term success.

In this episode, you will hear more about:

• Achieving success and not allowing your failures to hold you back
• Blocking out the white noise around you
• Paying attention to process and building a business
• Turning a passion into more than just an idea
• Innovation and reinventing a concept to create massive business success
• Franchising: Developing a strategy and proving out the business model

Chapters

• 00:00:41 - Introducing Steve Schulz
• 00:01:24 - Business Ventures
• 00:06:18 - Starting Nektar
• 00:10:27 - Franchising the Business
• 00:15:56 - Staying Focused
• 00:18:17 - Passion

Resource Links
Steve Schulze LinkedIn  |   Steve Schulze Instagram
Nekter Juice Bar LinkedIn  |   Nektar Juice Bar Facebook
https://nekterfranchising.com/             


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Russell Benaroya is an author, entrepreneur, coach, and speaker focused on helping people achieve their highest and best use by staying in their genius zones. Russell has spent the last twenty years in investment banking, private equity, and entrepreneurship, and today is the Co-Founder of Stride Services, an outsourced accounting and strategic finance firm that helps business owners use their data for better decision making. He is also the author of One Life to Lead; Business Success Through Better Life Design, a book focused on the steps to overcome your limitations to architect a life and business on your terms. 

 Chapter Summaries

• 00:39 - Introducing Russell
• 03:46 - Starting Stride Services
• 06:38 - One Life to Lead
• 10:29 - The Five Principles
• 17:50 - The Gift of Taking Action
• 21:13 - Inspiring Story
• 23:35 - Final Advice

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Key Takeaways 

• And there's some fear in delegation. Sometimes you don't even know how to delegate. It is a muscle that needs to be flexed. It is not an instinct for many people. You have to practice a delegation.
• You can't lead others until you know how to lead yourself.
• 5 principles of life design. Be the architect.
  • Awareness: is this a fact or a story?
  • Establish your principles. Meaning if you move throughout life without a set of non-negotiables for how you interact with people or make decisions, do business deals, you become subject to the goals, whims and wants of other people.
  • Harness the energy from the environment. If we have a hundred units of energy to expend a day, we're going to use the units available to neutralize our energy drains. First, before we're invested in our energy gains and energy are where do I get energy around certain people?
  • Get and stay in your zone of geniusExecution; take action
• Start getting in a place where you are the architect of a life designed by you versus a life happening to you.

Resource Links

• https://russellbenaroya.com/
• https://stride.services/

Social Channels:

• LinkedIn
• Facebook 

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