Nearly Verified

It feels pretty corny to go out and say this, but this episode literally changed my life. Just about 5 months ago I got to interview Swish Goswami, who is one of the co-founders and the CEO of Trufan. Trufan is a tech startup in Toronto that helps brands generate segment and activate first and third-party data to information that you directly get from your followers, whether it's email, phone number, mailing address, and the data that they're providing to you through Instagram or Twitter based on their activity and how they're engaging with you.

In this episode, Swish and I dive into entrepreneurship, leadership, basketball, and mental health amongst a ton of other topics. It was such a  genuine, and engaging conversation and I am really glad to get the hour to chat with him.

At the time of this interview which was the start of May 2021, I had a full-time job lined up as I was finishing up my undergrad in the Summer, but this conversation changed things around for me. Crazy enough, after the interview Swish asked me what I’m doing after school, and let me know what he is going to be launching Surf, the browser extension that rewards you for just browsing, and needed to start assembling a team for the launch which was coming up in September at the time.

After a couple of rounds of interviews, I went ahead and rescinded my initial offer, and came to work with Swish and the team here at Trufan in the Summer, about 4 months ago. I'm now working full-time as a Product Owner and it has been one of the best decisions I ever made. To Swish – I want to thank you A) thank you for coming on the show in the first place, and b) for giving me a shot at a career in tech with such an amazing company like Trufan.

This team is incredibly talented and driven but more importantly, they are just a genuine, kind group of people that I love to work with every day.

I hope you guys enjoy the episode, and I'm excited to get back to interviewing coming into the tail end of 2021.

To connect with Swish and learn about his businesses:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/swishgoswami/

https://www.instagram.com/goswish/

https://twitter.com/goswish

Joinsurf.com

Trufan.io

Matt's contacts:

https://linktr.ee/MattPuglisi

My last podcast episode was posted 5 months ago. Finishing school + moving to a new city + starting fulltime work has really slowed me down on doing this, but I am very happy to get back into it :) More episodes coming soon!

Mike founded Sustainable Waterloo Region and piloted Canada’s first Green Economy Hub while completing a double degree in business and computer electronics at Laurier in 2008. Within five years, the Hub had engaged companies employing 14% of the region’s workforce, all committed to setting and achieving voluntary climate goals.

Mike also spearheaded the creation of ClimateActionWR, a collaborative effort that secured unanimous support from Regional and City Councils for our community’s first-ever climate target (a 6% reduction by 2020, since raised to 80% by 2050)

In response to global interest in replicating Green Economy Hubs, Mike founded Green Economy Canada in 2013 and led the award-winning organization until late 2018. Today there are 8 Green Economy Hubs across Canada supporting over 250 organizations lowering their impact and increasing their profitability.

In the 2019 federal election, Mike was Kitchener Centre's Green Party candidate for Member of Parliament. Over the course of a 10-month campaign, Mike and his team made history: they knocked on every door in the riding (most of them twice) and increased the Green vote from 3% to 26% (from 1,500 to over 14,000 voters), the highest of any Green candidate in Ontario, Quebec and the Prairies.

Thank you so much to Mike for coming on the show – we dove into his experiences and what they taught him along the way, and why it is so important to find passions in life that can drive your work ethic and your personals and professional goals.

Welcome back to another episode of Nearly Verified! This week I get to sit down with a good friend and super successful guy that is recently graduated from Laurier University. Blair Forrest has been a serial entrepreneur since he could remember.

Whether it was a lemonade stand, garage sale, or selling on amazon, Blair has always tried to make the most of whatever side hustle he could get his hands on. Within the past 36 months, Blair has started AMZ prep, which is a full-service marketplace provider for companies looking to sell on Amazon and online. He has scaled his business with the help of grants, hard work, and trial and error.

Blair recently won the fastest growing startup in Canada, and student entrepreneur of the year at Enactus Nationals. It makes it that much more impressive than he did all of this while completing his degree full-time.

I’ve known Blair since my second year at Laurier and it has been unreal to see him and his business grow. Blair is hardworking, smart, driven and a great dude to sit down and talk to. Blair, thank you so much for coming on the show to chat and best of luck with everything to come for AMZ!

If you want to learn how to sell online or more about Blair check out the links below:

Website: https://amzprep.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blairforrest/

Matt's Links: https://linktr.ee/Mattpuglisi

Hala Taha is the host of Young and Profiting Podcast, frequently ranked as a #1 Education podcast across all apps. Hala is also the CEO of YAP Media, a full-service social media and podcast marketing agency projected to generate over $1M in revenue in its first year. She is well-known for her engaged following and influence on Linkedin, and she landed the January 2021 cover of Podcast Magazine.

Hala started her career in radio production while in college at HOT97 on “The Angie Martinez Show.” Later, she launched an entertainment news blog site, “The Sorority of Hip Hop,” where she led an all-female team of 50 bloggers. Together they ran the popular site, interviewed celebrities, produced radio shows, hosted parties/concerts, and nearly snagged a reality TV show on MTV!

When the blog site boom slowed down, Hala took a temporary exit from the entertainment industry to get an MBA. She has 7 years of corporate marketing experience at HP and Disney Streaming Services. She started Young and Profiting Podcast and YAP Media as a side hustle, and now has several high profile clients and over 40 employees. Hala is an expert on networking, personal branding, Linkedin marketing, side hustles, entrepreneurship and podcasting.

Hala's Links

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yapwithhala/

Website: https://www.youngandprofiting.com/

Instagram: https://www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/

Matt's Link:

https://linktr.ee/MattPuglisi

David Meltzer is the Co-Founder of Sports 1 Marketing and formerly served as CEO of the renowned Leigh (“Lee”) Steinberg Sports & Entertainment agency, which was the inspiration for the movie Jerry Maguire.

His life’s mission is to empower OVER 1 BILLION people to be happy! This simple yet powerful mission has led him on an incredible journey to provide one thing…VALUE. In all his content, and communication that’s exactly what you’ll receive. As part of that mission, for the past 20 years, he’s been providing free weekly training to empower others to be happy.

David moves very very quickly through a ton of his philosophies and best practices in this interview and to be seal some of it went over my head when we first had our conversation but listening back there are a ton of actionable things he talks about whether it be eliminating fear, or 5 practices for better understanding time, the difference between motivation and inspiration, and so on.

Overall, David thank you so much for coming to chat on the Podcast, your words pack a punch and it was really cool to hear your thoughts!

David's Links:

Twitter, Instagram, YouTube: @davidmeltzer

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/davidmeltzer11/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmeltzer2/

Link to David's training: https://dmeltzer.com/training/

Text Community: (949) 298-2905

Matt's Links: https://linktr.ee/MattPuglisi

This episode I got to have Sofy Carayannopoulos on the podcast to chat. Sofy is an associate professor at the School of Business and Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University. She currently designs, coordinates and teaches introductory business strategy courses to classes of over 200 undergraduate students, as well as a PhD class.

She holds an MBA and a PhD in Strategy and Entrepreneurship from Schulich School of Business at York University, as well as a Bachelor of Commerce and Economics and a Bachelor of Education from the University of Toronto. Her award-winning cases have been published and distributed by the Laurier Institute of Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice and The Case Research Journal.

Just like I say in the episode, Sofy is a core element in the BBA program from her involvement in extracurriculars to introducing the cohort of first-years to the University experience.

Thank you for coming to chat Sofy!

Links to Matt: https://linktr.ee/MattPuglisi

This episode I get the chance to chat with Devyn Kelly who is the Student’s Union President here at Wilfrid Laurier University. She has had her hands full with adjusting to a completely different type of University semester. Her mission is to be the voice for the student body, bringing our concerns to the administration in an attempt to see change.

She has been involved all over campus during her time at Laurier prior to this full-time role as president. She was a campus ambassador, hiring and recruitment coordinator and Board Member for the SU to name a few.

In this conversation, we talk about her efforts towards voicing our concerns of exam accommodations, lockdown browser, as well as she explains the process that she takes in order to communicate these issues.

I want to thank Devyn for taking the time to come on the pod and chat, I think we cover a good range of questions here and the goal was to give students a general idea of how and her team handles concerns, as well as how they are adjusting to this new type of operation under COVID.

I hope you guys enjoy!

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Student Union Links:

Website: https://yourstudentsunion.ca/

Twitter: @students_union

Instagram: @yourstudentsunion

Links for Matt: https://linktr.ee/MattPuglisi

Jon is the Chief Experience Officer at Shay Rowbottom Marketing, who I had on for episode 6, and previously was working with his Father’s forensic accounting company. Backtrack a little more, Jon was training and working with the WWE at the age of 18 to be a professional wrestler which unfortunately did not pan out.

Instead, he took that energy, that charisma, and those camera skills to LinkedIn, and now helps other creators and entrepreneurs master the skill of video marketing.

We dive into what it means to start creating content for yourself or your business, what goes into being comfortable on camera, as well as Jon’s experience in this marketing space.

Jon, thank you so much for coming on to the show, I really appreciate you taking the time and it was really fun to hang with you for an hour.

I hope you enjoy it!

Jon's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanpalmar/

Links for Matt: https://linktr.ee/MattPuglisi

This week, I interviewed Blake Pearson who is a Sr. BDR at Salesforce. Salesforce.com, inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management service and also sells a complementary suite of enterprise applications.

Blake actually worked as a BDR where I did my first internship, but we just missed each other there. I heard so many great things about him I thought I’d go ahead and interview him!

This was a cool one because as an assignment for my 4th-year sales management class, we have to interview someone in sales and ask them about their roles, responsibilities, hardships etc. So shoutout Grang Tanguay, this is the interview I’ll be writing a report on.

Overall, Blake is a great guy and has got some fantastic insight into the career of business development and sales and how he is navigating his first few roles in tech.

Blake, thanks so much for coming on to chat I really appreciate it!!