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Dan is an award-winning entrepreneur, public speaker, angel investor, Podcast Host, and cat lover.

Previously the Co-Founder of the UK’s top mobile Shopping app, Grabble & chart-topping viral sensation movie app Popcorn, he won Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2015.

Now, over 30, he can no longer claim to be young, but his new startup ‘Dawn’ aims to keep him and others feeling fresh as a “Human Potential Company”, providing content, community & products geared towards optimising cognitive performance.

His Podcast Secret Leaders is one of the most popular entrepreneurship Podcasts in the UK with over 1 million downloads. It features some of the UK’s best leaders from Royal Princes to Unicorns and even a Dragon from the Den, alongside other household names such as Jo Malone, Rankin & founders of Deliveroo, Calm, Just Giving, Shazam, Just Eat, Mumsnet and many more.

He is Co-Founder of Foundrs, a community of entrepreneurs in London and LA, supporting ‘founder sustainability’ in order to avoid the inevitable burn out, by offering community support, events and retreats for ambitious founders to reconnect and find balance outside the boardroom.

He is a regular Public Speaker having hosted CogX - the World’s largest AI Conference (and will again in 2019), to Keynoting or Speaking on a variety of topics from Innovation, Entrepreneurship and E-Commerce trends for clients ranging from Unilever to Facebook but his favourite gig was his TEDx Talk: “Can Laughter Build Resilience”.

In his spare time, he writes for Forbes, sits on the board for Ovarian Cancer Action, hugs his cats, and admires their 10k followers on Instagram @archieandbells.

This is part 1 of a 2-part interview. Part 1 sets the scene and part 2 will give far more context around what Richard is up to and where his future lies as a Social Entrepreneur.

Richard Leighton is Britain’s first male employed as a Social Entrepreneur in Residence. Apart from being entrepreneurial, creative and innovative, he has a proven track record in the design, development, implementation and management of projects, programmes, initiatives and enterprises.

And he started his vision at a very young age, he doesn’t even remember fully where he got the drive from. He puts it down to his father’s multiple redundancies in journalism and definitely the kindness of his parents ensured he subconsciously was drawn towards social causes.

Amir Bormand is the Co-founder of Elevano, a California- based recruitment company, who helps hundreds of people find more fulfilling jobs every year.

Amir is unique to the recruiting industry because he is a former engineer himself— and could still jot out a few lines of code! He’s seen the technical recruiting game from both sides, and during his engineering career, he constantly saw agency recruiters take shortcuts and use deceptive practices all for their own benefit.

That’s why, in his current position as Co-founder of Elevano, he encourages a candidate-centric approach to every aspect of technical recruiting and sales. His overriding desire is to smash the negative stigma left by current recruitment strategies, and replace it with a more transparent, honest and empathetic service offering.

When he’s not working, Amir enjoys spending time with his families and traveling. He and his wife have a 5-year-old daughter, who keeps him busy with the latest trends in Disney cartoons, you might just catch him humming Disney movie theme songs!

Deepak Shukla is the Founder of Pearl Lemon, an award-winning SEO agency in London.

He bootstrapped the business from his mum’s place to a £275k company in less than 24 months. He’s since gone on to invest in algorithmic trading, launch 5-figure online courses and continues to grow.

Deepak has featured in TEDx, SEMrush, BBC, Chelsea FC, Appsumo, Bright Talks & more

When he's not running his agency, you'll find him running marathons (24 so far) completing Ironmen (2 so far), getting inked (40% body coverage) or playing with his cat Jenny.

Mitchell Levy (pronounced Lee Vee) is The AHA Guy at AHAthat (https://ahathat.com) who empowers experts, thought leaders, and businesses to share their genius. His superpower is extracting the genius from your head in a two-hour interview so that his team can ghostwrite your

book and make you an Amazon bestselling author.

He is an accomplished Entrepreneur who has created twenty businesses in Silicon Valley including four publishing companies that have published over 800 books. Mitchell is a TEDx speaker and international bestselling author with sixty business books.In addition to these accomplishments, he’s been happily married for twenty-nine years and regularly spends four weeks annually in a European country with his family and friends.

Digital Marketer with 4+ years’ experience leading online strategies and implementation of digital projects and marketing campaigns. 

4 years’ experience in SEO, content marketing & social media. Advanced skills in Google Analytics, Google AdWords, Wordpress, Hootsuite, Buffer, Mailchimp, Hubspot, Facebook Business & Advert Manager, Twitter Analytics, Bing Business & Advert Manager and more. 2 years’ experience of project management of agencies and working on behalf of companies to deliver their content strategy. 

Key Achievements: 

Awarded 'Best Use of Social media' at the Insurance Times Awards on behalf of Norton Insurance. Competing and beating large insurance companies like Admiral to the award. 

Contributed through advertising and marketing to a 27% increase in sales for 2017, compared to 2016

Increased sales from Facebook for Norton Insurance by 197% since I adopted a Social media led strategy in 2017  

Managing a 424% increase in sales through Google PPC for the Heritage brand in 2017

89% increase in race entries for a 2015 Triathlon compared to the previous year, through social media and email advertising, plus PR.

A 35-year career in Information technology with international experience in varied business scenarios: start-up, turnaround, .com, market leader, all presenting different challenges and outcomes. Deal experience in consortia bidding, trade sale and Initial Public Offering.

An early pioneer of cloud computing and recognised by Microsoft and Google as a subject matter expert in this field with seven books published for Microsoft and two for Google.

Now with a portfolio career he was awarded the Financial Times Non-Executive Director Diploma (2015) and is qualified to advise on General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) following completion of the GDPR Transition Programme at Henley Business School.

Current positions

Co-founder and Director Digi-Board Limited

Co-founder, Inventor and Director MTR (Europe) Limited

Deputy Chair Cloud Industry Forum

Director Federation Against Software Theft

Board Advisor to C-Digital Studio

Board Advisor to Behind Every Cloud

Independent Expert to European Union Horizon 20:20 programme

Mentor to Microsoft Startups (London)

Fellow of the RSA

Member of IoD

Member of EY Independent Director Programme

Affiliate member ICSA:Governance Institute

Financial Times NED Alumni (invitation only)

Tracy is a mother of four kids under 10, a full-time voice actor since 2014, and lives just north of Kansas City, Missouri. She loves working with non-profits, but she has also voiced hundreds of commercials for clients like Amazon, Microsoft, Subaru, Walmart, and McDonalds. She is known for her fun personality, karaoke skills, and spontaneous dance moves. She has been teaching other freelancers and entrepreneurs how to build their client base through a free LinkedIn account since 2016, and now offers an online course called The LinkedIn Edge at www.TheLinkedInEdge.com. When not working, she loves to play games with her kids, eat sushi with her husband, and run to support her eating habit.

Hi, I’m Nick Davies. I’m a tall Mancunian, Blue Peter badge winner and the bloke who owns ‘The Really Great Training Company.’ My background’s in law and business. I’ve been a sales rep, a sandwich maker, and even sold shoes for Russell & Bromley for 6 years - where David Beckham and Vera Duckworth were customers. I’ve also been the director responsible for business development at two limited companies, and started 4 businesses of my own.

I qualified as a barrister as a mature student and even practised … for 6 months (the wig just wasn’t me.) As a trainer and coach in a range of communication skills, I travel the country, teaching bankers, lawyers, actuaries, civil servants and business people how to pitch, present, network, sell and persuade.

My clients range from global legal practices and financial institutions to small, owner-managed firms as well as The Royal Household (a kind of more grand owner-managed firm.)

When I’m not training and coaching I perform stand-up, deliver after-dinner speeches and host award ceremonies. Over the past few years I’ve been lucky enough to have worked and shared stages with a buffet of reasonably well-known people; including: The Rt. Hon. Michael Portillo, Sir Digby Jones, Jenny Bond, Kate Adie, Roger Black MBE, Alan Hansen, Frankie Boyle and Alastair Campbell.

Indecision! After graduating from university in 2014 I was unsure what to do.

 

By chance I discovered Coursera and learnt about some subjects I had an interest about. 

Starting with USA's constitution and then branched into economics, finances, marketing and business management.

 

Coming from non business background all the topics were new to me and a lot of the things

I was beginning to learn learning about were in stark contrast to what I had been brought up on.

 

Soon after I discovered my love of reading. Reading books such as the '4 Hour Work Week',

'Rich Dad Poor Dad', 'Richest Man in Babylon', 'Think and Grow Rich'. After reading them, there

was no turning back.

 

In late November 2014 I decided to start my first business; Game Overload. It was launched in late January 2015.

In the end I bit off more than I could chew with this business. I tried pivoting the business, but the passion slowly burnt out.

 

Always learning, always reading, always expanding comfort zone, always creating win-win scenarios.

Always adding value into the world. Masters do whatever it takes.

Remember, you either win or you learn. And by learning you are developing deeper roots for success.

You can do more good in the world when you are rich.

"How you do anything, is how you do everything" - T. Harv Ecker.