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Guest: Rio Rocket

Company / Business name: RioRocket.Com ​

Rio Rocket is a multi-disciplined performer, voice-actor with exceptional vocal malleability, actor, presenter, motivational speaker and commercial model. Rio is also Official Speaker, Announcer, and VOG (Voice of God) for John Jay College’s Annual Commencement ceremony at Arthur Ashe Stadium. First and only motivational speaker ever hired for a production by Lowe’s Home Improvement. He is also a former competitive athlete, and highly-accomplished graphic artist, illustrator, designer, web developer, online marketer, and entrepreneur.Show Notes:Rio starts off with the story how he evolved into a voice-actor and actor and then expanded into other areas like Voice-Of-God etc.Rio’s entrepreneurial journey started off with a graphic design and Rio talks about how he used elance.com to snag the first paying customers. Rio talks about the importance of price, pitch, portfolio to get first customers.Rio’s evolution into so many disciplines is gradual and it happened over a period of 20 years. He kept learning all the adjacent areas like SEO, video marketing, and branding.Rio then goes into the mechanics of coordinating so many different things and how time-slicing is very important. As Rio is involved in many disparate things like acting and graphic design, he needs to make sure that that time management is critical.As a person, Rio says he can’t stand still. He needs to keep learning, doing many different things. But having clear priorities like making sure that basic necessities are taken care of is key.Rio’s advice is to learn as much as possible about a topic, absorb everything, ask questions, and find mentors.

Episode Transcript

00:03Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the agile entrepreneur podcast. This is your host Ramesh Dontha. This podcast is about starting and building your own business with purpose, passion, perseverance, and possibilities. Today I'm excited to introduce a guest who transcends multiple disciplines. His name is Rio Rocket. Rio Rocket is a full service commercial graphic designer, web developer and branding expert. And needing a bigger mountain to climb Rio entered acting arena as a voice artist and has evolved to become a film and television actor. Hi Rio, welcome.00:49Rio: Hi Ramesh, thank you for having me.00:52Ramesh: Hey Rio, I have not come across a person yet on my podcast who has evolved so many domains. So, Rio in your own words tell me what you do now and, or where you're putting your focus on.01:05Rio: Well, currently I still am a full-service graphic artist, branding expert web developer. I still have you know, my business with digital marketing and online marketing. However, it also had, enables me and gives me the freedom and the time to branch out into becoming a more visual artists, using myself as the tool. So, film and television commercials,

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Guest: Tanya Fox

Company / Business name: ​Cast Global Media

Speaker, Collaborator, Podcaster and Serial Entrepreneur, Tanya Fox has owned businesses from retail to service to franchise. She now spends her days helping others to discover the fun in business and how to retrain how they think about failures.Tools / Books / Resources mentioned:Tools: NoneShow Notes:Tanya’s entrepreneurial journey started at a young age of 11 with a lemonade stand and apart from a 2.5 year stint in the corporate world, it restarted with an accounting firm after college.Tanya talks about her specialization which is to look beyond the numbers. As an example, her keynote speeches focus on ‘firing  a bookkeeper who doesn’t ask business questions.”.Tanya expands on her journey with stints in a bread making company (along with her husband), a Taekwondo studio etc. At one point, they had 5 simultaneous businesses but they made sure that they never start 2 businesses at the same time.Tanya talks about one of her popular keynote speeches ‘I am Tanya, and I am a failure’. The genesis for this was her conversations with other business owners who focused on failure a lot and not enough on the learnings from these failures.Tanya talks about people who inspired her starting with her mom who started her own business in her sixties. Her social media coach for 10+ years, Ashley inspires her as well. Tanya also talked about the 5:00 AM club.Tanya talks about 3 major attributes of successful people she has seen over the years coaching. (1) They embrace their fears (2) They are willing to reach out to others with expertise (3) They have inner confidence in themselves.Tanya’s advice for aspiring entrepreneurs is to collaborate (and look at that as competition) a lot and reach out for people with expertise that you don’t have.

Episode Transcript

00:02Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the agile entrepreneur podcast. This is your host Ramesh Dontha. This podcast is about starting and building your own business with purpose, passion, perseverance, and possibilities. So today I have a guest who has a broad spectrum of experience. Her name is Tanya Fox. She is aSpeaker, collaborator, podcaster and serial entrepreneur, a lot of things. Tanya Fox has owned businesses from retail to service to franchise.

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Guest: Millette Jones

Company / Business name: Fox Talks Business 

Millette Jones is a podcaster, speaker, contributor at major publications, frequent podcast guest and the founder and CEO of Cast Global Media. Cast Global is a podcast consultancy helping organizations reduce customer acquisition costs and increase employee retention rates through strategic podcast marketing. Cast helps corporations utilize podcasting to support firm initiatives, transform employee downtime, build executive and corporate thought leadership and drive brand loyalty through podcast advertising, interview marketing, internal podcasting, and custom podcasts.Tools / Books / Resources mentioned:Tools: NoneShow Notes:Millette starts off by talking about the need for corporations, the brick and mortar type, to understand the importance of podcasts for their business and how Cast Global Media fills this need.Millette talks about how she got into this specialty business after starting as a career coach. As her partnership with another coach fell through, Millette got the opportunity to explore podcasting and selling it to entrepreneur and businesses.Millette got her first paying customers by working with entrepreneurs she had in her coaching business and she explains how she is trying to engage with large corporations and businesses as well.Millette’s focus is on helping businesses connect with their customer via podcasting, connect with their own employees as well, and connect with their stakeholders.Millette traces her personal journey where she started in route sales where she travelled extensively, started entrepreneurship with affiliate marketing, then extended into coaching.  She now extended her business into podcast marketing connecting her online expertise with brick and mortar businesses.Millette talks about one thing she could have done is instead of starting her entrepreneurship as a full blown affair, she should have started it as a side gig while still having a job.Her advice for aspiring entrepreneurs is to figure out what you are good at, where your talents lie, and exploit them. Whether you like writing or speaking or just hustling, just find them and start with those talents.

Episode Transcript

00:03Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Agile Entrepreneur podcast. This is your host, Ramesh Dontha. This podcast is about starting and building your own business with purpose, passion, perseverance on possibilities. Today I have a guest who he's also in the same business that we are doing right here, which is the podcasting, so Millette Jones. Millette Jones is the founder and CEO of cast global media. She's a podcaster, a speaker and contributor at major publications and she's been a frequent podcast guest, the cast global media, it’s a podcast consultancy helping organizations reduce customer acquisition costs and increase employee retention rates through str...

Speaker, Collaborator, Podcaster and Serial Entrepreneur, Tanya Fox has owned businesses from retail to service to franchise. She now spends her days helping others to discover the fun in business and how to retrain how they think about failures.

Company / Business name: Fox Talks Business

Business website URL: https://foxtalksbusiness.ca/

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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/FoxTalksBusines

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanya-fox-64b46b6a/

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

Millette Jones is a podcaster, speaker, contributor at major publications, frequent podcast guest and the founder and CEO of Cast Global Media. Cast Global is a podcast consultancy helping organizations reduce customer acquisition costs and increase employee retention rates through strategic podcast marketing. Cast helps corporations utilize podcasting to support firm initiatives, transform employee downtime, build executive and corporate thought leadership and drive brand loyalty through podcast advertising, interview marketing, internal podcasting, and custom podcasts.

Rin Gamache, a licensed Skincare Hacker (Esthetician), is the founder of Bare and Beards. She constantly struggled with acne and hyperpigmentation from her early teens through adulthood. She decided to take matters into her own hands and began researching everything about skin care from products to acne triggers.

Rin decided to enroll in an esthetician program in the fall of 2017. She chose to concentrate on the male demographic, and create a clinic and products specifically targeting men. The beauty industry is associated with femininity since everything is geared towards women. Rin believes men don't have the skincare conversation because they aren't included enough; therefore, the conversation isn't happening. Rin's desire is to help change the industry standards, and jump start that conversation among men, because men want nice skin too!

Rin has lived in Brooklyn, New York and Teaneck, New Jersey for a total of six years. She also lived abroad in Barcelona, Spain and Tianshui, China for a combined three years teaching English as a foreign language. Her interests include playing basketball, running, watching the Seattle Seahawks play, learning about different cultures, practicing her Spanish, traveling, and spending time with family and friends.

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Guest: Rin Gamache

Company / Business name: Bare and Beards – Skincare services & products for Men

Rin Gamache, a licensed Skincare Hacker (Esthetician), is the founder of Bare and Beards. Rin chose to concentrate on the male demographic, and create a clinic and products specifically targeting men. The beauty industry is associated with femininity since everything is geared towards women. Rin believes men don't have the skincare conversation because they aren't included enough; therefore, the conversation isn't happening. Rin's desire is to help change the industry standards, and jump start that conversation among men, because men want nice skin too!Rin has lived in Brooklyn, New York and Teaneck, New Jersey for a total of six years. She also lived abroad in Barcelona, Spain and Tianshui, China for a combined three years teaching English as a foreign language. Her interests include playing basketball, running, watching the Seattle Seahawks play, learning about different cultures, practicing her Spanish, traveling, and spending time with family and friends.Tools / Books / Resources mentioned:Tools: NoneShow Notes:Rin talks about why she chose to focus on male skincare and how she got motivated.Rin talks about the operations of her business and how she has a multipronged approach of her own clinic, barber schools education, and direct reach.Rin talks about her i=unique approach to get first paid customers by approaching men at malls to try out her product for free and tracking their progress over multiple weeks over social media.How to price your products and service? Rin goes into specific details on bundling products, free education to help increase customers’ revenues, and determining the profit margins.Rin talks about her own personal journey from journalism to media marketing to entrepreneurship. She goes into details on finding niches and defining customer personas.Rin’s advice to business owners: 1. Talk to other owners and signup mentors 2. Learn by trial and error 3. Be consistent and persistent 4. Keep building credibility.

Episode Transcript

00:02Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the agile entrepreneur podcast. This is your host Ramesh Dontha. This podcast is about starting and building your own business with purpose, passion, perseverance, and possibilities. Today we have a guest and her business definitely interests me. So I would like to know a little bit more about, her name is Rin Gamache. Rin Gamache is the founder, an esthetician of Baden beards, men's skin and wellness clinic located in San Diego. Hi, Rin, welcome.00:41Rin: Hi Ramesh. Thank you for having me.00:45Ramesh: All right. My very first question, what is aesthetician?

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Guest: Vivek Kumar

Company / Business name: Qlicket

Vivek is the founder of Qlicket, an application platform that diagnoses the drivers of avoidable employee turnover and gets employees bought in to the best solutions to reduce the turnover. Vivek Kumar completed his MBA from University Of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and worked for couple of years in Management Consulting and couple more years in private equity. After 4 years in NY, Vivek had a calling that he has to make an impact in this world and decided that high tech industry is where he is going to make an impact. He moved to silicon valley and worked with a company that sold advertisements for free wireless in public places before his current venture.Tools / Books / Resources mentioned:Tools: NoneShow Notes:Why talent retention is a big problem and employee turnover is expensive for businesses and how Qlicket is helping solve that problem.Qlicket captures first-line feedback from employees about their concerns and addresses them as soon as possible to resolve issues.Vivek goes into details on how Qlicket pivoted and iterated many times before it found its current growth model. Key finding was that you don’t need a fully developed product but need working prototypes to drive customer discovery conversations.Vivek talks about the importance of resilience and how being resilient helped him from keeping the company afloat since 2011 before actually driving the growth they looked for in 2018.Vivek talks about his own journey from a business school to investment banking to consulting to silicon valley to India and back to the US. His key findings through all these churns are to fail fast, learn from stumbles in a non-emotional way, and relying on supporters & collaborators.Vivek goes into details on how he got first paying customers by targeting conference attendees, sending cold emails, following up with face-to-face meetings in a very targeted way. A combination of multiple strategies but in a targeted way.Vivek’s advice to entrepreneurs is to focus on customers want and not what you find interesting, assess failures objectively and learn, and keep focusing on growth.

Episode Transcript

00:02Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the agile entrepreneur podcast. This is your host Ramesh Dontha. This podcast is about starting and building your own business with purpose, passion, perseverance, and possibilities. Today I have the CEO of Qlicket Vivek Kumar. So the Qlicket is an enterprise software service company that caters to companies that are experiencing high worker turnover environment. And Vivek himself has gone through many pivots in his life as a career and for his own company that he...

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Guest: Robyn Mancell

Company / Business name: Girls Gone ForEx

Robyn Mancell is the Co-Founder and Mindset Coach for Girls Gone Forex, an online trading academy that teaches women across the globe how to trade in the foreign exchange (Forex) market. Before the Forex business and the nonprofit, Robyn was self-employed for over twenty-five years in almost that many industries. After her divorce in 1990, she left corporate America, going from stable, salaried nine-to-five employee to a commission-only entrepreneur. All while raising her children as a single mom.Tools / Books / Resources mentioned:Tools: NoneShow Notes:What is ForEx business? Why is it interesting?How Robyn got into Foreign Exchange investing and how she met her co-founder.Details on how Robyn and her co-founder used Facebook to start a contest to recruit first 15 or so women out of hundreds of applications for their first course and used social media to track their progress.Robyn shares details on how started multiple businesses over a period of 25 years spanning from restaurant business to insurance sales to ladies fitness center.Robyn’s motivation of ‘being afraid of not doing new things’ as opposed to ‘being afraid of doing new things’.Robyn’s observations on characteristics of people who do well in her classes as well as life. #1 is mindset. People who can focus, persevering, and not quitting. People with a drive and purpose and not looking at failures as failures.Robyn’s reflections of things that she could have differently. 1. Connect with mentors early on 2. Be willing to listen to people with more experience.Final advice to aspiring entrepreneurs; 1. Just go for it. 2. Have a network of mentors, supporters, and collaborators. 3. Don’t look at failures as failures but as learning lessons.

Episode Transcript

00:02Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the agile entrepreneur podcast. This is your host Ramesh Dontha. This podcast is about starting and building your own business with purpose, passion, perseverance, and possibilities. Today we have a guest dabbling in a business or build a business that we don't come across that often. So I'm a very honored to have you know, a person from investing and trading side. Her name is Robyn Mancell. Robyn, welcome to the podcast.00:38Robyn: Thank you so much, Ramesh. I'm happy to be here.00:41Ramesh: Excellent. Let me first introduce your business and then we'll get into the discussion. Okay. Robyn Mancell is the Co-founder of a business called girls g...

Vivek is the founder of Qlicket, an application platform that diagnoses the drivers of avoidable employee turnover and gets employees bought in to the best solutions to reduce the turnover. Vivek Kumar completed his MBA from University Of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and worked for couple of years in Management Consulting and couple more years in private equity. After 4 years in NY, Vivek had a calling that he has to make an impact in this world and decided that high tech industry is where he is going to make an impact. He moved to silicon valley and worked with a company that sold advertisements for free wireless in public places before his current venture.