Matt Johannsen aka “Josie” and his wife, Kelly, started Upstairs Circus together and have captured a totally creative niche: crafts & cocktails. But this ain’t no ordinary follow-along painting class; this is a dope-ass bar, with banging beats, and an edgy vibe. And the crafts are things that you’d ACTUALLY use, wear, and show off on...

Mike Arzt is one badass creative and thank god he picked up a snowboard 20+ years ago. His passion for snowboarding became a career, which became a business, which is now five businesses. The Public Works is creative agency that he co-founded with Frank Phillips but they don’t just dream up cool shit, they build it. Mike...

If you polled 100 startup founders about the kinds of things to expect during the process of a company acquisition, you’d be hard pressed to find any of them who would suggest that the company being bought would continue to grow exponentially during and after the acquisition process. But that’s exactly what happened as Jason...

A very real business strategy these days is to create and establish a tech or software based startup for the purpose of selling to a large corporate buyer in short order. It happens every day, but that’s not what Matt...

Every entrepreneur dreams of building a company that makes a difference in the world and he or she is able to grow for years to come. George Morris (@gmorris) felt the same way but felt a tension in his own soul as he did. The things the company needed from him were not resonating with who...

Dr. Ryan Ross’ (email) journey from the projects to PhD will show you he transformed through grit, hustle, and the kindness of others. There are a couple things to pay particular attention to in this episode. The first is how Ryan always came up with a third option when faced with two unappealing ones. The second is the sheer amount...

Teju Ravilochan (@tejuravi) is the CEO and co-founder of the Unreasonable Institute, has already been named “30 Under 30” by Inc. Magazine, and received a standing ovation for his TEDx talk. And he’s as humble as they come. Since 2009, his institute offers entrepreneurs from around the world, a 5-week bootcamp connecting them with highly seasoned mentors to build...

My guest this episode is Maggie Hsu (email), Chief of Staff to Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com. Maggie is an Advisor at the Downtown Project which treats downtown Vegas like a startup, using $350 million of Tony’s personal funds, to revitalize the city. After she gave me a personal tour and did a shot of...

Elizabeth Vino (email) gave me tangible, practical tools and steps to implement when I wanted to build a great company culture. You see, I’m obsessed with great company cultures and as much as I’ve read, I just couldn’t figure out what to do. The light bulb went off when I went to a leadership training...

Lorii Rabinowitz (email) is a master community builder and highly decorated civic leader who shares with us her design blueprint to engage various people at the ground stage of a new venture, creating physical spaces to make behavioral change, and building a culture of acceptance and growth to create vibrant communities. Lorii’s newest project is to create from scratch,...