The Bacon Bits 'n' Bytes Podcast

In this episode, I chat with Shann McGrail, the executive director of Haltech -- a non-profit organization based in the Halton Region that works with technology companies to accelerate innovation for business growth.

Shann talks about her leadership skills/style developed more after university and when she first started working.

She provides her definition of a woman in tech and the need for everyone to part of the conversation when it comes to equality.

On being a good leader:

-Being a good listener,

-Genuinely listening with curiosity and empathy

Leadership isn't a position it's about the actions you take.

At the end of the show, we chat about Shann's experience with improv and how it can help entrepreneurs.

Connect with Shann on LinkedIn

Connect with Haltech on LinkedIn

Whenever I think of venture capital and investing in early-stage companies, the shows Dragon's Den and Shark's Tank come to mind.

In this episode, I chat with Nitya Rajendran, a senior associate at Tribeca Venture Partners - an NYC based VC firm that focuses on tech startups mainly in New York. She shares how combining her passion for finance and working closely with entrepreneurs at Georgetown University made her want to pursue a career as a venture capitalist.

Site: Tribeca Venture Partners

Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/LinkedIn

Episode 14 kicks off Season 2 with an interview with the founder of Motify (idea came from combining the words "motivate" and "simplify"), Shauna-Kay Jones.

Editor's note: Motify is mispronounced by the host and should be pronounced as "moh-tify".

Shauna shares how the idea for Motify came from helping her brother (who is on the Autism spectrum) choose which school and program would be the right fit for him.

She also shares her experience taking the stage at the RISE tech conference in Hong Kong and meeting Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple.

Learn more about how Motify is used to support students through their academic careers and support their personal skill development.

Facebook: @motifylearn

Instagram: @motifylearn

Sarah Killins is an adventurer turned entrepreneur.

Using her skills she learnt working on Shopify's Support team, she now leads her own communications company specializing in marketing strategy and eCommerce migrations as a Shopify Partner. Beyond that, she cofounded ShopHamont.com, an online collective of brands, makers, artists and artisans marketing their products together to reach a larger audience. To cap it all off, she also teaches workshops and coaches business owners on eCommerce and Entrepreneurial excellence. She's passionate about empowering young leaders and is an advocate for accelerating the success of women in tech.

In this episode, we chat about e-commerce best practices, common e-commerce mistakes and her advice for aspiring Gen Z entrepreneurs

Connect with Sarah on Facebook and Instagram

This episode showcases how one HR consultant - Stefani Blazevic of infloHR is changing the HR landscape through the introduction and use of online tools to help improve her clients' workflow. We discuss some of her favourite online everyday tools such as:

Canva

Grammarly

Calendly

and tools to help with job description and recruitment such as

Genderdecoder

Joblint

Numbeo

Stefani also provides some great advice on how to connect with other people on LinkedIn.

We've all the saying before that Content is King. If Content is King, then distribution would be the queen. In this episode, I interview Laura MacHardy, the Co-founder and Director of Klusster - an online publication platform where users can upload their content and magnify their business' online presence. Business owners can engage their team to help drive distribution.

This episode is the first bonus episode for the podcast. It's a short one that highlights the many bloopers that happened during the recording of this episode. We say "pause" a lot. Enjoy!

In this episode, I chat with Kevin Peters, who unlike me, is putting his science degree to good use as a CTO at a biotech startup, Age Rate. Age Rate focuses on the science behind the ageing process within biological systems. Using innovative epigenetic technology, they have created a test that accurately predicts how fast or how slow a person is ageing.

AgeRate is a company located at The Forge Incubator, where Kevin is also a business mentor for other startups.

We also chat about his business failures, how his definition of success is different from when he was in university and how to determine whether something has the potential to be a good idea.

The Forge Incubator is always looking to help out STEM startups in the initial stages of the business. You can connect with Kevin on LinkedIn if you are interested: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-jefferson-peters/

Learn more about Age Rate: https://www.age-rate.com/

This has probably got to be the funniest episode I have recorded thus far. Every time I have listened to it, I have laughed out loud. I am so honoured and excited to bring you this episode with Jess Kupferman, co-founder of She Podcasts - a podcast about podcasting stuff and other tech stuff by women, for women.

We chat about doing shows dates as far back as her childhood when she and her sister pretended to be game show hosts and record them on a tape recorder.

Other topics found in this episode include the pros and cons of having a co-host, how she and Elsie Escobar (co-founder of She Podcasts) met, the business side of podcasting and the first She Podcasts LIVE conference happening next month (Oct 11-13, 2019) in Atlanta, Georgia.

For conference info: shepodcasts.live

Follow on IG: @shepodcasts

Facebook: shepodcasts

Follow Jess Kupferman @jesskupferman

In this episode, I chat with someone who I had originally connected with through the Shapr networking app. Jen Refat's background is software engineering but she also has a crafty side. Craftic is a site where crafters of all levels can go to find ideas for crafts, using the materials at hand.

We also chat about how learning HTML and CSS, is a great first step to learning coding and her thoughts on why crafting has become so popular recently.

Site: craftic.com

IG: crafticland

Pinterest: crafticland

YouTube: crafticland