The Business Method: Interviewing Billionaires, Billion Dollar Founders & the World’s Most Successful People 🎧🔥

Michael Ventura ~ Founder of SubRosa and Author of Applied Empathy

~ Current Series ~

Hey listeners welcome back to the show. Today’s guest is Michael Ventura the CEO and founder of Sub Rosa, a strategy and design firm that has worked with some of the world's largest and most important brands—from Johnson & Johnson, Adobe, the TED Conference, Delta Airlines, and The Daily Show. Michael has served as a board member and adviser to various organizations, including the Burning Man Project, and the U.N.'s Tribal Link Foundation. He is also a visiting lecturer at Princeton University and the United States Military Academy at West Point. In addition to this Michael is the author of ‘Applied Empathy’.  

Today on the show, we get behind the mind of Michael and creating Sub Rosa, and how they implement design practice and strategies for companies around the world. Part of the culture in Sub Rosa and all of Michael’s companies is the idea of Applied Empathy. Throughout the show we get to chat with Michael on how using ‘applied empathy’ can make a massive change in your business.

02:20: Who is Michael Ventura?

05:48: The Importance of Design

08:50: Succeeding in Many Different Businesses at Once

12:30: Empathy vs. Being Nice

16:38: Applied Empathy vs. Cognitive Empathy vs. Effective Empathy vs. Somatic Empathy

20:03: The Process of Applied Empathy

24:38: Training the Younger Generation on Empathy

28:53: How to Train Yourself or Others on Empathy

37:28: When Empathy Becomes Second Nature

39:48: Michael on Influence

Contact Info:

https://appliedempathy.com/

Janice Bryant Howroyd ~ Founder of ActOne Group

~ Current Series ~

I love incredibly successful people that still have the down-to-earth human touch. It is incredibly enjoyable to talk with them and understand why they are who they are.  Today’s guest is one of those people and yet so much more. Janice Bryant Howroyd is the founder The ActOne Group and she is the very first African-American female to found a billion dollar company, and yes you heard me right, a billion dollar company.  

What is even more impressive about Janice is that speaking with her was like talking with an old friend. She is incredibly relatable and really a caring and authentic human being.

During the interview I noticed this and really wanted to get behind her story and what made her the amazing individual and entrepreneur she is today. We chat about her upbringing as an African-American in a extremely racial environment with a family with 11 children. We chat about he life philosophy, her habits and what she vales. We chat about how she maintains personal relationships while running a billion dollar company, the challenges of being a female entrepreneur, how us humans like to operate in tribes and some of her favorite books she recommends even though she has a 6000+ book library.  

At the end of the podcast, we ask Janice about her philosophy on influence in today’s world and how she handles it responsibility.  

“Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal!” JBH

04:11: Who is Janice Bryant Howroyd?

08:22: Growing Up in a Harsh Environment w/ a Rich Family Culture

16:02: Janice’s Definition of Success

16:55: Maintaining Personal Relationships While Running a Business

25:55: Janice’s Advice for Entrepreneurs and the Sexes

29:05: Equality Opportunity Progress

33:30: Humans Operating in Tribes

35:55: Janice’s Recommended Books

43:45: Janice on Influence and the ‘If’ poem

If you can keep your head when all about you   

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: 

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man/Woman, my son/daughter!

Contact Info:

http://askjbh.com/

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

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

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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jbryanthowroyd

Casey Fenton ~ Founder of CouchSurfing and Upstock

~ Current Series ~

Imagine being a young man hacking the University of Iceland’s directory to meet new people and trying to find a couch to crash on for a free place to stay.  Then turning that concept into a 20 million person platform that changed the way people travel. Casey Fenton is that young man and the platform he built is called Couch Surfing.  

Casey joins us on the podcast today for a really exciting chat. These days Casey has built a new business called Upstock that is modernizing an antiquated stock option system that allows team members and employees to earn equity instantly without an undue cash burden on the company. He got this idea from his days at CouchSurfing when he didn’t have the ability to give his team and employees a shared part of the company. This frustrated him and it created a passion that started Upstock and the drive to help businesses help themselves.

We dive into Casey’s passion about Upstock today but also chat about the book on human egos that Casey is writing. He has another mission to help people understand their egos better and how we can use them for good. Of course, we also discuss about the Couch Surfing story and how it led Casey on a wild ride of world travel, startups, venture capitalists, challenges with the US taxation system, helping business grow and changing the way people travel all around the world.

04:19: Climbing the Great Pyramids

08:46: Casey on His New Business Upstock

17:50: Examples of Sharing Equity w/ Team Members

23:16: Casey on Gamifying Business

26:06: Ideas on Gamifying for Entrepreneurs Today

31:46: Ego Hacking

45:01: The First Couch That Casey Surfed On

48:47: Number One Lesson from CouchSurfing

51:32: Other Lessons from CouchSurfing

55:31: Casey on Influence

Contact Info:

https://upstock.io/

http://www.caseyfenton.com/

http://bit.ly/egohack

Jim Rogers ~ Founder and chairman of Rogers Holdings, and the Co-founder of the famous Quantum Fund and Soros Fund Management

~ Current Series ~

Ladies and gentlemen welcome to the podcast today. On the mic we have a very special guest. He is known as one of the world’s go-to people for investing advice amassing a net-worth of somewhere near $300,000,000. He is the founder and chairman of Rogers Holdings, and the co-founder of the famous Quantum Fund and Soros Fund Management that he built with George Soros in the 80’s. He is an author of many top-selling books and has been someone that offers sound and legitimate advice about business, investing and living a good well-balanced life, and his name is Jim Rogers.

We were very excited when we found out that Jim accepted our invitation to come on the show because he is a personal hero to both Noah Laith who joins us co-hosting today and myself. I started following Jim back in 2008 when I began investing in gold and silver.  He was a proponent of always having gold and silver, and I enjoyed listening to Jim on interviews and learning from someone who seemed to have an incredible amount of insight and experience. Chatting with Jim was a blast, because he is a very down-to-earth person who seems to value the important things in life, like spending time with his family, going to the beach, travel, riding motorcycles, giving back, teaching others, and doing good in the world over amassing more and more wealth. We had some creative questions to ask Jim about life philosophy, influence and what he would tell his 20-year old self, but also dig into those questions about investing today, where the markets are headed, his long-term view of economies and we threw in a few questions that you guys sent in to us.

03:22: Jim Leaving the Backwoods of Alabama for the Ivy League and Wall Street

04:56: How Jim Defines Focus

06:50: Training Yourself to be Persistent

07:40: The Influence of Jim’s Peers at Yale

08:53: Jim’s Advice for Today’s Youth

10:12: Tipping Points for Jim’s Life

12:30: New Emerging Markets for the Next 10 Years

16:21: Jim on Agriculture and Pharma

19:01: What Jim Would Do if He Were 20 Years Old?

19:33: Jim on Machine Learning and it Impacting Investing

20:25: What Was Jim’s Worst Investment?

21:40: Hedging Against the Effects of Climate Change

22:48: The Next Crisis

26:29: Jim on Using Intuition

27:28: Jim on Influence

29:00: Changing America’s School System

30:17: What Does Jim Wish People Asked Him More Often?

Contact Info:

http://www.jimrogers.com/

Ross Buhrdorf~ Founding CTO of HomeAway.com & Founder of ZenBusiness.com

~ Current Series ~

Many of us entrepreneurs in the internet/tech world are younger. Most of us are in our 20’s and 30’s because we grew up with computers.  Every now and then we get a guest that has been involved with tech and internet companies since before the Dot Com Boom and it is exciting to hear their stories because it seems like they have seen it all.

Today’s guest is Ross Buhrdorf and he is the founding CTO that worked with the global giant HomeAway.com for eleven years until they sold to Expedia for $3.9 billion.  Ross was also involved with one of the first major search engines Excite.com that was once bigger than Google. Today, Ross and I chat about his time with Excite and HomeAway and what it was like building these companies up to become tech giants.  Later in the episode, Ross shares with us about how he sets goals and how he uses neuro-linguistic programming to help create the success that he has had. Lastly, Ross shares about his newest venture Zen Business, that is helping entrepreneurs incorporate easily for a very low cost in any state of their choosing.

02:54: Why Ross Lives in Austin, Texas?

07:29: Ross’s Early Career at Excite.com and HomeAway.com

11:49: Working with One of the World’s Largest Search Engines During the Tech Boom

16:49: Tipping Point When Google Took Dominance

19:44: Working as a Founding CTO with HomeAway.com  

23:09: Picking Great Companies to Work With

30:44: Selling HomeAway for $3.9 Billion

33:09: The Vacuum of TIme After Exiting a Business

40:44: Goal Setting from the CTO of a Billion Dollar Company

44:19: Zen Business Incorporating Business for Free

47:49: Helping 1,000,000 Entrepreneurs in Five Years

51:48: Ross on Influence

Contact Info:

https://www.zenbusiness.com/

[email protected]

Brad Birkenfeld~ Exposing the Largest Tax Fraud Scheme in the History of the World w/ the Author of 'Lucifer’s Banker'

~ Current Series ~

The Swiss banking system is one of the most powerful and secretive banking systems we have in the world. They have been known for years as the go-to place for wealthy from all countries to store their money and according to Swiss law they absolutely cannot share their clients information with any person, government or entity around the world.

Our guest today, Bradley Birkenfeld is a former top employee of the Union Bank of Switzerland, known as UBS. He ran the United States division of the company in Geneva for years. While working for UBS, he found some documents that were written to protect the bank from illegal activity that the bank was condoning in the United States. These documents were worded in a way that they could throw their employees “under the bus” if they needed to direct the blame elsewhere.  When Brad approached the company about it, they ignored him. This was a huge red flag for Brad, and after numerous attempts, he eventually resigned from the company.  

This inspired a series of events which led Brad to approach the Department of Justice in the United States government, about the problem and illegal activity the bank had been conducting on US soil. To his surprise, the Department of Justice didn’t welcome him with open arms. In fact, they even turned the case against him. Eventually, Brad had to turn to the US Senate and IRS to expose what turned into the largest case of tax fraud the US government has ever seen, and Brad became largest whistleblower the US Government and the Swiss banking system has ever come across. On today’s show Brad tells his story and outlines what he has written in his book Lucifer’s Banker: The Untold Story of How I Destroyed Swiss Bank Secrecy.

 Now, because of Brad’s participation with the bank, he was actually sentenced to 30 months in prison by the United States. What is shocking, is the out of the 19,000 names Brad exposed to the US government not a single sole went to jail, except him. That’s right, the only person that went to jail is the man that exposed billions of dollars of tax fraud against the United States.  So far, the US government has collected somewhere near $16 billion in unpaid taxes from Brad’s case. Now there is some good new at the end of this tale! Because the government collected so much from Brad’s case, the IRS rewarded him $104 million...yes, you heard me right. The US government put the man in jail that blew the whistle on the largest tax fraud scheme in the history of the world with the Swiss banks, they then gave him 30 months in jail, and then rewarded him with $104 million….and yes, it is all a very true story!

  05:05: Lucifer’s Banker the Book

  07:41: The Swiss Banking Background

  17:11: Brad Starts Working for the Swiss Banks

  19:56: Seeing Red Flags While Working for a Swiss Bank

  27:59: The Whistleblowing Law

  29:36: Brad Brings 19,000 Names of People Committing Tax Fraud to the Department of Justice

  36:31: Exposing a Partner to Saddam Hussein

  41:06: Taking the Case to the Senate, the IRS and the SEC

  47:06: Brad Goes to Jail and is Rewarded $104 Million

  57:11: What Has Gotten Better Due to Brad’s Whistleblowing?

1:01:11: Are the Banks Really Too Big to Fail?

1:05:11: What is the Solution for the Future of Banking?

1:08:11: How Can the Average Person Support Whistleblowers and Stopping Corrupt Banking?

1:12:16: Brad’s Experience in Jail

1:14:51: Brad’s Investment Advice

1:16:51: Brad on Influence

Contact Info:

https://lucifersbanker.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-birkenfeld

Matt Artisan ~ Dating Coach, Founder of The Attractive Man & YouTube Influencer

~ Current Series ~

Imagine having over 500,000 YouTube subscribers and 80% of those were we the past 11-months. Today’s guest is a good friend, founder of The Attractive Man and world-renowned dating coach Matt Artisan. In the past year, Matt’s YouTube channel and influence has skyrocketed!  Matt has a been a dating coach since 2006 teaching men how to communicate and date women. He started out by helping a couple clients one-on-one. Over the years, he has turned this service into a business that helps thousands and thousands of people and they consistently run events all over the world.

Today, Matt and I chat about the influence he has acquired over the years. We talk about how he grew this simple service into a business and he shares his secrets to his massive YouTube growth in 2018!

• 05:06: Matt Getting His Start Helping Guys Talk to Girls in College

Contact Info:

Website: https://www.theattractiveman.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/theattractiveman1

Rock Thomas ~ World's Top 50 Realtor Selling 5000 Homes in a Year, Serial Entrepreneur and Investor

~ Current Series ~

Influence is an interesting aspect of being an entrepreneur. As each person climbs the ladder of success, their influence is bound to grow. How we manage that influence will say a lot about our character and help or hinder our continued growth. Today, on the podcast we are joined by Rock Thomas. Rock a person that has built a considerable amount of influence over the years from becoming one of the top 50 realtors in the world selling over 5000 houses in a year. He has spoken and worked with some of the most famous entrepreneurs and thought leaders in the world, had his speeches and videos viewed over 55 million times and built 34 streams of income.

Throughout the show, Rock and I chat about the influence he has achieved and how he maintains it in the good times and not-so-good times. Rock’s underlying message is, “Influence begins with influencing self”.

02:58: Managing Energy Levels and Daily Routine

05:32: Transferring Past Pain to Create the Result you Desire

08:52: Who is Rock Thomas?

14:10: Ways to Increase the Constructive Challenges in Your Life

15:52: Major Takeaways from Being on the World’s Top 50 Realtors

19:32: Creating 35 Streams of Revenue

26:42: Reverse Engineering

28:51: Creating an A-Team

32:12: Rock on Influence

37:32: Biggest Challenge as an Influencer

Contact Info:

https://rockthomas.com/

https://gom1.com/

http://www.gobundance.com/

Instagram: @rockthomas

Facebook: @RockThomasOfficial

Johan Ernst Nilson ~ Adventure Activist

~ Current Series ~

Could you imagine trekking eighteen months from the North Pole to the South Pole?  Or what about spending three-thousand nights in a tent? Or Kayaking from Sweden to Africa? Walking the Serengeti? Dog Sledding the Arctic? Riding a bike across the Americas? Or Kitesurfing across Greenland?  Well, today’s guest can and he has done it all! Not only has he completed those adventures he has completed nearly fifty more treks throughout 168 countries setting world records and making it on TIME magazine. Johan Ernst Nilson joins us on the podcast today to chat about his life and mission as one of the world's top adventure activists.

Johan and I, chat for an hour and a half about his life and the journeys he has been on. He has some great tips about finding the motivation to achieve impossible challenges. We chat about having a champion's mindset, never giving up and about the most inspiring and scary moments he has had trekking the earth. We wrap up our interview listening to Johan talk about what he has experienced with climate change, and how he is using the influence he has gained to make a positive impact in the world.

  04:03: The Placebo Effect and Branding

  09:42: Who is Johan Ernst Nilson?

  28:28: Johan on the Importance of Having a Why

  33:31: The Scariest Situation Out of All Johan’s Adventures

  37:11: Johan’s Most Cathartic Experience

  42:54: What Johan’s Thinks About on Long Solo Treks

  46:29: Johan’s Most Impactful Reads

  48:09: Climate Change Today

  58:04: Using Influence to Create a Positive Impact

1:06:04: Financing Non-Stop Adventures

1:16:54: Johan’s Future Treks

 Instagram: @johanernst

http://johanernst.com

Emma Jakobi ~ Founder of mmmEnglish

~ Current Series ~

One point six million YouTube subscribers in three years, going from a teaching job to having a massive platform to build a business and help people along the way. This is exactly what happened to today’s guest. Emma Jakobi is the founder of mmmEnglish. mmmEnglish started out as a YouTube channel created by Emma to help her students learn English when she wasn’t teaching in class. The channel took off pretty rapidly and after a year and a half, Emma saw the opportunity to build a business helping people learn English online using her channel as the main platform.

Today on the show, Emma and I talk about the growth of her YouTube channel. Emma shares about all the methods she had used to make this a success. Towards the end of the show, we chat about how Emma has handled her new influence in a responsible way creating a positive impact with her content and her business.

05:10: Who is the YouTube Sensation Emma Jakobi?

09:15: mmmEnglish YouTube Channel

16:33: Hitting 100,000 Subscribers on YouTube

20:38:: Getting 1,000,000 Subscribers in the Past Year

27:28: Hooking People on YouTube with Authentic Videos

36:33: Emma on Handling Haters

38:38: What is a YouTube Subscriber Worth?

42:13: Emma on Influence

Contact Info:

mmmEnglish YouTube Channel

https://www.mmmenglish.com/