Jacob Pechenik is the founder & CEO of Lettuce Grow, which he co-founded with his now ex-wife Zooey Deschanel. When they learned what goes into their food (additives, processed foods, toxic agricultural chemicals, and food miles), they decided to create a system that allows everyone to grow 20% of their own fresh food at home with no pesticides and 95% less water than traditional agriculture. 

Jacob has had a very successful and somewhat unconventional career, as he has dabbled in a few different industries and successfully managed to build and sell companies. However, no company has given him the sense of purpose that he has as much as Lettuce Grow and the vision to change our current food system. 

Jacob and I discussed: 

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Jacob Peckenik 

My Take: I believe that as technology advances growing your own food will become easier, more affordable, and accessible. I think that over the next few decades we will see a massive change in the way our food is produced and how we choose what we consume. marrying agriculture & technology will allow us all to grow our own food at home, from salads to steaks to oat milk.

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Ted McDonald, or Barefoot Ted, as he is more well known as, is the founder of Luna Sandals and has for the last 20 years been an advocate for mastering simple techniques for optimal personal fitness. His philosophy is simple - self-experimentation is key. Find your own path. Share what you discover. 

Many have come to know about Ted through the pages of Christopher McDougall's best-selling book "Born to Run" - which became a national bestseller! Ted has completely embodied the lifestyle he preaches and has enjoyed sharing his philosophy on life with audiences across the world. As "Barefoot Ted", he has played a major role in defining and popularizing the natural running movement, being an early adopter of the current trend.

Ted and I discussed:

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Barefoot Ted

My Take: Try everything once! New ideas are abundant, some are good, some are bad, and some are world-changing. Don't be afraid to try new things that may seem out of the box. They may not work for you, but there's also a small chance they could be the best thing you've ever done. The only way to know - is if you try it. 

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Austin Cohen is the founder & CEO of Flexit. Flexit is an app that provides users with on-demand access to fitness brands around the country by offering both virtual personal training and entry into gyms. Before the pandemic started in 2020, FlexIt allowed users to pay by the minute to workout at gyms where they were not members, but in March 2020 they added new features and created the Virtual Personal Training platform - which has been a big hit with consumers. 

Prior to launching Flexit, Austin was a founding member and partner of Wheels Up, a private aviation company.

Austin and I discussed:

And so much more...

Austin Cohen

My Take: Adapt or die. If you are not implementing new technologies and innovations in your company your days of success are likely numbered. You have to keep an open mind and realize when it is time to pivot in order to keep afloat and win. Everything from the food we eat to the items we buy (and the type of workouts we are doing) is being changed by technology. You have to harness the power of change in order for you to offer the best experience or product to your end consumer. 

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Andrew Carter is the co-founder and CEO of Smallhold. 

Andrew is a greenhouse and vertical farming specialist, he builds controlled environments and has been doing urban agriculture projects for years. Most of his background is in commercial greenhouse and vertical farm systems. together with his co-founder Adam DeMartino they built Smallhold. 

Smallhold is on a mission to dramatically shorten the distance between you and fresh, gourmet mushrooms. They have a network of organic indoor farms where they ship fresh mushrooms. They also have installations in supermarkets and restaurants where you can pick fresh mushrooms on the spot. They want to shift the definition of locally grown foods to represent foods grown locally, not 500 miles away. 

Andrew and I discussed: 

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Andrew Carter

My Take: There is so much innovation that is occurring in the food space that it is hard to know what our food system will look like in 10 years. With so much focus on sustainability, organic products, less water usage, and reducing carbon emissions & plastic consumption, I am extremely interested and cautiously optimistic about what the future of food of our food is going to look like. 

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Erez Yoeli is a research scientist at MIT's Sloan School of Management where he directs the Applied Corporations Team. His research focuses on altruism: understanding how it works and how to promote it. He collaborates with governments, nonprofits, and companies to apply the lessons of this research towards addressing real-world challenges like increasing energy conservation, improving antibiotic adherence, reducing smoking in public places, and promoting philanthropy.

Erez also has a popular Ted Talk about how to motivate people to do good for others. His new book Hidden Games: The Surprising Power of Game Theory to Explain Irrational Human Behavior with co-author Moshe Hoffman is a fun, powerfully insightful book, but also, an eye-opening argument for using game theory to explain all the irrational things we think, feel, and do.

Erez and I discuss:

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Erez Yoeli

My Take: We are not as rational as we think we are. It is important to take stock of this fact and question - why do we do certain things? Why do we act in ways that may go against our own self-interest? The path to knowledge is through questioning - and it is imperative to ask the most important question first - why?

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Jose Rosado is an online entrepreneur from the Dominican Republic who helps people achieve their full online potential. He teaches folks who want to learn how to make a full-time income online how to do precisely that. Jose has mastered the art of building a community and, most importantly, building trust with the people who follow him. In a few short years, he has amassed a massive following on Twitter by following a simple yet persistent pattern that has yielded incredible results. While some may think that creating online content is "easy" or "fast" the truth of the matter is - it's a process that makes time, energy, self-belief, and just a bit of luck. However, experts like Jose can speed up that process for people who are determined to succeed and are open to learning. 

Jose and I discussed: 

And so much more...

Jose Rosado

My Take: Both from my own personal experience but also from talking to many creators and online entrepreneurs, I can say for a fact that making money online and creating a viable, lucrative business takes time and does not happen overnight. This should not deter you from starting but simply help you create a realistic framework for you to work with. This is why many people start & stop because they don't see the type of engagement they thought they would see. Creating realistic expectations allows you to treat this path the way it should be treated - as a marathon, not a sprint. 

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Ron is the CEO of AllTrails, the most used and trusted outdoors platform in the world. Before becoming the CEO of AllTrails, Ron was Head of Growth at Yelp Reservations, Co-Founder of Liftopia, and Head of Business Development at Hotwire. The mission of AllTrails is to help people explore the outdoors with hand-curated trail maps along with photos, reviews, and user recordings crowdsourced from an ever-growing community of millions. Initially, Ron was hesitant to accept the role of CEO that was offered to him, but after some soul searching he decided to accept - and ever since the growth of AllTrails has been undeniable. 

Ron and I discussed:

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Ron Schneidermann

My Take: Even though we are getting more technologically advanced by the hour, the outdoors are and always will be an integral part of us. Finding a way to marry the two is the type of innovation necessary for this day & age. As someone who uses this app regularly, I can attest to how much easier and safer it makes my hikes - while allowing me to find trails I may not know of otherwise. 

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Michael is the Co-founder and CEO of Oros Apparel and has also been featured on the Forbes 30Under30. Oros is a performance outerwear company that uses the same stuff NASA uses to insulate spacecraft - and transformed it into max-warmth, zero-bulk apparel. While backpacking across Europe, Michael decided to climb one of the tallest mountains in the Swiss Alps,  but he looked like the Michelin Man (tons of bulk and layers of outerwear). He wanted to figure out a way to cut the bulk but keep the warmth, and that was the initial spark that started his quest for better insulation. 

While in college, he received a scholarship created by the Mercury 7 Astronauts — The Astronaut Scholarship. Through that scholarship, he learned about aerogel — this material NASA used to insulate things in space - and the rest is history. 

Michael and I discussed:

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Michael Markesbery 

My Take: Taking something that has worked for many years or even decades and reimagining it, is the work of dreamers, sometimes visionaries. Without visionaries, we would not have many of the advancements we so frequently enjoy and so easily take for granted. 

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Mark Achler is a Managing Director of MATH Venture Partners. Prior to MATH, Mark was the Senior Vice President of New Business, Strategy, and Innovation for Redbox. He is a serial entrepreneur who has co-founded four companies as well as being a partner in an earlier venture fund called Kettle Partners. Additionally, Mark teaches Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Business and is a frequent speaker, resource, and ardent champion for the entrepreneurial community. Mark recently released the book - Exit Right: How to Sell Your Startup, Maximize Your Return and Build Your Legacy, in which he and his co-author Mert Iseri interviewed dozens of M&A leaders at the biggest  Silicon Valley acquirers—as well as attorneys, bankers, and founders who have been through the trenches.

Mark and I discussed:

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Mark Achler

Exit Right: How to Sell Your Startup, Maximize Your Return and Build Your Legacy

My Take: It's important to focus on long-term strategy and start learning early on what a good exit looks like - if you are interested in starting a company and raising $. It's a less-discussed aspect of startups, perhaps because many don't make it that far but it's a crucial aspect of building and selling a company. 

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Duncan French is the Vice President of Performance at the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Performance Institute. Duncan gained his PhD in Exercise Physiology from the University of Connecticut and has over 20 of experience as a high-performance specialist. He has worked with many athletes who have competed in the Olympic Games, World Championships, and Commonwealth Games. 

Back in England, among other things, he was the head of Strength and Conditioning at Newcastle United Football Club in the Barclays English Premier League. His role in the PI is a unique one where he gets to work with the majority of the UFC roster and help them with everything from diet, recovery, strength & conditioning, weight cuts & more. 

Duncan and I discussed:

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Duncan French IG

Duncan French Twitter

My Take: Fighters are special athletes, not only physically but mentally. Knowing you are going into battle against another fine-tuned killer and that the result of the fight, win or lose is all on you, is a sobering reality. Helping fighters achieve their best performance through precise data behind the scenes deserves the recognition that perhaps is sometimes less talked about. 

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