The Risk Big Podcast - Stories of starts with entrepreneurs leaders

In this interview, I get the opportunity to discuss a number of subjects with my friend, David McKinzie. He's started multiple businesses, hosted live events, begun a product line of sports bow ties, all while holding down a new job to help float his entrepreneurial endeavors. 

It was great to talk to David about mentorship, friendship, what it takes to push through down times, and how he's doing these days. Enjoy the conversation!

I started following Grant years ago while running on the treadmill and listening to dozens of his episodes of The Speaker Lab Podcast. If you have any interest at all in becoming a paid public speaker, I'd suggest you start with Grant at The Speaker Lab.

The episode is chock full of Grant's story of his start, how it impacted and still impacts his family, a broad discussion on how hard it is to be an entrepreneur but how rewarding, and much more.

The highlight of the discussion to me were his thoughts on not allowing your profession to become who you are. It's an interesting dive into the human condition, and I hope it hits home for you like it did for me.

Beyond that, I'm thankful that Grant joined me for a quick conversation about his business, his start, his family, his love for the St. Louis Cardinals(!!!) and golf, along with many other sidebars. Enjoy!

This was a great discussion with one of my dearest friends, Jason Jett. He owns the marketing firm, wetsu creative. He's an incredibly talented marketing mind who has left multiple high level positions to run his own firm where he's served clients big and small.

The talk was fun, but I was very encouraged by his clarity on entrepreneurship and loved discussing his passion for what he does. If you are doing what you love, you don't really realize you're working. The opposite is also true, if you don't love what you do, you'll feel like you're working double the hours.

In the latest episode of the RBP, I delve into what I'm trying to accomplish with the podcast, namely, to hear the stories of leaders who inspire me in all fields of work. The start of their stories are of particular fascination and the hard stuff that was encountered on the timeline of their stories. Thanks for taking on season 2 with me!

Bob Burg co-wrote the book "The Go-Giver." It's one of my favorite books on sales and discusses how you can have real influence, provide value in people's lives, and how that translates to the sales process. 

Over a year ago, I was in Florida and we had breakfast in one of his favorite hometown diners. He encouraged me to start this very podcast and agreed then to be interviewed when I had it up and running. It's only fitting that he is our final episode in our inaugural season of The Risk Big Podcast. 

One thing that I really love talking about is real influence, and in the podcast, Bob dives into that subject. You'll hear about his 5 laws of influence and he goes over each of them. 

Finally, it's just fun to talk to someone who's been such an inspiration. If you told me a few years back that I'd be interviewing one of my favorite authors, I'd say you're crazy. With that, I hope you enjoy this conversation with Bob Burg. 

I love golf, completely love it. So, you can imagine my excitement to release this episode with PGA Tour golfer Billy Hurley III. He earned his way onto the tour after serving in the US Navy all over the world after graduation from the US Naval Academy. 

He talked about the difficulty being a golfer while serving in the military and while going through the academy. He talks about his journey not being a risk to him, but from the outside looking in he says how it would look like one. 

He gives us a deep dive into the journey of getting his tour card and how he worked through tragedy while trying to succeed on the tour. 

I loved hearing Billy's story. I hope you enjoy it. 

I didn't know what I was getting into when Steve agreed to be interviewed by me (I don't think he knew either.) This episode became one of my favorite interactions because Steve is such an engaging guy.

Steve started as a software developer before software development was cool. He bought the company he worked for which was doing computer training and turned it into a successful software company. 

Steve is an inspiring entrepreneur that created a software department in the company he worked for before he bought it. Not long after he started his job at Delta Systems, he became the CEO of the company. 

Then, he purchased Delta Systems and turned it into a software company and programming business. Since then, he's grown the company to millions in yearly revenue. 

Enjoy!

Helen Ciesielski is a Principal at Lewis & Clark Ventures in St. Louis, Missouri. Lewis & Clark Ventures funds startups in the information technologies (IT), agriculture, and health care fields. She has also started and manages Pumpie, LLC, a company that provides dishwasher bags for breast pump parts. 

Helen is a highly regarded startup investor in the St. Louis area and has an incredible array of experience as a young professional by working in multiple venture funds providing early round seed money for startups. She has accomplished this while building her own business to learn the process of being a startup, enabling her to build her knowledge base for her own venture fund research. 

She discusses multiple facets of her professional work including why she only funds people who won't quit (Once you take her money, there is NO quit!), how she's learned to start her own business and understand her market opportunity, who she invests in, and much more. 

I love that Helen takes a little bit of a deep dive into the type of person she invests in as a venture capitalist. Enjoy the listen from this inspiring entrepreneur.

Johnny Eaker is an inspiring young entrepreneur that is an artist with a video camera! In the latest Risk Big Podcast episode, he talks about the story of his start by leaving one of the nation's largest in-house creative departments to work on what was his side gig, Cosmic Sauce. 

Cosmic Sauce is a video marketing agency that uses the art of video making to tell the stories of companies, people, and organizations in a visually appealing way. Johnny has an excellent eye for video and with video exploding as a means for marketing and telling stories, Johnny has really carved out a niche for himself in video production.

I wanted to talk to Johnny because he took a significant risk leaving a huge agency to build up what he had already built over the last few years. He bet BIG on himself. I wanted to hear and tell his story. 

Beyond being a renowned video artist, he's a leader with a heart to do good with his business. 

Enjoy,

Travis

Steve Grubbs joined The Risk Big Podcast to discuss how he left elected office in Iowa as a state representative to start a business out of his basement. It's a cool story of a guy who just loved starting businesses and followed a path to do what he was passionate about.

He talks about failures, how to move on from them, how to iterate in business, pivot, and take your business through hard times.

He's got a tremendous story about how he's built a really successful business that has multiple products and services. He got there by continuing to curiously innovate and start new ventures, while cutting his losses on ventures that weren't paying off.

If you're an entrepreneur that can't get the idea of starting businesses off your mind, you'll love this conversation. Steve loves to test out new ideas. He spends a good bit of his time looking for new opportunities for his business, Victory Enterprises, which he founded.

While that has worked wonders for Steve, he's also done a terrific job of hiring the right people to run the ventures that he starts. He has a fascinating story on the podcast about how he likes to start new ventures for his business then hand them over to staff to maintain. When you think of a serial entrepreneur, Steve's name ought to come to your mind.

His inspiring story of starting from the bottom and working towards a large business that does work around the country will provide some motivation for those of you out there that think the same way. Do what you love.

Enjoy!

Listen to the show online: www.RiskBigPodcast.com/episodes

Follow The Risk Big Podcast on twitter and Instagram