The WLD Show

In this episode Will shares his discovery that he has ADHD, why he has comfort with vulnerability, and how he's building community. Andrew shares his coaching business.

Conrad Lee is the former mayor of Bellevue, Washington from 2012 to 2013. He’s been serving on the city council of Bellevue since 1994. He is Bellevue's first minority member of the City Council and its longest continuous serving member. Conrad is not only the first Chinese American mayor, but the first minority mayor of Bellevue. Bellevue is home to some of the world's largest technology companies, including Amazon. And has been rated one of best places to live by CNNMoney and USA Today.

In this episode, Conrad shares immigrant story as a  Chinese American and what he's learned while pursuing the American dream.

We bring our friend Hanny Pei-Rodriguez on the podcast to share her stories with us.  

Deron Quon is a serial entrepreneur, investor, a connector, and community builder. Deron hosts an incredible monthly breakfast in Los Angeles called Breakfast of Champions, centered around authentic conversations and being genuinely helpful towards others. Deron is the Founder and CEO of a new startup, Hoopla.com, an event discovery and booking app based on short-form video. 

In 1999, Deron co-Founded Menus.com, which failed during the dot-com bubble bust in 2001. However, from the assets of Menus.com, he Co-Founded and bootstrapped Datassential, which has become the global leader in data analytics and research for the foodservice industry with clients like Nestle, Kraft Foods, Coca-Cola, Door Dash, and MacDonald’s. Datassential sold a majority stake to Spectrum Equity, a growth private equity firm, in 2019 for $125M.

Deron also Co-Founded Collective Solution, a global call center business, in 2002. Collective Solution has over 3,000 employees and provides customer service and back-office operations to leading ecommerce and media companies like Amazon, Minted, Fashion Nova, and Triller, from its call centers in the Philippines, Honduras, and Jamaica.

At the age of 18, Anthony dropped out of college to take the Thiel Fellowship and pursue his first startup, EnvoyNow. Which was acquired by JoyRun, then by Walmart.

Seven years ago at the age of 21, Anthony suffered a life-changing accident that left him as a quadriplegic. Although he’s recovered some function since, he’s still currently in a wheelchair.

Today, Anthony is the Cofounder and CEO of Vinovest. Vinovest helps investors diversify their portfolios into rare wine and whiskey, an asset class that has outperformed the S&P over the past three decades. Vinovest has over $100MM in assets under management.

In this episode, we discuss

• Becoming paralyzed at 21. And how he persevered to grow and sell Envoy Now.
• His relationship with his wife Mckenna  and how they've stayed together since teenagers.
• Securing Mark Cuban as his first angel investor through a Shark Tank-esque campus pitch.
• Leaving college as a Thiel Fellow and meeting Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin.
• Hustling to work for Blockfolio, its sale to FTX, and meeting Sam Bankman-Fried.
• The genesis of Vinovest and how he carved out a serious reputation in the wine industry.

Learn more about Anthony:

• Vinovest Website: www.vinovest.co
• Video: Anthony pitching Mark Cuban Shark Tank-style
• Anthony's Instagram: @anthony_j_zhang
• Anthony's Twitter: @anthony_j_zhang
• Fortune: A 22-Year-Old Entrepreneur Moves Forward After a Life-Changing Accident Left Him Paralyzed

Today we are joined by Julian Chan, an entertainment attorney in private practice with an incredibly diverse clientele. A few of his clients include a billion-dollar internet retail company, internet businesses, best-selling authors, film production companies, and the official North and South American representative of the Shaolin temple.  A few high profile clients include Neil Strauss and Andrew Huberman.

Julian is one of the most colorful and interesting people I have ever met. The first time I met him, he explained to me why and how he has so many porn star friends that he used to know. And the second time we met, he gave me a tour of an incredible Hollywood mansion that his client turned into a Tiktok influencer content house. The decisions Julian has made and the path he has taken is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

Learn more about Julian:

• julianchanlegal.com
• Fetti: Julian Chan’s Legal Career: From Finalizing $100M Deals To Representing Billion Dollar Brands

To this day, our favorite episode is still Joe Cha's first episode with us. We bring him on a second time to talk more about some of things we didn't cover as well as talk about his life updates. In this episode we talk about:

• How Joe lost $10MM selling his company to a publicly traded company that  suddenly filed for bankruptcy
• Why Joe (Harvard-Westlake, Stanford, Harvard Business School) took his kids out of the Harvard-Westlake private school track and moved to rural Washington
• What Joe is going through taking care of his dying father with late onset Parkinson's disease

First published September 2020.

Our guest is Joe Cha, who’s story can be divided into two acts. The first half of Joe’s life, by most standards, would be considered impressive and inspiring. Growing up in SoCal, Joe attended some of the top universities in the world, with multiple degrees from Stanford, as well an MBA from Harvard Business School. He has had a storied career, which includes being a one time consultant bringing multinational companies to China in the early 90’s, a tech entrepreneur who founded one of the hottest companies that raised millions of dollars during the first dotcom boom, he was also a corporate executive at Yahoo at the height of the platform’s influence.

However, through all of these experiences and accomplishments, while at times rewarding, Joe found only fleeting moments of happiness and satisfaction with his life. It took a perfect storm of personal and professional challenges that up-ended Joe’s world for him to redefine his values, priorities and life goals, and embark on the second chapter of his life.

Rich Shiu from Episode 114: "Richard Shiu: Navigating Big Failures to Chart a Dream Life" interviews WLD Show hosts Will, Lee, and Andrew about their experience and learnings building the podcast.