Troublemakers

Getting to know Clement King, you get the sense that his career trajectory was single  minded.

He spent 17 years in highly important roles guiding companies like Wells Fargo, HSBC, S&P Global, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Barclays Investment Bank, and Citi.  During that period, Clement was focused  on risk and business strategy. 

Then best-selling author Patrick Lencioni came to do a 3-day workshop. He had written "The Advantage. Why organizational health trumps everything else in business." 

But along the way, his eyes were also opened beyond risk and business strategy. 

Talk to Clement and you'll quickly understand that he's a sponge for knowledge.  Along the way he was invited to join a group called Badassery,  a private community of unconventional thought leaders dedicated to igniting change.

This is one of my longest podcasts, and it's worth it.

When I run into someone whose job title on LinkedIn is Chief Disruption Officer, I know the podcast will be terrific. 

Alan F3 Zorro Blakeborough did not disappoint. He is packed with energy and pulls people into his orbit simply based on his total optimism. 

While solving a critical issue for the accounting sector, he also identified another  totally overlooked issue.  A lack of succession planning in the accounting sector.  

Alan's LinkedIn profile shows at least 20 different businesses. He’s worked at, founded, and guided over 20 different companies – many of them in the accounting sector.

Jessica Wolf has had six jobs. All of them were focused on community building. She is a great example of finding a career path you like and sticking to it. Her latest is Skye, a platform for coaching and serving leaders and their teams.

A 2022 paper from Statista found the  United Kingdom and the United States spending the least on e-learning or business or life coaching.  (source) 

This fact and and Jessica's focus on growth prove she and Skye are in the right place at the right time. 

In this podcast, Jessica opens up about some difficulties she had, opportunities to get her around the problems, and how much she depended on her very capable team members.

By carefully listening to their growing members, the Skye team heard a need that would make their businesses more successful and free them up to chase more clients. You'll like this approach.

One of my favorite moments in this podcast was when Jessica breezed past the fact that she was honored as a Forbes 30 Under 30. For such an accomplished CEO, she is incredibly modest. 

When troublemaker CEOs find ways to disrupt sleepy business sectors there's always a lot they can teach us. 

Founder and CEO of Bunafr, Anjani Annumalla, set his sights on a business sector 200 years old - the coffee industry.

For centuries, coffee enthusiasts had no control of the part of the process that gives coffee its taste - the roasting. 

This from an interview with Anjani - 

“Home coffee roasting can revolutionize the way each cup is personalized and consumed. And on top of that, it also starts to solve some deeply rooted problems of the coffee world – farmers’ inequity/poverty and the carbon footprint of coffee on the environment. Today, 80% of coffee farmers (25M farmer families) live below the poverty line because the coffee index gates the price paid to them, which is taken advantage of because farmers do not have the means to sell coffee directly to consumers. At Bunafr, our vision is to disrupt that practice by democratizing coffee roasting. “ 

Anjani Annumalla spent nearly 8 years at Amazon. He was in 3 leadership roles at Amazon during their most aggressive buildouts. These experiences prepared him to be ready for the difficulties many startups experience.

The page on https://www.TroubleGroup.com shows the brilliant and beautiful Bunafr machine. 
Be sure to visit https://bunafr.com/

The more I do these podcasts, the more optimistic I am that opportunities are all around us entrepreneurs. If you have the instinct to see them, and the bravery to jump in, you can be like my next guests.

Perry Griffith and Harry Dubke spotted, a gap in the three-to-four month rental market for student and intern housing – not just in DC, but world-wide.  Their company is Cortado, which means "stripped down" or efficient. And that's how they run their company.

You're going to enjoy this one.

We who are comfortable with technology, navigating social media, and working the web naturally think everyone else is just as adept. But that's not the case. 

All across America, HVAC installers, restaurants, and fashion stores are trying to survive post Covid and keep the lights on. Many don't even have a website and most don't have time to understand social media - much less to use it to grow their businesses.

My next guest, Rolan Reichel, has recognized just how lucrative this underserved market is.  He and his team think there could be up to $100B sitting on the sidelines and they want to help put it to work to help small businesses.

They launched their solution as a a browser extension.  If you've used Grammarly, then you know how easy it is to launch Arrow. It simply starts and the GUI is super friendly. 

The consumer loyalty market worldwide is valued at more than four billion U.S. dollars and it's expected to surpass 18 billion by the end of 2028. - Statista

 I remember when customer loyalty programs meant airline miles and credit card rewards. When Generation Z came along the rewards programs had to adapt to the demands of instant gratification.

 Denis Huré, entrepreneur, disruptor, and Founder / CEO of Reward the World, followed a path of marketing and 

 One thing you’ll learn about Denis is his ability to shift and stay ahead of the competition. For instance, when he decided to dedicate 25-30% of his time, every week moving forward, working on innovations that will keep him on the top of the sector. As Denis said, “If only one idea out of a hundred comes to fruition,  then it’s a win.”

 Some of my favorite Denis Huré quotes - 

 “Marketers tend to forget that the main point of marketing is to differentiate. 
 So if they're all doing the same, where's the differentiation?”

 “As far as I remember, I was never interested in being like everyone else.”

 “People need to follow their dream. But they need to understand, the cemeteries are full of people with great ideas. But at the end of the day, execution is key.”

Confidence isn't binary. It manifests in degrees. 

Doug Standley, CEO of niolabs is 100% confident. Deeply driven. Yet, humble. 

Most of his career was at Deloitte, helping companies not get too spun up about all the new digital solutions out there. Instead, Doug's team helped companies understand digitization and building successful implementations. They earned a ton of money and the trust of their clients by simply telling the truth, with none of the hype.

 He wrote the first 3 articles in Deloitte’s first annual trends publication. He was the first Deloitte Fellow. The list goes on and on. 

Now Doug is aiming his team to take on a problem of global scale and extreme importance. The world’s water infrastructure is falling apart, and  management of this vital resource is a disaster. Doug and niolabs are just the people to fix it. 

There is a ton of information in this podcast. But more importantly, I think what you'll pick up on is his scud missile approach.  Doug may be living proof that being a troublemaker is binary. And he's 100%.

618 BCE - The toothbrush was invented during the Tang Dynasty.

2021 CE - After 3 years of research and invention, Dr. Keith Arbeitman launched the SymplBrush. It cleans more effectively, and it’s safer (and faster) than any other toothbrush.

Dr. Arbeitman - "As a dentist, a lot of the work I do is the consequence of people either brushing too hard and hurting their teeth and gums, or not brushing hard enough to clean their teeth, causing cavities and gum infections," says Keith Arbeitman, DDS, a dentist in New York City and founder of SymplBrush. "It's really hard to get it just right. There's even research that suggests that brushing too hard can cause an increase in gum inflammation for some."  Source 

SymplBrush attacked a series of issues around the poor results of at-home oral care:

• Plaque builds up and hardens, especially near the gum line.
• The ADA says the minimum time to brush to get plaque off teeth is 2 minutes. 
• Surveys show that most people only brush for 45 seconds on average and a significant number don't brush twice a day.
• Modern toothbrushes don’t help users to position their brush exactly at the right angle to get up to the gum line, but not to damage the gums.
• Since so many are brushing far too briefly, Dr. Arbeitman decided to brush a wide number of teeth at once with their patented "Living Hinge" bristle design. 

The the Forsyth Institute, an affiliate of The Harvard Dental School in Cambridge, Massachusetts was shocked at the improvement in oral health in their study of SymplBrush.

From the SymplBrushwebsite - 

“SymplBrush delivers 5-7mm of bristle movement and up to 900 strokes per minute. This mechanical design allows the bristles to contact each tooth surface for 5-10 seconds when used in the 30-second guided mode, as opposed to just 1.5 seconds when using traditional toothbrushes as directed for two minutes.”   Source