Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur | Start and Grow Your Own Business

In this special Collab Week episode of Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur, six founders come together to answer one deeply personal question:

What's one thing you faked… until you made it?

You'll hear from Sheri Roder of Get UnStuck HQ, Bill McCumber of Rowan Elder, Wendy Votroubek of Integrity Legal Nurse Consulting, Sara Reece of Workmind, Patricia Ballivian of Altura Strategies, and Jane Alexander of Emma Advisor. Each of them talks about a moment when they had to show up before they felt ready.

For any wantrepreneur or entrepreneur wondering whether they really belong in the room, this episode will help. You'll hear how six founders moved from feeling like impostors to feeling like themselves, and why the "faking" part was never really pretending.

✨ What You'll Take Away

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why acting with confidence before you feel confident is how real confidence gets built
• How to choose the kind of leader you want to be without turning into someone else
• Why nearly everyone in the room feels the same impostor syndrome you do
• How asking for help and investing in yourself can close skill gaps faster than faking it
• Why being publicly visible is part of the job when you lead a company
• How to stop borrowing someone else's version of leadership and own the one you've earned
• What changes once you have real customers and can say your title with conviction

🎙️ Meet the Collab Week Contributors

Sheri Roder — Get UnStuck HQ

Sheri Roder is the founder of Get UnStuck HQ, a career and leadership coaching and advising practice for accomplished professionals at an inflection point. She spent more than 40 years in corporate life, including leading a department in London for the first time. Then she stepped away to build a practice around the work she loved most: helping people make decisions they've been circling for months, see options they couldn't see before, and trust their own judgment again. Today she helps clients turn messy, complicated situations into something they can act on.

Connect with Sheri: https://www.getunstuckhq.com/

William "Bill" McCumber — Rowan Elder

Bill McCumber is the founder of two ed-tech companies, Rowan Elder Productions and Applied Erudition. Rowan Elder is an async faculty development program that teaches professors to build studio-quality online lectures that feel more like YouTube than a stale slideshow. Applied Erudition is a platform that measures real capability rather than seat time.

Connect with Bill:

https://www.rowanelder.com/home

https://appliederudition.com/

Wendy Votroubek — Integrity Legal Nurse Consulting

Wendy Votroubek, RN, BSN, MPH, LNC, founded Integrity Legal Nurse Consulting in 2010. She leads a team of more than 20 legal nurses who translate complex medical data into legal strategy for civil and criminal defense attorneys nationwide. She is in the fifth decade of her nursing career and has written three nursing textbooks, including The Path to Legal Nurse Consulting. She taught at the University of Portland School of Nursing from 2011 to 2021 and now speaks on personal injury, medical malpractice, and criminal defense matters.

Connect with Wendy: https://legalnursepdx.com/

Sara Reece — Workmind

Sara Reece is the CEO and Co-Founder of Workmind, which helps growing organizations use practical, operations-first automation to remove friction and grow without adding headcount at the same pace. Over the last seven years she has implemented automation for nonprofits, small businesses, franchise systems, and Fortune 500 enterprises. Before that, her career ran through journalism, TV broadcasting, environmental research, and tech. She is the author of The Practical Path to Operational Automation and speaks regularly on automation, AI, and sustainable growth.

Connect with Sara:

https://workmind.cloud/

https://www.saralreece.com/

Patricia Ballivian — Altura Strategies

Patricia Ballivian is the founder of Altura Strategies, where she helps founders bring clarity and structure to the messy realities of scaling. She is originally from Bolivia and built her career across luxury retail and startups, working where strategy, people, systems, and customer experience meet. She has always been the person searching for the real source of friction, and that instinct became the foundation of Altura's systems-forward, people-centered approach to turning growing pains into sustainable growth.

Connect with Patricia: https://www.alturastrategies.net/

Jane Alexander — Emma Advisor

Jane Alexander is the founder and CEO of Emma Advisor, an AI platform that helps families get from high school to college with more clarity, strategy, and confidence. Her own path was unconventional: she was homeschooled in rural Idaho, went the community college route, and later did graduate work at Harvard. She then spent more than a decade advising leaders at over 200 colleges and universities. Emma Advisor grew from her belief that opportunity shouldn't depend on social capital or expensive consultants.

Connect with Jane: https://emmaadvisor.ai/

Are you so focused on growth that you're accidentally breaking the very things that made your business special? In this episode, we sit down with Jeri Larsen, a former C-suite executive turned founder of Manage for Good. Jeri reveals why the traditional, siloed approach to people, operations, and growth is a recipe for disaster during scale. She provides a masterclass on how to navigate the painful but necessary "inflection points" of growth by building a solid foundation first. This episode is a must-listen for any founder who wants to scale intentionally, keep their best people, and create a high-performing organization without losing its heart and soul.

💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business

• How to spot the critical "inflection points" in your business and make the leap without crashing.
• The high-stakes decision between promoting an internal star vs. hiring an external expert (and the framework to get it right).
• Why building your operational infrastructure before you need it is the key to catching, not chasing, growth.
• A powerful daily leadership practice to ensure you show up as the intentional, empowering leader your team needs.
• How to stop "squeezing more blood out of the turnip" and adopt an abundance mindset that creates loyal teams and happy clients.
• The secret to using an objective, third-party perspective to see and solve problems you're too close to notice.

📝 About Jeri Larsen

Jeri Larsen is the CEO of Manage for Good, a management consulting firm dedicated to helping companies scale without chaos. With a powerhouse career as a Chief Operating Officer, Chief Customer Officer, and Chief People Officer across SaaS, Fortune 500 consulting, and more, Jeri has seen it all. Her unique expertise lies at the intersection of people, operations, and growth, where she helps leaders build organizations that perform exceptionally well without sacrificing the culture that makes them great. She is the author of the new book, Manage for Good: Signals of Impact, a playbook for identifying and fixing the hidden red flags in any business.

🎯 Jeri’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs

"Figure out if you're the problem and figure out how to fix it, because so often we are only in our own way."

📢 Memorable Quotes

• “As companies grow and scale, there's such a tendency to squeeze more blood out of the turnip… Instead, we're not thinking, ‘If I'm growing, I want loyal, incredible people who enjoy their day-to-day work.’” – Jeri Larsen
• “It is that moment where I need to jump off the cliff, but I'm scared. That's the moment you have to jump.” – Jeri Larsen
• “As the leader, my job is to get out of their way and just give them everything that they need to be empowered.” – Jeri Larsen

💡 Actionable Takeaways

• ✅ Start your day with intention. Before diving into work, decide what kind of leader you need to be for your team today.
• ✅ Audit your next key hire. Are you hiring for potential and cultural fit, or just for a resume with past experience? Think through the long-term impact on your team.
• ✅ "War game" your operations. Ask your team: "If our biggest dream client signed tomorrow, what parts of our process would immediately break?" Start fixing those gaps now.
• ✅ Get an outside perspective this week. Ask a trusted mentor or peer to look at a persistent problem in your business. Listen to what they see that you don't.

🔗 Links & Resources

• Website: https://www.manageforgood.com
• Get the book on Amazon: Manage for Good: Signals of Impact
• Connect with Jeri on LinkedIn
• Follow Manage for Good on LinkedIn

Ever felt like your corporate experience puts you in a box? Think again. This episode features Ali Benslimane, a tech veteran from Google and Stripe who channeled his experience into solving a deeply human problem: the bureaucratic nightmare of moving to another country. Ali shares how he and his co-founder built Aelos, a company that combines high-tech efficiency with a high-touch concierge service to help Americans relocate to France. This episode is a masterclass in leveraging your background in unexpected ways, using technology to enhance human connection, and the critical importance of sweating the small details to build unbreakable customer trust.

💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business

• How to turn personal pain points (like moving countries) into a scalable, mission-driven business idea.
• Why your corporate background is a superpower, not a limitation, for starting your own venture.
• The 3-part "executive filter" every founder needs for making product decisions: simplicity, sweating the details, and speed.
• How to use AI to enhance the human touch and build trust, not replace it, creating a superior customer experience.
• The power of doing "unscalable" things (like sending handwritten notes) to build a loyal customer base that becomes your biggest advocate.
• How to overcome "wantrepreneur" paralysis by taking small, incremental steps that build unstoppable momentum.
• Why talking to 150+ potential customers before you build is your greatest competitive advantage.

📝 About Ali Benslimane

Ali Benslimane is the co-founder and CEO of Aelos, a company dedicated to helping Americans relocate to and retire in France with confidence and ease. Before becoming a founder, Ali spent over a decade building and scaling international operations at tech giants like Google and Stripe, where he worked on the game-changing Stripe Atlas product. Having personally lived in five different countries, Ali combines his deep expertise in global systems with a first-hand understanding of the challenges of building a life across borders, making him uniquely equipped to solve this complex problem.

🎯 Ali’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs

The biggest struggle for wantrepreneurs is just getting started. The best way to overcome this is by taking small, incremental "baby steps" that demystify the process and build confidence until you're hooked on the feeling of creating value and getting customers.

📢 Memorable Quotes

• “I think business is all about execution ultimately. I think ideas are cheap. We all had ideas and we see someone do them and we're like, oh my God, I had this amazing idea… It could have been me. Yes, it could have been you, but no, that person did it.” – Ali Benslimane
• “Every hour spent talking to a customer is essentially a chance for you to refine your product, your value proposition.” – Ali Benslimane
• “The way we see it is technology and AI enables humans to do things much faster. And to focus on things that they do best... [like building] that relationship of trust.” – Ali Benslimane

💡 Actionable Takeaways

• ✅ This weekend, take one "baby step": talk to two potential customers or use an AI tool to create a mock-up of your business idea.
• ✅ Review your own business's customer experience. Are you "sweating the details" and removing all friction, right down to making sure your website's copyright year is current?
• ✅ Identify one repetitive, low-value task in your workflow that could be automated, freeing you up to focus on building deeper customer relationships.
• ✅ Brainstorm one "unscalable" thing you can do for your next 5 customers to create a memorable, human experience (e.g., a handwritten note, a personal video message).

🔗 Links & Resources

• Website: https://www.aelos.net
• Connect with Ali on LinkedIn
• Follow Aelos on LinkedIn

Are you making marketing decisions based on gut feelings and chasing "good ideas" that never seem to move the needle? In this episode, growth strategist Izzy Sapien breaks down why this intuition-driven approach is the very thing keeping so many businesses stuck in the $2-5 million "no man's land." She reveals the critical shift from relying on grit to implementing disciplined, data-informed frameworks that create real momentum. This episode is a masterclass for any founder feeling the pressure of tight cash flow, showing you how to tie marketing directly to your P&L, make better strategic decisions, and build a profitable, scalable brand without burning through your budget.

💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business

• 🧠 Why the "gut feelings" that got you to your first $2M will prevent you from scaling further, and when to switch to a data-driven framework.
• Momentum vs. Movement: Learn the critical difference between being busy and making strategic forward progress that makes your business unstoppable.
• 💡 How to tell the difference between a "good idea" and a "right now idea" to avoid wasting time and money on strategies that won't deliver results.
• 💰 The simple formula that connects marketing directly to revenue (Traffic x AOV x Conversion Rate x LTV) and how to manage it for profitability.
• 💧 Why neglecting top-of-funnel marketing is like letting your well run dry, and how to invest in awareness even when cash flow is tight.
• 🗣️ The power of predictive questions to unlock breakthrough growth ideas within your own team and move past feeling "war-torn" by financial pressure.

📝 About Izzy Sapien

Izzy Sapien is a growth strategist and fractional Head of Growth with over a decade of experience helping beauty, wellness, and supplement brands scale. After founding and growing her own successful agency, she now specializes in guiding founder-led, cash-flow-pressured companies through the challenging $2-5 million growth stage. Izzy masterfully combines marketing strategy with financial acumen and founder psychology, helping leadership teams move from chaotic, intuition-driven tactics to disciplined, data-informed decision-making that fuels sustainable and profitable growth.

🎯 Izzy’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs

"Gut feelings are for moments when you lack evidence or experience."

📢 Memorable Quotes

• “A lot of brands get stuck at this $2 to $5 million mark... It's because a lot of the decisions and way that we make decisions up to the $2 million mark depends on things like grit and gut feelings.” – Izzy Sapien
• “There are plenty of strategies that are perfect on the outside—great strategies—but they're not right now strategies.” – Izzy Sapien
• "I'm not a big believer that people are the reason that a company fails. I'm always a believer that decision-making is at least one of the front runners for it." – Izzy Sapien

💡 Actionable Takeaways

• ✅ Audit your decision-making process. Are your marketing plans built on evidence and data, or are they a series of reactive gut feelings?
• ✅ Protect your top-of-funnel budget. Dedicate a healthy portion of your marketing spend to awareness, even if it doesn't have immediate ROI, to prevent your customer pipeline from drying up.
• ✅ Focus on your customer journey. It's cheaper to nurture existing customers than to acquire new ones. Invest in your email marketing and automation to maximize Lifetime Value (LTV).
• ✅ When evaluating a new idea, ask "Why here, why now?" to determine if it's a "good idea" or a "right now idea" that aligns with your current resources and goals.

🔗 Links & Resources

• Website: https://www.izzysapien.com
• Inquire as a brand at https://www.chiral-marketing.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/izzysellscpg/
• Connect with Izzy on LinkedIn
• Follow Chiral Performance Marketing on LinkedIn

In this episode, Brian sits down with Drew Alexander Forde, the world-renowned musician known as "That Viola Kid" who has masterfully blended artistic excellence with sharp entrepreneurial instincts. Drew shares his incredible journey from playing viola in NYC subways to performing with legends like Adele and Kanye West, and how those experiences forged his business mindset. This isn't just a story about music; it's a masterclass in turning a passion into a multi-faceted career, building a personal brand, and creating a tech solution (DTLA) to solve the biggest pain points in your industry. For any wantrepreneur or entrepreneur, especially those in creative fields, this episode is a powerful lesson in valuing your work, building systems, and dropping the "starving artist" mentality for good.

💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business

• How to build a powerful personal brand by sharing your process and journey, even before you have a product to sell.
• The subway busking mindset: how to find the audience with a problem you can solve and focus entirely on serving them.
• Why creative labor must be quantified and valued, and how to shift your mindset from "artist" to "business owner."
• The strategy of scratching your own itch: how Drew identified the administrative pains of freelance musicians and built a tech company (DTLA) to solve them.
• How to use "loading screen" moments (like commutes) for intentional strategic thinking to grow your business and diversify your income.
• Why developing a non-negotiable work ethic in your core skill allows you to handle the unpredictable challenges of business with ease.
• The "compound interest" effect of consistent practice and how it applies to building both skills and business expertise over time.

📝 About Drew Alexander Forde

Drew Alexander Forde, known online as "That Viola Kid," is a Juilliard-trained violist who has transformed his classical music career into a modern entrepreneurial empire. He has performed and recorded with some of the biggest names in music, including Adele, Kendrick Lamar, Alicia Keys, and Kanye West. Refusing to be just a performer, Drew embraced social media to build a massive personal brand and co-founded two businesses: Whole Soul, a hip-hop and R&B string quartet, and DTLA, a software company designed to eliminate administrative and financial headaches for freelance musicians. Drew is a shining example of how to merge world-class talent with a savvy business mind.

🎯 Drew’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs

"Don't be afraid of pain... It does not matter how slow you go as long as you do not stop."

📢 Memorable Quotes

• "The role as an entrepreneur is to find the people who have the problems that you can solve and then quickly and deeply try to solve those problems." – Drew Alexander Forde
• "Creative labor is real. It must be measured, it must be quantified because at the end of the day you only have 24 hours on the planet." – Drew Alexander Forde
• "If I get sick and I can't move my arms anymore... I lose all of my income. And to me, that scenario was unacceptable. So when I would sit in the subways or I would sit in the car and I would think about that possibility, it would drive me to read more books." – Drew Alexander Forde

💡 Actionable Takeaways

• Identify your industry's biggest "painful administrative problem" and brainstorm a simple tool or system to solve it, just as Drew did for musicians with DTLA.
• Start building your personal brand today by documenting your process. You don't need a finished product to start providing value and owning your audience's attention.
• Audit your "loading screen" time (commutes, waiting in line) and dedicate it to intentional thinking about your business goals and strategy.
• Stop accepting the "starving artist" narrative. Start tracking your time and quantifying the value of your skills to confidently charge what you're worth.
• Reframe a past rejection or failure. Instead of a verdict on your ability, view it as a necessary step that pushed you toward a more authentic and successful path.

🔗 Links & Resources

• DTLA website: https://getdtla.com/
• Whole Soul Music website: https://www.wholesoulmusic.com
• That Viola Kid website: https://thatviolakid.com
• Connect with Drew on LinkedIn
• Follow DTLA on LinkedIn
• Follow Whole Soul on Instagram

We spend countless hours perfecting our "welcome mat" — our onboarding sequences, sales calls, and initial client experience. But what happens when a client is on their way out? In this Solo Sunday episode, Brian pulls back the curtain on a strategy he’s never heard anyone else discuss in nearly 20 years of entrepreneurship: the offboarding plan. He argues that the way you handle the end of a client relationship is the ultimate test of your integrity and the most powerful, overlooked opportunity to build a legendary reputation. Brian shares his exact framework for ensuring clients feel cared for and set up for success long after they’ve stopped paying, proving that genuine care extends far beyond the transaction.

✨ Why This Matters for You

Mastering the offboarding process is a game-changer for your business:

• It’s how you turn a client who is leaving into a lifelong advocate for your brand.
• It’s the ultimate proof that your promise to "care about their success" isn't just sales-speak.
• It differentiates you from 99% of businesses who disappear the moment an engagement ends.
• It protects the hard work you've already done and ensures the client can continue to build on the results you delivered.
• It often leads to unexpected referrals and glowing reviews, not because you asked, but because you earned them.

📝 Key Takeaways

• Care Beyond the Check. True care is shown not when a client is paying you, but when they’re on their way out. Your actions at the end of the relationship define your character.
• Serve, Don't Sell. An effective offboarding plan is 100% about serving the departing client and 0% self-serving. Don't do it for the review; do it because it's the right thing to do.
• Document and Deliver a Roadmap. Don't let your hard work go to waste. Provide a final report that outlines the value delivered, identifies open loops, and gives a clear path forward for their continued success.
• Fill the Gaps You're Leaving. Proactively advise your former client on how to replace your services, whether through tools, technology, or new hires. This shows you're committed to their success, with or without you.
• Be the Exception. In a world where most businesses forget a client the minute they leave, you have a massive opportunity to be unforgettable by showing care far beyond the end of an engagement.

🚀 Put It Into Action

This week, sit down and create your V1 offboarding plan. Ask yourself:

• If my best client left tomorrow, what would I do to ensure they succeed without me?
• What information would they need to continue the momentum we built together?
• How can I create a final "success package" that includes a summary of our work, a roadmap for what’s next, and recommendations for filling the gaps?
• Start drafting a template for this process so you’re prepared to deliver exceptional value, even at the end of a relationship.

🔗 Stay Connected

• Subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode
• Connect with me on Instagram @imetbrian
• Share this episode with a fellow entrepreneur who wants to build a business that people remember for all the right reasons

In this special Collab Week episode of Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur, eight founders come together to answer one deeply personal question:

Have you ever been afraid to give something up, only for it to turn out to be a great decision?

You'll hear from Sheri Roder, Nicholas Cook, Brandon Pankey, David Beltran, John Lunsford, Raamon Newman, Drew Mehta, and Zeyno Dodd, as they each open up about the identity, title, plan, or old way of doing things they were scared to release — and what it gave them in return.

✨ What You'll Take Away

In this episode, you'll learn how to:

• Separate your identity from your job title before a big leap
• Use fear-setting to make a scary decision calculated, not reckless
• Let go of "I can do it all" to make room for your team
• Hold onto a long-term goal through years of doubt
• Choose between two good ideas by asking which excites you most
• Trust that letting an identity end opens the door to what's next
• Ease into change gradually instead of waiting for the perfect leap
• Drop the "perfect" plan and let your team step up when it counts

🎙️ Meet the Collab Week Contributors

Sheri Roder — Get UnStuck HQ

Sheri is the founder of Get UnStuck HQ, a career and leadership coaching practice built around her Stuck Spectrum framework, helping people navigate tough career decisions and creative ruts after her own 20-plus year corporate career.
 Websitei: https://getunstuckhq.com/

Nicholas Cook — Money 101 Academy

Nicholas is the founder of Money 101 Academy and owner of Prime Land Properties, helping people buy land for a homesite, camping, or investment. He also writes at The Place Blog, and recently made the leap from a W-2 job into running his own business full-time.
 Website: https://money101academy.com/

Brandon Pankey — Blue Pine Works

Brandon is the founder and owner of Blue Pine Works, an arboriculture and land stewardship company in East Central Minnesota. He and his wife Kay lead the company. He's learned to let go of doing everything himself so his team and clients can share the load.
 Website: https://bluepineworks.com/

David Beltran — Accord Intelligence

David is founder and CEO of Accord Intelligence. Ten years into his IT career, he refused to give up on becoming an architect despite being told repeatedly he wasn't a fit — a pursuit that opened the door to IBM and, later, to building Accord's AI decision-governance layer.
 Website: https://www.accordintelligence.ai/

John Lunsford — Tethral

John is the founder and CEO of Tethral, an engineer and anthropologist with a PhD studying how technology gets adopted. He formerly led AI and personal safety at Uber before letting go of a second viable business idea to focus fully on Tethral.
 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-lunsford/

Raamon Newman — New Mavericks

Raamon is co-founder of New Mavericks, a CEO leadership development partnership he started 25 years ago as a full-time meditating monk. His path ran from competitive running to monastic life to leadership consulting, letting go of each identity to make room for the next.
 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raamonnewman/

Drew Mehta — ThinkFraction

Drew is the founder of ThinkFraction, helping owner-operators fix leaks in their back-end workflows. After 20 years in corporate, he was terrified to give up its safety — so instead of a leap, he took a "leisurely stroll" into entrepreneurship, still finding out if it pays off.
 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhroovmehta/

Zeyno Dodd — AlgiSense

Zeyno is co-founder of AlgiSense, developing AI-driven EEG digital biomarkers to objectively measure pain. Across 25-plus years in healthcare, cybersecurity, and applied AI, she's learned to let go of her own "perfect" blueprint and trust her team to solve problems together in real time.
 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zeynoaygendodd/

In this powerhouse episode, we sit down with Jaime Pesquera, the CEO and co-founder of the Madrid-based startup accelerator, Jupiter Base. Jaime breaks down the new rules for building a successful business in the age of AI, revealing how founders can create a protective "moat" around their ideas to thrive against fast-moving competition. This conversation is a masterclass for any entrepreneur feeling overwhelmed by the pace of technology. You'll learn how to leverage AI as a growth accelerator, cultivate the founder traits that truly matter to investors, and build the resilience needed to turn inevitable obstacles into massive opportunities.

💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business

• How to Build an Unbeatable Business "Moat": Learn what a business moat is in today's tech landscape and how to build one to protect your startup from giant competitors like OpenAI.
• The Three Founder Traits That Guarantee Growth: Discover the essential qualities investors look for—willpower, diligence, and risk-taking—and how to cultivate them in your own entrepreneurial journey.
• AI-Native Acceleration: Understand how to strategically integrate AI not to replace human thinking, but to complement it, keep your team focused, and accelerate your path to market.
• The Power of a Niche: Hear Jaime's take on why conquering a specific, unexplored niche is the most effective strategy for building a foothold and scaling your business.
• Leveraging Behavioral Science for Peak Performance: Get a glimpse into how top accelerators use behavioral science to help founders manage stress, stay resilient, and perform at their absolute best.
• Why Your "Failures" Are Your Biggest Wins: Learn to reframe failure as a critical part of the journey that builds character and often leads to even better outcomes than you originally planned.

📝 About Jaime Pesquera

Jaime Pesquera is the CEO and co-founder of Jupiter Base, a pre-seed startup accelerator in Madrid focused on building the next generation of global companies. With a unique background that blends psychology, law (JD), and business (MBA), Jaime brings a multi-disciplinary approach to company building. He has helped raise over $30 million in startup capital, managed $100+ million in transactions, and possesses a deep technical knowledge, having coded since he was nine years old. This diverse expertise gives him a rare ability to see the market from every angle—legal, financial, technical, and human.

🎯 Jaime’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs

"Do not be afraid of putting in a lot of hours into a specific project and then it becoming a failure... the journey is sometimes much more important than where you arrive."

📢 Memorable Quotes

• “If you don't have that willpower, it's going to be very tough to build anything long-term. A startup is many times a 10+ year commitment.” – Jaime Pesquera
• "Diligence is the mother of good fortune. You generate your own luck, you create your own luck." – Jaime Pesquera
• “The journey is sometimes much more important than where you arrive. Because sometimes where you arrive isn't where you planned, and it could be even much better than what you ever imagined.” – Jaime Pesquera

💡 Actionable Takeaways

• Define Your Moat: Take 30 minutes this week to clearly define your business's primary competitive advantage (your "moat"). Is it distribution, IP, data, or something else?
• Use a Sounding Board: Ask a trusted friend, mentor, or your partner to help you identify your "zone of genius." As Jaime shared, it's often hard to see our own greatest strengths.
• Identify One AI Enhancement: Find one area of your business where AI can complement your team's thinking to accelerate growth—whether it's customer insight analysis, content creation, or product development.
• Reframe a Past "Failure": Look back at a project or idea that didn't work out. Write down three valuable lessons or skills you gained from the experience.

🔗 Links & Resources

• Website: https://jupiterbase.co/
• Connect with Jaime on LinkedIn
• Follow Jupiter Base on LinkedIn

Tired of feeling like success has to be a constant, grinding hustle? This episode is your antidote to entrepreneurial burnout. Kelly Csiszar, a former top-performing enterprise sales rep turned executive mindset coach, reveals why more strategies and tactics often fail to produce the results we want. She explains that the real breakthroughs happen when we look inward to understand and rewire the subconscious patterns that drive our behavior. For entrepreneurs and wantrepreneurs, this conversation is a masterclass in building a business that feels as good as it looks, achieving massive goals with ease, and transforming self-sabotage into sustainable success.

💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business

• 🧠 Why "more strategy" is often the wrong answer for breaking through plateaus and how to focus on your internal operating system instead.
• 🚀 How to make personal transformation feel fun and easy, rather than like a painful, dramatic overhaul of your life.
• 🧘 The secret to making peace and ambition coexist, allowing you to build your empire without sacrificing your well-being.
• 🔍 How to use pattern recognition as your entrepreneurial superpower to overcome procrastination, perfectionism, and people-pleasing.
• 💰 A framework for building the internal safety and security required to handle sales rejection and fearlessly put yourself and your business out there.
• 🔑 The single most powerful question you can ask yourself to uncover the root cause of any problem holding you back in your business.

📝 About Kelly Csiszar

Kelly Csiszar is an executive mindset coach and the founder of SoulShyft, a private coaching practice for high achievers. After a decade in the trenches of enterprise sales, she experienced firsthand how ambition can lead to incredible results but also burnout, anxiety, and perfectionism. Kelly transitioned into coaching to help others break free from these limiting patterns. Her work combines deep pattern recognition with neuroscience-based modalities to help entrepreneurs build unshakable self-trust, make bolder decisions, and create success that is both meaningful and sustainable.

🎯 Kelly’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs

When you feel stuck, ask yourself one simple but profound question: "What is the secondary gain I'm getting from having this problem in my life?"

📢 Memorable Quotes

•  “We think that success has to be hard and that's a societal program that was built into us. Now it takes a lot of work, I'm not gonna lie, but it doesn't have to be hard work. It can be fun.” – Kelly Csiszar
• “Being an entrepreneur is a total soul-led, self-led journey that allows you to become the best version of yourself. You start to get excited about all the triggers and all of the problems that arise because you start to look at them differently.” – Kelly Csiszar
• “You have to have a slingshot. You kind of have to take a step back in order to go forward.” – Kelly Csiszar

💡 Actionable Takeaways

• ✅ The next time you feel stuck on a problem, ask yourself, "What am I gaining from this problem still being here?" and write down whatever comes to mind without judgment.
• ✅ Instead of just consuming another business book or podcast, schedule 15 minutes this week for intentional reflection. Look for a recurring story or emotional trigger in your professional life.
• ✅ Reframe your approach to a difficult task on your to-do list. Instead of thinking "This is going to be hard," ask yourself, "How can I make this fun or approach it with ease?"
• ✅ Identify one area where you feel fear in your business (e.g., sales, visibility). Instead of forcing action, get curious about the underlying pattern (e.g., perfectionism, fear of rejection) that's causing the fear.

🔗 Links & Resources

• Website: https://www.soulshyft.com/
• Substack: https://substack.com/@soulshyft
• Connect with Kelly on LinkedIn
• Follow SoulShfyt on LinkedIn
• Follow SoulShfyt on Instagram

In an era where AI can make or break a business decision, how can you be sure you're getting the truth? Vanja Todorovic, a 25-year financial services veteran, faced this exact problem when AI gave him disastrous advice for his new venture. This experience led him to create MelMat, a patent-pending AI research platform designed to sift through AI "hallucinations" and deliver factually-grounded answers. This episode is a must-listen for any entrepreneur who relies on AI for market research, content creation, or critical decision-making. Vanja breaks down how his background in high-stakes mortgage compliance, where being wrong had severe consequences, shaped his unique approach to building a tool that prioritizes accuracy over a single, potentially flawed answer.

💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business

• How to turn a costly mistake (like getting bad pricing advice from AI) into a game-changing, patent-pending business.
• The powerful strategy of cross-referencing multiple AI models to uncover factual blind spots and find the real truth.
• Why your "non-tech" background is actually your greatest asset in building a unique and defensible technology company.
• The "multidimensional founder" mindset for successfully running multiple businesses by finding surprising intersection points between them.
• How to leverage the immigrant entrepreneur’s superpower of adaptability to pivot and thrive in a rapidly changing market.
• A framework for building a business where accuracy and trust are the core value proposition, not just features.

📝 About Vanja Todorovic

Vanja Todorovic is the founder of MelMat, a multi-engine AI research platform built to solve the problem of AI misinformation. With a 25-year career in financial services, including as a VP of Mortgage Compliance at Wells Fargo, Vanja understands the real-world consequences of relying on incorrect information. He combines this deep industry experience with executive leadership training and advanced AI education from MIT and Johns Hopkins. As an immigrant, multi-founder, and parent to twins, Vanja brings a uniquely resilient and multidimensional perspective to entrepreneurship, proving that a diverse background is a powerful advantage in building innovative solutions.

🎯 Vanja’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs

"Try to be a sponge, try to absorb as much information as possible while still staying true to yourself... The only people that are the biggest obstacle in your way is usually yourself. So try to remove yourself from that, try to be your own biggest fan and supporter."

📢 Memorable Quotes

• “When an AI doesn't have the answer, it's going to sound, it's going to look like, it's going to smell like, it's going to taste like the right answer. But it's not going to be one.” – Vanja Todorovic
• “The constraints I placed on myself throughout my life were self-imposed and that I'm able to do so much more.” – Vanja Todorovic
• "You nurture that business from the ground up and you're there to see it go through these different stages in life as your kids are, right? So you see that growth and you know you contributed to it.” – Vanja Todorovic

💡 Actionable Takeaways

• Before making a key business decision based on AI research, run your query through multiple different LLMs to spot inconsistencies.
• Audit your own skill set and identify how your unique experiences—even those outside your industry—can become a competitive advantage.
• Instead of putting all your passions on the back burner, look for ways they can intersect and inform your primary business.
• When you receive advice (from a mentor, a podcast, or AI), always ask, "How does this fit me?" before blindly implementing it.
• Practice being your own biggest fan this week. When you face a setback, consciously reframe your internal monologue from criticism to encouragement.

🔗 Links & Resources

• Website: https://melmat.ai/
• Connect with Vanja on LinkedIn
• Follow MelMat on LinkedIn