Explore " the jake dunlap show" with insightful episodes like "Episode #721 - Put In The Work To Be Successful with Jacob Dunlap, CEO of Skaled Consulting", "From Supply Chain To CEO: Disrupting The Ready-To-Eat Food Industry with Ellis McCue", "Don't Be Common—Outwork Everyone to Success with JeVon McCormick", "Trends That Will Define 2022" and "Your Future Is Yours for the Taking with Laura Gassner Otting" from podcasts like ""Million Dollar Mastermind with Larry Weidel", "The Jake Dunlap Show", "The Jake Dunlap Show", "The Jake Dunlap Show" and "The Jake Dunlap Show"" and more!
From Supply Chain expert to ready to eat food guru, this week’s guest is currently clearing the way for you to enjoy chef-prepared meals with nutritionist-approved menus, all powered by a personalization algorithm.
She is not only a disrupter, she was featured as a Top 25 Consumer Health Tech Executive, was an E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist in 2021, Even more impressively, her company has 55% women sitting on the executive board
The fearless leader of Territory foods and pug lover, Ellis McCue is this week’s guest on “The Jake Dunlap Show.”
Ellis is a school lover/life-long learner, and double majored in International Studies and East Asian Studies. If that wasn’t enough, she double minored in Economics and History as well. After multiple internships, she found herself at Deloitte in Financial Operations working her way through the ranks to a Global Functional Lead and Reporting Release Manager role, where she redesigned business processes for sales, supply chain, and financial functions. After a move to Gap working in Supply Chain, Logistics, and Product Operations, Ellis later went on to become the Chief Executive Officer of Territory Foods.
“Territory marries Ellis’ belief that consumer led design yields disruptive growth to traditional industries with her personal belief that delicious food should be healthy.”
Territory Foods is venture-backed, innovative focused food technology company that brings healthy, chef-prepared foods to eaters across the US,
Please enjoy this week’s episode with Ellis McCue!
Ellis’ Social Media Links
Territory Foods:: https://www.territoryfoods.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellis-singer
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellis.mccue/?hl=en
Jake Dunlap:
Personal Site - http://jakedunlap.com/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakedunlap/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/JakeTDunlap
Instagram - http://instagram.com/jake\_dunlap _
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/JakeTDunlap/
Skaled:
Website - https://skaled.com/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/skaled
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsw\_03rSlbGQkeLGMGiDf4Q
This episode of The Jake Dunlap Show features JeVon McCormick, President & CEO at Scribe Media. JeVon was born in a time when being born of a black father and white mother was illegal.
He grew up under tough circumstances, from the fact that his father was a pimp and his mother was an orphan on welfare, to racism which saw him unaccepted in both the black and white communities.
JeVon shares pivotal moments in his life, from learning about entrepreneurship from prostitutes, to learning about compound interest cleaning toilets, to impressing his boss enough to shoot up to vice president of Payday Loans, and meeting Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide Financial.
JeVon also shares his own formula for success. He keeps it simple and sums it up with mindset, choices, and hard work equals success. It is this formula which allowed him to overcome the circumstances he was born into and turn it completely around.
Quotes
JeVon : "He would say, 'don't be common in the way you walk the corner. Don't be common in the way you dress. Don't be common in the bed.' And that's what he would preach to the prostitutes. But we would hear it so often, it made its way down to me. So for me, don't be common meant, okay, do shit different than everybody else."
JeVon: "When I was a kid, my dad shared with me and some of my siblings, he said, I don't care what you do in life, whatever it is, be the best at it. And his exact words were, if you were going to be a street sweeper, be the best street sweeper. Now he could have given us a little more to aspire to, but I got the point was be the best."
JeVon: "The common thread is I always outworked everyone. I've never been afraid to work. I've never been afraid to ask questions. I've never been afraid of someone saying no to me. No, just meant not right now. I'll just come back next week, next month, whatever. So, I keep going."
JeVon: "Confidence is a choice. You can choose to wake up and be timid and meek, or you can choose to wake up and be confident. And, for me, many a day, man, confidence was all I had. Confidence was free and the confidence got me through the streets. It got me out of a lot of ass kickings."
JeVon: "I created a formula for myself, mindset, choices, and hard work equals success."
More about JeVon
JeVon is 1 of 23 children and is the son of a black pimp and a white mother who lived on welfare. Arguably, his circumstances almost dictated that success was not for him. But JeVon is living proof that what you you born into does not define you.
JeVon was not afraid of working and, as a matter of fact, outworked everyone else so much that he impressed his bosses enough that they opened up new opportunities for him, opportunities that were simply not available to anyone else in a similar stature as he was back then.
His first job was cleaning toilets of a restaurant, then he moved on to crunching numbers in proofing reports. He was outperforming the office record so much that his then boss brought him in to ask what he really wanted, to which he replied he wanted to be vice president. And he got it. He joined the company when it had 3 offices and left it with 8, thanks to him.
He’s made millions in the stock market (even though he didn’t go to college), he was the President of a software company (even though he can’t code) and he’s currently the CEO of a publishing company (even though he can’t spell).
JeVon also devotes part of his time mentoring and creating opportunities for at-risk youth, young men and women in the juvenile justice system, and those in lower economic communities.
Find out more about JeVon in the following links:
Learn more about Jake Dunlap and Skaled by visiting the links below:
Jake Dunlap:
Skaled:
This special episode of The Jake Dunlap Show is a solo show featuring Jake's predictions for 2022. Jake identifies three main trends that could define the coming year:
1. Removing friction from customer interactions.
2. When you show up, you better show up (try video and bring energy!)
3. Sales technology
Resources:
Mural - https://www.mural.co/
Learn more about Jake Dunlap and Skaled by visiting the links below:
Jake Dunlap:
Skaled:
YouTube -
This episode of The Jake Dunlap Show features Laura Gassner Otting, WaPo best-selling author, keynote speaker, media personality, and executive coach. Today, she looks back on her life growing up in a Jewish household in Texas and Miami and her eventual decision to study government in college.
She shares that the Iranian hostage crisis during the Carter administration became the driving force behind her desire to go to law school and enter politics. Laura shares funny anecdotes of life before the internet and pivotal moments which led her to work for the Clinton/Gore campaign.
By the time she served with AmeriCorps, Laura learned that nobody actually really knows what they're doing. She shares that faking it until you make it is a real thing and that "grownups" who have it together are in the exact same boat as everyone else.
So, knowing this, creating your own future is the only real thing left for you to do because nobody will hand it to you. She shares how she actually got her job in the White House and how nothing is what it seems, especially as an intern. But with an honest desire to do a good job and listening to the wisdom of others, she made it.
Fast forward, Laura reinvents herself as a headhunter with her Rolodex filled with contacts from her life in the White House. Realizing that she wasn't part of the solution and she wasn't connecting the organizations with the people that needed them the most, she decided to strike out on her own.
She ran her firm very differently and focused on creating positive impact and aligning her work with her true values, rather than chasing the most lucrative deals. Laura talks about consonance and how knowing that you are at your best solving a problem you care about is the best motivator.
Quotes
19:03 Laura: "On the black and white TV is then Governor Bill Clinton... giving this impassioned plea about service and saying there's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed with what's right with America... and he offered as a solution this idea of community service in exchange for college tuition. And in that moment, what I realized was that needs to happen."
24:07 Laura: "I was able to fake it 'til I made it to a certain point. And then I got there and it was like built on a house of cards. I didn't actually have any of the mistakes that you make along the way they teach you things. So that's how I learned that nobody really knows what they're doing."
30:13 Laura: "I had nothing to lose, I had everything to win. And sometimes you just need somebody to sort of bang you over the head and be like, you know, he's going to fuck you... This is your moment. Take it. Go."
35:25 Laura: "I started my own firm and I then ran that firm with this very different business model of creating budgets for searches based on the complexity of the work... I was no longer trying to build the bottom line of this firm by doing the biggest flashiest searches, but I was actually trying to create the most amount of impact in the sector."
39:20 Laura: "If success doesn't lead to happiness, then what does? And what I realized is that this idea of consonance... What is consonant with who you are? And consonance is alignment. It's flow. It's when you feel like the very best of what you do is being called upon to solve a problem at hand, a problem you actually care about."
More about Laura
Laura has a passion for philanthropy and public service. She graduated from the University of Texas, Austin with a BA in Government and worked as a staffer during the Clinton/Gore campaign soon after. This introduction into public service would lead her to work in the White House as Special Assistant to the Director, Office of National Service.
The White House Office of National Service was formed to author and ensure passage of President Clinton’s AmeriCorps legislation. It paved the way for the birth of the Corporation for National Service, which at that time was a $731.6 million, 400-employee federal agency whose programs annually engaged more than one million people in community service
Laura would eventually become a program officer of AmeriCorps.
In 1996, Laura finished her MA, Graduate School of Political Management from George Washington University.
Laura became the Vice President of Isaacson Miller, a nationally retained executive search firm concentrating on nonprofits, socially responsible businesses and the public sector. It is one of the largest firms in New England, and one of the most highly respected niche firms for nonprofit executive search.
She would then start her own executive search firm, the Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group, designed to operate with "new economy" savvy, the firm unbundles traditional executive search and leadership transition packages and offers sophisticated services tailored to clients’ various needs.
In 2019, Laura published her book Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve your Own Path, and Live Your Best Life which talks about consonance, helping others align their work with their values, and finding satisfaction solving problems which matter to them.
Find out more about Laura in the following links:
Learn more about Jake Dunlap and Skaled by visiting the links below:
Jake Dunlap:
Skaled:
This episode of The Jake Dunlap Show features Alan Stein, Jr, keynote speaker, basketball performance coach, executive consultant, and author of Raise Your Game: High-Performance Secrets from the Best of the Best. In his career, he has worked with basketball legends Stephen Curry, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, Justin Anderson, Terrence Ross, Victor Oladipo, Jerami Grant, Markelle Fultz, and many more.
Alan looks back on his childhood and how he immediately fell in love with basketball. He was always a sporty kid but he particularly enjoyed the deeply personal aspect of basketball which translates directly into his effectiveness while playing with a team.
He realized by high school that showing up in the best physical shape was central to being good at basketball. Fast forward a bit, by the time he graduated and struck out on his own, he would devote a couple of decades of his life being a basketball performance coach.
What he learned was that, more than performance improvement, he was in the relationship business. This held true even as he pivoted into keynote speaking as a profession as building a good relationship is the key in improving anyone's performance.
Alan shares that the transition from performance coach to motivational speaker was seamless because the same principles of improving performance on the court is the same as improving others' mindsets. He shares his motivations for writing his book, including organizing his message of motivation into a clearer flow that anyone can read and appreciate.
Quotes
10:21 "I actually thought basketball was perfectly suited for that kind of dichotomy of me needing some alone time, but then loved being a part of something and being part of a team."
25:53 "If I could earn the trust and the buy-in and the believe in of the players I was working with, they would give me a better effort and they would show more focus consistently. And I knew that if they would do those things, then as long as I'm laying out at least a halfway decent training program, they would start to make progress."
29:55 "When I started to look at my work as more of a chore and more of a job and less of a passion or something that filled my bucket, I just knew it was time to make a change."
33:13 "I basically followed the same template for building my speaking business that I followed when I first graduated Elon to build my training business, which is invest in relationships, work on being of service to other people, and then do a great job anytime you get an opportunity."
37:47 "Wherever your feet are planted, do the best job that you can do, be of the most service that you can be, get as good at your craft as you can be, and doing so, will then open up new doors and new opportunities for you."
More about Alan
Alan graduated from Elon College (now Elon University) in 1998 with a degree in Sport Management. By the time he graduated, he struck out on his own and dedicated the next two decades of his life as a strength and conditioning coach, and then as a basketball performance coach.
He was the co-owner of Elite Athlete Training Systems and its Strength and Conditioning Coach from 2000 to 2007, and was the Founder and Performance Coach of Stronger Team, LLC in Rockville, Maryland. They would merge with Pure Sweat Basketball.
Alan was also the host of the The Pure Sweat Basketball Show from 2016 to 2018. Around this time, he also realized that his passion for coaching was starting to wane and decided to pivot to keynote speaking to inspire others into their peak performance, similar to what he used to do for professional athletes.
He published his book Raise Your Game: High-Performance Secrets from the Best of the Best in 2019 and this remains his top referral for his successful motivational speaking career.
Find out more about Alan and get his book in the following links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-stein-jr/
Learn more about Jake Dunlap and Skaled by visiting the links below:
Jake Dunlap:
Skaled:
This episode of The Jake Dunlap Show features Lauren Gibbs, Director of External Sales at Parity and a lifelong athlete who famously brought home an Olympic silver medal for bobsledding in 2018.
Lauren's story is about perseverance and pivoting to where her desires and strengths are. She looks back on her athletic roots and getting accepted into Brown for track and field and volleyball.
Uniquely for Lauren, she also got into sales during her college years. She graduated from Brown with 100k savings, then moved on to build on her already successful sales career afterwards.
In 2014, Lauren got introduced to bobsledding by chance. She committed to it and shares that Olympic training is no joke, all while working again in sales to support herself. Another unique trait of Lauren is her ability to drum up support and even land sponsorships very early in her Olympic journey.
She shares the best parts of being an Olympian and bringing home the medal, but also the darker side of athletics in the form of "Olympic Blues." As Lauren moves to the next chapter of her life, she now focuses on her work with Whoop and Parity and its mission to close the pay gap in professional sports.
QUOTES
12:01 "I just liked the idea of being financially stable and... I just wanted to be able to take care of myself. I didn't want to have to rely on anybody. I wanted to work earlier, but I think there some laws, work permits and all that stuff."
23:00 "A lot of US Olympians and Paralympians actually live below the poverty line, so you're also trying to find a way to support yourself. Luckily for me, I have a sales background and I have an MBA so I was really good at trying to land sponsorships."
26:46 "The US Women's Olympic Bobsled Team has medaled in every Olympics since 2002, which is when the sport was allowed for women in the Olympics. So there's quite a legacy there and so I think it wasn't like a, if I medal, the expectation was to medal."
28:10 "I'm also just ready for that next phase of my life. If I get to go to a second Olympics, it'll be an honor. But I mean, something I tried it as a joke ended with two world championship medals, one of them being a gold, I think I have 14 world cup medals, an Olympic silver medal."
More About Lauren
Lareun went to Brown University and was the team captain of the volleyball varsity team. She got in Brown for track and field (and performed well in it) but she was able to pivot to her passion which was volleyball. She graduated in 2006 with a B.A. in Public & Private Sector Organizations, Business, Entrepreneurship.
Starting in college, Lauren worked for a number of companies where she honed her sales skills. Lauren hustled hard and would chance upon bobsledding at the age of 30. She joined the team as a joke, but discovered that her skills would prove invaluable as a brakeman. This would later be proven true as she won a silver medal during the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Now that she is ready to move on, Lauren focuses on her mission with Parity to close the wage gap between male and female athletes. She also works with Whoop to deliver the latest in fitness wearables and speaks professionally for goal setting, authentic leadership, and confronting and overcoming adversity to a wide variety of audiences
Find out more about Lauren and connect with her in the following links:
Learn more about Jake Dunlap and Skaled by visiting the links below:
Jake Dunlap:
Skaled:
This episode of The Jake Dunlap Show features Shama Hyder, CEO of Zen Media, best-selling author, keynote speaker, and 4x LinkedIn Top Voice in Marketing. Growing up as an immigrant to the US instilled many unique lessons in Shama.
She learned to be responsible for her siblings, helped with the family business, and soaked in learnings about the real world early in life. She shares how she started increasing her credit score as a teen and taking community college classes as a high school student.
These practical moves optimized Shama's road to entrepreneurship, allowing her to finish college and masters in just 5 years. Shama then founded her own company out of necessity and, in hindsight, all her previous setbacks turned out to be foundation blocks for a successful business career.
She shares how she got deeply involved with social media and the many creative ways she used the system to her advantage. Shama's lessons for listeners are if you have a good idea, there is always a way, and obstacles are not walls but challenges to be figured out.
QUOTES:
13:07 "I have a genuine kind of love for the underdog and for what I considered the hidden gems and, through my work, through what I do, it's so much about of is amplifying it and help them kind of navigate the rocky terrain."
20:41 "I was kind of the optimizer, like how can I optimize my way through school while making sure I helped my parents get food on the table or whatever they needed, whatever, like not just financial, but kind of emotional support being the eldest."
28:35 "I think exposing minorities and underserved communities with these kinds of opportunities is massive because you can be what you can't see and you don't know what's out there because we don't know what's out there."
39:53 "What was so exciting was that (social media) was this great equalizer. If you had good ideas, you could make it happen. I mean, remember, not only was I talking about marketing and social media and marketing and the digital age, I was walking the talk."
45:12 "When I first started and I used to do all these talks about social media, I talk about your digital footprint. But it's not your footprint anymore, it's your entire identity. And you get to determine what that looks like. So you're not stuck with who you are in the physical world. You can be a lot of things."
More About Shama
Shama moved to the US from Goa, India when she was 9 years old. She was exposed to entrepreneurship very early on as she witnessed her parents hustle to survive in a new country. One definitive characteristic of Shama is her creativity in turning setbacks into opportunities.
She hacked her way through school by taking college classes while in high school so that she entered the University of Texas as a junior. She found ways and means to get the necessary permissions to take even more classes, something which required simple curiosity and sheer willpower to do so.
Another unique tidbit about Shama is that she graduated college debt-free. By learning how to manage her finances as a teen, she was able to prioritize the future and took the necessary steps to secure it, a far cry from what her peers were concerned with at the time.
Immediately after graduation, she founded her company Zen Media and was the first person to write a book on social media. She had her pulse on the future and recognized that this is not a trend and its genesis will alter the way people do life and business in the near future.
Shama has been recognized for her marketing prowess by Forbes, Business Insider, Inc, Empact 100, and many more and has been awarded for her genius, earning her the monikers “Zen Master of Marketing” and “millennial master of the universe.”
Find out more about Shama and connect with her in the following links:
Learn more about Jake Dunlap and Skaled by visiting the links below:
Jake Dunlap:
Skaled:
This episode of The Jake Dunlap Show features Robert LoCascio, Founder and CEO of LivePerson. Growing up middle class with an entrepreneur father opened up Robert's eyes that the road to success is not a straight line.
While financial insecurity produced his own insecurities, it also taught him about powering through uncertainty. He shares an anecdote of when he was in Prague when the Berlin Wall was still up.
Robert realized then that what is true can only really be confirmed with your own eyes, a lesson which he has brought with him his whole life. He shares the story of his brief stint as an employee and the compelling reason he vowed never to work for another company again.
He then got introduced to the internet and decided that he wanted to be part of this nascent industry. Robert looks back on the hardships of the first years of his company, how he invented chat, and the boom they experienced. The events of 9/11 were also formative as he solidified his core value to lead with empathy.
Robert is excited to develop conversational AI that will fulfill the most important intentions in human life. He believes their core value of empathy is the strongest bet to make this empathic AI become a reality.
QUOTES:
06:52 "People have their filters on what truth is and I've always felt anytime there was an issue or something, I'll get on the field of play deeply in that area because, until you can feel it and see it, you should assume that it's not the truth that you may believe."
08:40 "As any entrepreneur goes or anything, I think just in life, you have to be curious to go outside what you're thinking. Once you can experience different things that even are very uncomfortable."
15:52 "I learned there to lead to empathy. There was no textbook written about leading through 9/11 or the dot com but I saw we had a person in the company that had a sales after 9/11. It was like, we got to go, everyone come to work... I had to get rid of him."
17:55 "You've got to lead with your heart. You've got to lead with your ears, not your mouth."
19:22 "I fundamentally believe there needs to be an AI in our life that we can trust,
that we think is empathetic, that loves us, that will fulfill our most important intentions in life."
More About Robert
Robert LoCascio founded LivePerson in 1995 before the dot com boom and bust. He is the longest-standing tech CEO and took his company went public just 5 years after its founding. During this tumultuous time, and especially after the events of 9/11, Robert learned that it is only by leading with empathy that his company will survive these dark times.
Robert actually lived out of his office space and slept on a couch for two years. This couch still sits in the LivePerson office today. Ten years after that, LivePerson experienced a resurgence and its stock returned to its original price after disastrous crashes.
Philanthropy is at the core of Robert's identity. He founded the Dream Big Foundation and has since helped 70,000 families get food to eat. Robert also helps fund the restoration of important works of art in the Vatican Museum.
By 2011, LivePerson was named one of Fortune's 100 Fastest Growing Companies and one of Forbes’ 25 Fastest Growing Tech Companies. And in 2020, his company was named one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies in the World. LivePerson is excited to deliver emphatic AI solutions in the near future.
Find out more about Robert and connect with him in the following links:
Learn more about Jake Dunlap and Skaled by visiting the links below:
Jake Dunlap:
Skaled:
This episode of The Jake Dunlap Show features Harrison Tang, Founder and CEO of Spokeo. Moving to the US from Taiwan as a teen was the biggest shift in Harrison's life. Not only did he need to learn an entirely new language, but he had to adjust to the people and culture all while gunning for the best education he could get.
Harrison would eventually make it to Stanford, a validation of he and his family's efforts, where he would graduate with a double major in Economics and Electrical Engineering. He continued down the path with his masters and, deciding against working for behemoths like Google and Facebook, started his own company in his parent's basement.
The trials began during the first years, during the product market fit years, when Harrison and his partners almost went bankrupt and needed another round of funding from their parents. These years instilled perseverance in Harrison to last until the end and to outlast all competition.
Through the obstacles, Spokeo entered its crazy growth phase. It was also during this time when Harrison started to dig deeper to ask questions of why they are being successful. For him, not knowing why you are successful makes the success very hard to replicate.
This was when Spokeo and Harrison entered the dig back into the why years. Not only did they start to get their data gathering correct, they also started to look deeper into their company fabric. Harrison learned the big difference between trust and blind trust with the defining factor being transparency.
As Harrison and his company grow, he has put a premium on providing transparency. This translates into the major changes the company has gone through, and the mission, vision, and strategy they now employ to provide their users with epistemic transparency. With tools rooted in transparency, they provide users the ability to determine what information is true and what is not.
QUOTES:
19:10 "Success is actually not about whether you gone to Stanford or Ivy League or how smart you are. It's actually whether you can last till the end, whether you can last longer than your competition."
21:14 "So I think when things are going well, I think the key thing is you have to ask why. So that's the difference between growth and blind growth and and the same thing with trust and blind trust."
25:26 "If running a business is so easy, why do you need humans? Robots can't do it. Data, at the end of the day, represents the voice of the people. Data, at some point, comes from a person or device or some kind of entity... You really have to dig deep into what people are saying."
31:02 "I think blind trust is one that you just say but you don't do. If you don't really care about somebody, you spend time working with them to help align the objectives between you and that person. Blind trust is the case where you don't care enough to do that."
35:53 "One little lesson I've learned is the importance of recognizing other people's work. Whether you agree with it or not, the importance of listening and acknowledgement, because that's the very first step of getting everyone on the same page."
More about Harrison
Harrison is originally from Taiwan and he moved to the US when he was 13 years old. He experienced a culture shock but this did not dissuade him from learning the language and pursuing the best education possible.
He graduated from Stanford University with a double major in Economics and Electrical Engineering. Harrison then got his MS also from Stanford for Electrical Engineering specializing in optical systems and optoelectronics.
He has helped pioneer communications technologies and has been featured in PC Magazine for a Skype mouse concept. He, together with his roommates in Stanford, started their company Spokeo in Harrison’s parent’s basement.
The company went off to a rocky start and their first round of funding would get depleted, threatening them with bankruptcy. However, with some more help from their parents, they were able to refine their product market fit and keep developing their business.
From trying to create a social network aggregator, they had evolved their product into a search engine where users can look up people’s contact information such as phone numbers, email addresses, and social media platforms.
From a four person company, the company has grown significantly and now serves 18 million visitors per month. Spokeo won the 2015 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the Consumer Services category and posted 159 percent growth over the past three years, with $78 million in revenue for 2015
Find out more about Harrison and connect with him in the following links:
Learn more about Jake Dunlap and Skaled by visiting the links below:
Jake Dunlap:
Skaled:
This episode of The Jake Dunlap Show features Jason Van Camp, Founder of Warrior Rising and Mission 6 Zero. Jason grew up patriotic among a community of patriots. He grew up around sports and entered every sport he could, even the ones he wasn't particularly good at.
By the time Jason was at West Point, he realized his desire to go on a mission. As luck would have it, he was to be sent to Russia, of all places. It was a culture shock but what Jason learned there would change his life.
He became fluent in Russian and he learned to evangelize in an atheist, communist country. These life skills, which at the core was basically sales, would become formative in his later life when he would tread the path of an entrepreneur.
Jason recalls extraordinary experiences in Russia, such as a run in with a mafia. Handled incorrectly, it could have been a kidnapping, but Jason's cool and confidence turned it into an amazing relationship where he got protection and provided the organization gear in return.
For Jason, taking action is the most important. Motivation comes from the self and all he can do is inspire others to move, make something happen, and see results. Jason also believes that surrounding yourself with people that inspire you to do better is a key ingredient of success.
He would become a Ranger, being only one of three guys to finish out of a hundred. His successes were only beginning as Jason would become a Green Beret soon after that. In his Special Forces mission in Iraq, he led some of the fiercest fighters, the Kurds, and they took the fight to the enemy and won.
By the time he exited the military, Jason made it his personal mission to help veterans get back on their feet. Through his business and nonprofit, Jason helps his fellow patriots regain their purpose and find meaning in life outside the military.
QUOTES:
20:42 "Especially when you read something in a foreign language, you can see how there's different perspectives on life and how people see things differently than you do and just really opened my mind."
29:09 "They want to be thought leaders or they want to be a guru or a wellness coach. I'm like, don't be a thought leader, be an action leader. Don't be a guru, be a do-ru. Get up and do something. Take action. Move. I don't care what it is, just do something about it."
30:09 "I can inspire you to motivate yourself so that you can take action so that you can see results. And once you see results, you inspire yourself to get motivated, to take more action, to see more results. And so it's like this circle of inspiration, motivation, action, and results."
32:29 "If you want to be a millionaire, hang around millionaires. They'll all rub off on you. And you'll realize as you, as you hang out with these guys, that they're not that different from you. They're not that more special than you are. You can do the same thing."
50:42 "One thing that you think about is what are their motivations? When you really start working with the leadership, you've got to find out what their values are, what they believe in, what they're made of."
51:31 "What you learned about leadership, you have to trust other people to do their job. You can't micromanage. You can't be everywhere at once. You have to say, all right, this is what I need you to do. I trust you, go get it done."
More about Jason
Jason Van Camp graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 2001. During his time here, he was a linebacker for the Army Black Knights Football Team and he went on a two-year LDS Church mission to Russia. He would become fluent in Russian during his time here.
Jason’s military successes were just about to begin. He entered Ranger School, an impressive feat in itself, but what is more amazing is that he is only one of three men who would finish the course.
He was part of the tip of the spear in the invasion of Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division and would later become a Green Beret. In his function in the Special Forces, he innovated the idea of training the Peshmerga, fierce Kurdish fighters of the Iraqi Military, to liberate cities from tyranny.
Jason is the recipient of multiple awards including the Bronze Star with V device for Valor as well as two additional Bronze Stars during numerous combat rotations as a Special Forces Detachment Commander in the Middle East and Africa.
In 2015, Jaosn founded Warrior Rising which empowers U.S. veterans and their immediate families by providing them opportunities to create sustainable businesses, perpetuate the hiring of fellow U.S. military veterans, and earn their future.
Last year, Jason published his book Deliberate Discomfort which can be purchased through his website below or through Amazon.com.
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This episode of The Jake Dunlap Show features Samantha Ettus, Founder and CEO at Park Place Payments. Sam grew up in New York and studied at the Dalton School her entire life. She opens up about her upbringing and how an unhealthy amount of pressure was placed on her to win at competitive tennis.
She recalls getting special permissions from Dalton to leave school early everyday to travel to Long Island and play tennis. The pressures of Sam's tennis career revealed to her that life is organized according to 7 slices: family, health, career, hobbies, community, friends, and relationship.
Incidentally, it is this same structure that she uses today when she advises women on how to manage their professional and personal lives.
Her extraordinary drive to excel at tennis was motivated by the desire to get into the best school for college. As it turns out, she was accepted into Harvard. She remembers a pivotal moment when she actually had to choose between tennis and writing, and decided to quit what had been her lifelong identity as a tennis player.
Upon graduation, Samantha pursued a career in Hollywood and shares the colorful personalities she met there working as a Hollywood assistant. Missing the creative side, she moved back to New York to work at Nickelodeon for Blue's Clues.
Samantha would move on and go back to school at Harvard Business School, the only entrepreneur in her class, with the world's first personal branding firm. Next, she would go on to start her book series The Expert's Guide and share how a majority of her guests were results of cold calls and the creative ways she got them to say yes.
She also talks about writing The Pie Life which is based on her 7 slices structure of work-life balance. Finally, Samantha shares how she founded Park Place Payments with the intention of empowering small businesses with financial freedom and growing it to a billion dollar company.
QUOTES:
04:50 "I think it's so important that we raise financially independent children so that they have the choices to live the life they want and I've always been passionate about equal rights."
11:39 "We all have seven slices which are our family, our health, our careers, our hobbies, our community, our friends, and our relationship. And every single activity you have is organized into one of those slices."
22:09 "It was really difficult decision... And honestly, I don't think I was actually ready to quit when I did, because it was mentally which showed me I wasn't ready to quit, is that I couldn't handle having all of this free time."
35:55 "I had a lot of experience winning and losing as a child even when the stakes seemed really high... I think you have to go out there and try 20 times before you're going to get your yes."
45:24 "I've tried, as we grow, to place myself where my strengths are and then also to help identify where people in our team are strong and weak and make sure that they're in a position where they can be successful."
More about Samantha
Samantha Ettus, Founder and CEO of Park Place Payments, has made it her mission to empower small businesses owners and help them achieve their financial independence. She is a five-time national bestselling author of books including her The Experts Guide book series and her latest hit, The Pie Life.
She is also a highly-sought after keynote speaker and TEDx speaker who inspires her listeners to thrive and grow. Samantha also co-hosts her own podcast called What's Her Story With Sam & Amy which celebrates other women who are at the top of their game.
She is a media personality who has appeared on TV more than 400 times and has been featured on Good Morning America, TODAY, NBC Nightly News, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Inc., Success, and Marie Claire.
She has worked with some of the biggest names in business such as Google, Target, General Mills, Yahoo, and Twitter, to name just a few.
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This episode of The Jake Dunlap Show features Neil Patel, Co-Founder of Neil Patel Digital. Before Neil became the behemoth of marketing he is today, he had humble beginnings in La Palma, a small city in Orange County CA. From very early on, he realized that having your own business is what generates wealth.
He was in his teens when his own entrepreneurial endeavors would kick in, starting with selling burnt CDs, getting licensed as an auto parts dealer, and mixing it up with other jobs like working in a theme park and selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door.
At 15, he started his first company, Advice Monkey, and after getting burned with no results, decided to pursue college classes while still in high school. Neil embraced social media marketing early in its inception and he made a name for himself leveraging all the available sites as they were getting popular.
Creating his blog was Neil's outlet to simply write and not worry about his other businesses like Quick Sprout. Incidentally, it would be his personal brand that would take off and grow exponentially even if it was not in Neil's intention to do so.
Neil's golden nuggets of advice include spending a lot of money hiring rock stars who know exactly what they are doing and knowing your place in the company. For instance, Neil had always known that operations was his weak side so he never aspired to be the CEO of his own companies.
Listen to the full podcast on Neil's uncommon entrepreneurial drive and unconventional priorities as a business owner to achieve success and what this truly means for him.
QUOTES:
16:08 "My grades kept getting worse and worse as I started making more money, because I was like, screw this. I'm just going to go make money."
24:18 "My biggest takeaway is, in business, no matter how hard you work, if you don't ride the trends that people are looking for, you don't have some luck on your side, a lot of times things don't work out. Doesn't matter how hard you try."
25:19 "If you want to do really well, it's not about how talented you are. It's about how talented your team is. And you got to hire rock stars. That's the biggest lesson I probably learned in my career."
36:58 "I'm okay being a father. I'm okay not going to office. I'm okay not being as successful because I get to see my kids grow up. I figured out what makes me happy in life and that's what I do."
38:58 "What's changed my life is I avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. You learn from it. You still make mistakes but you're making new ones and you learn from it."
More About Neil
Neil was born into a middle class family and he quickly noticed how his entrepreneurial uncles seemed to have a better life than his own family. This would drive him to pursue financial success early on even as his peers were focused on their social lives rather than creating wealth.
He explored many endeavors including selling burnt CDs, selling hacked satellite TV cards, and reselling car parts. Neil also performed many different jobs just to make ends meet including working as a custodian and door-to-door salesman.
His first company would manifest by the early age of 15 and he learned from many, many mistakes in trying to grow Advice Monkey. The dismal results from his outsourced marketing taught him that he might as well learn this skill on his own.
It is through marketing that he would meet his larger clients and he really started to enjoy income which already exceeded both his parents' monthly income. To satisfy his parent's desires and to learn even more skills, Neil decided to take early college lessons through night school at Cypress Community College.
Neil would found Crazy Egg soon after which would garner the interest of Fortune 1,000 companies. He and his partner ultimately failed to sell it at their goal of $10 million and so they persevered to make their company profitable.
By the time he was in the middle of his college life, he would be named one of the top influencers on the web by The Wall Street Journal. Also during this time he would start his first blog, ProNet Advertising. It would be named by Search Engine Journal as the Best Social Media Blog and ranked in Technorati’s Top 100
In 2007, Neil launched Quick Sprout blog and a year after that launched Kissmetrics. In 2011, they encountered one of their biggest hurdles which was a data privacy act violation lawsuit. The legal battles would continue for a year before Neil and his company would be cleared of charges.
Neil would be recognized by even more organizations for his talents as a marketer as the years roll by. For instance, Forbes would name Neil as one of the top 10 marketing experts of the year in 2014 and President Obama would recognize him as one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 30 in 2015.
Nowadays, Neil is focused on leading his company Neil Patel Digital but leaves the operations work to his rock star team. For Neil, he would rather focus on the areas he is good at and actually enjoys and leaves the expertise of operations to others. This strategy is what he recognizes as the key to the stellar growth that they have thus far achieved.
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This episode of The Jake Dunlap Show features Robert Ceravolo, CEO of Tropic Ocean Airways and real-life Tom Cruise as Maverick in Top Gun. All his life, Robert had wanted to become a jet fighter. His father's wartime stories of bombers flying overhead, liberating Italy from the fascists, would be imprinted on him.
By the time he came of age, Robert strived to achieve his and his father's dream for him. He graduated top of his class and secured his future as a Tomcat pilot. Robert shares stories of landing on carriers, his deployment in Iraq, and his eventual transition to various squadron responsibilities.
This well-rounded training would serve him well as it taught him, essentially, how it is to run a business. During his deployment to Italy and after reading Richard Branson's Screw It, Let's Do It, Robert decided to start his own business where he would sacrifice his Porsche, boat, and basically everything he owned to get the business off the ground.
Through grit and a passion to serve his customers the best service possible, Robert survived near bankruptcy, drove out wolves in sheep's clothing, and embodied his core value of compassion during the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian.
Listen to the full podcast on Robert's passion for the air and sea and his unshakeable desire to fulfill his dreams.
QUOTES:
09:22 "You mean I could land on a boat so I could always be around the ocean, which I absolutely loved, I get to date my instructor, ride a motorcycle. This is the coolest thing ever. And that was it. At that point I was like, I'm going to join the Navy."
20:35 "The Tomcat community was very, let's go have a good time mentality. It was the last of the old fighter pilots, if you will. In training, we had that jet up to 60,000 feet, we had it in Mach 2 plus. I mean, it was just insanity. And that thing was such a good performer."
31:46 "You start to look at these seaplanes as a phenomenal transportation solution to get people out of those major metropolitan areas that's congested or really tough to get to the airports, or to be the last mile connectivity piece for places like the Bahamas."
41:00 "We took that obstacle and turned it to an opportunity. It's all you can do when something bad happens is take a step back and say okay, well, how can we get through the next few days and is there any opportunity that's going to come out of it."
46:47 "These airplanes are great assets in an island nation during a disaster so, guess what, 2016 Matthew hits, we serviced 2 locations just after Matthew, 2017 we had an airplane in Puerto Rico did some evacuations on there. Then Dorian hits."
More about Robert
Robert took inspiration from his father, a lifelong aircraft enthusiast, whose passion for flying rubbed off on Robert from a very young age. His experiences growing up, from hanging out with seasoned pilots to flying with his father, solidified his path towards becoming a pilot.
Robert served in the Navy as a pilot flying the F-14 Tomcat, F-18 Super Hornet, and F-5 jets. He served in many more areas for the squadron for 10 years before becoming a reservist and focusing on his business full-time. As a pilot, he was deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. He studied Adversary Tactics, commonly known as TOP GUN, and would serve as an instructor for many years.
He founded Tropic Ocean Airways during the last year of his active service and struggled to get his first airplane off the sea. With persistence and passion, he was able to weather near bankruptcy and the recent pandemic to build the world's largest amphibious fleet in the world.
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This short format episode of The Jake Dunlap Show explores the top three moments of life before 25 that shaped someone to be the person they are today. Sharing his story is David Meltzer, Co-Founder of Sports 1 Marketing and Founder of David Meltzer Enterprises.
Growing up poor had a profound effect on David and he would never forget the example shown by his mother that he can outwork anyone to achieve the pinnacles of success. As he grew older, and being surrounded by affluence, David had access to a better education but it also gave him the impression that he was never good enough.
This negative self-talk, for better or worse, drove him to prove that he actually was worthy of success. He would follow his brother's advice and pursue what truly interested him, which turned out to be law.
But keeping an open mind as his successes as an oil and gas litigator piled up, he entered sales with the goal of becoming rich. He would become a multi-millionaire by the age of 30 and had everything he could ever want, except he wasn't happy.
Listen to the full podcast on David's meteoric rise to the top, the arrogance which was his downfall, and the undefeatable drive in him to overcome adversity to come out better than ever before.
QUOTES:
07:05 "I learned that through football because the minute I stepped on a field, they laughed at me, scoffed at me, made fun of me, and then I got the ball. And they applauded me. And I did the same thing with greater things later on in my life."
08:03 "My mom put us in a place in an affluent area with the better schools because she understood how the energy worked that you surround yourself with the right people, the right ideas, and the right teacher, and the right coaches, and the right sports."
14:24 "This is the best piece of advice I'd ever gotten, and I still probably maybe have ever gotten, (my brother) said David, you need to be more interested than interesting."
18:16 "Just because someone loves you, does not mean they give you good advice. I almost missed out on an unbelievable opportunity that ended up, 9 months out of law school, making me a millionaire."
19:12 "There's the ignorant, arrogant people, which was the Dave Meltzer from the time he was 5 until the time he was 35 worth over a hundred million dollars and had everything that everybody in the world wished for, but took it for granted."
More about David
David earned his law degree from Tulane University Law School and he would become a successful oil and gas litigator. In pursuit of even more financial success, he dove in to sell legal research on the internet in 1992 which made him a millionaire in just 9 months.
By 1995, he would sell his company for 3.4 billion dollars and this would catapult him to the top of Silicon Valley, raising hundreds of millions of dollars in capital. David would become CEO of Samsung's first smartphone division, PC-E Phone too.
At this point, David was already enjoying the material trappings of such immense success including owning mansions, Ferraris, golf courses, and much more.
For all his success, however, he would end up losing 100 million dollars and end up starting from scratch and rebuilding everything he had lost with newfound wisdom, focus, and empathy for the people around him.
David has written bestselling books including Connected to Goodness, Compassionate Capitalism, and Game-Time Decision Making. He is also chairman of philanthropic organizations and is the host of his own podcast, The Playbook Podcast.
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This episode of The Jake Dunlap Show features Daniel Binns, Chief Executive Officer NA and Global Director of Partnerships at Interbrand. Daniel's drive to be wildly successful can be traced back to his university life, but not because he was particularly good at academics.
When Daniel dropped out, he distinctly remembers a conversation he had with his father where he was basically told that this was the worst decision he could possibly make. From then on, it became the driving force behind Daniel's desire to become the best at whatever he does.
His career would take a definitive turn once he joined McCann Erickson where he would take on role after role that took him to Belgium, Bahrain, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Africa, back to London, and eventually New York.
Aside from taking opportunities as they came along, Daniel stresses the critical role that network played in helping him achieve great heights in his career. He also shares that, although he did not subscribe to a 5 year plan, he always had a goal in mind which was to become a leader of advertising in New York.
After 19 solid years of upward mobility with McCann, Daniel decided to break out on his own and run a charity. However, he missed the intellectual challenge of strategy and returned to the advertising industry as a consultant.
He would later be reconnected with his old advertising network and be invited to join the Interbrand team which would prove to be another turning point in his career. Daniel would work on strategy again, the aspect of business which he truly loves, and eventually move up to management as the CEO.
Listen to the full podcast on Daniel's trials of fire, believing in his own faculties to become successful, and fearlessly taking every opportunity as they come.
QUOTES:
16:30 "I called him up and said, by the way dad, I've dropped out of college. And he said what? I said yeah, yeah, you know, so I didn't really like it. And it was any time I think he ever swore me. He said, I don't care that you don't like it. That's not the point."
16:48 "That conversation has stuck in my head and was very formative because from that moment I was like, I'm going to show you I don't need to go to university. I am going to be way more successful than you ever dreamt of and it really drove me."
24:41 "How I became successful is I just always said yes. I was open to anything. I didn't plan. I had friends that would have their 5 year plan for their career. I was like, why would you do that? You're just going to take the opportunities that come along."
27:08 "I was never afraid to take a role that seemed outside of my abilities. From that regional, every one of the jobs I ever had, I didn't really have the qualifications to do it."
48:00 "It's hard to stay still. You're either moving forward or you're going backwards so I just thought, no, I'm going to keep going, keep going as far as I can go. Until I stop enjoying what I'm doing, I'll keep trying to drive up."
More about Daniel
Daniel began his professional career in a TV station selling TV airtime. While it was second to the smallest station at the time, it did introduce him to ad agencies which then led to a job offer from an agency as a media buyer.
After a couple of years, he had the opportunity to join the international media department of McCann Erickson which he considers to be the turning point in his career. This would eventually be called the European media department and, filling a leadership gap, decided to move along with his office to Brussels to work directly under the CEO.
He then had the opportunity to move to Bahrain as the Regional Media Director. Fearlessly, he said yes and jumped headfirst into the role. This trend would continue and it would take him to Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Johannesburg, and New York.
Daniel would find himself as President at McCann Indonesia at the age of 29 and his successes would continue on from here. But after a storied 19 year career with McCann, Daniel decided to start his own focus with a nonprofit called Peace One Day as CEO.
An ex-colleague invited Daniel to join Kimberly-Clark as a consultant to reposition their corporate brand and this gave birth to his consultancy firm, Left Field Consultancy. But after missing the business culture, he had the opportunity to join Interbrand, which he promptly took up.
Interbrand would take in Daniel full-time as Executive Director, Global Brand Engineer working with Nissan. In a couple of years, he would gravitate back to management where he is now CEO of Interbrand NA.
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THE JAKE DUNLAP SHOW – EPISODE 14 - The Jake Dunlap Show Season Highlights
This reel features some of the most memorable moments with the truly amazing people featured on the Jake Dunlap Show:
1. 00:10 Get to Know Your Host, Jake Dunlap
2. 01:26 Perseverance: Lessons From Manny Medina's Journey
3. 02:08 Hotel Regina: The Pursuit of Happiness and Balance with Dan Harris
4. 02:55 Creating Your Path: The Alternative Career Journey of Mark Roberge
5. 03:48 Heart and Soul - Leading Growth and Change with Claude Silver
6. 04:33 Beginner’s Mind - The Only Way to Innovate and Grow with Nick Mehta
7. 05:05 Independent Spirit - March to the Beat of Your Own Drum with Erik Huberman
8. 05:35 Zero Regrets - The Hustle It Takes To Win with Henry Schuck
9. 06:41 Entrepreneur Meets Artist – A Journey in Branding with David Brier
10. 07:22 Innovation Through Curiosity - Lessons from Baseball and Marketing with Chris Walker
11. 08:02 Undaunted - Overcoming Doubts & Doubters with Kara Goldin
12. 08:38 Dream BIG: The Relentless Pursuit Of Success w/ 4x Olympian Chaunte Lowe
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This episode of The Jake Dunlap Show features Chaunte Lowe, four-time Olympian in the high jump and triple negative breast cancer survivor. Chaunte's journey is one of relentless perseverance in the face of difficult family dynamics, growing up poor, and the desire to be better than she was yesterday.
From an early age, Chaunte already pursued athletics and learned that the way to be the fastest is to emulate what other successful athletes are doing, compete with them, and improve upon their strategies. By the time she was 20 and still in college she made her first appearance in the Olympics.
Chaunte would not make the final, but she would learn that when you dream, make sure your dreams are big so you don't lose steam when pursuing it. By the next Olympics games, she would achieve this goal and win the bronze.
Chaunte's shares that the succeeding Olympics games would be rollercoasters of emotions. From feelings of dejection after disappointing finishes, to exhilaration upon learning of her actual Olympic victory in 2008, Chante gives a very human side to the almost superhuman ability to even compete in FOUR Olympics games.
She would be diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer in 2019. Her mindset at this point was focused on the Tokyo 2020 Olympics since this platform would amplify her advocacy to teach about the dangers of breast cancer to men and women.
Listen to the full podcast on Chaunte’s journey of achieving the greatest victories, facing off the deadliest threats, and ultimately emerging victorious from it all.
QUOTES:
12:38 "I learned that, you know, when you start by running with that person, emulating what they do and then trying to find a way to improve upon it. And I've just done that in so many different areas of my life, in my education, anything that I want."
20:55 It's always been my goal to find people that know better than I do to get how to get me where I want to go. And when I picked a school, I needed both, I needed a school that had the academic challenging and the reputation of producing thought leaders in the world.
28:27 "At that moment, I realized I set my goal too low. My goal was to go to the Olympics and, once I made that team, all the steam, all the excitement, just like, I did it, and I didn't have anything else left to actually compete and make the final."
47:30 "Excuses are patches that you sew on the garment of failure."
53:45 "I wanted to make people aware that it's something that you should be looking for and what you could do to protect yourself. And, and that's really what training for my fifth Olympics was about… getting the opportunity to put this out there."
More about Chaunte
Chaunté Lowe was born on January 12, 1984. She is an American athlete who competes in the high jump and boasts an impressive four-time Olympics appearance in 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016.
She is the 2008 Olympic bronze medalist, the 2005 World Championship silver medalist and the 2012 World Indoor gold medalist. In the 2008 Olympic high jump final, she initially finished sixth but was promoted to the bronze medal in 2016. This was after three other competitors were disqualified for doping.
Chaunte is the American record holder in the women's high jump and holds an outdoor clearance of 2.05 m in 2010, and also holds the indoor record with a clearance of 2.02 m in 2012. Chaunte also earned her masters degree in Mathematics Education from Western Governors University while attending it online which she also finished in 2012.
Chaunte has been awarded the NCAA Inspiration Award for continuing to share her story about breast cancer, raise awareness, and provide hope for others. In March 2021, Lowe jumped in her first competition in two years, and her first since her cancer diagnosis. She reported that she exceeded her goal by one inch.
She is writing a children's book now which includes her honest views on growing up with domestic violence and homelessness and how she took advantage of opportunities that were available to her. It comes out in spring.
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This episode of The Jake Dunlap Show features Kara Goldin, Founder and CEO of Hint, Inc. Even as a little girl, Kara learned that it's never too late to reinvent yourself and create your own opportunities. Her drive to learn business concepts from day 1 became the foundation for her success during her storied career.
After graduating, she kept an open mind, toured around the country, and interviewed with over 90 companies to figure out what was best for her. She created a vast network for herself and ended up applying for her journalism degree with Time Magazine.
Kara's story is characterized by an intense desire to keep learning and grabbing opportunities as they come. These traits would allow her to meet directly with executives who would recognize her passion and open even more doors for her.
Years after her first real job with Time, she would go on to build a billion dollar ecommerce business, found Hint Water, win awards and recognitions like Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs in 2011, and write her book Undaunted: Overcoming Doubts and Doubters.
Listen to the full podcast on Kara’s journey of self-discovery, curiosity, and the value of continuously learning as you go along your way.
QUOTES:
28:40 "Your journey, no matter what you do, as you go on your journey you can start to pick the things that you really like about it."
32:46 "I should ask more people what they do and maybe they'll be willing to set me up with jobs with their companies. So then, anyone who came across my path, not just in Teepee, but also my dad's friends, I was like, who do you know in LA?"
43:23 "Where do you think you're lacking? I would ask these questions that just showed curiosity and, to your point, that's who you want to hire. Great managers want to hire people that help them think."
49:16 "That's what happens when you start not only a new company but when you're the only one in the space in a new category, as I share with entrepreneurs, you got to stay alive along the way and you got to wait for the consumer to catch up."
52:11 "You can still get back up from your challenges. You just have to figure out how not to freeze or when to slow down or when to pivot along the way. All those things are so critical."
More about Kara
Kara's very first job was at Alphabet Toys when she was just 14 years old. By the time she was in college, she would also wait tables at Teepee where she learned that opportunities are not just given to people, you can make them yourself by engaging others in meaningful conversations.
After graduation and landing her first real job as an executive assistant with Time Magazine, she would eventually rise up to become the Circulation Sales Manager. She would then move to CNN to work in sales, and then switch industries to work in ecommerce with 2market.
This venture, under her leadership, would become a billion-dollar business that would eventually be acquired by AOL where she served as VP of Electronic Commerce and Shopping.
After a few years and several pregnancies, Kara would found Hint Water with a desire to provide consumers a fun yet healthier alternative to soda which had caused her health to decline. Since its founding in 2005, Hint would become the largest independent beverage company without ties to Coke, Pepsi, and Dr. Pepper Snapple.
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This episode of The Jake Dunlap Show features Chris Walker, CEO at Refine Labs. A man of many hats, Chris has incredible depth of knowledge in entrepreneurship, operations, engineering, and marketing. He possesses a go-getter attitude and natural curiosity that have developed his expertise in these different fields.
Chris was once on the path to becoming a pro baseball player (and even won a state championship!) but would ultimately end up in engineering. Upon graduation, he would hone his skills in operations and as a consultant and integrate his expertise into his role as a marketer.
Another lesson to be learned from Chris is the ability to recognize opportunities for growth. Not only has this helped him as a consultant growing other people's businesses, it has also helped him grab opportunities that accelerated his own career.
Being on the forefront of innovation inevitably led to his founding of Refine Labs, a company that pioneers practices with a human-centric approach. Chris shares how innovation can be found in unlikely places and how organizations can improve by opening themselves up to new ideas and listening to what the data is telling them.
Listen to the full podcast on Chris Walker’s fascinating journey of constant learning and how he integrates lessons from various industries to usher innovation.
QUOTES:
16:42 "I was so much more focused on how the technology was being applied to solve someone's problem versus actually developing the technology. "
22:30 "The amount that you can learn as a young person starting a business that has low barriers to entry and low startup cost, just to understand how to run a business, is massive."
34:01 "I just took the consultant mindset that we talked about earlier which is go in, understand the business, talk to a bunch of people, analyze data, talk to customers, and then assess what is the biggest opportunity for this company?"
40:12 "You create alignment with sales by helping them hit their goals by giving them deals that they would have never seen or never sourced, is the way that I see it."
46:50 "If you believe in something, you might see it in a different way that everyone sees it and you got to go with it."
More about Chris
Aside from making waves as the CEO of Refine Labs, Chris has also become a mini-marketing-celebrity on Linkedin. He has become known for advocating innovation in the way high quality demand gen is generated, which is to share valuable content consistently and, when buyers are ready, they will come to you.
Chris' areas of expertise include creating go-to-market strategy design, marketing strategy, demand generation, revenue operations, customer acquisition, social and content strategies, attribution, insights and analytics, and e-commerce.
He is a sought-after podcast guest and has even won the Innovator of the Year Award in 2017. Chris consumes a huge amount of content via videos, blogs, and podcasts which he then applies to projects on marketing automation, targeted market research surveys, and optimization, among many others.
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