Join in for a conversation with Justin Jackson, Co-Founder of Transistor.fm. It’s a podcast hosting service and full disclosure, Accounted For is hosted on Transistor. I learned about the company and Justin because Basecamp’s podcast is hosted on Transistor and I further learned how Justin bootstrapped Transistor 2 years ago to a company that generated monthly recurring revenue exceeding $50,000. Justin didn’t start out in tech or podcasts but working for a not-for-profit for the first 7 years of his career. In our chat we dive into Justin’s decision into switch into tech at 28, navigating a career to product management in tech startups, starting his first company, building a community with podcasts and his journey with building a successfully bootstrapped SaaS company.

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#83 - Justin Jackson, Co-Founder of Transistor.fm. From Not-for-Profits to Bootstrapping a Highly Profitable SaaS Company Helping Podcasters.

Join in for a conversation with Matt Cohen, Founder & Managing Partner of Ripple Ventures. Ripple Ventures is a Toronto-based early-stage venture fund that works alongside startups through the good and the bad every day. Fitting with their motto of “Operators First” per Matt’s background as an operator turned investor. Though before Matt became an operator, his career started in finance as an equity trader for RBC, completing tours on Wall Street and Bay Street. While working in capital markets, he made a seed investment in Turnstyle Solutions, cutting his operator’s teeth on the company’s journey to getting acquired by Yelp. We go through the various pivots in Matt’s journey from capital markets, tech operations, angel investing and to his current role of running a venture capital fund. As always, it was never a pre-planned linear journey and we dig through every part of it.

#82 - Matt Cohen, Founder & Managing Partner of Ripple Ventures. Equity Trading on Wall Street to Tech Operator turned Venture Investor.

Join in for a conversation with Terrance Kwok, Product Manager at HyperComply. Terrance was one of the pivotal folks who recruited me to KPMG to start my accounting career. It’s been a while since then and today we go through Terrance’s journey from leaving accounting just before getting the Chartered Accountant designation to join a young Vidyard, before it became the 150+ tech company it is now, in an entry role in sales. We explore how he pivoted from sales to product management, working remotely in London, UK while working for a company based out of Kitchener and his subsequent journey being a digital nomad product manager at Chilipiper and HyperComply. This was a super fun conversation where we dove into what it was actually like to make each pivotal jump in Terrance’s career and how shame, embarrassment and doubt are all real and even normal emotions when you go through an unconventional career. Please forgive me on places where the audio quality isn’t as great as with COVID-19, Terrance was taking refuge in a hotel where the connection wasn’t the best. But, I promise it won’t change how fun this conversation will be for you!

#81 - Terrance Kwok, Product Manager at HyperComply. From Audit to Startup Sales Rep to Product Manager and Digital Nomad.

Join in for a conversation is another anonymous podcast with a return guest from episode 29 where we turnover the rock of working in a hedge fund in Canada. This was a top 10 downloaded episode in 2019 so what better way then to bring on my guest back during a time of market turmoil to see how it’s been like being an investor at a fund. Turns out, my guest already has an anonymous profile in the finance Twitter community as Moatsixcap. We chat about what it’s like being a fund manager during a time when the stock market plummets 30%+, deeper into what my guest is investing in, interesting companies worth digging into, and much more.

#80 - [Anonymous-Moatsixcap] Investing During the COVID-19 Bear Market & Finding Resistant Businesses.

Join in for a conversation with Josh Broun, Co-owner of Impact Kitchen. Impact Kitchen is a wellness company with 4 restaurants in Toronto. I’ve been a fan of Impact Kitchen since it’s first location at King East and I’ve been a patron here at least once a week for the last few years. It’s one of my staple places for legit healthy meals. My go-to is the paleo waffle though. A comfort food. So it was a real treat to speak with Josh, the man who helped create a place where I could get awesome coffee, work out of for a few hours, have some high-quality healthy food, in an awesome atmosphere. Josh’s journey did not start as a restauranteur. A hint, it involves going to university on a baseball scholarship in the US, studying health science, pursuing teaching, then firefighting, then becoming a personal trainer for successful entrepreneurs. Josh rekindled an inner entrepreneurial fire while getting a masterclass on business from his clients as he learned about their lives over the years. Through our chat, we go through the stress he felt early when he didn’t feel like he had his life figured out at 25 to the journey of starting Impact Kitchen at 35 to what it’s been like in the last 5 years of building the business.

#79 - Josh Broun, Co-Owner of Impact Kitchen. Baseball, Teaching and Personal Training to Entrepreneurship in Wellness.

Join in for a conversation with Elvis Wong, Founder and Managing Director of Innovate Financial Health (IFH). IFH is a not for profit accelerator based in Toronto that works with start-ups addressing the problem of financial health for financially vulnerable Canadians. Having developed a passion for social impact since high school, Elvis leveraged his experience as a management consultant to join the MaRS Studio Y Fellowship program to find ways of using technology to create social impact. What he did not expect was that he would be solving a problem in wealth inequality that would lead him to opportunities working with Social Capital Partners, one of the leaders of impact investing in Canada, and starting an accelerator backed by JP Morgan Chase and Capital One. In addition to dissecting his journey to creating IFH, we dig into the various learnings he has had from building an accelerator and strategies for forming partnerships with large corporations.

#78 - Elvis Wong, Founder & Managing Director of Innovate Financial Health. Consulting to Accelerators and Tackling Financial Health.

Join in for a conversation with Miguel Fernando, the Founder of Moment Financial. Miguel navigated a career starting in international finance to building products in FinTech companies to becoming a full-time bootstrapped entrepreneur. Miguel started his career in finance as an economic researcher at RBC and moved over to international wealth management with a focus on Central and Latin America. He made the pivot to work in a product role and become a product manager after realizing he enjoyed building internal tools and solutions while working for the bank and made the leap to join a FinTech company while teaching himself product management and coding through bootcamps and online courses. He went onto build the advisory solutions product for Purpose Investment’s Purpose Advisory Solutions business and made another leap into entrepreneurship. Something he felt he had to do. We talk a lot about the early years of entrepreneurship, what it was like making the decision, what gap he saw in the market, and much more.

#77 - Miguel Fernando, Founder of Moment Financial. International Finance to FinTech Product Management and Entrepreneurship

Join in for a conversation with a return guest, Marc Champagne. Marc is the Co-Founder of Kyo and Host of Behind The Human Podcast. In episode 46 we talked about Marc’s journey of building Kyo after a career in pharmaceuticals. In today’s episode, we talk through the developments since the year. The process and reason behind shutting down Kyo, the digital journaling app that had 86 million impressions and a community of 200,000 users. We talk about the difference between app rankings and user metrics vs. the economic reality of operating it. We also talk about Marc’s journey of building communities and how the podcast led to so much more than a personal brand, his new pursuit of consulting human-centric companies on brand strategy and writing a book on mental fitness. Traditional media only touts the stories of exits for obscene financial numbers but in our conversation today we talk about the daily process of building something, the constant ups and downs and the many iterations we will make in our journey to build something that is meaningful and fulfilling.

#76 - Marc Champagne, Host of Behind The Human Podcast, Returns. Economics of Building an App, Shutting down Kyo, Writing a Book and The Journey.

Join in for a conversation with Alex Norman, Co-Founder of TechToronto, Head of Canada for AngelList and Partner of N49P Ventures. Through his various ventures and roles, Alex is an investor and tech entrepreneur who is building the Canadian tech ecosystem. TechToronto is on a mission to develop the technology and innovation economy in Canada through its wide-reaching events. AngelList is the startup investing platform that manages $1.8Bn and N49P is a VC fund for early-stage companies in Canada. Prior to these ventures, Alex was an investment banker for Lehman Brothers during the dot-com bubble. He worked in various startups in SF, NY and London, UK. He received his MBA from Wharton, became a management consultant for McKinsey and co-founded Homesav, one of Canada’s largest furniture e-commerce companies, that was later acquired by Rebellion Media. Given how interesting his journey has been, we talk through how he made decisions in each of his career pivots and the circumstances that existed at the time. We also cover what the early years of building communities are like, the mistakes he’s learned from, and his own unconventional beliefs.

#75 - Alex Norman, Co-Founder of TechToronto, Head of Canada for AngelList and Partner of N49P Ventures. Investment banking to entrepreneurship and building the tech ecosystem in Canada.

Join in for a conversation with Ben Yoskovitz, CPO and Founding Partner of Highline Beta. Highline Beta is a venture capital and startup co-creation company based in Toronto. In our interview, we pan through Ben’s 20 year career as an entrepreneur, angel investor and startup executive. After graduating with a psychology degree, Ben started by building a web service business then a product based business and one of Canada’s earliest accelerators (where one of its companies was acquired by Airbnb). He then went to become the VP of Product at GoInstant and VarageSale while co-authoring The Lean Analytics book that’s been translated to more than 4 different languages. We go through the major learnings his had from his various ventures, his failures, his philosophy of building organizations and so much more!

#74 - Ben Yoskovitz, CPO and Founding Partner of Highline Beta. From Psychology to 20 years as an entrepreneur, investor, startup executive, author and redesigning the ventu

Join in for a conversation with Daniel Francavilla, Founder and Creative Director of Now Creative Group. Now Creative Group is a creative agency based in Toronto the builds brands and tells stories through impactful design, digital, marketing and media. In our chat, we go through Daniel’s journey from a freelance graphic designer in high school to starting his own agency after graduating from OCAD. We talk about Access, his first entrepreneurial project he started in high school and is in its 13 year of operation to specific pricing and client-related tactics in running a creative agency and his process of focusing on strengths in business and life. Daniel received the 40 under 40 award in 2018 and I could understand why from what he has build in his creative and social impact ventures.

#73 - Daniel Francavilla, Founder & Creative Director of Now Creative Group. Freelancing to Building a Creative Agency to Create Social Change.

Join in for a conversation with Jaxson Khan. Jaxson is the CEO of Khan & Associates, a consulting firm that focuses on AI and FinTech. As a result, he also is a co-host of an AI podcast called Ask-AI. I reached out to Jaxson after learning he had left his role as the Head of Marketing at Nudge.ai, a startup in Toronto, to live remotely in Columbia where he was getting paid to write in-depth articles for companies. Needless to say I wasn’t disappointed when we met to have the interview as I learned about Jaxson decision to not take a prestigious consulting offer but take the start up path early to why he started his own consulting firm. We also discuss what the early years of running his own service-based company has been like, the lessons he learned, what he would do if he had to do it all over, and how he builds and strengthens relationships.

#72 - Jaxson Khan, CEO of Khan & Associates. Building Start-ups to Consulting for AI & FinTech Companies Globally.

Join in for a conversation with Karm Sumal, CEO and Co-Founder of Daily Hive. Daily Hive is a national news media company that started out in Vancouver as Vancity Buzz and now has offices in Calgary, Montreal and Toronto. As a site that started in 2008 amid a competitive industry with many regional and national giants it garners as much as 17M page views a month. Not too shabby for supporting a country of 30M. Karm did not dream of owning a digital media company. Born to immigrants in the East side of Vancouver, he became a CPA and controller for Blenz Coffee for the stable job. But him and his cofounders felt the Vancouver news media didn’t cater to the Vancouver he saw. The Vancouver that was made up of middle class immigrants that make the city what it is today. This started the 12 year journey of Daily Hive. In our conversation we talk about his early years of starting Daily Hive, what learnings he carried over from large corporation to running his own company, the media landscape and the constant ups and downs of operating a national media company.

#71 - Karm Sumal, CEO and Co-Founder of Daily Hive. Accountant to National Digital Media Entrepreneur.

Join in for a conversation with Jim Elli. Jim is a powerlifting coach and marketing manager of Reactive Training Systems (RTS). RTS is an online coaching company that leverages its founder, Mike Tucherer’s method of auto-regulated strength training and they’ve trained multiple world champion powerlifters. After reading Mike’s work and following some of their world-level powerlifters, I signed up to work with for the last 2 years as I rehabbed back from my knee surgery. Today conversation isn’t about my journey though but about my coach Jim’s. We go through Jim’s journey of setting up his own online coaching practice prior to RTS, how he dealt with imposter syndrome as a business major who became a powerlifting coach, how he moved from running his own coaching company to join his dream team at RTS and the entrepreneurial journey of being a remote, online powerlifting coach. For those of you who are non-health science folks that are passionate in sports and helping others, this may be right up your alley but even if you aren’t, it will be a story that can inspire you to find the thing you love and do whatever it takes to make it work.

#70 - Jim Elli, Powerlifting Coach and Marketing Manager of Reactive Training Systems (RTS). Business Grad turned Remote Powerlifting Coach.

A blast from the past to start the new year. Join in for a conversation with Stephen Shedletzky, Head of Brand Experience and Igniter at Simon Sinek. If that name is familiar with you it may be because you may have watched Simon Sinek's famous TedTalk or read his first book "Start with Why". Stephen joined Simon Sinek's company, called after his own name, as the 4th employee 7.5 years ago. Stephen's journey to help people feel more fulfilled and engaged by the work they do started when on his first day on his first job at Suncor's leadership program when they fired 1000 people post-merger. This propelled him on a journey to find how he could do his life's work. We chat about the fruitful departure from Suncor, his foray into human capital consulting, why his tenure there was even shorter than at Suncor, starting his own platform for change as a personal 2-year MBA, the 5 paragraph email that got him a call with Simon Sinek and how his journey with Simon started a new chapter in his life. My first meeting with Stephen was when he graciously invited me to attend a talk he was giving at an incubator and though that was a treat it was nothing compared to the intensely fun discussion I got to have with him on the podcast. It was a super fun conversation and we also spoke about maybe even doing a part two in the near future so if you liked it please let me know on my sites contact page.

[Replay] #43 - Stephen Shedletzky, Head of Brand Experience and Igniter at Simon Sinek. Finding your calling, building your own MBA, reaching out to your hero and helping others find fulfillment at work.

Everyone walks a unique career journey. No matter how "linear" it may look in their LinkedIn profile, it is never that simple. Most people that have careers you aspire to have had to struggle. They had their own obstacles and made their own luck. Some careers you dream about may not even be what you assumed it would be. All assumptions should be tested and that is what I seek to do in this podcast. Follow along as I interview people on what they actually do in their careers and why they made the jumps in their careers, some quite unorthodox.

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Accounted For

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