Amplify Your Business

Amplify Your Business Signature Guest Ashif Mawji

For this special episode of Amplify Your Business, we’re joined by Ashif Mawji, the managing director of ScaleGood Fund LP. From his humble beginnings in Kenya, Ashif caught the entrepreneurial bug early on, watching his parents work their way up in their respective jobs. His dad was working on the shop floor at a Honda and moved up the ladder to become the managing director at Honda Africa, and his mother, who started out as a teacher, ended up running her own Montessori school. But having money doesn’t always make things easier, and after a tragedy showed his parents just how unsafe their living situation was, they decided it was time to leave Kenya – and everything they owned – behind and move to Canada to start over.
 
For his part, Ashif’s entrepreneurial journey started at the young age of 11 or 12, when he would travel to Nairobi to buy watches on consignment, where he would then sell at a local farmer’s markets on the weekend, making a percentage from each sale. That sales bug didn’t leave him on his move to Canada, though, and his first venture here was reselling Nintendos and Nintendo games. From there, he got into programming and would do consulting work on the side. Today, Ashif is the managing director at ScaleGood Fund, where he uses everything he’s learned over the years to help other entrepreneurs get a leg up in their respective businesses, through both investments as well as being a trusted advisor. To learn more, visit https://scalegood.ca/ or connect with Ashif on his LinkedIn.
 
00:00 - Into
00:49 - Can we talk a little bit about your background? I’d love to hear the story about how you arrived in Edmonton.
06:15 - What was your first entrepreneurial venture after moving to Canada?
07:04 - What were some of the biggest challenges you faced here in Canada?
08:40 - With ScaleGood Fund, what kind of companies do you find yourself drawn to invest in?
11:28 - Share a little bit about the Telus Community Safety and Wellness Accelerator that you chair.
15:13 - In all the companies you’ve funded or been a trusted advisor for, have you seen any commonalities in the challenges they face?
18:13 - Do you feel that the accelerator that you have created is a kind of ideal mix of all of the accelerator programs out there right now?
23:25 - What do you think is one of the most important challenges to tackle right now in terms of safety in Edmonton?
27:58 - What impact do you think AI is going to have on our society in general?
34:48 - What does success look like to you?
36:24 - If you could send your younger entrepreneurial self a letter, what advice you would give?
37:48 - If our audience wanted to connect with you, how could they do that?

Amplify Your Business Navigating the Complexities of Business Sales

For Episode 226 of Amplify Your Business, we’re joined by Damon Pistulka, the co-founder and managing director of Exit Your Way. Exit Your Way is a consulting and brokerage firm that helps business owners sell or succeed their businesses.  On the consulting side, Damon and his team help businesses to grow in preparation for an eventual sale. On the brokerage side of Exit Your Way, the team helps business owners looking to sell in front of qualified buyers who are in the market to purchase a business. Their services for brokering sales include pre-market planning, finding buyers and getting the LOI, negotiation, and due diligence.To learn more, visit https://exityourway.us/ 
 
00:00 - Intro
02:30 - What are three things every entrepreneur needs to know?
10:07 - What is it that Exit Your Way does? What services are you providing?
15:22 - Can you walk us through the buyer’s perspective?
21:41 - Talk to me a bit about what happens when a business owner wants to sell, but they’ve been underpaying themselves and then need to recalculate fair market value for what they do.
24:13 - What are some common mistakes you’ve seen when it comes to owners selling their businesses?
29:52 - Are there any books that you would recommend for our audience?
32:32 - How can our audience connect with you?

Amplify Your Business The Hydrogen Innovation Accelerator with Steven Martens

For Episode 225 of Amplify Your Business, we’re joined by Steven Martens, the founder of Grid 749 Innovations. But today, we’re not here to talk about Steven’s company. We’re here to talk about his work with Mount Royal University’s Hydrogen Innovation Accelerator and what it means for Edmonton and Canadian businesses. In partnership with Edmonton Global, The Hydrogen Innovation Accelerator will train teams on a repeatable and scalable innovation process to capture new value and revenue streams from the emerging Hydrogen economy in Western Canada. Each company will develop and test a new product and/or service concept by the end of their 4-day 4-step program, held over a 90 day window.To learn more, visit https://www.growthcompass.org/innovationaccelerator 
 
00:00 - Intro
01:32 - Can you talk about the work you’re doing with Mount Royal University in Calgary with their Hydrogen Innovation Accelerator and Growth Catalyst Program?
02:52 - Can you tell us a little bit about your entrepreneurial background and how you’ve gotten here?
10:40 - Could you explain why we’re seeing this hotbed of activity in the hydrogen space in the Edmonton Region?
20:24 - What are the goals of this accelerator? What is it trying to accomplish?
22:54 - These business that will opt to take part in the Hydrogen Innovation Accelerator, what will they learn? And how do you overcome the challenges of, essentially, teaching old dogs new tricks when it comes to established companies?
32:59 - How can our audience connect with you?

Amplify Your Business The Life of a Serial Entrepreneur

For Episode 224 of Amplify Your Business, we’re joined by Jess McCarter, co-founder and Sales & Strategy of Base86. Base86 started before the pandemic as a restaurant supply chain optimization company. They launched their first product in February 2020, and by June 2020, they lost half of their paying customers due to the decimation of the restaurant industry because of the pandemic. After meeting with their investors to brainstorm some new ideas for a company that could weather the storm of the pandemic, two investors emphatically suggested the healthcare industry. And so Base86 pivoted its area of operations to dental health care supply chain optimization instead.
Jess is a serial entrepreneur, who’s had his hands in everything from the restaurant industry to dental supply chain optimization, real estate development, technology development, and even a rideshare company called RideBid, which was a competitor of Uber and was acquired by the Bay Area Taxi Company.
To learn more, visit https://www.base86.com/ or follow Jess on LinkedIn.
00:00 - Intro02:36 - What are three things that every entrepreneur needs to know?13:35 - What are some of the advantages of your approach to entrepreneurship? 20:35 - How does one not allow failure to impact their psyche and instead leverage the learning that comes from that failure?31:01 - You seem to have a tremendous amount of interests, passions, and curiosity. Is that a curse or a benefit?40:01 - If someone wanted to connect with you, what would be the best way to do that?

Amplify Your Business Boundaries, Business, and Boobs

For Episode 223 of Amplify Your Business, we’re celebrating International Women’s Day with Heather Roberts, the founder of Extraordinary Women, and host of the podcast Boundaries, Business, and Boobs. Heather works with highly successful female entrepreneurs who also have families and children, and help them create a business and life that works for them. Many women are brought up in a society where they’re taught that they need to please, and do everything for everyone, and meet everybody’s expectations, which just leads to burn out. Heather then comes in and helps these women become the directors of their own life; to help them set boundaries in their lives and their businesses.To learn more, check out Extraordinary Women, and the Boundaries, Business, and Boobs podcast.
 
00:00 - Intro
01:30 - What are three things every entrepreneur should know?
03:09 - What is Extraordinary Women? What do you do? What are you trying to accomplish?
12:16 - Can you tell me more about your entrepreneurial background?
23:37 - Was it difficult for you to overcome the thought processes typically imposed on women in regards to traditional gender norms?
29:02 - How do you define success now as opposed to at the beginning of your entrepreneurial journey?
31:01 - If you could go back in time and write a letter to your pre-entrepreneurial self, what would it say?
34:35 - If anyone in our audience, specifically women, wanted to connect with you, how could they do that?

Amplify Your Business Digital Wellness in the Age of Hyperconnectivity

For Episode 222 of Amplify Your Business, we’re joined by Amy Blankson, the CEO and Co-Founder of the Digital Wellness Institute. Amy is also a best-selling author, with her work, The Future of Happiness. She is a member of the UN Global Happiness Council, and a graduate of Harvard University and the Yale School of Management.
 
Amy created the Digital Wellness Institute to help organizations develop a roadmap for finding the sweet spot between productivity and well-being in the digital era. These days, the vast majority of people spend most of their days on their phones, tablets, or laptops, staring at their screens for most of their waking hours. Amy believes that that sense of hyperconnectivity creates a mental strain not only on us personally but also on our productivity at work and our abilities to communicate effectively. This is where the Digital Wellness Institute comes in. They’ll go into an organization, help business leaders identify their current digital culture, determine ways to measure it and find ways to improve it.To learn more, visit the Digital Wellness Institute’s website at https://www.digitalwellnessinstitute.com/ 
 
00:00 - Intro
01:18 - What are three things that you think every entrepreneur needs to know?
02:10 - What are some of the biggest mistakes you’ve made on your entrepreneurial journey?
04:13 - What is the Digital Wellness Insitute, and what problems are you trying to solve?
08:01 - Has the pandemic influenced digital culture at all? And if so, how?
10:42 - What trends have you seen in terms of individuals who have a better grasp on digital wellness than others?
13:12 - What is your personal approach to digital wellness?
16:21 - Tell me about the journey of transitioning from your last entrepreneurial venture to the Digital Wellness Institute.
20:11 - Can you tell me a little bit about how you navigate through your own self-doubt?
23:39 - Are there any secrets, tips, or advice that you could give to other entrepreneurs just starting out on their journey?
27:11 - Walk me through your thought processes as you were trying to figure out funding for the Digital Wellness Institute.
31:36 - If you could go back in time and write your younger entrepreneurial self a letter, what would it say?
33:31 - If our audience wanted to connect with you, how could they do that?

Amplify Your Business Connecting Knowledge-Seekers with Knowledge-Keepers

For Episode 221 of Amplify Your Business, we’re joined by Rebecca Kirstein Resch, the founder and CEO of Inqli. If Quora and Tinder got married, had a baby, and that baby grew up to become an entrepreneur, it would be Inqli. Inqli is a platform that matches people who have the desire to learn with people who have knowledge to share. If a new entrepreneur or a student has a question, they would ask it in the Inqli platform, and they would instantaneously get matched with the right people who would be able to answer that question. The matching is made via an AI-based system that matches question askers to question answerers based on the knowledge-sharer’s skills, interests, purpose, and values. In short, Inqli is an inclusive knowledge-sharing platform that enables the connection of individuals who wouldn’t otherwise connect.To learn more, visit https://www.inqli.com/ 
 
00:00 - Intro
00:46 - What are three things every entrepreneur needs to know?
07:10 - What does Inqli do? What problems are you solving?
14:18 - What kind of impact did COVID have on your business?
17:33 - How did you overcome the challenges you faced during the pandemic?
21:08 - What is the business model from Inqli going forward?
24:37 - What do you think will be the key to your success in the next three years?
30:05 - What makes the entrepreneurial lifestyle difficult for entrepreneurs?
32:04 - If you could write your younger entrepreneurial self a letter, what advice would you give?
34:13 - If our audience wanted to connect with you, how could they do that?

Amplify Your Business Shaking Up the IT Reseller Space with Opkalla

For Episode 220 of Amplify Your Business, we’re joined by Brice Ulrey, the Managing Partner at Opkalla. Opkalla is an IT trusted advisory firm. Opkalla lives in the IT reseller space, but does things a little differently than your typical IT reseller. What they’re trying to do is solve the problem of biased agendas in their space. They consider themselves “vendor neutral.” Where most IT resellers have 20 to 30 vendors in their portfolio, Opkalla boasts over 300 different providers. Instead of singing the same old song that each solution that solves a business problem has only one provider to solve it, Opkalla brings two to three providers to the table and allows their customers to evaluate each one before deciding which one to go with. To learn more about Opkalla, visit their website at https://opkalla.com/. 
 
00:00 - Intro
01:18 - What are three things every entrepreneur should know?
09:15 - Let’s talk about what Opkalla is all about. What problem are you solving?
18:27 - What are the secrets to your rapid growth over the last four years?
21:56 - What was easier for the growth of your business through COVID, and what was more difficult?
26:23 - How has that impacted you post-COVID?
30:46 - From your perspective, what do you think is the most difficult thing to deal with in the entrepreneurial lifestyle?
35:05 - What’s easier now at this stage of your business that wasn’t as easy at the beginning?
39:36 - If you could send your pre-entrepreneurial self a letter, what advice would you give a younger Brice?
42:23 - If someone wanted to connect with you, how could they do that?