Amplify Your Business

Amplify Your Business Fueling the Future

For Episode 231 of Amplify Your Business, we’re joined by Alexei Beltyukov, the founder of Universal Fuel Technologies. Universal Fuel Technology is a chemical technology platform that develops technologies to make renewable fuels and petrochemicals, such as Sustainable Aviation Fuel, gasoline, Liquefied Petroleum Gas, and BTX.
 
Born in the former Soviet Union, Alexei started his first entrepreneurial venture in Russia in 2007. He then took a chance on a venture that moved him out to California, and though that business didn’t work out, he decided to stay. Eventually, with partnerships still in place in Russia, Universal Fuel Technologies was established, and though they’ve had some hardships, including buying out a partner due to the Ukraine-Russia War and making the decision to abandon their lab in Russia in the hopes of rebuilding it in the US, the company has come out the other side prosperous and ready to make the next bold moves in renewable energy.To learn more, visit the Universal Fuel Technologies website at https://unifuel.tech/ or connect with Alexei on LinkedIn.
 
00:00 - Intro
01:36 - What are three things that you think every entrepreneur needs to know?
04:51 - What problems are you trying to solve with Universal Fuel Technologies?
10:37 - Can you tell us a bit about the difference in entrepreneurial ecosystems between Russia and the US? What are the similarities and differences?
18:37 - Is the entrepreneurial spirit the same in Russia as it is in North America?
21:35 - How did factors such as geography, culture, and the Ukraine-Russia war impact your company's story?
24:02 - Given everything that you’ve got going on with Universal Fuel Technologies right now and your plans for the future, is there anything you would have done differently in order to see success quicker?
26:03 - If someone were to give Universal Fuel Technologies a large sum investment - say $1M or $10M - what would you do with that money?
27:34 - If you could send a letter back in time to your pre-entrepreneurial self, what advice would you give?
30:13 - If our audience wanted to reach out and connect with you, what’s the best way to do that?

Amplify Your Business Redefining IT Consulting for the Life Sciences Industry

For Episode 230 of Amplify Your Business, we’re joined by Rohit Tyagi, the Managing Partner at Sagax Team. Sagax Team was born out of the idea of wanting to present IT consulting in a different way than we usually see it. They take a true partnership approach in order to put their customers first. As a whole, they provide managed solutions designed exclusively for emerging pharma and biotech. With strategic consulting backed by a global team of experts, they can streamline the most complex IT projects so that they can focus on their missions of producing life-saving therapies.
 
Sagax Team offers specialized services to pharmaceutical and biotech companies in the areas of lab informatics and quality and compliance. Their lab informatics services involve collecting data from various instruments and using it to generate intelligent reports and make informed decisions. Their quality and compliance services help life sciences companies follow strict guidelines for drug manufacturing.To learn more, visit https://sagaxteam.com/ or connect with Rohit on LinkedIn.
 
00:00 - Intro
01:07 - What are three things that you think every entrepreneur needs to know?
05:04 - Have you always had such a positive outlook, or is this something you’ve had to learn along the way?
08:53 - What does Sagax Team do? What problems are you solving?
13:05 - Can you share with us what made you decide to pivot from a service-based company to developing a product that you will eventually be bringing to market?
19:05 - What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced in pivoting your offerings and building this product while still managing your service-based business?
23:21 - Where do you get your inspiration from? What or who inspires you?
27:02 - What are the most difficult aspects of being an entrepreneur?
33:15 - If you could write a letter to your pre-entrepreneurial self, what advice would you give yourself?
36:19 - If our audience wanted to reach out to you, how could they do that?

Amplify Your Business Financial Solutions for Growing Companies

For Episode 229 of Amplify Your Business, we’re joined by Rita Kim, the CEO of Partners for Growth Advisory Services Inc. Partners for Growth is a financial services company that specializes in providing structured financial solutions for growing companies. They work with entrepreneurs who are looking to establish a healthy and sustainable financial foundation, especially during the critical growth phase of their business. With over 20 years of lending experience, Partners for Growth has helped numerous companies from start-ups to succession, by addressing their key concerns centered around finance. Their expertise in strategic partnering for finance has been instrumental in helping entrepreneurs achieve success by providing customized financial solutions tailored to their specific needs.To learn more, visit https://www.partnersforgrowth.ca/ or check out Rita’s podcast Serenity Now for Entrepreneurs.
 
00:00 - Intro
01:04 - What are three things that you think every entrepreneur needs to know? 
03:55 - What does Partners for Growth do? How do you serve other businesses and what is your role within that?
08:05 - Of the people that are coming to you for help, what do you find they’re struggling with the most?
18:05 - What is an example of a risk that you took on and it backfired, and you ended up learning from it?
24:20 - If people in our audience wanted to connect with you, how could they do that?

Amplify Your Business Limelight: Telus Community Safety and Wellness Accelerator Pitch Party

For this special episode of Amplify Your Business, we’re filming at the Telus CSW Pitch Party, where we were fortunate enough to interview three amazing up-and-coming businesses in the Telus Community Safety and Wellness Accelerator who are doing amazing things in Edmonton and globally to bring safety and wellness to the workplace.
 
Lance’s first interview was with Christy Canida, the Senior Director of Product at AlchemistX, and one of the coaches of the Telus Community Safety and Wellness Accelerator. From San Francisco, this is Christy’s third year as a coach for the Telus CSW Accelerator. 
 
Next up was an interview with Antonio Visconti, the CEO and Founder of Sobereye, an organization looking to increase workplace safety through real-time impairment detection, which uses a pupillometer to detect potential impairment due to fatigue, illness, alcohol, and legal, illegal, and prescription drugs. Sobereye is a subscription-based proactive safety solution that includes testing devices, cloud-based enterprise software, and training and support. To learn more, visit www.sobereye.com
 
Lance’s third interview of the evening was with Akanksha Shelat, the co-founder and CTO of Mind-Easy. Mind-Easy is a digital mental health benefits platform that provides culturally sensitive mental health resources to organizations and their workforces. 90% of Canada’s therapists are caucasian, leaving a gap for many people of other races, cultures, and ethnicities who may not fit into the eurocentric, one-size-fits-all solution that a caucasian therapist may provide. To learn more, visit https://www.mind-easy.com/ 
 
Next in the hot seat was Ghalia Aamer, the founder, and CEO of TalkMaze. TalkMaze is working to instill confidence in children between the ages of five and 17 through public speaking and debate training. They do this through their platform that connects students with real-time instruction and coaches, along with asynchronous and gamified activities that help them build confidence. To learn more, visit https://talkmaze.com/ 
Lastly, Lance got to catch up with Ling Huang, the president, and CEO of Technology North, Digital Services. Ling was a member of cohort number two of the Telus Community Safety and Wellness Accelerator.
 
00:00 - Intro
01:12 - Christy Canida - Senior Director of Product, AlchemistX - Christy, can you tell me a bit about the Telus CSW Pitch Party and what you’re trying to accomplish with this accelerator?
01:39 - Out of the 20  businesses taking part in the accelerator, how many of them are not in Alberta?
02:19 - Why is it important to support businesses that have aspects relating to community, safety, or wellness?
04:18 - Were you involved in the first two cohorts of the Telus CSW Accelerator?
05:11 - Antonio Visconti, CEO & Founder, Sobereye - Where are you from and what’s the name of your business?
09:45 - Is your product in the market already?
10:39 - How can people connect with you who may be interested in deploying your product at their workplace?
11:36 - Akanksha Shelat, Co-founder & CTO, Mind-Easy - Where are you from and can you tell me a bit about your business?
12:26 - How does Mind-Eye offer culturally sensitive mental health resources?
13:10 - What role does technology play in Mind-Easy?
14:24 - What stage is your business at currently?
14:51 - What are you trying to receive out of the Telus CSW Accelerator?
19:18 - If someone wanted to connect with you, how can they do that?
20:25 - Ghalia Aamer, Founder & CEO, TalkMaze - Where are you from and can you tell me a bit about your business?
20:58 - What stage of your business are you in right now?
21:19 - What challenges do you think you’ll face with TalkMaze?
22:26 - Is there a lot of gamification involved in TalkMaze?
23:45 - If someone wanted to learn more about TalkMaze, how could they connect with you?
25:25 - Ling Huang, President & CEO, Technology North Digital Services -  Tell us a little bit about your business.
25:49 - Can you tell us about your experience being a part of cohort #2 of the Telus CWS Accelerator? What did you get by being a member of it?
27:11 - When you came into cohort #2, was your business already up and running?
31:27 - What are the biggest challenges in growing your business?
32:55 - If I gifted you a million dollars today, what would you do with it?

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?