CanInnovate: Recent Episodes

View Details

How would I describe this interview with Bryton Udy. His story is a riddle that I couldn’t wait to get the solution for. How does a Hockey Player, award-nominated country Music entertainer become a marketing & branding guru?

I was absolutely fascinated and honestly, he did not disappoint. This episode is for anyone professional and business owners that need to pivot.

Bryton is now taking his knowledge and experience and helping small businesses and thought leaders find clarity and confidence in their own branding and marketing with his brand coaching company, At Heart Branding Co.

In this episode, you’ll discover all these hidden gems: * 3 secret ingredients of branding * The value of an emotional barometer * The #1 rule of branding * Art of perception * At Heart Clarity Framework * How branding is deeper than looks * How to Find Your Own Authentic Way * How individuals and companies can benefit from branding * How #COVID is a pulse check for all companies * And so much more

And get this, He even has a free video course - 3 Minute Marketing Magic and is even giving away a 1-hour free coaching call. And, he’s a fellow podcaster, At Heart Branding Podcast.

Talk about value and giving back! He’s definitely all HEART.

More about Bryton Upton: From the ice to the stage, and even the boardroom, Bryton Udy has found success in various endeavors in his life. First playing Jr. Hockey chasing a NCAA scholarship, to releasing a top 20 Single at Canadian Country Radio and being nominated for multiple Canadian Country Music Awards, Bryton is now taking his knowledge and experience and helping small businesses and thought leaders find clarity and confidence in their own branding and marketing with his brand coaching company, At Heart Branding Co. And.. he’s a fellow podcaster, At Heart Branding Podcast.

Connect with Bryton: Website: atheart.co

Personal Instagram: @brytonudy

At Heart Instagram: @atheartco

YouTube Channel: At Heart Co

Apple Podcast: At Heart Branding Podcast

Hope you enjoy this episode and are staying safe.

P.S. He even told me I was a fantastic interviewer!! What?!?!? Let me know if you agree or disagree. I’d love to get your feedback.

View Details

Jennifer is the Founder and CEO of tellent and is on a mission to make work, work better for women. Her professional experience spans three continents across brand strategy and international market development and while her primary school teachers didn’t appreciate her questions challenging “why”, she embraces that curiosity and the perspective that comes with challenging the status quo to create impactful and lasting change.

In this episode: Jennifer Hargreaves, Founder and CEO of tellent and is on a mission to make work, work better for women. Jennifer has such a sparkling personality & a global citizen of the world. We chat about how her curiosity led her to found Tellent.

We chat about: * How tellent was created from her own needs of flexibility * Lots of jobs… access to FREE Job boards * Lots of companies are hiring, but roles have been elevated * How #COVID has created time for repurpose our why * How to stand out during the #COVID pandemic, especially when there is lots of top talent out there. * Power of Networking * How to change the next few years * Understanding the difference between time & space * COVID is a gift * Ideas Lab is the new playground for ideas * tellent has lots of free resources including access to job boards * 15% discount for access to Virtual Talent Platform which is a networking community and mastermind group for job-seekers and freelancers to find and build flexible work. + CANINNOVATE Listeners (code: CanInnovate) * And so much more

About tellent: tellent is a job-board and networked platform that connects professional job-seekers and freelancers with entrepreneurs and inclusive businesses to find, fill and build flexible work opportunities.

Connect with Jennifer: * WeAreTellent.com * LinkedIn * Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

View Details

This week, I sat down with Keith Ippel, the CEO & Co-founder of Spring. They are on a mission to help entrepreneurs change the world. First of all, Keith is the most down to earth person who is full of compassion, kindness, and is genuinely there to help small-medium businesses get through whichever phase they are in. From idea to growth.

More importantly, they’ve created this FREE resiliency program to help small businesses get through the recession.

There are so many hidden gems & nuggets: * Lifecycle of Entrepreneur * How to start * COVID trends * Resiliency movement * Return of the small communities * Transactional versus Relationship-based * The terminology of the day * Customer Discovery phases * The difference between incubator, angel investor and venture capital * Leveraging masterclasses * Plus, Keith shares such great FREE tools

A little more about Keith: With over 20 years of experience as a leader in technology & impact businesses, Keith Ippel has accelerated the growth of both small and large companies and raised over $30M in angel investment and venture capital.

Keith leads Spring, a global incubator and accelerator that empowers entrepreneurs and entrepreneur ecosystem organizations to build better businesses and change the world. To date, its global advisory work has supported entrepreneurs in over 40 cities across 5 continents while its impact programs have helped over 750 entrepreneurs launch 350+ businesses, and raise over $24M in early-stage capital.

FREEBIE ALERTS: * Hubspot Academy * Spring Resilience Online Course & Program * Networking Biggest Mistakes

Connect with Keith: * Website: spring.is * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithippel/ * Twitter: @KeithIppel, @Spring_is * Facebook: @SpringImpact

View Details

Driving change during a downturn I get a chance to sit down and chat with the infamous Rich Batchelor, who is a global Organizational Change Management guru and disruptor. We are always told to embrace change, but COVID-19 has definitely been more than most people have bargained for. Rich and I really get down to talk about how to navigate change, when it’s so disruptive.

How did Covid-19 change you during the downturn? What actions did you take? Let me know in the comments below.

Rich has been successfully delivering change for over 25 years. He is a founding member of the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) and founded the Toronto Change Days conference, a hands-on weekend of fun learning about change unlike any other change conference in North America!

He has a masters in change management and is certified in Project Management, Process improvement, Facilitation, HR, Coaching, Counseling and Psychotherapy. He is also a Certified Lego® Serious Play® Facilitator & Workshop Designer, VUCA Canvas accredited, Certified in facilitating organizations through uncertainty and complexity and an accredited emotional culture deck “elephant rider”!

In this episode: * The importance of change with people, not TO people * We talk about #epicfails * Difference between education and training * He introduces me to his friend, CARL * How to engage people in this virtual world * How to do stakeholder management virtually * How to have impact & influence * How it’s okay to not be okay * And so much more

Plus, I share what I’m currently curious about and it’s not quite what anyone expects!

Organizational change management is truly an essential business life skill that we should all master. It’ll help build your confidence and become your own secret sauce.

Connect with Richard: * CapillaryConsulting.com * CapillaryLearning.com * Twitter: @richbatchelor * Twitter: @capillarytweets * LinkedIn

I can’t wait to hear your feedback

Please stay safe and healthy.

Best Always,
Sapna

P.s. Have you checked out the latest FREEBIE? A downloadable Gratitude journal. That way we don’t forget all those amazing things that we are grateful for. I think we’ve discovered a lot.

View Details

Hey Innovators,

COVID-19 is always on our mind, it’s what everyone is talking about. We look at the COVID-19 for the things that it took away from us, but what has COVID-19 provided us? Did COVID-19 actually give us a gift? Is this an opportunity?

I sat down with Jessie-Lynn MacDonald. She helps clients break through self-imposed limits, fears, struggles, and challenges and awaken to the beautiful and infinite potential within. She is brilliant beyond belief! She helps parents, children, individuals, schools & companies, and consults globally. She’s a well sought out individual.

The Adult ‘Time-Out’ is a Gift! We have a lively discussion about COVID-19 and the impact and she sees this time as an opportunity and a gift! We chat about:

1. The impact of on our minds, clear blue light versus a snow globe
2. How stress is a love note to your body
3. How to identify stress signals
4. The power of autonomy
5. She gives a big secret!
6. Embracing our inner child
7. How empathy enables us to be more kind & forgiving to ourselves and others
8. Loneliness versus Boredom
9. Value of recognizing ‘grumpy goggles’
10. And so much more!

In fact, I admit that I may secretly want to be a gamer! We are all going through this change curve differently and it really allows us to become that diamond!

I think you’re going to really enjoy this episode. Please stay safe

Connect with Jessie Lynn: JessielynnMacdonald.com | Twitter | Facebook

Best Always,
Sapna

P.s. Have you checked out the latest FREEBIE? A downloadable Gratitude journal. That way we don’t forget all those amazing things that we are grateful for. I think we’ve discovered a lot.

View Details

Paul Minors is a productivity blogger and virtual consultant. Paul grew his business “on the side” while working full-time and now consults to companies all around the world helping them with tools like Asana, Pipedrive and Zapier. Paul’s website now receives 100,000+ visits per month and his audience of 43,000+ email subscribers love hearing about how to be more productive in business and life.

How to beat procrastination and be productive I got to chat with Paul Minors, who is based in New Zealand. He’s quite the inspiration for a variety of reasons. First, he started off his business as a ‘side-hustle’ and then quickly discovered that Productivity is his ‘How’. As we are all in this COVID-19 situation, we may find ourselves with a little more time and maybe it’s time to shift into trying a new adventure of starting a small business. So here are the topics that we covered on how to beat procrastination, the power of time blocking and so much more.

• How to beat Procrastination
• The value of stop starting
• The magic of time blocking
• How tasks are good intentions
• We also somehow end up talking about baking, Lockdown Loaf

I hope you’ll enjoy this episode and more importantly, staying safe.

Quotes: “You can be more productive if you follow the right habits and if you are disciplined enough to follow the right routines and use your tools and technology correctly.”

“By being disciplined, you’re following better routines, you’re being more productive, and if you’re getting more done, and being more efficient with your time, you’re actually creating more freedom in your life now because you have more free time. Discipline is like a prerequisite for freedom in your life.”

"I'm a big fan of this productivity method called time blocking I don't know what it is actually called, but I call it time blocking or block scheduling you have probably come into different terms before but it is basically this practice of taking task and maybe you have a task list or a notebook with it to list of things that you need to do, or maybe it is just in your head whatever it is, you are taking the task that you need to do and you are actually putting them on into your calendar and blocking up time to do that task."

Connect with Paul: PaulMinors.com | Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn

Resource Links: Productivity Blueprint

Productivity video training

Paul Minors Podcast

View Details

Hey Innovators,

Are you finished baking and looking for other ideas to entertain yourself… well… I have the perfect guest. I get to chat with Julie Shum, who has been a friend for over two decades and she always provides me with the perfect boost of inspiration. I’m so #Grateful for having such a down to earth, inspirational friend.

• Discover how Julie’s injury led to finding a new hobby that she’s completely obsessed about.
• How to tap into our inner child to discover other avenues ‘
• “I wonder…” The value of not overthinking and just going with the flow
• Tapping into our creativity through resourcefulness
• Julie provides ideas from gardening, handwriting, donating hair and so on…

Julie has a wonderful outlook on life and always finds opportunities at every twist and turn…

Get ready to get inspired!

Connect with Julie:

Instagram: @lovemelettering or @creativesassembly

I think you’re going to really enjoy this episode. Please stay safe

Best Always,
Sapna

P.S. Add the hashtag #gratefulmindset and tell us what you’re grateful for.

P.P.S - FREEBIE ALERT - free downloadable Gratitude Journal pdf! Another great resource, that may tap into a new hobby or interest.

View Details

As we all embrace and adjust to the ‘New Normal’, the impact on humankind is going to be instrumental. The biggest thing that we have just been reminded us to stop and be really present.

I was reading a Facebook post and it just summed it up completely. This person talked about how much has changed in three (3) weeks for him. He mentions in this post that 3 weeks ago he was unhappy with his job, overwhelmed with work, wanted to lose weight, canceling on friends to just stay at home to relax, irritated with traffic, talked to his mom once a week, irritated with elevator wait times. His point was that 3 weeks ago, he took everything for granted. Today, he is grateful for his job and how busy it is, how he misses human interaction, he calls his mom every day, and now is afraid to take the elevator.

Isn’t this the truth? Three weeks ago all those things that we complained about are now the things that we are grateful for. We are all starting to really gain a different perspective and re-learning gratitude. Could COVID-19 actually kill Narcissism?

Narcissism has been growing more and more over the past few years. The Wikipedia definition of Narcissism is “the pursuit of gratification from vanity or egotistic admiration of one’s idealized self-image and attributes. This includes self-flattery, perfectionism, and arrogance.” Have you ever fallen in love with a Narcissist? You lose yourself in order to feed their ego & make them happy.

Narcissism has been a social-cultural problem for many years and was growing exponentially, as many people post pictures of their amazing life of perfection to create the illusion of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).

The world has a common enemy, the COVID-19 virus. Not neighbors. We all have a shared vision and mission to save lives. Simon Sinek’s book, ‘Start With Why’.has really opened up our eyes to the power of having a shared purpose. Our worldwide shared purpose is ‘Stay at home and save lives’. We get to be heroes in our own stories. I know that I am so grateful for all the front line workers that are putting themselves at risk every day. This episode is dedicated to the health care workers, pharmacists, those in the food chain supply chain, waste removal services, and all the other front line workers.

The stories that I’m reading every day, shows how communities and nations are coming together to solve this epidemic crisis together. There is no shortage of stories from inspirational to educational.

• From neighbors singing for others' lives or recording a YouTube video. One of my personal favorite YouTube videos is a family’s adaption of a Les Miserables song for Coronavirus.
• To teenagers & neighbors sewing masks for health care workers and other high-risk individuals.
• Adopt a lonely isolated grandparent
• Toronto Distilleries are repurposing their operations to make hand sanitizers
• Free grocery deliveries for seniors through so many different groups and neighbors

The stories just keep continuing. Check out these 35 stories that Bored Panda released and Solidarity is spreading as the COVID-19 crisis continues

What perspective have I gained? For me personally, I’m more focused, more present and putting health first. I have newfound pride when I clean my house, daily. I am so grateful that there are groceries available, that I’m now spending more time on food prep and cooking more with purpose. I want to make sure that I stay healthy, so I am definitely eating cleaner. It is something that I never had enough time to focus on. I’m less wasteful and only purchase what I’m going to use for that week. I also grocery shop for ten people every week and deliver it to their porches. It provides me with a sense of purpose and protects others.

As a society, we are going to be more: 1. Gaining perspective & resetting priorities – Being in the present 2. Grateful for the smallest and simplest pleasures 3. Strengthening relationships digitally 4. Created a stronger sense of community and neighbors, 5. We are learning to listen with intent – deepening listening & understanding 6. Learning to be resourceful, not wasteful 7. Kindness & compassion is more there 8. Putting our health & well-being first, so that we always protect others

Do you know what the opposite of narcissism is – empathy, compassion for others, humble, modesty, treating others the way they want to be treated? There is no shortage of kindness out there. This is the time, where good will triumph over the bad. Where we all send prayers and love to people, strangers, acquaintances, and loved ones. So, yes. I do believe that COVID-19 will kill narcissism and reset society.

The society transition has already begun. Have you noticed that as a society, we have all changed how we end a conversation – from ‘bye’ or ‘see you later’ to stay healthy & safe?

Sending you all lots of love and I really hope everyone stays indoors and safe!

Best Always,
Sapna

P.S.

If you enjoyed this, then you may be interested in this episode about the Importance of Gratitude. This is when I learned what the true meaning of gratitude is, you may get a little emotional.

P.P.S.

Another little gift for you. I’ve created a FREE Gratitude Journal PDF for you to download along with this episode on our website.

Be grateful every day, as it really is a gift that will help us continue to evolve humans everywhere.

View Details

Life is always a rollercoaster! Lately, I’ve been overwhelmed by all the key activities that are in my life. It doesn’t help that I have a heightened sense of urgency. I like to get things done. It’s my favorite mode. Come up with a strategy, a plan to execute and just go!

But, how do we deal with the overwhelm? First, let’s define what Overwhelm is. I like to define it as ‘treading water’. You’re doing everything just to keep afloat. We’ve all experienced this feeling. It's just hard to see the forest from the trees. It’s just hard to see the plan/ where you’re going, the ultimate goal.

The truth is the chaos that you’re feeling, is coming from inside. Yup, we have lots of things going on in our heads. We need to find a way to take a breath, prioritize and break them into smaller chunks of activities. It does sound way too easy. But I’m here to take the complexity out of it.

Here are a few strategies: 1. ELEPHANT: First, we need to acknowledge the elephant in the room. Acknowledge that you are overwhelmed. That’s always the first step. 2. UNDERSTAND: Why do you feel overwhelmed? Too much to do? Too much to focus on immediately? Too many backs to back appointments/meetings? Not being able to say No? 3. BREATHE: Take a big breathe and recognize that everything is fixable and solvable. We just need to figure out our options. 4. BRAIN DUMP: Write down everything on a list. Just get it all down on paper. Just keep listing things. Whatever is on your mind, just get it out of your head and onto paper. One centralizes list. 5. NOW: What are the biggest priorities? What are the immediate items that you need to right now? Not just now, but NOW NOW. When I was working in South Africa, they had three (3) definitions for Now. There was just now, which meant within the immediate future. Then, there was Now, which meant within the hour or so. Then, there was NOW NOW, which meant, drop everything and focus on it now. So, what do you need to do NOW NOW. 6. ACTION: Are there items that you could outsource/automate/not do/eliminate/delegate? I’m a fan of the not-to-do list. My sister is great at this, she looks at her calendar for the week/month and highlights the days that she will need help with the kids. She gets proactive so that she can plan. The other day, I was struggling for time to do the grocery shopping/making a deadline and doing pickups. So, I got food delivered and decided to grocery shop online for delivery. Boom! #NailedIt! Next…. 7. POWER OF NO: There is a way to say no and it really provides you a way to take control. We often feel guilty for saying NO, but we shouldn’t. We are not saying NO forever, but saying NO for the immediate future. I wrote a blog about HOW TO SAY NO ELEGANTLY. It is often hard to say No, but people will thank you for being honest and managing expectations.

We need to recognize that being ‘Superman’ or ‘Superwoman’ is not about taking on so much. It’s about leveraging the people & resources around you to drive towards a goal/a vision.

Here are a few resources: BLOG: HOW TO SAY NO ELEGANTLY

PODCAST EPISODE: I did a podcast episode (E110) with Mr.Productivity himself - E 110: Overcome roadblocks by becoming more productive every day with Mr. Productivity, Mark Stuczewski

ARTICLES: Overwhelmed? These 6 strategies may help

Thank you again for your time and I really hope these tips help you. It has definitely helped me more times than I can count! Feel free to share with your friends or others that are struggling. We all need help and friendly reminders, that we are not alone in feeling this way.

Best Always,
Sapna

View Details

Everyday is Happy Women’s Day! You know why? because we choose our mindsets each day. Every morning when I’m in the shower, I’m thinking about the day and how to conquer it. Not, thinking about how it’s going to be a struggle. I look at all the opportunities in front of me and decide where I want to spend more time or less time on.

There is a difference between being assertive and aggressive in business. Women always get a bad rap and get called a not so positive name. The difference is how we utilize assertiveness. Being Assertive means speaking on facts, with the desired end goal in mind. Getting everyone aligned to where we want and need to go. Assertive women, know exactly what needs to be done and how to get there. Assertiveness is defined as self-assured confidence. Which is the complete opposite, of the Imposter Syndrome.

It’s interesting to me, how the Imposter Syndrome has become a growing syndrome that is impacting so many individuals. Imposter Syndrome is basically self-doubt. We all have this and experience it. I did a podcast episode (E84)about how feeling like an imposter is a competitive advantage. It’s called I’m an Imposter and let me Roar! I’ve also created a Free Imposter Syndrome Cheat Sheet to overcome this self-doubt.

Aggressive is where we get in trouble… anyone gets in trouble. It is fueled by emotions and somewhat seen as hostile. This is where individuals need to take 5-10 minutes to breathe, before responding. I wrote a blog all about Emotional Intelligence, as it can be quite the rollercoaster!

Strong Women tend to share many similar traits! 1. They’ve got a vision that has a plan behind it. Very clear on the direction, timelines, and milestones of where we are trying to achieve. 2. We drive things to completion, that’s right. We don’t wait, we have defined what needs to be done and then we figure out who we need to work with to make magic happen. We are proactive. 3. List makers - crazy right. Strong Women tend to have listed, to make sure that things don’t get dropped off the list. It helps us stay organized and accountable. 4. Risk Mitigators - we plan for the worst-case scenario. Strong Women are very conservative in planning. We tend to under commit and overdeliver. Mr.Wonderful, Kevin O’Leary - he has said on numerous occasions that he loves investing in women start-ups because he always recoups his investments. Women tend to be very ultra-conservative with their sales forecasts and they usually beat it. I’ve attached the link to the article. Shark Tank Kevin O'Leary: Women make me the most money 5. Time Management, strong women really know how to manage their time and make the most of every moment. There is that timeless saying “If you want something done, give it to a busy person.” 6. Listen- another key differentiator is that women tend to ask for proactive feedback from those in their inner circle and strangers. They know how valuable it is to get different viewpoints. This helps us mitigate risk (point #4). We listen to understand. 7. Comparisons - we don’t compare ourselves to others, we LEARN from others that we admire. We look to see what traits/best practices that we can adopt. 8. Learn- we look at every failure point as learning or an opportunity. We are also always looking for opportunities to build new skills, learn a new viewpoint and educate ourselves. This only adds to our confidence in our vision and plan (point #1). In fact, I have another little freebie gift for you. Reflection Action Review Cheat Sheet

Be ASSERTIVE, be strong, be bold, be courageous and be unapologetically curious! You’ve got this!

View Details

Armel Beaudry Kembe Tchemeube is the CEO and Founder of Trebble FM. Before running Trebble, he worked for 8 years as a software engineer for a startup in the telecom industry that got acquired by Nokia. Armel owns a software engineering degree from the University of Ottawa.

Episode overview: Are you a podcast junkie but wanted to get more content in a short amount of time?

If you are, then this episode is for you.

This week, I get to chat with Armel who is the CEO and Founder of Trebble.fm, a platform that releases shortcast - consumable 1 - 3 minutes podcast episodes. In this episode, we covered why people are becoming interested in consuming short-casts compared to longer podcast episodes. We also talked about how Trebble started, the difference between Twitter, LinkedIn posts and Trebble on podcasts and so much more.

About Trebble.FM Trebble.fm is an online music-sharing platform that allows music influencers and music enthusiasts to curate your own interactive music radio and share it with music lovers around the world. Those radios are called 'Trebbles', can be easily embedded in a website.

Trebble owners can add their personal touch to the music they share and speak to their listeners through ‘Capsules’. These are brief audio messages up to 90 seconds that they can record and play to listeners. They can attach additional information to those capsules like text, pictures, videos, allowing to fully express themselves and deliver a unique enriched listening experience.

Connect with Mark: Website: Trebble.fm

Twitter: @armelbeaudry and @trebblefm

LinkedIn: Armel Beaudry

Instagram: @trebble.fm

Books Mentioned:

Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies

Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups by Jason Calacanis

View Details

Mark ‘Ski’ Struczewski (“Mister Productivity”) helps entrepreneurs & executives get the right stuff done in a distracted world. In addition to being a productivity expert, Mark is a speaker, host of The Mark Struczewski Podcast and an online trainer. His strategies have guided CEO’s/Executive Directors, business owners, business corporate specialists and entrepreneurs to get back control of their time.

Episode overview: This episode is for all those that are looking for productivity tips/hacks and secrets. I chat with Mark Stuczewski, MISTER PRODUCTIVITY – he’s obsessed to help the world become a more productive place – one person at a time.

We chat about:

• How getting fired, was the best thing that happened to Mark
• Time to practice ‘Adulting’
• The notification cleanse
• The power of ODAE – Outsource/Delegate/Automate and Eliminate
• Concept of the NOT TO List
• How complexity is the gateway to procrastination!

And, I got challenged to take the 7-day productivity challenge. GAME ON! Hopefully, some of you will do it with me.

Connect with Mark: Website: MisterProductivity.com

Podcast: The Mark Struczewski Podcast

The 7 Day Productivity Challenge

Social media: LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

View Details

Laurence is the Founder and CEO of nanopay Corporation, where he drives the vision to offer the infrastructure to enable what’s more commonly known as Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). Prior to founding nanopay, Laurence came from the telecom industry where he was Vice President of Wireless at Shaw Communications, prior to his role as Chief Operating Officer of Bell Mobility. Active in the payments community, he is the Chairman of the Paytechs of Canada and a member of the Payments Canada Stakeholder Advisory Committee.

Episode overview: This week, I get to chat with Laurence about how we have an ambitious goal to lead the world’s transition to digital cash.

What isn't commonly understood about payments, is while money might appear to move quickly or instantly (ie. in the case of e-Transfer), the real money doesn't move until the next day when the banks settle the payment overnight. This creates settlement risk for the banks involved in the transaction. This risk grows exponentially when the transaction is cross-border, introducing currency and exchange risk.

Our innovative technology securely moves value from one user to another in real time – with instant settlement – and is ideally suited to transform the global payments infrastructure.

That being said, the road to digitizing cash isn't necessarily a straight line. Today, we offer a self-service payment platform for small businesses (you can sign up at Ablii.com), a business to business payment product, and a liquidity and cash management solution for banks.

About nanopay: nanopay is a Fintech company based in Toronto that empower banks and businesses to scale with innovative payment and liquidity software. nanopay offers two products: Connect, a business payment product which easily integrates with your ERP software and enables both domestic and cross-border payments, and Liquid, a real-time intra-company cash and liquidity product, which enables self-service virtual account management.

nanopay's products are built on a payment engine, nanorail, that securely tokenizes money to move value from one user to another in real-time. nanopay is venture funded with strategic investments from international partners including the Merchant Banking Division of Goldman Sachs.

Connect with Laurence: Website: Nanopay.net

Facebook: Nanopay Corporation

Twitter: @nano_pay and @laurencecooke

LinkedIn: nanopay Corporation and Laurence Cooke

View Details

Hey Innovators,

We keep hearing the same words over and over again - innovation, innovator, agile thinker, lean startup, design thinking expanding our horizons. Ugh! What on earth does it mean?

Let’s go back to reset and define Innovation. Innovation simply means continuous improvement, a way to produce new value. Very different than inventive, where it’s completely new. This is about innovation, taking something existing and refreshing it to provide new elements. This is where we get to be unapologetically curious and look at things with a new set of eyes.

How do you train people to think outside the box? It’s such a mindset shift. When we grow up, we are expected to do certain things (i.e. get married, have kids, get an education, save for the future). What about training people to say that it’s okay to go off course? The best way to really develop thought leaders is to embrace the notion of curiosity. Allow your teams to develop points of views, challenge the norm and provide them with a valued voice.

It’s interesting to me, how the Impostor Syndrome has become a growing syndrome that is impacting so many individuals. Impostor Syndrome is basically self-doubt. We all have this and experience it. I did a podcast episode (E84) & blog about how feeling like an impostor is a competitive advantage. It’s called I’m an Imposter and let me Roar! I’ve also created a Free Imposter Syndrome Cheat Sheet to overcome this self-doubt.

It’s quite the paradox - be adventurous and overcome impostor syndrome, and follow the organizational rules & expectations. Organizations and Individuals need to start to create time for innovation and creativity. We need to get from reactive mode to a proactive mode. The challenge is that we are not given enough time to think, only time to react.

Here are a few tips to slowly start to shift a little bit of your thinking.

The innovator mindset is to

1. Embrace Curiosity and become a Learn It All - explore different dimensions/avenues. What tools do you have at your disposal? List them out and also think about the non-traditional tools. Books/podcasts/free webinars/ articles/ talking to people across different industries. You know, I had a client that put me on retainer, just to brainstorm with. She’d have a few ideas and wanted to bounce it off all the wall and see what other elements could give it legs. Don’t dismiss the idea of talking to others and listening to understand where they are coming from. It might provide the perfect ‘AHA’ moment.
2. Encourage Points of View. A lot of individuals have thoughts but are afraid to provide their point of view (PoV), because it won’t be inline with the ‘status quo’. Encourage and reward people for having ½ baked points of views. They will gain experience and courage to develop full points of view. No point of view is perfect. Think about all those folks that put out 2020 trends, they are just an opinion, a point of view.
3. Failure - companies and individuals need to define their tolerance of risk. How far can you go in terms of failure? Encourage people around you to really test early, with minimal risk. Allow people to help develop the idea with you. You can start to test early and re-jig things based on feedback. It’s a perfect way to do a temperature check (just putting a toe in the water, to see what the temperature is).
4. When developing solutions/services/concepts offer three (3) options. Give something for your leaders to react to. Present a conservative approach, a crazy out of this world approach and a hybrid of the two (2) approach. One of these crazy ideas

Management Consultants have been using these approaches for years. Some of these concepts have been re-marketed under the umbrella of Design Thinking. These are classics that have worked for centuries! They just change the names to make them a little more ‘glamorous’.

So, I challenge you.

What are you interested to learn more about (Learn it All), what are you curious about?

As promised, here is that little gift that I have for you.

FREEBIE ALERT: Free Imposter Syndrome Cheat Sheet to overcome this self-doubt

Thank you so much for your time.

If you know someone that could benefit from this episode/blog, feel free to share with others. Drop me a line anytime, I love hearing from you.

Best Always,

Sapna

Links:

4 Steps to Cultivating an Innovation Mindset in Your Organization

I’m an Imposter and let me Roar

View Details

Dave McKeown helps individuals, teams, and organizations achieve excellence by doing the ordinary things extraordinarily well. He is the CEO of Outfield Leadership and author of The Self-Evolved Leader – Elevate Your Focus and Develop Your People in a World That Refuses to Slow Down. If that’s not enough, Dave is also the host of the podcast Lead Like You Give a Damn and writes a weekly online leadership column for Inc.

In this episode: Author Dave McKewon really made me pause, think and then dance. His book – the Self-Evolved Leader is a must read. It's for new leaders AND seasoned leaders – it’s a perfect read and reminder.

You’ll learn how to TACTICALLY move from firefighting mode to empowerment

• Stop working in the weeds and think more strategically
• Find more time to focus – give room and time to think
• Build empowerment deep in your team
• Free up your head-space to be more creative
• The Self-Evolved Leader: Elevate your focus and develop your people in a world that refuses to slow down

Honestly, this was a book that I’m going to read every year, to remind me what type of leader I want to be.

About Outfield Leadership: Outfield Leadership helps leaders deliver excellence by doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. Our flagship program, The Excellence Equation™ is an immersive, interactive and practical workshop that will help busy managers and leaders rise above the day-to-day urgency to focus on the long term direction of their team and development of their people.

Best advice: Building a culture of accountability is the holy grail in the leadership world. If we can get our people to go above and beyond their job description to help move the business forward then we'll see results like we've never seen before. Our customers will be happy, our people will be happy and your job as a leader will be much easier. The problem is that you can't teach your people how to hold themselves accountable. You can only provide the environment in which they want to do it.

Connect with Dave: OutfieldLeadership.com | Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram | Podcast |

Book mentioned: The Self-Evloved Leader: Elevate your focus and develop your people in a world that refuses to slow down

View Details

Happy New Year! 2020… Crazy, how time flies by.

The holiday season just flew by, one minute I was preparing for it, next it was over. I do love the holiday season. Stay tuned for the end of the podcast episode, because I have a little gift for you. It should help you orient yourself for 2020.

There is something magical about the holiday season. I always end up crying in commercials/ movies, you name it, my heart literally skips a beat.

I was thinking about the holidays and why is it the time of year that get people choked up. The spirit of generosity, kindness, love, family, compassion, triumph and magic - and then it dawned on me the magic word “INNOCENCE”. Seeing things through children’s eyes. It brings out the inner giant in everyone of us. The age of Innocence where good always beats the bad. Santa is real. Elf on the shelf are really Santa’s helpers, the joys of wishes and the idea that wishes could come true. With a simple letter to the North Pole. Human Connection, it truly is something gives us hope. Belief… That’s it…

The holiday season reminds us to believe in all the things that we normally forget. To make time for those that we love (let’s be honest, we are all so busy these days & we hope everyone understands), to help the less fortunate. How is it that we are more giving during this time of the year?

Does anyone remember Charles Dickens timeless classic, A Christmas Carol? I found this incredible article where Time describes Charles Dickens as the “Inventor of Christmas”. The story is from 1843. Can you believe that? The story is 176 years old.

I’ll be honest, I was always a fan of Bill Murray’s Scrooged. It cracked me up and still makes me giggle. What I loved most about these stories, is how he visits the Christmas Past, Christmas Future and then goes back to the Present to change things! There is always time for reflection, in order to move forward. So, definitely take a moment to reflect, before you start planning out your goals. I’ve enclosed a gift for you, so that you can also take a moment to reflect back into 2019.

So, in keeping with the holiday spirit, a look back to my 2019. I’m pretty excited. 2019 has been another incredible year, that I’m extremely proud of and have learned a lot.

1. I launched my 1st book - Connect the Dots - how to turn strangers into meaningful relationships. I nearly fell out of my chair, when it hit the Amazon Bestseller List! I’m still stoked! I’m already planning my next book. There were so many learnings from this entire experience. Getting the book formatted for ePub version has different formats based on online reader - Kindle/Kobo/tablet etc… I tried to use Fiverr to get the book interior designed, which just became a nightmare. There was extra spaces and new dashes everywhere. Every time, one person would fix the mistakes that I found, 5 more new errors would just show up. Then I finally just did the interior formatting myself, took over two full days but it was just easier than outsourcing. Lesson learned, If I’m going to outsource any activities, it might be better for me to send to 4-5 in parallel. Hedge my bets, instead of sending to 1 person & then it being a disaster and then wasting more time to find someone else. I think this task, took nearly 6-8 weeks longer for me to complete things and I was just getting more and more frustrated each time! Ugh… So, outsource to 4 or 5 people at the same time or just do it myself.
2. As per my goals, I also launched and held a few different webinars. I did a sales webinar on how to optimize your sales proposals. I still see so many poorly written sales proposals. It really astonishes me, that people don’t see that this is the first touch point that that a client receives from you. Need to make sure it provides an ideal experience. I’ll make sure the link is available. Remember, that this is the first official deliverable that your client is to get from you. We need to think, what is the experience that we are delivering during the honeymoon phase.
3. Brainfood Book Club was just an experiment and it has been the BEST experience ever. There are a few of us that meet virtually every month at lunch time to discuss the book. Honestly, the book provides the topic and it enables us to apply and discuss so many other discussions (both professionally and personally). We record the episodes, HOWEVER, I take out the other personal banter. The non-book relevant stuff. This virtual book club has developed new friendships, deepened existing ones and we are really dedicated to helping each other grow. We really love our monthly virtual social. SO much laughter. You can hear our discussions or even join us.. It’s free!
4. Teaching Consulting 101 at George Brown College. Which has been an absolute joy. I’ve been teaching for the past few semesters and really enjoy every minute of it. However, I’m ready for something new.

However, in looking at my goals for 2020. I’m ready to learn something new. Both personal & professionally. I’ve recently taken on a new role that has been consuming a lot of my time. There are lots of teaching & coaching opportunities. Which means, I need to balance myself out. I need to learn something new. It’s like that Yin/Yan - Give & Receive. Everything needs to be in balance.

So, here we are 2020. I remember writing about where the industry would be in 2020 and now it’s here! I definitely have a lot of goals for 2020, but more importantly, I have a lot more courage. No excuses, and I’m ready for 2020… game on! This year I’ve decided is to be filled with lots of new experiences.

CanInnovate podcast features timeless professional development secrets & essential business life skills, that management consultants have been using for decades. We are unapologetically curious!

I wanted to start this year off right by providing you with some inspiration. I want everyone to be unapologetically curious & courageous!

It all started off when I was watching one of my guilty pleasures. Yes, I was watching X-Factor Celebrity. I think I'm drawn to it because people are trying something new and taking a chance. But, this season I was drawn to it, because these are people that already have a following or known in their particular geography, but not well known globally. So, them entering a singing competition is a little bit like a ‘fish out of the water’. Which I absolutely love! That’s how innovation happens.

But, I need to tell you about this one particular contestant that had this amazing story and literally stole my heart and probably everyone else that heard it. So, of course I want to tell you about it.

Allow me to introduce you to Martin Bashir. Martin Bashir is known as a very well respected and hard nosed journalist. He’s interviewed everyone from Princess Diana, to Michael Jackson too many politicians. So, it came as a surprise for a 54 year old professional journalist to enter a singing competition. A Complete ‘fish out of water’ indeed.

Then he mentioned that his late brother was the driving force behind the inspiration. His brother was 29 years old, when he lost the battle of Muscular Dystrophy (MD). For those that don’t know what Muscular Dystrophy is a group of muscle diseases that results in breakdown of skeletal muscles over time. Just heartbreaking.

Then Martin shared the wise words of his late brother Tommy. I hope it inspires you as much as It did for me.

“When you grow up with a child and you fight over toys. At age four, he never fought back and, by the time he was 13 he couldn’t feed himself, you feel that you have no excuse for turning down opportunities.”

Martin said: "Every time I have faced a challenge I have heard him whispering saying, ‘What excuse do you have? You have no excuse.”

I was at a Raptors game (for my international listeners, its a basketball game) and one of the folks that I was with, secretly really wanted to get a picture with Super Fan. I probed a bit and discovered that they were a SUPER FAN of Super fan! So, off we went to get in line to get a picture! Don’t let being shy or fear of judgement hold you back. Why would you want to miss out on opportunities?

Every time you try something new, you learn a new experience and will have a new story to share. The best stories are actually those that don’t exactly turn out the way we want them to turn out. So, enjoy the roller coaster and a new adventure.

I really hope that 2020 really provides you the courage to be curious. In the words of Tommy, “What excuse do you have? You have no excuse.”

I really hope that 2020 brings you lots of goals, inspirations. Take time to reflect. In fact, I’ve got a little freebie cheat sheet for you. It’s my gift to you, as you embrace 2020. Revisit the Christmas ghost of the past in order to help you figure out where you want to go in the future.

Be unapologetically curious & courageous in 2020! Be bold, brave and adventurous.

ALL my best,

Sapna

me@sapnamalhotra.io

P.S. Here is the link for gift - all free: Reflections Review

Resources mentioned: Connect the Dots: How to turn strangers into meaningful network relationships

Reflection Action Review Cheat Sheet

Brainfood Book Club in Facebook

Celeb X Factors: Martin Bashir

Muscular Dystrophy

View Details

Frederic Lalonde is the CEO and Co-Founder of Hopper, the smart way to book travel on your phone. Combining massive amounts of data and advanced machine learning algorithms, Hopper predicts and analyzes future airfare and accommodation prices to save users money and enable them to travel more often. Hopper has ranked as the #1 travel app in over 55 countries and has ranked as one of the top 10 travel apps in over 120 countries. It has received accolades such as Fast Company’s Most Innovative Company in Travel 2018, the Google Play Award for Standout Startup of 2016, and Apple’s App Store Best of 2015.

Episode Overview: This episode for anyone that likes to travel for either work or pleasure. I get to sit down and chat with Frederic Lalonde is the CEO and Co-Founder of Hopper and WOW!!! He blows my mind! Hopper predicts prices with 95% accuracy up to 1 year in advance. Such an amazing overview of the BOOMING travel industry and the stats & insights he shares, WOW! Did I say WOW already?

In this episode we chat:

• How we don’t need to wait for those so called Airline SEAT Sales - Hopper does this for us
• How Hopper becomes the eyes behind our head when it comes to flights & hotels
• Travel Industry is a $1.4 TRILLION dollar industry - that’s 4% of Global GDP, where the ride sharing industry (i.e. Uber/Lyft) is only $40 Billion
• How they design with customer in mind.. In fact they only send true VALUE added push notifications
• Tips for how to get the best deals & how others are saving $1000’s of dollars
• Hopper utilizes a Jeff Bezos model/philosophy
• Hopper is doubling in size every 6 months - lots of cool jobs which we will be including on our newsletter!
• And so much more!

You’re going to love the energy in this episode!

About Hopper: Hopper is made up of hundreds of smart, creative, and inspired humans working to fundamentally change how the world books travel.

Hopper is the smart way to book travel on your phone. Combining massive amounts of data and advanced machine learning algorithms, Hopper predicts and analyzes airfare and accommodation to save users money and enable them to travel more often.

Since its launch in 2015, Hopper has become one of the fastest growing travel apps ever with over 30 million installs to date. It is now the most downloaded travel booking app in North America and travelers have booked hundreds of millions of dollars in flights and hotels around the world using Hopper.

The app has received accolades such as Fast Company’s Most Innovative Company in Travel 2018, the Google Play Award for Standout Startup of 2016, and Apple’s App Store Best of 2015.

Connect with Frederic: Hopper.com | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter: @fredlalonde @Hopper | LinkedIn: Frederic Lalonde and Hopper

View Details

This is probably the most overlooked area. We tend to think about interviews in terms of getting a job. How about gathering information that really provides great insights.

I used informational interviews everywhere, not just in podcast recordings. I use this approach everywhere. I use it to build new relationships, to ask for advice & guidance, build networks and it truly helps one see different dimensions and aspects about a particular topic.

It’s an approach that Management consultants have perfected. How many times have you heard “We hired consultants and they just validated everything that we knew.” The difference is that the management consultants go in to chat with people with the intent of gaining information & valuable insights to a particular area and they compare it with other companies/individuals that have faced similar situations/obstacles and/or challenges.

Management consultants often refer to this as discovery questions. There are no shortage of reasons to use this approach.

Here are a few typical use cases:

1. When you start a new department or company, you want to meet some of the key players (also known as stakeholders) to understand the current challenges in the environment. It provides us insights of what these individuals expect of us. Another ‘AHA’ moment
2. When you have a new business idea or potential concept, many of the innovators on the CanInnovate podcast told us that one of the greatest sources of information. They were able to test whether their idea was a problem or opportunity that others would pay for. Providing insights into their potential go to market, their target market, their key messaging and so on. It provides them with such valuable feedback that allows them to fine tune their business idea and potentially gain a few early adopters.
3. When you’re looking into jobs and want to know about company culture. What a great tool to use to dive in to understand more about the company. People really enjoy talking about the pros and cons of their company, as its an extension of their values.
4. Inspiration & Curiosity. You meet someone that is brilliant and would like to know more about them. They have gotten your attention and you’re curious to know more about them and their journey. Maybe it’s just because you are looking for a little bit of ‘juice’ for inspiration.

All of these different uses, give you an additional benefit. You will get collaboration and actually develop relationships. People that you’ve engaged, will want to be part of your journey. They are a little bit invested in your success. In my book, Connect The Dots: Turn Strangers into Meaningful Network Relationships, I talk about the study that confirms a positive link between asking for a small favor. It’s called the Ben Franklin effect!

The reason why I wanted to talk about the informational interview, was because this is also part of the overall design thinking principles. Asking “What If’, experimenting and testing early, hearing and understanding (Human Empathy) gathering feedback early in the process, focusing on the user experience mindset and most of all, collaboration. Information Interviews really enables you to humanize the problem/situation and possibly identify additional opportunities by TALKING!

There is no shortage of benefits of using information interviews. But, you know me - I like to get tactical.

• Plan: What do you want to learn about or discover? What is the context the purpose - put together 3-4 questions. Don’t forget that you may need to break down questions into smaller questions to re-frame questions. Think like a journalist. You’re just getting information and looking for little clues. Don’t forget to prepare a little mini-intro about you & what is the objective for the meeting.
• Engage: Who are potentially some folks that could give you some of these answers. Who in your network should you engage. FREEBIE ALERT! Connect the Dots Companion Workbook. To help put your networking and objectives into perspective. This workbook will help you identify who in your network to engage and more importantly, how to engage and what are some topics that you want to talk about. This will help provide you the basis, for your informational interviews.
• Warm Up: Meet the person and make sure that you take a few minutes to do some warm up questions. Getting to know them. People love talking about themselves. You can ask about how did they get into this field, or what does a day typically look like for them or talk about a hot industry topics. Just make sure you take the time to warm up the conversation.
• Conduct: Conducting the informational interview. Be open to go off script. This is a big challenge for people. The idea is to pick up clues, not to be perspective. You’re trying to discover what you don’t know.
• Reflections: Every time, you do an informational interview - think about did you get the information that you were looking for. You may need to refine and re-frame the question. We need to remember that we just need to get better at asking BETTER questions. By the way, you know I absolutely think Michael Bungay-Stainer’s Book - the Coaching Habit:Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way Your Lead Forever is an essential must read. This book provides such valuable ways to PHRASE questions to get information out.
• Thank you: I cannot express this enough. We need to take a few minutes to say thank you and be grateful for the time. I did an entire blog post about the value of gratitude. I’ll add it to the show notes. Send a handwritten note or email. Just to thank them for their time and the value that they provided. Do NOT ask for favors. You’re just starting to build relationships. You can touch base with them, throughout your journey and give them a little bit of an update.

One thing that I’ve learned, is that people want to genuinely help. However, they also want to know specifically what it is that you want. We get so many requests for our time, so we need to prioritize. Don’t ask for 4 hours of their time, ask for 25-30 minutes over coffee and BE SPECIFIC. “I’d like to learn from you, about what it’s like working as a Business Analyst at Company XYZ” or “I’d like to get your advice and perspective, of how to get more hands on experience with Blockchain technology”.

Information Interviews is another essential business life skill. I’ve got some freebies for you.

I hope you found this helpful and useful. I look forward to hearing from you. Feel free to share the content with others and leave comments. I love feedback.

Best Always,
Sapna

FREEBIE ALERT! Connect the Dots Companion Workbook. To help put your networking and objectives into perspective. This workbook will help you identify who in your network to engage and more importantly, how to engage and what are some topics that you want to talk about. This will help provide you the basis, for your informational interviews.

Other links:

Importance of Gratitude

3 steps to a perfect informational interview

How to get the most out of an informational interview

View Details

Founder and President of ​NKPR​, Natasha Koifman has built one of North America’s top PR and marketing companies. Natasha’s strengths as a marketer, communicator and relationship builder have earned her an award-winning reputation for successfully growing North American and global brands across many sectors.

Recognized as one of Canada's most powerful and innovative women, Natasha has been honored with awards from the Women's Executive Network (WXN) and BizBash, recently completed a TEDx Talk and had been profiled in top-tier publications that include FORBES, The Globe and Mail, and Marie Claire.

In this episode: * How she built one of North America’s top PR and marketing companies working with big brands and big CELEBRITIES * Difference between PR & Marketing * True Entrepreneur DNA * How she’s inspired by EVERYTHING * How it was a natural fit and evolution to become an Angel Investor * Difference between VC & Investor * How she’s been able to combine all of her personal and professional interests * What the ‘F Word’ podcast is all about and so much more…

About NKPR: NKPR is a 30-person agency with office in Toronto and New York and we're always looking for talented people who share our passion for great work. As part of the NKPR team you will work alongside the brightest in the field. With the support of a strong team, NKPR is a great place to keep learning, stay ahead of the curve and advance your career.

They offer ongoing training, employee appreciation events, comprehensive dental and health coverage, endless snacks and DJ Fridays. Everyone is encouraged to support each other and to give back through the NKPR 26 Acts of Kindness program.

Connect with Natasha: NKPR.net | Facebook | Twitter | NKPR on LinkedIn | Instagram

View Details

I’ll be honest, I’ve always been a Brandon Walsh girl over Dylan McKay! I have to say, I just watched Netflix’s Riverdale episode, and how they honour Fred Andrew (who was played by Luke Perry). I have to say… WOW! They really nailed it!

How they handled Luke Perry’s death, was absolutely beautiful. The writers truly honoured Luke Perry and the audience that grew up with him. We got to truly mourn his death (here is a little photo tribute). My sister and I were bawling throughout the entire episode. These writers were definitely thinking with their hearts and that level of empathy was so evident. We actually felt like we attended his funeral and got to say goodbye to him. They invoked so many memories and really helped us along the journey. There were a few hidden surprises, that just took our breath away.

This got me thinking about how this is a great example of design thinking. First of all, we all hear the words design thinking but it’s hard to envision and understand. Design Thinking is Human- Centered design, versus system centered. The Riverdale show writers, really understood their target market. Having all the Riverdale parents being teen idol stars from the 80’s, we know from Luke Perry, Molly Ringwald, Mark Consuelos, Skeet Ulrich, Robin Givens & Mädchen Amick.

They really kept the audience in mind when writing this episode. They really understand & understood their target audience and the different audience personas. Which means that every piece of content speaks to the audience personas. Which is exactly why this Riverdale episode and the funeral of Fred Andrews (aka Luke Perry) was such a big deal. How they handled this so tastefully, will encourage even more loyalty.

Design Thinking provides a hybrid approach to problem solving. It does not just look at data analytics and science, it also uses emotions and intuition. Design Thinking really provides a hands-on-approach to problem solving. Not just researching on a computer or google to problem solve. It wants you to get out their on the field to talk to people to ‘hear’ & ‘understand’. Less talk and more action. It’s an iterative process, where we seek to understand the user, challenge ‘same-old’ assumptions , and redefine problems to identify additional opportunities. Design Thinking is a total shift to the mindset.

There are lots of times that we get caught up in meetings and not actually talking to people that would be impacted. We make decisions without doing early testing. Designing the solution in real-time with the actual end users (aka people that will be using their solution), is where you will hit that sweet spot.

 **Here are some tips for you to start to embrace design thinking** * Know thy audience, including audience Personas – get to truly understand your audience. What are they struggling with? What are worked well before? What doesn’t?

• Learn from Failures – so try and test early. Get out there and listen and learn. Don’t just sit there and google to do research. Design Thinking goes beyond a computer, it goes back to the basics (pre-internet time). Just get out there and talk to people!
• Embrace Ambiguity – don’t be afraid of not knowing things. This is where many folks fall victim to ‘Imposter Syndrome’. Look at the gaps and unknowns as clues. Play detective and enjoy the mystery. It will allow you to be open to hearing and exploring new possibilities. One of my favourite quotes “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”― Thomas A. Edison
• Iterate & continuously improve – don’t develop something and go into a black box, until you finish developing everything. Touch base with your customers/target audiences frequently, grab their feedback to improve things throughout the process.

I hope this helps. I’ve also included a free little checklist to help you find questions to gather feedback. Just click here REFLECTIONS AFTER ACTION REVIEW. It takes 10 minutes to do a reflection to thinking.

Let me know what your thoughts are.

Best Always,

Sapna

View Details

This is the 1st of the new professional development ‘tune-up’ series! Short mini session, to elevate your game.

Who has ever experienced working with a contractor/technician/repair person? As soon as we say this, we know.. UGH.. it’s going to be an awful and painful experience.

So, my dishwasher broke down the other day. In a panic, I called an Appliance repair company. They came the very next day, charged me money and put in a temporary part. That’s when the big issue happened. The part arrived and trying to schedule them to come back, was challenging. They gave windows from 4-7pm and then, wouldn’t show up. I’m sure many of you have experienced this.

It’s beyond frustrating and we end up going through 32 flavours of emotion. From being patient, to irritated to angry. It’s amazing what happens, when these contractors overcommit and under-deliver.

Think of the experience that we go through, we someone like a contractor/technician or anyone in our lives underdeliver. There is a reason why parents always say ‘please don’t promise things to my kids, that you’re unable to deliver’. There is a massive fallout and disappointment that occurs. It’s hard to repair and pick up the pieces for someone to break promises.

It’s interesting, we all know how it feels - which feels AWFUL! Yet, so many of us to this at work.

We have a habit of saying ‘yes’ at work. We don’t want to disappoint someone, or don’t want to be seen as collaborative. Then, we sit down and realize that we can’t make that timeline. We try to make it work but we just can’t do it. Some of us, may get all stressed out trying our best to make the timelines, some will just continue working on our own timelines (often, failing to communicate or notify the other vested party that we can’t make that timeline). Yet, we all KNOW how it feels to be let down.

Here is the impact of not managing expectations of not being able to make the timeline. TRUST IS BROKEN. Yup, ultimately, we stop trusting the other person. They get seen as unreliable and the perception of ‘take their timelines and commitments’ with a grain of salt.

It happens all the time. Now, there are ways to mitigate this risk. Here are some practical tactics.

SCOPE IT OUT:

Don’t commit to anything, until you take the time to scope things out. Just say ‘let me get back to you on timelines, I want to scope things out’. What you’re saying is, let me do some due diligence to come up with a realistic plan that will generate a win-win. This shows a level of maturity. Then break down the task into smaller tasks & timelines. This needs to be looked at holistically, with all the other items that you have. Sometimes, saying YES to something, means that we need to say NO to something else. Or better yet, we can ask our supervisors/bosses/stakeholders to help us re-prioritize.

MANAGE EXPECTATIONS:

If you don’t know the expected turnaround time - Sit down and talk. Align on what is feasible and what isn’t feasible during that timeline. Find out, what do they need 1st. What is their minimum acceptable product/deliverable that they need. They may not need everything, just a few things. One of my favourite lines is, “when is the latest that I can get this back to you’? You'll be surprised, you might be thinking at the end of the week and they may be thinking the end of the month. Not everyone is reactive!

COMMUNICATE:

look folks, people are not mind readers. This part always drives me insane… just like those that don’t signal to change lanes. It doesn’t take much to send a quick message to say ‘Got the request, just looking into it’. This shows that you’ve acknowledged their request and it’s not going into a black hole. Give them quick updates or even let them see drafts. Communicate with them THROUGHOUT the journey, not just at the beginning and at the end.

OPTIONS:

If you can’t do something, be upfront. I am a girl that likes options. I always provide 2 or 3 options. I don’t want to be seen as the person that throws things over the fence and say ‘catch- it’s your problem’. I want people to know, that I may not be able to do something because of X,Y,Z reasons. However, here are a few options that might help you solve this issue. For example, Sally is doing something similar and you might be able to leverage this or I can do it, in a few weeks (beginning of Dec) or there I could oversee one of their team members and they can do the work and I can coach them through it.

People like options, they want to know that there is no dead end. Can you imagine, going to the doctors and being told that there is no options to get healthy! Don’t be that person! Provide options, so that people know there is hope. They will respect you for your honesty and the ability to think things through.

I’ve got a freebie for you. After Action Review or Reflections review. I do this at the end of every milestone or deliverable. I’ve created a free cheatsheet for you, that you can easily download and try. Just click here REFLECTIONS AFTER ACTION REVIEW. It takes 10 minutes to do a reflection to thinking.

Let me know what your thoughts are.

View Details

Being that this is our 100th episode, I can’t believe that the time has gone so fast. I started the CanInnovate podcast two years ago but still moving strong and it is just mind boggling to me. I keep thinking about this episode that I am going to record for you, my whole experience and the journey for the past two years and I have to say that I am really glad that I started this podcast journey because it opened up a whole new world for me that I never thought that would actually happen.

My Elevate Tech Fest Experience I got invited to speak on stage at Elevate conference which is a massive Tech Fest in Toronto. I was invited to moderate and lead the fireside chat with Ariel Garten, who is the founder of Muse – the brain sensing headband. It was kind of surreal to me because it happened so quickly and the next thing I knew is that I am sitting in the green room prepping to go on stage.

I cannot describe how I feel because it is so fascinating, exciting and nerve-wracking experience. I got all sweaty but Ariel and the rest of the team backstage told me that I was a natural at it and that helped me get the confidence I needed to be on stage and I felt that I am getting better at it.

What I find amazing during my time on stage is that, while listening to Ariel talk about being a serial entrepreneur at the age of 16 years old and she was coming up with a product line and she knew nothing about how to break a great product line but she just did it anyway. If you think about it, at 16 years old with a can-do attitude that nothing is going to hold her back, I became fascinated by her mindset. It is also fitting because the Muse headband is about meditation and clearing your mind and how to get a positive mindset.

My experience at Elevate Tech Fest was truly amazing and unforgettable.

The 100 Episodes of CanInnovate Podcast Being that this is our 100th episode, I can’t believe that the time has gone so fast. I started the CanInnovate podcast two years ago but still moving strong and it is just mind boggling to me. I keep thinking about this episode that I am going to record for you, my whole experience and the journey for the past two years and I have to say that I am really glad that I started this podcast journey because it opened up a whole new world for me that I never thought that would actually happen.

I keep going back to the five-seconds of courage when starting this podcast and not knowing how to do it because I just have my management consultant skills and overcoming the imposter syndrome and I just had a whirlwind of experience. I have met incredible executives that are so innovative and thinking about it, it is how I got on stage with Ariel because she was on the podcast three times, we were able to create masterclass together and being able to connect with her and that would not have happened if I didn’t start this podcast. I also think about my other speaking experience at other smaller events, conferences to having an Amazon best seller book, the online course: #Futureproof Yourself and so much more.

I am really glad that I started this journey and it opened up a lot of doors for me as I keep saying yes to a lot of stuff but it kept me thinking what do I have to say no to.

Episode 100 Going Onwards I overcame being a workaholic and it was a two decade old habit that I had and I really wanted to think about where I am putting my time and effort into and I actually had to start pairing some things down for the things that don't make sense any more or for the frequency that needs to be revamped.

I actually resigned from a couple of board directors and I also want to make sure to keep myself healthy. I was thinking about the podcast and you all know how much I love it but I was also thought about all the emails that I get.

I have been getting a lot of emails about the lack of professional development topics especially when I talked about how to prioritize, give and receive feedback, the vulnerability and the mindset podcast episodes. Ariel Garten’s episode 45 which is about the Innovation Mindset: how to untangle the knots in your head and killing that inner jerk is one of the episodes that provides tactical exercise has changed a lot of ways that you, the listeners have been thinking and in fact, I am still getting a lot of emails about it.

With me teaching at George Brown Consulting 101, the futureproof class, course and projects where I am coaching with other people to become more marketable, to increase their skill set and help them shift their mindset; I am thinking that it is time for us to start focusing on our own development and I will be bringing a lot of my management consulting best practices

The podcast will be shifting to focusing on:

• How we would innovate ourselves
• We will still have innovator guests who are changing the norm
• We will also have topics that will be broken down into smaller topics whether it is email management, when to prioritize or to how to say no to something elegantly

I am so excited for this shift and I hope you will continue to support me and the podcast. Here’s to our 100 episodes, to 100 more and I can’t wait to hear your feedback.

Links: Ariel Garten Episodes:

• Innovation Mindset: Undo the knots in your head
• Muse 2 takes innovation to a whole new level
• Optimize the crazy in all of our minds

Imposter Syndrome: I'm an imposter, hear me roar!

Feedback: 3 reasons why giving and receiving feedback is important

Vulnerability: What is vulnerability and why should we be vulnerable

Amazon best seller book: Connect the Dots: How to turn strangers into meaningful network relationships

Futureproof Course – a digital course that will help you future proof yourself

LinkedIn episode: Discovering the power of LinkedIn with janice Porter

View Details

Janice began her career as a teacher, was a corporate trainer for many years and has now been in business for herself for several years. She found her niche coaching and training business professionals to network at a mastery level and turn their connections into new business. Her passion is working with motivated people who are coachable and want to build their businesses through Relationship Marketing and Networking – offline & online.

Episode Overview: LinkedIn training is a huge part of Janice’s business – she believes anyone in business or looking for a new position, needs to have a professional LinkedIn profile, and that it is a powerful online platform for attracting new clients or being found by recruiters. It is also a valuable tool for building and strengthening one’s reputation and authority in his or her field.

In this episode:

• How she got into the LinkedIn world and what fascinates her about it
• Why people underestimate LinkedIn's power
• How to connect and build relationships that really matter
• Your not networking to make friends but to build relationship that will take you somewhere
• Janice shares how to set-up a proper LinkedIn profile using my LinkedIn as an example
• Why asking recommendations are important
• and so much more!

Janice knows how powerful it can be for one’s business to build relationships and show appreciation to prospects and clients alike. It really is all about the follow up! She is affiliated with a company called SendOutCards – and shows her clients how to use this system to show appreciation, stay top of mind with people, and increase their sales. If you are interested in hearing more about LinkedIn, effective relationship-building strategies, appreciation marketing, or receiving solid networking information, Janice welcomes your calls.

Resources Mentioned: Janice Podcast – Relationships Rule Podcast

Sapna episode on Janice podcast: Connect the Dots: How to Turn Strangers Into Meaningful Network Relationship

Connect with Janice: JanicePorter.com | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn

View Details

Corey Ellis is the Co-founder and CEO of Growcer, a company started with the goal of providing a tool to grow food in any climate, all year round. His unique perspective as a social entrepreneur has helped him understand how to enable community-level impact through profitable market-driven business models.

Episode Overview: You know that moment that you just get inspired and think… WOW! I’m glad someone really thought about that. It will make the world a better place! That’s just what happened! I got to sit down and chat with Corey Ellis is the Co-founder and CEO of Growcer, a company started with the goal of providing a tool to grow food in any climate, all year round. We talk about so many topics: * How a trip to the Arctic, inspired Growcer * How this innovative idea is helping farmers, entrepreneurs and small businesses + Even turning non-farmers into farmers, including Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau * The balance of being socially good & profitable has created a WIN-WIN-WIN situation + empowers remote Canadian regions to grow fresh produce locally using modular hydroponic systems + Saving water + Helping feed the growing worldwide population + Eliminating Carbon Footprint * How Canada is a food insecure country * The Dragon’s Den experience

And so much more!

About the Growcer: Growcer is an innovative approach to allow communities and businesses to grow food year-round. Our offering includes our core technology (modular hydroponic equipment, with automation and remote monitoring, making it user-friendly), along with business support and expert horticultural and technical know-how for the lifetime of their system. What's more, Growcer systems can grow fresher, better tasting products closer to consumers, without costing more than current prices in most markets. With this model, Growcer empowers people to adopt this new solution for 21st century farming, and makes it possible to grow more with less – moving us to a future where our food system can be more sustainable. To date, Growcer technology has enabled millions of servings of vegetables to be grown in some of the world's harshest climates – including within the Arctic Circle. Growcers have been deployed in temperatures below -50C and above 40C.

Connect with Corey: TheGrowcer.ca | Facebook | Twitter: @the_growcer and @corey_w_ellis ‏ | LinkedIn | Instagram

View Details

Dr. Daniel Shapiro is a Canadian entrepreneur and academic. The focus of his work has been deep learning artificial intelligence, including, enterprise consulting (Lemay.ai and Stallion.ai), audit automation (AuditMap.ai), trading algorithms (Investifai), and biological neural networks (Nuraleve). Daniel has over 30 peer reviewed publications and patents.

In this episode:

• What AI is based on his perspective
• How AI can help in customer segmentation for marketing and sales
• We talked about how AI can help the consumers with their privacy
• Do more with less
• What job sectors will be affected by AI
• Where will AI go in the following years
• What is Lemay.Ai and so much more!

About AuditMap: AuditMap is an idea funded using proceeds from our AI consulting business. Bootstrapping your own idea with your own money forces you to ask tough questions. We serve enterprise clients, and found that humans in these organizations are bad at diving into a large set of internal company documents and pulling together a coherent story about a given topic. With artificial intelligence we identify critical statements through the lens of an organization's "Audit Universe", and their Enterprise Risk Management Framework. It's like an AI-based search engine, trained using expertise in the internal audit domain. AuditMap handles the tedious matching and classification across time, so that executives can understand upcoming risks in key segments of the business before they turn into financial losses or penalties.

About Lemay.ai: Lemay is led by two engineers, Mathieu Lemay and Daniel Shapiro, PhD, performing research and development and rapid deployment of solutions in the field of Artificial Intelligence/Deep Learning (AI/ DL). They have delivered AI/DL products to both private and public sector clients, and have performed research in the AI/DL fields of natural language understanding, automated data segmentation, sentiment analysis, recommendation systems, text/image similarity and more. Currently, their bilingual team holds 5 patents, 8 certifications, 35 publications, and 2 PhDs. Lemay’s team has grown to 10, and continues to grow. They cooperate with their joint venture partner Stallion.ai for projects in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Related Links: Future Shock? The impact of automation in Canada's labour market

Connect with Jay: Lemay.ai | Twitter | LinkedIn: Daniel Shiparo and Lemay.ai

View Details

Paul Sloane is an experienced speaker, course leader and facilitator. A recognised authority on innovation and creative speaking, he speaks and gives workshops to leading corporations around the world. He is also the best-selling author of How to Be a Brilliant Thinker, The Innovative Leader, The Leader's Guide to Lateral Thinking Skills and editor of A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing, all published by Kogan Page.

Episode Overview: Do you want your team to generate great ideas and deliver successful innovations?

I have been following Paul Sloane for awhile now, his tweets always made me giggle. He really is the Innovation King! We chat on this episode around numerous areas about Innovation:

You’ll discover:

• The difference between creativity and innovation
• Different ways to measure Innovation
• How employees need to be idea generators
• Risk Takers vs Risk Avoiders – man versus women
• Innovation Audit and so much more

About Destination Innovation: Destination Innovation is a consultancy service led by Paul Sloane to promote lateral thinking and innovation. We help improve the agility of your team. We help people improve leadership and innovation. We provide talks, workshops and facilitation. Related Links: * What is the difference between creativity and innovation * How can you measure your innovation? What are the best metrics? * An innovative complaint – United breaks guitars * LinkedIn Group: Lateral Thinking in Business * Lateral Puzzles

Recommended Books: * Lateral Thinking Skills * Lateral Thinking Puzzlers * How to be a Brilliant Thinker * The Innovation Leader * Think Like an Innovators

Connect with Paul: Destination-Innovation.com | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn

View Details

Taylan Pince is the CEO & Founder of Hipo, a product studio that has helped launch businesses in a myriad of industries, including healthcare, finance, smart home, education, and natural sciences. For the past two decades, Taylan has focused on developing tech products that improve lives and change industries. His expertise in product design and development, as well as mobile, web and emerging technologies, have contributed to the success of more than 100 companies worth over $10B collectively. Episode Overview: UX/UI design is really like a secret sauce for a company to really shine brighter than the rest. This episode is for those that want to understand how UX/UI can really benefit their business to make them more innovative. In fact, UX/UI design philosophy is something that everyone should adapt. We should really look to understand the experience from a consumer perspective and design that intentional experience with that in mind. UX Design refers to the term User Experience Design, while UI Design stands for User Interface Design. Both elements are crucial to a product and work closely together. But despite their professional relationship, the roles themselves are quite different, referring to very different parts of the process and the design discipline. Process design teams use to create products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. This involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product, including aspects of branding, design, usability and function In this episode we discuss: * What exactly UX/UI design is & why it’s big deal * How Hipo is built on a philosophy of Empathy * The power of a discovery sprint * How tech is not a disruptor * The fastest growing segments looking to adapt UX design * And so much more

About Hipo UX: Hipo is a product development company that works with startups and enterprises across the world to bring novel ideas to market. At Hipo, they specialize in providing their clients with two critical things: flexibility and quality. They can build maintainable and scalable product solutions very quickly and efficiently, so their clients can focus on growth and sales.

Resources Mentioned: Roncesvalles, Toronto

Book: Radicalized by Cory Doctoro

Book: New York 2141 by Kim Stanley Robinson

Connect with Taylan: HipoLabs.com | Facebook | Twitter: @taylanpince and @hipolabs | LinkedIn: Taylan Prince and Hipo | Instagram

View Details

Marc Guberti is a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author with over 100,000 students in over 180 countries enrolled in his online courses. He is the host of the Breakthrough Success Podcast and Radio Show where listeners learn how to achieve their breakthroughs. He coaches content creators on how they can attract more traffic to their content and boost revenue. An Author of 23 books, including his newly published Breakthrough Success: Achieving Greatness In Business & Life (Grow Your Influence Series Book 4)

Episode Overview: I just had to do it. I needed to get Marc Guberti on the podcast and I’m so glad that I did.

He’s an absolute inspirational gem! He started his business at the age of 11 and ten years later, he’s on top of the world with his books/podcasts/online courses/summits. I had to dig in deeper and learn from the Master himself.

We hit so many topics:

• How he got started at the age of 11
• I even ask if he faced age discrimination
• How he made me look at my 10 year old niece a little differently
• Some productivity tips, especially if you’re Serial Juggler Occupation
• Favourite person that he met
• How his book – Breakthrough Success that is about to be released, is already on the Amazon Best Seller list one month BEFORE his actual book launch!
• So much more

Books Mentioned: * The Compound Effect * The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results * The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure

Resource Mentioned: Marc Guberti's podcast episode 16 and episode 292 with Seth Godin

Connect with Marc: MarcGuberti.com | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram | YouTube

View Details

From building planes for Airbus, to creating Augmented Reality products for online shopping, Jason have always worked to make consumer experiences better at scale. He is from South Africa but now live in Toronto. Jason enjoy drone photography, and pick up hockey and classical music concerts.

Episode Overview:

This episode is really special and it is for those that are going in a direction that may not have legs. Your spidey senses maybe telling you that!

Jason and I chat about the importance of pivoting. Jason is such a down to earth and humble person. He really truly gives back and wants people to learn, as he learns and grows. Jason is a serial entrepreneur and knows how to make magic happen. I think one of his superpowers is the ability to listen and deeply hear what the other person is saying.

In this episode, we chat about:

• The pivot and shift to HeyTaylor
• The power of designing solutions with the client
• How to land important meetings, when you don’t have the initial contacts
• A hidden gem of a resource within the government
• Where he got the inspiration for the company name...it’s not what you think!
• And so much more

About Hey Taylor: Hey Taylor is a company that focuses on strengthening relationships between retail stores and customers online. They create ecommerce merchant products in Augmented Reality for shoppers to try before they buy while they shop online. They help increase sales and reduce returns.

The team at Hey Taylor primarily develop tools for the homegrown Shopify platform and it's merchants and also work with a lot of local Toronto based customers. They use the diversity of the city to get input into how to improve their experience as Canadians are quite thoughtful when it comes to creating respectful and friendly relationships.

Connect with Jason: HeyTaylor.com | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn

Related Links:

#FutureProof Course - Learn management consulting timeless secrets that will always keep you ahead of the curve.

Connect the Dots - How to turn strangers into meaningful network relationships.

Cheat Sheets - 10 Biggest Networking Mistakes to Avoid

View Details

Jay Dilley is a Fintech Entrepreneur and CEO of Ratebroker, an innovative financial services marketplace that acts as a champion for the consumer. He believes in financial inclusion, is passionate about fundamentally improving people's lives through technology. An experienced executive, Jay has held President and VP roles in tech and commercial aviation. He has been recognized as a top 40 under 40 recipient, and for his championing of women in leadership. He holds an HBComm in Finance and Economics, a MSc. Mgt, is a CFA charterholder and is a member of YPO.

We have too many Canadians that are excluded from the financial system, approximately 1M in 2015 were unbanked and 5M were underbanked.

     **Episode Overview:**     Episode 92, we chat with THE Jay Dilley, who is truly a change maker and driving a different evolution of how to shop for your money! This episode is for anyone that wants to have more options in Finances/Insurance/Mortgages and so on… which means, this episode is for EVERYONE!

He provides such PURE GOLD information and here are the topics that we chat about:

• How Ratebroker is the Tinder for Financial Services
• Difference between Rate Comparison tool and RateBroker. It’s about your data privacy
• Getting vendors to BID for our business
• How many people are Unbanked and Underbanked In Canada. Totally surprised me, as we are not a third world country
• Tips for challenging the Status Quo, GDP and it’s not what you think it is!

He’s brilliant, insightful and everyone should be using RateBroker. I love having options.

About Ratebroker: At Rate Broker we think finding the best rates should be easy. They put you in the driver's seat we get company's to fight for your business! RateBroker has been setup to get you the consumer the best deals possible on Mortgage Rates,Home , Car and life, health insurance's. Ratebroker is one of the fastest's growing company's in New Zealand in 2016!

Resource Mentioned: GDP Social Media Metric

Connect with Jay: Ratebroker.ca | LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter

View Details

Daniel Eberhard is the CEO of Koho which offers an alternative to the traditional banking experience. He has built his career as an entrepreneur by finding ways to create scalable mission-driven companies.

In 2010, he co-founded Kineticor Renewables and facilitated the development of a 20 megawatt wind energy plant up to the point of construction. The company was acquired by Algonquin Power in 2011.

After the sale, Daniel took the opportunity to backpack through Europe and saw firsthand the differences in the European banking system compared to Canada’s. The experience inspired him to take a deeper look into Canada’s flawed banking system. In 2014, he founded KOHO Financial, Canada’s first challenger bank, looking to help eradicate debt caused by a system fueled by hidden fees and interest rates. With an integrated app and reloadable Visa card, KOHO is building the ultimate savings experience and leading the charge in the fintech space

Daniel was also named Baystreet Bull’s Top 30 under 30, along with KOHO receiving the NASDAQ award for Best FinTech Company.

SUBSCRIBE TO CANINNOVATE

iTunes| iHeart | Stitcher | Google | Spotify | SoundCloud

Episode Overview: Did you know that the average Canadian spends more on banking fees than our monthly NETFLIX subscription? This episode is for all those that want to save more in a FUN WAY. I talked to Daniel the CEO of KOHO.

• How different is the European Banking System compared to Canada
• What is KOHO and how it works
• We talked about ‘WHAT THE FEE”
• Daniel shares about Open Banking framework and what it really means
• How the rest of the world, outside North America is more CREATIVE/ INNOVATIVE and TRANSPARENT when it comes to banking
• We also talk about the KOHO office environment, scooters and beer!

About Koho: KOHO offers an alternative to the traditional banking experience. They don’t make money off of complexity or by hoodwinking their users. They believe the financial system should be open, intuitive, and designed to help you live a better life. To help all Canadians, from Tofino to Fogo island restore financial balance. Money can be way too stressful. The team at Koho want to empower you to see how easy managing your finances can actually be.

Connect with Daniel: Website: Koho.ca

Facebook: @Koho

Twitter: @GetKoho and @DanEbs

Instagram: @getkoho

LinkedIn: Daniel Eberhard and Koho

If you love this episode, share your thoughts and takeaways on the comment section below or leave us a review.

View Details

We have the brilliant & talented April Dunford on the podcast today. She’s a much sought-out international speaker on the topics of Positioning, Market Strategy and New Product Introduction. April is a positioning consultant. 7 successful technology startups and 3 global tech giants, over 16 products and more. She knows how to make magic happen & she’s sharing these secrets in her new book called ‘Obviously Awesome - how to nail product position, so customers get it, buy it and love it!”

SUBSCRIBE TO CANINNOVATE

iTunes| iHeart | Stitcher | Google | Spotify | SoundCloud

Episode Overview: This episode is really for everyone. We all need to learn how to position products, services and ourselves! April has launched a book called ‘OBVIOUSLY AWESOME’

April and I get down deep to talk about:

• The inspiration for the book
• The real value behind positioning - Positioning is the strategic underpinning of everything we do in sales and marketing and yet it is very misunderstood and rarely done well
• What positioning is & What positioning is NOT
• If you thought branding and messaging, you weren’t alone. I thought that too until...this book
• The pitfalls of Pitch competitions
• How writing a book is so hard. We both have definitely underestimated the amount of work, in creating it.
• And so much more

I’ll do a separate Q&A for anyone that joins my Book Launch team, for Connect the Dots, turning strangers into meaningful network relationships. For those that want the behind the scenes - the good/bad & the ugly.

April's Book: Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It

What makes this a Canadian Innovation or Innovative thinking? April spent 25 years as an executive at a series of successful Canadian startups, 6 of which were acquired by larger U.S. companies so she also was an executive at IBM, Siebel Systems, Sybase, etc. Across my career I launched 16 products into market. I have always been fascinated by what makes some products very successful while others, even some that had clearly better technology, failed.

The past few years I've transitioned to doing consulting work and my focus is specifically on Positioning. Positioning is the strategic underpinning of everything we do in sales and marketing and yet it is very misunderstood and rarely done well. I've developed a methodology for doing Positioning that I've validated with dozens of tech companies and I've just released a book that will help any company do it for themselves.

Connect with April: Website: AprilDunford.com

Twitter: @Aprildunford

LinkedIn: April Dunford

View Details

Amanda Chen, founder of Salty Paloma, a line of naturally flavoured salts and sugars handcrafted in Toronto. She noticed a gap when there was a demand of higher quality spirits and mixers, but nothing on garnishes, which is a huge aspect of a balanced cocktail.

With no background in food or business I created these products in her home kitchen and started making sales within the first month of launching. Amanda since expanded to host cocktail classes and in-house bartending for private parties and special events. In a previous life she was a journalist, turned copywriter, turned digital strategist until she walked away to give 100% of herself to her business, working for under minimum wage as a bartender in the city.

SUBSCRIBE TO CANINNOVATE

iTunes| iHeart | Stitcher | Google | Spotify | SoundCloud

Episode Overview: This episode is for those that have an idea and don’t believe that you have the skill sets to make magic happen. We all have ideas and many times we talk ourselves out of trying it.

Amanda shares her journey with Salty Paloma. She HAD no background in food & yet has launched a line of natural cocktail rimmers and gave some great marketing tips that makes finding your target audience less scary.

I really hope that you get inspired to start to take action and test out your ideas and concepts. The last thing anyone wants is to fall in the ‘could've, should've’ cycle of regret. I’m not going to say life is short, but… you owe it to your future self to be adventurous and embrace those things that you’re curious or intrigued about. You’ll never know where the journey can take you and what opportunities open up.

I hope you get inspired as I definitely did!

Don't make yourself a target consumer

About Salty Paloma: They are drink lovers who knew their drinks deserved better than table salt. When they couldn’t find what their thirsty hearts were looking for, they made it. That’s how Salty Paloma came to be. Named after the Paloma – a lesser-known but equally delicious tequila cocktail made with grapefruit soda – their goal was to serve up one of a kind rimmers, to help drink lovers cocktail like they mean it.

Connect with Amanda: Website: SaltyPaloma.com

Instagram: @SaltyPaloma

Twitter: ~~@~~saltypaloma and @missamandachen

Facebook: SaltyPaloma

LinkedIn: Amanda Chen

View Details

Co-hosts Lisa & Rebecca LOVE dishing out the world's craziest wedding tales! All the stories told on The Secret Life of Weddings Podcast are 100% true and completely unbelievable! These tales of nuptial woe are guaranteed to make you cry-laugh.

Lisa Mark is a professional photographer with over 10 years experience in the industry. Lisa runs a fine art wedding photography studio in Rockwood, ON. Lisa was honored to be named as the 2014 'Canadian Photographer of the Year' and 'Best Photographer in Ontario' by the 2014 Canadian Wedding Industry Awards.

Teaching others makes Lisa happy, and she therefore began offering both personal mentoring and workshops to professional photographers in 2015. Having hosted several multi-day in-person workshops in Toronto, ON, Lisa recently launched her online school in order to reach a broader audience.

SUBSCRIBE TO CANINNOVATE

iTunes| iHeart | Stitcher | Google | Spotify | SoundCloud

Episode Overview:

Innovation, by contrast, is an improvement to an existing product, process, or service. The word Innovation comes from the Latin word, Innovatus, which means to ‘renew or change.

I’ve been pretty stoked to have Lisa Mark one of the Co-hosts of The Secret Life of Weddings Podcast- a comedy podcast sharing listeners' most hilarious true wedding horror stories!

If you don’t know Lisa Mark- you’re totally missing out! Lisa is a professional photographer with over 10 years experience in the industry. Lisa runs a fine art wedding photography studio in Rockwood, ON. Lisa was honoured to be named as the 2014 'Canadian Photographer of the Year' and 'Best Photographer in Ontario' by the 2014 Canadian Wedding Industry Awards. Lisa’s wedding images have been featured in Huffington Post, Junebug Weddings, Wedluxe, Weddingbells, The Wedding Co., The Knot, The Wedding Opera & more. If that’s not impressive.. Try this on for size…privately commissioned by bands such as Our Lady Peace and Sloan to photograph their promotional images and many others.

About Secret Life Of Weddings: Canadian comedy podcast hosted by wedding photographers Lisa & Rebecca featuring CRAZY true wedding stories.

"Who are these two podcast hosts? WTF do they know about weddings anyway?"

Well, first of all they don't appreciate your tone. Secondly, they happen to know a few things because they have been wedding photographers for over 20 years combined in Toronto, Ontario Canada. Yes, they’ve seen the craziest stuff you can imagine.

Mostly they share the wildest wedding drama from their listeners and from the news. Remember what they say - truth is stranger than fiction. As they say at the end of every episode - anything can happen at weddings ... and they will be here to tell you all about it.

Connect with Lisa: Website: TheSecretLifeofWeddings.com

Podcast: The Secret Life Of Wedding Podcast

Instagram: @secretlifeofweddings

Twitter: @secretlifeofwed

View Details

It’s my birthday and I have some things to give away. Just a few of my favorite things! How to enter. Simple! If you’re already subscribed to our newsletter, I have entered your email address into the draw! If not, no worries - just go to either website and put your email in the newsletter subscribe box. I’ve also created a link and have put in the show notes.

Here is the link to join: http://www.sapnamalhotra.io/birthday

Someone asked me recently, if Podcasting has changed my life. It really got me thinking, was this a game changer for me?

The answer was YES! Podcasting has made me courageous and more adventurous. I get inspired everytime I do a podcast episode. I love being surrounded by people that are challenging the Status Quo. I’m doing more things than I ever would have done. I’m trying new things and constantly thinking ‘WHY NOT’, instead of ‘BUT’. A new fresh take on things.

At the end of 2018, I had made six month goals (instead of yearly goals), because I wanted the flexibility to add to things. So, my 3 goals were

1. Publishing my Networking book - NAILED IT!!! In fact, I ended up on the Amazon Best Sellers list, which totally took me by surprise. First of all, I need to thank everyone for their amazing support for my book launch, Connect the Dots, turning strangers into meaningful network relationships. I have to say, I love all the emails and notes. I’m glad that many people are finding the book and the companion workbook so useful! One listener, said the book had the ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ type of feeling and they loved all the stories! I’m sooo glad. This has definitely been a labour of love! The best was when my niece that named the book, was reading it. I was telling my brother in law, that we shouldn’t let her read it because she’s too clever to begin with and will learn how to build relationships so that she always stays ahead.. She’ll negotiate and win like no tomorrow! And she’s only 10!

2. Goal #2 was to conduct a free sales webinar. Which I did. I discussed common sales proposal mistakes and best practices. I’ve added the webinar information in the shownotes. I love teaching and sharing best practices.

3. My goal #3 was to finalize the volunteer partnership, so that we can start to make an impact on the world. I truly believe that education and awareness is instrumental in overcoming any challenges and obstacles. If children start teaching their uneducated parents, then we have a hope for the future. We need to provide opportunities for those that don’t have that privilege. And I found a charity that does just that. I’ve partnered with Food for Life Vrindavan (FFLV) . In fact, a portion of the proceeds of the book is going to them. Primarily, FFLV runs schools providing free education, meals, skill training and medical help to over 1500 girls in Vrindavan, India. This also includes free Meal Distribution, Cleaning and Tree planting, Paper Recycling , Organic farming, Sewing and Embroidery Centre (providing training & employment opportunity for village women). Over the past 25 years of working at grassroots, they saw the intense hardships a girl faces without an education, Child Marriage being the most common one, where she is forced into an adult role at an early age. FFLV aims to keep the girl in school until she is 18 to prevent early marriage. We also encourage & support the girl to pursue university education if she wants.

I can’t believe that we’ve been producing podcasts for a year and a half! It’s been amazing and lots of fun! It’s been incredibly inspirational to highlight Canadian Innovators. In fact, One of the little shifts that has been happening is that not only highlighting Canadian Innovators so that we can be inspired to run our areas of our lives or careers better. We are also having additional global innovators talk about innovation best practices. Along with, having episodes about essential business lifeskills!

I’ve been getting a lot of questions from some of the listeners being concerned about how all this Automation/Outsourcing/Mergers & Acquisitions and so on is going to impact their careers and industries. The truth is, it is not a question of “IF”, it’s a question of WHEN. We are on the slow side of the rate of change and it’s only going to accelerate. Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered! I have an online digital course #FUTURE PROOF that helps people navigate towards this to get ahead, get noticed and even promoted! I’ve put a link in the show notes !

What are my goals for the next 6 months

1. Do group coaching calls to help people #FUTURE PROOF themselves. I’m going to share some timeless management consulting secrets to help individuals become disruptors. I’m so excited for this online course - 8 hours of pure GOLD!!!
2. Write my 2nd book - did I tell you that writing this book was literally the hardest thing that I’ve ever done! Well, going to do it again! But, I have definitely learned a few lessons! I have about 5 different topics, so I need to sit down and do some prioritization
3. I’m going to do some workshops & webinars from discussing innovation trends to how to network effectively.

2019 is going to be awesome! This 6 months planning & goal setting has really lived up to the challenge. In 2018, I had set goals for the entire year and only did 2/3rd of them. I set up my 6 months goal and did all of them 100%, plus I launched a virtual book club that I adore! You can join the BrainFood Book Club! You don’t need to read the book to get the value from it!

Now, it’s my birthday and I have some things to give away. Just a few of my favorite things!

1. You know I absolutely adore truLOCAL! They’ve generously donated an amazing Steak Gift Basket from truLOCAL - who is ready for the BBQ season! They’ve been on Dragon’s Den and got so many offers! We had Marc LaFleur from truLOCAL on the podcast. Episode7! https://caninnovate.io/marc-lafleur/ We are going to get him back to see how things have changed 1 year later.. truLOCAL is exploding and expanding soooo rapidly!
2. Tease Tea has generously donated a brilliant tea basket.. They are really changing the world! You know I love my coffee… but once I started drinking these teas… my life has changed!!! Addicted to Skinny in the City and Tumeric Tonic Mind & Body Trio . I’m dying to try their Matcha Bamboo Kit.. addictive!! We had Sheena Brady on the podcast - E76 - https://caninnovate.io/sheena-brady/ . They are donating their Mind & Body Trio with Caramel Cardio, Skinny In the City & Turmeric Tonic (loose leaf 40g pouches) plus an infuser (valued at $39.95) as well as one of our Organic Ceremonial Matcha 30g tin and (not pictured) the Matcha Bamboo Kit, (valued at $39.95)
3. If you heard Ariel Garten - you know that I ABSOLUTELY love the MUSE Meditation headband . Meditation has changed so much for me! It’s now part of my daily ritual and this MUSE headband really taught me HOW to meditate! We had Ariel on E41 - where she taught us how to optimize the crazy in all of our minds! And then we had Ariel on episode 45, that taught us the Innovation Mindset! PURE GOLD! I get so many emails about how Ariel has changed their lives! I even added this to Connect the Dots book because I thought these tactics are brilliant and more people need to reset their mindset!
4. And.. based on our BrainFood Book Clubs great reads. I’m going to give away a few of my favourite books - Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stainer (E49: How to Get Unstuck), Your ONE Word by Evan Carmichael (E77: How to figure out your untapped potential) and of course, a copy of my own book: Connect the Dots, turn strangers into meaningful network relationships! (E81: Networking Tips & a cheatsheet)

How to enter… simple! If you’re already subscribed to our newsletter, I have entered your email address into the draw! If not, no worries- just go to either website and put your email in the newsletter subscribe box. I’ve also created a link and have put in the show notes..

https://mailchi.mp/caninnovate.io/birthday

So excited for the next 6 months! I’ve got some stellar innovators coming up, some starting as early as 11 years old! Crazy eh!

Till next week!

View Details

Ray Reddy is currently the co-founder & CEO of Ritual - the mobile pickup app that taps networks of co-workers and colleagues for fast and easy pickup and pay at a wide variety of local restaurants and coffee shops.

SUBSCRIBE TO CANINNOVATE

iTunes| iHeart | Stitcher | Google | Spotify | SoundCloud

Episode Overview: In this episode, I get to chat with Ray Reddy, who is currently the co-founder & CEO of Ritual. For those that don’t know what Ritual is, it’s a mobile food pickup app that taps networks of co-workers and colleagues for fast and easy pickup and pay at a wide variety of local restaurants and coffee shops and it’s expanding internationally.

If that’s not impressive, Prior to Ritual, Ray co-founded mobile commerce company PushLife that was acquired by Google in 2011. At Google, Ray led mobile product management for shopping and commerce. It was while at Google that Ray saw the potential to better leverage a social application to unlock mobile commerce and thus, Ritual was born. He has so many golden nuggets of wisdom to share

• How they build a product for everyday people and why they selected Toronto over Silicon Valley to launch.
• How not being covered in the Tech press for 2 years was an amazing gift
• He really talks about how we need to change the view on failure

About Ritual: Ritual is a social ordering app that taps networks of co-workers and colleagues for fast and easy pick up and pay at a wide variety of local restaurants and coffee shops.

With Ritual, users can mobile order and pay at all their favorite local eateries and coffee shops and have it ready to pick up when they arrive. By also uniquely giving friends and colleagues the ability to add their own food orders onto an existing order, Ritual gives customers the choice of either picking up themselves or having their food brought right to their desk.

This ‘social ordering’ saves customers time and drives incremental orders for merchants. The best and busiest quick service restaurants and coffee shops in major cities across North America are using Ritual to give them a competitive, technological edge, driving profitability, and a more personalized way to connect with their customers.

Connect with Ritual: Website: Ritual.co

LinkedIn: Ray Reddy

Twitter: @Ritual_co and @raymondreddy

Instagram: @Ritual_co

Facebook: Ritual.co

View Details

Born and raised in southwestern Ontario, Michelle has worked in the hospitality industry for most of her life. After her partner Luis Martins and Michelle sold our last business a year ago, they decided that their next business would focus on values true to our core, and Unboxed Market was born!

SUBSCRIBE TO CANINNOVATE

iTunes| iHeart | Stitcher | Google | Spotify | SoundCloud

Episode Overview: I chat with Michelle Genttner, one of the co-founders of the Unboxed Market here in Toronto and she totally surprises me of how much waste is happening. ONLY 10% of recycled materials are actually recycled! And here I thought I was a tree hugger. There are a lot of improvements that we need to make.

About Unboxed Market: Unboxed Market is one of an emerging group of zero-waste/low-waste/environmentally-conscious stores in Canada. The first brick-and-mortar version in Toronto. With the ever-increasing awareness about single-use plastics and excess packaging in general, these stores are creating a space where consumers can purchase exactly what they need, while avoiding the packaging that they (and the world!) do not.

Connect with Michelle: Website: UnboxedMarket.com

LinkedIn: Michelle Genttner

Instagram: @unboxedmarket

Facebook: Unboxed Market

Twitter: @UnboxedMarketTO

View Details

It’s official, the book is finally launching on Sunday June 9th! SOOO EXCITED! There is still time to join my book Launch team, for Connect the Dots, turning strangers into meaningful network relationships.

I’ll do a separate Q&A for anyone that joins my Book Launch team. For those that want the behind the scenes – the good/bad & the ugly and by, have I learned a LOT of lessons.

Today’s episode is about IMPOSTER SYNDROME with a free downloadable CHEAT SHEET below. This is for everyone that needs a little jolt of confidence. Imposter Syndrome is basically self-doubt. We all have this and experience it. This episode is inspired from all the questions that I receive.

Imposter Syndrome I love this podcast and the emails that I receive. I’m absolutely grateful for it. I’ve received quite a few emails and messages about feeling like an imposter. Which absolutely breaks my heart because it’s a very real and valid feeling. I repeat, what you are feeling is crippling and REAL!

So, I decided to do an episode about imposter syndrome.

We’ve all heard that quote ‘fake it until you make it’ but how can you fake something, when one thinks that they are the ‘fake’ element? When we doubt ourselves?

First, you’re not alone. It’s universal. It doesn’t discriminate on age, background, language. It’s truly universal. Einstein used to feel that way too, he described himself as an involuntary swindler. He didn’t feel that his work deserved the attention that it deserved, CRAZY RIGHT! Here is a great TED Video that explains imposter syndrome. It’s really a cute video. I’ll put the link to the video in the show notes.

What is an impostor syndrome and how can I combat it by Elizabeth Cox on Ted

Download your Cheat Sheet here

It’s interesting, we hear about these Innovators and their challenges and it seems to channel some sort of doubt in our own capabilities versus inspiration of those that challenged the norm. So, let’s talk about it. Here is my point of view. Imposter Syndrome is actually an ADVANTAGE!

I know what you’re probably thinking… WHAT? How is it an advantage? You have more self-awareness than anyone else.. Yup, It’s an advantage. Think about all those that overestimate their abilities to do things and they just don’t see the gaps and therefore, they can’t mitigate risks. Then, when it fails they blame EVERYONE else.

TA DA!!!! Whenever we are trying something new for the first time, it’s hard. We have learning curves, hard work in front of us. We can see the vision but we don’t know exactly how to get there.

You know, Kevin O’Leary (Mr. Wonderful) stated that he loves investing money in female run companies because they make money in the company. Here is why, women tend to provide conservative estimates in their sales projections. They evaluate the different assumptions, requirements and how realistic things are. They take the time to understand the gaps.

Here is a blog from Business Insider: Kevin O'Leary of ‘Shark Tank' invests in 27 companies and says the only ones making money have female CEOs

You know, when I started off in management consulting (nearly two decades ago), it was sink or swim mentality. We had to find ways to figure things out. Do the research, talk to people, find a way to validate it and then present it to our partners and this was before GOOGLE days. One thing, that management consultants have is, the opposite of imposter syndrome, we had competition, sense of urgency. We didn’t have time to doubt ourselves, we needed to get to the finishing line before our competition did. It was such an ‘up or out’ mentality in the consulting world. We were either moving up in terms of promotions, visibility, branding and so on or we were seen as irrelevant. It really was the survival of the fittest. Good old Charles Darwin makes an appearance again.

However, when I left the corporate world to become an independent consultant. I also decided I wanted to start a podcast. You know what hit me? What disappeared? My confidence. My ability to navigate in the unknown. WHAT? I used to create new product & services offerings not knowing how to do things. What had changed? YUP, I became an imposter!

I had nothing to hide behind. I was literally crippled by feeling like an imposter. It was my name, my reputation and my credibility.

I mean seriously, What on earth did I know about podcasting? Just because I love listening to podcasts, doesn’t mean that I’m going to be great at it. It’s like those foodies that love eating and then decide to open a restaurant. What universe did I belong to? I mean, seriously, I have zero broadcasting background. Never touched a microphone, except for the occasional microphone on karaoke nights. I didn’t have the knowledge, didn’t have the mindset. My benchmark was those that were those that were crushing the podcast world. I’d never hit that status. Trust me, I obsessed over every little detail.

We are afraid to fail but we also forget that success takes time and we learn, we tweak, we shift and we pivot. We see people’s FB/Instagram and compare ourselves to these images. You can be inspired, but don’t hold that as a benchmark. Projection is not real. We are just projecting our insecurities. We see things in others that we ourselves lack. But, how do we know if we lack the ability in something, without trying? Here is the truth.. Those that have ‘so-called’ made-it. We don’t really understand how long it took to ‘MAKE-IT’. We also don’t know about all the struggles they faced. So, here I was, Imposter in the podcasting world.

Did I tell you my favorite quote…?

“Thomas Edison failed more than 1,000 times when trying to create the light bulb”. When asked about it, Edison allegedly said, “I have not failed 1,000 times. I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways to NOT make a light bulb.”

Now, 90+ episodes later, I think… what was I waiting for? I should’ve started earlier and made those mistakes earlier. Nothing that I did from day 1 is the same after a year and a half. The website has changed 4 times, the name of the podcast changed, how we edited changed and we still keep changing things and we still keep making such silly errors (i.e. spelling errors on posts, forgetting to send the newsletter, wrong time zone on events and so on). It’s life. Most days I just shake my head and laugh. The spirit of continuous improvement. We need to start somewhere in order to improve.

I’ll tell you, starting this podcast at the time was the hardest thing that I’ve ever done. AT THAT TIME,. 18 months later (TODAY). Could I start another podcast? Yup, in a heartbeat. I’ll share something else, starting this podcast has allowed me to have more opportunities.

Now, I’m launching a book. No background in writing or publishing and my grammar, stinks. Did I ever tell you a story about my dad. When I was in grade school, I came home with an A+ on my book report. My dad, was furious, absolutely furious. He marched into the school and talked to the teacher. Most parents would be happy that their child got an A+, but not my dad. He actually read the book report. My grammar was AWFUL! He got the teacher to change my grade to C+ and I believe the teacher was nearly in tears.

So, who am I to write a book? Well, I have learned a few things. Find out what you’re not good at and find someone to help you in those areas. There is no bottleneck if you have things that you want to try, find out all the reasons why you will say ‘NO or BUT’. List them all down.

Then, give yourself a few options. I always believe in the rule of 3. Find 3 options to overcome this challenge/bottleneck or even

I’m here to tell you that – You’re no more of an impostor than I am with starting a podcast, writing a book and launching an online course!

TONY ROBBINS SAYS: FEED THE FEAR!!!

It’s like, when you play a new video game for the 1st time. We don’t get very far in our first attempt at the level. But, then we think, what could I do differently to pass this level. We experiment, try and learn.

Another great example, It’s like dating, we go on a lot of bad dates before we hit the jackpot. Did we stop going out on dates? Nope. But, the stories of those bad dates are what we share with others and we laugh. So, why don’t we share the challenges that we hit in our professional lives?

Impostor is because we are lacking confidence. We are afraid to fail. How about changing the outlook, to say that you’re just experimenting. I started the BrainFood Virtual Book Club, because I would read business books and have no one to talk to. I put out a blog to tell everyone that I’m going to try this and see if it’s a failed experiment. It’s been 5 months now and it’s been a great success. There are only a couple of us that come each month.. But the point was.. I had zero clue on how this BrainFood Virtual Book Club was going to work. It didn’t stop me because I know that everything can be FIGURED OUT! Everything is Solvable (except health, I have zero clue, but I’m learning)

Well, we need to start somewhere to beat this impostor syndrome and this ties nicely to the vulnerability episode (which by the way, was one of my top downloaded episodes), along with the episode with Ariel about how to undo those knots in our head. Get rid of those negative thoughts. Links will be in the show notes.

So, you know me, I like getting to tactics

There is a great book by Valerie Young, called The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It

She basically breaks down people into a few different categories:

• Are you a perfectionist? Is the issue that you’re afraid of not looking perfect
• Are you Superwoman/Superman? Need to do everything?
• Are you an expert? The one that needs to know 100% of everything before you can start. This is my challenge area
• The Natural Genius – that makes everything look effortless.
• Soloist – the one that never asks for help

Step 1: Have you ever admitted out loud when you’re scared of something and then all of the sudden, your not? Well, that’s exactly what we are going to do here. What are you in imposter in? Write it down. What are you dissatisfied with?

I was afraid of not being able to do everything. Yup, I was guilty of Superwoman. I have now learned a few things I can delegate and outsource certain things.

Now your turn! Say it out loud! Say it to someone!

Step 2: To building confidence in the area, is to research and read. Find out what others are saying about the topic. That will provide you with a baseline. I’m not saying become an expert in it. I’m saying just read the headlines and be familiar with the themes. Is there anything that these top experts are saying that you didn’t know? Maybe you don’t agree with them. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have a benchmark of what the top experts are saying. Now, you know what and where you’d like to elevate.

You know, Tony Robbins is the first to tell you that, when he started out, he read and learned from others that were doing it. In fact, that’s exactly what management consultants do. We learn from others and ‘ELEVATE it’. We don’t start from ground zero. So, continue to learn – get obsessed with the topic and have fun exploring your curiosity.

Starting is the hardest part. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. One step at a time.

Step 3: Do a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities & Threats

Analyze your strengths (S) and weaknesses (W). We keep underselling ourselves, whether it’s how much we charge for our services or our capabilities. I want you to remember that you have some incredible experiences from not just our successes but also from our FAILURES. Such a great source of data! Don’t forget to add things like your amazing source of support. For me, I write down my relationship with my nieces and nephew. They are such a source of strength for me.

Step 4: What are the different opportunities (O) that it could possibly bring? What could it possibly lead to? Dream big? Think of the WHY – get inspired/ get creative and have fun.

Don’t worry, I didn’t forget the T, in SWOT. T stands for Threat in the SWOT analysis. Let’s tackle the T.

Step 5: Take each of those threats and write down 3 options so that it becomes an opportunity. Did I let my fear of my poor grammar stop me from blogging/writing? Nope. I turned it from a threat to a weakness. I recognized it had 3 options.. (1) Get better at it. Read things out loud, pay attention to the red underlines in word (2) Get someone to proofread everything that I do (which is another bottleneck for turnaround time (3) Delegate or outsource it. That’s exactly what I did. I have Claire, my podcast manager and Barbara, who was my book editor.

Step 6: Develop an end to end plan – what does the overarching roadmap look like? How do we get from point A to point B? What does the end result look like? Break things into smaller steps. Celebrate all your small victories. Come up with timelines/goals

“Goals are dreams with a deadline.” — Tony Robbins

Step 7: It is a lonely road sometimes. Find someone to support you and hold you accountable. Have your own personal board of directors, that come from a variety of backgrounds. Diversity really help see things from different perspectives. In fact, I’ve been part of a few masterminds that have really helped. I’ll be starting my own mastermind shortly. Stay tuned. This is after the book and the course is out.

Just in case you wanted another resource: 4 ways to quiet imposter syndrome and start believing in yourself by Tania Katan.

Here is another great read from Ideas Ted: 4 ways to quiet imposter syndrome and start believing in yourself

We are all human and we are always going to have fear and doubts and insecurities. But, I want you to remember, the bigger picture. For me, my anchor are my nieces and nephew. I want them to know that they can do anything and therefore, I need to be their role model. It pushes me in a different direction. They are my guiding light. Find your WHY!

Remember, we all don’t wake up like models in the morning. Everyone started somewhere. Surround yourself with things that make you happy and remember what we are grateful for. We are lucky that we can create opportunities to try these things.

7 steps:

1. Admit the Fear – What are you an imposter in
2. Baseline yourself
3. SWOT yourself – get grateful!
4. Find your WHY
5. 3 options to get over hurdle (s)
6. Plan & celebrate
7. Personal Board of Directors

I want you to remember to have fun, look at it like an experiment, try and fail (it makes better stories and makes you more authentic). Have fun going on a bunch of bad dates, but remember, we learn something from every bad date.

Download the Imposter Syndrome Cheat Sheet

View Details

Shawn Kanungo is a disruption strategist. He has been recognized nationally and globally for his work in the innovation space after 12 years working at Deloitte.

SUBSCRIBE TO CANINNOVATE

iTunes| iHeart | Stitcher | Google | Spotify | SoundCloud

Episode Overview: Shawn’s mandate at the firm was to help corporate executives to better understand and plan for the opportunities and threats associated with disruptive innovation.

Shawn shares his hands-on experiences through talks around the world to help leaders navigate change within a digital era. He has also a TEDx speaker. He has been featured in the Globe & Mail, The Guardian, CBC and CTV. In 2016, he was recognized as Avenue Magazine's Top 40 Under 40.

He is also a fellow podcaster and is currently a co-host of The Dip, a podcast focused on strategy, marketing and innovation. I think we are about to seriously get inspired with Shawn today!

Here are the cool topics that we covered during our chat.

1. Shawn talked about his definition of innovation
2. Why is innovation so important today
3. How much ownership do people in organizations have to be innovative versus waiting for their organization to be innovative
4. What are crazy time & challenge for organizations
5. How Shawn deal with organizations that think they are innovative
6. What are some companies out there that are the benchmarks of innovation culture
7. How can we get more innovative and engaging to grab new ideas and insights from these different generations

Organizations + people can become more innovative.

Book Recommendation:

• Zero to One by Peter Theil

Connect with Shawn: Website: www.shawnkanungo.com

Facebook: Shawn Kanungo on Facebook

LinkedIn: Shawn Kanungo on LinkedIn

Youtube: Shawn on YouTube

Twitter: @ShawnKanungo

Instagram: @ShawnKanungo

View Details

Ameer Rosic is a serial entrepreneur, marketing expert, investor and co-founder of Blockgeeks. An online Blockchain innovation hub. And steward of bountyone.io. Blockgeeks mission is to share and grow the knowledge around Blockchain technology.

SUBSCRIBE TO CANINNOVATE

iTunes| iHeart | Stitcher | Google | Spotify | SoundCloud

Episode Overview: We even go down a philosophical discussion about society and humans. You never know where the conversation will take you and we definitely went down into the rabbit hole.

• Blockchain training for everyone and anyone.. From newbies to engineers
• He didn’t intend to build Blockgeeks, he solved his own problem and just grew from there
• A platform that allows & encourages people to explore their Blockchain curiosity
• Pandora’s Box is completely opened around Blockchain
• The growth of digital Gold
• We talk about how to trade in Cryptocurrencies
• Tips for newbies to play into Cryptocurrency
• Most precious commodity is time

Recommended Resources:

Books:

• Seeking Wisdom by Peter Bevelin
• The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell

Movie Mentioned:

• In Time - Justin Timberlake

About Blockgeeks: BlockGeeks is an online hub where talented, inspiring, hard-working entrepreneurs, investors, and leaders can learn about the rapidly evolving world of blockchain technologies.

BlockGeeks mission is to share and grow the knowledge around Blockchain technology. A vast amount of the knowledge that would be valuable to many people is currently only available to a few — either locked in people’s heads, or only accessible to select groups.

Connect with Ameer: Website: AmeerRosic.com and Blockgeeks.com

LinkedIn: Ameer Rosic and Blockgeeks

Twitter: @AmeerRosic and @Blockgks

Instagram: @ameerrosic

Youtube: Ameer Rosic

View Details

As many of you know, I’ve been working on my networking book. Boy, that’s been a journey of UPS & DOWNS! Fear, Anxiety, Excitement, Dreams, Reality, Unknown.. I’m literally my own 52 Flavors of Emotions. This is what happens, when you do things totally outside your NORM. I’ve always wanted to write. It’s no secret, my grammar sucks most of the time. However, you can hire editors to make you look like a rockstar!

Which is even funnier because my editor, Barbara, her & I met at a Women’s Digital Networking Event here in Toronto about 2-3 years ago. We always stayed in touch and meet up from time to time. I really had zero clue that I’d be using her to edit my book. A book was part of my curiosity list and more importantly, it was on my BUCKET LIST!

I’m happy to announce that the book is in the finalization stages and called CONNECT THE DOTS! How to turn strangers into meaningful network connections. Actually, my eldest niece - the 9 year old, who is a BOOK WORM! I actually call her BELLE (from Beauty & the Beast) came up with the book name! She asked me to explain what the book is about and viola. CONNECT THE DOTS was born!

As some of you know, this book is inspired by my College students. The students each week would come into the class and ask about networking techniques and tactics as they were having very poor luck. I was surprised because I thought everyone knew how to do this. Each class, we’d end up spending so much time on their challenges from confidence issues resulting in that they had an accent, or that English isn't their first language to how to introduce themselves or answer ‘What do you do?’ The book wrote itself throughout the semester.

The goal of the book is to bring the fun and ease back into Networking and to meet interesting people. The book teaches people some techniques to build the natural ease of networking. Too many people hate networking and yet it’s a necessity of life. It’s a necessary life skill as no one gets ahead in life without a little help.

The objectives of the book are to provide:

• Techniques to meet more interesting people
• How to craft a great intro that generates intrigue in you - and avoid rhyming off your entire CV, yup, we all know people that do that.
• Ice-breaker for all different aspects of your life (that are not cheesy)
• Remove the stress of small talk
• Discover different networking approaches & tactics
• Engage others in a fun way that is authentically you
• Build mutually beneficial relationships
• Be seen as a value creator
• Develop network roadmap, including leveraging social media

I interviewed lots of lots of folks to hear their amazing tips and some horror stories. In fact, some of the horror stories inspired me to write a blog - Am I networking or dating?

I thought in this episode I’d provide some tips, so that you can start to really optimize your networking activities.

Less effort, More results! How to take the Work out of Networking!!!! As my gift to you, I created a little cheat sheet - 10 free tips to optimize the networking benefits to start getting immediate results!

Networking is so time consuming, so why not make it more effective? Many companies prefer employee referrals for internal roles to help them find new fresh talent and make it more enticing place to work. It’s a win-win for organizations. They save on recruitment costs and employees bringing their network to the organization becomes a great retention tool! No one is going to refer someone that they don’t know a little bit or if they can get a sense of who they are and their values. Then, it’s a bit of a game changer.

One key thing is that we often forget that networking is a mechanism to build relationships. We need to let people get to know, like and trust us, before introducing us to people in their network. We are an extension to their brand and their circle of their trust. Networking is a two-way street, a two-way adult conversation.

| Common Mistakes | Scenario | Consider this | | 1 | Networking only when you need it | Waiting to build your network, when you need it is a common mistake. Networking is all about relationships. Relationships take time. We should be networking everyday and building this as essential business life skill. | * Eating lunch with different people. You can brown bag it | | 2 | Asking for something too soon | When you meet someone for the 1st time, do you ask if they can babysit your kids for the weekend? Or borrow their car for the weekend? Asking for something too soon is frustrating for the other person and you’ll get labelled as an opportunists or a used-car sales person. Networking is the beginning of a relationship/conversation. You need to start by giving before receiving to build trust and rapport. | * Practice your active listening skills and become curious about them, before you ask for things

PROVIDE VALUE | | 4 | Not staying in touch with existing networks | This is an often forgotten about area… your existing connections. Its human behaviour to want something new, instead of looking at the old. People move to different companies, industries and countries and they’ve increased their network. There is that age old saying - ‘your net worth = your network’. So, get in touch with people to see how they are doing. | * LinkedIn - see how your existing network is doing. LinkedIn provides notifications of updates * Did you forget to add people? I.e. Parent’s friends/ Old Colleagues * Existing contact gone very cold? Set up a google alert about them and see when they’ve published something. Use it as an engagement tool. |

However, people make the same mistakes over and over again. So, I thought I’d create a cheat sheet to help you mitigate this risk and for you to look like a rock star. I hope you enjoy this freebie and can’t wait to hear your success stories!

CLICK TO GET YOUR FREE CHEAT SHEET HERE

I really can’t wait to hear your feedback and thoughts.

Where to get the book? Amazon of course! The links are in the episode notes! You can get the digital or print version! I’m really excited about this journey!

I’m already thinking about my 2nd & 3rd book and then my dad, even had one that he wants to co-write with me.

Thank you for all your kindness and support. I am truly grateful for each of you! And even more grateful, if you share this podcast with your friends!

Best Always,
Sapna

View Details

Jessica Rawlley is the Co-Founder of MaaS Pros and TIEIT, leading edge technology companies that were able to expand at a global scale with clients across the globe and in various industries, including government organizations.

SUBSCRIBE TO CANINNOVATE

iTunes| iHeart | Stitcher | Google | Spotify | SoundCloud

She began to specialize in advising small businesses with their legal troubles, contracts and incorporations. Through this specialization, Jessica realized that she had a true passion for helping other small business owners like herself.

“The magic in Jessica's training is how she takes the most complicated topics and simplifies it, so even those without a technical background can understand it.”

Episode Overview: Imagine one stop-shop for all your business needs. Invoicing/ CRM/ Marketing/ Social Media/ Webforms/ Landing Pages are so much more.

In this episode, we chat about how to:

• TIEIT is the complete supporting ecosystem for businesses
• Inspired from headaches that they faced and other businesses face
• Validate your ideas by networking
• Leveraging AI as the foundation to the system
• The importance of networking
• One stop shop

It always seems impossible until it is done

Nelson Mendela

Recommended Resources: Book Recommendation:

• Connect the Dots: How to Turn Strangers into Meaningful Networking Relationships
• You Are a Bada** by Jen Sincero

Favorite Canadian Hotspot:

• Fairy Lake Park in Newmarket, Toronto
• Pho Fusion in Bayview Ave., Newmarket

About TIEIT: TIEIT is changing the way businesses operate and becomes the backbone of an organization helping teams improve efficiency, collaboration and captures all important data. TIEIT is made up of all essential modules that any business needs from sales, marketing, billing, scheduling and more, all under one, powerful and easy to use application. TIEIT recently won Innovation of the Year and Jessica received Entrepreneur of the Year by the Newmarket Chamber.

Jessica’s creativity and strategic approach to building partnerships have been crucial in creating and fostering successful business relationships to scale the company at a rapid rate. Jessica is deeply passionate about building a company that drives value to its clients.

Connect with Jessica: Website: TIEITApp.com and MAASPros.com

Facebook: MaaS Pros Facebook and TieiT Facebook

LinkedIn: Jessica Rawlley on LinkedIn

Twitter: @JRawlley

View Details

Tabitha always worked in different kinds of jobs, across different industries, and in varied roles but the one thing all her jobs have had in common is that she always work to help people get smarter about themselves, so they can make their own best decisions for life. The cannabis industry was really the first place where she felt like she fit- not necessarily because of cannabis, but really because it's a place for pioneers, and she really likes doing things first, before anyone else has had a chance to do it.

SUBSCRIBE TO CANINNOVATE

iTunes| iHeart | Stitcher | Google | Spotify | SoundCloud

Episode Overview: This is for those that are curious about the Cannabis industry. Here are some points that Tabitha and I talked about in this episode:

• Stigmas around Cannabis
• Edibles - what is legal & what’s not
• Therapeutic Benefits
• Women’s Health Benefits from Cannabis - I had zero clue
• Controversial topics such as Sex & Cannabis and she’s currently doing research
• Cannabis & Parenting - how to talk to your kids.
• Tips for if you’re a newbie and some best practices

Tabitha Fritz was nominated as a trailblazer, challenging the norm from Steven Looi, both a podcast guest and listener. We had Steven on the podcast talking about the Cannabis Industry on episode 18. Seems like a lifetime ago. Steven always knows the movers and shakers in the Cannabis Industry.

Tune in to Steven Looi's episode here

Tabitha sleeps soundly at night knowing that cannabis is changing the world, and she’s helping to make that happen.

About Mihi: Mīhī is a collective of people just like you, who are impassioned by the potential cannabis has for each of us. They are on a mission to make it an accepted and positive part of life.

They understand that cannabis consumption is different for everyone and should be customized to meet individual lifestyles and needs.

They believe in the importance of community. For them, this means both the neighborhoods in which they operate, as well as the community of entrepreneurs in cannabis. That is why they are partnering with local craft growers, accessory suppliers, and local community groups and artisans.

Connect with Tabitha: Website: MihiCannabis.ca

LinkedIn: Tabitha Frtiz

Twitter: @PenelopesWrist and @MihiCannabis

Instagram: @minicannabis

View Details

Scott Ste Marie is the Founder of Depression to Expression and has been speaking openly about his experience with clinical depression and an anxiety disorder since 2013. More importantly, he shares how he manages these illnesses successfully.

SUBSCRIBE TO CANINNOVATE

iTunes| iHeart | Stitcher | Google | Spotify | SoundCloud

Episode Overview: I had a great time chatting with Scott this week. Tune in and learn how you can lessen depression, the benefits of opening up and much more.

Scott and I sit down and chat about some topics that aren’t easy to talk about - we talk about everything from depression to social anxiety to how he’s making this topic something easy for people to understand. You should check out his Depression to Expression YouTube videos - they are COLORFUL!!!

I can’t wait to hear your feedback!

Scott first experienced depression and extreme anxiety while in his first year at University. During recovery, he found himself learning about mental health and taking charge of his own well-being. Upon graduation, his motivation for personal development has never been stronger. Scott’s passion lies in mental health where he hosts a YouTube Channel Depression to Expression and helps those who suffer from mood disorders.

His approach is to not only encourage people to alter their mind state by cognitive exercises but also to involve the body. In Scott’s experience, he says depression has been a blessing in disguise because he now takes nothing for granted and recognizes what is truly important in life.

Scott has been sharing his story of depression and anxiety for over 5 years and teaching others to feel confident in their self-expression. His mission is to empower people by helping them realize that depression and anxiety are not weaknesses but an opportunity for personal growth and development.

Scott’s message has reached over 10 million people through online media which supports the fact that the need for mental health education is needed. Scott is dedicated to Depression to Expression and lives his passion everyday single day.

About Depression to Expression: Depression to Expression started as an online mental health support community and is now serving over 150,000 members, reaching over 10 million people around the world. Offline, Scott provides workshops and presentations to schools and businesses in Toronto, creating an honest dialogue about mental health.

Depression to Expression recognizes all those who are affected by mental illness. They provide a refreshing perspective on what mental health means and offer strategies, coping tools and education to individuals, schools, and corporations.

Mission:

Create an honest dialogue about mental health by educating and inspiring people to express themselves freely with confidence.

Recommended Resources: * Watch Scott's YouTube videos * Meditation * Being mindful about yourself and your body * Writing a journal

Connect with Scott: Website: DepressiontoExpression.com

YouTube Channel: Depression to Expression

Instagram: @depressiontoexpression

Facebook: Depression to Expression

Twitter: @expressionscott

LinkedIn: Scott Ste Marie

View Details

Evan Carmichael TRULY believes in entrepreneurs. At 19, he built then sold a biotech software company. At 22, he was a venture capitalist helping to raise $500,000 to $15 million. He runs a YouTube Channel for Entrepreneurs with 1.7 MILLION subscribers, has written 4 Books and speaks globally. He TRULY breathes and bleeds entrepreneurship. He does daily Instagram live videos, answers everyone’s questions. He's truly obsessed, aiming to help one billion entrepreneurs and change the world.

Episode Overview: I know that I say that every episode is a GEM, but I can’t help. I truly get inspired by everyone and I’m so grateful for the guests and our listeners out there. However, this episode is really special to me. I get to chat with THE Evan Carmichael, who has changed the way I think! From hitting the snooze button to helping me find my purpose.

Evan is giving away a signed copy of his book Your One Word. Click here to join or tune in at the last section of this episode.

In this Episode, Evan and I talked about:

• How people can figure out their untapped potential. We all have something to offer the world and he provides tools for us to figure that out
• We talk about how pain really serves a purpose and will help us identify our ‘Purpose’ and One Word
• He even started a FREE GIRLBOSS series where you get daily videos for 254 days of wisdom & inspiration from women that are crushing it!
• We talk about how it takes 254 days to build a habit that becomes automatically embedded in our lives
• Oh yeah… he shares his thoughts about how to beat the ‘BATTLE OF THE ALARM CLOCK!”
• And so much more…

By the way, stick around to the end of the podcast and hear how you can get a signed copy of ‘One Word’ by Evan Carmichael. This book has seriously become one of my top 10 business books and I have bought so many copies and gave them away as gifts!

I came across Evan Carmichael a few years ago with his YouTube video series for Entrepreneurs which has over 1.7 Million subscribers. I was so surprised to find out that he was Canadian. I honestly should’ve known. The clues were right there, his love for Tim Hortons & Toronto Blue Jays. But, i was so enchanted by his content and his video series.

If you don’t know who Evan Carmichael is, you’re truly missing out. This is how Gary V describes Evan Carmichael.

“Evan consumes so much content and then knows how to DJ it to inspire people.”

Gary Vaynerchuk

Those are pretty big words and high praises from someone like Gary V. Evan is such a force that has made it his mission to help people to tap into their potential. He wants us to #BELIEVE in ourselves…

Evan has set two world records, uses a stand-up desk & has a giant Doritos bag in front of him all day long to remind him and he’s STRONGER than the Doritos. Talk about dedication and commitment.

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Evan a few times, he has invited me to be on his Instagram Live, his workshop and I’ll tell you this, he is so down to earth, HUMBLE, kind and genuine. What you see on Instagram/YouTube is EXACTLY what he’s like except that he’s over 6’ feet tall. A giant!

I ended up recording this podcast episode while Evan was driving on his 90 day tour. Yup, he did 23 cities in 90 days. I am so grateful for his time and we end up chatting about so many things.

Book Recommendation: * Your One Word by Evan Carmichael * The Top 10 Rules for Success by Evan Carmichael * 254 Confidence by Evan Carmichael

Connect with Evan: Website: EvanCarmichael.com

Instagram: @EvanCarmichael

YouTube: Evan Carmichael: Modeling the Masters

Facebook: Evan Carmichael

View Details

Having experienced dynamic challenges and barriers throughout her personal life and career, while falling in love with tea somewhere along the way, Sheena decided to combine passion and purpose through entrepreneurship. After becoming a certified Tea Sommelier, through the Tea & Herbal Association of Canada, Sheena decided to combine passion and purpose through entrepreneurship.

Tease Tea was born as an outlet to self empower through tea while also supporting women around the world. A portion of proceeds from every order supports organizations dedicated to the empowerment of women through Tease Tea's Charity Program.

In 5 short years, Sheena has built Tease Tea as solopreneur side hustle out of her condo to a million dollar business empowering tea lovers in 30+ countries.

Save your spot on Tease Tea Founders Fund

Episode Overview: This is another guest recommendation from Adrian Salamunovic the co-author of the Free PR book. Innovators tend to hang out with other innovators that are changing and challenging the norm. You're going to love our guest, Sheena Brady.

This episode is a game changer! I get to chat with Sheena Brady who is the CEO & founder of Tease Teas. We talk about:

• Did you know that Tea Sommelier is a thing? A real thing? Crazy eh?
• Tease Teas unique business model
• Her entrepreneurial challenges & how she is always giving back
• Tease Tea Founders Fund - $20K GRANT that you don’t need to pay back. That was inspired by the painful challenges that she had to growing her business
• From cash flow challenges, which many many innovators have talked about
• Lack of support from banks to help navigate entrepreneurs to understanding & interpreting their balance sheet metrics
• AND.. of course, I had to find out what her favourite tea is.
• Tea Sommelier, through the Tea & Herbal Association of Canada

About Tease Tea Founders Fund: No payback, no equity — just access up to $20,000 worth of funding to grow your venture. The fund has been invested in by other budding entrepreneurs who are looking to pay it forward to the next generation of social entrepreneurs. The fund is brought to you by Tease Tea which aims to self empower through your tea desires, all while empowering women around the world.

Application Process: * 8 questions + video submission. * Selection committee scores applications. * Top 10 announced- 2 recipients will receive the available funding. * All applicants will have access to the digital mentorship. During the incubator period.

Registration and Cut off: * April 9th 2019 Applications Open * May 3rd Applications Close * May 22nd Winners Announced * Up to $20 000 in available funding

About Tease: Tease Team believe you can self empowered by choosing the right tea to compliment your goals and desires while empowering women around the world. They take pride in working with tea packers who source from the top 10% grade of tea gardens from around the globe that are sustainably managed. With so many great tea companies that focus on traditional or classic teas and tea blends, their approach is modern, and about your goals & desires while supporting other women around the world.

What is a tease? To them, being a tease means confidently leaving your mark. To inspire and empower yourself and those around you, leaving them wanting more.

Resources Mentioned: * Tease Tea Founders Fun * Tea Sommelier * Adrian Salamunovic Episode: How To Get Press Attention Without Hiring A PR Firm Using The FREE PR Book

Connect with Sheena Website: TeaseTea.com and TeaseTeaFoundersFund.com

LinkedIn: Sheena Brady

Twitter: @Sheena_Brady and @Tease_Tea

Instagram: @Tease_Tea

Facebook: Tease Tea

View Details

Yvonne is a Change Strategist and Change Leadership Advocate with over 17 years of change experience helping professionals and organizations to implement and transition through change.

SUBSCRIBE TO CANINNOVATE

iTunes| iHeart | Stitcher | Google | Spotify | SoundCloud

She is genuinely passionate about change and has worked with a broad range of organizations globally to help lead and manage their Strategic, Technology and Regulatory Change Initiatives.

She is also the founder of The Change Leadership, a series of events and conferences focused on preparing leaders, change professionals and organisations to lead change in today's fast-paced and disruptive business environment.

Episode Overview: * How Yvonne’s passion for change, comes from a pain point * Did you know that 50% of existing jobs will disappear, but more jobs will be created * The importance of reading the writing on the wall & how employees can get prepared for it * We chat about the future of work and how organizations can start to think differently * Essential leadership DNA & soft skills needs to include empathy, EI & collaboration * I even learned a new term.. Ambivert in between an Extrovert and introvert

There are so many things that you’ll learn on this episode with Yvonne.

"Your home should always rise to meet you" - Oprah Winfrey

About Change the Leadership: The Change Leadership envisions a future where a new type of leadership ideology thrives. One in which leaders of organizations and governments bridge emergent technology and innovation with the sustainability of employees, customers, the communities in which they do business, in the face of change, and are benevolently rewarded for doing so.

Our purpose is to foster a culture of change leaders who respond better and faster to the uncertainties stemming from disruption, innovation and technology permeating all industry sectors in a rapidly changing world.

Recommended Resources: Tools Recommendation:

• Audible
• Blinkist.com
• BrainFood Book Club

Book Recommendation:

• Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson
• Captivology by Ben Parr
• This is Marketing by Seth Godin

Yvonne's Book:

• The Change You Want! Change Your Mindset, and Change Your Life
• The Change Your Want! Career Booster Guide & Workbook
• The Change You Want! Business Start-up Guide and Workbook

Connect with Yvonne: Website: TheChangeLeadership.com and YvonneRukeAkpoveta.com

LinkedIn: Yvonne Ruke Akpoveta

Twitter: @OliveBlueInc and @TheChangeLead

Instagram: @yvonnerakpoveta

Facebook: Olive Blue Inc

View Details

Margaret (Margo) Wu is a Vice-President on the Georgian Partners investment team involved in deal sourcing, due diligence and supporting portfolio companies. Prior to joining Georgian Partners, Margaret was a Senior Product Manager at Amazon, where she developed mobile metrics and content strategies for marketers and site merchandisers across Europe.

Previous to this, she co-founded a biotech company called Uma Bioseed and served as the Chief Operating Officer at OneSpout.com, where she held a variety of responsibilities ranging from business development and product management to finance and accounting.

While there, she helped the company grow to a peak of 350,000 users. Margaret began her career as a consultant in Accenture’s technology practice.

Episode Overview: This episode is all about VC's (Venture Capital) but how to make a lasting impression and get that investment. This is relevant episode to everyone that wants to make an impression in their corporate world (with their bosses), networking .. wherever you are pitching something.

In this episode, Margaret Wu and I talk about:

• How Georgian Partners differentiate from other & areas of focus
• How to get noticed by VCs - warm handshakes
• What to do and what NOT to do!
• Best practices based on the numerous mistakes that entrepreneurs make
• How Toronto job market is bigger than Silicon Valley and others - tonnes of opportunities
• Books, Books Books!!! I’m seriously thinking of starting a business book club

About Gregorian Partners: Georgian Partners is a thesis-driven growth equity funds currently investing in 4 areas where we believe that first movers will outperform their market competitors: Applied AI, Conversational AI, Security First, and Trust.

Lessons Learned: * Fail fast - figure out which one works for you * If you are meeting a VC, it is like going on a first date. You have to be bring a little bit of compassion, be an interesting person. * You have to be able to articulate your vision in a very convincing way. * Don't approach a VC if there are errors in your numbers

Book Recommended: * Art of the Start 2.0 by Guy Kawasaki * Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson * Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days by Jessica Livingston

Connect with Margaret: Website: Georgian Partners

LinkedIn: Margaret Wu and Georgian Partners

Twitter: @GeorgianPrtnrs

Facebook: Georgian Partners

View Details

Tricia Brouk is an award winning director. In addition to her work in the entertainment industry, she applies her expertise to the art of public speaking. She’s the executive producer of Speakers Who Dare, a TEDx producer and she's choreographed Black Box on ABC, The Affair on Showtime, Rescue Me on Fox, and John Turturro’s Romance and Cigarettes, where she was awarded a Golden Thumb Award from Roger Ebert.

The series Sublets, won Best Comedy at the Vancouver Web-Festival. The documentary short she directed and produced This Dinner is Full was official selection at The New York Women in Film and Television Short Festival, as well as the New York City Independent Film Festival. She curates and hosts the Speaker Salon in NYC, The Big Talk a podcast on iTunes and directs and produces The Big Talk Over Dinner a new TV series.

Episode Overview: * How to create the WOW factor when introducing yourself * Confidence tips in how to engage new people * Common speaker mistakes * What makes a great speaker * How to connect with a speaker after a big talk * And so much more

If you are clearly yourself and not who you think they want you to be; you will be authentic. They will trust you and there will be so many connections where people will introduce themselves.

Confidence tips in how to engage new people

• Practice communicating to people
• Create a scenario of mild stress - practicing in front of the mirror won't work because your body will betray you. You will get butterflies in your stomach, you will get sweaty palms or dry lips but if you practice under mild stress, you will know what to do when you have butterflies in your stomach.
• Practice the art of asking people about themselves. When you are an active listener, people will remember you far more than if it is only about you.

Best tips on how to engage with the speakers after their speeches

As a speaker, you must prepare of the "after party". People will come ask you questions or come to you to get your energy and ideas. So make sure your energy stays up. Make sure that you stay engage with your audience.

If you are someone who wanted to talk to the speaker, find out who is the speaker's assistant is and email the assistant so that your email or message will go directly to the speaker. This is because most speakers are really tired and won't remember every conversation that he or she had after the event.

How to look for a speaker:

What Tricia looks for in a speaker is the idea. If the idea moves her and she thinks that the world needs to hear about it, then she will move to the next phase which is knowing who this person is whether they are aligned in their lives and in their business idea, are they willing to talk about it and finding out if they are good human beings.

Common mistakes a speaker makes:

• Air quotes
• Blaming anyone else for any technical issues
• Never apologize for any mistakes

Resources: Speaker's Training: The Speakers Salon

Get The 7 Step Formula to a Fearless Speaking by texting TRICIA to the numbers 44-222

Connect with Tricia: Website: TriciaBrouk.com

Facebook: The Big Talk with Tricia Brouk

LinkedIn: Tricia Brouk

Twitter: @TriciaBrouk

View Details

Nicole Holland is named in the Huffington Post as one of “50 Must-Follow Women Entrepreneurs in 2017”, interviewed on over 100 trending podcasts, and featured in publications such as Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazine, Nicole provides elite level done-for-you Podcast Publicity services and consults on strategic visibility to help innovative thought leaders, disruptors, and change makers increase their brand recognition, credibility, and profitability.

Episode Overview: Here are some key learnings from this episode, Nicole and I chat about:

• The importance of personal brand
• People want to connect and understand people behind the brand
• The importance of connecting with those that have the same values as you
• How being original can really elevate your personal brand
• Where transparency fits into things
• How Seth Godin describes that podcasting is the new blog
• How podcast guesting can elevate your brand & connect with audiences
• Serve first and provide value

The importance of personal brand “It’s important to build your personal brand so that people know you.”

Nowadays, social media has put such an importance on knowing people, knowing about the people and figuring out who your dealing with rather than the brand and who is behind the brand and what they stand for.

The thing that got most people stuck is that the idea of how they want to be and it is incongruent of how they want to be. Nicole drops tips for whoever wants to get out of there and get their brand out

Tips about personal branding:

• Present yourself well, be authentic and be willing to let your guard down
• Make sure that your true self and forward facing self are in alignment before you go out there and present yourself

Tips on how to elevate yourself more than the crowd:

• You can get more of what you want if you can show more of what, who and how you are.

• People connect with people that are similar

• Allow yourself to be who you are without trying to play anything down

How Seth Godin describes that podcasting is the new blog

According to Nicole, podcasting is reaching the point where it is mainstream. This is because of today’s technology which allows us to download and listen to any content that we like anywhere. Podcasting is also very exciting.

Seth Godin’s Blog: Podcasting is the new blogging

How podcast guesting can elevate your brand & connect with audiences

Podcast guesting is also getting a lot of buzz because it is “easy”. Guests doesn’t have to prepare much when it comes to being a guest on a podcast, they could just be at their home without wearing makeup on or dressing to impress. To become a podcast guests and being out there everywhere, WITHOUT a clear plan of action and a clear understanding of who you are speaking to will waste so much of your time.

Tips before applying to be a podcast guest:

• Have a clear plan of action of who do you need to reach, what shows that they are listening to that have interviews and why do you want to be on that particular show.
• How can you give value first to the host before asking for a spot on their show.
• When you give time to give value first, you will find that people want to give you something back in return.
• You should never reach out to a podcast host without even listening to their show. In that way, you will know if you are a right fit for you.
• The host is the listeners trust and they are listeners.

Connect with Nicole: Website: www.TheNicoleHolland.com

Twitter: @Niczthename

Facebook: The Nicole Holland

Instagram: @thenicoleholland

LinkedIn: Nicole Holland

Podcast: BBRShow

View Details

Eran Ben-Ari is Top Hat’s Chief Product Officer, and oversees all product-related functions, including product management, development, design and analytics. 10 years ago our founders, while students at the University of Waterloo, felt there had to be a better way to drive engagement in the classroom. Today, Top Hat’s active learning technology helps professors easily engage students and build comprehension before, during and after class.

Episode Overview: This episode has a lot of ‘AH HA’ moments that got me really excited. In this episode you’ll learn:

• How Top Hat is disrupting the educational industry at three different layers. Students, professors and textbook authors
• Even revisiting the publishing model of textbooks
• Their unique go to market & sales strategy
• Eran is pursuing Anthropology of Technology, which has me quite intrigued.
• Driving engagement in the classroom that really embraces active learning
• Embracing the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) model in the classroom
• Creating an Agile teaching platform for instructors

This episode is great for those educators, human resources, learning professionals and anyone who wants to make learning really STICK!

Top Hat is disrupting three different components or facets of higher education or teaching today.

• How the courses are actually being delivered and for the first time, active learning can be used at scale to leverage technology. Active learning is the ability of students to learn a little bit of interaction or engagement.
• Professors and teachers today are not as tech savvy as their students so most of them are struggling on how they can shine, how they can bring to life or realize why they came to this profession in the first place which is to really make an impact to their learners. Top Hat created a community of instructors, teachers are no longer alone in teaching and that it infused on Top Hat’s content.
• The third disruption is about how they create content

“Students or learners nowadays have really short attention span”

Students are craving to study and learn in a more non-traditional way. Eran shared how students in this generation have shorter attention space and are often multi-tasking even when there is an instructor or a teacher speaking in front of them.

Classrooms are also getting larger and larger which also caused to the increase of students that a teacher can handle to be able to successfully make an interaction between the student and a teacher. Many of the more technology that we are introduced in the classrooms, they did not place the professors at the heart of what they are building because it was either for the students or the administrator. That created a lot of friction on how they use that technology in the classroom which created a disjointed experience when they are trying to learn in the classroom.

How Top Hat got into Universities:

The founders thought that if they focus on the professor and making sure that there are real value for the professor and at the same time, bring in the students as the paying customer. This will create a very fast adoption.

Lessons Learned:

• Focus on the professors and not everyone at the same time
• There is a lot of really valuable impact on the real time feedback system
• If you build, almost as of a reward system to student to play along with these new mode of teaching they can really harness the lessons.

Resource Recommendation: Book Recommendation: The Interpretation Of Cultures Paperback by Clifford Geertz

Favorite Hot Spot: Hey Brothers

About Top Hat: Top Hat is a higher education teaching app that makes active learning come to life. Their suite of easy-to-use tools address four teaching challenges: student engagement; textbook affordability and customizability; student comprehension; and secure test administration. More than 2 million students at 750 of the top 1,000 colleges and universities in North America have used Top Hat.

Connect with Eran: Website: TopHat.com

Facebook: Top Hat

LinkedIn: Top Hat LinkedIn

Twitter: @tophat

Instagram: @tophathq

View Details

This week, I lost a dear friend of mine - Laura Holdcroft (Laura Kraemer). This episode is definitely dedicated to Laura. She was my roommate when I was studying, I was her Maid of Honour and she was just the most beautiful person inside and out.

As I was thinking of her, I really regretted not seeing her more often. We’d text and communicate but, I wish I would’ve seen her more often. It got me thinking, about how much I appreciated all the things that she taught me and brought into my life. The laugher, the chats, advice and just being free to be ourselves without judgement.

It got me thinking about others in my life. What was I grateful for.. It lead me to do some research, I know… I’m a consultant, I can’t help but research. I started to wonder what is the definition of gratitude. Harvard medical School had a great definition:

“A thankful appreciation for what an individual receives, whether tangible or intangible. With gratitude, people acknowledge the goodness in their lives. As a result, gratitude also helps people connect to something larger than themselves as individuals – whether to other people, nature, or a higher power”

There are so many definitions out there. What was fascinating to me was that there are 2 stages of gratitude according to Dr. Robert Emmons:

1. The acknowledgement of goodness in one’s life. That we actually are saying YES to life.
2. That some of the sources of this ‘goodness’ is coming from outside ourselves.

What I find wonderful about this art of recognizing and be grateful, is that this recognition is being done unconditionally and unprompted from something. We are not doing it as an exchange in return. We are doing it because something or someone has given us ‘something that is valuable to us and allows us to appreciate life’. It’s a really great article from positive psychology program. Read the Gratitude Appreciation here.

Then, I started to wonder what are the benefits of being grateful. We have learned the positive benefits for being vulnerable, but what about gratitude. I have been hearing about gratitude journals for years. Didn’t think much of them of them till today.

Robert Emmons did some research about the study of gratitude. Here were some interesting findings:

1. Improved Well Being- being grateful made people more agreeable, open and less neurotic
2. Relationships - tend to be more willing to forgive others and less narcissistic
3. Optimism & Happiness - increased optimism, which makes sense because we’ve have learned that gratitude means that we are saying YES to Life. Which, apparently also reduces your inner fears. Love this one. This article from Wanderlustworker stated that it’s a hard to be fearful and grateful at the same time. I guess it makes sense. We are optimistic about the future.
4. Stronger Self Control - This one surprised me. I’m just going to read what it says in this article. “Self-Control helps us to be disciplined and focused and to persist with what is subjectively the most important for our long-term well-being. A study by DeSteno et al. in 2014 found that self-control significantly increased when subjects chose gratitude over happiness and feeling neutral. One of the study’s authors, Professor Ye Li, said:

“Showing that emotion can foster self-control and discovering a way to reduce impatience with a simple gratitude exercises opens up tremendous possibilities for reducing a wide range of societal ills from impulse buying and insufficient saving to obesity and smoking.”

I had to digest this one for awhile to reconcile it in my head. I guess, if we are always thinking coulda, woulda shoulda and thinking about regrets, then we are looking backwards. But, if we starting to be more in the moment and appreciating the gifts that are around us, we tend to look to the future and about our future self vision and goals.

What I learned is that gratitude will give us an overall better life. It makes sense, we are in the moment not looking back. Seeing all the different elements that we appreciate and being thankful & grateful for these things. It would make life taste a little sweeter. By the way, this article had mentioned another study that was done by McCraty and colleagues in 1998 that stated that there was a 23% reduction in the stress hormone cortisol.

So, being in the moment and being grateful, we ended up having better lives, stronger self control, lower level of stress and more. I’m in! I’ve definitely drank the Kool Aid.

But where to start?

1. Listing all the people in your life that you appreciate. Your mom, dad, siblings, friends, colleagues etc… let’s not forget those mentors, those that inspire you, your boss, colleagues and so on. There are so people in your life that go above and beyond to make things easier for you.
2. On that list, has there been someone that has done something that you truly appreciate, but may not have thanked them?
3. What did you appreciate? Write it down.
4. Send them a note or even a letter. Who gets thank you cards or letters anymore? What a double surprise to provide.

To my CanInnovate podcast listeners, I am really thankful that you invest in the time to hear me each week. I am always so grateful, when I get an email or review that told me what resonated with you. How it helped you. I often think that when I’m doing this episodes, that I’m just talking to myself. Like a little girl, pretending to hold an Oscar or pretending to do a cooking show. Those emails and messages that I get, are the most precious gift to me. So, I truly thank you all.

So, my dear friend Laura. I’m sooo grateful for having you in my life. You taught me how to be level headed and funny at the same time. Laura, used to work at Sick Kids Hospital in the Infectious disease division. Everytime I struggled with a problem at work and thought it was the end of the world. We’ve all had those moments. Laura, you always provided me with a real perspective. You really saw different dimensions of life. The good, the sad and the miracles. I thank you for all of those things.

I encourage each and everyone of you to take a pause and think about all the things that you’re grateful for.

In fact, I’ve had the Golden Girls theme song stuck in my head for the past few days. So, I thought I’d close with this.

Thank you for being a friend.

Travel down the road and back again.

Your heart is true, you're a pal and a confidant.

And if you threw a party, invited everyone you knew.

You would see the biggest gift would be from me

and the card attached would say, thank you for being a friend

Till next week

Have you checked out the episode about Vulnerability: Episode 58: Vulnerability - the New Advantage

Golden Girls YouTube Song

Articles mentioned in this blog:

Wonderlust Worker: 7 Crucial Reasons Why Gratitude Can Change Your Life

Positive Psychology Program: Gratitude Appreciation

Gratitude Journals:

The One-Minute Gratitude Journal by Brenda Nathan

The Five Minute Journal: A Happier You in 5 Minutes a Day by Intelligent Change

View Details

Based in Toronto, Canada, David is the founder of The Poirier Group - a global company that specializes in helping organizations to implement and integrate significant change successfully. He is a Senior Executive who offers extensive experience in the retail, general merchandise, food distribution, health and life sciences and manufacturing industries, creating and executing operational strategies, business transformation and process improvements that positively impact organizations.

Episode Overview: This episode is for those that are in service based industry. In order to be successful in a service based industry, you need to provide SERVICE. That’s exactly what The Poirier Group has done to achieve a 100% referral rate.

This episodes, we talk about how:

• Impacts of value systems
• Consulting organizations are changing
• How consulting provides essential life skills
• Secrets of the values of success including his 100% Referral Rate
• And so much more

Impacts of Poirier Group 4 value system :

• Learning
• Serving
• Excellence
• Integrity

Consulting organizations are changing Technology plays big role not only for Poirier’s client but also for other consulting organizations with the use of artificial intelligence, machine learning and other tools that are available today are dramatically changing the ability and time-frame to deliver results.

It is important for organizations like the Poirier to embrace that technology so that they can compete going forward rather than waiting for the technology to go to them and make them redundant overtime.

How consulting provides essential life skills We are in so many different industries with so many different situations that it helps grow our skills constantly. These skills that we learn in the process are so valuable in life. The Poirier group focuses more on the team performance rather than the personal performance. Pushing personal performance in one organization often leads to competition to one another.

Lessons Learned: Find a balance on yourself between your work time, family time and recharging time; be rigorous and disciplined around those areas in order to make sure that you are creating the most fulfilling time of your life as you can.

Sales and Marketing Tips: * To measure your success, know if you have succeeded your customers expectations * Reach for a goal that will make your customer say “You are not like any other consultants” * Look for a way for your customers/clients to say “We are glad to be a reference or a referral for you” * Keep an ongoing communications on your clients

Book Recommendation: Measure what Matters by John Doerr

About Poirier Group: The Poirier Group is a natural progression for David, who offers extensive experience in the retail, general merchandise, food distribution, health and life sciences and manufacturing industries. He thrives on creating and executing operational strategies, organizational transformations and process improvements that deliver on all business levels - particularly in complex and ever-changing business environments.

Connect with David: Website: ThePoirierGroup.com

LinkedIn: David Poirier

Twitter: @thepoiriergroup

Facebook: The Poirier Group

View Details

Meredith Messenger is VERY well versed in the demands of running a one-person shop and the struggles that many startups have with developing predictable revenue. She is the founder of Selling With Soul and the host of the Selling With Soul podcast.

She is a Revenue Coach and Sales Consultant offering revenue strategy development, sales consulting and sales team building to start-ups, small and mid-sized companies. The mission of Selling With Soul is to help more small businesses survive, thrive and impact the world.

Episode Overview: * How to make sales NOT so SCARY! * How Sales is an essential life skill * If the art of Cold Calling is Dead * Sales Pet Peeves * Common Sales mistakes & tips to how to avoid them! * How to utilize Sales Technology

I also have another freebie for you - I just recently recorded a webinar on common sales proposal mistakes. Click here

How to make sales NOT so SCARY! People have a negative impression on sales because they have gone through negative sales experience.

“We all hate that feeling of being sold to like we are trapped and we can’t get out on the conversation with the person who doesn't care about us at all and who just want to push their product on us”

These experience doesn't make us feel good and so we tend to bring up this emotion and experience when we talk about sales. When you are being sold to effectively and you didn’t know that, it doesn’t feel negative at all.

In out of the business world, people tend to makes sales a little more complicated when it doesn’t have to be. Meredith’s mission and motto is to find how to we simplify sales, how do we put the fun back in sales and convince people that it is just about serving another person.

How sales is an essential life skill Instead of making sales a thing about generating revenue, we should look at sales at a university level as a part of how we operate. An example that Meredith gave is when she had a negative sales experience in LinkedIn when someone sent her a message and tries to sell something about sales coaching. Immediately this made her feel that the person sending her the message is really obnoxious because it plainly tells her that these people don’t care about who she is, who didn’t even look at her profile and even worst, trying to sell a sales coaching program to a certified sales consultant.

This action tells us that if they are sending this message to her, they are also doing it to thousands of people who are on LinkedIn and this gives a bad impression to all sales person.

Measuring the right metrics are really important because if we are pushing all of our people just to hit activity numbers, we are pushing for the wrong things and that is where our quality starts to suffer.

Is Cold Calling Dead? According to Meredith, cold calling is a hot and highly debated topic because there are people who stand very firm in saying that YES it is dead and says everything can be sold through social selling but there are also people saying NO because outbound reach is very critical to a business.

In Meredith’s point of view, there is no right or wrong answers to this because there are companies who are doing cold calling and outbound emails who are doing it really well and it also depend of the type of people you are talking to. There are also people who are using social selling all the time and are doing really good but you also have to understand what social selling is.

Social selling is just providing value and getting into a point where they can get a phone call or a meeting from you because you provided value.

Tip:

When you are at that point of your business, you have to proactively develop business. The business is not going to come to you and so therefor, outreach that area where a lot of people get really uncomfortable, talking to people they don’t know in one form or another has to happen in order for your business to be successful.

Check out Selling with Soul Podcast Leveraging Technology to Make Sales With Miles Austin

Big mistakes that start-ups usually make: * People don’t ask for the business * Rushing the sales cycle * Just because you are the seller doesn't mean you have the say on everything than the buyer does.

Recommended Tools: * Nimble.com * SalesForce.com * HubSpot.com * Mailchimp.com * Drip.com * Bots

Book Recommendations: * Selling Boldly by Alex Goldfayn * Little Red Book by Jeffrey Gitomer * Stop Selling and Start Selling by James M. Kouzes

About Selling with Soul Podcast: Selling With Soul is on a mission to enable more women to enter into entrepreneurship and grow a profitable business that changes the world while supporting their family through education, inspiration and support.

Social Media: Website: MeredithMessenger.com

Twitter: @MerMessenger

Facebook: Selling With Soul Podcast

LinkedIn: Meredith Messenger

Podcast: Selling with Soul Podcast

View Details

Ross Andrew Paquette is the founder and CEO of Maropost, North America’s fastest growing marketing automation company, as ranked by the Deloitte Technology Fast 500. After founding Maropost in 2011, Ross has gone on to double annual growth every year since, turning a one-man operation into an international business. Acting as the strategic center of the company, Ross is responsible for determining both business and development direction.

“Let us go invent today rather than what happened yesterday” - Steve jobs

Episode Overview: In this episode, Ross Andrew Paquette talks about the value of delivering great customer services and scaling your business. Here we will learn:

• Why is this important for small-medium sized businesses?
• Sales and Marketing Tips
• Understanding how marketing and sales strategy works
• Introducing Maropost platforms that brings CRM and Email Marketing into a seamless platform
• The difference of how mid-market and small businesses uses CRM and Email marketing platforms

How did you come up with the idea of Maropost? Ross started out as a sales representative in a small tech startup in Ontario and in a short time he really understood the value of customers and what they needed in order to move their companies forward.

Maropost started out as an email marketing space which as of today, focuses on mid-market and enterprises. Maropost is a B2C, cloud-based revenue optimization suite that gives companies the ability to increase cross-channel customer engagement to maximize revenue.

Their first product was the email marketing and the social media marketing platform and recently they launched their second product which is a CRM in the service and support arena.

Why is this important for small-medium sized businesses? A lot of small businesses knows about MailChimp or other CRM and email automation software while Maropost is incorporating both pieces in their product to make it more seamless. Therefore, their customers can actually see the sales lead and marketing leads that they are sending out there so they will be able to actually close the actual sale.

“When you think about the amount solutions any organization uses, there is a huge cost from a time perspective and the resources that you have in place to make that happen.”

Email marketing and CRM are the backbone of any company which Maropost provides.

Maropost is currently focusing on a single customer view. The unfortunate thing about single customer view is that there are only a few platforms that provides this service. One the important thing that Ross also noticed is that nobody ever talks about the customer life cycle for a while, which is very important in any businesses out there.

Here are some of the customer life-cycle:

• Customer acquisition which is more on the marketing side
• Purchase process

Ross at first didn’t have a marketing strategy when he started Maropost but he went to $25M in annual revenues during your 1st 5 years. His initial innovative approach is to brought in clients and then client referrals.

What excites Ross about this industry: Ross is really excited about the single customer view which is not all about the sales and marketing. What it really means to Ross is to define who your core personas or customer and lead groups are that you are going to be marketing and selling your products to.

In addition, Ross is really excited about the evolution of sales, marketing and AI evolution and how AI we would incorporate AI into providing us with more in depth understanding on what we can do to our lead groups in marketing and sales perspective.

Sales and Marketing Tips: * Pushing the limit is terms of what you idea or concept is, think of something that companies and individuals that could benefit from forever. * You don’t need someone to give you $500M to startup your idea * Doing most things for yourself will help you understand and see what your customers needed and what you need to do in order to help them * Have an idea that is bigger than yourself thinking of companies buying your business * Have a big vision and don’t be afraid for people to see it. * Putting the right system in place is critical

About Maropost Maropost is a powerful platform designed to help businesses scale in every area — shaping the way organizations operate through technology. Ambitious, entrepreneurial, and results-focused, their team is committed to collaboration and innovation.

Above all else, they believe in building it themselves. Whether that means expanding their development team to create new products, or investing in professional development for promising employees—it starts with Maropost.

Connect with Ross: Website: Maropost.com

Instagram:

• @rossandrew
• @maropostcares
• @Maropost

Twitter:

• @RossAndrew
• @Maropost
• @MaropostCARES

Non-Profit: MaropostCARES.org

View Details

Mohamed is passionate about Blockchain technology and is committed to help growing the Blockchain ecosystem in Canada and around the world.

In addition to being CEO of Fast Access Blockchain, he is program manager at The BlockchainHub, a member of the Blockchain Global Consortium and leads the C-Lab program, the first peer-to-peer community based incubation program for Blockchain startups.

Mohamed is also a recipient of the “Durland Innovation Award” for a Blockchain use case and is a holder of the “Beta Gamma Sigma Scholastic International Award”. He is a world traveller and speaker on Blockchain and also the Blockchain Global Ambassador.

SUBSCRIBE TO CANINNOVATE

iTunes| iHeart | Stitcher | Google | Spotify | SoundCloud

Episode Overview: * What is blockchain and why is it important * Other visual assets besides cryptocurrencies * How blockchain works from a security perspective * The connection between privacy and blockchain * Is there a dark side about blockchain? * Is the technology ready to support blockchain in the ICO perspective * Tips on how to get into blockchain as a clear specialty

What is blockchain and why is it important Blockchain is a decentralized ledger that can manage pier to pier transactions in human world.

Blockchain was made to solve the double step problem. Double step problem is a process for when we send money from our banks to our recipients, we no longer have access to that money once sent. As Mohamen quoted:

“If we are able today to send many email in just seconds why is it not the case for visual assets like money and this is why bitcoin came about, to solve this problem.“

Bitcoin is just one of the centralized technology but Mohamed gives credit to the bitcoin as one of the most viable application of technology. Blockchain came after bitcoin just to describe the technology that is powering the bitcoin or any application that ran on top of this technology.

Other visual assets besides cryptocurrencies: There is an evolution where some people call bitcoin blockchain 1.0 which is basically financial assets like money to move from different participants. After that, there is a debate from the local system which was, “if we are able to send the cryptocurrencies other visual assets can also be sent.”

Ethereum is an open-source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform and operating system featuring smart contract (scripting) functionality. Ether is a cryptocurrency whose blockchain is generated by the Ethereum platform.

One of the process that Mohamed is working on right now is called Artscryption which uses blockchain technology to secure payments, reduce forgery and creates value for arts for musicians and etc.

How blockchain works from a security perspective: Blockchain technology use cryptography which is the art of writing and solving codes and had been around for decades.

We have heard a lot of news about hacks and etc. but technically the blockchain has never been hacked. The bitcoin system has never been hacked especially. On the education perspective, we need to understand the technology and the tools as well.

The connection between privacy and blockchain: Using the bank as an example: when you open an account the bank will ask you for your ID, but they really don’t need all the information on your ID. However, they might choose to get an additional information that they have such as your age and address as a tool for marketing.

With blockchain technology, you can enable the self control of identity that give the power back to the users.

The country that has the highest adoption rate in blockchain is USA and Canada but other countries are already picking up on the blockchain. The understanding in blockchain has now evolved and other countries are already adopting it to use n terms of marketing and security.

Is there a dark side about blockchain? Mohamed tells us that there is a privacy paradigm when it comes to our transactions without really knowing the identity of the recipients. This is an issue in some cases but on the other side, if you look at the illegal traffic and etc, cryptocurrency is also used in drugs or illegal arms.

Mohamed think that today there is no in-depth research on how cryptocurrency is used in the dark side. It could be used but they don’t have the exact numbers about the problems. On the bright side, the blockchain technology has the chance to improve transparency .

Is the technology ready to support blockchain in the ICO perspective. ICO also known as Initial Coin Offering is the cryptocurrency space's rough equivalent to an IPO in the mainstream investment world. ICOs act as fundraisers of sorts; a company looking to create a new coin, app, or service launches an ICO

In these situations, we should be looking at used cases like the people using the world blockchain. The questions that people should be asking is; “is technology ready to support this kind of application? It is like YouTube in the mind’s safety which is impossible because the foundational technology which is the internet could not at that time support YouTube. So, it is a used case that really doesn’t make sense in the technology perspective.

Another example is when we are looking at the chain which is actually involved in the process like using people’s name and pictures and they are not even aware that they are part of the project which basically taken this extra step to talk into the people to get involve into the project.

Tips on how to get into blockchain as a clear specialty: There is a lot of opportunities in career for people who want to work in the blockchain because it is an industry that is rapidly evolving. Here are some tips that Mohamed gave us.

• Do some homework and reading about bitcoins and blockchains
• Understand what is the logic behind this technology
• Go to events and talk to people who are involved in doing projects
• Know and see if this is something you like to do
• Start educating yourself with the programs

Recommended Resources: Book Recommendation:

• Blockchain Revolution by Don Topscott
• Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy by Melanie Swan

Other sources:

• Medium
• Newsletters

Favorite Hotspot:

• The Rushton in St. Clair, Toronto

About Fast Act Blockchain: Fast Access Blockchain (FAB) is an enterprise-grade, next generation blockchain application platform for global enterprises that aim to fast track the adoption of blockchain technology. Using a unique architecture, it is scalable to over one million transactions per second.

Unlike other blockchain platforms for business which are mostly private or permissioned, FAB is a true public blockchain, providing the highest level of trust and reliability and includes pre-built applications that speed integration with existing enterprise systems.

FAB provides a comprehensive framework for large-scale applications for enterprises from all sectors to take advantage of the burgeoning, blockchain powered, decentralized trust economy.

Connect with Mohamed: LinkedIn: Mohamed El Kandri

Twitter: @FAB_coin

Website:

• Fast Access Blockchain
• The Blockchain Hub

View Details

Dr. Ann Cavoukian is recognized as one of the world's leading privacy experts. She is currently the Distinguished Expert-in-Residence, leading the Privacy by Design Centre of Excellence at Ryerson University. Her Privacy by Design framework is now the International Standard and has been translated into 39 languages.

Listen to Episode 1: Privacy, the foundation of your freedom featuring Dr. Ann Cavoukian and Episode 28: Insiders Guide to GDPR & turning it into a competitive advantage with Dr. Ann Cavoukian

Episode Overview: * The elephant in the room about her resignation from the smart city Toronto project and how the world reacted. * Ann also talked about the places where our identity is taken that we didn't even know * She also talked about all the different things that are coming into play and other new things that we could look forward to this 2019 * Ann shared some tools that we should be using and the questions that we should be asking when it comes to our privacy.

Positive expectation for privacy in 2019: In 2018 the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation came into effect and it is raising the bar into privacy and data protection all around the world. It returns control back to the data subjects so that individuals should be in control of their information. It also strengthen privacy dramatically and for the first time, it includes Dr. Ann’s Privacy by Design Framework.

Countries all around the world want to be in compliance to this new EU law because they want to engage in trade.

There had been a dramatic growth in surveillance in the past year, tracking on all of our activities which is outrageous. The good news is that there had been a real reaction against it in the part of the consumers. In fact, 90% of consumers are concerned with their privacy and 92% are concerned about the lack of control for personal information.

The story on why Ann resigned from her role on Sidewalk Lab: “The absolute no break in this deal is we have to de-identify data at source.”

The minute data is collected from the censored and all the emerging technology that are going to be in place in the envision smart city 24/7, there will be able to obtain consent from people because technology is always on. The minute the sensors collect some data, right there at source it should be de-identified. In that way, they will still have a lot of data but it will not be linked to any identifiable individuals so that the privacy harms will be removed.

Sidewalk Labs wanted the Privacy By Design embedded into the smart city that is why they hired Ann but there are a number of parties were not happy being the Sidewalk Labs being the only body to govern the use of the data that they have collected even though that it was going to be de-identified.

In response to that, Sidewalk Labs created the Civic Data Trust. The intention of the Civic Data Trust is for Sidewalk Labs to be able to govern the body of the data. There are a number of bodies which will be involved in delivering the data such as IT companies, Waterfront Toronto and different levels of government.

In that way, multiple parties will have a say in the data but then Sidewalk Labs will be able to control what they do with the data collected and encourage them to de-identify the data at source however they can’t insist that they do that.

And the minute Dr. Ann Cavoukian heard that, she knew she had to walk away. The reason of this is because the minute that they impose it as a must, it is not going to happen because there are thousands of identifiable data and everybody will just be asking for the same access to the data.

The Issue on Statistics Canada: “Privacy forms a foundation of our freedom” - Ann Cavoukian

Statistics Canada went to all major bank to collect all of our very sensitive financial information which includes:

• Credit History
• Bank Statements
• Payments
• Bills
• And more

The banks refused to give these data to Stats Canada and also said that they will de-identify the data and will give data that was requested but will also make sure that all personal identifiers are stripped. However, Stats Canada said NO.

The reason that Stats Canada doesn’t want this kind of data is because they wanted an identified datas so that they can match it with the other information or data that they have.

Things that are going on that we may not know about: * The Growth in Facial Recognition * + There are facial recognition anywhere we go and the problem is, we don’t know that it is taking place. One of the biggest issue on this case is identity theft. * The Issues on DNA Tests * + Our DNA is our most sensitive personal information. This also includes your parents, children and families information.

What Questions Should We Ask To Make Sure That We are Protected: * The minute you raise your concerns about your privacy to the seller you will get a good response because they are getting more people who are asking for their privacy in terms of transaction online and offline. * Just ask the question and let them know that you don’t want your personal information to be used in any purpose other than completing the purpose of that transaction. * When using search engines, use Duckduckgo.com because in any searching you do, they will not share in any third party.

Ann is also working on a Smart Data Agent which is a software agent that will go out and act on your behalf. All the data that is being make in terms of your request using the smart data agent is encrypted, the search that it engages in is totally secured and it doesn’t stay in the cloud.

For the first time ever, Canada’s privacy laws for The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) is no longer equivalent to the new law in the EU, the GDPR which is also a real blow because we enjoy a same equivalent of privacy laws. Dr. Ann Cavoukian’s Privacy by Design is also included.

View Details

Andrew Graham is co-founder and CEO of Borrowell, a financial technology company that helps consumers make great decisions about credit. Borrowell was the first company in Canada to offer credit scores for free and has grown to be one of the country’s largest fintech companies, with over 800,000 users. Borrowell has won numerous awards, including being named one of the top 100 fintech companies in the world by KPMG.

Andrew holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an MA in economics from the University of Edinburgh. He was recently a finalist for the Ontario region for EY's Entrepreneur of the Year award.

“Money is a really challenging topic for many people.”

SUBSCRIBE TO CANINNOVATE

iTunes| iHeart | Stitcher | Google | Spotify | SoundCloud

Episode Overview: I thought we should talk about the ‘scary’ credit score topic. I get to sit down Andrew Graham is co-founder and CEO of Borrowell, a financial technology company that helps consumers make great decisions about credit.

• Borrowell is FREE credit score tool
• How credit scores can help you save money. After all the holiday parties/shopping.. Who can’t use more money?
• Gives us tips in how we can improve our scores
• Debunk the myths checking & monitoring our credit scores
• How entrepreneurship is a lonely road, with an emotional rollercoaster

Download our cheat sheet: Unleash your Curiosity Cheat Sheet The Idea behind Borrowell is to help people make the right decisions about using credits so that they can accomplish what they want to accomplish. The fact is 20 percent of people in Canada don’t pay their credit card balance every month.

After a year in the business of lending people credits, Andrew realized that many people did not know what their credit situation was and in 2016, Borrowell became the first company that offers credit scores for free in Canada.

Does checking our credit score actually decrease our credits? Applying for loans can actually decrease your credit while checking your credit does not impact your credit score. Using Borrowell to check your credit score can actually help increase your credit score in time.

Improve your credit score by constantly monitoring your credits. You can also use Borrowell’s new tool called the Credit Coach that analyzes your credit file as well as make suggestions on the actions that you could take to help improve your score.

How to build credits and credit history One of the challenges of people especially students who are traveling and plans to stay on one country to another is to get their credit score. The best way to build your credit score is to pay your bills on time since credit bureau keep tracks if you pay your bills on time or not.

If you are new to Canada and you need to have a credit card, it is good to get a card with a really low limit so that you won’t get yourself in any difficulty. If you purchase something with small amounts make sure you pay it in full and in the course of 6-12 months, you will start building a credit response.

Lessons Learned: * Surround yourself with smart people to help you get around things that you might find difficult. * When picking a name for your company, make sure that it is a reflection of you and make sure it make sense to individuals. * Test early and often * Don’t always trust your gut. You got to have feedback * Surround yourself with people who have a diverse point of view * Getting the right people when starting and growing your company is so important. * You don’t need to have an idea to start a business. You just need to solve the problem that you are passionate about.

Sales and Marketing Tips: * Word of mouth is really important to build your business * Try to be everywhere * Find great founders and cofounders to help you early in the journey is so important

Book Recommendation: * The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

About Borrowell: Borrowell is a 100% Canadian company, with a single goal in mind: to help Canadians make great decisions about credit. Our job is to empower you by providing the tools you need to improve your credit score and save money.

While it’s our technology that differentiates us, it’s people that motivate us. We were the first company in Canada to introduce free credit scores and over 500,000 Canadians to date have received theirs.

Connect with Andrew: LinkedIn: Andrew Graham and Borrowell

Website: Borrowell.com

Twitter: @andrewtgraham and @Borrowell

View Details

Adrian is the founder of DNA11 and CanvasPop, which he bootstrapped to 8-figure sales and helped to launch MyFax.com, which sold to J2 Communications for over 200M dollars. He is also a public speaker, start-up advisor, investor, and PR expert who is passionate about helping entrepreneurs amplify their companies.

Adrian has strategized the launch and continued success of many businesses, helping both his own and his clients’ companies generate hundreds of millions of free media impressions. He is a global mentor for San Francisco based 500 Startups and and is the #1 rated advisor with a five-star rating on Clarity.fm

“This book is like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow” - Sapna

Episode Overview: I am so excited to be sharing our featured episode this week with the author of Free PR: How to Get Chased By The Press Without Hiring a PR Firm, Adrian Salamunovic. Adrian talked us through the importance of putting ourselves out there in front of the media and get their attention even without hiring a PR expert.

Adrian drops PR and business tips, best practices and value bombs that we should really look into. Plus, he’s giving us free PR media kit and templates to help us write PR like a pro.

Be sure to tune in and I can’t wait to hear all your feedback!

“You don’t need to hire a PR firm in order to leverage the thousands of media out there that are looking you and your story”

How is it so hard to get featured in the media? “It is not difficult at all but you have to know how to do it.”

The secret is understanding how journalist and influencers see the world. Adrian also added that you have to know and understand your target market is. Understand where they consume information specifically which channels, websites, platforms or publications they to for information.

How did the Free PR book come about? The book was co-authored by another Canadian author, Cameron Herold and was also the CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK. The book was originally written by Cameron many years ago and asked Adrian to give his point of view on the book.

What is the media looking for? What are the hot topics that we should consider targeting? Adrian considered the media as a very very hungry machine where everyday, there are literally thousands of articles being published and the media need fresh stories and contents. Those stories and contents have to come from somewhere, so why not YOU.

When you approach a media, you are giving them a favor. You are giving them a story, an idea or a pitch or an angle that could be interesting to their viewers. One important thing that you need to understand before you approach the media is that they need you. That is why you need to understand what’s hot, what their audience care about.

Free PR: How to Get Top Media Hits for your Startup - DIY - how did the book idea come about? The point of the book is to help companies especially startups how to take control of the company PR, do it themselves and save money. This is because most companies especially startups hire PR agencies to do the PR for them. While there is nothing wrong about that, most companies are unsatisfied because results are under delivered.

Another tip that we should remember when doing your own PR or if you consider hiring one is to hire a salesperson. The idea behind this is that you need to have people who pitch your company every single day because in realty, the person you need is a hustler. Someone who embraces being told “NO” and goes after the hit anyways.

Also, when you hire person with PR experience, they are going to do their job the old way which is writing press releases, communication breach or doing light outreach but they are not going to hustle everyday trying to tell your story.

Here is a Free Press Release Template and Starter Kit to help you start write a power press release like a pro.

We should remember that when we do PR, we don't always control the outcome. When you are doing a great PR, you can get a 9 out of 10 outcome but what some journalist are doing, things can go wrong.

Best Practices: * The foundation to a great PR is to have a market fit. * He or she who gets the most attention will generally win. * In a noisy world that we are in now, PR plays an important role in cutting the noise and getting your story out there and if done right, it could be for free.

Adrian is doing a giveaway, so you can get yourself a free copy. You can go to www.freePRbook.com/caninnovate and enter your email address to win a free digital copy! Resources: * Book: Free PR: How to Get Chased By The Press Without Hiring a PR Firm by Adrian Salamunovic and Cameron Herald * Tool: Free Press Release Template and Starter Kit

Connect with Adrian * Website: FreePRBook.com * LinkedIn: Adrian Salamunovic * Instagram: @King_of_Canvass * Facebook: Adrian Salamunovic

Twitter: @asalamunovic

View Details

Michael Gord is the founder and CEO of MLG Blockchain, an enterprise blockchain and ICO consulting and development firm. He was the first enterprise blockchain developer at TD Bank, one of the largest Canadian banks.

Michael is also a director of the Blockchain Education Network, a robust global network of blockchain enthusiasts, sits on the board of directors of the Blockchain Association of Canada, is an advisor and investor into several prominent blockchain ventures.

Episode Overview: This week I get to chat with Michael Gord. As you know, I’ve become quite the blockchain junkie and even got certified as a Blockchain Business Professional. I’m more a fan of the technology versus Cryptocurrency.

In this episode we will learn:

• What have been challenges getting into this space and launching MLG Blockchain consultancy
• Why is Blockchain Technology seen as so innovative
• What are some typical ways that companies have been utilizing blockchain technology
• Which industry &/or countries have the highest adoption rate
• What are some key legal implications/considerations

What is Blockchain? As for Michael, Blockchain in the new internet. It is a better way of storing information and creating applications. The hype behind blockchain is based around the fact that we are reinventing the current internet, the current finances system, the current government system, the supply chain system and almost every existing industry is being disrupted by blockchains.

What have been challenges getting into this space and launching MLG Blockchain consultancy? The biggest challenge that Michael experienced upon the blockchain industry is education and scalability provocation because most people are not yet familiar with blockchain. For scalability, MLG row-block is, for enterprises put on a hundred millions of users on top of blockchain today because blockchain systems are not scalable enough compared to 20 years ago.

Why do people say that Bitcoin is Blockchain? Bitcoin on the topic, is a cryptocurrency that lives on a blockchain protocol. Bitcoin is also one of the thousands of cryptocurrencies and one of dozens of protocols which makes it one of the first cryptocurrency and the first to introduce blockchain as we know it today.

How do we classify cryptocurrency? As of today, the use of cryptocurrency is still very few in terms of using it in our everyday life but Michael expects that by next year, the use of cryptocurrency will become normal to us. We will see the use of cryptocurrency mostly on games, restaurants, online shopping and everything else that accepts cryptocurrency.

How other company uses the blockchain technology: Most companies use the blockchain technology through privy concepts and pilot applications. We have seen a similar case on the Venezuelan government that released cryptocurrencies. This made Michael believe that every government will release a government issued cryptocurrencies to power services to their country. Some countries are also looking into using cryptocurrencies for their government power services.

Which industry &/or countries have the highest adoption rate? Seoul, Korea and Tokyo, Japan currently have the highest adoption rate of companies and people who uses blockchain on their daily life. China and India also have a high adoption rate due to their online retail companies such as Alibaba or such. Most of these countries are used to paying using QR codes or digital dollars which is very simple to use.

In North America on the other hand, we are still predominantly cash-based or credit economy. It can be a culture shock if people will start paying with QR codes.

What are some key legal implications/considerations? Traditionally, it was only banks that have to care about knowing your customer for doing money processing. Today, with token sales there are people all over the world needing to know their customers.

At the end of the day, it is not just about knowing your customer and raising capital in your country. You are raising potential capital for people in hundreds of countries. So you have to touch, know and understand the legalities from the very beginning because it is necessary.

Some companies are using ICOs (Initial Coin Offering) as a way to raise capital instead of going through the traditional VC approach. Is this a new growing trend?

ICO represents a better way of raising capital, according to Michael. Everyone should be able to have the support of raising their capital on a global perspective rather than forced to raise capital exclusively and locally.

Consider your thoughts, thoughts are real because what you think about is bound to happen.

About MLG Blockchain: MLG Blockchain is a global blockchain development and consulting firm headquartered in Toronto with a distributed team across North America, Europe and Asia that is focused on building next generation applications using blockchain and smart contract technology.

We are blockchain agnostic and are experienced working with many blockchain fabrics including the Bitcoin Blockchain, Ethereum, Hyperledger, Ripple, Factom, Eris. We are also experienced working with many blockchain development APIs, software frameworks, databases, and devOps tools for testing and agile development.

Resource Recommendation: Book Recommendation:

• The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
• Good to Great by Jim Collins
• Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell

Favorite Hot Spot:

• Fun Festival in Montreal every year
• Yasu Sushi Bar in Toronto

Connect with Michael: Website: MLGBlockchain.com

LinkedIn: Michael Gord

Twitter: @BitGord

View Details

Carmelia Ray is an internationally acclaimed matchmaker for high achieving men and the quality women they’re searching for. She’s also a renowned TV personality from Mom Vs. Matchmaker, The Real Housewives Of Toronto, and A User’s Guide to Cheating Death (Fall 2018). She's also won the 2018 Best Dating Coach award!

Download the free cheat sheet: Get Unstuck in a Rut and Unleash your Curiosity

Episode Overview: When you are going toward networking, you need to know what it is that you are looking for in order to create that network professional connection.

• The connection between networking and dating
• The tactical nature on what to do to create an actual experience
• What kind of experience do you want people to have?
• What is it about you?
• What is your story?
• What is it that you are looking for?

Listen to Carmelia Ray’s episode 32 Experience Digital Dating on Another Level with Carmelia Ray of WooYou App

The challenges of making a connection digitally instead of face-to-face and how these two experiences differentiate:

Digital Dating:

• Putting yourself online like a dating site for example makes you feel overwhelmed. A lot of people feel that when they are online, it is daunting because there are so much to choose from. There is a lot of noise and responses online and a lot of action.

• How one represent themselves and how to interpret someone else's profile. Most people that go online do not do a great job of putting themselves online. Some are representing themselves a little less or even too much in their profiles.

• Engagement. What do you say to someone online? How do you get from sending messages to asking someone out.

Offline:

• One of the many challenges for many people is where can they meet people where in fact, it used to be meeting traditional way such as meeting in a bar, the church, family gatherings and others.
• Today, most people are meeting on a digital aspects or by chance.
• The only thing that you really know about a person when you meet them is that when you are attracted.
• There is a big investment when finding stuff out about a person.
• The Ghosting. When people go into disappearing act.

Today, more people are looking down rather than looking up.

In networking, people tend to get overwhelmed when they go to conferences or places that they just don’t know where to start.

Tips on making a good intro about yourself: People often gravitates to people when they tell a story about themselves rather than reading a list of things that are good at and are capable of. For sales and marketing companies, they focus on their tagline where they really put their thoughts into their brand. This will be based on the experiences that they want people to see, what is the feel that they wanted to get about and what are the core profiles that they want people to feel.

A lot of times, when people go online, they are focusing on the person whom they want to attract and who they wanted to be to attract that person.

• When writing a good intro, you should always start with the “about you” in story form.
• Always write what you are attracted to and what you are looking for instead of writing the things that you don’t like.
• Write a description of what your life is like. Something that would say that the person that you are targeting to is a part of your profile intro.

Tips on body language and how to carry yourself: The key is really to relax and it can only happen through time and practice. If you don’t have enough practice or do not put yourself on the line enough then it is going to be scary, nerve wracking and all those things. Confidence only comes out on both your presence in person and how you appear in your clothing because 55% of communication is nonverbal.

Body language also includes eye contact. The best move that you can do to make a good impression. Make sure to look at the person that you are speaking to and keep your phones away.

Here is a list of things that you should pay attention to:

• Eye contact
• Good posture
• Hygiene
• You don’t have to invest a ton of money to look a certain way.
• Dress for success but dress comfortably.

When you are more concerned about how you look like, you are not able to be with the person who is in front of you because you are more concerned about yourself.

Conversation Ice Breaker Tips: Apart of the confidence and nervousness is the already have in your mind is the intention of what you want to discover about someone. Being curiously engage with the person in front of you without an agenda.

If you have something passionate about or have great stories to tell, then tell that person that you are talking to and keep things positive. Sharing your positive experiences make the person you are talking to more interested in you because nobody will spend their valuable time listening to your problem.

People are really attracted to someone who is going somewhere who has their own paths, has their own trends and who is trying to figure the things out of what is missing in their career or personal life.

How Do You Leave the Date and How Do You Follow Up There are a lot of people who leave the date not knowing what to expect. Often times, people can be one way and really mean another and that makes a confusing king of date or meeting. And depending on the way you met each other, there is a way to follow up and know if there is an actual chemistry.

Another point to know is that you should always be okay to accept a rejection from the person you met at the end even though you put yourself out there. If you are dating with intention, you should make that clear before you leave.

If you are interested in someone, you are leaning in and getting closer.

Tips for Coaches and Matchmakers: The first match you make is with your matchmaker or with your dating coach.

• Do your homework and understand which niche does your coaching or matchmaking career looks like and the services that you wanted to provide.
• Understand what you want to accomplish
• Talk to at least 2 to 3 people who wanted to work with you based on the set of criteria that they wanted to accomplish.

Connect with Carmelia: Website: CarmeliaRa.com

Twitter: @CarmeliaRay

LinkedIn: Carmelia Ray

Instagram: @carmeliaray

View Details

As 2018 is coming to an end, I wanted to take some time to share my adventures and misadventures this year. It has been a world wind of lessons learned, lots of trail and errors, victories and laughter.

In this episode - I share:

• A new health discovery
• My 2018 adventures and lessons learned - there are lots of them!
• Discovering my own voice
• The joys of pivoting
• The 2018 goals - did I make them?
• Plus, I share my 3 big goals in 2019

2018 was an incredible year for me, I’m can’t believe how much I’ve learned and grown. And how many times, I had to learn to be gentle with myself. As an entrepreneur, we know that time is always a challenge and there is never a shortage of a list of things to do. And honestly, I forgot to take breaks, like real fun social breaks. I was substituting my corporate work alcoholic behavior for another kind. That was definitely not the intent.

In fact, I went to an off-beat innovative hormone specialist to find out more about my autoimmune condition, because I get no information from regular doctors. She did all the different tests and many other types and the results made me laugh, cry and pause for reflection. My cortisol levels were super high! Yup, stress. I’ve been internalizing stress.

Do you remember that book ‘Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff’? Well, we may not need to ‘Sweat the small stuff, but we need to deal with these things & not ignore them’. We can ignore the one off small things but, we cannot ignore the trends of small issues, that become medium or large ones.

So, I’ve made some small changes in life.

One, I’ve started to only plan to do 3 key things each day, 3 outcomes - two work ones and 1 personal one. Many of the projects that I’m working on are pretty big ones, so I need to break things down into manageable tasks and across a realistic duration.

I’ve started to plan more fun items over the weekend. I put a list of together of some close friends & family that I absolutely adore and made sure that I’ve made some plans to see them and doing some fun things with them. In fact, you know that I’m a huge Masterchef fan. Well, two weeks ago, thanks to my googling and advance planning, I got to have dinner prepared by Masterchef Canada Judge, Alvin Leung and the Masterchef Canada 1st winner, Eric Chong.

And sleep… I now, turn off electronics by 10pm at night and don’t look at it till the morning. It has made a big difference in my sleep. I use my Google Home to set the alarm and play my radio/news and it’s really made a difference in my sleep.

Okay, 2018: The adventures and misadventures.

There were 3 goals that I had made in 2018. The 1st one was to re-brand CanInnovate. I dropped the ‘h’, so that it's just CanInnovate. We even cleaned up and developed a richer website.

The 2nd goal, was that I was going to develop an online course. Taking the corporate world & management consulting best practices and unleashing it for others to benefit from. I got a little sidetracked, when I got asked to teach at George Brown College, Intro to Management Consulting. I ended up teaching many of the topics, which means. That lots of materials have already been prepared.

I may be delayed in this goal, but I will be having a free webinar in Jan 2019, where we are going to talk about sales proposals and the top 3 mistakes that people make. January is the beginning of a new sales cycle, so a great time to start thinking ahead. I’ll put the link in the show notes, so that you can easily register. Completely free.

The 3rd goal, was that I wanted to give back. I love volunteering and helping others. I actually did some research on a few different organizations, however, I couldn’t understand how much was being given to charity and how much was administrative fees. I like transparency. So, I met up with an old colleague of mine, who just sold his business for a fair amount of money. But, he started a charity, where he helps underprivileged by providing access to Education and Healthcare.

He’s a good man, with great values. He does it because he has daughters and wants to create something that they can be proud to be part of. I really believe that education and awareness Is instrumental in overcoming any obstacles & perception challenges. So, I will partner with an organization that has the same set of shared values.

There were a few big lessons that I learned this year…

One- I had to make some staff changes. I wish I had done it earlier. In fact, on episode 19 with Alain Gorbeau, from Farmlead, He had given some great advice.

Learning to really have the discipline or be able to realize faster that you’re in one of those situations and pull yourself back when you’re tempted to either hire someone that isn’t exactly right or to make excuses for someone that just isn’t fitting for whatever reason.

Alan Gorbeau, Farmlead

Oh boy… I didn’t do this properly. I didn’t trust my instincts, I kept thinking that I haven’t coached them enough or that I’m not clear enough. I took the blame. Nope, not any more. I need to trust my instinct. I need people that can help drive things forward, with minimal supervision. I have hired experienced people, so I need them to step up to the plate and be the CEO in their own domain. So, that was a big ‘aha moment for me’

Second lessons learned - I need to stop over-planning things and get faster into execution mode. I need to let go of my wanting it to be perfect. I can’t help it! I love what I do and I want it to be perfect. I’m just passionate at what I do. However, I do recognize that time is a precious commodity and there are places where I can go to get additional support. I’m going to switch into 10% planning mode and 90% into execution mode.

Lastly, The Value of Pivoting. I often forget that I can shift and move and make changes, whenever I want to. It’s actually quite fun. So, we decided to pivot. It’s the management consultant in me. As these Innovators share their best practices and lessons learned. I also wanted to depend my knowledge and skills in this area by offering masterclasses, where we can gain those tactical skills.

We’ve had a few of these masterclasses from mindset (Episode 45: Innovation Mindset), negotiations (Ep 57: The Art of Negotiation), vulnerability (Ep 58: Vulnerability is the new advantage). We have lots more coming. It’s really imperative to stay on top of industry trends, update our skill sets and not wait, for our bosses to guide us. We need to take control of our careers.

So, being that I’ve learned that pivoting is a good thing, I've actually only planned for Q1 & Q2 of 2019. That way, I can be open to shifting and conducting lessons learned. Who knows where the future will take us.

So, what’s in store for the next six (6) months

1. Publishing my Networking book - it’s nearly done and I can’t wait to share it. It’s inspired by my students at George Brown as this was a topic that they wanted more help in. The idea is that it’s about connecting as individuals for multiple reasons, not just for career development. We all have different reasons, different challenges - so, whether you’re looking for career opportunities, or new friends or new relationships. It’s about connecting with people that share common values.
2. Conducting free sales webinar & even local workshops- I’ve already got the materials developed from the course I taught and I’m going into execution mode. You can find the link to register for the free webinar in the show notes.
3. To finalize the volunteer partnership, so that we can start to make an impact on the world. I truly believe that education and awareness is instrumental in overcoming any challenges and obstacles. If children start teaching their uneducated parents, then we have a hope for the future. We need to provide opportunities for those that don’t have that privilege.

I’m pretty excited about 2019 and all the new twists and turns that I’m about to discover. My new year's resolution is to continue to push the boundaries and unleash my curiosity. Every time, I try something new a new adventure presents itself.

Thank you for being part of my journey and I really can’t wait to hear about your new adventures in 2019. I really wish everyone a very happy and healthy holiday season that is filled with lots of love curiosity and laughter! Get some much needed rest and lots of TLC.

Talk soon!

View Details

My sister has always been intrigued about my constant craving and desire to have feedback and not being sensitive to it. She’s always feels like when she gets feedback, that she’s getting criticized. She wanted to know my secret.

There secret is, I look at feedback like data. IData is really important, just look at Big Data/ Machine Learning and AI, they are always looking for ways to gather predictive data in order to be able to plan and mitigate risks.

This episode will talk about feedback from 3 perspective:

1. Receiving the feedback
2. Ways to provide feedback
3. Using feedback

Having data from multiple sources, just allows me to see my blind spots.

I don’t know, what i don’t know and that’s where feedback fits in.

Feedback allows you to see how others are receiving the communication and the perception that others may have. Sometimes, those perceptions are not what we want. But, that feedback really allows you to see what we may need to change.

When we start to uncover what we don’t know then we are able to understand what we don’t know and make appropriate plans to change that perception. It really helps us identify our blind spots and the expectations.

Maybe the role that we are in, isn’t the right fit for our personality. Maybe the role requires constant relationship building and you’re not a people person. You prefer to come in, log into the system and deliver reports.

1. How to receive the feedback As the year end comes, we are probably going to be getting our year end feedback from our bosses. We all hope for great feedback, so that we can get our bonuses. However, it’s make or break it.

If we don’t get great feedback, then our bosses don’t appreciate us and it starts a downward cycle. If we get great feedback, then we get comfortable in our skin and always feel like the smartest person in the room. It’s hard to not take feedback as personal. Think about all those internet trolls, that just need a hug and some love. (Anyways, I digress)

Getting feedback is a tricky process. People don’t like to get feedback. It’s a little scary. Think about athletes. They work on their skill and get feedback in order to improve their skills. So, think about our jobs - we are like athletes in a particular field, division, department.

We need the feedback for us to see how we can improve our skills in our sport. However, let’s be honest. Not a lot of managers are great at giving feedback.

• First, you need to see how you personally deal with feedback.
• How do you deal with feedback that you receive, don’t forget about your non-verbal queues.

Maybe you roll your eyes, huff and puff or just get ready to argue. How can we change that? Maybe you just need to change the narrative. Change the question ‘what can we do better?”.

Specific feedback is great because it allows us to focus on ‘What can we do better?’, which is much more positive and looks at the opportunities around us.

Our ego is built to protect us from negative emotions, so we need to change the narrative. So, that we don’t do self projection and it is there that it is time to change our mindset. We are looking for opportunities to strengthen our talent (our sport), our relationships and perceptions and to find new Opportunities.

Opportunities is what keeps us motivated- it’s the carrot dangling at the end of the stick!

1. Ways to provide feedback When we are getting feedback - we are looking for the opportunities for what we can do better and what does fine tuning our skills take us. Use this as an opportunity to talk about career paths, progressions and other marketable skills. What a great time to justify taking a course to further become marketable.

Let’s talk about some typical feedback mistakes:

1. Not giving or receiving feedback in a timely manner. I always provide feedback as something happens. Why wait till the year end to remind someone of something that happened 10 months ago.

   1. Let’s be clear - I can barely remember what I had for breakfast three (3) days ago. Details get distorted and memories fade. Just think about all those crime shows, where the police isolate potential witnesses to get their statements right away. Not, 2 days later, 10 months later… it’s immediately.
   2. Second issue I have with this approach, is that you didn’t give me the opportunity to correct something for 10 months.

2. Providing vague feedback - this is really frustrating. It’s my pet peeve when someone provides a theoretical answer to things versus a tactical example. We need to make sure that the feedback is specific and that also shows the downstream impact.

Also, using specific examples allows us to see whether there is a trend. Is this happening from a process perspective, project perspective, stakeholder perspective. Where is it coming from? How is it happening?

That really enables us to figure out, how we can make improvements by getting really great details. And talking about it, from a partnership perspective.

1. Here is my favourite mistake - not proactively asking your key stakeholders for feedback to send to your boss/career counsellor. Why are we waiting for our bosses. We need to take control of our destiny.

In another future episode, I’ll teach you some tricks of what management consultants use in order to get promoted. It’s a time tested tool that I’ve been using forever and with my coaching clients. Speaking of proactive feedback, It is an amazing temperature check tool.

Be the driver of your own destiny!

1. Using feedback I’ve used this for organizational change management for many many years. For example, I had launched a lot of training courses, with the associated training plans in order for the marketing organization to be able to use the new system and tools.

One day, one of my key stakeholders (my main client, the one that pays the bills) - had told me that he was in one of the big executive meetings where the Chief Marketing Officer had surprised him with some feedback.

That the CMO didn’t receive any training for her marketing organization. This CMO, had a lot of power and influence in the organization and across the C’Suite. She was a key and major stakeholder, that I couldn’t ignore.

It was odd to me, that she didn’t feel that her marketing department had received the training. I had done all the right things, I developed a curriculum, socialized it and gathered feedback from many of her senior managers and delivered the training and got rave reviews.

So, why did she have that perception? I didn’t understand that disconnect. I booked a meeting to uncover what was really going on under the hood.

The meeting was amazing - it was such an eye opener. She knew that her team had received the training, but she didn’t feel that her team was equipped to be the marketers of the 21st century.

AHA! That was a completely different problem that needed to be solved. I was solving the problem of getting the organization to use a new system that had been purchased. Her problem was does her team have the right skill set to be exceptional marketers. Completely, two different issues.

Was one around a system to add to their existing skills. The second one was around their existing skill sets. Now, for consultants - this is an opportunity. A cross-selling opportunity that enabled future sales.

The end result was, that we did a skill set mapping exercise, re-designed her marketing department and sold additional training to get her team equipped. We had designed it with her and this strengthen our relationship.

So, that is a client example of how to utilize feedback.

We can easily change perception, once we uncover what that perception is and that is from feedback. Feedback is a gift.. In fact, there was a great book called the The Present: The Gift for Changing Times Hardcover by Spencer Johnson M.D.

Now, I’d be silly to NOT to ask for feedback. I’d love to hear your feedback and thoughts on this episode. You can leave feedback in a review on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcast player, iHeart Radio, Spotify and the list goes on. You can also just email me at Sapna@CanInnovate.io

Don’t we want to be better tomorrow, than today.

Isn’t that the idea of new year's resolutions? We are all on a path to continuous improvement, or we’d be bored and become walking zombies.

I can’t wait to hear about your feedback and better yet, I can wait to hear about the new mysteries that you’re about to uncover!

View Details

I finally watched ‘A Star is Born’ and wow! Was I ever moved. I will admit, I did get teary eyed when she first gets on that stage. Now, I’m not going to give away anything but I will say that anyone that gets pushed a little or a LOT out of their comfort zone gets scared.

I got scared when I was going to put out this podcast. I’ve been a management consultant for way too many years, what did I know about podcasting? I didn’t have a background in broadcasting. I even had a few friends think I was weird but I didn’t care.

The reason why I didn’t care is because it was on my list of things that I was curious about and wanted to try. Just like when I moved to England for a few years, it was always one of my dreams to live abroad so I could travel the world. There are certain things that I just need to do and try.

The reason, why I wanted to talk about this topic is because I have gotten a few emails and messages saying that I was brave and that they wished that they could get out of their own way and try something new. Thank for you reaching out, these messages really mean the world to me.

One listener, even told me that she felt like a walking zombie and on auto-pilot and she’s lost the ability to even dream or be curious about things. It just touched my heart. I’ve been there, in fact many of my close friends will remember when I basically disappeared into a cave because I was in auto-pilot, not even cruise control.

I was just working 24 hours a day, sleepless, traveling non-stop, and trying to make magic happen for clients and my company. I literally disappeared and became a shadow and when I looked in the mirror, I didn’t recognize myself. So, I totally get it.

Change is hard, taking the first step towards anything is even harder. We get scared, nervous. But I’m here to tell you that it fixable and changeable and our mind creates more barriers than needed.

I think that’s why I’m addicted to Gordon Ramsey’s cooking shows. From Hell’s Kitchen to Masterchef. I absolutely LOVE LOVE his shows. Not because I have a passion for cooking, to be fair, I am a foodie and I do have a passion for eating! LOL

However, these home chefs come into a kitchen and get pushed to the limits. They may have a certain spice rack that they are used to using or they are really an amazing baker but they all get forced to try something new. Some fail because they can’t (actually… won’t ) make the leap to get out of their comfort zone. They are busy playing it safe to chase the money, instead of chasing the culinary adventure. See? I’ve watched way too many episodes.

Let our culinary adventure begin! Well, I have a few goodies to share.

The journey starts with 1- Why should I be vulnerable.

Part 2 of this tale - How vulnerability is actually a source of strength.

Part 3 - What to be vulnerable in.

What Is And Why Should I be Vulnerable. I can give you the heartfelt speech but how about I give you some research or better yet a researcher.

There has been this one TED talk that has always stuck with me for many years now. It is Brene Brown and she talks about vulnerability. This TED Talk appeared in 2010 with over 36 million views.

It’s a 20 minute video that also has subtitles. I think I’ve shared this TED Talk with so many people. Brene Brown studies human connection. The short end of the story is that she went to research and prove a certain thesis. When the results from her research came back, she basically had a meltdown because she didn’t know what to do.

She didn’t understand what the results were telling her because they went in the complete opposite direction.

Her TED talk video is so amazing! It’s very humorous, she’s an amazing speaker. She talks about how fear and shame is why we disconnect. However, when she studied people that were the happiest in the world. It was because they were open to being vulnerable and not afraid of being themselves.

They just were themselves, their authentic true self, full of flaws and happier because they saw that their so-called ‘flaws’ were what made them unique and special. It is so good that I highly recommend this video to everyone and anyone. I don’t want to give it all away but I will share a quote from her TED Talks and her book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead.

Here are Brene Brown TED Talk videos and books

• Daring Greatly - How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
• Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts, Oct 9th, 2018 by Brené Brown
• Rising Strong: How the Ability to Reset Transformations the Way we Live, Love, Parent and Lead
• The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings of Authenticity, Connection and Courage

Connection- Vulnerability gives us connection.

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.”

With a quote and research like that, who doesn’t want love, joy, courage, creativity and a sense of belonging! Wooziers! It’s a little mind blowing…

Part 2 of this tale - How Vulnerability is Actually a Source of Strength

“Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.” - Brene Brown from her book Daring Greatly.

Our imperfect selves is when we get true belonging? I think this is why I LOVE that film the Greatest Showman on Earth. The music, the story-line is amazing and if you need more. It has Hugh Jackman and he’s definitely dreamy in my books. The movie is about an entrepreneur that brought the Circus to life. The Circus that brought the ‘EXTRA’ to ordinary! It’s such a feel good movie.

I confess, I think I’ve seen this film about 10 times. There are so many messages. In fact, I was telling my sister about the film this summer while we were at Santa’s village. Yes, I was at Santa’s Village in the summer, it’s another story for another day. I was telling her that this movie is good for all ages three random girls (I think they were about 13, 15 and 18) jumped in and went on and on about.

They were telling my sister that this movie shows that our weaknesses is actually our strengths, we just need to stop looking at it from that perspective. The 18 year old and I went on and on about this one song ‘THIS IS ME’. My youngest sister has been telling for ages that there are parts of me that will never grow up. I’m stuck in the PG-13 movie genre for the rest of my life and this situation, was totally proving her point.

However, I digress. Back to the song ‘THIS IS ME’ - it was true.. This song seems to have y veins pumping with courage. You know there is always a song that just makes you feel confident, powerful, strong and courageous. This was it for me…

Don’t worry, I’ve got it in the show notes, so you can click and play..

In fact, this song became so popular it became a national anthem for so many groups and people.

Variety.com listed this song as the Anthem for Outcasts, the bullied, the marginalized, the disfranchised and as the theme of ‘Diversity’ and ‘Me Too’ gains more more traction, we are all starting to see that many of us have felt like outcasts in one way or another. Even CNN did a feature about this.

Indie Wire named this song the ultimate anthem. The song writers were quoted to say that they strove to represent “these people who have lived their whole lives in the shadows.” Shadows, we remember that feeling in life.

Part 3 - What to be vulnerable in. Now that we know that being vulnerable is such a good thing, what do we want to be vulnerable in? How about just unleashing some new areas of interest. As we get older, our inner giant/ child gets squashed. We only think in terms of practicality, and quickly get to a conclusion that it’s not feasible because we don’t have time, skill or support. We lost our inner child, our ability to be curious.

As 2018 is nearly over and a new year is around the corner, we start thinking about resolutions. What if your resolution was to try something new that you’ve always wanted to try. Mine is to publish a book, I’ve always wanted to write. In fact, my grammar is terrible. My dad fought with my high school English teacher for giving me an ‘A’ in English. However, I do know that it’s not a barrier, there are editors out there that can help me with my areas of weakness and same for anyone.

I have a little worksheet that I prepared and I used it on myself when I was trying to think of my next steps. I had zero clue for what I wanted to try. I think I got used to the same spice rack. I kept making the different dishes with the same spices. Who knew, that I could use different spices (Just to be clear, I’m using spices as a metaphor for tools and techniques).

I knew I needed to do something different but had no idea what to do. So, I created this for ME. I’m sharing it with all y’all. Why? because it’s hard to feel stuck, hard to see when there is no vision or goal. Because one day, I hope when my nieces and nephew go through this phase that someone will say or provide something that will help them. No charge, all free. I’m paying it future forward for the future generations.

Take a try, you’ve got nothing to lose but lots to gain. Since, I’ve been quoting movies - All you need is 20 seconds of courage (movie Matt Damon ‘We Bought a Zoo’. Let me know how it goes. Email me or message me if you get stuck. I’ll help you. I can’t wait to hear about all these new recipes that you’re about to discover.

“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren't always comfortable, but they're never weakness.”

Remember - the world needs more people like us. Real people, real struggles, real VICTORIES!!! Just real!

Show Note Links: * Daring Greatly - How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, June 26th, 2018 by Brené Brown * Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts, Oct 9th, 2018 by Brené Brown * Rising Strong: How the Ability to Reset Transformations the Way we Live, Love, Parent and Lead, April 4th, 2017 by Brené Brown * The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings of Authenticity, Connection and Courage, May 24th, 2013 by Brené Brown * Brené Brown - Ted Talks Video * The Greatest Showman on Earth - This is Me * Variety.com * Indie Wire * CNN

FREE WORKSHEET: HOW TO GET UNSTUCK!

View Details

Nicknamed “the negotiator” as a child, Fotini Iconomopoulos has been honing her skills her entire life. For the last decade, she’s been empowering Fortune 500 executives and their teams to achieve their objectives through her expertise in negotiation, communication and persuasion.

Episode Overview: * Tips on multiple areas of your life that you did not know you could actually negotiate * Key lessons in big mistakes that people are making * Tips on job offers and how to negotiate * Gender differences on how we negotiate

When she’s not strategizing with clients, she is a frequent guest on CBC & CTV Television, a professor of MBA Negotiations at the Schulich School of Business, which is one of the top business schools in the world and she offers her experience to non-profit initiatives. In 2018, she ran a week-long empowerment camp for young girls, an attempt to close the gender gap before it starts. She was recently recognized with a Greek America Foundation Top 40 under 40 award for her achievements and philanthropic work.

I actually got the honor to meet Fotini at WeWork, when we were in a workshop together and she is someone that I automatically gravitated towards because I could feel her passion for the topic and how she genuinely wants to help people become successful, not to mention she’s absolutely gorgeous and charming!

How important is it to master the art of negotiation as a life skill? When Fotini talks to her audiences during her keynotes and some of the keynotes that she does is for the people who does not know that they do any negotiation.

Negotiation is not always for people wearing suits shaking hands.

Fotini's experience at the hospital help a way to negotiate with the nurses and other staff at the hospital. She is talking to them to resolve these things that needed to be resolved to change her quality of life.

• If you spend time along with children, they are the best negotiator in life.
• Negotiations is about managing conflict.
• Negotiator prevent arguments.
• We have to negotiate all the time, so why not work on that skill every single day.

Where do people usually learn to negotiate? According to Fotini we learn how to negotiate during childhood or by learning on what works and what doesn’t work. In businesses schools, negotiation is a part of the program for the undergrad and for the MBA program, it is the most popular classes because it is a life skill that we really should be mastering.

Other areas that we can negotiate with our lives: One of the most common areas that we usually negotiate is in retail. In fact, almost everything that we do in our lives revolves around negotiation whether it may be business wide or a friendly gesture.

In Sir Alan Sugar’s UK Version of Apprentice, Sapna talked about an episode where men always get the upper hand when it comes to negotiation compared to the women. Here are the reasons why these happen:

• Men do it more.
• Women are more cooperative on how they could negotiate.
• Women get more items than men because they are more cooperative which may result to a “failed success” time-wise.

Fotini talked about Linda Bobcock’s study back in 2001 where 7% of women are trying to negotiate their first salary while 57% of men were. Sometimes the differentiating factors of getting the courage to get through this is situation is:

• Having the courage to do this
• Knowing “what do I need to do to mitigate the risk of retaliation
• Women are really gifted at negotiating but they don’t do it enough

The things that is preventing us to negotiate * Fear - as a child, the things that was encourage to play in different forms for a long time creates an impact in terms on how we connect ourselves. * Lack of encouragement - as adults, we should start building confidence to our kids instead of telling them that they are acting up or being bossy.

The things that people don’t ask in terms of jobs offers Fotini provides advice on how you should ask about some benefits that you can get when applying for a job such as the bonuses, a choice to work from home to save parking fees and much more.

When it is time to negotiate for salary, don’t be afraid to ask but before you ask, think of what is going to be the best component that you can get from the company that will save you and the company money in the long run.

Other mistakes that we see in term of negotiation:

• Assuming that there is no room for negotiation
• Do your homework
• People talking themselves out of the deal
• Take your time to think before speaking
• Take the time to learn what they need to say and get some knowledge out of them.

About Forward Focusing: Forward Focusing helps companies strategically invest energy into the areas that will advance their negotiation and communication goals. To optimize client performance in commercial activities, a truly customized approach empowers executives and strengthens their teams via advisory, coaching and training services. Service such sectors as consumer packaged goods, retail, professional services, energy, law, telecommunications, finance and more.

Resource Recommendation: Book Recommendation:

• Women Don’t Ask by Linda Bobcock
• Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
• Permission to Screw-Up by Kristen Hadeed

Best Practice:

• Outsource things such us hiring a speaker bureau
• Marking calendar for schedules
• Ask for help

Favorite Hot Spot: Insomnia - Richmond Station

Connect with Fotini: Website: Forward Focusing

Twitter: @FotiniIcon

LinkedIn: Fotini Iconomopoulus

Instagram: @fotiniicon

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.
• Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here.

I’m still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn’t love to save money?

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to Ian Schneider!

View Details

Carole Piovesan, a lawyer at McCarthy Tetrault. She is a respected leader in the area of AI and law.

Carole is known to apply creativity, strategic thinking and a multi-disciplinary approach to helping clients solve complex problems associated with all these new exponential technologies.

She is the co-lead of their national Cybersecurity, Privacy and Data Management group, as well as the firm lead on Artificial Intelligence (AI). Carole is also the editor of the CyberLex blog, one of Canada’s most widely read blogs on law and data.

Episode Overview: * What exactly is AI & the legal and ethical considerations from both a consumer and a business perspective * How lots of new roles are being created in this space * Whether AI should be recognized as people * How FREE is not FREE * How we should use legal as part of the end to end design - Outside - IN view

As Canada becomes a leader in AI research, there are lots of best practices that companies can learn and adopt. Let’s start at the beginning, for our listeners out there

How Carole define Artificial Intelligence (AI) It is a computer system and algorithm that is analyzing massive amount of data for the purposes of identifying trends and ultimately making predictions on those trends. We also discussed the confusion between machine learning and artificial intelligence where machine Learning - learning from the past - to define the rules to become more predictive.

Machine learning is an application of artificial intelligence (AI) that provides systems the ability to automatically learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed.

We’ve had Dr. Ann Cavoukian on the podcast a couple of times and she really emphasizes about privacy and how this is a big concern. You can check out our episode here: Ep1: Privacy, the foundation of your freedom featuring Dr. Ann Cavoukian

In the white paper that Carole co-wrote, co-author of the firm’s White Paper entitled, “From Chatbots to Self-Driving Cars: The Legal Risks of Adopting AI in your Business”. The point about AI is, it is creating a system that can reduce operational cost and do things that other humans could otherwise do faster, more accurately and cheaper.

What are some of the big ethical considerations that we should think about? We need to use the approach of data mindfully and responsibly. We also need to understand that artificial intelligence or the massive data sector that is being used for a predictive value will go forward. AI is using the data that existed 10 years ago and the questions would become, “what was 10 years ago and what would we like in the next 10 years look like”.

Movie mentioned: Minority Report with Tom Cruise

With GDPR that came into play and the Cambridge Scandal - what concerns does this open up? Canada has privacy legislation that is almost 20 years old and it is principled base unlike the GDPR that is more prescriptive but its essence aligns well with GDPR in protecting the privacy of Canadians.

Listen to our episode with Dr. Ann Cavokian to learn more about GDPR: Ep28: Insiders Guide to GDPR & turning it into a competitive advantage with Dr. Ann Cavoukian

The real debate that is happening right now in respect to our data and privacy is the fact that data is being collected everywhere all the time and in all of our devices so it is increasingly difficult for people to make informed choices about what privacy or what personal information they want to give up or for what purpose.

For Cambridge Scandal exposed an issue that is not technically legal but it is a social issue about the use of data for collateral purposes and is not the original purpose of collecting the data.

CBC Marketplace - are your Apps spying on you?

Carole shared the three main legal buckets to using artificial intelligence that consumers should be aware of and consider:

Input - when you are using a ton of data what you need to be thinking about as a business are:

• How your data is going to be used
• How is it collected
• For what purpose
• What is the nature of that data
• Where is the data being stored and is it secured?

Contract - if you are buying a system, you should be thinking about who is going to maintain it overtime whether you have the in-house skill to do so or somebody else to do so. If you need to maintain a third party relationship then you should think about how are you going to manage that relationship over time and what does it look like overtime.

• You should also look at the issues transparency and trainability
• You should also think about interpretability depending on context
• Every AI system needs to be interpretable

Deployment - focuses on issues of liability but we still don’t have enough information here other than being aware of the liability issues that goes into the contracting phase in particular.

About McCarthy Tetrault: McCarthy Tétrault provides a broad range of legal services, advising on large and complex assignments for Canadian and international interests. Built on a unique model of collaboration, the firm provides unequalled legal talent, industry knowledge and practice experience, and delivers customized legal services to help clients achieve the results that are important to them.

The firm has substantial presence in Canada’s major commercial centres as well as in New York City and London, UK. We deliver integrated services in business law, litigation, tax, real estate, and labour and employment law.

Connect with Carole: Website: McCarthy Tétrault

LinkedIn:

• McCarthy Tétrault
• Carole Piovesan

Twitter:

• @CJPiovesan
• @McCarthy_ca

Facebook: McCarthy Tétrault

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.
• Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here.

I’m still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn’t love to save money?

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to Franki Chamaki!

View Details

Blake Cronyn is Ironman, ultramarathon runner, Guinness World Record holder, Nike Pacer, technology entrepreneur and twin. When he is not in front of a computer, he on the pavement either on a bike or in his shoes (Nike only). Humans are tool builders; Blake use technology as a tool to enhance his mental and physical capacities in order to maximize my potential. He is also the President at rBux.

Humans are tool builders; Blake use technology as a tool to enhance his mental and physical capacities in order to maximize our potential. He is also the President at rBux.

Episode Overview: Hey innovators! I've got another tasty treat for you. This week's episode I get to talk to the president of rBux. It's almost like "our" Bucks which tells you that this episode is for everyone those that want to get rewarded for telling your friends about what you've bought and what you recommend. And those retailers and companies that are looking for some way to kind of partner with the actual general public that is utilizing your services.

It is kind of a WIN-WIN. Blake also share about how the importance and how the best practice of throwing spaghetti at the wall can help you really figure things out. He shares the anti sloth best practice out there and how action conquers fears.

Guinness World Record and Business Ventures Blake is a Guinness World Record holder for the longest TV watching marathon in history and it was sponsored by Bell Media. And they did a publicity stunt for the unveiling of Crave TV. The ironic thing is that Blake don't actually watch a lot of TV but when they told him about their experience he obviously was ecstatic because I wanted to get a Guinness world record and be the best in the world at something.

It is in that occasion that he met his partner Bruce Clark who is the CEO of rBux and Blake is the president.

Life happens when you're busy making other plans - Sapna

rBux is a social platform that allows anyone to market themselves for our partner companies and its performance based marketing where members get compensated according to the value that they create. It is also platform that allows you to share products online and if it leads to sales rBux will geta percentage. rBux is for people who sell products, it is for people who share products and it is for people who buy products and can get compensated in terms of financial rewards or point systems.

rBux which phonetically sounds like our box stands for referral box or reward box and it's all about the concept of getting compensated for referrals which we think don't get properly compensated in our society so we create a product that will solve that problem. Essentially you can redeem them for products at any of our partner retailers or brands or you can cash them out for local currency.

The whole idea of rBux come about: Bruce Clark is the CEO and he's the visionary and they came up with the idea around 15 years ago. He is a very successful he's a very successful retailer and essentially he noticed it as a problem that people made referrals but seldom got compensated and that's a huge problem because word of mouth sales are a great low cost way to market products and lead to sales. And so he thought if he could create a system that incentivized word of mouth sales more and then this would be a huge benefit for not only himself as a retail store owner but for others. So Blake met up with Bruce and pitched on the idea although Blake had no involvement in the creation of it. Instead, Blake helped with the execution which is arguably just as important.

People who create that value share share the benefits of the value they create as well.

What excites me most about this industry: Right now we are e-commerce focused and there's a lot of products selling online. However, Blake and his team are hoping to get into the services, in store and expand to bigger ticket items such as automobiles and even real estate. But let's start with where we are now with e-commerce and products which is an unbelievably exciting industry to be in because so many products are being produced at a frequent pace.

Lessons Learned: * The importance of finding out what works for you. * Fire bullets and then cannonballs. * It's essentially finding out what works. * Trying a little bit of everything but finding out what works and then doubling down and putting more effort behind the thing that really works.

Quotes to Live By:

“Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears” - Ben Franklin

Action conquer fear

Complexity is the enemy of execution

Productivity tool: * Trello

Book Recommendation: How Google works by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg

The First 90 Days by Michael D. Watkins

The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz

EMyths Revisited by Michael Gerber

The Digital Economy by Don Topsccott

Hotspot * The Ossington Strip - Toronto * Ride Cycle Club - Toronto * Paris Paris - Toronto

About rBux: rBux, uses technology to empower anyone to create and develop their personal brand for social sharing. rBux provides the online tools and education to help expand their reach and the ability to monetize their own social influence. From influencers building out their lifestyle brand to customers interested in developing passive income, rBux makes it easy to participate in social commerce.

rBux started operations in 2015 and is the evolution of retail. The brainchild of Bruce Clark, owner, and operator of The Muskoka Store, a destination retail brand housing unique and useful cottage products located in Muskoka, Ontario. In his search to encourage customers to recommend products, rBux was born.

rBux is social commerce, using social media and online media to cultivate social collaboration to assist in online buying and selling of products. The rBux platform was specifically designed for influencers and the evolution of Retail. By letting influencers promote products and create their own personal referral gallery, you empower them to recommend products that reflect their own lifestyle brand. With the ever-growing amount of products available online, people want to see products recommended by people, these word-of-mouth referrals create a feeling of shopping authenticity.

Connect with Blake: * LinkedIn: rBux Blake Cronyn * Website: Blake Cronyn and rBux.com * IG: @blakeycc

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.
• Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here.

I’m still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn’t love to save money?

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to Artem Bali!

View Details

Karen Greve Young is the Chief Executive Officer of Futurpreneur Canada, Canada’s only national organization dedicated to supporting young entrepreneurs. Futurpreneur’s unique model combines funding, mentorship and start-up programs to fuel the success of thousands of young entrepreneurs in every Canadian province and territory.

Karen is an accomplished non-profit leader dedicated to fostering economic and social prosperity through new approaches and partnerships.

How did the birth of Futurpreneur Canada come about? When Futurpreneur Canada started two decades ago before Karen even lives in Canada, there really wasn't an ecosystem for startup founders.

On an event, an entrepreneur started with a blank canvas or a blank landscape without whole lot of support and in response to that a group of Canadians; that was started by a Canadian members of industry and then supported by the federal government, got the idea of providing collateral free low interest loans to entrepreneurs.

Futurpreneur realize that money is an important part particularly for young entrepreneur especially if they don’t have other equity and access to funds there business. Another part that is important for Futurpreneur is its mentorship.

They also make sure that the entrepreneurs also get a mentor, a guide and the support of an individual to help them on their journey and that has always been part of the motto of Futurpreneur.

Futurpreneur financing, mentorship and its tools to help support these entrepreneurs from ages 18 to 39 so that they can use these in order to start their business. It is also the only organization supporting entrepreneurs that does this in every province and territory in Canada.

What matters to them is an entrepreneur who is young, has an idea or a business model and can use the mentorship that they provide in order to bring the business idea to reality.

Karen talks about the entrepreneur journey and how they work to support it: Entrepreneur starts with passion. They start with an idea and goal of what they want to achieve and pretty quickly they realize that they needed fuels (funds) to achieve this to get their ideas down in writing and to plan it out to get the resources they need. And often they need the confidence to actually start.

What excites Karen most about this industry:

"From wannapreneur to entrepreneur"

Entrepreneur is the umbrella term for people starting a business but obviously there are many types of entrepreneurs.

What Karen is really excited about as being a part of Futurpreneur is the scope of all the main street businesses in Canada. That means Canadian from smaller towns can come back to their hometown after college and have a vibrant job opportunities just like on the large city without having to go to a large city.

It is really important that they focus on opportunities that are broader, rural and urban, and for the whole diverse range of people whether they are doing it part time with the side hustle or full time.

The biggest entrepreneurial mistake that Karen see from time to time: * It takes a certain amount of confidence start a business * You need to have confidence to yourself and your business but should not reach arrogance or hubris. * As soon as an entrepreneur stops listening to people who disagree with her or with him; that is a recipe for disaster. * Having a mentor or advisers or talking to your customers who you know will say something straight given what is not what you want to hear is vital.

Karen also shared with us how this situation could lead to becoming a confident blocker. Listen to my episode Ariel Garten from Muse - episode 45 where we dive in through what confident blockers do to you and what you should do to stop it.

"Invite people with different opinions"

Marketing/Entrepreneur Tips: Sometimes we focus too much on the messages that we want to get out that we as humans we put things in what we want to convey rather than what we want them to hear and feel. So always keep your customers in mind and focusing on what's in it for them and what are they looking for from what you are doing and REPEAT, REPEAT, REPEAT.

"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and the second best time is today" – Chinese Proverb

Favorite Habit that made her say wow she was a part of:

Getting out of the field and visiting their team around the country. One specific experience that Karen had was being in Halifax visiting the House of Auto Details which is an auto detailing company; a female founded who has found a gap in the industry and several years later is still going strong. The very next day, she met Nathon Kong is a Montreal-based company creating bespoke custom-tailored suits with the help of a 3D scanner which is made by local artists and some of it are done by patients from the local mental health facilities.

"You are trying to embark on a new path there is no better time than now"

Personal Habit:

For Karen, it is all about how she starts her day early in the morning and do workouts and journaling and get things done. The last thing that she will do before getting her kids ready is she Muse headband for about 3 to 10 minutes. She uses her Muse headband to meditate, be mindful and set herself up for the day she wants to have.

You can listen to Ariel Garten the founder of Muse on episode 41

Resources Recommendation: * MaRS startup library * The power of mentors and partnership

Tools from Futurpreneur:

• Business Plan Writer
• Entrepreneur Pathway
• Library

Inspiring people to follow:

• Melinda Gates
• Richard Branson
• Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures

Hot spot:

• Webber’s on Highway 11, ON
• Halifax Central Library

About Futurpreneur: Futurpreneur Canada has been fueling the entrepreneurial passions of Canada’s young enterprise for two decades. We are the only national, non-profit organization that provides financing, mentoring and support tools to aspiring business owners aged 18-39. Our internationally recognized mentoring program hand matches young entrepreneurs with a business expert from a network of more than 2,800 volunteer mentors.

More about Karen:

Prior to joining Futurpreneur in 2018, Karen was the Vice President, Corporate Development & Partnerships at MaRS Discovery District, a global innovation hub based in Toronto. During her seven year tenure, Karen led corporate strategy development, implementation and measurement, managed a global network of innovation partners, and oversaw community engagement including marketing, communications and events.

She has previously held finance, management and strategy roles in San Francisco, New York and London, UK, at organizations including Bain & Company, Gap Inc. and the UK’s Institute of Cancer Research. Along the way, she co-authored a book with her mother about their shared experience through her mother’s ovarian cancer journey.

Karen holds an MBA from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and a BA in Economics from Harvard University.

Connect with Karen: LinkedIn: Karen Greve Young

Website: Futurpreneur.ca

Twitter: @Futurpreneur @KarenGreveYoung

Facebook: Futurpreneur

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.
• Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here.

I’m still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn’t love to save money?

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to Ian Schneider!

View Details

Ariel is the Founder of InteraXon, the makers of Muse: the brain sensing headband. She is also a neuroscientist, innovator, mother, and entrepreneur whose driving purpose is to empower and help others overcome mental obstacles in order to live healthy, happy lives and reach their maximum potential.

We’ve had Ariel on before talking about How to Overcome the Knots in your Head on Episode 45. Real tactical tips to overcome your obstacles and help change your mindset. I’ve received so much feedback on this episode that people have really liked the tactical exercises versus the theoretical stuff. In fact, one of our listeners shared it the episode with her teenage daughter and she was saying that it really built her confidence!

About Muse 2 Muse® 2 uses built-in biosignal, inertial, and heart sensors to create real-time audio experiences in four key areas to help users find focused calm, improve posture, and increase breath and heart awareness. With the companion app, Muse® 2 translates meditators’ internal states into immersive soundscapes to provide subtle guidance during meditation.

Muse 1 gives you real time feedback on your brain during meditations. It is essentially the personal meditation system that fits in your head and gather data on when your mind is focused or when it wondered so that you can build a stronger meditation practice of data.

Muse 2 teaches people that brain is amazing but meditation has a much greater gateway. Meditation is all about breathing, sitting, how your heart is moving, how your body is moving and then they built a sensor to each one of those facets just like what they did for the brain.

The new headband also has a PPG sensor the tracks your heart rate so that you can get real-time feedback on your heart, it has sensors that will be able to track breathing so that you can see each inhalation and exhalation. It also has sensors that will be track your movements. From there they created this three beautiful experiences around heart, breath and body so that you can get real-time feedback around those practice.

How Muse 2 Works Muse 2 had the same factor as his predecessor Muse 1 which is a small little headband that fits in your head just like an eyeglass. The form factor is a little bit slimmer and along the way they have created a smart glasses that read EEG and through the process of building smart glasses that could read your brain they develop the EEG smaller so they can take that and incorporate it into the new Muse. The new Muse is smaller and lighter but it has more power and more sensors.

They also added a PPG sensor next to the EEG sensors on your forehead that turns out to be more accurate than reading EEG on your wrist because reading your heart rate from your forehead is more reliable then your wrist.

Just like the Apple wristband where a red light go through your skin to be able to see the blood flow at any moment so it sinks in real-time in your heartbeat. In that perspective, they develop the headband that translate your heart's activity into a beating of a drum so you can actually hear every single beat like a beating of a drum plus they paired that with real-time feedback with your breathe.

When using your heart rate you can actually track each and every one of your breath and correlated it with your movement when you breathe in and out. Using these fusion of sensors, you can actually track each and every one of your breath in crisp real-time and then from there gives you guided reading exercises.

“The first sensation is never the right sensation”

“When you practice meditation over time, the impact of your emotions is not as dramatic in your mind and your body”

Ariel also shared about Muse Facebook group community which allowed them to support each other and hold each other accountable during their meditation sessions, their struggles during meditations and finding their best practices.

“Give yourself time”

“Turn of your inner critic”

About Muse® by Interaxon Inc.: At Muse®, our team of neuroscientists, meditation teachers, and engineers develop state-of-the-art experiences using research grade EEG technology. Our goal is to help individuals build a rewarding meditation practice and live healthier, happier, more connected lives. Our products include Muse® and Muse® 2, brain sensing headbands that are designed to help users meditate by providing real-time audio and visual feedback on their meditative state through the Muse® companion app.

Connect with Ariel: Website: Muse | The Brain Sensing Headband

Social Media:

• LinkedIn: Ariel Garten on LinkedIn
• Twitter: @ariel_garten and @ChooseMuse
• Facebook: Muse on Facebook
• Instagram: @Choosemuse @ariels musings

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.
• Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here.

I’m still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn’t love to save money?

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to Tom Roberts!

View Details

Tyler Handley is the co-founder & CEO at inkbox - a tattoo ecosystem that empowers customers to make good tattoo decisions. In just 3 years he’s led the development of a new product category and co-manages a team of 60 employees on a mission to empower the world to find confidence through tattoos. Outside of work you can find Tyler reading, staying fit, and playing too much Fortnite.

Episode Overview: This episode is pretty exciting for a few reasons. First of all - one of our podcast listeners nominated inkbox! Thank you Asma! This is definitely an innovative company that is revolutionizing the tattoo industry!

Tyler provides such great insights

• How the tattoo industry is changing & being revolutionized
• One of Canada's fastest growing startups and recently closed a $17M CAD Series A financing from tier 1 venture capital funds.
• How they are leveraging best practices from the tribes in Panama
• Inkbox also gives back to artists,

I’ve always wanted a tattoo but have been afraid of the pain, would it stretch when I got older and the lifelong design commitment. However, I think Inkbox is a commitment that I can totally make!

What makes this a Canadian Innovation or Innovative thinking? Inkbox is a tattoo ecosystem that empowers customers to make good tattoo decisions. Their anchor product is a semi-permanent tattoo that customers apply from the comfort of home, no needles required. Customers can choose from thousands of designs created by an active artist community or create their own.

They are also one of Canada's fastest growing startups and recently closed a $17M CAD Series A financing from tier 1 venture capital funds. And they have created an entirely new category. Inkbox semi permanent tattoo last for over seven days or at least three weeks depending on the skin types. It also gives back to the artist by providing them commission on the designs that they create for the consumers or customers.

Sapna shared a story about how she wanted to have her own tattoo that is designed by her when she was 10 years old.

What excites Tyler about this industry: This kind of industry is this it has become a progressive art form. It is also a very conservative industry on the artistic side but it is changing now. Historically tattoos have been relegated as an outskirt of society so people who consider themselves as a part of a rebel culture or is all about rebellion or being against the mainstream. However tattoo nowadays is already mainstream and Tyler think that it is driven by just a proliferation of Instagram or Pinterest where you can see a new style of arts where there is more accessibility for artist.

Lessons Learned: I realize that no one actually told him about the context of contacts.

"You really don't know what you are doing unless you have the context"

You need to know who are the best people to talk to to help you understand what you need to do to the get to the next stage.

Kickstarter allows you to sell your products online even if you still don't have a physical product ready to be shipped to your customers. Kickstarter allows you to raise funds and neat your desired budget in order to create your physical product.

" You need to get in front of the kickstarter community."

“Start of kickstarter is about leveraging your own network and community"

"Hustle until you get to the front page of Kickstarter"

Company goal: Their goal is to help you find confidence with your next tattoo decision

Company Story: It’s what sparked Tyler and his team to create inkbox. Their styles, tastes, and opinions were always changing. Why wasn’t there a tattoo that could change with us?

So they invented the inkbox tattoo - a temporary tattoo that actually looks authentic. Unlike temporary tattoos that are just stickers on your skin, inkbox tattoos function more like permanent tattoos - they sit in your skin, and then fade as your skin naturally regenerates. In other words, they allow you to express your boldest, most badass self, without the commitment. We think that’s pretty cool!

You know what else is pretty cool? Giving back. When they were developing inkbox they came across tribes in Panama who dye their skin with the pulp of a local fruit. This is where they found the active ingredients for our product.

They are proud to support these tribes through the Darien Initiative - a charity that helps the indigenous tribes of the Darién Gap, Panama by providing agricultural and community support programs.

And did you know that every time you buy an inkbox tattoo, an artist somewhere in the world makes money? We know how hard it can be to get by in today’s economy. We’re all about supporting independent artists in making some moolah off their passion.

Press Mentions:

“Never be a victim of impulse and poor judgement again with inkbox - Forbes

“The problem with fake tattoos is they look fake until now - Mashable

"inkbox is perfect for the person who wants to express themselves but doesn't know WTF they want." - Vice

"The Commitment We All Can Make" - Mtv

"They may not be permanent, but they too carry a wow factor" - Fashion

"This is not an average temporary tattoo company" - Inked (magazine)

Resources and Tips Mentioned: * Reading industry publications * Things that you can contact within your niche * Leveraging on your resources is key * Building up a strong network of people who tend average yourself and your business

Book recommendation:

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Hotspot:

Pai Northern Thai Kitchen

Connect with Tyler: Website: https://inkbox.com/

Twitter: @getinkbox and @Tyler_Handley

Facebook: Inkbox

Instagram: @inkbox

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.
• Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here.

I’m still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn’t love to save money?

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to Ross Findon!

View Details

We made it!

I am so excited to share with you all the first year anniversary of CanInnovate podcast. I can't believe that we made it this far and I could have done it without all of you who supported me and my podcast on this journey. CanInnovate as you might already know is my passion project. A passion project that is dedicated to share to the world how awesome Canadian innovators are. During my journey, I have interviewed so many aspiring innovators who are changing the world as we know it by providing valuable lessons, marketing and innovative tips, cheat sheets and lessons.

In this episode, my good friend Julie Shum who had been with be since day 1 get to interview me about the lessons that I learned, the tips that I applied that changed the course of how I do my business and my future plans for CanInnovate. So tune in and have fun!

Shoot, have I done? What’s next? I remembered when I first submitted my request to Apple and thought maybe I will get three to four days approval for my podcast. But, things got a little hyped when it was in fact approved 10 minutes after I submitted my request. So I asked myself, what’s next?

Trying to prove my mentor wrong My first objective and goal for starting a podcast was to prove my original thesis and my mentor wrong and that there is a lot of Canadian innovation happening on the landscape.

There's so much more innovation and thought leadership that is happening in the Canadian soil and I want to share and provide awareness that there are loads of Canadian innovations out there.

I love the fact that people are saying that they don't know that this kind of innovation or company is Canadian. I love the feedback that we are getting and which brings awareness of some really great Canadian thought leaders and provide some insights out there to our listeners.

My motivation now is really to create that awareness about what is currently happening on the Canadian landscape so that we can start supporting them.

Who in the first year surprise you the most being a Canadian innovator? Dr Ann Cavoukian because of her take on privacy just makes me more passionate about securing our privacy. I even ask my clients about their privacy awareness and share with them what think about it and ask how they purge about or how do they maintain it and so on.

I was also inspired by Eli Fathi of MindBridge AI because he brings so much innovation tips and he has been a serial entrepreneur for a long time. He taught us how to bring company to life and how to sell these companies for millions of dollars. Eli also told us that his secret sauce for his success was his wife.

We also had Ariel Gaten of Muse who has been on our podcast twice where we talk about the value of meditation on our regular podcast episode and a masterclass about changing our minds and practice tactical things on how to get ourselves on stuck on situation by using and understanding how our brain works through meditation.

It is also really exciting that we got Daryl Hemingway who is actually a rocket scientist from NASA, who is also a filmmaker and is a serial entrepreneur. He is also the CEO and founder of SmartTone, an entertainment technology company with one goal in mind – connecting broadcast media to mobile. They believe entertainment should excite audiences and enable them to participate.

And when i found out that the book that i was reading for years, The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier who is actually Canadian, it blew my mind! Michael provided as with the seven questions that change literally almost everything that I do.

Did you apply any tips and tricks or insights that your guests provided? Of course I did, when they share these best practices it really excites me because I’m learning something new and a few important practices that I learned from this best practices are:

• We can't do things alone - and I think this is really important because we tend to forget that we don't have a support system all of the time.
• Networking is huge and making network count – Our guests they have given so much insight and values about networking. One of them was Andreas Souvaliotis from Carrots reward told us that he never eats alone.

He continues to never eat alone and the reason behind it is to learn the different perspective from people about the world that he didn't learn about and almost having eyes at the back of his head.

Where do you think the direction of your project is taking you? This is huge for me because I am transitioning or to change into something that this not only focuses on innovators who talked about their journey but also start offering master classes or a deep dive into those best practices because we always hear about this kinds of tips and best practices but no one tells us how to do it.

So now I have been reaching out to these innovators and masterminds to focus on more tactical things to help the listeners understand what we should do about these best practices that were given to us to bring more value into our lives and our businesses.

I want to provide more cheat sheets out there where people can do things, more workshops or things that I usually do on corporations. I’m starting to see how valuable it is to see individuals to get the same access to these things that corporations provide and I wanted to really make it user friendly.

With all this industry and the Canadian innovators that you have discovered what do you think are going to get disrupted this year? It is really difficult for me to say because I think there is no company that is not going to get hit. For example, Fin-tech is really going to hit insurance industry soon because the whole thing and notion about privacy and security and the level of transparency is really going to continue and it is going to allow the consumers to keep asking questions and companies should be more responsive and I think this is really going to continue to evolve and take place.

Another example is the block chain technology, the smart contracts, the privacy, the security and everything else is really going to hit every industry. Supply chain is also a great one because you are looking at end to end perspective.

Company cultures, I think the shift on the company's behavior needs to change because they need to be a lot more innovative and they need to hear the employees so that they all have a stake on the ground that needs to be around for a long time.

Is there someone you are looking to interview may be an idol or something? I would love to get the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the podcast. I'd love to pick up his brain and talk about what is happening and where things are going and to really hear the vision of what they are thinking.

Do you have any surprises up your sleeves? When I started teaching at George Brown University, I talked to a lot of people who connected with me because they listened to the podcast and they wanted to meet. And the one thing that I noticed is that they don't know how to network.

So I decided to write a book about networking and communications.

I think that networking had become an evolved art because you can network via social media, you can network behind the computer or you don't have to meet face-to-face to create a connection. In fact, I have relationships around the world with people that I have never met but I jumped on a Skype call to meet them. So yes it is about communication and networking but it is really about how to connect with people.

Where is your favorite Canadian hot spot or hide away that you can share with us? I love going for a walk by the waterfront!

View Details

Warren Levitan is co-founder and CEO of Smooch, the omnichannel conversation platform for enterprise software makers. He previously served as CEO of Radialpoint, which was acquired by AppDirect. Founded in 2015, Smooch connects any business software to all the world’s messaging channels for a more human customer experience. It was named New Startup of the Year at Techvibes’ sixth annual Canadian Startup Awards and a 2018 CIX Top 20 company by the Canadian Innovation Exchange. Episode overview: This week, Warren  shares his vision and insights on what is happening in customer experience and how messaging is going to make all of our lives easier by connecting  consumers to businesses in a more personal and convenient way. He will also be dropping sales and marketing tips, the story on how Smooch came about and the lessons that he learned throughout his journey as an innovator. Smooch is about building relationships between consumers and brands. Smooch is not a bot platform. Smooch is helping businesses build new channels of communication with customers through their own websites and mobile apps, plus the messaging apps consumers are already using to connect with friends and family. Businesses can handle these conversation via their existing customer experience software using live human agents or ring on automation with chatbots. Customer intimacy (getting to know your customer and being very personal with them) - building an emotional connection between consumers and brands. Warren and his team don't want the new digital channels to turn into a crap where you are stuck or when you are  just typing to your agents or something but instead it is really about the connection between brands and where the consumers are and you can layer bot on top of that. “It's really hard for brands today to compete on their products.” As consumers interact with brands, we generally don't know everything we need to know to place an order or acquire something. Sometimes we do but most times we don't and brands have traditionally pushed us through forms and flows that make sure they get all the information from us. “As a consumer all you want is to engage with the lowest effort in the places we're already are and not jumping through hoops.” How the idea of Smooch come about: Warren shared a story about his last business delivering technical support for telcos around the world. Experiencing it firsthand, Warren realize that no matter how good they want to be in helping their customers and assisting them with their problems, by the time the call reach them, the customers are already angry. That is why he thought that this situation could be prevented. They would have solve this customer's problems so much easier if they were their first interaction. And that is where the idea for Smooch was born. Warren also shared about their venture and partnership with the biggest messaging platform, WhatsApp. What makes this a Canadian Innovation or Innovative thinking? Montreal-based Smooch is changing the way businesses create, nurture and grow one-to-one relationships with their customers. The Smooch Conversation Cloud allows brands to engage with users on all the world’s leading messaging apps and voice assistants, with support for both live agents and AI, revolutionizing and humanizing how people interact with businesses and technology. Smooch powers the conversational products and experiences of global leaders such as Zendesk, Oracle, Genesys, Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, Betterment and Bird. Resources Recommendation: Restaurant: Dinette Triple Crown  Book: Summary of Principles by Ray Dalio Company Mission: At Smooch, our mission is to humanize the relationships between businesses and their customers. With over 4 billion messaging accounts worldwide, people spend more time messaging than any other activity online. This shift, combined with the power of conversation at scale, creates an opportunity to make interaction with the brands we trust more useful, more immediate, more intimate, and ultimately more human. "The future is already here it is not just evenly distributed" As consumers grow to demand personal and human communication on a wide variety of channels, businesses are looking to their software vendors and partners to innovate and deliver these customer experiences. “Transformative change takes time” All great changes takes longer you might have imagined the best part of it is dance to be bigger and what you have imagined Sales and marketing tips : Make sure you're focused on your customers problem and not your solution Productivity tool: Messaging Slack Smooch WhatsApp Hot spot: Dinette Triple Crown in Montreal Jazz fest during summer Connect with Warren: Website: https://smooch.io/ Twitter: @SmoochLabs and @wlevitan Facebook: Smooch LinkedIn: Smooch.io Thanks again for tuning in! To help out the show: Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated. If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us. Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here. I’m still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen! Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn’t love to save money? We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to Ross Findon!

View Details

Michael Bungay Stanier is the author of several books, including The Coaching Habit and Do More Great Work. Michael has written for or been featured in numerous publications including Business Insider, Fast Company, Forbes, The Globe & Mail and The Huffington Post.

Michael is giving away two The Coaching Habit to CanInnovate listeners. So be sure to tune in and send me an email or comment down below.

Episode Overview: A sought-after speaker, Michael regularly speaks to businesses and organizations and has delivered keynotes at Leadership, HR and Learning & Development, conferences around the world, including ATD, SHRM, IPL, HRPA and the Conference Board of Canada.

Balancing out these moments of success, Michael was banned from his high school graduation for “the balloon incident,” was sued by one of his Law School lecturers for defamation, and his first published piece of writing was a Mills & Boone short story called “The Male Delivery.”

Michael left Australia 25 years ago to be a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where his only significant achievement was falling in love with a Canadian, which is why he now lives in Toronto, having spent time in London and Boston. He was the first Canadian Coach of the Year.

Michael explains why the manager only needs 7 good questions that transforms your leadership game on his book, The Coaching Habit.

“For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn't give you a fig. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity, for that I would give you anything I have.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

For the teachings that Michael does, he tries to strive for that simplicity and he thinks that so often we over complicate things. Michael is all about making things simple, practical and doable. For normal people, coaching is a little but weird because some people are being traumatized by their coaches.

For Michael, coaching is a very powerful leadership behavior to get the best out of people, get the best out of yourself and to have more impact in the work that you are doing. Part of the question that he usually ask is what is the least he can teach people and what is the least people need to have the most impact into the work they need.

“Spend less time asking people what to do and more times asking good questions.”

If you interact with other human beings in your life learning to be more coach-like which in the end is, can you beat yourself a little bit longer? Can you rush for action and give advice a little bit more slowly? Being a coach-like can be a little bit different for everybody.

“Most of us are advice giving maniacs”

Michael discovered that people advice is not nearly as good as they think it is because.

• The advice they have isn't solving the right problem
• The advice they have isn't that good of a solution
• People preferred to figure this stuff out themselves and come up with their own ideas and their own advice

Michael also talked about the And what else... And what else, comes with an insight that a person answer to your first question is never there only answer and it rarely gets the best to answer.

And what else is also a great management tool if you're going to slow down the rush to advice, asking and what else is a way of controlling your advice monster who is waiting for a leap of action that is trying to solve the problem and save the day. And you want to return this advice monster.

If you are saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?

Michael’s strategy question in the book says: When you think about innovation and you think about the challenges that brings with it so much of what great innovation is about and being clear to what the no's are so you can say yes to the stuff that really matters.

Every time you say yes you are rolling out a bunch of things that you can do instead of finding the things that you really want to do.

• What is ghost coaching (Coaching the Ghost)
• The difference between bad, good and great work and how to leverage it
• The benefits about giving less advice and staying curios longer

Should you get a coach when you are stuck in a rut?

Michael says that you should not get a coach immediately. If getting a coach works for you financially and how will you can commit, that would be really powerful. But there are also passive voice that you can get unstuck.

Tips on how to get unstuck.

• An accountability partner
• Hire a coach
• Read a book

I have made worksheet to help you get unstuck in a rut. Click here to download worksheet. Michael's Do Great Work book provides 15 very specific exercises to help you understand what great work is.

"The inspiration in your past suddenly make sense"

Sometimes seeking out other people's advice it is a way of detecting from you going away from understanding what's my real challenge what am i going to do about it and how am i going to take this on.

"Everything that you do in work or in life is forge into one or two different buckets"

And on sudden points you have to move away from collecting advice and you have to move into taking responsibility take your best jazz and move things on.

Resources Mentioned: Book recommendation:

• Art is Work by Milton Glaser
• Bill Bryson books

Hot spot recommendation:

• Defina wood pizza in Toronto
• Byblos restaurant

Connect with Michael: The Coaching Habit

Box of Crayons

MichaelBungayStanier.com

LinkedIn: Michael Bungay Stanier

Twitter: @boxofcrayons

Facebook: Box of Crayons on Facebook

Michael has created: * 'The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More and Change the Way You Lead Forever', a new book about practical coaching for busy managers. David Allen calls it "a brilliant how-to manual " and Dan Pink says "simple yet profound." * The award winning and best-selling book, Do More Great Work: stop the busywork and start the work that matters * End Malaria, a collection of essays from thought leaders about Great Work. $20 from each book sold goes to Malaria No More, and we have raised about $400,000 for Malaria No More. * The Great Work MBA, a virtual conference with 10,000 participants * The Box of Crayons' training programs which are used by Fortune 1000 companies around the world. * The award winning coaching tool, Get Unstuck & Get Going on the stuff that matters

Before founding Box of Crayons, Michael held senior positions in the corporate, consultancy and agency worlds He has lived and worked in Australia, the UK, the US and Canada.

Michael has an M Phil from Oxford, a law degree and a BA with highest honours from the Australian National University.

About Box of Crayons: Box of Crayons teaches 10-minute coaching so your managers build stronger teams and get better results. When your managers and leaders make coaching part of their everyday work, they increase focus, resilience and impact. Led by engaged master facilitators, all of our programs are highly interactive, engaging and fun.

View Details

Richard Batchelor the Founder of Toronto Change Days and President of Capillary Consulting has been delivering successful change for over 25 years. Always an early adopter, change thinker and someone who relishes the challenge of embracing the new, he is a strong believer in following the mantra of his university - their motto is "Do Different" and that's what he's been doing ever since.

Episode Overview: Richard is a very highly respected international change management professional with extensive experience delivering successful outcomes to engagements in business transformation, enterprise technology solutions and organizational restructures (including M&A) supported by extensive positive achievement in strategic human resources, executive leadership coaching, organizational development and operational excellence delivery. He has a global presence, working with businesses across Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas to develop, plan, implement and sustain the changes needed to grow and prosper.

In 2018 Rich founded Toronto Change Days conference, an experience very different to any other conference that may happen in north america. With performance art, yoga, mindfulness, trust games and more funky workshops making up a weekend experience of learning through immersive experience, change makers, agents, innovators and more will be welcome to a learning journey of brain expanding proportions this November 16, 2018.

CanInnovate listeners can get $75 off by using CP75 when you register for the conference. Click here to get your tickets.

About Toronto Change Days Conference: Rich had been working on Toronto Change Days for over 25 years and he has seen a lot of things and ideas that goes around and tell people what change actually means to them and how they are going to take things forward. - one of the things that inspired him was Berlin Change Days.

• If it wasn’t for change, we never create to invent anything
• He has been looking at how he can be innovative in that learning space for people to understand change.
• The main idea of Toronto Change Days Conference coming this year is for Rich to get the idea on how we can looking at how we can get people to have a truly experienced learning and activity over the weekend.
• The conference is not about corporate entity and not about depth of a PowerPoint or experiences.
• He want people to have an experience where they can took often is not about asking that question “why am I here?” but instead it is a conference that would make them say “Oh My God, I’m glad to be here”

The conference will be about people learning from each other either about: * Going to that experience or having lots of different things * They have people with analogies, stories, experiences and techniques that the audience may not know before. * They could have people spread out to the floor doing yoga poses as they learn about the agility of their body as a direct link to the agility of organization. * People will learn the art of leadership because it is not about action but rather a mindset of learning how you approach things * You will learn about trust. You are going to be doing trust exercises and learn how to trust boundaries and understand how sometimes, boundaries are correct and sometimes not correct. * And so much more!

This would be the perfect place for you to try and experiment a new types of activities to help you get unstuck or get you out of your curiosity.

This year’s theme is about Agility, Boundaries and Curiosity which also means:

• Agility - we are talking about flexibility, nimbleness and almost that agile mindset and getting people to explore these areas.
• Boundaries - we will talk to people how to understand boundaries; “should we have boundaries or should we not have boundaries?”. Boundaries are there for a reason and sometimes we have to respect those boundaries.
• Curiosity - we love the fact that curiosity brings so many new things to the world yet it is something that gets driven out of us.

Rich shares why curiosity is very important to be brought back to us on our workplace and and age and how it can improve the way we think, the way we work and the way we express ourselves innovatively.

Rich explains why as adults; because of compliance, we are forces to hold back the way we think innovatively which brings us down to two sections.

Fear Factor

• We have mindset that people afraid of failure and the only way of being confident of not failing is to keep doing the same-old same-old

• Failure is good and failure is not a problem because if you fail a couple of times, you come up with the best answers.

Metrics

• People are focused on short-term steps. They are focused on getting the money back into the business as fast as possible today without knowing what the potential is when going forward.

What makes this a Canadian Innovation or Innovative thinking? Capillary delivers consulting, learning and coaching services focused on individual, organizational and societal change. They are far from traditional in their approach and together with their sister company, Curiosity Culture they use innovative approaches including Lego, Music, performance art, storytelling and coloring in, to explore the impact and navigation of change as it approaches.

Rich explains the deeper meaning of change and provided us with tips and lessons learned based on his experiences.

Tips: * The way people can really look at their curiosity is to focus on questions not answers. * Stop looking at things and try to find solutions all the time. * Don’t just jump on the answer but question that question. * Don’t beat yourself up when things fail or you don’t know the answers to the questions. * It is more important to have a dynamic important questions to enable curiosity to move forward * When you have a deeper curiosity, you are able to challenge yourself in any situation. * Don’t be afraid to fail. If you don’t know, it’s okay. * Questions keep your brain exercised not the answers. * Take a risk and go forward to develop things and the ideas

Lessons Learn: * Remember to reflect on every change * Organizations don’t change; People change. * Stop focusing on the organization. Stop trying to drive change in the organization. * When people embrace the change, the organization through with no problem. * When you are trying to jump in the organization to change, the people will push back at you. Do it with them not to them.

Resources Mentioned: Productivity Tool:

• Trello

Book Recommendation:

• Directing The Agile Organization by Evan Label

Personal Habit:

• Mindfulness and meditation
• Reflecting on his own personal target
• Become a little bit more realistic
• Drink coffee :-)

Hot spot Recommendation:

• Port Perry in Scugog, Ontario
• The Jester’s Court

About Company: Capillary Consulting offers a broad range of consultation services delivering effective, influential and sustainable change through a new kind of collaborative consultation that puts the client at the centre of the engagement and optimizes organizational functioning.

Our collaborative approach values ‘partnering to discover solutions’ over ‘one-size-fits-all methodologies’. We take clients on a journey of self-discovery and, through developing a thorough understanding of their organisation and situation, apply the right elements of proven successful change models to capitalize on opportunities and find innovative possibilities even in difficult situations.

Our approach is a tailor made engagement for each and every client, through which we are able to reflect on what has happened, learn from what’s currently happening, to flourish into the future.

Connect with Rich: Twitter:

• @TOChangeDays
• @CapillaryTweets

LinkedIn: Rich Batchelor

Website:

• Capillary Consulting
• Toronto Change Days

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.
• Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here.

I’m still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn’t love to save money?

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to Ross Findon!

View Details

Jonathan Hera is the Founder and Managing Partner of Marigold Capital. Marigold offers strategic consulting and fund management for private market impact investments. The firm works with families, foundations, corporations and governments to better use finance for equitable and prosperous social change.

Episode Overview: In this episode, Jonathan talked about venture capital and why VC (venture capital) doesn’t work for everybody but it is super sexy and a super exciting type of finance at this stage. In Marigold Capital, they use different types of mechanism and different type of finance that allows them to fund many activities that might not fit the traditional VC model.

Jonathan explained how venture capital handle the money that they get and provide to the entrepreneurs. For Jonathan Hera, the model of managing money and getting bigger returns on the back-end is really weird because it can be broken and it needs to change.

Jonathan also talked about why women are usually good founders on a company and talked about how they run a business and stepping it up to the market.

Venture Capital and Angel Investor: Venture Capital. VC is a type of private equity, a form of financing that is provided by firms or funds to small, early-stage, emerging firms that are deemed to have high growth potential, or which have demonstrated high growth (in terms of number of employees, annual revenue, or both).

Angel investor. An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity.

Jonathan explained that if you got a business idea and turned that idea into some minimal viable product and having some prototypes and testing it to some of your customers, and if you are looking to fund yourself beyond you and your founders or family who can't provide anymore capital, that is when venture capital and angel investor comes in.

You might also go to a couple of groups of angel investors or long standing entrepreneurs who are looking to give back to other inspiring entrepreneurs. And if you start to validate your product and your services a little bit more, venture capitalist will be the next step that you be looking for. These are going to be a little bit more institutional, a little bit more professional in terms of how they are managing you.

Best Practices to approach the VC: * Warm intros are the way to go * All that marigold does is around gender and equity * Going outbound instead of waiting for the outbound intros can often be a really useful tactic to venture out on VC’s * You just need to know your numbers * You don’t need to know everything * It is fine to say you need to follow up but you need to have humility on the strength you need to know your operational, unit economics, market size and etc. * You need to know what your key assumptions are * Do your homework and build that relationship

Just because you can’t see what’s behind the black box or the curtain doesn’t mean we’re not all talking

Gender and inclusive lens that marigold focuses on that can contribute to a business and a community and the quaint customers well being:

• Women and technology
• Women with inmost companies
• Product and services
• Upstream and downstream suppliers and distributors practices

For men entrepreneurs, they should be thinking more of a board of advisers or board of directors are two places are obviously to begin with. Jonathan had also made a lot of deals in financial inclusion and med-tech and here are the things that you should be looking at.

• How the products are designed
• How the services are administered
• Who is administering those products and services

Jonathan shared about the 2017 Canadian Budget where the government is allocating a ton of money to the venture capital space to build the infrastructure for later stage financing of their startups that include a gender-balanced element. The Canadian Budget is also working on BBC to target women in technology.

We have all these elements in both domestically and internationally working private sector player.

This is not just the government’s initiative but also for public and private to leverage one another towards more equitable solutions for ultimately women and girls.

Marigold Capital on social change: * They still adhere that innovation can change society. * They completely believe in entrepreneurs who wanted to change the world * They completely adhere to what VC’s say to that as well * They are looking for positive social progress through awesome entrepreneurs affecting communities with great products and services

Build something that you would use that you know that there is something to demand for and that there are many more you’s out there

Sales and marketing tips: * Never give up * Always be fundraising but always ask for advice, never for money * Reach out to people with something that has value to them * Always provide value to someone who you are requesting invite from * Stay in touch * A tip from Venture Capital - When you need the money no one is going to give it but if you don’t need the money, you’ll have more offers * Be authentic * Start your relationship six months prior * Make money while doing good now

Resources Mentioned: Book recommendation:

• 1000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly
• The Innovation Blindspot by Ross Baird
• Reset by Ellen Pao
• Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
• Mindset by Carol Dweck
• New Power by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms

Hot spot:

• El Catrin in Toronto

About Marigold Capital: Marigold makes investments using a gender and inclusive lens for systems level impact. It is one of Canada’s leading impact investors and blended finance practitioners, and it continues to re-conceive traditional finance to shift norms, remove structural barriers, and empower marginalized individuals to participate and benefit fully in society.

• Marigold Capital is built on leading impact investment experience at Grand Challenges Canada, RBC and Sarona Asset Management, alongside the Schulich School of Business.
• Marigold is a leader in gender lens investing and blended finance
• Marigold has built collaborative impact platforms that bring together various (and different) stakeholders to provide more finance and resources to social enterprises
• Marigold is about to launch Canada's deepest gender lens fund

Connect with Jonathan: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanhera/

Twitter: @JonathanHera and @marigoldCap

Website: Marigold Capital

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.
• Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here.

I’m still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn’t love to save money?

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to RawPixel!

View Details

Braden Kelley is an experienced leader of projects and programs focused on innovation, digital transformation, design thinking, organizational change, and process improvement.

He is the author of two books (1) "Charting Change" and (2) "Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire", and has helped numerous organizations increase their revenue and cut their costs through the creation of innovative strategies, organizational change, digital transformation, and improved organizational performance. He has maximized profits for companies while living and working in England, Germany, and the United States. Braden earned his MBA from top-rated London Business School.

Braden is passionate about digital transformation, innovation and change, and has written for numerous online publications including CIO.com, The Atlantic, Wired, and The Washington Post. In addition, he has written commissioned white papers on “Harnessing the Global Talent Pool to Accelerate Innovation” for Innocentive, "Winning the War for Innovation" for Imaginatik, and "Five Ways to Make Your Innovation Culture Smell Better" for Planview.

In his spare time, Braden is a popular keynote speaker, workshop leader, and a co-founder of the world’s largest global innovation community – InnovationExcellence.com – home to 7,000+ innovation articles and is an innovation leader on Twitter (@innovate) with 19,500+ hard-earned followers.

About Innovation excellence: InnovationExcellence.com is the online home of the global innovation community, building upon a rapidly-growing network with thousands of members from over 175 countries – thought leaders, executives, practitioners, consultants, vendors, and academia representing all sectors and industries. Their mission is to broadly enhance innovation by providing a forum for connection and conversation across this community – assembling an ever-growing arsenal of resources, best practices and proven answers for achieving innovation excellence.

Their community currently generates over 225,000 unique visits and requests more than 800,000 pages every month.

Braden also partnered with Rowan Gibson, Julie Anixter and Dean DeBiase to built Innovation Excellence and now has over 400 contributing authors around the world providing a range of perspective on the business aspects of innovation and how to help people succeed in their business.

What Innovation means: Braden define innovation as a means to transforms the useful seeds of invention into widely adoptive solution that values above every existing alternative. Several key things about this definition:

• The tension between useful VS valuable - you can create lots of useful things very easily but the things that are valuable to people are much harder.
• The tension between invention and innovation - (they are not the same thing) often times people can get confused when they are inventing things and thinking that it is innovation. One of the key differentiators between innovation and invention is for something to make that leap from one to the other is that innovation must become widely adopted and must also, as a result of its inherit value be able to displace the existing solution even if it is the “do nothing solution”.

The 2 key to success for any organizations: 1. What you have to do is to be really really good at what you do and but you also have to have one eye at the future. 2. Your customer and understanding how their needs are changing overtime so that you are delivering the things that they look to you to provide in terms of the solutions. 3. Innovation is all about value - so you have to be constantly on top of identifying where value comes from in your contacts and how to deliver value and translate that value for people to access that value.

• Innovation excellence
• Operational excellence

Value came from three components: * Value Creation - the invention part of it * Value Access - helping people access that value * Value Translation - to help people understand how these new things will fit into their lives

The challenge that companies have in creating the innovation culture is RISK PROFILE. It is one key challenge that every organization have. Oftentimes organizations tend to over index whereas repeatability and operational excellence is they do that to deliver that consistency that the customers expect in that quality. Sometimes it leads people to feeling that they can’t make a mistake so you have to sort of change the mindset of the organization and make learning an accepted part of the culture because you can learn from success as much as you can learn from failures as long as you are set up to do it.

Braden’s Books: Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire

Charting Change

Tips to captivate change: * Organizational change - it is all about the mindset and what’s important to different individual * You really need to segment inside your company for your customers * It is all about the customer

Branden shares what excites him about the industry:

“Good artist copy and great artist steal” - Pablo Picasso

If organizations really want to be in it for a long haul and they exist 50 years from now, you have to put the right building blocks in place to build the right mindset and the right culture so that you will have the ability to change as the world changes around you.

• You should not rush in without having an understanding of what you are going to do of people’s idea on the back-end.
• Do not start an innovation program if you are not committed financially, committed to time for people to work on the projects.
• Before you start asking anybody for anything, know what you are going to do with what they provide.
• Do you research, do your homework.
• It is not just about things in your area but keep a file of the things that you are trying to do that has impact.
• Look and learn from other people who are already doing it and see what you can leverage out of it.

“A body in motion stays in motion, a body at rest stays at rest”

Productivity tool: * Notepad * Outlook Calendar (online version)

Book Recommendations: * Winning the Brain Game by Matthew E. May

Connect with Branden: Website: InnovationExcellence.com and BradenKelley.com

LinkedIn: Braden Kelley on LinkedIn

Twitter: @innovate

Facebook: Innovation Excellence

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.
• Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here.

I’m still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn’t love to save money?

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to rawpixel

View Details

Ariel Garten is neuroscientist, innovator, mother, entrepreneur, founder of Muse, a brain sensor headband that makes everyone feel like Wonder Woman or any superhero. She speaks about happiness, meditation,understanding the brain, mental health and constantly giving her audiences the tools they need to help individuals become their better selves.

Click to download How to Get Unstuck Worksheet Learning Outcomes Understanding the innovation blocks for Individuals:

Normally you have 2 kinds of mental blocks, the thinking & feeling blocks. When you need to think about ways to overcome your mental blocks you tend to think about your thinking blocks but there is also this realm of feeling blocks that you can overcome as well.

One of the best way to overcome your thinking block and feeling block is motivation. Being engage, being passionate, doing something we want to do.

TIPS:

• MAKE THE IDEA BIGGER! - if you go to an idea and you want that idea to come true; is to make your idea really really big; make it so big that it overcomes the fear and it doesn't matter if it is a little uncomfortable because it is something that you really want to do in your life
• You need to feel the ‘WHY’
• Make the idea real for you - make the idea soooo big that you’re compelled to do it
• Don’t be afraid of talking about your idea - no one is going to steal your idea. Most people don’t take action
• By talking about the idea - it creates a temperature check and helps you validate your idea and they may help you connect to others that may help you with your idea
• Don’t get caught in the INFO INTAKE PARALYSIS
• Reach out to people beyond your pay grade
• People genuinely want to help and support
• If you have an idea that is going to make the world a better place then you are much more likely to succeed
• Galvanize towards that idea that actually adds value for the world and add value for particular customer group
• You’ll never know what will happen if you put yourself out there - Ariel shares her trip to Silicon Valley
• You just need 5 seconds of courage (you just need to take that 5 seconds of courage to take the first step to open up so many other doors
• You will get this 5 seconds of courage through Meditation
• YOUR ABILITY TO TOLERATE YOUR DISCOMFORT makes you closer to success in life!!!
• Your feelings give you fake information

Ariel talks about Meditation: During our podcast episode, Ariel talks about the importance of Meditation and how it can help leverage our selves, balance out our thoughts to get a bigger purpose. Here, you will learn:

• Meditation - focus on your breathing
• Meditation helps you stay away from your wandering mind which is often negative
• Meditation allows you to have a clear mind, which is like a clean room
• When you meditate, you are strengthening your attention and you are learning to manage your distraction
• TIP: (on how to get yourself back from wandering mode or a set-back)
  • Setbacks are completely normal and we have those all the time.
  • Being an entrepreneur and being able to deal with a no or a setback is critical and the best way to deal with it is just to let it right past and not engage in it.

Getting out of Being Scared During Presentation: In this section, Ariel shares a story of why she loves loves presenting her product or content on stage. This section we will learn:

• Why Ariel is passionate about her content and loves to deliver it
• How to focus on the content and the values of what you are presenting
• Don't pump up the fear because it actually doesn't mean anything
• Know your content and practice it (the more you practice your content beforehand, the more easier it is for you to share during your presentation)
• If you are feeling nervous, transform that nervousness into excitement because the sensation of being nervous and excited are actually really close to one another

6 Steps on How to Kill your Inner Critic Exercise: Your inner critic are the voice that is inside of you, constantly telling you bad things about you. Ariel help us go through a little exercise to help us how to overcome our little critic.

“Kill the jerk in your head”

Step 1: Think about something that your inner critic told you recently.

Step 2: Follow through Ariel’s guide (audio) and imagine what your inner critic says

Step 3: Imagine what your inner critic looks like.

Step 4: Tell that inner critic the same thing that you would have told that stranger dissing your best friend

Step 5: Talk to your inner critic

Step 6: Use your fingers and imagine that you are shrinking your inner critic and flick it away

Our inner critic dis-empowers us if we use them as motivations.

The Power of Meditation that Counters Procrastination The thing about procrastination is that nobody ever realize that we are doing it. Meditation will teach you how to distinctively avoid procrastination. We procrastinate because we have a feeling block, because we think we need to do something that is really hard and it feels uncomfortable.

• Recognize that you are procrastinating and then make the choice to return back to reality.
• Stay focused and stay engaged

Here are my takeaways:

• If you got an idea make it BIGGER!
• Do one small thing everyday to help you validate your idea and help push the idea forward
• Practice meditation
• Setbacks are good. It is just data that tells us whether to pivot or not or to try something new
• Know your content
• Kill the jerk in your head and flick it away
• Just do it!

If you want to learn more about Muse headband, click here to listen to our podcast episode.

Connect with Ariel: Website: Muse | The Brain Sensing Headband

Social Media:

• LinkedIn: Ariel Garten on LinkedIn
• Twitter: @ariel_garten and @ChooseMuse
• Facebook: Muse on Facebook

Instagram: @Choosemuse @ariels musings

View Details

Speaker Bio:

Andreas Souvaliotis who was the founder of the world's first eco rewards program and more recently the world's first public wellness rewards initiative in partnership with the government of Canada called carrot rewards, has been recognised globally for his achievements in influencing and rewarding behaviour changes on a mass scale. Andreas is a prominent Canadian leader and an advocate for Canadian & innovative approaches to social change particularly around the areas of public health promotion climate change awareness and citizenship.

Episode Overview:

Carrot Rewards actually gives you rewards based on one your favorite loyalty rewards and whether it is your favourite programs like Aeroplan® Miles, SCENE®, Petro-Points™, More Rewards®, and Drop.

We get to challenge ourselves and Carrot Rewards give us tips about different pieces whether you're counting your steps, your food, whatever it is, it actually helps us with those different things and becomes a bit of a game for us. So it began from kind of like a core health and wellness message around the app.

Carrot Rewards is a new way to try and deliver wellness to Canadians compared to the traditional methods that have been used all over the world. So when you think of how we have tried to convince our fellow citizens not just in Canada but in any country to live a little bit healthier so that everybody saves a lot of money down the road and when they get old.

The app is free but not only is it free, you actually get a whole bunch of your favorite points just for putting it on your phone.

The important thing about Carrot is that it’s actually not aimed at the healthy segment of the population it’s aimed at the whole population. Carrots messaging is appropriate for every single Canadian. The app doesn’t say come to Carrot because you love being healthy or because you love being financially healthy. The app says come to Carrot Rewards because it will give you more points.

For those that are looking for something to kind of help you with your own resolutions or areas that you want a change of 2018 definitely take a look at this and listen to this episode.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• What Carrot Rewards is all about and how this app can be a huge part of everyday lives.
• How the rewards convince people to live a little bit healthier
• How Carrot Rewards became almost like an aggregator of rewards
• Understanding core health and wellness
• How to do things better easier and faster and then get rewarded for it.
• How to take advantage of our addiction to mobile phones using this app
• How to be productive, passionate and focused towards your goals
• Why lunch is an important part of the day.
• How to transform lunch as an extended part of work.
• The app can be a helpful source of guidance four your new year’s resolutions.
• The things that makes us different are actually the things that make us successful.
• Too often in our quest to fit in and to live normal, we end up quashing those very things that could make us special.

Resources Mentioned:

Ad: The Crazy Ones Apple Ad

Magazine: The Globe and Mail

Restaurant: The Food Dudes

Restaurant: Rasa Bar

Book: Misfit The Book

Website: https://www.carrotrewards.ca/blog/

FB: https://www.facebook.com/souvaliotis?ref=br_rs

Twitter: https://twitter.com/souvaliotis

Overview of the Company:

Carrot Rewards is a free Canadian mobile application that motivates Canadians to adopt healthier behaviors, eat better, be more physically active, and take care of their mental health by rewarding them with their favourite loyalty points. Created in partnership with the federal government, Carrot harnesses Nudge Theory to guide people through the stages of behaviour change, and currently has over 650,000 users in Ontario, British Columbia, and Newfoundland and Labrador.

View Details

Dr. Ann Cavoukian is recognized as one of the world's leading privacy experts. She has consulted with Facebook, the European Uion and many other on privacy concerns. She is currently the Distinguished Expert-in-Residence, leading the Privacy by Design Centre of Excellence at Ryerson University. Her Privacy by Design framework is now the International Standard and has been translated into 39 languages. Dr. Ann Cavoukian has won numerous awards such as Top 25 Women of Influence in Canada Top 10 Women in Data Security & Privacy, Power 50 by Canadian Business, Top 100 Leaders in Identity.

Dr. Ann Cavoukian will be sharing:

1. How her privacy by design framework has become the international standard
2. She'll show us how to create a new competitive advantage
3. And even, how Steve Jobs avoided being tracked

Other Resources:

1. Equifax Breach - http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/equifax-canada-cyberbreach-1.4296475
2. Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PET): http://www.ontla.on.ca/library/repository/mon/27009/324331.pdf
3. Book: Feel the Fear & Do it Anyways - affiliate link -> http://amzn.to/2zCXjvo
4. GDPR: General Data Protection Regulation: http://www.eugdpr.org/
5. Danah Boyd - NY University - https://tisch.nyu.edu/itp/itp-people/faculty/adjuncts/danah-boyd
6. Homomorphic Encryption: https://www.networkworld.com/article/3196121/security/how-to-make-fully-homomorphic-encryption-practical-and-usable.html
7. International Council on Global Privacy & Security by Design: https://gpsbydesign.org/
8. Privacy-Protective Surveillance - http://www.ontla.on.ca/library/repository/mon/27009/324331.pdf
9. Twitter - @AnnCavoukian
10. Email - ann.cavoukian@ryerson.ca
11. Restaurant - Mayrik - https://www.mayrik.ca/

Hit subscribe & share your thoughts or nominate a Canadian Innovator. As we explore the Canadian landscape & toot the horn for all Canadian Innovators. There are many ways to connect with us! Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/CanInnovateh/ Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/CanInnovateh/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/22324999/admin/updates/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/caninnovateh/ Twitter: @CanInnovateh YouTube: CanInnovateh Website: www.caninnovateh.ca Email: info@caninnovateh.ca

View Details

Hey Innovators!

This podcast truly started out as a passion project and it’s really one of my favourite things. Everytime I record an episode.. I literally say out loud ‘that I love my job’. I get to learn from smart people. There is a saying that you are who you spend time with. Each episode I definitely become wiser as we get to learn from their insights.

These guests share lessons learned and best practices. Unleashing areas of unknowns. My friend Paul - will laugh when he hears me say this.

• You know what you know
• You don’t know what you don’t know
• But now, we know what we don’t know --> this is the most powerful element.

When we know what we don’t know, our blind spot - no longer becomes a blind spot. This is exactly what these innovators have done. They’ve shown us different perspectives.

They’ve identified best practices and lessons learned. Now, we know we need to learn how to implement these into our lives, our business and our careers. So, we are going to offer masterclasses so that we can all continue to evolve and innovate our own minds.

So, Innovators get ready- you’re going to enjoy this new mixture

We’ll continue to place a spotlight on innovative companies in Canada. We’ll also continue to offer insights on global industry trends. That way, we’ll be more aware of what these industry ‘BUZZ’ words and what they really mean to. It will give us more foresights on what could potentially disrupt our companies, our businesses and proactively identify shifts in skills and new new opportunities out there.

Plus, we are now going to offer these masterclasses, that zone deeper into particular topics so that we can gain tactical knowledge of how to implement things. For example, mindset. We’ve got an episode that is coming that talks about how to TACTICALLY change our mindset. In fact, on this episode - Ariel literally changes my mindset in a few areas that I’ve been struggling with. We do a few different exercises that you can also do, while you’re listening. Since recording this episode a couple of weeks ago, things definitely changed and shifted for me. You’ll see! It’s such a powerful episode. In fact, I’m going to get my nieces to listen to it, so that they no longer see boundaries. It’s a doozy!!!

I truly believe that education and awareness is instrumental in overcoming any perception challenges in our lives, businesses and even our careers. It’s a perception game.

Plus, we’ll also have Q&A episodes. Where you get to ask your question and I’ll get some answers!

These four components are going to be a powerful blend - consider it a new cocktail mix for us to evolve our different areas of our lives, our careers and business.

• Spotlight on Innovative companies in Canada
• Stay on top of global industry trends - the potential disruptors
• Masterclasses where we gain tactical skills
• Q&As - where we get to learn from each other

Lots of different things coming. So - Innovators - get ready to be inspired, gain tactical skills so that we can continue to innovate our lives, our businesses and and our careers. We are just going to keep evolving and having a lot of fun while doing it!

I’ve also got a new tools page, of where I’ve negotiated some pretty cool discounts from our guests. Some of them are affiliate links. Feel free to use them, this just help us continue to produce content for free. If you use them, THANK YOU! If not, no worries. We just like to provide full transparency and provide additional options. You can find them under the resources tab - TOOLS

You can also stay in the loop of new things that are going on, with our newsletter. You can subscribe here. The links is on our home page, about us page and our contact us page!

Drop me a line - I really can’t wait to hear your feedback on the new shifts! Send me your questions and we’ll get them answered! You can email either myself at Sapna@CanInnovate.io or Claire at Claire@CanInnovate.io

I love this new direction - Cocktail mix. Let the innovation games continue!

Best Always,

Sapna

View Details

Hani Mourra is a dad, Softwareprenuer, and the creator of Repurpose.io a software designed to help content creators automate the distribution of podcasts and live videos across multiple platforms and grow their audience faster.

Hani truly believe that the less time you spend on the technical side of things, the more time you will have to create amazing content for your audience!

What makes this a Canadian Innovation or Innovative thinking? Automation of tedious tasks so business owners and content creators can focus on delivering valuable content to they potentials while still getting maximum exposure online

RePurpose.io is designed to create content on one platform whether it is a video or a podcast to help get it out to other platforms such as Youtube, Facebook, Libsyn, iTunes, Google Play and many other immediately.

“Having your content on different platforms multiply your reach”

What excites Hani about the podcasting industry: Podcasting is becoming mainstream because most people does not have a time to sit in front of the computer or watch videos, read and some people who are on the road or at the gym. There are all sorts of topic being discussed in the podcast industry which makes it very exciting and interesting.

Lessons Learned: * Hani treat his customers or people as friends by making himself available for help. * If you treat people well, words about you being helpful and careful will go around and is good for your business as well. * Hani also consider the people he connect as friends and not as customers. * Treat people as friends and not as a number or a dollar sign in business.

Sales and marketing tips: * Join as many group as you can especially on Facebook about the topic that matches your business. * Try to help your co-members solve their problems and try to hang out with them * Listen and contribute to the group that you are in.

Resources Mentioned: Podcast Recommendation: Startups for the rest of us podcast

Hot Spot: Starbucks

Benefits of Using RePurpose.io * Convert Audio Podcasts To Videos and Publish To YouTube and Facebook * Upload Facebook Live Videos To YouTube * Push your Audio Podcast to SoundCloud * Convert Facebook Lives to an Audio Podcast on iTunes * Publish Video Podcasts To YouTube * Distribute Your Audio Podcasts and Facebook Lives to 50 TV Networks* * Upload Facebook Live Videos to Other Facebook Groups or Pages * Backup Audios and Videos to Google Drive and Dropbox

Connect with Hani: Twitter: @hanimourra

LinkedIn: Hani Mourra

Facebook: Hani Mourra

Websites:

• Hani Mourra
• RePurpose.io

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.
• Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here.

I’m still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn’t love to save money?

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to Jason Rosewell

View Details

Olivia Simmons is a two-time entrepreneur and holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto, with a Specialization in Applied Mathematics and Economics.

She also attended University of Waterloo Math Faculty where she grew a love for Computer Science before transferring to U of T. She is a self-taught web programmer and has been running her own tech businesses since she was 21.

“Self love - put yourself first and as much as you can take a moment to love yourself”

Episode Overview: This week, I get to chat with Olivia Simmons, CEO and Founder of ConferenceCloud. She shared how she and her brother came up with ConferenceCloud and how they used it to connect with their clients while using their collage budget.

She also shared how easy and beneficial ConfereneCloud is for your business meeting and other conferences especially when you have a 3-5 days conference.

ConferenceCloud allows you to have a playback on the videos that you shared such as masterclass, meetings or conferences. This allows other viewers to have access on the things that they missed earlier or get the information that they needed.

Listen in to this week’s episode and be amazed on how this conference tool can help and elevate your business meetings and more!

Lessons Learned: * When it comes to startup and tech, everything is very hands-on, it's very fast and you get a lot of trial and errors. * Other startup entrepreneurs always say “The technology is great and the technology is important and it needs to work but if nobody knows where to find your technology then your whole process will be wasted. * The most important aspect in your business is always sales and marketing.

Resources Mentioned: Tips:

• Follow-up is key to your business
• Understanding the basics of business
• For start-outs, you gotta get out of the notion of someone is always going to be there to help you get a mark or measure at the beginning of your business.
• No one will come along and give you a million dollars because of your big idea that will make you quit your job
• You have to do a lot of leg work to show your value so that you can achieve your million dollar
• Do not be afraid to learn every single day

Tools:

• Asana
• Close.io for sales

Podcast Recommendation:

• Podcast Sales Hacker
• e-Contact

Hot spot:

• Our Aquarium at Ripley’s

About ConferenceCould: ConferenceCloud provides state-of-the-art live communications and interactivity for hybrid conferences, lectures and meetings.

There are conferences held all over the world chock full of inspiring experts, content and research. But there is one main problem that all conferences share in common: and that is profitability.

It doesn’t matter if the conference holds 300 people, or 3000 people, held in Montreal or Madrid. The profitability for the organizers is relatively low. The current conference model is constrained by the physical venue. With on-site attendees the profit just doesn’t scale.

ConferenceCloud provides live video, Q&A crowdsourcing suite, live audio and native slide presentation to provide a unified virtual attendance platform for the client and the end user.

The company is currently going after the conferencing ticketing sales market segment, currently valued at approximately $100 Billion dollars in the US. The company’s mission is to expand the market by increasing access and decreasing cost.

Connect with Olivia Simmons:

Twitter: @confcloud

LinkedIn: ConferenceCloud LinkedIn

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.
• Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here.

I’m still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn’t love to save money?

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to Headway!

View Details

Ariel Garten is a neuroscientist, innovator, mother, and entrepreneur whose driving purpose is to empower and help others overcome mental obstacles in order to live healthy, happy lives and reach their maximum potential. Ariel is the Founder of InteraXon, the makers of Muse: the brain sensing headband.

Her team’s technology has been featured in over 1000 media pieces, as well as was the feature showcase at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, an installation that allowed over 7,000 people control the lights on the CN tower, Canadian parliament buildings, and Niagara Falls with their brains from across the country.

Ariel’s Podcast is called Inside the Head Of where every week she get inside the head of neuroscientist, psychotherapist, the skilled and the mental arts and we learn about their cutting edge experience and their personal life.

Episode Overview: This week I get chat with Ariel Garten of Muse where she shared the benefits of meditating using Muse headband and how it can help us improve our concentration through meditation. She also talked about what meditation really means.

She also shared what meditation really means and explained how the 30-second meditation works.

“It is important for your brain to slow down for it to speed up” - Lauren Waldman, Learning Pirate

If you are able to stay in a calmer mind you get more and more points. So, the longer you stay in this state then you will get rewards, badges and milestones. Ariel Garten also added that Muse is the mixture of technology - which is always on the cutting edge with the added soundtrack that is the sound of your mind.

Meditational down regulate your medulla which is your fight and flight response so that you end up being not so reactive to the world around you. Meditation also helps you to decrease default mode network.

“The more you muse the more you can bring your brain back”

Lessons Learned: * Do not be afraid * Do not be held back by the thoughts in your head that is not going to work or is not going to go right * If you can see something that has a possibility out there, don’t let anything hold you back and do it! * Be bold and be be brave * Your ability to sit in discomforts probably predicts your success is life * If you are feeling afraid, just don’t worry and push through until you get to the other side

Recommended Resources: Tips:

• Quite the voice in your head that says “this is not going to work” and find ways that it will because if you have a good idea, it will.
• Make sure your customer centric and TEST, TEST, TEST
• The problem is not to deliver dollars in your pocket book but rather how to deliver value in somebody else.
• Do not be afraid to start in an online-only business.
• Just like your brain is plastic, the way you engage the world is plastic

Tools: Muse

Hot spot: Organics Farm in Markham, Ontario

About Muse: Muse: the brain sensing headband will elevate your meditation experience. It gently guides your meditation through changing sounds of weather based on the real-time state of your brain. This allows you to obtain a deeper sense of focus and motivates you to build a highly rewarding practice.

Meditation has been scientifically shown to reduce symptoms associated with stress, depression and anxiety as well as improve focus, performance and quality of life.

• Learn the essentials of focussed attention meditation
• Soundscapes include Beach, Rainforest, Desert and others*
• Milestones and rewards to keep you motivated
• Create multiple accounts and share with family and friends
• End of session results and graphs help measure progress
• Exercises contributed by meditation experts to help you learn

Muse / Interaxon, based in Toronto, Canada is a developer of engaging experiences using brainwave-sensing technology designed to help you free yourself from physical, emotional and mental obstacles so you get more out of every moment.

Our mission is to enable you to live a happier, healthier and more connected life with leading brainwave technologies and experiences. Our flagship product, launched in 2014, is Muse: the brain sensing headband.

When accompanied with an app available for both iOS and Android devices the Muse headband is a sensory device that is designed to help with meditation by providing real-time EEG based audio and visual feedback.

Connect with Ariel: Website: Muse | The Brain Sensing Headband

Social Media:

• LinkedIn: Ariel Garten on LinkedIn
• Twitter: @ariel_garten and @ChooseMuse
• Facebook: Muse on Facebook

Instagram: @Choosemuse @ariels musings

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.
• Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here.

I’m still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn’t love to save money?

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to Jared Rice!

View Details

Jeff Wiener is a serial entrepreneur, real estate investor and now a best selling author. He has just published the The Kick Ass Entrepreneur Guide to Investing that hit #1 in Amazon business book and he is now helping entrepreneurs reach their potential and helping them to create wealth with other entrepreneurs sharing his 30+ years of experience.

“I want to help entrepreneurs but I wasn't really sure what capacity that I want to help them”

How do you market your book?

The idea concept behind it is, you have to take a section of your big book and use that as a reader magnet and market the small section of your book. Capture as many emails as you can and build a base, do podcast, do interviews and build a brand and platform for yourself and and once you got that, you are in a big position to market your big book.

When you are dealing with entrepreneurs you got to think of it differently. The cash that they have to invest, you have to put consideration the different things that you would in your traditional investor who does not own a business

THREE SIMPLE STEPS TO BUILD MASSIVE WEALTH WITH YOUR BUSINESS’S PROFITS The concept behind Jeff’s 3-Bucket Investments

You need to consider the value of your business as part of your overall equity.

• Real-Estate - this bucket-list refers to a multi-unit resident that you can consider as an investment property where you are generating cash flow.
• Cash - When the market tanks, you want to take advantage of buying real-estate, buying a competitor or doing other things with your cash investing and expanding with your business.
• Equity - Maintain your allocation; a third from each bucket investment.

“You know when to hold them, to fold them and stay alert for the best deals at the lowest price”

Lessons Learned:

• You can’t just rely with any one vendor
• In whatever industry you are in, you can’t solely rely on one product
• Getting constant feedbacks from people is what makes you better in your life
• If you want to help your clients then you need to start thinking like an entrepreneur

Marketing Tips:

• What doesn't kill you makes you stronger
• It makes it difficult to take advantage of opportunity as they arise.
• You got to get your name out there in the world of social media
• You need to build the right channels and marketing automation tools to help expand the business
• You need to study what’s working and what’s not and constantly understand the return on investment from every dollar spent both in time and dollars invested in marketing.

Sales Tips:

• Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross
• It’s now how many phone calls you make, it's how you get in touch with the prospects strategically

About The Kickass Entrepreneur The Kickass entrepreneur is a simple step-by-step approach to help you achieve three BIG AUDACIOUS goals, and help you develop a kickass mindset. Download Jeff’s FREE E-book The Kissass Entrepreneur: Guide to Investing

Connect with Jeff:

Website: The Kickass Entrepreneur

LinkedIn: Jeff Weiner

Facebook: The Kissass Entrepreneur

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.
• Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here.

I’m still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn’t love to save money?

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to Olu Eletu!

View Details

Michael Kolm is the City of Toronto’s first-ever Chief Transformation Officer. A seasoned executive with extensive experience in business transformation. Michael provides strategic leadership to help the City become more effective and efficient in its delivery of public services, now and in the future, while delivering maximum value for public dollars.

With a long and successful background in consulting with powerhouse firms such as EY and PwC, Michael worked with private and public sector clients to plan for and realize the benefits of implementing business transformation.

Leading the City’s Transformation Office, Michael works closely with internal and external leaders, partners and stakeholders to lead transformational projects that will ultimately drive social, environmental and economic benefits for all those who live, work and play in Toronto.

One of Michael’s current focus areas is developing a Smart City strategy which includes leading the City’s submission to the Federal Smart Cities Challenge.

“Find something that you are really passionate about”

Michael’s 6-Point Plan for Toronto Michael was hired to identify, lead and drive bigger/broader transformational opportunities in the city. These are the fundamental behavioral aspects of how he work at the city that will be really important to help us keep moving forward and modernizing.

1. Planning the Transformation

We need to transform Toronto into a more resilient city. We need to get ready for the impact of climate change and that is a massive transformation that they are focusing on.

1. Operations and how they deliver their operation services

We need to figure out ways to be more efficient and use public dollars more effectively. They went through a whole a bunch of programs looking on these aspect and one example of that is real-estate. On January, they created CREATE TO as a single place where all real-estate are managed in the city of Toronto.

1. Supply-chain

We spend almost 3 Billion Dollars a year on goods and services here in Toronto buying from private company and they have to make sure that the money spent is used effectively. They also have to make sure that they make a good decision on who they partner with the delivery of goods and services and be strategic on how they spend on different things.

1. Customer Service

Michael and his team plan on having a strategic services on how they need to deliver the goods and services on different mobile platforms and reduce the burden of people lining up and taking number like the old fashioned way that you interact with your city government.

1. Smart City Transformation

Michael’s main question is “are we using technology and data in a way that provides better outcome for our residence and really focusing on making life better for people that work, like and play in the city of Toronto?”

1. Cultural Transformation

Focuses on the fundamental things like how we behave or how we do our work here at the city and how we organized our work here at the city which falls under a few headings.

• Governance
• Change in management
• Be data driven and fact-base
• How to do partnerships better
• Figuring out how to embed innovation and human centered design
• Find out how to become better at experimenting and failing fast

Michael also talked about Smart Cities privacy security governance model.

If you want to know more about Smart City data, privacy and security, you can check out our episode 1 with Dr. Ann Cavokian here.

Michael’s goal is not to become a surveillance-based city but rather to leverage the value of data to help us identify, diagnose and drive outcome; measure success and measure outcomes by doing it in such a way of being respectful of the privacy and entune with the security risk that are present today.

Michael shares his smart city discussion that he have been referring to:

Smart cities 1.0 discussion focuses on structure, infrastructures, vehicles and traffic management which are we need. These are also big challenges for every citizen for the city of Toronto to make it easier to get around or make the environment cleaner and safer.

Smart cities 2.0 discussion focuses on making data and technology use as an equal playing field for people who are not as advantage in society and maybe need some help in terms of food, child-care or training so that they can get into a better job.

“Our goal is to have a citizen driven human centered smart city”

Resources Mentioned: Productivity Tool:

• Spend time with your kids and family

Book Recommendation:

• Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz

Hotspot:

• Go to craft beer brewery

About Transformation Office: The Transformation Office develops strategies to help the City become more effective, efficient and able to adapt to future challenges. The Office works to deliver the greatest value for public dollars by transforming operations, programs and services.

With a focus on those who live, work and play in Toronto, the Office transforms public services to allocate resources in more effective and modern ways to drive social, economic and environmental benefits.

Connect with Michael: Email: Transformation@Toronto.ca

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.
• Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here.

I’m still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn’t love to save money?

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to Yeshi Kangrang!

View Details

Casey Binkley is the Founder & CEO of HaulerAds, a Truck-Side Advertising Marketplace data-fueled by WI-FI / GPS performance analytics. They've launched in Canada and are expanding into the US. Casey previously built a global manufacturing business to $2.5M ARR, and was recently selected as a Canadian Delegate to the 2018 G20 Summit in Buenos Aires.

Episode Overview In this episode, we feature Casey Binkley of HaulerAds where he drops value bombs and tips on how moving ads provide impact in your company’s market exposure. He also shared their company’s breakthrough with Ryerson University’s summer outdoor advertising campaign.

Casey tipped us with the difference between moving ads and static ads and how these two will impact your business. In addition, moving ads can impact your business by providing uniqueness on the delivery that makes canvasses speaks to your audience.

Resources mentioned Tips: * Do it! * Be consistent and persistent with people * When you have an idea, it is so important to get it out there and talk to everybody that you possibly can. * Do not be afraid to fail.

Productivity Tool: * Tony Robbins Podcast * Gary Vaynerchuk Podcast * Slack * Trello * Google Document

Hotspot: * Watching Wolfpack Rugby team in Toronto

About Hauler Ads: HaulerAds is a Toronto-base out-of-home advertiser and media provider. Its story begins in 2015 when Casey Binkley, founder and president of HaulerAds, noticed something peculiar about the mobile billboard advertising industry - no ads on trucks! His entrepreneurial instincts told him, "a commercial vehicle without creative advertising is an underutilized asset for truckers and advertisers!". Thus, concluding these facts:

Companies demand more and more outdoor brand exposure, while the supply of traditional billboards continues to shrink (due to city development and municipal restrictions).

There is a need for data analytics on this advertising platform to guide marketers.

Companies recognize that out-of-home advertising is a key ingredient in increasing their brand awareness. Access to traditional billboard advertising and other out-of-home advertising mediums are limited and present a vast number of challengers such as; the inability to track the success or failure of advertising billboard demand and supply. Even more so, HaulerAds is the ONLY mobile billboard advertiser/truck wrap supplier with unique GPS tracking and Impression Analytics Technology. With it, advertisers can track where their ads are being shown, who is seeing them, and the impressions gathered.

Connect with Casey Website: HaulerAds.com

Twitter: @haulerads

Facebook: Hauler Ads

Instagram: @haulerads

Email: Casey@HaulerAds.com

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.
• Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here.

I’m still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn’t love to save money?

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to @explorewithjoshua!

View Details

Daryl Hemingway is an entrepreneur, rocket scientist and filmmaker. Daryl is founder and CEO of SmartTones Inc. that is connecting broadcast to mobile, at the cutting edge of the evolution of advertising and media.

Daryl found a gap in time between when people discover something they want to do and when they can take that action. So he looked for a better way on how to directly connect the audience to the entertainment media they love. The solution is to use silent sign codes in the audio track of the film, TV show, radio song or live events such as sports to connect directly to mobile phones which is where people take action today.

With this, the phone recognizes the content that you are watching and can trigger all sorts of different experiences for you to get what you want, when you want it, and enables you to participate directly in traditional media. Sports fans can predict the play and win prizes, film buffs can learn behind the scenes secrets, fans can vote for their favourite talent, shop what they see or enter contests, all in real-time and effortlessly on their mobile.

Episode Overview: A few years ago, Daryl made a documentary film about green energy and his audience wanted to know more about that topic. Yet, he found that there was not a good way to give it to them. Scrolling a URL or a hashtag on the screen and hoping they remember and go to the website later, was not very effective.

Daryl shares a bit of his journey and how he started SmartTones Inc. and discusses how broken methods of advertising trigger most users to block unwanted ads.

“The key piece of missing information for those advertisers and content producers was context.”

Traditional media is one to many, digital is one to one, but now we are entering a post-digital world that puts the consumer in control of connecting to their favourite moments. Right now, ads are still delivered ad hoc based on outdated systems that lack the audience intelligence to auto-filter irrelevant messages. When you do see something you want, there is a lag and many manual steps to get it: remember, search, spell it correctly, find it in a big website, and more. SmartTones can trigger things to happen with the content that is being consumed rather than waiting for a commercial break or forcing you to watch an ad. SmartTones can also trigger the right message to the right person and at the right time. The future is ad free content that enables you to choose to engage with what you want in the moment. SmartTones is a solution that recognized and rewards hard won audiences that have been growing increasingly hostile toward ad saturation and interference with their viewing experience: preroll, popups, banner ads etc.

Daryl found out that there are lots of changes going on in the ad agencies when he talked to experts at film festivals and connected to other people within the industry. In this episode, Daryl also shares what excites him about the future of participatory entertainment. Sports is transforming into active fan engagement: Play along, score your knowledge, win points and prizes, all in a social environment with friends. Do all the things you love to do in person at the game, from anywhere, and make it all happen with one app.

Resources Mentioned: Lessons Learned: * From NASA ‘There are no limits’ * From NASA ‘ Do what it takes to make the mission happen!’ - get out of the employee mindset

Tips: * Change = Opportunity * The future is predictable, if you create it * When you’re 70% sure based on your market research, trust your gut and go for it * Dial into WII.FM Station * Play until the GAME OVER (PacMan was the discussion) * Pacman Analogy - ‘Figure out what dots/pellets that you need to eat to get to the next level’ * Failure is not an option * Believe in your WHY * Do what it takes to accomplish the mission

Hotspots: * Recroom in Toronto * El Catrin - Mexican Food at the Distrillery District

About SmartTones Media: SmartTones Media was founded as an entertainment technology company with one goal in mind – connecting broadcast media to mobile. They believe entertainment should excite audiences and enable them to participate. This happens when you combine context with precision targeting. Breaking down the old one directional, non-responsive broadcast model creates a new dynamic way of interacting with audiences. With a phone in hand, advertisers and content creators can reach audiences through their mobile devices. SmartTones Media is transforming passive audiences into active participants by igniting their excitement.

The SmartTones Platform provides a frictionless way to encode, create and execute smart campaigns into your current workflow. Their executive dashboard gives you front row access to capture and monitor data in real-time for first party measurement and transparency. Engage your audience and deliver context-driven calls to action. SmartTones instantly immerse people into entertaining experiences they actually want to participate in, engage with and share.

• Capture and monitor data in real-time with a comprehensive executive dashboard
• Integrates into your existing app to enhance your brand and increase users
• Privacy is always protected

Connect with Daryl: LinkedIn: Daryl Hemingway

Twitter: @smarttonesmedia

Website: SmartTones Media

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.
• Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here.

I’m still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn’t love to save money?

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to @martenbjork!

View Details

Melissa Sariffodeen is the CEO and Co-Founder of Canada Learning Code. She is a celebrated digital literacy advocate who is dedicated to ensuring that women and youth have the critical skills, confidence, and opportunities that they need to thrive in our increasingly digital world. She is a graduate of the Richard Ivey School of Business and is currently pursuing her Master’s in Education Policy at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. She taught herself how to build websites from scratch using HTML when she was 11 years old and has been coding ever since.

She also won the 2017 RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur award for Social Change Award

It was originally called Ladies learning code and it started in 2011 out of self-interest for us group of 4 woman who wanted to learn more technical skillset. They wanted to create this opportunity to learn to code and that time in toronto there was not any opportunity or explicitly welcoming for women or for beginners to learn to how to code.

Episode overview: In this episode, I get to chat with Melissa Sariffodeen of Canada Learning Code where she provided us with a thorough explanation on how important coding is to the younger generations. Here you will find that Melissa and her colleagues really feel the need to empower, educate and inspire teachers to introduce coding to their students.

Their popular course is the Intro to HTML and CSS where the workshop will allow you a day or over a day or evenings to build your own website from scratch or maybe edit a website that you already have. The other popular course is Data Analysis and Visualization where they focus on Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) where the desire of people to know how to work and manipulate it visually. They also teach arts and music making things fun and engaging like creating emojis, prints and graphic designs.

For every four learners there is always one technical expert who is there to work with you the entire day for the program and to help you learn.

In this episode, you will also understand the importance of why learning how technology is built and learning coding is going to be critical for every role into the future whether you want to start your own business or whether you are working in a company and you want to jump-start your career; it provides a way of understanding (connecting the dots) of people.

How can you support Canada Learning Code: If you are technical or run a technical team; volunteering and giving back or hosting our program to their chapters/programs running around 35 different cities around the country; they are always looking for technical mentors or spaces to host their programs because they don’t have a physical space anywhere. They are also looking for innovative content on sponsorship, donations or charity.

Resources Mentioned: Tips:

• “Get started”
• Understand how coding works and how technology works
• Launching fast, failing fast, elevating fast
• Try to serve the best
• Do not be afraid to try different things
• Progress is an achievement as well as getting things out there
• Do not be afraid to fail forward

Tools:

• Slack
• Hootsuite

Book:

• The Radical Candor by Kim Scott
• How We can Win by Anthony Lacavera

Hootspot:

GTA for food

Nelson BC for retreat

About Company: Canada Learning Code is a national not-for-profit organization championing digital literacy education, working nation-wide and across all sectors to equip Canadians with technical skills. To date, the organization has taught over 80,000 learners through their programs, which are offered in over 30 cities across the country.

Founded as Ladies Learning Code in 2011, the organization has evolved to run programming for adults, youth and educators through programs Ladies, Girls, Kids, Teens and Teachers Learning Code. Canada Learning Code’s goal is to create 10 million technology learning experiences for Canadians over the next ten years.

Technical skills are a tool of empowerment, and it is the organization’s mission to ensure that all Canadians - particularly those who are currently underrepresented in the tech sector - have access to learn these critical skills and be active participants in the digital age.

Connect with Melissa: Website: Canada Learning Code

Twitter: @learningcode @melsariffodeen

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissasariffodeen/

Instagram: @learningcode

Facebook: Canada Learning Code Facebook

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.
• Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here.

I’m still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn’t love to save money?

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to Hitesh Choudhary!

View Details

Brent Lessard is the co-founder and project manager at rLoop, a SpaceX award winning globally distributed and crowd-sourced organization with over 1300 members for more than 50 countries. Brent also serves as an advisor to the president of Durham College for the school of Science and Engineering and was recently awarded the Ontario's Premier Award for his work within his local community as well as rLoop.

rLoop is working to revolutionize the future of transportation. Through open-source and collaborative design, a prototype was designed, manufactured, and tested entirely by the crowd, capable of travel at hyper speeds, enabling people to get where they need to go, faster – much, much faster! Simultaneously, rLoop is reimaging how people can collaborate together on complex and interdependent work by leveraging blockchain technology.

In 2015, Elon Musk announced through SpaceX that they were going to host a competition open to independent and student teams where they would build and provide the facilities to test these vehicles and would allow certain number of teams to manufacture prototype vehicles to come around for testing. This competition landed Brent and his team several awards, including the Best Non-Student Design which gave them the permission to build their prototype along with 27 other teams out of 1800 submissions. They also won the best Pod Innovation Award where SpaceX acknowledged the complexity of their system and the unorthodox way in which their team come together.

“We dreamed of flying cars instead we got 140 characters” - Peter Theil

Episode Overview: In this episode, Brent shares how rLoop came together from Reddit and how this small community designed their prototype for Elon Musk and SpaceX’s project and competition. He also shares his AH-HA moments, realizing the processes and organization they built to develop the Hyperloop could be applied to other projects, but facilitating co-work on complex engineering systems required careful attention to engineering and management processes. They also need to focus on the human resources aspect as they continue to onboard new members, needing to bring them up to speed and able to contribute and collaborate in the best capacity that they can, as quickly as they can.

Tips Mentioned: * We all have science fiction diets * Connect with people who are successful or who have been in the industry * When you’re first starting out, find your legs and interact with people in the industry and it will go a long way in accelerating your understanding about your specific niche * Find your passion and devote yourself to it entirely * You have to be 100% devoted and passionate towards your goals * “The day before something is a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea.” - Peter Diamandis

Resources Mentioned: Tools:

• Hacker Unit
• Google Tools
• Jira - Task Management

Book:

• The Wide Lens by Ron Adner
• Abundance by Peter Diamandis
• Bold by Peter Diamandis

Productivity Tool: Find a quiet place with good coffee and free WiFi

Hotspot: Hair of the Dog in Toronto

About Company: rLoop is a crowdsourced and globally distributed moonshot engineering organization. They try to connect the untapped global pool of talent and resources, and drive that knowledge and expertise towards large-scale engineering projects that might have positive global impact. rLoop is also the first crowdsourced engineering team.

The Hyperloop concept goes back to 2013 when Elon Musk open sourced a paper outlining his vision for a ground-based transportation system where vehicles are levitated so there is no rolling resistance, and the vehicle is put in a tube or a tunnel where they can also control the environment and optimize it for their purposes. In this case they evacuate most of the air inside the tunnel to eliminate air friction. The vehicle can then optimize the energy that it is using and travel at an immense speed, with an estimated speed of 1200 km per hour.

rLoop uses a magnetic levitation system that is somewhat similar to mag-lev trains where they have self-contained hover engines to interact with a conductive subsurface, in this case aluminum. When these two interact it causes the vehicle to levitate off the surface. The engines can then be manipulated to induce thrust, braking, and in-flight control.

Connect with Brent: LinkedIn: Brent Lessard

Twitter: @rLoopTeam and @MrBrentLessard

Website: rloop

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.
• Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here.

I’m still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn’t love to save money?

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to Marc-Olivier Jodoin!

View Details

Salim Teja is the President, Venture Services for MaRS, where he leads the overall strategic direction of MaRS’ venture services areas: Energy & Environment (Cleantech), Finance & Commerce (FinTech), Health and Work & Learning. He is an experienced entrepreneur and active early-stage technology investor, with deep industry expertise in software and digital media.

Salim joined MaRS in May 2013, providing strategic direction and leadership for MaRS’ ICT venture services group, leading corporate and venture capital engagement, and overseeing MaRS’ expanding international collaborations in the ICT sector.

Salim joined MaRS from Indigo Books & Music, where, as vice president of corporate development, he drove the formation of the company’s Digital Innovation Lab. Prior to Indigo, Teja held the position of COO at CX Digital, a leading online ad network.

He has also held roles as COO of b5media and partner with early-stage VC firm Brightspark Ventures. He was also co-founder and vice president of sales and business development for San Francisco-based MobShop Inc.,.

Resources Mentioned: Book Recommendation: The Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz

Productivity Tool:

• Email
• Slack
• Text and Messaging
• Phone Calls
• Entrepreneurship 101 Course
• Entrepreneur’s Toolkit

Tips Mentioned: * You got to focus on solving the problem that people will understand and that people prioritize the problem worth solving * You need to stay away from nice-to-have solutions and really focus on must-have solutions * Why this, why you, why now? * Shares the key mistakes that entrepreneur makes all the time * We are reinventing ourselves as a kind of innovation where we help different kinds of entrepreneurs * You always got to be hustling * You should not be shy to pick up the phone on making the call or going to a conference * Its different to just go out there and get people's attention and get notices than sitting in a room with your colleagues * Build skills that allows you to feel comfortable being out there and building your network * “Be sure to find people to be a good team member, co-founders and investors in your business” * “Regardless of how digital our world gets we can’t forget about the aspects that we are doing in” * “Think carefully about the partners you choose and the relationship that you build” * Companies may come and go but relationships will last a long time * It is hard for one person or one small group to know everything * There is no right or wrong when you’re building a business; You just need to navigate your way to a lot of grey area in order to get to the other side.

Episode Overview: Toronto’s it at its peak stage because they have unbelievable companies that are reaching out for growth and stage that they are trying to get on a global map. They have global corporate coming in to the city and wanted to be a part of the community, investing in teams and resources. They also have global investors that are coming into their market to make big bets on their companies.

In this episode, Salim Teja talks about all aspects of being an entrepreneur in Canada and how it impacts the innovation growth. He also shares how MaRS is one of the crowned jewels that really help the growth of innovation in Canada and and learn more about his venture services.

“How could we do something different to re-capitalized the local ecosystem and give back to our community.”

Salim also shared his a story about him and his colleague who had a relationship with The SickKids Hospital conceived a concept around - “why don’t we get community together to raise funds and help the hospitals and made a big campaign to build a next generation of children hospitals in Toronto.

It is a $25,000 that they are spearheading where they used the money to setup a chair at the SickKids hospital in artificial intelligence and machine learnings. Check out the video of SickKids VS Undeniable Youtube video.

About Company: MaRS is one of the largest Innovation hub, an innovation center right in the heart of Toronto. The company had been around for about 13 years

The Vision of the early founders was: where can we build a place where we can active all of the different nerves that are important to the innovation process.

And how to we build a program to find the company that has the highest potential driven by science and technology and how do we help accelerate their path to become global businesses from Canada.

The vision: “how to we build a place and how to we build a program that will put Toronto and Canada globally”

13 years later now, what we have the world's largest urban innovation centers of about a million and a half square feet of space and a flagship program that Salim leads called Venture Services which today has twelve hundred octave startups that are participating in the program.

Foresights of the founders was “This type of platform was important to the city and the country and certainly as an economy we started to shift away from natural resources towards science and technology, how are we going to create the companies of tomorrow and thereby the jobs of tomorrow to really drive Canada’s growth.

Connect with our guest: Website: MaRS.com

LinkedIn: Salim Teja

Twitter: @salimteja

View Details

Jason is an aerospace engineer from South Africa with an amazing heart for strengthening relationship with a personalized touch. He is also the Co-Founder at TelliGram & Program Manager at Legal Innovation Zone focusing on augmented reality.

Jason immigrated in 2015 after selling his last startup Acquahire. Jason has an interesting career from building aircrafts for airbus and Hamburg? to augmented solutions.

His company, TelliGram is an augmented reality startup that was created 5 to 6 months ago where they look for ways to strengthen relationship using augmented reality.

“Upwards and Onwards” – Brad Feld

EPISODE OVERVIEW: Augmented reality is the new way to connect and strengthen relationship through marketing or any print media that benefits your business or personal life. TelliGram becomes the bridge in helping you connect in these aspects.

Jason Muloongo AH-HA moment comes when he was looking at a product that he think is cool but is not speaking to him. He then received a Skype video call with his friend that is imposed with the product and the thought that it was what AR (augmented reality) needs to do.

They then started talking to people on what AR can do and people just started to get involved to help them get their business off the ground.

TIPS SHARED: * Difference between virtual reality and augmented reality * The sky’s the limit * Failing forward is not actually painful * Stop holding back and tell it – tell the story/message * Augmented reality keeps you on your own reality that you are being able to enjoy it * There are million of things that you can make in AR to make your reality enjoyable * Don’t be afraid to tell people what you are doing to make them collaborate with you * Talk to people who knows more than you do or people who don’t know more than you do * We are the generation who loves to be spoiled with options * Know your company’s story and be flexible in tailoring it to whatever audience it speaks to * Go to networking events * The Rising DMZ – University-based incubator

RESOURCES MENTIONED: Book Recommendation:

• The Design of Business by Roger Martin
• Tools of Titans by Tim Ferris

Productivity tool:

• Asana
• Early morning routine

Hotspots:

• Bloomer’s in Toronto – Vegetarian and Vegan restaurant
• Krazy Roll – Japanese Restaurant in Humber Bay

Website: TelliGram

LinkedIn: Jason Muloongo

Instagram: @telligramco

ABOUT TELLIGRAM: TelliGram is for personalized, warm expressions of gratitude. They enhance the gift giving experience with AR Experiences. TelliGram (pronounced “Telly Gram”) is an online store based in Toronto, Ontario, that specializes in Augmented Reality (AR) Technology to help you accomplish one thing.

You shop a gift, upload a personalized video message to a friend, family or loved one, then they wrap it in special packaging and ship it, making sure to really impress. They can also create 3D cinematic scenes around the unboxing/unwrapping of gifts.

They are helping people like you be more expressive with your personal touch.

1. open our app,
2. point your camera to the gift/greeting card.

This simple AR technology allows you as the gift buyer to express yourself in the best way possible to a loved one when you buy them a gift.

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.

I’m still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to @creative_xchnge!

View Details

Carmelia Ray is an internationally acclaimed matchmaker for high achieving men and the quality women they’re searching for. She’s also a renowned TV personality from Mom Vs. Matchmaker, The Real Housewives Of Toronto, and A User’s Guide to Cheating Death (Fall 2018). She's also won the 2018 best dating coach award!

She's THE Chief Dating Advisor! With decades of experience and a tireless enthusiasm for online dating and matchmaking, Carmelia has established herself as the go-to attraction expert when elite singles are ready to find, attract, and connect with Mr. or Ms. Right.

In her career, she has helped over 7,000 clients and interviewed over 65,000 singles on the issues, challenges, and successes of how to date, mate, and relate.

SPECIAL OFFER TO THE FIRST 20 CANINNOVATE LISTENERS WITH $25 UBER RIDE CREDIT ON YOUR FIRST DATE IN TORONTO! EPISODE OVERVIEW: Carmelia Ray talks about digital dating and how Woo You App – Date App can help connect people who are seeking for a date faster and arrange their date according to their preference.

WooYou allows you to be the master of your own dating experiences. You propose a unique date idea or choose from hundreds of dates in multiple categories from food & drinks, cultural and activity dates.

Woo You Free Dating Application was created as a response to the overwhelming challenges faced by singles dating and trying to find love in the digital age. She also shared her AH-HA moment and drop some awesome tips!

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: * Discussing dating digital challenges * The date becomes the product, not necessarily the person * Driving the dating centric experience including identifying who pays upfront * This dating app takes the awkwardness out of the equation! * Most common dating terms and themes - CatFish, GymRat, KittyFishing, Ghosting, Zombing, Haunting etc... (sooo many terms that I have zero clue about!) * Senior dating is a growing segment * Bringing Courting back into Fashion - 'WOO YOU' * “The most important career decision that you’ll ever make is the first person that you marry” – Sheryl Sandberg * Whatever you're doing... Do it better! Figure out how to constantly improve yourself! Don't get complacent!

RESOURCES MENTIONED: Book Recommendation:

• The Perfect Date Formula by Craig Ballentyne
• White Hot Truth – Danielle LaPort
• I Love Marketing Podcast by Dean Jackson and Joe Polish
• Finding The One: Your A-Z guide to Attracting and Keeping Your Soul Mate

Productivity tool: Scheduling everything in my calendar! Don't forget the reminders!

Hotspots:

• Lamesa – Filipino Restaurant
• Jollibee in Scarborough – #1 Filipino Food Chain

Website: Carmelia Ray Marketing and Coaching and Woo You App

LinkedIn: Carmelia Ray

Twitter: @CarmeliaRay and @WooYouApp

Instagram: @WooYouApp

About Woo Yoo App:

Woo You is designed to help reinforce and provide the stage for both Attraction & Attachment to happen. Attraction is experienced in response to Dopamine, a powerful love chemical released by the brain when we do the things we love and feel good to us. In addition to Dopamine, a secondary Love Chemical; norepinephrine, is released during attraction. These chemicals make us feel giddy, energetic, and euphoric.

Launched, January 2018, Woo You developed native applications designed for both Apple and Android mobile devices. Woo You is available for free download in the Apple App Store and in the Google Play App Store.

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.

Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn’t love to save money?

I’m still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to @AMPRSNDPHOTO!

View Details

Angela Johnson is the Founder and President of Medical Confidence, a company that help empower individuals to be informed in their health and healthcare decisions. She has over two decades of executive management and business leadership experience focusing on health and healthcare.

Prior to venturing into healthcare leadership, she helped global fortune 500 companies solve complex IT-related business issues.

In 2008, her sister struggled with a very rare neurological condition, an experience which affected Angela which compelled her to focus on helping individuals receive the best care for their health condition. Since 2009, her company has helped individuals become empowered healthcare consumers, enabling them to access the care they need in a timely manner.

Angela is the author of the Step by Step Guide to Navigating Canada’s Health Care System & Minimizing Your Wait Time.

Episode Overview: Angela shares with us her story on how she started Medical Confidence, the benefits of her business and the range of services that Medical Confidence offer. She also considered herself as a “three piece person"; a problem solver, very patient as a person and very persistent.

Medical Confidence works with individuals to help them understand their health-related circumstances, access the ideal physician specialist(s), and ultimately become informed and actively engaged in decisions that will lead to the best possible outcome.

Tips shared: * We as Canadians are more passive in our nature than our neighbors and we are taught to accept whatever the system gives us we should take and be thankful and grateful for it but she then decide that it was wrong. * The only thing to keep us healthy is we are engaged, active and involved as participants in our own healthcare. * If we didn't advocate for ourselves then who are going to advocate for us * You need to find people to surround yourself that you can rely on to provide you the emotional support, financial support and to be your champion * Get your elevator pitch right and let the people capture the value of your services. Once you got it right, go networking like crazy * Don’t network like crazy until you get your elevator pitch right * Try not to do everything yourself * You need to find a team, you need to trust them and need to delegate to them * If you try to multi-task you’ll get your stuff half done

Resources Mentioned: Book Recommendation: Angela’s book Step by Step Guide to Navigating Canada’s Health Care System & Minimizing Your Wait Time and The Broken Brain Documentary Series

Productivity tool: Going to Bootcamp, Academia and The Universe

Hotspots: Georgian Bay (Ontario)

Website: Medical Confedence

LinkedIn: Angela Jhonson on LinkedIn

Twitter: MedConfidence

Company Background: After learning the hard way about the various “quirks” and challenges in the system, Angela realized many people could benefit from her knowledge.

Medical Confidence provides individuals with access to a level of clinical knowledge and expertise that often is only available through costly private clinics. Engaged patients have more confidence in their treating team of medical practitioners and are more actively involved in their diagnosis, treatment plan and recovery.

Working with Medical Confidence, individuals use the Canadian healthcare system to its full potential.

Medical Confidence espouses the belief that the education of empowered healthcare consumers also benefits employers, insurance providers, associations through reduced benefit costs and minimizing the impact of presenteeism and absenteeism. The Canadian healthcare system also benefits as individuals are better able to navigate the system resulting in increased efficiency.

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.
• Check out the book recommendations our Canadian Innovators provide here.

View Details

Philip Parker, the COO of Coral Health is a data scientist with expertise leveraging diverse data assets to guide operations and marketing strategy. After graduating from Harvard University, Philip consulted for Fortune 500 for pharmaceutical clients and Analysis Group where he led health economics and effectiveness projects across a range of treatments.

Jeremy Mullen is a strategist and a data expert who has spent his entire career advising Fortune 1000 enterprises on data aggregation and strategy. Previous to Coral Health, he served as the director at Research Now, Inc., the global leader in data collection. He is currently the Board of Director for the Toronto chapter of the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association (MRIA) and is a member of the data association. He also leads the Coral Health’s corporate development strategy and partnership development.

Episode Overview:

This episode is a powerful listen as it delves into the healthcare issues where we find most patient-doctor situation are not able to access their data in time and benefit from the full healthcare delivery.

Coral Health’s blockchain-powered solutions accelerates care delivery, automate multiparty administrative processes, and improve health outcomes by enabling secure, real-time, shared access to validated healthcare information. They drive adoption to their system from the ground up with targeted enterprise applications that provide immediate operational benefits to healthcare providers, payers, pharmaceutical companies and labs.

Tips they shared:

• Try to keep it simple
• Start of a business model first
• Put some thoughts into a business problem and try to develop a solution.
• Think of a business model that you are actually solving and need? And does blockchain actually need to be involved at all?
• In blockchain healthcare, ask if it is desirable, viable or feasible then ask if anybody is going to pay
• Just because someone else is doing it doesn't mean you can't do it better than them
• Talk to your clients and validate your ideas before putting a ton of time in building it out

Resources Mentioned:

Connection Recommendation: Anita McGahan

Podcast Recommendation: Decoding Healthcare

Productivity tool: Jeremy - Run in the afternoon

Hotspots: Burger Priest (Toronto)

Website: My Coral Health

LinkedIn: Coral Health Research and Discovery Inc.

Twitter: myCoralHealth

Philip Parker

Company Background:

Coral Health is a healthcare blockchain entity where they build blockchain solution to leverage technology in order to increase primary data exchange within the healthcare industry. The driving empaties behind Coral Health is that they find that patients and doctors spends a lot of time, dealing with frustrations (in terms of getting access to the best care possible), and a lot of it stem from the fact that they can't share their information easily throughout the system. By leveraging healthcare data and medical records, they are able to give the customer a tailored treatment at the point of care rather than a one size-fits-all health care delivery system that currently exist today.

View Details

AI provides Foresights - The Holy Grail in AI Companies!

Eli Fathi is the Co-founder & CEO of his seventh start-up, MindBridge Analytics Inc. He has been recognized with numerous awards including the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance, Startup Canada 2016 Senior Entrepreneur Award for Canada and Civic Entrepreneurship, you name it he’s got it. Eli has also been featured in publications such as Huffington Post, Globe and Mail and the Financial Post. He is also active in his community and has provided about half a Billion dollars in job creation!

Episode Overview:

Is big data a problem? Yes, BIG data is a problem but it is also a blessing for AI because big data gives you information that you can mine and provide results. In the machine and artificial intelligence, we cannot detect intent. Error plus intent is fraud. So, fraud is really left in the course to decide the intent but we definitely can detect errors and irregularities in the data.

In this episode, Eli talks about the levels of how MindBridge AI works in regards to hindsights, insights and foresights (the holy grail in the AI companies) and how MindBridge applies it on a near real-time basis. He also tackled on the issue about the damage caused by major frauds and how the 80-20 rule takes place.

Listen to this episode to learn more about how artificial intelligence helps in securing your financial data with the help of MindBridge Ai. Plus, get the awesome tips that Eli shared with us today!

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• One of the most important things of small company is FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS.
• One of the most attractive markets from their perspective is the external audit market. The CPA world has been using the same processes for the last hundred years and has not been disrupted to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the audit process.
• They are addressing the internal and external audit market, with Ai Auditor, their extensible AI platform that can also be used for the financial market.
• Each year, the world loses $3 Trillion dollars due to errors and frauds that are going unnoticed. This is the market that MindBridge is addressing.
• By using artificial intelligence, MindBridge is increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of the audit process. By reviewing the data (trees), we can ascertain the overall high-level aspects of the company (forest). “The relationship between the trees in the forest; Sometimes when you look at the forest, you don't see the trees in the forest and vise versa” but the interesting thing is that with artificial intelligence is that by looking at the trees, you can tell what’s going on in the forest.

Tips he shared:

• You have to build your own credibility
• Don’t look for a manager but look for a leader
• Do good; make a difference
• Ask for forgiveness not permission
• Don't try to micromanage
• Don’t criticize but rather encourage
• Empower people to take action and be solution oriented
• Be part of a team
• Don't compare yourself against others
• Never stop learning
• Think out of the box

• Challenge the status quo

• With every customer meeting, 10 minutes before the end of the meeting always ask the question “what is the next step?”

• Always ask for the order and make sure that when you get the answer, stop talking.

Resources Mentioned:

Business Resources: Have a mentor

Book recommendation:

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg

How Google Works by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg

Productivity tool: Arleen Fathi (Eli Fathi’s wife)

Website: Eli Fathi

Website: MindBridge AI

Hotspots: Baan Thai (Ottawa), Royal Treasures (Ottawa)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eli-fathi/

Twitter: Eli Fathi

Company Background:

MindBridge Ai is a venture-backed FinTech company based in Ottawa, Canada. Through the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies, the MindBridge platform detects anomalous patterns of activities, unintentional errors and intentional misstatements. Using the MindBridge Ai-Auditor, organizations across multiple industries can minimize financial loss, reduce corporate liability and can focus on providing higher value services to their clients. MindBridge launched Ai Auditor, its extensible artificial intelligence (AI) platform in February 2017 and has since enjoyed burgeoning demand. MindBridge Ai has signed over 125 customers in 6 countries and doubled the size of its workforce.

View Details

What is GDPR? How to turn GDPR into our next competitive advantage & avoid the penalties!

Today, we are talking about General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the due date for businesses to be compliant is fast approaching.. May 25th, 2018.

We chat with Dr. Ann Cavoukian who gives us the low-down on the importance of GDPR, the relevance, the implications and some tools that will enable us to be prepared and turn this into our next competitive advantage.

Dr. Ann Cavoukian is recognized as one of the world's leading privacy experts. She is currently the Distinguished Expert-in-Residence, leading the Privacy by Design Centre of Excellence at Ryerson University. Her Privacy by Design framework is now the International Standard and has been translated into 39 languages. Dr. Ann Cavoukian has won numerous awards such as Top 25 Women of Influence in Canada Top 10 Women in Data Security & Privacy, Power 50 by Canadian Business, Top 100 Leaders in Identity.

Some highlights:

• 40% of companies of are prepared for GDPR
• GDPR will be very positive if you can get ahead of it
• 92% of consumers are concerned about their privacy and loss of control
• Consumers don’t want this lack of control
• Lead by telling your customers that you’re protecting their privacy
• Make it a win-win prospect, this will build loyalty and customer trust
• GDPR applies to all 28 EU member countries
• It’s one overarching regulation
• GDPR raises privacy dramatically and includes privacy by design
• Privacy by design is the strongest form of privacy protection because it’s proactive
• Medical model of prevention
• Privacy by default, which is the 2nd privacy by design principle is included in GDPR
• Currently, we need to opt-out, but it’s going to change
• It says that the companies need to get customer’s positive consent
• Need to make it clear on how we collect people’s information, what purpose they use it for and the ways in which they process the data
• Review what you are doing now, identify what customer information that you’re acquiring
• Consumers now have the right to have their data deleted at any time if they feel that is not required
• Each element of data collected needs to have a clear purpose and intent, in which consumers have provided their permission
• Need to get the consent from the customer - need to seek their positive consent
• Penalties - 4% of your global revenues
• Imagine 4% of Facebook or Google - it’s going to be billions
• GDPR is the starting point, but it will impact everyone globally
• Everyone wants to do business with the EU
• In Canada, our privacy legislation was pretty good, but now, it’s no now longer adequate. Canadian laws are going to be updated in order to be adequate and consistent with GDPR
• Personal data is defined as any identifiable information - this includes IP addresses, locations, cookies, preferences etc.. Article: GDPREU.ORG - personal data https://www.gdpreu.org/the-regulation/key-concepts/personal-data/
• Do Privacy by Design - do the 7 principles and it will show that you are acting in good faith the be compliant
• GDPR has been in the process for 5 years, so companies have had lots of time to get ready for May 25th, 2018 deadline
• GDPR is going to take a hard line on this
• You can have privacy and marketing and give consumer options
• Need to revalidate with your existing customers of which data they should be using
• Shouldn’t be using and keeping personal data forever, we should be purging
• Security breaches are becoming more and more common

Tools:

• ICO.Org.UK - 12 Steps to take now - https://ico.org.uk/media/1624219/preparing-for-the-gdpr-12-steps.pdf
• Privacy by Design - Seven Foundational Steps - https://www.ryerson.ca/pbdce/certification/seven-foundational-principles-of-privacy-by-design/
• Data Protection Self Assessment - https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/resources-and-support/data-protection-self-assessment/
• Direct Marketing Checklist - https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/resources-and-support/data-protection-self-assessment/direct-marketing-checklist/
• EU GDPR - https://www.eugdpr.org/
• Article: Data Privacy deadline looms in EU, and yes, Canadian business must comply http://business.financialpost.com/executive/many-canadian-organizations-unprepared-for-the-eus-gdpr-compliance-deadline
• ITPRO Article: GDPR Preparation: 2018 data protection changes - http://www.itpro.co.uk/security/27563/how-to-get-ready-for-gdpr-2018-data-protection-changes/page/0/2
• Article: GDPREU.ORG - Personal Data https://www.gdpreu.org/the-regulation/key-concepts/personal-data/

I even published a blog about GDPR CanInnovate Blog-

Check out our new website - NEW WEBSITE: www.CanInnovate.io

CanInnovate also has a new resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn't love to save money? http://caninnovate.io/offers/

Thanks again for tuning in! Would love to hear/read your thoughts and feedback. If you get a minute, perhaps even leave a review:) I'm still channelling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!:)

Talk to you all next week.

Best Always,
Sapna

Sapna@CanInnovate.io

View Details

Speaker Bio:

Lauren Waldman is a CTDP (Certified Training and Development Professional), has certification in the Fundamentals of Neuroscience (Harvard), is currently working on a certificate in Medical Neuroscience (Duke), is a Designated Communication Coach and Trainer, and is an advisory board member of the NCCA (National Communication Coaching Association of Canada).

She taps into the science, and fun of learning while maintaining a sharp approach with an intense dedication to the success of others. Her current focus in the studies of neuroscience and how the brain learns, has played an eminent role in helping individuals and corporations navigate through the creation of what she calls "Learning Legacies." These studies have also given rise to strategies relevant to the confusions and challenges, of the current cross-generational workforce.

Episode Overview

The pirates followed her throughout her entire life that’s the story of how the company and learning pirate happened.

Lauren had been working for so many different magical people and it wasn't until three years ago that she was in a conference for training professionals. She was introduced to the neurosciences through a keynote and she used her pirating skills to commandeer the keynote speaker as her mentor.

Her eyes were opened to the value and the understanding of how learning professionals should be using the science of neuroscience and how the brain learns to create better designs and obviously create better learning experiences for clients and learners. The benefits that we get to it as just humans from brain health alone is quite amazing.

What you’ll learn from this episode

• Best advice is always focused on the things that you can really do well and reach out to others. For those that are because it’s more valuable for your time.
• There are scientific facts and fundamental truths to how the brain learns.
• Technology has literally changed the way of the brain and it’s not necessarily for the better
• There are physiological effects that are changing the composition of the brain because of technology it’s something that we need to take seriously and learn how to slow down
• Sometimes you need to speed up to slow down and, in this case, slow down to speed up
• Meditation
• Educators are the part of the only profession that changes brains every day
• Your small stuff is someone else’s big stuff.
• Learning Metacognition – thinking about what you are thinking about

Resources mentioned

Book: David A. Sousa – How the Brain Learns

Course: Dr. Barbara Oakley – Learning how to learn

Twitter: @learningpirate

Events: Horse Shoe Tavern

Company Overview:

Learning Pirate provides strategic, forward-thinking learning solutions based on the fundamentals of neuroscience and how the brain learns. It helps navigate the creation of learning legacies within new and growing companies. It expands/grows employees personal and professional minds/cognitive abilities through methodically planned learning experiences. It taps into individual’s curiosity seeking minds and helps create the map for their learning journeys.

View Details

Speaker Bio:

Sarah stands at the forefront of international trade with expertise in the global logistics industry, working with the private sector to build, develop and increase efficiencies in their supply chains. She has spent the past 20 years working in logistics and supply chain, most recently as Director of Sales and Marketing for ICECORP Logistics Inc, a privately owned 3PL.

Throughout her 20-year tenure in Supply Chain, Sarah has gained a reputation for her passion in helping employees and clients learn about increasing efficiencies and building cost-effective supply chains including international transportation, customs & compliance, cross dock solutions, and warehousing.

Sarah has been a leader and mentor, managing sales and marketing teams through motivation, thought leadership and being hands on. Sarah also created an internship program that resulted in hiring most of the students from the program once they finished school. The program included teaching students about the industry and special projects to be completed during the internship.

Episode Overview:

The supply chain is everything from purchasing to the last mail delivery and everything in between. It is not to be confused with logistics. Logistics is just the small part of that. It is the transportation piece. Sarah explains that they want to come up with a simpler way for shippers to be able to move their goods around the world. This episode talks about different subjects that are relevant to supply chain while revisiting Sarah and Sapna’s Cannabis Episodes on their own podcasts. Sarah’s episode can be found below while Sapna’s episode is linked HERE.

It is good to note that there is a big gap between accelerator and funding programs, especially in Canada. For startups, you need to be at a certain stage to be able to utilize the funding programs where sometimes it’s just not possible. The grant side in Canada is not easy to navigate. There is a big gap whether they will provide the grant to your company or not. Those were one of the many challenges startups face. Sarah explains with great enthusiasm the challenges and how to deal with them.

Listen to the episode and learn Sarah’s tips on handling accelerator and funding programs. Learn also the difference between Canadian programs compared to it’s US counterpart.

What you’ll learn in this Episode:

• Excited about working with other innovators in this space and how the players in the supply chain are responding to change
• Hard work and asking a lot of questions pays off. The courage to just ask opens doors that you can’t even imagine walking through.
• Get out there, start talking about it and ask people. See what their thoughts are. You’re going to get NO’s but you’re going to get YESSES.
• Most technology company takes a lot of money to be able to start
• Think about your board of advisers. Having an adviser who’s been where you are can help you save money with some of the documentation that’s needed especially on the startup side.
• On the accelerator side, make sure that you read the fine print and have a discussion with them about every single point why they should be taking a percentage of your company.
• Really make sure to ask questions and that you are comfortable with the company because again, you are giving away some shares in your business. This is going to affect potential investment rounds down the road
• Life is lived forwards and understood backward a quote by Soren Kierkegaard
• Everything happens for a reason.
• Success didn’t come until his forties for Stephen Colbert. (Podcast Episode of the show notes).
• List writer - writes lists upon lists but not too many lists. Write tasks for every working day of the week.
• Yoga Morning and a gratitude journal every night is a good morning and evening routine.
• How Meditation helps your focus

Resources Mentioned:

Productivity Tool: Pen, Paper, and an Agenda

Podcast: Let’s Talk Supply Chain

Podcast Episode: Let’s Talk Supply Chain: The Cannabis Supply Chain

Podcast: School of Greatness – Lewis Howes

Podcast Episode: School of Greatness: Cultivate a Monk Mindset – Jay Shetty

Shows: Oprah’s Super Soul Conversations

Show Episode: Super Soul Sessions: Stephen Colbert

CEO: Nova Spivack

Website: Magical

Mentor COO: Ken O’Brien of Gemini Shippers Group

Website: Gemini Shippers Group

Hotspots: Primal Cravings

Email: listeners@letstalksupplychain.com

Website: Let’s Talk Supply Chain

Website: SHIPZ Logistics Simplified

Twitter: @LetstalkSChain

Instagram: @letstalksupplychain

Instagram: @be_victoryus

Twitter: @sarahcaroline88

LinkedIn: Sarah Barnes-Humphrey

LinkedIn: Let's Talk Supply Chain

Company Overview:

Sarah’s dedication to excellence in the field has resulted from a combination of hands-on experience while obtaining her CITP designation, FIATA Diploma, and CIFFA certifications. Sarah continues this dedication as a Board Member for FITT (Forum for International Trade Training), Certification and Accreditation Committee (CAC) committee member and just recently in 2016/2017 was the chair for the FITT planning committee for their well-recognized 25th Anniversary celebration and conference. In her spare time, Sarah lends her time to her local Habitat for Humanity and has experience with Media, live TV, and interviews.

View Details

A Personal Chef is not just for the rich and famous

Speaker BIO:

Gil Eiges was born in Jerusalem, Israel. He has lived in four countries around the world. After graduating from the London School of Economics, he started his career as a management consultant and worked at Amdocs leading various large business and marketing teams. Gil co-founded manjya along with business partner Mia Andrews, which is an online bidding marketplace that connects chefs with individuals and businesses who need catering either at home or for large and small events. He consults and sits on advisory boards for several start-ups. He's also an advisor to the MaRS Institute, a launchpad for innovation based in Toronto.

Episode Overview:

How do you get tasty, healthy food when you don’t have the time or ability to do the cooking? Or if you want a special experience to offer to your guests? Or if you want a special date night in your own home without doing the work? You turn to manjya.

It's like having your own Masterchef in the kitchen, delivering a culinary experience that you've designed! A Personal Chef is not just for the rich and famous, it's accessible to everyone!

Gil Eiges co-founded manjya which is an online market for chefs and caterers. Clients just enter their desired experience and their budget, and manjya makes magic happen. Different chefs provide menus based on the clients’ requirements. All clients need to do is go online to manjya and post their request, including food preferences, and various chefs and caterers who are available will bid on the client’s business. Clients will get to see all of the different offers in one place. Simple, easy and FUN!

manjya, in partnership with the Canadian Personal Chef Association, is helping people host events, follow a diet or just eat healthy exactly the way they want. Submit a request for what you want, when and where you want it, and let the bidding begin.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• People have a lot of food sensitivities and allergies that need to be taken into consideration
• Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans
• Circumstances are going to change, and you’ve just got to be ready for every change that comes along and take it with a smile
• You can design an experience through food
• Meditation generally helps one to be sane
• Word of mouth is still having an impact
• You can't ignore the personal touch even in a such a modern, automated digital world.

Resources Mentioned:

Productivity Tool: Fiverr

Tool: FULLSTORY

Website: Manjya

Book: The Four Hour Body By Tim Ferriss

Podcast: How I built this by NPR

Podcast: Start-up School by Seth Godin

Hotspots: Bar Buca

Hotspots: Pearl Diver

Email: Gil@manjya.ca

Company Background:

manjya is an online marketplace that connects businesses and individuals on one side, to chefs and caterers on the other. So if you're having a party, a dinner party, a wedding, an event at the office, or if you just need food for the week because you're too busy to cook, this is what manjya can help you with. Clients don’t need to go through a lot of menus and offers, or numerous chefs profiles. Clients can actually go online with their requests and chefs will get back to them with bids which include menus and quotes. You can chat with the chefs, you can negotiate, and then you can choose whatever you like.

View Details

Speaker Bio:

Laura Simpson is one of the Co-founders and CEO of Side Door. She is a living large, DNA music pumping through her veins, music industry professional. She lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She also founded the The Syrup Factory, which began hosting house concerts in 2011, offering strategies and services to artists in 2015. She's also been an organizer in the art scene since she was 14 years old going to all ages shows and then eventually taking live music photography and freelancing. She was writing about shows and artists, becoming a journalist for seven years with CBC and Roger's Radio. Eventually, she found her way back to the music world and has been involved in numerous initiatives from working as an Expert Development Program Officer and Communication Manager for Music Nova Scotia. She’s also worked with the Halifax Jazz Festival, the CAPACOA, and the East Coast Music Association. In 2015, Laura even mentored with some top tier music marketing team at Blackbox in LA. She's even juried for Music Nova Scotia, The Halifax Pop Explosion, CBC Music Search Light competition and the Juno’s. She’s now one of the co-founders and the CEO of Side Door, where they have a dream of making things better for touring artists and live music fans.

Episode Overview.

Side Door Access was started with the welfare of the artists and the fans enjoyment deeply in mind. The business is built on tech to make it easier for artists who are trying to find places to tour and to have better profit margins. When it started, they located venues that are low overhead, including houses, cafes, bookstores, churches and people who want to offer that space for a show. The platform offers a split so that the artist gets the majority of the revenue, and a portion is offered to the host to cover costs and then Side Door takes a typical booking fee. Side Door is building the tech so that they can try to create an almost like a Tinder style match between the host and the artist. Using their preferences, they put in the details and instantly they're going to get back basically a match for a show they could play at the location at this time.

it's an automatic contract that's made and the two parties decide what they want to do with that show and they're off to the races. Side Door does all the ticketing, helps with the promotion and, supports them with best practices. One of the founders is a host herself. Laura’s Co-founder is Dan Mangan who is a Juno award-winning artist in Canada and he built his career on doing house concerts and now he's doing huge concerts. They have seen both sides of that process. They wanted to find a way to make it a little bit easier for artists who are constantly struggling to make a living with all their touring.

What you will learn in this episode:

• The people are the resources. You don’t think about it unless you talk to those people.
• A network can give you ways to structure your business or ways to finance the company.
• The company survives and thrives based on trust by influencers.
• Not every company wants to be a Unicorn but a zebra which is like the strong and steady
• Staying true to your personal philosophy and motivation for doing it.
• Take advantage of scheduling tools to make things easier
• Walk the dog every single day for an hour keeps clear your head
• Moving outside and being outside in the fresh air is close to meditation and makes you more productive later during the day.
• Steadying and maintaining the philosophy and that motivating factor which keeps you going forward.

Resources Mentioned:

Productivity Tool: Podio

Productivity Tool: Calend.ly

Website: Side Door Access

Website: Haligonia

Conference: Dazzle Con

Book: Chris Hadfield’s The Astronaut

Book: Tiffany Haddish’s The Black Unicorn

Book: Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard

Hotspots: Agricola Street Brasserie

Hotspots: The Seahorse and The Marquee

Hotspots: Seafood at Nova Scotia

Twiter: @novascotiamusic

Company Overview:

Side Door is a startup in BETA phase. We give audiences instant access to intimate and unique events happening right in their own neighborhoods. Artists match with hosts who turn their private homes, businesses or alternative spaces into venues while we manage the ticketing fairly and transparently.

Our goal is to create a direct-to-audience gigging economy, trimming overhead and making touring financially feasible even for emerging acts. We want to foster connective tissue between people in tactile offline shared experiences.