Canada's #1 Podcast for Entrepreneurs 
Canada's #1 Podcast for EntrepreneursVince Guzzo is a well-known entrepreneur based in Quebec who is owner and President of Cinémas Guzzo. He also owns a pizzeria and construction company. Guzzo, who is also a dragon on the popular Dragons Den CBC TV series, talks about being an entrepreneur – advice for success – and about dealing with the current COVID-19 crisis.
Sean Reid is the President and Head Coach of Arrowhead Coaching and Facilitation Solutions, based in West Niagara, Ontario. Arrowhead provides coaching and consulting solutions that help leaders lead with clarity and confidence. They work with individual business and community leaders and with organizations seeking to establish their own internal leadership development programs.
Sean Reid has nearly two and a half decades of experience leading and growing high-performance organizations, and helping other leaders lead at all levels of the enterprise.
In his career, Sean has worked in politics, high tech, government bureaucracies and start-up not-for-profits. He’s worked for companies with 100,000 employees and companies with 3 employees. He’s had lousy bosses and wonderful bosses, great relationships with co-workers and not-so-great relationships with co-workers, high-performing staff and low performing staff. He’s made a ton of mistakes and experienced some major successes too. He has learned, and grown and become the coach he is today, because of all of these experiences.
A 3-person small-group podcast on the future of financing for businesses focusing on ‘partnerships’ and ‘collaborations’ vs traditional ‘loan’ lending. With special guests:
Jill Earthy, CEO Women’s Enterprise Centre
Jill is entrepreneurially minded leader with an MBA, who believes diversity drives innovation. As an entrepreneur, she started, grew and sold two businesses. In senior leadership roles, she developed teams, programs and partnerships to increase access to capital, networks and resources for entrepreneurs. She is now focused on empowering female leaders to invest in early-stage companies. By unlocking the experience, expertise and capital of more female leaders, she will start to see a shift in how companies access funding, and in who receives the funding. My strengths include finance, strategic planning, business development, community engagement, team building, marketing as well as development of strategic partnerships and programs. She is an active mentor and community member, serving on several Boards and as Co-Chair of We for She. She’s honoured to have been recognized in 2018/2019 by the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion as a Community Champion, by Business in Vancouver as an Influential Woman in Business and by WXN as a Top 100 most powerful women in Canada.
Grant Lawrence, Co-Founder Valhalla Private Capital, President Valhalla Angels Kelowna, Co-President Valhalla Angels Vancouver
Grant has participated in an IPO, experienced a buyout and the integration challenges that go with this; he is an active Angel investor is a Founder of Valhalla Private Capital and as President of Valhalla Angels Kelowna and Co-President of Valhalla Angels Vancouver Grant contributes to building the tech community. He also mentors and guides startups through business operations and sales.
Grant has over 22+ successful years in the software industry both in startups and establish companies; holding a number of different senior positions in sales and marketing and proven track record in building and managing teams in the areas of strategic alliances, indirect and direct sales channels in complex B2B environments domestically and internationally throughout North America, Europe and Asia.
Mike Winterfield, Founder & Managing Partner Active Impact Investments
Mike is the founder and Managing Partner of Active Impact Investments where he exclusively supports small to medium sized social ventures scale their impact and profit by providing funding and extensive capacity building services to the portfolio companies. Prior to this, Mike was a Top 40 under 40 with 20 years in the tech industry specializing in services companies and SaaS products. He worked for 14 years in various executive roles for award winning companies, most recently President of Traction Rec and COO at Traction on Demand. Prior to that President of Randstad Professionals running $300M in revenue. Mike’s greatest expertise is in enterprise sales, building high performing teams, improving operational efficiency and execution. He serves on the board of directors at DSRF, Sametrica, GoJava and ChopValue and is a mentor/EIR at NVBC, Founder Institute and Spring Activator. Mike has a Queen’s BSC, INSEAD exec MBA and got his board training through the Beedie Directors Education Program (DEP). He’s also an avid lover of nature and any form of outdoor activity or experience.
The Dream Founder – Sanjana Kapur Bansal, born in India, molded in America, and made it in Canada!
Sanjana brings the ‘DREAM’ seed with her from Texas, United States where she led as the Sr. Commercial Energy Consultant for over five years, procuring energy contracts for all size businesses across United States and maintaining their energy portfolios.
Sanjana earned her Bachelors of Business Administration (BBA) in International Business and Marketing from Stephen F. Austin State University (TX, USA) and her Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from University Of Texas at Tyler (TX, USA). Sanjana is a certified Business Energy Professional (BEP), and licensed energy broker in the province of Ontario.
She strongly believes in the power of ‘education and empowerment’ that laid the foundation for Dream Energy Solutions. With Dream Energy, Sanjana wants to educate Ontario businesses about energy deregulation, empowering business owners with the knowledge and resources to make better energy decisions and pocket savings.
Jenn Lofgren is the founder of Incito, an executive leadership coaching firm in Calgary. For the last 15 years, Jenn has been coaching leaders and executives to be the bold, daring and magnetic leaders they know they can be. In this interview, she offers practical advice and resources for leaders who are looking to navigate through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Imagine a 10th century Viking TED Talk.
Warrior, leader, motivational speaker, Ingrid Larsdöttir, reveals the untold truth of Viking shield maidens and what it takes to go to battle. Her presentation is a clarion call that that spans the centuries. She empowers women to claim their inner warrior and invites men to be allies in the battle for equality.
Melanie Teichroeb wrote this solo show during the birth of the #MeToo movement. Shield Maiden addresses sexism, gender bias, sexual freedom, and trauma. It does so with irreverence, empathy and humour. The dance between strength and vulnerability is explored as the warrior character Ingrid works to recruit new warriors while inadvertently revealing her own dark and violent personal history.
Melanie lives and works on Gabriola Island, British Columbia. Her day job is Chalk It Up Signs. The business, co-owned with husband and artist in his own right, Dave Teichroeb, creates hand drawn chalkboard art that ships worldwide.
Shield Maiden is Melanie’s first solo show. In addition to performing to sold out crowds in Canada, she has been honoured to perform in Austin, Texas and off Broadway in New York City. Canadian tour coming soon (once the pandemic ends and theatre lives again).
Dr. Laura Hambley is a Workplace Psychologist, Speaker and Author. She describes herself as a serial entrepreneur with businesses including Calgary Career Counselling, Canada Career Counselling, Synthesis Psychology and WorkEvOHlution. Hambley talks about being an entrepreneur and how to cope with the COVID-19 crisis.
Jamie Salé, former Olympic gold medalist and world champion in figure skating, is a motivational coach and speaker in Edmonton. She talks about being an entrepreneur, the connection between sports and business, and dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sweta Regmi teaches the do’s and don’ts to job seekers through her company Teachndo. She helps people searching for new employment to avoid ATS tools & reach hiring managers directly, learn effective networking via course & templates, build resume & cover letters, optimize their LinkedIn, develop job search strategies, develop a personal brand and be comfortable during an interview.
Olivia Wong is a former emergency disaster responder living in Vancouver, BC. She was one of the first international aid workers deployed to the frontlines of the Fukushima nuclear radiation disaster in 2011. She has shared essential lessons learned from managing a crisis through hands-on examples from her past work with the UN, UNHCR, International Rescue Committee, and the US State Department. Since leaving nonprofit work, she has merged her past experience in the field of crisis management with Prototype Thinking Labs, a breakthrough innovation method born at Google X, and has trained large corporations such as Google, General Mills, Capital One, Mastercard, L’Oreal, Lululemon and more. In Vancouver where she resides, she has been a mentor to startups in the Vancouver startup community and during COVID-19 has been helping other entrepreneurs and small business owners launch new income streams in 36 hours. Prototype is offering a free 75-minute training to help small business owners & entrepreneurs launch new income streams in 36 hours. To date, they have helped 400 people in less than 3 weeks! Free 75-minute Interactive Webinar: www.prototypethinking.io/webinar.
