A podcast about vulnerability and entrepreneurship — learn from the life stories of founders 🚀, activists ✊, and even drug lords 💊 Our aim is to inspire you and let's face it... you aren't inspired when you hear about success. Real inspiration comes from hearing someone's lowest moment, and rising with their success. Using music, sfx, and voiceover, we interview the founders of companies, movements, and even drug cartels to reveal vulnerability so you can learn from victory. I’m your host, Samuel Donner, and together with my team we aim to inspire and educate a global community of leaders.
A podcast about vulnerability and entrepreneurship — learn from the life stories of founders 🚀, activists ✊, and even drug lords 💊 Our aim is to inspire you and let's face it... you aren't inspired when you hear about success. Real inspiration comes from hearing someone's lowest moment, and rising with their success. Using music, sfx, and voiceover, we interview the founders of companies, movements, and even drug cartels to reveal vulnerability so you can learn from victory. I’m your host, Samuel Donner, and together with my team we aim to inspire and educate a global community of leaders.
In this emotional and inspiring episode, Theresa Bruno recounts her extraordinary journey from Juilliard-trained concert pianist to award-winning creative director and founder of a multi-million-dollar fine jewelry brand. After a career-ending injury, she pivoted into advertising, secured major clients like Regions Bank, and later launched a jewelry business that caught the attention of The New York Times and even First Lady Michelle Obama.
Bruno shares the highs of building a seven-figure brand and the devastating lows of fraud, business collapse, and the tragic loss of her husband. Her story is a masterclass in reinvention and resilience — with powerful insights into grief, identity shifts, and how creativity can be a lifeline through life’s darkest chapters.
She now channels her purpose into the Soul Talks podcast, her book He's Not Coming Back, and new AI video projects that blend storytelling with emotional healing.
Notable Takeaways:
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In this episode, we sit down with Kevin Surace, a legendary inventor, keynote speaker, and the man credited with creating the world’s first virtual assistant—technology that would eventually power Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant. With 94 patents under his belt and a track record of turning vision into billion-dollar industries, Kevin walks us through his unconventional path from tinkering with radios at age 12 to co-founding Air Communications, revolutionizing enterprise AI at Appvance, and retrofitting the Empire State Building to save millions in energy costs.
We cover:
Packed with actionable insights, hard-won wisdom, and inspirational storytelling, this is a masterclass in curiosity-fueled innovation. Kevin’s journey will leave you rethinking how you build, lead, and live.
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Only a year after joining social media, Joanne Molinaro would become a New York Times bestseller for “The Korean Vegan Cookbook”— but when she was crying in her car, stressed about her job, her divorce, and future, this eventual reality seemed like a fantasy. Now, Joanne is one of leading voices in the cooking world with 3 million followers on tiktok, nearly 1 million Youtube subscribers, and more than 600,000 instagram followers. Under her slogan ‘I veganize Korean Food. I koreanize everything else’, Joanne explains how to make vegan kimchi and un-fuck-up-able pho, all while sharing her intersectional identity as a Korean American woman and her family’s refugee experience. But let’s take this back… before she became a successful blogger, content creator, writer, and attorney.. Let’s start this story generations before in North Korea.
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We all start somewhere…and for christian, that start was a best-selling, chart-topping, fart-themed ringtone. Now, with over 1.7 billion views on YouTube, 6 million subscribers, and 3 million monthly Spotify listeners, Christian-better known as TheFatRat- has outgrown this early legacy and made an extraordinary impact on the electronic music scene. But how did this German artist get his start? Before composing for Dota 2 and Rocket League and before producing the best selling CD in France, Christian surprisingly discovered music through classical piano training. To learn how his early interest in musical improv and Chopin turned into a love for glitch hop, let’s go back to his childhood…all the way to when he first earned his elementary school nickname…‘the rat’
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In this episode, Omar Alvarez, founder of Kinnect, shares his incredible journey from growing up amid gang violence in Chicago to breaking into Nike’s ultra-competitive hiring pipeline—beating a 0.5% acceptance rate. He dives into his experiences as a Division 1 athlete, surviving a Twitter mass layoff before even starting his job, and eventually launching Kinect, an AI-powered platform preserving human stories.
Omar discusses:
Packed with actionable insights on resilience, storytelling, and startup building, this conversation is a must-listen for entrepreneurs, creatives, and anyone interested in AI’s role in human connection.
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Hunter Williams witnessed his mother’s diagnosis, prognosis, decline, and passing in the span of only two months and two weeks. And at the end of the summer of 2016, he suddenly found himself stranded in the middle of his life, unable to move forward in any direction.
Fast forward to today and Hunter Williams is a full time YouTuber known for his sharp, well edited video essays on the business of being a content creator. From hitting millions of views on his deep-dive analysis of Mr.Beast and Mark Rober to receiving a video response from Cody Ko himself, Hunter might be on the path to creating his very own YouTube empire. Yet before he converted his garage into a home studio and embarked on this creator journey, Hunter was just a young kid with a point and shoot camera. Miles deep into the rural countryside and 20 minutes from the nearest small town, there was a time when he didn’t even know YouTube existed….
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In this episode, Yehuda Niv, founder of Spines and Niv Publishing, shares his entrepreneurial journey from a struggling musician to a publishing disruptor. Yehuda details how he built Israel’s largest publishing house, scaling it to over 1,200 books a year, and later transitioned into AI-powered publishing with Spines, securing $16M in Series A funding.
Key takeaways include:
This episode is packed with actionable insights on growth, automation, and resilience, making it a must-listen for aspiring entrepreneurs, authors, and tech founders.
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In this episode, we sit down with Chris Miles, CEO of Money Ripples, who shares his journey from financial advisor to financially free entrepreneur – twice. Chris opens up about how he built a successful career, lost it all in the 2008 financial crisis, and came back stronger by developing cashflow-based wealth strategies that break the traditional financial planning mold.
Key discussion points include:
Chris breaks down real, actionable steps for achieving financial freedom, scaling your wealth, and building a lifestyle where work is optional. If you want to rethink how money actually works and take control of your financial future, this episode is packed with golden nuggets of wisdom.
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In this episode, we dive deep into the mind of Remy Abode, the creator of Gemini Home Entertainment, a critically acclaimed YouTube horror anthology series with over 348,000 subscribers and 14.4 million views. We explore Remy's early inspirations, including his childhood fascination with horror soundtracks, his early experiments in filmmaking with his siblings, and the pivotal moment when he discovered Local 58, the series that defined the analog horror genre.
We break down:
This episode is packed with actionable insights for creators looking to build a devoted audience and craft stories that stand the test of time. Whether you’re an aspiring filmmaker, a YouTuber looking for non-traditional growth strategies, or just a horror fan, you won’t want to miss this conversation with Remy Abode.
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Derek Ting began his entrepreneurial journey in high school, founding two companies: TorrentReactor, a torrent-sharing platform, and WoolNet, a web hosting service. He later earned a degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo. In 2008, Derek launched TextNow to provide free texting, inspired by his own struggles to afford phone bills as a student. Despite early challenges Derek steadily grew TextNow into the first mobile provider offering free phone service with unlimited talk and text. Today, TextNow employs 200 people and generates $130 million in revenue, serving about 7 million users.
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Linda has experienced a lot. She’s traveled the world as an army brat, played piano and sung in Led Zeppelin's tour bus, explored drugs as an “X rated hippie”, and worked to understand her Latin American, Chicano, and Indigenous roots through her art. Through these various paintings, sculpture, and ceramic work Linda embraces her brownness and the world has taken notice. Her work has been shown globally in major galleries and museums, as well as Chicano and Latino spaces. Today, her artwork focuses on encouraging discussion surrounding how class, culture, and the color of our skin intersect, notably in her, “Make ‘Em All Mexican” pieces. But let’s look at where this all started and dive into Linda’s roots. Let's look back to where her family's story began, with her grandparents meeting while working on the railroads.
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You just heard from Jimmy Edgerton about a crucial time in his entrepreneurship career, a moment when it seemed like his new startup was going down in roasted chickpea flames. Luckily, these hard times didn’t last forever, since today I’m presenting a special episode, a podcast swap with seasoned entrepreneurs and business consultants Jimmy Edgerton and Julie Meyer from AugMentors. Before they taught us to navigate the nuances of networking, Jimmy and Julie learned these lessons firsthand through running their own successful businesses. Julie found her start in writing her book Eat Well Shanghai and now works as the co-ceo of nutrition company Eat Well Global. Meanwhile, Jimmy worked in real estate until a fateful beer garden meeting launched his business career running Watusee Foods. But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s hop in a time machine to the start of Julie’s story and see how these lives intersected.
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Trey Ferro, CEO of Spot Pet Insurance, turned a lifelong love for animals into a mission to revolutionize pet care. From mimicking animal sounds as a toddler to raising millions in funding for Spot, Trey’s journey blends personal passion with innovative leadership. Using AI and celebrity partnerships with names like Cesar Millan and MrBeast, he’s made Spot one of North America’s fastest-growing pet insurance companies. Tune in to hear how Trey is transforming pet care through technology and heart.
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Tech has always been a part of Jeremy Toeman’s life. Loving math at a young age allowed Jeremy to want to continue his career path in the tech industry. Jeremy learned basic C++ programming during elementary school. Today he owns Augie Studio, a programmed AI system able to make videos for marketing as well as social media purposes.
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Despite having two hit book series under her belt, it was at this moment that Kimberly caught a glimpse of the publishing industry’s true nature. The world of literature had a short term memory and she was only as good as her most recent book’s sales. No matter how proud she was of her stories or how many book tours she’d finished, it felt like maybe she would never get the chance to reach the same heights. Luckily, this burnout didn’t last forever and Kimberly Derting is here with us today as an established author in both Young Adult fiction and children’s books. She mixes the genres of horror, mystery, and romance to create the captivating narratives of the award winning Body Finder series as well as the Pledge and the Taking trilogies. But before she spun these unique worlds from scratch, Kimberly was an imaginative kid who spent her days reading at the library and checking out the new releases at the neighborhood bookmobile. Words provided an escape from the darkness of her surroundings, banishing her home life and rough and tumble neighborhood with the flip of a page.
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You just heard Ali describing one of her breaking points, where a battle for a copyright claim over one of her creations caused her to file a lawsuit. Now, Ali Spagnola, musician, comedian, and artist, has proved herself to be a creator you can’t look away from. With her eccentric dedication to living “outrageous”, Ali has won over 1.4 million tiktok followers and more than 400k subscribers on YouTube with her bubbly enthusiasm and boundless creativity. From turning her car into a chia pet to fighting for the world’s right to party, Ali’s career has been anything but mundane. Yet before music parodies and unusual crafts became her way of life, Ali had already fallen in love with the piano, plunking out melodies on her family’s baby grand…
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Writer, Halloween expert, paranormal historial, and bookseller, Lisa Norton’s entire life is defined by the genre she has devoted her career to. Beginning as a young child in Pasadena consuming a large amount of horror content, she now loves to set her prose in her hometown, creating stories of suspense and supernatural happenings. Lisa is a six-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award for both her fiction and nonfiction work relating to horror and Halloween as well as the former president of the Horror Writers Association. But let’s begin where her love for the spooky holiday began, when she was just a child spending hours building her own costumes.
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Alex Mufson has always been an entrepreneur, from her first imaginary business she began at the age of three years old to a very real horse training company that she ran nearly a decade. But after experiencing deep frustration with the medical system, she felt led to build a values based business to help support others battling similar situations. Without any investors, Alex built the company from zero figures to seven in three years and now is now obsessed with helping others do the same, putting money into the hands of people, and their businesses, who will heal the world with it.
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Somehow David has repeatedly found himself at the center of disaster. His most life changing trip through Asia was during the Asian financial crisis, his first big writing opportunity was during the 2008 financial crisis (which resulted in him losing his day job), this earthquake in Japan cemented that position as a writer, and now post covid the world needs the kind of community David is building more than ever. I actually think that’s something the best entrepreneurs have in common. Finding opportunity in disaster. And in David’s case I think he’s able to see opportunity because his breadth of experience is so wide. David was a resource strategist on Wall Street, oversaw natural resource programs at the white House, and even ran a water-focused NGO in Africa. His writing appears in the LA Times, the New York Times, and he’s published a book under Yale University Press called The Elements of Power. While writing this book in internet cafes around the world, David experienced firsthand how working remotely requires flexibility and breathable spaces–which is why he created OutPost, designed to be a safe place for digital nomads to break away from the conventional office. But before he was writing and traveling the world, a life of adventure in his hometown of Trumbull Connecticut had a pretty low bar.
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Zach put 40 hours into his YouTube debut only to get 10 views and a spam comment. That left him to question his online identity; was this the end of his short-lived YouTube career? I mean there wasn’t much in his favor. He was starting at the height of covid and the worst of med school just around the corner. I’m sure Zach was questioning whether juggling his work and his passion would amount to anything. But today, Zach Highley’s 454K subscribers are proof that it was well worth the sacrifice. Zach now makes a living as a doctor but also as a YouTuber, and today he’ll share how it all started: the nightmare of applying for med school.
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