Startup Life Hacks | Business and Life Advice | Founders | Entrepreneurship

Rommel Cabal chats with startup founders and thought leaders like Founder of Ugg Brian Smith
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Inspiration For College Student Entrepreneurs

  1. 01/01/2016

    BONUS! Year in Review 2015

    Year in Review 2015! Welcome to Startup Life Hacks 2015, year in review! First of all I want to thank each and every one of you for having me in your ears while your driving, cooking, doing the dishes, or whatever you are doing to absorb the content. For subscribing, for sending in the great reviews. I’m doing this for YOU. I apologize for the delayed episode, but there were a lot of events this holiday season that left me out of my studio, aka my room, which involved going to LA to pick up my parents that flew in from Japan, non-stop family gatherings, and also recovering from a stomach bug that’s been going around lately in San Diego. Oh and also falling 13,000 feet in the sky, but more on that later. WHY? This is a special episode not only because it will be my last episode of this calendar year, but this will also be my first episode reflecting on this year’s accomplishments, failures, and lessons learned. Something that I feel like everyone should do even if you don’t have a business. It’s good to reflect and look back at what you’ve accomplished to see where you’ve come from and how far you’ve come since then. Now is the best time ever as we’re entering the New Year, 2016. I’ve seen some podcasters and bloggers do this and I think this was usually their best episode/blog to listen to. Mainly because it really makes it humbling to know that they are going through the same challenges I am facing as I’m running my business and I can learn a lot from their trials and errors, as well as tips on what I can do in the future to further my business. And that’s what I wanted to provide to you, and I hope you walk out of here with a few takeaways before this episode is over. WHAT YOU WILL LEARN In this episode you will know a little bit more about me, in case you haven’t listened to my awful first episode. How I started with podcasting earlier this February to this current episode and everything in between. And a little bonus! What’s in store for Startup Life Hacks for 2016! BACKGROUND So a quick background about me. I am a Master’s of Engineering student in Electrical Engineering at San Diego State University. Go AZTECS!   I was born in the Philippines, but raised here in San Diego, part of the reason why I’ve lost my accent and adopted the California tongue. I grew up very traditional. I was taught the traditional values of going to school and getting good grades to get a safe and secure job with benefits. Stay with the company for 20 years to get a pension to live a “comfortable” life. Sound familiar? I’m not saying that this is a bad route to take, because most people take this route. I’m just saying that I found out later that this was not the route for me. And seeing as though you are listening to this podcast, we are on the same boat. SCHOOL I’ve always felt that I would fuse technology and business together and make a living out of it. I was always good at math at a young age (In fact I was usually first to complete the multiplication table in elementary school whenever we had a contest). And even though I was a shy kid while growing up, I had a good sense of putting things where they need to be visually. Not many people know this, but I was originally a Marketing Major...

    13 min

  2. 12/22/2015

    Ep 028: New Year’s Resolutions Are Overrated w/ Mike Goncalves

    Why are New Year’s Resolutions overrated? Now I know January 1st is when everyone starts making New Years Resolutions, but let’s be real. How many of you have actually stuck to your resolutions? Well, this episode’s guest has insights on how to tackle on 2016! Mike Goncalves is the founder of The Wellness Bucket, which is concentrated on helping you create more health and happiness in your life, so that you may finally start to feel, look, and live your best.   WHAT’S YOUR ADVICE TO SOMEONE STARTING OUT IN FITNESS? One of the problems people struggled with when staying consistent originated from coming out of the gate too fast. That’s one of the big reasons why people fall off the chart after two weeks into their New Year’s Resolution. They go from really not doing anything, to going 60 miles per hour. Here are my suggestions… Don’t come out so aggressive. Have a simple workout plan that you know you can follow. Have an accountability structure, whether it may be a buddy that you work out with, a running group that meets a couple times a week, etc. DESCRIBE THE WELLNESS BUCKET An online community that empowers people through health and wellness to live their best lives, whether that’s in entrepreneurship, careers in business, finance, or relationships. WHAT WAS ONE STRUGGLE YOU HAD DURING YOUR FIRST ONLINE BUSINESS? Coming from a brick and mortar, I didn’t know anything about online. My biggest challenge was how to develop a rapport from people that you’ve never even met. Also, how do you stand out online in a sea full of “professionals.” GREAT SUCCESS We do a 30-day wellness challenge every year. Its 30 days a 30 different wellness challenge, such as eating 3 salads, doing 100 burpees, taking a cold shower, etc. It’s great to see different parts of the world take part in this challenge. A notable one was when the French food company, Sodexo, implemented the 30-day challenge throughout the company for everyone in their business to follow. SUPERPOWER I’d say my superpower is the desire to genuinely help people and make a difference in someone’s life. KRYPTONITE Not being able to say no is a struggle of mine. I want to help everyone. IF YOU CAN HAVE ANY SUPERPOWER… I’d love to go back in time to thank mentors that I’ve had. For example, I love Jim Rohn and would love to go back in time and tell him he’s awesome and thank him for all the work he’s done throughout the years and how much it has affected me. RECOMMENDED RESOURCE OR APP Momentum: Daily motivation for your new tab page Youtube   RECOMMENDED BOOKS ...

    30 min

  3. 12/14/2015

    Ep 027: Selfless, Supporting, and Social w/ Cameron Ripley

    Cameron Ripley is the Founder and Director of Community Boost, an award winning digital marketing and web design agency that primarily focuses on the nonprofit and social entrepreneurship space. He’s brought together a caring group of millennials to really tackle on today’s social problems. His organization has worked with many causes, including: Google Ideas, Noah Homes, Miracle for Kids, just to name a few. STRATEGIES USED TO FUND BUSINESS Community Boost was incubated out of another digital marketing agency, named E-Boost Consulting. E-boost Consulting was mainly focused on the startup tech space. We had this program where we would bring in young people and teach them digital marketing and then have them apply that to the nonprofit and social space. We had a big vision for what that could do and how that can be its own company. We’ve bootstrapped the whole thing and never received any outside funding. FOUNDER I think any entrepreneur looking to get started and have that founder discussion can sometimes get very difficult. When I came out of school at 21 years old, I went out and sought a founder, and I found someone who was really smart and could help fund the business, which was a really big pain point for many startups. But I also realized that we were not aligned with certain key areas and that was an issue. At Community Boost, a lot of the partners, including the management team, has really found us, and have given the opportunity to bake themselves into the business. WHAT WAS ONE THING THAT YOU STRUGGLED WITH IN THE EARLY STAGES OF YOUR STARTUP? I think one the things I struggled with the most was not failing fast enough or a fear of failure. Not failing fast on a certain idea. And just, you got to have no fear when validating your market, validating sales. HUGE SUCCESS My biggest achievements are some of the successes we’ve created for other organizations 3 years ago we were working with Mia Roseberry and she has an organization now called Wounded Warrior Homes. At that time she had multiple veterans who were suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD), and she just wanted to help them out. But seeing where they are today, and supporting them from ideation to an office and full-time staff. And really helping her create her vision and what she wanted to make a stand for in the world. That’s some of the stuff that makes me fulfilled and most proud of. SUPERPOWER I really try and value authentic and deep connections with people and really bring in a sense of compassion. So that’s why my superpower is compassion, and I think that’s why I’m so drawn to the space we work in. That authenticity was how we were able to secure business in the early days. KRYPTONITE Delegation of tasks can sometimes be a struggle of mine. The transition from being self-employed to a business was slowed down because of that weakness. IF YOU CAN HAVE ANY SUPERPOWER… For me it would have to be teleportation. I just want to see as much of the world as I can. If I can teleport to all those cool places, that would be amazing. RECOMMENDED RESOURCE OR APP My best resource is not an app, but a routine I do every morning. Take 10 minutes every morning. The first 3 minutes, concentrate on being present. 3 minutes to bring and really feel your breathe through your

    31 min

  4. 12/07/2015

    Ep 026: How to Live An Amazing Life w/ Gary Ware

    Gary Ware is the Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Tower33 Digital, a digital advertising agency that focuses on helping small brands drive results and be seen online. He is a dynamic, qualified, and goal-oriented Online Marketing Professional with over ten years of extensive experience providing key support to professionals, including colleagues and customers, and providing team management. Gary recently gave a talk on how to live an amazing life by using the acronym S.A.V.E.R.S. If there was something that you can do, that would almost be the elixir of life. Where if you did it everyday and took it as a magical pill, and it will give you what you need to thrive. To live your best life. Wouldn’t you want to do that? Studies show that if you commit to something like this during the first part of your day, it’s going to give you the mental energy to get through the day. Here Are The Steps Silence: Meditation or prayer. When we are moving at 120 miles per hour, we hardly get a moment to ourselves. Meditating for about 10 minutes every morning and really focusing on your breathing, allows us to calm and center ourselves. A good app to use for meditation is Headspace. Affirmations: Think about a time when you are really stressed out, and you think to yourself that you can’t do it. You’re actually telling your brain that you can’t do it. And that’s an affirmation. It would be better to tell your brain something more uplifting and is going to help you get the things that you want. You can say something like, “I thrive to be ______ a little bit more every day.” Visualizations: Try to take a moment and think about what you need to get done TODAY, and really visualize yourself achieving those goals. Bonus tip: Break down your goals by what you want to get done that month. Write a letter to yourself as if it was the first day of the next month and you have achieved those goals. Not only say what you have achieved, but say what the feeling was like when you achieved those goals. Exercise: All you need is a few minutes of physical activity to get you going throughout the day. This could be simple as doing jumping jacks or pushups to get the blood flowing. Reading: Read a minimum of 10 pages a day. You’d be surprised how many books you will read. Look at the goals that you want to achieve this year. Now look at the skills you need to acquire those goals. Now find the books and audios that you need to get that knowledge. Scribing: Write 3 things that you are grateful for. This is to train you to see the good things in life. When you start looking for the things that bring you joy in life, you don’t have time to see the negative things. Mentions Bot Joy: A tiny (and sometimes giant) robot army programmed to bring you joy Pencils of Promise: We’re a global community that believes everyone deserves access to quality education. We’re reshaping the landscape of education guided by our 100% PROMISE. RECOMMENDED RESOURCE OR APP Evernote: The work space for your life’s work   RECOMMENDED BOOKS img...

    1 hr

  5. 12/02/2015

    Ep 025: Your Network is Your Net Worth w/ Will Caldwell

    Will Caldwell is a graduate from the University of San Diego/ After majoring in Accountancy, he has grown to publishing many articles in well-known sites such as Entrepreneur.com, Inman News, and Elite Daily. Will grew up in the real estate industry, with both parents working in the field. So it’s no surprise that he himself is also making a dent in the real estate world. He is the Founder and CEO of Dizzle, which is an app specifically designed for real estate professionals and organizations, to help generate more word-of-mouth leads. STRATEGIES USED TO FUND BUSINESS Initially it was teaching kite surfing. I was able to make cash quickly. Then I started a drone business to compliment my software business. I knew that I needed to get in front of realtors, so I took aerial photography of the real estate. It was a way to fund my activities before I was in the position to go out and raise angel capitol to grow the business. DESCRIBE A MOMENT WHEN YOU FELT LIKE GIVING UP I was in a legal dispute with one of my business partners and it didn’t look like things were going to turn out right for me to continue. At that point you just pray a lot and take it day by day. You can only control what you can do that day, and that’s the mentality I’ve taken because it’s so uncertain when you start a business. HUGE SUCCESS As we pivoted from our initial idea of selling apps to realtors, to then turning into an advertising platform for vendors to reach real estate agents or homebuyers during the sale of a house. To see the vendors happy and to see the business model working as we predicted, has been a phenomenal satisfaction to me and it’s the reason why I do this. SUPERPOWER Resilience. I won’t go down easily. KRYPTONITE It’s everything that’s going against me as an early stage founder. Running out of money. Customers don’t renew. Uncertainty, it’s hard to predict. IF YOU CAN HAVE ANY SUPERPOWER… It would be mind control so I can know what everyone else is thinking. RECOMMENDED RESOURCE OR APP Toutapp: Tout lets you see who’s opening your emails   RECOMMENDED BOOKS The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers img...

    19 min

  6. 11/30/2015

    Ep 024: Founders, Date Before You Marry w/ Mike Chan

    Mike Chan is an entrepreneur, consultant, marketer, and blogger. He is the co-founder of Ribl, a real-time, location based message board app, where you can share and discover the most relevant content about your current vicinity, so you’ll never miss out on what’s happening around you. Not only that, he is also the Founder and Host of his own show, the Go and Grow Podcast. Where he interviews entrepreneurs and industry leaders to learn how they launch and grow products and companies. STRATEGIES USED TO FUND BUSINESS My businesses are often bootstrapped. I’ve either started them working on the side while working a full time job or leaving a full time job and doing some consulting. There are certainly pros and cons to that but the bottom line is…just make it happen. Funding from outside sources is not necessary to create a startup FOUNDERS The first startup that I worked on didn’t last very long. And it was because of founder issues. One of the biggest problems for non-technical entrepreneurs like me who are trying to get into a tech startup is to find technical co-founders. I found 3 technical cofounders really quickly and what happened was that I essentially got married without dating. It failed a couple months down the road. We couldn’t agree on the next steps, we couldn’t agree on the strategy and the vision of the company. And this was the startup I quit my full-time job for. Date before you marry. HUGE SUCCESS I haven’t got to the point, at least in my eyes, when I realized I’ve achieved great success. You have to celebrate the small successes. One of the things that I look at is just seeing the fruits of your labor when you’ve worked hard. SUPERPOWER I think empathy is my greatest strength. Whether in business or life in general, I think I’m pretty good at putting myself in other people’s shoes and seeing things from their view. KRYPTONITE My kryptonite is that I am a Jack of All Trades, but a Master at None. It’s tough for me. I like to know a lot about a lot of things, but it’ll serve me well to focus on one thing and get really strong at that. IF YOU CAN HAVE ANY SUPERPOWER I want to be able to read people’s minds. Empathy is part of this, but I’m definitely not at the point of reading people’s minds. RECOMMENDED RESOURCE OR APP Trello: The free, flexible, and visual way to organize anything with anyone.   RECOMMENDED BOOKS The Business of Happiness: 6 Secrets to Extraordinary Success in Life and Workimg style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=stalifhac-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1596981148" alt="" width="1" height="1" border="0"...

    25 min

  7. 11/25/2015

    Ep 023: “We want people 22-26 yrs old with 30 yrs experience” w/ Ken Arnold

    Ken Arnold is a consultant, author, engineer, and professor at San Diego State University, where he teaches a wide variety of courses such as programming and embedded systems. Aside from starting multiple companies in the past, he founded HiTechEdventures.org, whose purpose is to connect motivated students and potential employers, by providing work-for-hire consulting services. Students have the opportunity to work on client’s projects while they’re enrolled and working toward their degree.   STRATEGIES USED TO FUND BUSINESS When I first started as an entrepreneur, I hired my friends to do consulting work for companies and bootstrapped the entire thing. I paid them depending on the money I was getting from the companies. At the time, the best jobs were going for $1-2 an hour and they were getting $4 an hour. It was a win-win-win situation. DESCRIBE A MOMENT WHEN YOU FELT LIKE GIVING UP One of the biggest ones was when I had just jumped off and started the business. The large company I had worked for had a health plan. My son had become ill when he was born and had substantial hospital bills. It turns out there was a limit on how much the hospital paid out. All of the sudden the hospital gave all the money back to the insurance company. The company said they weren’t going to pay money that was over the limit, and I was forced to spend tens of thousands of money to cover the cost. That was all the money that I was going to spend on advertising and all sorts of business stuff. Family first. HUGE SUCCESS My favorite success is the HiTechEdVentures program because it’s something that I feel addresses a direct need and it solves a problem so many of my students had. Good students are not able to get jobs because they couldn’t even get an interview because they didn’t have any paid experience to put on their resume. I feel proud to start that because none of the people that have called me back have said, “Ken, I couldn’t find a job or get an interview.” SUPERPOWER I’d say my primary strength is simply that I try to be creative in finding different solutions to problems that people have used the standard solutions for. KRYPTONITE Bureaucracy, definitely. I’ve always had trouble with big companies and big organizations. What really grinds my gears is the bureaucreatic BS that prevents people from doing what needs to be done. IF YOU CAN HAVE ANY SUPERPOWER If I had any superpower it would be to inform people widely of really important things that they’re not aware of. RECOMMENDED RESOURCE OR APP Doodle: The scheduling tool you’ll actually use Google Hangouts Skype youcanbook.me   RECOMMENDED BOOKS img style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=stalifhac-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0446404667" alt=""...

    38 min

  8. 11/23/2015

    Ep 022: The Importance of Serving Others w/ Robin Zander

    Robin is an author, educator, and strategist, with a background ranging from management consulting to circus performance. He has a desire to help people and companies keep pace with rapid change. If you can’t find him in a dance studio, he is directing the Stanford-founded Design for Dance Conference, and also runs his own podcast, The Robin Zander Show. STRATEGIES USED TO FUND BUSINESS My main gig right now is the educational startup called SOCOS. SOCOS is 3 years old right now; I joined a year and a half ago. But we’re bootstrapped. SOCOS had started with a small scale consultancy for online universities. Only in the last 6 months was where we’ve taken decades of research into learning and turning it into a product that people can use. The product is called MUSE. It’s for parents of kids 0-12 years old, where it’s that one thing that parents can do every single day to maximize the life of their child.   WHEN DID YOU FEEL YOU’VE GAINED ENOUGH KNOWLEDGE FOR CONSULTING? Every consulting opportunity is different from the one before. When I started consulting as a special needs consultant to families, I didn’t evolve yet like I was the expert. But I realized that by having that outside perspective, and having the story of one other family of whom I can share with the person in front of me right now, was incredibly useful. We often overlook our strengths because we assume that other people have them too. DESCRIBE A MOMENT WHEN YOU FELT LIKE GIVING UP One moment was with my old consulting business, Move Autism. I had a couple clients and decided to give it my all. I was getting great feedback from my initial clients, but when I decided to expand my business, it was very difficult since I was relatively new to social media marketing. There was a point when I questioned if I should join my friends and enter into the tech industry or get my Ph D. The thing that saw me through was that desire to be of service. HUGE SUCCESS From consulting, success at that time was seeing the changes in the little girl and her family. I asked myself, have I to the best of my ability in this setting been of service to that person. If the answer is yes, then that’s success. SUPERPOWER One is the ability to ask questions and helping people reach their conclusions. KRYPTONITE It’s setting a high expectation for someone else and not having those expectations delivered and getting upset about that is my kryptonite. IF YOU CAN HAVE ANY SUPERPOWER I would love to have a “Narnia” closet where time is paused and you can do whatever you want to feel refreshed. RECOMMENDED RESOURCE OR APP Evernote: The workspace for you life’s work Slack: Be less busy   RECOMMENDED BOOKS img style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;"...

    39 min
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