Leanne Bonner Cooke is the founder and CEO of e-Bate, a financial startup from UK which aims to help businesses world wide with rebate management solutions. They help businesses to manage contracts with buyers and suppliers digitally to keep a centralized solution, process commercial transactions in real time, manage payments and claims and analyze agreements and providing visibility for better negotiations.
(Be sure to watch the video interview below!)
Leanne Bonner Cooke has been able to raise €1 million euro and have been able to keep looking for investors in the middle of lockdown. And while they started in the UK they’re looking to expand to other countries and start working with clients in the US.
Bryan Lopez is the Founder and the CEO of Brytemap, the first and only tech company on the US East Coast focused exclusively on supporting the regulated cannabis industry. Bryan Lopez is a corporate IT sales and consulting industry veteran with over 20 years of experience, he specialized in remarketing the largest technology companies in the world, he worked with companies like IBM, HP, Cisco, Microsoft, VMware and many more. He developed a good sense on marrying emerging technologies and strategic partnerships for small businesses and Fortune 500 clients. In doing so he was able to generated over $100 million in sales during his career.
(Be sure to watch the video interview below!)
Bryan Lopez did a lot of traveling in his tech years and through those trips he started hearing many times from Cannabis dispensary owners and growers that there was no decent software for dispensaries or cultivators, that retailers needed a POS / ERP platforms and growers needed ERP / MRP platforms and both needed regulation compliancy reporting capabilities. There were a few platforms at the time but everything required a lot of integrations and still does so he created Brytemap to help the cannabis industry with these issues.
Bryan Lopez has many awards in sales though his career, some of them include:
2012 $1M Sales Revenue Million Dollar Club
2013 $1M Gross Margin Sales
2014 $1.8M Gross Margin Sales
2014 Gross Margin Super Star
2015 Million Dollar Club
Some of his current projects include:
Brytemap GreenR
Brytemap GreenR is the most integrated and complete retail software platform in the cannabis industry, GreenR unifies everything needed to run a successful cannabis retail operation. Manage and support your POS, pre-orders, e-commerce, texting and emailing, loyalty and promotions, inventory management and automated Metrc compliance reporting. We’ve taken the time to build and support a single platform to reduce training time, integration of disparate systems and overall subscription costs.
Brytemap Scout (FOCUS)
Scout is designed to give you the ability to audit your facility in real-time and help cannabis growers leverage RFID for instant inventory audits and reconciliation. Scout allows cannabis growers to run inventory counts and guaranteed compliance in minutes, not hours!
Brytemap PlanTR (Coming Soon)
PlanTR (Plan, Track, Report) provides growers with a unique and revolutionary seed-to-sale suite of tools designated to increase operational efficiency. Our state-of-the-art software helps you efficiently streamline your resources, optimize your costs, and maximize your cannabis or hemp crop yields. We give you the power to focus on growing your best product.
Gary Saarenvirta is the founder and CEO of Daisy Intelligence, a Canadian based startup looking to become the biggest artificial intelligence company in the world. They use AI to help retail businesses to analyze all their data and make better promotional and pricing decisions and insurance companies to quickly and accurately discover fraud and manage risk. Recently they raised $10 Million CAD in a series A funding to keep growing their company and develop new features to their software.
(Be sure to watch the video interview below!)
Daisy Intelligence uses a branch of AI called reinforcement learning and their patent-pending Theory of Retail to be truly different in the marketplace and on the cutting edge of the category management revolution. Their unique approach is the first of its kind in the marketplace and will significantly help businesses grow in the competitive retail landscape.
Gary Saarenvirta is the former head of IBM Canada’s data mining and data warehouse practices, he’s very passionate about AI and its ability to transform how retailers grow their businesses and establish an edge in an increasingly challenging and competitive environment.
Erin Kathleen Rothman is the founder and CEO of StormSensor IO, a startup that’s the equivalent of Google Traffic Maps for sewers and stormwater. StormSensor IO started as a simple tracking tool that would message people when it started raining and ended up evolving into a complex system that uses empirical data to track flooding and other similar issues, allowing cities to create better plans to upgrade the sewer system where it’s most needed. The plans are to integrate this into cities to expand the range of what smart cities are capable of doing.
(Be sure to watch the video interview below!)
Erin Rothman has a BA in Technical & Scientific Communication and a Master in Natural Resources / Wetland Ecology. She was an environmental consultant for many years and a VP at SoundEarth Strategies and a Managing Principal at her own consulting company called Rothman & Associates. They have raised an overall amount of $2.6 Million USD and just closed another round of funding in the middle of a pandemic to include new features like tidal sea level risa data capture and analysis / insights and they’re planning to expand to many cities in the US and Latin America in the coming years.
Ryan Lee is the founder & CEO of Kurvv AI, a startup that is looking to make data science and artificial intelligence services available to small business owners who are not tech savvy. Kurvv is a system that allows you to integrate your systems and so that a pre-made machine learning model (artificial intelligence) can analyze the data and give you valuable insights on your business, and currently they have machine learning models ready for use for companies currently using Shopify or Square. The company recently raised $1 million dollars in seed capital and is affiliated with Y Cominator’s Startup School & Micrsoft for Startups. Kurvv was selected as one of the top 50 startups to watch in 2020. Now Ryan Lee is completely focused on Finding out new problems to solve for small businesses.
(Be sure to watch the video interview below!)
Ryan Lee is a Microsoft Data Scientist veteran with 7 years of experiences on new startup and technology evaluation and was a project manager for a data science team. He also was in the smartphone business incubation team in Samsung Electronics with 7 years of experience and was a project manager for the first water proof phone in the world and the first HDD embedded smartphone in the world. Ryan Lee also has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering at the Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea and studied in the Kellogg School of management in the Northwestern University.
Note: If your company is using other services to collect data they would love to work with you to see if they can built Machine Learning models for you and your business. If this is something that interests you please contact Kurvv at “yo@kurvv.ai”
Gun Hudson is an entrepreneur from Australia who started a piano moving business and after desiring a life of travel decided to go full online entrepreneur, creating a business where he helped other people to grow their Instagram followers. Then he decided to hire a CEO to improve his business and gain more time and freedom. With his new found time he decided to explore other areas of online entrepreneurship.
(Be sure to watch the video interview below!)
He founded Satoshi Holdings which is a Cryptocurrency hedge fund registered in the Cayman Islands and another business called Global Tax Freedom where he helps other entrepreneurs to legally eliminate tax by living globally and using international laws to gain this freedom.
Laurits Christensen is an Entrepreneur and an Online Marketer with 10 years of experience of offline sales (serving customers “on the floor”), 3 years full time doing online business and through that experience he has become fluent when it comes to automating processes and creating great advertising campaigns.
(Be sure to watch the video interview below!)
He won the “Freedom Business Award 2019” for the category of the best offier and has been helping people improve their cold email campaigns, web design, eCommerce businesses, Lead Generation processes and Facebook and Instagram Advertising. His latest project is the A1 Campaigns where he helps and guarantees small business owners to generate 3 times return on their adspend or he gives his service for free.
For those watching this interview you can get a 20% discount ($100) for his service on “A1 Campaigns” using the code “LEVELUP20” when you sign in. This is specifically for those doing eCommerce or Training Courses.
Charles Travers is the Founder and CEO of Finetune Digital, a UK based SEO Digital Agency that helps other businesses improve their Google Rankings with Search Engine Optimization and the author of SEO for Marketing Managers, a short book that helps people get started on SEO with the right foot and get their SEO strategy right. His business has been featured in companies like Inc, Blogging.org, Yahoo News and The Telegraph in the UK.
(Be sure to watch the video interview below!)
Charles Travers decided to go full on SEO when he worked at a company overseeing their digital marketing presence. He looked for ways to improve their traffic and found SEO to be a good answer. In the first year his strategy created a record number of apprenticeship applications for the company and he knew he was on to something. Then he moved to become a freelancer but after seeing many horror stories of businesses dealing with SEO he decided to go full as an agency and do the job right.
Quentin Vanhaelen is the Director of the Virtual Human Project at Insilico Medicine, a startup that has achieved a Series B funding for about $37 Million USD. They are using artificial intelligence and deep learning to identify bio markers in the human DNA to help aging research and medicine discovery that can help us extend longevity in the human race.
(Be sure to watch the video interview below!)
Quentin has a Bachelor’s & Masters degree in Physical Sciences and a PhD in Philosophy and Theoretical Physics, he’s originally from Belgium he joins us today from Moscow to discuss the theories of aging, artificial intelligence and the applications to discover new techniques that can help us to discover more about aging and medicine.
Sungwon Lim founded ImpriMed on the 4 of may of 2017 (may the 4th be with you) with a strong motivation to innovate a way to help cancer patients who need an effective treatment ‘today’, by optimizing and personalizing drug treatment options that are currently available and they help veterinary oncologists to screen the most effective treatment options with 82% prediction accuracy and exclude out non-effective ones with 80% accuracy and now they are providing their service to dogs with cancer with a focus to expand into cats in the near future, so far, they’ve served 750 dog cancer cases (500 patients in a half year), their service is available for 99 veterinary oncologists at 77 vet hospitals in 26 different states in the US and continuously expanding the client network and service coverage area and successfully raised $4M Seed round from prestigious Silicon Valley VCs and international VCs, and just started to raise our Series A to fast scale up our business to the entire US pet cancer market and also open the Japan market.
(Be sure to watch the video interview below!)
Sungwon Lim has a PhD in Bioengineering at Stanford University, a MS in Translational Medicine at UC Berkeley & UC San Francisco in a join Bioengineering program, a BS in Chemical Engineering at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) and has 12 years of academic research experiences in pharmaceutical and biotech companies.
Elnaz Sarraf is the CEO and Founder or Roybi Robot, an AI-powered companion robot for young children in language learning & early childhood education and considered by CNB one of the 100 most promising startups to watch in 2019. Roybi has also been the winner of the “Create The Future Awards” by Pluralsight, was a finalist in the “Cool Tool Edtech awards”, top 100 semifinalists in the “startup of the year”, a finalist in the Katerva Awards, a finalist in the Fast Company World Changing Ideas 2019 and Best Innovation in AI Hardware by Aiconics 2019.
(Be sure to watch the video interview below!)
Elnaz has created an Indiegogo campaign that had 488 backers making $103,55 USD and got a Seed Round for $4.2 Million Dollars, they have a working team and china and finally have cleared the production phase, so now they have plans for adding more languages and start expanding their technology and start changing little by little the education system.
Spencer McMurtry is an entrepreneur that has a lot of experience in the automation and selling of businesses. He started his first business when he was 15 years old and then went onto creating his second businesses called Infinite Graphics which was a printing business which became the largest provider on his local area, then he sold that business to create Striking Wraps which became the largest provider for Vehicle Wraps for Culligan Water Franchise which he sold to Signature Graphics (a Fortune 500 company) and also gave consulting to them so that he could start building his new business called “The Systems Method.”
(Be sure to watch the video interview below!)
Spencer McMurtry is also the instructor of an entrepreneurship group called “The Secret Society Mastermind” created by Timothy Marc and through that he has mentored hundreds of entrepreneurs to scaled their business in many countries around the world (including myself).
Sarah Hill is the CEO of StoryUP XR and an interactive media tech professional with 25 years building successful platforms. Her company, StoryUP, makes “Healium”, the world’s first biometrically powered VR/AR channel controlled by the user’s brain and heart rate via their wearables. Hill is a former interactive TV news journalist for the NBC, ABC, & CBS affiliates in Missouri. A national Edward R. Murrow, NAB Service to America, National Sigma Delta Chi, and 12 time mid-America Emmy award-winning storyteller, she spent decades reporting about the world’s negativity and trauma in 5 continents.
(Be sure to watch the video interview below!)
She started working with AR filters during live TV newscasts in 2011. Hill creates with a variety of XR inputs including BCI, heart rate variability, and respiration trackers. She’s passionate about the transition of storytelling to ‘story living’ and XR’s effect on wellbeing. An alum of the Missouri School of Journalism and former adjunct faculty, her reporting has taken her team around the globe capturing stories about the human spirit in the Amazon, UAE, Congo, Guatemala, Zambia, and China. StoryUP’s roots are in virtual travel for Veterans. In 2015, Hill’s team built a program called “Honor Everywhere”, that uses Virtual Reality to allow aging Veterans the opportunity to see their WWII, Vietnam, Korea, & Women’s Memorials.
Carlos Miceli is an entrepreneur, speaker, and lifelong learner. He speaks and advises regularly on the future of work and education, the role of relationships in business innovation and career growth, and the entrepreneurship mindset. He is the first eResident of Estonia from Argentina and currently lives there running his new startup called Mesa and the Estonia Experience where he runs events where entrepreneurs from all over the world come together in Estonia to learn more about the benefits of being an e-Resident.
(Be sure to watch the video interview below!)
He has founded multiple startups and has advised hundreds of people on how to grow their careers. He has worked in the US, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Australia, Mexico, China and Estonia. He has spoken at many institutions worldwide, including Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and more. Apertura magazine, the most important business magazine of Latin America, named Carlos a Top Leader of Argentina Under 35
Diana Castro is the co-founder of “For Productions” a Video Production Company. She is also the creator of Leaders with a Mission, a TV ready Interview show that highlights people that are making a difference. Her true passion is to work with leaders, influencers, change makers, and forward thinkers that are looking to use the power of video to reach more people. Diana’s video company specializes in social video content, specifically consistent video for social media, Branded Videos, Video Training Series, Event Highlights, and Speaker Reels. Diana is also a speaker on topics like The importance of Video Marketing, Personal Branding in a Digital Age, and Leadership positioning using video.
(Be sure to watch the video interview below!)
Diana believes that every person has a purpose, a talent to offer to the world. It is one’s duty and responsibility to help as many people as possible with that talent. “For Productions” is a husband and wife team, and in all honesty, our obsession is creating video with heart, soul, purpose, and strategy. They are not videographers, they are storytellers with video-superpowers. They specialize in infusing BRANDING, marketing, and strategy to all digital video content, more specifically, Social Content, Branded Videos, Video Training Series, Event Highlights, and Speaker Reels.
Davit Baghdasaryan is the CEO and Co-Founder of an artificial intelligence app called Krisp.Ai. It’s the first Armenian Startup to be featured in the Berkeley SkyDeck Accelerator and is consideredone of the 12 most disruptive startups for 2019. It raised $3.5 Million USD from investors that include Sierra Ventures. Krisp eliminates all the background noise from calls, being able to use in apps such as Skype, Zoom, Google Hangouts or any calling technology you might use by using Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks to be able to separate the noise from the voice.
(Be sure to watch the video interview below!)
Davit Baghdasaryan worked for 9 years in Silicon Valley and never thought he would become one of a CEO of one of the startups found in there. Let alone taking on a problem that nobody was able to solve yet, making his startup the unique solution for those who need help removing background noise from any kind of call. Along with his co-founder, serial tech entrepreneur Arto Minasyan, they created a product that works exceptionally well, and now more than 30,000 people use it to converse in 200 different languages.
Christoffer Bertilsson is the CEO of LinkedKurs also known as Mr. LinkedIn and he has extensive experience in helping professionals and business leaders make better use of digital platforms and becoming more relevant to this new “digital age”.
(Be sure to watch the video interview below!)
And the best platform for professionals today is LinkedIn, here he has helped 1000s of professionals and business leaders master LinkedIn to develop their career, gain a larger business network and multiply their business opportunities he has also worked with and helped many of the biggest profiles on LinkedIn in Scandinavia.
Scott Lee is the Founder of The Unspoken Pitch, he has built a career around informing, innovating, and presenting complex data with clarity; connecting customers with brands through visual storytelling. Taking the complex or boring and turning it into a visual format which communicates your message quickly.
(Be sure to watch the video interview below!)
Scott earned a degree in Architecture from the University of Technology in Sydney, after which he worked within the industry doubling down on the nuances behind the consumer psychology, communication, sales, and marketing. Entering the business environment from an Architecture & Design background, it was clear that industry trade shows were filled with revolutionary ideas that fell short due to lackluster presentation.
Scott discovered a consistent gap between great ideas and delivering them to an audience. In less than a decade, Scott has proven that effective and engaging visual multimedia storytelling can close the deal faster than you thought possible by helping brands communicate their message to their target marketing effectively.
Having partnered with high profile clients including McDonald’s, Ramsay, Veeva, and others, Scott’s initiative and love for design has lead to marketing assets generating millions of dollars in sales.
Level Up! is a series of interviews featuring successful professionals from all over the world who are making a mark in their lives and others and finding out how they did it so you can learn from the very best. Our interviews will be focused on finding out their principles, strategies, mindsets, habits and tools that you can use and implement in your business, life and mind to get to the next level of your goals.
(Be sure to watch the video below!)
About Rodrigo Flamenco:
Rodrigo Flamenco is an entrepreneur from El Salvador, Co-Founder of Frame Freak Studio and host of the Creative Hustlers Show. The show was born from the need to learn more about the details of the creative industry, as El Salvador is a third world country located in Central America, where there’s no industry nor schools to teach these topics, this show helped the team of Frame Freak Studio to learn more about the creative industry world wide and also as a portal for those who want to learn but are living in situations or places where that’s not possible.
Introduction to Level Up!
(Click the play button to watch the video interview above)
So, when I started entrepreneurship I was really damn scared, of reaching a client, of offering something, I spent 3 months improving my website to impress my first clients, and when I finally got my first 3 clients, they never even saw my website. After that lesson I decided that I would always make my business ideas pay for themselves, and I have done so since then.
Something that I see with many people who are starting business is that they start asking if the “marketing method” is good, if it’s safe, who has results, all that.
But they’re not really asking for the answers, but because they are afraid of selling, which, let’s be honest I was too.
So, what can we learn from Weight Lifting?
In weight lifting there’s a training method called “Stronglifts 5×5”. It’s made to become strong FAST! It consists in doing only 3 exercises, for each one you have to put the weight you can lift the most, where you use ALL your strenght. And Then you gotta do 5 sets of 5 repetitions each.
So if you’re using the MOST weight you can lift, this thing is gonna look something like this:
5+5+5+4+3
5+5+4+4+3
5+5+4+3+2
And it’s gonna stay something similar for that for some time. And the moment you can do all 5 repetitions in all 5 sets, next day you’ll add 10 pounds more. And do all over again until you get to do the 5 reps in the 5 sets and the next day you add 10 pounds more and so on. The idea is to ALWAYS lift at your damn limit. So how can we use this to sales?
Ok, let’s say you’re damn scared of selling, absolutely scared!
Then create an offer that’s about $97. Sell that until you feel comfortable and the moment you feel that way, make it $147, then $297, then $397, then $497.
If you keep consistent at it you can increase your prices really fast, get clients really fast and the best of all, with so many sales and interactions with your customers you’ll know better what they are looking for, their objections, fears, problems, etc.
The more of that you can integrate in your copy writing, the better your offer will be, the easier you’ll sell.
So start at a price you’re a bit scary to ask, and then put in the work. In a year you’ll be a whole different monster, and your offer will be much different as well.
