The Art of Business

In this episode we talk with Casey Fenton, Co-Founder of Couchsurfing.com as well as CEO and Founder of Upstock. Credited with kicking off the sharing economy, Casey has a 21-year history of ground-breaking entrepreneurship. Casey joins us today to discuss ego hacking, creating trust, and leadership styles. Currently, Casey and his wife are working on a new platform and book about how to hack your ego to overcome the self-fulfilling prophecy that it can create. As a biological function, ego keeps track of how you and others feel about what you have identified with. There are many ego traps that you can fall into. One of the biggest is optimizing for being right instead of optimizing for connection. Often, people are afraid of looking wrong but what you really need is to work on connections and authenticity. Another common trap is trying to choose your own narrative instead of the truth. Identify with the truth of situations and treat things as data to learn from. When building Couchsurfing.com, Casey found himself challenged with taking on the role of leadership. He needed to change into more of a visionary and coach type of leader over the affiliate style he was used to. It’s also important to build trust, both outwardly and internally, in your business. Think about ways that you can show trust to potential clients. Find commonalities and build relationships based on them. If you and your team and clients are aligned, it’s much easier to build the trust that gives you momentum.

In this episode, our guest is Trevor Cowley, the co-founders of  Easier Accounting, 60 Day Credit Repair, AreteSyndicate, and host of real business owner’s podcast. His podcast was created to help other entrepreneurs that want to grow their business. He and his business partner Kale Goodman are both sharing their knowledge and expertise through this podcast. When Trevor was young, he had some issues with drugs, but he decided to change his life for the better and became an extremely successful entrepreneur. Trevor is a good example of a great man that worked hard to get to where he is today. In this recording he covers his start in business, how he picks his investment, why have multiple streams of income, and much more.

In this episode we talk with Jeff Fenster. He is serial entrepreneur as well as Founder and CEO of Cal-based superfood company Everbowl. His company is helping to bring eating habits back to what we were made to eat along with staying active. Jeff joins us today to discuss relationship capital, how to add value to your relationships, and pitching yourself to create opportunities. Jeff attributes a large part of his success to having relationship capital. It’s all about leveraging who you know and your relationships with people that can help you get to where you want to be. Build a supportive community around you and make sure you give back. Relationships aren’t a one-way street; you have to create value for others and make an investment in people.

Lujah is the founder of Centrall inc., a Montreal-based retailer specialized in high-end sneaker reselling. Before turning 20, Lujah was able to scale his business to an 8 figure valuation, now operating through 4 retail locations and a massive online store.