Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur | Start and Grow Your Own Business

• 1330: STEAL THIS! This is EXACTLY how I'm doing my 2026 planning in SIX LAYERS!

  As the new year approaches, are you tired of setting the same old resolutions that fizzle out by February? It’s time to stop making wishes and start building a strategic roadmap. In this Solo Sunday episode, Brian pulls back the curtain on his completely evolved annual planning process — a powerful 6-layer framework he’s using to design his best year yet in 2026. Forget spreadsheets and simple goal-setting. Brian walks you through a holistic system that starts with who you need to become and ends with designing a life that fuels your business, not the other way around. This is the exact process for turning big ambitions into an actionable, quarter-by-quarter execution plan.✨ Why This Matters for YouThis isn't just another planning episode. This framework is designed to create alignment and momentum:It forces you to start with identity, ensuring your actions are aligned with the person you need to be to succeed.It connects your offers directly to your revenue goals, revealing gaps and opportunities in your business model.It helps you move beyond tactical chaos by defining high-level strategy before you get lost in the "how."It breaks down an entire year into manageable 90-day sprints, making big goals feel achievable.It integrates your life with your business, preventing burnout and ensuring your company serves your ideal lifestyle.📝 Key TakeawaysBrian breaks down his annual planning into six distinct layers that build on one another:The Identity Layer: Who do you need to become to achieve the results you want? It all starts with embodying the identity of the person who has already succeeded.The Offer Layer: A strategic look at your products and services. Do they align? Do they support each other? Do they create a clear path for your customers and your revenue goals?The Themes Layer: What are the 3-5 guiding principles for your year? Think "leverage over labor" or "visibility over obscurity." These themes act as your compass for every decision.The Strategy Layer: Before tactics, you need strategy. This is where you make the big-picture decisions about your focus, market positioning, and key milestones for the year.The Execution Layer: Translate your strategy into a concrete plan. This is where Brian maps out his quarterly focuses, turning a 12-month vision into 90-day actionable chunks.The Life Design Layer: Your business must support your life. This layer ensures you intentionally plan for health, relationships, rest, and creativity, building a sustainable foundation for success.🚀 Put It Into ActionThis week, grab a notebook and do a "6-Layer Audit" for your upcoming year:Identity: Who is the version of you that effortlessly achieves your goals? Write down three traits they embody.Offers: List all your current offers. Is there one you need to cut, evolve, or create to hit your goals?Themes: What’s one theme that feels absolutely essential for you this year?Strategy: What is the single most important strategic milestone that would make this year a massive success?Execution: What is the #1 focus for you in the first 90 days of the year?Life Design: What is one non-negotiable personal habit or activity you will protect this year?🔗 Stay ConnectedSubscribe to the show so you never miss an episode.Want to share your plan or ask Brian a question? Send him a personal email at [email protected] with Brian on Instagram @imetbrian.Share this episode with a fellow entrepreneur who is ready to make next year their best year yet.

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• 1329: The End of "iPad Kids"? This Founder's Device is Changing Parenting w/ Dhruv Chadha

  Tired of the screen time battle and the overwhelming number of single-use gadgets for kids? This episode tackles the "iPad kid" epidemic head-on with Dhruv Chadha, founder of Ahmi. Drawing from his experience building hit products at Blackberry, Microsoft, and T-Mobile, Dhruv shares how his personal journey as a father led him to create Ahmi—an all-in-one intelligent device that serves as a monitor, sound machine, nightlight, and learning hub. This conversation is a masterclass for any entrepreneur on how to identify a deeply personal problem, validate it with rigorous customer research, and make the strategic decision to build a cohesive hardware and software solution in a fragmented market. Tune in to learn how technology, when built with intention, can support development instead of competing with it.💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR BusinessThe "iPhone Moment" Strategy: Learn how to identify a fragmented market filled with single-solution products and create one cohesive platform that does it all.Why Hardware Matters: Understand the strategic decision-making process behind building a physical product versus just an app, especially when user behavior (like kids swiping away) is a key factor.From Pain Point to Product: Discover how Dhruv turned his own parenting struggles with routine charts and learning tools into a scalable business idea.Customer-Led Development: Hear how interviewing over 50 parents was crucial in defining Ami’s core features and validating the market need before a single unit was built.AI-Powered Personalization: See how Ami uses AI not as a gimmick, but as a tool to create personalized learning experiences for children based on their unique interests (like counting with cars instead of apples).📝 About Dhruv Chadha Dhruv Chadha is the founder of Ahmi, an intelligent device designed to help parents raise confident, capable kids in a tech-saturated world. With a rich background in consumer technology, Dhruv has been at the forefront of the mobile revolution, building smartphones at Blackberry and Microsoft. He later led the software development for T-Mobile's Sync Up Kids Watch, which became the #1 selling kids' smartwatch at launch. As a father himself, Dhruv combines his deep technical expertise with a personal mission to create technology that enhances early childhood development rather than distracting from it.🎯 Dhruv’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs "If you have a passion for an area and the drive to do it, you can. Just jump in and go do what you're passionate about, and if you see a real problem and you can quantify it, I think it's worth pursuing those problems."📢 Memorable Quotes"We're not here to replace the parent. We're here to help the parent and actually bring the child and parent closer." – Dhruv Chadha"I really call this the iPhone moment of parenting tech. There is so much tech for parents right now, but they solve like one problem at a time, and they don't work cohesively." – Dhruv Chadha🔗 Links & ResourcesVisit Ahmi’s websiteVisit The Connected Childhood PodcastConnect with Dhruv on LinkedInFollow Ahmi on LinkedInFollow Ahmi on Instagram

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• 1328: The $700 Million Grant-Giver Who Built a Startup with Zero Code w/ Justin Steele

  Justin Steele, a former Google.org director who oversaw $700 million in grants, found himself on the other side of the table as a non-profit founder struggling to afford fundraising tools. Instead of accepting the status quo, he taught himself to code with AI and built Kindora, a Public Benefit Corporation that makes professional fundraising tools accessible to all. This episode is a masterclass in scrappy innovation, demonstrating how any entrepreneur can turn a personal "thorn in your side" into a viable business. Justin shares his incredible story of building an MVP in just two weeks from his living room, offering a powerful lesson in leveraging AI as a superpower to solve real-world problems, build a mission-driven company, and scale your impact without waiting for permission.💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business🚀 How to use AI as your personal software developer to build an MVP, even with zero coding experience.💡 The step-by-step process of identifying a personal pain point and transforming it into a scalable business idea.💰 A fundraising strategy for early-stage ventures: why a high-volume, targeted approach to small grants can be your rocket fuel.⚖️ How the Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) model allows you to legally balance profit with social impact, protecting your mission as you grow.🛠️ Why being the "painter" closest to the problem gives you an unmatched advantage in developing effective solutions and products.🤝 The power of partnership and how a co-founder can provide the courage and confidence to turn a prototype into a real company.📝 About Justin SteeleJustin Steele is the co-founder and CEO of Kindora, a Public Benefit Corporation making professional fundraising tools accessible to every nonprofit. With a background that includes directing $700 million in philanthropic grants at Google.org and degrees from Harvard Business School, Justin combines big-company experience with startup grit. His journey began when he founded his own nonprofit, Outdoorithm Collective, and discovered the very tools meant to help him were financially out of reach. This inspired him to leverage AI to build a better solution from scratch, giving him a unique and powerful perspective from both sides of the funding table.🎯 Justin’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs"Grab your paintbrush and start painting with these AI programs."📢 Memorable Quotes“I would just gut check it. I don't want to know... is this worth my time to do more due diligence or not? And I just literally had the AI do that 10,000 times.” – Justin Steele"As a founder, you know, you're supposed to put out products that you're embarrassed by... if you're not putting stuff out that's early prototyping, then you're probably hanging on to it too long." – Justin Steele"I have yet to try something and hit a wall where I'm like, 'Oh, I actually can't build the thing.' It's a superpower. It gives everybody a massive edge and we should all be in these tools. It's like jumping into an Iron Man suit." – Justin Steele🔗 Links & ResourcesVisit Kindora’s websiteVisit Outdoorithm Collective’s websiteConnect with Justin on LinkedInFollow Kindora on LinkedInFollow Outdoorithm Collective on LinkedIn

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• 1327: Make Better, Faster Decisions with the Data You Already Have w/ Bobby Thompson

  In a world buzzing with AI, how do you cut through the noise to make decisions that actually grow your business? This episode features Bobby Thompson, the founder of WUNN Labs, who is demystifying the world of data for entrepreneurs. Bobby breaks down how the information you already have—from sales calls and emails to CRM entries—is a goldmine waiting to be tapped. He explains how modern AI makes it possible for any business to analyze both quantitative and qualitative data to gain a competitive edge. This isn't a high-level theoretical chat; it's a practical guide on shortening your innovation cycles, solving problems faster, and building a well-oiled machine that moves with speed and clarity. Tune in to learn how to harness data to build a smarter, more agile, and more successful business.💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business🚀 Why your qualitative data (emails, call transcripts, Slack messages) is just as valuable as your quantitative data, and how AI can finally make sense of it all.💰 How to identify and eliminate the 20% of sales efforts that are going nowhere, effectively boosting your revenue without increasing your workload.🧠 A framework for approaching AI: Start with your biggest business problem, not with the technology, to find the right solution.⚡ How to shorten your business cycles from years to months (or months to weeks) by making better, faster decisions backed by real data.🤝 Why AI won't replace entrepreneurs but will empower smaller, more agile teams to compete with monolithic companies.📈 How to move beyond simple dashboards and get the full context behind your data to make decisions you can feel confident about.📝 About Bobby ThompsonBobby Thompson is the founder of WUNN Labs, where he is building the infrastructure for better human judgment in an AI-driven world. With a background as a data scientist and a former Chief Product and Technology Officer, Bobby has spent his career at the intersection of data, design, and decision-making. He got disillusioned with the slow, expensive cycle of traditional data science and saw an opportunity with AI to create a shorter, more effective bridge between data analysis and real-world business action. His unique perspective helps entrepreneurs move past the hype and use data to build truly intelligent and efficient companies.🎯 Bobby’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs“It's the golden era for ambition. Be ambitious. You could do so much more than you could before, and so the people that try and are resourceful and ambitious, they're going to have a lot of success.”📢 Memorable Quotes"If we keep accelerating faster without better decisions, we're just going to kind of end up in weird places as businesses." – Bobby Thompson"The bigger question should be what are your biggest problems that you're actually trying to solve?... And then it's just, AI to solve that thing specifically." – Bobby Thompson"I do think you're not going to need as many monolithic companies, which I actually think is cool, especially for a podcast about entrepreneurship. There's going to be a big boom of smaller companies." – Bobby Thompson🔗 Links & ResourcesVisit WUNN Labs’ websiteConnect with Bobby on LinkedInFollow WUNN Labs on LinkedIn

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• 1326: Healing-Centered Leadership: The Next Evolution for Entrepreneurs w/ Dominique Samari

  Ever feel like you have a brilliant business plan, but something mysterious always gets in the way of executing it perfectly? This episode is your answer. Dominique Samari, a former attorney turned strategist and healing arts practitioner, pulls back the curtain on the invisible forces—the hidden organizational and leadership patterns—that sabotage our success. This isn't just another strategy session; it's a deep dive into building a business that is not only successful on paper but is resilient, collaborative, and truly impactful in practice. Dominique shows us how to bridge the critical gap between a great idea and a profitable reality by focusing on the one thing that matters most: human connection.💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business🚀 How to identify the fear-based patterns in your leadership that stifle creativity and growth within your team.🤝 Why "healing-centered leadership" is the next evolution for building resilient, high-impact organizations that thrive in complexity.💡 A framework for bridging the critical gap between a brilliant plan and successful, real-world execution.🧠 How to quiet the loud voice of your intellect to finally hear and trust your entrepreneurial intuition, even when it doesn't make logical sense.🤖 A balanced perspective on using AI as a powerful tool without losing the human connection that truly drives your business forward.📈 The secret to building "relational infrastructure" from day one to create a culture that fuels, rather than fights, your strategy.📝 About Dominique Samari Dominique Samari is an experienced attorney, strategist, coach, and healing arts practitioner who masterfully blends analytical strategy with a deep understanding of human dynamics. With over 15 years of experience leading planning and training efforts for organizations, including rebuilding rule of law infrastructure in Afghanistan, she has a unique global perspective on what makes teams succeed or fail. Through her companies, Kin Consultant Group and the tech platform Kin Universe, she helps organizations increase trust and strengthen the connections needed to turn ambitious plans into tangible success.🎯 Dominique’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs"Don't wait until you have cultural problems—design for relationships from day one."📢 Memorable Quotes “My intellect is like, ‘well, that's crazy making.’ And then I take the steps, follow my intuition, and it's f*cking magic.” – Dominique Samari“[Intuition] is always there. It's always ready for us to use, but you have to chip away the things that get in the way of you accessing that.” – Dominique Samari“Culture eats strategy for breakfast. You can have the best ideas, the best strategy but if you aren't building a culture that can actually execute that, then it's all for naught.” – Dominique Samari🔗 Links & ResourcesVisit Kin Consultant Group’s websiteVisit Kin Universe’s websiteConnect with Dominique on LinkedInFollow Kin Consultant Group on LinkedIn

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