This Is My Era – the Podcast (#ThisIsMyEra)

Founder and President of Ashesi University in Ghana, Patrick Awuah joins us to discuss his journey from engineering to developing and running a school in Africa. He shares his mission and inspiration for this breathtaking project.

#ThisIsMyEra welcomes Jeremy Sherk and Kevin Pasco, founders of Nested Naturals, a nutrition supplement business that has skyrocketed on Amazon in the last four years. The two share their not-always-smooth journey in entering the Amazon market.

Twenty-three-year-old Jaclyn DiGregorio has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to building confidence. She’s the founder of Clarity and Action Consulting. On this episode, Jaclyn talks to us about gaining confidence and a positive mindset!  

We welcome Haley Hoffman Smith, an entrepreneur, motivational speaker, and author who is helping others make this their era. At just 22, she was named Top 12 Motivational Speaker to Capture Your Audience by Under30CEO. Haley just wrapped up her college campus speaking tour and is here to discuss her journey, finding your purpose, staying motivated.

Financial wellness is something everyone struggles with. Author, entrepreneur, and certified professional coach, Ashely Feinstein Gestley, makes it her mission to empower others financially. She has a degree in finance and worked as an investment banker and started The Fiscal Femme as a blog dedicated to women, believing financial wellness is an important step in achieving gender equality. She focuses on not only the logistics, but the emotional and behavioral sides of money. Her business has rapidly grown, and she’s since helped thousands of women and has been featured by Forbes, NBC, New York Times, and Glamour. For those looking to take the first steps in financial wellness, this podcast identifies the mindset and programs that can help you make this your era financially!

Kevin Adler!!     Kevin Adler started his professional career in the tech industry, eventually deciding to make a difference by getting into education. On his walks home from work, he witnessed widespread homelessness in his neighborhood. One day Kevin decided to not just walk by like everyone else...he stopped and began talking to people and listening to their stories. After an epiphany moment, he realized how we could use social media to create good. That’s where Miracle Messages was born. Read the full blog at http://thisismyera.com/blogs/podcast/ep-32-miraclemessages

Norette Turimuci! ☕️ Gender inequality is a global issue where women and girls lack access and resources for social and economic advancement. Norette Turimuci and her the team have strived to overturn this problem by focusing on lowering the “confidence gap” through workshops to empower their voices to resonate. Tune in to learn more!

Jonathan Goldman & Alana Gulliver of Trii [The Right to Immigration Institute]

Devassi Joseph!

Sonari Chidi!

Emily Wang!

Curtis "DubblUp" Washington

Max.ng's Adetayo Bamiduro             “It’s not just our era, it’s the era for the African people.” Meet Adetayo “Tayo” Bamiduro. He’s the Co-Founder and CEO of MAX Delivery NG, an innovative motorcycle ride sharing platform with a mission to make transportation safe, accessible, and affordable to 1 Billion (with a capital B) Africans. In this episode, Alexander Star and Tayo talk about the importance of successful entrepreneurship. That is, finding a problem that people face and delivering value that would address it. For Tayo, he was able to identify a critical problem faced by many of the developing societies that severely limited the success of his fellow Africans: transportation.

Jordann Windschauer -      Jordann Windschauer went from selling her products at 100 stores to over 4,000 in just one year. Talk about growth! Tune in to this inspiring episode to hear how one entrepreneur had a simple idea to an individual problem before refining the solution into an incredibly successful business venture.    Full article by Josh Park on our website - www.thisismyera.com/blogs/podcast/ep24-jordannwindschauer

Shayne Veramallay     Socially conscious entrepreneurship focuses on people rather than profit, emphasizing community over product. Carbon is a social enterprise that provides “economies in a box” and empowers communities to achieve sustainable growth. Curious to learn more? Listen in to this episode with Shayne Veramallay, Carbon’s co-founder and managing partner!   Full article by Josh Park at https://thisismyera.com/blogs/podcast/ep-23-shayneveramallay

Inspiring Vanessa     At 12 years old, Inspiring Vanessa is an international speaker, role model, coach, author, and kidtrepreneur. When she was 9, Vanessa found her love for public speaking and has since taken massive action to pursue her passion. Tune in to this episode to learn more about Inspiring Vanessa and how she’s making it her era. Full article at www.thisismyera.com/podcast

Jasmin Manke     Have you lost passion for your job and feel like you’re stuck in a grind with a daily 9-5? If you feel like the world is passing you by and want to do something about it, this episode is especially for you! Jasmin Manke is an international speaker and certified professional coach. As the Founder and CEO of The Confident Boss, she specializes in helping women overcome their fears and doubts to pursue their passion in entrepreneurship. With a Master’s of Science in Psychology for Neuroscience and Mental Health, Jasmin is an energy leadership master practitioner. She works closely with women (and recently with men as well) on how to take purposeful action and transform their lives in a healthy and productive way. In this episode, Jasmin shares her story of how she was able to change her life from working without passion to living at her greatest. She talks about the importance of avoiding false motivation that is plastered across social media and instead becoming introspective to find the root of the fear or doubt that is holding you back from success. By removing false motivation, you can focus on taking action that will be meaningful to your goals. Plan out your day with all your activities and goals and be productive with your time with Jasmin’s key insights using TIME’s 90 Day Planner. But keep in mind, Jasmin adds, to get rest. Take action now in a way that can make your era last a lifetime, not just a few years. Listen in on Alexander’s interview with Jasmin and get inspired to transform your life.

Samantha Lakin     At some point in our lives, we’ve all had that dream of changing the world and leaving a global footprint that would mark our legacy to humanity’s progress. While most people eventually pursue other paths, there are a few who rise to meet the call. One of those people is Samantha Lakin. If you’re looking for an inspiration, Samantha is definitely someone to keep under your radar. Since 2013, she has been researching transitional justice and local perspectives of memory in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. If that’s not amazing enough, she’s also a two-time Fulbright Scholar, a Ph.D. candidate at Clark University, a TEDx speaker, a board member of Survivors Fund (SURF) and Genocide Survivors Support Network (GSSN), a multilingual who is fluent in French, a published author ... the list goes on and on. In this episode, Alexander Star and Kuda Biza discuss with Samantha about her journey to become who she is today and how she was able to accomplish everything despite the challenges she faced. In her reflection, she reviews how she started on her path, how it took her four years to get her first Fulbright Scholarship, and how she was able to push through her moments of difficulty. In the final ten minutes of this interview, she actually provides a brief synopsis of the context of her research and how it has helped shape her own life, which she talks about more in-depth in her TED Talk.

Khierstyn Ross     What does it take to start a successful crowdfunding campaign? Khierstyn Ross knows the secrets – and she’s learned through her own successes and failure. After her first attempt at a crowdfunding campaign failed miserably, she worked hard to learn from her mistakes and ended up raising $600,000 in funding… and going on to become a crowdfunding guru who helps her clients bring exciting new products to market. In this episode, Kuda Biza and Alexander Star talk to Khierstyn to learn the secrets of her success. Listen now to learn what goes into a successful campaign on Kickstarter or IndieGoGo, as well as how Khierstyn discovered how to harness her personal strengths to become a successful entrepreneur and scale her consulting business. Khierstyn is refreshingly transparent about how she learned through trial and error, meaning that this episode is full of takeaways about tuning into your own strengths and finding your own personal route to success.

Paul Goodman     Upon graduating from college, Paul Goodman and Griffin Thall went to Costa Rica to relax and recalibrate. Each friend put in $100 to purchase 400 bracelets from Costa Rican artisans to sell to their friends and family in the U.S. Today, Pura Vida sells between 2000 and 5000 orders a day online and has its products in 2000 plus retail stores.  Paul Goodman – Co-Founder and CFO of Pura Vida Bracelets – joins Kuda Biza and Alexander Star to discuss the journey, passions, profit, and people.

Casey Gauss     What’s it like when your success means helping other people succeed? Casey Gauss is the co-founder and CEO of Viral Launch, a company that helps entrepreneurs forge success on Amazon. After teaching himself to code and dropping out of college, he built Viral Launch from the ground up into an eight-figure company with more than 40 employees. Not only did he make Viral Launch hugely successful, Casey did so with minimal initial investment and while struggling to make ends meet. The result is a company that keeps his passion for helping others at the center of its mission. If you’re interested in selling products on Amazon, you’ll get incredible advice from this podcast – and if you haven’t thought about it before, you might be tempted to!

Book Beau     Have you ever had a problem, discovered the perfect solution… and then turned that solution into a thriving business? When Benita Botello invented Book Beau, a book sleeve for book lovers who take their books on the go, demand was so high that she couldn’t sew them fast enough. Together, she and Arel Avellino turned her brilliant idea into a thriving business, scaling it from a one-woman operation on Etsy to a growing brand. Listen to this episode of the #ThisIsMyEra podcast for a great conversation about scaling a business from the ground up, building a loyal fan base through social media, and the importance of giving back to your community. Benita’s story is hugely inspirational – in terms of both how she’s transformed her own life and built her business – so this is an episode you won’t want to miss.

Joshua Williams     In this episode of the #ThisIsMyEra podcast, Alexander Star sat down with Joshua Williams – a 16-year-old changemaker and youth activator. Joshua founded the Joshua’s Heart Foundation at the age of five when he realized that everyone deserves to live a life with access to dignified food. With the help of his family, who loved sharing their Jamaican food with their community, they were able to feed around 200 people every Saturday before becoming incorporated. Since the beginning of his foundation, Joshua’s Heart has been able to feed 1.3 million lbs in food and over 300,000 people.

Jonny Caiani & Jeremiah Lee Klingman     Lots of guests on the #ThisIsMyEra podcast started making it their era at a young age, but Jonny and Jeremiah – also known as the Richest Kids in Maine – are truly remarkable for having built a million dollar eCommerce business at the ages of just 21 and 22. They taught themselves the ropes of using Amazon as a platform to sell their products and, through trial and error, navigated the learning curve and massively scaled their brand within a single year. In this episode, the Richest Kids in Maine join the #TIME podcast to share their insights on launching an Amazon-based brand, cultivating a customer base, and prioritizing family and community. They provide a clear roadmap for anyone wanting to give an Amazon business a try, either as a main business or as a side hustle. The central takeaways they offer are applicable in nearly every area of life, and show just how many lessons entrepreneurship can teach us that can make us better people.

Adam House     Ready to meet someone who’s not only made this his era, but whose career seems to already span multiple eras? Adam House is a successful serial entrepreneur who’s been running successful companies since age 19. In addition, he’s a dedicated father (listen to the podcast to hear about his son’s entrepreneurial spirit!), a pro basketball player, and on the board of a major philanthropic foundation. In this episode, Alexander Star chats with Adam about how success can follow an unexpected path, how life goals can be achieved out of the usual order, and about that all-important theme which undergirds the #ThisIsMyEra ethos: building a legacy. A huge takeaway from this episode is Adam’s philosophy on seizing opportunity. It’s sure to both motivate you and change the way you approach opportunities in your own life.

Michelle Reeves     What do you do when a major life experience shatters your sense of self? When this happened to Michelle Reeves, she faced the difficult task of rebuilding her life from the ground up – and realized that she wasn’t alone in tackling this life challenge. Today, Michelle has found her passion as a certified life and mindset coach, working with women to achieve the best version of their true selves. In this episode, Michelle chats with Kuda Biza and Alexander Star all the way from her home in the UK. She explains how our thoughts shape our reality, and how developing mindset shifts can help create massive change in our lives. Michelle’s advice is powerful because it addresses both the personal and professional at the same time, revealing how our inner selves and personal happiness can reflect directly upon our professional achievement.

Geoff Woods     Entrepreneur Geoff Woods thinks that you’ve been working towards success all wrong. And there’s a pretty good chance he’s right. But don’t worry, because in this episode of #ThisIsMyEra the Podcast, Geoff walks us through the “surprisingly simple truths” that will completely transform the way you approach success and taking action towards your goals. Geoff is uniquely qualified to bring us this advice because he lives it out and proves its effectiveness every day. Just over two years ago he was still working at an unfulfilling job, but since then he’s completely reshaped his life and now serves as VP of The ONE Thing. Built around the book of the same name, The ONE Thing is a company that helps individuals achieve extraordinary results. He also hosts The ONE Thing Podcast which is among the top 5% of all podcasts. Listen now to Geoff chat with Kuda Biza and Alexander Star. They discuss his secrets for success, and how embracing a quote from entrepreneur Jim Rohn: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” completely transformed his life. Even before the episode is over, you’ll have taken some key actions to clarify your purpose and priorities. By the end, you’ll be ready to take massive action towards your goals with a whole new perspective.

Black Violin     Black Violin is a trailblazing duo of classically trained musicians, Kev Marcus and Wil B, who blend hip-hop with classical music. As a duo, they’ve toured with musicians like Alicia Keys, Lupe Fiasco, Black Thought, 2 Chainz, and The Eagles ⭐️

'Champ' James Jones     Welcome back to the #ThisIsMyEra podcast! In this episode, Alexander Star and Kuda Biza chat with James Jones, 3 time NBA champion with the Miami Heat and Cleveland Cavaliers. Jones’s dominance on the court and insatiable drive for success eventually led to him to work on the business side of the NBA, which is a rare feat for former players to achieve. Listen now to learn how James Jones cultivated not one, but two incredible chapters of his career with the NBA, and how reverse engineering a path to success was key to James achieving his goals. This episode is jam-packed with actionable takeaways that will help you make this YOUR era, regardless of what success looks like for you.

Kurtis Dennison     Can art, music, and theater change the world? Kurtis Dennison believes they can – and he’s put that belief into action. By harnessing his passion for theatre, Kurtis has turned the arts into a tool for community building and education. He started out by serving as an Americorps volunteer in his native West Virginia and then moved to Rwanda through the Peace Corps. Today, he’s made Rwanda his home and continues to use theatre to make this his era. While in Rwanda for the Ubumuntu Arts Festival, Alexander Star sat down to chat with Kurtis, who organized the festival. In this episode of the #ThisIsMyEra podcast, you’ll hear about the power of passion to drive positive change, the challenges of becoming a local in a foreign country, and the importance of not letting others determine your path. Kurtis’s story is sure to resonate with community builders, as well as with anyone who has felt stifled by the status quo.

The Ziglers     Jenna and Travis Zigler are all about vision, in more ways than one. They’re both optometrists who are living life on a mission to end preventable blindness. In order to do so, they’ve created a massively ambitious and creative vision for how to change the world, one pair of glasses at a time. As the founders of Eye Love, a company that sells high-quality, affordable products supporting eye health, Jenna and Travis are able to provide value to their customers while using their business to fund mission trips, distributing glasses to people in need. They also run the Eye Love Cares Foundation, which is working towards opening free eye clinics. All this, and they still run an optometry practice full time! Needless to say, Jenna and Travis are hugely inspiring, but they also provide some highly actionable insight into social entrepreneurship. Listen to them as they chat with Alexander Star and Kuda Biza about creating a vision for the future, taking risks despite the possibility of failure, and choosing to focus on providing value rather than chasing dollars.

Maruxa Murphy     What happens when you mix a passion for empowering women with a love for coffee? If you’re entrepreneur Maruxa Murphy, you get Perky Perky Coffee, a company that fuses roasting small-batch coffee beans with helping women achieve their fullest potential. In this episode of #ThisIsMyEra the Podcast, Kuda Biza and Alexander Star chat with Maruxa about building a business based on core values, how community can be the foundation of an entrepreneurial venture, and how it’s possible to navigate the drive to “have it all” as a woman in the 21st century.

Melissa Ortiz     This week we're sitting down with a true change maker who is making this her era. Melissa Ortiz is a world-class athlete and social entrepreneur. Throughout her career as a professional soccer player, she's broken boundaries, becoming the first Colombian woman to play on a professional soccer team in the US. She's played for the Colombian Women's National Football Team, as well as professionally in Boston and Iceland. She's creating real-world change by blazing trails for the next generation of female athletes and creating sustainable jobs for artisans in Colombia through her business, Vakano Bracelets. Perhaps most importantly, Melissa has developed a mindset of owning her journey, fully living in the moment and realizing that failure is part of the process. In this episode, Melissa will teach us why owning your journey is essential to making this your era.

Asoka Veeravagu     this episode of the #ThisIsMyEra Podcast, Kuda Biza and Alexander Star bring you a massively packed conversation with visionary entrepreneur Asoka Veeravagu. Asoka is the co-founder and CEO of Revolve Automotive, a subscription service that lets users drive the latest luxury cars, switching them up as easily as updating a Netflix queue!! Asoka reveals the keys to staying motivated as an entrepreneur in the face of setbacks, and how to relentlessly pursue an idea that will disrupt the way things have been done for generations. You’ll find huge takeaways here whether or not you have an entrepreneurial dream, because all of Asoka’s insight is hugely relevant to taking risks and creating change in all areas of life. Listen now!!

Sam Vaghar     What’s the key to making big things happen? Sam Vaghar, the executive director of the Millennium Campus Network, was once told to never be afraid of starting a conversation with someone, no matter who that person is. This one piece of advice led to him to build an organization that’s creating massive world change. Today, the Millennium Campus Network is an organization that encourages college students to come together to realize their visions. The MCN works with 300 universities and has expanded its reach worldwide by holding its annual Millennium Campus Conference in Morocco in 2017. In this episode, Kuda Biza and Alexander Star speak with Sam about starting conversations, taking full advantage of every opportunity, and learning to ask the right questions. Sam brings tons of actionable advice and ideas for cultivating connections and leveraging the community to maximize the potential for impact. If you’re seeking to network in genuine ways that build real relationships, you’ll definitely want to listen to this episode.

Kuda Biza     In this second episode of the brand-new #ThisIsMyEra podcast, co-host Kuda Biza sits down with Alexander Star to discuss the power of taking massive action [If you missed it, you’ll definitely want to listen to the first episode, which tells Alexander’s story]. As Kuda tells us in this episode, he first became an entrepreneur at age nine – that’s right, nine – and tirelessly worked to overcome obstacles in order to come to the United States from Zimbabwe as a college student. This episode is going to fire you up to create massive world change and equip you with a ton of new skills for honing in on your goals and working towards them… in short, this episode is going to have you saying #ThisIsMyEra. Watch the "This Is My Era" music video! Follow #ThisIsMyEra on Instagram! Follow #ThisIsMyEra on Facebook! Get the #ThisIsMyEra 90-day Goal Planner! Listen to "Better Than Ever" by Alexander Star! Listen to "Pass The Good Vibes Around" by Alexander Star! Follow Alexander Star on Instagram! Follow Alexander Star on Facebook! Follow Alexander Star on Twitter!  

Alexander Star       Welcome to the #ThisIsMyEra podcast! This podcast will inspire you to create huge worldchange and take massive action. In this very first episode, you’ll get to know Alexander Star, an Emmy-nominated recordingmusician and good vibes ambassador who lives out the mission of #ThisIsMyEra in all that hedoes. Alexander Star discusses what it means to find your core purpose, which becomes the starting point for the impact you will make on the world and the actions you will take to accomplish your goals. In Alexander’s case, he discovered in college that his core purpose was filling the world with good vibes through his music. From there, his music (in particular, the song #ThisIsMyEra) grew into something that reached far beyond just himself. It’s up to you to define your own core purpose, but once you do, you may be astounded by the places it takes you. Watch the "This Is My Era" music video! Listen to "Better Than Ever" by Alexander Star! Listen to "Pass The Good Vibes Around" by Alexander Star! Follow Alexander Star on Instagram! Follow Alexander Star on Facebook! Follow Alexander Star on Twitter! Follow #ThisIsMyEra on Instagram! Follow #ThisIsMyEra on Facebook!