Boiling Point Podcast

Introducing Kristy O’Leary Kristy O’Leary calls herself a vision broker and has a goal to make entrepreneurs and change makers succeed in making a positive impact on this Earth and make a profit while doing so.  Growing up her family’s business was a great example of how business should be done in a positive fashion.  She also saw the other side of the coin when large and uncaring big box stores outdid the family business.  Kristy has always had an eye for making a change or an impact.  She studied foreign policy with the goal of working in international development, but then studied art in order to express herself. She realized the best approach was a hybrid of her two educations where she could make real change and tell great stories.  So Kristy eventually opened Scout and Burrow which is a marketing agency for mission/cause based organizations and social entrepreneurs.  Her goal is to help her clients change the world AND make a profit while doing so. Kristy is a big proponent of B Corps.  A B Corp is a

In this episode of the Boiling Point, Greg and Dave sit back to reflect on our first 16 episodes.  Dave points out that Ken Blanchard once said, "feeback in the breakfast of champions."  That doesn't include audio feedback, right?   We are looking for your feedback. What did we do right?   Where did we drop the ball?   Who do you want us to interview? Are you enjoying the show? How can we make the show better? Please send us emails to boilingpointpodcast@gmail.com, tweet at us @boilingpointpod, or send us a message on Facebook.  You can also leave a comment on our website, boilingpointpodcast.com. Also, we want to remind everyone to rate and subscribe to us on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. Also, remember to share our conversations with your family, friends, colleagues, and even enemies :) We will be back next week with a whole new guest and another Boiling Point.         Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Introducing Boyd Sharpe Boyd Sharpe is the true Renaissance man.  As a young man, and graduating with a degree in theatre arts and a bachelor of education, his father asked him whether he was prepared for a career as a teacher.  Boyd thought about it and responded that he wanted to have 10 jobs across five career paths over the following 30 years.  He’s definitely on his way.  Boyd was a teacher for six years before he retrained in IT.  He was a web designer and systems analyst, and then retrained as a project manager.  Most recently he trained to become a professional MMA fighter and a producer with Greg Hemmings in their recent series Cubicle to the Cage.  All of the above, plus becoming a basement quail farmer, boat builder, and podcaster on the BS Show. Boyd is the type of person who is constantly looking for a new challenge and has to move on from situations after they become easy and boring.  He has a drive to push himself to his limits and to move past fear.  What inspired him to do this?  When Boyd

Introducing John Wesley Chisholm   Here is a math equation for you, what does an accountant plus a rocker give you?  A television producer named John Wesley Chisholm.  After finishing university with a finance degree, John Wesley had the intention of becoming an accountant. At the same time his part-time band, The Johnny Favourite Swing Orchestra gets a big record deal with MCA records.  Initially, John Wesley thought he could balance his two careers, but he found it difficult to commit to either one.  But he had an idea about telling the world about the thousands of Shipwrecks near his hometown of Halifax.  He pitched the idea to the Discovery Channel and was able to sell his idea to them almost immediately.  Just like that John Wesley was a successful TV producer, he created Arcadia Productions, and the course for his career was set.   John Wesley admits that he is a “professional bullshitter.”  It is common to believe that we live in the information age, but John Wesley believes we actually live in the

Introducing Ed Webber  Ed Webber is a veteran of old-school family business in Nova Scotia.  He started in his youth by helping out his father but at the age of 16 his father died.  This left his family strapped for cash, and Ed was forced out of school and into the workforce.  He began running a gift shop out of a local hotel, and through the years went on to the buy and sell business, as well as opening a breakfast and lunch joint.  But after getting married and having a child, Ed wanted better job security and decided to take a job as an area manager for a firm, which rented televisions in hospitals.  From there he grew into a regional manager and then with a few partners became the companies only franchisee by starting VistaCare Television Services of Canada in 1989.  By 2003, Ed was getting a bit bored with hospital TV rentals and decided to leverage the reputation of VistaCare Television to start a high-end cabling and fiber-optic construction firm.  He formed VistaCare Communications Services of Canad

Mike Brooks is a podcast pioneer and marketing guru coming to the Boiling Point from Southbury, Connecticut. Our host, Greg Hemmings, met him and Dino Dogan at this past NMX (New Media Expo) and soon was on Mike and Dino’s Road to TED podcast. Check out the episode of Boiling Point with Dino Dogan here.   Mike studied IT and worked in the business for 10 years when a taekwondo school he attended was about to close up due to hard times. Mike saw this as a perfect opportunity and quit his day job in IT to help rebuild and market the martial arts school. Mike put a great deal of effort into the school and specifically its digital footprint. This was at the leading edge of when the internet was really starting to mean something for small business.  Mike created content for the school in terms of blogs, social media, videos, podcasts, etc. and soon the school at six times the number of students it had when Mike first started. Others in the community started to notice and within six years other business owners woul

Introducing Steven Fisher Steven Fisher’s LinkedIn profile calls him a creative leader, a seasoned entrepreneur, a sci-fi filmmaker, a soon to be published author, a budding craft beer maker, a slow runner, and a fast eater. With an introduction like that, you know there is a ton we could have spoken to Steven about. To save time, Greg and Dave talked to him about his upcoming book, “The Startup Equation” and his experience making his crowd funded sci-fi fan fiction flick, “Browncoats: Redemption”. Steven brought up an important statistic that he discovered from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, which is that one in six people on this planet will be entrepreneurs of some fashion by the end of the decade. With over six billion people on Earth, that means there could be over a billion entrepreneurs by 2020. Where can all of these go-getters discover their keys to success? One way is to follow the path beaten down by the successful business people before them. This was the inspiration behind Steven’s new book

Introducing Yan Simard Yan Simard woke up one morning in 2010 with a splitting headache and an idea.  He doesn’t remember the source of his pain, but the idea ended up changing the course of his career.  The idea was actually a memory of an idea he had about five or six years before, but now smart phone technology had progressed to a point where now the idea was feasible.   Yan spent two solid days crafting and designing and was left with the basic components of ZapTap.  What’s ZapTap?  It’s software that connects brands to customers in retail environments.  More specifically, ZapTap allows brands to create a customized experience for customers interested in a product.  The software gathers information on consumers as they shop, in a respectful way, and lets brands better know their customers.  Imagine you are an avid snowboarder who is interested in buying a GoPro camera to show off on YouTube.  If GoPro was a ZapTap client, you could get personalized content and videos showing other snowboarders using the

Shawn gives us insight into what it is like to compete on the Amazing Race and what he and his wife learned from the experience. Dave tells an anecdote about a coincidence between left and right brain thinkers. Greg sees parallels between Shawn and himself including trying out for the Amazing Race Canada. Shawn tells us about the experience, how he had to drop off the grid to be on the show, and how some of his employees thought he was in rehab instead. Dave makes a great point about taking care of yourself first, in order to take care of others by comparing it to having oxygen masks drop during an airplane ride. Greg is validated for his own lifestyle and describes how Dave helped him come up with a personal and business vision statement and how this allows him to live an integrated lifestyle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Introducing Paul Simmonds   Independent retail is a tough business.  Independents are competing with big-box stores, large shopping destinations, and online retailers, which often have hard-to-beat pricing.  So how does an independent retailer stand out amongst the crowd?  Paul Simmonds seems to have the answer.   Paul is a 35 year veteran of the retail business and the owner of Robert Simmonds Clothing in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.  This tough but kind business man started in the business as a stock boy in a shoe store at 14 years of age, and moved himself up the ladder to success by learning from a number of mentors.  Robert Simmonds, named in homage to Paul’s father, opened in 1998 as an upscale men’s clothing store. Sixteen years later, Robert Simmonds offers upscale men’s and women’s, as well as urban style clothing.   What sets Robert Simmonds Clothing apart from the crowd?  An over-the-top customer experience.  A typical customer interaction involves a customer entering the store, being

Judith explains her path to success. She tells us that she knows she is not the greatest at everything she gets wrapped up in, but she surrounds herself with a sub group of people that can help her. Many entrepreneurs would scoff and say they can’t afford help, but Judith is quick to point out that there is always a way. If you can’t afford a service, then barter. She tells us that communicating to your community, giving every customer the same attention, and a general attitude toward customer service. It’s also about knowing your customer, developing a niche, and treating that customer really well.   Greg sees a running theme in Boiling Point that in this flat world we can make international ripple effects from small cities. Dave is inspired by Judith’s brilliant way of expressing things concisely and intelligently. Dave also notes that he is motivated by Judith’s passion for telling not only her stories, but the stories of her clients and others in her community.   Greg points out that Judith, Dave, and him

Introducing Gino Dion   It is amazing who you might meet if you open yourself up to new experiences.  Even more amazing when you find a mover and shaker you didn’t know about in your own backyard.   That is exactly what happened to Greg when he decided to attend a conference for the National Association of Broadcasters in Las Vegas.  NAB is conference for broadcasters and their equipment manufacturers.  Greg decided to attend to see what connections he could make through networking, but it wasn’t necessarily a conference for filmmakers to pitch their ideas.  He left with a quorum of industry people from New Brunswick, Canada and this is where he met Gino Dion and the two became fast-friends.   Gino works for a company called IneoQuest, which is a multi-national company offering products and services for the monitoring of video quality.  Broadcasters use products from IneoQuest to guarantee their transmissions.  We all can imagine how important such a service is by considering, what would you think would

Introducing Dino Dogan His website hails him as a “Global Force for Badassery” and we agree.  Dino is a public speaker, author, blogger, mixed martial artist and recovering network engineer and singer/songwriter.  He is also the founder of Triberr, the social network for bloggers.  Greg met Dino in Las Vegas at the New Media Expo, which is a convention for bloggers, podcasters, and web video.  Greg broke his own rule at conventions when he went to the bar and ordered a drink… by HIMSELF.  Dino quickly came over, introduced himself, and invited Greg to sit with him and his group.  A new connection and friendship was born and soon after Greg was a guest on Dino’s “Road to TED” podcast speaking about his then upcoming speech for TEDx New Brunswick. As mentioned above, Dino is the founder of Triberr.  Bloggers join Triberr and are placed into “tribes” according to the type of content they generally write about.  Then bloggers share each other’s content on their own blogs.  This allows for more content than they

Introducing Mickey MacDonald Mickey MacDonald is a true fighter; he fights in business, in his charitable work, and has also fought in the ring as a boxer. Still down-to-earth and approachable, Mickey came from humble beginnings, but as an entrepreneur he became one of Atlantic Canada’s preeminent businesspeople. Mickey credits his drive to his mother. Mickey’s father had a heart attack, leaving Mickey’s mom as the primary caregiver and breadwinner for her seven children. As head nurse at the Halifax Infirmary, she would take care of sick babies full-time and then come home to take care of her family. This dedication to her career and family proved to be an inspiration to the entire MacDonald clan. At the age of 16, Mickey left home and moved to Toronto. While in the city, he briefly lived on the streets and took up boxing. Mickey was willing to take any odd job and learn as he worked to support himself. His attitude and willingness to work hard had him working in mines, driving trucks and heavy equipment.

Introducing Michael Losier - Have you ever felt like something fell in place at just the right time?  Have you experienced serendipity or coincidence?  Well you, sir/madam, have been experiencing evidence of the law of attraction. Michael Losier is a best-selling author, speaker and trainer originally from New Brunswick, now living in British Columbia.  Michael started his journey after moving to BC and started a focus group on positive thinking out of his home.  Before long, he had close to 50 people coming to his home every Sunday.   One day, after talking with a motivational speaker, he was motivated to write his own book and become a speaker.  He has now done talks in 33 countries.  His book, “Law of Attraction” has sold 1.8 million copies, and his second book, “Law of Connection”, has sold over 500,000 copies.  He has been interviewed by Oprah Winfrey four times on her radio show and was even asked to host a radio show on Oprah’s radio station; all of this without ever actively eliciting business. Th

Greg and Dave discuss with Susan regarding the importance of continuous risk taking by entrepreneurs and supporting both success and failure in business. Susan encourages successful companies in a comfort zone to continue to expand and take risks. They discuss how it is important for entrepreneurs to be bold and that success comes from being ambitious and passionate. Susan explains that big business leaders in New Brunswick don’t fit into a specific mold except that, in general, they know how to build teams for success and are optimists. Susan highlights the importance for entrepreneurs to pass on the success of other business leaders in the region. Propelling good news stories of other businesses helps the whole community. Promoting others success also encourages others to promote your company and your successes.   We learn that optimism is an important ingredient to an entrepreneur and that ability to be optimistic and the wiliness to take risks are much easier when you have community support. Learn more

Greg and Dave dive into the importance of teaching coding to kids and speak about their upcoming documentary project, Code Kids.  Dave gets the new nickname, “Cutlets”, to differentiate the Davids.  We learn the importance of teaching code to kids before grade five, and the need to “break the stigma” and get girls interested in coding.   “Cutlets” is inspired by the idea of educators as coaches.  Entrepreneurs and leaders making their communities a better place inspire Greg. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  Greg and Dave discuss with Kevin the importance of goal setting and sticking to the path to that goal. Kevin also discusses the difference between running an acquired company versus a start-up. Dave notices the differences between entrepreneurs. Some take very calculated risks, others are more action orientated, and some need to plan, plan, plan. Greg sees the link between entrepreneurs and artists; both like to start with a blank canvas to make a thing of beauty and both seek adventure and encounter risk. The guys also discuss the importance of listening to your gut feelings and being willing to make mistakes. Finally, there is a discussion of how Atlantic Canada is a great incubator for entrepreneurial success. The region supports its’ own and has a history of being hardworking and resilient. There is sense of community in the Atlantic region unlike what you would find in larger cities.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices