Sometimes all it takes is one viral video to change your life. Following the pandemic, Karho Leung was able to help his fellow businesses in Chinatown and make that area lively again by simply throwing a barbecue. Since Karho had moved to New York at a young age, he became acclimated to the city’s fast-paced hustle and learned to always keep trying. Through his passion for connecting with the community and creating experiences, Karho was inspired to open 12 Pell, a barbershop-shoe shop fusion. F...
Feb 08, 2024•1 hr 19 min
San Francisco grapples with a housing crisis that challenges families to navigate perplexing American housing protocols in a market whose prices are only getting higher. We’re back with Leonardo Shapiro as he gives his perspective on what it’s like to find housing in the Bay Area as an immigrant. As we walk through Leonardo’s neighborhood, we discuss immigrating to the U.S. and the potential pathways for affordable housing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Feb 01, 2024•33 min
San Francisco is one of the most expensive cities to live in the United States. Because of this, some families have turned to more affordable housing options like RVs. Juanita and the Coalition on Homelessness are dedicated to helping fight for the RV community’s place in the city, as it keeps people housed and allows families to save money for the future. In our journey to the RV community, we dive into Juanita’s past with homelessness, reveal the harsh realities of shelters, and learn about RV...
Jan 25, 2024•36 min
APEC’s influence on homelessness can most notably be seen from the increased sweeps the police are doing within the APEC zones. People are losing their valuables and have to be on the move. Javi works for the Coalition on Homelessness, which connects unhoused people with resources for permanent living solutions. As we go through alleyways that are usually heavily populated, we’ll discuss the city’s response to homelessness in relation to APEC and compare it to the resources the community actuall...
Jan 18, 2024•48 min
This is Alexis and her three kids. I’m meeting them at this building in San Francisco that’s a school during the day and a shelter at night. One year ago today, Alexis and her family called the shelter home. It became a safe haven for them as the past held shadows of a 17-year marriage marred by domestic abuse. During her time at the shelter, Alexis was able to get a job and eventually got a place for her family to have their own space. As we walk through what was once their neighborhood, we’ll ...
Jan 11, 2024•35 min
The Tenderloin is known as the grittiest neighborhood in San Francisco. From the high crime rate to the common drug use, most people wouldn’t be caught walking through after dark. But today Del is walking me through the streets of the Tenderloin and showing me his unique perspective. Before Del was a San Francisco community activist and the secular mayor of the Tenderloin, he was a drug user on these very streets for 18 years. Because of that unique experience, he’s intimately aware of how to br...
Jan 04, 2024•51 min
This is Terry. He volunteers with the Downtown Streets Team, who once helped him get on his feet when he first moved to San Francisco. Now he helps clean the streets of needles and helps San Francisco’s most vulnerable. We’re going to follow him through the areas he serves while learning a bit about his own life story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dec 28, 2023•1 hr 4 min
Leonardo and his family had built their whole lives around the success of this company, and yet with just one visit from Homeland Security, it was on the brink of vanishing into thin air. He’d moved to an entirely new country looking for opportunity, and faced obstacle after obstacle, all because he was an ‘alien.’ With only a couple of weeks before their green card expired, Leonardo and his family were desperate for any help they could get. Today, Leonardo Shapiro is both the CEO and founder of...
Dec 21, 2023•59 min
Zach put 40 hours into his YouTube debut only to get 10 views and a spam comment. That left him to question his online identity; was this the end of his short-lived YouTube career? I mean there wasn’t much in his favor. He was starting at the height of covid and the worst of med school just around the corner. I’m sure Zach was questioning whether juggling his work and his passion would amount to anything. But today, Zach Highley’s 454K subscribers are proof that it was well worth the sacrifice. ...
Dec 14, 2023•49 min
A beautiful California day turned into a nightmare, as Will failed to save his friend’s life while running one of the state's toughest rivers. This nightmare frightened him enough to quit kayaking, possibly forever. This is the reality of extreme sports. Often not even the greatest athletes can conquer these elements unscathed, but it’s a risk they’re willing to take. Will Gadd stands as a four-time Canadian National Sport-Climbing Champion, three-time Winter X Games gold winner, and the world’s...
Dec 07, 2023•1 hr 3 min
As if being trapped, seeking cover from bombs wasn’t scarring enough, just 24 hours later Hao was laid off from his dream job. He found himself across the globe, without a job or a clue what his next step would be. But somehow he’d find opportunity in Vietnam. Today, Hao Tran is the CEO and co-founder of Vietcetera, one of the biggest multimedia digital networks in Vietnam that connects Vietnam with the world, and the world with Vietnam. As a mentor, speaker, and innovative business leader, Hao ...
Nov 30, 2023•47 min
Taku Tanaka’s burgeoning success in the food industry was slowly being torn apart by COVID and the isolation that came with it. So much hinged on the success of this business and it was up to him to save it. Taku proves that he can handle whatever comes across his plate, as today he stands as the CEO of Kamereo, Vietnam’s first tech-powered B2B food sourcing platform. The inspiration behind his company came from a life-long journey with food, from working at Pizzaria to growing up in his delicio...
Nov 23, 2023•33 min
Marina hat hit bottom. At the start of a global pandemic, she found herself with a broken heart, in another country, isolated from the people she loved most. She had no stability. But it was at this moment she could define her character. The choices we make when we feel the world is against us, those choices define us. In this episode we’ll explore how Marina turned her life around and stands today as the founder and CEO of EQUO, a company that offers 100% plastic free straws, utensils, dishwash...
Nov 16, 2023•1 hr 5 min
Will hit another roadblock, but this wasn’t the first one he faced. He was told by the best chefs in Paris to get out of the way, that he’ll “never make it as a chef,” and yet today, he stands as the #1 pastry chef in the world, a Rising Star and a nominee for the James Beard Award for Best Pastry Chef in America. So I was in Bali for a month and was lucky enough to be invited to Will’s restaurant Room 4 Dessert. I was greeted with a 15 course meal with a wine pairing – This wasn’t just food, th...
Nov 09, 2023•44 min
Maybe it was Black magic, maybe it was the locals pushing back on the first signs of foreign development. Regardless, it’s a difficult and complicated thing to start a business when you are a foreigner. In spite of countless roadblocks Waterbom stands and Sayan Gulino, current CEO of Waterbom Bali, has pushed his father’s legacy forward. Today, Waterbom has won several awards and is recognized for its dedication to sustainability, but joining the family business doesn’t mean success was just han...
Nov 02, 2023•48 min
Somehow David has repeatedly found himself at the center of disaster. His most life changing trip through Asia was during the Asian financial crisis, his first big writing opportunity was during the 2008 financial crisis (which resulted in him losing his day job), this earthquake in Japan cemented that position as a writer, and now post covid the world needs the kind of community David is building more than ever. I actually think that’s something the best entrepreneurs have in common. Finding op...
Oct 26, 2023•59 min
Ayu Sudana bet everything on that first export of coffee beans; her family’s harvest, her personal savings, and years of hard work. This moment was the culmination of working her family coffee farm, of a shattered dream for higher education, of a desire to learn that took her around the world. From working as a receptionist at a five star hotel, to a waitress at a celebrity chef’s restaurant, to administrative work at a logistics company in Dubai, to finally founding Bali Beans in Bali. Now, Bal...
Oct 19, 2023•1 hr 8 min
The french-born Nora Gasparini has dedicated her life to the craft of perfumery and has found her calling in scent. But it wasn’t an easy road to get here. Before establishing her perfumery laboratory, Nora was struggling to find her independence and see the value in herself. She was often stuck at home with her mom while her dad and brother went out, explored and handled the family business. But Nora wouldn’t be on the sideline for long. After igniting her flame in boarding school, tapping into...
Oct 12, 2023•53 min
Jamie was about to risk everything to create a travel towel company in Bali during covid. Maybe not the most opportune time but Jamie takes risks. From Ebay side hustles in his teens to transcontinental moves for new job opportunities, Jamie has learned that taking risks can forge new connections with people who were once strangers. Jamie’s learned that these new relationships have vastly changed the trajectory of his life and now he’s trying to give others that opportunity. Jamie’s company “Bee...
Oct 05, 2023•58 min
This is my Grandpa. He’s 92 and despite the long list of supplements that accompany his breakfast, he’s still got an expansive knowledge of the stock market, most of his hearing, and a full head of hair. More importantly he’s the OTHER co-founder of my family. Previously we spoke to my Grandma about her childhood, her challenges, and the creation of the Donner Family as I know it today but, of course, she didn’t do it alone. And also I didn’t do this podcast episode alone either. This is a full ...
Sep 28, 2023•1 hr 2 min
A 7 page spread in National Geographic; that was the culmination of years of work, years of cold emailing publications, posting to small online forums, and hoping her photos would get noticed. This passion would take her love of nature from a childhood in Germany, to remote nordic villages, cliffside birds nests, and vulnerable populations in Mongolia. Today, Lana is a National Geographic Explorer who specializes in nature conservation, photography, and biology. But before her first publication,...
Sep 21, 2023•1 hr 3 min
Linda has experienced a lot. She’s traveled the world as an army brat, played piano and sung in Led Zeppelin's tour bus, explored drugs as an “X rated hippie”, and worked to understand her Latin American, Chicano, and Indigenous roots through her art. Through these various paintings, sculpture, and ceramic work Linda embraces her brownness and the world has taken notice. Her work has been shown globally in major galleries and museums, as well as Chicano and Latino spaces. Today, her artwork focu...
Sep 14, 2023•58 min
Laser eye surgery, a seemingly inconsequential, almost routine surgery, that in an instant turned into a nightmare. Sumit Ajwani, who had built a career creating films as head of production for a global ad agency in Canada, discovered he could no longer see. He was a wunderkind. His career was moving fast. He had just been appointed head of the ad agency at 23 years old. But this wouldn’t be the end of his story. Sumit would ultimately create a producer-led collaborative network called ‘Makers’ ...
Sep 07, 2023•1 hr 16 min
Jordan had a dream that he thought would take a lifetime, but as he invested all of his energy into making that dream a reality – that reality came more quickly than expected. The crazy thing is… this was just the beginning. Today, Jorden stands at upwards of 345K followers on Instagram, 1M subscribers on YouTube, and a whopping 3M followers on Tiktok – which he firmly believes “anyone can do.” With 8 years worth of traveling, content creation, and friend making in his pocket, Jorden has learned...
Sep 02, 2023•59 min
Kyukei Goto was saddled with massive responsibility from birth. He was the first born son to his father of 50, meaning Goto would have to carry the weight of a tradition going back 28 generations. He comes from a lineage that has perfected the art of Kamakura Buri which is a method of carving wood and then coating lacquer to make sculptures, plates, tea sets, cutlery and other household items. But this sentence belies the spiritual and technical intricacies of this art form. Facing the death of ...
Aug 24, 2023•47 min
As a photographer David’s eyes are his livelihood. His vision was everything, but somehow David shrugs it off, he takes it stoically, he has this lack of concern for any roadblocks. I mean David has always believed that he would achieve great things. I think that’s why after traveling around the world to 13 countries at 18, he decided to try and make it as a commercial photographer. He started taking classes at New York’s Parsons School of design, and subsequently tried to make it in the biz, bu...
Aug 17, 2023•52 min
10,000 subscribers overnight and soaring to 50 thousand a few days later, Rachel Southard was shocked to learn that her Youtube video documenting her first week of medical school was gaining attention so quickly. Growing up, Rachel wanted to try everything and after pushing through feelings of doubt in her early school years and seeing the incredible work doctors do, she began her journey to med school. Wanting to document her experience, Rachel starting vlogging and recording her many weeks of ...
Aug 10, 2023•39 min
With 10,000 Chapters, 13 million referrals, and 21 billion dollars in business… just in the last 12 months, it’s safe to say that Ivan Misner has had world wide impact. Ivan jumped from law school, to a government job, to a fateful unrenewed manufacturing contract that would transform a small consulting network into a global organization. BNI now has different chapters spanning the globe, all working to develop meaningful business relationships through referrals and networking. Now a successful ...
Aug 03, 2023•31 min
What had started as a fun business idea between college friends had spiraled out of control. Saddled with international shipping costs, low student funds, and no way to market their product, Olivier and Rick hit a logistical wall before they fully began. Luckily, that wasn’t the only idea these two twenty year olds had in their pocket. Now, Olivier Momma is the young cofounder of Ekster, the groundbreaking company behind the most successful smart wallet in the world. Generating 25 million dollar...
Jul 27, 2023•26 min
Utter silence. Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz felt the pulse of his racing heart, the countdown from ground control, and the sense that he’s been here before. I mean he’s prepared his whole life for this moment, the moment of lifting off into space. He’s been preparing since he was a kid, from sitting in a cardboard spaceship all the way to launching into space more times than any human in history. But how did he get here? Well Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz is a record breaking NASA astronaut, with 7 flights...
Jul 20, 2023•1 hr 12 min
