#33. Carly Hill is the founder of Carly Hill Communications, her influencer management agency. She is also from my hometown, Traverse City, MI, and was around entrepreneurial spirit from a young age as her mom owned a clothing store in our downtown there. Since moving to New York City post college, she’s had various jobs in fashion and marketing and worked with several brands over her career of over ten years. When COVID hit and she was laid off from her job at the time, she started her own comp...
Jan 04, 2024•55 min•Season 2Ep. 7
#32. (BONUS EPISODE) Happy New Year's Eve and may you bear witness to the curveball thrown my way at the tail end of 2023. I've been working as a contract data engineer for a prestigious tech company and now I'm finally getting what I've wanted for a long time - time off to pursue my own entrepreneurial pursuits with undiluted focus. It just came a bit sooner than I'd anticipated, and with it is coming a wave of emotions and reflections. Bit of a torrential downpour. Tune it to hear the life upd...
Dec 31, 2023•32 min•Season 2Ep. 6
#31. Skylar Sorkin is the dynamic 26 year old force behind Regardless, a podcast that serves as the ultimate life manual for navigating the tumultuous terrain of one’s twenties. Recognizing the gap left by traditional education, Skylar founded Regardless two years ago to provide fellow twentysomethings with a potent blend of competence, community, and confidence as they navigate the uncharted waters of post-college life. For her day job, she is an account executive for Influential, the largest i...
Dec 21, 2023•49 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Lola and Aorthi both work in the tech industry and met at the University of Auckland in Auckland, New Zealand. Lola is 23 and studied software engineering before becoming a full stack developer for 1.5 years. A full stack engineer is a mixture of front end and back end, where front end means working with a product’s user interface and back end is focused on how things work behind the scenes. Afterwards she transitioned into a Delivery Lead role, a more managerial role focused on the delivery of ...
Dec 07, 2023•1 hr•Season 2Ep. 4
Portia Reinholz is the founder and creator of the skincare brand Chrysalis Cosmeceuticals. Originally going to college for business and communications, she has spent the last six years working for her father’s construction company and started building her skincare company on the side about two years ago. Her exposure to entrepreneurship from a young age has helped her understand what is possible, and her lifelong passion for lotions and other potions led her to the decision to create her own ski...
Nov 23, 2023•48 min•Season 2Ep. 3
#28. Lauren Dunn grew up in the Bay Area and attended college at the University San Diego. Once graduated, she had various jobs including working at an art gallery, in events at Stanford and then in Sales and Customer Experience at a tech company in San Francisco. She began to seek out a career in East Asian and Integrative Medicine because of her own journey in healing her hormones and digestion. Alternative Medicine was a powerful catalyst in reframing how she viewed health and the different w...
Nov 09, 2023•54 min•Season 2Ep. 2
#27. John Peterson is the CEO and co-founder of The Nudge, a company that will text you fun things to do in your city. Originally studying Economics and Computing at UCLA for his undergraduate degree, he then became a growth analyst at American Airlines before moving on to becoming a growth consultant for 6 years. While working as a consultant, he also created a product called 9 Financial that analyzed public stocks and delivered recommendations and sold this to friends as a side hustle. Later h...
Oct 26, 2023•51 min•Season 2Ep. 1
#26. Wrapping up season one, this episode will cover everything we’ve achieved so far (statistics and more), the challenges I’ve faced in producing it, the learnings I’ve had after reflecting, the current status, then deeper topics like my mental health throughout this process and how my work with Sage, my life coach, has impacted my thoughts and goals around the show in general. I will also cover why I'm going to continue to do this and what it means to me. https://www.instagram.com/passionproj...
Oct 12, 2023•48 min•Season 1Ep. 26
#25. Patrick Wilson is the oldest sibling of 3 in our family so my oldest brother. He was the first of the three of us (so between me and my other brother Dan) to go to college, and to pick a major - he picked Computer Science even though both our parents were teachers although we do have some engineers in the extended family. At the time, Computer Science seemed to be quite a hot and emerging major and so he kind of trailblazer that path for Dan and I, studying at the University of Michigan and...
Sep 28, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 25
#24. Maya Campos is currently an assistant designer at Reformation, learning about the clothing production process and other elements involved in designing their clothes. During and after getting her degree in fashion from Syracuse University, she has worked in a variety of roles to get experience in design, social media marketing campaigns, styling and more. She is a big proponent of reaching out to people via email to introduce herself and pitch herself for roles, attributing her ability to ge...
Sep 14, 2023•52 min•Season 1Ep. 24
#23. Dalton Viggers is the co-founder and CEO at bubl, where he's building a revolutionary soundproof booth with advanced technology to create the ultimate work environment. Dalton and his co-founder, Austin, have been working on bubl for the past 3 years, bootstrapping their company all the way from prototype manufacturing to at scale marketing and distribution. Prior to bubl, Dalton was a senior design manager at Uber where he had the opportunity to have creative jurisdiction across multiple p...
Aug 31, 2023•52 min•Season 1Ep. 23
#22. (BONUS EPISODE) Mom and Pop, or Margaret and Michael Wilson met at Michigan State University. Margaret was studying Geography and Michael studied Mathematics. Both ended up getting their teaching certificates after college to turn their favorite subjects into a marketable skill that could translate to a career in education. My dad spent his first three years of teaching in Oahu, Hawaii, while my mom worked as a city planner there. After moving back to Traverse City, Michigan, my dad’s homet...
Aug 28, 2023•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 22
#21. From random gigs in tech to working in fashion and paving her own path upon graduating during the pandemic, Fiona Tran is the founder of 2 companies; FT The Label & LOCO Wetsuits. Two years, many lessons, and one company later- Fiona fell in love with surfing but found issues with her wetsuit and the surf industry. With her entrepreneurial experience and retail background, Fiona finally felt like she found a niche and could produce something of real value while also cultivating a commun...
Aug 17, 2023•54 min•Season 1Ep. 21
#20. Hello anyone and everyone out there in the void listening in. So appreciate your listening, would absolutely love to hear your feedback (to do so please leave a review in Apple Podcasts or message me on the pod instagram @passionprojectpending - website with feedback option coming soon). In this episode, I give an update on how it's going being a solo podcast host after 20 episodes in 22 weeks total of podcasting, coordinating and interviewing with 15 different guests so far. It has been an...
Aug 05, 2023•47 min
#19. Damian Tenuta is the founder of Contente, a company geared towards providing social media marketing solutions to doctors and natural health clinics around the world. He started the company in 2019 while still in college and at this point he is working with his brother, leading a team of about 10 people, providing services to 75 clients currently. Damian is a proponent of career coaching and investing in your own growth through hiring others with more experience than you to teach you, someth...
Jul 23, 2023•53 min•Season 1Ep. 19
#18. Lexi Whaley is the creator and founder of War on Sanity, the brand that revolutionized cowboy hat fashion. It's a symbol of boldness, elegance, and the irresistible allure of the Wild West. War on Sanity may be best known for their creatively designed cowboy hats but they also sell one-of-a-kind pieces of clothing as well as art. On top of running the brand, Lexi also hosts events around L.A., not only advertising War On Sanity but also providing an environment to showcase other growing art...
Jul 15, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 18
#17. Sage Miller is a Life Optimization coach and her journey to get to where she is today has been anything but ordinary. From years of working in the field marketing space with brands like Clif Bar and Suja Juice, to creating and managing the marketing strategy for Wanderlust Hollywood, to producing events for Nike, to launching and running a digital marketing agency for years – she has been on a journey to find her deepest passion for quite some time. After years of struggling to get clear on...
Jul 08, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 17
#16. Adrienne Lin is a food blogger, software engineer and recovering tech founder. In other words, she’s an incredible guest for me to have on this podcast, which is meant to be geared towards discovering what you love to do and aligning that with your career. I used to work with Adrienne at Poshmark, so that is how I knew her from before. She has over ten years of industry experience, working as a civil engineer, product manager, backend engineer, product engineer, and even startup CTO. On top...
Jul 01, 2023•1 hr 30 min•Season 1Ep. 16
#13. Beya Alcaraz is the owner of The Animal Connection, an exotic animal pet rescue and store in the Outer Sunset district of San Francisco! Beya has owned the store for 4 years but has worked there since high school. I’m going to save all the details about her background, decision to buy the store and more for the ep. but FYI this is a very wholesome episode getting to know a San Francisco local who loved working at this store so much she bought it at 22 years old! I’m convinced there’s not a ...
Jun 10, 2023•58 min•Season 1Ep. 13
#12. Kristina Schagane is the 25 year old owner and founder of Moody Goose, a vintage clothing store in San Francisco. If you haven’t been yet, it is an absolute must it’s on Polk street. Kristina started the store about 1 and a half years ago. Moody Goose is this perfect combination of affordable prices and really trendy but unique secondhand pieces. Throughout the store there’s a variety of styles of vintage clothing and then in the front she’s selling jewelry and some apparel by other small b...
May 27, 2023•1 hr 32 min•Season 1Ep. 12
#11. Interviewing my cousin John this week! John Kunz went to school in upstate New York and studied Computer Animation. During college, he DJ’d a bit (known as DJ Doctor Teeth) and worked with his friend, playing at house parties and some events and competitions. Also while in college, John interned for Mad Decent in L.A. which is the record label founded by Diplo. After college, he and his friend, going by Chemicals of Creation, continued to play at different clubs and venues and at one point ...
May 20, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 11
#10. Alec Huth is the creator of the apparel brand Fruit Face SF. I first found out about Fruit Face while shopping at Moody Goose Vintage on Polk, who Alec partners with to sell her shirts in their store. I bought this cute baby tee with a little cow on it, that I later came to find was her Valentine’s Edition tee. Another popular design is their “Strawberry Cowgirl” tee, boasting “I Love SF” where the heart is a strawberry with a cowgirl hat on it (aka v cute). Alec started this brand while st...
May 13, 2023•57 min•Season 1Ep. 10
#9. This week I'm interviewing Tess Garcia, an absolute queen in media. She is also from Michigan but is currently living in New York City. For her main gig she creates marketing and social strategies catered towards Latinx audiences for clients like HBO Max at a company called Worthi. In addition, she produces a Shorty-awards nominated podcast called Going Mental by Eileen Kelly with over 100,000 monthly downloads, and incredibly also finds time to be a freelance journalist focused on pop cultu...
May 09, 2023•1 hr 40 min•Season 1Ep. 9
#8. In this episode it’s literally just me talking to myself for an hour. I talk about my background, history with working as a software engineer, some side hustles I’ve tried, my experience with social media and entrepreneurship and more. Some of my main topics of focus are the pressure I felt with student loans, the pressure I felt in picking a career, and the pressure I put on myself to do things on top of work LOL. Are we sensing a theme here. To be concise, I briefly considered pursuing doc...
Apr 30, 2023•55 min•Season 1Ep. 8
#7. This is Part 2 with Elise, a San Francisco fashion and lifestyle content tiktok creator. In part 2 we hear more of Elise’s advice to aspiring content creators and her experience of managing a healthy relationship with the app that is notorious for its addictive quality. Elise and I both have experience with tiktok and both have an eye for style, so this episode’s conversation gets into managing the comparison that comes from being on tiktok and seeing success stories from other creators, som...
Apr 22, 2023•49 min•Season 1Ep. 7
#6. Elise Andersen works in fashion merchandising for Gap in San Francisco and is a well known SF tiktok content creator on the side. She creates content around lifestyle, fashion and life in your mid twenties with plenty of info about San Francisco restaurants and experiences as well. When I first joined tiktok, Elise was one of the first accounts shown to me (via algorithm) and since then I have enjoyed her relatable and genuine content immensely and based a lot of my ideas for content off of ...
Apr 16, 2023•53 min•Season 1Ep. 6
#5. Miela Foster is a 23 year old working for Apple as a Project Manager and an artist on the side. This February, she hosted her first art show at Another Cafe in San Francisco, after spending 8 months preparing for it. The show, featuring 10 pieces, was called A Sister of the Yam, centered around black femininity and dedicated to black women that came before her as well as black women who will be here after her. In addition to her acrylic paintings, Miela also prepared pieces of poetry to acco...
Apr 10, 2023•58 min•Season 1Ep. 5
#4. Andros Wong is a 27 year old cofounder of two venture capital backed startups, Wonderverse and StemsDAO. Wonderverse, founded in 2021 while Andros was still working as a software engineer for Instagram, focuses on building collaboration tools for people to work online and remote, together. Specifically, the concept is aimed at web3 communities or DAOs, decentralized autonomous organizations. Stems was founded in 2022 and helps people drop remixes of their songs as NFTs. It allows musical art...
Apr 02, 2023•1 hr 36 min•Season 1Ep. 4
#3. This is Part 2 of the story of Butter & Crumble, Sophie Smith’s San Francisco bakery. After a challenging first couple years of handling the overwhelming growth of Butter & Crumble with little to no support, Sophie signed up for a pastry class in Paris and put her business on hold last summer. In Part 2 we talk about Sophie’s Parisian summer spent learning patisserie, the signs and implications of burnout, and the future of Butter & Crumble. Check out her bakery here . https://ww...
Mar 25, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 3
#2. Sophie Smith started her bakery and business Butter & Crumble in the midst of a pandemic in one of the most expensive cities in the world, San Francisco. Regardless of the challenges, her notoriously beautiful cakes with unique but delicious flavor combinations caught fire in terms of popularity. As her business grew, she moved from one kitchen space to another depending on availability and increasing needs for size and equipment. Sophie has the help of an assistant today, but in the ear...
Mar 18, 2023•58 min•Season 1Ep. 2
