People are in uncharted territory at the moment, due to the Coronavirus pandemic sweeping the nation and the world. As it threatens everybody’s way of life, their health, and the economy in tremendous and unforeseen ways, it’s important for entrepreneurs to remain focused and optimistic about their work and how it can help. For entrepreneurs who are wondering how to move forward in this period of uncertainty, heed advice from these top 21 entrepreneurs. Based on their individual experience and expertise, they share insights on how to grow or refocus a business in this trying time.
Nitin Khanna, Founder & Executive Chairman of Sentia Wellness.
Sentia is a 21st century wellness company focused on providing natural solutions to the stresses of modern life, a mission statement that truly encompasses the havoc that COVID-19 is wreaking on our society.
Knowing that our CBD products primarily help people with sleep and anxiety we knew we had to find a way to keep supporting our customers through this crisis. We’ve managed to stay open while enforcing social distancing guidelines at work, offered up our offices and our platform to a charity that helps collect and distribute food for hungry kids, and will be launching a campaign to have FREE CBD gummies delivered to anyone who requests them. This has led to a 2x increase in online revenues starting March 15. While we have had to furlough some employees, we’ve ensured they can apply for unemployment insurance and we are covering 100% of the health insurance premiums while they are furloughed. We were also one of the very first companies to apply for the SBA Loan that will allow us to bring as many employees back to work as quickly as possible.
Shazir Mucklai, Founder and CEO of Imperium Group
Mucklai is 23-years old, a former Goldman Sachs alum and is spearheading one of this year’s fastest growing PR firms. Mucklai is known to work with a number of A-listers but is also known to have never turned down working with a single client no matter what the budget is. Mucklai represents clients like Justin Bieber, Halsey, Matrix 4, and others to name a few. Mucklai was the youngest contributor at Forbes at the age of 17. Mucklai wakes up at 5:00 AM every day and takes pride in his 17 hour workdays driven by the motivation to disrupt industries. Mucklai also owns a series of web assets that collectively generate over 15 million impressions per month.
Steve Lok
Steve Lok was a co-founder of an early health tech startup in the 00s. As the former Global Head of Martech at The Economist, his team received numerous awards for their enablement of smart use of data in acquisition and engagement and in helping our team execute on their visions of the future.
Megan Nager, award-winning SAG Actress
Megan is an award-winning SAG actress, writer, comedian and host of Therapy for the Right-Brained podcast at Abrams Artist’s Agency, where she is a client as well. When she is not acting, she performs stand-up comedy at venues such as The Laugh Factory, The Comedy Store, and The Hollywood Improv. She is known for producing her own professional digital content and mini-series that are currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Her series, Verified, currently swept the film festival circuit, accruing five official selections and four wins for best series. In addition to creating her own content, she has worked with several A-list production and brands such as Carousel, 9Gag, Kevin Hart’s LOL Network, and TruTV to create original content for them. She currently runs her own content business, Megan Makes Content.
Marc Narrie, CEO of Buddha Beans
Marc Narrie runs a CBD/CBG infused coffee company based out of Los Angeles called Buddha Beans (#staygrounded). Although it started off small, the company is growing rapidly and is trying to keep up with demand even in the current economic fiasco by trying to hire new quality people. Buddha Beans is currently sold in over hundreds of stores across 26 states and has over hundreds of additional online customers who buy directly and are subscribed to buy every month. Buddha Beans is also capable of doing custom orders with higher quantities of CBD/CBG and/or different flavors of coffee as the standard beans are Mexican, Ethiopian, Colombian, and Burundi. However, it may take some time but the company has an excellent track record of delivering the highest of quality products in a time-sensitive manner.
Rachel Feigelson, CEO Rocksam Management and Consulting
Rachel Feigelson is a music industry consultant and law student at Southwestern Law School, which is recognized as having a top-rated music law program. Feigelson started her company, Rocksam Management, and Consulting, with support from singer Taylor Dayne. Rachel brainstormed and executed a celebrity lip-sync video that included Kris Jenner, RuPaul, Hunter Pence, and more for Taylor Dayne’s 30-year-anniversary of “Tell it To My Heart.” For more information: Rocksam.com. Connect with Rachel on Instagram @rachelfeigelson.
Kale Goodman and Trevor Cowley
Kale & Trevor are Partners of Real Business Owners a brand with over 61K followers on their Instagram that focuses on bring real knowledge, tools and resources to help business owners succeed. They are on this list because of their dedication and success over the years. Kale Goodman started his first business at the age of 23 which turned into a 3 million dollar business within its first 2 years. Which led to 15 years later doing over $10M in revenue. He’s a partner at Easier Accounting which is on pace to break 8 figures this year. Trevor Cowley is a serial entrepreneur and has been since 2013. He’s now a co-owner of 5 different companies. In 2019 he and his partners broke over $10M in revenue.
Dave Panozzo
Dave Panozzo who is a full-time Professional Real Estate Agent and a member of the National, Arizona and Scottsdale Association of Realtors. There’s a reason why Dave is on this list… he’s flipped over 40 homes and has been on ABC, National T.v. the American Dream and now on Park City T.V., The reason he’s on this list with so many accolades is that he’s a unique leader in the real estate community. He’s utilized and has continued to utilize social media & technology as a digital resume and making the client experience the #1 priority for his company.
Dan Waldschmidt, Writer of EDGY Conversatioms
Dan Waldschmidt doesn’t just talk about leveling up. He’s obsessed with it. He’s set records as an ultra-runner and been the personal strategist for the leading business leaders of our time. He wrote a book, called EDGY Conversations that accidentally became a worldwide bestseller and continues to share his insights from the stage as a keynote speaker and on his blog and podcast. Most days, you’ll find Dan heads-down, working on breakthrough strategies for his clients at EDGY Inc, a highly-focused, invite-only, business strategy execution company based out of Silicon Valley.
JIll Stelfox, Entrepreneur
Jill Stelfox knows what it takes to win at the highest levels of business. She’s driven to lead teams that make an impact on the world. Whether it’s creating a new category of wireless technology to protect teachers in schools or driving international expansion for one of the world’s largest consulting companies, she refuses to accept mediocrity. Along the way, she’s raised over $50 million for her own start-ups and returned over $1 billion to investors by selling her companies. Clients include the Minnesota Vikings, Ice Cube, Eminem/StockX, Kendrick Lamar, Kevin Durant, Clayton Kershaw, Oscar De La Hoya, Kobe Bryant, Jimmy Kimmel, Mark Cuban and many more.
Bella Verita, CEO of Align Sales Agency
Meet Bella Verita, the CEO and chief sales sorceress at Align Sales Agency. She has the secret transformational sales sauce to increase your company’s revenue, decrease sales slops to make sales sexy. According to the 2018 State of Women-Owned Business Report by American Express, as of 2018, there were 12.3 million women-owned businesses in the U.S generating $1.8 trillion a year. Today, over 40% of businesses are owned by women. Bella is part of that statistic. Align Sales is the first female-led sales agency for women sales professionals in the United States. Bella’s sales agent is one that stands out in the industry, being a mostly-woman agency. Formed in 2018, the agency’s focus is to solve sales problems and processes for service-based companies. With Align, Bella also teaches people to become sales professionals.
Will Zhang, CEO of Fintelics
Will Zhang is the Founder and CEO of Fintelics, Fintelics is an advanced technology consulting & solution development company. Will worked for IBM, then became a CTO of Stafits. Will provided consulting services doing cloud architecture/computing, data engineering for many large enterprises such as Toronto Stock Exchange, Citco Group limited, Thomson Reuters. During his time at Fintelics, the company won “Leading Experts in Omnichannel Sotware” and “Best Custom Fintech Consultancy in Ontario” awarded by Wealth and Finance International. Will was Canada Developer 30 Under 30 winner in 2019 and awarded a fellowship by Founder Institute(One of the best pre-accelerators in the world). Will was invited by IBM, CASCON, and IEEE to present the academic speech of blockchain and cloud computing. Specializes in: Software Engineering, Omnichannel App Development, DevOps, Cloud Computing, Big Data, Blockchain, Machine Learning.
