Bag Mentality

Justin Nguyen was the student who had “everything”; a high GPA, internships at Fortune 150 companies, and involved on campus… but he still didn’t know what he wanted to do in his life. Instead of going down the traditional path, he decided to start a podcast where he gets to interview people his age who are killing it in their industry, learn from them, and share their stories.

Being the son of two Vietnamese Refugees, education was supposed to be the way out, but he’s always felt that he never got the guidance that he was looking for in school. With Young and D.U.M.B. and GetChoGrindup, he is bridging that gap between school and real life application.

Justin is a LinkedIn Campus Editor for the University of Central Florida, his content is viewed over 65,000 times each month, and host LinkedIn Workshops on campus to teach students how to leverage LinkedIn to get a full time job after graduation.

Through the Young and D.U.M.B. Podcast Justin and his team have interviewed Emmy winners, influencers with tens of millions of followers, successful entrepreneurs; and one thing they all have in common is that they’re just getting started. Each month thousands tune in to listen to these stories.

This week Will is joined by Brian Schulman, Founder & CEO of Voice Your Vibe™, a Forbes Featured Entrepreneur, a LinkedIn Top Voice 2018 and LinkedIn Top Video Creator. 

However, behind all of the accolades is a seemingly unparalleled struggle that has forged an incredible man.

It all began before Brian was born. In fact, he wasn’t even supposed to live at birth, but he did. Later in his life, he was diagnosed with Turrets Syndrome and has been battling it ever since.

Now Brian is taking these experiences and turning them into positives. He’s spreading his message through his large LinkedIn following (over 30,000) and through his company Voice Your Vibe™, which aims to maximize the impact of company’s messaging across all platforms and media, as well as within their internal communications. 

Brian’s goal is to empower everyone to share their story (because we all have one) while not forgetting what got us here in the first place. This episode even features a never-before heard personal letter from Brian’s daughter, which Brian reads as a testament to his own struggles and perseverance.

On this episode of the Bag Mentality Podcast, Will Preble chats with personal branding expert and podcast host, Brittany Krystle.

Brittany's speciality is providing entrepreneurs & the entrepreneurial-minded the most effective & efficient strategies to grow influence online that translate to results offline. 

She really fell in love with the personal branding space during her 3 years at VaynerMedia, which included working on content, distribution, optimization strategies, influencer marketing, book promotion, paid ads, and all aspects of personal brand growth Gary's Vaynerchuk's brand team (Team Garyvee), as well as the personal branding arm of the agency, VaynerTalent. Brittany has worked with other notable personal brand clients including Marie Forleo, Tom Bilyeu (Quest Nutrition), Nyakio, and Bonin Bough.

Brittany works with business & creative thought leaders, founders, executives, and influencers to help them achieve their personal & professional goals through personal brand direction, mindset work, social growth & digital content strategy. 

In order to share her knowledge at scale, she creates digital products and also speaks and provides workshops on how to grow your industry influence for individuals and organizations. 

Brittany hosts a weekly podcast, Beyond Influential, a Top Management & Marketing podcast on iTunes, where she takes a deeper look at the power of influence by talking to today's industry experts who get us to consume both on and offline. 

Erika Gutierrez is your average Brazilian/Colombian learning the lessons of life one moment at a time. She is currently an Applied and Computational Mathematics student at Florida State University, fluent in English, Spanish and Portuguese. 

Speaking three languages has opened passageways that has allowed Erika to explore so much of what this world has to offer, and she says it can do the same for you too if you are interested.

She was originally a Marketing/Entrepreneurship Major, but when she was in high school, she started a videography business and consulted and created content for boutiques who wanted to grow their online presence through social media.

Recently, Erika developed “The Positive Focus” to educate others on the power of positive thinking. Now, she has found many people are confused on what it actually means to be a positive thinker.

Erika strongly believes that the people you surround yourself with will shape the course of your life. She advocates for not settling for less than what you deserve and being unafraid to be selfish. Erika also says to never put your happiness aside for somebody who is bringing you down, as there are many so kinds of humans in this world– you just need to go out there and meet the right ones.

- thepositivefocus.com

Please don’t hesitate to reach out. I promise I will respond to EVERY person who messages me.

Finn is the CEO & Founder of Project 33. In 2017 he dropped out of college in Germany, fundraised over $40,000 for a charity traveling all over the country, decided to fly to New York without knowing anyone and documented the journey on Social Media.

Since then he has built an engaged audience of 35,000+ followers across platforms (LinkedIn, Instagram, Youtube), averaging 1.2M impressions every month. His videos and articles have been seen by over 1 million people on LinkedIn.

Katie Wallace is the founding sustainability consultant at Hux Sustainables, and CEO of Rebranding, their non-profit homeless employment partner. If a sustainability consultancy and a creative agency fell in love and had a baby, Hux would be that baby.

Katie helps impact driven and socially responsible companies/organizations grow through sustainable initiatives, creative strategies, and social media content + strategy.

Katie is also the co host of The (Un)Learn Show. In each episode, Katie chats with one awesome professional about their personal and professional difficulties, delving deep to explore what it really takes to conquer adversity and unlearn toxic behaviors. And they ask one very big question: What is the one thing you are working to UnLearn?

There will be a tears. There will be inspiration. But most importantly, there will be a whole lot of laughter and life.

Sam Lister is a 19-year old entrepreneur that founded BLNK SLATE MEDIA, a videography company specializing in short form video content. He has grown his personal brand to thousands, achieving more than a half a million views through digital storytelling, sharing his experiences on entrepreneurship, personal branding, not going to college and self-development. 

As a result, he has been able to launch his own videography company and projected to take it to six figures in the first year of business, with this being the first business he started.

Video has transformed his life and has allowed him to launch this business, speak around the country, land influencer deals and inspire along the way.

He also apart of a startup that is helping connect college students with opportunity through job shadowing. They are still in the developing stages of this startup but hope to release a beta in early 2019.

Chantel Soumis is a communications expert and professional storyteller. As an advocate for the differently-abled community, Chantel spreads awareness, hope, and inspiration to those around the world who fighting for acceptance and fighting to understand the hidden struggles of differently-abled people.

Chantel is also a top LinkedIn creator, a social media influencer, and a host of the (Un)Learn Show on the social networking platform. The (Un)Learn Show features those who have broken bad habits. In doing so, the show inspires and motivates others to un-learn certain behaviors or beliefs that no longer serve us.

By administering the power of positive thinking, Chantel has overcome severe personal and professional obstacles. In my view, Chantel is most certainly a wise leader who practices what she preaches. Yet, her message is always delivered with love, kindness and generosity.

Chantel spends a substantial portion of her time coaching others to accept and believe in themselves, and to treat one another with dignity and value, recognizing we are all brothers and sisters. You’ll be inspired by Chantel’s courage, captured by her humble, soft nature, and empowered by her story.

Through her storytelling, we are all invited to fully accept what we may perceive as our own, personal weaknesses, to embrace challenges as opportunities, and to convert them into strengths. Likewise, we are encouraged to see and value the diversity of our brothers and sisters in life. Imagine the culture-shifts that would occur in our world, our country, our workplaces, and our homes if we did so.

Jordan Paris is a 21-year-old author, web-developer, podcast host, and former college athlete seen in Men’s Health, Yahoo Finance, and NASDAQ as a beacon of light for inspiring people from all walks of life. 

After wallowing in the pit of depression for years, Jordan Paris finally made the decision to climb out; He decided to change his life for the better. He turned to personal development, seeking out countless books, mentors, and ultimately, his unique truths. In only a few short years, Jordan effectively turned his setbacks into setups; he built multiple businesses and his online programs impact lives across the globe. 

Jordan’s journey is the latest to prove that anyone can rise up from any challenge to enjoy a prosperous life. He teaches us that a major key to prosperities of all kind is continual growth and development. At a time when people are desperate to improve their lives but are unwilling to improve themselves, Jordan's compelling lessons come in handy for those that seek to create their own reality. 

His approach is a bit unorthodox in some ways, though, as he says that there are no seeds of greatness that are already inherently inside us. Instead, he says that we must make a conscious effort to plant these seeds by enrolling in the University of Life, and water them continually in the form of growth and development. In the end, unlike most self-help books that claim there is only one right way to live life, Growth Mindset University argues that there is an infinite amount of truths since what works for one person may not work for another. 

In this way, wisdom is merely an accumulation of a wide-ranging spectrum of different perspectives. With this invigorating manifesto, Jordan summons us to seek our own unique truths while empowering us to creatively and effectively design our lives in the manner we wish.

Jordan’s podcast, Growth Mindset University, was ranked #227 in the iTunes Education category. On the show, he interviews young up-and-comers and the most successful people on planet earth like David Meltzer, Mark Manson, Rachel Starr, and Dan Lok. 

Jordan is also the founder of The WordPress Rocketeer, where he focuses on developing engaging websites to launch his celebrity clients’ dreams to infinity and beyond. 

His approach to life and business is simple yet powerful: Don’t make a living, design a life. 

With this creator’s mentality, Jordan has been able to produce outstanding results for himself and challenge others to rise above circumstances and take control of their lives.

Within just a few months, CEO and Founder of the digital media marketing agency Heide Media, Shawn Heide, has established viewer counts of over 500,000 in 2019 and over 2.4 million views in 4 months in 2018.

His recent clients have seen major rises in book sales due to Heide Media handling their content creation and profile optimization, and have seen 4,000 follower increases in just under a month with their content automatically going viral as soon as we take over their social media operations.

But given the full context of Shawn’s life, it’s hard to believe he’s even gotten this far. For much of Shawn’s recent adult life he lived out of his car, and later on the street. He would often find himself braving the elements without any shelter and only a bag of clothes and a laptop and charger to his name. 

Bouncing between less than ideal sleeping quarters at night and cafes during the day, Shawn began picking up the pieces of his life on the back of just his laptop. Shawn describes several times in which he would have to use a street light to charge his laptop, just so he could work near a coffee shop with internet during the night.

Despite all of this adversity, Shawn prevailed, and he recently started Heide Media as a triumph of a previous life. Heide media works with brands and businesses with everything from lead generation to content creation and has been built through Shawn's relentless effort.

Cory Warfield is the Co-founder and CEO of ShedWool.  They are an employee scheduling and workforce management software company.  In just a year, they have partnered with IBM, American Airlines, and several other high-profile companies.  

Cory wasn’t always an acclaimed CEO, however. For 20 years he worked in the restaurant business, serving tables and chasing his passion projects on the side, but when he found a gap in the market for a program like ShedWool, he went all in. 

“All in” wasn’t all it was cracked up to be either. It meant long, sometimes 100 hour long, weeks and countless failures. All of this didn’t discourage Cory, however, as he had been through the entrepreneurial gauntlet before. He took his past experiences and failures and turned them into what ShedWool is today. 

ShedWool has helped revolutionize the way businesses in over a dozen industries connect their employees to each other and their work schedules through customizable web and mobile apps. By assembling a team of brilliant engineers, developers, and business specialists, they launched ShedWool cross platform at the beginning of 2017. 5K downloads later, we have published 250K shifts, and saved hundreds of companies thousands of hours and dollars. Cory’s team is always available for customer support, and they proudly offer customized free trials to all, and free services to nonprofits. ShedWool is rated with 4.7 stars on Capterra, the App Store and Google Play.

John Hawley is a design thinking facilitator who focuses on team-building and process improvement. He believes the key to company success lies within growing and molding the individual contributor. 

John breaks through traditional barriers of office politics to enable a team-wide shift to collective and collaborative thinking. He has educated thousands of individuals around the world with his proven successful methods, unleashing their hidden potential.

He does this through hands-on exercises that build teamwork, creativity, and personal growth and that are done in rapid succession to mentally test each individual’s strengths and areas for improvement. Through iterative evolutions, participants will learn the tools of human-centered design, communication, and process improvement. A series of interactive exercises and team thinking challenges enhance meaningful collaboration and improve the camaraderie of the team.

John graduated from Virginia Tech with a Bachelor of Science in Building Construction and a minor in Leadership. He accepted a commission as an officer in the United States Navy and is currently serving as a nuclear-trained Surface Warfare Officer. 

A passionate snowboarder and traveler, John enjoys meeting and connecting with new people and spending time with his family.  He and his wife, Carissa, reside in Virginia Beach, Virginia with their daughter, Madelyn, and German Shepherd, Django. 

Pedram Ghozat is a social media marketer, advertiser and the CEO of the Facebook/Instagram Advertising agency, MediaBoostr. Pedram’s work with several dozen brands has generated millions of social media impressions and converted hundreds of thousands of dollars worth in revenue.

While still young, Pedram has had years of professional experience under his belt attending university, working in sales, event planning and finally as a paid marketing strategist.

In this episode, Will and Pedram discuss the ebbs and flows of entrepreneurship, the secret formula to success (and lack thereof), the importance of perspective in the short and long term, and the common shortcomings of professional entrepreneurs.

This conversation reveals a lot about the mindset behind Pedram’s successful agency and helps explain how he’s able to drive such strong and consistent ROIs for his clients

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Allen Little is the founder of “A Little Motivation,” speaking to groups of people on the power of living authentically. He was a keynote speaker for the Ben Carson Presidential Campaign and has addressed tens of thousands of people across the country on his message.

The origin of Allen’s message can be traced back to a time in his life when he wasn’t sure who he should become. Allen struggled for direction, but eventually found a mentor who helped guide him in his personal and professional life.

But Allen reached a crossroad, idolizing his mentor he wanted to start doing what his mentor was already successfully doing. Allen’s mentor didn’t let this happen, and by doing so taught Allen a lesson that he would go on to share with people all across the world, live your own, authentic life. 

Allen’s message teaches people that they often work too hard on their profession, and that we’re taught the ostensible belief that working hard long hours is the only way to generate a decent income to provide for their family. Although action is necessary, there is a way to be proficient without burning yourself out, and by doing so you can work half as hard and still create double the results. 

Allen helps people live authentically, excel at their profession and actually have time to enjoy the fruits of their labor. He’s helped individuals create seven figure incomes for themselves and still come home to their families every night enlivened and fulfilled.