This week, The Entrepreneur Podcast is featuring one of our fellow podcasts from the larger Western ecosystem, Ivey Academy Presents: Leadership in Practice, which discusses critical issues in business, unpacks new research, and talks to industry leaders about the latest trends.

In this episode of Leadership in Practice, I spoke to Ivey HBA ’06 alumni Erik Mikkelsen, who is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Auxo Management LP - one of Canada’s first successful search funds, and the President and Chief Revenue Officer of Stealth Monitoring Inc., a leading North American video monitoring and security company with over 1600 employees.

Mikkelsen shares his journey through entrepreneurship, including the detours within his career where he found new avenues for opportunity.For more information on the Leadership in Practice Podcast, visit: IveyAcademy.com/blog

Melissa Sariffodeen has a number of roles and titles on her profile. One of them is "lifelong student." 

And it’s fitting.

As Co-founder and CEO of Ladies Learning Code and Canada Learning Code, lifelong learning is integral to her founder’s journey. Since 2011, over 700,000 Canadians from all walks of life have had the opportunity to learn critical skills and build up the confidence to become builders - not just consumers - of technology in an increasingly digital world.

In this episode, Sariffodeen joins fellow Ivey alum and Director Internal of Morrissette Entrepreneurship, Deniz Edwards, to share her story and her passion for entrepreneurship, education and technology.

Silicon Valley Legend is a prized descriptor, and few fit the term as well as Guy Kawasaki.

A renowned author, marketing specialist, angel investor, and tech evangelist, Kawasaki has a storied career in the Valley - including a major role at Apple marketing Macintosh computers in the early 1980s.

Today, Kawasaki is the chief evangelist for Canva, the Australian graphic design platform, and the host of his podcast and passion project, Remarkable People, speaking to the likes of Jane Goodall, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Marc Benioff and more.

In this special episode of the Entrepreneur Podcast, Kawasaki joins Eric Janssen to discuss his career, the importance of sales, how to be an effective employee in an early-stage start-up, family and fatherhood.

For Rick Cytrynbaum, the entrepreneur life can feel like a game of snakes and ladders. Yet rolling the dice, doesn’t have to be a game of chance.

Through years of hard work and hustle, Cytrynbaum has built a diverse and innovative career in the fashion space, where he has developed footwear for New Balance, co-founded House of Harlow 1960 with Nicole Richie, worked with celebrities like Kanye West and Heidi Klum, and owned multiple brands like Modern Vintage, Champion, and Kendall & Kylie. He was also an influential player in the rise of the direct-to-consumer model that brought a wide range of celebrities into the fashion industry.Cytrynbaum joins Eric Morse to share various aspects of his journey; from finding the white space in an industry, and cultivating one’s gut feel, to the critical role failure plays in the life of an entrepreneur.

“The reward for taking out Bose, Panasonic, and Samsung was getting to play against Amazon, Google and Apple.”

That’s a common joke at Patrick Spence’s Santa Barbara-based audio giant, Sonos; which is chiefly responsible for the rise of the smart speaker.

An HBA ’98 grad, Spence joined the company in 2012 and took over as CEO, five years later.

But Sonos wasn’t Spence’s first rodeo in the fast-moving world of consumer electronics. For 14 years, Spence was an integral part of RIM/BlackBerry, serving a number of roles before ultimately becoming the Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing. During that time the company grew from $50 million in revenue to more than $20 billion, and from 150 people to more than 17,000.

In this episode, Spence shares lessons from the highs and lows of his career, his philosophy on technology and innovation, Sonos’ legal battles with Google, and the different outlooks of entrepreneurs on both sides of the 49th parallel.

Jake Karls, BA’16, exudes the enthusiasm that one would expect of an entrepreneur. But the co-founder of Mid-Day Squares is not playing a part. He is a true believer that their chocolate bar will become the modern-day Hershey’s bar.

After the failure of his clothing brand, Karls was invited to join Mid-Day Squares by his sister and brother-in-law, Lezlie Karls and Nick Saltarelli; to bring his enthusiasm to the fore of a brand with a big vision. From instituting weekly therapy sessions to showcasing their entire journey (the good, the bad and the ugly) on social media, Karls and his co-founders took a unique approach to build a brand that has sold $8 million in chocolate bars.In this episode, Jake Karls joins Ivey Faculty Larry Plummer to discuss the rise of Mid-Day Squares, covering a range of topics including the importance of authenticity, various funding sources, the complicated world of retail and how he balances family and business while forging a chocolate empire.

This Summer, the Entrepreneur Podcast is back! Featuring the likes of Jake Karl of Mid-Day Squares, the Montreal-based chocolate company that’s taking the world by storm, Patrick Spence from the innovative audio giant Sonos, and Rick Cytrynbaum, a true trailblazer in the direct-to-consumer fashion industry.

Follow The Entrepreneur Podcast on your favourite podcast player or visit entrepreneurship.uwo.ca/podcast for our season kick-off on August 3, 2022.

The path of an entrepreneur is rarely a straight line, but some paths are more unconventional than others.

Since the age of 15, Michelle Kwok was working in research labs. When she joined Western University to pursue a degree in Medical Science, everything seemed set for a future Dr Kwok. But then she started to wonder… and then wander… soon she was helping companies with social media marketing, working with founders on their startups, and even co-founded one that was acquired in 2021. Today, it’s come full circle with Kwok working with biotechnology startups at San Francisco-based accelerator, On Deck Longevity Biotech.

In this episode, Kwok joins Eric Janssen to share her conventional journey as well as some nuggets that could light the way for other aspiring entrepreneurs.