The Calum Johnson Show

Latest Episodes:

E18: Dakotah Rice: The Journey from Wall Street to Fintech Founder Sep 25, 2022

Show notes

Dakotah Rice is the founder of Poolit, a platform allowing users to invest in top private equity, venture capital, and hedge funds with no minimums. Before becoming a full-time founder, Dakotah worked for some of the most prestigious firms on Wall Street: Goldman Sachs (trading GS), Coatue and The Carlyle Group. Learning directly from global investment companies with billions under management, he provided a wide range of financial services for his clients with a key purpose to invest wisely and create value over time.

With years of experience in the financial industry under his belt, Dakotah left his job to start @thepoolit. Backed by the co-founders of Carlyle and Coatue, Dakotah is laser focused on his mission of making the financial system inclusive for all.

In this episode, we talk about

The impact that working on Wall Street had on Dakota career & him becoming a founder
How he managed to get into such a competitive industry & rise up the ranks so quickly
How he made the leap from working in finance to starting his own company
How to overcome fear and doubt in you career

E17: Zach Pogrob: The Power of the Boring Business Sep 18, 2022

Show notes

Zach Pogrob is the creator behind @behaviorhack on Instagram, where he has racked up a following of close to 200K followers. As a multi platform creator, he shares and tweets powerful messages about following-your-obsession and entrepreneurship besides, of course, documenting his own views about building his brands.

He is also the founder of @Peakphotobooths, an innovative photo booth company bringing fun moments for weddings and other events in New Jersey and New York areas. From starting his business with his own savings to sharing tips to fight procrastination, Zach’s motivation, as well as his obsessive approach to reaching his goals are certainly clever and inspiring.

In this episode, we discuss about

The right moment to monetize your audience
How to overcome procrastination and manage your time
Transitioning from a 9-to-5 to running your own business
Adding value to commoditized products/ services
How Zach built a large following & personal brand online
How Zach built his content creation machine
How he deals with burnout & FOMO when working weekends
Does Zach feel satisfaction from his success?

E16: Kirby Porter: The Creator Economy & Web 3 Sep 11, 2022

Show notes

Kirby Porter has been a prominent figure in the sports industry. As the founder of New Game Labs, she supports athletes by building their brands in the creators economy. One of the goals of her company for the next 8 years is ‘to inspire 1 million athletes to unleash their inner creator and leverage technology to scale their brands’ but her ambition doesn’t stop there. Kirby started her career in the marketing and communications department at PepsiCo (trading PEP) before venturing into her own businesses and is currently taking advantage of the power of web 3.0 in the sports industry.

In this episode, we discuss:

Finding your passion and putting it into practice
How athletes can take a piece of the The $100B creators industry and the web 3.0
The massive investments athletes are receiving from brands
Transitioning from athlete to entrepreneur
Building and strengthening online brands and online audiences

E15: Michael Karnjanaprakorn: Founder of Skillshare on How to Live The Good Life Sep 04, 2022

Show notes

Michael Karnjanaprakorn is behind many successful startups. He started Skillshare and Otis. He was also an early employee at Behance and Hot Potato (now part of META). Michael, who just turned 40, writes about life, money, entrepreneurship and business for his growing 34k followers on Twitter. When he’s not creating disruptive companies, he’s probably eating burgers, improving his golf score or watching UFC fights.

In this episode, we discuss:

The mindset changes you need to implement in order to achieve professional and financial freedom
The power of boredom
The concept of personal holding companies - the future of entrepreneurship
Michael's experience doing a Dopamine Detox
The keys to living the good life - a life of happiness and fulfillment

E14: Jack Butcher Part 2: The blueprint to building a 7 figure online business Aug 28, 2022

Show notes

This is part 2 of our episode with Jack Butcher, Founder of Visualize Value. Jack spent 10 years working in Fortune 100 advertising in NYC as a creative director for multi-billion dollar brands. He then started his own advertising agency and is the founder of @visualizevalue - a platform that offers courses on selling digital products and creating high-impact, unique images. Jack @jackbutcher posts his unforgettable visuals to his 207.9k followers on Twitter.

In this episode we discuss:

Jack's journey to building Visualize Value
How you can figure out what business problem you should be solving
Selling 6 figure NFTs & the story of the $77 million NFT
The power of brand & community in business

E13: Jack Butcher Part 1: Founder of Visualize Value on How Taking Big Risks Led to Big Rewards Aug 21, 2022

Show notes

Today’s guest on the podcast is Jack Butcher. Jack spent 10 years working in Fortune 100 advertising in NYC as a creative director for multi-billion dollar brands. He has since started his own advertising agency and is the founder of @visualizevalue - a platform that offers courses on selling digital products and creating high-impact, unique images. Jack (@jackbutcher on Twitter) posts his unforgettable visuals to his 207.9k followers on Twitter.

In this episode we discuss:

How does the environment you live in influence your work ethic?
The impact that moving to NYC had on Jack's career
How too much knowledge can actually hold you back from starting new ventures (naivety over knowledge)
How Jack made the pivot from working at an agency to starting his own business
How Jack found his niche and escaped competition

E12: Dave Kline: Former Hedgefund Recruiter On How You Can Take Your Career to the Next Level Jun 26, 2022

Show notes

Today's guest on the podcast is Dave Kline. He is the owner of Skillscouter, where he teaches leaders how to build great teams & level up in their career. Before that he worked for over 10 years at Bridgewater Associates, helping hire talent for the world's biggest hedgefund. He also worked at Moodys, one of the premier financial services companies in the United States. In the last year, he has grown his following on Twitter to nearly 60,000 followers writing on how people can level up in their career.

In this episode we discuss:

- How to Build trust in the workplace

- Handling workplace politics

- Finding a company that matches your superpower

- Why you should always negotiate your salary

- The importance of trying things - 10,000 iterations

E11: Dakota Robertson on going from college dropout to becoming a 6-figure business owner Jun 19, 2022

Show notes

Todays guest on the Podcast is Dakota Robertson. He is the owner of Growth Ghost, a six-figure “Twitter Ghostwriting Service” that helps grow intentional audiences, increase profits and decrease workloads for companies. Dakota started off as a “jack of all trades”, he worked as an electrician, security, even started his own drop shipping business. With a few self help books and re-evaluation Dakota began getting into Crypto and learning about Copywriting. From there Dakota created his Twitter account @WrongstoWrite to showcase what he learned about Copywriting and to help others. Dakota has grown his Twitter following to 94K Followers and growing.

In this episode we discuss:

- What inspired Dakota to start his own business?

- Why people in their 20’s should take more risks?

- How to change your Identity & improving self-talk

- Best way to manage your invested time

- How to find your authentic voice when producing content online

E10: Barrett O'Neill on how he passed up a banking Internship to build a 7-Figure Storage Company Jun 08, 2022

Show notes

Barrett O'Neill is the Co-Founder of OnDemand Storage, a 7-figure storage company. He is also the Owner of BrightLine Media, a company that helps organizations rank higher in search engines. He also worked a year in corporate at Bain Capital. Barrett grew up wanting to be a professional Baseball player however an elbow injury derailed that dream. He started a storage company with his friend in college and has grown that to a 7 figure business. In the last year he has also grown his Twitter following to 60K followers, he tweets a ton of great advice on building companies & growing your online audience.

In this episode we discuss:

- How Barrett bounced back from a devastating sports injury to achieve his dreams in business

- What sets the GOAT athletes apart from the rest & dealing with extreme discomfort

- The smart approach to starting a successful business

- The importance of moving fast to get what you want

- The Winner effect

- Being bootstrapped vs raising VC funding

E9: Paige Doherty On Raising a $5 million VC Fund at 22 Years Old May 29, 2022

Show notes

Paige Finn Doherty is a Founding Partner at Behind Genius Ventures. It's a early stage fund investing in product led growth companies at the future of work and play at the pre-seed/seed stage & they are backed by Bain Capital Ventures, Tribe Capital, Bonfire Ventures among others. She has also written & published her own children's book, Seed to Harvest: A simple explanation of Venture Capital. She has built a following on Twitter & also hosts her own podcast, Seed to Harvest

In this episode we talk about:

- How she got into Venture Capital & the startup world

- Paige's formula for sending the perfect cold email

- The value of producing content online & building in public

- Pushing through Imposter syndrome

- The value of asking for what you want - how Paige built a twitter following, podcast, VC fund, published a book at 23 years old