E51: CanInnovate 1st Year Anniversary Special: What I Learned Over A Year of Podcasting

We made it!

I am so excited to share with you all the first year anniversary of CanInnovate podcast. I can't believe that we made it this far and I could have done it without all of you who supported me and my podcast on this journey. CanInnovate as you might already know is my passion project. A passion project that is dedicated to share to the world how awesome Canadian innovators are. During my journey, I have interviewed so many aspiring innovators who are changing the world as we know it by providing valuable lessons, marketing and innovative tips, cheat sheets and lessons. 

In this episode, my good friend Julie Shum who had been with be since day 1 get to interview me about the lessons that I learned, the tips that I applied that changed the course of how I do my business and my future plans for CanInnovate. So tune in and have fun!

 

Shoot, have I done? What’s next?

I remembered when I first submitted my request to Apple and thought maybe I will get three to four days approval for my podcast. But, things got a little hyped when it was in fact approved 10 minutes after I submitted my request. So I asked myself, what’s next?

 

Trying to prove my mentor wrong

My first objective and goal for starting a podcast was to prove my original thesis and my mentor wrong and that there is a lot of Canadian innovation happening on the landscape.

There's so much more innovation and thought leadership that is happening in the Canadian soil and I want to share and provide awareness that there are loads of Canadian innovations out there.

I love the fact that people are saying that they don't know that this kind of innovation or company is Canadian. I love the feedback that we are getting and which brings awareness of some really great Canadian thought leaders and provide some insights out there to our listeners.

My motivation now is really to create that awareness about what is currently happening on the Canadian landscape so that we can start supporting them.

 

Who in the first year surprise you the most being a Canadian innovator?

 

Dr Ann Cavoukian because of her take on privacy just makes me more passionate about securing our privacy. I even ask my clients about their privacy awareness and share with them what think about it and ask how they purge about or how do they maintain it and so on.

I was also inspired by Eli Fathi of MindBridge AI because he brings so much innovation tips and he has been a serial entrepreneur for a long time. He taught us how to bring company to life and how to sell these companies for millions of dollars. Eli also told us that his secret sauce for his success was his wife.

We also had Ariel Gaten of Muse who has been on our podcast twice where we talk about the value of meditation on our regular podcast episode and a masterclass about changing our minds and practice tactical things on how to get ourselves on stuck on situation by using and understanding how our brain works through meditation.

It is also really exciting that we got Daryl Hemingway who is actually a rocket scientist from NASA, who is also a filmmaker and is a serial entrepreneur. He is also the CEO and founder of SmartTone, an entertainment technology company with one goal in mind – connecting broadcast media to mobile. They believe entertainment should excite audiences and enable them to participate.

And when i found out that the book that i was reading for years, The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier who is actually Canadian, it blew my mind! Michael provided as with the seven questions that change literally almost everything that I do.

 

Did you apply any tips and tricks or insights that your guests provided?

 

Of course I did, when they share these best practices it really excites me because I’m learning something new and a few important practices that I learned from this best practices are:

We can't do things alone - and I think this is really important because we tend to forget that we don't have a support system all of the time. Networking is huge and making network count – Our guests they have given so much insight and values about networking. One of them was Andreas Souvaliotis from Carrots reward told us that he never eats alone.

He continues to never eat alone and the reason behind it is to learn the different perspective from people about the world that he didn't learn about and almost having eyes at the back of his head.

 

Where do you think the direction of your project is taking you?

 

This is huge for me because I am transitioning or to change into something that this not only focuses on innovators who talked about their journey but also start offering master classes or a deep dive into those best practices because we always hear about this kinds of tips and best practices but no one tells us how to do it.

So now I have been reaching out to these innovators and masterminds to focus on more tactical things to help the listeners understand what we should do about these best practices that were given to us to bring more value into our lives and our businesses.

I want to provide more cheat sheets out there where people can do things, more workshops or things that I usually do on corporations. I’m starting to see how valuable it is to see individuals to get the same access to these things that corporations provide and I wanted to really make it user friendly.

 

With all this industry and the Canadian innovators that you have discovered what do you think are going to get disrupted this year?

 

It is really difficult for me to say because I think there is no company that is not going to get hit. For example, Fin-tech is really going to hit insurance industry soon because the whole thing and notion about privacy and security and the level of transparency is really going to continue and it is going to allow the consumers to keep asking questions and companies should be more responsive and I think this is really going to continue to evolve and take place.

Another example is the block chain technology, the smart contracts, the privacy, the security and everything else is really going to hit every industry. Supply chain is also a great one because you are looking at end to end perspective.

Company cultures, I think the shift on the company's behavior needs to change because they need to be a lot more innovative and they need to hear the employees so that they all have a stake on the ground that needs to be around for a long time.

 

Is there someone you are looking to interview may be an idol or something?

 

I would love to get the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the podcast. I'd love to pick up his brain and talk about what is happening and where things are going and to really hear the vision of what they are thinking.

 

Do you have any surprises up your sleeves?

 

When I started teaching at George Brown University, I talked to a lot of people who connected with me because they listened to the podcast and they wanted to meet. And the one thing that I noticed is that they don't know how to network.

So I decided to write a book about networking and communications.

I think that networking had become an evolved art because you can network via social media, you can network behind the computer or you don't have to meet face-to-face to create a connection. In fact, I have relationships around the world with people that I have never met but I jumped on a Skype call to meet them. So yes it is about communication and networking but it is really about how to connect with people.

 

Where is your favorite Canadian hot spot or hide away that you can share with us?

 

I love going for a walk by the waterfront!