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Awesome Office: Lead. Create. Inspire.

The Awesome Office Show is all about helping you lead people, create culture, and inspire Awesome at your company. Each week we talk to a business leader, entrepreneur, HR pro, or engagement specialist at the most successful and buzzed about companies in the country, and learn their most actionable tips, tactics, and best practices - and share them with you. This is a behind the curtain look that you’re not going to find anywhere else. If you care about developing stellar cultures that provide lasting value for employees, customers, and shareholders, then this is the podcast for you. The Awesome Office Show is hosted by Sean Spear. Similar to Entreleadership and HBR Ideacast.
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Now displaying: May, 2017
May 30, 2017

How’s this for a recipe for success: Work at McKinsey. Go to film school. Take over a high-level strategy role when your colleague has a mental breakdown. Start your first company in your mid-thirties.

Sound a bit... circuitous? Well it's precisely the path that today’s guest Adam Zbar took - and it seems to be working out.

Adam is the CEO and founder of Sun Basket, a San Francisco-based meal-kit delivery service that makes healthy cooking easy by delivering ready to make recipes and organic and non-GMO ingredients every week.

Since launching in 2015, the company has seen enormous growth and success, scaling from 0-1,000 employees and raising more than $50 million in funding.

In this episode, Adam joins us from his Bay Area home to share Sun Basket’s recipe for success, as well as some top shelf “Zbarisms” - including why it’s usually better to “solve the people, not the problem.”

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Recommended Reading

Special Offer for AO Listeners - Try SnackNation Market for FREE

Introducing SnackNation Market.  

For the past few years SnackNation has only been available to businesses, but now it’s available for homes and awesome individuals too.

SnackNation Market brings health- and taste-conscious folks expertly curated boxes of the most delicious, innovative and healthier snacks right to your doorstep.  With SnackNation there is no more worrying about having a weak, unhealthy and tasteless snack game.

We’ve secured a special offer for the listeners of this show: you can try SnackNation for FREE.

Just visit SnackNation.com/AO right now, and get your first box free (just cover shipping and handling).

That’s SnackNation.com/AO.

May 22, 2017

Sometimes being the company that VCs just don’t “get” can actually work to your advantage.

Take MeUndies, the wildly successful direct-to-consumer lifestyle brand on a mission to produce the world’s most comfortable and sustainable underwear. After a seed round in 2011, they found that convincing investors to pour money into their subscription-based underwear business was more challenging than they anticipated. Compared to some of their startup peers, they often felt a little underfunded.  

But this turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Being largely bootstrapped taught them an important lesson that they would have never learned any other way - the importance of taking calculated risks. When you’re underfunded, you have to be savvy enough to see an opportunity when it arises, nimble enough to mobilize and take advantage of it, and brave enough to actually pull the trigger.

That’s all according to this week’s guest, MeUndies CEO Bryan Lalezarian.

Bryan is a Wharton educated, former hedge fund analyst who decided to take a leap of faith and get in the underwear game. In this conversation with co-host Sean Spear, Bryan shares his top leadership tips, explains why he believes their focus on brand is a major key to MeUndies' success, and tells us an amazing story about what taking calculated risks really means - and how it can really pay off.

Recommended Reading

Links

Special Offer for AO Listeners - Try SnackNation Market for FREE

Introducing SnackNation Market.  

For the past few years SnackNation has only been available to businesses, but now it’s available for homes and awesome individuals too.

SnackNation Market brings health- and taste-conscious folks expertly curated boxes of the most delicious, innovative and healthier snacks right to your doorstep.  With SnackNation there is no more worrying about having a weak, unhealthy and tasteless snack game.

We’ve secured a special offer for the listeners of this show: you can try SnackNation for FREE.

Just visit SnackNation.com/AO right now, and get your first box free (just cover shipping and handling).

That’s SnackNation.com/AO.

May 15, 2017

There’s no one out there who embodies the idea of “enjoying the journey” quite like today’s guest, YAS founder and CEO Kimberly Fowler.

YAS stands for Yoga And Spinning, and is a pioneering hybrid fitness concept that combines yoga for athletes with the high-intensity cardio of spin.

And quite a journey it’s been. Before she launched YAS, Kimberly had already lived everywhere from LA to New Jersey to Monaco, been an attorney, a corporate executive, and a professional endurance athlete.

Kimberly’s story is one of incredible grit, creativity, and constant reinvention. In this conversation, she takes us through several pivotal moments in her life, major forks in the road that forced her to pause and ask “now what do I do with my life?”

Through it all, Kimberly has maintained a fearless attitude and her trademark grit as she faced these challenges - which include a terminal brain tumor diagnosis in law school and a near-fatal free climbing accident that made her lose her job and forced her to start over yet again.

Co-host Sean Spear met up with Kimberly in YAS’ flagship Venice location to talk fundraising, fitness and to hear about this remarkable journey.

May 8, 2017

This week we’re going back to the archives for one of our very favorite episodes, our conversation with Jason Nazar.

Jason Nazar, is the co-Founder and CEO at Comparably, a company whose mission is to make work better by providing the most accurate and comprehensive compensation and culture data available anywhere. He’s also the  the former CEO of Docstoc, an entrepreneur in residence for the city of Los Angeles, and an active investor, writer, and speaker. He definitely knows a thing or two about creating strong teams and inspiring cultures, and he brought his A-game in this classic interview.

In our conversation Jason describes his first foray into entrepreneurship at age seven, explains why he did a 180 on the importance of culture, and reveals the three hiring rules that helped make DocStoc go from a mere idea to a massive online repository of business intelligence with more than 50 million registered users.

Key Takeaways

  • Jason explains why the ability to handle pressure and uncertainty is a defining characteristic of good leaders.
  • Jason’s a firm believer that a certain amount of internal pressure is a necessity, and discusses how to develop good pressure within an organization.
  • Jason tell us why, at a certain point, it’s more important to be a coach/cheerleader rather than the sprinter at the front of the pack.
  • Jason talks about how the What and How will always be an obstacle if your company doesn’t have a strong Why.
  • Jason describes his complete 180 on the importance of culture, and how it became an afterthought to the thing he starts with first when building a new company.
  • Finally, Jason reveals the three hiring practice that helped make DocStoc great.
  • Jason explains why he thinks of himself as a D1 coach, and why he sees it as his job to help his employees “go pro.”
  • Jason talks about the importance of transparency, and how to create a shared sense of accountability in outcomes.
  • Jason talks about why it’s important to have a best friend at work, and how you as a leader can facilitate the opportunity for employees to make personal friendships in the workplace.
  • Jason talks about what he considers his greatest accomplishments as a leader, and why looking out for yourself at all costs is generally bad advice.

Links

Recommended Reading

Special Offer for AO Listeners – Try SnackNation Market for FREE

Introducing SnackNation Market.  

For the past few years SnackNation has only been available to businesses, but now it’s available for homes and awesome individuals too.

SnackNation Market brings health- and taste-conscious folks expertly curated boxes of the most delicious, innovative and healthier snacks right to your doorstep.  With SnackNation there is no more worrying about having a weak, unhealthy and tasteless snack game.

We’ve secured a special offer for the listeners of this show: you can try SnackNation for FREE.

Just visit SnackNation.com/AO right now, and get your first box free (just cover shipping and handling).

That’s SnackNation.com/AO.

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