Founder's Story

• What COVID Exposed—and DealMagik Fixed—for Local Businesses | Ep 265 with Pavitra Anakru Founder of DealMagik

  Pavitra describes commuting from New Jersey to New York before remote work existed, holding client meetings while deciding whether to miss a school play, and starting her first company in 2008 when Wall Street was on fire. She didn’t set out to be a CEO; clients from a collapsing firm pulled her into entrepreneurship, and a former CFO wrote the first check. Years later, COVID grounded her flights and exposed how fragile main street really was. A talk with her hairdresser—a friend and mother in her son’s circle—revealed the gap: local merchants were juggling siloed tools while big-box stores thrived on integrated tech. DealMagik was her answer: unify the messy stack and give mom-and-pop shops enterprise-grade capabilities without enterprise-grade pain. Key Discussion:Pavitra reframes “mom-guilt” as an incomplete story: presence matters, but so does modeling problem-solving at home. Her son, now a PhD student, grew up in the spillover of dinner-table debriefs about customers, product choices, and resilience; that, she says, was its own kind of presence. She walks through the real leap from employee to owner: writing every check yourself, discovering that scaling requires constant storytelling and sales, and learning that credibility in SMB land is won delivery by delivery, not pitch by pitch. As an immigrant founder, English wasn’t her first language, and she names the cultural and linguistic adjustments that fed years of self-doubt. The antidote was curiosity—the habit of asking how trades settle on Wall Street and, later, how salons, florists, and restaurants actually run their days. Curiosity led to competence; competence quieted the doubt. On AI, she’s optimistic: technology will change jobs, shorten the week, and rewire work, but it will also open new doors if we choose to walk through them. For founders considering a leap, she offers a grounded rule: get to the basics of the problem, solve it in small circles, and let trust compound. Takeaways:Ambition and family aren’t opposites when you bring your learning home. The difference between corporate and founder life is owning every line item and every outcome. Local business tech doesn’t fail for lack of tools; it fails for lack of integration and trust. Curiosity is a founder’s renewable energy; self-doubt loses to evidence. The future of work will be different not just in tools but in tempo—and platforms like DealMagik show how that future can reach the corner shop as surely as the Fortune 500. Closing Thoughts:Pavitra’s story isn’t a victory lap; it’s a field manual. She built through crisis twice, turned guilt into grit, and is now arming small businesses with the rails they lacked when the world shut down. If you want to see what practical optimism looks like, watch where DealMagik shows up next—and who it keeps in business. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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• Burnt Banksy: How Burning $95K of Art Changed Crypto | Ep 264 with Burnt Banksy Founder of XION

  As an NYU student, Anthony mined ETH until the dorms “asked him not to come back,” collected early NFTs, and—after a lucky GameStop options win—bought a $95K Banksy print with two friends for one reason: to burn it and sell the moment as an NFT. The plan was part dare, part experiment, not a get-rich scheme. What followed was a week of whiplash: Vice photos, Forbes first coverage, BBC calling for comment and publishing a slam thirty minutes later, a Toyota Camry breakdown on the Van Wyck with a Banksy in hand, and a final sale near $400K. The hate was real; the lesson was bigger. Being anonymous forced him to let action speak, and the public’s confusion exposed a harder truth: crypto, as used by normal people, was unusable. That’s the seed of Xion—make crypto disappear behind experiences people already understand. Key Discussion Points:Anthony unpacks how the Banksy burn wasn’t destruction but translation: moving value from paper to a new medium and testing whether culture would accept it. Half the crowd called it idiotic; the other half called it genius—and he admits he didn’t know which it would be. The post-burn months became a proof loop: dozens of Clubhouse NFT launches, a window into how attention compounds when the product is simple and the story is clear. He contrasts that with today’s Web3 friction—seed phrases, bridges, gas, Metamask—and makes the case that Xion exists to remove all that: walletless by default, mobile first, sign-in with familiar IDs, and rails that let products ship without forcing users to learn crypto. We drift into the value of anonymity as an innovation unlock—embarrassment becomes cheaper, experiments get bolder—and the double edge of social media, the most potent dopamine machine in history and the new gatekeeper of distribution. On AI, he’s pragmatic: it’s a calculator for creativity—an amplifier, not a replacement—shrinking the menial so people can actually say something. He loves the mischief brand of guerrilla making and hints that once the platform is ready, the provocations will return—this time at scale, powered by Xion. Takeaways:Attention is today’s currency, but utility is tomorrow’s moat. The Banksy burn proved that narrative can vault a new medium into relevance; the years after proved that unless crypto feels like nothing—no wallets, no jargon, no hurdles—most people will never cross over. Xion is built around that thesis: hide the chain, surface the value, meet users where they already live (their phone and their existing login), and let developers build products people touch without noticing the rails. Anonymity can catalyze audacity; simplicity sustains it. Closing Thoughts:Anthony’s arc reads like a thesis: provoke to reveal the seams, then engineer them away. If Guernica turned pain into picture, Burnt Banksy turned a picture into protocol—and Xion is the rails that make the protocol disappear. If you see him at Korea Blockchain Week, ask about the next stunt; odds are, the art will be the interface and the chain will be invisible. Get more leads and grow your business. Go to https://www.pipedrive.com/founders and get started with a 30 day free trial. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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• "I Met Andy Warhol—and He Bored Me to Death" | Ep 263 with Charles Edelman

  We begin with the question people rarely ask an artist directly: what does an artist’s life actually look like? Charles Edelman answers with a life-in-stories—New York studios, MoMA walkabouts, and a candid aside that meeting Andy Warhol was “boring.” He frames his practice at Charles Edelman Masterpieces as a “mental gym,” a place where discipline, curiosity, and play keep boredom at bay and skill compounding. His book Crashing Waves of Passions threads through the conversation: Van Gogh’s legend (including “the ear”), Susan Valadon’s overlooked power beside Toulouse-Lautrec, and a time-travel tableau that situates these spirits in modern rooms to explain the disabilities they navigated and the work they made. He rejects the doom story that artists only matter after death—he’s lived well, taught at Dartmouth, trained in a gifted program at Yale, and painted twelve-hour summer days by choice. The episode pivots to purpose: inspired by Picasso’s Guernica, he’s raising support for a ten-by-thirty-foot mural that does the opposite—an explosion of joy, love, and light—arguing that beauty can heal as forcefully as outrage can indict. Key Discussion Points:Charles traces how early memories of light became a lifelong motif, and how quiet places—Belize jungles, Cusco skies, Cozumel shores—strip away noise until people find themselves. He argues that creativity is teachable; a seventy-something student gave up golf because making art felt truer. Corporate teams, too, can be rewired: give them constraints, history in forty-five minutes, and a playful brief, and they’ll surprise themselves—just like his billionaire students tasked with designing family-friendly paintings for a Central Park restaurant. He tells a lineage story through Marcel, the eighty-three-year-old master printer for Picasso and Dalí, who looked at Charles’s work and said, “He would love it.” There are gallery-wall brags and grounded details—charity projects, low pricing for collectors who return for ten to fifteen pieces, a recent New York Weekly profile—and there’s a standing invitation: he believes one painting can change how we see, maybe even lift a tragedy’s weight. Takeaways:Art isn’t mysticism; it’s method. Show up early, work long, keep it fun, and your eye will catch more light. The myths about artists suffering to matter are lazy; a sustainable life is possible with craft, community, and a clear offer. Inspiration multiplies in silence; go somewhere quiet and your hand gets honest. Great teaching unlocks dormant makers—whether they’re executives, students, or “not creative” friends. And if Guernica proved painting can channel horror, a monumental counter-image of joy can be just as world-shaping. Closing Thoughts:Charles Edelman’s stories make the studio feel less like a pedestal and more like a train you can board. If you want on, start with one page, one sketch, one hour—then repeat. To see the work, commission, or study, visit CharlesEdelmanMasterpieces.com or find Crashing Waves of Passions on Amazon. Ditch the other hiring sites, and let ZipRecruiter find what you’re looking for — the needle in the haystack. Try it FOR FREE at this exclusive web address: ZipRecruiter.com/WORK. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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• Why 95% of People Live Like Victims—And How to Reclaim Your Life | Ep 262 with Dr. Stoyana Natseva Founder of Happy Life Academy

  We open with the question everyone secretly asks: can a life really change that much? Dr. Stoyana Natseva answers with names and outcomes, not platitudes. Through Happy Life Academy, she’s watched Tatiana Markova move multiple sclerosis into remission, rebuild family bonds, and buy her first home, and Tsetsa Dimitrova outlive a one-month cancer prognosis to become a holistic therapist who now mentors others. Those stories anchor her thesis: when mind, emotion, and habit align, health and circumstance can follow. She dismantles the “I’ll be happy when…” script—more money, more success, more love—and insists that happiness isn’t deferred; it’s practiced now. Social comparison and cultural conditioning (the “matrix,” as she calls it) train us to chase what’s missing; her work re-trains attention toward gratitude, abundance, and authorship. The entrepreneur in her is direct: treat happiness as a skill. Start with awareness and acceptance, then do the reps daily—writing, meditation, loving action, community. Key Discussion Points:The conversation stays close to the real lives behind her frameworks. We explore how labels like “I’m damaged” become convenient autopilots—and how observing thoughts proves we aren’t our thoughts. Dr. Natseva maps the unlearning arc she teaches: notice honestly without shame, choose a creator identity over a victim identity, and rehearse new beliefs through practices that involve mind, feelings, and body. Gratitude is central but not a slogan; it is specific, sensory, and active—thanking the sun, the meal, the breath, the lesson inside the setback—until the nervous system recognizes abundance as home base. She challenges the hidden cost of an unhappy life: illness in the body, erosion of self-worth, fractured families, and years quietly stolen. Even simple physiology supports the shift—a genuine smile feeds back to the brain, making anger hard to sustain. When listeners ask how to begin, she keeps it simple: write what’s true, name three real gratitudes, sit in stillness for a few minutes, and repeat. The point isn’t perfection; it’s momentum. Takeaways:Happiness is not an outcome to acquire later but a discipline to practice today. By choosing the stance of creator—“I am not a victim of circumstances”—and pairing it with small, repeated actions, the story changes from the inside out. Gratitude reframes trauma as curriculum, not identity; attention placed on emptiness multiplies emptiness, while attention placed on abundance multiplies abundance. Community accelerates change because it interrupts isolation and offers models to mirror. Start where you are, feel what you feel without punishment, and move one honest step at a time. Closing Thoughts:Dr. Natseva leaves us with a decision rather than a dare: choose happiness as a daily act. When thoughts, emotions, and actions line up, life follows. If you’re ready to practice, her programs at Happy Life Academy turn the idea into a method—and the method into a life. Closing Thoughts: Dr. Natseva’s message is simple but profound: happiness is not a gift or a circumstance—it’s a choice. And the cost of not choosing it could be your health, your family, and your future. Get more leads and grow your business. Go to https://www.pipedrive.com/founders and get started with a 30 day free trial. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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• Heart Disease Is Optional? The Truth About Health, Habits, and Longevity | Ep 261 with Dr. Hosen Kiat

  We open by challenging a midlife myth: “you’re getting old, expect decline.” Dr. Hosen Kiat counters that aging is plastic—biology is modifiable—illustrated by his ninety-six-year-old mother’s daily hour-long walks after hip surgery and his own “mind overdrive” routine that gets him training on days he least feels like it. The conversation locates prevention where he believes true healing lives: at the meeting point of modern cardiology and time-honoured medical traditions. He explains why Western medicine excels at acute saves (stents, bypass, resuscitation) but underinvests in prevention, and how his Wisdom from Two Worlds philosophy—and his platform at DrKiat.com—helps patients pair evidence-based care with practices that build harmony and resilience over decades. Key Discussion Points:The episode maps the levers that truly add healthy years: Mediterranean-leaning meals with fewer ultra-processed carbs and deep-fried foods; more plants and lightly cooked dishes; routine movement (“any movement beats none”); restorative sleep; and trainable responses to stress. He distinguishes measurable load from the stress we manufacture in our interpretation—two people can finish the same task with identical results yet feel completely different based on mindset—so part of heart health is training reactions. Social connection isn’t optional either; loneliness, he notes, carries cardiovascular risk comparable to smoking, making community a medical issue, not a luxury. On misinformation, he shares a clinic vignette: a couple arrives certain—thanks to social media—that a 70% blockage “needs a stent.” It didn’t. The point isn’t to shame patients but to restore standards: ask for credentials, weigh evidence, and individualize decisions. For listeners in their thirties and forties, he outlines the first medical mile: get a baseline cardiac assessment and labs, review family history, blood pressure, glucose, lipids, inflammatory markers, and signs of chronic infection; then tailor further testing with your physician. Takeaways:Healthspan bends to habit. Train what you eat, how you move and sleep, how you meet stress, and who you stay connected to, and biology follows. Prevention is the main event: marry cutting-edge cardiology with proven traditional practices, treat community as medicine, verify before you medicalize social-media advice, and get a baseline assessment in your forties so you’re not flying blind. Most importantly, start small and daily—one walk, one better plate, one calmer reaction—repeated until they become identity. Closing Thoughts:Dr. Kiat’s message is disarmingly practical: decline isn’t a sentence but a series of choices. If you build “healthy habits” and guard your mindset, your heart—and your years—change course. Prevention today is the price of freedom tomorrow. Get more leads and grow your business. Go to https://www.pipedrive.com/founders and get started with a 30 day free trial. Ditch the other hiring sites, and let ZipRecruiter find what you’re looking for — the needle in the haystack. Try it FOR FREE at this exclusive web address: ZipRecruiter.com/WORK. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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