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I open my mailbox. Real mail. Not a flyer from a store I’ve never visited. Inside is a hand-written note and a Starbucks card from across the border. I was a guest on Morris Sims’ podcast, The Commission Code, and this was his thank you. I stood there in the hallway, genuinely touched. In a world of automated emails and quick “thanks so much!” DMs, physical mail across international borders stops you cold. It’s the kind of gesture you remember for a long time. On the episode,

2021. TikTok is exploding for consumer brands. I am on a Zoom call with a TikTok marketer. She’s created millions of views for other clients. Millions. She is not a personality fit. I know that quickly. I hire her anyway. The numbers are too good to ignore. I was hiring the stats, not the person. Within weeks, it is clear. She is not a right fit. I keep her on. For months. Long after it is obviously a disaster. Because I cannot have the hard conversation. Last Sunday, I told

Not the title. Not the introduction first. That's where most speeches go wrong before they even start. I've given a good number of talks this year, and every single time, I follow the exact same structure to build a talk that actually lands: 1. Start with the core throughline What is the ONE thing you are talking about? Define your thesis before you write a single paragraph. For example: "What success means to me." Everything you write next hinges on this single anchor.

Two minutes and forty-three seconds. That's the whole episode. I was just featured on the, "Do This First" podcast, and it might be the fastest guest spot I've ever done. Bite-sized episodes, no filler, no long intros. The TikTok of podcasts, basically. I talked about the 30-second decision framework I use with founders: the filter that tells you instantly whether something is a "do it," a "delegate it," or a "drop it." Decision fatigue is real for CEOs, and most of it comes

Last-minute decision to go to The Great Gatsby, and it reminded me of a harsh truth about business presentations: If your talk is just slides and spreadsheets, you've already lost the room. I’ve been a lifelong fan of theater, and it’s impossible to overstate how much the arts have shaped me as an entrepreneur. Business is part science, part art. The science is numbers, unit economics and operational systems. The art? The art is where human connection happens. Having delivere

I prepped for an AI workshop by asking AI to list all the ways I use AI. So meta, I know. Jim Carty invited me to join an interactive session on practical AI uses for business with the Black Youth Entrepreneur & Innovation Program (BYEI) here in Ottawa. I spent a Saturday afternoon surrounded by early-stage founders sharing how they use AI to build and scale their ventures. A few of the many use cases discussed: Vibe Coding Copyediting Brainstorming ideas Building websites Da

As founders and entrepreneurs, we launch our companies with a clear vision: to solve meaningful problems, innovate, and build something impactful. But as the business grows, it’s all too easy to wake up one day submerged under hiring tasks, customer service issues, endless operational decisions, and a dozen active Slack channels. When every single operational choice runs through you, growth stalls and the business starts running you instead of the other way around. I recently

Here’s the talk I recently gave at my speaking club about building your own framework for a fulfilling life. How do you define success for yourself? You can watch the talk here.

"I stopped pitching a year ago." A founder walked up to me after my workshop a while ago. I had just finished teaching a session on building sell sheets, the one-page pitch document you use to get products onto retail shelves, whether it’s a local neighborhood boutique or a giant like Costco. During the session, I didn't just share the templates and tactics. I shared the scars. I talked about the brutal mountain of rejection I faced building my product brand. The inbox full o

January 2023. My home office. 11:00 PM. The holiday rush was over. Everyone else was recovering from Christmas. And I was staring at my warehouse software watching a number that would not stop haunting me. Thousands of units of my product. Sitting in a warehouse. Going nowhere. I had miscalculated. Overordered. Storage fees were ticking up every single day. I was completely embarrassed… I've shared pieces of this story in writing before, but I wanted to share the spoken versi

6:30 PM. A room full of immigrant founders at Immigrant Entrepreneur Canada And two kids sitting quietly on their parents' laps. I was there to give a talk. I ended up leaving with something I did not expect: a reminder of what it actually costs some people to show up. These founders were not just investing their evenings. They were negotiating childcare, packing snacks, and figuring out logistics, all so they could be in that room, learning, building, growing. To the organiz

I have the brain of a nerd and the heart of an artist. A few weeks ago, my girlfriends and I went to see the musical Once. It was absolutely phenomenal. We couldn't stop talking about it for hours after the curtain fell. In the days that followed, I couldn’t help but reflect on how deeply the arts influence my life as an entrepreneur. I have a highly analytical mind. I started my career as a programmer and engineer. I still code. I love diving into numbers, forecasting, and b

How do you get your products onto retail shelves? I recently condensed a two-hour presentation on retail distribution into a punchy five-minute talk for my speaking club, sharing exactly how I started my business and pitched major retailers. You can watch the talk here. (Note: The video briefly freezes between 0:34 and 0:44, apologies for the technical glitch!)

Last week, I returned to Immigrant Entrepreneur Canada to talk about what happens after you've cracked your first market. Same room of brilliant founders. Same incredible energy. A whole new set of challenges to dig into. This time, we went deep into international expansion. We covered: - Funding purchase orders from bigger retailers, both in the U.S. and Canada, because a big yes from a retailer can break you financially if you're not prepared - Private labeling opportunitie

Two hours flew by in what felt like two minutes. Last week, I stood in front of 25 brilliant founders for Immigrant Entrepreneur Canada, diving deep into the realities of product distribution. We covered the exact steps it takes to get products onto shelves, including: - The raw reality of building and scaling my previous brand, The Radiant Rhino - How to build a sell sheet, the one document every retailer will ask for, that makes a buyer stop and look - Navigating trade show

The auditorium was silent, but the presence was deafening. As a child in India, I watched the magician PC Sorcar Jr. command a massive room. I didn’t know what "presence" was back then, but I felt it. That memory stayed with me for decades. It also convinced me of something that took years to unlearn: that I was not a presenter. A couple of weeks ago, I finally stepped up to the podium to deliver my first formal five-minute speech at my speaking club. I titled it after that l