The Entrepreneur DNA

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1. Why Most AI Projects Fail (And How to Be the Exception) | Stephen Straus & Ben Szuhaj

   4 november 2026 · 35 min

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   GET THE BOOK: Wayfinding: A Business Fable About Leading in the Age of AI Lees meer

   Order now in hardcover, ebook, or audiobook: https://wayfindingbook.com

   Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1637749848

   Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/?ean=9781637749845

   Simon & Schuster: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Wayfinding/Stephen-Straus/9781637749845

   Most AI projects never make it to production. Stephen Straus and Ben Szuhaj's team gets 96% of theirs there.

   In this episode, I sat down with Stephen Straus and Ben Szuhaj, co-authors of Wayfinding: A Business Fable About Leading in the Age of AI. Stephen started KUNGFU.AI back in 2017, long before most "AI experts" showed up, and his team now gets 96% of its AI projects into production while most of the industry struggles to get even 10% there. We talked about why they wrote the book as a parable, the AI tools business owners forget exist beyond ChatGPT, and why "we're automating our business" isn't a strategy if you believe AI will disrupt everything. Ben broke down how a trucking finance company used AI to approve invoices in seconds instead of hours without laying anyone off, and Stephen shared the wild story of waking up in Yellowstone with the entire outline of the book in his head. If you want to be the disruptor in your industry instead of the next Blockbuster, this one is for you.

   In this episode:

   Why Wayfinding was written as a business parable

   The full AI toolbox: predictive analytics, computer vision, anomaly detection and more

   How KUNGFU.AI gets 96% of AI projects into production

   Why automating your business isn't the same as having an AI strategy

   The real reasons companies struggle with AI: misalignment, egos, and fear

   How to grow revenue without growing headcount (and without layoffs)

   The Triumph Financial case study: invoice decisions in seconds, not hours

   Wayfinding vs. navigating: leading when you don't know the destination

   The Yellowstone moment that sparked the book

   ABOUT THE GUE…

2. Why Doing LESS Took This 30-Year-Old From $29K to $2M a Month | Brandon Willington

   31 oktober 2026 · 41 min

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   GET BRANDON'S NEW BOOK: F*ck Your Agency - youragencybook.com Lees meer

   Know your customers better than any agency ever will. Brandon's 10 timeless principles for ads, landing pages, and sales so you can grow your business yourself, no matter how the platforms change.

   Available on Amazon and everywhere books are sold.

   ️ATTEND A "WHERE U?" WORKSHOP

   US Workshops: https://withu.whereu.com.au/withu-us

   Australia Workshops: https://ahoy.whereu.com.au/withu

   Website: https://whereu.com.au

   Why would a 30-year-old cut 75% of what he sells right when his business needs money? That's what I asked Brandon Willington, founder of Where U?, and his answer surprised me. Brandon was running a done-for-you agency with packages for every kind of client and every kind of funnel. He was buried in operational bloat and owed a quarter million dollars to the Australian tax office. Then he noticed his small workshop offer was three times more profitable than everything else, so he cut the rest. He stuck to one offer, one type of customer, and getting 1% better at one presentation, and monthly revenue went from about $29K to over $2 million. We break down how he applies that same "do less" thinking everywhere: running one ad channel until it plateaus before adding another, keeping funnels to one step or two, ignoring organic content until he passed $1M a month, and using a one-page plan to throw out any idea that doesn't move the business forward. If you're stuck because you're trying to do everything, this episode will show you what to cut.

   WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

   Why cutting 75% of his offers made the business grow faster

   The sales call that turned "go watch a YouTube video" into a two-day workshop people fly in for

   How he put three new hires on payroll the same day his investor backed out

   Why the business owner beats the agency: they know the customer, they're the most financially motivated, and they move the fastest

   The "curious vs. committed" spectrum and why some lead magnet ads fill your…

3. How to Raise Confident Kids: The Parenting Mistake Almost Everyone Makes | Raleigh Williams

   27 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 13 min

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   I sat down with Raleigh Williams, a former M&A attorney who walked away from a top five law firm after a panic attack, built and sold an entertainment business, and now teaches parents how to raise genuinely confident kids. We got into why praising your kids for being smart or pretty can actually backfire, what to say when your child says “I can’t” or “I’m so dumb,” and his 4 C’s framework of core values, courage, competence, and compassion. Then the conversation went somewhere I didn’t expect. Raleigh opened up about chasing his father’s approval into law, the two years they didn’t speak after he left, losing his best friend to suicide, and why he now believes confidence matters even more than purpose. I shared how my own mother’s addiction became the toughest lesson I ever got, and we talked about the idea that we choose our parents for a reason. If you’re a parent, an entrepreneur, or someone still trying to trust your own voice, this one is for you. Lees meer

   ---

   GUEST BIO

   Raleigh Williams is a former mergers and acquisitions attorney turned entrepreneur, investor, and author. After graduating from a top five law school and joining a top five global law firm, he left nine months in to start an escape room business. He grew Williams Entertainment to seven locations across three states, adding trampoline parks, axe throwing, and other entertainment venues, and sold it for $26 million. Today he invests in founder-led businesses through his firm DealMaven and created Exit OS, a system that helps business owners build companies that grow without them and are actually sellable. He is the author of The Creator’s Call, an Amazon bestseller about leaving the default path for a life of purpose. A father of three, Raleigh has built a large Instagram following teaching parents how to raise kids with real, lasting confidence.

   CONNECT WITH RALEIGH

   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raleighw/

   Website / DealMaven: https://www.dealmaven.io

   ---

   About Justin:

   Justin Colby is the…

4. From Navy Discipline to $18M Entrepreneur in 3 Years | Eric Winegard

   24 oktober 2026 · 47 min

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   Eric Winegard’s story is not the polished founder myth. Before he became CEO and co-founder of Rare Blue Moon Marketing, he was a kid raised by a single mother on welfare, a teenager experimenting with drugs, and a young man who realized no one was coming to save him. Lees meer

   In this episode of Entrepreneur DNA, Justin Colby sits down with Eric to unpack how he went from 17 years in a W-2 sales role to building an $18 million marketing business in just three years.

   What You’ll Learn in This Episode

   How Eric went from a troubled childhood to military discipline

   Why sales became the skill that changed his life

   The difference between networking and selling

   Why most marketers don’t understand sales

   How Rare Blue Moon Marketing scaled so quickly

   Why organic content and paid ads need to work together

   What business owners get wrong when hiring agencies

   Why commitment matters more than talent

   ---

   About Justin:

   Justin Colby is the host of The Entrepreneur DNA and The M.O.R.E Show podcasts and a best-selling author. He is a serial entrepreneur and a seasoned real estate investor with over 20 years of experience.

   Driven by a passion to help entrepreneurs thrive, Justin created the Entrepreneur DNA community to support business owners in building wealth, systems, and long-term freedom. Through his podcasts, books, education platforms, and hands-on mentorship, he continues to help entrepreneurs scale with clarity and confidence.

   Connect with Justin:

   Instagram: @thejustincolby

   YouTube: Justin Colby

   TikTok: @justincolbytsof

   LinkedIn: Justin Colby

   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

5. How the Rich Actually Stay Rich (Family Office Secrets) | Kristian Mtetwa

   13 oktober 2026 · 36 min

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   In this episode I sat down with Kristian Mtetwa, a wealth advisor who leads Synergy Private, a multifamily office serving athletes, entertainers, entrepreneurs, and executives. We start by busting the biggest myth about the rich: they aren’t hoarding money, they’re obsessed with adding value because that’s the only way to keep it. Kristian explains what a family office actually does, why giving anyone power of attorney over your money is a massive liability, and the numbers ($10M liquid net worth or $1M in annual income) where it starts to make sense. We dig into ambition vs. envy, why you focus to get wealthy but diversify to stay wealthy, how to avoid shiny object syndrome, and why liquidity matters more than most people think. I also share my own hard lessons from 2024, what I learned in my mastermind about using lines of credit instead of long-term loans, and how I use whole life insurance like a personal bank. If you want to build wealth that actually lasts, with long obedience in a specific direction and aggressive patience, this one’s for you. Lees meer

   Guest Bio

   Raised in the suburbs of Nashville, Kristian is a Zimbabwean immigrant to the US and a nationally recognized wealth advisor specializing in advising the ultra-affluent. He entered financial services at age 18 before earning a Certificate in Financial Markets from Yale and becoming an Accredited Investment Fiduciary. He has held leadership positions at several financial institutions and now leads a Black-owned multifamily office with clients across the country. That firm is Synergy Private, a boutique wealth advisory firm operating as a multifamily office that offers bespoke financial guidance for ultra-affluent individuals and their families, available by invitation only. He was named 49 Financial’s Advisor of the Year for 2022 after nearly tripling his personal client roster. He is also a speaker on career development, entrepreneurship, and financial planning, and has been featured in Financial Planning, T…

6. Being a Great Operator Is My Biggest Vulnerability | Gary Vaynerchuk

   29 september 2026 · 46 min

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   Your operator strengths might be the very thing holding you back. Gary Vaynerchuk shares a hard financial realization. Lees meer

   Gary Vaynerchuk is known for spotting internet trends years before they happen. But even with that foresight, he faced a brutal reality in 2026. Sometimes, the skills that get you to a certain level of business growth are the exact same habits that prevent you from scaling further.

   ---

   In this episode, I sat down with my GOAT, Gary Vaynerchuk, and he did not hold back. Gary broke down his entire empire, from VaynerX and VeeFriends to Vayner Sports and his new TV production company, and explained why he refuses to follow the "just focus on one business" advice so many of us preach. He opened up about building Wine Library into a $50 million business for his dad, walking away at 34 with nothing, and growing VaynerX to roughly $400 million in revenue without a single outside dollar to start. We got tactical on where attention is right now, including TikTok Live, Substack, Facebook, YouTube Shorts, and Snapchat Spotlight, and why he calls this the era of "interest media." Then we went deep: why being a great operator is his biggest vulnerability, why he has no one he goes to for advice, how he runs his companies like a family business, and whether Gary Vee is actually happy. This one is packed with real advice you can use today.

   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

7. Why the Smartest Entrepreneurs Are Choosing Community Over AI | Heather Simpson

   18 september 2026 · 42 min

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   Everyone wants to talk about AI, but my guest this week would rather talk about people. Heather Simpson spent years in real estate building brokerages and personal brands for agents before making a hard pivot to build something for women entrepreneurs specifically. Today she runs Her Connection Hub, a coworking and community space in the Pacific Northwest, and she is expanding into Northern California. We got into why she thinks too many people are outsourcing their thinking, the gap she saw between hustle culture and the "make a million from the beach" crowd, and what actually separates the women who win from the ones who stall out. We also had a real conversation about sacrifice, about what it costs a mother to go after something bigger, and about how she is adapting a physical business in a challenging 2026 economy. Heather uses AI for systems, never for her voice, and honestly I think that is where the smart operators are landing. If you are a builder who feels wired for more, this one is for you. Lees meer

   About Heather:

   Heather Simpson is a business strategist, community builder, and the founder of Her Connection Hub, a female-focused coworking community in Bellingham, Washington. Simpson began offering monthly Connection Breakfasts in 2018, and they proved to be the catalyst for something much bigger. The events resonated deeply with attendees, who then voiced their desire for a physical coworking space, and so Simpson turned that dream into a reality with Her Connection Hub, which opened to the public in 2021. Before building for entrepreneurs, Heather spent years in real estate helping agents develop their brands and helping launch brokerages. She is also the founder of She Leads Me, a company devoted to supporting women on their individual journeys in their lives, careers, and businesses. She hosts the podcast Shatter This, a show for leaders, founders, and builders who are done outsourcing their thinking and ready to create what actually lasts. Her first book, S…

8. The Woman Behind Gemini: How AI Is Actually Built and Who It Will Replace | Sneha Shah

   15 september 2026 · 39 min

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   AI is all anyone can talk about right now, but most of us are just getting started with it while the giants have been building it for two decades. In this episode I sat down with Sneha Shah, CEO and co-founder of Hazel AI, who spent nearly 20 years at Amazon and Google as the engineer behind the scenes. She was on the team that built Amazon same-day delivery and scaled it to ten countries, then went to Google as a founding engineer on Cloud Spanner, the global database that powers companies like Deutsche Bank and Nintendo, before building Vertex AI and scaling it into Gemini Enterprise. We broke down how AI actually gets built (yes, it is real people writing real code), why Amazon delivery has always been a losing model, why AWS is where the money is, and the difference between knowledge and wisdom in an LLM. Then we got into Hazel AI, the engine she is building underneath the biggest tech consulting firms on the planet, and the honest conversation everyone is avoiding: which jobs AI is going to take, which ones it is going to create, and why the opportunity has never been bigger for the people willing to get uncomfortable and level up. If you want to hear where AI is going from someone who has actually been in the trenches instead of another influencer guessing, this one is for you. Lees meer

   About Guest:

   Sneha Shah is the CEO and co-founder of Hazel AI, an Autonomous AI Modernization OS that powers global system integrators as they take Global 2000 enterprises from cloud native to AI native. Before founding Hazel, Sneha spent nearly two decades building at the largest scale on the planet. She started her career at Amazon straight out of Carnegie Mellon University, where she was part of the team that built same-day delivery and scaled it across ten countries. She then spent almost a decade at Google Cloud as a founding engineer on Cloud Spanner, the globally distributed database used by companies like Deutsche Bank and Nintendo, growing the team from four to hundreds and …

9. The New Era of Search: AI, SEO, and What You Need to Know | Kevin Roy

   11 september 2026 · 40 min

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   In this episode I sit down with Kevin C. Roy, CEO of GreenBanana SEO, who's spent the last 15 years mastering search engine optimization and is now at the forefront of how AI is completely rewriting the rules of how businesses get found online. Kevin walks me through his wild entrepreneurial journey, from getting laid off and going door to door offering free websites, to bringing on a 50/50 business partner that nearly sank everything, to surviving a lawsuit from a sales partner who tried to put him out of business entirely. We get real about why most business partnerships fail and what he'd do differently. Then we dig into the meat of what his agency does today: how AI engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude decide who to cite, why building your author authority and connecting it to your content is now more important than keyword stuffing, and the exact three-block content format businesses need to use to get found by AI instead of just Google. If you run a business and you're not thinking about how customers are finding you through AI search right now, this conversation is your wake-up call. Lees meer

   Guest Bio & Social Links

   Kevin C. Roy is the Founder and CEO of GreenBanana SEO, an Inc. 5000 (3x) digital marketing and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) agency based in Beverly, Massachusetts, that he's built over more than 15 years into a pay-for-performance SEO and AI search visibility firm. He's a frequent podcast guest, author, and media commentator on SEO, AI search, and AEO/GEO, with commentary and work featured in Adweek, SiliconANGLE, Inc., Boston 25 News, and Techstrong TV.

   Website: greenbananaseo.com

   LinkedIn (personal): linkedin.com/in/kevincharlesroy

   LinkedIn (company): linkedin.com/company/greenbanana-seo

   Instagram: instagram.com/greenbananaseo

   X/Twitter: twitter.com/greenbananaseo

   Facebook: facebook.com/GreenBananaSEO

   YouTube: youtube.com/@GreenBananaSEO

   About Justin:

   Justin Colby is the host of The Entrepreneur DNA and The M.O.R.E Show podcasts and…

10. The Messy Middle: How to Build a Business When Your Life Is Falling Apart | Christina Deering

    9 september 2026 · 46 min

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    In this episode, I sit down with Christina Deering, energy and intuition coach and host of the You Unlimited podcast, to talk about something I think about constantly: how the energy you bring to your business matters just as much as the strategy. Christina walks us through the difference between wishing for something and actually being aligned with it, why so many business owners build something they don't even want and end up wanting to burn it down, and how to use your body to tell whether you're in the right lane. She opens up about going through four back-to-back miscarriages while simultaneously doubling her business, and how healing that grief actually expanded her capacity to hold a bigger vision for her life and work. We get into practical tools like the "alter ego" exercise, "trusting the crickets" through the messy middle, and her five-minute energy reset for staying grounded when everything outside of you feels out of control. If you've ever felt like you're doing everything right but still stuck, or like your business is exploding while your personal life is falling apart, this conversation gives you real, practical ways to work through it. Lees meer

    About Christina:

    Christina Deering is a Shaman, Business Intuitive, Keynote Speaker and creator of the Calibration Keys Methodology. She helps visionary entrepreneurs become the known expert in their industry, expand their income and impact and have the time of their lives doing it.

    Her insights have been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Psychology Today, ABC and FOX, and she’s the host of the top 5% podcast You Unlimited.

    Join Calibration Keys: http://christinadeering.com/keys

    5 Minute Energy Reset: https://christinadeering.com/reset

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamchristinadeering/

    Podcast (You Unlimited): available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

    Website: https://christinadeering.com/

    About Justin:

    Justin Colby is the host of The Entrepreneur DNA and The M.O.R.E Show podcasts and a best-selling a…

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