Productivity Mastery

In this special bonus episode on Productivity Mastery, Stoyan Yankov, the co-founder and co-host of The Leaders Who Care podcast and community platform, interviews Masami Sato - Founder and CEO of B1G1 (Buy1Give1). In this episode: ✔️ What makes Japanese companies the most sustainable in the world, ✔️ Reevaluating consumerism lifestyle and focusing on giving vs taking, ✔️ Why "thinking small" can create a much bigger impact, ✔️ How to build a team of truly caring people, ✔️ Practical steps to create a giving culture in any business, and so much more! Masami was born in Japan but her desire to expand her horizons took her on a global journey. She became deeply concerned about the inequalities and other challenges that existed in the world. Since then, she has endeavoured to create real WIN-WIN connections across all cultures, people and organisations to realise a different world. She has been a serial entrepreneur since 2001, starting and running several commercial enterprises, all aiming to transform the way businesses are operated today. And by taking a completely new look at the power of giving, she founded B1G1 (Buy1GIVE1) in 2007. Masami’s approach to life is very different. She brings a new, almost upside-down strategy to everything she does. And she also radiates it through her writing and speaking. She has authored four books including, ‘JOY - The gift of acceptance, trust and love’, ‘GIVING BUSINESS – Creating the maximum impact in the meaning-driven world’ and ‘Better Business, Better Life, Better World’. Masami’s career has followed her diverse talent and skills having been a teacher, translator, natural food chef (and a farmer!), author and award-winning entrepreneur as well as a mother of two teenage children. She is a two-time TEDx speaker and frequently invited to international events, podcasts and interviews. Tune in!

In episode #88 of Productivity Mastery, we’re having a very special and inspiring guest, the man who coined the phrase “We work in a coffee business serving people, but we’re in a people business serving coffee” and built Starbucks as we know it today, the former president of Starbucks Coffee Company International and the author of It's Not About The Coffee: Leadership Principles from a Life at Starbucks, Howard Behar! He shared with us a lot of valuable information, including: 💡  What is servant leadership and how it became part of Starbucks, 💡  How to create a company culture of care, 💡  Some incredible stories about expanding the Starbucks franchise, 💡  How to live up to your values, and much more! Mr. Howard Behar's career in business spans over 50 years, all in consumer-oriented businesses covering several industries. He retired from Starbucks Coffee after 21 years where he led both the domestic business, as President of North America, and was the founding President of Starbucks International. During his tenure, he participated in the growth of the company from 28 stores to over 15,000 stores spanning five continents. He served on the Starbucks Board of Directors for 12 years before retiring. Mr. Behar is currently a Trustee for the Sheri and Les Biller Family Foundation and is on the advisory board of Anthos Capital. He formerly severed as a board member for Starbucks, GAP, Shurgard, University of Washington Foundation, and IDTech to name a few. Mr. Behar is committed to the development and education of our future leaders and has been a longtime advocate of the Servant Leadership Model*. He has also authored two books on leadership titled "It's Not About the Coffee" and "The Magic Cup". Enjoy listening and stay #productive! #starbucks #servantleadership #startup

In episode #87 of Productivity Mastery, we're paying attention to a very important topic, especially for the female entrepreneurs - The Path to Presence and Confidence. Our guest is the inspiring Milica Radak, whose amazing story you can read below. Milica shared with us a lot of valuable lessons, including: 💡  The importance of embracing your emotions and listening to your body, 💡  Living your womanhood, 💡  How to deal with past guilt, shame and fear, 💡  How to be more mindful and confident, and much more! Milica Radak was born in Belgrade, Serbia and immigrated to Canada when she was 11 years old. She is also a single mom of 2 amazing girls, and someone whose life mission is to live as easy, as joyful and as peaceful of a life as possible. But it wasn’t always this way. Milica grew up believing that “Life is hard. A struggle. A survival game.” Thus, it was not too foreign to her when she started struggling with food and body image during her teenage years. Like most, Milica turned to dieting, starvation, overexercising and desperately seeking safety in her own body. It didn’t feel safe to be at her natural weight, so she forced and manipulated her body through food and exercise just to fit into a social ideal. After having her children, Milica started investing more time into herself and her own well-being. She started seeking answers to the most important questions like: “What do I really want from life?” and “Do I really want to spend all my time thinking about food and how to be skinny?" And once she asked, answers started pouring in...  Milica knew she wanted peace, freedom and joy. "I knew I wanted more, so I went after it with all I had. Now, I have finally come to a place where I can hold space for other people’s stories and guide them to their own path to feeling confident in their body while enjoying the foods they love, still being mindful of their physical, emotional and mental health." Having gone through a massive personal transformation and learned countless valuable lessons on her journey, today Milica works as a mentor and coach. Milica provides personal coaching and uniquely-tailored guidance through highly effective mindfulness and self-awareness techniques, and helps people to break free from their patterns so that they can begin designing the future of their dreams. Find Milica on Instagram as @barenaked_me and learn more via https://barenakedme.com/ Enjoy listening and stay #productive!

In episode #86 of Productivity Mastery, we talk about Building a Success-driven Community. And our guest is the Co-founder & CEO at The Recursive, Irina Obushtarova. Spreading the news about innovation & startups in Southeast Europe, that's Irina's mission, so she shared with us lots of candid lessons including: 💡  Her startup experience, past failures, and how she learned from them 💡  How to build a community of success-driven people 💡  How to make your workers relate more to your projects 💡  Some useful leadership tips for perfectionists, and much more! Irina started her career path in Vienna, working in media and communications. In 2016, she made her first attempt as an entrepreneur when she co-founded WelcomeBuddy - a platform for expats in Austria. The venture failed to launch, but the experience gained had a huge effect on her decisions later on. On one side, by observing how migration trends in Europe lead to massive brain drain in Southeast Europe, Irina identified a new mission. On the other, Irina also developed a strong passion for disruptive business models and the startup world. Later on, she gained experience in digital marketing and sales, working for various tech companies in the B2B segment in DACH. In 2018, Irina decided to move back to Bulgaria - and the media sector, helping establish the first international outlet of Trending Topics in Sofia. Three years later, she and her co-founder, Etien Yovchev, launched the regional media project The Recursive. By combining news media with ecosystem mapping and a content marketing agency, their mission is to help innovative ventures from Emerging Europe scale internationally and get the visibility they deserve. Irina holds a degree in Mass Media & Communication Studies from the University of Vienna. In 2021, she was awarded Female Entrepreneur of the Year by La French Tech community in Bucharest. As a member of the advisory board of Entrepreneurs in Class, Irina is committed to inspiring an entrepreneurial mindset in young students. Enjoy listening and stay #productive! #productivity #podcast #communications #contentmarketing

In episode #85 of Productivity Mastery, we talk about The Surprising Power of the Real YOU. And the person to take us through this journey is the super-energetic and inspiring speaker/author/artist - Ryan Foland! He shared with us his valuable expertise, including: 💡  How to really connect with your audience 💡  Telling the story of the Real You 💡  How to create a true personal brand 💡  Becoming a speaker in 2021, and much more! Ryan Foland is a high-energy speaker, author, and consultant who teaches entrepreneurs and executives how to grow their influence. His 3-1-3® Method uncovers core brand messaging to guide bespoke branding strategies. He specializes in helping leaders harness the power of authenticity by teaching them how to create content that reveals their whole self to drive differentiation, growth, and loyalty. Ryan believes in the simplicity of messaging and of simply being you. He is recognized for his expertise when it comes to marketing people, which is most commonly known as "personal branding." His clients include New York Times bestselling authors, venture capitalists, and Fortune 500 executives. In his book, Ditch the Act, published by McGraw-Hill, Ryan shares the art of being perfectly imperfect. Ryan is a four-time TEDx speaker and has been featured in Forbes, Fortune, Inc., Entrepreneur, and more. For fun, Ryan loves to sail, rap, and draw Stick Figure NFT art. Learn more at ryan.online Enjoy listening and stay #productive!

In episode #83 of Productivity Mastery, we talk about Growth Mindset and Growth Hacking. And our guest is the Best-Selling Instructor & Podcaster, Maja Voje. Being also a growth advisor, Maja shared with us tons of valuable lessons and practical advice, including: 💡  Leading a business through a growth mindset 💡  How to create a collaborative culture in your company 💡  How to market and monetize a knowledge product 💡  Creating content by learning to listen to your audience And much more! Maja Voje is a globally recognized growth advisor and practitioner. She has built her career in leading technology companies such as Google and Rocket Internet. As a lecturer, she participates in one of the best-selling online courses at the Udemy online classroom, which has already been taken by more than 51,000 international students. As a consultant, she has helped develop growth strategies and build growth teams for more than 300 American, German, Austrian, Swedish, Belgian, Dutch, and Slovenian companies operating in international markets. In her career, she has helped several companies invest up to 10-25 million and scale from 20 million to 60-100 million in yearly revenue. Maja studied at Said Business School, Oxford University, Wirtschaftsuniversität in Vienna, and the Shanghai Institute of International Trade. Enjoy listening and stay #productive!

We all love to hear stories about successful companies and the next unicorn that has emerged in the region. We go out and tell everyone how “cool” it is to be an entrepreneur and post about it on every possible social media account.  Let's take a pause! And let's have a real talk! Entrepreneurship is not only "sunshine and roses." It takes relentless commitment, and often the journey is much harder than we expect. What does it really take to build a long-term successful company? What mindset, strategies, and unsexy habits are required to grow a peak-performing team that has what it takes to succeed?  Productivity & Performance coach and Global Speaker: Stoyan Yankov will share key learnings that he's discovered together with his co-author: Cristobal Alonso (CEO, Startup Wise Guys) while writing a book about startup culture and performance, and interviewing hundreds of successful founders from the region. Get ready for a ride! Tune in!

In this episode, Lauren shares with us a variety of insights from her experience and gives a lot of practical advice, including on: 💡  Achieving productivity through prioritization 💡  How to nourish your team and make them motivated to do their best 💡  How to develop an onboarding process strategy 💡  The difference between striving for excellence and struggling with perfectionism ...and much more! Lauren leads consultant PwC’s design practice. The British native has spent the last 15 years building and leading diverse design teams and has realized large-scale projects for global brands including Audi, Coca-Cola, Huawei, Heineken, and Unilever. Listed by business magazine Campaign as one of “30 female creative trailblazers in the UK,” Lauren is an avid supporter of initiatives such as “Creative Equals,” “SheSays,” and “Who’s Your Momma.” But work doesn’t end at the doorstep for the Executive Creative Director who also likes solving design challenges in her private life, describing herself as an “OCD house renovator.” Enjoy watching and stay #productive!

In this episode, Chris Robbins, Chief Customer Officer and CEO of Tele2 Estonia, talks about leading a company in a value-based way. He shares with us a lot of practical advice based on his impressive expertise: 💡  How to make a turn-round in your company for 100 days 💡  How to transform your company's culture 💡  A bottom-up approach for creating your company's values 💡  How to live and make decisions for your company according to your values And much more... Chris Robbins is a passionate leader of values-based challenger organizations, with a particular focus on customer-centricity, communication, and psychology. Chris has lived and worked in 7 countries across North America and Europe and has covered 13 countries in the scope of the roles of a CMO, CCO, CEO, and EIEIO. Enjoy listening and stay #productive!

In this jubilee episode #80, we’re talking about how you can boost your B2B sales. Our guest is the inventor of ‘The Launch Code’ - Zoltan A. Vardy. This episode is an absolute must-hear, especially if you're a new startup founder. Zoltan shares a lot about: 💡 The building blocks of a business, 💡 How to create a compelling client message, 💡 How to show potential clients that you're credible, 💡 Tips for growing your network and building business relationships, and much more! Zoltan Vardy is a business growth mentor with 30 years of global corporate and entrepreneurial experience who helps B2B startup founders scale their business internationally by applying his 9-step business development framework called ‘The Launch Code.’ Zoltan spent 20 years as a senior media executive, and 10 years as an entrepreneur, investor, and advisor. He has experienced both corporate comforts and entrepreneurial uncertainties, and knows the thrill and challenges of creating “something from nothing” first-hand. Zoltan created ‘The Launch Code,’ a 9-step business development framework that helps B2B technology startups boost their revenues by adapting corporate planning, sales, and management techniques to a startup environment. In this way, he has accelerated the revenue growth of hundreds of startups in agtech, medtech, AI, business services, and media. Enjoy listening and stay #productive!