Our guest today is Angela Smith, an investor at Origin Ventures. Origin Ventures is an early-stage venture capital (VC) firm investing in software and marketplace businesses in the digital native economy. Angela walks us through what is VC, how she worked her way into VC (after being a middle and high school teacher), the current state of VC investing, and her thoughts on being a women in a traditionally male-dominated industry.

This episode dives deep into how one can think about optimizing one's career while acknowledging the trade-offs with such optimization. When should one switch jobs? How should one think about work-life balance, about wealth creation? What does optimizing in a job look like? We also discuss what entrepreneurship through acquisition looks like with a personal experience of becoming an owner-operator. Our guest this episode is Matt Phillips. Matt graduated from BYU's MBA in 2019. Matt shares his insights on these topics while addressing his highlights and stresses of being an owner-operator.

Back from my little sabbatical to have an interesting discussion regarding Women's Rights, abortion, pornography and other cultural issues. Our guest for this episode is Nicole Wawro, founder and President of Fluence. Fluence is a social media platform dedicated to covering Women's Issues from a non-woke perspective. Fluence currently has over 19K followers on Instagram and over 400K followers on TikTok.

Our guest in this episode is Robbie Hulme, CEO and Founder at Impact Funeral Partners. Robbie graduated from the BYU MBA program in 2020. While in school, Robbie learned about search funds - what they are and how they operate. After spending a couple of months talking to people in the industry, Robbie decided to do a search fund. This episode explores the start of Robbie's search fund, how it has evolved and the current status of the fund.

Our guest for this episode is Chris Redfern, CFO and COO of Oncoor Marketing. Oncoor Marketing is a sports marketing agency which helps athletes navigate the new NCAA Name, Image, and Likeness or NIL policy. Oncoor helps bridge the gap between brands and athletes. Oncoor currently represents more than 65 athletes across professional, collegiate, and Olympic sports.

In this episode, Chris explains how he got involved with a sports marketing agency, how the college athletics landscape is changing, and how deals, sponsors, and money are flowing to not only the top athletes but also non-star athletes as well. As a bonus, we also discuss BYU football and the impact of joining the Big 12.

Our guest on this episode is Kelly Wood. Kelly won the college sailing national championship in 2012 while at Boston College. She has been sailing for 25 years. She currently works at Amazon and continues to sail in her spare time. In this episode, we discuss the changing landscape (or lack thereof) of college athletics due to the new NCAA NIL policy, mental health and resilience, and the importance of having hobbies outside of work.

One note - in the episode, I mention the Ryder Cup. This should have been the America Cup.

Our guest in this episode is Retired Major Kyle Williams. Kyle Williams served in Afghanistan from 2004-2005. In Afghanistan as a Major, Kyle was the S4 Head Logistics Officer. He also flew Apaches during his time there. In this episode, we discuss his experience in the military, why he joined, his deployment in Afghanistan including coming home, dealing with the VA and PTSD. We also discuss military strategy, the US pullout in Afghanistan and the subsequent implications of our actions. We round off our discussion talking about leadership both within the military and in the political sphere. Enjoy!