Hacks and Hobbies with Junaid Ahmed

5 key takeaways: Moonshot as legacy: Digital assets on the moon turned an improbable idea into a deeply emotional milestone for a global community. Entrepreneurs as nation-builders: Startup mindset and product thinking accelerate governance — but require new leadership skills. Space needs law now: Without regulation, space activities risk large-scale harm; lawyers and business leaders must shape p...

Key takeaways: How personal crisis (vision loss + addiction + financial collapse) can be reframed into a purpose-driven business mission. Why traditional hearing aids fail many users — and how open-ear, bone-conduction designs reduce stigma and cost. The front-line work: what door-to-door trust-building with seniors taught Michael about product adoption. The Flow Group’s product features that matt...

Five key takeaways Surface‑level success is often a default script — define success on your own terms before you spend years chasing it. Big wins can create new misalignment; after achievement, pause and re‑redesign your life around what actually matters. Use environment and community deliberately: put yourself where your desired norms are already the norm. Identity signals attract support — show...

5 key takeaways: Discomfort is inevitable — choosing the hard path often leads to deeper, lasting growth. We habitually value immediate comfort over long-term benefit ("swipe now, pay later") — awareness is the first step. Confidence is domain-specific: preparation, repetition, authenticity, and courage are the practical levers. Make "win-win" micro-decisions that feel good now and compound into l...

5 Bullet Takeaways Mindset is the foundation, not the fluff: unaddressed limiting beliefs sabotage even the best strategies. Motivational interviewing is a powerful, non‑confrontational tool to surface blind spots and elicit the answers people already hold. Small, visible rituals (affirmations, journaling, grounding) wire new neural pathways and make confidence habitual. Authentic leadership and m...

5 Key Takeaways The mountaineering mindset: break big goals into micro-steps, celebrate small wins, and keep momentum through mini-rewards. Reframe “failure” as information — use consequences and curiosity to iterate, not to shame. Forensic nursing sharpened rapid decision-making, de-escalation, and crisis leadership skills that translate directly to high-stakes business situations. Recognize surv...

5 key takeaways Growth is an engineering problem: opinions don’t scale — data does. Single-channel dependency (Meta ads only) is the fastest route to bankruptcy. Time-to-interact matters: every second above ~1.7–2.0s costs ~7% conversion. Rapid, repeatable sprints + AI can compress multi-year growth into weeks. Stop chasing “magic bullets”; focus on quality strategy, product differentiation, and e...

Timestamps: 0:01 — What is the Rapid 2x Protocol? Sabir’s 25‑year engineering experiment that became a system 3:12 — Attention economics: the 1.7‑second rule and why ads aren’t the problem 7:28 — Mobile truth: 72% of your buyers are on phones — are you designing for them? 13:53 — The first action step: run GTmetrix on your best‑selling product page (TTI explained) 18:31 — Dangerous illusion: most...

This episode made me rethink everything I believed about fundraising — not as a sprint for cash, but as a discipline of integrity, patience, and business hygiene. Michael Haskell walks us through two decades of building finance teams across New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and the US — and the exact playbook he uses to help founders raise capital without selling their soul. From the early bootstr...

When the funding hits the bank, everything changes — your team, your decisions, your sleep. In this raw, curious conversation, Michael Haskell pulls back the curtain on the moment every founder either becomes a leader or gets eaten by growth. He explains how to spend with discipline, hire with rigor, and keep the sense of urgency that made you successful in the first place. In this episode of Hack...

A raw, hopeful conversation about growing up into yourself.  In this second part of our deep dive with Dr. Deborah Heiser, we move from the neuroscience of aging into the practical — mentorship, storytelling, and the day-to-day legacy you can build now. This episode turns the fear of midlife into a toolkit for purpose: how emotional maturity becomes your secret power, why some stories should be re...

Midlife isn’t a downhill spiral — it’s a calling. In this episode, Dr. Deborah Heiser reframes aging, mentorship, and legacy so you can turn what feels like a ‘crisis’ into a catalytic second act. Short description Dr. Deborah Heiser (applied developmental psychologist, CEO & founder of The Mentor Project, TEDx speaker and author of The Mentorship Edge) joins Junaid to dismantle myths about midlif...

Robert Plank didn’t start podcasting to chase fame — he started because he felt invisible. What followed was 1,400 episodes, a business built around conversation, and a systems-first way to stay visible without burning out. Description: Robert walks us through the slow-burn alchemy of building a podcast into a platform: how podcasting taught him social skills, why guests rescued him from creative...

What if one recorded conversation could power an entire month of visibility?   In this episode Robert Plank — the relentless creator behind Marketer of the Day with over 1,400 episodes — walks Junaid through the exact mindset and workflow that turns a single podcast into a month’s worth of magnetic content. This is less about perfection and more about systems, small wins, and the emotional grit of...

A filmmaker turned software founder shares the inciting moment when Hollywood craft collided with personal focus, sparking an app built to help creators reclaim deep work and meaning. In this episode Steven Puri — visual effects producer (Independence Day, Transformers), serial builder, and CEO of Suka — walks Junaid through the pivots, creative rituals, and real-world constraints that shaped his...

Short description   If you keep waking up and losing the morning to scrolling, this episode is for you.   Steven Puri — from IBM and Hollywood sets to building Suka — walks Junaid through the exact mental switches and tiny systems that turn distraction into sustained, creative output. This is not fluff about productivity hacks; it’s a candid, emotional conversation about intention, environment, an...

Style is more than clothes — it’s the first sentence of your story.  In this emotional, curiosity-driven conversation, Elaine Johnston traces a lifetime of fashion and writing that led her to help people translate presence into trust. From journaling outfits in high school to co-founding a podcast production company and launching a cryptid storytelling show, Elaine shows how constraints, practice,...

You don’t need perfect to be magnetic — you need one story, one palette, and the courage to practice.   In this intimate, practical conversation, Elaine Johnston — a storytelling and style strategist — walks Junaid through a simple, repeatable framework for turning the mess of self-doubt into a confident, memorable public presence. This episode is part how-to, part therapy: the kind of tactical co...

What if success didn’t mean sacrificing your health, family or sanity?   In this episode Junaid sits down with Leo Gestetner — founder, CEO, and late-blooming endurance athlete — to unpack how to build thriving companies without burning out. Leo recounts starting as a 13‑year‑old selling secondhand computers, transforming his life from “couch potato” to marathoner and triathlete, and reframing ent...

What if the real flex isn’t how big you build your business, but how fully you live your life while building it? In this episode, Junaid sits down with entrepreneur and endurance athlete  Leo Gestetner , a man who went from being  95 pounds heavier and non-athletic  to running marathons, completing triathlons, and building global teams — all while protecting his health, family, and freedom. Leo br...

THIS IS YOUR PERMISSION TO STOP CHASING VIRAL HITS AND START BUILDING A WORLD. Lefteris (Lefty) Koutinas — 10x award-winning filmmaker, DJ-turned-storyteller and founder of the Persona Club — explains why entrepreneurs must think like directors, not content spammers. In this raw, cinematic conversation Junaid and Lefty unpick the mechanics of emotional storytelling: music first, lenses matter more...

Stop chasing virality. Start building a world.   In this episode Lefteris “Lefty” Koutinas — a 10x award‑winning filmmaker and branding strategist — takes us past tactics and into mythology: how to treat your life and business as a cinematic universe so your brand becomes a place people want to live in, not just another feed to scroll past. Over the course of this conversation we unpack universe‑b...

Start small. Speak big. Ship fast.   Rory Paquette strips podcasting back to the essentials — showing creators how to launch and grow an audience without expensive gear, endless edits, or burnout. In this tactical episode Rory and Junaid map a pragmatic path from first recording to real growth using phone mics, Zoom, and simple social systems. If you’ve been waiting for the “perfect” setup, this e...

Start messy. Start now. Stop paying for permission. In this intimate conversation, Rory Paquette — a former public speaker turned podcast coach who’s earned the nickname “Robin Hood of Podcasting” — dismantles the myths that keep aspiring podcasters stuck: you don’t need a $20k course, a perfect studio, or endless edits to be heard. Rory explains how his minimalist philosophy (phone-first, low-cos...

THIS EPISODE CUTS PAST THE SELF-HELP NOISE. In a raw, curiosity-driven conversation, David Alcott (author of Swords of Illumination) dismantles the “do-have” myth and teaches the Samurai-inspired framework that turns identity into destiny. This episode feels like a private coaching session: practical, emotional, and unnervingly simple. David walks Junaid through the first sword — Identity — and th...