Vegan Business Talk

In this episode I interview Jodi Monelle, the founder and CEO of global vegan media company LIVEKINDLY, in Vancouver, Canada. Originally from Bath in the UK, Jodi has a background in media sales for BBC magazines and worked in marketing for Hootsuite and a small VC startup. During her time working at the VC fund, she was inspired by the entrepreneurs she met and began exploring how to turn her blog into a business with large-scale impact. In 2017 LIVEKINDLY came into being and quickly became a popular news source for millions of people regardless of their dietary choices, focused on empowering people to make positive changes – big or small – in their own lives and how their daily actions make a difference in the world. In this episode Jodi discusses: • The challenges involved in the early days of LIVEKINDLY and how she handled them. • Why she spent the first 18 months growing a brand and community without a focus on monetization. • The mistakes she made when deciding to seek investors to raise capital

In this episode I interview Alon Hochberg, co-founder and CEO of Billion Vegans, an online marketplace that is aiming to be the ‘Amazon for vegans’. Born and raised in Israel, Alon is a serial high-tech entrepreneur and angel investor who has founded five companies over the past 25 years. He started his first business Modus in 1995 and funded it by himself with a second mortgage. It was one of the first companies in the world that developed an enterprise-grade Customer Relationship Management application. Alon sold the business three years later to the largest system integrator in Israel. In February 2017, after accidently seeing a short video about the dog-eating festival in China, Alon immediately went vegan. After spending several months replacing all his food, clothes, cosmetics and dog supplies, reading the fine print on every product, and contacting the vendors for more information, he bought a pair of ‘vegan’ shoes on Amazon. When they arrived, he found out the glue was made of pigs’ bones and dec

In this episode I interview Ben Davis, creator of the inaugural Plant Based World Conference & Expo, which takes place in New York in 2019. Ben is working on the project with his family’s company JD Events, a boutique trade show management company with a 17-year track record of launching and growing unique concepts into industry-leading events. He came up with the idea as a result of his own drastic transition to a plant-based lifestyle (from being a big meat-lover), and earnest desire to make the world a better place. Coming to the Javits Convention Center in NYC in June of 2019, the event will have three streams, bringing together businesses, consumers and healthcare professionals to experience the latest foods, products and services and learn from world-class experts about what plant-based living has to offer. In this interview Ben discusses: • The benefits to vegan business owners of being involved in or sponsoring trade shows • How exhibitors and sponsors can get the best out of trade shows and how

In this episode I interview Ronnie Tsunami, a vegan speaker and learning solution architect in North Carolina, who helps leaders and organizations to accelerate the growth of their world-changing movements. Originally from Honolulu, Hawaii, over the past 25 years, Ronnie’s innovative solutions have been implemented in more than 10,000 academic institutions, companies and enterprise organizations around the world including Microsoft, the US Air Force, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Time Warner Cable, and PlantPure Nation. In addition, he’s helped to build online and local support communities with millions of members in over 400 cities around the world in the fields of IT, business, and health and wellness. The President and CEO of Change Leader Solutions, Ronnie is a big advocate of the plant-based lifestyle. He earned a Certificate in Plant-Based Nutrition from eCornell University, and is the co-founder of the Plant-Based Society, an organization that provides resources and

In this episode I interview Diana Edelman, founder of Vegans, Baby, a resource website and guide to all things vegan in Las Vegas. After nearly a decade as a publicist, Diana wanted a change so in early 2010 she left her job and the US, to travel through Europe, documenting her experiences on a blog she launched, called d travels ’round, and worked for an elephant sanctuary in Chiang, Mai, Thailand. After four years living abroad and becoming more aware of animal rights and responsible travel, Diana returned to Las Vegas determined to live a cruelty-free life. With no up-to-date resource for vegans in the city, she created Vegans, Baby, a site dedicated to making life in Vegas more accessible for vegans. Diana creates and organizes major vegan events in the city including a vegan dining month – Veganuary Las Vegas – and offers vegan consulting services to restaurants who want to expand to the rapidly growing vegan market. She also penned the Las Vegas Vegan Food Guide, a comprehensive guide to vegan dinin

For this episode of Vegan Business Talk I’m going to share with you an audio recording of a 20-minute talk I gave earlier this year at the Plant Powered Women’s Leadership Conference in Sydney. Organized by vegan publishing powerhouse Kathy Divine, the conference provided a platform for a range of female speakers from all walks of life talking about various aspects of veganism and plant-based living. My talk was on how to get media coverage for your vegan brand. Because it was an event focused on plant-based women, I gave a couple of examples of two female vegan entrepreneurs whose stories I shared in my Forbes column: Laura Way from vegan watch company Votch and Anna Tagliabue from luxury faux fur brand Pelush The aim was to explain why, as a journalist who writes about vegan and plant-based business for Forbes, I chose these two women to feature. I get a lot of pitches from both publicists and vegan business owners and I turn far more down than I choose to write about. What got Laura and Anna o

In this episode I interview Lindsay Rubin, director of operations for v-dog, a vegan dog food company in San Francisco. Always obsessed with animals, Lindsay ran her own dog sitting business in high school, and became a vegetarian at college. After learning about the dairy and egg industries, she went vegan and became an animal rights activist. Photo by Gianna Conci Photography In 2013, she met Dave Middlesworth, the late founder of v-dog, who started the company in 2005 with his wife Linda, and starting working with the company as the first full-time employee. She currently leads the company’s strategy for growth. In this interview Lindsay discusses: • The challenges the company faced with packing, warehousing and distribution companies when it started out and how it resolved these • How partnerships have been instrumental in the growth of the brand • How and why the company is expanding internationally under the v-planet brand name • How the company decides when and what type of new product to bring

In this episode I interview Sara Kidd, vegan baking ambassador in Sydney, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand. Sara started out studying as a chef but ended up at film school in Sydney. She worked in film for 15 years as Head of Acquisitions and Marketing at Indievillage, with a remit to take on animal rights and environmental films. Photo: Melissa Katherine Her last project, Kangaroo: A Love Hate Story, released in early 2018, was quoted by Australia’s breakfast TV show Sunrise as being the most controversial Australian documentary ever released in the US. Now, Sara, who has a background in branding and marketing, has made the decision to leave the world of show business behind to pursue a career as a vegan cake designer and baker. Her newly launched retro-inspired website sarakidd.com shares a wealth of free vegan baking resources and video recipes, and her Facebook group Vegan Cake Decorating, All Types of Baking & Resources is a fast-growing online community that’s supporting fellow vegan baking busi

In this episode I interview renowned business journalist, leadership expert and best-selling author Suzy Welch in New York. Suzy began her career as a crime reporter for The Miami Herald in 1981 before leaving daily journalism a few years later to study at Harvard Business School and then worked as a management consultant. In 1995 she combined her two career paths at the Harvard Business Review (HBR), where she was eventually named Editor-in-Chief. Suzy is the author of the New York Times bestseller 10-10-10: A Life Transforming Idea, a guide to values-driven decision making. With her husband, Jack Welch (the former chairman and CEO of General Electric), Suzy founded the Jack Welch Management Institute, an online MBA program. The pair have co-authored international best-sellers, The Real Life MBA and Winning. For the past three decades, Suzy has written extensively about leadership, career management, and other organizational issues, for publications ranging from O, The Oprah Magazine to The Wall Street J

In this episode I interview Nicole D’Angelo, owner of The Yoga Collective studio in New York. Nicole left her full-time career as a social worker in the Philadelphia suburbs to move to the Big Apple in 2014 to pursue her dreams of working in health and wellness. Just four day after she arrived in New York, she started her yoga training. A graduate of the Three Sisters Yoga School, she’s taught gentle yoga, yoga for runners and meditation for runners at The Yoga Collective, which she bought in 2015, and currently manages the studio. Her aim is to create a space for artists and teachers to do what they love for themselves and the community. Nicole also graduated from The Institute for Integrative Nutrition in 2014 with a health coach certification and is a writer and recipe developer. She maintains a blog called Forever Plant-Based, a health and wellness website dedicated to plant-based recipes, meditation, running and fitness. In this interview Nicole talks about: • How she supported herself with side hu

In this episode I interview April Tam Smith, co-owner of PS Kitchen, a vegan restaurant in New York that gives away 100% of its profits. April’s ‘day job’ is managing director of an equity sales and trading team at a large investment bank where she’s worked for the past 13 years. Most evenings, however, she can be found at PS Kitchen. It’s a balance she’s happy to strike as she’s driven by a passion to help people. Having spent time volunteering in South Africa and Haiti, April, who moved to the US from Hong Kong when she was 11, discovered the joy of giving and was keen to make a difference in her own neighborhood. She and her business partners teamed up with experienced restaurateurs Craig Cochran and Jeffrey LaPadula, owners of the Terri plant-based restaurant chain, to launch PS Kitchen, which opened its doors in August 2017. Located in the heart of New York’s theater district in Times Square, the restaurant is unique in not only giving away 100% of its profits to charity, but also in providing employ

In this episode I interview Dylan Kendall, a designer of fun, affordable, functional and responsibly-manufactured products for the home, in Los Angeles. Dylan founded her first enterprise, Hollywood Arts, as a response to the challenge of ending youth homelessness. Hollywood Arts was the only educational facility in the nation to use arts and music to help homeless young people become self-sufficient. It quickly grew to serve hundreds of young people and earned Dylan the recognition of the Ashoka Foundation for her innovative approach to ending youth homelessness at the national level. Her second company Dylan Kendall Home launched with a bowl on feet. The company now sells internationally and is working on a program of eco-friendly products for children based on new-to-market, green materials. It hasn’t all been plain sailing though and Dylan uses her experience of getting through some particularly difficult times to help other entrepreneurs succeed via her social impact coaching services. In this interv

In this episode I interview Leslie Durso, a vegan chef and wellness expert in Los Angeles. An Italian-American, Leslie has eaten plant-based since the age of eight and you may remember her from her entertainment days when she starred as Leslie the lab girl, on the popular TV show Bill Nye, the science guy that ran from 1993 to 1998. It was during the show that Leslie discovered her love of education and shifted from science to plant-based food. After establishing herself as a private chef for the NYC and Hollywood elite, Leslie began hosting cooking segments on television and online, including her show Accidentally Vegan for the FabFitFunTV membership community. She regularly appears on Food Network, Discovery Channel and Hallmark Channel, as well as in other mainstream media. Leslie is currently the vegan chef at the Four Seasons, Punta Mita in Mexico and a chef partner at PLANTLAB culinary school. In this interview Leslie discusses: • How she became a chef despite not going to culinary school • How s

In this episode I interview Ryan Bethencourt, a vegan biotech entrepreneur, investor, and one of the founders of the biohacker movement, in Los Angeles. Growing up in inner-city Miami, Ryan’s imagination was fueled by science fiction and as an adult he’s focused on using science and technology to solve some of humanity’s most intractable problems and reduce animal suffering. He’s a co-founder, former program director and venture partner at biotech accelerator program IndieBio. Ryan has invested in more than 70 early-stage biotech startups, and served as the head of life sciences at the XPRIZE Foundation. His latest venture, of which he’s co-founder and CEO, is Wild Earth, a pet food company that uses cultured protein to create vegan dog food. The company, which was started in 2014, is also working to bring a cruelty-free clean meat cat food to market. In this interview Ryan discusses: • What biohacking is and how it’s helping people, animals and planet • The language and messaging vegan brands need to u

In this episode I interview Dr Joel Kahn, holistic cardiologist and owner of two vegan restaurants GreenSpace Café and GreenSpace & Go in Detroit, Michigan. Joel is the founder of the Kahn Center for Cardiac Longevity and Professor of Medicine at Wayne State University. Even though he’d practiced traditional cardiology since 1983, it was only after his own commitment to a plant-based diet that he began to explore non-traditional diagnostic tools, prevention tactics and nutrition-based recovery protocols and focus on holistic cardiology. Having treated thousands of acute heart attacks during his career, Joel wants to prevent these happening in future. He aims to achieve this by educating people about plant-based nutrition through his books (so far he’s authored five, as well as 100 scientific papers and hundreds of health articles), and speaking, as well as his restaurant ventures. He opened GreenSpace Café – a 120-seat all-vegan restaurant with a full bar – in Ferndale in December 2015 with his son Daniel

So, this is a special episode of Vegan Business Talk, as it’s episode number 100! I’ve interviewed 100 brilliant vegan business owners for the show who have been so kind and generous in sharing their challenges and how they overcame them, along with providing practical strategies for success. I love how this community of entrepreneurs on a shared vision are willing to share their intel and tips to help other vegan business owners to succeed. I know I learn heaps from every single person I interview and I’m so grateful to everyone who contacts me personally or posts on social media to let me know how much they enjoy the podcast and how much they learn. So a big thank you to all my interviewees for making the show a success and of course to you, the audience, for listening to and sharing the episodes. So for this episode, I talk about 5 key lessons for vegan business owners that have come out of the 100 episodes and you can find links to the ones mentioned below. Lesson 1: Everyone does it tough. Starting

In this episode, I interview Rebecca Mink, founder of vegan luxury shoe brand Mink Shoes in Los Angeles. Rebecca is a pioneer in this field, as she started Mink Shoes back in 2000 when there were few other players in the market. Working as a celebrity wardrobe stylist, she found it hard to find high-end vegan shoes for her clients, so she decided to create her own. She was initially turned down by 16 factories in Italy, until one finally agreed to take up the challenge of making luxury vegan shoes, for which Rebecca had to create her own animal-free glue! Eighteen years later she’s now a part-owner of this female-run factory, which also makes shoes for the likes of Chanel, Christian Louboutin, Jimmy Choo, Dolce and Gabbana and Gucci. Mink’s specialty is making custom shoes and the company’s clients include celebrities such as Pamela Anderson, Alicia Silverstone and Natalie Portman, as well as Miley Cyrus who approached the brand when she turned vegan to ask Rebecca to make animal-free versions of her favo

In this episode, I interview Jonathan Petrides – aka JP – from allplants, a plant-based frozen food subscription service in the UK. JP is a serial entrepreneur passionate about building businesses that solve major global problems. He founded Africa's first and fastest growing mobile bank, M-Shwari, which now has more than 30 million users, most of whom previously had no access to a bank account, and issues more than 100,000 new loans each day. He also founded an award-winning retail health chain, Penda Health, in Kenya, bringing a new model for affordable mass-market healthcare to East Africa. After returning to the UK, he started allplants with his brother Alex in January 2016, soft-launching the first range of frozen plant-based meals to family and friends, before rolling out the subscription-based service nationwide in January 2017. In May last year allplants secured £800,000 funding from Felix Capital. This was the first time the venture capital firm had invested in a plant-based startup and the large

In this episode I interview Marla Rose, an award-nominated journalist, columnist and author from creative agency Vegan Street Media in Chicago. Since 1995, Marla has dedicated her life to building vegan culture and community. In addition to writing most of the content and managing social media for the Vegan Street website, including a variety of creative and informative memes, she is the co-founder of the annual free vegan festival Chicago VeganMania, which is now in its 10th year. For the past several years, she has been writing feature stories for magazines, including VegNews, and her popular blog Vegan Feminist Agitator. In 2015, Marla and her husband John Beske, a graphic designer, created Vegan Street Media, a creative agency dedicated to bringing the most effective, professional and unforgettable communications to vegan businesses, services, product lines and non-profits. The agency helps clients with logos, packaging, campaigns, promotions, branding, social media, web development and consulting. Ma

In this episode I interview Brooke Goldner, medical doctor and plant-based healer, in Texas. Brooke was diagnosed with systemic lupus nephritis with stage 4 kidney disease at the age of 16 and made a startling recovery at 28 through plant-based nutrition from supermarket foods. She’s been symptom-free ever since, with normal lab results and no trace of disease in her body. Now, she educates physicians and patients on how to heal and achieve vibrant health using her Hyper-Nourishing Healing Protocol and supermarket foods, a system that’s helped patients with lupus and a multitude of other auto-immune diseases. A board-certified medical doctor licensed to practice medicine in California and Texas, Brooke is also a psychiatrist specializing in healing the mind from trauma, depression and anxiety. This forms part of her online nutrition programs to help people worldwide live a healthy, happy life. She’s the author of two best-selling books, Goodbye Lupus and Green Smoothie Recipes to Kick-Start Your Health &