Community & Guest List
Chris Castanes is an award winning insurance agent, speaker and author of “You're Going To Be Great At This!”. As president of Surf Financial Brokers since 2011, he helps his clients with life and disability, and long term insurance. He is originally from Fayetteville, NC and began his career in sales and marketing after graduating from North Carolina State University in 1985. He resides in North Myrtle Beach, SC with his wife and daughter.
I grew up in a 1 stop light town in rural Pennsylvania. In 1999, fresh out of University (age 23), I moved to Costa Rica. Via a fateful "roommate wanted" ad, I met a fellow U.S. expat. With little money and less experience, we started an online travel agency. Today we're the largest in Central America, designing high-end, custom trips to Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua & beyond.
Christina is a Life & Leadership Coach, a Fitness Industry Consultant, and a Group Fitness Instructor. She uses an ontological coaching method to help her client create the lives that they have always dreamed of having. Christina is also an advocate for those with alopecia and uses her platform to connect with and support others who are experiencing hair loss.
Chris Erhardt is the CEO and co-founder of the online recording studio and music publishing house Tunedly. He co-founded Tunedly in 2015 and led the company through two business accelerators in New York and St. Louis, raised angel and VC funds and now manages a team of five employees and over 30 independent contractors. Throughout his career Chris has become deeply involved in business development and advocacy. He has been a speaker at an increasing number of tech and music conferences, including CMW, several accelerator events, and coast to coast startup festivals.
Cenita Johnson helps midlife women discover & pursue their midlife calling, to do their part in making the world better. Cenita uses NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) principles and intuitive listening to assist women to navigate their midlife journey.
She wants women to know that what they are feeling is not a midlife crisis, it’s a Midlife CALLING! It’s time to pursue your dreams and start that business idea.
She wants women to know that what they are feeling is not a midlife crisis, it’s a Midlife CALLING! It’s time to pursue your dreams and start that business idea.
Connor Gillivan is a founder and the Chief Marketing Officer of FreeeUp.com, a leading freelance marketplace for eCommerce and digital marketing professionals. Connor served as CEO of his first eCommerce company which sold over $25 million on Amazon. He regularly writes for his own site, ConnorGillivan.com, and is passionate about building companies from the ground up.
Being in the film production industry for over 10 years, Caleb was able to see the major problems in the Film Industry associated with processes behind the camera being 50+ years old still working off pen and paper. He reached out to a friend, now Co-Founder Stanley Yang, who has a background in software development, and they created their company Topsheet, making production admin up to 25x faster, being more than a payroll service but instead a platform for end to end production admin.
Christine McKay is a Business Negotiation Strategist, international speaker, host of In the Venn Zone podcast, and author of Why Not Ask? A Conversation about Getting More. Christine holds a Harvard MBA and is the CEO/Founder of Venn Negotiation. She has negotiated with more than half of the Fortune 100 & hundreds of small and mid-sized companies across 53 countries. She loves leveling the playing field for her clients and empowers entrepreneurs and business owners to ask for more of what they want and shows them how to get it. Her mission is to reduce business failure rates by helping people elevate their negotiation skills! She was born and raised in a rural community in Montana, graduating with the same 20 kids she grew up with. Christine’s been married to the love of her life for almost 30 years and is a proud mom of three grown children.
Chris is the Founder of Lionshare Partners, a trusted financial planning firm. He draws on a decade of multidisciplinary experience to help high net worth individuals and small business owners solves their financial challenges. Prior to founding Lionshare, Chris help managed over 300 million dollars of individual and institutional assets and held senior roles at multiple globally-recognized investment firms.
An entrepreneur, speaker and media personality, Chris has been featured in several news outlets such as CNN, Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. He is currently a Board Member of the non-profit organization, Strive LA, a mini-campus for Los Angeles inner-city youth. He also serves as a market analyst for the iHeart Radio podcast, “City Watch on the Air.”
An entrepreneur, speaker and media personality, Chris has been featured in several news outlets such as CNN, Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. He is currently a Board Member of the non-profit organization, Strive LA, a mini-campus for Los Angeles inner-city youth. He also serves as a market analyst for the iHeart Radio podcast, “City Watch on the Air.”
Chris is the founder & CEO of Amplio Recruiting, a staffing company helping great companies hire dependable employees from the refugee workforce. In 2018, Amplio hit $4M in revenue and placed over 800 refugees into jobs in Atlanta, Houston, Dallas and Raleigh. They aim to be in 25 markets by 2025 and plan to release a book this Fall on the economic impact of refugees in the marketplace entitled "Refugee Workforce."
