Hacks and Hobbies with Junaid Ahmed

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 modeled vulnerability reduc...

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 survival mod...

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, ...

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 — Da...

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 bootstrap choices to the 1&nda...

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 Hacks and Hobbies, Michael and I ...

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 retired, and how a single c...

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 midlife...

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 exhaustion, and the min...

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 showing up.

...

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 quest to protect produc...

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, and the quie...

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, and playful creati...

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 coaching...

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 entr...

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 breaks down ho...

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 than cameras, and ...

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‑building...

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 episode ...