Unicorn Leaders – Details, episodes & analysis

In this episode, Fahd sits down with Ron Tite—comedian, author, and founder of Church+State—to explore how creative Davids take on industry Goliaths without selling out or burning out.

Ron shares how he bootstrapped his agency through speaking gigs, built a brand that stood out by standing for something, and why the smartest move isn’t to play harder—but to play different.

He opens up about the early chaos of entrepreneurship, what nearly broke him, and the lessons that helped him lead with more trust, more honesty, and less ego. From missing payroll to rewriting the rules of growth, this is a story of survival, reinvention, and what it really means to define your own version of victory.

In this episode, Fahd sits down with Stuart Lombard, founder of Ecobee, to unpack one of the most iconic David vs. Goliath stories in Canadian tech. What started as a personal mission to reduce his carbon footprint led Stuart to invent one of the world’s first smart thermostats—and take on giants like Honeywell and Google Nest in the process.

Stuart shares how Ecobee turned clunky hardware into a customer-obsessed experience, why innovation often starts with frustration, and how staying true to their mission helped them win customer trust while competitors chased channel partnerships and flashy ads.

From getting 172 VC rejections to building sensors that rewrote the rules, this is a story of what happens when a team chooses learning over ego—and how a thermostat became the first step in rethinking home energy systems.

In episode 19, Andre dives into how he found his way into creating a socially impactful business while sharing valuable lessons and principles that he embraced on his journey to success as a leader. 

From letting go of micro details to building high performing teams and influencing decision making processes, discover some actionable insights that will transform your leadership approach and help you create a meaningful impact. 

Get ready to unleash the unicorn leader within! Tune in to hear about Andre’s experience and journey.

In episode 18,  Jonah Midanik shares his journey and experience in a growth mindset of recognizing that ‘what got you here won’t get you there. He has been lucky enough to have seen the startup journey from a variety of perspectives: as a successful bootstrapped founder/CEO, having helped launch new corporate divisions at BigCo, and as the founder/CEO of Limelight, a Venture backed company.  Jonah currently spends his time helping companies grow with Forum Ventures as the COO and General Partner. 

Jonah shares a crucial tip in the discussion around ‘what got you here won’t get you there’. The tip for every founder or leader involves 3 key steps:

• Conduct an honest self-assessment. Asking yourself what you’re struggling with, what does the company need from you right now,  where I need to go? Identify the gaps in the stage. 
• Approach your peers, mentors, founders, etc. Ask what they think you are really good at vs not great at. Write all this down.
• Finally, review your notes and ask if you can do this, or if you event want to do this. If it’s absolutely yes, then you will find the resources that will get you there. 

Jeanette Dorazio, CEO of Leadpages, a no-code website and landing page builder. She has had various executive-level positions at leading organizations, including Oracle, 8thBridge, Verifone, and Solera. Jeanette’s passion comes from breaking down barriers and championing the inclusion and success of women in STEM fields as female leaders in tech.

In episode 17, Jeanette lays out how to reach the next level of your leadership career. She shares 3 lessons gained through her journey: knowing what is happening in the market, which she calls “outside in” because “nothing important happens in the office,” listening first and understanding all sides before communicating, and finally, understanding how to interpret data.

Her main piece of advice is to lean into your strength no matter what the judgements might be. With this advice, you will succeed in reaching the next level of your leadership journey.

On this episode we look at organizational systems and how to think when designing the organizational structure. Realizing that it should not be designed from a people centric place but rather around the needs and direction of your business. It’s important to be mindful when you do design around people and whether it is sustainable long term. 

Krista shares the top two reasons to consider when looking to expand a team.  First, think about whether the growth is significant and if in fact, a talent acquisition specialist becomes a specialty that is needed. Second, you reach a point and realize that the evolution of your organization and the complexity of products and solutions is growing. 

Some trends to look forward to: The skillsets for managers are looking very different, we promote people into roles and the manager role is the one they’re least prepared for while adding new skills on top of that.

Kyle Racki, the co-founder and CEO of Proposify, Kyle helps thousands of businesses remove the bottleneck of proposals and get more visibility into the close. 

In true serial entrepreneur form, Kyle also co-host his own podcast, The Racki and Symes Podcast, where he discusses ideas and strategies to push through growth.

Kyle got his start in marketing and design, and ran a digital agency for over five years before selling it and starting Proposify.

Since then he’s amassed a wealth of experience and lessons that he shares with us in this episode.

In episode 15, Kyle lays out the framework of the job of a CEO and some of the important pieces they’re faced with including: creating vision and auditing values, building out the executive team (title politics are real), hiring leadership contextually, having difficult conversations and holding people accountable.

He even offers a tool to conceptualize cash concerns that are big on the mind during periods of recession.


Listen to the full episode to hear more from Kyle!

Natalie Furness, CEO of RevOps Automated and Revenue Operations Consultant shares her journey and learnings along the way onto remote work and falling into the world of operations.

She speaks of finding your people through value alignment for both the work you do and the work environment you prefer. Though she’s the biggest remote work proponent, she acknowledges that its’ not for everyone and a reshuffling can and should naturally occur for the best possible match.

She encourages remote individuals not to lose sight of their personalities and not allow slack only to be a platform for work. Instead, she reminds us to use it to continue fostering social bonds as we would in person, and also continue to empower others to check in with one another and release the pressure off yourself as a leader for the need to control everything. 

One of her main pieces of advice is to lead with empathy and understand the challenges of remote work to then better help those you lead.

Chris Williams, former VP of HR at Microsoft has over 40 years of experience building and leading teams.

Through his journey, starting from installing car stereos and while being pulled into firing employees because of his people skills, to eventually transitioning to a computer science and going on to start a consulting business before selling it to Fox Pro before eventually starting his work with Microsoft. At Microsoft he worked in product before stumbling into HR and eventually becoming VP of HR and responsible for 32,000 employees.

Through it all, he’s seen his share of bad leadership and what makes teams succeed and fail as he noticed a common denominator to these failures and successes. Having a clear and crisp vision. 

He shares his advice on how to discern whether your team or organization may be struggling with vision too, and how to re-engage your vision with a clear direction and destination, and something that is active, not passive.

Chris also highlights the importance of trust between team members as a contributing factor to success. Trust that is fostered by going through hard things together which are often motivated by the vision.

Besides his passion for vision Chris helps hone into how to elevate from good to great leadership through personalized understanding of individual differences.

Listen to this episode to hear Chris and all his stories! 

Florent Schmahl, Chief of Staff of highly purposeful agtech company, Growcer, shares his journey and learnings along the way as he shifted his work from being focused on developing hard skills to now pursuing purposeful work.

Over the years he’s has time to gather his insights on finding the work that drives you and how important it is in today’s labour market pressures.

Despite this, Florent’s advice releases that pressure from the concept of pursuing purpose and instead reframing it as a journey.

He encourages instead to explore of what drives people in their work rather than trying to answer existential questions of a singular life purpose.

In this episode Florent helps translate these questions into a team setting and how to find that drive if your place of work doesn’t feel like it has the most impact in the most pressing of issues.

His main piece of advice is focusing on problems instead of tormenting with questions of passion. 

Listen to the episode to hear to the rest of Florent’s insights!