Episode Details

In this special Collab Week episode of Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur, nine founders answer one creative and surprisingly powerful question:

What is a concept from another discipline, hobby, or part of life that changed how you think as a founder?

You’ll hear from Shawn Sundsvold, Jaimz Hodge, Jane Alexander, Drew Dorenfest, Erik Berglund, Lisa Larson, Nate Hebbert, Stephen Custer, and Nicholas Cook as they pull lessons from recovery, fiction writing, gardening, baseball, fitness, running, software engineering, sketch comedy, poetry, and more.

The result is a wide-ranging episode about patience, systems, storytelling, recovery, consistency, craft, perspective, and the small lessons that quietly reshape how we build.

For any wantrepreneur or entrepreneur who feels like business wisdom only comes from business books, this episode is a reminder that some of the best founder lessons are hiding in plain sight — in the hobbies you love, the disciplines you practice, the challenges you survive, and the patterns you notice when you slow down enough to pay attention.

✨ What You’ll Take Away

In this episode, you’ll learn how to:

• Use life’s highs and lows as perspective instead of letting them define you.
• Move beyond passion by intentionally studying your craft.
• Build a startup with the patience and care of a gardener.
• Stop swinging for home runs and focus on getting on base consistently.
• Treat your business like something that needs regular self-care.
• Build recovery into your operating rhythm instead of glorifying exhaustion.
• Apply systems thinking from software engineering to business problems.
• Use storytelling to build trust in sales, marketing, and leadership.
• See creative hobbies as training grounds for better communication and business growth.

🎙️ Meet the Collab Week Contributors

Shawn Sundsvold — GoldBear Media
Shawn Sundsvold is the co-founder and COO of GoldBear Media, a marketing agency based in Westminster, Maryland. After years of solving business problems across sales, operations, management, and marketing roles, Shawn joined his wife Kelly full-time in GoldBear Media to help small and medium-sized businesses improve their marketing, branding, online presence, social media, email marketing, and growth.

Connect with Shawn:
Website: https://goldbear.media/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goldbear.media/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GoldBearMedia

Jaimz Hodge — Cart Catalyst
Jaimz Hodge helps ecommerce brands convert more customers by eliminating the invisible friction in their buying experience, from ad click to checkout. Through Cart Catalyst, he helps entrepreneurs get their products and ideas online, selling through Shopify and advertising through Google Ads.

Connect with Jaimz:
Website: https://www.cartcatalyst.com

Jane Alexander — Emma Advisor
Jane Alexander is the founder and CEO of Emma Advisor, an AI platform helping families navigate the path from high school to college with more clarity, strategy, and confidence. After an unconventional educational path and more than a decade advising leaders at over 200 colleges and universities, Jane built Emma Advisor from the belief that opportunity should not depend on insider knowledge, social capital, or expensive consultants.

Drew Dorenfest — Client Magnet CRM
Drew Dorenfest is a marketing expert who has worked with global brands including Netflix, Apple, Warner Bros., the NFL, and more as a video editor. Today, through Client Magnet CRM, he helps small business owners grow their brands through more clients, more 5-star revie