The Leap Academy Podcast with Ilana Golan is all about honest and inspiring conversations about what it really takes to leap to bigger things, amazing careers, and craft the life you want. Stories and tips you won't find anywhere else. Ilana speaks with some of the world's most influential people, experts, and thinkers who created incredible careers, massive impact, built a reputation, and an extraordinary life. Together we discover the untold truths, the emotions, and important lessons that enabled them to reinvent themselves & leap. We take our audience on a journey that will not only inspire but also teach concrete lessons on how to leap careers: fast-track to leadership, jump to entrepreneurship, build a personal brand, portfolio career, and much more.
141 episodes transcribedJohn Demsey didn’t become a powerhouse in the beauty industry by a mere stroke of luck; he built that influence on retail floors, taking on scrappy ro...
When 19-year-old Anna-Sophie Hartvigsen walked into a bank hoping to secure a loan to buy a property, she was denied on the spot. That “no” pushed her...
Brian Tracy was fired from washing dishes, cars, and floors, and began to believe that “washing things” might be his destiny. But when he learned that...
When Sharon Price John was a kid, she spent a summer determined to climb a massive tree. After several falls, she reached the top, only to realize she...
He could have built a billion-dollar company, but instead, Jimmy Wales built a movement. When the dotcom crash hit and funding vanished, he didn’t sel...
Ben Weiss set out to create the future of footwear. With nothing but conviction and a radical idea to merge AI with design, he reached out to Reebok c...
Jim McKelvey did the impossible. He beat Amazon. The tech giant launched a product similar to Square’s, undercut their pricing, and leveraged its mass...
At a 2015 World Cup match in Vancouver, Kara searched nine stores for her daughters’ jerseys and found none. That spark of “joyful irritation” became...
Robert Glazer collapsed in his kitchen in front of his son, convinced he was having a heart attack. In reality, it was a massive panic attack triggere...
Most people would assume that raising capital for a celebrity-backed business would be a cakewalk, but Thai Randolph knew that was far from the truth....
For eight years, Lisa Bilyeu lived the life others expected: a traditional Greek wife focused on supporting her husband and running the home. But deep...
As a teenager, Sir Richard Branson had already mastered the art of taking bold leaps to pursue opportunities. Dyslexic and struggling in school, he qu...
Ilana Golan knows what it feels like to lose everything. After climbing from the Air Force to Intel to VP in a Silicon Valley startup, she thought she...
Despite outward success, Brad Feld struggled with depression, exhaustion, and feelings of emptiness. For years, he hid these challenges while relentle...
Brendan Kane didn’t break into Hollywood through connections. He started out making coffee on film sets. Spotting the untapped power of MySpace and Yo...
George Kurian’s journey from a modest upbringing in Kerala, India, to becoming CEO of NetApp is an extraordinary story. George worked cafeteria shifts...
Klaus Kleinfeld’s journey from a difficult childhood in Germany to leading two Fortune 500 companies, Siemens and Alcoa, was anything but easy. He exp...
Nathan Blecharczyk, co-founder of Airbnb, built his first software business as a teenager, earning nearly a million dollars before shutting it down to...
After 12 years of working in corporate advertising, Case Kenny launched a podcast, New Mindset, Who Dis? as a personal experiment. In its first month,...
What do you do when the dream you've chased no longer fits? For Julia Hartz, it meant walking away from a promising career in Hollywood to dive into t...
