Tony Horton is a name we all know as he is the best-selling fitness series: P90X®, P90X2®, P90X3®, and Ten Minute Trainer®, and 22 Minute Hard Corps®. Tony is also a world-class motivational speaker and the author of “Bring It”, “Crush It!” and his latest motivational book, “The Big Picture”. He promotes healthy living through exercise and proper nutrition and believes that what you fuel your body with is as important as what goes on your body which is why he also teamed up with beauty experts at Ultimate Salon Professionals to create his new hair and skincare line, TH Care by Tony Horton. Tony is the guy to learn from when it comes to transitioning to a healthy and successful lifestyle and mindset. His professional success can be contributed to many factors including his ability to grow utilizing multiple verticals.
Secret Academy Episode – Michael Luscher
Michael Luscher has two decades of sports marketing, licensing, sponsorship and media sales experience at the NFL, Major League Baseball and most recently, leading a sports technology start-up to profitability. He is a third-generation “garmento” whose founding and leadership of POINT 3 has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Men’s Fitness and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Luscher took a problem, discovered a solution and began his journey into creating a performance apparel brand – POINT 3 Basketball. Like many entrepreneurs, trial and error led him to innovate the industry with DRYV Technologies.
Secret Academy Episode – Chris Stoikos
Chris Stoikos is the archetypal “mover and shaker” with several entrepreneurial credits to his name. His true genius lies in the ability to creatively market and commercialize products, and build and maintain teams of experts to run businesses independently. Stoikos started off like any other consumer dealing with over-priced mediocre products that simply were not up to par with his needs. Having an unruly beard but not wanting to use beard oils with chemicals and preservatives allowed him to innovate the market by coming up with an affordable and higher quality product than anything he could find on the market. A subscription model combined with creative and “outside the box” advertising resulted in tremendous growth and success. Featured in multiple magazines, “Obsessed with making things work better, it’s what makes him tick,” according to Inc.
Secret Academy Episode – Joshua Spodek
Joshua Spodek decided to major in Physics after nearly giving up his love of science and math due to bullying through high school. After earning his PhD, he felt as if the more education one received, the less career options became available. He realized the corporate lifestyle and working under someone else wasn’t for him. His first business venture was a Zoetrope-based idea for advertising in subways that started with him and a friend working out of his friend’s grandfathers garage. This success gave him an independence and freedom to realize that he could make anything happen. With five Ivy League degrees under his belt, Spodek wanted to continue creating businesses but didn’t want to be constrained by my own lack of knowledge and experiences so he went back and received his MBA. Spodek’s awareness and self-awareness changed and he soon began speaking, writing and teaching. Among many other accomplishments, Spodek’s work has earned him high-profile recognition from the likes of Esquire Magazine’s Genius Issue, where he was named “Best and Brightest,” and NBC, which praised him as an “Astrophysicist turned new media whiz.” Both Forbes and ABC News have also acknowledged his accomplishments, praising his work as a rocket scientist.
Secret Academy Episode – Dave Baggett
Dave Baggett was one of the creators and programmers of the iconic video game character, Crash Bandicoot. Having computer science degrees from UMD, College Park and MIT, he contributed to the game using his coding abilities. After the success of that game by Naughty Dog, he went on to co-found ITA Software, a search provider for air travel. Dave eventually grew the company to 500 employees, and in 2011 ITA Software was acquired by Google for $700M. Today, Dave is active in his new startup called Inky, which is a secure email encryption platform.