Brandy Old
Brandy is a dedicated community builder and certified IDEO Design Thinker, empowering entrepreneurs to solve complex challenges with innovative, human-centred solutions.
With over 8 years of business coaching experience, she helps founders gain traction by refining their client targeting, value proposition, and growth strategies.
Holding a Master’s in Social Impact, Brandy expertly guides entrepreneurs across for-profit, non-profit, and social enterprise models and has a unique knack for preparing her mentees to succeed in pitch competitions.
Passionate about hands-on learning, Brandy encourages resilience and celebrates growth through failure, as shared in her TEDx Talk on redefining success.
She and Craig Elias also engage early-stage founders through the board game Playing Lean, teaching entrepreneurship fundamentals across Canada.
Craig Elias
Craig is a LinkedIn pioneer (user 3,956 of over a Billion users) and a globally recognized sales expert with over 10,000 unsolicited endorsements for entrepreneurship, innovation, and lead generation.
He is an award-winning entrepreneur and ‘gifted‘ pitch coach, who helps early-stage and scaleup founders generate revenue, attract investors and win pitch competitions.
After completing an Executive MBA specializing in technology commercialization and new venture creation from the University of Calgary, Craig built a startup that won a $1 million prize in a global billion-dollar idea pitch competition and secured Tier 1 venture funding and national recognition within two years of launching.
He is the creator of “Trigger Event Selling™” and was twice chosen as LinkedIn’s #1 B2B Sales Expert in Canada (#15 globally). Craig mentors startups through programs like Alchemist Accelerator and SXSW. He and Brandy Old champion accessible entrepreneurship through innovative tools like Playing Lean, a board game for aspiring founders.