The Gifted Unplugged Podcast

"Entrepreneurship x Faith" ft. Eugene Johnson | Gifted Unplugged Podcast 002

Gifted had the privilege of sitting down with Eugene Johnson. Throughout his life Eugene has hit multiple milestones in his career from launching his first company to becoming an amazon best seller. While all these accomplishments are great, Eugene shares with us common mistakes we make with trying to find work/life balance while maintaining his relationship with God. Here is his story. Eugene is the CEO of Zyrl which is an autonomous marketing & POS platform for SMB’s that gives them a self service kiosk that uses data to drives marketing for the business like customer reviews, insights & loyalty as well as promotions on social media. Starting from humble beginnings, he grew up in one of the toughest neighborhoods in New York City and often found himself caught up in the difficulties of living in an impoverished area. Though his circumstances were not ideal, he had dreams of taking his life to unprecedented heights. While in college, Eugene started his first business at the age of 18. He built that business from the ground up starting with just him and eventually growing to hundreds of people nationwide. At 26, he sold a large stake of that business to a partner. After selling his company, he traveled to places like Dubai and Africa to recharge. He then spent some time as a consultant, helping leaders grow their business. As a consultant, he built his social media following to over 250k follows and wrote a book that became an Amazon best seller called "The Mental Playbook." After spending time as a consultant, Eugene needed to get back into the entrepreneurship, and he has alway been fascinated with tech. However, with all Eugene's business experience he knew he didn't have any tech experience so he decided to work for a tech company & learn first. He chose a small (at the time) tech company called Meraki. Eugene ran sales for SMB companies for his territory. That territory grew from one to seven states, and he increased revenue for his region by millions. Because of this, he gained recognition as one of the top sales executives at Meraki. Cisco eventually acquired Meraki for $1.5 Billion. Eugene spent almost five years there before he came up with the idea of ZYRL. Eugene has taken what was just an idea into a thriving business and has positioned the company for great future success.