Champ Nichols

Entrepreneur. Senior Executive. President. Public Speaker. Speaker Manager. Adventurer. In 1999 a childhood friend, Keith Perrin, a co-founder of the fashion brand, FUBU, invited me to visit his company headquarters on the 66th floor of the Empire of State Building. While the Manhattan views were breathtaking, the diversity of the people working at FUBU left an indelible mark. Seeing many key decision makers in the company who looked, talked, and dressed just like me changed my perception of the business world; more significantly, it changed the role I imagined I could play in it. My foray into the business world began as an unpaid intern and has led me to become a senior executive at The Shark Group — a branding and consulting company owned by fashion business pioneer and ABC TV’s Shark Tank star, Daymond John. In 2016, I launched InnerVation Lab, co-designed with Dr. Saras Sarasvathy — a world-renowned scholar on the cognitive basis for high-performance entrepreneurship at the Darden School of Business. It is a unique, customizable, action-learning experience that couples Sarasvathy's findings with the practical knowledge and insight of world-class entrepreneurs to teach a universally applicable mindset and method to practice entrepreneurship. I am also the co-owner and president of Shark Speakers — a public speaker management, booking, and consulting company I co-founded with Daymond John. We don’t manage public speakers; we manage elite executives and world-class entrepreneurs who speak. Besides John, our roster includes other notables such as Kevin Harrington, Cindy Eckert, Jay Abraham, Alfred Edmond Jr., and Jeff Tweedy. Beyond speaker management, I broker strategic partnerships between clients and some of the largest corporations in America, including the United States Post Office, AT&T, MillerCoors, and CHASE Banking. Also, I am an avid fan of boxing and reggae music, and I have a weakness for Haagen Dazs ice cream.