Evolving Your Workplace

“Business is really simple. We make it so complicated. If you just take care of people, if you just want what’s best for them and you treat them like human beings—it’s amazing what will happen to your business,” says Wayne Mullins, founder and CEO of Ugly Mug Marketing: a marketing, social media, web design, and graphic design agency. Wayne says one key to success is thinking of clients as people...

Aneesh Dhawan’s journey in business started early. As a teenager, he worked with a team at MIT to install a desalinization device in Haiti. The following year he launched a marketing company and also helped set up a solar-powered device for a school in Haiti. And as a high school senior, he founded the company that would later become his current business: Knit.  Knit helps brands understand t...

After over a decade of smooth sailing for Ted Lau, everything seemed to go wrong in his business at once: his partnership dissolved, a client filed a lawsuit, he underwent an audit, and he experienced high rates of turnover. The stress piled up and he had a mental breakdown.  Ted sought help and his doctor advised him to take a few months off; but as a business owner, he knew that was a near-...

People are lonely and Derrick Morton co-founded FlowPlay to keep them entertained. FlowPlay is a virtual world technology and game developer. It’s a platform where people can play games and create avatars to chat online with others. Derrick started on a completely different path: film school. He worked in the creative industry for a short period before realizing he had more to offer; so he got his...

After being a doctor for years, Bobby Peddi decided he wanted to start his own company. But he ran into an issue: There was a scarcity of information on how to start one. So Bobby spent hours researching and eventually figured it out. However, knowing that other entrepreneurs would come across the same problem, he decided to create a free state-by-state guide on how to start a company.  “It w...

At age 26, Jessica Gomez started a manufacturing company with her husband. She began with no money and no prior knowledge of how to run a business. Almost 20 years later, she has been named to the 2021 Women of Influence List by the Portland Business Journal and received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, among many other honors.  Jessica’s business, Rogue Valley Microdevic...

Vimal Patel came from humble beginnings, working at a McDonald's and living with his cousin when he moved to America. A few years later he got a job in the hotel business, and currently, he manages 11 hotels. How did he get to where he’s at? A lot of mistakes and hard lessons, he says.  As the President and CEO of QHotels, Vimal owns and operates several hotels; on top of that, he founded Inn...

Straight out of college, Joseph Landes landed a job at Microsoft and stayed for 23 years, growing into many roles and living in many countries throughout his time at the company. Upon meeting his current CEO, Vadim Vladimirskiy, he left Microsoft to start a very different journey.  Joseph became the chief revenue officer of Nerdio, a technology firm that helps MSPs build cloud environments us...

Marco Torres and his co-founders worked in the travel business and needed to find a way to get their clients to leave video reviews. They came up with an incentive: Offering a three-day hotel stay in Orlando or Las Vegas for leaving a review. The idea worked and hundreds of clients started taking videos. This planted the seed for a new company. Marco co-founded Marketing Boost, a B2B service that...

In the ever-growing space of digital marketing, Ken Braun, co-founder of Lounge Lizard Worldwide, has carved out a niche that holds strong almost 25 years later. Ken found early success working in agencies, known for dreaming up the Ocean Spray slogan, “Crave The Wave”, and working with brands like Jose Cuervo. But 10 years in, Ken hatched the idea to start freelancing on the side. He created a we...

From working out of his home to owning and operating a seven-office law firm – Matthew Davis knows the ins and outs of building a business from the ground up. Matthew founded Davis Business Law, a “soup to nuts” law firm for small businesses, recently featured on the Inc. 5000 list. He also authored the book “The Art of Preventing Stupid”, is working on another, and currently hosts two business-fo...

At age 27, Richard Blank made the bold decision to pack up and move to Costa Rica to work at a call center for a few months. Fast forward eight years – he opened his own call center with one essential component: pinball machines. Richard, founder and CEO of Costa Rica’s Call Center, began his business out of his home with just a website and now operates a 300-seat call center. In this episode, he...

James Laws, CEO and founder of Saturday Drive, puts it very succinctly, “Our number one value is people – over profits, process or products.” Starting his company in 2014 while working full time as a web administrator required family support, sweat equity and late nights. Making a deal with his wife to bootstrap the startup by banking two years of salary, Laws worked to solve the problem of reprod...

Two offices. Two countries. Two cultures. Charles Brecque, founder and CEO of Legislate, is leading the movement for small businesses and doing it across Europe. Legislate is a legal technology company that provides lawyer-approved contracts for small businesses that don’t have big legal budgets. It’s based on a knowledge graph technology (sporting a new US patent) that makes the contract data usa...

In this podcast, you’ll hear how a history student ended up founding not one, but two tech companies. Dipanwita Das, CEO and co-founder of Sorcero, comes from a long line of accomplished female scientists who endowed her with a legacy of service, problem solving and system sustainability. And as a leader, she doesn’t take that legacy lightly. Founding Sorcero, an artificial intelligence and insigh...

This interview, with Mark Towler, chief executive officer of Phase 2, is a refreshing view of common sense leadership and authentic team management. Building a business with family also adds a challenging element that Towler has achieved with a certain amount of style. It all started when Towler’s brother asked him to partner in a company back in the 90s focusing on wide area networks (remember th...

Katelyn Sorensen, President of B2B Social at Traject, CEO of Loomly and Sendible, found her calling as a leader very early in her career. Recruited to work at Traject, a social media company in the greater Seattle area providing a suite of tools for digital agencies and marketing, Sorenson volunteered to move to the United Kingdom where she now oversees multiple divisions and staff spanning the wo...

Small business owners everywhere are faced with soul-sucking challenges: staffing, supply chain, inflation, and marketing. In this podcast, Amanda Hoffman, chief operations officer of Madwire, a platform providing “360 degree” umbrella of business management products and marketing services for SMBs and franchises, discusses how Madwire’s unique umbrella marketing approach takes marketing technolog...

We could have been calling Tom Coburn, Dr. Coburn because he only wanted to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps as a biology student at Boston College. Instead, in 2011 while still students, Tom and his buddies entered a business plan competition in hopes of winning ten thousand dollars. On their second try, they won by presenting a version of what became Jebbit based on an “aha” moment Tom had...

Fun and passionate aren’t typical words used to describe a technology company founder. But it’s what Daniel Liebeskind, CEO and founder of Topia, is – passionate about people connecting in a safe space and a bona fide experience junkie. Topia, the company he founded that features a customizable, immersive digital space where the unique spatial video platform delivers an authentic in-person experie...

Watch out, Silicon Valley! San Diego is making a bid to become the new center of technology through innovation, creation, and disruption. David Tal and Verse.io are leading the charge! Raising $17 million over three rounds, Verse.io is well placed to create, innovate, and disrupt traditional B2C platforms. Similar to many tech leaders, David was just looking for a solution to a problem. After grad...

David Barrett is not your typical tech CEO, nor does he want to be. As a talented engineer, David has been part of many failed startups. His own company, Expensify, has gained notoriety because of what it doesn’t do – follow the VC handbook. David initially wasn’t trying to build a business. He only wanted to provide a way for people in his Tenderloin (San Francisco) neighborhood with a way to get...

Content marketing isn’t a new concept but the struggle to get to that essential number one ranking is an enigma that Christopher Day and his partner Shawn Schwegman are endeavoring to solve. Passionate about marketing tools and content as the foundation, Christopher and his team at DemandJump are disrupting marketing norms through pillar-based strategies. In this episode, you’ll hear Christopher e...

Join me in this fascinating discussion with Kathryn, a confessed serial entrepreneur, as she discusses how she’s built several profitable ventures because she kept finding problems that needed solving. During her early career in the burgeoning cable television industry, Kathryn loved how technology made lives better. What she did not love was the negative aspect of working in a culture of constant...

It all started because he was unemployed, bored, and didn’t want to be a system administrator anymore. Luke Kanies founded Puppet in 2005, raised $87 million in funding, and was then fired from the company for which he sacrificed his health and probably a bit of his sanity in 2014. He then set about developing a personal CRM product through a company called Clickety in 2019, but chose instead to s...