The Changeup

This week's guest is the founder and CEO of KERV Interactive, Gary Mittman. KERV is a patented interactive video platform that drives deeper user engagement, boosts creative performance, and increases time spent with brands. We talk about the genesis of the patent that led to the company, his very insightful thoughts on artificial intelligence and machine learning, breaking into the infomerci...

This week's guest is the Co-Founder and CEO of Restore Hyper Wellness, Jim Donnelly.  Restore Hyper Wellness is a system of total balance, energy and proactive healing.  It is their belief that the holistic approach to wellness is what is missing from conventional health care.  We talk about the path that led to creating Restore Hyper Wellness, his five-year theory on building new companies a...

This week's guest is the owner of Alphabet City Beer, Zachary Mack. ABC Beer Company is a beer bar and store located in the lower east side of Manhattan.  We talk about how he built the business in 2012, the evolution of the beer industry over the last decade, and how he will help anyone, and I mean ANYONE, find the right beer. 

This week's guest is the founder and CEO of TechFides,  Jacques Jean. TechFides is an IT company that helps other businesses with enterprise digitization, IT performance management, and IT merger acquisitions and divestitures.  We talk about how the genesis of his company came from his son at the dinner table, how building a company with friends and family adds another layer of strength, and...

This week's guest is the founder and CEO of Loop, Nick Gallo.  Loop is a new creative studio that just launched, working with companies across brand marketing, social media, video production, live interactive videos, and stunts. We talked about how he broke into media with The Onion newspaper, how he was an integral part of the pop culture phenomena that was HQ Trivia, and what virality looke...

This week's guest is the founder and CEO of The Value of a Veteran, Lisa Rosser.  The Value of a Veteran is a women, veteran, and minority-owned small business that provides Human Resources consulting and training for organizations that are seeking to improve support, recruitment, and retention of military veterans.  We talk about the insight that led to the company's formation, how she...

This week's guest is the founder of Human Factor Media, Zack Slingsby.  Human Factor Media is a video production and creative shop that makes videos people want to watch. They work with brands and clients to create original work that doesn't get skipped or scrolled by.  We talk about his journey from writer to founder,  the creative process, balancing family and work, and so much more. 

This week's guest is CEO and Co-Founder of Cognitiv, Jeremy Fain. The media and marketing world has recently become obsessed with artificial intelligence and deep learning, marking it as the future of the business as a whole.  Cognitiv has been applying these practices for years to help predict consumer behavior and drive marketing performance for their clients. We talked to Jeremy about the...

This week's guest is the CEO and founder of Reimaginez, Therese Gedda.  Reimaginez specializes in designing, redesigning, and scaling culture successfully. They help founders, CEO's and leaders keep, attract and lead high achievers while living as high achievers themselves. We talked about how growing up in Sweden building her own company was always going to be her path forward, her conn...

This week's guest is the CEO and Founder of De Kabeza, Alana Kalin.  De Kabeza is a tech platform with gamified communications and live interactive trivia and games, based in Mexico City. We talk about her decision to move herself and the company from New York to Mexico to refocus on a Mexican audience, the evolution of gamification, the differences in startup culture and finally how for some...

This week's guest is the CEO and Founder of Malida Advisors, Natasha Kehimkar.  Malida Advisors is a strategic advisory firm, focusing on areas of diversity, equity, inclusion, organizational change, and scaling your HR function.  We talk about her career journey in the Pharma world, to tech start-ups, to building her own thing. She also shares how during the pandemic she recorded her family&...

This week's guest is co-founder and CEO of Curacubby, Steven Khuong. Curacubby is a next-generation, fin-tech, SAS platform that helps education, recreation, and family service programs save time and money by optimizing finance and business workflow functions.  We discussed how a very personal family hurdle led to the creation of Curacubby, how his family moved from Hong Kong to Grand Rapids,...

This week's guest is the founder of Farmer Nick, Nick Cutsumpas. I met Nick when he was a sales executive at Thrive Global, where we hit it off due to his empathy and creativity and his love of baseball didn't hurt either. Nick bet on himself and has grown a small empire focused on urban farming. His Farmer Nick Instagram account has over 169,000 followers, his plant coaching business is...

This week's guest is Career Strategist, Executive Coach, and Consigliere, Jill Griffin.  Before going out on her own, Jill was a senior executive at massive media agencies like Publicis, overseeing Fortune 500 branding, strategy, and media partnerships.  We talk about how what was initially going to be a few months of consulting turned into a 6+ year career, her ongoing mission to help workfo...

This week's guest is the Founder of Press 2 for Espanol, Carmen Diaz.  We talk about her journey from teaching in schools in Texas to teaching Spanish online. We discuss how she took her love of language and passion for helping others and turned it into a business, and her plans for growth to help her home country of Guatemala. 

This week's guest is Co-Founder of Bumper, Dan Misener.  Bumper is a podcast growth agency that helps organizations reach their business goals through the power of audio.  Dan is one of the sharpest minds in audio. We talk about the Faustian bargain some audio companies took to garner scale, what it means to focus on engagement versus download numbers, where he thinks the industry is headed,...

This week's guest is the author and executive performance strategist, Laura Garnett.  At Laura's firm, Garnett Consulting, Laura and her team work with highly driven, industry-leading executives and teams to achieve the impact and fulfillment they desire.  We talk about her decision to leave one of the biggest companies in the world, executive burnout, and our psychology at work, as well...

This week's guest is the founder of Schlaf & Co, Steve Schlafman.  Steve was a venture capitalist who made the decision a few years back to leave the industry to focus on building his boutique leadership company that focuses on helping early-stage founders and VCs.  He is also an avid reader and writer and something we explore during our conversation together is how he made it an intentio...

This week's guest is the Founder and CEO of Sparkfly, Catherine Tabor.  Sparkfly is a retail technology solutions company that helps innovative retailers and merchants like Chipotle, Texas Roadhouse, and Great Clips leverage technology to create a meaningful connection to their customers We talk about how she was able to win her first big client and turn that into her business, how vital cons...

This week's guest is the creator of Shameless Acquisition Target, Laura Mayer.  Laura and I worked together at the Slate group, where she was a producer at Panoply, also known as Megaphone, prior to its sale to Spotify. She has had a front-row seat to the podcast acquisition boom and helped launch dozens of award-winning shows. It has not punched her ticket to podcast millions, like some luck...

This week's guest is the Chief Learning Officer at Weill Cornell Medicine, Dr. Ruth Gotian. Dr. Gotian is also the author of The Success Factor – Developing the Mindset and Skillset for Peak Performance , where she researched CEOs, Nobel laureates, and Olympic and NBA champions to find out how we can all optimize our success.  Last year, she was among the 30 people worldwide to be named to th...

This week's episode is with the Founder and CEO of SalientMG, Mack McKelvey. SalientMG is a strategic marketing firm, focused on accelerating market position for growth stage tech companies.  We talk about leveraging digital tools to better share your skill set, why being a Chief of Staff is the ultimate pipeline to becoming a CEO, and the discrepancy she sees in how founders are able to rais...

Season 3 Premiere!  So excited to welcome the CEO and Co-Founder of Mojo, Vinit Bharara.  Mojo is a sports stock market, where fans can literally invest in their favorite players' careers. Along with Vinit, there are some pretty big names as co-founders, Bart Stein, Mark Lore, and a baseball player turned businessman,  you might have heard of Alex Rodriguez.  Vinit has founded and sold multip...

We took the month off of interviewing and while on break, we put together two special episodes with some of our incredible past guests to highlight some themes that were recurring.  This week we focus on diversity and race.  T hese entrepreneurs have firsthand experience with the disparities within the corporate and business world and offer insight into their own stories and possible solutions. 

During our short break from interviewing, we decided to reflect back on some of our great past guests.  This week we’re highlighting some of our female entrepreneurs from seasons 1 and 2 to reflect back on their experiences in the male-dominated business world.