Wisdom.MBA

Michael Minter has had a very successful career as a creative marketer working with some of the world’s largest footwear brands.  Michael is currently the CMO of Reef, a 40-year-old legendary sandal brand that has recently seen an expansion in its product catalog and growth in eCommerce sales.  Prior to Reef, Michael was the Global Head of Marketing for DC Shoes, leading many of the company’s icon...

Bakari Akil is a visiting lecturer at Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management teaching students how to buy a business. Bakari is also a successful search fund entrepreneur and independent sponsor.  Bakari recently sourced the acquisition of a burlap bag manufacturer, secured equity financing, closed the deal, then recruited and hired the CEO to operate the business. Bakari shares his inspira...

Ryan Duey is the Co-Founder + Co-CEO of plunge.com. Plunge has seen fantastic growth with increases in demand for cold plunge and contrast therapy coming out of the pandemic. Ryan and I go deep into what caused the company’s parabolic rise and how he and his co-founder Michael Garrett were able to both help create and capitalize on the current cold plunge boom. We talk about getting free organic e...

Chris McKleroy is the founder and CEO of Nocs Provisions, a company which has reinvented binoculars. Chris is a successful entrepreneur with a proven track record of designing disruptive products and bringing them to market. Prior to Nocs, Chris was the Head of Product and Co-Founder of Boombotix, one of the original Bluetooth personal speaker brands to enter the market. Chris helped scale the bus...

Bradley Harris is the principal and CEO of A-Frame - a venture studio built for sustainable growth.  Brad and I met on acquire.com, an online marketplace for buying and selling startups. I was looking to purchase the surf and board sports business that he had founded. I loved what he had built and his focus on being a socially minded entrepreneur. Brad ultimately sold the business to someone else,...

Will McGuire is a seasoned entrepreneur with a passion for helping startup founders raise capital. Will and I take a deep dive into the JOBS act and how equity crowdfunding came to be in the United States. We talk about a bill that just passed in the house of representatives that would improve access to capital and how accredited investors are defined. We also talk about how his business Incolo.io...

Mike Fata is a true pioneer in the health food sector and a passionate advocate for wellness. Mike's story is as inspiring as it is unconventional. His career began not in the boardroom, but in a personal battle with weight loss and the pursuit of a healthier lifestyle. This journey led him to discover the nutritional potential of a plant that was largely overlooked. In 1998, Mike co-founded...

Jen “JB” Braly is a hands-on transformation executive with a proven track record of driving large-scale change. Most recently, she was the Vice President, Program Office for Moderna during the COVID-19 pandemic. Reporting directly to the Chief Digital and Technology Officer, JB helped the company grow from a pre-commercial research start-up with less than 1,000 US employees and no revenue to a $20...

Kelly Smith has had an incredibly diverse career and is a true business renaissance man. 5 exits. Investor in companies which were acquired by ESPN, Amazon and Google. Vice President of Digital for Starbucks China when the company was experiencing massive growth opening a store a day. Chief Digital Officer at MGM Resorts International, Hagerty and now Athletic Greens. Kelly and I talk about what i...

Eddie Cohen is the founder of Walden, a brand that designs, engineers, and manufactures products for meditation. Eddie’s founder journey started after a 10-day meditation retreat. As a product designer who worked at Apple, he discovered that the products at the retreat lacked inspiring aesthetics. With Walden, Eddie wants it to become Nike for the mind, providing customers with beautiful and thoug...

Andrew Lachlan is the founder and CEO of Sauna House, a modern bathhouse committed to enhancing bathing culture and social wellness.  Joe Rogan, Jesse Itzler, Russell Brand, Wim Hof … there is no shortage of Internet health and wellness gurus talking about the benefits of sauna and cold plunge. Atlantic writer Helen Lewis argues that we are in the “Golden Age of Gurus” where there has been an expl...

Jason Gulya is a Professor of English at Berkeley College. In 2020, Jason received Berkeley’s Faculty of the Year Award for Teaching Excellence. He is also a higher ed consultant who helps students and professors prepare for the future and gives advice on how to utilize artificial intelligence in and outside of the classroom. Jason has a wealth of knowledge and actionable advice for using A.I. He...

Jake Karls is the Co-Founder and Rainmaker for Mid-Day Squares, the first functional chocolate bar on the market. The company was founded in 2018 by Jake, his sister Lez and brother-in-law Nick. Their goal is to build a modern chocolate company with functional ingredients. The company has since exploded. Their peanut butter bar became the number 1 selling SKU in its category at Target. They receiv...

Finn McKenty is one of my favorite YouTube content creators who is also a brand strategist and marketing director. Between his Punk Rock MBA and personal channel, Finn has over 500k subscribers on YouTube. The Punk Rock MBA looks to promote career, business and life advice for the DIY community. Finn skillfully analyzes the cultural significance of punk and metal like a tenured English lit profess...

Harvard Business School Students Juan Ruiz and Doug Walsh run communEtA -- an MBA student-run fund which invests in search entrepreneurs. The first of its kind; it is a community of LPs, students, and searchers.  The group looks to provide exposure and training on Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition and source high-quality investment opportunities for LPs and finally highlight ETA as a viable car...

Sheena Brady is the founder of Teasewellness.com, a wellness brand that creates all natural, tea and botanical based products that support you to live and lead consciously. As a B-Corp and through its’ Founder Fund, Tease also helps support under-represented women entrepreneurs with mentorship, strategic resources and funding. Sheena is a tea Sommelier with a wealth of knowledge. As an owner and c...

Justin Sibley is the CEO of POWDR, an adventure lifestyle company that owns some of the best resorts on earth, including Copper Mountain, Killington, Silver Star and more. Justin is a fellow Fuqua MBA graduate who was the Vice President of Finance at Backcountry.com before becoming CFO and then co-President of POWDR. POWDR also owns Woodward. If you know anything about board sports, you know that...

Natalya Wallin is an endurance athlete with an amazing work career. Natalya just finished a 100-mile ultramarathon in Moab, Utah. We talk about setting hard goals, remaining tenacious when faced with adversity, the ups and downs of ultrarunning and the parallels between endurance races and pursuing an MBA. Natalya talks about her time at the White House, meeting the Obamas and working for the US D...

Rory Gillis is the President of Triangle Media Partners and Founder of Triangle Digital Partners. Triangle Media Partners is the largest lifestyle influencer in the Research Triangle Park of North Carolina. The company owns Chapel Hill Magazine, Durham Magazine, Chatham Magazine, Heart of NC Weddings, Sip + Savor and Triangle Weekender. Triangle Digital Partners is the digital wing of the business...

Kasper Kubica and David Spratte are the co-founders of Carpe, makers of Dermatologist recommended sweat care products. Carpe is quickly becoming a major player in the world of antiperspirants, competing against giants like Unilever which owns Degree, Dove and AXE. From their humble beginnings, we then talk about how they have positioned Carpe to succeed in a hypercompetitive market and what makes...

Andrew Gazdecki is the founder and CEO of MicroAcquire which is billed as the world’s #1 acquisition marketplace for Startups. Andrew is a successful founder with 3 exits to his name.  He has been named an Inc. Magazine 30 Under 30 entrepreneur, and had the Fastest Growing Company in San Francisco in 2014 according to Inc. Andrew and I talk about his entrepreneurial journey and spend a lot of time...

Nick Gray is a successful entrepreneur, author and talented public speaker who has given a very inspiring TEDx talk on how he built and sold his multimillion-dollar start-up Museum Hack. Nick also runs a popular newsletter for business owners and entrepreneurs with topics such as productivity hacks and how to use virtual assistants. Nick and I talk about our mutual love of tea, his new book, how h...

Robert Graham is a successful search fund entrepreneur. As a Partner at Search Investment Group (SIG), Robert advises searchers on deal sourcing, due diligence, and capital raises. He is also an investor in multiple Private Equity and search deals in the lower-middle market and is the CEO of Pillar Health Group, a group of healthcare companies he acquired through a self-funded search. Robert and I...

Ishveen Jolly is the CEO + Founder at OpenSponsorship. OpenSponsorship is a marketplace that connects brands to professional and amateur athletes. The platform covers multiple sports in 120 different countries. Ishveen and I talk about how she built her business and the NCAA’s recent policy change that allows current and future athletes to generate revenue from their name, image or likeness. This...

Tommy Sowers is a true renaissance man with an incredible resume. He is an entrepreneur, academic, politician and a decorated Military officer with an 11-year career in the Army, having achieved the rank of Major. He has taught at West Point, the University of Missouri and Duke. He also served as the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Tommy is currently the President of fly...