Evolving Your Workplace

On this episode of Authentically Successful, host Carol Schultz interviews Sudhir Bhojwani, co-founder and CEO of a procurement technology company named ORO Labs.  Sudhir opens up about his journey as a software engineer and his first startup which opened the door to three more. He reflects on projects that failed and also shares successes, such as his company Vayulogic.  The conversatio...

On this episode of Authentically Successful, Carol Schultz is joined by Tobias Dahlberg, the founder and CEO of The Simple Company. As the title displays, his business works with organizations of many sizes to simplify, refocus, and hone their operations. He calls these companies “maxed-out operators” and aims to transform them into “wealthy business owners.” With over 15 years of experience in st...

On this episode of Authentically Successful, host Carol Schultz interviews Paul Baron, the founder of The Wall Printer. Paul's printer technology transforms images into wall art. In this episode, you’ll learn about Paul’s winding journey through business, including his experience in retail and manufacturing, and what later lead him to retire. He also delves into the process of starting The Wall Pr...

On this episode of Authentically Successful, we dive into the world of healthcare and the importance of vaccinations with our guest, Dr. Jonathan Baktari. Jonathan leads three organizations: e7 Health, a platform aimed at streamlining adult vaccinations, eNational Testing, offering nationwide access to laboratory tests, and lastly, U.S. Drug Test Centers, a network of testing centers in America.&n...

“I think there's a lot of disruption coming, and that disruption has started with the advent of Chat GPT and all these generative AI tools. And I think if you ask me if there's anything that's going to keep me up at night is, how do we pivot as a company to understand and appreciate these tools that are coming. And what does that mean to our workforce?...”- Rajeev Kapur On this episode of Authenti...

On this episode of Authentically Successful, host Carol Schultz sits down with guest Ted Rubin, a highly successful CEO in the automotive tech industry. They discuss topics such as the importance of evolving conversations, messaging solutions, and how to succeed in the automotive industry.  Ted’s company, ActivEngage, aims to help automotive companies sell and service more cars through an imp...

On this episode of Authentically Successful, host Carol Schultz invites the co-founder and CEO of Carbon Title, Trevor Dryer, to share his journey in Fintech and later co-founding his organization in the climate tech space.  Carbon Title offers transparency into the carbon emissions of all buildings, empowering stakeholders to understand, manage, and take action to reduce emissions across the...

"I feel like men think— and a lot of people think— oh, nonprofits are just nice and they're all volunteer ran and it's this nice, fluffy thing over here. But we are really meeting a need." - Tracy Smith On this episode of Authentically Successful, we hear from Tracy Smith, the CEO of Make-A-Wish Alabama, a nonprofit organization that grants wishes to children with life-threatening medical conditio...

“By bringing customers to the back along with their pets, they were able to see everything that was going on. And so we did that for transparency reasons. What we discovered then is when the pet owners we call customers were able to see the caregivers, what they were doing, they were really appreciative. It added value in their eyes to the work that we were doing." — David Bessler  It’s a 2-f...

Should you take venture money? "You really need to be up for growing a business, growing it relatively quickly, and finding an exit." — Seth Levine On this episode of Authentically Successful, Carol interviews Seth, the managing director and co-founder of Foundry Group. The venture capital firm was formed in 2007 and has now grown to 75 employees.  You’ll hear about Seth’s winding journey fro...

“Don’t invite me onstage because I’m a female.” Bobbie Shrivastav says, “Invite me onstage because I have something valuable to add to the conversation.” Bobbie, co-founder, and COO of Benekiva, is a second-time founder. She and her husband first created Docsmore, a document manager, and later moved on to join Benekiva, a platform that transforms the end-to-end insurance claims and servicing exper...

“The true answer in the startup world is those who are successful are almost always white men who have exited before.” Leslie Hyman says, “In order to compete particularly in the payment world and then in the multifamily world, it takes a fair amount of money. That is not easy, and I just want to call out, it’s hard, I mean women still get 2-3% of VC funds. That is unconscionable.” Leslie co-found...

“I want to hear people acknowledge that they have failed,” Chuck Frydenborg says, “What I ask of my people is to make new mistakes. Don’t make the same ones over and over again. Then we got a problem. Make new ones. Learn from them.”  MarketMuse, an AI platform for content creation and strategy, began as a personal science project. The original founder, Aki Balogh, was researching the space w...

“I think we’ve learned pretty quickly that we can do work remote. (But) It is difficult to lead and it is difficult to be the leader you need to be without being around the leaders you’re going to replace,” Rick West says, “I think you’ll have a whole wave of people upset that they’re not the next partner…because they were in California on a beach doing amazing work but someone else was there arou...

“You take care of your people and your people take care of your company every day— on personal levels, professional levels. I know without a doubt that they have my back.” - Melissa Hurrington  As CFO of Premier Claims, a public adjustment firm that advocates on behalf of the customer, Melissa leads with a people-first approach.  Melissa says her company turns away about 50% of work beca...

“What we’ve done is we’ve really tried to take peoples’ skill sets and use them so that they’re not only doing what they’ve been hired to do but they’re doing what they love to do.” - Cynthia Adams Cynthia and two others started GrantStation in a one-room cabin in the woods of Alaska. The organization was created to connect nonprofits with grantmakers nationally and internationally in order to get...

Jagadish Gattu (Jag) came to the US from India to get his master's and stayed here ever since. After working at many companies, he realized that many customer needs could be better fulfilled through AI.  In 2019 he founded UptimeAI, an artificial intelligence-based predictive maintenance software provider for companies in heavy industries. Since its start, the company has grown to 24 employee...

“I’m sorry– there is no balance. Some people can separate the two, you know, but overall it’s integrating and how do you bring it all together and make it work harmoniously together,” Dan LaBroad says.  Dan’s company, Ovation Health and Life Services, is an employee benefits firm aimed at helping employers create better health plans.  Dan began his career in the restaurant industry, comp...

“We made a big mistake. We configured the platform where—luckily it never saw production because it was caught in testing– but we had where we pointed the system to the wrong logo,” Brent Williams tells Carol, “We owned it. We said ‘This is us, we did this.’”  Brent founded Benekiva, a SaaS technology platform that aims to transform the end-to-end insurance claims and servicing experience. Fo...

“You get this feeling of happiness when you do this,” Jitesh Shetty tells founders, “If that’s not happening, it’s almost like your system internally telling you: change something! Maybe that’s not the right idea for you, the right problem space…I think if that is not happening it will be very hard to succeed.”  Jitesh, a three-time founder, most recently co-founded Credible, a SaaS company t...

“You’ve got to cast a long shadow,” Eric Miller tells Carol. “We look a lot bigger than we are to our clients. They are always a little surprised that we are less than 100 people because we pack a bigger punch than these 4,5,600-person companies that we compete with.”  Eric is a co-owner and Principal at PADT, a provider of tools and services that help companies design and manufacture their p...

Calvin Goforth founded VIC Tech in order to help commercialize new technologies invented by university researchers.  VIC Tech began as a consulting firm for tech startups. After noticing that many professors with new technologies didn’t want to quit their roles to develop them, Calvin decided to shift.  The company screens new technologies brought to them from various universities and an...

“There is a financial responsibility that exists in every organization. Traditionally HR is not a part of those conversations. They’re the conversation that happens after that decision has been made, and they’re left to reconcile the reality that’s been created when they weren’t in the room.” - Matt Burns Matt founded BentoHR, an HR operations consulting firm. After working as an HR executive for...

“Sometimes when people spend too much time in corporate life, they kind of are taught to not think. Don’t think just do. And that is really like the opposite of what we want people to think,” Ozan Bilgen says, “We want people to be critical about the process and come up with their solutions as well, if possible.” Ozan founded Base64.ai, an artificial intelligence service that works as a one-stop-s...

“She (Shahed’s wife) would go to a stakeholder meeting and tell me that ‘You haven’t done that properly…”” CEO Shahed Islam tells Carol. “Our team members have learned that. We have become a good example. Now they are arguing.” Shahed co-founded SJ Innovation, an IT solutions company, with his wife almost two decades ago when they were two traveling freelancers. The business has now grown to 170 e...