Evolving Your Workplace

“I learned over time the value of just getting everyone to get on the same page and move in a direction, albeit imperfect– because you can course correct. You can inspect and adapt as you go,” Phil Reynolds says, “It wasn’t about me being right, it was more about building alignment in the team.” Phil first founded BriteCore, a cloud-native platform for P&C insurers, and almost two decades late...

“You manage engineers in a completely different way to how you manage salespeople, in a completely different way to how you manage finance people, and so on and so forth. And you have to be able to shapeshift your management personality into a context that is relevant to that point in time.” - Phil Tee Phil has founded several successful software companies, his latest: Moogsoft, an AIOps incident...

“I’ve asked people to stop doing any multitasking— because this is a freaking illusion. It doesn’t work,” Vadim Peskov tells Carol.  Vadim co-founded Diffco, an app development company.  Diffco helps tech startups build their software and, in some cases, also build out their business model.  In order to make his days as CEO as efficient as possible, Vadim has learned to structure hi...

“I think most lawyers, they go for comfort. Maybe not comfort in the subject matter of what they’re doing, but comfort in their repeatable patterns. They go to the office, they do the same type of work each day. The cannabis industry was anything but that,” Bob Hoban tells Carol. Bob founded Hoban Law Group, which Clark Hill’s Cannabis Industry Group later acquired. His firm notably paved the way...

“I was laying there so uncomfortable, afraid, anxious, confused, just clamoring for information to understand what all of these crazy acronyms were,” Michael O’Neil tells Carol about the genesis of his idea.  After being treated for Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Michael founded Get Well, an organization that aims to empower patients to take an active role in their health journey.  Get Well uti...

“People think once you raise money, that it gets easier. No. You only have more to prove.” - Sofiat Abdulrazaaq Years ago, Sofiat wanted to check out a food truck a friend had recommended and was unable to find it. This catapulted her and her friends into a journey to create GoodFynd, a way to connect customers to mobile businesses, helping food trucks to be more visible and profitable. Sofiat is...

“If you’re just promoting yourself, you’ve lost people right there. You have to give back. The more you give back, the more people are going to be receptive to you and know that you are an industry leader.“ - Brandon Leibowitz Brandon founded SEO Optimizers, a digital marketing agency that helps companies gain online traffic through search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM),...

“The future of work is changing, but also the future of travel,” Andrew says, “People are staying gone longer, they’re seeing that things are actually better in another place potentially for them, they don’t have to wait until they retire.” Andrew co-founded Insured Nomads, an insurtech and travel-tech platform aimed at helping travelers, ex-pats, and digital nomads explore and live with their wel...

Chad Pytel began freelancing as a developer in high school and continued throughout college to make ends meet. Later he joined a startup that failed quickly and led him to form a new company with the team he built.  He founded thoughtbot, an end-to-end product development and design consultancy. thoughtbot aims to bring a company’s idea to life and eventually give them the tools to have their...

When Ravi Maddimsetty began his start-up he had a vision of connecting the physical with the digital to help businesses engage with customers – not necessarily through QR code technology. But after trial and error, Ravi and his co-founder Sharat knew QR codes were the technology they had been looking for.  Today their company, “Beaconstac” employs over 60 people and has worked with brands suc...

Scott Snider began his entrepreneurship journey in high school when he started mowing lawns. His side gig quickly turned into a full-blown operation with several employees. With mentorship from his dad, he grew the business and strategically sold it seven years later.  Scott now uses his dad’s same methodology to help other businesses. As the president of the Exit Planning Institute (EPI), Sc...

In an effort to solve the growing issue of service technicians leaving the field, Aaron Salow co-founded XOi Technologies to help the workforce by providing much-needed data.  XOi Technologies is an all-in-one communication tool connecting field service technicians, offices, and customers. His company now has over 90 employees. Aaron says a large part of the product's success comes from the f...

Yotam Segev aims to lead the way in the new and expanding cloud data security market. The space is part of the larger cyber security market and is growing quickly as data security becomes more and more complicated, Yotam says.  Yotam’s company, Cyera, is a cloud data security firm that, while only being a year-and-a-half old, has already raised a large sum of capital. Carol presses Yotam on w...

Years ago, Shane Foss had a back issue and checked into a nearby urgent care facility to get help. After getting services, he was billed $800. Fortunately, Shane had worked in the healthcare space and knew how to negotiate it down to $75.  That’s when he got the idea to start Hooray Health, a company aimed at providing limited healthcare benefits to hourly workers that won’t break the bank. S...

Meet Jaci Russo: a mother of four and the founder and CEO of BrandRUSSO, a strategic branding agency. Beyond that, she also wrote a book on branding and created courses for people to learn how to brand their companies independently.  “To me, it’s just about saying yes. That seems like a good idea. Sure I’ll try that! That seems like an awesome opportunity, yes let’s do that!” Jaci tells Carol...

One value Guillermo Elizondo looks for in his employees is a “force of spirit” which he refers to as the spirit within someone that pushes them to meet a goal despite obstacles. With globalization and facing worldwide problems, Elizondo believes it’s our force of spirit that will help change the world.  Elizondo co-founded Territorium, a global education technology leader providing an educati...

“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...