Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan

Alex Sheridan sits down with Erik Davison, founder and CEO of DBV Solutions, to discuss the real cost of scaling a consulting firm. Erik shares how he tripled revenue through multi-year deals, why he delegates what he does best, and the Accenture lesson that changed how he thinks about cash flow. Key takeaways: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:53 Q: How do you triple revenue after 20 years? A: Erik Dav...

She watched $600/hour consultants deliver terrible work for years. Then she quit corporate and built a better firm in 12 months. Rachel Losser left corporate in July 2024 to start Losser Consulting Solutions. In under a year she scaled to six employees and 10-20 consultants, almost entirely on referrals. She replaced 150-page decks with 3-slide proposals and partnered with Chris Voss on a book cal...

He went from $300K to $20 million in under three years. Now he works 7 hours a week on that business. Kevin Goodwin is the co-founder of Quality Solar, Scors.ai, and The Good Collom Foundation. He started as an entrepreneur at 25, built a subprime lending company before the 2008 crash, pivoted to flipping homes on Chicago's South and West Sides, and then discovered the solar industry almost by...

Your 401k is not going to make you rich. A wealth advisor to $50M+ families just said it on camera. Jeremy Boynton manages ultra-high-net-worth families. He survived two 100-year market crashes back to back, pivoted to alternative investments by learning from a Chicago family office, and today runs Laureate Wealth Management and Pure Crypto, where his first crypto fund is up 6X since 2018. In this...

94% of business problems are process, not people. But most founders blame people first. Rick Lochner has spent 18 years coaching leaders on how to get out of their own way. He is a West Point graduate who managed a $1.5 billion business unit at Sprint overseeing 640 people across 19 states. He has coached executives on six continents. He has seen firsthand why talented founders stay stuck and why...

She had a six-pack, a thriving ER career, and did everything right on the surface. Then she was diagnosed with cancer. The cause was not genetics. It was the lifestyle pattern most founders follow every day. Dr. Jennifer Ron is an ER physician turned Integrative Cancer Care specialist and cancer survivor. She breaks down which founder habits accelerate aging and the protocols that reset your healt...

You built a business worth millions. Now you are getting married. Do you know what your spouse is legally entitled to if it does not work out? Most founders have no idea. Chris Lunardini is a Partner at Spyros Davis LLC (Spydav Law), specializing in business law, family law, and estate planning. 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:22 Scaling a law firm to 20 employees and finding the right hires 00:05:27...

Most founders have no idea the financial infrastructure they depend on is about to fundamentally change. And the ones who understand why are already positioning for it. Zach Lindquist is the Founder of Pure Crypto, a crypto hedge fund operating for over eight years. He breaks down what blockchain means for business owners, why stablecoins will eliminate processing fees, and why Bitcoin might be th...

Most founders don't know where they're bleeding cash every month. Neither did some of the most successful business owners Hunter Scott has worked with. Welcome to the 100th episode of Founder Talk! Hunter Scott is a CPA and Partner at Strata Cloud Accountants. In this conversation, he breaks down the top financial mistakes founders make, shares stories of hidden margin killers, and explain...

Ryan Quinn acquired a 30-year-old construction company after the owner said he was either closing the doors or selling. Ryan and his wife Nancy survived year one, and are now rebuilding the business into something new. Key takeaways: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:11:55 Q: Have construction prices come down since COVID? A: Ryan Quinn says prices have not dropped in six years and owners who waited are st...

A dentist who stopped drilling and started building. How a clinician turned CEO quadrupled revenue, scaled to multi-location, and built a team that runs without him. Dr. Abhishek Nagaraj walked into a 4-year-old broken dental practice and quadrupled the revenue in 12 months. He shares how listening to customers, scaling without scaling chaos, hiring with personality tests, and choosing between bei...

A 45-year tech veteran who watched mainframes become iPhones shares what founders have forgotten about leadership and scaling. Jody Jankovsky has built and run Blackline IT for 30+ years. He breaks down why clarity is the most underrated leadership skill, what "irresponsible delegation" costs you, and how the Moonshot framework can transform a founder-dependent company into a self-scalin...

Trigger Warning: This episode includes discussion of childhood abuse and trauma. Bestselling author Jill Monaco reveals why your biggest business bottleneck isn’t strategy, it’s what’s happening beneath the surface. Most founders blame hiring, systems, or tactics. In reality, deeper currents of fear, control, and outsourced identity are blocking growth. Jill Monaco is an ICF-certified life coach,...

Most founders think they're covered legally. They're not. Ana Casanueva, Founder of Casanueva Law PLLC, reveals the legal mistakes that will cost you money, deals, and peace of mind. Whether you're relying on handshake deals, using AI to draft contracts, or thinking about selling your business someday, this conversation breaks down what every founder needs to know to protect themselves...

In this episode, Alex Sheridan sits down with Andy Sharma, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Flowtogen, a company that builds and deploys AI agents for businesses. With 20 years at Accenture, Andy breaks down the difference between efficiency AI and opportunity AI, a framework every founder needs before making their next AI investment. Key takeaways: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:14:55 Q: Is a compute...

In this episode of Founder Talk, Alex Sheridan sits down with Adam Hodge, founder of Farr and Swit, to unpack how a microbrand watch company grew in a saturated market by competing on identity, nostalgia, and meaning instead of pure utility. Key Takeaways: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:06:30 Why do people still buy watches when phones and smartwatches already tell time? Answer: Adam argues the best wat...

What if the real reason a business still depends on the founder is not strategy, but culture? In this episode of Founder Talk, Alex Sheridan sits down with Eric Himes, founder of The Inspired Culture, to break down a different model of leadership: one that is measurable, repeatable, and designed to build stronger teams without making the founder the center of every decision. Key Takeaways: 00:00:0...

When a founder refuses to let go, the business eventually hits a ceiling. In this episode of Founder Talk, Alex Sheridan sits down with Amanda Horan, Co-Founder + CEO of Line + Cleat, luxury USCG-approved life jackets, to unpack what it takes to build in a crowded category, challenge legacy assumptions, and create a brand that can grow beyond the founder. Key takeaways: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:03...

Founders lose great people in the day-to-day moments where pressure overrides self-awareness, feedback gets ignored, and defensiveness replaces trust. In this episode of Founder Talk, Alex Sheridan sits down with Farah Harris to unpack why emotional intelligence is one of the most underrated skills in business and why it matters more as teams grow. Farah Harris is an emotional intelligence expert,...

Purpose is easy to talk about. Building a company around it is much harder. In this episode of Founder Talk, Alex Sheridan sits down with Brian Floriani, founder of Bernie’s Book Bank and BUKU Branded, for a conversation about what happens when a founder stops chasing surface-level success and starts building from conviction. For founders and operators, this is a practical conversation about purpo...

Scaling usually does not break because of the strategy first. It breaks because the people side of the business cannot support the next stage of growth.  In this episode of Founder Talk, Alex Sheridan sits down with Lindsay Dagiantis, founder of blueprintHR, to unpack what founders miss when they wait too long to build real people systems.  Lindsay is a Chicago-based fractional HR leader who helps...

Are you building something the market actually wants, or just getting excited about a smart idea? In this episode of Founder Talk, Alex Sheridan sits down with Elina Conley, Founder of Azenity Consulting and a patent-holding innovator who helps companies turn promising ideas into real commercial opportunities. What starts as a conversation about AI agents quickly becomes a deeper founder discussio...

Most founders talk about delegation. Very few build a company that can actually run and grow without them. In this episode of Founder Talk, Alex Sheridan sits down with Daniel Tataje, founder of Mercy Dental Group, to unpack his path from arriving in the US from Peru, unable to practice dentistry, to building a 13-location organization with more than 135 team members. For founders and operators, t...

Running a lean company gets harder the moment growth adds complexity.  So in this episode of Founder Talk, Alex Sheridan sits down with William Dagiantis, Cofounder & CEO of Cloudasta, to break down what it actually takes to scale a service business without bloated payroll, unnecessary software, or wasted motion.  William shares how Cloudasta helps businesses migrate to Google Workspace, strea...

The founders who win are not always the loudest. They are the ones people trust fastest. In this episode of Founder Talk, Alex Sheridan sits down with Joshua Feagans, Founder and Managing Partner of Feagans Law Group, to unpack what founders can learn from the courtroom about persuasion, trust, client relationships, and high-stakes decision-making. Josh leads the firm’s trial team and litigation p...