Million Dollar Relationships

What if the thing you have been hiding is the exact thing that would draw people to you? April Pertuis is a storyteller, speaker, author, and podcaster who founded Lightbeamers after a 25-year career in journalism, video marketing, and digital storytelling. She helps women leaders and entrepreneurs harness their own story through books, stages, podcasts, and social media. Her own path was opened b...

What if the deal you cannot close over email is sitting half an hour away, waiting for you to show up? Li Hayes is the founder of Go Leeward, where she connects world-class business speakers directly with event planners and executives, cutting the agencies out of the middle. She also coaches emerging speakers through her podcast, Path to the Main Stage. Her business began the day she had nothing l...

What if the six companies you sold had less to do with your talent than with the two people who told you to go? Mike Grossman has run six venture-funded technology companies over thirty years, every one of which was acquired. He now sits on four boards, informally coaches close to ten first-time CEOs, and wrote Failure Is An Option: Reflections of a Silicon Valley CEO. The two relationships he cre...

What if the only thing that changed between being called stubborn and being called visionary was the world, not you? Dr. Rodney S. Ridley Sr. is the chief economic, community and strategic development officer at Alvernia University, founding dean of its College of STEAM, and COO of the O'Pake Institute. A materials engineer by training, he holds 27 US patents and spent two decades in semiconductor...

What if the hardest part of your business has nothing to do with people? Kerri Roberts spent more than twenty years in corporate human resources before founding Salt & Light Advisors, a consulting firm built for businesses that never built an HR foundation. She is also the host of Don't Waste the Chaos and the author of The HR Easy Button. Her career was built on people who said yes before she had...

What if a stranger who had no idea what you did decided to introduce you anyway, purely on a feeling? In this episode, Aaron Vaccaro, President of Singularity University and Managing Director at West River Group, shares how a lunch he asked for in a college cafeteria led to a five minute phone call that shaped his entire career. Aaron helped take Topgolf from $90 million to over a billion in reven...

What if the person who could not take your call was reachable through the person sitting beside him? In this episode, Elana Frank, founder and CEO of the Jewish Fertility Foundation, shares how a conversation in a baby pool at her local Jewish community center in Atlanta led her to build an organization that now operates 11 offices and grants over a million dollars a year in fertility assistance....

What if the people who change your life are the ones who put you somewhere you have not earned yet? In this episode, Ethan Giffin, founder and CEO of the B2B eCommerce Agency, shares how losing every penny on a failed nightclub in his early twenties led to a chance encounter at a bar that relocated him, employed him, and changed his career trajectory entirely. Ethan now helps mid-market manufactur...

What if one unsolicited demo, sent to an artist you had never met, set the direction of your entire career? In this episode, John Petrocelli, founder and CEO of Bulldog DM, shares how encrypting a copy of Purple Rain and sending it to Prince's organization led to building the first direct-to-consumer music service for a major artist, and eventually to one of the most experienced livestream studios...

What if talent was never the problem, and the only thing missing was someone willing to fund it? In this episode, Christie Garton, former attorney and founder of 1,000 Dreams Fund, shares how a bestselling college guidebook series turned into a national nonprofit that has now granted close to $2 million to students chasing dreams they could not otherwise afford. Christie started her first nonprofi...

What if you could reach the top without leaving your health, your relationships, and yourself behind to get there? In this episode, Ariana Hall, executive coach to CEO founders, shares how a three-year-old asking for violin lessons led to a professional singing career in front of a million audience members, and eventually to coaching leaders of billion dollar companies. Ariana's path ran from art...

What if the empire you built became the thing you got lost inside? In this episode, Michael Fineman, author of The Authority Drift and co-founder of the Les Brown Prodigy Program, shares how a kid who was on his own at 15 taught himself to be an adult by listening to Les Brown cassettes in a beat-up car, and later found himself sitting across the table inking a deal with the man himself. Michael's...

What if the highest use of a CEO's time is the one thing that never shows up on a balance sheet? In this episode, Shane Pliska, president and CEO of Planterra, shares how a film school graduate who wanted to make movies ended up running his family's 53-year-old interior landscape company and turning its legacy greenhouse into one of the most sought-after wedding venues in Michigan. Shane serves Fo...

What if the most sustainable thing you could build started with the smallest thing you could give? In this episode, Gina Gabel and Priscilla Heffelfinger, co-founders of Thrive, share how two mothers living in Bangladesh for their husbands' work started delivering bananas to one school once a week and built a feeding program that now serves almost 4,000 children every school day. Thrive has missed...

What if you hit every number you ever set for yourself and still woke up feeling like something was missing? In this episode, Ray Higdon, sales trainer, author, and founder of Rank Makers, shares 21 years of lessons from telemarketing, door to door advertising, and selling $7,000 education systems from stage to cold rooms. He has never seen a sales script he could not improve, and he has the resul...

What if the only thing standing between where you started and where you could go was one person willing to tell you the truth? In this episode, Chelle Neff, founder of Urban Betty in Austin, Texas, shares how a girl from a small West Texas town with no savings and no safety net built a salon company with three locations, nearly 100 employees, and revenue trending past $7 million. Chelle got her co...

What if the simplest way to open every door in front of you is to refuse to close any of them? In this episode, John Loyack, President of Rider University, shares how 40 years across corporate finance, energy, rail, and higher education led him to a model that turns struggling universities into engines of economic redevelopment for the cities they serve. He has now done it three times, in Wilkes-B...

What if the relationship that changed your life also uncovered the business opportunity you were meant to pursue? In this episode, Moshe Edri, Founder of Spa Sphere, shares how an unexpected relationship led him to discover a massive gap in the aesthetics industry and inspired him to build an AI-powered platform designed specifically for aestheticians. After spending more than 20 years building te...

What if the biggest obstacle to building lasting wealth isn't a lack of money, but meeting people who make it possible? In this episode, Peter Skaggs, Founder of Investor Lighthouse and Innovative Mortgage Alliance, shares how decades in real estate investing taught him that financial freedom isn't built through luck or chasing trends. It's built through education, disciplined action, and relation...

What if your greatest adventure isn't about where you go, but who you become? In this episode, Kevin Thompson sits down with entrepreneur, adventurer, and Wayfinders founder Mike Brcic. After building and selling one of Canada's leading adventure tourism companies, Mike realized that success alone wasn't enough. Today, he helps high-achieving entrepreneurs reconnect with themselves through transfo...

What if one relationship could help save thousands of lives? In this episode, Kevin Thompson sits down with Andrea and Jessica La Mesa, co-CEOs of The Life You Can Save, a nonprofit dedicated to lifting people out of extreme poverty by changing the way people think about and donate to charity. Drawing on successful careers in Silicon Valley, the husband-and-wife team now helps donors make smarter,...

What if every door that ever opened for you started with a message you almost didn't send? In this episode, Susanne Sandler, SVP and GM of Fintech at Mews, a $2.5 billion global hotel technology company, shares how a bold application as a college sophomore led her into the office of the CFO of Merrill Lynch, and how a cold message to a keynote speaker years later led to six years working alongside...

What if the most important introduction of your career started with raking a sand bunker? In this episode, Bob Whalen, CEO of HB Global and author of Beyond Your Ownership, shares how a 112-year-old mechanical contracting company in Central Pennsylvania became one of the most powerful examples of employee ownership in America. Today HB Global has 2,500 employee owners, over $215 million in value s...

What if the two words you never meant to say turned out to be the most important words of your life? In this episode, Ryan Lee, founder of Wealth Outside Wall Street and author of Retire in 10 Years or Less, shares how losing most of his net worth in 2008 led him to discover a completely different way of thinking about money. He retired at 34, not because he was rich, but because he had built enou...

What if the person who shaped your entire career was someone you met on a soccer pitch at university? In this episode, Kieran Corbett, venture capital professional at StudioVC in New York, shares how a 13-year career in futures trading, a soccer club chairmanship at university, and one chance encounter at an event in New York led him to the second chapter of his career in early-stage venture capit...