Rust Belt Startup

Hey everyone – I was going to say Happy 2021 until things all went sideways last week. Regardless this the first episode of Season 3 of the Rust Belt Startup Podcast. On today’s episode I’m actually reading a blog post in it’s entirety that I really enjoyed which was featured in Tim Ferriss’ newsletter ‘ Five Bullet Friday ‘. It’s originally by Conne...

Today’s pod is a super-shorty episode (I’ll be experimenting with more of these) where we’re talking about the Trojan horse that is the Nike Run Club app. This app started as a sensor you’d put in your Nike shoes (Nike+) and evolved as smartphones entered the market to a full-fledged and full-featured digital community. And there’s key feature/Trojan horse methodology...

Today on the podcast it’s a little lighter and I’m chatting with a colleague of mine – Bernie Freytag. He is the Creative Director at Romanelli Communications and he has a new book called ‘Find Wonder In The Ordinary’, which is sort of a memoir mashed-up with New Yorker cartoons. So in this conversation we focus on creativity – how to harness your own creativity , how do you be creativ...

Today – a short reflection on the past several weeks and the role small towns and cities can have in meaningful change. Imperfect and incomplete. Rust Belt Startup · Storytellers and Story-Changers – Some (self) Reflection on Social-Justice

Rust Belt Startup · Functional Speed and the Evolution of Ice I’m in week 9 or 10 of work-from-home and quarantine at this point, and things are settling into a rhythm. At least the sun is starting to come out and working from home also includes working in with the laptop in the back yard. Today is another toolbox episode that was inspired by a Scott Galloway post on what he calls Functional...

Today we’re going a bit tactical. I’m taking with Gary Maples about chatbots – now before you tune out, we should start to understand what a chatbot is and what it isn’t and most important – how the tech is really democratized and how small businesses and organizations can build their own with minimal expertise.  We’ll get into what goes into building a chatbot, what you can do wi...

Over the weekend I wanted to catch up with urbanist Arian Horbovetz in Rochester, NY. I’ve been enjoying his podcast The Urban Phoenix and wanted to dig into what cities might be like after the COVID19 pandemic. We get into urban planning, last mile transport, remote work, the changing commercial real estate market, and the impact of EVs on cities amongst other topics. If you’d like to learn more...

Devin Mahoney is a Utica, NY native who spent a decade working and writing for TV and Film in LA, on shows such as Scrubs, before returning to upstate NY with the mission of taking over the Uptown Theater and turning it into a punk-rock version of a Fine Arts School. The theater is now known as the Uptown Theater for the Creative Arts (UTCA) and has become a hotbed of comedy, improv and music with...

I’m hunkered down at home on self-imposed quarantine (no symptoms, just staying safe) and have been thinking about how COVID19 is not only disrupting all of our lives, economies and governments, but what lasting change is it going to have on work culture, real estate, meetings, education and politics. Here are some of my hot takes, with the help of some recent blog posts from Seth Godin and Scott...

Today on the pod, I’m sitting down with Tim Giarrusso, CEO of Human Technologies to talk about empowering people with disabilities, holistic employment, building trust and how to create communities. HT is a $60M company that is powered by people with purpose, creating jobs and an inclusive environment, while still turning a profit. Tim is also the founder of Rochester Community Inclusive Rowing &#...

It’s been a minute – today’s podcast is a toolbox episode rather than a conversation and hope you dig it. So we’re a few months into the new year and wanted to bring you up to speed on some of things I’ve been working on, tools I’m using to create space and time, and trying to build the best year yet. Some topics I cover:  – Reading goal for 2020 and tactics to read more – N...

How often do you talk to Alexa or Siri? Voice tech is quickly becoming a facet of the way we operate in our daily lives.  And while you may not have a smart speaker in your home or like to talk to a virtual assistant, it will become a primary way your kids will interact with computers.  And synthetic voice will test our views on what’s real, and our view of AI. Today I’m talking with Geraint John,...

This week I’m sharing a conversation I had with health/wellness blogger and influencer Georgie Morley. I first discovered her photography of Nantucket (a beautiful island off the coast of Massachusetts) on instagram and was always curious how she built her blog and turned her journey into her career. So I reached out and Georgie was incredibly generous with her time for this interview. In this con...

I’m a huge fan of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and laughed my tail off at the episode about Chiitan (and Chiijohn). And I was even more surprised to hear that the costume of Chiijohn came from a little place called Geppetto Studios in Utica NY. I was lucky enough to get to hang out and have a conversation with Scott and Will of Geppetto Studios in their ‘Warehouse of the Weird&#8...

I’m super excited to share this conversation I had with Big Mike Morrill. Mike is obsessed with Kaizen, or the process of continuous improvement. We talk about his journey of applying this manufacturing process to his business (Total Solutions) , and even his relationships. Learn how to eliminate struggle, 1 minute at a time. Mike also has a great TEDx talk on this very topic.

I’m (finally) kicking off Season 2 of Rust Belt Startup with a shorty, or a toolbox episode. It’s a recap of my recent album launch, how to ‘show your work’ and some tips on how I reverse engineer projects. Season 2 starts now and we’ve got great long-form interviews coming up. If you want to see the project referenced in this episode, visit PostcardsPoetryandProse.co...

This is it! We’re sticking a fork in season 1 of Rust Belt Startup. Today is a bit of a throwback episode. It’s a conversation that I had in front of a live audience in Utica, NY with Hugette Montesinos. Hugette is the founder of Disfunkshion Magazine – which is way more than a magazine at this point and has turn into a lifestyle brand, consultancy, digital services and more. She’s an Instag...

This week I’m super excited to share a conversation with one of my favorite songwriters out there- Ryan Montbleau. He has built an audience and a career through a steady stream of thoughtful songs, working with amazing bands of musicians and almost non-stop touring all over the country for more than a decade. He has a new album out called The Woodstock Sessions and you can learn much more ab...

I think deep down in all of us, there’s been a period of time when we’ve wanted to sell our stuff, drop everything and go out and see the world. Today on the podcast I’m talking to Ryan & Brittany Parr who are about to embark on that very journey. They’ve sold the house, sold their stuff and have moved into a 5th wheel camper to travel for an indefinite period of time a...

We’re talking citizen journalism and the media landscape with Brett Orzechowski. He’s launching a new project called Stateline NY. It’s a media site with a collection of interesting and in-depth stories covering a host of issues that are relevant across upstate NY. We talk about the role that long-form and mixed media journalism plays in today’s landscape, and some of the common issues facing upst...

It’s just over a month until Election Day and the race to represent the 22nd District is in full force. Anthony Brindisi is in the middle of that congressional campaign, running as the Democratic nominee and I recently got the opportunity to have this conversation with him. I’ve always been curious about why someone decides to run for public office, as well as what the day-to-day exper...

What makes a great city? That’s what we’re going to dive into with my guest Arian Horbovetz who is the author of The Urban Phoenix . It’s a blog that focuses on conversations surrounding our urban environments. So he’s the perfect person to talk about how small cities are reinventing themselves and creating dynamic urban environments. Arian is also a person who has gone car...

On this week’s episode, I’m having a chat with Dr. Heather Malyuk of Soundcheck Audiology. She’s an audiologist that focuses on working with musicians and touring musicians from her home base in rural Ohio and has worked with the tour of Jay-Z & Beyonce, Death Cab for Cutie, Journey, Kanye West, and many many more. In our conversation we talk about the science of music, what...

Chris Hartman is a farmer, academic and founder of Headwater Food Hub in Rochester NY. In our wide-ranging conversation we try to get to the root of what makes an effective food-system. But it’s not just about food… We talk about building a team of people that believe what you believe, starting movements, and doing work that matters. Want to learn more about Chris, the Good Food Collective, and He...

Sometimes the standard for service in a given industry is god-awful, or terrible. Sometimes if you’re just ‘bad’ you’ll have all the work you can handle. So let’s talk about how you can go from ‘terrible’ to ‘bad’ to ‘mediocre’ to ‘amazing’ using a technique from the founders of Air Bnb. In this episode we talk about the...