Success Stories with Steve Cross

Most people love talking about their wins. Tim Tierney would rather talk about the failures that made them possible. In this episode of Success Stories, Tim sits down with Steve Cross to unpack the real story behind building and selling multiple businesses. They get into entrepreneurship, bipolar disorder, bad partnerships, private equity, Bitcoin, and why some of the most expensive lessons end up...

Martin Rowinski's story starts with escaping communist Poland at nine years old, living in Italy while his family fought to get into America, and showing up to school without speaking a word of English. In this episode, Martin joins Steve Cross to talk about resilience, entrepreneurship, surviving the 2008 mortgage crash, building and exiting businesses, personal branding, and why failure isn&...

Most people don't expect a hairstylist to end up running a multi-location franchise company. Jenner Feroah did. In this episode of Success Stories, Steve Cross sits down with the CEO of Lunatic Fringe Salons to talk about turning a passion into a career, growing from salon assistant to CEO, and building a business that refuses to compromise its culture. They get into leadership, franchising, h...

Keith Tessler learned a lesson most founders eventually figure out the hard way: Technology isn’t the hard part. People are. In this episode, Steve Cross sits down with Keith Tessler, CEO of CMIT Solutions, to talk about getting thrown into leadership in his 20s, helping modernize a family business during the PC revolution, learning leadership through mistakes, and building an IT company without c...

Most people know their career doesn’t fit. They just don’t do anything about it. This episode is what it looks like when someone finally does. Steve sits down with Rob Reznik, founder of Beacon, to break down how a CFO with multiple exits walked away from a “successful” path to go fix something everyone complains about but nobody actually solves: referrals, trust, and how deals really happen. They...

This one’s about realizing you built a life that looks right but feels off. Briana Mascaro followed the script perfectly, going to law school, climbing the corporate ladder, and working for 15 years at Disney. Then three things hit at once: a brutal self-check, a colleague gone overnight, and her 8-year-old telling her she wasn’t where she was supposed to be. That’s what cracked it. This conversat...

This one’s a reminder that most people aren’t stuck. They’re just not looking hard enough. Steve sits down with Rob Berk, President of Berk Enterprises, and the story isn’t some clean, step-by-step playbook. It’s a guy walking county fairs, noticing nobody gives a shit about better cups… and turning that into a business edge. It’s flying to China before it was normal, figuring it out in real time,...

This one’s about what happens when you realize the “safe” path isn’t actually safe, it’s just comfortable. Mitch Stein spent 15 years doing everything right (stable career, solid income, clear path),and still walked away from it. Not because it failed… but because it felt limited. This conversation gets into what that actually looks like when you make the jump later in life. We also get into how h...

Most people think success is about hitting some milestone. Ed Kalaher doesn’t. In this episode, he breaks down how his real turning point came decades into his career when he stopped chasing what success should look like and started owning what he’d already built. From grinding through 9/11, the Great Recession, and COVID, to rebuilding a company out of bankruptcy and scaling Window Depot to 90+ l...

Stephanie Sage doesn’t sugarcoat entrepreneurship. After the 2008 crash wiped out her mortgage career, she started a restoration business with zero experience, no paycheck for years, and nothing but hustle to survive. This episode breaks down what it actually takes to build something from nothing: early mistakes, brutal learning curves, and the moments that finally moved the business forward. From...

Most people don’t think twice about doing laundry. Turns out, it’s one of the biggest sources of microplastic pollution on the planet. In this episode, Steve Cross sits down with Max Pennington, co-founder and CEO of CLEANR, to break down how a random discovery turned into a real company solving a real problem. They get into what it actually looks like to build a physical product from scratch: pro...

This episode flips the typical “success story” on its head. Sean Hackett didn’t follow a clean, linear path. He went from competitive academics to acting, got knocked off course, learned business the hard way in the Chicago Board of Trade, and eventually found his way into the plumbing and construction world. What you get here isn’t theory; it’s decades of real-world experience around pressure, mo...

This episode with Tom Berka, owner of Badlands Distribution, is a real look at what it actually takes to build something from nothing; no polished startup story, just hard work, risk, and figuring it out as you go. Tom walks through his journey from running delivery routes in the middle of the night to scaling a multi-state distribution business with hundreds of accounts. The conversation dives in...

This episode cuts through the polished success narrative and gets real about what it actually takes to build something from nothing. Marisa Sergi, CEO of L’uva Bella Winery, walks through the uncomfortable parts most people avoid: rejection, burnout, identity hits, and making hard business decisions when your emotions are tied to the brand. From launching a wine company as a college project to sca...

In this episode of Success Stories, Steve Cross sits down with Tim Petrey, CEO of HD Growth Partners. Tim breaks down the moments that actually changed his trajectory, from getting called out by a high school guidance counselor to finding a mentor who pushed him to think bigger than the limits he had set for himself. They talk about building a company the hard way, why mentorship matters, how one...

In this episode of Success Stories, Steve Cross sits down with Josh and Christina Mikels, the husband-and-wife team behind Mr. Electric of Winter Garden. They walk through how Josh went from engineering and corporate leadership to betting on a franchise, why they chose a proven playbook instead of building from scratch, and what it actually took to grow the business while raising five kids. It’s a...

The housing industry is broken: slow, expensive, and wildly inefficient. In this episode of Success Stories, Steve Cross sits down with Vikas Enti, CEO and co-founder of Reframe Systems, to talk about why that’s the case and what it takes to actually fix it. Vikas explains how his team is using robotics, software, and micro-factories to rethink how homes get built, why construction hasn’t improved...

In this episode of Success Stories, Steve Cross talks with Ryan Schreiber, Founder and CEO of Streamline, about leaving a stable career to build a solution to streaming fragmentation, starting with sports fans. Ryan shares how personal frustration turned into a product, why early versions were too broad, and how focusing on the right user improved retention and traction. They discuss the shift fro...

In this episode of Success Stories, Steve Cross sits down with Mike Brown, owner of McGregor Manufacturing, for a real-world conversation about what it actually takes to build and sustain a manufacturing business. From learning CNC machining in high school in the 80s to buying his first Haas machine on a leap of faith, Mike shares how hands-on skill, calculated risk, and a lot of hard lessons shap...

In this episode of Success Stories, Steve Cross sits down with Jeffrey Poulin, President of SMB Packaging, to explore how a reluctant move from California to rural Mississippi and a childhood built on hard work laid the foundation for a 600,000+ square foot, three-location company serving Fortune 500 brands. Jeffrey shares how buying a garage-based side business from his father at 20 became the st...

In this episode of Success Stories , Steve Cross sits down with James Wesolaski, owner of Get Lit Electrical Services, to talk about what it really takes to bet on yourself under pressure. From juggling a full-time job and late-night side work during a divorce to launching his own company with zero capital, James shares the hard lessons behind eight years of growth: bootstrapping, cash flow mistak...

In this episode of Success Stories, Steve Cross sits down with Bernard Huang, founder of Clearscope ( clearscope.io ), to dig into what “success” really looks like when you’re in the grind. Bernard traces the turning points that shaped his path, from growing up under heavy expectations in an immigrant household, to ditching the track he hated, to learning risk and independence through online poker...

Most people don’t plan to end up running a successful company; they back into it out of necessity, frustration, or sheer survival. That’s exactly how Carlos Sanchez’s story starts. In this episode of Success Stories, we talk about being a reluctant entrepreneur, why most contractors fail, how boring business fundamentals actually create freedom, and why doing things the right way still matters. Ab...

Food trailer manufacturing is broken, and Justin Campbell decided to rebuild it from the ground up. In this episode of Success Stories, the owner of Firefly explains how process, systems, and smart leadership turn chaos into scale (and why most builders are doing it wrong). About Our Guest Justin Campbell is the owner of Firefly Fabrication (Firefly), a California-based builder of food trucks and...

In this episode of Success Stories, host Steve Cross sits down with Jay Fortuna, Senior Vice President of Talent and Operations at GoHealth, for an inspiring deep dive into resilience, leadership, and lifelong learning. Jay shares how his journey, from being told he’d “never make it” in learning and development to leading major talent and operations teams, was fueled by grit, curiosity, and a driv...