The Business Reality Check: You can’t grow a business you hate.

Adam did not leave community mental health because the bureaucracy was choking him out. He left because he was tired of driving an hour to work every day and his kid was not going to stay little forever. After four years in community mental health, Adam stepped out on his own and built Greenside Prairies, a private practice where he works with individuals on trauma, OCD, anxiety, aging concerns an...

Jay Tharian did not stumble into entrepreneurship. He ran at it from every direction he could find. He fell in love with technology as a kid, ripping apart Walkmans and figuring out how the internet worked before most people knew what it was. He went on to spend years in the restaurant industry scaling franchises and building tech infrastructure, eventually becoming a director of technology for la...

Selena Parrish has spent 30 years in veterinary care. She knows what is in every product on her shelves, why it works, and what it will do for your pet. That is not something you find at the big box pet store down the road. That is what she built Wags, Whiskers, and Beyond around. It started as a converted 18-passenger bus she drove to events across the OKC area. When she was ready for more, she o...

Morgan Dilldine and her husband built M&N Property Care from the ground up in the Oklahoma City area. The work is good. Their clients love them. They get referrals because the quality shows up every single time. Morgan has a 90% close rate once she gets someone on the phone. Her clients almost become friends by the end of a job. Those are not small things. What they are working on right now is...

Mendy Applegate built HDC Academy to answer one of the most frustrating questions in small business: why does nobody hand business owners the actual owner's manual?! Trust us, she would know. Mendy spent years in corporate, pivoted into running her own bookkeeping firm in 2020, and has grown into one of the most trusted small business educators in the Oklahoma City area. She speaks at the Cham...

THE BUSINESS REALITY CHECK PODCASTEpisode 5: When the System Does the Work But the Story Does the Selling with Patrick Wilson of Bar-Key BartendingPatrick Wilson is not just a bartender. He is a problem solver who spent years in accounting and banking before deciding he was done building someone else's business. When he launched Bar-Key Bartending, he knew from the very beginning that he wante...

THE BUSINESS REALITY CHECK PODCAST Episode 4: When the Culture Is the Brand with Devin from Fernwell Salon and Spa Devin did not open Fernwell Salon and Spa because she wanted to run a business. She opened it because she had spent years working in environments that were the opposite of what a salon should feel like, and she made a promise to herself that she would build something different. Someth...

THE BUSINESS REALITY CHECK PODCAST Episode 3: When You're Great at What You Do But Nobody Knows You're There Yet with Mo from Crush Theory Beauty Mo made a decision most people would never make. She spent six months away from her husband and babies, lived with her in-laws, and went back to school full time to build something she believed in. Last month, she opened Crush Theory Beauty, a sk...

THE BUSINESS REALITY CHECK PODCAST Episode 2: When Your Self-Imposed Expectations Become Your Boss with Liliana Provencial Liliana Provencial has spent more nights than she can count working past midnight since her daughter was born. She's running three businesses doing the creative work that lights her up, but somewhere along the way, her stress and self-imposed expectations became her boss....

THE BUSINESS REALITY CHECK PODCAST Episode 1: The Gap Between Loving Your Work and Making Money From It with Melinda Schmitz, Founder of Lifestyle Techniques Five years into her business. Working full-time. Posting every day. Running ads. Spending money on courses and tools. And Melinda Schmitz still couldn't figure out why her calendar wasn't full. She teaches confidence and social skills...