The Unshakeables

Daisy Kelly and Jay Simpson met working at Blue Origin, the aerospace company founded by Jeff Bezos. When they decided to start Multi-Axis Technologies — a machine shop in Kent, Washington — they used personal savings to purchase secondhand machines and sign a five-year lease before they had a single customer. They set out to solve a problem they kept seeing firsthand, shops that could...

Elon Elezra moved to Alabama for college and never left. A gig fixing iPhones in his dorm room turned into running storefronts for the largest reselling platform in the world, doing roofing repair, and buying real estate. He spent years treating every venture as a classroom, seeing a lesson in every hardship. But ambition has a price. When Elon tackled one of his first major commercial renovations...

Max Siegelman had a logo before he had a brand — borrowed from his father's harness racing stable, Siegelman Stable. The logo felt like it was meant to be on a hat, so when the pandemic hit, Max put $600 down and started making them. No outside money, no rapid scaling. He funded each production run with returns from the last, built buzz with rappers and shipped hats to the NBA Bubble in 2020...

How do some small businesses stand the test of time? In today’s mini episode, Maya talks with Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business and host of “The Unshakeables” podcast, about what helps businesses endure across generations – from adaptability and grit to a deep connection with their communities. This episode was made in partnership with Chase for Business. Listen to &ldq...

Christopher Borgatti learned the business from his father. His son, Christopher, learned it from him. Since 1935, four generations of Borgattis have been rolling pasta in the same Bronx shop through the Depression, through WWII, through changing neighborhoods, through the internet age and through a pandemic. The name on the door has never changed. Neither has the commitment to quality.  But l...

Patricia Ermecheo always knew she would build something. She just didn’t know what — until she saw mountains of discarded clothing headed for landfills. When she couldn’t find a way to break textiles back down into usable fiber, she built one. That company became OSOMTEX. But building a solution no one else has figured out comes at a cost. The same drive that powered Patricia for...

Millionaire-making tech start-ups are most often associated with Silicon Valley. But this software revolution begins on a woman’s kitchen table in rural Britain in the 1960s. Steve Shirley faced extraordinary odds. After escaping Nazi Germany as a child, she later encountered workplace discrimination and endured deep personal tragedy. But she persevered to build a business decades ahead of i...

Everyone's talking about AI. In boardrooms, in government and around the kitchen tables — it's everywhere. But what does it actually mean for small businesses, and how are they using it to get ahead?   Recorded live at South by Southwest, Ben and Kathleen are joined onstage by Oz Woloshyn — journalist, CEO of Kaleidoscope tech podcast network and a small business owner himself &md...

Nubia Perez had a plan for her life — marry abroad, raise trilingual kids and build something global. But when her father fell ill, Gretna Machine Shop needed her more than her plans did. The family business was suddenly without direction, and Nubia stepped in to put out fires. But the business didn’t need a firefighter — it needed a leader. For a decade, both Nubia and the compa...

Work doesn’t end when the workday does. Even after we close our laptops, our minds keep replaying awkward meetings, looming deadlines, and unfinished to-do lists. Over time, that “always on” mentality can quietly hijack our relationships, our health, and our happiness. Dr. Laurie sits down with psychologist and bestselling author Guy Winch ( Mind Over Grind: How to Break Free Whe...

There are movies about how a dog can change your life — but for Dr. Laura Surovi and Michael Sivo, it actually happened. Laura had recently built a successful mobile vet practice, but the long drives were exhausting. Then in 2016, they met Chauncy, a rescue with serious injuries and no local rehab options. Watching him struggle they knew their community needed something better. So Laura buil...

Dr. Victor Van Berkel lost his father to lung cancer — the deadliest cancer in the U.S., in part because it’s so difficult to detect early. That loss inspired Breath Diagnostics, a start-up using breath samples and microchip technology to identify cancer. But groundbreaking science doesn’t always translate into a sustainable business. After years of stalled leadership and mountin...

Terry Iverson grew up in the family machine tool business, eventually becoming the third-generation CEO of Iverson & Company. But as American manufacturing declined, Terry knew the legacy he inherited wasn’t enough — he needed to create something new.     In this episode, Ben Walter and Kathleen Griffith sit down with Terry to talk about what it means to walk aw...

Transitioning your business isn’t something that happens overnight — it takes thoughtful planning to make sure everything goes smoothly. In this special episode of  The Unshakeables , Ben sits with Adam Frank, Head of Wealth Planning and Advice, at JPMorgan Chase as they break down the steps every business owner should take to prepare for the future, whether passing a business on...

Ron and Kelly Moore started in the family business young — Ron in the warehouse, Kelly on the phones. They built careers expecting to take over one day. But when their father passed away, those plans unraveled. Their stepmother, now in control, shut them out. They went their separate ways until Ron called Kelly with an idea: start again, from scratch.  That call became Moore United Cons...

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From the basketball court to the corporate boardrooms of the largest global sports brands in the world, to a locker-room–inspired idea that took off, first-time entrepreneur Jasmine Maietta’s Round21 was off to a stellar start. She’d made a quarter of a million dollars in seven days and was the first-ever Web3 company to pitch on Shark Tank—right at that moment, the NFT mar...

In this special episode, Ben sits with Tino McFarland, CEO of McFarland Construction, and Michelle Rockwell, Founding Member & Licensed Customs Broker of Sheltered International, for a roundtable discussion in Florida. They discuss the state of small business in America and, through the lens of commercial real estate and freight forwarding, share the realities of working through labor shortage...

In this episode, Nick Richitt, global co-head of Healthcare Services at J.P. Morgan, sits down with Michael Gao, co-founder of Smarter DX and president of Smarter Technologies, to explore how AI is revolutionizing healthcare. Together, they dive into the journey from digitization to true innovation, discussing how AI is transforming clinical reasoning, improving patient records and driving operati...

Emergency room doctors Kevin Biese and Daniel Arteaga saw a familiar pattern: when older adults were taken into emergency departments, more often than not, they were left waiting. On stretchers, in hallways, or in overcrowded waiting rooms. For many, the longer they waited, the more agitated they got, often leaving in worse condition than when they arrived. So the doctors decided to take on this i...

Imani Ellis has always believed community is a superpower. What began as a small gathering in her Harlem apartment grew into The Creative Collective NYC and CultureCon — one of the largest conferences celebrating creators of color. But behind the highlight reels and celebrity speakers, Imani’s journey has been defined by burnout, bold leaps and learning when to pause.  In this epi...

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Samantha Snabes never set out to build a typical company. As co-founder of re:3D and a member of the Air Force National Guard, she launched an open-source 3D printing company that prioritizes access over exclusivity. But when back-to-back hurricanes hit both her team in Houston and her customers in Puerto Rico, it nearly brought the business to a halt. Then came COVID, and a vendor vanished withou...

When Hurricane Katrina hit, Gary LeBlanc did what he knew best—he showed up to cook. But what he found on the ground was far from comforting. The food being served to survivors wasn't physically or spiritually nourishing. That moment sparked the idea for Mercy Chefs, a faith-based disaster relief organization committed to serving high-quality, home-cooked meals to people in crisis.   In...

What can we do to cultivate more resilience at work? Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business and host of  The Unshakeables  podcast, thinks about this question a lot. In today’s mini episode, Ben joins Maya to talk about the unique challenges faced by America’s small business owners—and the insights he shares can help anyone who wants to improve their well-being at work....