THIS is a Thing

Tara Chapman spent a decade at the CIA working on issues surrounding Afghanistan and Pakistan — then quit to become a beekeeper in Austin, Texas. In this episode, she talks about the Groupon beekeeping class that changed her path, why she took a seasonal job with a commercial beekeeper before going all in, and how a simple idea to sell honey turned into Two Hives Honey, an agritourism business tha...

Raj Shingadia always wanted to be a lawyer — until a professor convinced him the reality of a law career was nothing like he imagined. With no backup plan, he started taking steps. He tried commercial real estate. He went deep on his aquarium hobby. He started growing coral in his basement to offset the cost. And then 2008 happened — and everything he had built was wiped out overnight. What came n...

Marc Evan is the co-founder of Maniac Pumpkin Carvers, a New York-based studio that has elevated pumpkin carving into a legitimate fine art — with work displayed at MoMA, the Whitney, and Yankee Stadium, and clients including Martha Stewart, Food Network, and the New York Botanical Garden. In this episode, Marc traces the whole journey: from carving Halloween decorations at the East Village bars w...

Dasti Llenga was juggling three things at once — private equity job, master's degree, growing side hustle — when he asked himself a simple question: what could he do if he put all his focus into one? It started with a $4,000 Mercedes he flipped for $15,000 in three days. Then came the flea market finds, the first liquidation pallet, a truckload of Costco returns sold out of his parents' ga...

Arthur Wei was a three-time national chess champion by age 11 — and then he quit. That decision taught him a framework for making big choices that he's used ever since: always choose the path that maximizes the number of potential positive outcomes. It's the logic that led him to leave a stable job at Oracle, travel the world for four years as a filmmaker, build a custom camper van in Broo...

Rachel Clowes founded The Sustainable Sequin Company out of an MA thesis project asking one deceptively simple question: why do the materials in special occasion clothing last thousands of years when we only wear those clothes two or three times? Her answer — bio-based, biodegradable sequins — turned into a business she started with a government startup loan and a customer lined up before she had...

Dave Kozuha spent 18+ years in corporate IT. He always wanted to be in food. So when he got fed up enough to start thinking about an exit, he started researching coffee for a crepe cart he was planning to open. That was the beginning of a very unexpected rabbit hole. He couldn't find coffee he loved, so he ordered green beans and roasted them himself on Thanksgiving morning in a frying pan. Sm...

Jessica Zouaoui started out with a one dream: quit her corporate job, travel the world, and open a small business when she returned. Then she met Damien. Nine months later they were married — and their individual dreams had become one joint plan. They quit their jobs and bought one-way tickets to travel the world with the goal of finding a business idea worth bringing back to the United States. Ov...

Gene Neffenecker II — aka King Gene — is the founder of Balloon Kings. What started as a single store on the Upper West Side with and a cult following among locals (including me) is now a growing franchise. Before all of this, Gene was a Marine Corps veteran who survived cancer, lost his sign-making business in the 2008 financial crisis, and was picking up landscaping work to make ends meet. A cha...

Bob Young didn't just build a business, he built an entirely new category: using Border Collies to humanely chase geese off golf courses, school yards, parks, and neighborhoods. He didn't go looking for the idea — a golf course owner flagged him down while he was exercising his dog Boomer and begged him to clear his course. That was 1999. GeeseChasers now has 13 franchises and 27 consecuti...

Charlie Todd is the founder of Improv Everywhere — the group behind 200 people freezing in Grand Central Station, the No Pants Subway Ride, and some of the most joyful viral videos on the internet. He's been staging surprise performances in public spaces for 25 years. And it all started as something he did just for fun. In this episode, Dana and Charlie talk about the three decisions that buil...

He sold candy bars at recess when he was 7. By 31, he was the youngest plant manager in his industry. Today, Omar Atia is co-founder of Zero Carb Lyfe — a growing company famous for its chicken-crust pizza. Dana Mauriello talks to Omar about three pivotal decisions: leaving his corporate career in big food, partnering with an inventor who had the idea but needed someone who could scale it, and cho...

Kyle Bergman launched Swoveralls — sweatpant overalls — while getting his MBA, working full-time at Birchbox, teaching up to 8 fitness classes a week at Orange Theory, and training for triathlons. All at the same time. We talk about three decisions: the decision to start Swoveralls, the decision to quit his day job (his take is not what you're expecting), and the decision to sell. Along the wa...

Owen had a wild idea: starting a new rugby 7s professional sports league in the US, Premier Rugby 7s. In this episode, Owen talks through some of the big decisions that got him there — from raising his hand for a summer internship with the New England Free Jacks Rugby Team, to running a scrappy pilot tournament as a proof of concept, to making the hard call to pivot the business toward talent deve...

Antoine Richard graduated a top French business school and quit a marketing job at L'Oréal to learn to be a mountain guide. Then he stumbled into a job post that caught his eye and decided to jump into a new adventure running one of the world's top climbing wall manufacturers. After 12 years, he walked away to start something entirely his own: HAPIK, a fun indoor rock climbing concept that...

Richard Worsham's Janus Motorcycles hand-builds classically-styled motorcycles inspired by the 1920s and 30s — and makes them in small-town Indiana with a network of Amish craftsmen, local RV suppliers, and other domestic manufacturing partners. He graduated with a master's in architecture and had never run a business, but turned a moped hobby into a thriving busieness with a passionate fo...

David Barnett co-founded Noble Signs, a Brooklyn-based design studio specializing in hand-painted and neon signage His wild idea? Keeping the art of craft signage alive in a world where fast and cheap vinyl signs are becoming the norm. He's in his dream job now, but before this he was in a different dream job -- designing album covers and posters for Def Jam Records as Art Director. He tells t...

Entrepreneur Joe Hession built SNOW Partners into a $100M company from just $60,000 in savings— he rescued Mountain Creek from bankruptcy and opened Big Snow American Dream, North America's largest indoor ski area, after it sat unfinished for 15 years. We talk about how he made two wild ideas a reality that everyone doubted, why credibility beats capital when starting a business, and what it r...

Peter is one of the only artisan globe makers in the world today. He and his team make custom globes out of his London studio for passionate individuals, collectors, and museums that can run well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. He didn't start out in the arts, though. He created a business for pizza parlors, ran a nightclub, did some property development ... It was only when he trie...

Chris Turner is a treasure hunter and the Founder of the Ring Finders. He and his community of over 300 treasure hunting professionals across 18 countries are there to find anything you've lost (wedding rings are the most common!). In this interview, Chris shares his story of starting and growing the Ring Finders -- it wasn't part of his master plan, but he says it's better than anythi...

Pete builds high-end treehouses, bringing dreams to life for the young at heart. In this interview, we talk about how he fell in love with treehouses, how he ventured into turning his passion into a business, and how he grew beyond his wildest dreams with a major assist from a TV show on Animal Planet. Nelson Treehouse and Supply: https://nelsontreehouse.com/ Treehouse Point Resort: https://www.tr...

Andrew Evans started a magic speakeasy in his apartment in San Francisco as a fun project with friends -- after selling 1000 tickets in 60 seconds he realized he was on to something and quit his job at the design firm IDEO to build his business full time. This is an awesome story of following your curiosity and always evolving. Check out Andrew's show and get tickets here: https://www.themagic...

Assaf Eshet is the founder of the toy company Clixo, which makes incredibly innovative building toys are a bit like magnetic origami and lot like magic ⭐️In this conversation, he talks about how he transitioned from graphic designer to toy designer, how he prototypes, and how he knows when to stop tinkering and launch. Check out Clixo toys here: https://clixo.com/

When Laura was working as a police officer in Kansas City, she responded to a homicide scene where the victim’s family asked when the police would return to clean up the body. The answer was: they wouldn’t. Even more surprising, Laura couldn’t find a single local company to recommend to the family. In that moment, she saw a real, unmet need in the market. Spaulding Decon grew from a business Laura...

Leah Koch founded the romance bookstore The Ripped Bodice with her sister Bea Koch - they now have two locations, consult to major movie and TV studios, and have been rightfully called "the cool whisperers of romance." In this episode, I talk to Leah about how she made her wild idea of being the first romance-only bookstore in North America happen, despite the many skeptics who told her...