THIS is a Thing

Jack Child spent decades as a pilot, first in the Air Force and then at Delta. He then launched G-FORCE, a parking lot striping franchise (now with many other service verticals) with a focus on supporting veteran owners. In this conversation, Jack shares how he went from looking to pivot away from commercial aviation after 9/11 to building a franchise network, why he wasn’t ready to franchise the...

Bron Launsby built one of the fastest-growing franchise concepts in family entertainment — starting from a single slide bolted onto a trampoline park. Before Slick City Action Park, Bron owned Sky Zone franchises, and before that, he ran corporate retail and his own wholesale import business. In this episode, Bron talks about why he initially rejected the slide his now-business-partner pitched him...

Steve Guttman built UOVO — the storage company now trusted by top museums, auction houses, and fashion houses — out of a personal problem: he needed somewhere to store his own art collection. He talks with Dana Mauriello about the decades of real estate experience that got him there, why UOVO has stayed almost entirely self-funded, and how listening closely to clients turned one storage business i...

Larry Kosilla quit a career on the floor of the Mercantile Exchange to wash cars — and built that decision into AMMO NYC, one of the most respected names in car care. In this episode, we dig into why he left finance, how he built his first car wash into a full sensory experience, the 2008 crash that taught him to never take on debt, and why he's stayed AMMO's only full-time employee — turn...

Kevin Prince spent 15 years building marketing and social strategy at places like NBC, CBS, Gawker Media, and Netflix, always chasing the feeling of building something new. Then a headline-grabbing project for the 2023 Grammy Awards led him to drones, and Heads in the Sky was born. In this episode, Kevin shares how a flexible contractor gig gave him the afternoons to explore side projects, how a c...

Will Petz discovered silent discos on a cruise ship with his parents — dancing to music DJs play directly into your headphones — and thought it was the stupid until he tried it and realized it was amazing. At the time, Will was working in finance and IT — first moving computers on Wall Street for J.P. Morgan, then running the BlackBerry rollout at Lehman Brothers — when he decided to build his own...

Ken Decker set out to make monster masks and movie props — and ended up also building hyperrealistic silicone human heart models used to train medical professionals. In this episode, he talks about how he found his way onto a Hollywood film set with no union card and no connections, taught himself mold-making from a VHS tape, started a prop shop and grew it into a company that supplies both Hollyw...

Loren Ostrow spent over two decades thinking about building senior housing for the LGBTQ community before he ever broke ground. In this episode, he tells the story of Living Out — one of the first senior living communities in the country built specifically for LGBTQ seniors — and how it finally came together in Palm Springs with his business partner of 50 years, Paul Alanis. We talk about why Lore...

Dave Campbell spent years scribbling game ideas on index cards during long drives as a traveling salesman before Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza became an international hit, selling over 12 million copies. In this episode, Dave shares how he taught himself to recognize when a prototype has "electricity," why he ran his game company as a side hustle for years before leaving his day job, and wh...

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...