This is Capitalism: Inspired, Explained, In Focus

It was probably inevitable that as his career as an economics and finance writer evolved, Chris Farrell would be drawn, ever deeper, into matters of age. After all, for the past quarter-century, the dominant theme in personal finance has been about savings, IRAs and 401(k)s, and the fact that most Americans haven't saved enough money to retire on. In economics, there's a parallel strain that cente...

Ray Hoffman introduces the guest for this episode. John Byrne and Ray Hoffman have known each other for so long that they refer to each other as old friends. John is one of the most significant business journalists of his generation, having written over two dozen cover stories for Business Week , where eventually he became Executive Editor. He also was Editor-in-Chief of Fast Company and the autho...

Ray Hoffman introduces the guest for this episode. How did Amazon do it? And how is Amazon going to continue to do it? John Rossman has the answer to both questions. He joined Amazon in 2002, after 23 interviews, and he led the creation of the Amazon Marketplace, with all the third-party sellers that came in, which is what lifted Amazon from being just an online seller of books and videos to a sel...

Ray Hoffman introduces the guests for this episode. "Is there such a thing as entrepreneurial love? After visiting Thibault and Lola Manekin, I'm inclined to think there is because in talking to Thibault, Co-Founder of a remarkable property development firm called Seawall, and his wife, Lola, who created a wildly popular space known as Movement Lab, I learned about an entrepreneur's love for the c...

Ray Hoffman introduces his guest Veronica Dagher in the form of a note: "I like your work, Veronica Dagher. I like your Wall Street Journal columns on successful women, your Secrets of Wealthy Women podcasts, as well as your new ebook based on the columns and podcasts. It's called Resilience, and it offers a lot of lessons in life. And, take it from me, not just lessons for other women. And you an...

Tom Stewart is Executive Director for the National Center for the Middle Market, which is part of the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University. It's the leading source of information and research on the companies whose output accounts for one-third of the private sector in the U.S., the middle third of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product. These are firms that have grown out of being sma...

Darrah Brustein asks a lot of good, pointed questions of herself as well as others. In part because of the questions she has asked herself since graduation from Emory University in 2006, she has gone from the fashion world to building a payment processing system for merchants, to event planner and networking guru, children's book author and advocate for teaching young people about personal finance...

Charles Morgan is a lot of fun to be around and to learn from. He learned about business first from working with his father, starting when he was a little boy. As IBM's top systems engineer for the entire state of Arkansas, Charles sold Sam Walton his first IBM System 360 Mainframe, which allowed Walmart to take off. He's a pioneer of big data, having built one of the first companies in the indust...

There aren't many 32-year-olds in any profession who have assumed the kind of leadership role that Stacy Lewis has in the world of professional golf. Not only by her 12 LPGA tournament wins so far, including two majors, or the fact that she was the first American woman in more than 20 years to win the LPGA Triple Crown — no, there's more to it. Because a girl who grew up in a back brace, as she di...

For Rosina Samadani, New Year's Eve — the fireworks, the ball drop, the champagne — came on December 28, 2018. That's when her company, Oculogica, received FDA approval to market a major tool — a breakthrough algorithmic neurodiagnostic tool for determining whether a person has had a concussion. Oculogica's EyeBOX ® does that by a modern variation on what doctors used to do as a matter of course i...

They've only been business partners since January 2017. When they're not on the road, usually in two different cities, their homes are about 1,200 miles apart. Yet, Joe Gilliland and Larry Lemons have a knack for finishing each other's sentences. They share a vision of a somewhat disruptive, more comprehensive approach to sports management. They call their company Anth3m because they and their aff...

The organization known as SIFMA goes back to 1912. It is a trade group which was first known as the Investment Bankers Association of America, then for many years, the Securities Industry Association, and now, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA). SIFMA may be best known for a game played by middle school and high school students that represents the only economic educa...

Ray Hoffman interviews Mike Iiams. The first thing you should know about this particular entrepreneur CEO is that his name isn't what you think it is. If you're looking casually at an article about the important social work being done by a Denver-based company known both as SCRAM Systems and Alcohol Monitoring Systems, you'd probably think the CEO's name was Mike Ilams. Mike Iiams has a long list...

Ray Hoffman interviews Dr. Christina Lampe-Önnerud. You might say there's electricity in her blood. Long before her reputation was established as one of the world's foremost experts on power storage, her father, Wolfgang Lampe, was world-renowned for building power stations and power transmission lines. After earning her doctorate in her native Sweden, Christina came to the U.S. and started her fi...

Ray Hoffman interviews Jennifer Collins, President and CEO of JDC Events. Jennifer's first events were her own family reunions which she evolved from cookouts to city tours and dine-arounds. She worked on social events while in college, and when she started working at PR firms, she saw how they were handling events and felt that she could make a business of it. She turned to business events, and t...

Ray Hoffman interviews Steve Odland. Steve Odland's career has taken him from oatmeal to auto parts, from Sara Lee to the U.S. Commission on National Transportation Surface Policy. Today, he's CEO of one of the nation's premier business research organizations, The Conference Board - year after year, the source of a lot of great insight into the economy and human behavior.   Key Takeaways: [:44] Ra...

Ray Hoffman introduces Kara Trott. Kara Trott does very well by her clients and very well by her clients' employees. She's the Founder and CEO of Quantum Health, based in Columbus, Ohio. For companies like Hertz, Dillards, and American Honda, and hospital systems like Houston Methodist, Quantum offers a remarkably personalized approach to healthcare cost containment. It is personalized in the sens...

Ray Hoffman introduces Kathleen Lawson and Marsha Masters. It's amazing how little most of us really know about the economic miracle that supports and nourishes the USA. After all, only 22 states require high school students to take even a single course in Economics. Only 17 states mandate a high school level course in Personal Finance. Bessie Moore of Mountain View Arkansas, whose life spanned th...

Ray Hoffman introduces Doug Clark. It's only about a 30-mile drive from where Doug   grew up to the Cherry Hill, New Jersey headquarters of Corcentric, the company that he has been building over the last two decades. Corcentric's proprietary technology helps companies optimize their back office transactions, as in the way they purchase, make payments, and get paid. It's also only about a 30-mile d...

Ray Hoffman introduces Darrin Williams. Darrin Williams practices capitalism in places where capitalism is sorely needed — some of the poorest towns and neighborhoods of Arkansas and Mississippi, particularly in the Mississippi Delta. Darrin Williams left a promising career in law and politics to be the CEO of Little Rock-based Southern Bancorp, a bank on a mission, a mission to create economic op...

Ray Hoffman introduces Mobile Mini Solutions and its CEO, Erik Olsson. Between 1980 and 2000, the metropolitan population of Phoenix grew by 45%. As amazing as that might seem, consider the growth in the exurban city of Chandler, Arizona — 22 miles from downtown Phoenix — it grew by 460%. Peoria, Arizona — 14 miles out — grew by 740%. This formed perfect conditions for the growth of a company call...

Ray Hoffman introduces Tammira Lucas and Keisha Ransome. When she was growing up on the West side of Baltimore, Tammira Lucas didn't have any interest in entrepreneurism. An entrepreneur, to her, was a hustler. Keisha Ransome, growing up in another part of town, had a slightly less negative view of entrepreneurism, but thanks to television, she too, had no particular interest in how businesses are...

Ray Hoffman introduces the topic. It was in late 2016 when the Rockefeller Foundation went looking for entrepreneurs — social entrepreneurs to build businesses intended to solve some of the problems of American cities. Within just four months, not only did the foundation identify 10 of these social business builders, but each of them had $100,000 in funding and a whole lot of new connections and m...

Herbert Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover, his wife of nearly 45 years, were two of the most significant, most influential Americans of the entire 20th Century. Unlike any president and first lady who came before and only a handful who came after, they were true partners. Considering how this adventurous couple came of age in the late Victorian years, this indicates something quite extraordinary — almos...

When it comes to turning great businesses into philanthropic legacies, there are two Ford families of note — the one from Detroit, and the one from Little Rock. It was Joe Ford, and later his son, Scott, who built a little telephone company in Sheridan, Arkansas — population 1,338 in the 1940 Census — into a $30-billion player in wireless — Alltel. After selling Alltel to Verizon, Scott Ford start...