Action and Ambition

Welcome to another episode of Action & Ambition with your host, Andrew Medal. 

Ashok Wahi is the Chief Inventor and CEO of Trutek Corp. He is the inventor of NasalGuard® patented technology for the filtration of microscopic particles from entering nasal passages. He has acquired several patents in the US and internationally for this unique electrostatic topical gel that acts as a preventative method for the effects of breathing contaminated air. Since then, over twelve million units of NasalGuard products have been sold worldwide so far. 

Before Trutek, he has been a senior consultant to Fortune 25 pharmaceutical companies, hospitals/medical facilities, and higher education institutions in the US for over 40 years. He has specialized in designing state-of-the-art R&D and high-tech laboratories.

You’re going to love this episode. Let’s get to it!

What are Ashok and his business about? (0:13)

• Ashok is an entrepreneur, even though he is an undergrad in Engineering and has a Master of Science degree. He is an entrepreneur at heart. 
• He likes recognizing problems everybody comes across and then solves it. 
• And since nobody has bothered to recognize the problem and solve it, Ashok can smoothly go after its intellectual property. 
• He began his life, breaking up toys and mixers, irons, and heaters, but he would not be able to put them back together again. 
• This stayed with him for many years. Through education and experience of many years, he has been able to put things back together again.
• He says he likes taking problems apart and putting them back together in a solved, simplistic and scientific way. 
• He’s a science graduate at heart as well as an entrepreneur, and that is why he is not giving people fluke solutions. He’s not trying to rip people off to make as much money as he can. 
• He does not lie to his customers about needing his products; he has science and technology, backing up his products’ statements. 
• The company he cofounded is called TruTek because it is true technology, true to its core, and it’s true to what it says it’s supposed to do. 

How did Ashok acquire his Patents? (6:47)

• Getting his first patent in an uncharted area of science and technology was somewhat comfortable. 
• If you can identify the area you are going after, it is not too difficult to make a patent for that technology. 
• Ashok likens it to find a massive piece of land that you can build a house on top of, a flat piece of land that no one else has noticed. 
• For Ashok’s first patent, he has a patent attorney as a partner who said he would do all of Ashok’s patent paperwork, put it into files, and get the license in return for 22.5% of the profits. 
• This seemed like a great idea to Ashok initially; he figured 22.5% was an excellent low but great pay to pay for the work the attorney was doing.
• He was providing Ashok with a secure patent and making sure others could not get into it too, which initially would have cost him something like $5,000-$10,000.
• That would be the price from a small law firm that would represent your claim to USPTO and write a professional claim and then go through filing before going into prosecution. After all of that, you would have about a 70% chance of actually getting the patent. 
• Ashok also explains that it is more expensive and harder to get additional patents on the same technology that you created.
• Ashok has half a dozen patents of Nasal Guard itself. The first was on the fundamental idea of the product; after that, he developed the product and had to patent that then.
• Method Patenting is one of the strongest patents you can have on a physical product. 
• So once Ashok had his first two patents, he just kept building them from there as he developed his products. 

What is Ashok’s vision for his business, and how has he stayed motivated for so long? (16:43)

• Ashok is driven by his want and need to create a global good that will help many people.
• Ashoke also finds ways to keep people away from him or medicate them, in a pop a pill fashion that many consumers like. 
• An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure. 
• His idea for Nasal Guard was if dust particles in the air can increase the number of asthma attacks a person suffers, he created something that limits the particles entering the consumer’s nose and therefore preventing attacks. 
• With the fires on the west coast, Ashok and his company donated Nasal Guard products for the firefighters to protect them from inhaling all of the smoke and dust from the event while they fought at the front line. 
• His Nasal Guard is an invisible filter that will stop microscopic and submicroscopic particles that tend to go right through a mask. 
• So it all comes down to Ashok just wanting to help people live better, healthier, and more comfortable lives.

TruTek

Trutek Corp. is a company active in Intellectual Property Development, R&D and Manufacturing of Topical Allergy Prevention Products, Nasal Particle Blocker, Cold&Flu Block, Skincare Products (such as Eye, Hand, Face & Body Moisturizers), and Hair Conditioners based in Somerville, NJ USA.

Resources

Connect with Ashok: Instagram

TruTek Corp: LinkedIn

Connect with Andrew: LinkedIn

Welcome to another episode of Action & Ambition with your host, Andrew Medal. Today’s Guest is Eliot Buchanan. 

Eliot Buchanan is the CEO and Co-Founder of Plastiq. Eliot is responsible for defining the strategic vision and industry-changing innovation at Plastiq. He is a creator of disruptive business model innovations and has been actively engaged in several ventures driven by that imperative. 

You’re going to love this episode. Let’s get to it!

How did Eliot get into FinTech? (0:40)

• FinTech has become quite a trend in the business world. 

• Admittedly, Eliot did not initially choose FinTech but instead chose a problem that he found interesting, and it so happened to be financial services. 

• Eliot grew up in Canada and came to the US for school, and one of the problems he ran into was that he had no credit score. 
• If you are new to the US, one way to establish a credit score is by getting a credit card. As a student, this is what Eliot did to build his score almost ten years ago. 
• Credit cards had been around for over 60 years at the time, and so Eliot tried to pay his tuition payment and was very surprised when he was not allowed to pay that way.  
• That was the lightbulb moment for Elliot and seeded Plastiq in his mind and excited Elliot to innovate within financial services. 

What obstacles did Eliot encounter during his journey? (4:11)

• One thing Eliot experiences in financial services was that companies that were already successful often have compliments for the incumbents versus replacements. 
• To compare it to say, the transportation industry, which has many pain points people wouldn’t argue with.
• However, in the financial industry, some disruption needed to happen to the incumbent way of life in the financial sector. 
• Most successful FinTech’s are not trying to replace the incumbents. They like the incumbents and getting along with the system. 
• Like any industry, there is a lot of bureaucracy and red tape based on partnering with large organizations. 
• Once partnered with a large organization, those incumbents help you grow your business instead of work against you. 

What are some things Eliot things are going to blow up in the next few years? (18:57)

• There are several brands that consumers are loyal to in terms of their products and services.
• A lot of these brands and products that people use daily are not traditional FinTechs. 
• Looking at the larger tech companies like Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Google, customers willing and have a desire to run banking or their financial lives through the brands and services that they love, even though they weren’t historically a banking tech or in FinTech. 
• Eliot believes there will come an exciting tipping point in what people look for in managing their finances.
• This is because so many people complain about their banks, asking consumers which of the brands they use they trust the most, ranking from top to bottom, their bank would usually be one of the last names mentioned. 
• There’s been a steadily increasing trend of people getting comfortable doing payments and banking from non-traditional banking methods. 

How does Eliot keep morale going in his team during the pandemic? (28:20)

• Eliot said at the start of things he was trying to add too much for morale-boosting. 
• They were doing happy ours, virtual lunch cat cafes, or virtual yogas, and people took advantage of those during COVID. 
• He said he eventually just tried to make sure his employees were separating their home and work life and still taking their lunch breaks. 
• He also enforced the first Fridays of every month where people would work only half days, and the rest of the time, they must not touch their work. 
• So just trying to keep that normality and balance because if people are not happy at home, they are not going to be very useful at work. 

Plastiq

Plastiq is a service that lets individuals and businesses use debit or credit cards to pay vendors that don't otherwise accept those payment methods.

Plastiq facilitates one-time or recurring payments for bills such as rent, mortgage, utilities, daycare, homeowners association fees, and other expenses. You add a debit or credit card to your Plastiq account and charge it in the bill’s amount, and then Plastiq pays the company on your behalf via a method that the vendor accepts: ACH, wire transfer, or an old-fashioned paper check.

Resources

Connect with Eliot: LinkedIn

Plastiq: Website

Connect with Andrew: LinkedIn

Welcome to another episode of Action & Ambition with your host, Andrew Medal. Today’s guest is Ross Shanken.

Ross Shanken is the founder and CEO of Jornaya. He is a thought leader and business builder within Information Services, interactive markets, and display advertising. Ross has broad knowledge and experience in leading sales, marketing, business development, and launching new businesses. 

You’re going to love this episode. Let’s get to it!

How did Ross know he wanted to solve complex problems when he was young? (0:40)

• Ross always loved brain teasers as a kid. He would spend hours as a kid just sitting and solving complex and advanced puzzles. 
• When he was around ten years old, somebody released the Rubik’s cube, and Ross thought it was the most relaxed, most challenging thing in the world. 
• Ross had solved it by the time he was 11 after spending many hours on it. Puzzles were something that Ross couldn’t do. 
• That’s where his love for problem-solving started, and as he got older, it began to expand into the business world and other things that were hard to solve. 
• He even did some computer coding and used it to program basic applications. Ross states that it was just how he was made. 

What was Ross’s entrepreneurial journey, and how did it lead him to where he is now? (4:09)

• Looking back now, Ross says he’s always been entrepreneurial and had a burning desire to start companies. 
• He started that passion off in a small scale manner when he was a teenager. All his friends were getting jobs at ice cream shops or restaurants as waiters. 
• Ross was instead of putting fliers in people’s mailboxes that he would do odd jobs for people in their gardens and build an excellent little business doing that.
• Going into college, he came into contact with an import/export guy from Pakistan who brought these sweaters and boots and other items into the country, and then Ross sold those products. 
• However, there was another side of Ross, which was that he hadn’t been exposed to any other entrepreneurs. 
• Reading about people like Steve Jobs and Bill gates fascinated him and planted the idea that he wanted to follow a path similar to them. 
• Wanting to follow the path, Ross did not know how to start, and he knew that he was slightly more risk-averse than other entrepreneurs.
• His first job out of college was at Haverford College Alumni. Haverford wanted to start a fax-on-demand business, which back then was the fastest way to get information around.
• To find information like stock quotes or earnings estimates, you had to go to the library and hope they had the information, or you had to subscribe to mail order services. 
• So Haverford and Ross digitized that information and put it online in the form of fax and eventually pushed it onto the internet as that became more prevalent. 
• It was the thing that Ross had always loved, but he didn’t have the guts to go out and do himself because he had grown up with little money and was relatively risk-averse. 
• He worked two more jobs after that, each 3 and 4 years long, respectively, which led to the longest stint he had before founding Jornaya. 
• For thirteen years, he worked for a data intelligence company called Targets Info. Ross was the seventh employee in the company, and they rapidly grew to a few hundred people.
• They sold targets Info to a public company, and it was an excellent outcome for everybody. 
• But again, that was not Ross starting his own company but instead helping to develop it. 
• By then, however, Ross had made enough money and gained enough experience to feel comfortable starting his own company by himself.
• It’s ten years later now, and the company has grown extraordinarily. 

Does Ross have any tips on how to create effective use of proceeds early on in a business? (41:48)

• Ross says it was never a case of he had it all figured out, and it all went smoothly from the beginning.
• He felt like he wasn’t very good at certain things. He was good at the things he knew about certain things that were important to him. But other things were rather daunting to Ross. 
• Ross never wanted to raise money, but he asked himself the question if he did raise money right now, how much faster and bigger could his company get? 
• Ross was not young when he finally started his own business, and he had a great mentor for the last three-four years before starting his company, which is now working in Jornaya as a partner. Who helped Ross immensely. 
• Ross feels he had to learn the importance of setting out and just doing it, really pursuing what he wanted to accomplish. 
• Being too risk-averse at the start, Ross had to come to realize that there are always risks, and you are still wrong.
• He learned the famous quote from Eisenhower, who said, “Plans are useless or worthless, but planning is indispensable.”
• It’s just about going through the planning process and adapting as things go wrong that is the most important. 
• Ross raised money without really good plans, but he had the right direction and a sound rationale at that point. 
• However, starting a business is always stressful, and Ross states he’s sure that there’s still that pressure that many entrepreneurs feel but don’t talk about. 
• When a Venture capital comes in, they don’t want the money to sit in your bank account. They want you to spend their money, and this is for the following reason; 
• • Theoretically, it would make you grow bigger and faster. 
  • However, this is not the case, and without a good plan, and if there is a conflict of interest, it can become tough to align incentives between a VC and Business owner. 
• Ross did not become great at that until he had, had a couple of runs at this.
• His advice is to learn as many hard lessons as you can, as fast as you can, because you know excellent lessons in the process too. 

Jornaya

Jornaya is a data-as-a-service company that uses a network of 35,000+ comparison shopping and lead generation to helps marketers detect consumer purchasing intent and ensure compliance with data privacy laws.

Resources

Connect with Ross: LinkedIn

Jornaya: Website

Connect with Andrew: LinkedIn 

Welcome to another episode of Action & Ambition with your host, Andrew Medal. Today’s guest is Robert Schlien. 

Robert Schlien is the Founder and CEO of Buddy Custard Inc. Robert is a cancer survivor of 13 years and had the good fortune of being introduced to the Budwig Protocol seven years ago.  At that time, he had already decided to forego the conventional treatment of chemotherapy prescribed to him.  Instead, he employed this simple, sensible technology.  It is his personal experience that inspired him and co-founder Katherine Schlein to use that protocol to develop Buddy Custard, a frozen treat additive to foods for dogs. 

You’re going to love this episode. Let’s get to it!

Who is Robert, and how did he get to where he is now? (0:01)

• Robert founded a company called Buddy Custard. It is a unique company in that it produced an initially established product in the human care industry about 60-70 years ago. 
• Robert, being a cancer survivor, stumbled on a treatment protocol that was developed by Dr. Joanna Budwig in Germany. 
• Dr. Budwig had a fantastic reputation for taking a holistic and all-natural approach to curing chronic diseases.
• Robert used the Budwig Protocol to treat his cancer, and it worked wonders about 11-12 years ago. 
• Robert did not believe the treatment would work, but it ended up working better than he thought. 
• Robert’s company produces this Budwig Protocol in pet-friendly edible products, particularly for dogs, to cure various things like cancer, arthritis, diabetes, and heart disease. 
• Buddy Custard has had marvelous success in helping treat cancer and arthritis in pets. 
• The nutraceutical is in a human-grade frozen custard form, and animals love the taste.

How did Robert raise funds for the project initially? (10:41)

• The initial inception for Robert was putting money into R&D and doing testing and packaging, dry shipping, and container shipping for the product. 
• Robert and his wife initially used some of their own money and used donations from friends and family to start the company with a couple of hundred dollars. 
• It was at that point that they started doing a lot of marketing and advertising, but Robert says everything they were able to achieve came quite organically. 
• When COVID-19 happened, Robert put a hiatus on all the marking and advertising until the dust settles. 
• Now that things are calmer, they have conversations with massive retailers, and they are starting to adopt an aggressive marketing strategy.
• They are also aiming to fundraise $400,000 that will be their second round of funding, and they are gearing up to go as high as a million dollars, possibly. 
• They have started branching out and are making probiotics, hemp and CBD infused Buddy Custard as well. 

What is some advice or tips that Robert can share on going through the process during COVID-19? (13:56)

• In the approach, be very careful and very conservative because surprises are out there whether stimulus packages are coming or not. 
• Robert is waiting on some small loads from EIBL, and right now, they are projecting to do well over a million dollars over the next 12 months. 
• Many businesses fail because they become so enamored with their concept that they become blindsided to what else is out there.
• When things were looking bad, Robert took time to reflect on what went wrong, and he would suggest any entrepreneur do that, think about what they did wrong in R&D, and fix it. 
• Think about it again before launching.
• A lot of companies get in trouble because they end up wasting a lot of money. Robert keeps his business on a very tight budget, and his business model outsourced almost everything they do. 
• Robert would instead get the experts to handle the product as they have a history of success, so three vetted FDA and USDA develop buddy Custard approved manufacturing facilities. 

Buddy Custard

Buddy Custard is an all-natural remedy frozen treat to help dogs feel their best and boost their health, regardless of how healthy or ill the dog is. It is based on 70 years of research and experience. Thousands use it with positive results. 

Resources

Buddy Custard: Website

Connect with Andrew: LinkedIn

Welcome to another episode of Action & Ambition with your host, Andrew Medal. Today’s guest is Julius Makarewics.

Julius Makarewicz is the CEO of Nude Beverages, British Columbia's fastest-growing alcohol beverage company. Nude launched nationwide in the States a month ago and has made massive waves.

You’re going to love this episode. Let’s get to it!

What was Julius’ journey to get to where he is now? (1:02)

• Julius started in a very different industry initially. He was working in many various industries instead of just one. 
• He grew up in a small town and dropped out of university, starting to work shortly after. 
• He worked for many technology firms, mining firms, etc., but the whole time he was looking for an idea.
• He knew he wanted to start a business and be an entrepreneur and do something great. 
• Back in 2013, Julius saw a gap in the market, and everyone was going to be healthier people, choosing healthier food and non-alcoholic beverages that we’re more nutritious than others. 
• Julius noticed that there wasn’t anything on the liquor category of alcohol that was any healthier than the other alcoholic beverages that are offered. 
• Julius wanted to create something better for you that also fit into Julius’s lifestyle at the time, so he started thinking about putting vodka soda, or hard seltzer ina can and then thought of the name Nude. 

What steps did Julius take to establish his brand once he had the idea going? (3:12)

• The first little bit of money that Julius used to make the first edition of his product came from his grandmother’s inheritance, an entrepreneur in Poland.
• He had promised himself that he would use that money to start a business, and he did to make his first viable product. After that, he began to find people to bring on board as advisors. 
• Julius stated that he brought on the right kind of people to help grow his business, especially their co-owner and head of sales. 
• Doing all of this helped get Julius to the point where he could pitch his business and product to investors; this was hard and took a few years because Julius was young, and very few people want to give a 20 something year old with no track record a lot of money. 
• Julius eventually got his first investor, and from there on, more and more people started to invest, and he managed to raise $300,000 to start it up. 

Some leadership tips from Julius. (7:18)

• Julius is a firm believer in leading by example. Be the person you want everyone else to be. 
• Julius wants everyone to be good people and treat each other well and not to have too much politics on whether you should or shouldn’t be nice to people; he’s just always a straight-up nice guy to everyone. 
• Working hard for what you want to achieve is another critical component, and Julius states that if you don’t work hard, other people aren’t going to work hard for you either. 
• Julius makes sure to put more hours in than any of his team to make sure they have that example coming from him. 

What is helping Julius currently drive growth and awareness for his business? (9:43)

• Julius loves doing influencer campaigns, but they do not pay the influencers. They just drop off the products for them and say if they want to post it, they can, and if not, they don’t have to. 
• Often, people will post their product because they just love the product so much.
• Julius prefers this because it shows that the influencers enjoyed the product instead of not enjoying it and posting it anyway. 
• Marketing is a crucial component, and digital ads are great for awareness and new markets. 
• PR is also quite essential and doing cool stuff and getting it on the wire helps a lot with sales. 

Nude Beverages

Nude Beverages was founded in B.C Canada, with the goal to make the best alcoholic beverages in the world. They wanted to change up the market by introducing drinks that weren’t oversaturated with sugar and chemicals. They work alongside industry-leading and award-winning beverage developers to work towards a result that will be the new standard for alcoholic beverages.

Resources

Connect with Julius: LinkedIn

Nude Beverages: Website

Connect with Andrew: LinkedIn

Welcome to another episode of Action & Ambition with your host, Andrew Medal. Today’s guest is Tanner Chidester.

Tanner Chidester is a self-made millionaire and successful entrepreneur. He has grown and scaled two 7-figure online businesses: Elite CEOs and Fit Warrior that has generated $16 million in less than three years. He is a five-time winner of the "2 comma club" award from ClickFunnels, which signifies doing a minimum of $1 million in a sales funnel, and an 8-Figure Award recipient for one billion in the sales. 

You’re going to love this episode. Let’s get to it!

How did Tanner get started with his businesses, and how did he scale them so quickly? (1:11)

• Throughout school, Tanner was bullied as a kid. 
• Tanner eventually found his niché in fitness, and that started to build his confidence to start going in that direction. 
•  It was kind of like he worked out and got results, and suddenly people were respecting him.
• So he figured if he worked hard at school and girls and all those other things, it would all fall into place. 
• Through his second year in college, Tanner wanted to play in the NFL.
• And the way Tanner is about business is once he sets his mind to something, he goes ‘[sycho’ about it, and he would work all day long for extreme hours to achieve what he wanted. 
• By 20, he had his third shoulder surgery, and he realized that Football was not going to work for him, he wasn’t big enough, and his injuries made it very hard to keep pursuing that dream. 
• Tanner met a man who convinced him to leave school to be an entrepreneur who was a big thing for tanner because no one in his family was one, and they did not believe in him when he left.
• The guy taught Tanner about online marketing in the first two years, and Tanner was starting to feel stressed out because he had no money and wasn’t making any money. 
• However, he did learn a lot of valuable things that helped him later on in life. 
• After two years of learning Online marketing, Tanner couldn’t do it anymore and decided to be a server, doing door to door sales; he hoped he could raise enough money that way to start his own business. 
• What ended up happening was after learning those skills and working a year or two as a server, Tanner realized he was going in circles and not making any money. 
• Tanner noticed an ad while he was out walking that said how to build your online fitness business. 
• Tanner signed up for the course after scraping together the $5,000 tuition fee. At the seminar, he was more advanced than many people attending, having worked door to door, and his two years of Online Marketing learning. 
• So at this seminar, tanner ended up making a lot of connections, and he started messaging and contacting people and ended up selling over $10,000, which was four times more than what he was making a month. 
• Realizing all he had to do was build connections and message them offering his fitness service that Tanner could finally make money.

What are some tips that tanner can give busy professionals and founders on how to stay in shape? (15:03) 

• Tanner did not understand how people can be out of shape until he started his business. 
• He realized then how hard it was to fit the gym into a busy and stressful schedule because all you want to do after work is sleep. 
• So during his first couple of years, Tanner was not in the most excellent shape himself. 
• The first tip tanner can share is that it’s mostly about diet. Someone who’s eating right will easily beat someone going to the gym every day but eating poorly. 
• Tanner says to try and follow a healthy diet and if you’re going to eat bad, try not to do it every day. 
• Another tip from Tanner is to incorporate weight training into your week. You do not have to do it excessively, but three times a week should be easily sustainable.
• And the last tip from Tanner would be that when you do not have time, try and do a quick 30-minute high-intensity Aerobic exercise at home because of how fast they are with good results. 
• Many entrepreneurs tend to sit at home at desks and never actually move, so Tanner encourages Cardio just to keep the heart healthy and the cholesterol levels down. 

Where does Tanner want to go now, and How will he go about accomplishing those goals? (18:36)

• His short immediate goal for this year is doing about $15 million and to possibly try and push that to $20-$25 Million in consulting. 
• That goal is near the ceiling of where you can go with paid ads and stuff like that.
• Currently, Tanner is working on the first SAS, which will be a trainer to trainer software. 
• They will be expanding that further as they are still getting new trainers over the next 3-5 years.
• Tanner is not too sure about what his next big thing is going to be. He has thought about investing and getting into start-ups where he feels there is a lot of upsides. 
• At this point, Tanner just ikes doing things that push him to be the best person that he can be; therefore, Tanner has put a lot more time in his personal life lately. 

Fit Warrior

Fit Warrior has a different approach to sport, nutrition, and fitness. They believe that there is a warrior in everyone, and they strive to release that inner warrior for each of their clients. They believe in the spirit of fitness and the mental and physical discipline necessary to achieve it, and they strive to support their clients as they find their warrior.

Resources 

Connect with Tanner: LinkedIn

Fit Warrior: Website

Connect with Andrew: LinkedIn

Welcome to another episode of Action & Ambition with your host, Andrew Medal. Today’s guest is Jeff Radway.

Jeff Radway is the CEO and co-founder of SKYMINT Brands. (Formerly Green Peak Innovations). Before launching Michigan’s largest vertically integrated cannabis company, Radway built and sold J. America, one of the largest privately-owned licensed apparel companies in the U.S.

You’re going to love this episode. Let’s get to it!

Were the exits that Jeff had previously change anything for him in his life? (1:37)

• Jeff considers his first exit to have been life-changing. 
• When Jeff was in high school, he started a landscaping and lawn keeping business, and he sold it to his partner to pay for college. 
• He says he was too young to realize back then how much work he had put into that business and didn’t translate the same work ethic in College. 
• He screwed around through most of college and blew all of the money he had earned on paying for it.
• His second exit taught him a valuable lesson as he had exited with shares. The company ended up filing for bankruptcy, so he barely received any of the earnout/payouts. 
• At the time, he thought his career was made, and his life was over. 
• Sometimes the things that hurt you the most end up teaching you the most. So by his third exit, which was the most recent in 2016, Jeff was relatively prepared for the best and the worst.
• The third turned out successful, which was also life-changing because Jeff and his wife were building a house in the Caribbean, and he was ready to retire. 
• He lasted about 24 hours in retirement before starting Green Peak Innovations; now, SKYMINT Brands. 

What path got Jeff into the Cannabis Space? (3:32) 

• Jeff was in the apparel industry for almost 30 years, and so from 92 to 2016, Jeff got up every day and competed with Nike.
• It sounds a lot more glamorous than it was because Nike is terrific at everything, from distribution to branding to design and import. 
• The business Jeff was in had to figure out how to be different and meaningful to retailers and make more margin for the retailers because ultimately, Nike was Nike. 
•  Despite their large competitor, Jeff’s business did well and a much-needed resource for retailers. 
• And so after almost 30 years, Jeff told his wife that he was ready to be bored for a couple of years. 
• However, Jeff went to a Trade Show in Las Vegas. And as he was standing in Las Vegas and waiting for his Uber driver who got lost, Jeff thought Ubers have to be better. 
• They have to deliver dry cleaning. They should provide food, and then Jeff thought, hey, they should provide Cannabis. 
• Jeff’s wife was in the health care industry, and she had been talking about CBD and Cannabis lately, although Jeff himself knew nothing about it. 
• Jeff messaged his much younger Nephew, a government affairs expert, and medical healthcare lobbyist, and said, why doesn’t an Uber deliver weed? Thinking he was making a joke. 
• Jeff’s nephew texted him back, saying it was becoming legal in Michigan and that he was helping put together the bill and legislation, we will be passing the bill. I could get you into contact with the technology companies if Jeff were serious about it. 
• Jeff quickly fired off questions at his Nephew to get all of the information. He was too excited as he realized the possibilities of what he had just thought of and discovered. 
• It was funny because Jeff was at the trade show in Las Vegas to ‘hand over the keys’ of the business he was currently in and retired with his wife to the Caribbean. 
• And so Jeff’s nephew got him into contact with everyone he needed to know and helped him get everything he needed to get started. 

Does Jeff have any tips when it comes to building and scaling a company? (20:32)

• Jeff joked that the podcast name says it all, Action and Ambition. 
• You have to take action, and it’s not always going to be the right action. 
• Someone told Jeff once, you fire the gun, and then you steer the bullet, and he thought that was a very accurate analogy. 
• There isn’t time to be perfect, but you never lose sight of where you want to go, what the visions and goals are. 
• In Jeff’s case, they started hiring their executive team from the beginning, gathering an elite group of people with fantastic experience, and that helped SKYMINT grow so fast. 
• High growth requires high risk, and there is a certain amount of insanity, pain, and fun that goes along with it. 
• Jeff believes in systems over people, but in this case, they had to build out manufacturing and science, government affairs, legal, merchandising, product, marketing, and retail operations. 

SKYMINT

SKYMINT are purveyors of premium crafted cannabis. They have developed a portfolio of the finest cannabis brands available for health, healing, or just getting high on life. Whether you want to get off of pain meds, restore your appetite, relax into a more restful sleep, or unlock your higher self, SKYMINT has the products you want and need to enjoy the absolute best cannabis experience. 

Resources

Connect with Jeff: LinkedIn

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Welcome to another episode of Action & Ambition with your host, Andrew Medal. Today’s guest is Michael Miller. 

Michael Miller co-founded Brightway Insurance in 2008 with his brother, David Miller. As President and CEO of Brightway, Michael’s day-to-day focus is setting the strategic agenda for the company, helping Brightway continue to innovate in ways that help everyone associated with the business grow and prosper. 

You’re going to love this episode. Let’s get to it!

How did Michael find success in his industry? (0:44)

• Initially, they were a very small nationwide captive insurance agency in Jacksonville, Florida.
• They bought the business from a man named Ray Jennings and he actually had the business for 42 years.
• It took Ray 42 years to grow the business to annual sales of $2.3 million, which in their industry is a very average size. 
• Now, Michael and his brother managed to grow the business to about $715 Million in annual sales. 
• Right now Michael and his older brother David are the sole owners of the business. They had no outside capital on it so they did not start with a lot of money. 
• The initial buy-in was something like $300,000, they then added and invested more money to start growing the business. They decided to go for a high risk, high reward approach and pushed everything they had into the business, not know if it would succeed or fail. 

How much of a risk did they take and how did it pay off? (2:46)

• People look at Brightway today and say that it was an overnight success. Michael however says there were many moments where they had t do a gut check. 
• Giving an example, When they started they had about $2.3 million on the books and they hoped that in 10 years they would be at a $10 million agency. 
• Obviously, they passed that a while ago, but going into it they didn’t have a franchise model and now Brightway is a franchise. 
• They had to change from, what they were to become what they are now which is a franchise. 
• They also changed their legal structure in the process and that was also when they changed their name to Brightway insurance.
• The reason they changed to a franchise was because of how rapidly they were growing. 
• They were growing so rapidly that they outgrew their financial resources. They had to pause and say wow they were running out of money. 
• So in 2007, the brothers had a gut check where they had to decide if they were going to continue or pull out of the business. 
• Michael and his brother decided to continue with the business, they maxed out their credit cards and scraped together every penny they could find under their family. 
• Doubling down, they said they worked this hard to grow this quickly and quitting then was not an option. So instead of focusing on growth, the Miller brothers decided to start focusing on changing the business model to a franchise company. 
• They took the gamble, even though they only have enough money left for 3 more months of functioning and they ended up selling their first franchise shortly after. 

Where does Michael see himself in 3-5 years, what goals has he set for himself? (13:29)

• Their goal as a company is to be the dominant insurance distributor in the country. 
• So they are trying to push out as many Brightway stores, really focusing on developing the franchise across the country because of it being one way to distribute their insurance. 
• They are also looking at doing some vertical integrations. They have already grown their affinity partnerships to help feed the business and to partner with other companies.
• They are looking at leveraging their systems and client bases to create some synergies within them.
• They are mostly just working on innovation which is extremely important in the times of COVID-19.
• The pandemic has made multiple changes across the business world but Michael believes that the best opportunities come in the worst of times. 
• COVID has created this opportunity for them to leverage the technology that they had built. Starting to come out of COVID now they created another franchise model. 
• They removed the barriers to business ownership and they have never grown faster. 
• So just continuing to focus on the business and where they can grow and innovate is what Michael and his brother will be focusing on for the next few years. 

Brightway Insurance

Brightway Insurance is a national property/casualty insurance distribution company. It is one of the largest Personal Lines agencies in the U.S. Brightway focuses on creating win/win situations for consumers by offering customized insurance solutions and for people wishing to sell insurance by providing business opportunities that span from a single agent to multi-unit enterprises. Regardless of the path taken, Brightway provides the support necessary to consistently outsell other insurance agents.

Resources

Connect with Michael: LinkedIn

Brightway insurance: Website

Connect with Andrew: LinkedIn

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