Back in Business

Since high school, Mike Zouhri has founded and participated in a number of startups. He’s spent the past year building Pain Worth, which helps anyone who’s suffered an accident reach a reasonable settlement. The best practices Mike has brought to Pain Worth come from the successes and failures of his past ventures, including one important lesson: It’s okay to ask for help.

Starring Dave Bellous in part 2 of 2. After more than two decades of showing up at the same office for work every day, getting a handle on why he needed to roll out of bed in the morning proved to be a challenge for Dave. He needed to separate himself from his Yellow Pencil identity and reinvent himself, but it took many, many months to get past the grief of letting his baby go.

Back in Business cohost Joel Magalnick started and shut down two startups—one that fizzled, another that exploded—but he felt more relief than grief. The hard one was the 90-year-old media company that he had to wind down after a dozen years on the job. He talks about his loss of identity and how he still struggles to figure out his career path.

Starring Dave Bellous in part 1 of 2. Twenty years is a long time to spend doing anything—especially if you’ve been a serial entrepreneur your entire life. So when you put that much effort into building a major digital agency, you may at some point realize you’re no longer the best person to run the show. It’s a shock, but also, as Dave tells us, the right decision to step aside.

Starring Andy Lucardie. Who can consider themselves an entrepreneur? Is it a mindset? A way of life? What’s the upside of the hard work devoted to build a sustainable business in the age of the Instagram influencers who make lightning-quick millions? Andy and Justin discuss sweat equity, introspection, and second, third or fourth acts.

Back in Business co-host Justin Bertagnolli knows a thing or two about the struggle to reemerge from the pain of a failed startup—he’s been there more than once. To introduce the series, Justin talks with his co-host Joel Magalnick about his successes and challenges not just in the businesses he built, but afterward. And about how hard it’s been to move forward after each setback.