Building Birmingham Together

Today we interviewed Brett Ables, founder and CEO of Feast. Feast is a Birmingham based company that is providing a solution to catering for both customers and local restaurants. It is the best way for restaurants to connect to customers that need catering services. Brett has been in the restaurant industry for 14 years, most recently as the Director of Operations for Jimmy John's across the greater Birmingham area. He left a long career to help build companies that create solutions for the restaurant industry in Birmingham, and across Alabama.

Contact Feast:

[email protected]

Follow Feast:

Instagram: @feast_bham

Brett LinkedIn: @Brett Ables

Feast LinkedIn: @feast-bham

This Episode is Sponsored by Forge

Forge is a thriving coworking space in the heart of downtown Birmingham at The Pizitz Building.  If you are tired of working from home and are in need of a place to be productive as well as be surrounded by a community of entrepreneurs, schedule your tour of Forge today!

Forge Availabilities: Open seating coworking, Dedicated Desk, Private Office, Conference Room Rentals, Event Space, Business Mailing Address

Workatforge.com

This week we interviewed Pamela Reed Phipps on Building Birmingham Together. Pamela became the Executive Director at Grace House in 2010. At Grace House she is responsible for managing the day to day operations as well as raising awareness and funds to support the ministry. Prior to joining Grace House, Pamela worked in executive level administrative positions at several companies including the Birmingham law office of Constangy, Brooks and Smith, AmSouth Investment Services, and Girls Incorporated of Central Alabama. Notable is her 10 year professional modeling career, which was the key that unlocked her passion for mentoring young girls. The Birmingham Business Journal featured Pamela in the class of 2014 "Top 40 Under 40" and she was a member of the 2016 Leadership Birmingham class. She was also recently spotlighted as "Birmingham’s Champion for Girls in Foster Care" by StyleBlueprint magazine. A Birmingham native, Pamela and her husband Bennie live in Hoover with their three sons: Douglas, Stuart and Reed. Pamela builds Birmingham together by being an advocate for girls, and committing to empower and equip every girl to be a confident and Godly woman.

Contact Grace House:

[email protected]

Follow Grace House:

Facebook: @gracehouseorg

Instagram: @gracehouseorg

Pamela’s Recommendations:

Dare to Lead by Brené Brown

This Episode is Sponsored by Forge

Forge is a thriving coworking space in the heart of downtown Birmingham at The Pizitz Building.  If you are tired of working from home and are in need of a place to be productive as well as be surrounded by a community of entrepreneurs, schedule your tour of Forge today!

Forge Availabilities: Open seating coworking, Dedicated Desk, Private Office, Conference Room Rentals, Event Space, Business Mailing Address

Workatforge.com

This week we have Ryan Robinett on Building Birmingham Together.  Ryan Is the founder of Multiply, Inc which can be found online at askmultiply.com.  Multiply Is a tech enabled services firm which uses operational and HR management principles to help companies of all sizes create a sales process from scratch or get more out of their current sales team.  Ryan Is a graduate of Auburn University and has a masters from UAB. He and his wife Ashley have two teenage children. He began his career as an IT professional services consultant, at Accenture, before moving to CTS In 2006.  Ryan was a key part of growing CTS around the southeast as it was acquired by CGI In 2017. Ryan departed CGI In 2018 and founded Multiply utilizing many of the key tenants that made CTS successful.  He continues to build Birmingham together using those key tenants.

Contact Multiply, Inc:

[email protected]

Follow Multiply, Inc:

Instagram: @ryanrobinett

Ryan’s Recommendations:

The Challenger Sale by Mathew Dixon and Brent Adamson

The Startup Playbook by David Kidder

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

Time Suck podcast

This Episode is Sponsored by Forge

Forge is a thriving coworking space in the heart of downtown Birmingham at The Pizitz Building.  If you are tired of working from home and are in need of a place to be productive as well as be surrounded by a community of entrepreneurs, schedule your tour of Forge today!

Forge Availabilities: Open seating coworking, Dedicated Desk, Private Office, Conference Room Rentals, Event Space, Business Mailing Address

Workatforge.com

This week’s episode of Building Birmingham Together features Autumn Sanders, Founder and CEO of Quire Consulting. Since 2010, Autumn has worked with Fortune 500 companies, start-ups, and nonprofits, helping them grow their businesses by understanding their customers. She launched Quire in 2017 to bring ethnographic research and design thinking to organizational leaders that are looking for a way forward but don't know how to get there. Autumn currently serves on the City of Birmingham Small Business Council. She also teaches tennis with Better Basics and coaches entrepreneurs with Create Birmingham and EGK Starters. On top of that, she has served on several non-profit boards focusing on the arts and design. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ohio University (Athens, OH) and a master’s degree in design management from the Savannah College of Art and Design (Savannah, GA). Autumn is very passionate about the work that she is doing with Quire. She loves helping organizations use the design thinking process to make decisions that can have significant impacts on the day to day of their organization and ultimately helps build Birmingham together!

Follow Quire Consulting:

Website: quireconsulting.com

Instagram:@quireconsulting

Twitter: @quireconsulting

Autumn’s Recommendations:

Death, Sex, and Money podcast

Measure What Matters by John Doerr

This Episode is Sponsored by Forge

Forge is a thriving coworking space in the heart of downtown Birmingham at The Pizitz Building.  If you are tired of working from home and are in need of a place to be productive as well as be surrounded by a community of entrepreneurs, schedule your tour of Forge today!

Forge Availabilities: Open seating coworking, Dedicated Desk, Private Office, Conference Room Rentals, Event Space, Business Mailing Address

Workatforge.com

In this episode we’re talking with Jessica Moody, the Director of Programs at Create Birmingham. Create Birmingham is the only agency in the region exclusively dedicated to the economic development of Birmingham’s creative industries, including performing arts, visual arts and crafts, culture and heritage, media and film, design, and culinary arts. Jessica oversees the services Create offers in support of the city’s creative industries, including CO.STARTERS, Film Birmingham, Birmingham365, SpaceFinder, and Office Hours. She serves as a valuable resource to visiting filmmakers and incoming productions and plays a critical role in mentoring local small businesses and entrepreneurs. In addition to weekly meetings with CO.STARTERS participants, she consults with graduates regularly to help them set actionable tasks and achievable goals and take full advantage of the spectrum of CO.S graduate support services. She also represented the commercial creative sector as a member of the City of Birmingham’s Small Business Council, an advisory group to the Department of Innovation and Economic Opportunity. Jessica’s work with Create Birmingham is literally helping entrepreneurs around the city build Birmingham together!

Go to www.costartersbham.com to apply for the next cohort starting on September 13th.

You can reach Jessica at ​​[email protected]

Follow Create Birmingham:

Jessica’s Recommendations:

Conan O’Brian Needs a Friend Podcast

This Episode is Sponsored by Forge

Forge is a thriving coworking space in the heart of downtown Birmingham at The Pizitz Building.  If you are tired of working from home and are in need of a place to be productive as well as be surrounded by a community of entrepreneurs, schedule your tour of Forge today!

Forge Availabilities: Open seating coworking, Dedicated Desk, Private Office, Conference Room Rentals, Event Space, Business Mailing Address

Workatforge.com

Today we’re talking with Dave Wells, President and CEO of Alabama Goodwill Industries. Dave’s career in human capital performance and business leadership spans over 40 years in both the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors. He has been a business owner, and worked for small business startups as well as large corporations and for the last 19 years he had been with Goodwill. In this episode you will hear how two of Dave’s passions, serving people and organizational development and leadership have come together to grow an organization that is making a huge impact on the people in our city.

You can reach David Wells at: [email protected], 205-323-6331

Follow Alabama Goodwill Industries, Inc.:

Facebook: @alabamagoodwill

David’s Recommendations:

Book: The Fifth Discipline by Peter M. Senge 

This Episode is Sponsored by Forge

Forge is a thriving coworking space in the heart of downtown Birmingham at The Pizitz Building.  If you are tired of working from home and are in need of a place to be productive as well as be surrounded by a community of entrepreneurs, schedule your tour of Forge today!

Forge Availabilities: Open seating coworking, Dedicated Desk, Private Office, Conference Room Rentals, Event Space, Business Mailing Address

Workatforge.com

Today we’re hearing from Cindy Martin the founder and President of Bham Now and most recently also The Bama Buzz. Bham Now is Birmingham’s modern media company, helping to make our city better, smarter and more healthy. Bham Now provides news, information and camaraderie for a modern Birmingham by publishing content to help educate, inform and entertain the greater Birmingham audience. They are very passionate about promoting local companies, non-profits, products and events and are helping us all build up Birmingham together!

Follow Bham Now and Bama Buzz:

Bhamnow.com

Thebamabuzz.com

You can reach Cindy at [email protected]

Cindy’s Recommendations:

7 Habits of Highly Successful People by Stephon R. Covey

This Episode is Sponsored by Forge

Forge is a thriving coworking space in the heart of downtown Birmingham at The Pizitz Building.  If you are tired of working from home and are in need of a place to be productive as well as be surrounded by a community of entrepreneurs, schedule your tour of Forge today!

Forge Availabilities: Open seating coworking, Dedicated Desk, Private Office, Conference Room Rentals, Event Space, Business Mailing Address

Workatforge.com

https://workatforge.com/

Today on Building Birmingham Together we have the Drew Honeycutt, CEO of Innovation Depot and Kellie Clarke, Director of Programs at Innovation Depot.  The Innovation Depot has been a cornerstone in the tech ecosystem in Birmingham for the last 25 years.  It would be hard to find a tech company in Birmingham that did not spend some of their early years at Innovation Depot or rely on the services and programs at The Innovation Depot to get their start.  The Depot has really set the stage for the tech renaissance that we are beginning to experience here in Birmingham and Drew and Kellie are helping to push that forward now.

Follow Innovation Depot:

Website: https://innovationdepot.org/

If you want to find out more about the programs at Innovation Depot you can reach out to Kellie at [email protected] and connect on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelliecosby/

Kellie’s Recommendations:

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Drew’s Recommendations:

This Episode is Sponsored by Forge

Forge is a thriving coworking space in the heart of downtown Birmingham at The Pizitz Building.  If you are tired of working from home and are in need of a place to be productive as well as be surrounded by a community of entrepreneurs, schedule your tour of Forge today!

Forge Availabilities: Open seating coworking, Dedicated Desk, Private Office, Conference Room Rentals, Event Space, Business Mailing Address

Workatforge.com

Today on Building Birmingham Together, we have Tommy Mayfield, the co-founder of Wyndy. Tommy is an attorney turned entrepreneur working to build the technology for a new "skills economy". He founded Wyndy with his wife Ginger after they had their second child and became exhausted from the common methods all parents use to find babysitters (which most often is at the last minute).  Wyndy is a platform that uniquely combines trust and technology, enabling parents to easily connect with background checked college students in a way that benefits everyone. In the episode today you will hear how providing a solution for a personal need has led to a platform that is on its way to solving the problem of on-demand need in any area of the skilled workforce.

You can find Tommy on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tommymayfield/

Follow Wyndy:

Website: https://www.wyndy.com/ ; https://www.getalysyn.com/

Facebook: @getwyndy  ; @getalysyn 

Twitter: @getwyndy 

Instagram: @getwyndy 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/wyndy/

Tommy’s Recommendations:

Traction by Gino Wickman  

The StartUp Podcast by Gimlet 

How to Start a Start Up by Y Combinator and Stanford University 

Today on Building Birmingham Together we hear from Ashley McMakin, known here in Birmingham as the founder of the amazing Ashley Mac’s restaurant!  Ashley took a chance in 2007 and turned her side hustle into a full career - starting with catering and growing to 5 locations around the Birmingham metro area. Ashley has a passion for food and a deep love for people that drives her business and brings so many people in Birmingham so much joy!

Follow Ashley and Ashley Macs:

Instagram: @ashleymacs, @ashley_mcmakin  

Facebook: @ashleymacs, Ashley McMakin  

Ashley’s Recommendations:

The Motive by Pat Lencioni

In-N-Out Burger: A Behind-The-Counter Look at the Fast-Food Chain That Breaks All the Rules

Business Made Simple Podcast with Donald Miller 

How I Built This Podcast with Guy Raz 

The Next Right Thing Podcast with Emily P. Freeman 

This Episode is Sponsored by Forge

Forge is a thriving coworking space in the heart of downtown Birmingham at The Pizitz Building.  If you are tired of working from home and are in need of a place to be productive as well as be surrounded by a community of entrepreneurs, schedule your tour of Forge today!

Forge Availabilities: Open seating coworking, Dedicated Desk, Private Office, Conference Room Rentals, Event Space, Business Mailing Address

Workatforge.com