Growing Roots Tallahassee

Season 1 is officially complete!

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Lean startup is one of those buzzwords in the business world. Everyone telling you to get lean, reduce overhead, don’t take investors, but few people to seem to ever take that advice.

Unless you are Ryan LaPete from DEEP Brewing Company.

Ryan started DEEP inside of his Miami condo with the help of his wife, Marsha. Ryan wasn’t afraid of starting big either, so he self-funded a 10-gallon home brew system that was still in use years later, when DEEP’s doors opened for the first time.

Eventually the LaPete family would make the move back to Ryan’s hometown, our town, Tallahassee and grow DEEP into the award-winning brewing company it is today.

All while not taking a single investor or a business loan. Now that’s lean.

Tallahassee if full of state government agencies, PR firms, and lobby groups, but what about tech startups?

This isn't Silicon Valley, BRO!

True...but thanks to Diverse Computing Tallahassee, university students, and university professors are starting to understand that this city is a great place for a tech startup.

While our guests, Craig and Lester, aren't the founders of Diverse Computing, they are instrumental in the building of the DCI that our city knows.

Tallahassee is full of and surrounded by southern living: antebellum houses, roads named after native American chiefs and American presidents, small historic towns, and rivers with longs names full of fish and ancient protected forests full of wildlife.

Amidst all of this is the Lamb family and William Lamb, 5th Generation Tallahassee.

William has seen this city grow from farms and dairies to the sprawling urban city that we know of today. He began his career as banker and eventually started his own financial firm
BUT burn out would settle in.

He would begin building a business around his passion for art and his southern lifestyle.

How does Seth Miller, someone that grew up in a sheltered suburban life, become the Executive Director of the Innocence Project of Florida standing up for marginalized people in our society?

With no real direction as a kid, Seth enrolled at Penn State University where he eventually made the decision to come to FSU's College of Law. In his senior year at Penn State and into his years at FSU, Seth's goals had began to evolve.

Seth's life would change in January 2003 when Barry Scheck visited FSU's College of Law to launch the Florida Innocence Initiative.

I mean how can you change Mac N Cheese? It’s Mac N Cheese. Maybe you could swap the flavor of cheese, thicken or thin your sauce or get wild with the macaroni type. But you couldn’t build a business around it? Right?

If you said no you would be wrong and if you said yes then you probably know about Tally Mac Shack and Justin Cruz. Justin thought differently about the way our city, Tallahassee thinks about Mac N Cheese. He started using the mac as the foundation to add smoked meats, home-made sauces, vegetables, anything that he could think of. Anything that would make the Mac N Cheese shine.

Tallahassee immediately loved it, so Justin put his ideas on wheels and named it Tally Mac Shack. When you look around Tallahassee today, you will notice that Tally Mac Shack isn’t just a food truck anymore...

Locals of Tallahassee love their trees and no one more than Mike Cross. An unlikely advocate for our trees, Arborist Mike Cross started tree cutting at 16 and would soon become a professional Arborist. Mike and Arbor Pros are going through a recent rebranding, but how can they stand out in such a lucrative and overpopulated market?

In 2004 Dawn Jones started Mojo's Backyard in Tallahassee, Florida and was almost immediately successful. At the time there was no dog daycare or dog boarding in Tallahassee. In 2006 Megan Federico joined the team and eventually became the face of Mojo's Backyard with Dawn. After 12 years of continual growth Dawn and Megan decided to fix something that didn't seem to be broke. They changed everything and became Camp Mojo's.

What is Growing Roots? It's Conversations with the people of Tallahassee who put down roots and grew trends that you see around TLH today. Growing Roots takes you through the story of Tallahassee’s local entrepreneurs and the change they’ve cultivated.

Hosted by Kyle Kane, a local and an admirer of Tallahassee

First Episode Premiering Thursday, September 5th!