Milwaukee Uncut

I’m still in shock that the Milwaukee Bucks won the NBA title. The odds are stacked so far against a small market team from the Midwest to win a title, especially in the era of superteams and star player mobility. 

As a lifelong fan, I’m so happy for the city and the Bucks organization — that was amazing to watch from a basketball standpoint. But what about from a life and business perspective? 

Chris Luecke (Host of the Manufacturing Happy Hour podcast) and I decided to come together and talk about the top leadership, marketing, and life lessons we took away from the Bucks championship run. Listen in as we take a deep dive and unpack what we've learned.

Josh Delaney has made local and national news lately by selling 80% of his company, FAB Nutrition to High Tide Inc for $20.6M. Josh started FAB Nutrition only three years ago and the fact that he just cashed out for over $20M at age 35 is rare. It’s the largest exit I personally know of by a young(ish) Milwaukee entrepreneur. That said it is far from an overnight success story. 

Pete’s Pops has been all over the news (and streets of the Milwaukee area) this year. With the announcement of “Sneaky Pete’s” recently opening at the Milwaukee Public Market, their four brick-and-mortar locations, fifteen pop carts roaming around the area, and their expansion last year to St. Louis (Pete’s hometown) last year, it’s clear that business has never been hotter – erm — chillier — for this Milwaukee-favorite pop shop. All that said, Pete’s Pops is far from an overnight success story. 

Believe it or not, I was one of the first to try these legendary pops. Pete Cooney served me one of the original Pete’s Pops out of a dixie cup in the kitchen of his East Side apartment about eight years ago, back when he was a full-time corporate accountant. Pete’s Pops was a side hustle for Pete until the start of 2021, his last job being the Controller for the Pabst Group.  

Although Pete’s Pops has grown significantly since Pete started making Pops, his passion and excitement for the business haven’t gone away: 

“Something about this concept resonated with me; it made me excited, it made me happy... Our business is happiness and positivity, it’s just a really great business, and I’m thankful it’s what I chose,” Pete said fondly on this episode of The GoGedders.

For the company’s future, Pete predicts an expansion of the current business model and a potential consumer packaged goods (CPG) play down the road.

For more on Pete’s story and what it took to get the business to where it is today, listen in to the full episode.

In this Q&A episode I cover work/life balance (can it actually exist?), how to market when starting out and tell the story of my illustrious and rare double eagle in the Ray Fischer tournament last weekend. 

Like clockwork every Wednesday morning through chemo and during his three-week hospital stay where he underwent CAR T Cell therapy, he fired off a group text that I was fortunate enough to be a part of. It featured a message from Rich as well as a song of the day. On April 14th at 6:37am, on his 13th day in the hospital, he sent off the following message: 

“I look out my window and see Children’s Hospital and two flight for life helipads. I wonder about everyone’s stories and the randomness of it all. We all have a clock, but it’s not until you experience a life changing event that you become more acutely aware of how you spend your time. My hope for everyone is that we all take time to appreciate that each day is a gift and we make the most of life, because none of us truly know how much time is left on our clock.” 

On the podcast, I asked him to elaborate on this message and how he has chosen to remain positive through his journey with cancer, while the rest of us continue to get stressed out and anxious about minute details and events of day-to-day life that really have no meaningful impact. He responded to my question by saying, “I’m thankful. Not that I got the disease, but that I’ve got time. It changes the way you react to certain things. Something changes where you appreciate everything, and you appreciate the little things more. I feel fortunate, I don’t know how much time I have, but I do have time. Some people get (life) taken away from them in an instant or in a few months. None of us know when it’s going to be over, so we should really all have that attitude. Sometimes you look at life, and you’re like ‘where did that time go’ most of the time, we just go through the day and don’t appreciate the day."

Luckily for Rich, along with his positive attitude, he is in great hands with Dr. Parmeswarn Hari at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Dr. Hari is rated one of the top doctors in America and started the Celgene bb2121 Car T Cell Clinical Trial right here in Milwaukee. Rich is only the sixth person in the world to get it. Essentially the treatment takes patient’s T cells that are ineffective to treat myeloma and reprograms them genetically to convert the cells into supercharged, highly efficient T cells that can target and destroy every last myeloma cell. Approximately 450M cells were pumped into Rich’s body. It’s living cell therapy, and Dr. Hari is optimistic that many cancers will be cured this way in the next 20-25 years; right now, only three cancers can get treated like this. 

Dr. Hari and Rich both advise that if you think something is wrong with you, see a doctor as soon as possible as many of us procrastinate and wait until later stages to get looked at, and our health is the most important thing we have. 

The majority of us desire a viable third party and aren't satisfied with the candidates we have to choose from in election cycles. Why is this and what can be done about it? 
Katherine Gehl breaks down how the "Politics Industry" really works behind the scenes and how she is working hard and making incredible progress to change our country for the better! 
This episode is live from the Milwaukee Rotary Club! 

Milwaukee as a city got hit hard by the pandemic and arguably no one knows this better than Marcus Corporation's third generation CEO, Greg Marcus, who has recently been helping the city get vaccinated as well as bringing the city and his businesses back to life. 
Marcus Corporation was founded in Ripon, WI in 1935 with a single movie theater and now operates 91 theaters and 18 hotels across 17 states.  
Make sure to tune into today's episode to learn more about Greg's unconventional path to become the CEO of Marcus Corp, the importance of community, how he is helping the city get vaccinated and what it's been like running a hospitality business during the pandemic and how he sees the future of the company. 

Is the Pfister really haunted? What's the best seat to watch a movie in all of Milwaukee? The Hilarious story of how Greg met his wife, how to deal with hair loss,  has Chris Stegman been kicked out of Mason Street Grill? What is Greg's best single piece of advice to young professionals? 
Greg answers all of these as well as several more hard hitting questions in our lightning round. 

Should you invest in Crypto? Does it have any real value? Why has it taken off? What is blockchain? NFTs? etc..... 
Erin Magennis, Christopher Perceptions and Alec Shaw join the podcast to discuss the current state of block chain, cryptocurrency and how to navigate the space. 
We also answer a lot of user submitted questions. 

Two Silicon Valley leaders have recently made the move to Milwaukee and are bringing startup jobs with them. David Reeves and Glenn Reid joined the podcast to discuss topics like what made them move (and move jobs) to Milwaukee, what the city can do to create a better tech culture, the risk tolerance and mentality differences between Silicon Valley and Milwaukee, how the city can better play to it's strengths to recruit talent and more! 

David Reeves is the President of OpenGov, a technology company that is the leader in providing state and local governments with modern cloud based software and serves more than 1,000 governments in the US.  David grew up in Milwaukee, went to UWM then had a number of roles in the tech industry between Chicago, Boston and Silicon Valley including Senior VP of Sales at both PTC and Zora where revenue grew from $16M to $100M during his tenure. He then joined OpenGov where he has been the President since 2018 and recently moved back to Milwaukee and opened an OpenGov office here and has already hired 17 employees and anticipates having over 100 in the Milwaukee office within three years.

Glenn Reid is the Founder and CEO of Marathon Machines, a company disrupting the laundry space with essentially and all in one washer/dryer with modern technology that was named “The Tesla of appliances” - by Wired Magazine. Glenn has an amazing background in Silicon Valley. He created iMovie 1.0 and spent hundreds of hours working directly with Steve Jobs. He was employee 25 at Adobe Systems and solid his startup Five Across was acquired by Cisco in 2007.