The Inspired Stories Podcast

Jordan Rodriguez is the founder of Chagrin Valley Legacy Advisors in Beachwood, Ohio, a planning firm built for owners of closely held family businesses, multi-generational families, and high net worth early retirees. A certified financial planner and certified exit planning advisor, he spent nearly a decade at Warnock Spear Wealth Managers before leaving to build a practice specifically structured around the client types where he could deliver real depth, not a generalist service model dressed up to look specialized.

✨ Key Insights You'll Learn:

• Starting career as a college intern at Warnock Wealth Management, doing data entry and back-office work

• Early lessons at Northwestern Mutual and Wells Fargo on commission versus fee-only models and where incentives lead

• The difference between wirehouse advisors and independent fiduciaries, and why that distinction matters to business owners

• Spinning out Chagrin Valley Business Strategies as a separate entity to provide business valuations and consulting within a compliance constraint

• Using Quist Insights software to give business owners a range of values, a gap analysis, and thirteen actionable drivers to close it

• Why 75% of a business owner's wealth in an illiquid company requires a fundamentally different financial planning approach

• Three client demographics: closely held family business owners, multi-generational families, and high net worth early retirees

• The case for renaming exit planning, because the word exit scares off founders who aren't thinking about selling

• Why second and third generation owners are often easier to advise than founders who treat the business as their identity

• EOS Lite: using the VTO, quarterly rocks, and weekly scorecards without the full EOS complexity

🌟 Jordan's Key Mentors:

• Warren Warnock (Managing Director, Warnock Wealth Management): Lifelong family friend who gave Jordan his first look at the industry through a high school shadow and then his first internship

• Warnock Spear Team: A decade of shared growth that taught Jordan how to build client longevity, transition from wirehouse to independence, and think about fiduciary standards in every interaction

• His Wife: His primary model of doing things the right way, and the person who first noticed the stress the departure took on him

• Tax and Legal Professionals in His Network: The source of most introductions into his practice, because his model integrates them rather than working around them

• Business Owner Clients: They taught Jordan what gap existed in the market by telling him they wanted their business integrated into their financial plan in ways standard advisory firms couldn't deliver

👉 Don't miss Jordan's account of leaving a decade-long professional partnership, why a $413,000 enterprise value number on a to-do item is the most motivating thing he can show a business owner, and his honest take on why exit planning needs a name change.

🔗 Connect with Jordan Rodriguez:

Website: chagrinvalleylegacy.com

📋 Transcript Available: Jordan Rodriguez on Why Business Owners Need More Than a Portfolio Manager

📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast

🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast

📋 Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency: Providing innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being while optimizing your bottom line. Website: addbackbenefits.com

Marnie Byford is Chief Operating Officer at Supreme Staffing, a national employment agency connecting workers to opportunities in manufacturing, logistics, customer service, and office support across 22 locations. She came to the role through an unlikely path: a degree in educational psychology, nearly five years in disability day services, and a career in workforce management that her industry repeatedly told her she wasn't right for. Under her leadership, Supreme Staffing launched its own forklift training center, built a travel recruiting team, and achieved 7% turnover in an industry that averages over 400%.

✨ Key Insights You'll Learn:

• Degree in educational psychology, early career working with adults with disabilities at Open Arms Care

• Transition into workforce management through a Nike warehouse staffing role focused on training and development

• Five years at SIMOS Insourcing Solutions, rising from safety and training manager to executive director of recruiting

• Joining Supreme Staffing in February 2020, two weeks before COVID changed everything

• Keeping doors open during COVID while competitors closed, providing grocery money and flexible schedules to retain workers

• Growing organically through the pandemic and beyond through word-of-mouth customer referrals

• Launching a forklift training center after four years of planning to address a critical driver shortage

• Deploying a travel recruiting team to stabilize client sites across the country, including onboarding 200 workers in three weeks

• Phone system automation that cut response time from four hours to one hour and grew Memphis walk-in traffic from 50 to 200 per day

• Expanding to 22 locations with plans for Pennsylvania, Boston, Canada, and beyond

🌟 Marnie's Key Mentors:

• Eduardo Sanchez (Owner, Supreme Staffing): Saw Marnie's potential, handed her the operational mandate, and gave her the private-company flexibility to build something the corporate world wouldn't allow

• Open Arms Care Leadership: Grounded Marnie in humanization, patience, and learning people before judging them, skills she brought directly into staffing

• Jason Nunez (Director of Operations): Started at the front desk at 18 and grew into the role under Marnie's mentorship, representing the internal development model she champions

• Her Four Daughters: Daily motivation to model what it looks like to push past nos and build something in spaces where women are told they don't belong

• Her Staffing Teams Across 22 Locations: Young, hungry, and eager to learn, they have been both the proof of her leadership philosophy and the engine behind Supreme's growth

👉 Don't miss Marnie's account of being told repeatedly that the industrial world wasn't for women, how she kept Supreme Staffing's doors open during COVID when everyone else closed, and the moment a former colleague called to say they had underestimated her.

🔗 Connect with Marnie Byford:

Website: supremestaffing.agency

LinkedIn: Marnie Byford

📋 Transcript Available: From Educational Psychology to Staffing COO: Marnie Byford's Path to Supreme Staffing

📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast

🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast

📋 Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency: Providing innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being while optimizing your bottom line. Website: addbackbenefits.com

Greg Mahoney is Associate Director of Management Consulting at Skytale Group, a Dallas-based firm helping dental support organizations and multi-site healthcare platforms grow profitably, prepare for M&A, and exit with positive outcomes. He came to that work through a decade of building his father's single-location dental practice from $1 million to $7.5 million in revenue, discovering along the way that he had accidentally built something too profitable for any associate to buy — which sent him inside some of the country's largest PE-backed dental platforms before he landed on the consulting side.

✨ Key Insights You'll Learn:

• Growing up in a dental family and planning to become a dentist before organic chemistry redirected the path

• Discovering a natural strength in economics, accounting, and finance after his GPA transformed with the switch

• Early career in corporate finance at a startup, then product management at Heraeus Kulzer dental manufacturing

• Joining his father's $1M practice with a mandate to build everything except the dentistry

• Adding TMJ, sleep apnea, and implant service lines as standalone practices within the practice

• Growing from $1M to $7.5M in two and a half years through internal marketing and specialty cross-referral

• Realizing the practice was too profitable for associate buyout and choosing private equity as the exit path

• Joining Elite Dental Partners post-acquisition, scaling from 66 to 114 locations while building support infrastructure

• The shift from buy-and-hold DSO arbitrage to same-store growth as the new operating imperative

• Joining Skytale Group to serve founder-led healthcare practices across dental, aesthetics, dermatology, and beyond

🌟 Greg's Key Mentors:

• His Father (Dr. Mahoney): Lifelong role model who handed Greg the business mandate and whose example continues to shape how Greg works with founder-led practices

• Elite Dental Partners Leadership: Gave Greg the opportunity to go from single-practice operator to multi-location infrastructure builder across 114 locations

• Skytale Group Team: A meritocracy where the best idea wins, giving Greg the environment to apply operator experience to consulting without politics

• Founder-Led Practice Owners He Has Served: Consistently reinforce why the emotional investment of a founder creates different problems and different opportunities than PE-backed groups

• His Wife: Grounded him when he was still considering dental school mid-MBA with a newborn at home, and redirected him toward the path that fit

👉 Don't miss Greg's account of the moment he realized the practice he built was too profitable for anyone to buy, how a failed organic chemistry class shaped a career in dental operations, and why he believes today is the golden age of dentistry for operators.

🔗 Connect with Greg Mahoney:

Website: Skytalegroup.com

📋 Transcript Available: Greg Mahoney on What Breaks Inside a DSO When Acquisitions Move Faster Than Operations

📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast

🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast

📋 Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency: Providing innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being while optimizing your bottom line. Website: addbackbenefits.com

Meir Spiegel is a CPA and partner at B2B CFO, the nation's largest CFO consulting firm, working with privately held businesses in New Jersey and beyond. He spent over a decade as CFO and controller at VIP Wireless, where he built financial systems from the ground up, implemented NetSuite, and developed automated processes that enabled the company to scale through multiple acquisitions before the industry fundamentally shifted. That experience now drives his fractional CFO work helping business owners see what their own numbers can't tell them.

✨ Key Insights You'll Learn:

• Joining VIP Wireless two days before a merger went live with no accounting infrastructure in place

• Building billing, payment, and residual systems from scratch using pseudocode handed to developers

• NetSuite implementation: nine months, full ERP buildout, itemized inventory tracking for cell phone ESNs

• Automated a two-person, two-day residual payment process down to a 90-minute script

• Recognizing a credit system house of cards before COVID hit and rebuilding it to survive the shock

• Moving from single-company CFO to fractional partner at B2B CFO after the wireless industry restructured

• Ideal client: five million to one hundred million in revenue, outgrown their infrastructure

• B2B Exit: preparing companies for sale by boosting EBITDA and choosing the right exit structure

• The management buyout option: benefits, risks, and why pulling back the offer can destroy morale

• Staying focused: a short daily priority list as the simplest and most overlooked productivity fix

🌟 Meir's Key Mentors:

• Jerry Mills (Founder, B2B CFO): Author of the B2B CFO and B2B Exit books; built the fractional CFO model Meir now operates within

• Partner at Early Accounting Firm: Trusted introduction to VIP Wireless that launched Meir's in-house CFO career

• VIP Wireless CEO: Made fast, decisive calls on NetSuite and gave Meir the runway to build for scale

• Programming and Tech Community: Meir's pseudocode-to-developer workflow and current AI coding tools have been shaped by years of working alongside developers

• Clients Over the Career: Business owners facing exits, growth ceilings, and distress have each sharpened his diagnostic instincts

👉 Don't miss Meir's account of walking into a merger with no systems and no team two days before go-live, and what that experience taught him about building for scale, staying focused, and knowing when a company has outgrown itself.

🔗 Connect with Meir Spiegel:

Website: b2bcfo.com

Email: [email protected]

📋 Transcript Available:Meir Spiegel Built His Own Systems From Scratch. Now He Does It for Everyone

📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast

🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast

📋 Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency: Providing innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being while optimizing your bottom line. Website: addbackbenefits.com

Pat Voltapetti is the co-founder and managing partner of Pinnacle One Capital, a private equity and advisory firm focused on multifamily and commercial real estate in high-growth markets across the Southeast and Sun Belt. A third-generation investor who spent nearly four years managing investor relations at Cardone Capital, Pat left to build something built entirely on his own terms, grounded in transparency, operator alignment, and the philosophical foundation his Italian grandfather laid when Pat was still a teenager.

✨ Key Insights You'll Learn:

• Three generations of real estate: from grandfather Gino's Italian restaurant and flea markets to Pat's private equity firm

• Grandfather's innovation: using a broker's license to source off-market deals, then holding paper on sales

• Accounting and public auditing background: understanding how businesses are valued and where numbers are hidden

• Finding Grant Cardone through YouTube cold-calling content, joining as an early team member

• Cardone Capital's crowdfunding evolution: from friends-and-family funds to managing thousands of investors

• Hitting the corporate ceiling and leaving to build Pinnacle One Capital from scratch

• Targeting distressed commercial deals where debt is coming due and basis has reset

• Operator alignment: bringing developers in as partners so incentives match across the deal

• Advisory model: helping operators on bigger deals find valuation errors before signing

• Stoicism, metaphysics, and teaching children to notice the limits of the five senses

🌟 Pat's Key Mentors:

• Grandfather Gino: Introduced Pat to accounting, self-improvement books, stoicism, and Eastern and Western philosophy starting at age 14

• Grant Cardone: Showed Pat how to build investor infrastructure, crowdfunding systems, and scale a real estate brand at speed

• His Father: Modeled the brokerage side of real estate and reinforced the value of staying close to the transaction

• Long-term Operators in His Network: Taught Pat what 15-plus years of successful asset management actually looks like from the inside

• His Children: Drive his continued exploration of purpose, legacy, and how to pass real knowledge forward across generations

👉 Don't miss Pat's account of leaving a recognized brand to start over, the philosophy his grandfather handed him at 14, and why he still believes in finding partners even after being burned.

🔗 Connect with Pat Voltapetti:

Website: PinnacleOneCapital.com

LinkedIn: Pat Voltapetti

📋 Transcript Available: The Deal Gap Nobody Sees: Pat Voltapetti's Strategy Against Overpaying

📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast

🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast

📋 Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency: Providing innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being while optimizing your bottom line. Website: addbackbenefits.com

Lloyd Lewis: Building a Social Enterprise Around the People Most Workplaces Overlook

Lloyd Lewis, President and CEO of Arc Thrift Stores, shares how his son Kennedy’s birth with Down syndrome launched a mission that transformed a struggling thrift chain into one of Colorado’s largest social enterprises — with 34 retail locations, nearly 1,900 employees, $120 million in annual revenue, and 600 employees with intellectual and developmental disabilities at its heart.

Key Insights You’ll Learn:

• Leaving finance at Smith Barney and IBM after his son Kennedy was born with Down syndrome

• Inheriting a turnaround situation with same-store sales falling double digits and cash burning fast

• The back to basics plan: walking out of the meeting so experienced managers could lead it

• Rebuilding Arc with weekly reporting, store visits, accountability, and mission emphasis

• Growing from 10 IDD employees to 600 — and why it’s half the reason for 14 record years

• Why hiring people with IDD improves morale, productivity, and ultimately revenue

• The Arc University: post-secondary classes, certificates, and PhD designations for IDD employees

• Processing 200 to 300 million donated items annually with no barcodes and no SKUs

• Expanding from Colorado into New Mexico and Texas with IDD employment at the core

• What Satya Nadella, Jamie Foxx, and Winston Churchill all have in common: life-changing relationships with people who have disabilities

Lloyd’s Key Mentors:

• Kennedy Lewis (Son): Changed his values, his mission, and his understanding of what matters in life

• IBM Management Training Program: Laid the operational and financial foundation he brought to Arc

• Dr. Linda Crnic (Neuroscientist): Sparked the Down Syndrome research advocacy that preceded Arc

• Experienced Store Managers at Arc: The people he trusted with the turnaround by leaving the room

• Randy Lewis (Walgreens): Demonstrated at scale that IDD hiring works across distribution centers nationally

Don’t miss this conversation about what happens when you hire the people most companies overlook, why mission is as powerful as any business strategy, and how one man’s son changed the lives of hundreds.

Connect with Lloyd Lewis:

Website: arcthrift.com

Email: [email protected]

Transcript Available: Lloyd Lewis: How a Son With Down Syndrome Turned a Finance Career Into a Mission

Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast

Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast

Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency — Providing innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being while optimizing your bottom line. Website: addbackbenefits.com

Nathan Anderson is the co-founder and head of operations at Nimbl Tech, a fractional IT firm in Lehi, Utah serving small remote accounting and financial services companies with device management, cybersecurity, and compliance. He built it from scratch inside Nimbl, the parent company where he serves as head of tech, after being turned down from a master's program and redirected by a CEO who offered to show him how to build a business instead.

✨ Key Insights You'll Learn:

• Managing 1,500 employees to remote work overnight during COVID at the Missionary Training Center

• Joining Nimbl part-time while finishing school, starting with basic IT and early automation

• Recognizing a market gap when cloud accounting peers kept asking how Nimbl secured its remote team

• CEO Dave Olson's offer: skip the MBA and build the company instead

• Signing first client July 2024, reaching six figures by end of year one

• Three core services: device management, access management, and data security compliance

• FTC and IRS compliance documentation: written information security plans and incident response

• Phishing emails as the most common real-world threat, not sophisticated outside attacks

• AI safety for accounting firms: paid plans, SOC 2 certification, and the right privacy settings

• 15-minute help desk response time as a non-negotiable standard, not a marketing claim

🌟 Nathan's Key Mentors:

• Dave Olson (CEO, Nimbl): Redirected Nathan from pursuing an MBA to building NimblTech, then backed him fully

• Missionary Training Center Leadership: Gave Nathan his first large-scale tech transition experience during COVID

• Cloud Accounting Community: Provided a collaborative peer network that surfaced the market need NimblTech was built to fill

• His Parents: Offered faith-grounded perspective during his lowest point after the master's rejection

• NimblTech Clients: Each new service line has come from a client request, shaping the firm's growth organically

👉 Don't miss Nathan's candid account of being rejected from the graduate program all his friends got into, the professor who confirmed he should have been admitted, and the moment a CEO's belief in him changed everything.

🔗 Connect with Nathan Anderson:

Website: trustnimbl.com

📋 Transcript Available: How Nathan Anderson Built Nimbl Tech Inside Someone Else's Company

📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast

🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast

📋 Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency: Providing innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being while optimizing your bottom line. Website: addbackbenefits.com

From Venezuela's First McDonald's to Miami Nightlife CEO: Luis Ginestra's Hospitality Journey

Luis Ginestra, CEO of the Rabbit Group, built one of Miami's most innovative hospitality portfolios through a career spanning Venezuela, San Francisco, and South Florida. From cleaning grills at McDonald's at 16 to managing a 300-seat Thai restaurant at 21 to leading a multi-concept group through COVID and out the other side with double the sales, Luis shares the operational instincts, strategic partnerships, and hard lessons that shaped him.

Key Insights You'll Learn:

• Crew member at Venezuela's first McDonald's in 1986 at age 16

• GM of the Western Hemisphere's first Thai restaurant at age 21 with no prior restaurant leadership experience

• Hospitality degree pursued over computer engineering after realizing he needed to be with people

• Joining the Dirty Rabbit Group in 2022 to professionalize a fast-growing but financially scattered operation

• Cutting 15 concepts to 7 while doubling sales and corporate staff from 32 to 14

• Promoter costs reduced from 20% to 10-12% through strategic marketing and social investment

• Entertainment costs cut from 14% to 8% by curating DJ talent rather than chasing headliners

• Partnership model with Mandala Group bringing Bagatelle and Sala de Espejo to Miami

• Hurricane growth strategy: expand from the inside out, stay close to home base

• Shifting from CEO to Chief Partnerships Officer to focus on brand licensing and strategic deals

Luis's Key Mentors:

• Jean-Paul Coupal (Restaurateur): Took a raw 21-year-old under his wing at the first Thai restaurant in the Western Hemisphere; taught operational detail and the art of hospitality

• Renato Viola (Mr. O'Wan Founder): Showed Luis that great ingredients, fair pricing, and genuine service can outperform any marketing budget

• Mandala Group Leadership: Global hospitality partner that expanded Luis's exposure to ultra-premium concepts and international brand management

• McDonald's Training System: First school in consistency, process, and the value of repeatable standards

• Karen Cohen (Franchisee CEO): Former McDonald's boss who later became a business connection and example of long-term growth through franchising

Don't miss this conversation about what it actually takes to survive in one of the most competitive hospitality markets in the country and why cutting the fat was the best decision Luis ever made.

Connect with Luis Ginestra:

Website: thedirtyrabbitgroup.com

Transcript Available: From Venezuela's First McDonald's to Miami Bar & Restaurant Group CEO: Luis Ginestra's Hospitality Journey

Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast

Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast

Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency: Providing innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being while optimizing your bottom line. Website: addbackbenefits.com

Drew Allen is the President and CEO of Grace Technologies, an electrical safety and predictive maintenance manufacturer based in Davenport, Iowa whose products are used in factories and facilities across more than 60 countries. He made his first trip to China at 13, spent years selling car care products across Asia for Meguiar's and 3M after college, and then returned to run strategy and product development at the family business his father founded in 1993 before stepping into the top role. Grace holds a patent for industrial interface design, has been recognized as a top workplace in Iowa and a BBB Torch Award winner for ethics, and Drew also hosts his own podcast, The Factory Futurist.

✨ Key Insights You'll Learn:

• First trip to China at 13, studying international business at Lingnan University in Hong Kong, and nearly four years running Asian distribution for Meguiar's and 3M

• Growing China sales 70% year over year by raising prices, creating a certification model for detail shops, and activating distribution partners across provinces

• Joining Grace Technologies to run international operations, then product development and strategy, before taking over as CEO

• Grace's four product lines: Graceport industrial interface panels, absence-of-voltage testing, electrical reliability monitoring, and wireless vibration condition monitoring

• Arc flash explained: a copper-vaporizing electrical explosion triggered by short circuits in high-amperage industrial systems that can reach tens of thousands of degrees

• The $400,000 product failure that produced the iterative development philosophy Grace now uses across all hardware launches

• Firing bullets before cannonballs: never cutting tooling, paying for certifications, or ordering inventory without multi-customer validation first

• 3D-printed molds for pre-production validation: an innovation discovered during a 48-hour engineering hackathon that allows physical testing without traditional tooling costs or lead times

• Perceive: a separate technology holding company structured to enable equity participation for key engineering talent without diluting the family-owned Grace entity

• Seven days walking 22-26 miles per day on the Camino de Santiago — in a monsoon, with an injured ankle — while processing his mother's terminal cancer recurrence

🌟 Drew's Key Mentors:

• His Father (Grace Founder): Invented both the Graceport product and the mass-customization business model in the 1990s, and first took Drew to China at 13 to show him where the world was heading

• Jim Collins (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0): The fire bullets before cannonballs framework became the foundation for how Grace approaches all hardware product development after Drew's $400,000 failure

• His CTO (Sivionics Founder): Brought condition monitoring technology into Grace through a creatively structured acquisition that solved both the equity and cash constraints of a family-owned company

• Asian Distribution Partners: Taught Drew that channel activation and relationship density are as critical to revenue growth as product quality, a lesson he carries into Grace's go-to-market today

👉 Don't miss Drew's account of sinking $400,000 into a product no one wanted, walking 22 miles a day through a Spanish monsoon while his mother was dying, and what meeting the future Uber CTO on a boat to Alcatraz taught him about never dismissing an idea too quickly.

🔗 Connect with Drew Allen:

Website: graceport.com

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn: Drew Allen, Grace Technologies

📋 Transcript Available: Drew Allen on Why American Manufacturing Needs to Think 10X Bigger, Not Just 10% Better

📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast

🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast

📋 Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency: Providing innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being while optimizing your bottom line. Website: addbackbenefits.com

Shaun McDonald is the Director of Customer Success at Harri, a New York-based technology company founded in 2012 that helps restaurants, hotels, and hospitality businesses hire, schedule, and engage frontline employees. Harri serves millions of workers across tens of thousands of locations worldwide and counts McDonald's, Subway, Burger King, Raising Cane's, and Shake Shack among its clients. Shaun came up through restaurant operations as a general manager at Sweetgreen and Luke's Lobster before moving into hospitality SaaS through Restaurant 365, where he earned a promotion within his first year and discovered that the gap between restaurant operations and tech was far smaller than he expected.

✨ Key Insights You'll Learn:

• Started as a dishwasher and bus boy in college before transferring to Johnson and Wales University to complete culinary and business degrees

• General manager at Sweetgreen and Luke's Lobster, where he once ran a new store opening entirely alone after his full staff called out

• Moved to Restaurant 365 after seven-plus years in restaurants, renting an RV with his then-girlfriend and driving cross-country before either had secured a job

• Joined Harri after being recruited out of Restaurant 365, drawn to customer success over reactive support work

• Harri's platform covers the full employee lifecycle from applicant tracking through scheduling, timekeeping, onboarding compliance, and employee engagement

• Fair Work Week compliance automation: helping operators avoid tens of thousands of dollars per week in penalties as city-level regulations expand

• California break law as a top client acquisition trigger: operators get sued, lose their vendor, then find Harri

• Harry Engage: clock-in touchpoint delivering surveys, training, and recognition at the moment employees have to interact with the system, driving response rates into the 70-90 percent range

• One-click AI scheduling in beta: agentic flows checking forecasts, local events, employee availability, and skill levels simultaneously to produce a complete schedule with a single button press

• Misdiagnosed with blood cancer at 23, spent over a year getting bone marrow tests before a specialist cleared him — an experience that reoriented his relationship with gratitude

🌟 Shaun's Key Mentors:

• Restaurant Operations Career (Dishwasher to GM): Eight-plus years of frontline experience that gave Shaun the operational credibility to consult enterprise hospitality clients as a peer, not a vendor

• Restaurant 365 (Early SaaS Career): Showed him that everyone in tech is figuring it out too, earned a promotion in under a year, and connected him to the tight-knit hospitality SaaS community

• The Luke's Lobster Employee He Promoted to GM: A young woman from South Boston who never thought she'd amount to anything, whose journey from crew member to store manager is the moment Shaun most wants to be remembered for

• All In Podcast (Ongoing Learning): Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks, and the other hosts provide real-time visibility into what cutting-edge AI companies are doing, helping Shaun stay at the edge rather than chasing from behind

👉 Don't miss Shaun's account of running a restaurant opening entirely alone, the cancer misdiagnosis he kept from almost everyone for years, and why hospitality is the best possible training for a career in customer success.

🔗 Connect with Shaun McDonald:

Website: harri.com

Email: [email protected]

📋 Transcript Available: Shaun McDonald on What Harri's One-Click AI Scheduling Actually Does Behind the Scenes

📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast

🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast

📋 Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency: Providing innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being while optimizing your bottom line. Website: addbackbenefits.com