The Inspired Stories Podcast

🎤 From a Crowded Baltimore Bar to 12,000 Taps Worldwide: Josh Goodman’s Pour My Bev Story

Josh Goodman, founder and CEO of PourMyBev, had an idea in a crowded Baltimore bar in 2009 that nobody asked for and nobody could explain. Fifteen years, two failed partnerships, a near-shutdown in 2014, and a COVID-delayed wire transfer later, Coca-Cola came calling. Today his company operates across 23 countries with over 12,000 taps installed — all built on the premise that waiting for a drink is a problem worth solving.

✨ Key Insights You’ll Learn:

• Cutco knife sales as the foundation for every sales skill he still uses

• IT staffing commissions stolen by corporate politics and what that unlocked

• The Baltimore bar moment that sparked the self-pour concept

• Two failed technology partnerships and a near-total company collapse in 2014

• $100K wire transfer to Austrian engineers as the turning point

• Rebuilding trust with burned customers by installing the new product for free

• Toast integration that eliminated the line problem he accidentally created

• Coca-Cola Euro Pacific Partners investing in exchange for a Burger King Spain rollout

• Pour Insights analytics platform now fed into AI for real-time operator intelligence

• Country clubs as the next high-growth vertical through property management integrations

🌟 Josh’s Key Mentors:

• His Cutco district manager: taught him the full architecture of consultative selling before he knew what it was

• Herman Rettle (Reddle Austria): second-generation engineering visionary who built the product that actually worked and became a long-term manufacturing partner

• Branded Hospitality (Michael Schatzberg and Jimmy Frischling): first institutional investors who opened the Coca-Cola door

• Sports and middle school adversity: hardened his pain tolerance and wired him to treat setbacks as redirection rather than rejection

👉 Don’t miss this conversation about why category creation is harder and slower than anyone warns you, what it actually looks like to nearly lose a company and build it back, and how a $45,000 install can outperform a fully staffed bar.

🔗 Connect with Josh Goodman:

Website: pourmybev.com

📤 Transcript Available: PourMyBev Built a Category Nobody Believed In and Josh Goodman Still Isn't Done

📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast

🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast

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

🎙️ From McDonald's Griddle to Nobu: The Rise of Drew Nieporent

In this episode, Drew Nieporent, founder of Myriad Restaurant Group, traces a path from a McDonald's grill at 17 to co-founding Nobu with Robert De Niro and Nobu Matsuhisa. He walks through opening Montrachet with a $16 menu that earned three stars, building six restaurants on one Tribeca block, and facing a stroke, kidney cancer, and leukemia within the same year.

✨ Key Insights You'll Learn:

• Started at McDonald's at 17 as the quarter-pound grill man

• Opened Montrachet in 1985, three stars on a sixteen dollar menu

• Recruited by Robert De Niro to open Tribeca Grill

• Nobu turned him down twice before saying yes

• Nobu is now worth roughly $300 million

• First restaurateur to put a chef's name on the menu

• Ran the Madison Square Garden burger concession for 12 years

• Wrote the memoir "I'm Not Trying to Be Difficult"

• Survived a stroke, kidney cancer, and is now battling leukemia

• Three restaurants at one Tribeca address held three stars for decades

🌟 Drew's Key Mentors:

• Robert De Niro: Recruited him for Tribeca Grill and backed Nobu from day one

• Warner LeRoy: Employer at Maxwell's Plum and Tavern on the Green, modeled scale and spectacle

• George Lang: Fellow restaurateur who pushed him toward treatment at the Mayo Clinic

• His Father: State Liquor Authority official who exposed him to New York's best restaurants as a child

• Nobu Matsuhisa: Creative partner in building one of the industry's most recognized brands

👉 A candid look at four decades of restaurants, and what it means to keep showing up while your health keeps testing you.

🔗 Connect with Drew Nieporent:

Instagram: Drew Nieporent

📄 Transcript Available: Forty Restaurants, One Neighborhood, and a Life Drew Nieporent Has No Regrets About

📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast

🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast

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

Website: addbackbenefits.com

From 31-Year Franchisee to Executive Coach: Kevin Harrison's Uncommon Reinvention

Kevin Harrison, founder of Uncommon Influence, spent three decades as a Chick-fil-A franchisee before walking away to build an executive coaching firm from scratch. Recognized by the Virginia General Assembly for people development, Kevin now coaches leaders across hospitality and beyond on how to grow capacity, reinvent themselves, and have life-changing influence on the people around them.

Key Insights You'll Learn:

• 31-year Chick-fil-A run ending when the vision stopped inspiring him

• iPad drive-through system: early pioneer growing throughput from 100 to 300+ cars per hour

• Leader intern program attracting recent grads through structured rotations and experiences

• Marathon wellness program inside Chick-fil-A sending dozens of employees to Disney race

• Origin of Uncommon Influence: ninth-grade teacher mailing life goals back 11 years later

• Five D's framework for overwhelmed leaders: do, delete, defer, delegate, decide

• Camino de Santiago reinvention experience: 95-mile trek sold out through 2026

• Coaching principle: you cannot want growth more than your client wants it

• Distinguishing statements from questions as tools for lasting change

• AI as thought partner, not thought leader, for high-performing executives

Kevin's Key Mentors:

• Roger Flinchum (Ninth Grade English Teacher): Mailed back life goals 11 years later; sparked the Uncommon Influence vision

• Chick-fil-A Company President: Planted the question "How good do you want to be?" at a critical moment

• Kevin's Wife: Named the moment his vision no longer inspired him and gave him permission to leave

• Kevin's Personal Coach: Facilitates annual and biannual strategic retreats; challenges his thinking regularly

• Mitch and Stacey Hartman (Scrimp Shack Founders): Trusted Kevin with scaling their brand after retirement

Don't miss this conversation about what it looks like to rebuild at the top of your game and why the leaders who truly change are the ones who want it most.

Connect with Kevin Harrison:

Website: uncommoninfluence.com

Transcript Available: Kevin Harrison on Why the Uncommon Influence Coaching Program Starts with a Question, Not an Answer

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

Josh Zolin is the CEO of Windy City Equipment, a commercial equipment service company operating across Arizona and Texas with 50 to 60 employees and between $10 and $12 million in annual revenue. He joined his father's one-man repair operation at 21 with no degree and no plan, after spending his early life in a stunt family and nearly 16 years doing stunt work across film and television. Along the way he co-founded Blue Is the New White, an academy teaching soft skills and practical leadership to blue collar professionals, and hosts the Everything They Don't Tell You podcast.

✨ Key Insights You'll Learn:

• Born into a stunt family in Chatsworth, California, with his grandfather, mother, father, and three uncles all working in the industry

• First stunt appearance at age six in Matinee with John Goodman, rolling out of the way of an oncoming car

• Teaching at the family stunt school from age 14, training people from around the world in falling, fighting, and fire work

• Moving to Los Angeles and breaking onto film sets at all hours, knocking on stunt coordinators' trailers to find work

• The studio apartment mirror moment in 2008 during the writer's strike that sent him toward his father's business in Phoenix

• Joining Windy City Equipment at 21, spending ten years in the field learning the trade before stepping into the CEO role

• Expanding from kitchen equipment into HVAC and refrigeration, which drove revenue from $1M to $6-7M in four to five years

• Achieving Inc. 5000 recognition three times and expanding from Phoenix to Tucson to Houston

• Launching Blue Is the New White in 2019 as a book and advocacy platform, then building the academy eighteen months ago

• Sister-in-law's sudden death on January 1, 2015 as the mindset shift that ended procrastination and anchored his daily urgency

🌟 Josh's Key Mentors:

• His Grandfather: First memory of the stunt world, jumping from 50 feet into a pool, and the origin of everything that followed

• His Mother and Father: Both stunt professionals who trained Josh from childhood, ran the stunt school, and modeled the work ethic he brought into business

• His Father (Windy City Founder): The mechanic who built the original business and made the call to get out of stunts to never miss a weekend with his son, setting Josh's path in motion

• James and Terry (HVAC and Refrigeration): Master technicians who helped Josh launch the division that became Windy City's growth engine

• His Wife: The steady presence through his sister's death and the person who helped him learn that sometimes being there is all that's needed

👉 Don't miss Josh's account of staring down a 60-foot drop onto a bag the size of a pen cap, the studio apartment mirror moment that ended his stunt career, and why his sister-in-law's death at 26 became the most clarifying day of his life.

🔗 Connect with Josh Zolin:

Website: joshzolin.com

📋 Transcript Available: From Stuntman to CEO: How Josh Zolin Built a Family Business into an Inc 5000 Enterprise

📺 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

Joe Griebel, Director of Physical Product at Sunday, started his career helping fuse tissue with a laser in a deviated septum surgery and ended up redesigning a fertilizer box system that saved the company $2 million a year. In between, he held patents on orthopedic devices, published research on micro engines, worked at Philips Healthcare, and missed a full ride to architecture school by one ACT point — a moment he calls the best failure he ever had.

✨ Key Insights You’ll Learn:

• Tissue fusion lasers and bone tamp patents straight out of college at a startup called Mind Rocket

• Why the design process is identical whether the problem is a golf ball dispenser or a femoral artery device

• What design validation means in medical devices and why it takes years before anything reaches a patient

• How a former colleague’s referral took Joe from Philips Healthcare to a Boulder lawn care startup backed by Sequoia

• Sunday’s personalization model: soil sampling, GPS lawn mapping, 20+ SKUs, and region-specific plans from day one

• The Sunny AI agent and what it can and can’t do for a customer who just wants green grass

• Why Sunday’s soil database is its most valuable asset and why no competitor has anything close

• The packaging problem that wasn’t about box size and the cell system that saved $2 million

• What Sequoia Capital pressure actually felt like from the inside and why it never compromised the customer

• Missing architecture school by one ACT point and why junior year at UCCS was where the pivot finally made sense

🌟 Joe’s Key Mentors:

• His Grad School Advisor (Mind Rocket Founder): Invited Joe to co-found the company after his thesis on laser tissue fusion — the first domino in the entire chain

• His Colleague at Mind Rocket: Found him again a decade later and brought him to Sunday at exactly the right moment

• The Orthopedic Surgeon on the Bone Tamp Project: Took Joe into eight surgeries a day to watch what he struggled with — modeled what it looks like to find a problem worth solving

• His Parents: Raised him without much but gave him enough — homemade popsicles included — to know how to create something from nothing

👉 Don’t miss this conversation about what it means to apply the same design process to wildly different problems, why the hardest packaging insight was realizing the box wasn’t the real problem, and how a 32 on the ACT eventually became the best thing that ever happened to Joe Griebel.

🔗 Connect with Joe Griebel:

Website: getsunday.com

Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/getsunday/

https://www.facebook.com/getsunday/

https://www.youtube.com/@getsunday

📤 Transcript Available: From Laser Tissue Fusion to Lawn Care: Joe Griebel’s Design Arc at Sunday

📺 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

Brandon McConnell, corporate executive at Delavan Lake Lawn Management, learned hospitality before he learned long division — garnishing plates at his mother’s diner at age six, stripping hotel beds in middle school, and eventually turning a TQM class on a Tuesday night into a professional philosophy that followed him through Disney, Grand Geneva, and now Lake Lawn Resort. He’s also finishing a 330-page book on AI psychosis through a Johns Hopkins research cohort.

✨ Key Insights You’ll Learn:

• Diner childhood: learning hospitality through food, family, and 4:45 AM wake-ups

• Skipping class to vocational school: how TQM lit up Brandon’s mind and redirected his career

• Disney at scale: timing housekeepers with a stopwatch to save $40K per property annually

• Grand Geneva turnaround: diagnosing a four-diamond property in 30 days and moving the needle in 90

• Hire for aptitude first, attitude second, availability third

• Lake Lawn Resort: Wisconsin’s oldest resort spanning golf, spa, marina, and residential real estate

• Night golf and short courses: where the sport is headed and what Lake Lawn is building

• Imposter syndrome as a reminder of the journey rather than a reason for fear

• AI psychosis research: what LLMs are doing in suicide prevention that surprised even Brandon

• Why the AI moment mirrors where social media was a decade ago

🌟 Brandon’s Key Mentors:

• His Mother: Introduced him to hospitality through her diner and modeled hard work and human connection

• TQM Instructor (Vocational School): Gave Brandon the process framework that redirected his entire professional life

• Disney Leadership Teams: Taught alignment, scale, and people-centric operations at an institutional level

• COO of Development (Former GM, Delavan): Hired Brandon twice and shaped his long-term trajectory

• Johns Hopkins Research Cohort: Challenged Brandon to think rigorously about AI from a non-clinical standpoint

👉 Don’t miss this conversation about what hospitality actually teaches you about people, why imposter syndrome belongs on the table not buried underneath it, and how a resort executive ended up writing one of the more unusual books on AI and human psychology.

🔗 Connect with Brandon McConnell:

Website: https://www.lakelawnresort.com/

Social Media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-m-mcconnell-1aba4240/ 

📤 Transcript Available: Brandon McConnell on A People First Mentality in Hospitality + His Book on AI & Human Psychology

📺 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

🎤 Richard Parker Bought 13 Businesses Before He Started Helping Others Sell Theirs

Richard Parker, founder of Roy Street Advisors and author of How to Buy a Good Business at a Great Price, has personally bought and sold 13 businesses — not as a banker advising from the sidelines, but as the one signing the checks and losing sleep over payroll. That experience became the foundation for a boutique M&A firm that closes over 90% of its deals, and a program that has helped over 100,000 buyers across 80 countries navigate a process that most people get badly wrong.

✨ Key Insights You’ll Learn:

• Why blowing $60,000 in the stock market at age 29 launched a career in business ownership

• The case for buying a business over starting one — and the math that makes it work

• How $100,000 down can get you into a million-dollar business with a real salary on day one

• Why 94% of people who search for businesses to buy never close a deal

• The three questions Richard asks every client before taking them to market

• Why spotless books and records are the single highest-leverage pre-sale move

• How second-tier management transforms sellability and business value simultaneously

• Why a 90% close rate starts with refusing listings that aren’t ready to sell

• Ego as the thing that held Richard back longest — and what finally changed it

• The $197 program with unlimited email access to Richard that marketers keep trying to upsell

🌟 Richard’s Key Mentors:

• His first employees who outperformed him: revealed that getting it right matters more than being right, and that empowering better people changes everything

• Andy Cagnena (Trans World Business Brokers): the conversation about $60,000 average broker earnings that told Richard exactly what was broken — and exactly how to fix it

• The clients who took six months of vacation: living proof that a business built on systems and second-tier management is worth far more than one that can’t run without its owner

• His own failures: the botched acquisition he walked away from became the case study that drove him to write the course, and the stock market loss that forced him into entrepreneurship in the first place

👉 Don’t miss this conversation about why most deals die before they start, what separates a sellable business from a lifestyle job with helpers, and how a guy from the suburbs of Montreal built one of the most trusted names in lower middle market M&A.

🔗 Connect with Richard Parker:

Website: RichardParker.com and RoyStreet.com

Social Media: https://www.youtube.com/@richardparkerdiomo

https://www.facebook.com/RichardParkerDiomo

https://www.instagram.com/richardparkerdiomo/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardparkerdiomo/

📤 Transcript Available: Richard Parker: Stop Working In Busyness and Start Building a Business Worth Selling

📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast

🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast

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

Andrew Acer, Senior Business Analyst at Cogent Analytics, grew up on a ranch in Idaho raised by a Depression-era West Point grandfather before navigating family businesses, serial startups, graduate test prep, and a leadership burnout that cost him his heartbeat. He came back to consulting with a clearer philosophy: stewardship over shortcuts, and truth over comfort.

✨ Key Insights You'll Learn:

• Ranch upbringing: responsibility, seasonality, and work before self

• Family serial entrepreneurship: route accounting at 14, managing rental business through college

• Georgia State scholarship, LSAT tutoring, and building Atlanta operations from scratch

• Joining Cogent Analytics in 2016 as regional VP at 28, selling to owners older than his career

• Managing director of business development through COVID with zero travel and near heart failure

• Left for a deliberate reset: design consultant at bathroom remodeling company to decompress

• Returned to Cogent as Director of Portfolio Development and now Senior Business Analyst

• AI as a hyper-literal intern: multiplier, not replacement, with real management implications

• The owner's trap: what got you here will not get you there

• Stewardship model: trust-based leadership built on accountability, not just service

🌟 Andrew's Key Mentors:

• His Grandfather: West Point graduate and stockbroker who modeled hard work, directness, and lifelong professional ambition

• His Mother: Serial entrepreneur and business analyst who modeled resourcefulness and introduced him to consulting

• Rob Raymond (Cogent Founder): Mentored Andrew through leadership transitions and growth at the firm

• His Team at Cogent: Gave direct feedback that reshaped his communication and delegation approach

• Business Owners He Has Served: Continue teaching him what high-stakes decision-making looks like from the inside

👉 Don't miss Andrew's candid account of burning out at 33, stepping away deliberately, and what returning to the work he loves actually taught him about sustainable leadership.

🔗 Connect with Andrew Acer:

LinkedIn: Andrew Acer

Website: cogentanalytics.com

📋 Transcript Available: The Business Owner's Trap Andrew Acer Sees Time and Time Again

📺 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 West Point to ExxonMobil to AI Practice Leader: Jon Hilton’s Unconventional Path

Jon Hilton, shareholder and AI practice leader at LBMC, earned a Bronze Star in Iraq, spent over a decade at ExxonMobil managing capital projects across the globe, then walked away from that security to earn a master’s in data science at Berkeley — all while raising four kids. What looks like a series of bold pivots is actually one continuous story about doing hard things, building the right team, and leading through uncertainty. Now he helps middle market companies stop experimenting with AI and start getting results.

✨ Key Insights You’ll Learn:

• West Point and two tours in Iraq: training, grit, and the next right step

• 11 years at ExxonMobil’s global projects organization — $40B+ capital programs

• Pursuing a Berkeley data science master’s while working full-time at ExxonMobil

• Why AI transformation is a leadership problem, not a technology problem

• BCG study: 75% of CEOs at large companies are the primary AI decision-maker

• AI use case ROI stacks — the real value starts at use case three, four, and five

• Sales call coaching agent: AI listening to every rep and generating coaching reports

• Patient care coordination agent: identifying fall risk from unstructured conversation

• Audit agent: comparing narrative reports against financial data for discrepancies

• Why hallucinations are declining — and why a human in the loop still matters

🌟 Jon’s Key Mentors:

• Thermodynamics Professor (West Point): Recognized Jon’s aptitude for math and redirected him from political science to engineering

• Zacher Hussein and Fazl (EY): Taught Jon how enterprises actually approach AI strategy and change management at scale

• Dr. Charlie Pegian (LBMC Colleague, former Belmont/MTSU Professor): Co-developer of Jon’s problem-first AI framework for client engagements

• His Wife: Held the family together through two Iraq deployments, expat assignments in Norway, France, and England, and a Berkeley master’s program — the unsung hero

• His Combat Brothers and Sisters: The community that made the hardest years survivable

👉 Don’t miss this conversation about what leading through fear actually looks like, why the middle market is falling behind on AI, and what a West Point education and two combat tours have to do with building an AI practice in Nashville.

🔗 Connect with Jon Hilton:

LinkedIn: Jon Hilton — LBMC

Website: lbmc.com

📎 Transcript Available: The Bronze Star Veteran Who Now Helps Companies Stop Being Afraid of AI with Jon Hilton

📺 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

David Tobin, founder and managing partner of TobinLeff, started with coupon books in college, built a B2B telemarketing firm that he scaled to 60 people and sold under pressure rather than on his terms, and then spent years piecing together what went wrong. That painful exit became the foundation for everything he built next: an MA advisory firm focused on marketing, technology, and professional services companies that has now guided more than 250 clients through valuations, acquisitions, and sales over 16 years.

✨ Key Insights You’ll Learn:

• College coupon books that sold for more than expected and nearly bought back a few years later

• How a trade show accidentally launched a B2B telemarketing firm aimed at financial services companies

• Why positioning financial advisors as exit planning specialists worked in the mid-90s before anyone had a name for it

• The difference between increasing EBITDA and increasing your multiple — and why both matter

• Why one plus one doesn’t equal three in a roll-up and what TobinLeff learned the hard way

• Growth, margins, transferability, and client retention: the four value drivers buyers actually measure

• Why 60 to 90 days of prep before going to market changes everything

• Deal fatigue is real: what happens when a seller takes their eye off new business during the process

• Why getting on a plane to meet a prospective client won an engagement that a Zoom call never would have

• The difference between business brokers, MA advisors, and investment bankers — and why it matters

🌟 David’s Key Mentors:

• His Father (Sydney Tobin): Named his first company after him; passed away when David was young and shaped his early drive

• His Mother: Her line — experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want — stayed with him through his hardest exit

• His Three Partner Colleagues (Former Marketing Agency Owners): Proved that good business sense built over years of ownership transfers directly to MA advisory work

• The Buyers and Sellers He Observed Early On: Watching deal rooms before doing deals himself taught him what actually mattered in the process

👉 Don’t miss this conversation about what business owners get wrong when they think about selling, why the most painful exit David had turned out to be the most useful, and what separates a firm that commands 7x from one that gets 4x.

🔗 Connect with David Tobin:

Website: tobinleff.com

📤 Transcript Available: The Lesson David Tobin Learned Running a 60-Person Firm He Couldn’t Scale: Manage for Profit

📺 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