Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur | Start and Grow Your Own Business

In this special Collab Week episode of Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur, eight founders come together to answer one deeply honest question:

Take us back to a lean season in your business. How did you get through it, and how do you prepare differently now?

Some are in a lean season right now. Some are still learning from their first one. Others have watched their busy seasons and slow seasons flip on them. It’s a wide-ranging episode about relationships, pipelines, cash, self-care, and why the best time to prepare for a lean season is before you’re in one.

For any wantrepreneur or entrepreneur wondering what to do when the pipeline goes quiet, or bracing for the next slow stretch, this episode is for you. You’ll walk away with practical ways to stay steady, stay visible, and keep building when business isn’t moving at the pace you want.

✨ What You’ll Take Away

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why lean seasons can be financial, human, or about impact, and how self-care keeps you steady through all of them
• Why doing more is the wrong instinct when cash gets tight, and how to decide what to cut before you have to
• How to build relationships before you need them and use slow periods to reconnect and strengthen your processes
• How to map your clients’ seasonal patterns so you can ramp up new channels before your own slow stretch
• Why a single point of dependency is risky, and how low overhead buys you time to adapt
• How to treat building the business as the work, even when the calendar is empty (or too full)

🎙️ Meet the Collab Week Contributors

Kacy Webster — Profit Quiver

Kacy Webster is a Business Transformation Strategist and Certified AI Consultant who helps leaders aim precisely at what matters most: people first, then technology. With 30+ years of executive leadership across higher education, workforce development, and enterprise transformation, she has held senior roles including Regional Market President, Campus Academic Dean, and Senior Director of Market Strategy & Insights for a nationally recognized assessment organization. Through Profit Quiver and The PrecisionX System, Kacy partners with leadership teams using her 12 Domains of Human-First AI Adoption, a framework that starts with culture, alignment, and readiness, not just technology.

Connect with Kacy: https://www.profitquiver.com/

Drew Dorenfest — Client Magnet CRM

Drew Dorenfest is a marketing expert who has worked with global brands such as Netflix, Apple, Warner Bros., and the NFL as a video editor. Today, through Client Magnet CRM, he helps small business owners get found online with SEO, GEO, and automation. That means more clients, more 5-star reviews, and more sales without having to create social content nonstop.

Connect with Drew: https://clientmagnetcrm.com/

Anne Gillaspie — Fix & Form

Anne Gillaspie is a global keynote speaker, truth disruptor, and creator of SHARE YOUR FEAR™, a movement making fear less scary and truth easier to tell. A 12-year entrepreneur, CEO and founder of Fix & Form Branding Firm, and host of the top-ranked OnlyFounders podcast, she’s also a brand therapist to founders and executives. Through provocative storytelling, unexpected dance, and radically human experiences, Anne helps audiences stop performing who they think they should be and start telling the truth about who they actually are.

Connect with Anne:

• https://theannegillaspie.com/
• https://fixandform.com/

Rami Akeela — Nera Systems

Rami Akeela is the founder of Nera Systems, a confidential AI company that helps enterprises use AI on their most sensitive data. With 20+ years at the intersection of hardware, software, and cryptography and PhDs in electrical and computer engineering, Rami is a deep-tech builder with a record of solving problems before the market knows it has them. He previously founded DZK, the first company to build zero-knowledge proof systems.

Connect with Rami: https://nera.systems/

Heather Waisanen — Coastal Maverick

Heather Waisanen is the founder of Coastal Maverick, a woman-owned, boutique out-of-home advertising agency helping brands stand out beyond the screen. With more than a decade of experience across the client, agency, and media owner sides of advertising, she launched Coastal Maverick after being laid off from her role as a senior media planner. Now in her fourth year of entrepreneurship, Heather leads nationwide campaigns while staying deeply involved in Jacksonville’s business community. She’s a JAX Chamber Small Business Leader of the Year and a member of the inaugural 2026 Visionaries 200 class.

Connect with Heather: https://www.coastalmaverick.com/

Drew Mehta — ThinkFraction

After 20+ years in corporate, Drew Mehta founded ThinkFraction to help owner-operated businesses fix the leaks in their back-end workflows and bring AI into their day-to-day in a practical way. His approach pairs advisory with implementation and education, with no hype, to grow revenue, lower costs, and improve quality. He’s also learning to be an entrepreneur himself, and he’s in his first full year of running his own business.

Connect with Drew:

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhroovmehta/
• Website: ThinkFraction.xyz

Sara Reece — Workmind

Sara Reece is the CEO and Co-Founder of Workmind, where she helps organizations use practical, operations-first automation to eliminate friction and grow without adding headcount at the same pace. Over the last seven years, she has designed and implemented automation with organizations ranging from nonprofits and small businesses to franchise systems and Fortune 500 enterprises. Her career has spanned journalism, television broadcasting, environmental research, and technology. Sara is the author of The Practical Path to Operational Automation and has appeared on Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur, It Starts with Joy LIVE, and Level 10 Leadership. She has also presented at The Business Show Miami and Akerman’s Global Franchising Summit in Denver.

Connect with Sara:

• https://workmind.cloud/
• https://www.saralreece.com/

Mike Gross — Michael J. Gross LLC

Mike Gross is a trainer, training provider, consultant, and auditor who helps organizations make sense of ISO standards and apply them in a practical way. With over 35 years of experience, including steady growth into executive leadership roles, he focuses on building understanding through training first, then supporting organizations as they refine and improve their systems. He started Michael J. Gross LLC and Management System Certification Training Solutions about seven years ago after finishing his corporate career. As a committed solopreneur, his approach is straightforward: build on what already works, keep it practical, and leave people more capable than when he started.

Connect with Mike: https://mj-gross.com/

Ever frantically searched for your keys, wallet, or even your luggage at the airport? Daniel Daoura, the founder and CEO of Pebblebee, transformed that universal feeling of anxiety into a global tech company. Drawing on over a decade of experience developing tracking systems for military assets at Boeing, Daniel applied his deep expertise to solve an everyday problem. This episode is a masterclass in turning specialized knowledge into a consumer-focused brand, navigating the complexities of hardware manufacturing, and having the perseverance to build something truly innovative. You'll learn how Daniel led Pebblebee to become the first company to create a universal tracker that works seamlessly with both Apple and Google, and how his personal mission for his family's safety is now pushing the industry into its next frontier: personal safety devices.

💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business

• 🚀 How to translate high-level enterprise or military-grade experience into a scalable consumer product.
• 🤝 The art of navigating partnerships with tech giants like Apple and Google to create a universally compatible product.
• 💡 Why your most personal pain points (like losing your keys or worrying about your family's safety) are often your most powerful business ideas.
• 📈 How to strategically expand your product line into new verticals that align with your core mission of providing value and peace of mind.
• 🧠 The founder's discipline: learning when to say "no" to good ideas to maintain focus and execute on the great ones.
• 🔋 How being the first to innovate with features like rechargeability can create a massive competitive advantage in a crowded market.
• 🌍 The gritty reality of building a global hardware company, from managing manufacturing and certifications to providing world-class customer support.

📝 About Daniel Daoura

Daniel Daoura is the Founder and CEO of Pebblebee, a visionary leader in the trackables and personal safety industry. His journey began with a focus on predicting satellite communication traffic for military asset tracking systems, which led him to a decade-long career at Boeing leading teams developing global tracking technology. Inspired by a personal moment of losing his keys, Daniel leveraged his immense experience to create Pebblebee, helping people track what matters most. With over 40 patents to his name, Daniel brings a unique perspective shaped by his technical genius, his personal experiences growing up in Beirut, and his dedication as a father.

🎯 Daniel’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs

"Perseverance. Don't give up. When you believe in something, just continue to find ways to solve that challenge."

📢 Memorable Quotes

• "What excites me is adding value in this economy and creating products that people really use and feel that is adding peace of mind to them." – Daniel Daoura
• "A good idea is only the beginning, and especially in our space, since we do hardware. I mean, it requires patience, capital, certifications, and manufacturing." – Daniel Daoura
• "Part of being a father—my daughter just started college... I want her to have a simple way to, you know, feel safe... That's why safety became a thing for Pebblebee." – Daniel Daoura

💡 Actionable Takeaways

• ✅ Solve Your Own Problem: Look at the daily frustrations and anxieties in your own life. Your most authentic and powerful business idea might be hidden there.
• ✅ Create Universal Value: Don't force your customers into one ecosystem. If you can, build products that offer flexibility and value to everyone, like Pebblebee did with Apple and Google compatibility.
• ✅ Reinvest in Innovation: Adopt a mindset of sustainable growth. Use profits to fuel R&D and stay ahead of the curve, rather than just maximizing cash reserves.
• ✅ Let Your Mission Guide Expansion: When considering a new product or service, ask if it truly aligns with your company's core mission. For Pebblebee, moving from tracking items to personal safety was a natural extension of providing "peace of mind."
• ✅ Don't Underestimate Perseverance: The next time you hit a wall, remember Daniel's advice. Give it time, break the problem down, and just keep taking the next step forward.

🔗 Links & Resources

• Website: https://pebblebee.com
• Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn
• Follow Pebblebee on LinkedIn

In this episode, Brian sits down with Micah Alexander, the 22-year-old co-founder of Junior Innovators, a company revolutionizing entrepreneurship education in K-12 schools. Micah shares his powerful journey from launching teenage businesses like snow shoveling and t-shirt companies to building a national education venture that teaches students to do business, not just study it. This episode is a masterclass in the "ready, fire, aim" philosophy, emphasizing that the best way to learn entrepreneurship is by getting in the weeds, creating value, and embracing failure as a critical learning tool. For any wantrepreneur feeling stuck in the planning phase, Micah’s story and insights are the ultimate permission slip to stop waiting and start doing.

💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business

• 🚀 Why "Ready, Fire, Aim" is a more effective startup strategy than endless planning and analysis.
• 💡 How to find a scalable business idea by focusing on solving one small problem, not trying to build a billion-dollar company from day one.
• 💰 The truth about startup capital: why creating value for a customer is the only thing you need to get started, even with $0.
• 🧠 How to reframe failure as a learning opportunity that is just as valuable (if not more so) than early success.
• 🗣️ The simple yet powerful strategy of talking to people to conduct real-world market research without even realizing it.
• 🔥 Why high school (or any early stage) is the perfect low-risk environment to experiment, fail, and build entrepreneurial muscle.
• 📈 The difference between learning business theory and actually doing business—and why the latter is the only path to real growth.

📝 About Micah Alexander

Micah Alexander is the co-founder of Junior Innovators, an education company dedicated to bringing hands-on entrepreneurship curriculum to K-12 schools. A serial entrepreneur since he was 16, Micah experienced firsthand the gap between academic business classes and the real-world action required to build a venture. Alongside his co-founder Logan, he bootstrapped Junior Innovators while still in college to give students the chance to fail, learn, and succeed by building real companies. His unique perspective as a young founder working with the next generation of innovators provides a fresh and urgent take on what it truly means to be an entrepreneur.

🎯 Micah’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs

"Just try something. You can't come up with an idea unless you have a problem to solve... Entrepreneurship is one of those things that is for everybody and anyone can go out and try to create value for someone else."

📢 Memorable Quotes

• “A lot of entrepreneurs, especially, think of a business idea as being this big thing. And they need all this funding to get started. Like you don't. You need to figure out a way to create value for someone.” – Micah Alexander
• “If a student can clearly articulate why their business failed… that's just as good as someone who made $500 their first time. That is the same level of learning.” – Micah Alexander
• “There are so many businesses that have solutions to nobody's problem. And a problem is the first thing that you have to figure out when you're trying to come up with a business idea.” – Micah Alexander

💡 Actionable Takeaways

• Identify one problem in your immediate community or circle of friends this week. Don't think about the solution yet—just define the problem.
• Talk to five people who experience this problem. Ask them questions to understand it at its core. This is your first step in market research.
• Take one small, tangible step on your business idea today. Don't wait for permission. This could be creating a landing page, making one sales call, or designing a simple prototype.
• Look back at a past "failure" in your career or business journey. Write down three specific lessons you learned from it that you still apply today.

🔗 Links & Resources

• Website: https://junior-innovators.org
• Connect with Micah on LinkedIn
• Follow Junior Innovators LLC on LinkedIn

In this episode, Brian sits down with Matt Justice, a career finance expert turned AI founder who is revolutionizing how SaaS companies interact with their own numbers. Matt shares his journey from feeling the intense frustration of data wrangling in corporate finance to founding SMPL.ai, a platform that gives teams their time back and empowers them with true financial intelligence. This isn't just a talk about spreadsheets and compliance; it's a masterclass in shifting your mindset to see finance as a strategic tool for making faster, smarter decisions. For any wantrepreneur or entrepreneur tired of flying blind, Matt’s story and insights will show you how to connect the dots in your data, build a business founded on personal experience, and leverage AI to scale as a solo founder.

💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business

• Financial Truth vs. Financial Intelligence: Understand the crucial difference and why your business needs both to survive and thrive.
• Connecting the Silos: Discover how to use AI to integrate your pipeline, bookings, revenue, and cash flow for a single, reliable source of truth.
• The Power of Timely Data: Learn why having perfect information too late is useless (the "Titanic" principle) and how to get real-time insights for your business.
• A Solo Founder’s MVP Strategy: Hear how Matt built a proof-of-concept in just a few days and used a "pre-dinner barbecue" to get brutally honest early feedback.
• Milestones Over Timelines: Why focusing on achieving the next critical milestone is more effective than getting bogged down by rigid, long-term projections.
• The Unbeatable Motivator: Learn how to ground your business idea in your own blood, sweat, and tears to create a vision so clear that motivation is never a question.
• AI as Your Co-founder: See practical examples of how a solo founder uses AI as an extension of his team to manage everything from customer support to coding.

📝 About Matt Justice

Matt Justice is the founder of SMPL.ai, an AI-powered financial intelligence platform for growing SaaS companies. With a deep career spanning FP&A, accounting, and strategic finance, he has spent years in the trenches building the data systems and reporting infrastructure that finance teams rely on. Matt turned his professional frustration with disconnected systems and manual data wrangling into a powerful mission: to give finance professionals their time back and empower them to make better, faster decisions. His firsthand experience makes him a uniquely insightful guest on solving real-world business problems with technology.

🎯 Matt’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs

"When you go out and you start this, make sure that it's something founded in your experience and your beliefs...and then I think motivation never becomes a topic again."

📢 Memorable Quotes

• "The Titanic had perfect information, it was just late." – Matt Justice
• "The more you can stay down, it just means you're learning... the more lessons you can learn now, I guess the longer you stay in the highs." – Matt Justice
• "I never thought in a million years creating a software platform was going to be the easy part." – Matt Justice

💡 Actionable Takeaways

• ✅ Audit Your Data's Timeliness: Ask yourself if your financial reports are helping you make decisions for next month or if they're just a history lesson. Identify the biggest bottleneck in getting timely information.
• ✅ Reconnect With Your "Why": Write down the personal frustration or experience that led you to start (or want to start) your business. Use this as your north star for all future decisions.
• ✅ Identify Your Next Milestone: Forget the 5-year plan for a moment. What is the single most important milestone you need to hit to move your business forward? Focus all your energy there.
• ✅ Delegate One Task to AI: Find one repetitive, time-consuming task in your day (writing email drafts, summarizing notes, troubleshooting code) and find an AI tool to handle it. Start building your "extra pair of arms."

🔗 Links & Resources

• Website: https://www.smpl-ai.com
• Connect with Matt on LinkedIn
• Follow SMPL.ai on LinkedIn

What if you could condense weeks of expert-level analysis into just a few minutes? Former McKinsey Partner Raman Julka is doing exactly that. In this episode, he breaks down his journey from advising global corporations to building two AI-native companies, ValueChaser.ai and Chance-Me.ai, with a radically lean team. This conversation is a masterclass in how AI is shattering the traditional barriers to entry in business. You’ll learn why your human judgment, not coding skills, is your most valuable asset and how to leverage your unique expertise to build a scalable business in this new economic landscape.

💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business

• 🚀 How to transform weeks of expert analysis into minutes of automated work using AI, freeing up your time for high-value strategic decisions.
• 🤖 Why your human judgment and industry experience are becoming your most critical assets in an AI-driven world.
• 💰 The new economics of entrepreneurship: Learn how to build an enterprise-grade business with a lean team and minimal coding knowledge.
• 📈 Why distribution and credibility are the new "moats" for your business when technology is no longer a barrier to entry.
• 🧠 How to leverage your existing domain expertise to build a scalable, AI-native product that solves a real-world problem.
• 🎯 The seismic shift from "brand name" to "guaranteed impact" and how you can compete with established giants as a small service provider.
• 🛠️ How to operate like a "human + AI" team to massively accelerate your path from idea to market.

📝 About Raman Julka

Raman Julka is an entrepreneur and former McKinsey partner who spent 13 years advising major companies on technology and large-scale transformations. He left his corporate career to pursue a powerful hypothesis: that AI could turn complex, expert-driven work into scalable, accessible products. As the founder and CEO of ValueChaser.ai and Chance-Me.ai, Raman is proving that very small teams can now build businesses that previously required large organizations, offering a unique perspective that blends high-level corporate strategy with scrappy, hands-on startup execution.

🎯 Raman’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs

"Perfection is the enemy of getting it done."

📢 Memorable Quotes

•  “For me, AI replaces the part that's repeatable, that's actually mundane, and it allows you to apply the human element in a much longer time frame in a much more effective way.” – Raman Julka
• “As it becomes easier to build many businesses and ideas, what really differentiates is the distribution.” – Raman Julka
• “How can I build a $100 million ARR business without requiring 100 additional people?” – Raman Julka

💡 Actionable Takeaways

• ✅ Identify the most mundane, repeatable tasks in your business this week and explore AI tools to automate them.
• ✅ Stop waiting for your idea to be perfect. Launch a minimum viable product (MVP) to a small group of pilot users this month to gather crucial feedback.
• ✅ Re-evaluate your business's "moat." If it's just your technology, start building your distribution channels and personal brand credibility now.
• ✅ Practice working with AI. Instead of just asking for answers, learn to provide deep context and use your expertise to guide AI tools toward superior outputs.

🔗 Links & Resources

• ValueChaser.ai website: http://valuechaser.ai/
• Chance-Me.ai website: http://Chance-Me.ai
• Connect with Raman on LinkedIn
• Follow ValueChaser.ai on LinkedIn

Ever have one of those days where the motivation just isn't there? You know you should work on your business, but you're tired, uninspired, or just don't feel like it. In this raw and personal Solo Sunday episode, Brian pulls back the curtain on the single most important trait for entrepreneurial success: just keep doing it. Recorded at 11:30 PM on his birthday, this episode isn't about theory; it's a real-time example of what it takes to show up when everything in you wants to quit. If you’ve ever waited for the “right time” or the “right feeling” to take action, this episode is the jolt of reality you need to build unstoppable momentum.

✨ Why This Matters for You

This isn't just about pushing through tiredness; it's about building an identity as someone who follows through. For entrepreneurs, this mindset is everything:

• It proves that discipline, not motivation, is the engine of your business.
• It helps you break the cycle of procrastination and waiting for perfect conditions.
• It builds trust with yourself, proving that when you make a commitment, you will honor it.
• It’s how you build real momentum, where small, consistent actions compound into massive results over time.

📝 Key Takeaways

• Consistency > Intensity. Showing up every day, even when it's not your best work, beats waiting for a perfect day that never comes.
• Stop Negotiating With Yourself. Once you decide to do something, the debate is over. Brian shares how he adopted the Kobe Bryant mindset of refusing to negotiate with his own commitments.
• Action Creates Motivation. Don't wait to feel inspired. The act of starting is what generates energy and clarity, not the other way around.
• Redefine "Just Do It." It's not just about doing it; it's about doing it despite the excuses, the tiredness, the fear, and the self-doubt.
• Show Up for Your Future Self. Every time you push through resistance, you're giving a gift to the future version of you who will benefit from that consistency.
• Your "Best" Is Situational. Give your best for that specific moment. It doesn't have to be your all-time best performance, but it has to be your best effort right now.

🚀 Put It Into Action

This week, honor the contract you made with yourself:

• Identify the #1 task you've been avoiding because you "don't feel like it."
• Set a timer for just 15 minutes and start. No negotiations, no overthinking.
• The goal isn't to finish it perfectly, but simply to prove to yourself that you are the kind of person who shows up, no matter what.

🔗 Stay Connected

• Subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode
• Connect with Brian on Instagram @imetbrian
• Share this episode with a fellow entrepreneur who needs to hear this message today

In this special Collab Week episode of Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur, six founders come together to answer one deeply personal question:

What's one thing you faked… until you made it?

You'll hear from Sheri Roder of Get UnStuck HQ, Bill McCumber of Rowan Elder, Wendy Votroubek of Integrity Legal Nurse Consulting, Sara Reece of Workmind, Patricia Ballivian of Altura Strategies, and Jane Alexander of Emma Advisor. Each of them talks about a moment when they had to show up before they felt ready.

For any wantrepreneur or entrepreneur wondering whether they really belong in the room, this episode will help. You'll hear how six founders moved from feeling like impostors to feeling like themselves, and why the "faking" part was never really pretending.

✨ What You'll Take Away

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why acting with confidence before you feel confident is how real confidence gets built
• How to choose the kind of leader you want to be without turning into someone else
• Why nearly everyone in the room feels the same impostor syndrome you do
• How asking for help and investing in yourself can close skill gaps faster than faking it
• Why being publicly visible is part of the job when you lead a company
• How to stop borrowing someone else's version of leadership and own the one you've earned
• What changes once you have real customers and can say your title with conviction

🎙️ Meet the Collab Week Contributors

Sheri Roder — Get UnStuck HQ

Sheri Roder is the founder of Get UnStuck HQ, a career and leadership coaching and advising practice for accomplished professionals at an inflection point. She spent more than 40 years in corporate life, including leading a department in London for the first time. Then she stepped away to build a practice around the work she loved most: helping people make decisions they've been circling for months, see options they couldn't see before, and trust their own judgment again. Today she helps clients turn messy, complicated situations into something they can act on.

Connect with Sheri: https://www.getunstuckhq.com/

William "Bill" McCumber — Rowan Elder

Bill McCumber is the founder of two ed-tech companies, Rowan Elder Productions and Applied Erudition. Rowan Elder is an async faculty development program that teaches professors to build studio-quality online lectures that feel more like YouTube than a stale slideshow. Applied Erudition is a platform that measures real capability rather than seat time.

Connect with Bill:

https://www.rowanelder.com/home

https://appliederudition.com/

Wendy Votroubek — Integrity Legal Nurse Consulting

Wendy Votroubek, RN, BSN, MPH, LNC, founded Integrity Legal Nurse Consulting in 2010. She leads a team of more than 20 legal nurses who translate complex medical data into legal strategy for civil and criminal defense attorneys nationwide. She is in the fifth decade of her nursing career and has written three nursing textbooks, including The Path to Legal Nurse Consulting. She taught at the University of Portland School of Nursing from 2011 to 2021 and now speaks on personal injury, medical malpractice, and criminal defense matters.

Connect with Wendy: https://legalnursepdx.com/

Sara Reece — Workmind

Sara Reece is the CEO and Co-Founder of Workmind, which helps growing organizations use practical, operations-first automation to remove friction and grow without adding headcount at the same pace. Over the last seven years she has implemented automation for nonprofits, small businesses, franchise systems, and Fortune 500 enterprises. Before that, her career ran through journalism, TV broadcasting, environmental research, and tech. She is the author of The Practical Path to Operational Automation and speaks regularly on automation, AI, and sustainable growth.

Connect with Sara:

https://workmind.cloud/

https://www.saralreece.com/

Patricia Ballivian — Altura Strategies

Patricia Ballivian is the founder of Altura Strategies, where she helps founders bring clarity and structure to the messy realities of scaling. She is originally from Bolivia and built her career across luxury retail and startups, working where strategy, people, systems, and customer experience meet. She has always been the person searching for the real source of friction, and that instinct became the foundation of Altura's systems-forward, people-centered approach to turning growing pains into sustainable growth.

Connect with Patricia: https://www.alturastrategies.net/

Jane Alexander — Emma Advisor

Jane Alexander is the founder and CEO of Emma Advisor, an AI platform that helps families get from high school to college with more clarity, strategy, and confidence. Her own path was unconventional: she was homeschooled in rural Idaho, went the community college route, and later did graduate work at Harvard. She then spent more than a decade advising leaders at over 200 colleges and universities. Emma Advisor grew from her belief that opportunity shouldn't depend on social capital or expensive consultants.

Connect with Jane: https://emmaadvisor.ai/

Are you so focused on growth that you're accidentally breaking the very things that made your business special? In this episode, we sit down with Jeri Larsen, a former C-suite executive turned founder of Manage for Good. Jeri reveals why the traditional, siloed approach to people, operations, and growth is a recipe for disaster during scale. She provides a masterclass on how to navigate the painful but necessary "inflection points" of growth by building a solid foundation first. This episode is a must-listen for any founder who wants to scale intentionally, keep their best people, and create a high-performing organization without losing its heart and soul.

💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business

• How to spot the critical "inflection points" in your business and make the leap without crashing.
• The high-stakes decision between promoting an internal star vs. hiring an external expert (and the framework to get it right).
• Why building your operational infrastructure before you need it is the key to catching, not chasing, growth.
• A powerful daily leadership practice to ensure you show up as the intentional, empowering leader your team needs.
• How to stop "squeezing more blood out of the turnip" and adopt an abundance mindset that creates loyal teams and happy clients.
• The secret to using an objective, third-party perspective to see and solve problems you're too close to notice.

📝 About Jeri Larsen

Jeri Larsen is the CEO of Manage for Good, a management consulting firm dedicated to helping companies scale without chaos. With a powerhouse career as a Chief Operating Officer, Chief Customer Officer, and Chief People Officer across SaaS, Fortune 500 consulting, and more, Jeri has seen it all. Her unique expertise lies at the intersection of people, operations, and growth, where she helps leaders build organizations that perform exceptionally well without sacrificing the culture that makes them great. She is the author of the new book, Manage for Good: Signals of Impact, a playbook for identifying and fixing the hidden red flags in any business.

🎯 Jeri’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs

"Figure out if you're the problem and figure out how to fix it, because so often we are only in our own way."

📢 Memorable Quotes

• “As companies grow and scale, there's such a tendency to squeeze more blood out of the turnip… Instead, we're not thinking, ‘If I'm growing, I want loyal, incredible people who enjoy their day-to-day work.’” – Jeri Larsen
• “It is that moment where I need to jump off the cliff, but I'm scared. That's the moment you have to jump.” – Jeri Larsen
• “As the leader, my job is to get out of their way and just give them everything that they need to be empowered.” – Jeri Larsen

💡 Actionable Takeaways

• ✅ Start your day with intention. Before diving into work, decide what kind of leader you need to be for your team today.
• ✅ Audit your next key hire. Are you hiring for potential and cultural fit, or just for a resume with past experience? Think through the long-term impact on your team.
• ✅ "War game" your operations. Ask your team: "If our biggest dream client signed tomorrow, what parts of our process would immediately break?" Start fixing those gaps now.
• ✅ Get an outside perspective this week. Ask a trusted mentor or peer to look at a persistent problem in your business. Listen to what they see that you don't.

🔗 Links & Resources

• Website: https://www.manageforgood.com
• Get the book on Amazon: Manage for Good: Signals of Impact
• Connect with Jeri on LinkedIn
• Follow Manage for Good on LinkedIn

Ever felt like your corporate experience puts you in a box? Think again. This episode features Ali Benslimane, a tech veteran from Google and Stripe who channeled his experience into solving a deeply human problem: the bureaucratic nightmare of moving to another country. Ali shares how he and his co-founder built Aelos, a company that combines high-tech efficiency with a high-touch concierge service to help Americans relocate to France. This episode is a masterclass in leveraging your background in unexpected ways, using technology to enhance human connection, and the critical importance of sweating the small details to build unbreakable customer trust.

💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business

• How to turn personal pain points (like moving countries) into a scalable, mission-driven business idea.
• Why your corporate background is a superpower, not a limitation, for starting your own venture.
• The 3-part "executive filter" every founder needs for making product decisions: simplicity, sweating the details, and speed.
• How to use AI to enhance the human touch and build trust, not replace it, creating a superior customer experience.
• The power of doing "unscalable" things (like sending handwritten notes) to build a loyal customer base that becomes your biggest advocate.
• How to overcome "wantrepreneur" paralysis by taking small, incremental steps that build unstoppable momentum.
• Why talking to 150+ potential customers before you build is your greatest competitive advantage.

📝 About Ali Benslimane

Ali Benslimane is the co-founder and CEO of Aelos, a company dedicated to helping Americans relocate to and retire in France with confidence and ease. Before becoming a founder, Ali spent over a decade building and scaling international operations at tech giants like Google and Stripe, where he worked on the game-changing Stripe Atlas product. Having personally lived in five different countries, Ali combines his deep expertise in global systems with a first-hand understanding of the challenges of building a life across borders, making him uniquely equipped to solve this complex problem.

🎯 Ali’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs

The biggest struggle for wantrepreneurs is just getting started. The best way to overcome this is by taking small, incremental "baby steps" that demystify the process and build confidence until you're hooked on the feeling of creating value and getting customers.

📢 Memorable Quotes

• “I think business is all about execution ultimately. I think ideas are cheap. We all had ideas and we see someone do them and we're like, oh my God, I had this amazing idea… It could have been me. Yes, it could have been you, but no, that person did it.” – Ali Benslimane
• “Every hour spent talking to a customer is essentially a chance for you to refine your product, your value proposition.” – Ali Benslimane
• “The way we see it is technology and AI enables humans to do things much faster. And to focus on things that they do best... [like building] that relationship of trust.” – Ali Benslimane

💡 Actionable Takeaways

• ✅ This weekend, take one "baby step": talk to two potential customers or use an AI tool to create a mock-up of your business idea.
• ✅ Review your own business's customer experience. Are you "sweating the details" and removing all friction, right down to making sure your website's copyright year is current?
• ✅ Identify one repetitive, low-value task in your workflow that could be automated, freeing you up to focus on building deeper customer relationships.
• ✅ Brainstorm one "unscalable" thing you can do for your next 5 customers to create a memorable, human experience (e.g., a handwritten note, a personal video message).

🔗 Links & Resources

• Website: https://www.aelos.net
• Connect with Ali on LinkedIn
• Follow Aelos on LinkedIn

Are you making marketing decisions based on gut feelings and chasing "good ideas" that never seem to move the needle? In this episode, growth strategist Izzy Sapien breaks down why this intuition-driven approach is the very thing keeping so many businesses stuck in the $2-5 million "no man's land." She reveals the critical shift from relying on grit to implementing disciplined, data-informed frameworks that create real momentum. This episode is a masterclass for any founder feeling the pressure of tight cash flow, showing you how to tie marketing directly to your P&L, make better strategic decisions, and build a profitable, scalable brand without burning through your budget.

💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business

• 🧠 Why the "gut feelings" that got you to your first $2M will prevent you from scaling further, and when to switch to a data-driven framework.
• Momentum vs. Movement: Learn the critical difference between being busy and making strategic forward progress that makes your business unstoppable.
• 💡 How to tell the difference between a "good idea" and a "right now idea" to avoid wasting time and money on strategies that won't deliver results.
• 💰 The simple formula that connects marketing directly to revenue (Traffic x AOV x Conversion Rate x LTV) and how to manage it for profitability.
• 💧 Why neglecting top-of-funnel marketing is like letting your well run dry, and how to invest in awareness even when cash flow is tight.
• 🗣️ The power of predictive questions to unlock breakthrough growth ideas within your own team and move past feeling "war-torn" by financial pressure.

📝 About Izzy Sapien

Izzy Sapien is a growth strategist and fractional Head of Growth with over a decade of experience helping beauty, wellness, and supplement brands scale. After founding and growing her own successful agency, she now specializes in guiding founder-led, cash-flow-pressured companies through the challenging $2-5 million growth stage. Izzy masterfully combines marketing strategy with financial acumen and founder psychology, helping leadership teams move from chaotic, intuition-driven tactics to disciplined, data-informed decision-making that fuels sustainable and profitable growth.

🎯 Izzy’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs

"Gut feelings are for moments when you lack evidence or experience."

📢 Memorable Quotes

• “A lot of brands get stuck at this $2 to $5 million mark... It's because a lot of the decisions and way that we make decisions up to the $2 million mark depends on things like grit and gut feelings.” – Izzy Sapien
• “There are plenty of strategies that are perfect on the outside—great strategies—but they're not right now strategies.” – Izzy Sapien
• "I'm not a big believer that people are the reason that a company fails. I'm always a believer that decision-making is at least one of the front runners for it." – Izzy Sapien

💡 Actionable Takeaways

• ✅ Audit your decision-making process. Are your marketing plans built on evidence and data, or are they a series of reactive gut feelings?
• ✅ Protect your top-of-funnel budget. Dedicate a healthy portion of your marketing spend to awareness, even if it doesn't have immediate ROI, to prevent your customer pipeline from drying up.
• ✅ Focus on your customer journey. It's cheaper to nurture existing customers than to acquire new ones. Invest in your email marketing and automation to maximize Lifetime Value (LTV).
• ✅ When evaluating a new idea, ask "Why here, why now?" to determine if it's a "good idea" or a "right now idea" that aligns with your current resources and goals.

🔗 Links & Resources

• Website: https://www.izzysapien.com
• Inquire as a brand at https://www.chiral-marketing.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/izzysellscpg/
• Connect with Izzy on LinkedIn
• Follow Chiral Performance Marketing on LinkedIn