Retail

Joe Griebel went from laser tissue fusion to $2M packaging savings at Sunday. The design process, he says, is always the same — whatever the problem is.

Ben Cooke spent 25 years building other people’s companies before losing everything on his own. Now he’s turning Marathon Sports into New England’s trail running brand.

Eric Simsolo grew up inside Next Level Apparel, started as an intern, and stepped into the president’s role during a major turnaround — now building the company to outlast him.

John Prothro acquired Foot Solutions one week before COVID and rebuilt it into a 3D printed orthotic franchise with a 97% success rate — now targeting 350+ US locations.

Rick Blackshaw grew Chuck Taylor to $1.8B, doubled Hey Dude to $1B+, and signed Taylor Swift for Keds. Now he’s building Stoke Shoes for the 75% of men with wide feet nobody was serving.

Todd Lucas of Family Farm and Home shares how a radio background, 11 years at Menards, and a workforce age crisis led him to build a training department from scratch with a deer urine video.

Lloyd Lewis of Arc Thrift Stores shares how his son with Down syndrome led him to build a $120M social enterprise with 600 IDD employees and one of the best disability programs in the world.

JoAnn Newman shares journey from only woman in Penn State engineering to AT&T semiconductor plant shutdown to CEO rescuing Orlando Science Center—raising $48M, doubling attendance to 660K visitors, launching 8K planetarium, proving informal learning sparks STEM curiosity before junior high.

Eliza Keegan, 33-year-old CEO of Momentum Indoor Climbing, shares journey from Houston Dynamo soccer programs to leading climbing gym expansion across US, Bulgaria, Europe, and Asia while navigating gender bias, imposter syndrome, and revolutionary LED wall technology.

Derek Sorrells shares how he built eight businesses with ten locations in Wichita by observing concepts in bigger cities, learning that hobbies cost money while businesses make money, and discovering that scaling from two to three stores feels exponentially harder without systems.

Jonathan Ng Sposato shares journey from Apple II game developer to founding JoySauce—first Asian American TV channel on Amazon Prime Video—revealing why $2 trillion spending power needs cultural capital, how childhood in Hong Kong shaped entrepreneurial path, and why celebrating joy beats trauma narratives.

In this inspiring episode, Dan Shapiro, CEO and co-founder of Glowforge, shares his remarkable journey from early entrepreneurship failures to creating one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns in history.