Scaling & Growth Episodes

Paul Benner is the founder of Platform Beer Company. What began in 2014 as a tiny neighborhood brewery grew remarkably quickly through constant experimentation before ultimately being acquired by Anheuser-Busch in 2019. Platform was also personally meaningful to me…. with many formative conversations in my own entrepreneurial journey and life having occurred within its walls. In our conversation, Paul and I unpack the full Platform story—from his early interest in entrepreneurship and homebre...

Gerald Hetrick was one of the very first guests ever on Lay of The Land, back on episode 6, where we talked about his path through Vox Mobile, building Able, and what it took to grow a venture-backed software company from Cleveland. We then picked the story back up on episode 142 after Able’s acquisition by Bullhorn, exploring what an exit actually feels like, what Gerald had learned about company-building, and his work with Bezlio, Docket, and EOS. Today, we continue that arc with Gerald’s n...

Joshua Friedlander — also known as The Jam Man — is the founder of Jam by Josh, a Cleveland-based small-batch jam company he started at just 10 years old. What began as a childhood love of cooking, gardening, and canning has grown from a backyard hobby into a formidable and rapidly expanding food brand, now sold in more than 75 stores across Northeast Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and beyond. At 16, Josh has taken Jam by Josh from his home kitchen to grocery shelves national wide. In our c...

Bowen and Finn Alexy are brothers, entrepreneurs, and investors based in Willoughby, Ohio. They serve as Co-Chief Operating Officers of Alexy Metals, a second-generation brazing alloy manufacturing and precious metals refining company, where they have helped lead the business through a period of significant growth while becoming the two youngest executives in their industry. Beyond manufacturing, they are the Co-Founders and Managing Partners of BowFin Capital, an early-stage venture investment ...

Alec Shankman is the founder of HeartRock Partners. Alec has spent more than two decades at the forefront of entertainment, talent representation, reality television, digital media, podcasting, brand-building, and the creator economy. Before launching HeartRock, he was a Senior Partner at The Gersh Agency, following its acquisition of his division from A3 Artists Agency, where he built the Alternative Programming and Digital Media Division into a nine-figure 60-person bi-coastal team. In o...

What does it take for AI to matter inside a real operating business? Not as a demo, not as a dashboard, and not as a generic productivity tool — but as something that answers calls, reduces clicks, quotes freight, improves service, and helps people spend more time doing the work that actually moves the business forward. Today we're republishing an episode from The O.H.I.O. Fund Report with Mark Kvamme — co-founder, CEO, and CIO of The O.H.I.O. Fund — Peter Coratola, founder and CEO of EASE L...

Teddy Baldassarre has built one of the most influential watch platforms in the world — and just as compelling as the watches themselves is the entrepreneurial story behind it. I first met Teddy almost ten years ago at StartMart in Terminal Tower, before any of this existed: before millions of followers, before the global audience, before the authorized retail partnerships, and before the beautiful physical boutique we recorded this conversation in at Crocker Park. In this episode, Teddy an...

Aidan Meany, Founder and CEO of Found Surface. Aidan is building a programmable knitwear factory in Cleveland that is reimagining what American apparel manufacturing can look like What began for him with learning to sew from his grandmother and making clothes as a teenager has evolved into a much larger ambition — rebuilding the whole infrastructure to make apparel at scale here in the United States. Today, Found Surface develops its own yarn relationships from American farms and spinni...

Ken Sobel — Co-founder and CEO of Hyperframe. Ken is an engineer and repeat founder whose entrepreneurial path started early — out of college he launched a fingerprint payments company that predated Apple Pay, which he took through Y Combinator and ultimately was acquired by Visa in 2016. Ken grew up in construction though… recalling memories being in his father’s workshop as a kid — and his longstanding passion for construction coupled with his love of engineering and problem-solving has ...

Dave Stack. Dave is an internet entrepreneur and the founder of MusicStack, one of the early online marketplaces for rare and out-of-print music, which he began building out of his dorm room at Ohio State 30 years ago in the early days of the commercial internet. Over the years, he has gone on to build a portfolio of niche vertical marketplaces under the banner of Vertical Commerce, including MusicStack, Bear Pile, Reborns, and BJD Collectors — which has grown to facilitate tens of million in gr...

Anna Dey is a multi-unit and multi-brand franchise entrepreneur who has spent the past decade building businesses across Northeast Ohio. Since getting her start in franchising with an Anytime Fitness location in 2012, she has gone on to own and operate franchises across several systems including Clean Eatz, Smoothie King, The Vitamin Shoppe, Barrio Tacos + Tequila, and goGLOW, earning national recognition along the way as both Franchisee of the Year and Multi-Unit Owner of the Year. Today, An...

Anne Hartnett is a neighborhood developer and entrepreneur focused on creating spaces where community, well-being, and small business can thrive. She is the founder of Harness Cycle and CEO of HCO Partners, a Cleveland-based real estate and placemaking company that develops and operates neighborhood-focused commercial properties. Anne began her career as a software consultant. After years of traveling and being inspired by vibrant neighborhood cultures in cities like New York and Minneapolis,...

Noah Jackson and AJ Wadian — the Co-Founders of Premier Home Pros Launched in December 2022 with just $65,000 of their own capital and a decision made around a dinner table, Premier Home Pros has scaled from zero to more than $150 million in annual gross sales in just three years — surpassing $100 million in under 24 months — all without raising a single dollar of outside capital. Headquartered in Canton, Ohio, Premier now operates across 14 states and continues to expand at a pace that few c...

Scot Lowry — Managing Partner and Co-Founder of PromiseONE Companies Scot is the Managing Partner and Co-Founder of PromiseONE Companies, a Cleveland-based investment firm that helps purpose-driven entrepreneurs acquire and grow established businesses through Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition, or ETA. Prior to launching PromiseONE, Scot acquired and led Fathom, a digital marketing firm he grew more than 450% over a decade — an experience that became both the financial engine and talent inc...

Chad Delligatti — CEO of InnoSource Chad Delligatti is the CEO of InnoSource — a more than two-decade-old, Ohio-based company that has grown into a national workforce solutions platform serving Fortune 500 and midsized organizations across the country. Since joining InnoSource in 2000 as one of its earliest employees, Chad has devoted his entire professional career to building the company — helping it evolve from a regional staffing firm into the leading HR, talent, outsourcing, and data s...

Akram Boutros — Founder and CEO of Nexus Bedside. Akram brings more than 30 years of experience as a healthcare leader, executive, and clinician. He previously served as CEO of The MetroHealth System in Cleveland from 2013 to 2022, where he led a team of more than 6,000 employees and 3,500 medical staff, overseeing a nearly billion-dollar revenue operation and the complete transformation of the MetroHealth campus and care model. Prior to that, Akram held senior leadership roles at multiple he...

Tyler Dunagin is the founder and CEO of Turnserv, a Northeast Ohio–based platform company behind brands like ApartmentPainters.com, ApartmentFlooring.com, and Liquid Liner — each rethinking a critical piece of the residential turnover and value-add process for property owners and operators. In our conversation, Tyler traces his journey from early curiosity in real estate and the unlocking of his entrepreneurial spirit, to building a multi-brand platform that now partners with some of the lar...

Michael and Tory Waxman — the founders of Sundays for Dogs, the Cleveland-based company designed to make dog parents’ lives easy. What began with their own dog, Mabel, and a simple but powerful question — why does feeding dogs well have to be so difficult? — has grown into one of the most exciting consumer companies to emerge from Ohio. Led by loving dog parents Dr. Tory Waxman, a veterinarian, and Michael Waxman, a serial entrepreneur, Sundays pioneered human-grade, air-dried, zero-syntheti...

Craig Newmark is the founder of Craigslist and someone whose work has shaped the modern internet as we know it. Long before Craigslist became one of the most enduring, important, and frequented platforms on the web, long before the internet even connected all of us, Craig was a computer science student here in Cleveland at Case Western Reserve University — tinkering with early programming languages, studying neural networks and AI, and exploring the frontier of software engineering. The res...

Brad DeHays — Founder and CEO of Connect Real Estate and Connect Housing Blocks. Brad’s journey spans from buying small distressed properties while still in college to leading one of the most ambitious housing manufacturing platforms in the country. Through Connect Real Estate, Brad has revitalized some of Ohio’s most overlooked landmarks — transforming abandoned power plants, trolley barns, and historic buildings into vibrant new community anchors. That same entrepreneurial vision inspi...

Jerry Schill is the founder and CEO of Schill Grounds Management — a company he launched in 1993 with his brother after a chance summer job revealed a passion for landscaping. What began as a two-person side hustle has grown into a large-scale commercial grounds management company, now one of the fastest-growing platforms in the industry. In 2020, Jerry began a bold new chapter—scaling Schill Grounds Management through strategic acquisitions alongside organic growth. Under his leadership, th...

Nearly a year and a half after our conversation first aired, Aaron Slodov and Atomic Industries have reached an important milestone worth celebrating. Atomic recently announced the close of its $25 million Series A, led by MaC Venture Capital and DTX Ventures, with participation from Narya and others, to accelerate the rollout of its AI-driven manufacturing platform. With this funding, Atomic is expanding its software-defined factory footprint and advancing the AI systems at the heart of its ...

Ralph Lazaro, Co-founder & CEO of INaudio, has spent more than two decades leading high-performing teams and driving innovation. His career began in Fortune 500 companies before he joined Findaway in 2012, where he helped transform the business from a physical device company into a $100M+ digital audiobook powerhouse — a journey that ultimately led to Spotify’s acquisition of Findaway. Now, alongside Blake Squires (who shared his own remarkable entrepreneurial story on episode 206 of Lay of t...

Terry Coyne is an Executive Vice Chairman of Newmark and Principal of Terry Coyne Properties. Over his 25-plus-year career, Terry has become one of Ohio’s most accomplished commercial real estate leaders, negotiating more than 2,000 transactions totaling over $5 billion in value. In Cleveland alone, over the past five years, he and his team have brokered 250 transactions worth more than $1.2 billion. In our conversation, we cover Terry’s unique philosophy and strategy on real estate, risk, an...