Episodes

Erin Holston Singh, founder of Options Naturapathic, the Ohio Association of Naturopathic Doctors (OHNDA), and in private practice since 1999. She had her first encounter with natural medicine at 15 years old when her mother developed a perplexing and seemingly incurable health condition which opened up a broad new world full of possibilities and ignited her passion for true healing. Since then, Erin made her life's work unlocking the mystery of non-specific illnesses that keep people misera...

Meg Mayhugh, Founder and Managing Partner at People Architects as well as the Head of Talent & people at Ninety.io the leading cloud-based business operating system and only officially licensed software for EOS (the Entrepreneurial Operating System), which recently closed its $35 million Series B funding, valuing the company at over $200 million! Meg has decades of experience in talent and people management, leadership strategy, and HR writ-large with an amazing set of roles that led her profes...

Brian Krusz is the Founder & Managing Partner at Sgt. Clean Car Wash — a premier express carwash organization proudly serving Northeast Ohio since 2013 with over a dozen locations throughout the region. Under Brian’s leadership, Sgt. Clean has been recognized many times over as a five-time Inc 5,000 fastest growing private company winner, Weatherhead 100 winner, Smart Culture award recipient, and, having spent 8 years in the United States Marine Corps himself, a multi-time Vet100 winner as a ...

TJ Gliha, Co-Founder of Journey Wealth. Established in 2021, Journey Wealth is a full-service wealth planning firm that helps entrepreneurs explore the world of opportunities availed by their success, by addressing their needs and enabling them and their families to lead the lives they aspire to. From its humble beginnings with just 4 employees, Journey Wealth has grown as a self-governing Registered Investment Advisory firm to nearly 20 professionals, with the strategic acquisition of a signif...

Our conversation this week is with Tom Lix — founder & CEO of Cleveland Whiskey — on pushing the boundaries of convention while building on tradition to artfully blend science with craft to create unique award-winning Whiskey. Tom is a serial entrepreneur — prior to founding Cleveland Whiskey, he founded Public Interactive which he sold to National Public Radio, he served as President/COO of Yankelovich Partners, and as you'll hear later, Tom has always been a tinkerer through and through....

Todd Goldstein — Founder & CEO of Whoa Dough In 2008, Todd co-founded LaunchHouse with the mission to invest, develop, and foster promising idea-stage startups in Northeast, OH through Community, Education, Coworking, and Investment — and through LaunchHouse, has helped grow a diverse portfolio of 65 companies that collectively raised more than $30 million in follow in funding. Todd’s most recent endeavor — among his many as a serial founder, entrepreneur, investor, and advocate for inte...

Gerald Hetrick (CEO of Docket (formerly Bezlio) & Professional EOS Implementer) Gerald has been on the show once before; those of you who’ve been with Lay of The Land from the beginning may recall Gerald as one of the first entrepreneurs to make an appearance back on Episode #6, which I’d encourage anyone interested in learning Gerald’s personal and entrepreneurial journey co-founding and leading two companies from inception to exit — spanning his time building Vox Mobile and Able — to take a l...

Jack Greco, co-founder and former CFO and COO of ACV Auctions, a Buffalo-based wholesale online marketplace for cars (ACV Auctions went public in 2021 and is currently valued at approximately $3 billion dollars) Now an active angel and venture investor through his fund Far Out Ventures, Jack runs a weekly newsletter called Buffalo Bridge which tells the stories of Buffalo’s startup community and has made nearly 200 investments in other founders and startups! Jack is the first guest to com...

Tracy Strobel — CEO of the Cuyahoga County Public Library (CCPL) Tracy Strobel was appointed Chief Executive Officer of CCPL in July 2019 after serving in the Deputy Director role for nearly 15 years. CCPL has 27 branches that serve the 610,000 residents of 47 communities in Northeast Ohio. CCPL has earned the prestigious five-star rating in Library Journal’s Index of Public Library Service for the last decade; and received the publication’s highest overall score among America’s largest metr...

Ethan Karp — President and CEO of MAGNET: The Manufacturing Advocacy and Growth Network which, founded in 1984, has been dedicated to fostering local manufacturing and supporting local manufacturing businesses across technological innovation, workforce training and improved management practices. Ethan joined as CEO of MAGNET in 2013 after a consulting career at McKinsey & Co. and academic studies in biochemistry and physics and ultimately a Ph.D. in Chemical Biology from Harvard. We cove...

Mike Maczuzak — a product designer, early-stage investor, and founder of SmartShape Design — an innovative product development and industrial design firm he started here in Cleveland back in 1989. SmartShape's beginnings were richly steeped in this world of industrial design leveraging Mike’s own background and experience in it — however over time, Mike evolved the firm’s competencies and capabilities to cover mechanical engineering, integrated manufacturing, and strategic product developmen...

Adam Rakestraw — co-founder, chairman, general counsel, and chief business development officer of MediView XR, based here in Cleveland Ohio! With approximately $29.5 million in capital raised from strategic partners like the Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic GE HealthCare, JobsOhio, and many others since its founding in 2019, MediView is a medical technology company working to advance human health through its digital augmented reality ecosystem. MediView's AR visualization platform aims to unloc...

Michael Sirpilla, co-founder and CEO of Society Brands. Under Michael’s leadership as CEO, Society Brands has raised $205 million in capital to continue their rapid consolidation in the e-commerce sector with many completed and successful acquisitions since inception. Society Brands, based in Canton, Ohio, is a tech-enabled consumer products company that acquires e-commerce native brands and powers them with a global growth platform, scaling and evolving them into household brands. They provi...

Umberto Fedeli — Founder, President, and CEO of the Fedeli group — one of the largest risk management and insurance firms in the state of Ohio. This conversation is packed full of Umberto’s earned wisdom over his career and his life — as a true maven and master connector of people, it is easy to understand through our conversation how and why Umberto has become so renowned for his first-class hospitality, powerful network, and influence across the business, political, and philanthropic worlds...

Andrew Wolfe, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Bloomfilter. Andrew is a software engineer turned entrepreneur who is passionate about improving the ways people build software. Prior to Bloomfilter, he and his co-founder Chris Stoll co-founded Skiplist, a consultancy dedicated to refining the software development lifecycle (SDLC) — an experience that led Andrew down the path to work on Bloomfilter addressing the same problem space. Businesses rely on software development to solve problems, delive...

Mike Schroeder, Founder & President of Roundstone. Mike founded Roundstone Insurance in 2003 — when they launched the first Group Medical Captive of its kind, and have since revolutionized the self-insurance industry. Roundstone’s captive approach to insurance allows small and mid-sized businesses to take advantage of the benefits of self-funded insurance that previously only larger enterprises could enjoy — such as plan flexibility & control, transparency, and cost savings. By banding smalle...

David Levine — Co-Founder/CEO @ Wireless Environment (Acquired by Ring, Acquired by Amazon) & Co-Founder/CEO @ My Home Park Having made a career of invention and serial entrepreneurship, in 2005 David Co-Founded Wireless Environment to revolutionize the lighting industry with a belief that off-grid, wireless, LED lighting would be the future of lighting. Over the next 13 years, David proved that thesis as he lead the organization as CEO to over $30 million in sales on just $1.1 million in equ...

Stewart A. Kohl is Co-CEO of The Riverside Company — a $14 billion global private equity firm founded to invest in premier companies at the smaller end of the middle market, with headquarters in Terminal Tower in Tower City here in Cleveland! Since 1988, Riverside has invested in more than 960 companies globally, growing assets under management from $1 billion in 2004, to as much as $14 billion dollars under management today, employing more than 300 people in offices across North America, Eu...

Bill Manby, Founding & Managing Partner at Interstate Fusion Ventures. An entrepreneur at heart, Bill grew up in NEO and has always been passionate about working every day to make his home better through investments, philanthropy, and whatever else it takes. In late 2016, this vision led to the creation of his first fund – Akron Fusion Ventures (later rebranded as Interstate Fusion Ventures). While Bill knew the benefits of living in NEO and the strong entrepreneurial spirit, he felt he ...

John McKenna, CEO of Peachtree VA, a virtual assistant staffing organization & President of The Emerald Group, a premier mortgage recruiting firm. Based here in Cleveland, John acquired Peachtree VA early in 2022 to grow their vetted virtual assistant offering in the wake of a flourishing virtual assistant industry where entrepreneurs, startups, small businesses, nonprofits, executive directors, and other business models are often stretched thin, and using a virtual assistant can gain back some...

Mitch Kroll, co-founder & CEO of Findaway (acquired by Spotify). Mitch started Findaway back in 2004, a time when audiobooks were available only on CD and cassette, in order to revolutionize this business of audiobooks, connecting storytellers with listeners at scale. With this vision of audiobook democratization in mind, Mitch led the company over the next 17 years to sell over 6 million units of its Playaway audiobook device and through a honed focus on innovation, became the global leader...

Michael Crawford — Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO of the Hall of Fame Resort & Entertainment Company, which he joined in December of 2018. The Hall of Fame Resort & Entertainment company is a publically traded organization (trading as HOFV on the NASDAQ) headquartered in Canton, Ohio. Spanning media, gaming, entertainment, resorts, and sports — the company is dedicated to making legendary moments for fans and leverages the power and popularity of the Hall of Fame Village, the 100-...

Michael Goldberg, Executive Director of the Veale Institute for Entrepreneurship, as well as an Associate Professor of Design and Innovation at the Weatherhead School of Management at CWRU where he teaches courses on entrepreneurship. Notably, Goldberg created a massive open online course — also known as a MOOC — for CWRU called "Beyond Silicon Valley: Growing Entrepreneurship in Transitioning Economies", a course which has attracted over 175,000 students from over 190 countries across the w...

Angie Dianetti — President and driving force behind Radcom, a company specializing in performance improvement consulting, which she founded back in 1996. Under Angie's guidance, Radcom has earned the distinction of a Weatherhead 100 Outstanding Growth Company seven times over since then as one of Northeast Ohio’s fastest-growing companies that Angie has successfully navigated through various challenges over the years spanning the dot-com bubble burst, offshoring, reshoring, the Great Recessi...