How Daniel Karen Cohen Grew 50 Wendy’s in 48 Months and Learned He’d Never Do It That Fast Again

How Daniel Karen Cohen Grew 50 Wendy’s in 48 Months and Learned He’d Never Do It That Fast Again

Daniel Karen Cohen, CEO of AKA Restaurant Holding LLC, got his start when McDonald’s came to Venezuela in 1985 and recruited from universities because part-time work didn’t exist in the country. He became a general manager before he finished his degree, went to Hamburger University twice, joined Andres Garcia’s group to help build Wendy’s across Venezuela, grew 50 restaurants in 48 months, won a US residency lottery, moved to Miami in 2008, and eventually found an artisanal pizza brand that rests its dough for 72 hours — and has 4.9 stars across 30 locations. ✨ Key Insights You’ll Learn: * How McDonald’s introduced part-time work to Venezuela in 1985 and changed who could enter the workforce * Being promoted to general manager before finishing his university degree and what Hamburger University taught him that school couldn’t * Joining Andres Garcia’s group at 25 to lead a 20-restaurant pizza concept and learning what happens when you push change too fast * Choosing Wendy’s over a McDonald’s franchisee offer by doing a two-chair exercise with his mother * Growing 50 Wendy’s locations in 48 months and what he’d do differently now * Moving to Miami in 2008 after winning the US residency lottery and starting over in a country where he had to relearn how to do business * Converting Latin food concepts to Francisca Chicken during COVID and using the analysis to find Mr. O1 * Why manager partners outperform managers by three to five degrees — and how the equity structure works * The divorce, the Kabbalah study, and the remarriage — and what three years apart taught him about appreciation * Two sons now working in the business, one of whom just opened his first Mr. O1 location in Sarasota 🌟 Daniel’s Key Mentors: * Lorenzo Bustillos (McDonald’s Venezuela Owner): His first reference for what it means to lead with people — a man who inspired everyone around him to be extraordinary * Andres Garcia (Business Partner): The entrepreneur who saw Daniel’s talent at 21, called him back for Wendy’s, and has been his partner across every major chapter since * His Mother: Put two chairs back to back and asked him questions from both seats when he couldn’t choose between McDonald’s and Wendy’s — that conversation changed his life * His Wife: A Kabbalistic astrologer and teacher who found the spiritual path first and brought Daniel along — and who came back after three years apart 👉 Don’t miss this conversation about what culture actually looks like inside a restaurant with 2,500 employees, why slowing down growth is sometimes the fastest way to build something that lasts, and how a man who opened McDonald’s in Venezuela as a university student ended up building a franchise around 72-hour dough and Italian-imported flour. 🔗 Connect with Daniel Karen Cohen: Email: kac@aka03.com 📤 Transcript Available: How Daniel Karen Cohen Grew 50 Wendy’s in 48 Months and Learned He’d Never Do It That Fast 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

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

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

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

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

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

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 [http://getsunday.com] Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/getsunday/ [https://www.instagram.com/getsunday/] https://www.facebook.com/getsunday/ [https://www.facebook.com/getsunday/] https://www.youtube.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 on A People First Mentality in Hospitality + His Book on AI & Human Psychology

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