Ramona Cedeno Built a Firm by Sending One Email to Her Contact List

From Educational Psychology to Staffing COO: Marnie Byford's Path to Supreme Staffing

Marnie Byford is Chief Operating Officer at Supreme Staffing, a national employment agency connecting workers to opportunities in manufacturing, logistics, customer service, and office support across 22 locations. She came to the role through an unlikely path: a degree in educational psychology, nearly five years in disability day services, and a career in workforce management that her industry repeatedly told her she wasn't right for. Under her leadership, Supreme Staffing launched its own forklift training center, built a travel recruiting team, and achieved 7% turnover in an industry that averages over 400%. ✨ Key Insights You'll Learn: * Degree in educational psychology, early career working with adults with disabilities at Open Arms Care * Transition into workforce management through a Nike warehouse staffing role focused on training and development * Five years at SIMOS Insourcing Solutions, rising from safety and training manager to executive director of recruiting * Joining Supreme Staffing in February 2020, two weeks before COVID changed everything * Keeping doors open during COVID while competitors closed, providing grocery money and flexible schedules to retain workers * Growing organically through the pandemic and beyond through word-of-mouth customer referrals * Launching a forklift training center after four years of planning to address a critical driver shortage * Deploying a travel recruiting team to stabilize client sites across the country, including onboarding 200 workers in three weeks * Phone system automation that cut response time from four hours to one hour and grew Memphis walk-in traffic from 50 to 200 per day * Expanding to 22 locations with plans for Pennsylvania, Boston, Canada, and beyond 🌟 Marnie's Key Mentors: * Eduardo Sanchez (Owner, Supreme Staffing): Saw Marnie's potential, handed her the operational mandate, and gave her the private-company flexibility to build something the corporate world wouldn't allow * Open Arms Care Leadership: Grounded Marnie in humanization, patience, and learning people before judging them, skills she brought directly into staffing * Jason Nunez (Director of Operations): Started at the front desk at 18 and grew into the role under Marnie's mentorship, representing the internal development model she champions * Her Four Daughters: Daily motivation to model what it looks like to push past nos and build something in spaces where women are told they don't belong * Her Staffing Teams Across 22 Locations: Young, hungry, and eager to learn, they have been both the proof of her leadership philosophy and the engine behind Supreme's growth 👉 Don't miss Marnie's account of being told repeatedly that the industrial world wasn't for women, how she kept Supreme Staffing's doors open during COVID when everyone else closed, and the moment a former colleague called to say they had underestimated her. 🔗 Connect with Marnie Byford: Website: supremestaffing.agency LinkedIn: Marnie Byford 📋 Transcript Available: From Educational Psychology to Staffing COO: Marnie Byford's Path to Supreme Staffing 📺 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

Greg Mahoney on What Breaks Inside a DSO When Acquisitions Move Faster Than Operations

Greg Mahoney is Associate Director of Management Consulting at SkyTale Group, a Dallas-based firm helping dental support organizations and multi-site healthcare platforms grow profitably, prepare for M&A, and exit with positive outcomes. He came to that work through a decade of building his father's single-location dental practice from $1 million to $7.5 million in revenue, discovering along the way that he had accidentally built something too profitable for any associate to buy — which sent him inside some of the country's largest PE-backed dental platforms before he landed on the consulting side. ✨ Key Insights You'll Learn: * Growing up in a dental family and planning to become a dentist before organic chemistry redirected the path * Discovering a natural strength in economics, accounting, and finance after his GPA transformed with the switch * Early career in corporate finance at a startup, then product management at Heraeus Kulzer dental manufacturing * Joining his father's $1M practice with a mandate to build everything except the dentistry * Adding TMJ, sleep apnea, and implant service lines as standalone practices within the practice * Growing from $1M to $7.5M in two and a half years through internal marketing and specialty cross-referral * Realizing the practice was too profitable for associate buyout and choosing private equity as the exit path * Joining Elite Dental Partners post-acquisition, scaling from 66 to 114 locations while building support infrastructure * The shift from buy-and-hold DSO arbitrage to same-store growth as the new operating imperative * Joining SkyTale Group to serve founder-led healthcare practices across dental, aesthetics, dermatology, and beyond 🌟 Greg's Key Mentors: * His Father (Dr. Mahoney): Lifelong role model who handed Greg the business mandate and whose example continues to shape how Greg works with founder-led practices * Elite Dental Partners Leadership: Gave Greg the opportunity to go from single-practice operator to multi-location infrastructure builder across 114 locations * SkyTale Group Team: A meritocracy where the best idea wins, giving Greg the environment to apply operator experience to consulting without politics * Founder-Led Practice Owners He Has Served: Consistently reinforce why the emotional investment of a founder creates different problems and different opportunities than PE-backed groups * His Wife: Grounded him when he was still considering dental school mid-MBA with a newborn at home, and redirected him toward the path that fit 👉 Don't miss Greg's account of the moment he realized the practice he built was too profitable for anyone to buy, how a failed organic chemistry class shaped a career in dental operations, and why he believes today is the golden age of dentistry for operators. 🔗 Connect with Greg Mahoney: Website: skytalegroup.com 📋 Transcript Available: Greg Mahoney on What Breaks Inside a DSO When Acquisitions Move Faster Than Operations 📺 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

Meir Spiegel Built His Own Systems From Scratch. Now He Does It for Everyone.

Meir Spiegel is a CPA and partner at B2B CFO, the nation's largest CFO consulting firm, working with privately held businesses in New Jersey and beyond. He spent over a decade as CFO and controller at VIP Wireless, where he built financial systems from the ground up, implemented NetSuite, and developed automated processes that enabled the company to scale through multiple acquisitions before the industry fundamentally shifted. That experience now drives his fractional CFO work helping business owners see what their own numbers can't tell them. ✨ Key Insights You'll Learn: * Joining VIP Wireless two days before a merger went live with no accounting infrastructure in place * Building billing, payment, and residual systems from scratch using pseudocode handed to developers * NetSuite implementation: nine months, full ERP buildout, itemized inventory tracking for cell phone ESNs * Automated a two-person, two-day residual payment process down to a 90-minute script * Recognizing a credit system house of cards before COVID hit and rebuilding it to survive the shock * Moving from single-company CFO to fractional partner at B2B CFO after the wireless industry restructured * Ideal client: five million to one hundred million in revenue, outgrown their infrastructure * B2B Exit: preparing companies for sale by boosting EBITDA and choosing the right exit structure * The management buyout option: benefits, risks, and why pulling back the offer can destroy morale * Staying focused: a short daily priority list as the simplest and most overlooked productivity fix 🌟 Meir's Key Mentors: * Jerry Mills (Founder, B2B CFO): Author of the B2B CFO and B2B Exit books; built the fractional CFO model Meir now operates within * Partner at Early Accounting Firm: Trusted introduction to VIP Wireless that launched Meir's in-house CFO career * VIP Wireless CEO: Made fast, decisive calls on NetSuite and gave Meir the runway to build for scale * Programming and Tech Community: Meir's pseudocode-to-developer workflow and current AI coding tools have been shaped by years of working alongside developers * Clients Over the Career: Business owners facing exits, growth ceilings, and distress have each sharpened his diagnostic instincts 👉 Don't miss Meir's account of walking into a merger with no systems and no team two days before go-live, and what that experience taught him about building for scale, staying focused, and knowing when a company has outgrown itself. 🔗 Connect with Meir Spiegel: Website: b2bcfo.com Email: meir.spiegel@b2bcfo.com 📋 Transcript Available:Meir Spiegel Built His Own Systems From Scratch. Now He Does It for Everyone 📺 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

The Deal Gap Nobody Sees: Pat Voltapetti's Strategy Against Overpaying

Pat Voltapetti is the co-founder and managing partner of Pinnacle One Capital, a private equity and advisory firm focused on multifamily and commercial real estate in high-growth markets across the Southeast and Sun Belt. A third-generation investor who spent nearly four years managing investor relations at Cardone Capital, Pat left to build something built entirely on his own terms, grounded in transparency, operator alignment, and the philosophical foundation his Italian grandfather laid when Pat was still a teenager. ✨ Key Insights You'll Learn: * Three generations of real estate: from grandfather Gino's Italian restaurant and flea markets to Pat's private equity firm * Grandfather's innovation: using a broker's license to source off-market deals, then holding paper on sales * Accounting and public auditing background: understanding how businesses are valued and where numbers are hidden * Finding Grant Cardone through YouTube cold-calling content, joining as an early team member * Cardone Capital's crowdfunding evolution: from friends-and-family funds to managing thousands of investors * Hitting the corporate ceiling and leaving to build Pinnacle One Capital from scratch * Targeting distressed commercial deals where debt is coming due and basis has reset * Operator alignment: bringing developers in as partners so incentives match across the deal * Advisory model: helping operators on bigger deals find valuation errors before signing * Stoicism, metaphysics, and teaching children to notice the limits of the five senses 🌟 Pat's Key Mentors: * Grandfather Gino: Introduced Pat to accounting, self-improvement books, stoicism, and Eastern and Western philosophy starting at age 14 * Grant Cardone: Showed Pat how to build investor infrastructure, crowdfunding systems, and scale a real estate brand at speed * His Father: Modeled the brokerage side of real estate and reinforced the value of staying close to the transaction * Long-term Operators in His Network: Taught Pat what 15-plus years of successful asset management actually looks like from the inside * His Children: Drive his continued exploration of purpose, legacy, and how to pass real knowledge forward across generations 👉 Don't miss Pat's account of leaving a recognized brand to start over, the philosophy his grandfather handed him at 14, and why he still believes in finding partners even after being burned. 🔗 Connect with Pat Voltapetti: Website: PinnacleOneCapital.com LinkedIn: Pat Voltapetti 📋 Transcript Available: The Deal Gap Nobody Sees: Pat Voltapetti's Strategy Against Overpaying 📺 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

Lloyd Lewis: How a Son With Down Syndrome Turned a Finance Career Into a Mission

Lloyd Lewis: Building a Social Enterprise Around the People Most Workplaces Overlook Lloyd Lewis, President and CEO of Arc Thrift Stores, shares how his son Kennedy’s birth with Down syndrome launched a mission that transformed a struggling thrift chain into one of Colorado’s largest social enterprises — with 34 retail locations, nearly 1,900 employees, $120 million in annual revenue, and 600 employees with intellectual and developmental disabilities at its heart. Key Insights You’ll Learn: * Leaving finance at Smith Barney and IBM after his son Kennedy was born with Down syndrome * Inheriting a turnaround situation with same-store sales falling double digits and cash burning fast * The back to basics plan: walking out of the meeting so experienced managers could lead it * Rebuilding Arc with weekly reporting, store visits, accountability, and mission emphasis * Growing from 10 IDD employees to 600 — and why it’s half the reason for 14 record years * Why hiring people with IDD improves morale, productivity, and ultimately revenue * The Arc University: post-secondary classes, certificates, and PhD designations for IDD employees * Processing 200 to 300 million donated items annually with no barcodes and no SKUs * Expanding from Colorado into New Mexico and Texas with IDD employment at the core * What Satya Nadella, Jamie Foxx, and Winston Churchill all have in common: life-changing relationships with people who have disabilities Lloyd’s Key Mentors: * Kennedy Lewis (Son): Changed his values, his mission, and his understanding of what matters in life * IBM Management Training Program: Laid the operational and financial foundation he brought to Arc * Dr. Linda Crnic (Neuroscientist): Sparked the Down Syndrome research advocacy that preceded Arc * Experienced Store Managers at Arc: The people he trusted with the turnaround by leaving the room * Randy Lewis (Walgreens): Demonstrated at scale that IDD hiring works across distribution centers nationally Don’t miss this conversation about what happens when you hire the people most companies overlook, why mission is as powerful as any business strategy, and how one man’s son changed the lives of hundreds. Connect with Lloyd Lewis: Website: arcthrift.com Email: llewis@arcthrift.com Transcript Available: Lloyd Lewis: How a Son With Down Syndrome Turned a Finance Career Into a Mission 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