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

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

Richard Parker: Stop Working In Busyness and Start Building a Business Worth Selling

🎤 Richard Parker Bought 13 Businesses Before He Started Helping Others Sell Theirs Richard Parker, founder of Roy Street Advisors and author of How to Buy a Good Business at a Great Price, has personally bought and sold 13 businesses — not as a banker advising from the sidelines, but as the one signing the checks and losing sleep over payroll. That experience became the foundation for a boutique M&A firm that closes over 90% of its deals, and a program that has helped over 100,000 buyers across 80 countries navigate a process that most people get badly wrong. ✨ Key Insights You’ll Learn: * Why blowing $60,000 in the stock market at age 29 launched a career in business ownership * The case for buying a business over starting one — and the math that makes it work * How $100,000 down can get you into a million-dollar business with a real salary on day one * Why 94% of people who search for businesses to buy never close a deal * The three questions Richard asks every client before taking them to market * Why spotless books and records are the single highest-leverage pre-sale move * How second-tier management transforms sellability and business value simultaneously * Why a 90% close rate starts with refusing listings that aren’t ready to sell * Ego as the thing that held Richard back longest — and what finally changed it * The $197 program with unlimited email access to Richard that marketers keep trying to upsell 🌟 Richard’s Key Mentors: * His first employees who outperformed him: revealed that getting it right matters more than being right, and that empowering better people changes everything * Andy Cagnena (Trans World Business Brokers): the conversation about $60,000 average broker earnings that told Richard exactly what was broken — and exactly how to fix it * The clients who took six months of vacation: living proof that a business built on systems and second-tier management is worth far more than one that can’t run without its owner * His own failures: the botched acquisition he walked away from became the case study that drove him to write the course, and the stock market loss that forced him into entrepreneurship in the first place 👉 Don’t miss this conversation about why most deals die before they start, what separates a sellable business from a lifestyle job with helpers, and how a guy from the suburbs of Montreal built one of the most trusted names in lower middle market M&A. 🔗 Connect with Richard Parker: Website: RichardParker.com [http://richardparker.com] and RoyStreet.com [http://roystreet.com] Social Media: https://www.youtube.com/@richardparkerdiomo [https://www.youtube.com/@richardparkerdiomo] https://www.facebook.com/RichardParkerDiomo [https://www.facebook.com/RichardParkerDiomo] https://www.instagram.com/richardparkerdiomo/ [https://www.instagram.com/richardparkerdiomo/] https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardparkerdiomo/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardparkerdiomo/] 📤 Transcript Available: Richard Parker: Stop Working In Busyness and Start Building a Business Worth Selling 📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast 🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast 📤 Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency: AddBack Benefits Agency - Providing innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being while optimizing your bottom line Website: addbackbenefits.com

The Business Owner's Trap Andrew Acer Sees Time and Time Again

Andrew Acer, Senior Business Analyst at Cogent Analytics, grew up on a ranch in Idaho raised by a Depression-era West Point grandfather before navigating family businesses, serial startups, graduate test prep, and a leadership burnout that cost him his heartbeat. He came back to consulting with a clearer philosophy: stewardship over shortcuts, and truth over comfort. ✨ Key Insights You'll Learn: * Ranch upbringing: responsibility, seasonality, and work before self * Family serial entrepreneurship: route accounting at 14, managing rental business through college * Georgia State scholarship, LSAT tutoring, and building Atlanta operations from scratch * Joining Cogent Analytics in 2016 as regional VP at 28, selling to owners older than his career * Managing director of business development through COVID with zero travel and near heart failure * Left for a deliberate reset: design consultant at bathroom remodeling company to decompress * Returned to Cogent as Director of Portfolio Development and now Senior Business Analyst * AI as a hyper-literal intern: multiplier, not replacement, with real management implications * The owner's trap: what got you here will not get you there * Stewardship model: trust-based leadership built on accountability, not just service 🌟 Andrew's Key Mentors: * His Grandfather: West Point graduate and stockbroker who modeled hard work, directness, and lifelong professional ambition * His Mother: Serial entrepreneur and business analyst who modeled resourcefulness and introduced him to consulting * Rob Raymond (Cogent Founder): Mentored Andrew through leadership transitions and growth at the firm * His Team at Cogent: Gave direct feedback that reshaped his communication and delegation approach * Business Owners He Has Served: Continue teaching him what high-stakes decision-making looks like from the inside 👉 Don't miss Andrew's candid account of burning out at 33, stepping away deliberately, and what returning to the work he loves actually taught him about sustainable leadership. 🔗 Connect with Andrew Acer: LinkedIn: Andrew Acer Website: cogentanalytics.com 📋 Transcript Available: The Business Owner's Trap Andrew Acer Sees Time and Time 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