Curated Collection Of The Best Interviews From Our Sandy Springs Studio
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Jeff Hilimire with his nephew Logan
Jeff Hilimire / Dragon Army
CEO
Currently Jeff is the CEO of Dragon Army, a mobile agency and game studio. I’m fascinated with entrepreneurship, startups, technology, and specifically mobile apps and gaming.
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A spotlight episode of Atlanta Business Radio and powered by Business RadioX. Co-Hosted by Ryan “Redhawk” McPherson and Brandon Skolnick with Gathering Of Angels. Featuring veteran entrepreneurs, support organizations, outreach groups and more in the Atlanta area continuing to serve our families, our communities and our country.
Brandon Skolnick, Everett Steele and Ryan Redhawk
Everett was named one of the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s “40 Under 40” in 2015, graduated from LEAD Atlanta in 2014, and is an active participant and board member of several non-profits. Everett is a Veteran of the United States Army, where he earned awards for his participation in combat operations during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation New Dawn. Everett is a proud native Atlantan, a graduate of the University of Georgia, and a diehard Atlanta sports fan. When he isn’t at the office, Everett enjoys spending time exploring the city, dining out, and writing music.
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Ryan Blanck and David Felfoldi
David Felfoldi / NPressive
Founder
A serial entrepreneur, David has founded and grown three technology services companies — an Inc5000 “Fastest Growing” custom web software development firm, an award-winning “Best Search Engine and Social” digital marketing agency in Atlanta, and most recently a SaaS CRM for nonprofit member associations called NPressive.
David started as the self-taught senior web designer for Siemens USA at the age of 16. Since, he has guided the digital strategy behind ADP, Spanx, Racetrac Petroleum, Rinnai America, Gables Residential, and the National Center of Civil & Human Rights. When not tinkering with technology or musing on marketing David enjoys traveling, hiking, running, and cycling with his wife, daughter, and dogs.
Ryan Blanck / Deviate, LLC
CEO & Founder
It only takes a minute with Deviate Founder and CEO Ryan Blanck to experience the infectious authenticity, enthusiasm, and positive attitude that help make his partnerships with clients so successful. He has a gift for bringing out the best in people and he feels a powerful responsibility to use it as he works with c-suite leaders, high-performing teams, and world-class athletes and entertainers. Since 1999 Ryan has led over 450 inPersonSM experiences meetings, retreats, and workshops for small groups to national conferences. Hes the world’s only dual Certified Professional Facilitator (CPF) and Certified Personal Trainer (CPT). Blending his unique background in Leadership and well-being, he specializes in performance improvement to lead his clients to achieve their champion within (mind and body).
Ryan is a guest leadership educator at Penn State University and Stanford University’s Business Leadership Program. Hes been interviewed about leadership and training in The Huffington Post, The Desert News, Esquire, YFS, and Vim and Vigor Magazines. And CNNs story of his client Marlon Gibsons life-altering transformation is one of the networks most popular online health articles of all time.
He has advised and coached leaders within organizations such as the The Color Run, Joe’s Black Book, Human Movement Management, World Bank, Google, Nike, CRC Insurance, Penn State University, lululemon athletica, and United Way.
Ryan is a well-respected member of the Society for Human Resource Management, International Association of Facilitators, IDEA Health and Fitness Association, and the American Council on Exercise (ACE), for whom he also serves as national spokesman. He also has sat on the boards of national non-profits Freestyle Foundation and Loa Scholarship Fund and currently serves on Western Michigan University’s Haworth College of Business board.
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Spencer Nix, Zaheer Faruqi, Mary Ellen McClanahan, Ryan “Redhawk” McPherson
Mary Ellen McClanahan / Georgia Department of Economic Development
Director, Entrepreneur & Small Business
As Director of Entrepreneur & Small Business Development for the Georgia Department of Economic Development, Mary Ellen McClanahan helps find solutions and effective ways to build an entrepreneurial environment to support small business through mentoring, professional development, strategic planning and resource awareness. She also connects with Georgias business and community associations so that thousands of businesses, local leaders and practitioners are aware of resources and opportunities. She also directs any size businesses to the specific resources they need. Mary Ellen is also an Existing Industry Project Manager within the Metro Atlanta region. She calls on growing companies making them aware of state resources and incentives and provides assistance with their growth plans and decision-making process. She also works closely with the local economic developers with their existing industry support efforts.
During her 18 years with the department, she helped develop and grow its regional economic development program, the Entrepreneur Friendly Initiative and acted as legislative liaison. Prior to that, Mary Ellen was the economic developer and president of two rural South Georgia chambers of commerce in Dodge and Sumter Counties.
Originally from Erie, PA and in Georgia since 1973, Mary Ellen serves on the boards of GEDA (Georgia Economic Developers Association), GACCE (GA Association of Chambers of Commerce Executives), Georgia Mentor Protégé Connection, Adv
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Zaheer Faruqi / Aventure Aviation
Founder and President
Zaheer Faruqi has been president of Aventure Aviation since he co-founded the company in 2001. He has more than 35 years of aviation experience, having worked in the engineering and maintenance departments of several major international airlines for more than 20 years before co-founding Aventure. Zaheer is responsible for the success and strategic direction of the company. He oversees the company’s operations, taking great interest in ensuring that the right staff are hired, and that they are provided with the proper training and facilities needed to make their jobs challenging and fun. His favorite part about working at Aventure is forming relationships with customers, to ensure that he understands their specific parts requirements. He also takes great satisfaction in training the Aventure staff to better serve their customers. Zaheer was first attracted to the aviation field by his childhood love of airplanes.
When not working, he enjoys reading business books, volunteering in the community, and helping those in need improve their daily lives. Zaheer holds a Masters in Administrative Management, and a Bachelor of Science in Aircraft Maintenance Engineering Technology. He has FAA airframe and power plant licenses, and has completed multiple courses from Airbus and Boeing.
Spencer Nix / Reformation Brewery
Founder
Reformation Brewery out of Woodstock, Ga. employs 10 people and is redefining what local beer should be. “We built our entire business model on this concept of enjoying well made beer as a gift and sharing that gift with others,” said Spencer Nix, CEO of Reformation Brewery. And Nix wanted to enjoy the process. Many breweries obtain a lot of capital and skip to the largest equipment they can afford, but Reformation did the opposite and started with a few investors and opened a production brewery on a 1-Barrel Brewhouse. They’ve since scaled that equipment to a 3-Barrel Brewhouse, a 7-Barrel Brewhouse, and recently installed the first High Efficiency Brewing System (HEBS) in the State of Georgia.
Since starting in 2014, the company has gone from zero paid employees to ten and saw $700,000 in sales in 2015. But its impact on people and the community is what fuels their business and has launched them into the new phenomenon of “beer tourism.” The brewery has drawn visitors from as far away as Michigan, and theKeeping Room welcomed 12,000 visitors to its downtown Woodstock location in its first year.
So why start a brewery in Georgia? “Because it’s home,” Nix says. “Home to a growing population relocating from other parts of the country. Home to great small communities where small business thrives. Home to world-class resources the city of Atlanta attracts. And home to where I’m from, and all meaningful adventures start at home.”
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Kit Hughes and Michael Flock
Michael Flock / FLOCK Specialty Finance
Founder, Chairman & CEO
Michael Flock has been involved in the credit, collections, debt buying, and outsourcing businesses for more than 20 years, beginning with Dun & Bradstreet and more recently as a financial advisor and investment banker.
In 2007, he founded Flock Advisors to provide M&A advisory and capital funding services to these same industries. In 2013, Flock Advisors became FLOCK Specialty Finance. This change enabled the company to provide more funding solutions to current clients. The change also gave FLOCK the ability to expand its offerings into more market segments that have been under served by traditional banking.
Prior to founding FLOCK, Michael provided M&A advisory support to private equity firms, helped companies reengineer their operations, and led a successful recapitalization of a consumer collections agency where he was interim CEO. He was also an advisor to Croft & Bender, a middle market investment bank.
He earned his BA from the University of Virginia as an Echols Scholar and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. During his college years, he served as a White House Intern. Later he worked as a Fulbright Teaching Assistant in France and also did graduate work at the Institut d’Etudes de Sciences-Politiques in Paris. He received an MBA in finance from Fordham University.
Kit Hughes / Look Listen
CEO
Kit Hughes is a typical technology entrepreneur. He dropped out of college to start a company in 1999, spent a period of time homeless, and (slowly) became an overnight success.
Eventually, Kit returned to school as a two-time research fellow at the University of Georgia leading experimental technology research projects exploring mobile computing and connected devices. He credits his business smarts to his studies in strategy and innovation at MIT.
In his agency career, Kit has worked with a variety of B2B and B2C brands across multiple touchpoints: AnheuserBusch, BP, Char-Broil, Coca-Cola, GE, NCR, Philips, Steve Harvey, and Synchrony Financial.
He co-founded Look Listen with his collaborator in punk bands, Paul Sternberg. In 2015, Look Listen was recognized as one of the fastest growing privately held companies in the US by hitting the Inc 500 and the 64th fastest growing company in Atlanta, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle Pacesetter Awards.
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Mike Pearson, Brian M. Douglas and Ryan Redhawk
Brian M. Douglas / Brian M. Douglas and Associates, LLC
Attorney
Brian M. Douglas, Esq. has always been committed to the belief that a persons legal needs are personal and not just business. This is a cornerstone in Brians approach to law and how he serves his clients. In 2003, when he founded Brian M. Douglas & Associates, LLC, his vision was to create an entire culture that embraced this same powerful concept.
Brian received his Bachelor of Science degree from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he studied Mechanical Engineering while working full time as a manufacturing supervisor for a Fortune 100 Corporation. Upon graduation, he moved to Atlanta to attend John Marshall Law School, where he graduated cum laude and as class valedictorian. Brian was initially drawn from engineering to law because of his gifts for reasoning and logictwo qualities that are essential for a successful attorney.
Today, Brian is a highly respected attorney with a solid reputation with his clients, colleagues, opposing counsel, and within the court system throughout the state of Georgia. Through his firm, he has taken on very diverse cases, working with real estate law, estate planning and elder law. What Brian is highly acclaimed forestate planning and asset protection. Today, Brian is married to a wonderful woman, Tess. They have two small children who make life a daily adventure, and are passionate about animal rescue and fostering, along with all causes that help promote it.
Mike Pearson / CBI
Information Security Strategist
Mike Pearson serves as an Information Security Strategist for CBI, a provider of IT risk management services and solutions. Possessing more than 25 years of industry experience, Mike provides oversight and leadership on client engagements in the Atlanta area, helping organizations assess their IT risk and then build a road map to minimize and mitigate those risks.
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Linda Minnick, Sherry Wheat, Patrick Lynch, Kunbi Tinuoye and Ryan Redhawk
On March 16, 2016 we featured Kunbi Tinuoye with UrbanGeekz, Patrick Lynch with The Frontier Group, Linda Minnick with Linda Minnick Consulting and Sherry Wheat with TeleSales, Inc.
Kunbi Tinuoye / UrbanGeekz
Founder and CEO
Kunbi Tinuoye is an award-winning British-born journalist and broadcaster based in the United States. She is the Founder and CEO of UrbanGeekz.com, a groundbreaking digital news platform focused on technology, science and business.
Tinuoye is a sought after on-air contributor, speaker, panelist, and moderator at conferences across the country. More recently she has appeared on MSNBC & Arise News and facilitated a panel discussion at the Spelman College Leadership and Women of Color Conference.
Tinuoye is a former News Correspondent for NBCs African American digital news platform theGrio.com. In 2013, she provided commentary as an investigative reporter on the Investigation Discovery hit television series Deadline: Crime with Tamron Hall.
Prior to relocating stateside, Tinuoye was a senior broadcast journalist for the BBC in London. She is an international writer whose work has been published in The Daily Mail, Londons Evening Standard, Ebony.com and The Voice newspaper
lShe is one of the original founders of Aspire, a support network for ethnic minority journalists in the United Kingdom. The organization has partnered with and attracted sponsorship from mainstream media outlets, including the BBC, Channel 4, Trinity-Mirror, the Guardian and the Financial Times
Tinuoye graduated from Trinity College, University of Cambridge, with a bachelors and masters degree in Social & Political Sciences. She studied a post-graduate in journalism and is an NCTJ qualified journalist.
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Patrick Lynch / The Frontier Group
President
Patrick Lynch is the President of The Frontier Group, a human capital management consulting firm that provides executive coaching, talent management and outplacement solutions. The company has offices in Atlanta and Charlotte. Previously, Patrick had a 25 year career in consumer products marketing.
Linda Minnick / Linda Minnick Consulting
Sherry Wheat / TeleSales, Inc
Linda Minnick-A student of the sales & success process, Linda studied with some of the worlds greatest sales & success teachers Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, Bob Proctor, Wayne Dyer & others. As CEO of her own marketing company, Linda worked with companies and organizations from startups to corporations such as Verizon, Microsoft, Siemens and Coca Cola.
Linda is a sought after speaker & coach who works with individuals & companies helping them build successful sales & management teams that reach both their business & personal goals.
Linda is a personal development coach, sales trainer, speaker, author & PSYCH-K (R) Facilitator. For more information about Linda, please check out her website atwww.lindaminnick.com of LinkedIn.
Sherry Wheat – Sherry Wheat, founder of TeleSales, Inc , and her Inside Sales Team has opened doors for 100s of growth oriented companies for the past 18 years. Her team works with companies that struggle to consistently generate new business opportunities, leads, and appointments with qualified decision-makers.
We are Business Development & Lead Generation Experts, extending our clients reach, designing & implementing Outbound Calling Campaigns, coordinating Integrated Marketing Campaigns that include the telephone, and managing Inbound Lead Follow Up Campaigns.
Sherry was also a member of the Management Team that started and grew a Solar Business in Metro Atlanta to $4M within 3 years.
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Dr. Alvin Perry, Ryan Redhawk and Brent Leary
Dr. Alvin S. Perry/PV designs, Inc.
Founder
Alvin S. Perry, DBA is a proven leader with over 20 years of experience in the consumer products and consulting industries. His corporate experience consists of management positions with IRI, Colgate-Palmolive, NCR Corporation, the Pepsi-Cola Company, M&M/Mars and Wal-Mart. Dr. Perry has Higher Education faculty experience with Saint Leo University, William Paterson University, Montclair State University, Pillar College, and Essex County College. Dr. Perry also has over 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur launching six startup companies. Dr. Perry is also an inventor, professional speaker, songwriter, author (7 Publications), filmmaker, and fashion designer (PV designs, Inc.). Dr. Perry possesses a Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) Degree in Entrepreneurship from Walden University, a MBA from Centenary College and dual Bachelors of Business Administration Degrees in both Marketing and Management, from Valdosta State University.
Brent Leary/EXcom 2016
Event Co-organizer
Brent Leary is a CRM industry analyst, advisor, author, speaker and award winning blogger. He is co-founder and Partner of CRM Essentials LLC, an Atlanta based CRM advisory firm covering tools and strategies for improving business relationships. Current and past clients include Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce.com, SAP and other major technology companies. Leary sits on the advisory board of Social Media Today, and the editorial advisory board of The Atlanta Tribune Magazine, and writes regularly for CRM magazine.
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Leslie Hale, Chef Christophe Le Metayer and Jessica Park
Leslie Hale/Books for Keeps
Executive Director
Leslie Hale began work in June 2013 as the first-ever executive director of Books for Keeps, after completing a Master of Public Administration from The University of Georgia. While earning her masters degree, Leslie focused on public policy and nonprofit management, while working with the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities and Watkinsville-based Extra Special People.
Leslie spent the first part of her working life as a newspaper reporter in Naples, Florida, covering K-12 and higher education as well as state political races. Watching the policy process first-hand, in the context of an early introduction to volunteerism in her hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, pointed her toward nonprofit work. A long-standing interest in working with under-served and at-risk populations were critical factors in her journey toward taking the reins at Books for Keeps.
Leslie is now proud to call Athens, Georgia, home, along with her husband, Aaron; daughter, Evelyn (born August 2014); and their two cats, Ocho and G.W. When she gets a weekend off, youll find her hiking in the North Georgia mountains, trying out new recipes in the kitchen, running at the UGA Botanical Garden, and, of course, reading in her hammock.
Chef Christophe Le Metayer/Christophe’s To Go
Chef/Owner
French-born Chef Christophe Le Metayer has been pursuing his passion for good food and elegant cuisine for three decades.
-Trained at Lycée d’État de St. Quentin en Yvelines, a formal French culinary school, though he enjoys offering a truly international menu.
-Chef at several Michelin-star rated restaurants.
– Owner and chef at Saint Martin, critically acclaimed by the Michelin Guide (Bib Gourmand), The Pudlowski Guide, and Bottin Gourmand.
-Chef at The Café and sous-chef of The Dining Room at The Ritz-Carlton in Buckhead.
Now Chef Christophe is bringing his worldly experience and passion for delicious food to Christophe’s To Go!
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Jessica Park/Christophe’s To Go
Catering Sales Director
Jessica Park is an Event Planner and Entrepreneur here in Atlanta, as well, she is a native Atlantan. Jessica’s near 25 year tenure in the restaurant and events industry has given her the skills to organize peers and charges to get things done in a high volume environment. Providing food & beverage, as well as, event consulting. A demeanor perfectly suited for event planning, proving to be unusually skilled in multitasking and troubleshooting. Jessica has catered an afternoon tea and dessert for the Dalai Lama, has been featured by Martha Stewart on Martha’s Circle, Style Me Pretty, and Ruffled Blog. Her work has also been seen in Occasions Magazine, The Atlantan Brides, and Pretty Pear Bride featuring her custom made dessert tables. Voted best caterer in Atlanta by Wedding Industry Experts in 2012 & 2013. Hosted a weekly radio show called Meeting Pro’s on Business RadioX. Interviewing event industry professionals on their event businesses and innovation. Jessica has quickly established herself as a valuable asset to the events industry and is an excellent resource.
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Mike Blake is President of Arpeggio Advisors, a business appraisal and strategic advisory firm headquartered in Atlanta. Mike appraises businesses, securities, and intellectual property to help clients maximize their returns on transactions and painlessly comply with tax and financial reporting requirements. Mike has specialized expertise in appraising and advising emerging technology companies; patents, copyrights and trademarks; professional services firms; alternative energy companies; and aerospace companies. Prior to starting his career as a business appraiser and strategic advisor, Mike raised capital and created international strategic partnerships for Israeli companies, and helped convert Russian companies convert part of their weapons of mass destruction design and production capabilities into civilian applications and privatized businesses.
Mike founded co-founded StartupLounge in 2007, a nonprofit that helps technology entrepreneurs on the journey from idea to venture to business, and helped technology entrepreneurs in Atlanta raise over $10 million (all pro bono). Mike has also coached 6 companies to victory in various business plan competitions, helping them win a combined $300K in cash and over $2 million in services. One of Mike’s teams went on to secure funding on ABC’s Shark Tank.
Mike is a member of the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Top 40 Under 40 Class of 2009 and is a member of the Leadership Atlanta Class of 2014. He plays keyboards and vocals for a classic rock band, Kickin Off the Coverz, and lives in Chamblee with his wife, Cordelia (a fellow entrepreneur) and two sons, Alex and Max.
