Badass Women in Business
Welcome to The Badass Women in Business Podcast, the definitive space for unfiltered, tactical insights into female entrepreneurship, enterprise scaling, and business monetization. Hosted by seasoned business owners, growth partners, and exit strategists Cristy O’Connor and Aggie Chydzinski, this podcast moves past passive advisory to bring you directly inside the high-stakes execution of building and successfully exiting companies on your own terms.As hands-on growth partners who actively engineer scale and value alongside founders, we deliberately strip away the superficiality of traditional corporate highlight reels. Instead, we dissect the raw, hard-earned operational strategies and profound psychological shifts required to unl...
How Two Nurses Built a $1.6M Nonprofit | Veronica Simpkins & Ashley Green
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Two nurses became business partners after knowing each other for just 12 hours. They spent the next three years working for free. Today, they've built a $1.6 million nonprofit that's changing how thousands of families access maternal healthcare.
Veronica Simpkins and Ashley Green, cofounders of Latched Support, didn't set out to build a multimillion-dollar organization. They saw a serious gap in postpartum care and believed they could solve it. What started with a Facebook post offering free breastfeeding support grew into an organization with approximately 20 employees, five programs, partnerships with hospitals, and a...
Growing an Award-Winning Business Beyond Its Founder | Elexis Schroder
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SUMMARY
What happens after you've built an award-winning agency, earned the trust of major brands, and become the person everyone looks to for the final decision? SchroderHaus founder Elexis Schroder, recognized nationally for agency excellence, explains why her next chapter is about developing leaders who can exercise their own judgment while protecting the standards that made her company successful. Her experiences with difficult client decisions, radical accountability, and learning to delegate offer established founders a more meaningful way to think about business growth.
SHOW NOTES
Strategic...
From Scientist to Business Owner: How Alyssa Mouton Bought a Laundromat and Won Federal Contracts
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SUMMARY
Alyssa Mouton spent a decade as an analytical chemist, expecting to build her career in the oil and gas industry until retirement. Becoming a mother changed her priorities, leading her to explore business ownership, acquire a laundromat through an unconventional approach, and discover how federal government contracts could transform its revenue potential. Her story offers a practical look at transitioning from a corporate career into entrepreneurship, financing a business acquisition, and finding opportunities most aspiring business owners never consider.
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Strategic Focus
<...When Divorce Puts Your Business at Risk: Jamie Paine on Protecting What You Built
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SUMMARY
A company can be worth millions and still face a cash crisis in divorce. Jamie Paine, cofounder of Thrive Family Law, explains how a spouse buyout, weak legal agreements, and a business that depends entirely on its owner can put years of work at risk. Drawing on her own path from childhood instability to courtroom advocacy and entrepreneurship, she shares how women can protect their businesses without losing sight of themselves.
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Strategic Focus
Jamie's experience as a prosecutor...
Stop Shrinking Your Brand: Kim Bode on Turning “Too Much” Into a Business Advantage
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SUMMARY
The traits women are taught to tone down may be the very traits that make a founder memorable, trusted, and difficult to replace. Kim Bode shares how ADHD, intensity, failure, personal betrayal, and the fight to save her company reshaped the way she thinks about personal branding, business ownership, and why women need to stop hiding behind their companies and start owning the value only they can bring.
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Strategic Focus
What happens when a founder stops trying to look polished...
Build a Business That Works Without You: Ashley Ortiz on Delegation, Systems and Ownership
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SUMMARY
The hardest part of growing a business is often not finding more work, but building a company that no longer depends on you to make every decision. Ashley Ortiz shares how she and her husband grew Bella Vista Painting from nights spent painting $200 apartments with their kids in tow to a million dollar business, and why learning to hire, delegate, document and tolerate mistakes became essential to creating the freedom they actually wanted from ownership.
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Strategic Focus
A growing company...
Her First Project Was $53 Million. Then Came the Hard Part | Melissa Drew
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SUMMARY
Most founders spend their first years trying to land a major client. Melissa Drew had the opposite problem: InSite BUILD’s first project was worth $53 million, and once that extraordinary opportunity ended, she faced the harder question of how to turn one big win into a durable business. She shares how strategic partnerships, transparent communication, disciplined planning, and a different approach to leadership are helping her build the pipeline, systems, culture, and confidence required for the next stage of growth.
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Strategic Focus
...The Revenue Trap: Why Growing Sales Can Shrink Your Profit | Natalia Zacharin
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A bigger business is not automatically a better business. Natalia Zacharin explains how a company can grow from $1 million to $4 million in revenue and still become less profitable when pricing, hiring, cash flow, and expenses are not managed with financial discipline. This conversation shows founders how to use their numbers to catch problems earlier, price based on the work they actually deliver, and make growth decisions before the consequences hit cash.
SHOW NOTES
Strategic Focus
Growth can create the illusion of progress while quietly weakening the...
Don’t Just Go for It: Mara Smith on Research, Credibility and Building in a New Industry
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SUMMARY
Entrepreneurship celebrates action, but Mara Smith makes a strong case for something less glamorous: do the work before you make the leap. After 16 years outside the traditional workforce, she entered the spirits industry with no tequila experience and built Inspiro Tequila through deep research, deliberate credibility building, disciplined growth, and an unwillingness to accept a product that was merely good enough.
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Strategic Focus
What does it take to enter an industry where you have no track record and convince customers...
Women’s Hair Loss Was an Industry Blind Spot. Shab Caspara Built a New Category
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Women struggling with thinning hair were spending money across salons, dermatologists, products, and treatments, yet no one owned the full customer journey. After seeing that gap from behind the chair, Shab Caspara left a highly paid luxury salon career, became a board-certified trichologist, and created New York City’s first hair preservation studio. Her story shows how deep specialization becomes market authority, why customer trust can outperform advertising, and how to prove a category before scaling it.
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Strategic Focus
Shab did not begin wi...
When Growth Breaks the Model: Deanna Woodroffe on Choosing Better Care Over More Patients
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What happens when growing your business makes it harder to deliver the work you built the company to do? Deanna Woodroffe explains why Vibrant Health of Colorado moved from an insurance based practice serving roughly 7,000 patients to a direct primary care model capped at 1,000, and how that difficult decision changed patient care, provider burnout, and her relationship with the business itself.
SHOW NOTES
Growth is usually treated as evidence that a business is working, but Deanna's experience raises a harder question: what if the economics driving growth...
Charge From Day One: Clara Ma on Bootstrapping a Profitable Community Business
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Many founders try to build a large audience before asking anyone to pay, but Clara Ma built Ask a Chief of Staff around the opposite premise: prove the value first and let committed customers shape what comes next. She explains how charging from day one, staying bootstrapped, hiring for leverage, and protecting her time helped her build a profitable 500+ member community while keeping the business in service of her life rather than the other way around.
SHOW NOTES
Strategic Focus
At the center of this c...
The Risk of Doing Nothing: Stephanie Georges on Midlife Reinvention for Women Over 50
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The most dangerous career risk for many experienced women is not the leap, but staying in roles and systems that keep minimizing their power. Stephanie Georges brings four decades of Wall Street and C suite transformation experience to a sharper conversation about dignity, agency, AI, and why midlife can become a serious entrepreneurial advantage when women stop waiting for permission and start building the conditions for their next chapter.
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Strategic Focus
This conversation asks what happens when highly capable women reach the edge...
Turning Fandom Into Revenue Without Losing the Brand with Veronica Hart
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Growth in entertainment is no longer just about getting attention; it is about turning emotional connection into live experiences, licensing, merchandise, sports, and global partnerships without diluting what people loved in the first place. Veronica Hart, Chief Growth Officer of RWS Global, unpacks how leaders can build new revenue streams, protect brand integrity, and create momentum in complex markets while making sure women are not waiting for permission to claim their seat at the table.
SHOW NOTES
Strategic Focus
This conversation explores the discipline behind...
AI Transformation Is a People Problem: Megan Malli
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Megan Malli, CEO of AnswerLab, reframes transformation as a deeply human discipline, where AI, customer insight, and leadership all fail when they are layered onto broken workflows or disconnected cultures. In this conversation, she shows why curiosity, trust, and human centered strategy are becoming the real executive advantage for companies that need to move faster without losing the people they depend on.
Show Notes
The Strategic Focus: This episode explores what it takes to lead through uncertainty when technology is accelerating, customer behavior is shifting...
How to Modernize a Legacy Business Without Losing Its Core: Anne Huntington Sharma
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Anne Huntington Sharma explains how leaders can honor a company’s history while still making the difficult decisions required for its next chapter. Drawing from her path from “center number 17” to President and CEO of Huntington Learning Center, she explores succession, franchise growth, digital transformation, and the discipline of evolving only when change creates measurable value.
Show Notes
The Strategic Focus
This conversation examines what it takes to lead a second generation company with credibility, patience, and strategic clarity, especially when the business must p...
Reinvention Without Permission: Jane Bertch on Building La Cuisine Paris and Starting Again at Any Age
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Jane Bertch left corporate banking, moved through London into Paris, and built La Cuisine Paris into the largest English language French cooking school in the city, despite having no culinary background and no perfect plan. In this conversation, she shares why clarity comes through action, how community turns an experience based business into something durable, and why women should stop waiting for permission to begin again.
Show Notes
Jane’s story is a masterclass in founder reinvention, not as a polished leap from certainty to su...
Scaling a Purpose-Driven Coffee Brand from Garage Roasting to National Retail with Jillian Salinas
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Jillian Salinas, founder of Beach City Coffee, joins Badass Women in Business to share how a backyard roasting hobby became a national retail brand rooted in community, sustainability, and resilience. Her story offers a grounded look at what it takes to rebuild after disruption, enter major retail without a clear roadmap, and grow without abandoning the values that made people care in the first place.
Show Notes
The Strategic Focus:
This conversation explores the long game of building a values-led consumer brand, where staying...
Building a Franchise Brand Around Care, Systems, and Self Belief with Nuttha Goutier
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Nuttha Goutier built Sabai Thai Spa from less than $1,000, a clear vision, and a deep belief that wellness should feel like belonging, not a transaction. In this conversation, she shares how Thai hospitality, community care, disciplined systems, and a staff first culture helped turn one spa into a growing franchise brand with ambitious expansion plans across Canada and beyond.
Show Notes
Nuttha’s story is a powerful reminder that the strongest brands are not built only through capital, polish, or speed, but through a clear point of vi...
Giving Patients Their Voice Back: Human-Centered AI with Dr. Maheen Adamson
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When Dr. Maheen Musoof Adamson watched her father lose his ability to speak after a stroke, her life’s work became deeply personal. In this episode, she shares how that experience led her to build Soof Solutions, an AI-enabled communication platform helping stroke, ALS, and non-speaking patients express their needs through eye movement, while challenging what healthcare innovation can look like when science, empathy, and access lead the way.
Show Notes
This conversation is about building technology that serves real human need, not just market excitement. Dr. Ad...
Why Legal Strategy Is a Growth Strategy: Protecting Value Before It Costs You Millions with Hillary Hughes
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Most entrepreneurs view legal support as something they need when problems arise, yet the most successful founders understand that legal strategy is one of the earliest and most important investments they can make in protecting enterprise value. In this conversation, Hillary Hughes shares how thoughtful contracts, intellectual property protection, governance structures, and investor readiness can help founders avoid costly mistakes, preserve negotiating power, and build businesses that are both investable and acquirable.
Show Notes
The Strategic Focus
This episode explores the often-overlooked connection between...
When Money Feels Unsafe: Tiffany Carter on Trauma, Sales, and Building Real Wealth
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Tiffany Carter’s story challenges the polished mythology of entrepreneurship by exposing how trauma can quietly shape the way high achieving founders earn, sell, lead, and stay visible, even when they appear successful from the outside. In this deeply honest conversation, Tiffany reframes money mindset as more than a confidence issue; it is a nervous system, identity, safety, and self trust conversation that determines how much capacity a leader truly has for wealth, visibility, and growth.
Show Notes
Tiffany Carter joins the Badass Women in Business Podcast fo...
The Retail Breakthrough That Almost Didn’t Happen with Shan and Erika of Shades By Shan
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Shan and Erika built Shades By Shan from a San Francisco garage into a nationally distributed cosmetics brand carried in more than 600 JCPenney Beauty stores, but the real lesson is not simply how they scaled, it is how they protected their mission while navigating the pressure of national retail. This conversation is a sharp, deeply human study in founder discipline, radical honesty, community-led growth, and the kind of purpose-driven strategy that turns a small team into a powerful market presence.
Show Notes
Shan and Erika’s story reveals wh...
Building the Business of Caregiving with AI, Trust, and Tenacity with Nicole àBeckett
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Caregiving is one of the most universal experiences in life, yet it remains one of the most overlooked problems in healthcare, technology, and the workplace. In this episode, Nicole àBeckett shares how her own experience caring for both parents became the foundation for HeroGeneration, an AI powered platform designed to help families organize care, reduce overwhelm, and build real support before crisis takes over.
Show Notes
Nicole’s story reveals the hard but necessary leap from lived experience to scalable business, especially when the market is emotional, fragmented, and...
From Financial Shame to Strategic Control with Nancy Benet
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After divorce left Nancy Benet with four children, no income, five failed businesses, and more than $650,000 in debt, she had to rebuild not only her finances, but her confidence, judgment, and sense of personal agency. In this conversation, Nancy shares how women can move from avoidance and overwhelm into financial clarity, sustainable business ownership, and a more grounded definition of success.
Show Notes
The Strategic Focus
This episode examines the discipline required to rebuild a life and business when the old plan has collapsed. D...
How Scarlett Leung Built a Beverage Brand Into 2,000 Stores and Learned When to Walk Away
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Scarlett Leung, co-founder of Pretty Tasty, joins us for an honest conversation about what it really takes to build a modern consumer brand. From turning around retail businesses and launching companies from scratch to rebuilding after founder heartbreak, Scarlett opens up about the realities behind entrepreneurship, leadership, fundraising, and growth.
Scarlett never planned to become a founder, but after careers in luxury retail, finance, wellness, and consumer brands, she found herself building one of the fastest-growing beverage brands in the country. In this episode, she shares the real story behind scaling P...
From Refugee to Founder: Soon Hagerty on Building Businesses That Give Back Without Burning Out
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What if success is not about balance, but about building a life with purpose, curiosity, and impact? In this episode, Soon Hagerty shares how fleeing Vietnam as a child shaped her entrepreneurial mindset, why “business for good” has to be built into the model from day one, and the biggest mistake women founders make when chasing growth. This conversation is packed with honest insights on leadership, resilience, growth mindset, and creating businesses that actually mean something.
Show Notes
Key Takeaways
Why the best businesses solve...Building What Tech Ignored: Rebecca Matchett on Connection, Neurodivergence, and the Business of Belonging
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What happens when a seasoned entrepreneur steps away from building brands and decides to solve something far more human?
In this episode, Rebecca Matchett shares her journey from launching fashion brands like alice + olivia to co-founding Synchrony, an AI-assisted platform designed to help neurodivergent adults build real connection. What started as a gap she couldn’t ignore has turned into a mission-driven business tackling one of the most overlooked challenges in tech: social isolation.
Rebecca breaks down why traditional platforms have failed this community, what it actually means to bu...
Deborah Farone on Why Business Development Is the Skill Women Can’t Ignore
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There’s a point in your career where being good at your work stops being enough.
You’re experienced. You deliver. You’re trusted. But growth slows, and the path to real influence or ownership becomes less clear.
Deborah Farone has spent her career inside that reality.
As former Chief Marketing Officer of Cravath, Swaine & Moore and Debevoise & Plimpton, and now CEO of Farone Advisors LLC, she has worked alongside some of the most successful professionals in the world. What she’s seen is consistent. The people who rise...
When One Woman Thrives, Communities Rise with Shannon Fernando
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What if the solution to hunger isn’t more aid, but empowering women? Shannon Fernando, Founder and CEO of Alabaster International, is working on the frontlines of healthcare, food security, and female entrepreneurship across East Africa and South Asia. In this episode, she shares what she’s learned from nearly two decades in the field, why most approaches to impact fall short, and how women are the key to transforming entire communities. This is a real look at what it takes to create change that actually lasts.
Show Notes
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From Loss to Lifeline: Cristina Bernardo on Building Avocado Health and Supporting Parents When It Matters Most
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What happens when the system meant to support you leaves you with more questions than answers?
In this episode, Aggie and Cristy sit down with Cristina Bernardo, co-founder of Avocado Health, to share the deeply personal story behind the company and the mission driving it forward.
After losing her daughter Aviva following months of medical uncertainty, Cristina and her husband made a commitment no parent should ever have to navigate fear, confusion, or isolation alone. That promise became Avocado Health, a platform delivering real-time, evidence-based parenting support through simple...
Candace Dellacona: Why Women Are Burning Out in the Sandwich Generation and the Cost of Not Planning Ahead
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There’s a phase of life no one prepares you for.
You’re raising kids, supporting aging parents, managing a career or a business, and somehow expected to hold it all together. Most women don’t even realize there’s a name for it. The Sandwich Generation.
In this episode, estate planning attorney Candace Dellacona breaks down what’s actually happening in this stage of life and why so many women feel overwhelmed, stretched thin, and unsupported.
We talk about the real cost of avoiding hard conversations, why famili...
Missy Wright: What Actually Makes a Franchise Work (And Why Most People Get It Wrong)
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Missy Wright did not plan on a career in franchising, but once she got in, she saw the impact it can have on people’s lives and never left.
In this episode, Missy breaks down what really makes a franchise successful, what separates the people who thrive from the ones who struggle, and what most people misunderstand before they invest. We also talk about what it takes to scale a brand the right way and what happens when companies grow too fast.
This is not a surface level conversation. We...
Melissa Anderson on Trusting the Nonlinear Path, Taking Risks, and Staying Grounded
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What if the safest path is not actually the safest one?
In this episode, Aggie and Cristy sit down with Melissa Anderson, President of Search.com, to talk about building a career by trusting instinct over convention. Melissa shares how she turned bold, uncertain choices into major opportunities, from moving to Ireland after college with no job, to scaling startups, leading innovation, and navigating acquisitions.
This conversation goes beyond business. Melissa opens up about decision making, risk, leadership, spirituality, and why staying grounded is critical for success. She shares...
From Survival Mode to CEO: How Natasha Golinsky Rebuilt Her Business, Beat Cancer, and Found a New Mission
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What happens when life forces you to step away from the business you built?
In this episode of the Badass Women in Business Podcast, Aggie and Cristy sit down with Natasha Golinsky, founder of On Purpose Projects, a custom web and e-commerce development agency based in Vancouver, Canada.
Natasha has spent more than a decade building her agency without ever being a web developer herself. Along the way she learned the hard lessons most founders face: underpricing services, dealing with scope creep, people pleasing with clients, and figuring out...
The Founder Mindset Most Women Are Not Prepared For with Rethink Compliance CEO Kirsten Liston
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What does it actually take to leave a secure job and build a company from scratch?
In this episode of the Badass Women in Business Podcast, Aggie and Cristy sit down with Kirsten Liston, Founder and CEO of Rethink Compliance, to talk about the reality of becoming an entrepreneur and the mindset required to build something new.
Kirsten shares how she went from a career in journalism to spending more than two decades in the compliance industry. After 15 years working inside the field, she saw a clear gap in...
Meredith Farley: From Corporate Leader to Founder and Owning Your Voice on LinkedIn
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In this episode of the Badass Women in Business podcast, Aggie and Cristy sit down with Meredith Farley, founder of Medbury, an agency that helps executives and founders turn their real world experience into credible thought leadership on LinkedIn.
Meredith shares her journey from being a writing major during the 2009 financial crash to spending 13 years inside a fast growing content agency, eventually stepping into senior leadership. After being laid off just days after closing on her home, she made the decision to bet on herself and build Medbury.
The...
Rebecca Todd: Building a Purpose Driven Photography Business Through Relationships
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In this episode of the Badass Women in Business podcast, Aggie sits down with Denver-based photographer and TruBlu Images founder Rebecca Todd. Rebecca shares her journey from studying photography at LSU to rebuilding her business after relocating from New Orleans to Denver.
They talk about carving out a niche working with mission-driven brands and nonprofits, why relationships matter more than marketing tactics, and how Rebecca has built a sustainable creative business while navigating imposter syndrome, seasonality, and growth. Rebecca also shares powerful behind-the-scenes stories from nonprofit work and offers practical advice...
Anna Perks: Building a Business by Taking Houses Apart, Not Burning Out, and Rethinking Waste
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Anna Perks is the founder of Perks Deconstruction, a Denver based company proving that sustainability and profitability can coexist. What started with walking her dog past a bulldozed historic home turned into a seven year journey building a 20 plus person company that diverts massive amounts of construction material from landfills. In this episode, Anna shares how she built a business in an industry she did not come from, why entrepreneurship is often romanticized, and what it really takes to lead, delegate, and grow without burning out. This is a grounded, honest conversation about...
Maria Onesto Moran: Being Where Your Feet Are and Building a Values-Driven Business
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Maria Onesto Moran, founder and CEO of Green Home Experts, joins the Badass Women in Business podcast to share the real story of building a sustainable, values-driven company through recession, pivots, leadership challenges, and motherhood.
Maria started Green Home Experts in 2007 as a green building supply showroom just before the housing market crashed. What followed was not failure, but evolution. Today, Green Home Experts is a WBE-certified energy efficiency logistics and fulfillment company serving utilities and program implementers across the Midwest.
In this episode, Maria talks about mindfulness as...
