Business Origin Stories for Entrepreneurs, Coaches, and Leaders

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Technology can help an organization move faster. But what happens when the people expected to use that technology aren’t moving with it?

Tres Roeder, president of Roeder Consulting, has spent 25 years helping organizations decide what matters and get important initiatives done. His philosophy sounds simple: do fewer things better.

But getting those things done requires more than timelines, software, budgets, and project plans.

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, Tres shares how his own approach to project management evolved after he realized that th...

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What if the business problem you keep trying to solve isn’t actually the problem?

For many entrepreneurs and leaders, the instinct is to respond to a challenge with another strategy, a new marketing plan, a leadership book, or a spreadsheet. But Martijn Meima, a business coach since 2007, takes a different approach. He helps entrepreneurs use what he calls “pure intuition” and methods including business constellations to uncover what may be happening beneath the surface of a business problem.

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, Amy Schutt...

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What happens when the life you built to earn approval stops feeling like yours?

In this solo episode, Amy shares the real story behind bringing her Kármán Line™ framework to the TEDx Cambridge stage — a year and a half of rejection and the six-week sprint that followed. She talks about what it actually takes to move a big idea from private conviction to a stage in front of strangers: the help she had to ask for, the outfit that sat in her closet for a year before she ever wore it...

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Paula A. Bell wears a lot of titles — business analyst consultant, life coach, fitness coach, third-degree black belt in karate — and in this episode, she explains why she never niched down to just one.

Paula built Paula A. Bell Consulting on a mind-body-soul philosophy: when a client comes to her for career strategy but the real block is a limiting belief, she follows the problem wherever it actually lives. She traces that approach back to nearly fifteen years on the mat, where she went from a reluctant white belt (dragged in beca...

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In this episode, host Amy Schutte sits down with Megan Wright and Kaitlin Oran, co-founders of Nove — a platform built specifically for personal stylists to manage and grow their businesses. From digitizing client closets to tracking VIP engagement, Nove was born out of the founders' experience working with stylists and noticing how much of the industry's back end (contracts, invoicing, client communication) was held together by patchwork tools.

In this episode: 

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What if the people challenging your organization the most are actually the ones who could save it? In this episode, Tanarra Schneider — founder of Rebel 75 — unpacks why healthy dissent gets mistaken for disruption, and how leaders can build teams that thrive on honest conversation instead of avoiding it.

In this episode, you'll learn:

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In this episode of Business Origin Stories, Cynthia Newman shares lessons from more than 40 years in wealth management and her transition into executive coaching. After spending decades leading people, developing talent, and navigating organizational complexity, she now helps professionals strengthen leadership skills, improve communication, and create sustainable growth in their careers and businesses. 

One of the central themes of this conversation is self-awareness. Cynthia explains how leaders often struggle not because they lack expertise, but because they are unaware of how others experience their communication, decision-making, and leadership style. S...

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What happens when a professional musician spends 26 years building leadership teams? Michael Brenner, founder of Right Chord Leadership, joins the show to share how a single conversation with a mentor turned his passion for music into CHORDS — a six-note framework (Communication, Harmony, Ownership, Respect, Direction, Support) that's reshaped how he diagnoses dysfunction on teams.

Michael pulls back the curtain on what it actually feels like to walk into a room and read a team's energy in the first five minutes, why he opens keynotes with an Irish tin whistle instead of a...

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Divorce is one of the most financially and emotionally high-stakes events in a person's life — but most people walk into it completely unprepared. In this episode, Amy sits down with Courtney Harkness, a divorce strategist who helps successful women leave high-conflict partners with clarity, strategy, and their financial future intact.

Courtney shares her own journey from running a private equity-funded business alongside her ex-husband to building a coaching practice rooted in one core belief: your superpower is not reacting.

In this conversation, you'll learn:

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What happens when leadership growth becomes less about gaining skills and more about understanding yourself?

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, Jason Daily, founder of Anchored Leadership, shares the experiences and leadership principles that have shaped his work helping leaders unlock their full potential through self-awareness, communication, and coaching. Jason has coached more than 5,000 leaders across industries and continents, working with everyone from emerging managers to seasoned executives at organizations including Nike, ’47, Nationwide Insurance, Slack, and L Brands.

Before launching Anchored Leadership, Jason led executive coaching an...

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What happens when life takes you away from the workforce for nearly two decades?

For Heather Nemelka, that question became the foundation for a mission that is now helping women, career changers, and workforce returners rediscover their confidence and create new opportunities.

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, Heather shares her remarkable journey from returning to work after an 18-year career gap to founding both Elevator and the Elevator Foundation. Along the way, she discovered that many talented individuals are overlooked not because they lack ability...

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What happens when the life you've built no longer aligns with who you are?

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, Tucker Branham shares how his unconventional journey shaped a career dedicated to helping individuals and organizations find alignment between values, purpose, leadership, and work. After leaving college, working multiple jobs, and navigating an unexpected path into nonprofit consulting and organizational leadership, Tucker discovered a question that would define his work:

Are people building lives they truly want, or simply following a blueprint created by someone else?<...

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What if the biggest obstacle to scaling your agency is not your marketing strategy, but your leadership systems?

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, Amy sits down with Dan Newman, founder of Learn to Scale, to talk about the people side of agency growth. Dan works with small marketing agencies to solve communication breakdowns, leadership bottlenecks, and culture issues that quietly damage retention, morale, and client experience.

Dan shares his unconventional path from studying music and philosophy to working in education and eventually corporate learning and...

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What if executive presence has less to do with performance and more to do with service?

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, Amy sits down with Katya Davydova, leadership coach, facilitator, and communication expert, to explore how leaders can communicate with greater confidence, authenticity, and impact.

After spending a decade working in people operations, learning and development, and organizational leadership, Katia transitioned into entrepreneurship to focus on helping founders, executives, and teams strengthen communication, leadership, and change navigation skills.

Throughout the conversation, Katia breaks...

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What changes when leadership decisions carry real consequences?

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, I sit down with David Fivecoat, a former U.S. Army Colonel turned executive coach and founder of The Fivecoat Consulting Group. After more than two decades leading soldiers in some of the world's most complex and high-stakes environments, David now works with executive teams to help them lead with clarity, discipline, and accountability.

This conversation explores what happens when leaders are removed from conference rooms and placed in environments...

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Most people don’t struggle with the desire to give. They struggle with knowing how.

In this episode, Elena Fracchia shares what she has learned working across nonprofit management, fundraising, and wealth strategy. After seeing both sides of philanthropy, she identified a consistent gap. People are surrounded by financial advice, but no one is helping them connect their values to meaningful impact.

Elena built The Good Philanthropist to fill that gap.

She works with individuals, families, corporations, and nonprofits to clarify what giving should actually lo...

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Most companies wait too long to develop their next generation of leaders.

In this episode, Amy sits down with Randy Hain, executive coach, author, and founder of Serving Partners, to talk about the gap most organizations ignore: investing in early-career professionals before they become senior leaders.

Randy brings over 30 years of experience as a senior executive and now coaches leaders across Fortune 10,000 companies. Through that work, he has seen a consistent pattern. Organizations pour time, money, and energy into senior leaders, but often leave younger professionals to...

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The path from college to career is not working the way it used to.

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, the founder of YoPro shares what he’s seeing firsthand after working with more than 70 young professionals trying to land jobs in today’s market. His perspective comes from 25 years in marketing working with Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies, followed by a layoff that pushed him to start his own business.

YoPro focuses on helping college students and recent graduates navigate what he calls a “hostile job market...

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What happens when the traits that made you successful start working against you?

In this episode, Claudia Beck, founder of Better Together Group, shares her journey from a 30-year corporate career to coaching senior executives on conscious leadership. After reaching senior leadership and experiencing a forced exit, Claudia was confronted with a fundamental question: who do you want to be when you are no longer operating at full speed?

Claudia now works with highly intelligent, high-performing leaders who want to improve their relational capacity and lead more...

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What if the number you’re chasing in business isn’t actually the number you need?

In this episode, Amy sits down with Carrie Veatch, who helps entrepreneurs build time, location, and financial freedom in a way that is grounded in their real life, not arbitrary goals.

Carrie’s work starts with a simple but often avoided question: what do you actually need? Instead of chasing external benchmarks, she guides clients to define their personal version of financial freedom and build a roadmap that aligns income, time, and li...

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Most leaders don’t think about HR until something breaks. But by then, it’s already costing time, energy, and momentum.

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, Neil Katz shares how his fractional HR firm helps companies remove the operational burden of people management so leaders can focus on growth.

Neil works with businesses ranging from five to five hundred employees, helping them navigate everything from hiring and onboarding to performance management and compliance. His core belief is simple. Leaders should not spend their time solving problems that expe...

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AI is no longer optional. But rushing into it may be the most expensive mistake your business can make.

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, Matt Murphy shares what he’s learned from deploying AI inside real companies and why most of those efforts fail.

With 30 years in technology and the last five focused on AI, Matt has worked across ERP, cloud, HRIS, and enterprise systems. Today, as CEO of The Faction Group, he helps businesses implement AI in a way that actually works.

Hi...

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Many founders imagine that selling their company will be the finish line. But for many leaders, the exit is actually the beginning of a new identity crisis.

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, Amy Schutte sits down with Peter Corbett, former agency founder turned executive coach, to explore what happens after entrepreneurial success.

Peter built a digital agency that grew to roughly 100 full-time employees and another 150 contractors in a given year before selling the company to a public organization at age 36. Like many founders...

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When a leader walks into a struggling organization, the instinct is often to fix things fast. But Mark McFatridge learned early in his career that real turnaround work begins with listening.

After earning his first bank president role, Mark relocated from Indianapolis to Springfield, Missouri to lead the worst performing banking group in the company. He didn’t know the team, the community, or the culture. What he did know was that walking in with a heavy hand would fail.

Instead, he spent his first 30 to 45 days en...

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What happens when leaders measure their value by how busy they are?

For many nonprofit and government leaders, the pressure to respond to every crisis becomes a badge of honor. The calendar fills up, the phone never stops, and the mission feels too important to slow down.

But that approach comes with a cost.

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, Julie Jakopic joins Amy Schutte to talk about leadership, worthiness, and the dangerous habit of living in constant urgency.

Julie works with...

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If you’ve ever looked around online and thought, “What’s working for everyone else, and why doesn’t it work for me?” this episode is for you.

In this conversation, Amy sits down with Macy Robison, a longtime friend from the StoryBrand Guide community, to talk about why so many experts get stuck chasing shiny strategies and how to come back to the way you are actually wired to lead.

Macy helps experts and thought leaders transform their wisdom into resonant thought leadership that feels authentic, creates im...

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When the old leadership model stops working, most leaders assume the problem is external. The market. The team. The generation. The culture.

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, Amy Schutte sits down with Traci Philips, founder of the Innate Coach and an executive leadership and performance coach working with high performers in major transition, especially in the mergers and acquisitions space. Traci supports leaders navigating uncertainty, ambiguity, and rapid change, where decisions impact entire teams and cultures.

Traci explains a pattern she sees repeatedly in high-performing...

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What happens when women are taught to be palatable instead of powerful?

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, I sit down with Sophie Jane Lee, CEO and founder of Electric Peach, to talk about her debut book, Beyond Palatable—a bold, compassionate manifesto for women who are tired of shrinking, apologizing, and silencing themselves to fit in.

Sophie shares her deeply personal journey, from growing up undiagnosed neurodivergent and struggling with addiction, to reclaiming her voice and helping thousands of women do th...

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What happens when the business gets hard and there’s nowhere to hide?

In this episode of Business Origin Stories,  I sit down with executive coach Steve Smith for a grounded, honest conversation about leadership when comfort zones collapse, money gets emotional, and identity is forced to change.

Steve has spent over 16 years coaching leaders across industries, from startups to Fortune 500 companies, and what he brings to this conversation is refreshingly real. We talk about what’s actually at stake when leaders avoid discomfort, why financial clarity is a lea...

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Leadership problems rarely start at the top. They start in the middle.

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, I sit down with Keith Repko, a former healthcare executive who spent decades leading one of the largest VA medical systems in a five-state region. Over his career, Keith oversaw thousands of employees, multiple hospital campuses, and complex operational systems, and what he learned is simple and uncomfortable: most organizations promote people into leadership roles without teaching them how to lead.

We talk about why bad managers drive great people...

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What if the real leadership crisis isn’t burnout — but never having time to work on what truly matters?

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, I sit down with Frederick Buskey, a former assistant principal turned leadership coach, to explore how leaders — especially in education — can escape the constant pull of urgency and reclaim their time, priorities, and humanity.

Frederick shares his powerful framework for helping principals, assistant principals, and leaders stop living at the mercy of emails, interruptions, and endless to-do lists — and instead de...

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What if the way we work is the very thing that’s breaking us—and what if there’s another way?

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, I’m joined by Olivier Egli, a business guide who stands at the intersection of leadership, neuroscience, psychology, and spirituality, offering a radically different blueprint for work—one that breaks from our traditional, toxic approaches to success.

Olivier’s work invites leaders, founders, and parents to reconsider everything from productivity and ambition to abundance, intuition, and peace. His perspect...

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What happens when family, business, legacy, and pressure collide?

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, I sit down with Scott Gingold, a self-described family business therapist who helps founders, owners, and multi-generational companies untangle conflict, rebuild trust, and move forward without blowing up the business, or their relationships.

Scott’s path to this work is anything but typical. From surviving life-or-death moments as a first responder to building, exiting, and reinventing multiple businesses, his approach to leadership and resilience is grounded in perspective, accountability, and humanity.

In...

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What if the biggest thing holding women back isn’t a lack of opportunity—but the quiet agreements we make with ourselves to wait?

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, I’m joined by Emily Lampkin, longtime Washington, D.C. power broker, global speaker, and author of the upcoming book White Lies and Duct Tape. Emily has spent decades working inside politics, government, corporations, and global organizations—and studying one question closely:

Why do some women thrive, while others slowly abandon their dreams?

Emily...

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What if your next career move isn't about finding the perfect job—but finally becoming the most unapologetic version of yourself?

Executive coach Jennifer Speciale joins host Amy Schutte for a raw conversation about career reinvention, owning your story, and stepping into your power without apologizing for it.

Jennifer opens up about her own pivots: moving to Italy, realizing she was massively underutilized, and rebuilding her career from scratch with clarity and zero regrets. Now she helps executives, emerging leaders, and anyone feeling stuck turn their experience in...

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Why do we resist change, even when we want it?
How do leaders move from fear into possibility when the world around them is evolving faster than ever?

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, host Amy Schutte sits down with Andi Simon, a blue ocean strategist, author, and leadership advisor who helps organizations reinvent themselves, rewrite their internal narratives, and navigate the identity shifts required for growth.

Together, they explore:

Why humans cling to old stories and...

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What happens when the thing you’ve built your identity on… stops being the thing the world needs from you?

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, host Amy Schutte sits down with Michael Landers — global leadership and culture consultant, author, and founder of Culture Crossing — for a raw, honest conversation about AI, identity, purpose, and what remains when everything around us changes.

Together, they explore:

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What does it take to create visual content for some of the world's biggest brands—and sustain that success for over two decades?

In this episode, director and photographer Stewart Cohen pulls back the curtain on the creative industry, sharing insights from his extensive portfolio working with American Airlines, AT&T, Coca-Cola, MGM Resorts, and Frito-Lay through his production company, SC Pictures.

In this conversation, you'll discover:

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What if one tiny decision—like choosing a local salt over a supermarket staple—could help change your food system, your family life, and your business?

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, host Amy Schutte sits down with Sarah McElrae, the founder of Summa Salts and the beloved “Salt Lady” of Jacksonville, Florida. Sarah went from a chaotic childhood and a career in education to building a fast-growing, values-driven product-based business rooted in local food, regenerative farming, and really fun salt blends (hello, Vampire Killer and Lava Head crew 🥵).

She share...

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Are you making big decisions from a place of clarity—or chaos?

In this episode of Business Origin Stories, host Amy Schutte sits down with executive coach and decision-making expert Michael Walker to unpack why so many founders and leaders feel stuck, second-guess themselves, or unintentionally throw their teams into whiplash with constant pivots.

Drawing on years of research, coaching, and real-world leadership experience, Mike breaks down: