Brent Ridge , MD, cofounded Beekman 1802 in 2008 and has worked alongside Josh Kilmer-Purcell to lead the company ever since. Prior to his entrepreneurial career, Ridge was Vice President of Healthy Living at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. He also built a distinguished medical career as a specialist in geriatric medicine, completing a fellowship at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and joining the faculty there as an assistant professor.
In this episode, I chat with Marc Brown, a dynamic attorney and Big Dave's Cheesesteaks franchise owner. Marc opens up about his non-linear career path from Biglaw to founding his own successful firm, sharing insights on the fulfilling shift to plaintiff's work and the challenges of running a business. Aspiring lawyers and entrepreneurs alike will find inspiration in Marc's journey of pursuing passion over convention and learning to balance career and life. Tune in for a mix of legal wisdom and the secret to a perfect cheesesteak!
Back then, I was a marketing representative for an asset management firm in Penang, Malaysia. It was a steady job, and I had supportive managers who allowed me to take ownership of my work. It was a client-facing role, and over time, I realized it wasn't the best fit for my personality, even though I learned and grew a lot from the job. After the pandemic, I started feeling burned out. Deep down, I always knew a 9-to-5 wasn't meant to be my long-term path.
I always knew I wanted to study and work in the United States. When I was 18, I dreamed of making $200,000 a year working in Big Tech when I graduated. Over time, I began to question whether I wanted my career dictated by a visa. I realized how little control I had over external factors: the economy, layoffs, and visa policies. The only thing I could control was my response.
"The first five years of RIXO, we lived together, apart from being in the office together," Rix tells Bustle. "We were literally together 24/7. Neither of us had boyfriends." Other friendships wouldn't have survived, especially remembering how difficult that time was for both of them. "We were 23. We wouldn't even buy ourselves a coffee," she says. "We were so careful about our spending, wanting to put everything into the business. It wasn't a glamorous lifestyle."
Tyler Perry said something to me I'll never forget, because I battle this all the time, I always try to bring everybody with me," Hayes tells Fortune. "'Sometimes you've got to leave them in the sand. Sometimes you've got to go in the water, row the boat, leave them in the sand, and offer to come back and get on the boat' ... Sometimes people aren't going to understand the mission.
I own a business, and frankly I hate it. It consumes all of my time and energy and I'm trying to figure out a plan to get out. That said, the only thing I hate more than owning and operating my business is TALKING about the business I own and operate. And yet, in any social gathering, people inevitably ask me about how it's going. And no matter how many times I deflect or redirect, inevitably, at the next social gathering, people ask me about it.
In a session overflowing with experience and hard-won lessons, he will share his unvarnished take on the world 15 years from now - a future he believes will be defined by unprecedented abundance, massive job displacement, and transformational change across every sector. This is advice entrepreneurs need to hear - not just what they want to hear - to build enduring companies in turbulent times.
You've probably heard of the British Entrepreneur Emma Grede because of Skims, the $4 billion shapewear company she runs with Kim Kardashian. She's also invested in other brands with the family, such as the cleaning products company Safely and Kylie Jenner's clothing line, Khy. And the growing empire can all be traced back to one phone call she made to Kris Jenner that changed everything.
"I wanted my clothes to fit better, and so my own butt was the inspiration," Blakely said during Fortune's 2013 Most Powerful Women Summit. "I might be the only woman in the world grateful to my cellulite."
Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I'm Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday.
For some people, there's value in having clear boundaries between work and family. But I believe that integrating my personal and professional lives was the best way to grow this business. Ultimately, I was doing this for my daughter and other kids, and I knew the best business would be born from melding my family and business.
Now in its fourth year, the event aims to help bring together creative and entrepreneurial minds together in the Bronx. There are people who have come to the Summit, literally met there, and now they're doing long-term work together. I know some people found their photographers and videographers from the summit, said Brooks. We've also been able to see really strong partnerships build through the networking at the Summit because there's panels and workshops, but there's also the networking piece which is really invaluable.
By the way, dreams come true, and you can make your dreams come true if you manifest and if you go after that goal, that north star, knowing that along the way there are going to be roadblocks and obstacles,
Then you should take this business-development course, which will help you take your idea - no worries if it doesn't exist yet, you'll manifest it later! - and spin it into a multimillion-dollar company that you can scale within mere months. Behold this lady, a graduate of said course, who turned her ceramics hobby into a $5,000,000 juggernaut in three years and now lives in Italy with her family, dog, and a bunch of olive trees! This could be you!
While these are certainly high-income skills worth developing, if you don't have this one underrated skill, you will literally get nowhere in your career or in your business. Regardless of how hard you try, how many certifications and tools you add to your skill stack, how good your resume is or how exceptional your portfolio may be, lacking this one skill can leave you far behind in the job market and result in you losing out to competitors in your industry and niche.
And unlike most tools in the productivity or publishing space, this one comes with a lifetime subscription for $49 (reg. $540)-no monthly fees and no subscription fatigue necessary. Built for busy entrepreneurs with ideas worth sharing Youbooks pulls together the power of multiple AI models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Llama) and a 1,000-step production pipeline to create structured, research-backed manuscripts up to 300,000 words. It even integrates real-time online research to keep things current and customizable, down to tone and voice.
In the summer of 2016, I was 21, living in New York City, and working as an intern for a private-capital research firm. One weekend, I went to the Jersey shore with a group of friends. I'm from Seattle, so I'm not used to seeing airplanes flying banners every couple of minutes. They looked like they were from the 1940s. They were noisy and emitting a lot of smoke.
At twenty-three, I launched my first real business with another partner-an upscale pet resort. We had climate-controlled suites, a beautiful play yard, and classical music playing softly in the background. An elaborate four-tier fountain greeted guests in the lobby, where you could also view the handcrafted "Catio" patio built by my father himself. Within a few months, it was already turning a profit. On the surface, it seemed like a dream come true. But something felt off.
It's not enough to have a great business idea that you think can be scaled up and replicated as a franchise. Your great idea must be a proven success, with a track record spanning at least a year. The whole idea of buying a franchise is that the company has figured things out and made most of the mistakes already, so you don't have to.
I'll never forget standing on the sideline of our first SaberCats match, watching one of our players get leveled by a brutal tackle. Most people would've stayed down. He didn't. He fought for every inch, rolled and kept driving the ball forward. The crowd erupted. That image stuck with me. In rugby, getting hit is part of the game, and when you get hit, you don't stop - you adapt mid-impact.
When Jared Pobre and his wife, former WWE star Stacy Keibler, moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, he expected more time outdoors, skiing, hiking, fly-fishing. What he experienced was how extreme conditions accelerate skin aging and damage, leaving his skin raw and red. When searching for solutions for his skincare, not only were options limited, but nothing seemed to help. Out of frustration, he tried one of Keibler's pricey serums.
He calls b.s. when he sees it, but he isn't a hater. As fast as O'Leary is to declare "I'm out!" he also doesn't hesitate to throw his full energy behind the things he loves. If you follow Mr. Wonderful on social, you know he loves watches. WORSHIPS watches. We talked about where his passion for collecting rare timepieces came from and how that obsession led to his latest venture, WonderCare, a partnership with the 1916 company.
"My greatest successes happened on the heels of failure," Corcoran wrote. "The moment I made my first profit, it felt like all the long nights and rejection finally paid off. I wanted to invest it in something big that would set me apart."
As entrepreneurs, we're constantly bombarded with recommendations for the same big-name podcasts (How I Built This, The Tim Ferriss Show or Masters of Scale). They're good, but they've become the mainstream playlists of the entrepreneurial world. The real edge comes from discovering voices that are flying under the radar - podcasts that don't just regurgitate clichés but dig into gritty lessons, unconventional strategies and the realities most entrepreneurs are too busy or too cautious to discuss openly.
