Start, Then Optimize: Leaving the Corporate Seat to Build a Business
Paul Vedder, CEO of VXIT, talks with Jonathan, an accountant who left an eight-year career to launch his own firm. He shares his first six months as a founder, from landing his first anchor client to making his first hire, and what he learned about patience, emotional intelligence, and leading a team. They cover the "business is just math" mindset, including profit-first thinking, budgeting, and cash vs. accrual accounting, plus how upbringing shapes our relationship with money, why buying ba...
25 Sept 2026
Danny Zayas: From Touring Guitarist to Running a Music School
Danny Zayas spent five years on the road playing lead guitar and keys for Tenth Avenue North. Then he came home to Palm Beach County, started teaching lessons out of his house with his wife Renee, and watched it turn into Zayas Studios, a family-owned music school in Jupiter with a full teaching team, piano and band showcases, a class for kids under five, and a worship-platform track you won't find anywhere else in the county. We get into what it actually takes to turn a musician into a busin...
11 Sept 2026
SBA Ray!
Ray Drew started originating SBA loans at 23 with no book, no mentor, and no institutional support. He built the largest podcast in SBA lending, then a media network modeled on Barstool, then a video agency that failed, and in April 2026 he walked away from the W-2 entirely to become a partner at Lendesca. We get into the part nobody talks about: he ended his flagship podcast before he quit his job, not after, which is a strange order of operations for someone whose whole leverage was the aud...
28 Aug 2026
Meet "Petty Ca$h” The rapping CPA!
In 2015, Drew Carrick was an auditor at Grant Thornton who recorded a rap about public accounting. It went viral, and instead of firing him, the firm put him on its Innovation Council. Eleven years later he is still the Rapping CPA, and still arguing that accounting has a marketing problem rather than a math problem. We get into what it costs to build a career on one breakout moment, why he splits himself across three separate social accounts because the personas can't share a page, and what ...
14 Aug 2026
Ben Starling III, Founder and CEO of Southern Philanthropy
Ben Starling III uncovers his secrets to gift-giving within the world of Philanthropy. As a professional fundraising consultant, Ben understands the ins and outs of managing donor relations and what it takes for non-profits to raise money. He’s also know Paul since Paul was around 14 years old. A friendship almost 30 years in the making. Ben has seen Paul grow up, get married, have children, start a career and eventually start VXIT. https://southernphilanthropy.com/
31 Jul 2026
States Hines
States Hines is now a Vistage leader and one of Paul’s mentors. Vistage is the world's largest executive coaching and peer advisory organization for chief executive officers, business owners, and key corporate executives. Founded in 1957, it operates in 40 countries and helps leaders solve business problems, improve decision-making, and scale their companies through structured group collaboration. States is in his 90s now and plans to live until 120+ years old. States has lived through vast c...
17 Jul 2026
Sean & Kristen Shea - The Husband & Wife Business
Sean and Kristen Shea built a business together. Kristen is the brains. Sean is the muscle. And they turn their house into a nightly Christmas show every year. In this episode, Sean and Kristen walk us through what it actually takes to build a business with your spouse, work out of your house, and stay sane doing both. They split roles cleanly: Kristen runs strategy, Sean runs execution. It works because the lanes are clear. The home-office angle is the part most husband-and-wife teams get wr...
3 Jul 2026
Solo Episode - My Story
Solo episode. No guest. Just me, my story, and why this podcast exists. This show is built on conversations with founders, sales operators, family business owners, and the people who run them. This is the episode where I hand the mic to myself: where I came from, what I've learned along the way, and what made me hit record on this show in the first place. The thread running through every conversation here is the same one running through my own career: the people who win in business, in sales,...
19 Jun 2026
Robin Vedder
My wife Robin is the calm to my chaos. In this episode, we sit down for the conversation about marriage, mindset, and what it actually takes to keep a household running when one of you is wired like a CEO and the other is not. Robin is a stay-at-home mom to our two daughters, Bethany and Gwen, both 6th graders she homeschools. She runs our household. I run a company. Different jobs. Different temperaments. Same partnership. In this conversation, we go back to where we started. How we grew up....
8 Jun 2026
Anthony Bobba - Born a Sales Guy!
Anthony Bobba the serial entrepreneur! Finance. Insurance. After-intimacy wipes. Yes, really. A serial entrepreneur who's wired to win. Some people sell because they need to. Anthony sells because he can't not. In this episode, he walks us through a career that's moved through finance, insurance, and yes, after-intimacy wipes. The product changes. The operator doesn’t. What makes Anthony interesting isn't the variety. It's what the variety reveals. The category is irrelevant. The competitive ...
22 May 2026
Keith Carley - Dynamics of a Family Business
Keith Carley swept the shop floor at Air Compressor Works. Then he ran the company. Then he sold it. The family business arc, told straight. In this episode, Keith walks through what it actually looks like to grow up inside a business his father and uncle built from nothing. The lessons came on the floor: show up early, work harder than anyone else in the room, and the rest sorts itself out. Decades later, Keith took over Air Compressor Works. Years after that, he sold it. The conversation go...
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