Prime for Growth! Conversations with Everyday Innovators

If you're struggling to make your mark in a business with history, the challenge is real.  So is the opportunity to break new ground using powerful legacy tools and experience.  This episode is all about finding the difficult, but valuable, balance between innovation and history, harnessing the past for a better, energized future.  Whether you are born an entrepreneur,  or born into a family of entrepreneurs, there is no doubt that moving beyond the family legacy can be both a burden and an opportunity.  Anthea Sargeaunt started her entrepreneurial career right out of high school, building a business to pay her rent through her post secondary education path and launching her ambition to build something meaningful.  Her lessons in entrepreneurship motivated her to create something world changing, while respecting the boundaries between family and business - an age old problem to which she applies a modern approach.  Her company, 2S Water, has a huge mandate - to enable real time water testing and help enterprises and governments to improve global water safety.   But, transitioning from intergenerational legacy to leading edge innovator is daunting in many ways, and running an engineering-focused business as a risk taking entrepreneur is no less overwhelming.

Today we are exploring the strange and wonderful world of Venture Capital. Kristina Milke started her career as a chartered accountant, with ambition, but an unformed game plan. Being open to opportunity however, brought her to one intersection after another, where she was able to stretch her boundaries and grow her talents in some really diverse organizations.   From industrial supply, to aerospace, to her tenure at the incredibly innovative growth company Intuit, her last employee role before launching into venture capital, was as CEO at Investopedia working on its sale.  She credits her life journey to having an innovation mindset – being ambitious to learn, but open minded about what form that learning would take.  Today Kristina is supporting her favourite type of startups, technology,  into scaling opportunities, while mentoring the founders behind them using her own hard earned leadership and investment skills.  VC is innovating itself – as an industry traditionally dominated by niche risk takers, all the way through to the IPOS where big investment banks flourish, there is a  growing peer to peer investment community supported by regional and national angel funds whose investment theses cover almost any type of business vertical market.   Through mentorship, networking and focused collaboration, there are some amazing things happening in the world of growth and venture capital that are putting many new entrepreneurs squarely on the map. 

If your business dreams include breaking amazing new ground, solving problems previously undefined, and doing something entirely new, this episode is for you.Today we meet Chris, who after 20 years of pursuing her medical profession, found herself at a cross roads where she could stay with what she knew, or take the road, not just less travelled, but break new ground, by building a brand new category of business.For those of you who have read "Blue Ocean Strategy", this will be a great exploration of the model with an incredibly bright and articulate R.N. who found herself being more than just "a nurse with a business' - in fact she created a new business category in the conservative legal market where the foundation is literally in "how we have always done things", in other words, legal precedent.Building a business by innovating a new category is, let's face it - not for everyone.  It can take years to succeed, your main barrier is that your prospective clients probably don't even know that they need you, and your primary tool is educating on the opportunity and hoping to get that one convert who will help you gain momentum.Chris Rokosh did this, and 20 years later, has both the scars and the success story to show for it.  Her journey isn't just about getting here - it's about staying focused on the core values and purpose that drove her along this path after the door was kicked open by a chance conversation that lit the spark of an idea.  The hard work came after that - as we learn from other stories of innovation in category as well. Get inspired by this conversation with Chris who is an amazingly articulate, compassionate and insightful human who has walked the talk and invests daily in becoming a better entrepreneur and leader, with her company Connect Medical Legal Experts , on our fourth episode of Prime for Growth. 

Is your culture dysfunctional and full of blaming and shaming, or does your organization foster a caring, safe environment where people can thrive? Are your team striving for excellence and succeeding through great collaboration and trust, or are your team stuck and you have a revolving door of talent?This is the story about how a construction company, working in an industry plagued with dysfunction, dissatisfied workers, stakeholders and owners with billions of cost directly due to disputes and irreconcilable differences, turned its fortunes around through cultural transformation. Simon Sinek describes purpose driven organizations and says that "Purpose-led organizations put purpose before the metrics, and that over time, purpose-driven organizations are more profitable, have better tenure, and more loyal clients."  If you're curious enough to see your company with the veils pulled off, and honestly face the challenges that may be simmering under the surface, you might want to listen to this episode about how a rough and tumble construction company found its purpose, and became a magnet for great relationships, people and results. Glenise Harvey's family owned a construction business, and 40 years along that journey as a second generation family member she became an owner.  Her passion, from her years as an educator, was helping people thrive and be their very best.  Glenise's journey of taking a rough and tumble culture of construction and transforming its awareness from blame and shame all the way through to identifying its culture as a SuperPower, was a six year (and counting) odyssey of commitment, hard work, iteration and methodically working it all the way from the boardroom to the field lunch room.  Join us and learn how to transform your own organization, focus on a values based approach  and develop an aware leadership and an engaged team, on Prime for Growth's third episode.

I read a quote that fit well with Today’s episode: " Never let success get to your head, and never let failure get to your heart. ".   We know being an entrepreneur involves trying and failing and iterating your way to success - but how do you overcome failure and the chaos typical of high growth companies? Our guest today lived this for years in her business, challenged by a feast or famine revenue cycle, focused on innovating into new markets, but struggling to control the growth and the quality at the same time.  Their team invested heavily in process implementation – turning bootstrapping into scaled opportunity.  Jodi Scarlett began her business Pro Star Cleaning & Restoration as a local home cleaning business and now does large scale construction and disaster restoration projects across the country. We discuss how tempering the entrepreneurial “go factor” using a process framework, actually enables more creativity, innovation, and growth.