Dr. John Gentile is the father of five grown children with his wife Christine. He's a 1986 graduate of the prestigious Palmer College of Chiropractic. He maintained a private practice in Delmar and Guilderland, New York from 1989 to 2004. He spoke professionally within the chiropractic profession for several years, then he studied to receive theological training and was ordained a pastor of a Christian church in 2014. In 2015, he re entered part time mobile chiropractic practice. The mobile chiropractors covers the majority of the capital region of New York with personal concierge care. Dr. John, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Dr. John Gentile: Well, you're quite welcome, John. Thank you for having me. Thank you. John Platte: So you served as a chiropractor for many years, and [00:01:00] then you got theological training and then began ministry, and then you began mobile chiropractic. Can you tell me about that story? Dr. John Gentile: I graduated from school with the idea that I was going to be in practice for a very long time in one particular location with an office that I had imagined in my mind, and none of that came true. It just happened the way that it happened. And so I did the typical things that most people would do when they go into practice, did some marketing, and got involved with insurance companies, try to really hone in on my skills. And I stayed in practice from 1989 private practice until 2002 when I began to feel that I wasn't able to pull off the successful large practice that I had in mind. So I decided to bring in an associate and try different [00:02:00] ways to bring in more money and to alleviate stress, and I brought in an associate, and after about a year of that, I asked him, I'm feeling like I want to sell this, do you want to buy it? And he agreed and that began the journey. It took a little bit of time to get that situated and done. But finally, I was free and I was on the journey really at that particular point. But the brick and mortar idea in my life, being in one place at one time every day was just not appealing to me anymore that the love of people and the desire to help that is part of me that never goes away. So I needed to retool myself and make some changes and I did, and it was definitely worth it in the long run. John Platte: A lot of different aspects of your business were impacted, right? Dr. John Gentile: Well, the switch went from having an income as a chiropractor to having none, having [00:03:00] no access to patients. Signing a nondisclosure agreement, and trying to keep that. It began early in the practice where people would call me up and say, "Hey, listen, I know you're not supposed to be practicing in a certain area, but do you have a portable table? You can come see me because I don't really like the doctor." I said, "Oh, okay. I guess I could." So it kind of began that way almost immediately, but there wasn't enough income to do that. So I went on a 10 year journey, various different jobs, selling insurance, driving trucks, going back into a limited chiropractic role. Then I began to do some professional speaking with another chiropractor. We traveled around the country for a few years. I was in his office doing some different things. It really was great. You know, it's very difficult to leave the profession. I was told by professionals, you end up going back into the profession [00:04:00] anyway. You end up violating the non compete clause or you end up having some kind of lawsuit or something. So I tried to avoid all those things by staying on the speaking end of chiropractic rather than the practice end, because I didn't want to affect this guy who bought my practice. And it worked out well, it worked out well, but ultimately I found myself in a situation where mobile was the best way for me to practice for my personality, the amount of time that I spend with people for what I do when I'm with them, for the sense that being somewhere diff

Green Wolf Brewing Company rests within the heart of scenic Schoharie County. While Green Wolf makes its own beer down the street, they also offer a wide selection of local wine, hard cider, guest beer, and spirits for its customers. Justin Behan is also a musician and writer, father and partner, dreamer, baseball card collector and WNBA superfan. Justin, thanks a lot for coming on today. Justin Behan: Well, thanks for inviting me, John. John: So, you have a brewery. How did that come to happen? Justin Behan: It was around when I was 35 years old, which I'm 47 now. I've always been a seeker, a dreamer, somewhat... I have trouble focusing [00:01:00] on amongst myriad interests in life. And I felt like I was at a turning point at that age. We had lived... on our property in central New York, for about six years, we had just moved into our alternative house that we built over the span of six years. We built something called a straw bale house which had basically overwhelmed the first half of my thirties, mostly for good. And I didn't have a job. I had a little bit of a side job as an audio editor for my buddy who owns a recording studio. I had basically a background in terms of education, American history and literature. And I had discovered homebrewing I, we moved out here to start a farm, I had thought about the Unitarian Universalist ministry seven years before that, and I we bought the [00:02:00] place to start out an organic vegetable farm, I didn't want to do that anymore, and I fell in love with making beer in my kitchen. I was in the old house on our property that we had lived in while building the new house. It's ripping out some sheetrock. One morning, my wife was newly pregnant with our daughter, who's now 11, and I suddenly looked at this empty house and I said, okay, here's an empty structure on our building with plumbing, electric and heating. I could turn this into a brewery! Isn't this a great idea? So I immediately called up my friend Finn, down the road who had just started a goat dairy, making goat cheese and I said, am I crazy? He said, that's not any crazier than me wanting to start a goat dairy and making goat cheese. And that's how it began. It began through a love of making home brewed beer and being Basically, self driven trying to, you know, find meaning in life with a meaningful [00:03:00] profession and it went, that was the chrysalis for Green Wolf Brewing. And it changed dramatically from there. For the first year after, deciding to go down that route I was thinking either writing, music or moving forward with my homebrewing. I decided the least insane direction was to start a brewery. It originally was going to be the old house on our property. And it was just going to be, you know, very small scale, small tasting room over the course of about two years, year and a half or two years I, we decided as I brought on my parents in law's business partners and reached out further into the community that it made more sense to find a Main Street location on one of the villages nearby. So we Middleburg, New York is only about a 12 minute drive from our house. We, and so we ended up just refitting the old house into a house again and we, we got a Main Street location for our brewery and [00:04:00] tap room. And one of the early large changes was, sure, I love make, I loved making beer and I loved seeing the expression on people's faces when they drank the beer and they, they had this misgiving. Something like. "Oh, this guy made it in his kitchen. I don't know about this home brewed business," and then like, "oh wow, this is good," and their face would light up, and it made me so happy. But, as I moved into a greater community, in Middleburg, New York I realized that starting this business was only partly about making beer. The other part, which is as important or more important, was how does this grow the community around me? How does this bring people together? How, how can, how can I make, how c

Jodie Rocchio created the Fearless Cooking Company in 2015 as a small catering service providing clean, locally sourced food, presented in creative menus. Fearless refers to their willing approach to all techniques, foods, and venues, as well as their dedication to sourcing either organic or locally, either organic or local, sustainably grown products in all their foods. Fearless now attends farmer's markets and has created a mobile booth with grills to cook their globally inspired and locally sourced foods. They're building a mobile kitchen for future events. Jodie's husband, Steven, and her children help Jodi to bring fearless to the community. Jodie, thanks for coming on the show today. Jodie Rocchio: Yeah, thanks for asking. John Platte: We were planning the show offline. And, you mentioned attending farmer's markets [00:01:00] in the mobile booth, and you also mentioned your husband built a trailer and that, and there was a fire and there's been all kinds of flux. I'm really interested in that story. Jodie Rocchio: Yeah. So the, the need for a cooking device when we started to go to farmer's markets became really apparent within the first month of us attending farm markets. Our mission we started farm markets was to celebrate local harvest and show people how to use things like Swiss chard and cucumbers and things like that once they started to not look as beautiful as they would in a salad. So my eight year old daughter at that point would do demonstrations, showing how to pickle and, and make things like salsas and and using different really simple ingredients to, to give something a little bit more shelf life. And so we did, we did that for, for a few months, and then my husband [00:02:00] one day said, you know what would be really great is if we could do some wood-fired pizza. And I thought, well, yeah, he's got a, he's Italian heritage and um, is a great builder, a wonderful designer, and a great builder. And we had a pickup truck, so he created an oven that rolled on and off of our pickup truck,. We'd roll it on on a Saturday morning, go start the wood fire, and fill the market with this wonderful, comforting smell. John Platte: Wow. Jodie Rocchio: And he, developed an great recipe for uh, nice toothy pizza dough. And I would walk the market before market and look for things like, a friend from Florida Bakery creates this incredible smoked kielbasa and we make a spicy barbecue sauce. So we started doing things like a barbecue pizza with kielbasa and pickled onions. We got to use all of those things, somebody else's product, our sauce, and then a pickling that my daughter had made. [00:03:00] So with that and then of course there were all these beautiful types of vegetables that we could put on top of mama's marinara, and and it was a hit. We were making pizzas, we couldn't make enough pizza. So we did that in Middletown Farm Market. It was our first market and, and it grew to include three more markets over the next summer or two. Every Saturday we rolled that pizza oven on and rolled it right back off and put it back in my husband's shop. And it was, it was great. It was fun. And after a few years we realized we needed something bigger and a little bit more kind to the shocks of the truck. So Steve built a trailer. He had had enough time to know what he wanted. I. I got in the habit of, as he was cooking pizzas, I would toss in some fresh corn to do some street corn, or I would try to make arepas on the side. which really I think frustrated him and made him aware of the fact that we needed a bigger oven. [00:04:00] So when he came to the decision that a horse trailer, would be the perfect size he started working on that and he took probably six or seven months to create what was known as the Dreadnought trailer. It was a beautiful trailer. He utilized wood from our home that had been repurposed. I mean, it was completely within our, our philosophy for Fearless to use what we have and create something n

Kristin Nelson lives in New York's beautiful Hudson Valley with her husband Dave and three boys. They stay busy at their modest homestead, working in their gardens, and raising a small number of heritage breed poultry, cattle, and pigs. In addition to homesteading, she loves to cook, bake, and experiment in the kitchen. A few years ago, she made her first batch of caramel and found it to be not quite what she was looking for. She started playing around on a quest to find her caramel ideal. It took a few tries to get there, but when she did, wow! Jars of caramel sauce became her signature gift, and her friends and family often requested it, a farmer friend asked to sell it. After a year of planning research and a lot of hard work, she released her first product, Cara-Sel, a luxuriously complex caramel sauce. Kristin, thank you for coming on the show today. Kristin Nelson: Thank you so much for having me.[00:01:00] John Platte: So, what were you doing before you started selling caramel? Kristin Nelson: I don't know if you would call it the corporate world, but you know, I worked a regular nine to five. And then when we had our third child, I did stay home to raise the two youngest, which, you know, cuz they would've been in daycare and just, you know, my salary didn't make it make sense to do that. So I was home with them and doing all sorts of stuff, and it did give me, you know, on one hand I had more time in the kitchen even though I was chasing them around. But I, you know, I didn't have the constraints of the nine to five. So I just really, that's when, you know, I just started experimenting a lot and that's when the caramel thing sort of happened. Yeah. John Platte: How fast did it take off? What was that like? Kristin Nelson: Well, so from the idea of, you know, like you had said, it was, it [00:02:00] was my sort of signature gift, you know, like if I was coming to your house or oh, you just had a baby or whatnot, like it would be sort of like, that's the thing that I would bring. And you know, when my youngest was approaching kindergarten age, it was definitely time to get back into the workforce, you know, needed the income for sure. And you know, I figured it was now or never. You know, people had been saying like, oh my gosh, you should sell it. And there's, oh God, you know, I, I wouldn't even know where to begin. I've got these, you know, the kids running around, I just couldn't see it. And then when the farmer said like, we would sell it here at our farm stand, and I thought, okay, well if I'm ever going to do it, it's now before I do re-enter a workforce and work for someone else. And it took a year. At that point I, you know, I did use things like SCORE and oh, there was, there's another thing like that that, of course I'm spacing at the moment, but, you know, sort of free mentorship out there [00:03:00] and, you know, but navigating, like, navigating, you know, having no experience in product development. It, it was tricky. I had, you know, some restaurant experience. Some of my first jobs were in restaurants, but it was a whole different animal. Mm-hmm. So figuring out, you know, things from, you know, the regulations, licensing, things like that all the way down to like, okay, well what sizes would I want? Okay. How do I figure out what jars work? You know, labeling, branding, business name, you know, all those things. Cornell Co-op was extremely useful for that. They do have a branch of their, I don't even know what you would call it, but, you know that Food Venture Center is, is one of the sort of taglines of what they do, and that was really useful. But it, you know, it, it still was very tricky, especially since, you know, I wasn't looking for investors. It's not like we had a lot to throw into it. So it was very [00:04:00] bootstrapped. You know, as far as the branding and the website and all of that, designing the label, I ended up doing like a one month crash course with someone that was do

Meghan Del Prete has been a Romana's Pilates certified instructor since 2005. She owns and operates Pilates and Wellness with Meghan Del Prete in Saratoga Springs, New York. Meghan is an integrative nutrition health coach and lifelong vegetarian. She has a passion for cooking and helping people introduce more delicious plant-based meals into their diet. Her work with clients is focused on helping women truly transform their lives. Her program utilizes movement, integrative nutrition, and other modalities that have helped her personally. She helps her clients feel their best in their bodies and in all aspects of their lives. Meghan, thanks for coming on the show today. Meghan Del Prete: Oh, thank you so much for having me, John. I'm so happy to be here. John Platte: All right, so that's, that was the brief version. Tell me more about what you do.[00:01:00] Meghan Del Prete: Well it, I guess it started with Pilates. When I was in college I was a dance major I started doing Pilates then, and I just love the way it helps change my body and helped me be able to find muscles that I had struggled finding in my dance classes. And I just wanted to that path. So I, I did a certification through Roman Pilates in New York City after I graduated. And I I've been teaching Pilates ever since. I had a big studio for a while and I had a very young family, and that got to be, I felt like I was doing a bad job everywhere. So I downsized my studio a couple years before the pandemic and that was great. I could, I just had a smaller space. I could focus more on the teaching aspect and not, you know, the business. You know, running a big business as much. And then when the pandemic it sort of [00:02:00] changed everything, I guess, because I'm sure you know, like a lot of people weren't going to gyms to do workouts. And I've moved my studio to my home and I've been teaching there ever since. And that, that's been working out great. But I also, during that time Since I've always been a vegetarian, I've been interested in cooking and I was always kind of wondering if I was getting the right things for my body. So I did an integrative nutrition health coaching certification program, and I just, I love that. So I've been bringing that, into my work since then and it's been a, a really nice, I think combination. It complements the Pilates because most people that are, you know, interested in exercise like Pilates for their health are interested in being healthier overall, you know, in every way. So it's a nice, it's usually the same kind of people that are interested in both things.[00:03:00] John Platte: Wonderful. So how did that was that a was that a difficult transition when scaling down? You have to make tough choices. Can you tell me about any stories from, from that episode? Meghan Del Prete: Oh gosh. Yeah, it, that was the hardest thing I've ever done, like in my whole life, because I John Platte: Hmm. Meghan Del Prete: worked so hard for so long to build my business and, you know, to make a change like that is really, it's really hard. One of my clients gave me a Brene Brown book and she said, know, A change like this is like experiencing a death, you know, there's like a grieving, and you know, definitely it felt like that. I felt like I let a lot of people down. There was a lot of clients that were mad. There was staff that was mad. I mean, it was, and I'm a people pleaser personality. I like to think [00:04:00] of myself now as like a recovering people pleaser. Cause I think that was like a, a hard step when you're always trying to make everybody happy to do, like, to make a tough decision like that, that you know is the right thing for you. Then you deal with the fact that a lot of people are not happy with you, you know? But it really was, it was a good situation. My, like, I, I did enjoy a lot of the a lot of the parts of running a business, like the marketing I thought was fun. I have a background in graphic design and I felt

Katie Camarro says she has the sweetest job in the world. She and husband Jeff Shinaman founded and co-own Sundaes Best, a brand of hot fudge sauces and other natural ingredient chocolate products that came right out of the family kitchen. Katie wanted to make gifts for her business clients, something handcrafted and personal. She used a secret recipe from her mother-in-law and started sharing hot fudge. She went to her first show in November 2001 and sold every jar of her Sundaes Best hot fudge sauce. Before long her product was on store shelves and she was fully committed to this new business. Katie, thanks for coming on today. Katie Camarro: John, thanks for having me. I'm so happy to be here. John Platte: That was super brief version, but tell me how you got started. Katie Camarro: That's pretty much it. Your, the bio is pretty spot on. I have always worked in manufacturing, sales [00:01:00] working with people, bringing their products to market. And in 1995, my father and I had a long conversation. I was working in a job grossly underpaid, loved the stuff that I was doing, but I was just, but there was some bumps along the road. And he said to me, Katherine, he's the only one that called me Katherine, he said, why don't you do something for yourself? And I thought you've, he said, basically what he said was, you've worked for enough jerks in your life. Why don't you do something for yourself? And, and then, then shortly thereafter, he passed. And, and I was thinking about it and I'm like, you know, maybe he's right. Maybe I should start something. So, I love marketing, I love sales management. And I was in, in, in a showroom in Los Angeles at the gift show. And a rep that I worked with said to some vendors that were there, they said, oh, do you know katie Camarro? She could probably help you out with what you need to do. And they said, do you do any consulting, Katie? And like a lightning bolt from heaven. I said, [00:02:00] yes, yes I do. I had no idea what consultants did, but I said hmm, I can do it, probably. So I started a consulting uh, Timber Springs Marketing, which was specializing in brilliant ideas. And so what I did for small businesses, which is very common, I think, still even today, even though I don't do that anymore, is that the sales end of the deal is so important. Obviously we wouldn't all be here if we wouldn't have sales. So that always seems to get pushed into the backseat, you know, or into the trunk or on the bumper or dragging behind the vehicle or whatever, because there's always a little fires to put out and things to do. And I said to myself, well, hiring a national sales manager, which is a job that I did for a long time, is an expensive commitment and most small businesses don't have the capital or the wherewithal, or they're not at that point. So what I started with Timber Springs was a consulting business that helped bring small entrepreneurs, bring products to the marketplace. [00:03:00] And I specialized in specialty gift and paper stationery, in that industry because that's what I worked in and that's where I was. So now that I'm in the food business, we call the reps brokers, but in the gift business, we call them sales reps. So you, you gather up commissionable sales reps, you get a sales team together, you make sure they have everything they need to go out and do their job, and then you just connect people. It's a network of people connecting, you know, and, and I have to say, it's a very fun job. It's very frustrating sometimes, but, anyhow, I did that. And so my very first year when I started my business, I'm like, oh, at holiday time I said, I really wanna give handcrafted gifts. So it was like it was, my mom is a great cook. She's a terrible baker, but my mother-in-law, she can bake and sweets and confections. Oh, it's another reason to be in that family. So I was very blessed. So I called her up and I said, Hey, Marilyn. You know, I really wanna make something for ho

André Kreft, owner and founder of Savor, grew up in a home where meals were celebrations. He was raised to believe that eating is an essential part of living, but the utmost appreciation for good things that which we take, give and share with grace. Andre, thanks for coming today. André Kreft: Thank you for inviting me. John Platte: So tell me how you got started. André Kreft: We lived in a 10 room house in a small Milltown in Connecticut, and the recession hit and there was nowhere to go and what to do. Through grief and being stuck in Connecticut and not knowing what to do next you know, I couldn't sell my house. I wasn't moving to Hawaii right away. Through that transition and trying to adjust to a new life I [00:01:00] decided to start a small business and see where it would go, and I started with small farmer's markets continued further. People liked the product, and moved into larger farmer's markets, got more interest, found some help with from people and hired some people and just continued forward on that. From that we also, I started doing a larger events, garlic festivals. I met a lot of different vendors, which offered a lot of support. Including Rocker Box Spice, who we now use some of their product. Our cookies are shortbread and we also do dried fruit and candied fruit Right now. Some of those fruits are from, or we use in our cookies. The, the flavors we do range from like coconut, ginger, lavender chai, ginger.[00:02:00] Birch beer, maple syrup, cranberry to rosemary lemon, that we make logs and we roll those logs in sea salt so that there's salt on the rim of it. And it's kind of like a margarita. Dried Shall Wow. Wow. Hot pepper and onion hot pepper, coconut and lime. So, you know, we do a variety and it's really interesting to see culturally how people react. The English detest our birch beer ones because it reminds them of anointment that they put on their body called germline something I never knew until I was at a farmer's market and a group of English people started. I don't know, what would you call it? Ewing gasping about the, the flavors. And I asked them, well, would you like to Stop eating it, and they go, oh no, we love it. You know, if I yell Cardimum in a room, every Swedish person will come running to tell me that they're Swedish and [00:03:00] that they love Cardimum. So it's, it's been a really interesting process that way. I, I've. I grew up very shy, and working with people and communicating with people has been really interesting and it brings back that idea of celebration of food one-on-one interaction. I see a lot of people in public who just are unhappy and they don't smile, and one of my goals was in my grief. Was to see people smile or try to make people smile. And that occurred pretty much when I'd offer them a cookie and they accepted it and they really enjoyed the taste of it. Not everyone did, but most did. John Platte: So was it a straight line? You kind of hung out a shingle. How did you find your first customers and how did you get started? André Kreft: It wasn't a straight line and I don't think anything ever is. I, I, [00:04:00] in business I find it very, not challenging, but interesting in that there's an ebb and flow just like in nature. And to continue and follow in that path is very important. I look forward. Different paths just in case and different options only for the fact that what I would like to have happen, what I would like to project, doesn't necessarily occur. How can I say? There's lots of times where I think, oh, we're going to make. A lot of production this year and sales are growing, sales are happening. Then all of a sudden there might be covid or what have you, and to be very. Cautious and to be very open to any and all obstacles that occur because they will occur. [00:05:00] And I had a friend who was a visual artist and stayed a visual artist. And she said, it's not the rejections that are a problem. It's when people say yes. Mm-hmm. And th

April Weygand is a business owner and former teacher. She has a bachelor's degree in education from the State University of New York at Geneseo. She attempted to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail in 1996, which ended because of injuries. After moving to North Carolina to pursue teaching, she attempted another thru-hike in 1998. April moved back to Wilton, New York in 1999 and started her cleaning company, April Fresh Cleaning. Now, 24 years later, she is selling her company to her staff and has started writing. She wrote a chapter last year in an anthology called The Path compiled by Cathryn Mora of Change Empire Books. Trail Gimp is April's first book about her trials and adventures on the Appalachian Trail, also published by Change Empire Books. The book will be released in May, 2023. She currently lives in Wilton, New York [00:01:00] with her husband Brian. They have two teenage children, Madison and Tyler. April, thank you for coming on today. Pleased to have you with me. April Weygand: Oh, you're welcome. Thanks for having me. John Platte: Can you tell me a little about what you do at April Fresh? April Weygand: I own and run April Fresh Cleaning. We're a commercial cleaning company in Saratoga Springs. And I've been running this for 24 years. This is our 24th year this year. John Platte: Wow. How did you get started? April Weygand: In a roundabout way. I used to teach school down in North Carolina and I ended up through a series of events, ended up moving home to Saratoga and I didn't wanna teach anymore, and so I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was switching careers and I had no idea what I was qualified for and no idea what I was good at. I had been wanting to teach my entire life, so this was something new, [00:02:00] not doing that, and I was offered a job cleaning an office once a week and it was just enough to make my car payment and that was fine. I was living with my parents and just needed to make enough to make my car payment. And then I found a real job during the day, but I kept the office cleaning job, then they, that company quickly expanded. So I was cleaning one day a week, and then I went to three days a week. Then I went to five days a week, and then I went from four hours a day to six to eight. It became a full-time job while I had a full-time job, I just hired somebody to help. And then I hired somebody else to help and I eventually left my day job and just expanded this... somehow started a cleaning company. It's something I was really, really good at. And with my teaching background, I can explain, I can train staff very well. [00:03:00] It just kind of, sort of happened. It wasn't planned. Nobody, very few people planned to run a cleaning company because it's difficult. But somehow I started it and I'm good at it. And here we are 24 years later. John Platte: So what are some of the challenges that people run into and that you were able to get past? April Weygand: So one of the challenges is it, it's a kind of job that can't be done remotely. Which made, especially during the pandemic, made finding staff extremely challenging. So we actually have to show up and clean. And if you don't, the client gets upset. So the first thing is we actually have to show up. And when we show up, we have to show up when we're supposed to show up, we can't just say, oh, I, I don't feel like working tonight. Um, my, you know, my kid is sick. I'll, I'll just work tomorrow. W we can't just do that because tomorrow we have other plans and the [00:04:00] client may have plans for the office tomorrow, so it has to be cleaned when they think it's gonna be cleaned. So that's the biggest challenge, making sure the schedule is set and people show up for that. And then the second challenge is finding people who actually like to do this kind of work. Very few people like to clean, but there are some people that love to clean and organize and make sure things look great. So we have to find those people. And then you'r

Raema Obbie shares how she went from a hobby to 10 years of making a product as a solo entrepreneur with a niche product—natural garlic powder.

How do you elicit raw feedback from strangers? What do you do when that feedback isn’t what the client was hoping to hear? What do smaller businesses need to know about market research? Neal Sandin founded 643 Research, performing market research for clients and partners across a wide variety of fields and industries.