Interviews

Audrey Wisch: Raised Millions for Her College Mentorship Business- EP. 162

Beat the Often Path, Interviews

“I needed to make money and I had more time on my hands so I decided to start tutoring. I reached out to a bunch of families, sent my resume around and found some students to tutor and started working with a seventh grader and a ninth grader. Working with them, observed how disengaged and uninspired they were with what they were learning in school and how they were absorbing and regurgitating what they were reading in a textbook but they didn’t know why they were learning what they were learning. So that inspired me to apply what they were learning in school to my own passions, in hopes of igniting the imagination for what they could pursue and why, and got them really jazzed up about learning.”

Charlie May: The Man Behind ‘Xpander’ Who Changed Electronic Music – EP. 161

Beat the Often Path, Interviews

“The year was 1999 and a game was released called Wipeout 3, a game that you might be familiar with. I didn’t know much about the electronic music scene. I didn’t know anything. I was playing on a friend’s PlayStation One, and this game looked like the future. And you can see that that aesthetic has still stuck with me. I didn’t put up this background just for you. That’s a vibe that I’ve always sort of lived in, this semi-dystopian, futuristic world. Some things are going to be bad, other things are going to be nice. We’re going to have flying cars, but we’re not going to have trees anymore. That’s sort of the feeling that I had. And I noticed that every time I played that game, one song would come on and it just sounded like the future to me. I just knew in an instant, this is the future. That’s what the future sounds like. I looked on the back, I tracked down the CD and of course, its Xpander, one of the most iconic tracks of all time from Sasha. That song, it became my anthem.”

Zak Lefevre: Raising $30 Million for EV Charging Software – EP. 160

Beat the Often Path, Interviews

“I’m the co-founder and CEO of Charge Lab. We are a software startup. We build software for managing EV charging stations. And so the way to think about an EV charger or an electric vehicle charger is it’s basically like a gas pump, but for an electric car. And now that millions of Americans and people around the world are switching from driving gasoline vehicles to driving EVs, which are much more sustainable and tech forward, there’s a huge need for refueling those vehicles. And one of the really interesting things about EV infrastructure is you’re no longer constrained to kind of go into a gas station that has a giant tank of petrol underground that you pump up into your vehicle. You can actually charge your electric car at home in your condo, in your apartment building, at your office building. If you’re a fleet, instead of going out to gas stations, you can charge at your depot.”

Tommy Linstroth: Building a $ Multi-Million Co. in Eco-Construction – EP. 159

Beat the Often Path, Interviews

“Do you want to have an inefficient, unhealthy building? Is that where you want to live? Right? No, it doesn’t make any sense, right? Call it green, call it efficient, whatever you want. To me, a lot of it’s about the messaging. And I’m a firm believer in climate change. And, I’ve spent a lot of time on it. But if you don’t, I’m not going to change your mind. I mean, that’s the thing, right? It is politicized. You’re either one side or the other. So you can yell at me and I can yell at you or we can change the frame of it. And to me I did that a long time ago. And it was, I didn’t want to argue about it, but I could tell you that, ‘Look, do you want to have lower utility bills? Do you want to save money? Do you want to be in a high-performance healthy building or a low-performance unhealthy building? Do you want healthy air quality?’ When you frame it like that, I mean, I don’t care, all of those will result in lower greenhouse gas emissions, but it’s also going to give you these other things that you will appreciate and benefit. And who cares if I’m wrong and climate change isn’t an issue, but you still have a healthier building and are spending less, that’s still a good thing, right?”

Tony Selvaggio: Recycling Old Tech to Make Computer Labs for Kids – EP. 158

Beat the Often Path, Interviews

“One of the things that I realized, because of my background, is that when we started recycling all of these computers from your regular attorney office, your real estate guy that had just upgraded five computers, is that these computers, when I saw them, it was kind of a culture shock, Ross, because they were pretty new. I come from a country where you keep the same computer for like 20 years, right? And from a generation that you keep upgrading. And then when I noticed that these computers were pretty new, and if they had not met me at that time, they would probably end up in the trash.”

Paige Peters: Turning Raw Sewage into a Multi-Million-Dollar Business – EP. 156

Beat the Often Path, Interviews

Hydroponic farming for those that don’t know is growing plants in water instead of soil. It’s a way of growing crops 2 to 3 times more quickly using 90% less water, no pesticides or chemicals. It is a much more sustainable and resource efficient way. And it also allows you to grow plants indoors. And so I was introduced to this concept through a project at the University of Virginia where I was studying, and we were basically looking at how to build these farms in refugee camps. And that was the original projects, part of the social entrepreneurship program. And through that I was like, ‘Well, micro farming is possible.

Alexander Olesen: Raising $8 Million for Self-Contained Vertical Farming – EP. 155

Beat the Often Path, Interviews

Hydroponic farming for those that don’t know is growing plants in water instead of soil. It’s a way of growing crops 2 to 3 times more quickly using 90% less water, no pesticides or chemicals. It is a much more sustainable and resource efficient way. And it also allows you to grow plants indoors. And so I was introduced to this concept through a project at the University of Virginia where I was studying, and we were basically looking at how to build these farms in refugee camps. And that was the original projects, part of the social entrepreneurship program. And through that I was like, ‘Well, micro farming is possible.

Masachs Boungou: Fleeing Civil War in the Republic of the Congo and Becoming a Ph.D. in the U.S. – EP. 154

Beat the Often Path, Interviews

“I think I am kind of on the mission of discovering my mission on this earth, probably back home because I think back home there are quite a lot to do. There are villages that do not have cleaning water. There are a lot of young people who survive the civil war do not have economic opportunities. And they don’t have access to educational opportunities as well. So to me, I am trying to find a bridge between America and home.”

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