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Business Owners Tell All

Business Owners Tell All

Di: Jamie Seeker
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On The Seeker Solution Podcast, your host, Jamie Seeker encourages business owners to tell all! They'll share not only their expertise, but their stories and their purpose and what it takes to run a successful business. We cover a wide range of topics – the good and exciting, the challenges and sometimes the ugly. Experiences and lessons learned that our guests have faced along the way. We believe that every person has a unique message which can make a positive impact . We let our guests share on the subjects they’re well-known for. No matter the topic, you’ll be hearing real stories from real people. *This podcast is not affiliated with any other show of the same or similar name. Business Owners Tell All: What It Takes is a project of Seeker Solution, featuring conversations with real business owners.Copyright 2026 Jamie Seeker Economia Gestione e leadership Leadership Management
Episodi
  • We Built It Bigger. Then We Built It Better

    We Built It Bigger. Then We Built It Better
    Oct 15 2026
    In this episode of Business Owners Tell All: What It Takes, Victor Huynh, cofounder and CEO of Ready Artwork, shares what more than 22 years in business have taught him about learning, adapting, and staying relevant through constant change.Victor and his cofounder Emily started Ready Artwork almost accidentally. Both had full time jobs when freelance design projects began piling up. Eventually, they decided they were young enough to take the risk, make mistakes, and go back to traditional employment if the business failed. Pasted textTheir original business centered on graphic design, packaging, branding, and print. When the financial crisis brought business nearly to zero, they were forced to reinvent themselves. They recognized an opportunity between technology focused web companies that lacked design expertise and designers who lacked technical expertise. That became Ready Artwork’s next evolution. Over time, the company continued adding and removing services as the market changed until it found another sweet spot serving technical B2B and industrial companies. Pasted textThat pattern of reinvention became one of the central themes of the conversation. Victor describes Ready Artwork’s 22 year journey in one word: pivoting. Rather than viewing change as an interruption to business, he sees the ability to change as fundamental to surviving in business. Pasted textVictor also discusses the latest major disruption facing his industry: AI. He compares the current transition from traditional search to AI driven answers with the earlier transition from search engines such as Yahoo and AOL to Google. While the technology feels revolutionary, Victor believes businesses that have lived through previous digital shifts recognize a familiar pattern. The platform changes, customer behavior changes, and companies have to learn how to become relevant within the new environment. Pasted textThe conversation also explores how AI is changing talent and development inside agencies. Work that was previously outsourced can increasingly be completed with AI, which means Victor believes agencies must move toward higher level strategy and become even more human centered. Technology can handle more execution, but he sees human relationships, judgment, guidance, and communication as increasingly important differentiators. Pasted textVictor shares another important learning point from his partnership with Emily. Early in the company, they were both doing essentially the same creative work. Victor eventually made the difficult decision to step away from the creative work he loved and focus on sales and client relationships while Emily concentrated on creative and production. That division allowed each founder to develop a distinct role and helped accelerate the company's growth. Pasted textEven after decades in business, Victor continues having to challenge his own preferences. One example was remote work. Although both founders prefer working in the office, Victor realized the company needed to become more flexible. After trying hybrid work and finding that managing it created additional complexity, Ready Artwork moved toward remote work while maintaining office space for employees who want it. Pasted textVictor ultimately brings the conversation back to the lesson that has defined his entrepreneurial career: business owners have to embrace change. His answer to what it takes to be a business owner is simple: pivot, adapt, and recognize that refusing to change eventually means being left behind. Pasted textKey Episode NotesPrimary theme: Learning and DevelopmentStrong secondary themes: Adaptability, continuous learning, AI, business evolution, cofounder dynamics, specialization, changing workforce expectations, remote work, human connection.Victor’s business journey: Freelance graphic design → print and branding → financial crisis → websites → SEO → digital advertising → B2B industrial specialization → AI driven marketing evolution. Pasted textBiggest Learning and Development takeaway: Learning is not presented as formal training. Victor’s story demonstrates organizational learning through continuous experimentation, recognizing when something no longer works, developing new capabilities, abandoning services that are not a fit, and changing individual roles as the company evolves.Strongest founder lesson: Victor had to stop doing creative work he loved so that he and Emily could develop complementary roles. He moved toward sales, relationships, and company direction while Emily focused on creative, production, and strategy. Pasted textStrongest current business insight: AI may make lower level execution easier and cheaper, but Victor believes that increases the importance of strategy and human connection rather than eliminating them. Pasted textSignature answer: What does it take to be a business owner? Pivoting and embracing change. Victor says that is the essence of business because, “If you don’t ...
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    22 min
  • Growth Creates Problems. Strategy Creates Scale.

    Growth Creates Problems. Strategy Creates Scale.
    Oct 8 2026
    Eddie DeAngelis’s story is ultimately about learning through experience and becoming a different kind of leader as the business grows. He began more than 30 years ago selling imitation perfume and cologne in Northeast Philadelphia, eventually building retail and wholesale operations, spending nearly two decades in screen printing and embroidery, and later transitioning into commercial finance. Pasted textA major theme throughout the conversation was Eddie’s willingness to acknowledge what he did wrong for years. In his earlier businesses, he believed he needed to touch everything himself: every large sale, client relationship, order, and decision. Looking back, he believes his inability to delegate kept those companies from growing beyond roughly $2 million in revenue. Learning to build a team rather than remaining at the center of everything became one of his biggest leadership lessons. Pasted textLearning & Development NotesHiring is part of development. Eddie said his earlier approach was essentially to find someone quickly, hire them, put them to work, and expect them to learn as they went. QualiFi now treats hiring as an actual process, using multiple interviews, multiple perspectives, prepared questions, assessments, and post interview feedback. His lesson is that investing more time before hiring dramatically improves what happens afterward. Pasted textYou cannot develop motivation into someone who does not have it. Eddie admitted that he used to retain underperformers for 12, 18, or even 24 months because he believed he could eventually motivate them. One of his biggest lessons was recognizing that motivation has to come from within. Leaders can train, support, coach, and create opportunity, but the employee has to want it. Pasted textDevelopment does not stop after onboarding. QualiFi now provides six to eight weeks of structured training. Eddie and his daughter created the training manual, and they use interactive tools such as Kahoot to keep people engaged. After formal training ends, employees continue receiving significant management support. Eddie described having three sales managers supporting 19 sales representatives and still feeling that additional support could be valuable. Pasted textListening is part of leadership development. Eddie contrasted his current leadership style with the traditional CEO who dictates how everything should be done. He now sees tremendous value in listening to employees who are closest to customers, partners, and day to day operations. QualiFi intentionally tries to create a culture where everyone has a seat at the table and can challenge something that is not working. Pasted textCulture became real to him only after seeing a larger organization operate. Eddie said that five years earlier he would have considered culture little more than a buzzword. His experience after his prior brokerage was acquired exposed him to a larger corporate environment with departments, managers, systems, processes, and a deliberate focus on people. That experience heavily influenced how he later built QualiFi. Pasted textGreat people can materially change a small company. One of Eddie’s strongest observations was that just two excellent hires can change the trajectory of a small business. He has watched highly motivated employees and managers elevate not only performance but even his own energy and thinking as the owner. Conversely, two poor hires can pull the organization in the opposite direction. Pasted textAdditional Business LessonsEddie repeatedly connected people development to systems and processes. His philosophy today is to look at each component of the company almost as its own business. Hiring has a process. Onboarding has a process. Training has a process. The client journey has a process. He recommends mapping the customer's experience from the first point of contact through the final outcome and continuously improving each stage. Pasted textHe also emphasized client experience as a competitive advantage. One lesson he carried forward from former Nav Technologies CEO Greg Ott was to continually focus on the client experience. Eddie's takeaway was that when a company builds a great product, makes customers happy, improves its process, and gets incrementally better, financial results become a byproduct. Pasted textTechnology is another component of development and scale. QualiFi has used API integrations and other technology to turn processes that once required multiple people and 15 to 30 minutes into tasks that can now happen in roughly a minute. His point was not that technology replaces people, but that the right technology allows good people and good processes to perform significantly better. Pasted textSignature Question: What Does It Take to Be a Business Owner?Eddie’s answer centered on resilience.He connected his ability to navigate entrepreneurial chaos to his childhood experience growing up in a family affected by addiction. He believes those ...
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    37 min
  • Reverse the Process: Turning an Industry Problem Into a Business

    Reverse the Process: Turning an Industry Problem Into a Business
    Sep 3 2026
    In this episode of Business Owners Tell All: What It Takes, Boris Zhukov, Co-Founder and CEO of LetYouKnow®, shares how his background in economics, statistics, and mathematics helped him build a marketplace designed to reverse the traditional buying process.Boris explains that his vision goes beyond simply making car buying more convenient. His goal is to shift transactional power toward consumers, allowing them to research the market, determine what they are willing to pay, and instantly discover whether a seller will accept their offer. Convenience and eliminating negotiation are benefits, but Boris repeatedly emphasizes that they are byproducts of the larger objective: empowering consumers to take control of transactions and save money.The conversation also explores the strategic challenge of getting dealerships to participate in a model that initially appears to compete with their existing sales. Boris explains that LetYouKnow was intentionally structured to provide incremental business rather than replace a dealer's normal sales channels. Dealers establish hidden pricing thresholds that operate automatically, allowing transactions to occur without manually reviewing individual bids. The platform also generates demand data from unsuccessful bids, which businesses can use to evaluate pricing and potential demand.One of the larger strategic themes of the episode is building for expansion from the beginning. Boris says LetYouKnow intentionally started with automotive because of its complexity. By solving for a difficult industry first, the company could create infrastructure capable of expanding into restaurants, hotels, storage, services, and potentially virtually any other industry without continually rebuilding the underlying system.Boris also discusses how the company's strategy has evolved since 2019. One significant lesson came from initially expecting dealerships to actively manage their pricing within the system. He eventually concluded that this was neither feasible nor desirable. Feedback from dealership owners, including some who became shareholders, pushed the company toward creating a hands-free, automated system instead.That feedback also revealed an opportunity Boris had not originally anticipated: the value of unsuccessful bids as demand data. Rather than seeing only completed transactions, businesses could potentially understand transactions they could have had at different price points and use that information to improve pricing decisions.The discussion ultimately moves from process management into leadership. Boris says one of the skills he had to develop was recognizing individual team members' strengths and weaknesses and positioning people accordingly. He credits much of LetYouKnow's evolution to surrounding himself with experienced business owners, shareholders, and advisors who could challenge assumptions and contribute practical expertise.When asked what it really takes to be a business owner, Boris identifies optimism, perseverance, hard work, honest evaluation of progress, and the willingness to keep solving difficult problems. Rather than viewing obstacles as evidence that something is going wrong, he argues that genuinely difficult problems can be evidence that a company has reached the frontier where meaningful innovation happens.Key Episode NotesCore theme: Process Management / StrategyMajor discussion points:Boris's economics, mathematics, and statistics background became foundational to building LetYouKnow's marketplace and matching methodology.His motivation is not simply eliminating an unpleasant dealership experience. He wants consumers to control transactions and get better deals instantly.LetYouKnow's model is designed so businesses establish hidden thresholds rather than manually accepting or rejecting individual bids.Boris views the platform as a source of incremental business, rather than a replacement for a company's existing sales process.Missed bids create valuable demand data by showing businesses transactions that potentially could have occurred at other prices.The long-term vision extends beyond automotive into restaurants, services, hospitality, storage, nonprofits, and other industries.Boris uses opportunity cost as a framework for strategic decision-making and expansion.Starting with automotive was intentional because solving for a complicated industry created infrastructure that could later support simpler industries.A major operational pivot was moving away from expecting dealerships to continually manage their own pricing toward creating a largely hands-free system.Dealer and shareholder feedback became an important source of product and process innovation.Boris learned that leadership requires understanding people's individual strengths and putting them in positions where those strengths can produce the best results.He believes meaningful progress should be measured over longer intervals rather than expecting visible results every day.Difficult ...
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    39 min
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