How retired Air Force veteran Lisa Ducharme is helping veterans turn decades of military training, leadership, and resilience into an advantage in entrepreneurship.

Leaving the military doesn't mean leaving behind the skills that made you successful there. For Lisa Ducharme, the bigger challenge is helping veterans recognize just how valuable those skills can be in the business world.

In this episode, Levi sits down with Lisa Ducharme, retired Air Force veteran, business strategist, author, and Executive Director of the Massachusetts Veterans Chamber of Commerce. After serving more than 20 years in the Air Force, Lisa experienced firsthand the challenges of transitioning into civilian employment before eventually finding her way into entrepreneurship and veteran business advocacy.

Lisa shares the story of her military career, including how a decision originally made with her sister led to more than two decades in the Air Force. Her work in casualty affairs placed her in the middle of several major events, including the Khobar Towers bombing and 9/11, where her previous training allowed her to step into the casualty response at the Pentagon.

She also explains why transitioning out of the military can be so difficult. Veterans spend years learning leadership, problem solving, discipline, and how to accomplish a mission, yet Lisa believes the transition process often focuses too heavily on turning them into employees instead of helping them recognize how those abilities can translate into leadership and entrepreneurship.

Lisa's own entrepreneurial journey wasn't planned. After being laid off and exploring everything from hospitality to 3D animation and photo art, a veteran representative suggested she start a business. That idea eventually brought her deeper into the veteran entrepreneurship community and ultimately led to the creation of the Massachusetts Veterans Chamber of Commerce.

The conversation also explores one of Lisa's biggest lessons for entrepreneurs: you have to be willing to pivot. She discusses why businesses need to test their ideas, prove that a concept is viable, build the right foundation, and recognize when something simply isn't working.

Finally, Lisa shares her approach to practical AI for small businesses. Rather than chasing every new platform, she encourages business owners to use a small number of tools that solve real problems. More importantly, she explains why technology should never eliminate the human relationships that make a business memorable.

For veterans considering entrepreneurship, business owners navigating change, or anyone trying to figure out how AI fits into their company without losing the human side of business, this conversation offers a look at how leadership, adaptability, resources, and relationships can shape the next stage of a career.

Massachusetts Veterans Chamber of Commerce: https://www.massvcc.org/

Lisa Ducharme: https://lisaducharme.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisaducharme/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisaducharme2020/

Andy Fankhauser shares how lessons from banking, business risk, and resilience inspired a new approach to helping local entrepreneurs grow.

For many small business owners, the opportunities that could help them grow are often the same opportunities they can't afford to access.

In this episode, Levi sits down with Andy Fankhauser, founder of Aqua Luxury Consulting and Micro Expo My City, to discuss two sides of entrepreneurship that are often overlooked: protecting what you've already built and creating affordable opportunities to grow what comes next. Drawing from a career largely spent in banking, Andy shares how experiences during COVID changed his perspective on business preparedness and eventually inspired him to help entrepreneurs build stronger foundations.

Andy shares how graduating with a dual business degree in 2008 immediately challenged the career path he had envisioned. He entered the workforce during a major economic downturn and ultimately spent much of his career in banking, where he gained a firsthand look at the financial realities facing individuals, families, and business owners.

Those lessons became especially powerful during COVID. While working as a banker, Andy met grieving family members whose loved ones had built successful businesses but hadn't adequately prepared for what would happen if they were suddenly gone. Families that had depended on those businesses for their income could find themselves unable to access company funds or continue operating the business they knew very little about. Those experiences became part of the inspiration behind Andy's consulting work and his focus on helping owners prepare for risks before a crisis occurs.

The conversation then turns to Micro Expo My City, Andy's effort to rethink the traditional business expo for smaller, local entrepreneurs. Instead of requiring businesses to travel to major convention centers and spend thousands of dollars on booths, hotels, travel, and staffing, Andy wants to bring the expo directly into local communities.

His philosophy centers on two ideas: accessibility and affordability.

Micro Expo My City is designed around smaller events featuring roughly 50 to 70 vendors, with workshops, demonstrations, seminars, networking, and opportunities for businesses to connect directly with their local communities. Andy explains that the entry-level vendor option starts at $150 using a "bring your own booth" approach, dramatically lowering the barrier for entrepreneurs who might otherwise never consider exhibiting at a traditional trade show.

For Andy, that accessibility is especially important for the entrepreneur building something on the side, the recent graduate struggling with the job market, the longtime corporate employee suddenly facing a layoff, or the local business owner who simply doesn't have five figures available to gamble on an expo with an uncertain return.

Rather than asking people to travel to the expo, Andy's goal is to bring the expo to the people.

He discusses working with cities throughout Southern California and exploring venues such as local colleges and community college parking lots to keep operating expenses lower. The long-term vision isn't a single annual event either. Andy wants Micro Expo My City to move between communities regularly, giving local businesses recurring opportunities to increase visibility, meet potential customers, generate leads, and develop relationships.

The episode closes with a deeper conversation about entrepreneurship, faith, perseverance, and what happens when life refuses to follow the plan.

Andy shares the "Story of Perhaps," a reminder that something that appears disastrous today may ultimately lead somewhere unexpected tomorrow. Whether it's graduating during a recession, navigating COVID, losing a job, experiencing financial setbacks, or watching a carefully constructed plan fall apart, Andy believes those are the moments when grit, resilience, and perseverance matter most.

For entrepreneurs building something without unlimited resources, this episode is a reminder that opportunity doesn't always need to be bigger to be better. Sometimes growth starts by making the right opportunities more affordable, more accessible, and closer to home.

🌐 Micro Expo My City: http://www.microexpomycity.com/

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/microexpomycity/

💼 Aqua Luxury Consulting: Andy also discusses his consulting company in the episode, which focuses on helping business owners strengthen their financial foundations and prepare for risks they may not see coming.

Scientist and health equity leader Dr. Eugene Manley Jr. explains how neurodivergence, life experience, and workplace systems can cause talented people to be misunderstood instead of empowered.

What happens when someone has the talent to succeed, but doesn't fit the expectations of the system around them?

For Dr. Eugene Manley Jr., that question is deeply personal. Growing up in inner-city Detroit as a first-generation scholar with undiagnosed ADHD, Eugene often felt like an outsider. He eventually earned degrees spanning mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, and molecular and cell biology while building a career in biomedical research, health equity, and cancer advocacy.

In this episode, Levi sits down with Eugene, scientist, speaker, author, and founder of the SCHEQ Foundation, to explore how those experiences shaped his understanding of perseverance, leadership, neurodivergence, and the ways organizations can unintentionally lose talented people.

Eugene shares how becoming a caregiver at a young age forced him to take on responsibilities most children never experience. Caring for family members while navigating school taught him about empathy, perseverance, and a lesson he still carries today: what someone shows on the outside may not reflect what they are going through internally.

He also opens up about growing up with undiagnosed ADHD and receiving a diagnosis at 27. Looking back, the diagnosis helped explain why he processed situations differently, recognized patterns others might miss, and often struggled with environments that expected everyone to communicate, behave, and work in the same way.

The conversation then turns toward the workplace. Eugene argues that companies can lose high-performing employees not because those people lack ability, but because their differences are misread. Someone who continually identifies problems in a process, for example, may initially be valued for their energy and insight but later viewed as difficult when those observations challenge the status quo.

Eugene shares practical ideas for building environments where different types of employees can perform at their best. That includes understanding that people may need different communication styles, providing clear written instructions when appropriate, applying expectations consistently, and examining whether the values leadership promotes actually match employees' experiences inside the organization.

He also discusses his book, Too Much and Not Enough: Neurodivergence, Race, and Broken Systems, which he describes as part memoir, part leadership guide, and part systems critique. The book explores what it means to repeatedly feel like you don't fit the expected mold while also challenging organizations to consider how many high-performing people they may be overlooking.

The conversation ultimately returns to the idea of grit itself. Perseverance can help people survive difficult circumstances, but Eugene argues that constantly having to fight through unnecessary barriers isn't the goal. Sometimes growth means identifying what can be changed, removing unnecessary stress, and recognizing when staying in a difficult environment is no longer the right answer.

For business owners, leaders, managers, and anyone who has ever felt misunderstood in the workplace, this episode offers a different perspective on talent, leadership, resilience, and what it takes to build environments where people have the opportunity to do their best work.

🔬 SCHEQ Foundation: https://scheq.org/

💼 LinkedIn: Search for Eugene Manley Jr.

📖 Book: Too Much and Not Enough: Neurodivergence, Race, and Broken Systems