Wings of Inspired Business

Melinda Wittstock

Women entrepreneurs are changing the game of business, stepping into our authentic feminine power and growing consciousness to start and scale great companies. Listen to Wings to learn from women who've "been there, built that" with 7, 8 and 9-figure businesses, even billion dollar Unicorns. You'll learn how to manifest the mindset, mojo and money to create, grow and scale a business aligned with what makes your heart sing. Wings is hosted by Melinda Wittstock, a 4-time serial entrepreneur, tech visionary and award-winning journalist. Melinda focuses where personal and business growth meet, her insightful interviews with inspiring female founders and businesswomen providing actionable tips to help listeners to real and tangible results. These innovators, influencers, and investors all share their success secrets, epiphanies, and practical advice on how to get the confidence, connections and capital so you too manifest the success of your dreams in life and in business.

  1. 3d ago

    Operation Phoenix: How Entrepreneur Kayla Rodriguez Graff on Hard Things and Healing with Honey

    Kayla Rodriguez Graff got a 'no' from the patent office, 'no' from the FDA, and another 'no' from Medicare, and now her biotech company SweetBio® is FDA-cleared, patented in almost 20 countries, reimbursed, and in clinics across the country with $12 million in financing. CEO Kayla co-founded the company with her brother, turning manuka honey and collagen into a dissolvable sheet that helps the body repair. Kayla shares how she and her team white boarded "Operation Phoenix" to figure out reimbursement not clearance was their true value metric, plus how a COVID test inspired a product patients apply at home. We also talk about the "pre-mortem" exercise she runs every year ("what if we're wildly successful, or we've died?"); and how she built a company and three children at the same time without choosing between living and building. Passionate about policy and advocacy for women, Kayla serves on several boards supporting these efforts and recently presented at the U.S. Senate on Women Entrepreneurship. 🔑Key Takeaways🔑 🍯 🩹 Honey, Collagen and a Phone Call: Kayla's brother, a biomedical tissue engineer, had spent three years combining two trusted wound-care materials into something greater than its parts. Her four tests before saying yes: is the need big enough, will people pay, can we make it for less than we sell it for, and can we protect it. 🚫 🔥 Three No's and Operation Phoenix: The USPTO said no, the FDA said no, Medicare said no. The morning after the FDA rejection the team whiteboarded a twelve-month plan to pivot from dental into wound care and had clearance in ten. "When you believe you can make a difference, you find the way around. You burrow under. You fly over." 💰 📋 The Real Milestone Is Reimbursement: FDA clearance feels like the moment that changes a company's trajectory. It isn't, without a clear, proven reimbursement path. Kayla would raise against reimbursement, not clearance, if she did it again. $12 million raised, two clearances, patents in almost 20 countries, multiple reimbursement codes and a randomized trial, because she had no choice but to be capital efficient. 🔮 🛶 Dangerously Optimistic, So Run a Pre-Mortem: Entrepreneurs are a canoe that can turn with the tide, and they are dangerously optimistic. Kayla's team imagines the year has ended in either a billion-dollar headline or a funeral and asks what happened. A COVID test that trained millions through pictures became the model for VERIS, a daily dissolving sheet patients apply at home. 👩‍👧‍👦 🌱 Living and Building: Company in 2015, engaged the same year, married in 2016, first baby in 2017, "I've only known chaos." She left San Francisco for Memphis to prove you can build something extraordinary without killing yourself, judges balance by the month rather than the day, and keeps the grace to be kind to herself. 🎙️Subscribe to Wings and get the full Show Notes at https://bit.ly/Wings1006 More about Kayla at SweetBio® https://www.sweetbio.com/

  2. Oct 20

    Your Brain Has One Bank Account: Entrepreneur Sarah Deane on Human Energy, Burnout and Sustainable Peak Performance

    Sustainable high performance, says Sarah Deane, comes down to capability times culture times capacity to execute. Most leaders have the first two. The third is the one nobody measures: do you actually have the cognitive and energetic resources to access the thinking you're being paid for? A former AI engineer who led the worldwide employee workplace experience program at HP for 320,000 people and now teaches at Stanford Continuing Studies, Sarah spent the better part of a decade following the data until she could quantify human energy, then founded MEvolution in 2021 to do only that. Today she explains the capacity continuum and why 80 percent is the threshold for resilience, why performing without capacity is borrowing from a loan shark whose interest always comes due, why the wrong hire is worse than no hire, why AI demands exactly the resource people are running lowest on, and the formula she lives by: Net capacity equals energy gains minus energy drains. 🔑Key Takeaways🔑 🧠 ⚡ Capability x Culture x Capacity: Knowing how to do the job and working somewhere that lets you are not enough. Growth mindset, sound judgment and creativity are brain systems you can only access when you have the capacity, and capacity sits on a continuum where about 80 percent is the line between resilient and fragile. 🏦 📉 One Bank Account for Your Brain: Show up and perform without the energy for it and your brain borrows, from stress, adrenaline or autopilot. That's a loan shark. The interest shows up as a reactive moment, a poor decision, a skipped workout, a strained relationship, until there is nothing left to borrow. Most people only notice when the borrowing stops. 🧮 🌿 Net Capacity = Gains Minus Drains: You can meditate, sleep seven hours and eat well and still end the day depleted if the drains are bigger. The largest drain is what is going on in your mind, and the biggest single source is misaligned expectations. Accept reality first, then choose. And keep the non-negotiable Sarah time every night, dishes or no dishes. 👥 🚫 The Wrong Hire Is Worse Than No Hire: Especially the first few. MEvolution's EMQ assessment places a person on the continuum, names the patterns that would give them more capacity, and matches that to what the role will demand. Teams that do it together end up with a shared language for their blockers. 🤖 🎯 AI Needs Humans Who Can Think: Every AI mishap traces back to a human decision made somewhere, and quality of thinking requires capacity. This is the first year Gallup has found more American workers struggling than thriving. "Are we scared of AI, or are we saying we don't trust the humans making the choices?" 🎙️Subscribe to Wings and get the full Show Notes at https://bit.ly/Wings1005 More about Sarah at MEvolution

  3. Oct 13

    Health Insurance is "Gaslighting" You: Entrepreneur Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs on the Alternative She's Built to Protect Your Health and Build Your Wealth

    Health insurance now eats around 30 percent of the average American family's after-tax income, about $35,000 a year for a family of four, and what you get for it is a $5,000 to $10,000 deductible and the right to file a claim someone else may deny. Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs calls it the biggest gaslighting project in recent history, and she would know: she has spent 21 years inside life and health insurance, ranks among the top 175 independent insurance producers in the United States (fewer than 3 percent are women), and built Quantum Insurance Services from a cell phone and a laptop in 2013 after tripling her boss's business and being told a maternity leave was "really like a paid vacation." So, she founded Ionava, a healthcare fintech built on 400 million life years of mortality and morbidity data: a Vault that unlocks $300,000 to $1 million in cash if the big what-if happens, and a Wallet, funded by 70 percent of your subscription, that you can spend anywhere on health and wellness, that rolls over, earns interest, and pays you more the healthier you get. Today Jennifer shares how it works, why the private sector will fix healthcare before Congress does, the coaching that finally got her funded, and her theory of who writes checks to women. 🔑Key Takeaways🔑 💰 🏥 The Vault and the Wallet: How Ionava splits protection from spending. A Vault reserved at $300,000, $700,000 or $1 million that pays cash on a terminal, critical or chronic diagnosis, and a Wallet that takes 70 percent of your subscription, spends anywhere in health and wellness with no network and no prior authorization, rolls over, earns interest, and goes with you at 65. 📈 🌱 A Good Driver Discount for Your Body: Sleep, hydration, mental health, community and early screenings raise your health score, and your health score raises the interest rate on the money you haven't spent. Skin in the game changes behavior; Ionava pays you for it. 💸 🔎 Cash Is Cheaper Than You Think: A doctor takes home about $65 for an office visit inside an insurance network. Jennifer's own cataract surgery cost $10,000 cash with the best surgeon in Beverly Hills, versus $10,000 out of pocket on top of $15,000 in premiums, with the insurer choosing her lenses. Cash rates now match or beat insured rates, and most people don't know it. 🚀 📱 A Cell Phone, a Laptop and a Citrine Crystal: Why Jennifer left the boutique whose business she'd tripled, squatted in an unused corner of the building, held a crystal for courage on scary calls, and grew Quantum 37 percent in year one while the Affordable Care Act cut commissions from 20 percent to as little as zero. 👩‍💼 ⚖️ Competent Until Proven Otherwise: The credibility gap in fundraising, why a coach told her to say "Princeton" in the first 30 seconds, the Wall Street friend who taught her to write ten-word emails, and her hot take on which investors will never hear a woman's pitch no matter what she delivers. 🎙️Subscribe to Wings and get the full Show Notes at https://bit.ly/Wings1004 More about Jennifer at Ionava www.ionava.com

  4. Oct 6

    The Success Lie: Entrepreneur and Investor Chantell Preston on Women, Wealth and Investing in Women

    Women make most of the purchasing decisions, and on the receiving end of the largest wealth transfer in history, some $40 trillion in the next decade. We're writing more philanthropy checks, but less so when it comes to investing, especially in women-led startups. Chantell Preston is done being polite about it. A serial healthcare entrepreneur with multiple exits, including Mentis Neuro Health, she is the founder and CEO of the family office Preston Partners, co-owner of the San Francisco Signal pro volleyball team, lead partner of Portfolia's Active Aging and Longevity Funds, and author of the new book The Success Lie: Reframing Your Reality to Thrive Personally and Professionally. She also hosts the Get Real Get Results podcast, a professional and personal development show which focuses on ambitious professionals—especially women—to redefine success on their own terms. She's been named as one of America's Top 100 Women to KNOW and to the Entreprenista 100. Today she shares why Gen X women were never taught about money and how to fix that now, what she looks for before she invests, how she and her partner brought 75 women into sports ownership with them, and why the definition of success she had chased for 25 years turned out to be someone else's. 🔑Key Takeaways🔑 💰 📈 Women Investing in Women: Why so many accomplished women donate but don't invest, the "don't worry, somebody will take care of you" lie at the root of it, and how to start now: a finance group that works like a book club, a fund rather than a single startup, and minimums as low as $10,000. 🏐 🤝 Open the Door, Then Pull Them Through: How Chantell and her partner Jess Wolf secured the San Francisco Signal in League One Volleyball as lead investors and then brought 75 women in with them, whether the cheque was $25,000 or $25 million, so that women owning women's sports becomes the norm, not the exception. 🔎 🧐 What a Family Office Actually Looks For: Bet on the jockey. Is the founder coachable? Do they have an exit strategy? Do they know who is going to pay? And the instant red flag: "there's nothing like it out there." 🪞 ✨ The Success Lie: Chantell had the money and the title by her early forties and called it the darkest time of her life. Why success now means peace of mind and control of your time, and why you get to rewrite rules you never agreed to. 👩‍👧 ⚖️ Balance Is a Lie. Integration Is Real: Quality time over quantity time, Sunday logistics meetings at home, letting your kids see the bad days as well as the good, and the grief nobody warns you about when you sell your company. Her advice? Stop chasing perfection and start building self-worth; learn to say no earlier and more often, and focus on ownership not just income. 🎙️Subscribe to Wings and get the full Show Notes at https://bit.ly/Wings1003 More about Chantell at Preston Partners Get The Success Lie Listen to Chantell's podcast Get Real Get Results

  5. Sep 29

    Reinventing Corporate Events: Entrepreneur Laila Marshall on Transforming Concierge Service into Scalable Tech

    Laila Marshall is the Founder & CEO of Beebizy, a B2B event management SaaS built for the lean teams running events that drive real business revenue. A previously exited founder in on-demand healthcare technology, Laila brings a rare combination of practitioner depth and product vision — having personally produced 500+ events before building the software she always wished existed. Based in Los Angeles, Laila is currently in active enterprise conversations with brands like Marriott, Hilton, and Eleventy Milano, while raising a seed round to fuel the next phase of growth. She also serves on the General Leadership Council of the Ayana Foundation, which focuses on capital access and development programming for female founders. 🔑Key Takeaways🔑 🚀 🤝 Turning Event Nightmares into Seamless Success: Planning events, whether for 2 or 2,000 people, can be overwhelming, so learn how even "non-event planners" can create and run impressive gatherings in minutes. Hint: Software and repeatable proven processes are key for finding reliable vendors, staying on budget, and organizing across all departments. ✨ 🤖 Building Software from the Ground Up: Why Laila built Beebizy as a concierge service, planning 500+ corporate events and using every pain point as a jumping off point to build a scalable software platform built on customers' real-world needs and challenges focused on everything from transparent budgeting, remote site planning, vendor discovery and management, and analytics reporting. 💰 📈 Fundraising and Female Founders: Why warm introductions from other founders to investors is critical to success in raising angel and venture capital, and why even if you're not ready to raise, it's important to start cultivating those relationships and networks asap. 🎉❤️Face-To-Face is Valuable: Why events are increasingly important for any company's marketing, sales and customer success, as more people crave genuine connection.  🎙️Subscribe to Wings and get the full Show Notes at https://bit.ly/Wings1002 More about Laila at Beebizy www.beebizy.com

  6. Sep 25

    Venture Capital for Women: Naseem Sayani on Catalyzing an Ecosystem of Women Investing in Women Founders

    Naseem Sayani is a venture capitalist and the CEO and founder of GCWC and GCWC Capital. She also hosts The Capital Flex podcast, highlighting the stories of female founders raising money for their startups. Previously a GP at Emmeline Ventures, Naseem is on a mission to educate women about venture investing, and catalyze an ecosystem where women are writing checks to support their entrepreneurial sisters. We talk about how 100,000 women, each with a $50,000 check, could revolutionize venture with a $50 billion fund. 🔑Key Takeaways🔑 🏟️ 💵 The $50 Billion Stadium: Naseem's math: 100,000 accredited women, $50,000 each, is $50 billion into venture, "a sports stadium of people." What it takes: Education about venture, an annual investing allocation for investing in women-founded startups, and female fund managers working together. 💪✨Volume Creates Change: If more women pooled resources—even at modest check sizes—we could move billions in venture capital, funding more women-led innovation and leveling the playing field for the next generation. 🎯 🤝 Build Powerful Networks & Share Opportunities: Connecting women with each other to share knowledge, resources, and opportunities is foundational. Stronger communities mean more collaboration and less isolation, enabling collective success. Plus, how to overcome deeply embedded ideas about scarcity and competition between women that stand in the way of collective power and progress.  💪 🦋 Financial Fluency Matters: Understanding financial tools—from investment terms to strategic use of leverage—is crucial. Moving beyond "treasurer" roles into "co-CFO" positions in households and businesses allows women to take charge of generational wealth-building. 💰 📈 The Numbers Don't Lie: Women-founded companies deliver 2.5x the returns, generate 78 cents of revenue per dollar invested against 31 cents for men, burn 15% less capital, exit six months faster, and made up 24.3% of US venture exits in 2024 on less than 2% of the funding. As Naseem puts it, "that's not the takeaway." Imagine how much bigger these businesses would be if they were funded. "This isn't charity; I'm here to make money." 🎙️Subscribe to Wings and get the full Show Notes at https://bit.ly/Wings1001 More about Naseem: GCWC Capital · The Capital Flex Podcast

  7. Sep 22

    Who Gets the Money? Seven Women on Raising Capital, Returning It, and Building Our Own Fund

    Episode 1000. Almost a decade ago I started Wings of Inspired Business to change the power dynamic for female founders, who to this day receive less than 2% of venture capital while delivering 2.5 times the returns. So, for the thousandth episode I gathered seven women who have lived it: Rajia Abdelaziz (invisaWear), Lindsey Mignano (Mignano Law Group), Clare Baukham (The Billionaire Woman), Ungenita Prevost (Ungenita Beauty), Trixy Castro (TRX Capital) and Deborah Sass (SpaceVrse), bookended by venture investor Naseem Sayani (GCWC Capital). The subject: money. Who gets it, why, what to say when an investor hesitates, and how women could put $55 billion into venture without asking anyone's permission. 🔑Key Takeaways🔑 💰 📈 The Numbers Don't Lie: Women-founded companies deliver 2.5x the returns, generate 78 cents of revenue per dollar invested against 31 cents for men, burn 15% less capital, exit six months faster, and made up 24.3% of US venture exits in 2024 on less than 2% of the funding. As Naseem puts it, "that's not the takeaway." Imagine how much bigger these businesses would be if they were funded. 🎯 🤝 Qualify Your Investor as Hard as They Qualify You: After 99 no's, Rajia flipped the pitch: "I'm going to be as selective about you as you are about me." Lindsey on why a term sheet is a long-term marriage, "all collaborative until it's not," and the five questions to ask before you take the money. 🗣️ 💡 Rewrite the Pitch: How Rajia went from safety statistics to "that could be your daughter, your granddaughter, or your wife," and sold a quarter of a million dollars in two minutes on Good Morning America. Plus, Clare's reverse-psychology close: "Don't put them on a pedestal. It's not for everyone," and my enterprise-sales version, "can you see any reason why you wouldn't want to do this?" 🚪 🛤️ Venture Isn't the Only Door: Lindsey on founder haircuts of 20% at seed and 16 to 17% at each round, why "an incredibly great, incredibly lucrative business" may not be right for VC, and the alternatives her clients use: crowdfunding, SBA loans, non-dilutive credit lines and revenue-based financing. Her own girlfriends' fund: 30 accredited women who pooled their money and got into a $300 million fund. 💪 🦋 Resilience, $52.27 and the Fearless Girl: Ungenita on the day she was down to $52.27 (she still has the bank slip), Trixy crying in front of the Fearless Girl statue on Wall Street and vowing to be that girl for everyone behind her, Deborah on why she will "always, always support other women in any freaking way I can," and Clare's butterfly: "that's not me anymore." 🏟️ 💵 The $55 Billion Stadium: Naseem's math: 100,000 accredited women, $50,000 each, is $55 billion into venture, "a sports stadium of people." From treasurer to co-CFO of your household, to an annual investing allocation, to female fund managers walking in together instead of as the exception. And why investing in women "is not charity. I'm here to make money." 🎙️Subscribe to Wings and get the full Show Notes at https://bit.ly/Wings1000 More about the guests: invisaWear · Mignano Law Group · Ungenita Beauty · TRX Capital · SpaceVrse · GCWC Capital · Clear Art Reserve

  8. Sep 15

    Smart Quitting: Entrepreneur Drea Lynn on How to Prepare, Position, Pivot, and Profit

    Drea Lynn is an attorney, former corporate COO, and author of Smart Quit who helps entrepreneurs escape burnout, scale with confidence, and take control of their business and life with The Smart Shift System®. She also helps professionals make the leap into entrepreneurship with a four-phase framework. After years leading teams inside high-growth organizations, she walked away from the corner office - and the six-figure salary - to build her own consulting business. The exit didn't go to plan: she landed in six figures of debt before rebuilding to half a million in revenue. Her mission is to help one million people quit smart, build bold, and live free. 🔑Key Takeaways🔑 💵Cash In, Clock Out: Knowing when to walk away from a job you've outgrown with a plan, not a panic, and how to master the mindset shift that helps you master your time freedom and grow wealth. Hint: It means being nimble, proactive, self-aware, and open to relentless learning. 💪 Prepare, Position, Pivot, Profit: Learn the 4 P's of the Smart Quit framework, including knowing when to walk away, and how to avoid the biggest mistakes most people make when they try to leave a job. 🛠️Preparation is power: Build a financial runway, assess your skills, and use your current role to gather relationships, skills, and systems to serve you in your future business.  💡 Profit isn't just money: True entrepreneurial "profit" is about building the life you want, not just the business. Consider your why and what freedom and fulfillment look like for you—otherwise, you risk building a new kind of prison for yourself. 🎙️Subscribe to Wings and get the full Show Notes at https://bit.ly/Wings999 More about Drea at How To Smart Quit https://www.howtosmartquit.com/ and at DreaLynn.co

4.9
out of 5
148 Ratings

About

Women entrepreneurs are changing the game of business, stepping into our authentic feminine power and growing consciousness to start and scale great companies. Listen to Wings to learn from women who've "been there, built that" with 7, 8 and 9-figure businesses, even billion dollar Unicorns. You'll learn how to manifest the mindset, mojo and money to create, grow and scale a business aligned with what makes your heart sing. Wings is hosted by Melinda Wittstock, a 4-time serial entrepreneur, tech visionary and award-winning journalist. Melinda focuses where personal and business growth meet, her insightful interviews with inspiring female founders and businesswomen providing actionable tips to help listeners to real and tangible results. These innovators, influencers, and investors all share their success secrets, epiphanies, and practical advice on how to get the confidence, connections and capital so you too manifest the success of your dreams in life and in business.