Maine Thrive Voices

Sandy Smith
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Maine Thrive Voices highlights the people, businesses, nonprofits, and community leaders helping Maine communities thrive. Through conversations, interviews, and local insights, we explore stories about business, wellness, community growth, local events, and the people making a difference across Maine. Episodes feature local business owners, healthcare professionals, nonprofit leaders, community organizations, and voices from regions throughout the state — including the Penobscot Valley, Kennebec Valley, Casco Bay, and beyond. Produced by Maine Valley Voices Media.

  1. Oct 22

    Living the Life I Choose — Jennifer Goddard, Thriving Proof

    Jennifer Goddard came to Maine from New Jersey for her grandchildren, won the USOA Mrs. Maine 2025 crown on her second try, and built Thriving Proof in Bangor on one belief: your health is not a hand you're dealt and stuck with. It's something you get to influence. Jennifer is the owner and practitioner at Thriving Proof, a functional health practice at 33 Penn Plaza in Bangor, where she works alongside Dr. Cassandra Generlette, a board-certified family physician who runs a Direct Primary Care membership. In this Community Voices conversation, Jennifer and Sandy talk about: • Four grandbabies, a slower pace, and the culture shock of leaving New Jersey • "Do something that scares you": how a message she thought was spam led to the Mrs. Maine crown • Letting her hair go white in public, and aging gracefully as a platform • Why Thrive Health & Wellness became Thriving Proof • The patient story that turned a BNI connection with Dr. Generlette into a partnership • Driving school, not the body shop: functional medicine explained with a car analogy • Thermography, PEMF, BrainTap, and DNA analysis, the tools most people in Bangor have never heard of • "The biggest lie I had ever been told," and why your health isn't a crapshoot For Jennifer, thriving means living the life she chooses to live, not the one she's told she has to live. She shares that root-cause path in her new book, "Thriving Proof: You Were Never Meant to Just Survive." Recorded September 16, 2026. Connect with Jennifer and Thriving Proof: • Thriving Proof: thrivingproof.com (book a free call with Jennifer) • Purchase Jenn's book, "Thriving Proof: You Were Never Meant to Just Survive" • Community profile: penobscotvalleythrive.com/detail-page/thriving-proof Read the companion Insight on Maine Thrive Insights: mainethriveinsights.com/jennifer-goddard Listen and follow on every platform: pod.link/1896782233 Maine Thrive Voices is produced by Smith Digital Solutions, LLC in Bangor, Maine. Learn more at smithdigitalsolutions.com. Your companion Insight article "Living the Life I Choose" is a written feature on Maine Thrive Insights that tells Jennifer's story for readers.. Read it here: mainethriveinsights.com/jennifer-goddard. The article follows our conversation in eight short sections: 1. Four Grandbabies and a Slower Pace 2. Do Something That Scares You 3. Aging Gracefully 4. Why Thrive Became Thriving Proof 5. The Final Straw 6. Driving School, Not the Body Shop 7. Tools Most People Have Never Heard Of 8. "It Doesn't Matter" Is the Myth

    Living the Life I Choose — Jennifer Goddard, Thriving Proof

  2. Oct 8

    If It's in Your Head, It Dies With You — Lisa Liberatore, Upstart Maine

    Episode 15 of Maine Thrive Voices continues the Community Voices chapter with Lisa Liberatore, Program Manager and Entrepreneur in Residence at Upstart Maine, and the person many call Maine's entrepreneur ecosystem connector. Lisa has started, built, and sold a tea company, a burrito restaurant in Gardiner, and Bangor's first coworking space. Her secret is a goal most owners never set: "I wanna be replaceable." In this conversation, she and Sandy talk about: • What an ecosystem connector actually does, and why meeting with her through Upstart Maine is free • Going from career counseling to Baxter Tea Company to Lisa's Legit Burritos, with customer discovery on every customer who walked in • Building CoWork, Bangor's first coworking space, with Dr. Jason Harkins • The pandemic pivot into real estate, and keeping your "head on a swivel" • Her book Power of Transparency, and why naming what's going on makes hard times easier • What founders most often get wrong when they go looking for capital • Her systems work as Vice President of the Animal Orphanage in Old Town • Why the Bangor region needs more "collisions" Her advice for any Maine owner who wants to thrive, not just survive: think about your exit now. Document your systems. Know your numbers. Because if the business lives only in your head, "then it dies with you." Recorded August 19, 2026. Connect with Lisa and Upstart Maine: Upstart Maine: https://upstartmaine.org Meet with Lisa: https://upstartmaine.org/meet-lisa/ Power of Transparency: https://www.poweroftransparency.com The D-Max Effect: https://www.thedmax.com Read the companion Insight on Maine Thrive Insights: https://mainethriveinsights.com/lisa-liberatore Listen and follow on every platform: Maine Thrive Voices is produced by Smith Digital Solutions, LLC in Bangor, Maine. Learn more at smithdigitalsolutions.com.

    If It's in Your Head, It Dies With You — Lisa Liberatore, Upstart Maine

  3. Sep 30

    From Rivals to "We're Doing It" — Molly Hooper & Paige Teel, Tides to Pines

    Maine Thrive Voices opens its Community Voices chapter with its first two-guest episode. Before there was a Tides to Pines, Molly Hooper and Paige Teel ran the two biggest competing property management companies in Rockland. Today they run one company together: Tides to Pines, a Rockland-based, full-service vacation rental management company caring for roughly 485 Maine homes. Molly is CEO and Paige is Chief Experience Officer. In this conversation, Molly, Paige, and Sandy talk about: • How COVID turned two rivals into allies, then friends, then co-founders • What they learned working inside a national corporate operator, and why they left to bring back personal service • Why Airbnb and VRBO are marketing channels, not managers, and what full service really means • "Two clients in every transaction": caring for homeowners and guests at the same time • How two partners with "one brain cell" work through disagreements on paper, with humility • The hardest lesson of their first years: when your gut says something isn't right, change it now • Why "Maine is just one big small town," and why they've turned down offers to expand out of state • Growing with guardrails, from Brunswick to Acadia to Moosehead, and what's on the map next The only scoreboard that matters to them is the guest who drives home saying, "That was the best vacation ever — we can't wait to come back." Recorded September 9, 2026. Connect with Molly, Paige, and Tides to Pines: Tides to Pines: https://tidestopines.com Read the companion Insight on Maine Thrive Insights: https://mainethriveinsights.com/molly-hooper--paige-teal Listen and follow on every platform: https://pod.link/1896782233 Maine Thrive Voices is produced by Smith Digital Solutions, LLC in Bangor, Maine. Learn more at smithdigitalsolutions.com.

    From Rivals to "We're Doing It" — Molly Hooper & Paige Teel, Tides to Pines

  4. Sep 11

    It’s What I Was Born to Do

    Nancy Marshall trademarked herself. The PR Maven® has spent more than four decades in public relations,and this year Marshall Communications — whose client list reads like a tour of the Maine economy — celebrates its thirty-fifth anniversary. Episode 13 opens a new chapter of Maine Thrive Voices with our one-of-one Founding Ambassador, andit’s the story of how a teenage girl from Maine flew to Pittsburgh, shadowed the woman running PR at Westinghouse headquarters, and came home announcingexactly what she was going to do with her life. From there: the Sugarloaf years under PR dynamo Chip Carey — a live Good Morning America broadcast from the mountain, a page-one Wall Street Journal story, walking into The New York Times without an appointment. Flip Day with Bill Green in Class V whitewater. Taking her own name off the door in 2018 to shine the light on her team. Why personal branding matters just as much for the plumber in Hermon as it does for a CEO.And the argument at the heart of her third book, due out in weeks: old-fashioned public relations is exactly how a Maine business gets found by AI. Read the companion Insight: https://mainethriveinsights.com/nancy-marshallVisit Marshall Communications: https://marshallpr.comAll episodes: https://pod.link/1896782233

    It’s What I Was Born to Do

  5. Sep 2

    Episode 12 — The Sign Meaghan Staples Asked For

    Episode 12 — The Sign Meaghan Staples Asked For Guest: Dr. Meaghan Staples, DPT, Owner, Refine PhysicalTherapy (Hermon, Maine)   Dr. Meaghan Staples grew up a gymnast and college polevaulter in small-town Minnesota, tore her ACL, rehabbed her way back, and knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life. Seven years of schooling later, travel physical therapy sent her — almost at random — to Lincoln, Maine. Thenshe met a Mainer. And as she says, it's nearly impossible to get a Mainer to leave Maine. So here she is.  In this conversation, Meaghan shares how she went out on her own with exactly one client on grand opening day, and the remarkable moment that turned a general outpatient practice into Greater Bangor's home for women's pelvic floor physical therapy: she asked for a sign that this was herpath — and got one the very next day, unprompted, from a client who came in for knee pain.  She explains in plain language what the pelvic flooractually is, why "just do Kegels" is so often the wrong advice, and why guarded, tense muscles need to lengthen before they can strengthen. She shares the statistic that stops people cold — sixty percent of women over theage of twenty experience bladder leakage — and describes her favorite day in the clinic: early jumping day, when clients discover their bodies can do what they'd been told to just live without.  And she looks ahead: a growing team, women's groupstrengthening classes, and a robust prenatal and postpartum program — all in service of one message for the women of Greater Bangor: it's never too late.   Connect with Dr. Meaghan Staples and Refine PhysicalTherapy: Website: https://www.refinephysicaltherapy.com Read the companion Insight on Maine Thrive Insights: https://mainethriveinsights.com/dr-meaghan-staples Explore Meaghan's profile on the Maine Thrive CommunityNetwork: https://penobscotvalleythrive.com/detail-page/refine-physical-therapy-llc Maine Thrive Voices is produced by Smith Digital Solutions,LLC in Bangor, Maine. Follow the show: https://pod.link/1896782233

    Episode 12 — The Sign Meaghan Staples Asked For

  6. Aug 27

    Adam Barker-Hoyt Did The Math

    Episode 11 — Adam Barker-Hoyt Did the Math Guest: Adam Barker-Hoyt, Owner, MAC Heat Pumps (Bangor, Maine) Fifteen years ago, Adam Barker-Hoyt was a university mathematics instructor who had never heard of a heat pump. Today he runs one of Maine's most trusted heat pump companies — an A+ BBB-accredited operation serving the entire state, with a 4.9 average across more than five hundred Google reviews. In this conversation, Adam takes us from his unpaid year apprenticing under heat pump expert Jim LaBrecque, through the rebate boom that grew MAC Heat Pumps 600% two years running, into the brutal stretch when competition flooded the market and he worked fourteen-hour days just to make payroll. He shares the values that carried the company through, gives his refreshingly honest answer on whether a heat pump can handle a Maine winter (spoiler: keep a backup), and explains why heating with a heat pump has stayed cheaper than oil every single year he's been in business — even when oil was at its cheapest. And he lays out the mission that keeps him going: standing against the throwaway culture by repairing units others won't touch, refurbishing old systems for a second life, and proving that the climate case, the community case, and the business case are all the same case. Connect with MAC Heat Pumps: Website: https://macheatpumps.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MACHeatPumps Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/macheatpumpsme/ Phone: 207-947-3851 Read the companion Insight article on Maine Thrive Insights: https://mainethriveinsights.com/adam-barker-hoyt Maine Thrive Voices is produced by Smith Digital Solutions, LLC in Bangor, Maine. Learn more at smithdigitalsolutions.com.

    Adam Barker-Hoyt Did The Math

  7. Jul 24

    I would love for us to go out of business because no one needed our help. That would be a lovely day.

    "I would love for us to go out of business because no one needed our help. That would be a lovely day." That's Suzan Prendergast, Executive Director of the Bangor Humane Society, after eighteen years leading the shelter that serves thirty-five Penobscot Valley towns — and it tells you everything about how she sees the work. In this episode of Maine Thrive Voices, host Sandy Smith sits down with Suzan for one of the most honest conversations you'll hear about what really happens inside an animal shelter. Before BHS, Suzan spent years with the Red Cross in disaster relief and emergency response — training that shows up in shelter leadership more than you'd ever guess. She talks about her son growing up in the kennel halls, what "no-kill" actually means and doesn't mean, the post-COVID surge that filled all forty-two kennels, and why a shelter that is roughly eighty percent donor funded depends on its community every single day. In this conversation: - The Red Cross years — and how disaster response training built a shelter leader - The honest truth about no-kill, straight from the person who lives it - What the post-COVID surge did to shelters across Maine - Forty-two kennels, thirty-five towns, one small team - The Partners for Peace partnership and the work most people never see - Paws on Parade and how Greater Bangor can actually help - Why the toy bin matters more than you think - The answer that gave this episode its title How to help the Bangor Humane Society: Adopt, volunteer, donate, or join them at Paws on Parade. Details at the website below. LINKS Bangor Humane Society: https://www.bangorhumane.org Read the companion Insight — "I'd Love to Go Out of Business": https://mainethriveinsights.com/suzan-prendergast Suzan's Community Profile on Penobscot Valley Thrive: https://penobscotvalleythrive.com/detail-page/bangor-humane-society Maine Thrive Voices is produced by Smith Digital Solutions, LLC in Bangor, Maine. Learn more at smithdigitalsolutions.com.

    I would love for us to go out of business because no one needed our help. That would be a lovely day.

  8. Jul 23

    The Letter That Brought Chris Mendoza to Maine

    Chris Mendoza's life changed with a piece of mail. He was living on Long Island, working in retail, engaged to be married — and then a hand-written letter arrived from his grandfather Jack, who had run The Appliance Doctor in the greater Bangor area for 36 years and believed Chris was the right person to carry it forward. Chris and his fiancée Dorothy read it together, took the leap, and moved to Maine in 2016. In this episode of Maine Thrive Voices, host Sandy Smith sits down with Chris to talk about learning the trade from a man who could diagnose a machine by ear, the three years they worked side by side before Jack's passing in 2019, and what it means to carry a legacy through kitchen doors all over the Penobscot Valley — where customers still remember Jack by name. Along the way: the Long Island-to-Maine culture shock, what "kind, honest service" actually looks like on a service call, the appliances that give Maine homeowners the most trouble (laundry on well water and refrigerators lead the pack), a pet-hair maintenance lesson from Sandy's own washer, why Chris urges people to list working appliances on Facebook Marketplace instead of throwing them away — and the phone number that has never changed: the same Hudson-Bradford line his grandfather answered. Reach The Appliance Doctor: Call or text: 207-327-1000 Website: https://appliancedoc.org Community profile: https://penobscotvalleythrive.com/detail-page/appliance-doctor-inc Read the companion Insight on Maine Thrive Insights: https://mainethriveinsights.com/chris-mendoza Maine Thrive Voices is produced by Smith Digital Solutions, LLC in Bangor, Maine. Learn more at smithdigitalsolutions.com.

    The Letter That Brought Chris Mendoza to Maine
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About

Maine Thrive Voices highlights the people, businesses, nonprofits, and community leaders helping Maine communities thrive. Through conversations, interviews, and local insights, we explore stories about business, wellness, community growth, local events, and the people making a difference across Maine. Episodes feature local business owners, healthcare professionals, nonprofit leaders, community organizations, and voices from regions throughout the state — including the Penobscot Valley, Kennebec Valley, Casco Bay, and beyond. Produced by Maine Valley Voices Media.

Information

  • Creator
    Sandy Smith
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    16
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Sandy Smith
  • Show Website
    Maine Thrive Voices