Lay of The Land Jeffrey Stern

Brendan Anderson and Donnie Bedney on their work at ScaleCo — a Cleveland-based entrepreneurship-through-acquisition organization that has invested more than $165 million in over 20 regional companies.
In our conversation today, we explore what entrepreneurship-through-acquisition even is, the advantages of buying a business over starting one from scratch, ScaleCo’s unique approach to unlocking value in partner companies, and why Donnie and Brendan have double-downed in ScaleCo’s commitment to investing locally in the Northeast Ohio region 
A long-time student of emerging business, Brendan Anderson began his entrepreneurial career in 1995 when he formed The Mast Group to provide management services across various industries. Later in 1996, he formed the Heartland Companies to purchase a distressed industrial park, and in 1998 he purchased Stam, Inc., a manufacturing company which he lead until 2005 as CFO, VP Sales, and Director. Transitioning from the operating world, in 2006, he founded Evolution Capital Partners to provide capital to growing companies where he invested over $100 million in 16 platform companies across three committed capital funds, and most relevant to our conversation today, in 2018, he formed ScaleCo to support the Evolution Capital portfolio companies. Now serving as Chairman of ScaleCo, Brendan is also an active member of the Entrepreneurs Organization of Cleveland and Entrepreneurs Across Borders, in addition to serving on the board of SOAR, an organization that helps young adults with ADD & ADHD.
Joining Brendan to represent ScaleCo, Donnie Bedney has spent his career across prestigious consulting and healthcare organizations, including Gallup and Press Ganey, as a workforce, human capital, and sales executive. Donnie joined ScaleCo in 2020 as an Operating Partner, taking on business development responsibilities in ScaleCo’s investment thesis around the human capital management business. In 2021, ScaleCo purchased PSP Metrics, Inc., a provider of employee assessment tools, where Donnie was named President.
Please enjoy my conversation with Brendan Anderson and Donnie Bedney
-----
Lay of The Land is brought to you by Ninety. As a Lay of The Land listener, you can leverage a free trial with Ninety, the platform that helps teams build great companies and the only officially licensed software for EOS® — used by over 7,000 companies and 100,000 users!
This episode is brought to you by Impact Architects. As we share the stories of entrepreneurs building incredible organizations throughout NEO, Impact Architects helps those leaders — many of whom we’ve heard from as guests on Lay of The Land — realize their visions and build great organizations. I believe in Impact Architects and the people behind it so much, that I have actually joined them personally in their mission to help leaders gain focus, align together, and thrive by doing what they love! As a listener, you can sit down for a free consultation with Impact Architects by visiting ia.layoftheland.fm!
-----
Learn more about ScaleCo — https://scaleco.com/
Connect with Brendan Anderson on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/andersonbrendan/
Connect with Donnie Bedney on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/thedonniebedney/
-----
For more episodes of Lay of The Land, visit https://www.layoftheland.fm/
Past guests include Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, Steve Potash (OverDrive), Ed Largest (Westfield), Ray Leach (JumpStart), Lila Mills (Signal Cleveland), Pat Conway (Great Lakes Brewing), Lindsay Watson (Augment Therapy), and many more.
Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up for Lay of The Land's weekly newsletter — sign up here.
Connect with Jeffrey Stern on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreypstern/
Follow Jeffrey Stern on Twitter @sternJefe — https://twitter.com/sternjefe
Follow Lay of The Land on Twitter @podlayoftheland
https://www.jeffreys.page/

Tanya Budler, Founder of Rise Together, on building an impact consulting firm based here in Cleveland that partners with civic, public, private, and nonprofit organizations to create systems-level change that enables and empowers international newcomers to join the local workforce.
Tanya is a people-centric problem solver with a unique background that blends private sector, government, and non-profit experience. She started her career building global youth programs, crafting international events, and facilitating leadership workshops in eight different countries. While the Harvard Graduate School of Education, she began exploring other sectors, including impact consulting for nonprofits. Tanya has since served in various levels of government, first as an Economic and Social Recovery Fellow in the Office of the Governor of Connecticut and most recently supporting workforce efforts in the US Department of Transportation.
Through these experiences, Tanya saw great power and opportunity in working at the intersection of all these sectors and decided to move back to the Midwest, originally from the farmlands of Nebraska and Missouri, after 10+ years on the East Coast — based here in Cleveland and serving the larger Northeast Ohio region, she launched Rise Together in January of 2022. Since then, she and her team have been working to create a welcoming workforce for international newcomers by developing policies, coalitions, and workshops that play to the community's assets and strengths.
In our conversation, we dive into Tanya's background and path to entrepreneurship and Cleveland, founding Rise Together, creating and growing a for-profit service organization, and her reflections and learnings throughout the journey. Please enjoy my conversation with Tanya Budler.
-----
This episode is brought to you by Impact Architects and Ninety. As we share the stories of entrepreneurs building incredible organizations throughout NEO, Impact Architects helps those leaders — many of whom we’ve heard from as guests on Lay of The Land — realize their visions and build great organizations. I believe in Impact Architects and the people behind it so much, that I have actually joined them personally in their mission to help leaders gain focus, align together, and thrive by doing what they love! As a listener, you can sit down for a free consultation with Impact Architects or leverage a free trial through Ninety, the software platform that helps teams build great companies, by visiting ia.layoftheland.fm!
-----
Learn more about Rise Together — https://www.risetogethercle.com/Connect with Tanya Budler on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanyabudler/
-----
For more episodes of Lay of The Land, visit https://www.layoftheland.fm/
Past guests include Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, Steve Potash (OverDrive), Ed Largest (Westfield), Ray Leach (JumpStart), Lila Mills (Signal Cleveland), Pat Conway (Great Lakes Brewing), Lindsay Watson (Augment Therapy), and many more.
Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up for Lay of The Land's weekly newsletter — sign up here.
Connect with Jeffrey Stern on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreypstern/
Follow Jeffrey Stern on Twitter @sternJefe — https://twitter.com/sternjefe
Follow Lay of The Land on Twitter @podlayoftheland
https://www.jeffreys.page/

Our conversation this week is with Lindsay Watson, CEO & Founder of Augment Therapy.
Augment Therapy was founded in 2017 when Lindsay — who is a pediatric physical therapist from Chagrin Falls, Ohio — was searching for a way to solve the problems she was experiencing in her own physical therapy practice. Lindsay had spent years working with children and was frustrated with the inefficiency of treating kids once a week, with no way to help them exercise on a daily basis for faster progress. And with that, Lindsay set out to find a way to encourage and motivate them to exercise and Augment Therapy was born.
Augment Therapy is an interactive software that uses the medium of augmented reality to engage kids to exercise. Using depth-sensing camera technology, Augment Therapy functions as a motivational tool, exercise prompt, and progress tracker for children needing therapeutic exercise – with no headsets or other wearables required. It can be used in the hospital and clinical setting or in the home environment – any place where added motivation is needed.
Augment Therapy looks like a game to the child, but solves real problems of exercise adherence – its portability and anywhere/anytime access make the completion of daily therapeutic exercise simple, convenient, and fun!
Originally published as episode 30 back in July of 2021, this conversation with Lindsay Watson was one of my favorite conversations to date! Lindsay’s passion for her work is infectious and I learned a lot from her story — when I re-listened to it in advance of republishing it today, I was struck by how inspiring and forward-thinking Lindsay’s work through Augment Therapy was, and still is today as she’s continued to grow the business and raised an additional million dollars of funding — all with the goal of improving the therapy experience for children and bringing increased innovation to the pediatric market at large. Please enjoy!

-----
This episode is brought to you by Impact Architects and Ninety. As we share the stories of entrepreneurs building incredible organizations throughout NEO, Impact Architects helps those leaders — many of whom we’ve heard from as guests on Lay of The Land — realize their visions and build great organizations. I believe in Impact Architects and the people behind it so much, that I have actually joined them personally in their mission to help leaders gain focus, align together, and thrive by doing what they love! As a listener, you can sit down for a free consultation with Impact Architects or leverage a free trial through Ninety, the software platform that helps teams build great companies, by visiting ia.layoftheland.fm!
-----
Learn more about Augment Therapy — https://augmenttherapy.com/
Follow Augment Therapy on Twitter — https://twitter.com/augment_therapy
Connect with Lindsay Watson on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsay-watson-pt-mpt-68103a134/ 
Follow Lindsay Watson on Twitter —  https://www.twitter.com/@lindsaywatson26
-----
For more episodes of Lay of The Land, visit https://www.layoftheland.fm/
Past guests include Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, Steve Potash (OverDrive), Ed Largest (Westfield), Ray Leach (JumpStart), Lila Mills (Signal Cleveland), Pat Conway (Great Lakes Brewing), and many more.
Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up for Lay of The Land's weekly newsletter — sign up here.
Connect with Jeffrey Stern on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreypstern/
Follow Jeffrey Stern on Twitter @sternJefe — https://twitter.com/sternjefe
Follow Lay of The Land on Twitter @podlayoftheland
https://www.jeffreys.page/

Dr. Onas Bolton — Founder and CEO of Octet Scientific, a specialty Cleveland-based chemical manufacturer unlocking the full power of safe, economical, and sustainable energy storage by providing better electrolyte chemistry for zinc and other aqueous batteries — on the potential for zinc-based batteries, the history of energy production, storage, and use, and how the work Octet Scientific is doing will facilitate our transition to carbon-neutral sustainable power!
Dr. Bolton is a 14-year veteran of the specialty chemicals industry with a PhD in materials science and specific expertise in organic electrochemistry. He is an experienced organic and materials chemist whose work has been published in prestigious scientific journals like the Journal of the Electrochemical Society, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and highlighted on the cover of Nature Chemistry and in the Economist. Prior to founding Octet, Dr. Bolton created new organic additives for Atotech, the world’s largest producer of chemicals to the electroplating industry.
At Octet, he and his team are working closely with a wide variety of zinc battery chemistries and manufacturers worldwide to continue to perfect zinc battery chemistry through novel additive development. Dr. Bolton began Octet by winning two highly competitive funding awards from the US National Science Foundation, based on the idea that establishing safe and sustainable zinc-based energy storage will require optimized additive chemistry and more recently, has closed over an additional $1 million in traditional venture funding led by Jumpstart here in Cleveland. Please enjoy!
-----
This episode is brought to you by Impact Architects and Ninety. As we share the stories of entrepreneurs building incredible organizations throughout NEO, Impact Architects helps those leaders — many of whom we’ve heard from as guests on Lay of The Land — realize their visions and build great organizations. I believe in Impact Architects and the people behind it so much, that I have actually joined them personally in their mission to help leaders gain focus, align together, and thrive by doing what they love! As a listener, you can sit down for a free consultation with Impact Architects or leverage a free trial through Ninety, the software platform that helps teams build great companies, by visiting ia.layoftheland.fm!
-----
Learn more about Octet Scientific — https://www.octetsci.com/about-octet/Connect with Dr. Onas Bolton on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/onas-bolton-693ba319/
-----
For more episodes of Lay of The Land, visit https://www.layoftheland.fm/
Past guests include Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, Steve Potash (OverDrive), Ed Largest (Westfield), Ray Leach (JumpStart), Lila Mills (Signal Cleveland), Pat Conway (Great Lakes Brewing), Lindsay Watson (Augment Therapy), and many more.
Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up for Lay of The Land's weekly newsletter — sign up here.
Connect with Jeffrey Stern on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreypstern/
Follow Jeffrey Stern on Twitter @sternJefe — https://twitter.com/sternjefe
Follow Lay of The Land on Twitter @podlayoftheland
https://www.jeffreys.page/

Anees Pretorius and Cono Onorato — co-founders of Bean ($1.7mm in funding) — on the pursuit of their vision to reimagine the global accounting industry and elevate the profession into the digital age.
Anees Pretorius, a former Big 4 Accountant, is the CEO of Bean, a market network for specialized accounting services. Originally from South Africa, Anees previously held positions at Deloitte in Cape Town and San Francisco, and later at EY in Cleveland. During his time as a consultant, he worked alongside High-growth and Fortune companies, providing compliance and strategic services. However, it was his experience in the Bay Area working alongside some of the most influential and technologically progressive companies in the world that inspired him to think beyond the traditional constraints inherent in accounting and financial services.
Cono Onorato is the CTO at Bean, with over 15 years of experience building, designing, and deploying apps across many industries, including finance, healthcare, and education. Cono worked as a consultant for Fortune 500 clients such as UPS, Coca-Cola, Chick-Fil-A, Verifone, and AT&T, where he deployed creative and engineering solutions. Cono also founded and built an app called Gitful, where he successfully scaled the company to service hundreds of thousands of users across the globe in less than four years.
In this episode, we dive into the arc of their careers, their paths to entrepreneurship, and how they joined forces to create Bean. We explore their original insights, the questions they asked, and their vision for the future of accounting. We unpack their approach to building in stealth mode and the advantages and disadvantages of it. We also discuss the history and current state of accounting, the implications of AI in accounting, and how Bean will bring about the future of accounting in the digital age! Please enjoy my conversation with Anees Pretorius and Cono Onorato!
-----
This episode is brought to you by Impact Architects and Ninety. As we share the stories of entrepreneurs building incredible organizations throughout NEO, Impact Architects helps those leaders — many of whom we’ve heard from as guests on Lay of The Land — realize their visions and build great organizations. I believe in Impact Architects and the people behind it so much, that I have actually joined them personally in their mission to help leaders gain focus, align together, and thrive by doing what they love! As a listener, you can sit down for a free consultation with Impact Architects or leverage a free trial through Ninety, the software platform that helps teams build great companies, by visiting ia.layoftheland.fm!
-----
Connect with Anees Pretorius on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/aneespretorius/
Connect with Cono Onorato on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/conoonorato/
Learn more about Bean — https://getbean.com/
Follow Bean on Twitter — https://twitter.com/one2bean
-----
For more episodes of Lay of The Land, visit https://www.layoftheland.fm/
Past guests include Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, Steve Potash (OverDrive), Ed Largest (Westfield), Ray Leach (JumpStart), Lila Mills (Signal Cleveland), Pat Conway (Great Lakes Brewing), Lindsay Watson (Augment Therapy), and many more.
Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up for Lay of The Land's weekly newsletter — sign up here.
Connect with Jeffrey Stern on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreypstern/
Follow Jeffrey Stern on Twitter @sternJefe — https://twitter.com/sternjefe
Follow Lay of The Land on Twitter @podlayoftheland
https://www.jeffreys.page/

Julia Solooki & Lior Shafir — the co-founders of Smart Soda, headquartered here in Cleveland — on revolutionizing the beverage industry!
The revolution is taking the water and soft drink industry by storm where for many consecutive years, carbonated soft drink sales have been in decline as an increasingly health-conscious society is demanding healthier alternatives in face of the $250 billion US soft drinks market.
Smart Soda is meeting that demand with a proprietary and functional beverage platform for major corporations, restaurants, offices, and retail, offering state-of-the-art beverage dispensing products serving healthy and delicious flavored sparkling water made with all-natural alkaline mineralized water, with the option for over 32 flavors utilizing organic cane sugar, vitamin infusion, and much more coming down the pike — to deliver everyday effervescence.
To date, Smart Soda has raised over $7mm building out the company, and has partnered with major brands like Sysco, BareBurger, 7-Eleven, and many others, all in pursuit of their vision to sustainably (WELL Standard adherent) create the best tasting and highest quality health-forward beverages.
Lior Shafir is an experienced executive in the water and beverage industry, with over 20 years in the field serving as the former Chairman and CEO of Aquatal and also as the former CEO of the exclusive US distributor of Soda Stream, the Israeli-based carbonated drink maker, which was acquired by Pepsi for $3.2 billion back in 2018.
Julia Solooki, now the president of Smart Soda, is focused on running and developing retail and online sales operation as well as strategically developing Smart Soda’s channel partner relations. Prior to co-founding Smart Soda with Lior, Julia held a series of leadership positions in the healthcare services arena in addition to serving on the board of education for the Healthcare Billing Management Association.
We cover a lot in this conversation — the proliferation and market for carbonated drinks, Julia and Lior’s commitment to sustainability, expansion plans, go-to-market strategy, and much more — please enjoy our conversation!
-----
This episode is brought to you by Impact Architects and Ninety. As we share the stories of entrepreneurs building incredible organizations throughout NEO, Impact Architects helps those leaders — many of whom we’ve heard from as guests on Lay of The Land — realize their visions and build great organizations. I believe in Impact Architects and the people behind it so much, that I have actually joined them personally in their mission to help leaders gain focus, align together, and thrive by doing what they love! As a listener, you can sit down for a free consultation with Impact Architects or leverage a free trial through Ninety, the software platform that helps teams build great companies, by visiting ia.layoftheland.fm!
-----
Learn more about Smart Soda — https://smartsoda.com/
Connect with Julia Solooki on LinkedIn
Connect with Lior Shafir on LinkedIn
-----
For more episodes of Lay of The Land, visit https://www.layoftheland.fm/
Past guests include Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, Steve Potash (OverDrive), Ed Largest (Westfield), Ray Leach (JumpStart), Lila Mills (Signal Cleveland), Pat Conway (Great Lakes Brewing), Lindsay Watson (Augment Therapy), and many more.
Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up for Lay of The Land's weekly newsletter — sign up here.
Connect with Jeffrey Stern on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreypstern/
Follow Jeffrey Stern on Twitter @sternJefe — https://twitter.com/sternjefe
Follow Lay of The Land on Twitter @podlayoftheland
https://www.jeffreys.page/