Episodes

Brian FitzGerald, CEO of Grand Circle Corporation, joins Mark Perkins on The Necessary Entrepreneur to talk about leading a 65-year-old travel company through leadership change, COVID-19, and ongoing transformation. Grand Circle's brands, including Overseas Adventure Travel and Grand Circle Travel, serve Americans 50 and older, and FitzGerald explains the loyalty behind the numbers: more than 70 percent of travelers return each year, and repeat travelers plus referrals top 90 percent. FitzGeral...

Tim Lidman, co-founder and CEO of Clyde AI, joins Mark Perkins on The Necessary Entrepreneur to explain why this is the most disruptive moment entrepreneurs will ever live through, and what to do about it. Tim opens with a confession: he caught himself delegating original thought to AI, and it scared him. "The second I delegate creative critical thought to AI, I truly have delegated my value to technology." From there, he and Mark dig into what AI actually changes for founders, consultants, and ...

Most companies don't have an AI problem. They have a data problem. Ilan Man, founder and CEO of Paradox Machines, joins Mark Perkins for a hype-free conversation about what AI actually means for mid-market businesses. A former actuary turned data science leader at Squarespace, Paperless Post, Formation Bio, and the Brooklyn Data Company, Ilan now builds AI-native data systems for companies that could never before afford them. They cover why EQ is becoming more important than IQ, the new economic...

What does it take to believe in yourself, build a recognizable brand, and create a life that reflects who you really are? On this episode of The Necessary Entrepreneur with Mark Perkins, photographer and artist David Drebin shares the mindset, philosophy, and relentless work behind his journey from commercial success to fine art entrepreneurship. David discusses how self-belief, authenticity, and creativity influence both business and life. He explains why making people feel something is at the...

What if being busy is actually holding your business back? On this episode of The Necessary Entrepreneur, Mark Perkins sits down with Bill Gallagher, a four-time CEO, entrepreneur, author, and founder of Scaling Coach, who has spent more than 40 years building and scaling businesses. Bill has helped grow two companies from startup to more than $500 million and has worked with roughly 800 companies across 18 countries. Bill is the author of Busy Is Broken: Do Less, Scale More, built around a s...

In this episode of The Necessary Entrepreneur, host Mark Perkins sits down with Joshua Evarts, entrepreneur, business owner, and author of the new book If Jesus Smoked Cigars: The Eight Lessons in Relational Leadership. Joshua has spent 25 years in business, most recently as the owner of the Vault Cigar Lounge in Meridian, Idaho, where he built a thriving community around one simple belief: relationships are not just a nice part of doing business, they are the business. His model of relational ...

Eric Saperston took an unconventional path into entrepreneurship. After college, he hit the road in a Volkswagen bus, asking successful and influential people if they would sit down with him for a conversation. Those interviews eventually became The Journey, an award-winning documentary that took a decade to complete and featured conversations with people including Jimmy Carter, Henry Winkler and Maya Angelou. After interviewing hundreds of extraordinary people, Eric began identifying the princ...

How do you take a law firm from a one-bedroom apartment to a 150+ employee organization without losing the standards that made it successful in the first place? On this episode of The Necessary Entrepreneur, Mark Perkins sits down with Seth Bader, founder and CEO of Bader Law, one of Georgia's leading personal injury and workers' compensation firms. Seth started the firm in 2008 out of a one-bedroom apartment and grew it into a business serving tens of thousands of clients. Seth shares wha...

How do you scale a business when technology is moving faster than your ability to plan for it? On this episode of The Necessary Entrepreneur, Mark Perkins sits down with Gilad Bechar, Founder & CEO of Moburst, a global digital growth company that has worked with brands including Google, Uber, Samsung, and Reddit. Gilad built Moburst from a highly specialized mobile marketing company into a much broader digital growth business, expanding through technology, AI, and strategic acquisitions. Along ...

What does it really take to build a successful business and a life that still works when the business gets complicated? On this episode of The Necessary Entrepreneur, Mark Perkins sits down with Dr. Thomas J. Powell, founder of The Founder’s Office, to explore the mindset, resilience, risk management, and decision-making that separate successful entrepreneurs from everyone else. Tom has spent decades working with founders and says his experience helping more than 500 founders and deploying mor...

What does it take to build a company that can scale, adapt and keep getting better when the problems never stop? On this episode of The Necessary Entrepreneur, Mark Perkins sits down with Darragh de Stonndún, co-founder and CEO of Automated Industrial Robotics (AIR), a rapidly growing global industrial automation company with operations across the United States, Ireland and the United Kingdom. Darragh has spent decades building and leading businesses in industrial automation and advanced manufa...

Kim Keating, founder and CEO of The Fifty Factor, joins Mark Perkins on The Necessary Entrepreneur to discuss confidence, experience, entrepreneurship, and creating new opportunities in the second half of your career. What happens when decades of professional experience become an overlooked asset? Kim Keating believes the answer is not stepping back. It is finding new ways to leverage the knowledge, wisdom, relationships, and leadership skills that come with experience. In this episode, Mark an...

While many people know the Dalio name, Matt Dalio has spent his career intentionally building something entirely his own. As the Founder & CEO of Endless Studios, Matt believes the greatest challenge facing America isn't technology, it's whether the next generation will have the skills to create it. In this conversation with Mark Perkins, Matt explains why the future belongs to builders, why AI should be viewed as a tool rather than a threat, and why America's competitive advantage has always b...

What if ride-sharing companies stopped taking a cut of every ride? What if drivers owned more of the value they create? In this episode of The Necessary Entrepreneur, Mark Perkins sits down with Kay Woo, Founder and CEO of Throo and TADA, to discuss how he's challenging the traditional ride-sharing model with a zero-commission platform built around driver ownership, blockchain infrastructure, and the future of mobility. Kay shares the entrepreneurial journey behind building one of the world's ...

In this episode of The Necessary Entrepreneur, Mark Perkins sits down with Muriel Touati, Founder and CEO of Exit 3D Studio, to uncover what actually makes a business valuable when it's time to sell. While many founders believe profitability automatically translates to value, buyers are looking for something much different, transferability, operational health, recurring revenue, and systems that can thrive without the founder. Drawing from her experience evaluating businesses for acquisition, M...

Albert Lukonga arrived in the United States as a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo with little more than ambition, resilience, and a willingness to learn. Today, he is the founder of ALBERT COUTURE, Kentucky's first luxury fashion house, creating bespoke garments and handcrafted footwear for executives, professional athletes, entertainers, and public officials across the country. In this episode of The Necessary Entrepreneur, Albert sits down with Mark Perkins to share the mindset t...

Most people think successful investors spend their time chasing the next big opportunity. Jacob Vanderslice believes the best investors do the exact opposite; they spend more time thinking about what could go wrong. In this episode of The Necessary Entrepreneur, Mark Perkins sits down with Jacob Vanderslice, Principal and Co-Founder of VanWest Partners, to discuss the mindset, discipline, and decision-making behind successful real estate investing and long-term wealth creation. Jacob shares ho...

Most entrepreneurs think success comes from having the perfect idea. Sam Eitzen believes it comes from something far less glamorous: learning to adapt before you have to. In this episode of The Necessary Entrepreneur, Mark Perkins sits down with Sam Eitzen, Co-Founder and CEO of Snapbar, to discuss how a simple photo booth business evolved into an AI-powered experiential marketing platform serving more than 10,000 brands, including Microsoft, Google, and Toyota. Sam shares the unfiltered story...

Most entrepreneurs don't fail because they lack great ideas. They fail because they spend too much time working in their business instead of on it. In this episode of The Necessary Entrepreneur, Mark Perkins sits down with Adam Spector, Founder and CEO of Chore, to discuss why delegation, hiring, communication, and leveraging AI have become essential skills for entrepreneurs who want to build companies that scale. Adam shares lessons learned from building Chore, a business operations platform ...

What separates businesses that continue to grow from those that hit a ceiling? In this episode of The Necessary Entrepreneur, Mark Perkins sits down with John Sampogna, CEO and Co-Founder of Wondersauce, to explore the leadership principles, growth strategies, and mindset shifts required to build and scale a modern business. John shares lessons learned from leading a fast-growing agency through economic shifts, technological disruption, acquisitions, and the rapid rise of artificial intelligen...

What if the next great resource boom isn't on land, but thousands of feet below the ocean's surface? In this episode of The Necessary Entrepreneur, Mark Perkins sits down with Oliver Gunasekara, founder and CEO of Impossible Metals, to discuss one of the most controversial and potentially transformative industries of the next decade: deep-sea mining. As demand for AI, electric vehicles, data centers, batteries, and advanced technologies continues to surge, the need for critical minerals has ne...

What if the life you've worked so hard to build isn't actually the life you want? In this episode of The Necessary Entrepreneur, Mark Perkins sits down with Kenyada Meadows, leadership coach, former executive at Deloitte, JPMorgan, and Bank of America, and author of The New Alpha. After spending more than 25 years climbing the corporate ladder, Kenyada realized something uncomfortable: success on paper does not guarantee fulfillment. The paycheck was growing. The titles were impressive. But th...

Daniel Nikic joins Mark Perkins on The Necessary Entrepreneur for a wide-ranging conversation on AI, international investing, startup growth, and the future of global business. As a global investment strategist and founder of Cohres, Daniel has analyzed thousands of companies across international markets and brings a unique perspective on how entrepreneurs and investors can identify real opportunity in a rapidly changing economy. From AI’s impact on jobs and productivity to the cultural differe...

Dan Mintz, Founder & CEO of , joins Mark Perkins on The Necessary Entrepreneur to break down why most businesses don’t fail from lack of strategy, they fail from lack of execution. In this conversation, Dan explains how the “12-week year”...