Founder's Story

Sheelam Chadha discusses her bold journey from two decades in corporate real estate to launching her own firm, Dry Capital, symbolically founded on International Womens Day 2025. Driven by the desire to break the glass ceiling and leverage her extensive experience in the volatile European real estate market, Sheelam shares insights into navigating uncertainty, the importance of trust, and the power of strategic networking.

Key Discussion Points:

From Corporate to Founder:

• The motivation behind launching Dry Capital after encountering limitations in the traditional corporate structure.
• How Sheelam turned professional frustrations into entrepreneurial opportunity by creating a company aligned with her vision and values.

Navigating Market Volatility:

• Insights on how major eventslike Brexit, COVID-19, and recent interest rate hikeshave reshaped the European commercial real estate landscape.
• Why traditional bank financing is increasingly limited, and how Dry Capital provides alternative private capital solutions to help companies navigate prolonged market challenges.

Challenges and Advice for Women Entrepreneurs:

• The barriers faced by women in traditionally male-dominated industries and how Sheelam overcame criticism by cultivating resilience and self-belief.
• Practical advice on why women should embrace risk, leverage supportive networks, and pursue their entrepreneurial visions without hesitation.

Strategic Networking and Building Trust:

• How critical building and maintaining a professional network has been throughout Sheelams career.
• Advice for young professionals: proactively attend industry events, build genuine relationships, and cultivate trust that can last decades.

Valuable Corporate Experience:

• How experiences during economic downturns and corporate restructuring periods provided Sheelam with invaluable insights and resilience.
• Why challenging times offer greater learning opportunities compared to periods of easy growth.

Key Takeaways:

• Embracing discomfort and uncertainty can drive significant personal and professional growth.
• Genuine trust and integrity within professional relationships can be a key differentiator and asset throughout one's career.
• Courage, belief in oneself, and leveraging past corporate experiences can empower entrepreneurs to launch and scale their own businesses successfully.

Aaron Marcum spent over two decades in the home care industry before founding Breakaway365, a coaching program designed to help agency owners scale their businesses while reclaiming the time, energy, and freedom theyve lost. In this episode, Aaron shares what inspired him to launch Breakaway365, how positive psychology transformed his approach to leadership, and what he's learned from coaching hundreds of overwhelmed home care entrepreneurs.

Drawing on data from his previous venture, Home Care Pulse, Aaron explains how burnout, poor delegation, and always-on leadership are silently eroding the effectiveness of many agency owners. Through Breakaway365, he now empowers leaders to rethink how they build their businesseswith scalable systems, strong culture, and purpose-driven leadership at the core.

Key Discussion Points:

The Burnout Epidemic in Home Care Leadership:

Aaron shares how most agency owners lose sight of their original vision due to constant stress and reactive leadership. Breakaway365 was created to help them "break away" from always being on and return to the freedom they set out to create.

Positive Psychology Meets Entrepreneurship:

Backed by a masters degree in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, Aaron explains how mindset shiftslike reframing setbacks as temporarycan radically transform business owners resilience and performance.

Keeping Culture Framework:

A proprietary model developed by Breakaway365 focused on retention and team growth.

• K.E.E.P. stands for Knowledge, Empowerment, Engagement, and Partnership.
• Emphasizes autonomy, relationships, and confidence as the arc of growth that drives team loyalty and performance.

AI-Driven Purpose Matching:

Aaron introduces a powerful tool Breakaway members use to help caregivers define their personal purpose, aligning it with the companys missionenhancing retention and employee engagement from day one.

Three-Day Immersive to Three-Year Commitment:

Breakaway365 starts with a transformational three-day event where owners define their Breakaway Blueprinta roadmap tailored to what they truly want from their business. The program then continues for up to three years, offering tools, coaching, and AI-powered systems to build lasting success.

Why This Matters:

• Home care is a mission-driven industry deeply impacted by leadership burnout and staff turnover.
• Breakaway365 is not just about growing revenueit's about restoring joy and purpose to business ownership.
• Aarons approach is adaptable across industries, offering a blueprint for any founder looking to scale with sanity.

Yaroslav Lazor and Sergiy Korolov take us on their fascinating journey from passionate software engineers to innovative entrepreneurs at Railsware. They share how their love for building software evolved from personal passion into a thriving business, influencing multiple industries and countless lives. Railswares approach of treating every internal process as a product is central to their ability to innovate, scale, and continuously improve.

Key Discussion Points:

Origins & Inspiration:

• How their genuine passion for software as a transformative force inspired the founding of Railsware.
• Viewing software development as an exciting sportendlessly challenging and infinitely rewarding.

Product Mindset & Business Evolution:

• The philosophy of approaching every company function (legal, finance, recruitment) as a "product" to enhance efficiency and user experience.
• Balancing in-house product development with collaborative ventures to constantly engage with fresh ideas and challenges.

Building & Scaling Successful Companies:

• Why early-stage entrepreneurs must juggle multiple roles, from visionary to executor.
• The critical importance of team-building, sharp decision-making, and scaling thoughtfully as the business grows.

Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs:

• Embracing a "founder mode craziness," coupled with conscious decision-making, intuition, and deep domain knowledge.
• How luck, timing, persistence ("don't quit"), and managing your own psychology are underestimated yet critical factors in entrepreneurial success.

The Impact of AI:

• AIs role as a productivity booster rather than a complete replacement for creative roles such as writing, design, and software development.
• How AI fosters clearer articulation of ideas, better prototyping, and expanded creative possibilities.

Key Takeaways:

• Passion and continuous learning fuel entrepreneurial longevity.
• Treating business processes as products helps create clarity and efficiency.
• Understanding timing, persistence, and adaptability is critical for sustained success.
• Leveraging AI effectively enhances human potential rather than replacing it.

In this episode of Founder's Story, Raza Sheikh, Founder & CEO of Identable, explains how he distilled his own frustration with fragmented SEO, content, and social tools into Identableone platform, zero fragmentation. Designed for businesses of every size, Identable combines AI-powered SEO, content creation, social scheduling, and lead capture into a single dashboard. Raza describes how his technologist roots and Antler VC experience revealed a universal pain point: marketing teams wasted hours wrestling with disconnected systems instead of crafting strategy.

Key Discussion Points:

• Inspiration & Problem:Juggling multiple free AI utilities, legacy SEO tools, and agencies left teams burned out.
• Founders Path:Solving his own go-to-market struggles led to a platform that any entrepreneur can use.
• Core Features:Unified website optimization, AI-driven content generation, social posting, and real-time lead tracking.
• SEO Meets GSO:Integrating traditional backlink SEO with generative search optimization for structured, AI-aware content.
• AIs Role:Speed and scaleusing AI to handle repetitive tasks so humans can focus on strategy and creativity.

Takeaways:

• Fragmented marketing stacks cost time and talent; consolidation boosts both productivity and results.
• Generative Search Optimization (GSO) is the next evolution of SEOstructure and semantics matter.
• AI tools amplify human insight but must be steered by clear strategy and intent.

Closing Thoughts:

Whether you run brick-and-mortar shops or digital agencies, Identable offers a streamlined, AI-powered path from content idea to customer capturefreeing teams to innovate rather than integrate.

Shane Smith is a seasoned med spa entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience and the CEO of Upkeep Ventures—one of America’s fastest-growing aesthetic brands. With multiple Inc. 5000 awards and 1000%+ year-over-year growth, Shane has built a national business by making high-quality med spa services accessible to the customers most companies overlook.

His fearless approach to scaling and commitment to affordability are changing the face of the industry.s a seasoned med spa entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience, responsible for building and leading some of the world’s top-performing spa and med spa companies, including multiple Inc. 5000-ranked businesses. As the CEO of Upkeep Ventures, Shane has scaled a national med spa brand focused on affordable, high-quality aesthetic services, driven by rapid growth, fearless strategy, and a commitment to serving customers others overlook.

We dive into: – Why being too smart can hold you back as a founder

– What Shane learned by shadowing elite CEOs

– His no-fluff take on entrepreneurship and risk

– Why doing what others won’t is the secret to growth

– And how to scale a service business without losing your soul

💻 Visit: https://www.upkeepmedspa.com

🌐 More: https://www.upkeepventures.com