In this thoughtful and grounding episode of Built for This, Carly Pepin sits down with Angelo D’Amico, President and CEO of a global manufacturing company based in Ontario, Canada, generating more than $25 million in annual sales.

Angelo brings a rare blend of economics, management consulting, and philosophy into the conversation, offering a deeply human perspective on what leadership actually looks like in practice. He shares how stepping into an established organization required restraint rather than force, choosing observation, listening, and humility before making change.

Together, Carly and Angelo explore why values alignment matters more than technical skill, how trust is earned through service rather than authority, and why burnout is often a symptom of misalignment, not workload. They unpack generational differences in motivation, the hidden costs of ego-driven leadership, and the responsibility leaders carry in shaping cultures where people feel seen as humans, not treated as resources. This conversation reframes leadership as stewardship and challenges listeners to consider a powerful question: can the culture inside your company be better than the world outside it?

Key Themes:

• Leadership Is Granted, Not Assigned: Why real influence comes from trust, consistency, and acting in the collective’s best interest.

• Values Alignment Prevents Burnout: How meaning, not effort, determines whether work feels energizing or exhausting.

• Culture Mirrors the Leader: Why the behaviors leaders model and tolerate define the entire organization.

Memorable Quotes:

“A leader is someone people trust to make decisions with everyone’s best interests at heart.” “Burnout isn’t about effort. It’s about misalignment.” “My challenge is to build a place where the society inside the walls is better than the society outside.”

About Angelo D’Amico: Angelo D’Amico is the President and CEO of a global manufacturing company based in Ontario, Canada with more than $25 million in annual sales. With a background in economics, management consulting, and philosophy, he is known for applying rigorous strategy and timeless ideas to modern leadership, culture, and community challenges. Angelo serves on multiple non-profit boards, supports initiatives across the arts and healthcare sectors, and is passionate about bridging business success with philosophical insight.

Connect with Angelo D’Amico:

Website: https://www.angelodamicocanada.com

Instagram: https://instagram.com/angelodamicocanada

In this powerful episode of Built for This, Carly Pepin sits down with Don “The Dragon” Wilson, one of the most accomplished kickboxers in history and a prolific action film star whose career spans more than four decades.

Don shares how the same principles that made him an eleven-time world champion also allowed him to build a successful second career in Hollywood. From setting clear goals and ignoring naysayers, to mastering fundamentals and refusing to let ego sabotage preparation, Don breaks down the repeatable formula behind sustained excellence.

The conversation moves seamlessly between elite athletics, filmmaking, leadership, and personal growth. Don explains why ego can be useful in controlled doses but destructive when left unchecked. He reveals why humility, preparation, and respect for every role on the team were non-negotiable in both the ring and on set, and why longevity depends on never believing your own hype. This episode is a masterclass in discipline, mastery, and staying grounded while performing at the highest levels.

Key Themes:

• Success Follows a Formula, Not Luck: Why preparation, research, and learning from experts determine whether opportunity becomes achievement.

• Ego as a Tool, Not an Identity: How confidence fuels performance, but unchecked ego leads to complacency and decline.

• Longevity Through Mastery and Humility: Why fundamentals, continuous improvement, and respect for the team create careers that last decades.

Memorable Quotes:

“Don’t believe your own press.” “Ego becomes a problem when it makes you work less hard.” “The same principles that made me a champion worked in every other part of my life.”

About Don “The Dragon” Wilson: Don “The Dragon” Wilson is an eleven-time world kickboxing champion with a four-decade career that includes seventy-two wins and forty-seven knockouts. He was named “the greatest kickboxer in American history” by STAR System Ratings and inducted into the International Sports Hall of Fame in 2015. After dominating the ring, Don built a second career in film, starring in Bloodfist, Ring of Fire, and dozens of action movies worldwide. He also served as a commentator during the early UFC era, helping introduce martial arts to mainstream audiences. Today, Don is known not only for his titles, but for the discipline, mastery, and humility that defined both of his legendary careers.

Image Credit: Leo Medvedev (CC BY-SA 4.0)

In this thoughtful and nostalgic episode of Built for This, Carly Pepin sits down with Claudio Ulrich, a veteran film licensing and distribution expert with more than 30 years in the industry and the founder of Focus Media.

Claudio pulls back the curtain on the world of film distribution, revealing the immense amount of unseen work required to bring a movie from original film reels to a finished home release. From licensing rights and restoring 35mm film to creating artwork, subtitles, packaging, and bonus content, he explains why a finished disc represents craftsmanship, history, and care far beyond what most people ever see.

After experiencing burnout during the peak of the VHS and DVD boom, Claudio made a defining decision. Instead of chasing scale and volume, he chose collectors, quality, and meaning. That shift led to the creation of premium “media books” that transform restored films into collectible experiences. At its heart, this conversation is about choosing passion over pressure, redefining success, and building a life where work becomes a mission rather than a grind.

Key Themes:

• Passion Outlasts Markets: Why industries do not truly disappear, and how following what you love can create sustainable niches even as markets change.

• The Invisible Work Matters: A behind-the-scenes look at the complexity, cost, and care involved in preserving and distributing films properly.

• Freedom Is Real Success: How Claudio designed a life centered on joy, creativity, and choice instead of constant scale and stress.

Memorable Quotes:

“I don’t see myself as a distributor. I see myself as a film lover who wants to share movies with other people.” “When you do what you love, it doesn’t feel like work. It becomes a mission.” “People don’t see what’s behind a movie. They only see the end product.”

Connect with Claudio Ulrich:

Website: https://www.mm-u.ch

Website: https://fokus-media.ch/

In this inspiring episode of Built for This, Carly Pepin sits down with Carlos Lauchu, a nationally recognized STEM education leader with more than 25 years of experience reshaping how students learn science and technology.

Carlos shares how a moment of deep frustration early in his teaching career became the catalyst for creating Science Academy STEM Magnet, now one of the top-ranked schools in the United States. Rather than accepting an education system that underestimated students, he challenged it by raising expectations, increasing rigor, and teaching students how to learn instead of what to memorize.

Carly and Carlos explore how high standards paired with genuine support unlock extraordinary outcomes. From middle school students passing Advanced Placement exams to teens earning college degrees before high school graduation, this conversation reveals what becomes possible when education is built around human potential. The lessons extend far beyond classrooms, offering powerful insights for parents, educators, and business leaders alike.

Key Themes:

• Students Rise to the Expectations Set for Them: Why removing artificial limits and raising the bar leads to performance, not burnout.

• Learning How to Learn Changes Everything: How teaching study skills, critical thinking, and ownership creates long-term success.

• Failure as Feedback: Why reframing mistakes as progress builds resilience, confidence, and curiosity.

Memorable Quotes:

“Maybe it’s not the kids. Maybe it’s the system that’s holding them back.” “Teaching more has never been the problem — teaching less is.” “If you give students the opportunity and believe in them, they will show you what’s possible.”

Connect with Carlos Lauchu:

Website: https://stem4education.com

In this refreshing and thought-provoking episode of Built for This, Carly Pepin sits down with Erik Braund, founder and CEO of Katmai, a virtual office platform built around one bold idea: work should feel human again.

Drawing on a background in music, film production, and creative leadership, Erik explains why real collaboration does not come from back-to-back calendar invites. After watching remote work explode during COVID, he saw a widening gap between how people connect in real life and how they were being forced to connect online. Katmai was created to restore spontaneity, presence, and natural interaction to remote teams.

Carly and Erik dive deep into why culture cannot survive inside endless Zoom meetings, how over-systemizing can quietly suffocate creativity, and why authenticity in leadership matters more than polish. Erik openly shares where he got it wrong as a founder, how he course-corrected, and what it took to build a company that actually works the way humans do. This conversation is a powerful reminder that technology should support people, not control them.

Key Themes:

• Culture Is Built Through Presence, Not Meetings: Why trust, creativity, and connection grow from unstructured interaction, not scheduled calls.

• Too Much Process Breaks What Works: How stripping back meetings, rigid frameworks, and bureaucracy unlocked clarity and momentum.

• Authenticity Creates Alignment: Why being fully yourself as a leader attracts the right people and builds stronger culture.

Memorable Quotes:

“You can’t build culture in a grid of faces on a calendar.” “We didn’t need more meetings. We needed more spontaneity.” “The moment I stopped trying to look like a CEO was the moment the company started working better.”

Connect with Erik Braund:

Website: http://katmaitech.com Demo: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WsMU3q3LgADFgJZCJY_cM8bb0_cTDMd0/view

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/katmaitech/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katmaitech/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/katmai

In this powerful episode of Built for This, Carly Pepin sits down with Jarrod Adreon, a behind-the-scenes operator who has helped build and scale companies generating over $100 million annually, all without chasing visibility, titles, or personal branding.

Jarrod shares a raw and deeply personal journey that includes homelessness, failed businesses, broken partnerships, crushing debt, and surviving industry-shaking events like the 2008 financial crisis and COVID. Rather than running from pressure, he explains how learning to operate in a controlled state of fight-or-flight became one of his greatest strengths. Speed, he explains, only works when it is grounded in clarity, discipline, and direction.

Together, Carly and Jarrod unpack what it really means to think like an owner, even when you are not legally one. They explore integrity-driven leadership, accountability over blind trust, and why most businesses fail not because of bad ideas, but because foundations are rushed. This conversation is a masterclass in resilience, patience, and building companies designed to endure when everything else breaks.

Key Themes:

• Speed Without Direction Is Dangerous: Why moving fast only works when decisions are intentional and grounded in long-term thinking.

• The Power of the Long Game: How sustainable growth, wealth, and leadership are built through patience, not shortcuts.

• Accountability Over Assumptions: Why trust alone is never enough and how clear expectations create stronger teams and businesses.

Memorable Quotes:

“Speed is only great if you’re going in the right direction.” “If you’ve survived this far, you already know you can survive what’s next.” “Trust in business isn’t about hope. It’s about accountability.”

Connect with Jarrod Adreon:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jarrod-adreon-0b28b48/

In this episode of Built for This, Carly sits down with Charles Read, founder of GetPayroll, decorated Marine veteran, CPA, and author of The Payroll Book: A Guide for Small Businesses and Startups.

With over 50 years of financial leadership experience, Charles shares the hard-earned wisdom that every entrepreneur needs to hear — from understanding cashflow and building loyal teams to keeping your ego in check as a leader.

Whether you’re just starting your business or scaling toward seven figures, this episode will remind you that success isn’t just about profit — it’s about people, process, and principles.

Charles shares with Carly why showing profit on paper doesn’t mean you can actually pay your bills. He breaks down the difference between accounting profit and real cash in the bank—and explains why cashflow, not profit, determines whether a business survives or collapses.

Charles talks with Carly about how his Marine Corps motto, “Mission. Men. Self.”, became the foundation of his leadership philosophy. He and Carly explore how focusing on the mission and taking care of your people—before yourself—creates sustainable success, while ego-driven leadership can quietly destroy even the strongest companies.

Charles reveals to Carly how he designed GetPayroll to keep running smoothly even if he’s not there—complete with systems, procedures, and empowered people. As he tells her, “If I drop dead today, the payrolls will still run tomorrow.” It’s a powerful example of true operational freedom and legacy-focused leadership.

“You can be profitable and still go bankrupt — because profit isn’t cash.”

“Your job as a CEO isn’t to be the smartest in the room. It’s to hire the smartest person in the room.”

“Without my people, I’d be nowhere.”

https://getpayroll.com

https://www.linkedin.com/company/getpayroll/

https://www.facebook.com/GetPayroll/

https://www.instagram.com/getpayroll/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxs-_RwC9NgfUcqbwvEaMIQ

In this inspiring episode of Built for This, Carly sits down with Joseph Merhi, the Syrian-born filmmaker and entrepreneur who co-founded PM Entertainment alongside her father, Rick Pepin. Starting with $400, a high school diploma, and a dream that began at age twelve, Joseph went on to help build one of the most prolific independent studios in Hollywood — producing more than 100 films and TV projects for major networks and international distributors.

Joseph shares how he went from dishwasher to restaurant owner, then sold everything to make his first film — a comedy that flopped — and how that early failure became the foundation for everything that came after. He talks about meeting Rick, learning the craft side by side, and how their complete lack of ego created a company culture where hundreds of people found their footing, launched their careers, and felt like family.

From writing scripts in a weekend to selling films at Cannes, from dreaming up wild stunts to running a 60,000 square foot studio, Joseph opens up about the chaotic, hilarious, and deeply human journey behind PM Entertainment’s rise. This episode is a tribute to legacy, leadership, and the magic that happens when two people say yes to each other and decide, “Let’s make a movie.”

Key Themes:

• Build Culture First — Skills Follow: Why Joseph always hired people for who they were, not what they had on paper — and how that created one of Hollywood’s most loyal and high-performing teams.

• Humility Scales What Ego Breaks: How Joseph and Rick ran a 100-film studio by listening, laughing, and treating every idea as valuable, no matter who it came from.

• Opportunity Is Something You Give: The reason PM became a launchpad for hundreds of careers — because Joseph and Rick constantly gave people chances to grow.

Memorable Quotes:

“We just treated everyone like family. And we knew our success was because of all the people.” “I would rather hire a great human being at skill level four than a difficult person at eight — we can train the skill, we can’t train the human.” “We never took ourselves seriously. That’s why we could create so much — we listened, we laughed, and we worked together.”

Links for Joseph:

Website: https://www.josephmerhi.com

A special thank you to

http://www.mm-u.ch and https://fokus-media.ch for the clips