👋 Hello – My conversation today is with Blake Squires. The Journey of Blake is a Lay of the Land of the Lay of the Land. Listen to The Episode Blake began his journey in the mid-90s in Los Angeles, capitalizing early on the convergence of technology and media. He soon returned to his hometown of Cleveland to co-found Everstream with Steve McHale (episode 196) and Charlie Lougheed (episode 42, and also my co-founder at Axuall). Blake served as COO until Everstream’s acquisition by Concurrent...
12 days ago • 1 min read
👋 Hello – “The road to the Moon and Mars runs through Ohio” as Dr. Jimmy Kenyon says — from the Wright Brothers to Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, Don Thomas, Ron Sega, Mike Foreman, Gene Kranz, — Carl Walz carries this brave adventurous spirit and like so many astronauts, I believe represents the best of us! Listen to The Episode On Lay of The Land’s 205th episode, I had the privilege of meeting Carl—astronaut, space pioneer, and proud Clevelander who’s a veteran of four spaceflights, spending...
19 days ago • 1 min read
👋 Hello – My conversation today is with Paul Roetzer, an AI expert and educator with over two decades of experience in the marketing industry! Listen to The Episode Paul is the founder and CEO of SmarterX and the Marketing AI Institute—a media, event, and online education company that he started back in 2016 to make AI accessible, approachable, and actionable for marketers and business leaders. Through the institute, he created MAICON—the leading annual Marketing AI conference, which is...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
👋 Hello – My conversation today is with Geoff Bruder, co-founder of GhostWorks Engineering and Sonic Fire Tech—a company redefining fire suppression by fighting fires with acoustic wave technology. Listen to The Episode Geoff's journey is rooted in his work at NASA Glenn Research Center here in Cleveland, where he focused as a Research Engineer on projects like the Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator (ASRG), thermoacoustic stirling heat engine designs, and led the design for the Glenn...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
👋 Hello – My conversation today is with Jared Semik, founder of Eternium Aerospace, a long-range, zero-emissions aircraft development company, focused on sustainable transatlantic flight. Listen to The Episode A multi-service military aviation veteran with three global deployments, Jared began his career in the Marine Corps in 1999. He is an aerospace research and development engineer with over 20 years of experience working with next-generation zero-emissions aircraft systems. His expertise...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
👋 Hello – My conversation today is with Robert Marks. Robert founded Fidelity Voice and Data in 1999 with just a $600 investment, which he grew into a business generating over $30 million in revenue, making it one of the largest telecommunications and cloud services competitors throughout the Midwest. The company focused on providing high-speed Internet access to various industries. Listen to The Episode After selling the company in 2015, Robert turned his attention to giving back to his...
2 months ago • 1 min read
👋 Hello – I couldn’t think of a more fitting guest than Andy Tran to celebrate Lay of The Land Podcast's 200th episode. Andy has lived more lives than just about anyone I know. He’s a serial entrepreneur who has started businesses across industries as diverse as tech, ammunition manufacturing, defense contracting, architecture, and tequila—and that’s just scratching the surface. Andy is a true modern Renaissance man: He has alpine mountaineered in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego while living...
2 months ago • 1 min read
👋 Hello – my conversation today is with John Knific, a serial entrepreneur and investor who has built three venture-backed software companies here in Cleveland. His latest venture, Squad, is a peer discovery platform designed to gamify ratings and rankings for Gen Z, starting on college campuses, delivering valuable preference data to marketers. Before Squad, John co-founded Wisr, a virtual communities platform that transformed how universities engage students. Wisr ultimately served nearly...
3 months ago • 1 min read
👋 Hello – my conversation today is with Rob van Haaren. Rob is a Dutch-born entrepreneur and CEO of Proximal Energy, a Cleveland-based SaaS company transforming asset management for solar and energy storage projects.Rob has long been interested in renewable energy engineering — he holds a Master’s from Columbia University in Earth and Environmental Engineering and a PhD from Columbia as well with a focus on utility-scale energy storage optimization and engineering. He also has over a decade...
3 months ago • 1 min read