[Top Resources & Gener8tor Series] Top Tools and Growth Hacks

Leslie Danford is the Founder and CEO of Vitaminis, a clean-label functional food and beverage brand that delivers whole-food-based juice shots designed to support gut health and immunity.

Laura Markewicz is the Founder of Lotza, a better-for-you beverage made for people who want to celebrate without the morning-after slump. 

RJ Pire is the Founder of Service ID, a tech startup that uses AI-driven tools to help utilities and municipalities identify and remove lead service lines. 

Bradley Will is the Founder and CEO of Mumbies, a Milwaukee-based company creating natural, sustainable chew toys and treats for dogs made from materials like coffee tree wood and coconut husk.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [3:43] Why Leslie Danford created Vitaminis after struggling to keep up with nutrition as a busy parent
• [5:40] How Lotza helps people enjoy celebrations without sacrificing how they feel the next day
• [12:22] RJ Pire outlines how Service ID uses homeowner photos and AI to remove lead service lines faster
• [19:41] Bradley Will on creating natural, splinter-resistant dog chews inspired by his own pets
• [27:04] Founders share the books and practices that keep them grounded and resilient

In this episode…

Meeting the needs of our health, celebrations, snacks, and essential utilities can feel complicated in a world full of choices and compromises. What if there were smarter, cleaner, and more enjoyable ways to nourish our bodies, celebrate mindfully, feed our pets, and modernize essential services — without the usual headaches?

Leslie Danford, Laura Markewicz, Bradley Will, and RJ Pire reveal how they’re redefining their industries with innovation, taste, and practicality. Leslie shares how Vitaminis delivers functional nutrients through fruit-based, no-sugar-added shots, making daily nutrition simple and guilt-free. Laura explains how Lotza reinvents soda with real fruit, low sugar, and functional benefits, allowing celebrations without the next-day slump. Bradley highlights Mumbies’ approach to creating snacks that combine flavor, convenience, and nutrition for pets. RJ draws on nearly a decade of regulatory experience to demonstrate how Service ID enables utilities to modernize their infrastructure, enhance compliance, and better serve their communities.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz talks with Leslie Danford, Laura Markewicz, Bradley Will, and RJ Pire about building functional food and beverage brands, creating healthier snacks for kids, and streamlining utility operations. They discuss innovation, practical solutions, and finding a balance between wellness and enjoyment. They also share insights on clean-label ingredients, functional benefits, and modernizing essential services.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Leslie Danford on LinkedIn
• Vitaminis
• Laura Markewicz on LinkedIn
• Lotza
• Bradley Will on LinkedIn
• Mumbies
• RJ Pire on LinkedIn
• Service ID
• Recharge
• ChatGPT
• Opus Clip
• Descript
• Shopify
• Leadpages
• Replo
• Microsoft Azure
• Apollo
• Squarespace
• GemPages
• Upcart
• Fomo
• Claude
• The Bible
• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It―Unlock Your Persuasion Potential in Professional and Personal Life by Chris Voss
• The War of Art – Audible Audiobook by Steven Pressfield
• Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger
• Ramping Your Brand: How to Ride the Killer CPG Growth Curve by James F. Richardson PhD
• The Go-Giver, Expanded Edition: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea by Bob Burg
• The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you by Rob Fitzpatrick
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds by David Goggins

Special Mention(s):

• Matt Zalk on LinkedIn
• Keyrenter Property Management
• Aimy Steadman on LinkedIn
• BeatBox Beverages
• OneTab

Related episodes:

• “Gener8tor.com & Sconnie.com: How to start a Nation..Sconnie Nation -with Troy Vosseller [Top Wisconsin Entrepreneur Series]” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[One Question] Hostage Negotiator Loses The Hostage with Chris Voss of Black Swan Ltd” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Author Series] Bob Burg: Transform your business and life by being a Go-Giver?” on Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable moments:

• “When we become adults, we kind of have to choose between having fun and feeling good, and I didn’t want that trade-off anymore.”
• “Lead has major impacts on children, and at the end of the day, that’s our mission: to ensure every family has access to clean, safe drinking water.”
• “I was looking for that real food- and beverage-based solution that gives you more bang for your buck, and I didn’t see it, so I started Vitaminis.”
• “Most of what dominates the market is plastic chews, but microplastics are everywhere; dogs deserve a natural alternative.”
• “Virality is often seen as luck, not a strategy, but there are tangible, scientific approaches to make your brand stick.”

Action steps:

• Leverage AI daily: Use tools like ChatGPT and Claude to streamline tasks, scale efficiently, and work smarter with limited resources.
• Gather real customer insights: Use platforms to validate ideas and ensure your product truly meets your audience’s needs.
• Build and iterate online fast: Adopt flexible builders to launch and optimize without heavy technical reliance.
• Repurpose content strategically: Turn long-form videos into shareable clips to maximize reach with minimal effort.
• Invest in continuous learning: Read and apply insights from books recommended by successful founders to sharpen skills and stay inspired.

Episode Transcript

Intro 00:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, I am the Founder of InspiredInsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Thanks for tuning in to this special best-of episode, where we’ll take a look back at some of our favorite moments from previous conversations. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help B2B businesses give to and connect to their dream 200 relationships and partnerships. We do this in two ways. Number one, we are an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast for ROI. We do the strategy, accountability and full execution and production. Number two, we are also an easy button for your company’s corporate gifting. We make gifting and staying top of mind to your clients, partners and prospects. Simple and seamless and affordable. Some companies even send gifts to staff. From a culture perspective, all you have to do is give us the list of people you want to follow up and keep in touch with, and we do everything else from there, from gift selection to the card to your branding on the box. 

We call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background to make it as stress-free as possible for companies so they can build relationships and run their business. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships, and I am always looking at how to give to my best relationships. And I’ve found no better way over the past decade than having them on my podcast, featuring what they are working on and sharing it with the world, and also sending delicious treats in the mail every few months for years. If you have thought about starting a podcast or gifting, do it. If you have questions, email us at [email protected] or go to Rise25 to learn more. Now let’s look back at some of our favorite moments from past conversations. 

Jeremy Weisz here. This is great people. Great resources. Right. And I select great entrepreneurs leaders. And they get we get to hear what tools it could be software, tools, plugins, Chrome extensions, whatever strikes our fancy we’re going to get into it. And this is, I guess not only a top resources series, but a a generator series. So way back when I did a Wisconsin Entrepreneur series and I had Troy Vosseller, who is the Co-founder of Gener8tor, and this is going to be a fun series because we have a bunch of cohorts who are part of Gener8tor. So let’s start off, Leslie. First of all, I love your product. I’m a big health fanatic. My background is as a chiropractor, so yours resonates with me as well. Laura, I checked your website out. But, Leslie, start with you. Just tell people you know your name, your company and what you do, and then we’ll launch into software, tech and tools. I’m going to share my screen as you talk.

Leslie Danford: 03:16

So thank you so much. So Leslie, Founder of Vitaminis, we are a vitamin juice shop with no added sugar, no mystery ingredients and no strong flavors, and also no refrigeration required. So unlike pills, it’s easily digestible. It’s fun. It tastes great. Unlike gummy vitamins. No added sugar? No. Like ginger, turmeric, pepper, like the other juice shots. It’s just fruit juice and vitamins.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:40

I love it. Why did you start this?

Leslie Danford: 03:43

I have always been a nutrition junkie, but as life got busier and busier with job and kids, I now have four kids. I had no time to kind of check all the boxes and I hate supplements. Like pills make me nauseous. And gummies just felt like coating my teeth with lots of sugar. So I was looking for that real food and beverage based solution that gives you, like, more bang for the buck. And I didn’t see it. So started Vitaminis.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:09

I love it. I could eat these, drink these every day. So some of your favorite software tech tools, plugins. What’s on your list?

Leslie Danford: 04:20

I have been loving Recharge lately for subscriptions. So I have been using the basic subscription functionality for a long time, and I love how it integrates with Shopify. And we’ve started putting subscription as the default when you check out. So you’ll see that all over our website. And I’ve recently been hearing they have some additional functionality, such as giving deeper discounts the longer you stay on subscription. So kind of combining like loyalty with subscription. Yeah. So I’m figuring that they have more and more that to offer in this regard. And subscriptions is a huge part of our business, so that’s a big one for me.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:56

I think people use Recharge for all sorts of businesses, right? Like software too. Not just E-com. Okay, I’ve definitely heard of it. Any other tools? Plugins?

Leslie Danford: 05:07

I don’t want to steal Laura’s thunder, but I use a lot. I’ve been using a lot. And honestly, Laura, have you inspired me to use it even more?

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:17

Laura, what do you use it for?

Laura Markewicz: 05:19

Literally everything. I’m in it all day, every day with like eight different tabs open so it can have multiple personalities as I’m, like, shifting between tasks.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:32

Well, just we’ll, you know, we’ll kind of bounce around a little bit. Laura, why don’t you talk about your company, what you do. And I have it pulled up here.

Laura Markewicz: 05:40

Yeah. So Lotza is a better for you soda made to party. It’s clean and low in sugar and crafted with functional ingredients that support your body while you celebrate. When we become adults, we kind of have to choose between having fun and feeling good, and I didn’t want that trade off anymore. I wanted a drink that really gave us permission to have fun and, like, actually feel good about it. And our core ingredients, we don’t just have like adaptogens and electrolytes. We have entirely plant based antioxidants, one of which is designed to metabolize alcohol related toxins for your liver. So you wake up. Yes, you wake up feeling much better than you deserve after you have overserved yourself. So yeah, we’re brand new.

We just launched this year. I’m formally an ad exec in the digital space, so I think that’s why Leslie kind of called me out. I’m like, that’s my bread and butter is the the web space.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:42

So how do you decide on these flavors?

Laura Markewicz: 06:47

Well, citrus is the base on all of these because we wanted it to taste great with alcohol, so every flavor has a blend of lemons, limes, oranges, and botanicals. I literally drool every time I describe it. And the other one was all surveys. So that’s one of my fave things is survey. Like I use Typeform for majority of them. And I brought along, yeah, a couple hundred women along for the journey of the development not only of our flavors, but like what they cared about. Like I went into this thinking like, this is going to be I’m one of those people. It’s like, throw everything in the kitchen sink in there. And what we learned as well, people are drinking. All they care about is how they feel in the moment and how they’re going to feel the next day.

And so we really focused on a functional formula that was designed to enhance our drinking experience and kind of combat those negative effects.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:47

Yeah. So we have watermelon here. We have Of.

Laura Markewicz: 07:51

Original citrus.

Laura Markewicz: 07:53

And then a wild berry. Yep. You know, it’s really.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:56

Interesting, the functional side of I don’t I’ve never seen anything that’s like, oh, this helps you metabolize and recover quicker while you’re doing it. So you drink is a standalone, but they also mix it with alcohol. That’s what it’s meant for.

Laura Markewicz: 08:09

Yes. Yeah. Like I mean obviously the better for you soda category is exploding. But like while Poppy kind of modernized soda for everyday occasions, we are modernizing soda for celebrations. Which 1 in 3 sodas are consumed in those celebratory occasions. And then it’s the go to non-alc choice, you know, just because it’s so ubiquitous. So there’s really a wide open gap that we are kind of flying right through.

Jeremy Weisz: 08:40

You mentioned a couple Typeform ChatGPT what other software plugins.

Laura Markewicz: 08:48

Yeah. So right now I’m trying to crack the code on just rapid content creation. With little budget and my two favorites. For two different reasons our Opus Clip and Descript. So what opus clip is good for? Like if you have like I was on a TV segment last week, so I just uploaded the video and it will give you, you know, like 30 different, different ways to slice and dice it, to kind of distribute through the channels you want to distribute it through.

Whereas descript kind of is the other way where it’s like it will take a bunch of footage and create more of a longer form video. So they are great complimentary, scrappy content creation tools that have really allowed me to speed up that creation process for not only our organic social, but also our paid media, which is becoming increasingly competitive and expensive.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:49

Any Shopify plugins that are a must for e-commerce.

Laura Markewicz: 09:53

Yeah, I mean, it’s a little thing, but saved by I use it. It’s the insurance that people, it automatically defaults. And you essentially like add 5% to every single sale you make, which is really nice depending on how much your AOV is at. I’m actually a huge fan of lead pages as well. There’s a lot of different.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 10:15

That’s been around forever.

Laura Markewicz: 10:17

Yeah, it has, and I have not left it because that’s what I use for all my AB testing lead pages development. And I actually the my website is actually a combination of lead pages and Shopify just well we do a lot of that testing and and our Shopify layer over it is and I love Replo for the same reasons I love Lead Pages is it’s a drag-and-drop builder. And with Replo two, they have tons of templates. Templates that are already tested and optimized for ecom. And it’s just an add. So you don’t need a developer to design and build out your Shopify store or have that big learning curve on, like how to build out your pages like repo allows it to be kind of an easy, an easy win and an easy setup.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:12

I’m curious, are you obviously you’re B2C. Do you want to go retail or.

Laura Markewicz: 11:18

Yeah. Yeah. We were in Total Wine and more. And we’re about 150 locations, both retail and bars and restaurants. But I mean, my bread and butter, I’m, I’m a digital girlie. So I’m, I’m going to lean into my strengths and really grow on Amazon and Meta and Shopify and TikTok shop kind of get that scale to really put us in more of a position of power when we try to get into some of the larger retailers and kind of already have that built in awareness and, and scale to help with drive velocity without big marketing dollars is just like a dream of mine. So that’s kind of where our focus is.

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