For almost 30 years, Dawn Reshen-Doty has been running Benay Enterprises, a business support company that provides back office accounting and management support. Under her leadership, the company is expanding its Maine presence. In this appearance recorded on 7/27/19 on WGAN’s Inside Maine, we explore what is driving growth for Benay and Dawn’s impressions and plans for growing the business in Maine.
Steve Woods is CEO of TideSmart Global, a Falmouth, Maine based experiential marketing company. Seems like someone in marketing could come up with a shorter term for the field, but anyway, it’s a growing and important area of marketing – actually experiencing and interacting with a product, in a live setting in which you have to put down your phone. It’s what many CMO’s in the world of automotive and retail are looking for, and TideSmart Global provides it, all over the world. The company also has a strong focus on environmental sustainability, and developed and built Maine’s first Net Zero office on the campus, where the interview was recorded (using batteries! really!).
Steve has hosted his own podcast and radio show for many years, ran for Governor in 2014, and has strong opinions about the growth and direction of Maine’s economy. We’ll explore them more deeply in the episode, but the basic question is, do we let growth and entrepreneurship bubble up, or do we pick winners and losers?
I’d love to hear your opinion. Which approach will net greater growth for Maine’s economy?
I carried my podcast recorder to the Rural Maine’s Next Economy Envision Maine conference at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor on Friday February 10. The temperature outside was in the single digits, but inside the ideas were flowing. I captured two segments – the Rural Sparkplugs segment of four minute talks, and the One Minute Big Ideas, an off-the-cuff opportunity to pitch the crowd on your idea. Here the guests in order of appearance:
Colin Woodard, Steve Bromage, Cathy Renault, and Don Gooding: a dream team weighing in on the history and future of the Maine economic ecosystem. As recorded at the Envision Maine conference.
Purchase the Envision Maine book, from which these talks are excerpted, at this link.
Kerem Durdag, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Maine Technology Institute, gives his impassioned take on Maine’s business community, in what I think is one of my best episodes. Envision Maine, pitch contests, Department of Economic and Community Development, FocusMaine, you name it, we talk about it.
And, you (and I) get to figure out how to say ‘Kerem Durdag’.
This is officially the first episode of The Grow Maine Show that has mentioned The Northwest Passage.
Ben Davis of True Course Yachting has combined an upbringing on the ocean, a natural understanding of his client’s needs, and Maine’s yachtbuilding and refitting industry into a fast-growing Portland-based business.
And you’ll never guess who his first customer was.
Dream something big with Kerem Durdag of Biovation, Shannon Kinney of Dream Local, Shawn Moody of Moody’s Collision Centers, Melissa Smith of WEX, Jess Knox of Blackstone Accelerates Growth, Lisa Pohlmann of NRCM, Dana Connors of Maine Chamber of Commerce, John Piotti of Maine Farmland Trust, and Sean Sullivan of the Maine Brewer’s Guild.
Like what you hear? Register to hear Shawn Moody on Tuesday Dec. 16.
