Name Bubbles

In 2020 Melinda, a mother of three, received a box of masks that her father had developed with scientists during the 2003 SARs virus epidemic. She quickly noticed the positive reaction not only from her kids in their ability to continue to laugh, talk and play; but other parents and families as well who were taking an interest. Requests began to pour in. Hear how Melinda turned a neighborhood group chat into her successful business on today's episode.

The CEO and Founder of Happy Masks, Melinda Hwang. Happy Masks was launched in the early days of the pandemic, Melinda created an essential product that was born out of love and back by 20 years of science. Melinda, a mother of three children, received a box of masks that her father had developed with scientists during the 2003 SARs virus epidemic. She quickly noticed that these masks easily allowed her kids to laugh and talk. This was something that other parents noticed as well, and requests began pouring in. Stay tuned to hear Melinda’s story of how Happy Masks came to be.  

Melinda Hwang

CEO & Founder of Happy Masks

Today's episode highlights Happy Masks Founder, Melinda Hwang. Melinda created an essential product that was born out of love and backed by 20 years of science. Melinda, a mother of three, received a box of masks that her father had developed with scientists during the 2003 SARs virus epidemic. She quickly noticed the positive reaction not only from her kids in their ability to continue to laugh, talk and play; but other parents and families as well taking an interest. Requests began to pour in. Hear how Melinda turned a neighborhood groupchat into her successful business... 


Melinda Hwang - Happy Masks

Happy Masks

We created Happy Masks because we wanted to offer this superior protection to all families. Whether you’re sending your child to school during a pandemic, keeping society running by working on the front lines, or even trying to stay safe from the environmental impacts of wildfire smoke, pollution, and allergens, our mission is to be the mask you trust to protect you through all the seasons of life. Stay safe and be well, Melinda Hwang Happy Masks Founder


Sunny Lu Williams is the President of TechServ, a woman-owned business aimed at helping underserved communities, focusing on healthcare, corrections, and education. Sunny Lu is passionate about improving community and public health, and today she shares how she and TechServ are doing just that. Listen now for TechServ's incredible story, and learn how they are expanding and doing good for our communities.

Sunny’s expertise is on strategic alliance partnerships – identifying the how with the who to move programs forward and scaling with technology.

Sunny Lu Williams

President, TechServ

Sunny Lu Williams is the President of TechServ, a woman-owned business aimed at helping underserved communities, focusing on healthcare, corrections, and education. Sunny Lu is passionate about improving community and public health, and today she shares how she and TechServ are doing just that. Listen now for TechServ's incredible story, and learn how they are expanding and doing good for our communities. 


Sunny Lu Williams - TechServ

Saratoga Tea and Honey is a tea and honey shop in Saratoga Springs, NY, offering an authentic, inviting, and warm experience in the teabar and discovery room. Saratoga Tea and Honey has traditional tea, organic traditional tea, and organically produced tea even from local vendors. Today we listen in to how Hayley got her start, where she got to travel to learn about tea, how she sees her business evolving, and the difficulties that being a business owner has. Hayley wanted to "do it once, and do it well" and she has held true to that in every subset of the business.

Hayley Stevens is a graduate from the Corso Superiore at the renowned Italian culinary school, Alma, in Parma, Italy. She has experience in kitchens from the north to south of Italy; between Oderzo, outside of Venice under the tutelage of Alessandro Breda, to Licata, Sicily where she worked with Pino Cuttaia at La Madia. Hayley was employed on the Amalfi coast at the 2 Michelin star restaurant Don Alfonso where she spent several years enjoying cooking with fresh products from the fertile Vesuvian land and the nearby Mediterranean sea. 

Hayley was a Chef/Instructor at the International Culinary Center where she taught professional and amateur classes in the Italian Culinary Academy and French Culinary program. She is a two time North American Olive Oil Tasting Champion and one of few that has the honored title of Associate Savantes in her capacity for olive oil tasting analysis. In 2015 she opened Saratoga Tea and Honey Company in downtown Saratoga Springs, NY, which houses a tea bar and honey tasting room.  Her greatest joys are traveling to origin,  working with family and friends and pouring tea for regulars and travelers alike!

Hayley Stevens

CEO & Founder of Saratoga Tea & Honey

Saratoga Tea and Honey is a tea and honey shop in Saratoga Springs, NY, offering an authentic, inviting, and warm experience in the teabar and discovery room. Saratoga Tea and Honey has traditional tea, organic traditional tea, and organically produced tea even from local vendors. 

Today we listen in to how Hayley got her start, where she got to travel to learn about tea, how she sees her business evolving, and the difficulties that being a business owner has. Hayley wanted to "do it once, and do it well" and she has held true to that in every subset of the business. 


Hayley Stevens - Saratoga Tea & Honey

Saratoga Tea and Honey

Saratoga Tea and Honey is a tea and honey shop in Saratoga Springs, NY, offering an authentic, inviting, and warm experience in the teabar and discovery room. Saratoga Tea and Honey has traditional tea, organic traditional tea, and organically produced tea even from local vendors. 


Faena is an innovative Spanish language learning video game founded by their CEO Isabel Last. Isabel wanted to make learning fun by creating a game where you learn by speaking and interacting in a story-filled world. Today, Isabel shares her background, what led to her wanting to start her business, and what the word "Faena" means. Listen now and learn more about Faena and what the future holds for the company.

Raised in Baltimore, MD, Isabel Last was heavily influenced by her father and mother's professions: Spanish teaching and floristry (respectively). There, she became certified to teach Spanish as a second language and gained experience teaching middle school and high school students. In 2020, Last came to Albuquerque, NM to pursue a masters in Hispanic Linguistics at the University of New Mexico as well as teach Spanish at the University level. In was during this program that she realized the pitfalls of the current paradigm of language teaching, and decided to combine her artistic pursuits, her pedagogical training, and her linguistics background to create the future of language learning. Isabel Last is the CEO and Founder of Faena, a language learning video game startup. With Faena you don't have to choose: play and learn all in one immersive, sci-fi world in the Colombian Andes. 

Isabel Last

Founder & CEO of Faena

Faena is an innovative Spanish language learning video game founded by their CEO Isabel Last. Isabel wanted to make learning fun by creating a game where you learn by speaking and interacting in a story-filled world. 


Isabel Last - Faena

Lindsay Tjepkema is the CEO &amp; Co-Founder of Casted, the only amplified marketing platform, and is where we host our very own podcast! Lindsay has an extensive background in marketing, is passionate about women in leadership and workplace culture, is a podcast host and speaker, and is a mother of 3 boys. Lindsay started her company just before the pandemic hit; what a time 😅. Today, she takes us through her journey as a marketing leader turned CEO and Co-Founder of a company. She shares how she put her vision into play and where she hopes to take Casted in the future. Listen now! Takeaways:00:03&nbsp;-&nbsp;02:07 Introduction to episode and Lindsay02:32&nbsp;-&nbsp;03:39 Set out to be the change you want to see04:04&nbsp;-&nbsp;06:37 The process of putting a vision to play07:01&nbsp;-&nbsp;09:00 The good, the bad, the ugly - Having a demanding work and personal life09:39&nbsp;-&nbsp;11:56 Venture Capitalist Funding - How it happens and what the process is like14:40&nbsp;-&nbsp;16:08 A day in the life of Lindsay Tjepkema18:27&nbsp;-&nbsp;20:36 Casting a Vision - An evolution of Casted23:26&nbsp;-&nbsp;25:07 The biggest win at Casted27:15&nbsp;-&nbsp;28:42 Final Thoughts

In the years before starting Casted, our CEO, Lindsay Tjepkema, was a marketing leader for a global martech SaaS enterprise. Like many of our customers here at Casted, she led all of the brand’s content marketing efforts. Her mission was to help grow the business by aligning the brand around a common message, to humanize it with a unified voice, and to highlight perspectives of customers, partners, industry experts, and internal thought leaders. What started with interviews of those subject matter experts turned into a powerful global content strategy. 

The only thing missing was a voice - literally. The brand needed a voice. And the voices of all those internal and external experts needed to come through louder and clearer. So, Lindsay and her team launched a brand podcast. Instead of trying to capture the perspectives of those experts in writing, she interviewed them and let their actual voices speak for themselves.

These conversations produced rich and valuable content: original ideas, executive insights, and customer stories. The podcast and accompanying video series were a great success. But even with this new approach, she quickly experienced two problems:

Podcast metrics were the worst. The podcast was incredibly successful in terms of anecdotal feedback and vanity metrics (ahem, downloads), but that wasn’t enough to prove the value of the podcast to Lindsay’s CEO. Lindsay needed visibility on how the podcast impacted pipeline, and ultimately revenue. However, because podcast metrics were pretty horrible and clearly not made for marketers, the information Lindsay (and other marketers) needed simply wasn't available. 
Podcasting-related software was also the worst. Although the podcast was thriving and Lindsay's team was using it to create rich, engaging content, the work was very manual and inefficient. Podcast tools consisted of one-off tools and point solutions and were not designed to support the way marketing teams collaborate, to work with the tools they already use, to support the way they need to deliver assets to other teams, or to prove any return on investment.   
So in April 2019, Lindsay left her role as a marketing leader and Casted was born. Today, Casted gives marketers a true return on those podcast conversations with broader access to the content, many ways to wring-out and amplify that content across other channel, and attribution that reveals the impact that content makes on the brand and the business.

Lindsay Tjepkema

CEO & Co-Founder

Lindsay started her company just before the pandemic hit; what a time 😅. Today, she takes us through her journey as a marketing leader turned CEO and Co-Founder of a company. She shares how she put her vision into play and where she hopes to take Casted in the future. Listen now!


Lindsay Tjepkema - Casted

Meggan Wood is the CEO &amp; Founder of Lily Jade, a leather diaper bag and handbag company. Inspired by wanting style and efficiency, Meggan started her company in 2013, and it has grown into the successful company it is today. In this episode, Meggan joins Michelle to discuss everything Lily Jade. This discussion includes Meggans's background in communications and broadcast journalism, how that translates to her role now, and the evolution of Lily Jade and "keeping the niche." All that and more on this episode of From the Basement Up.

Meggan Wood is the co-founder, designer, and branding maestro behind the leather diaper bag and handbag brand, Lily Jade. It all started when she was a new mom and diaper bag options weren’t available for the woman who valued quality as well as organization. As a solution, Meggan carried her leather tote filled with a ziploc bag “organizational” system. Her friends thought it was hilarious but her husband, Landon, knew she was on to something. Encouraging her vision, Landon asked her to design the diaper bag of her dreams. Taking a leap of faith, she quickly went from happy homeschool mom to successful business owner in one year! 

After launching Lily Jade from their home in San Antonio, Texas in 2013, Meggan knew it had to be about more than just bags. She knew she wanted to create a community to bless others. With that aim in mind, Lily Jade values hosting giveaways, championing adoptive families, inviting women into friendship through Nourishment & Encouragement Groups and helping out mommas with unexpected pregnancies by partnering with Embrace Grace.

Meggan Wood

CEO & Founder of Lily Jade

Meggan Wood is the CEO & Founder of Lily Jade, a leather diaper bag and handbag company. Inspired by wanting style and efficiency, Meggan started her company in 2013, and it has grown into the successful company it is today.
In this episode, Meggan joins Michelle to discuss everything Lily Jade. This discussion includes Meggans's background in communications and broadcast journalism, how that translates to her role now, and the evolution of Lily Jade and "keeping the niche." 
All that and more on this episode of From the Basement Up.


Meggan Wood - Lily Jade

Lily Jade and Name Bubbles

In this episode, Meggan joins Michelle to discuss everything Lily Jade. This discussion includes Meggans's background in communications and broadcast journalism, how that translates to her role now, and the evolution of Lily Jade and "keeping the niche." 


Founder &amp; CEO of The Baby Cot Shop, Toks Aruoture, talks with host Michelle Brandriss about what it's like to be an entrepreneur and nursery interior designer. Toks shares how she went from the pharmaceutical industry to interior design while being the mother of four children. During the conversation the two discuss traveling to help people all over the world to design their dream nursery's, and how that process has shifted with the prevalence of remote meeting apps like Zoom and WhatsApp that allow Toks to meet people anywhere they're at. Toks also talks about overcoming imposter syndrome, and how she realized she should follow a passion for interior design. All that and more on this episode of From the Basement Up.

Toks is a British-Nigerian businesswoman and the founder of The Baby Cot Shop, a luxury baby furniture brand based in London. She hosts the acclaimed podcast, Living Inside Out, which focuses on entrepreneurship, faith and mindset. A sought after speaker best known for her authentic storytelling style, she helps women unwrap their gifts so they can play bigger.

Toks Aruoture

Founder & CEO, The Baby Cot Shop

Founder & CEO of The Baby Cot Shop, Toks Aruoture, talks with host Michelle Brandriss about what it's like to be an entrepreneur and nursery interior designer. Toks shares how she went from the pharmaceutical industry to interior design while being the mother of four children. During the conversation the two discuss traveling to help people all over the world to design their dream nursery's, and how that process has shifted with the prevalence of remote meeting apps like Zoom and WhatsApp that allow Toks to meet people anywhere they're at. Toks also talks about overcoming imposter syndrome, and how she realized she should follow a passion for interior design.


Toks Aruoture - The Baby Cot Shop

Founder & CEO of The Baby Cot Shop, Toks Aruoture, talks with host Michelle Brandriss about what it's like to be an entrepreneur and nursery interior designer. Toks shares how she went from the pharmaceutical industry to interior design while being the mother of four children. During the conversation the two discuss traveling to help people all over the world to design their dream nursery's, and how that process has shifted with the prevalence of remote meeting apps like Zoom and WhatsApp that allow Toks to meet people anywhere they're at. Toks also talks about overcoming imposter syndrome, and how she realized she should follow a passion for interior design. All that and more on this episode of From the Basement Up.


From the Basement Up

Meet the groundbreakers and community makers, with Michelle Brandriss, founder of Name Bubbles. This podcast is for those thinking about starting a business, branching out on their own, or creating something for their community. Hear from people who tackled their biggest fears and got their grit on. Learn how they are redefining success and creating inspiration for others to do the same.

Melinda Hwang - Happy Masks

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Today's Host

Michelle Brandriss

Emily Flanagan

Today's Guests

Melinda Hwang

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