As someone with interest in fitness, helping as many people as possible improve their health, and seeing the benefits of his own weight loss transformation, Matthew Bible started his fitness company, CASS Fitness in September of 2013. The company started out with Matthew and his two partners Stephen Sengstacke and Ramon Thomas. Matthew is an in-home personal trainer, traveling to homes, apartment gyms, parks, offices, and more in Montgomery County, MD, Arlington, VA, and Washington, DC. Over the next few years, Matthew helped to recruit several talented personal trainers in the DC area as independent contractors. In 2017, CASS Fitness began teaching outdoor classes for the Parks at Walter Reed in DC and also gained their first trainer in Pittsburgh, PA.
Melissa Forziat is a Southern California-based marketer, speaker, consultant, and author. She uses her experience working with big organizations like Olympic Winter Games, Rugby World Cup, and the US Olympic Committee and now she teaches small businesses how to market on a budget and helps them execute their marketing strategies. She is the author of "Small Business Marketing on a Budget," and as a speaker she offers keynotes, presentations, workshops, and webinars.
where he led all modeling and valuation work for the firm’s M&A and fundraising assignments."
Marcia Moran has written over fifty business plans and helped entrepreneurs strategize over how to differentiate their companies in changing environments. Her twenty-plus years of experience helping other entrepreneurs caused her to found her own firm, Performance Architect, in 2012 and co-founded Positive Business DC that same year. After suffering a major stroke in 2014, Marcia applied her skills in planning and strategy as she strived to become whole. Over time she learned to walk again, but Marcia struggled with aphasia, a language disorder. She joined Toastmasters International hoping to regain her speaking abilities, and it helped some, but in August 2017 she discovered a technological breakthrough that minimized her speaking disability. Let's hear from Marcia what coming back from the stroke was like.
Michelle Pellizzon is the founder of Holisticism, a wellness-tech company providing affordable, accessible holistic wellness care. A former professional dancer-turned-tech founder, she started Holisticism after overcoming an epilepsy diagnosis at 17 using holistic medicine. After spending 6 years in Silicon Beach working at various startups like Thrive Market and Laurel & Wolf, Michelle started Holisticism as a passion project and has quickly grown it to a community of over 45k people.
Melanie is the owner of her own digital marketing agency, Melanie Hardcastle Marketing + Events. She left her full-time job a year and a half ago to pursue entrepreneurship and has never looked back. Melanie works with clients to help them find their brand's voice, execute their marketing strategy and produce killer virtual events. If you want to grow your audience, reach the right people and scale your business, she's your woman.
Megan Yelaney is a business coach who specializes in helping online coaches get booked out with 1:1 clients and scale their businesses to six figures. She started in network marketing in 2011, building that business to six figures, and transitioned to her own health and fitness coaching in 2017, scaling that to six figures in 6 months. She has since gone full time into business coaching and has scaled that business to multiple six figures in 1.5 years. Megan specializes in client attraction utilizing social media marketing strategies as well as launch strategy to help her clients and students have a strategic plan to launch their programs profitably and in an organized and stress free way.
Mike is the Founder of JETRO, a modern day digital accounting firm servicing small business owners across the country. Mike has spent the majority of his career as an entrepreneur. He was CFO and co-founded several companies and has experience in all business stages. He set out on a mission to help businesses that have seen and lived the same experiences he did in business. Mike has both a Bachelors and Masters in Accounting and is a Certified Public Accountant.
Michael H. Drobnis is the CEO of OptfinITy, LLC, , a technology solutions firm which has received numerous industry awards including a ranking of the top 250 small technology businesses worldwide. Mr. Drobnis has over 22 years of technology experience across many different industries and disciplines, including but not limited to records management, disaster recovery and business continuance planning, system security, web design and development, project management, technology and infrastructure design. As an accomplished technology executive and project manager, his vision and expertise have helped hundred's of organizations work smarter and more efficiently through the use and development of proper technology solutions and collaboration tools. Mr. Drobnis received his MBA with a concentration in technology from the McCallum Graduate School of Business at Bentley University in Massachusetts. He has served on the Fairfax County Information Technology Policy Advisory Committee, the ITT Technical Institute Curriculum Advisory Board, as the President and on the board of the Springfield Chamber of Commerce and on the board of the Central Fairfax Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Drobnis is an alumni of Leadership Fairfax and The FBI Citizens Academy and is the proud father of 3 girls in West Springfield.
Michael James Niner is the CEO of Blue Raven, Incorporated, which is considered by many as the top Executive Protection & Security Services company in the D.C. Metro area. He also currently serves as the Personal Protection Specialist Advisor to the Virginia CJSB (Criminal Justice Services Board).
