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Welcome to Florida State University's official entrepreneurship and innovation podcast, The InNOLEvation® Mindset! Hosted by Mark McNees and powered by the Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship. This podcast features audio and video versions of our podcast, which highlights student and alumni entrepreneurs and innovators from FSU.
Get inspired by the next generation of young business leaders and hear their inside stories. Learn from faculty who teach entrepreneurship and innovation courses at FSU as they share key insights.
On this channel, you'll find:
-Full video episodes of our podcast conversations with founders of startups born at FSU
-Business advice and thought leadership from FSU professors focused on entrepreneurship
-Fireside chats and interviews recorded live with enterprising alumni making their mark
-Special segments and speaker events at FSU focused on innovation
Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, a current business owner, or you just love hearing success stories - subscribe now to see inspiring individuals daring to turn ideas into reality. With new episodic content added regularly, The Innovation Mindset podcast tells tales of vision, grit, failure, and triumph straight from the FSU community.
This channel visually brings the podcast to life with photos, graphics, and video. Join us by subscribing if you bleed garnet and gold!
Episodes
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1 hr 5 min
Host Mark McNees interviews FSU alum entrepreneur Alex Sandkuhl on the InNOLEvation® Mindset podcast about his wide-ranging path through sales, startups, and business building. Sandkuhl recounts leading an FSU phone book ad-sales team to a national win over Florida, launching an early podcast network that headlined a live Oktoberfest broadcast, and how an FSU connection led to his first hyper-growth software startup role. He explains lessons from becoming an Eagle Scout and creating a braille-guided trail for the blind, discusses turning around InSync Healthcare Solutions from negative EBITDA to $39M revenue and $9M profit before a 2021 sale, and outlines his current work across a French wine-importing business, a private-equity-focused market research firm, and a portfolio of software companies. He emphasizes opportunism, knowing partnership “lanes,” bootstrapping vs. raising capital, and learning to enjoy the entrepreneurial process.
00:00 Welcome and Introductions
00:48 FSU Roots and Life Today
01:39 Oktoberfest Live Podcast
03:20 Phone Book Sales Win
05:48 Creative Writing to Startups
10:00 Eagle Scout Leadership Lessons
12:40 Opportunity Driven Career
14:27 Scaling and Selling InSync
15:57 Wine Importing and Portfolio
17:40 Jewish Deli and COVID Pivot
22:16 Partnership Lanes and Margins
27:41 B2C vs B2B Reality Check
29:43 Bootstrap vs Investors
32:22 Red Eye Coffee Origin
33:44 Beach Volleyball Tech
38:15 Feedback Loop AI
40:24 Vision and Flexibility
48:32 Stay in Your Lane
52:23 Risk and Exit Discipline
58:24 Trenches Perspective
01:03:02 Advice to Past Self
01:04:36 Podcast Wrap Up
Sep 20, 2026
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