LET'S GROW

How Tenia Davis Left the Boardroom to Build a Bookstore Café That Connects a Community When most people finish a corporate career, they picture rest or maybe a consulting project. Tenia Davis, PhD, imagined something far more vibrant. She traded meetings for meaningful conversations and turned her passion for books and people into a Chicago-based bookstore café filled with connection, creativity, and purpose. In this episode of the Growth Department podcast , host Chelsey Rey

Sales leadership is both strategy and stewardship. It’s knowing the numbers while guiding the humans behind them. As Steve Levitt shared, “You can’t succeed alone without your team. Help them. Carry their concerns upward and bring clarity back down. That’s the job.” Start now. Evaluate, plan, and lead with purpose. The teams that thrive in 2026 will be the ones whose leaders were already preparing today.

Wendy’s move into entrepreneurship was the result of years of reflection and a desire for more alignment between her work and her values. “I had a long and rewarding career,” she explains, “but I wanted more alignment. I wanted to create something lasting, meaningful, and deeply personal.”

There is a moment in every high performer or leader’s life when relentless effort stops producing better results or stops feeling...

If you think your career has zigged and zagged, wait until you meet Henry Woodman. He sold knives at 13, launched a television show in Chile, scaled and exited a global hotel tech platform, and now he’s producing a reincarnation-themed romance series written from a manuscript discovered in his dad’s garage.