Category Archives: Entrepreneurial Women

By Christine Graf

When leaders of the Veterinary Services division of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) were tasked with improving the agency’s internal culture, they turned to CultureTalk for help.

CultureTalk, a Saratoga Springs-based company, was founded by sisters Theresa Agresta and Cynthia Forstmann. The USDA is among a long list of companies and agencies from around the world that have utilized the CultureTalk Platform to measure and define workplace culture.

Organizational culture refers to the values, beliefs, attitudes, systems, and rules that outline and influence employee behavior within an organization. 

“It’s common for people to talk about culture, but a lot of people don’t fully understand it,” said Agresta. “It is more often found in the ‘unwritten rules’ than the things that have been spelled out. CultureTalk can take something that is difficult to define and make it easy to talk about.”

The sisters came up with the idea for CultureTalk while working together on their first joint venture, brand development company Allegory Studios.

“Cynthia and I developed a niche and expertise in brand development,” said Agresta. “Very early on, we discovered the impact that measuring culture had on the development of an authentic brand. When we were working with a business to differentiate and brand them, the culture was the piece that really stood out to us.”

“If you are selling services, a lot of what you offer is similar to your competitors. It’s your people and your culture that really differentiate you, and that can be why a prospective client might choose your business.”

By Christine Graf

Thirty-year-old Broadalbin native Amanda Triolo was managing the accounting department at Chris’ Coffee Service when she started flipping houses in her free time. It was a risky proposition but one she thrived on.

“I realized I liked rolling the dice to see what I’m made of,” said Triolo. “So, when I got some money under my belt and got the opportunity to take over a commercial install only HVAC company, I decided to give it a shot.”

Triolo purchased PMA Mechanical LLC in 2016, relocating the business from Broadalbin to Albany. Almost immediately, she recognized the  company would have more growth opportunities if she expanded into the residential market.  

“From 2016 until COVID happened, I was trying to figure out how to go from the commercial industry to the residential industry,” she said. “I couldn’t figure out how to do it without going bankrupt. I didn’t have the cash flow to be able to hire residential employees and also pay for the commercial employees and wait for the money to come in from commercial jobs.”

In March 2020, while Triolo was still trying to come up with a plan, construction sites were shut down because of the COVID pandemic.

“In the snap of a finger, I had no business at all,” said Triolo. “I had 12 employees at the time, and I had to lay off all but 4.”

Triolo transitioned her remaining employees to residential work, relying on Google ads to market their services. As the phone started ringing, she was able to bring her laid off employees back to work.

By Andrea Harwood

Brooke McBride, a nurse practitioner moved to the area with her family from Vermont about a year ago. Upon arrival, she went to look for scrubs, a standard medical wear, for her new job.

“I did a quick Google search and discovered there was nothing anywhere around me closer of a 30-minute drive away,” said McBride. “I told my husband, ‘We should just open our own’. And so we just went for it.”

She opened The Scrub Shop, a medical apparel and accessory store at 462 Maple Ave. in Saratoga Springs on Aug. 19. She said business has been very good.

McBride positioned her retail space on  Maple Avenue close to Saratoga Hospital, in an area with over 20 different medical offices. She started a grassroots marketing campaign.

“I went to every office in the area that would let me through the doors and I passed out marketing materials,” she said. “We got a lot of customers that way. From there, our customer base grew from word-of-mouth and a strong social media presence.”

McBride works full-time in primary care as a nurse practitioner. Her husband and staff run the store when she is at work. This is McBride’s first business, though her husband has a degree in business.

By Christine Graf  

California native and Ballston Spa business owner Michelle Brandriss fell in love with Saratoga the first time she and her husband, David, visited the city during horse racing season. Their dream to settle in the area became a reality after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. 

They were living in New York City at the time, and David was working on the 23rd floor of the North Tower. He was among those who were able to evacuate the building before it collapsed.

While working in advertising, Michelle came up with the idea for Name Bubbles, a personalized name label company. At the time, she was a new mom and her son was enrolled in a Saratoga Springs day care program.

“In New York state, day cares require everything to be labeled. I was using Sharpie pens and masking tape to label his bottles. The labels would wear off, so I would redo it every few days,” said Brandriss. “Then I started noticing other women had really nice, fancy labels.”

After learning the women were ordering the labels online, she started researching label companies. She discovered that the biggest custom labels companies were located in Canada and Australia. Much to her surprise, there were no major players in the United States.

By Paul Post

While many people were at the beach or enjoying backyard barbecues, Rachel McDermott spent Fourth of July weekend harvesting barley for her new craft brewery.

Ninety percent of Dancing Grain Brewery’s ingredients are raised in fields surrounding the farm-based business, located at 180 Old West Road in Moreau, just south of Northway Exit 17.

“This is all hand-selected intentionally to give you something you can’t get somewhere else, from people who have painstakingly suffered all the trials and tribulations to make it possible,” McDermott said. “I want to grow really good crops. I want to share that story with people who come here to enjoy good beer. This is the first brewery I know of where a grain farm is taking on this production aspect of beer.”

Raised in Schaghticoke on her family’s West Wind Ag farm, McDermott studied applied economics and management at Cornell University en route to an exciting investment banker’s career with firms in Houston and New York City.

But upon turning 30, she took inventory of her life’s goals and gave it all up to come back home and help out on the farm.

By Susan Elise Campbell

If beauty were only skin deep, innovative professional aesthetician Denise Dubois would have had no need to evolve her day spa into Complexions Spa for Beauty and Wellness.

A 1984 graduate of Catherine Hinds Institute of Esthetics, Dubois opened Complexions Spa in 1987 when “a day spa was not really heard of,” she said. 

“The foundation of the business has always been skin care,” said Dubois. “Originally, Complexions occupied 1,200 square feet and had four facial rooms. Besides me there was one other employee who did make-up and answered the phone.”

Today Dubois and her licensed staff offer non-surgical cosmetic procedures, wellness and nutritional consultation and coaching in addition to facials, massage, hair color and design, manicures and pedicures, and more. 

Services are performed from two addresses, in Albany and Saratoga Springs, but  with one overarching holistic approach.

“Lifestyles impact how we look and feel,” said Dubois. “There is a range of medical spa services we can use once we understand what’s going on in the inside and what a client’s lifestyle is like.”

By Susan Elise Campbell

Ever since she could remember, Danielle Kresge wanted to run a hair salon and spa.

Half her dream was realized when she started Elle Salon three years ago in South Glens Falls. Now in her new location at 113 Saratoga Ave., Kresge has the room to add staff and services to give clients the full spa experience.

“At the other location, I had a good starting point to get my feet wet,” she said. “I’m actually surprised at how quickly we grew, and proud of it.”

Once she determined to move and expand, Kresge knew she would put her clients first. The location she found on Facebook was a brand new building in which she could picture clients “relaxing and enjoying themselves,” she said.

“The space is like an open canvas with white walls and high ceilings,” she said. “It has a clean, breezy, airy feeling.”

Since the move the first week of August, there have been a few new hires, bringing the staff to 12.

By jill Nagy

Just past her one-year anniversary, Leslie Swedish is finding Moxxi Coffee Co., her new coffee business, “nothing short of a pleasure.”

The company sells its own blends of coffee online and through retail outlets and “business is going really well.”

Swedish designs the blends—there are six so far—in cooperation with Chris’ Coffee Service in Latham. Chris’ imports the coffees and roasts and mixes the blends to her order. Coffees are organic and fair-traded.

Typically, there are between two and four varieties to a blend. The three basic blends are blond ambition, a four-bean blend of lightly roasted coffees; bold ambition, a dark roast blend of monsoon and Malabar coffees; and wild ambition, an “almost espresso” blend of extra dark Peruvian and Indian coffees.

In addition, Swedish has concocted three varieties of herbal and botanical infused coffee blends: relax, refocus, and revive. A winter blend is under development. Swedish also offers a variety of coffee mugs.

For every item sold, the company donates $1 to the Moxxi Women’s Foundation that makes grants “to support ambitious women in the Capital region.” The foundation, nonprofit charitable corporation, has been active since last March. Grantees include a local woman who sells soaps and candles and will use the grant money to buy a tumbler for polishing stones.

By Christine Graf

Before owning her own company, Rose Miller worked in human resources for companies of all sizes. Around 2005, she began to seriously consider the idea of opening her own human resources consulting business.

“You have to do a scout model. Always be prepared and get as many facts as you can,” she said.

Her research revealed that the number-one failure point for HR professionals who went out on their own was loneliness and isolation. A self-described people person, Miller found that concerning.

“I saw myself quickly becoming dissatisfied with working out of my house,” she said. “I also knew that one of my strengths is building great teams. I knew I didn’t want to work all by myself. I wanted to build a company.”

Her first step was to create a business plan. According to Miller, it is essential for anyone who is thinking about starting their own business.

“So many entrepreneurs don’t write a business plan, but you really need to sit down and go through a professional business plan because it makes you formulize things and delve into areas that you may not be strong at. To put it in writing is an amazing exercise.”

While working on her business plan in 2005, she attended a chamber of commerce meeting and was seated with the managing partner from a local CPA firm. After learning that his firm was interested in starting an HR consulting practice, she told him that he had found the person to run it.

By Susan Elise Campbell

Interactive Media Consulting LLC owner Beth Moeller, PhD. is helping solve digital marketing problems for small businesses and nonprofits—markets she said she slipped into during the company’s earliest beginnings.

The company is marking its 25th anniversary this year.

“It was First Night 1996 and we were involved in organizing communications to create a web site,” said Moeller. “There was no money to pay us, but I knew we would do it.”

An arts enthusiast, Moeller has donated valuable professional services ever since to sustain and establish the arts and art education from her alma mater, Clarkson University in Potsdam, down to the Capital District.

She was teaching at Clarkson and was about to get married when she decided to create an LLC. That decision led the couple to the Saratoga area and the pro bono web site that introduced her programming and web design skills to the merchants and sponsors of Saratoga’s First Night.

“Some of those companies called and asked me to do their websites, and some of them are still clients,” she said. “I was at the right place at the right time with the right expertise.”

Moeller started her company at a time when the HTML programming language was “taking off” and more and more advertisers were promoting their websites on TV and in print, she said.