{"id":11397,"date":"2016-09-11T17:41:18","date_gmt":"2016-09-11T21:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/?p=11397"},"modified":"2017-03-22T17:41:53","modified_gmt":"2017-03-22T21:41:53","slug":"speaker-spotlight-ben-weiss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/speaker-spotlight-ben-weiss\/","title":{"rendered":"Speaker Spotlight: Ben Weiss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 2009, <strong>Ben Weiss<\/strong> founded Bai Brands, the producer of antioxidant, low-calorie drinks from coffeefruit. By 2011, the company&#8217;s annual revenue reached $1.7 million and distribution expanded from his New Jersey basement, to all over the Northeast.<\/p>\n<p>In Weiss&#8217;s recent <em>Inc.<\/em> video he discusses why he almost quit four years before he grew the company&#8217;s sales to $120 million. He says difficulty in preserving family relationships, especially with his son, is what almost pushed him to quit.<\/p>\n<h2>On balancing work and life<\/h2>\n<p>&#8220;I was a dad that coached little league but now I was a dad in the stands and I was a dad that at times couldn&#8217;t even be in the stands because work was becoming a little bit more demanding of my time as the business grew,&#8221; says Weiss.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I remember there was a double-header one day and my son was pitching and I just noticed he wasn&#8217;t there, he wasn&#8217;t in the game. He was telling me in no uncertain terms &#8216;Hey dad I kinda miss you, I kinda resent what this business has done because it&#8217;s taken you away from me.&#8217; It rattled my world.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I realized that I needed permission to do this and I needed it to come from my 10-year-old who needed me as a dad,&#8221; continues Weiss. &#8220;We had a very real talk and he gave me permission. If he hadn&#8217;t I would have quit Bai in a second.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Weiss\u00a0knows that an entrepreneur and his families must make great sacrifices in order to manage a business. He is thankful for his son&#8217;s understanding and commitment.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>View the full video <a href=\"http:\/\/www.inc.com\/ben-weiss\/how-he-almost-quit-4-years-before-he-grew-bai-brands-to-120-million-in-sales.html?cid=rw0081\">here<\/a>. For more information on Ben Weiss, please visit our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/\">website<\/a>. Interested in booking a speaker for your next event?<a href=\"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/infopages\/contactus.php\"> Contact us<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p>For further related speakers on subject like entrepreneurship, check out our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/lists\/business-and-economics.php\">top speaker lists<\/a> under business and economic topics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2009, Ben Weiss founded Bai Brands, the producer of antioxidant, low-calorie drinks from coffeefruit. By 2011, the company&#8217;s annual revenue reached $1.7 million and distribution expanded from his New Jersey basement, to all over the Northeast. In Weiss&#8217;s recent Inc. video he discusses why he almost quit four years before he grew the company&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":12372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[389,262],"tags":[306,484,482,328],"class_list":{"0":"post-11397","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business-economy","8":"category-speaker-spotlight","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-ceo","11":"tag-inc","12":"tag-worklife-balance"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/ben-weiss.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11397"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12375,"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11397\/revisions\/12375"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}