Miami Business Assembly
Your MBA for the price of doughnuts and coffee.
Everyone has something to learn. Everyone has something to share.
On select Friday mornings, we bring together people who are building, running, funding, advising—and sometimes just beginning—businesses.
We talk about what's working.
What's not.
What we've tried.
What we've learned.
What we need.
And what we're trying to figure out next.
Then we put thought into who should be around the table.
Because sometimes the most useful business experience isn't found in a book, a classroom or a conference.
It's sitting across from you.
Friday mornings · 7:00–8:30 AM · Brickell, Miami
In plain terms
A curated business peer gathering in Brickell.
Miami Business Assembly is a curated business gathering in Brickell, Miami. On select Friday mornings, founders, entrepreneurs, senior executives, investors, business owners and experienced professionals come together around real business challenges. Before each gathering, we learn what participants need and what they can share, then thoughtfully curate the room around those conversations.
It is not a networking event, not a paid membership, not a mastermind and not a coaching program. There are no dues and no tickets. Every seat begins with a request describing what you are working on, what you need and what you can share.
Business is learned by doing.
There are things we can learn in business school.
And then there are the things we learn from actually doing business.
Hiring the wrong person.
Finding the right partner.
Losing a customer.
Landing the customer that changes everything.
Launching something nobody buys.
Launching something we can't make fast enough.
Running out of money.
Raising money.
Growing too quickly.
Growing too slowly.
Making a great decision.
Making a terrible one.
And getting up the next morning and figuring out what to do next.
There's value in all of it.
Miami Business Assembly is about sharing those experiences—and learning from the experiences of others.
Bring it to the table.
Maybe you're considering an acquisition.
Trying to grow sales.
Launching a product.
Entering a new market.
Trying to understand AI.
Raising capital.
Dealing with a manufacturing problem.
Rethinking marketing.
Hiring leadership.
Working through a legal or financial question.
Or staring at an opportunity and wondering:
Should we do this?
Tell us about it.
Bring whatever helps explain it.
Numbers.
Slides.
Documents.
A prototype.
A website.
A drawing on a whiteboard.
Or simply a conversation.
The objective isn't to impress the room.
It's to use the room.
We build the room around the conversation.
This is one of the most important things about Miami Business Assembly.
When someone requests a seat, we ask what they're working on.
- What's working?
- What's not?
- What have you tried?
- What have you learned?
- What do you need?
Before each gathering, we review what participants are working on.
Then we curate the room.
If someone is considering raising capital, we may invite someone who understands capital.
If a company is struggling with distribution, we'll look for someone who has actually built distribution.
If technology is the issue, we'll look for relevant technology experience.
If someone is considering buying or selling a company, experience with transactions may belong at the table.
If there's a legal issue, the appropriate legal perspective may be useful.
If someone is trying to get a product onto retail shelves, perhaps somebody who's actually done it should be sitting across from them.
And sometimes the most valuable perspective comes from someone none of us would have predicted.
We don't just decide who's coming.
We think carefully about who should be in the room.
We can't promise that every problem gets solved in 90 minutes.
Business doesn't work that way.
But if you're getting up early and giving us 90 minutes of your Friday morning, we'll put serious thought into making those 90 minutes worth your time.
Tell us what you're working onOur story
How it started.
The idea behind Miami Business Assembly goes back years.
While our founder, Leon Stoltz, was building PotatoFinger, a potato chip manufacturing company founded in Decatur, Georgia, the business grew from a local operation into nationwide distribution, with some international distribution as well.
And as the company grew, so did the questions.
So we started bringing people together on Friday mornings.
The format was remarkably simple.
A small number of companies would come in and tell us what they were doing and what they were dealing with.
What was working?
What wasn't?
What had they tried?
What had they learned?
What did they need?
Then we tried to bring the right experience into the room.
Some sessions took place at our offices in Decatur.
Others were hosted at Morris, Manning & Martin, one of Atlanta's leading law firms, with the support of its co-founder, John G. “Sonny” Morris.
The room might include people with experience in marketing, strategy, finance and law.
Other gatherings brought investors, executives, entrepreneurs and specialists whose experience was particularly relevant to the companies participating that morning.
The objective was never to assemble the most impressive résumés.
It was to assemble the most useful room.
Week after week, companies brought real situations to the table.
People shared what they knew, what they'd tried, what had worked, what had failed—and what they would do differently.
Along the way, Sonny Morris and John Morabito became mentors to Leon.
But just as importantly, every person who came through the room had the potential to teach us something.
There were no professors.
No curriculum.
No exams.
Just real businesses, real decisions and people willing to share what they'd learned from actually doing it.
And that's how Leon ended up with what he still calls his MBA for the price of coffee and doughnuts.
Sometimes the people you learn from become your mentors.
Two people who became particularly important during those years were John G. “Sonny” Morris and John Morabito.
Sonny co-founded Morris, Manning & Martin and helped build the firm from a small Atlanta practice into a nationally recognized law firm.
He became a highly respected real-estate deal lawyer and an important member of Atlanta's business community.
John brought a different kind of experience.
His career combined finance with substantial operating experience, including sales and marketing leadership involving brands such as Samuel Adams, California Coolers, Guinness and Rémy Martin, followed by executive leadership in the beverage industry.
Over time, both became mentors to Leon.
Nobody assigned them as mentors.
There wasn't a mentorship program.
Those relationships developed because people kept showing up.
They talked about business.
They asked questions.
They challenged ideas.
They shared what they'd learned.
And they took an interest in what other people were building.
That's what can happen around a good table.
Sometimes we meet someone who has already been where we're trying to go.
Sometimes we become that person for somebody else.
And sometimes we don't realize either has happened until years later.
Everyone has something to share.
One of the most memorable people who ever joined one of those tables was 14 years old.
She had started an online cosmetics company and arranged to have her products manufactured in Canada.
She sat at the same table as experienced businesspeople and professionals.
Not as a student.
As an entrepreneur.
There were things the experienced people around that table could share with her.
And there were things she understood that they didn't.
That experience captured something we've seen repeatedly.
Age doesn't determine the value of an idea.
A title doesn't determine the value of a perspective.
The size of a company doesn't determine whether someone has something useful to say.
And success isn't the only thing worth talking about.
Everyone has something to learn.
Everyone has something to share.
What worked?
Share it.
What didn't?
Share that too.
What would you never do again?
We really want to hear that one.
Business conversations have a tendency to focus on success.
But some of the most valuable things we know came from things that didn't work.
The employee we shouldn't have hired.
The market we entered too early.
The product nobody wanted.
The deal we should have walked away from.
The company that succeeded.
The company that didn't.
It's all experience.
Someone at the table may be about to make a mistake someone else made ten years ago.
Or they may be about to discover something none of us has considered before.
Both conversations are worth having.
This isn't a then-and-now story.
Those original Friday mornings didn't create the idea of bringing people together.
They demonstrated its value.
Throughout Leon Stoltz's career—across entrepreneurship, technology, real estate and other ventures—bringing people together has remained a constant.
People with ideas and people with experience.
People who need something and people who may know how to help.
People who've succeeded.
People who've failed.
People at the beginning of their careers.
People with decades behind them.
And often the distinction between who is helping and who is learning disappears pretty quickly.
Someone knows something we don't.
And we probably know something they don't.
Miami Business Assembly simply gives those conversations a table.
Why Miami?
Because Miami is full of people with extraordinarily different experiences.
Established business leaders.
Entrepreneurs.
Startup founders.
Investors.
Developers.
Technologists.
Professionals.
People building family businesses.
People building their fourth company.
People building their first.
People who grew up here.
People who arrived from somewhere else.
Different industries.
Different cultures.
Different generations.
Different ways of seeing business.
We don't want everyone around the table to think alike.
That would defeat the purpose.
7:00 AM.
We meet early because we respect the business day.
Coffee is ready.
Doughnuts are on the table.
We start at 7:00 AM.
We finish at 8:30 AM.
Then everyone gets back to whatever they're building.
90 minutes.
One table.
A room built around the conversation.
Candid, but use good judgment.
Useful business conversations require candor.
We ask everyone participating to treat the conversations they hear with discretion and respect.
But Miami Business Assembly is not conducted under a mutual nondisclosure agreement.
Don't share trade secrets, privileged information or anything that requires formal confidentiality protection.
Share enough for the table to understand the issue. Keep genuinely confidential information confidential.
Upcoming Tables
New gathering dates are announced periodically. You can still request a seat and let us know you're flexible.
Come to learn.
Come to share.
Bring an experience.
Bring a question.
Bring an opportunity.
Bring a problem.
Bring something that worked.
Bring something that failed.
Bring something you need.
Ask for perspective.
Challenge an assumption.
Tell someone what you wish somebody had told you ten years ago.
And be willing to hear something from the person you least expected to learn it from.
Everyone has something to learn.
Everyone has something to share.
That's Miami Business Assembly.
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