When Shelley McGuire started firing questions, Akinwande Oshodi was ready for every one of them.
At VETS26 in New Orleans, the founder and CEO of The Avery Group sat down with Shelley for a round in the Orange Slices Podcast hot seat, and honestly, it was a blast to watch. The conversation went everywhere. Golf. Charcoal grilling. AI. Leadership. And the question every veteran-owned business owner has chewed on at some point: what does it actually take to earn respect in this work? Akinwande had something real to say about all of it.
If you have spent any time around him, you know why he keeps coming back to this event. He will tell you straight. It is the education, the connections, and the relationships that turn into partnerships, teammates, and joint ventures. And it is not just talk. We watched those relationships take shape on the floor all day long.
Then he dropped the line that had everyone grinning. To describe a slow and deliberate pace, he came out with a new favorite: moving like peanut butter in the wintertime. You cannot teach that. It stuck immediately, and we are absolutely keeping it.
That mix is the whole point. Substance and personality in the same breath. It is how Akinwande leads, and it is how The Avery Group shows up for the agencies we support every day.
Big thanks to Shelley McGuire and the Orange Slices team for the conversation, and to NVSBC for building the kind of room where veteran-owned firms learn from each other and actually become teammates.
The hot seat is cooling down. The connections are just warming up.
