Circle Back: Becoming chief problem solver

Gov. Phil Bredesen has always been a problem-solver, from a childhood that included selling Christmas cards to his time as a physics student at Harvard. Early in his career, he started Health America, which he sold in 1986 after having grown it to 6,000 employees and turning a handful of initial $10,000 investments into $40 million apiece.

Bredesen shares details of that journey and others that followed in an episode of Circle Back, the Nashville Entrepreneur Center’s new podcast that shines a light on some of Middle Tennessee’s most well-known entrepreneurs and for which the Post is proud to be the media partner. Among the elements of the story he shares is not wanting to reprise his entrepreneurial health care journey and instead launching himself into politics — albeit by losing his first two races.