Foundr Magazine Podcast | Learn From Successful Founders & Proven Entrepreneurs, The Ultimate Startup Podcast For Business

If you’ve ever bought a bottle of Jack Daniels BBQ sauce or Febreze kitty litter, you’ve seen Michael Stone’s powerful approach to brand licensing in action. This attorney-turned-entrepreneur pioneered the form of corporate licensing that makes such products possible and wildly successful. Stone made his first foray into the world of licensing with the launch of his company, Beanstalk, in the mid-1990s. The firm quickly became the go-to resource for prominent brands like Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, and AT&T—all corporations that were eager to expand their reach into different product categories and strengthen their relationships with consumers. In 2018, Stone and his company were responsible for generating over $7 billion in retail sales of licensed product. While he stepped down as the CEO a few years ago, Stone still serves as the chairman of Beanstalk and is committed to innovation in this industry. Check out this interview to learn more about the ins and outs of licensing and to hear about Stone’s experi

Blake Mycoskie had a number of hits and misses as a young entrepreneur, but it was a trip to Argentina that inspired the idea that would become his mission—and end up having a huge impact on the business world. Mycoskie wanted to find a way to help the children he encountered who didn’t have proper footwear, but he wanted to do it in a for-profit, self-sustaining way. That’s how TOMS came to life. From there, Mycoskie blazed a trail in the way companies think about social good, by popularizing the one-for-one giving model and building the beloved brand that still exists today. TOMS generates hundreds of millions in sales and still stays true to its mission of giving back to communities around the world. Check out this episode to learn more about Mycoskie’s advice for those who want to pursue social entrepreneurship, the business model that led to his success, and the expansion of TOMS into other types of products. Key Takeaways Why the idea of a “job” was foreign to Mycoskie growing up How Mycoskie’s entrep

In business, everyone wants to win. But sometimes it’s the people who refuse to lose who end up finding success. This is the mindset that food writer, author, and founder of the website Serious Eats carried with him throughout the ups and downs of his career. This tumultuous journey is also the primary focus of his latest book Serious Eater: A Food Lover’s Perilous Quest for Pizza and Redemption. In this interview, Levine shares the details of how he got into food writing, experimented with media platforms to diversify the way he told stories about food, and ultimately bootstrapped the money needed to launch Serious Eats. From struggling with being profitable to testing his tolerance for risk, Levine shares the sacrifices he had to make to keep his company alive for the eight years leading up to its sale. If you want an unflinching look at the challenges of entrepreneurship, this is your chance. Levine speaks with candor about the toughest aspects of launching a startup and dispels the most common myths aroun

When Nir Eyal has a burning question (which he frequently does), he goes on the hunt for an insightful answer. That curiosity is what led Eyal to publish his first and wildly popular book, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. He was inspired to delve into this topic after launching a startup in the advertising and gaming industry, where he observed that product design had the powerful ability to change human behavior. Eyal wondered why some companies were so good at it while others failed. In this fascinating interview, we chat with Eyal about his early days as an entrepreneur, the behavioral model behind forming habits and get a sneak peek into Eyal’s upcoming book Indistractable: Mastering the Skill of the Century. Plus, Eyal uses Nathan as a live case study and shares his best tips for breaking bad habits! Whether you’re an entrepreneur who wants to better understand the link between product design and human behavior, or you’re an individual looking for tangible ways to build better habits, this is

Success doesn’t happen overnight. This is something Foundr CEO Nathan Chan knows all too well. Before he started his business, Nathan was in a common predicament: he hated his job and he had no idea what career path to take. It took many steps to plant the seed that eventually became Foundr. Even then, it wasn’t an easy path forward. He stayed in his job long after starting Foundr, and at one point, Nathan even launched a webinar from his parents’ basement. There was no magic involved—only hard work, strategic decisions, and many lessons learned. In this video interview, Dave Hobson, our Head of Growth and Marketing and one of the first to join the Foundr team, has a raw conversation with Nathan about his journey to building a global brand. Nathan opens up about what it took to get Foundr off the ground, shares the key takeaways he picked up along the way, and reveals the nitty gritty details around how he turned a webinar presentation he hacked together into a multimillion-dollar product. This episode is cho

“I think about how little we knew, but how—I believe—how courageous we were,” says Christene Barberich, reflecting on the early days of Refinery29. Before she and co-founder Piera Gelardi were the women at the helm of one of the fastest-growing digital media companies in the world, they were new entrepreneurs working tirelessly on a vision (first sketched on a napkin) that outsiders failed to understand. The Refinery29 founding team formed in 2004, and in those early days (before Twitter had even launched), people struggled to grasp even the concept of digital media. The co-founders’ pitches were met with skepticism. “We would go talk to people, and they would act like we were trying to sell them a carpet or something,” Gelardi says. “They thought it was a scam.” Potential advertisers and brand partners also didn’t think customers would ever want to buy something online. “I just remember thinking, like, ‘I don’t think that’s true,’” Barberich says. That skepticism gave them an advantage, though: It gave Refin

When Kim Perell landed a job at a hot new internet startup in 1998, she thought she had hit the jackpot. She loved her job and learned a lot, but when the dot-com bubble burst, the startup went bankrupt. What was once a dream company that she recruited many friends to join had become a nightmare when she had to lay off those friends, and then lose her own job too. “In an instant, someone pushed delete on my life, and my future, my identity,” she says. “My multimillion-dollar stock went up in flames and was worth nothing.” Perell turned to the one person she thought might give her a loan to start over: her grandmother. And sure enough, even though Nanny didn’t know what the internet was, she loaned her granddaughter $10,000, which Perell spent on a computer, a GoDaddy account for a website, and a one-way ticket to Hawaii to live with her boyfriend rent-free. Perell launched Frontline Direct, a digital marketing company pairing brands with online advertising. Scarred from the bankruptcy, she was eager to work f

When Ross Andrew Paquette founded email service provider Maropost in 2011, he never expected it to take off. “The plan was to have 10 customers and maybe sit by the pool a little more often than not,” he says with a laugh. But since then, he’s scaled the company to nine figures, with an impressive customer list that includes DigitalMarketer, Livestrong, and The New York Post. And beyond email marketing, Maropost has expanded into customer acquisition and ecommerce solutions. These are extremely crowded markets, but at the core of the company’s success is its strong commitment to excellent customer service, with heavy emphasis on a 24-hour in-app live chat and five-minute support response times. We chatted with Paquette to learn the strategies he used to so impressively grow his SaaS company in a short amount of time. Key Takeaways How Maropost got started The crazy story behind how Paquette met his co-founder How Maropost has expanded from email marketing to customer lead acquisition, mobile push notificat

You don’t become the richest self-made woman in American real estate by playing it safe. Dottie Herman has proved time and time again that bold moves pay off. In the 1980s, in a maneuver that solidified her path to the top in real estate, Herman flew to California and convinced Merrill Lynch to hire her to help the company expand into the real estate market. In 1990, when Prudential decided to sell its regional holdings, Herman then persuaded the company to lend her $9 million to purchase its own Long Island real estate offices. And in 2003, Herman expanded her empire into New York City with the nearly $72 million purchase of the most prominent Manhattan real estate company, Douglas Elliman (again convincing Prudential to finance the deal). “If you don't ask, you don't know,” Herman says. “And the worst that can ever happen is someone says no.” Key Takeaways How Dottie Herman got into real estate Her bold move that convinced Prudential to lend her money to purchase one of its own companies How she weathere

Jay Baer was born to be in business. As a seventh-generation entrepreneur, he always knew he’d start his own company one day. Over the years, his ventures have run the gamut—from an early internet company to a design firm to his popular marketing consulting firm, Convince & Convert. His clients have included Hilton, Cisco, Nike, and Oracle, just to name a few. And if that weren’t enough, Baer is a New York Times-bestselling author, with six books under his belt. His latest, Talk Triggers—co-authored by marketing expert Daniel Lemin—dives into the power of word-of-mouth marketing and how to use it in your own business. What is a talk trigger? According to Baer, it’s a “strategic, operational choice that creates conversations.” Take DoubleTree, for example. Their talk trigger is the warm chocolate chip cookie given to every guest who checks in. Baer and Lemin interviewed 1,000 DoubleTree customers for this book, and that’s just for one of the 30+ case studies you’ll find inside. If you want to acquire customers

“I don’t think CEOs should be able to be CEOs if they can’t code,” says Grant Petty, founder and CEO of Blackmagic Design. That’s a bold statement, but Petty is a bold guy. Working as an engineer in the television industry, he realized the technology was overpriced. So he started a company that cut costs and put power into the hands of creators. “Really what I was doing was a protest against the way the TV industry was,” he says. And soon, Petty began to challenge the status quo of business in general. He runs his company a little differently: There are no spreadsheets, very little planning, and to him, metrics hardly matter. “In the Western world, business culture becomes so rigid and so inflexible,” he says. “If you’re a creative person, you can get destroyed by that because they don’t allow you to exist.” Today, Blackmagic Design boasts nearly $300 million in annual revenue and is still 100% bootstrapped. Its technology is used by 80% of modern day feature films. We sat down with Petty to discuss what he’s

These days, Sabri Suby reigns supreme as the founder of King Kong, Australia’s fastest-growing digital marketing agency. But he’s come a long way since his first job, selling ink cartridges over the phone, which he describes as a “cold, hard slap to the face.” “I sucked incredibly badly at doing that in the beginning,” he says. Soon enough, thanks to mastering the art of sales and persuasion, he became the top producer in that role, went on to travel the world, and eventually, forged his path as an entrepreneur. For all of his companies, he realized he was asking the same fundamental question: “How do we get more customers?” His obsession with answering that question has helped him perfect his selling skills and scale King Kong from zero to $10 million in annual revenue in just four years. In his latest book, Sell Like Crazy, Suby reveals the selling system he’s created and honed over the years, including things like the Magic Lantern Technique and the Halo Strategy. He says he’s deployed this system in more

Eighteen years ago, David Heinemeier Hansson was a college student sitting in his little apartment in Copenhagen when he stumbled across a blog post by 37signals (which would later become Basecamp), a Chicago-based design company he had long admired. In the post, co-founder Jason Fried posted a question on some aspect of programming. Hansson knew the answer, so he contacted Fried. Several emails later, Fried was asking Hansson to work with him. “Jason decided it was easier just to hire me than to learn how to program,” Hansson says, “and that's how we started working together.” That was the beginning of a now-legendary tech startup team, and an illustrious career for Hansson. In Hansson’s early days at Basecamp, he famously created Ruby on Rails, an open-source web development framework once used by Twitter, and still in use by GitHub, Shopify, and many more. We were excited to talk shop with Hansson (often known as DHH) because, in an industry dominated by breakneck Silicon Valley culture, Basecamp stands ou

Most of Foundr’s podcast episodes are one-on-one chats, usually focusing on a particular foundr or their business. This time around, we were fortunate enough to sit down, in person, with two startup icons, and explore some of the most important facets of running a business. Oli Gardner and Ryan Deiss are both digital marketing pioneers who have grown their online businesses to millions in revenue. Gardner, the instructor of our Landing Page Formula course, co-founded landing page builder Unbounce in 2009. Deiss, a serial entrepreneur, founded DigitalMarketer in 2011. Not surprisingly, this turned out to be a fascinating conversation, in which Gardner and Deiss share both similar and differing opinions on everything from branding to hiring. For example, both founders insist that creating core values is an important business practice that will inform your branding and your decisions. “I have had more businesses come close to failure because of too much opportunity,” says Deiss, who adds that having a mission ma

NEW COURSE ALERT: Entrepreneur, we wanted you to be the first to know that we’ve collaborated with Arman Assadi to bring you our brand new copywriting course. Learn the copywriting secrets behind 11 seven-figure product launches, taught by Arman himself. Arman’s broken it down into a 10-step framework that he’s proven with his clients time and time again. He’s even going to give you templates, formulas, and how-to guides so you can start converting customers like crazy. If you’re tired of seeing ZERO sales for all the hard work you’ve put into your amazing product—then you NEED to learn the power of copywriting. We’re opening the doors to this course soon for a limited time only, and we want to see you there. Be sure to get on the FREE waitlist so you don’t miss it! Key Takeaways The “crisis of meaning” that drove Assadi to leave his job at Google, book a trip to Cuba, and pursue freedom as a solopreneur How Assadi became a self-taught copywriter and began working with the likes of Neil Patel, Lewis Howes,

Serial founder and VOIP pioneer Alex Mashinsky has founded eight companies and raised more than a billion dollars in collective funding since his entrepreneurial start in the 1990s—and he is showing no signs of slowing down. Mashinsky is the founder of Celsius, which allows users to earn interest on and borrow dollars against cryptocurrencies. While Mashinsky wants his company to succeed, he sees much more at stake here than just his entrepreneurial resume. Mashinsky is devoting his latest startup to taking on the world’s financial systems and driving the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies. Subverting the “big guys” has been a common theme throughout Mashinsky’s career, starting with helping AT&T develop some of the first international VOIP systems, and now fighting to decentralize the world’s banking systems. According to Mashinsky, “This is the biggest battle that I’ve fought in my life. I fought with the phone companies…in the 90s. This is 10 times worse.” Listen in as Mashinsky reveals the details of his e

Frank Body co-founder Erika Geraerts left her $20 million coffee scrub company to invent a new category within the beauty industry. She's now on a mission to empower young girls everywhere to feel more comfortable with themselves. According to this forward-thinking founder, the world has enough makeup products, and what the industry really needs is better products with better brand messages. Geraerts thinks makeup should be fun, not a necessity or a chore, which is one reason she called her company Fluff. But there's nothing frivolous about her approach to business. Geraerts is filling a void in the cosmetics industry and raising up the self-esteem of women globally in the process. In this compelling video interview, Geraerts reveals why she decided to leave her booming skin care company, and what she sees on the horizon for Fluff. She also talks about her strict manufacturing process, her focus on sustainable products, her unique customer development process, and the distinct way the company creates online c

Welcome to part two of our two-part podcast series that’s shining the spotlight on successful entrepreneurs who hail right from our very own Foundr community! If you haven’t listened to part one featuring Gavin Symes, you can check it out right here. Today, we talk with Danielle Roberts and Shea Kucenski, courageous entrepreneurs who started a marketing agency while working full-time jobs. Roberts and Kucenski took all the action steps laid out in the Consulting Empire course and in two months took their business from slow and stagnant to closing 20% of all proposals, doubling their earnings, and reaching their first $10,000 month. In this inspiring interview, you will hear about Roberts and Kucenski’s journey to success, how they overcame their perfectionism and fear of failure, and how they land high-paying clients while managing busy schedules. We are extremely proud of Danielle and Shea’s achievements and we are happy to share their amazing story with you! ATTENTION: If you want to learn how to start and

The Foundr community is full of passionate people from all walks of life, in the trenches daily doing what it takes to make their startup dreams a reality. In this week’s podcast, we want to highlight one of these entrepreneurs we’re especially proud of—Gavin Symes of The Foundry Group. In part one of this two-part podcast series, we talked with Consulting Empire student Gavin Symes, who advanced his business growth and management skills to create a profitable consulting business. Symes took all the action steps laid out in the Consulting Empire course—from validating his service to developing a lead-gen machine—and built his consulting business from scratch. Three-and-a-half months into the course, he closed 10 clients and generated over $50,000 of monthly revenue. He plans on scaling to $1 million this year and then to $10 million in three years. In this inspiring interview, you will hear about Symes’ own journey to success, the biggest problems most businesses face when scaling, and how to set up processes

New to the US from Pakistan, Syed Balkhi was a lonely and isolated 12-year-old. Unable to speak English fluently, he took to communicating with new friends—computers—and quickly found comfort interacting with these non-human companions. Soon Balkhi was learning how to code and build websites, and that very same year he made his first dollar from a website he created. Now 27, Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner, the first and largest WordPress resource website in the world, and co-founder of many accompanying businesses. He was also named a top entrepreneur under the age of 30 by the United Nations, his websites receive millions of monthly pageviews each month, and his software runs on nearly 8 million sites serving billions of monthly impressions. Listen in as Balkhi takes you through the early years of his entrepreneurial journey and how, brick by brick, he built his empire. Key Takeaways How Balkhi decides which versions of existing software to acquire and improve Why managing four products independently