The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan is a leading entrepreneurship show featuring in-depth conversations with successful founders and business leaders. Guests have included Mark Cuban, Tim Ferriss, Tony Robbins, and many others. Host Nathan Chan shares proven methods, lessons from failure, and inspirational stories to help listeners start, build, or grow their businesses.
Episodes
707: How Two Aussies Took On Samsonite & Rimowa - and Won ($100M+)
Athan Didaskalou had bet everything on a one-year-old suitcase brand called July. Then Covid wiped out travel and nearly took the business with it. What happened next turned it into a nine-figure global company. Athan came from the agency world and sold out of two businesses to go all in; his co-founder Richard Li brought the manufacturing and supply chain muscle. They chose luggage precisely beca
706: Jay Hated His Plumbing Job - Now He Sells Beach Pools and did $50K in a Month
Jay Haddad hated being a plumber. He lived for the weekends - free diving, waterfalls, surfing, the beach - and when he and his wife had their first daughter at 23, the outdoor life they'd promised each other suddenly got hard. On his first Father's Day, they bought some fabric from Spotlight, watched a YouTube tutorial on how to thread his mother-in-law's dusty sewing machine, and made a waterpro
705: (Solo) How Success Made Me Neglect the Thing That Built Everything
I am going to tell you about the dumbest thing I have done in 12 years of building Foundr. It is not a bad hire or a failed launch. It is something far more dangerous, because I did not even realise I was doing it. For four years I took my eye off the thing that built this entire business, and by the time I noticed, I had left years of growth on the table.
Here is the trap: when your monetisation
704: How One Pivot Turned My FAILING Startup Into a $300M Brand
Mariam Naficy sold her first company for over $100 million in cash - two weeks before the Nasdaq crashed in 2000. Then she did something harder. She built Minted, a crowdsourced design marketplace her own investors thought was weird, watched it generate zero sales for its first month, and was one day away from shutting it down when it turned the corner and took off like a rocket ship. Today Minted
703: (Solo) If I Had to Start Over in 2026, Here's How I'd Make My First $1M
If I lost everything tomorrow, the team, the audience, the network, here's the exact tactical playbook I'd use to build back to $1 million from scratch.
If I lost everything tomorrow, the team, the audience, the brand, the 13 years of relationships and network I have built, and I had to make $1 million from zero, here is exactly what I would do. This is not a motivational pep talk. It is the real
702: Mark Cuban Calls Us His BEST Shark Tank Deal Ever ($200M+)
Four childhood friends pooled $30,000 in a Chicago apartment to make wet
wipes for men. Everyone told them dudes would never use them. Thirteen
years later, Dude Wipes does close to $220 million in retail sales, runs
on a team of just over 20 people, and is Mark Cuban's best-ever Shark
Tank investment. They bootstrapped almost the entire way, none of them
had retail experience, and they built
701: Trieu Doubled His Brand To $200K/Month In 5 Months - Whilst Still Working Full Time
Trieu became a dentist because he liked working with his hands and helping people - he got into UCSF's dental school as the very last student accepted, number 81 in a class of 81. Then the job started breaking his body. Aching neck, aching back, and mentors around him retiring early from surgeries.
So he tinkered with some prisms until he could sit up straight and see like he was looking through
700: (Solo) The Ambassador Strategy - How to get Famous People to Sell Your Brand for Free
I interviewed the founder of HexClad about a year ago. Cookware, pots and pans, not the sexiest category in the world. But their ambassador is Gordon Ramsay, one of the most famous chefs on the planet. And when he holds up your pan, you do not need to explain anything else. So here is the question nobody asks: how does a cookware brand get Gordon Ramsay without a massive ad budget or a celebrity a
699: A Pizza Oven Saved My Life - Then It Built a $100M Company
Tom Gozney hit rock bottom with addiction at 21 and spent nearly a year
in a South African rehab facility. What saved him back home wasn't a
business plan - it was a brick oven he dug into his garden, because
cooking pizza for his friends was the only way he could socialise
without alcohol at the centre of it. He noticed something: after a few
weeks, people stopped bringing beer and started b
698: (Solo) She Worked 7 Hours a Day & Made Zero Sales - This Was The Fix
I got on a call recently with a founder in our community who had everything right. Amazing product, clear gap in the market, strong differentiators, all the boxes ticked. But she had no sales. So I asked her to walk me through her days, and she said she was doing seven hour days posting on TikTok, Instagram, running Facebook ads, trying everything. And I told her that was the problem right there.
697: I Sold My House to Fund My Idea - and Built a £26M brand
Sam Faiers had already shut down two businesses. She'd laid off her entire team in one day when the fashion brand stopped turning a profit. So when she found a collagen formula every manufacturer told her couldn't be made, she put the money from the sale of her house into it anyway. Revive Collagen launched in August 2020, mid-lockdown, with no marketing budget, and hit £1 million in sales in 13 w
696: Jamie Left a Nike Exec Job to Bootstrap A Drinkware Brand - Now It's On Track For Seven Figures
Jamie spent over 20 years in corporate America, including a stint as a Nike executive, before a barbecue accident changed everything. Hosting friends and family in Park City after a near-perfect day outdoors, he tripped and sent a tray of drinks flying over everyone. That clumsy moment sparked two ideas at once: a better, genuinely leak-proof product, and a brand built around the outdoor-lifestyle
695: (Solo) I Was Winning. So Why Was I Falling Apart?
A few years ago I started waking up in the middle of the night, heart pounding, cold sweats, this overwhelming feeling of dread I could not explain. And the strangest part was there was no crisis. The business was good. Revenue was up. Everything on paper was working. But something was deeply wrong, and it took me weeks to even name it.
Here is what nobody tells you about burnout: it does not alw
694: We Were Two Weeks From Shutting Down - Then We Found Our $30M Product
Chris and Jake Yap were two weeks from shutting down. A billion-dollar
retailer had copied every product they launched and sold them for one
tenth the price, then put it in the news - buy this coffee table from us
for $499, or from them for $49. They'd burned their business savings,
their personal savings, and taken out personal guarantee loans chasing
speed. Jake was telling his wife he wasn
693: (Solo) How I Built a Billion Dollar Network From Nothing (And How You Can Too)
I get this all the time. DMs, emails, some version of "hey Nathan, can I pick your brain?" And I get it, the intention is good. But here is what that message actually says to the person receiving it: I want your most valuable asset, your time, and I am going to give you nothing in return.
Here is the thing: I grew up in the suburbs with zero entrepreneurial connections. No successful friends, no
692: I Was Selling Muesli From My Car Boot - Now I Run a $35M/Year Brand
Narelle Plapp started Food for Health twenty years ago making recipes
for patients who couldn't find allergy-friendly food on any shelf. She
loaded her first Woolworths order by hand - 14 pallets that showed up
via fax and had to be paid on delivery, funded by $13,000 from her
parents. One SKU eventually did over $2 million in a single retailer.
Then she did something most brand founders neve
691: Anastasia's $850K Brand Collapsed To $42K A Month - Then She Tripled It Herself
Anastasia Chapman came up with the idea for her brand where all good bathroom ideas start - sitting on a toilet, hiding a competitor's product she was too embarrassed to be seen with. She developed the formula in an Airbnb in Cape Town, mixing batch after batch and testing them by dropping samples into wine glasses of water. She hand-poured her first 50,000 units in her mum's garage. Then, after h
690: (Solo) The Truth About Selling Your Business (From Someone Who Said No)
At some point, if you are building a DTC brand and getting traction, someone is going to reach out. An aggregator, a private equity firm, a bigger competitor. And most founders have no idea what to do when that happens because nobody ever walks you through it.
Here is the thing: that cold email landing in your inbox is not random. There are analysts sitting in offices right now scraping the inter
689: I Sold ONE Product in ONE Color - Then Exited for Half a Billion
Rob Ward exited Quad Lock last year for half a billion dollars. He never
took a cent of outside investment to build it, was profitable every
single month from day one, and ran the business with a skeleton team for
years while competitors burned cash chasing scale. His first product
got ripped off. His second became the thing everybody with a phone mount
on their bike, car, motorcycle, or desk
688: (Solo) I Lost Years Of My Life To This One Mistake (And You're Probably Making It Right Now)
I have never said this directly on the show before, but shiny object syndrome did not cost me months. It cost me years. Entire years where the Foundr team was spread across five or six initiatives instead of going deep on one or two. And the worst part is it never felt like a mistake. It felt like being smart because I kept seeing opportunities everywhere.
Here is the problem: every new thing you
687: I Broke Every DTC Rule and Built a $1 Billion Brand From My Garage
Sandra Oh Lin walked away from running eBay's fashion business in 2011 to pack craft boxes in her garage. She raised just $11 million in total - and never needed another dollar. KiwiCo has now shipped over 50 million crates, crossed $1 billion in lifetime revenue, runs profitably since 2016, and operates with a team of under 150.
The standard DTC playbook says outsource fulfillment, buy every cu
686: Claire Built The World's #1 Dachshund Brand From Home - Now Doing $140K/Month
Claire Wolfson got her first dachshund at 20, became completely obsessed, and watched him get paralysed by the spinal condition that affects almost every sausage dog. The original plan was to design a supportive harness. That didn't work out. So her husband Chris drew a simple wiener dog silhouette, they slapped it on some beanies, and Bean Goods was born. That was 2011. Thirteen years, one capsul
685: (Solo) The $500,000 Lesson I Had to Learn the Hard Way
A few years ago I lost half a million dollars in 30 days. Not in crypto, not in a speculative bet. In the business I built from my parents' basement and launched on $3,000 from a credit card. And the part that still gets me is that the loss itself was not the dangerous part. The dangerous part was everything that led up to it.
Here is the thing nobody warns you about: your most vulnerable moment
684: She Bet Her House Deposit on Hair Gel - and Built an 8-Figure Brand
Yasmina Elmerkaoui had one shot - use the house deposit to buy a home, or bet it all on a hair gel she'd spent two years formulating. She chose the hair gel. On launch night she packed orders until 5am, drove them to the post office herself, and woke up to find all 20,000 units - what she thought was a year's worth of stock - completely gone in 24 hours. Macao is now on track for eight figures in
683: (Solo) The Expense Audit That Could Save Your Brand Thousands This Year
This is not a growth hack. It is not going to go viral on a Twitter thread. But I genuinely believe it is one of the highest leverage things you can do for your brand right now, and most founders never do it properly because it is not exciting.
Here is what a mentor told me years ago that I keep coming back to: a dollar saved is a dollar earned. And depending on your margins, that dollar saved is
682: From $2M in Debt to a $250M Gum Company | Pur Gum
Jay Klein lost $2 million on a gum nobody wanted. He sold the remaining
stock to a pig feed company for $13,000 - then used every cent of it to
launch Pur. Sixteen years later, Pur is the fastest-growing gum in North
America, the #1 selling gum on Amazon, sells in over 50 countries, and
does over $250 million in retail sales annually. All bootstrapped. All
founder-owned. And built in a $20 bi
681: Dr. Angela Spent $350K Building The Skincare Brand Her Daughters Needed — Now It Does $40K/Month
Dr. Angela Casey spent nearly 15 years treating skin cancer before she had her business idea. She didn't come from entrepreneurship - she came from molecular biology, medical school, residency, and a clinical practice. When the idea hit her, it was so obvious she couldn't believe nobody had done it properly. She searched every major retailer - Ulta, Sephora, Target, Walmart, Macy's - and found not
680: (Solo) The Thing Nobody Tells You About Building a Business Alone
After interviewing over 700 founders, including more than 100 billionaires, I kept noticing something that never made it onto the podcast. When the recording stopped and I asked privately how they were really doing, so many described the same thing. The weight of carrying something you cannot put down and cannot hand to anyone else.
Here is the truth I wish someone had told me earlier: entreprene
679: The $20 Jar of Salt Behind Her 9-Figure Jewelry Brand
Jennifer Fisher started with $5,000 and a dog tag she sketched on a
piece of paper for her son - a son she almost never had, after
chemotherapy, failed IVF, and years of surrogacy attempts. She knocked
on doors on 47th Street, got Uma Thurman to wear her piece on a Glamour
cover, and bootstrapped the brand for 20 years without taking a single
dollar from investors. Now Jennifer Fisher Jewelry
678: (Solo) The First Hire Mistake That Trips Up Almost Every Solo Founder
Most founders make their first hire reactively. They're overwhelmed, stretched across every function, and they just want someone to take the pressure off right now. So they bring in a generalist, hand them a list of everything they hate doing, and a few months later they're more frustrated than before.
Here's the problem: hiring to relieve pressure is not the same as hiring strategically. And whe
677: We Built a $250M Cold Plunge Brand - From a Garage | Plunge
Ryan Duey was living in an RV with his float spas closed and no backup
plan when he and Michael Garrett built their first cold plunge from a
retrofitted $100 bathtub in a garage. They turned their Shopify store on
with zero marketing—and got a sale. What followed was one of the most
unlikely scaling stories in DTC history: $30 million to $80 million in a
single year, $250 million in cumulativ
676: Alisha Spent 16 Years In Salons - and Distilled it all Into One $7K/Month Product
Alisha dropped out of year 10 to become a hairdresser, opened her own salon at 20, and ran it for nearly a decade - applying five different products to every client's hair, every single day. By the time she sold the salon, she already knew exactly what was wrong with the industry. What she didn't know was how to start an e-commerce brand. James Jade, her all-in-one leave-in conditioner that replac
675: (Solo) The Money Mistake That's Quietly Killing Your Business
I've wasted so much money over the years running Foundr that I don't even want to know the number. And if I'm honest, it came down to one thing: when it's the business's money, it doesn't always feel like yours. So you spend it like it isn't.
Here's the problem: when your personal and business finances are tangled up together, revenue starts to feel like income, a good month makes you feel like y
674: From $800 to $250M Selling Women's Fashion | Demi Marchese
Demi Marchese started with $800, no investors, and no fashion
background—just a clothing rack in the back of her car and 30 sororities
to pitch in 30 days. She made $40,000 in her first month dressing girls
for Coachella out of her living room, turned $800 into $40K, and never
took a dollar from investors. Ten years later, 12th Tribe does close to
$50 million a year with $250 million in lifet
673: (Solo) Your Next Team Member Might Not Be Human
Most founders are still thinking about AI as a faster way to do their work. But that is not what is happening anymore. AI agents do not help you do the task. They do the task for you. And if you have not started asking which roles in your business actually need a human, you are already behind.
Here is the thing: this is not a big tech problem or a future problem. Small and medium sized businesses
672: From Broke College Student to $20M Brand in 10,000 Stores | ESW Beauty
While every brand was raising prices during inflation, Elina Wang cut hers—and nearly tripled revenue. The co-founder of ESW Beauty turned a juice bar epiphany and a $25,000 bank loan into a $20 million business across 10,000 retail doors, fully bootstrapped and profitable from day one. She did it by making the contrarian bet on retail-first when every founder around her was chasing DTC—then survi
671: Tori Quit The Barber Shop, Built a Brand In Her Spare Room, and Hit $1M In Under 2 Years
Tori Gill was still cutting hair on weekends when she sold her first 20,000 sunscreens. A former hairdresser with two kids, no e-commerce background, and a product that took two years to develop, she launched Sun & Daughter on Boxing Day 2024 and hasn't really stopped since. This is the follow-up episode - and a lot has happened.
In this episode, Tori gets real about what scaling from $100K to a
670: (Solo) Why Great Products Lose to Better Offers - and How to Fix Yours
I see it every single time. Great product. Solid branding. Ads running. And yet it won't scale. Conversions are flat, the economics don't work, and the founder is convinced it's the creative or the funnel or the targeting.
It's never the ads. It's the offer.
Here's the problem: most founders spend 90% of their time perfecting the product and almost no time on the complete package around it. The
669: They Built a Luxury Beauty Brand in Year One — With a Team of Two | Brunel
A Victoria's Secret Angel and a Goldman Sachs investor built one of the
most talked-about luxury body care launches in recent memory without
raising a cent or paying a single influencer. Jasmine Tookes spent two
decades on the world's biggest runways turning down incubator deal after
incubator deal, waiting to build something real. When she finally met
Sabrina Carstensen—who spent years evalu
668: (Solo) The One Marketing Concept Behind the Fastest Growing DTC Brands Right Now
Most founders think their product is different. But if your marketing sounds like everyone else's — better ingredients, better results, better formula — your customer hears nothing. Because when everything sounds the same, nothing stands out.
Here's the problem: customers don't just buy outcomes. They buy belief that your way of getting there is different. And without a unique mechanism, you're l
667: He Built a $300M Men's Grooming Brand in JUST Three Years | MANSCAPED
Paul Tran started Manscaped with $50,000, a bloody problem nobody was talking about, and a category that didn't exist. The company hit $300 million in revenue in just 36 months, eventually turned down a $1 billion SPAC deal, and has become the #3 men's grooming brand in a category dominated by companies over 100 years old—while staying profitable the entire way.
In this interview, the founder and
666: Jess & Victor Started A Jewellery Brand With $2,000 — Now It Brings In $40K A Month
Victor Chan bought a $2,000 engraving machine off Amazon to make his girlfriend Jess a necklace — a hand-engraved star map of the exact moment they met. She thought it was the most thoughtful gift she'd ever received, and two weeks later they had a store. Two years on, By Lumine is doing $30–40K a month and Jess has quit her accounting job to go all in.
A software engineer and a Big Four accounta
665: (Solo) Why Waiting Until You Feel Ready Is the Biggest Mistake You Can Make
I still remember the day I launched Foundr. After all that work, all that effort — I made $5.50. And when I told someone close to me, they laughed. I was embarrassed, jaded, and genuinely questioning whether any of it was worth it.
Here's the truth: that feeling never fully goes away. It just shows up in different forms. And if you're avoiding it, you're avoiding the exact things that grow your
664: He Changed How the World Builds Startups. Now He's Warning You About What Comes Next | Eric Ries
Eric Ries wrote the book that changed how the entire world builds startups. Now he's back with a more urgent argument: the way we're taught to build companies is quietly turning them against everything that made them worth building in the first place. The creator of The Lean Startup has spent years watching mission-driven founders get fired from their own companies, watching the spark that started
663: (Solo) More SKUs, More Problems — The Case for Going Deeper, Not Wider
When I started getting serious about e-commerce, I genuinely believed the more products you had, the more successful you'd be. More SKUs meant scaling. I was completely wrong.
Here's the problem: most founders launch a hero product, get early traction, and then the anxiety kicks in. What if it runs out of steam? What if a competitor copies me? So they launch a second product, then a third — and
662: I Bet Everything On Sugar Free Candy — Now It Brings In $100 Million A Year
Daniel Kitay put everything he had—his savings, his mortgage, and two
months before his first child was born—on a container ship full of
sugar-free gummy lollies from Switzerland. When a $250,000 shipping bill
landed before he'd sold a single product, he had no option but to make
it work. Five years later, Funday Natural Sweets does over $100 million
in retail sales across 8,000 stores in Aus
661: Donna’s Corporate Career Ended Overnight — So She Built A $51K Brand In 2 Months
A 20-year career in high-level finance ended in a single day when Donna Gilbertson was made redundant with one day's notice. No plan B, two kids at home, and a household now running on one income — she could have played it safe and taken the next accounting role that came along. She went to the interviews. Every single time, she didn't want to be there. So instead, she pulled $7,000 from her home
660: (Solo) The New Role Defining Which E-Commerce Brands Win in 2026
Most founders think they're ahead of the curve because they're using AI. But if you're only using it for basic ad copy and product descriptions and wondering why it sounds like everything else on the internet — you're not using AI. You're scratching the surface of it.
Here's the problem: the advantage was never just having access to the tools. It's knowing how to direct them at scale. And right
659: How Molly Sims is Disrupting a $200 Billion Industry
Molly Sims spent nearly six years modeling in Europe, graced the cover
of Sports Illustrated, and starred in Las Vegas and The Carrie
Diaries—then quietly spent three years and over $2 million of her own
money developing a skincare brand nobody asked for. When she launched
YSE Beauty on April 24, 2023, she had no idea if it would work. It did.
The brand hit close to $30 million in revenue, is
658: (Solo) You're Posting Everywhere — But Do You Know What's Actually Driving Revenue?
Most founders can tell you their follower count, their reach, their impressions. But ask them which channel is actually driving revenue — not likes, not email subscribers, actual revenue — and most of them can't answer that confidently.
Here's the problem: we've been told to be everywhere. More platforms, more visibility. But being everywhere without knowing what's working means you're spending
657: They Bet Everything on a Sport Nobody Took Seriously… Now It’s Worth $200M
These two brothers sold a profitable airsoft business to bet everything
on a sport most people had never heard of. In 2014, Rob and Mike Barnes
founded Selkirk Sport in the pickleball space—back when the sport was
small, the products were cheap, and the category felt entirely mom and
pop. Eleven years later, the company is valued at over $200 million with
revenue up 1,900% since 2019, and pic
656: How Chloe Built a $50K/Month Personalised Gifting Brand From Home
Chloe Widera spent 15 years as a freelance makeup artist, ran a hair and makeup agency, worked inside one of the world’s fastest-growing beauty brands, and still felt like something was missing — until she built a gifting brand from her living room that hit $54,000 USD in a single month.
Based in Dubai with two kids, an autoimmune diagnosis, and zero e-commerce experience, Chloe launched Inword
655: (Solo) The Fuel Crisis Is Already Hitting Your Margins. Here Are 4 Moves to Protect Them.
Most e-commerce founders see the fuel crisis in the news and think it's someone else's problem. But if you're shipping products right now, it's already showing up in your bills — and if you're still running last year's shipping model, you're bleeding margin without realising it.
Here's the problem: this isn't one cost squeeze. It's three hitting at the same time — carrier rate hikes, fuel surch
654: The Hoodie That SAVED Their Business ($5M in 2 Years) | Boys Lie
Tori Robinson and Leah O'Malley launched Boys Lie as a cosmetics brand
with 16+ SKUs and generated $250,000 in revenue in year one—against
$250,000 in debt. But they discovered customers only wanted the two
branded hoodies, not the makeup. Sitting on mountains of unsold
inventory and ready to quit, they sent a blind gift to Gigi Hadid. Two
months later, Gigi stepped out in their "Boys Lie Goo
653: (Solo) Why Community Is the Most Undervalued Asset in E-Commerce Right Now
Most e-commerce founders treat influencer marketing and community like two separate strategies — two separate budgets, two separate teams. But that split is exactly why so many brands hit a ceiling they can't explain.
Here's the problem: influencer marketing is a reach play. Every time you want that reach, you pay for it again. Community works differently — when customers feel genuinely connect
652: IM8 Founder: What It REALLY Takes to Build a $200M Supplement Brand
Danny Yeung went from selling baseball cards at age 12 to scaling
Ubuy-Ibuy to nearly a million a month in revenue in just six months
before Groupon acquired it in 2010. Then during Covid, he launched a PCR
testing operation that processed 28 million tests and generated over
$800 million in revenue across three years. He listed the company on the
Nasdaq at a billion-dollar valuation—then watc
651: From 7 Years In Recruitment To $60K In 6 Months Selling Mouth Tape
Michael Forshaw read a book, taped his mouth shut every night for a year, and then built a business out of it — launching Breath Sleep Tape from idea to live store in just ten weeks.
A recruiter by trade with zero experience in e-commerce, digital marketing, or product development, Michael turned a personal obsession with nasal breathing into a brand that hit $60,000 in its first six months. Th
650: The Lie About Social Media Growth (And What Actually Works in 2026)
Most founders are still treating social media as a vanity channel — a place for likes, views, and followers. And here's the tough truth: if your social media isn't converting into customers, subscribers, or owned audience, you're building on rented land. And that's incredibly risky.
I talked to a founder today who's been building his business for a couple of years. He's got Facebook ads running
649: We Had 3 Weeks Left… This Saved My $35M/Year Company
Christina Stembel built Farmgirl Flowers into a $55 million bootstrapped business by 2021, betting on simplicity, direct-to-consumer, and zero VC money. Then as Covid vaccines became widely available, sales crashed 50% overnight. To save the business, she had just 36 hours to test a radical pivot or go bankrupt in three weeks. She took out a $3.5 million loan, white boarded new distribution mo
648: (Solo) Why the Best Brands Create Moments, Not Just Products
The brands that win don't just deliver products. They create moments. And once you see this pattern, you start noticing it everywhere.
I recently came across a concept from one of our course instructors, Camille Moore, called the overflow effect. It's simple but incredibly powerful, and it highlights a key truth about building brands in 2026: most e-commerce founders focus heavily on the produc
647: I Started a Jewelry Brand With $25K and the WRONG Business Model | Noura Sakkijha
Noura Sakkijha is a third generation jeweler who realized the entire fine jewelry industry was fundamentally broken—built on the outdated idea that men buy diamonds for women, not that women buy the diamonds themselves.
In 2013, she launched Mejuri with a radical mission: create fine jewelry for women to buy for themselves. What started as a crowdsourcing platform quickly pivoted after just on
646: How Jesse Built A $450K/Year Brand Whilst Still Working in the Mines
Most people with a full-time job, 14-hour shifts, and zero business experience don't start a brand — Jesse did, and he's closing in on half a million dollars a year to prove it.
After 16 years working in the mining industry, Jesse knew the gear handed to workers on site was genuinely not fit for purpose. So he did something about it, building Wolf Workwear — durable, functional workwear for hea
645: (Solo) Why Your Email List Is Your Most Valuable Asset in 2026
Email marketing doesn't sound flashy. It's not the newest channel, not the trendiest platform, and it definitely doesn't get the same attention as TikTok, Instagram, or Meta ads. But that's exactly why it's so powerful.
Here's the truth: while most founders are chasing reach on social media, the smartest ones are quietly building something much more valuable — an owned audience they can reach d
644: This FBI Negotiation Trick Gets People to Say YES (By Saying NO) | Chris Voss
Chris Voss spent decades as the FBI's lead international kidnapping
negotiator, where a single wrong word could cost someone's life. After
talking down armed bank robbers and negotiating with terrorists, he
discovered something critical: the rational bargaining models taught in
business schools don't just fail—they're dangerous. Compromise is
guaranteed lose-lose. Win-win deals are often code
643: (Solo) Why Profitable Businesses Still Fail (And How to Avoid It)
Most founders think if their company is profitable on paper, they're safe. But here's the truth I learned the hard way: businesses don't fail because they're unprofitable. They fail because they run out of cash.
I had a really good run for about 6-7 years at Foundr before I ever faced a serious cash crunch. And when it hit, it was terrifying — that feeling when you don't know if you're going to
642: I Quit My 15 Year Career To Build a Jewelry Business — and Hit $400,000 in My First Year
Rosie Collins had a Christmas epiphany about baby shower gifts—every present focused on the baby, never the mom. That single observation turned into Deja Marc, a multimillion-dollar personalized jewelry brand that captures fingerprints, handwriting, and meaningful moments in elegant, timeless pieces. Within a year, she hit $400,000 in revenue while working full time. The secret? An engraving fairy
641: How Konnie Built A $60K/Month Swimwear Brand In 18 Months — Without Quitting Her Day Job
Most people spot a gap in the market and do nothing — Konnie Tsimiklis spotted one, had zero fashion experience, and built a brand around it anyway.
A management consultant by trade, Konnie spent decades avoiding swimming pools because no swimwear on the market made her feel like herself. So she created her own — Unity Cove, Australia's first gender-inclusive swimwear brand — and hit $27,000 in s
640: (Solo) Why Community Beats Followers in 2026
Followers are easier to get than ever. But here's what most founders don't realize: genuine community and real relationships are becoming significantly more valuable.
At Foundr, we've built an audience of over 5 million followers across social channels. We started growing that audience when organic reach was strong and content traveled far. But the landscape has completely changed. Content is f
639: From $60K in Debt to ICONIC $100M Fashion Label | Rebecca Minkoff
Rebecca Minkoff arrived in New York City at 18 with no money, no degree,
and a low-paid internship that paid $3 an hour. She lived in a
relative's playroom just to make it work. Twenty-one years later, she's
built a globally recognized fashion empire and become one of the most
influential voices in the fashion and entrepreneurial world.
But the journey from handing out postcards in Union Squ
TRAILER: Little Empires — A Foundr Original Series
You've heard from the best in the business — Mark Cuban, Alex Hormozi, Emma Grede. Their stories are incredible. But sometimes, you need to hear from someone who's exactly where you are right now.
Little Empires is a brand new series from the Foundr team, shining a spotlight on the builders inside our own community. These are Foundr students who are in the trenches — taking action, learning the
638: (Solo) How I'd Launch an Ecom Brand in 2026 with $10K and Zero Followers
If you're just getting started with e-commerce and you're wondering how to actually scale with limited cash and no audience, this episode is for you. I get asked this all the time: "Nathan, how do I get started when I only have a small budget?"
Here's the truth: most founders tattoo their business idea to their arm. They fall in love with the brand, the product, the vision — and they hold on ev
637: How One Decision Separates a $1 Million Business From a $250 Million One | Leila Hormozi
Leila Hormozi went from six arrests in 18 months to building a portfolio
generating over $250 million in annual revenue by age 30. What makes
her story fascinating isn't just the rags-to-riches narrative—it's her
unflinching honesty about the messy middle, her unconventional approach
to leadership, and how she scales companies with ruthless precision
while maintaining her humanity. Alongside
636: (Solo) The Facebook Ads Metrics That Actually Matter When Scaling
Most founders think scaling Facebook ads is about finding one winning ad and spending more behind it. But that's not how it works — especially not anymore.
Here's the truth: the brands that scale obsess over the numbers. Not just ROAS. Not just conversion rate. And definitely not just the data inside Facebook Ads Manager. They understand the full picture — from traffic to creative to business e
635: The Meta Ads System Working in 2026 | Nick Shackelford
Nick Shackelford has spent hundreds of millions of dollars profitably on
Meta ads and grown Structured from zero to $76 million in revenue in
under three years. And he's here to tell you this clearly: Meta isn't
broken. Most founders are just reading the wrong signals.
In this interview, the co-founder of Structured Agency and partner at
BREZ breaks down what actually matters in 2026. From w
634: (Solo) My Current AI Stack (and How It’s Helping Us Move 10x Faster at Foundr)
Most founders are either ignoring AI or drowning in it. But here's what I've learned after 13 years of building Foundr: AI isn't a shortcut to success — it's a tool. And when used right, it's like upgrading from a horse to a car. You make the same journey, but a lot faster.
I've always run Foundr lean. At one point we had 80-90 people and it was a disaster — bloated, slow, misaligned. Now we mo
633: We Built a $42M Business by Reinventing Coffee | Purity Coffee
Amber and Andrew Salisbury turned a marriage argument about coffee into
an eight-figure health food empire. After Andrew couldn't find a single
coffee brand that prioritized health over marketing, the
husband-and-wife founders spent two years in research and development
with leading coffee scientists to create Purity Coffee—the first
specialty-grade coffee engineered specifically for maximum
632: (Solo) Why In-Person Still Wins (Even in a Remote World)
We've glorified remote work — the flexibility, the efficiency, the freedom to work from anywhere. And don't get me wrong, I love it too. But here's what we've lost in translation: humans are wired for connection. And when it comes to deals, creative work, strategic alignment, and building real trust, Zoom just doesn't cut it.
I learned this the hard way while building something with Nick Shacke
631: He Built a $125M Brain Food Brand With Just 10 People | Will Nitze
Will Nitze went from selling Linsanity T-shirts in his college dorm to
building IQ Bar into a $125 million brain food empire—with just a team
of ten people. No bloated headcount. No burning through VC cash. Just
ruthless focus on unit economics and a contrarian approach to funding
that let him scale aggressively while maintaining control.
In this interview, the founder and CEO of IQ Bar break
630: (Solo) How to Find People Who Actually Care About Your Business
Most founders are desperate to hire — but they're asking the wrong question. It's not "How do I find great people?" It's "How do I find people who care as much as I need them to?"
Here's the truth: you can't scale alone. And no one will ever care about your business as much as you do. But after building Foundr and making every hiring mistake in the book (including paying half-million-dollar sal
629: $50K to $300M+: How Two L'Oréal Employees Built Glow Recipe | Sarah Lee
Sarah Lee went from cold-emailing 700 journalists by hand and sleeping two hours a night to building Glow Recipe into a nine-figure global skincare brand inside Sephora. And she did it without raising venture capital.
In this interview, the co-founder of Glow Recipe breaks down how a $50,000 bootstrapped Korean beauty curation site turned into one of the most recognisable modern skincare brands
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