What's Working
Real strategies. Real results. What's actually working right now. Hosted by Isaac Medeiros and Zain Ali, this weekly business podcast covers the strategies, tools, and business models that are producing real results for founders and entrepreneurs.
Episodes
Dead Business to $100m+
iRestore took a failing family business that lost money for ten straight years and turned it into a 9-figure red light therapy empire with a $1,000+ AOV.In this episode of What's Working, Kevin Chen (CEO of iRestore) breaks down his journey from quitting his corporate path to rebuild his dad’s failing quit-smoking laser clinic. He reveals how iRestore pioneered the home red light therapy market on
Why I Turned Down a $300 Million Offer for My Brand
Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://whatsworkingpod.beehiiv.com/Sean Frank is the CEO of Ridge, one of the fastest growing nine figure DTC brands in the world, and co-host of the 9 Operators podcast. He’s been running YouTube creator sponsorships since 2016, spending more than almost any brand in history, and his team sits at the intersection of e-commerce, advertising, and brand building.Connect
Is Meta dead in 2026?
Bryan Bumgardner is the head of media buying at North Beam, the first party data attribution tool used by some of the fastest growing e-commerce brands in the world. His team sits with over 1,000 ad accounts and he is one of the few people actually backing his opinions with real data.In this episode we go through every major ad platform, rank them S tier to D tier, and break down what is actually
How they Built an 8-Figure Brand on iMessage | Calvin Klaski
Calvin Klaski and the founders of NOBS waited until they were generating $1 million a month in revenue before quitting their corporate day jobs. Now, they run a massive oral care empire with just a 3% operating expense, managing the entire business from an iMessage group chat.In this episode of What's Working, Calvin pulls back the curtain on how NOBS disrupted the legacy toothpaste industry witho
The GLP-1 Effect: Why The Beauty Industry is Crashing
Cody Plofker took Jones Road Beauty to $160 million in revenue without a VP of Finance or a VP of Marketing. Now, he’s stepping down as CEO to stop the burnout and build the future of lean, AI-powered e-commerce.In this episode of What's Working, Cody breaks down the reality of running a 9-figure family business, why he stepped down to focus on high-level strategy, and his unapologetic take on why
Going ALL in on TikTok doubled their Sales (Beauty By Earth CEO interview)
In Episode 14 of the What's Working Pod, we sit down with Prudence Millsap, co-founder of Beauty by Earth, to unpack the exact strategies she used to build one of the most successful bootstrapped beauty brands on the internet.Prudence pulls back the curtain on how taking TikTok Shop in-house catapulted them to $700k/month, and how that external traffic miraculously slashed their Amazon ad spend by
This 9-Figure Founder Replaced His Whole Creative Team with AI | Nik Sharma
Nik Sharma sold his agency Sharma Brands for a reason most people miss, and now he's building entire DTC brands using only AI, from ads to assets. In this episode of What's Working Podcast, Nik breaks down the exact move that led him to sell Sharma Brands through a reverse RFP process, why he wanted a blank slate going into January, and how he went from running one of the most recognized DTC agenc
How Apple made him $100m | Roman Khan
Roman Khan has spent the last decade building, scaling, and acquiring e-commerce brands, taking his portfolio to nine figures in revenue. From nearly going bankrupt to achieving a 3% OpEx and netting eight figures in EBITDA, Roman has mastered the mechanics of highly profitable DTC businesses. Now, he’s shifting his focus from private equity to the highly inefficient public markets.In Episode 12 o
Chris Meade | Why I Quit a 8-Fig D2C Brand for Brick & Mortar | What's Working Podcast
Chris Meade took the ultimate leap of faith, pulling his $7,000 life savings from a 401k to build Crossnet. By age 27, he had grown the invented sport into a massive $10 million business netting $2 million in EBITDA. Today, he has moved away from the brutal grind of physical products to focus on high-cash-flow brick-and-mortar Pilates studios and the ultra-exclusive Founders Club.In Episode 11 of
How Memes Made Him a Multi Million Founder
Jason Levin went from ghostwriting for tech founders to going undercover in the meme world, ultimately raising a $3 million seed round from industry giants like Balaji Srinivasan to build Meme Lord an AI-powered SaaS platform combining Google Trends and Canva for marketers.In Episode 10 of What's Working, Jason breaks down why "Memes Make Millions" isn't just a catchy book title, but a billion-dol
How Clean Girl Took Over the Entire Internet
Maxwell Maher went from owning a failing moving company to building "Clean Girl" a media juggernaut that racked up 18 billion views and 27 million followers in under two years. Now, his products are sitting on the shelves of 5,000 stores across the country, including Target and Walmart.In this episode of What's Working, Maxwell breaks down his insane entrepreneurial journey: from knocking on doors
Launching Nationwide in Target Destroyed then Saved His Business
Colin McGuire acquired a dormant Australian hair care brand and scaled it to $7 million in just 18 months. His DTC growth was so explosive that Target's lead retail buyer actually filled out a customer service form on his website begging to stock the product.In this episode of What's Working, Colin breaks down his incredible e-commerce journey, starting from running Facebook's earliest "Dark Post"
$200m a year by just selling wallets?
Connor MacDonald helped scale Ridge from a couple million in revenue to over $200 million a year. How? By ditching the traditional agency model, going in-house, and ruthlessly optimizing everything from growth-hacking subreddits to coining brand-new e-commerce metrics.In Episode 7 of What's Working, Connor (CMO of Ridge and host of the Marketing Operators podcast) breaks down his wild origin story
Pastor to Media CEO
Aaron Orendorff went from an infantry soldier and pastor to burning his life to the ground, only to rebuild it into becoming the Chief Content Officer for The Operators and former Editor in Chief at Shopify Plus.In Episode 6 of What's Working, dive into his wild journey of faking Wix blogs to land bylines in the NYT, shaping the early days of Shopify Plus enterprise, and building the DTC Index at
The Truth About AI Adoption in 9-Figure Brands
What if your best employee wasn't human? Meet "Liam", the autonomous Open Claude AI agent fully integrated into Asana and Slack, actively running data analysis, generating action items, and doing meeting prep for an elite agency.In Episode 5 of What's Working, Cherene and Jacob from Growth Capital Co. pull back the curtain on building a truly AI-native growth agency. They share their journey from
AI Won’t Take Your Job
Jared Orkin went from setting up AOL accounts for seniors at age 15 to building Activate Talent, the offshore staffing empire placing hundreds of employees at massive brands like Hexclad , Fashion Nova , and Comfort.On Episode 4 of What's Working, Jared breaks down his wild entrepreneurial journey, from launching a hyperlocal Groupon competitor in college to dominating Amazon FBA. He reveals why A
$1b worth of retail secrets
Shray Joshi runs Good Peeps, the biggest CPG agency you’ve never heard of, managing up to $25M/month in ad spend and driving over $1.1B in retail sales over the last year. If you want to build a massive physical product brand, this episode is your masterclass.On this episode of What's Working, Shray breaks down his wild origin story, from reversing his own severe autoimmune issues using real f
99% of Health Brands Fail. This One Does $50K/day
Is it possible to scale a supplement brand to $50k/month while still working a corporate 9-to-5? TJ Bongiorno did exactly that, balancing a career in tech startups with the growth of what is now The Outgoing Co.In this episode of What’s Working, Zain Ali sits down with TJ to discuss the gritty details of his recent rebrand—from the logistical nightmare of losing all Amazon and TikTok reviews to us
95% of Books Fail. He Sold $100M Worth.
What happens when an elite affiliate marketer enters the old-school publishing industry? He accidentally builds the 10th largest book brand in the country , selling up to 12,000 units a day entirely through Meta ads.On this episode of What's Working, we sit down with legendary affiliate marketer and agency owner Jason Kutasi. Jason shares his wild journey from dominating Yahoo's early ad platform
