Carlos "Los" Silva is rightfully considered today one of the top business marketing trainers in the world.

After a 10-year entrepreneurial journey, he finds himself at the helm of multiple, million-dollar businesses that aim to teach other entrepreneurs different ways they can achieve startup success. His advice is sought after by master entrepreneurs in their own right, with his client list boasting names like Disney, Ryan Deiss, Kent Clothier, and many more.

Which is why we're super excited to be sharing this interview with you today, and delivering his secrets on Internet marketing and what it takes to build a local customer base and successful startup.

And alas, Foundr family, this will be our final post for 2015 as we head into the holidays. We'll be taking a much-needed break during the next week to spend some precious time with our own families, and we hope you do the same. We'll be back in a week with more amazing content.

See you all in 2016, and until then, enjoy the interview!

In this interview you will learn:

• How E-commerce helps on your startup and how to identify opportunities on the e-commerce space.
• Why social media plays a huge role in selling your digital products.
• The different tools that you need to help grow your business online.
• The importance of building good relationships and business partnerships that can help support your system.
• The process to increase your email list and get more people to join your webinar and Techniques in Educating buyers about your products.
• & much more!

During one of Guy Kawasaki’s first marketing assignments in the early 1980s, he would knock on the doors of startup software companies across Silicon Valley armed with a stack of non-disclosure agreements and a prototype computer in a bag. “We would say, ‘If you sign this, we’ll show you what’s in the bag,’” he says. The prototype, Kawasaki explains, was a top-secret project that, if knowledge of it was widespread, would cannibalize sales of their main computer hardware product. It’s name? Macintosh—a project run by a team of developers at Apple, headed up by Jef Raskin and a then 29-year-old Steve Jobs. As far as marketing a computer is concerned, “it was hand-to-hand combat.”

Of course, Kawasaki was successful in his efforts marketing the Macintosh, and the rest is history. Today, Guy Kawasaki is a famed tech startup guru who notoriously spearheaded the marketing cause for Apple in 1984, before going on to work on a number of startups, a venture capital firm, and a stint at Google.

It’s a title that stands out because when you think evangelist, the image that often pops into mind is that of a middle-aged man with slick hair, a pink suit and a Texan accent on late-night television, prancing about on a stage and shouting about the bible. In Kawasaki’s case, that couldn’t be further from the mark.

At 61, Guy Kawasaki comes off as a truly decent human being, affable, humble and easy-going. The sort of guy you’d be happy chatting with at a friend’s barbecue for hours without having to fake a bathroom visit to get away.

In this interview you will learn:

• How to inspire and convert your audience.
• Learn the importance of Visual Marketing.
• The importance of building your brand's social media platform.
• Techniques on how you can evangelize for your startup without a huge budget.
• Learn about the Two simple ‘tests’ to apply to any content your company shares on social media to ensure that it has maximum traction online and has the maximum benefit for your business.

There’s a simple rule that all entrepreneurs live by: Aim for disruptive change. Everything you need to know about being an entrepreneur lies in that beautifully simple rule. Yet, as many entrepreneurs will tell you, it’s easier said than done.

But that’s exactly what Lisa Q. Fetterman went ahead and did as the co-founder and CEO of Nomiku.

Nomiku takes it name from “nomikuii” a Japanese word which means to eat and drink- a perfect name for the revolutionary kitchen appliance that’s finding homes in professional and personal kitchens worldwide, creating disruptive change as it simplifies the science of gastronomy for food-lovers everywhere.

Lamenting the fact that she couldn’t create restaurant quality food at home because of the lack of a sous vide machine, she sought to change that.

Ever since that simple idea in 2010, Nomiku has amassed over $1 million between their two Kickstarter campaigns. Gaining the distinction of having raised the highest amount of money for any product within their category with just their first campaign alone, they raised nearly $600,000 within 30 days. They then went on to break their own record by raising $750,000 with their next project. Today the Nomiku sees itself in kitchens from the White House to Michelin starred restaurants around the world.

Nomiku is an entrepreneurial success story that can only exist within the 21st century. Fetterman has tapped into the power of hackerspaces, accelerator programs and crowdfunding in order to be invited to the White House as a “White House Honored Maker”, listed on Zagat’s 2014 “30 under 30”, and listed again as “30 under 30” in 2015, this time on Forbes.

• Why it's important to love what you do.
• How to utilize social media, blogger and word-of-mouth to generate buzz and excitement for your product.
• The important strategies in launching a crowdfunding campaign.
• The resources that you need when investors aren't listening.
• How to have a product development strategy to overcome the struggles of manufacturing.

Building a startup is hard, from generating an idea, to developing an MVP, to launching a product, and eventually growing a business. It's just really hard.

But what if I told you that it's entirely possible to launch a startup in 7 days and build a profitable business almost instantaneously? Sounds crazy right?

Well tell that to Dan Norriss of WP Curve who went ahead and did just that.

After seven years of trying his hand at various business, it wasn't until 2013 that Dan struck gold with WP Curve. A worldwide team of Wordpress developers providing constant support for small business of every kind 24/7. Today he impressively manages a worldwide team and just started his craft beer brewery, and there's no sign of slowing down.

He shares with us the lessons he's learned through his career as a serial entrepreneur and as an award-winning content marketer. Teaching us everything from the importance of content marketing in today's world of startups to managing a remote team and what it's like to be in the modern tech industry.

In this interview you will learn:

• How to start your own website from scratch

• The importance of getting all the opportunities to get press release in launching your ideas

• How to manage a huge remote team around the world using different online tools

• What content marketing is and how to build and grow a business with it

• Why you should be producing awesome evergreen content

• & much more!

How can you attract top talent, and create a workforce that goes the extra mile for the company? The answer – surprisingly – isn’t salary, perks or bonuses. It’s culture.

Making the effort to build and invest in a positive business culture can drain time, resources and money. But research suggests that the ROI on a happy workforce can be measured in dollars as well as satisfied, secure staff.

According to The Journal of Workplace Behavioral Health, good culture-building activities successfully cultivate a companywide commitment to satisfying customers. Other benefits include enhanced performance, reduced staff turnover, increased job satisfaction, greater employee engagement, fewer errors and enviable status as a workplace of choice.

The jury is officially in: happy and healthy employees cost companies less. A 2011 academic study through the London School of Economics found that for costs spent promoting well-being in the workplace represented a substantial annual return on investment of more than 9 to 1, with increased productivity and reduced absenteeism. And it doesn’t just happen. If you’re a business owner, creating culture is up to you, with former MIT professor Edgar Schein once commenting that the only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture.

So how do you create a good workplace culture? CEO of Mindvalley, Vishen Lakhiani, is the man officially standing at the intersection of mindfulness and business and has workplace culture down to a fine art.

In this interview you will learn:

• How to turn the power of meditation into your superpower
• What it takes to build a great company culture and keep top talent
• The benefits of having a great looking office and how it can double your employee's performance
• How to strip back the perks but still keep an amazing company culture
• The process Vishen uses when it comes to hiring A-players
• & much more!

Scott Jordan is no wall flower. He is a force to be reckoned with – and when he became frustrated with carrying devices and wanted something better than a man bag or a fanny pack he quit his job as a lawyer at a startup and launched SCOTTeVEST– a travel clothier that specializes in multi-pocket clothing specifically built around the tech gear we all carry.

That decision, fourteen years ago, was made based on a philosophy that has guided much of his entrepreneurial journey – anything worth doing is worth doing now.

Scott Jordan’s first product, the eVest 1.0, has morphed into a full line of clothing for men and women and a company that has landed on Inc.’s Fastest Growing Companies List three consecutive years. With global sales exceeding $10 million and Board of Advisors that includes Steve Wozniak (yes, the Steve Wozniak) and Kenneth “Hap” Klopp (co-founder of North Face), SCOTTeVEST has traversed the startup desert and reached the land milk and money.

In this interview you will learn:

• How to use the power of storytelling to sell a product no one's ever heard of
• The power of PR and spin, how to make the best out of a bad situation and come out on top
• What is controversy and why it isn't always a bad thing
• Answer to the question of whether or not you should bootstrap or go after investors
• The strategies that Scott used to get his name and his business on the map
• & much more!

However great it is, entrepreneurship is hard. It can mean disappointment. It can mean exhaustion. It can mean frustration. It can mean failure. Starting a business is less smooth sailing and more stormy seas, often with waves of worry even as you tack toward horizons glowing with promise.

“If you’re obsessed about this product that you want to bring to life, this business that you want to create, you’ll get through it,” Feld says. “If you’re not, you won’t.”

He would know. Feld has been open about grappling with depression and dealing with the difficulties of a demanding job, yet he’s worked obsessively over dozens of years to get to where he is today.

In 1987, he built a profitable software consulting company. Six years later, he sold it. He soon began investing money in other startups, a path that would lead him to co-found two venture capital firms, including Foundry Group, where he works today. He also co-founded Techstars, a massive startup accelerator.

Feld has heard pitch after pitch—both successful and not. He has invested in company after company—including Harmonix, Zynga, and Fitbit. Pair those facts with his first-hand experience running a business, and it becomes clear that Feld knows how to get things done.

In this interview you will learn:

• What makes, and breaks, an true entrepreneur
• The importance of finding balance when it comes to work and your personal life
• What to do when you hit those roadblocks and feel like giving up
• The key to rockstar pitches and how to impress investors
• How to blend short-term and long-term thinking in order to become a successful entrepreneur
• & much more!

Joanna Wiebe isn't someone that's focused on money, a statement that some of entrepreneurs would be horrified by. However what she is passionate about is words, the power of them, and their ability to inspire, convince, and persuade.

It's this passion for writing that has led her to create one of the most premiere copywriting services in the world where her skill as a wordsmith is sought after by hundreds of businesses. She doesn't do this by making good copy, she does it by making GREAT copy.

If you've ever wanted to learn how to separate yourself from the pack and have your voice get noticed then you need yourself some great copy.

Which is why you'll absolutely love this episode where Joanna takes us through the ins and outs of how to make great copy, and how you can use it to convert like crazy.

In this interview you will learn:

• The building blocks of what makes great copy
• How to use the power of words to instantly grab someone's interest, turn then into a friend, and make them a customer
• The power of using the right words, how to find out what your customers are saying and take advantage of it
• Why you the last thing you want to be is just like everyone else
• A full breakdown of how Foundr's own copy stacks up from the master!
• & much more!

If you’re new to the startup space, Steve Blank is the biggest name in tech you haven’t heard of. A serial entrepreneur turned educator, in entrepreneurial circles he’s referred to as one of the “Godfathers of Silicon Valley.” A master of the startup, he was involved in or founded ’s started eight venture-backed Silicon Valley companies, including software company E.piphany, which alone raised $66 million prior to going public in 1999, before being acquired by a larger corporation for $329 million in 2005. Basically, he’s a Silicon Valley pioneer who was killing it in the startup space when the rest of us were watching Muppet Babies.

Drop his name around the offices of Facebook, Apple, Google, et cetera, and you’ll get knowing and approving nods. Follow him around Palo Alto and you’ll see him get asked for autographs. It seems in the way startups operate today, everyone owes a debt to this man. If you’ve heard of the Lean Startup, you’re familiar with his work already.

Today, Blank actively lectures at Stanford, UC Berkeley, and the joint Berkeley/Columbia MBA program, NYU and UCSF, as well as the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, through the Innovation Corps program he developed. The Harvard Business Review named him one of 12 Masters of Innovation in 2012. CNBC recognized him as one of the 11 Notable Entrepreneurs Teaching the Next Generation. In 2013, Forbes listed Blank as one of the 30 most influential people in Tech. Blank’s books, blog, and interviews are often featured in world news publications such as The New York Times, Forbes, Inc, TechCrunch, and The Wall Street Journal. His teaching commonly focuses on the Customer Development methodology that he developed throughout his accolade-rich career.

His 2003 book The Four Steps to the Epiphany launched the Lean Startup movement. And a decade later, the sequel The Startup’s Owner’s Manual cemented his place on all entrepreneurial required reading lists. Not bad for a man who’s technically been retired for over a decade.

In this interview you will learn:

• What it takes to become an entrepreneur, all without going to business school!
• The secrets to building a fully-functioning lean startup
• What it takes to become a leading player in Silicon Valley
• The unexpected highs and lows of entrepreneurship, the harsh truths, and positive realities
• What it takes to get ahead, and stay ahead
• & much more!

Tony Stubblebine was not one of those 22-year-old tech startup CEOs, wearing hoodies and distributing profane business cards. He got his start as a sharp programmer, working alongside people like Ev Williams and Biz Stone, and has been steadily climbing his way up the ladder since.

The path to becoming a successful CEO involved a lot of growth and personal development for him, almost like an athlete in training. One thing he could have used much earlier is a good coach.

“I didn’t get my first coach until it was way too late. Why didn’t I have an exec coach grooming me to be an executive, to be a CEO?”

Follow Stubblebine's journey as he took, what others perceived to be, his weaknesses and turned them into strengths that made him a force to be reckoned with.

Stubblebine shows just what it takes to become a great leader and a CEO of a multimillion dollar business.

In this interview you will learn:

• A full breakdown of all the elements that make up a great leader and CEO
• The secrets to utilizing meditation in order to stay grounded and tackle any and all challenges
• Why you don't need to be a jerk, and there's nothing wrong with being the 'nice guy'
• The process of building a great product that drives social change
• How to bring out that 'elite performance' mindset from yourself and achieve it
• & much more!

All the most successful ideas in the world were when entrepreneurs realized that there was something about their current life that they wished could be done a little easier. The only difference between entrepreneurs and regular people though, is instead of just complaining, they go ahead and built it.

For founder Chris Strode it all began because he wanted make the lives of small business owners a little easier back in 2002. Today Invoice2go is one of the highest grossing business app on the market, and the number one invoicing app worldwide for small businesses.

In this interview you will learn:

• Exactly what it takes to bootstrap your way to $100 Million
• How to create a brilliant product by identifying a personal problem
• The importance of finding, and defining, your perfect customer
• How to grow a business as a one-man startup
• The key to persevering when the odds seem stacked against you

Today's episode is a little different than most, but as always it is one not to be missed.

If you've ever wondered how to harness the power of Email Marketing, this one will not only be an massive eye opener of what's possible, but also a sure fire way for you to quickly understand what you need to do, to sell your products/services on automation with Email Marketing.

We sit down with Micah Mitchell who is an Infusionsoft master, co-founder of a popular Membership SaaS (Memberium), and also knows a lot about creating and profiting with online courses.

In this episode you will learn:

• What is Email Automation and how it can EXPLODE your business
• How to create profitable online courses
• An intro into how to nurture leads, and convert prospective customers into sales with Email marketing
• How membership sites work and how you can tap into this multi-billion dollar educational industry
• Email Marketing and funnels
• What to do when someone steals your business idea
• What is Fear/Loss/ & Greed when nurturing leads
• How to create a profitable SaaS
• & So much more!

Tony Robbins talks fast. Conversing with him is like riding Space Mountain: You get in, you hang on, and before you know it, it’s over and you’re left feeling bewildered, slightly euphoric, and wanting to smooth your hair.

Robbins has become a household name as the man who popularized life coaching. Imagine your client list including Oprah, Princess Diana, and Bill Clinton—all before you hit your mid- 30s. He’s spoken to more than 50 million people in 100 countries. To call Tony Robbins just a self-help guru would be like calling Muhammad Ali just a boxer. It doesn’t quite cut it. He is a force of nature, an industry, and a global brand. His advice is still sought by the likes of professional athletes, CEOs, movie stars, rappers and world leaders.

When Foundr interrupted Robbins’ schedule for an interview, he was 40 miles from the Arctic Circle, racing Lamborghinis across a frozen ice lake. As you do. “I was eaten up by my crazy schedule, going to 15 countries a year, so I decided, ‘I’m going to find a little time to play,’ and this was on my list. So it’s nice to be able to experience it.”

It’s a fitting vacation. Robbins is best known for his high-intensity seminars. To say he’s bursting with enthusiasm is an understatement. It seems as though he’s sitting atop an erupting volcano of energy and optimism. His voice is booming, with its trademark rasp. He makes each point with the force of an artillery bombardment.

In this interview you will learn:

• How to deduce your market to the metrics that matter
• The steps you need to take in order to be financially free
• Turning past pain into pure motivation and a hunger for success
• Tony's ethos in living for impact, and how the money will follow
• How to serve your client in the best possible way
• & more more!

PAX Labs is changing the way we look at smoking. The beautiful elegance of the product is restoring luxury to the vaping world. But, developing a product that essentially sold itself for the first two years required an innovative approach to need finding.

In this episode you will learn:

• What goes into developing a product so innovative that it is its own category
• The T-Shaped principle when it comes to building an effective and harmonious team
• How to use personal experience to develop a product that achieves immediate market response
• Secrets in finding that sweet spot between the product and market to achieve epic growth
• The "lights out" approach to mass-producing with affordability, scalability, and expertise
• & much more!

Michelle Phan wears many hats. Or more perhaps more aptly; lipstick hues. 

YouTube pioneer, mega brand boardroom heavyweight, company founder, creative director, global beauty queen. 

Phan has makeup tricks that will make your eyes pop. But the numbers behind her success could make them water. Approaching 8 million YouTube followers, 1.1 billion video views, and over 1 million subscribers to her online beauty community and sampling service, ipsy.

Not bad for a 28-year-old who started touting the perfect pout online as a hobby during university. 

But don’t be mistaken, Phan’s success is not a story of luck but one of awesome internet savvy, authenticity and getting there first to opportunity.

In this interview you will learn:

• How to develop fresh angles and stories that your audience will love
• Key tips on developing your own personal brand
• The importance of good storytelling, whether it's video, audio, or written
• How to stay creative and be constantly inspired
• What exactly YouTube is for marketers and the best way to utilise it
• & much more!

Founder of Fueled and the Fueled Collective, Rameet Chawla, explains what it takes to consistently build the finest mobile apps, defines the Viral Coefficient and reveals how his need to be creative and independent lead him to leave the world of corporate finance to create a job for himself, which started by building his dream company.

In this episode you will learn:

• What goes into making and developing the right MVP
• The secrets to getting the best kind of user feedback, when to listen, and when not to listen
• How to develop the right technological triggers needed to click with users
• The right and wrong way to network and build professional relationships
• The analytics tools and metrics that Ramee relies on to track the success of his apps
• & much more!

A couple of months ago we sent an invitation to all the readers of our weekly newsletter. We asked if there was anyone who would like to have a one-on-one with tried and true entrepreneurial professionals.

Out of the hundreds of responses we received we picked out Derric Haynie former professional poker player and today the founder and CEO of Splash. An online marketing consultancy based in San Diego.

He sat down with Foundr’s own CEO, Nathan Chan, and Mathew Michalewicz, author of Life in Half a Second and entrepreneurial genius to talk strategy. You might remember our previous interview with Matthew where we talked about the science of success, and his journey in building 4 incredibly successful businesses.

What happened was a full breakdown of Derric Haynie’s business, his goals, what he wanted to achieve, and the steps he needed to take in order to get there.

There has never been an episode before where we’ve given away so much actionable advice and strategy, invaluable guidance, and lessons in entrepreneurship.

We’ve also included a special deal for the first 50 listeners of this episode! If you wish to access it go to - www.foundrmag.com/mattm

This is an episode you definitely don’t want to miss.

In this interview you will learn:

• Invaluable insight on how to exponentially scale your business with the goals pyramid
• The best way to pitch potential clients and investors
• How to generate the right leads
• The steps you can take today to become a successful entrepreneur
• Multiple marketing strategies for online, cold calls and emails, referrals
• & much more!

In the 1990s, the FUBU brand was everywhere, including on the backs of A-List celebrities like Will Smith, Janet Jackson, and LL Cool J. Like most trends, it seemed to come out of nowhere.

But in the case of FUBU, it sort of did. When Daymond John started the company with his longtime friends, they only had about 10 shirts. They’d sneak into a hip hop video set, put a shirt on one rapper, then take the shirt back and go do the same at another video set.

“Before you knew it people started to think of us as a huge clothing company, when we literally still had 10 shirts in a basement,” says John, now a celebrity investor on the hit reality show Shark Tank. 

Daymond John’s talent for building hype didn’t hurt, but that was only the beginning. While today John can regularly be seen on TV in flawless suits, closing six-figure deals, the rise of his game-changing streetwear company was a tumultuous one. The branding icon gained his financial chops the hard way, with lots of stumbles, and a constant learning process that continues today.

In this episode you will learn:

• Marketing hacks to grow your business
• The key components of what makes a successful business
• How to bring confidence to the table when negotiating
• The importance of education and mentorship
• How to build an unwavering drive to succeed
• & much more!

In this weeks episode, Nathan goes through in detail the steps he took to interview Sir Richard Branson for a Foundr Magazine front cover story and what he learnt from the whole process.

If you would like to check this interview out, you can download Foundr Magazine on any Tablet or Mobile device on the iTunes and Android stores.

iTunes - www.foundrmag.com/itunes

Android - www.foundrmag.com/android

In this episode you will learn:

- The key things Nathan took away from Interviewing Richard Branson

- How to get in touch with hard to reach people

- The secret strategy to convince influencers to be interviewed for your magazine / show

- Why this interview was game changing for Foundr Magazine

- & So Much More!

The trials of starting a business—even if you forget, for a moment, the typical travails of day-to-day living—often overwhelm entrepreneurs. Late nights, endless work, big choices, and extreme uncertainty can swirl together to form a raging twister that ravages the landscape of life, shredding business hopes and ideas along the way. But the forecast is much better for some, including Andy Puddicombe.

Puddicombe is one of the minds behind Headspace, a guided meditation app that’s reaching new users every day. He can also say something that few entrepreneurs can: he’s rarely overwhelmed.

In this episode you will learn:

• What is Mindful Meditation and how to use it effectively
• The importance of when, and when not, to listen to customer feedback
• How to improve your product by living in the present
• How Andy inspires and leads a worldwide movement for meditation and peace
• Key tips on how to avoid burnout
• & So much more!

Two years ago, the owner of a local coffee shop, Steve Rowley, was asked by a regular customer for coffee grounds to be used as an exfoliate. This simple act was the catalyst for a brand that has experienced amazing growth driven heavily by Instagram.

Frank Body creates coffee scrubs formulated with minerals and essential oils and is set to bring in more than $20 million this year. The Frank Body founding team included Bree Johnson, Erika Geraerts and Jess Hatzis of Willow & Blake.

In this episode you will learn:

• How to find your voice and personify your brand
• How to turn influencers into brand ambassadors
• Key tips on speaking to your target market
• The best ways to generate content for Instagram
• Hacks to scale your business to epic proportions
• & much more!

He was told it couldn’t be done. Social good was meant for nonprofits. Businesses were for making money. But Tom Dawkins always felt like there was a puzzle to be solved, that he could put the pieces together and run a profitable business that created change in the world.

A serial entrepreneur from a young age, Dawkins worked in both nonprofits and tech startups before finally  solving it. The result was StartSomeGood, a crowd-funding platform for anyone—nonprofit, for profit, or individual—with an idea to make positive change in the world.

In this episode you will learn:

- How to start your own social enterprise

- How to measure your impact and why

- The true definition of social entrepreneurship

- How find a problem that needs solving

- Budgeting 101 with a for profit social enterprise

- & So much more!

In this episode we go behind the curtain and shine the spotlight on someone part of the Foundr Magazine team that is an absolute superstar designer, entrepreneur and ruckas maker.

Enter Karan Jain.

You wouldn't probably know this, but Foundr Magazine wouldn't be where it is today if it wasn't for Karan. 

Karan taught me the power of design and branding. This bold move that we've made with the level of Foundr's design has allowed to build great reputation in the entrepreneurial space. Not just as brand itself, but also as an influencer in the entrepreneurial space.

In this interview you will learn:

- What it takes to have epic design and branding in your startup

- The untold foundr story you wouldn't know

- Behind the scenes on the creation process of Foundr Magazine

- Key lessons from Karan on how to choose a design agency

- & So much more!

Dan Tocchini wants to change how we use the web. His website design startup The Grid have had almost 50,000 founding members and they might just pull it off.

For all of the advances in how we use the Internet in recent years, the options for the average person who needs to make a website can still be simultaneously dizzying and uninspiring. It usually comes down to either paying someone a bunch of money, learning to do it yourself, or buying a template.

Dan Tocchini wants to change that. His startup The Grid poses the questions: What if having your own unique website was as easy as posting to Facebook? What if you could just supply the content, and a program just did the rest for you?

The answer he and his team came up with is an automated alternative to services like Wordpress or Squarespace. And if Tocchini’s right, it might just change how people view the web. While the company hasn’t gone live yet, the team has racked up two hit Kickstarters, two rounds of funding, more than 31,000 preorders, and an offer from Facebook (they turned it down).

So what’s all the fuss about? Well, the corners of the Internet that are thriving these days have developed fancy algorithms and design features that make it as simple as possible to connect and share information (think of the curated Facebook feed or Twitter’s 140 characters). They take the flurry of anxiety-inducing decisions away from the average person (see Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice). But website creation has been sort of left behind, Tocchini says, and relatively few Internet users have their own sites. For those who do, it’s kind of a pain.

“Websites are like the atomic building block of the web, and they’ve been completely ignored by the big tech companies,” Tocchini says.

He thinks the web can do better. His team has spent the past few years creating a platform that starts with content and uses software to automatically turn it into a website. Think of it as having your own web designer that makes all of the decisions for you, except that web designer is artificial intelligence.

If you would like to becoming a founding member of the grid, make sure you go to https://thegrid.io/ to sign up now :)

In this interview you will learn:

- Why you would turn down a buyout offer from facebook

- Leadership 101

- How to come up with an epic idea

- How Dan's vision is going to revolutionize the web

- The problem with websites right now and how the Grid plans to solve this massive problem

- What it truly takes to become a successful entrepreneur

- & So much more

It is with great pleasure we bring you this interview with the one and only Ed Dale.

If it wasn't for this man, Foundr wouldn't exist. I've been lucky enough to learn a lot of my marketing and online business chops from Ed Dale, so I thought what better reason to bring him on the show to share with us the infamous secrets to doing a $1 million launch.

Ed Dale is the creator of The Challenge and co-founder of MagCast. He's helped over 300,000 entrepreneurs start online businesses and is a world re-knowned online marketer.

The best place to find Ed is at eddale.co

In this interview you will learn:

- The processes that Ed goes through to prepare for a $1m launch

- What is good will, and why it matters when it comes to doing a $1m launch

- The secrets to getting other people to promote your products/services when it comes to getting affiliates

- What it takes to create a successful digital product

- & So much more!

In business, in music, or in life, there are few people you will meet as unapologetically honest as Amanda Palmer.

A lifelong nonconformist, Palmer has evolved from living statue to award-winning musician—as one half of cabaret rock duo Dresden Dolls and soon to hit the stage opening for Morrissey and Blondie—from TED-talker to esteemed author, and now thought leader.

Palmer’s Twitter bio colorfully advertises a performer, writer, giver, taker, yeller, listener, love-lover and rule-hater to her one million-plus follower base. And from our own conversation with Palmer, all of these qualities seem fairly apt. 

But there’s one thing this self-account fails to capture, and that is how authentic she is. Palmer has built legions of passionate fans—and certainly her share of detractors—by having a unique voice that is louder than her music ever could be. And by simply asking. 

And the answer for many is a loud and resounding YES.

Ask, Don’t Tell

Being a born storyteller has perhaps taken Palmer in directions even she did not foresee. As an arts graduate Palmer began her professional life as the Eight-Foot Bride on the streets of Cambridge, Mass. During this time she honed a deep curiosity for genuine human connection that has been the underlying theme of all her achievements. 

It is this story that Palmer shared on the global TED stage in 2013, when she spoke of the profound encounters she experienced with people from all walks, often people who Palmer sensed were very alone. In her recollection, they would momentarily enjoy very intense eye contact and “fall in love a bit.”

In seeking this connection with others, Palmer and her Dresden Dolls bandmate Brian Viglione made a habit of always spending time “signing and hugging” with fans after each concert, and from here, the story takes off. In the past decade, Palmer has couch surfed the globe several times, sourced music, food, instruments and a hundred other forms of support from her loyal fan base, crowdfunded a cool $1.1 million to produce an album, and whipped up a good deal of controversy along the way.

In this interview you will learn:

- How to embrace your audience

- How to endure criticism and become a revolutionary in your industry

- The importance of asking for help

- How to build an extremely strong community

- Breaking the rules and why they were created

- & So much more

Marketing guru and multiple New York Times bestselling author Seth Godin explains why you should focus less on doing what you're told and more on doing work that's worth doing. In order to take advantage of the unique opportunuties afforded by our times, some rules just have to be broken.

Some people just get it. They grasp the spirit of the times in ways that ordinary people don't. They understand the patterns and progression of history, and can interpret current events and trends with rare wisdom and insight. Seth Godin is one such person.

You might say his knowledge about the world of business borders on the prophetic. You could also safely say Seth Goden is a man who sees the world not for what it is, but for what it could be. He's in the business of change: predicting it, implementing it, and watching it unfold.

You've probably seen his TED talks, his books, his blog, his podcast; he's the one of those characters who are grounded, yet somehow still larger than life. For those late to the Godin party, he's a marketing guru, founder of Squidoo.com and world-renowned author of 17 business bestsellers including Linchpin, Unleashing the Ideavirus, Tribes, and Purple Cow. For a man who understands tribes, he has proved time and again that he can walk the talk, building, in the process, a legion of raving fans-people who thrive on his entertaining blend of business and sociology.

In this interview you will learn:

- How to when to ship a project and when its ready to be released into the world   

- Why perfect doesn't exist

- The best analogy we have ever heard for good marketing

- Seth's failures

- Why it's YOUR turn! 

- The importance of blogging every day

- & So MUCH MORE!

So we've decided to mix things up a little with this podcast episode.

This one is a short bite-sized episode, detailing our top 7 hacks for Instagram. You're probably not aware, but in the past 8 months we've been quietly building up a very strong community on Instagram, and within the space of 8 months our Instagram account is 197,000+ followers from the time of writing this.

So often our community is asking us how we did it, so I wanted to share with you our top tips and tricks on how to gain a massive following on Instagram fast.

In this episode you will learn the following tips:

- The importance of posting content regularly

- How to create epic content and why

- Why you should have a CTA (call to action after every post)

- The importance of optimizing your bio and account

- How to use hashtags and a secret hack to increase your engagement in 30 seconds

- What an S4S is, and why it's super important

- Why you should be commenting on other pages.

If you would like to learn more on how to take advantage of Instagram for your business make sure you sign up to find out more about our course that we're launching soon called 'Instagram Domination'. You can do so here - www.foundrmag.com/getig

If, like me, you think the job Lifestyle Entrepreneur seems completely made up, you’d be right.

Lewis Howes’ title, like everything else about his career, is completely self-styled and made into reality on his own terms.

The popular School of Greatness podcast host, who is also an accomplished author and former Arena League football player, quite possibly achieves more before breakfast than most of us do in a week. And it’s all because he took the time to design the life he really wanted. In part, the job description includes overseeing his School of Greatness Academy, a resource for entrepreneurs that gives people access to tools, a community, and accountability coaching to bring their business and lifestyle to the next level.

We sat down with this marketing guru, lifestyle coach and all-round nice guy to learn how he went from couch-surfing to being one of the most sought after online thought-leaders. We also picked up a bunch of expert advice on how one achieves the level of greatness that would warrant such a slick, albeit made-up title.

Wander the halls of the School of Greatness and you’ll find them stocked with high-achieving alumni, each with a unique story in their chosen field or industry but who share the commonality of success. It is an inspirational and fascinating fraternity, one that keeps millions of listeners coming back to Lewis Howes’ podcasts week in, week out.

So how did a kid who dreamt of nothing more than becoming a professional athlete wind up inspiring people on the Internet? 

In this interview you will learn:

- Lewis's top 3 marketing must do's

- The importance of selling an online course before you have created it

- How to build relationships Lewis Howes style

- Branding & Copywriting 101

- The School of Greatness and the strong clarity and purpose he has behind everything he does

Rod Drury conveys a palpable sense of urgency. If there’s one thing he’s picked up in his many years as an entrepreneur, it’s that having a certain velocity can make all the difference.

“Biggest thing I’ve learned in business is actually making things happen. So picking up the phone, asking why, why aren’t we doing it now, why’s it going to take a week, let’s go do it today,” Drury says. “Just driving urgency, and getting things done puts you so far ahead of most other businesses that you can win in a really significant way.”    

It’s the kind of attitude you’d expect from the cofounder and CEO of a company that went public on day one, raising $15 million out of the gate with only about 100 customers. (“I think they were all blood relatives.”)

Since that early IPO in 2007, Drury’s accounting software company Xero has been essentially building a startup in the public eye, and that very sense of urgency has translated to some pretty incredible momentum. Over the course of eight years, the company has raised more than $300 million, they now have more than 1,000 staff, and more than 400,000 customers globally.

Not bad for a little company from New Zealand.

In this interview you will learn:

- Rod's key ingredients to success

- What it takes to build a Billion Dollar Startup

- Why Rod decided to list Xero on the NZ stock exchange when everyone doubted him

- How to develop a compelling vision and lead a team to success

- How Rod manages his life and work life balance

- Raising capital & pitching 101

Beanies, caps, eyewear, tees and tops, watches, snow accessories, backpacks, hot tub shorts. You name it, Neff rocks it.

So how did Shaun Neff, founder and namesake of the California-based clothing company, skyrocket this global apparel giant from his humble backpack into the big time? By keeping it real, staying rad and being an insanely astute businessman.

On the surface, Shaun Neff might seem like just another hip, down-to-earth cat — but don’t be fooled. The 35-year-old Californian native is as sharp as they come. He’s also a lifetime opportunist and networking powerhouse. As the founder and CEO of Neff Headwear, he also bears the lofty responsibility of serving up trends to the world’s most sort-after audience — the youth market.

The tale of how Neff got to where he is today, at the helm of a multi-million dollar brand selling in 50 countries, is particularly intriguing. It’s one that takes a sharp departure from the usual “worked my way up from the bottom” story. Mostly because Shaun Neff, to this day, is still working his first job.

“It’s crazy but this is the only job I’ve ever had. Since high school I had dreamed of starting a surf, skate, snow-inspired brand that reached out to youth. So when I was up at college in Utah, snowboarding every day, I thought, ‘Alright it’s go time,’ and just went for it.”

In this interview you will learn:

- How to find the secret sauce to connect with influencers

- Branding 101 and the 3 simple principles Shaun has used to turn Neff into a 100m+ empire

- The power of authenticity and why it can make or break you in business

- How to know when to "take some of your chips off the table" and sell some of your company

- Key entrepreneurship lessons for starting out

- & Much more

We’ve all been curious about the best way to get better at languages, sports, cooking, fitness, and of course, how to start a business. Using a grand total of four hours per week, Tim Ferriss showed us how. Ferriss needs no introduction. Multiple New York Times best-selling author. Entrepreneur. Self-help guru. Investor. Celebrity. And now star of his own television show.

Even if you know nothing of entrepreneurialism, you probably know the work of Tim Ferriss. The 4-hour Workweek ring any bells? Chances are, it’s that book your roommate is always gushing about. A #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-seller, it has seeped into the zeitgeist and changed more lives than its detractors would like to admit. The 4-Hour Workweek was on the New York Times best-seller list for four-and-a-half years straight and stayed on other lists for seven consecutive years. Released in 2007, this seductive and seminal book was about escaping the workaholic lifestyle to “find your muse.” For the uninitiated, that means a business that takes up little time, yet turns over enough revenue for you to enjoy a sort of freedom from the office bullpen.

If it weren’t for Tim Ferriss and The 4-Hour Workweek, a lot of us wouldn’t be where we are today. I know I wouldn't! So it's with great pleasure I bring you the man, the myth and the legend Tim Ferriss.

P.S. If you would like to check out Tim's new TV show, 'The Tim Ferriss Experiment' which we highly recommend! You can visit - www.itunes.com/timferriss

In this interview you will learn:

- Tim's strategies on how he exploded the 4-hour work week brand (the early days)

- How he builds solid relationships with influencers and doesn't use the hard sell

- The no.1 marketing strategy he uses for approaching any project and making it explode

- The top 5 productivity tools that are changing the game for Tim right now that allow him to hack the hell out his time and get insane amounts of work done (gamechanger)

- Tim's new epic TV show and the secret to learning any skill FAST

- An extremely humbling story of how Tim got his first customers for his first business, and what it's like for every single person when they first start out on their entrepreneurial journey

- & So much more of course :)

Getting laid off is enough to make anyone want to crawl into a hole and hide. But Pat Flynn went the other direction. He took the opportunity to open himself up, and put his experience in the spotlight. And that very openness became the key to his success, as his Smart Passive Income Community has now reached millions of entrepreneurs.

It’s not every day that you have the chance to become an overnight sensation, but for Pat Flynn, the stars seemed to align perfectly for him on a gloomy day in 2008. After landing the job of his dreams and working passionately at it for many years, the mid-2008 recession hit him harder than he’d ever imagined. Being recently promoted at a large architecture firm, he was shocked when his boss announced that the company could no longer pay for his services and expertise.

Although he was clouded with the fear of unemployment during the first few weeks, this obstacle was the golden opportunity that would change his life forever.

Enter Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income

In this interview you will learn:

- How Pat has built a raving super engaged community so powerful that he often receives emails from community members asking for his amazon affiliate link as they want Pat to receive the affiliate commission from Amazon

- The power of building extremely deep relationships with your audience and how to build epic amounts of trust

- A throwdown on the Foundr Podcast and core action items on how to improve your podcast

- How Pat has built one of the top ranked business podcasts

- The power of transparency and how it has helped Pat grow his business exponentially

- What Pat believes it takes to build a successful online business these days

- & Much more!

Barbara Corcoran doesn’t look far past the family tree for inspiration. While many entrepreneurs seek seasoned businesspeople to learn from, Corcoran’s mentor was her mother, not because her mother managed a company—she didn’t—but because she managed a family.

“She ran our little, tiny two-bedroom flat like a corporation,” Corcoran recalls. Everything was organized, and everything had a system. Her mother did a phenomenal job motivating each of the children, helping them do what they did best. “If she had been in business, she would’ve been a tycoon,” Corcoran says. “I wouldn’t have wanted to compete with her.”

Common sense was one of her mother’s virtues, and it’s a trait that Corcoran says is vital in business. “I think you have to trust your natural instinct,” she says to aspiring entrepreneurs. Business is about street smarts. It’s not something you can learn in a classroom — you have to do it.

That’s exactly what she has done. Corcoran’s resume includes several businesses and millions of dollars, and she’s now a “shark” investor on ABC’s popular Shark Tank TV series.

She started young. “I had a flower-of-the-week club when I was in college that failed miserably,” she says. “It was good for a while and then it failed. How did I get that job? I just invented it.”

She later founded two real estate companies, including the Corcoran Group, which she started with a $1,000 loan and ultimately sold for $66 million. Corcoran has channeled her experience into her role as an investor on Shark Tank, a reality TV competition that pits entrepreneurs against each other in a contest to pitch their ideas and get big funding. The show’s run includes six seasons, and she’s been along for the whole ride.

In this interview you will learn:

- Barbara's story on how she rose to success

- The critical elements she believes it takes to become a successful entrepreneur

- A super productivity hack to get the most of your day

- Real estate investing tips

- What it takes to get your idea funded

- What Barbara looks for in an entrepreneur and the companies she invests in

- & Much more

Mattan Griffel wasn’t prepared for his first job. After he graduated college, a startup company asked him to be their marketer, but he didn’t know how to be a marketer. Mattan had studied philosophy and finance, but despite years of delving into the life of the mind and the management of money, he couldn’t snag a job in the financial sector. So he sat there, tasked with an entirely different field: marketing.

Griffel really wasn’t prepared, so he decided to fix that. He charged into the challenge, devouring books on marketing, consuming online classes, doing everything he could to eat up as much knowledge as possible. In just a year and a half, he says, he learned more about marketing than four years at university taught him about finance.

Learn voraciously. A passion for new skills can expand your opportunities and multiply your successes.

Griffel’s drive to be good at whatever he did gave him the ability to successfully manage a marketing budget of half a million dollars.

Now, that same drive has put Griffel at the helm of One Month, a Y Combinator-backed education startup aiming to provide what he calls a “no-BS first month of learning.” The company has created a contingent of lightweight courses that each teach the basics of a topic—ranging from Ruby on Rails to HTML to growth hacking and more—in 15 minutes per day for 30 days.

It was his endeavor to gain marketing skills that exposed Griffel to entrepreneurial education outside the brick walls and stone pillars of formal schooling. Having learned from platforms like Udemy and Skillshare, he eventually began teaching for them.  While instructing an in-person class on coding at General Assembly, Griffel met Chris Castiglione, with whom he would one day found One Month.

In this interview you will learn:

- Epic growth hacking strategies

- Key lessons from a Y-Combinator backed startup

- Mattan's experience at Y-Combinator

- Key Entrepreneurial lessons learned along the journey

- How to create powerful and valuable courses that sell

- & Much more!

Some people thought entrepreneur Justin Gold was nuts for trying to disrupt the peanut butter market. A decade later, he’s been recognized by Inc. and Ernst & Young as one of the food and beverage sector’s rising stars.

Originally from Pennsylvania, Gold is one of the Boulder, Colorado startup community’s big success stories, having moved to the mountain town after becoming disillusioned with his original career plan to become a lawyer. The keen outdoorsman made the most of the biking and skiing lifestyle while waiting tables to support himself, and found himself frequently chowing down on peanut and almond butter for the protein benefits.

Gold decided to start making his own at home, experimenting by adding everything from maple syrup to berries in his concoctions. They proved a big hit with his roommates, who ate everything he whipped up, so Gold started labeling the jars “Justin’s,” at first just to keep them away.

“At that point it changed from a kitchen experiment to a project,” he says. Being completely new to business, he had a million questions about how to start a company, from company structure through to labeling, packaging, and food regulations. Leaning on the Colorado University business library as a resource, Gold came up with a business plan. And since Boulder is home to a number of other companies in the natural foods space, from Celestial Seasonings to Rudi’s Organic Bakery, he started reaching out to their founders for advice.

Having raised about $30,000 from friends and family, Justin’s launched in 2004, selling to local stores, but a few years in, wasn’t growing as Gold had hoped. He knew overnight success was unlikely — his own mentor Steve Demos, the creator of milk alternative Silk, struggled for nearly 30 years selling tofu first. Being a “little naive and a little stubborn” kept him going, he says, with the idea that they would figure it out eventually.

In this interview you will learn:

- When, and how to know how much equity of your business you should give you

- The importanance of starting your business idea

- Why curiosity can be an amazing trait as an entrepreneur

- How Justin turned his idea peanut butter idea into a multi-million dollar empire

- Key leadership skills to build a solid team

- How to scale a business when you recieve rapid growth

- When, and how to know how much equity of your business you should give up

- A key concept to keep your employees super motivated

Bleeding brain. Fractured skull. Concussion.

These were the effects. The event was just as sudden. One Thursday in late July, Sean Stephenson took his dog for a stroll. Then he fell — ripped from his wheelchair, Stephenson crashed onto the concrete ground, a traumatic impact that landed him in the hospital and left him for some time without short-term memory.

But he had dodged death, and not for the first time. When Stephenson was born, he was diagnosed with osteogenesis imperfecta, an uncommon disease that brings stunted growth and fragile bones. Doctors predicted he would quickly perish.

Instead, he lived, growing up to become a motivational speaker and businessman. After traveling for years, speaking to audiences far and wide, Stephenson has cut down on the airplane flights and shifted to holding seminars in one location in Arizona. His success hasn’t been easy, but he says that only a fraction of his challenges stem from disability. The rest have to do with the sorts of things most people struggle with in various ways: friends and money and marriage.

Stephenson’s story shows that entrepreneurship — no, life itself — is laced with challenges. Sometimes, you’re buffeted by events that you can’t control. He recommends that in those instances, when you really can’t control the outcome, you stop trying to. If you can change your circumstances, do so, but if you can’t, don’t stress for no reason.

“I know that if I’m willing to let go of control, it’s going to be a lot easier process than trying to fight for the control with some invisible force out there,” he says. “Call it God, call it universe, call it law of attraction, call it science, call it whatever makes you comfortable, but there are powers that play outside of us that are much bigger than us.”

As he recovered from his July accident, Stephenson felt out of his depth, so he did what made sense to him: he sat back and had to laugh, waiting to see where it would all go.

As much sense as relinquishing control sometimes makes, it’s not an everyday play. In most areas, Stephenson doesn’t passively await his fate. He shapes it, because there’s a flipside to the challenges he has no control over: the ones he does.

“The start of my career is not sexy. It really started with discrimination,” he says. At age 17, Stephenson applied to a number of jobs, all of which he believes rejected him because of his disability.

In this interview you will learn:

- How Sean has overcome his challenges in life and business as an entrepreneur

- How to find mentors

- Key factors and insights on what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur

- Marketing 101 the Sean way!

- & Much more!

This is not your typical interview where I interview someone well known in the entrepreneurial space.

Steve Mehr is an entrepreneur, businessman, all round hustler and the founder of an Ad Agency called Webshark 360 in Southern California. I met Steve through Instagram via his extremely popular account (@agentsteven) and we have been great friends since. Overtime Steve has actually taught me a lot about life and business, so I thought why not get him on the show to share with everyone how he has built a multi-million dollar empire.

In this interview you are going to learn:

-How Steve built his empire and fortune from the ground up

-How to achieve scale with businesses and grow them at a rapid pace

-Key mindsets required to not stay successful in business and life once you have attained "success" in the eyes of society

-Hiring and Recruitment 101

-Managing a team

-Setting goals and why it's Steve's secret to success

-Instagram and the Importance of it

-The importance of measuring

If you want to learn how to dominate your goals, make sure you check out Steve's book here, fantastic read and I highly recommend it! - http://stevemehr.com/

A very long time ago before I even considered starting a business, I once read that the self storage industry was a brilliant business model, and a booming industry.

Little did I know 4-5 years later I would be speaking to a disrupter of this industry.

Enter Rob Rebholz, Co-founder of Spaceways whom are currently turning the self storage industry on it's head at a rapid pace, with the kind of growth that most startups would dream of.

Rob is an extremely savvy and interesting entrepreneur and in this interview he shares with us:

- The story behind spaceways, how the idea was conceieved

- Customer Development, and how to find out what your customers truly want

- Marketing 101 and the power it can bring to your business if you done properly

- His experiences being backed by Rocket Internet

- Top web apps and tools that they are using to help manage a rapidly growing business and team

- & Much more

I need your help!

If you haven’t already, I would love if you could be awesome and take a minute to leave a quick rating and review of the podcast on iTunes by clicking on the link below. It’s the most amazing way to help the show grow and reach more people!

Leave a review for the Foundr Podcast!

In the brave new world of business that has arisen with the growth of the web, there are many types of entrepreneurs. There is the planner, who plots every move from the beginning, never a scandal in sight. There is the accidental entrepreneur, who falls into a business and makes it work. There is the enfant terrible, such as Mark Zuckerberg, who was likely always going to be successful, but couldn't have anticipated the impact Facebook would have on the world.

And nestled neatly within the pack there is the visionary, the type of entrepreneur that could just as easily pass for a seer such is their knack for knowing what to do and when to do it.

Marie Forleo, the founder of Marie Forleo International, is nothing if not a visionary.

Forleo's first rule of business is to lead with your heart, and it is safe to say that in 2015, with 14 years of entrepreneurship under her belt and an eight-figure business, Forleo's heart has served her well.

Marie was named by Oprah as a thought leader for the next generation and one of Inc’s 500 fastest growing companies of 2014. She reaches over 275,000 readers in 193 countries worldwide and leads dynamic training programs that teach individuals to succeed in business and life. She’s the creator of the award-winning show MarieTV and has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, Fast Company, Glamour Magazine, Self Magazine, Forbes.com and The New York Times among others. Marie has been interviewed by Tony Robbins as one of the world’s leading lifestyle and online marketing experts and mentored young business owners at Richard Branson’s Centre of Entrepreneurship in South Africa. Her bestselling book, Make Every Man Want You: How To Be So Irresistible You’ll Barely Keep from Dating Yourself is published in 13 languages.  Through her Change Your Life, Change The World® initiative, each for profit training program is tied to a non-profit partner who supports women, the environment and entrepreneurship.

Choosing whether to follow her heart or listen to her head, however, hasn't always been easy. Forleo openly admits to questioning herself and wondering whether it was all worth it, "but I had this deep feeling in my heart that I was doing the right thing."

In this interview you will learn:

- How Marie Built her Online Business step-by-step

- The importance of building your business with heart

- How to challenge yourself

- The importance of Value

- Marketing & Copywriting hacks that are absolutely essential to know!

Greg Koch doesn’t care if you don’t like Stone Brewing’s Co.’s beer. Case in point, the label on a bottle of Arrogant Ale:

This is an aggressive beer. You probably won’t like it. It is quite doubtful that you have the taste or sophistication to be able to appreciate an ale of this quality and depth. We would suggest that you stick to safer and more familiar territory…

Koch, Stone’s CEO and cofounder, insists that when he wrote that caption back in 1997 when they first released the beer, it wasn’t a marketing gimmick. He really didn’t want people who prefer “fizzy yellow beer” to buy this hoppy, high-alcohol monster without fair warning. Of course, he did have some fun with it, reveling in the mocking tone of the Arrogant Bastard.

“That’s a tone of voice that I attribute to the beer and not to myself. Although maybe there is a little bit of me in there,” says Koch, who with partner Steve Wagner started in 1996 what would become one of the largest and most beloved craft breweries in the United States.

That little bit of arrogance — although you might swap that descriptor out with optimism, passion, or persistence — is in large part what has made Stone the giant success it is today.

Stone Brewing started early in the craft beer revolution, when the market had little interest in bitter, heavy brews, but Koch and Wagner had strong and unwavering opinions about good beer. When they decided to start their own brewery they knew they had to stick stubbornly to their ideals, and accept that some set of people would like it … or they wouldn’t. 

But they did, and as Americans came around to more aggressive flavor profiles in their beers (with Stone and other small breweries leading the charge), the Southern California-based operation grew rapidly, averaging 50 percent annual growth and ranking consistently as one of the country’s fastest-growing companies and best-reviewed breweries.

In this interview you will learn:

- Why Greg has never had to ever pay for advertisement for Stone Brewing Co

- How to develop a cult following 

- Creating something that people truly want

- What it means to follow your heart and create true art

- The Stone Brewing story, and how it all started

- Marketing copy 101

- & Much more!

37,000 feet high in the air. Hurtling forward at hundreds of miles per hour.

This was it. This was the scene. This was where Chris Ducker sat when he wrote his resignation letter – a step that helped his career take off and reach new heights.

“I got my job because I ultimately become unemployable,” he says. His current job: CEO. But as he sat aboard that plane to Hong Kong in 2006, Chris wasn't the boss – he was being bossed around. He says that the head of the company he worked for was “such a painful boss, just a micromanaging boss.”

Living in the Philippines, Chris worked for a Florida-based infomercial company. But his work earned the company half a million dollars per month in sales, which was far more than his salary. Throw that fact on top of the fraught feelings he bore towards his boss's management methods, and Chris was itching for something different.

So he crafted his resignation letter on an airplane flight to Hong Kong. When the plane landed, he sent the email, officially resigning. He didn't intend to return to the world of work as someone else's employee, so he entered entrepreneurship.

Having been involved in the Philippine call center market for several years, Chris decided that the niche could support a new company. He launched with seven staff and a lot of courage.

Eight years on, Chris still works as CEO for his Live2Sell group of companies. Composing the group is a call center, a business to help people find virtual staff, and a co-working space. Starting with seven staff, the group now boasts 270 employees.

To get there, Chris worked hard. He poured time and effort into his companies, striving to build them up to where they are today. And he pulled it off.

In this interview you will learn

- How to attain virtual freedom

- Chris's strategies and tactics on buying your time back as a business owner

- Productivity hacks

- How to outsource & train overseas staff

- Chris's best advice for entrepreneurs right now trying to grow their business

- The 3 lists you need to create to attain freedom

- & Much more!

This episode is proudly sponsored by DesignHill - The World's #1 Marketplace for Custom Designs. If you go to designhill.com/promo/foundrmag, foundr listeners will get $40 off the contest posting fee and $50 worth power upgrade of services for free. 

There aren’t too many startups on the planet that regularly make millionaires of their community members. Or who have doubled user, traffic, and revenue numbers consistently for the better part of a decade.

The story of Envato going from a modest Flash design resource to a multi-site, multi-million dollar, online heavy-hitteris the essence of startup success. In fact, as a case study, it should probably be taught in business school. Except for the small fact that the journey of CEO and Cofounder Collis Ta’eed has been anything but textbook.

Since its inception in 2006, Envato has boomed. Actually, you would have to say it has BOOMED. One and a half million active buyers, eight thriving marketplaces, 250 employees and over $215 million paid out to authors to date — all born from an idea to start a business that could support the travel aspirations of Ta’eed and his wife Cyan.

“We had just got married and we had a lot of freelance clients. It was beginning to feel like a drag! Cyan said, ‘Let’s go traveling!’ I had always wanted to start a business and we had some ideas about how it would work, so we just thought, let’s go for it. Even though we had to keep freelancing for a long time to keep living as we built the company,” Ta’eed recalls.

Since Envato launched FlashDen, its first digital marketplace that sells content created with Adobe Flash, the company has grown to include eight online marketplaces. There’s a good chance you’ve heard of at least one of them. The Largest of the Marketplaces is ThemeForest, which sells website themes and plug-ins. ThemeForest, is to digital creatives what Home Depot is to DIYers, The Envato Market also includes GraphicRiver, CodeCanyon, VideoGive, PhotoDune, 3DOcean, AudioJungle and ActiveDen (formerly FlashDen), while the broader Envato group is also home to freelance hub Studio and learning platform, Tuts+. Phew.

In this interview you will learn:

- How Collis validates his business ideas for marketplaces and how he chooses the right ones to pursue amongst the hundreds

- How he has rapidly grown Envato

- Raising capital vs Boostrapping

- How he got his first 1000 customers

- Marketing tactics and strategies for growth

- What it takes to manage a large team and becoming a leader

This is a short episode of around 20 minutes. In this episode I answer your top 5 most popular questions.

As I'm hearing from so many of you in our community, I'm finding a lot of commonalities in the questions that I'm being asked. Since I'm on this journey with you as an entrepreneur working towards building a successful business, I thought it would be fun to share with you what I'm learning and how I can further help you tackle these common problems and mix things up from our regular schedule.

Please let me know if you would like me to do more of these kind of episodes by emailing me at nathan@foundrmag.com

“What's the relationship-minded way that we can make cool stuff happen on the web?”

“How do we use all these digital tools to be human at a distance?”

“How do we make people feel like they're cared for and treated well, and how does that translate into revenue for companies?”

Chris Brogan has big questions. He also has answers for those questions – answers that inform his own business endeavors and the efforts of companies that he has consulted for. This isn't middle-tier dabbling. Brogan has worked with big names like Disney, Motorola, Coke, Pepsico, Microsoft, and Google. Yeah, he's a big deal.

But Brogan’s company, Human Business Works, doesn't just serve corporate juggernauts. It also helps small businesses and solo entrepreneurs act on a community-centered approach to boost business. His company offers publications, online courses, and in-person training. He doesn't just have answers. He has proven solutions that could work for you.

That's what has propelled Brogan to the top of the online blogging and entrepreneurial space. Besides working as CEO and president of Human Businesses Works, he publishes Owner magazine and delivers anticipated keynote speeches at conferences worldwide. With a massive following, Brogan has earned the respect and admiration of entrepreneurs everywhere.

In this interview you will learn:

- Content marketing and the future of blogging

- What it really means to develop deep relationships with your customers and how?

- What influences Chris's business decisions

- Community building 101

- How Chris has become an extremely influential marketer, blogger & entrepreneur online

I Need Your Help!

Eight years ago, Charlie Hoehn had no job. He submitted application after application to no avail. Only two companies offered him employment. His choices? “Back-breaking labor and a pyramid scheme,” he says.

Today, Charlie turns down work. He is a speaker, an author, and a marketing strategist. His recently-released book is Play It Away: A Workaholic's Cure for Anxiety. At one point, the former unemployed man worked so much that it burned him out – but he triumphed over that, too, and wrote a book about curing stress. The turnaround is dramatic, and Charlie attributes his successful employment to his signature strategy: work for free.

He didn't figure it out immediately. Charlie graduated in Colorado State University's Class of 2008 and soon faced a job market mired in recession. Bleak. Job-seeking millennials know it well.

“I was just blasting out my resume to all these companies for jobs that I didn't really even want …  because that's what everyone was doing,” Charlie says. “All my friends were doing that and that's what I was told would work.”

Conventional wisdom wasn't working. Go to school, submit applications, get a job – Charlie rejects that.

“We get caught into these dead-end careers, and once we start buying a bunch of stuff with the money that we've earned, we've built ourselves a golden cage … that's surrounded by nice furniture and all these nice things,” Charlie says. “And then after five or ten years we think, 'Well, I can never go back, you know, I can't give all this stuff up.'”

At that point, Charlie says, “you've built your own prison.”

He looks back to his days of blasting out job applications and sees a mistake. Life isn't a sprint, he says: it's a marathon. There's no need to rush for a mediocre position that doesn't interest you. He found this out firsthand – his work-for-free strategy required patience, but it took him from being an unemployed college grad to later landing jobs with Tucker Max and Tim Ferriss.

In this interview you will learn:

- Tactics and strategies for curing stress and anxiety

- Why we work so hard and how to slow down

- Ways to connect with highly influential people

- What Charlie learnt from working with world re-knowned entrepreneurs like Tim Ferriss & Seth Godin

- How to become a recession proof graduate

- What Charlie believes it takes to become a successful entrepreneur

- & Much more of course!

Meet Kevin and Julia Hartz.

In 2003, Kevin and Julia were sat next to each other at the Santa Barbara wedding of mutual friends. They hit it off, and the rest, as they say, is history. In 2006, they celebrated their own wedding, and in 2008, they welcomed the first children.

You would be forgiven if you think this story sounds familiar, like the stuff Hollywood movies are made of. But rest assured: this story is anything but familiar.

Along the way, the duo also founded Eventbrite, a self service ticketing platform for event organizers valued at $1 billion as reported by The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones VentureSource.

But let's start at the beginning.

When Kevin and Julia first met, Kevin was a serial entrepreneur working on his second startup, the Silicon Valley-based money transfer company XOOM, which he had cofounded in 2001. Julia, meanwhile, was working in television development for FX Networks in Los Angeles.

Their chance encounter at the wedding of mutual friends brought them together, but for a few years at least, their respective careers kept them geographically apart, navigating the murky waters of a long-distance relationship.

Eventually, that had to change, so Julia decided to "make the leap and move to the Bay Area."

In this interview you will learn:

-Growth secrets to eventbrites success

-The birth of eventbrite

-Sticking points and how they leveraged them

-How to understand your DNA as a founder

-How and why you need to seek great advisors

-Building a great culture in your workplace

Forget social media. When it comes to marketing techniques, newer isn’t always better, according to marketing wunderkind Derek Halpern. 

You just started your blog. And now you’re ready to set the fiber-optic cables on fire with your wisdom and start raking in sales. In doing so, most likely you’ll be staring into a blue glowing screen until the early hours, cobbling together posts that your growing list of readers will find both valuable and compelling. 

Starting from scratch, how do you build an audience and debut a digital product? What’s more, how can you convince people to buy it? Among the several schools of thought, the predominant is you could just let the product to speak for itself, provided it’s good enough. Or, as some of the more savvy marketers have found, you could get just better at selling. 

The soft sell is out, and according to expert marketer Derek Halpern from New York, the hard sell is back. In a world of new fandangled sales techniques and buzz jargon, Halpern demonstrates that an adherence to the time-honored traditional sales process with a psychological spin is enough to cut through the noise to reach the modern-day consumer. 

There’s been a rise in the number of books on the forces affecting buyer behavior, including Adam Alter’s seminal Drunk Tank Pink. Yet the motivating factors behind buyer behavior still, for many, remains elusive. Why do some people buy and not others? What are the triggers that will get someone to purchase your product over someone else’s?

Derek Halpern is founder of Social Triggers, a blog and podcast about effective internet marketing strategy. There since 2011, he has provided information on marketing to 140,000 subscribers. What’s more, the Social Trigger’s podcast recently hit #1 in the business section on iTunes, beating the likes of the Harvard Business Review, and the Wall Street Journal.

In this interview you will learn:

- How to master sales

- Next level Conversion strategies

- Derek's amazing story

- Content strategies

- The buying process and the psychology behind it

- Creating sales funnels

Forget everything you know, and everything you think you know, about starting a startup.

If Andy Sheats' success with health.com.au tells us anything — and let's be clear, when you're bringing in $100 million in revenue within three years of launch, you're a success — it's that to be an entrepreneur, you need to think of yourself as everything but an entrepreneur.

Sure, an Internet search of the phrase "how to start a business" would tell you otherwise. But the numbers speak for themselves. Doing things the Andy Sheats way might just be the path to victory that every startup founder is looking to find. So just what is the Andy Sheats way?

In this interview you will learn:

- The secret to Andy's success with health.com.au

- How to evaluate your startup idea

- Achieving rapid growth on a mass scale

- How to handle growth (quality problem to have)

- The key questions you need to ask yourself when starting a business

- & Much more!

AJ Leon walks backs to his corner office on the 28th floor. He closes the door behind him and walks past his $8,200 mahogany desk to his window. He surveys the stark Manhattan skyline in the winter morning sunshine. The Chrysler building, the Empire State. Without warning, tears begin to drip down his cheeks. In his boss’s office, right next to his own, he’d just been offered a promotion. His six-figure salary would track up to seven-figures. All before his twenty-sixth birthday. It dawns on him that he has to do something radical: walk away. 

Have you ever had the sensation of living someone else’s life, or that you didn’t choose the path you’re on? Most people experience this, including AJ Leon. 

AJ Leon is no stranger to striding halls of financial power. “One thing led to another until I became a financial executive in New York,” AJ says. When he graduated college with a degree in finance and accounting, he took “the biggest offer at the largest firm that I could find. I really didn’t care what I would be doing for them or where I’d be.” In his mid-twenties, he’d ascended the corporate ladder until he boasted a corner office in Manhattan. AJ was making “an absurd amount of money, with big bonuses. I didn’t even work a ton of hours. I was kind of at the top.” Yet he was crestfallen. The problem, he confesses, was: “I hated my life. I was completely and utterly passionless about what I was doing and always had been.”

When he was presented with the dream promotion, he was working on Wall Street. It was December 31, 2007, the month that saw the beginning of the global financial crisis and US recession. AJ Leon was offered a job that promised a salary double his previous one. Imagine while the world begins to crumble, you are selected to be groomed to make partner in one of the most successful firms in New York city. “[My boss] said basically you’re going to make twice as much money as you do. You’re effectively going to be number three in the company.” AJ realized he was just offered something that he would never be able to walk away from. “I got truly depressed to the point where I was crying, alone, in my office.” 

In this interview you will learn:

- AJ's inspiring story on what it means to give up society's perfect life that is mapped out for you

- How to become a corporate misfit

- The secret to creating a movement that people can really get behind

- What it takes to turn your idea into reality

- How to obtain Freedom

- What it truly means to do work that matters and change the world one step a time

- How to live a life of adventure and fun!

- & So much more!

This is a story not to be missed.

So often in the startup world, we only hear about the successes, the acquisitions, and how much money this person is making.

But how about the real story of entrepreneurs? The struggles? The failures?

Enter Nikki Durkin.

Nikki Durkin founded 99dresses, a company that allowed women to trade fashion items with other users.

99dresses was a Y-comibnator backed startup that had thousands of users and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for it, but recently had to shut down.

In this interview you will learn:

•How Nikki started her business

•What her biggest lessons and realizations were as an entrepreneur and what you can learn from her mistakes

•The best way to approach launching a startup

•Why you have nothing to lose when starting a business

•How to overcome the fear of failure

•Why she has no regrets what so ever

•The power of vulnerability

•How the media really thinks and glamorizes success

•Biggest takeaways a startup founder

•Future plans for her next startup