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

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 su

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 mo

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,

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

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 t

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

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 Griffe

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

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

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

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

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 an

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.   T

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 in

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 —

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   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!

“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

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 a

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 f

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