Advice Line with Bill Creelman of Spindrift
Host Guy Raz and Spindrift founder Bill Creelman co-host an advice line, taking calls from three founders about their growth challenges. They discuss ingredient integrity and defensibility with a fast-growing pickle beer brand, hiring and marketing strategy for a flannel-aloha apparel startup, and focus and simplification for a kombucha company juggling multiple revenue streams. Bill also reflects on his own journey, emphasizing the importance of narrowing focus and solving the biggest problems rather than trying to do everything.
Masterclass: How to go from founder to CEO (without imploding)
Sam and Sean discuss how a startup's growth is constrained by the founder's psychology and development as a leader, especially after the brute-force phase ends around a few million in revenue. They contrast abdicating versus properly delegating, share concrete management frameworks (like RACI and feedback methods), and talk about building culture through real, lived values rather than slogans. In the second half, they examine how repeat founders exploit their edge talents by running the same proven playbook in similar industries, highlighting multiple examples of entrepreneurs who "speedrun" the same business model to build multiple large companies.
Nuts.com: Jeff Braverman. From Corner Store to Snacktime Powerhouse
Host Guy Raz interviews Jeff Braverman about how he transformed his family's small Newark Nut Company, founded in 1929, into the large e‑commerce brand Nuts.com. Jeff describes growing up in the store, his early experiments putting the business online, and eventually leaving a lucrative finance job to overhaul operations and focus on direct-to-consumer internet sales. He explains key inflection points, including aggressive use of Google Ads, quirky marketing stunts, a major rebrand to Nuts.com, navigating COVID-era challenges, and eventually transitioning from CEO to chairman while keeping the business family-owned.
Advice Line with Stacy Madison of Stacy's Pita Chips
In this Advice Line episode of How I Built This Lab, host Guy Raz and guest co-host Stacey Madison, founder of Stacey's Pita Chips, answer questions from three entrepreneurs about scaling personality-driven brands, positioning a little-known spirit, and reviving a heritage snack company. Stacey also briefly reflects on her own journey, including her pivot from a food cart to pita chips, burnout from a pandemic-hit energy bar business, and the importance of listening to customers. Callers include the founder of a fast-growing pizza steel and content brand, the co-founder of a Peruvian pisco label, and the fourth-generation leader of Stucky's pecan snacks seeking to modernize while honoring legacy.
Faherty Brand: Alex and Mike Faherty. How Jersey Shore + Manhattan Chic grew to 80 stores.
Twin brothers Mike and Alex Faherty describe how a high-school dream of blending surf culture with Manhattan-quality fashion became Faherty, a surf-inspired clothing brand with around 80 U.S. stores and roughly a quarter of a billion dollars in sales. They walk through their deliberate 12-year preparation period, early careers in fashion and finance, the decision to pursue a multi-channel model combining wholesale, e-commerce, and retail, and scrappy tactics like a mobile beach house store and a print catalog. The conversation covers cashflow struggles, a pivotal hero product, the impact of COVID on their business, rapid store expansion, family dynamics, and their desire to keep Faherty a long-term family-run brand.
Advice Line with Michael Dubin of Dollar Shave Club
Host Guy Raz speaks with Dollar Shave Club founder Michael Dubin, who shares what he has been working on since selling his company, including writing a screenplay, advisory and board work, exploring new company ideas, and starting a wildfire-focused nonprofit. Together they field calls from three entrepreneurs: a founder launching Syrian cheese into U.S. grocery stores, a mobile mini-golf business owner scaling service quality through employees, and a former wildland firefighter making custom fire uniforms who is struggling with production capacity and growth. Dubin and Raz offer practical advice on marketing in a noisy digital world, brand storytelling, customer experience, hiring and incentives, and when and how to think about fundraising and manufacturing partnerships.
Brainstorming $100M Ideas with the $1B+ King of Brands
The hosts interview consumer brand entrepreneur Eric Ryan about how he repeatedly reinvents everyday product categories like soap, vitamins, and bandages into large, culturally resonant brands. Ryan explains his simple but disciplined model for spotting category white space, stealing inspiration from distant industries and geographies, and balancing familiarity with novelty, then applies that thinking in a live brainstorming session for new $100M+ brand ideas. He also discusses the challenges of execution, leadership, and funding, including a recent failed retail jewelry venture and his current shift toward incubating brands and investing via a new consumer fund.
Poppi: Allison and Stephen Ellsworth. From Farmers Market Vinegar Drink to $2B Soda Sensation
Allison and Stephen Ellsworth describe how a homemade apple cider vinegar drink that helped Allison's health issues evolved into Mother Beverage and ultimately the prebiotic soda brand Poppy. They walk through bootstrapping production in their house, early traction at farmers markets and Whole Foods, a pivotal Shark Tank deal with investor Rohan Oza, a complete rebrand and shift to cans, and rapid growth fueled by Amazon, Shark Tank exposure, and TikTok. The episode concludes with their creation of a new "modern soda" category, Poppy's sale to Pepsi for nearly $2 billion, and reflections on building a generational brand as a married co‑founder team.