Can AI uplift entrepreneurs that traditional banks reject? | Mercedes Bidart
Impact entrepreneur Mercedes Bidart explains how informal entrepreneurs across Latin America are highly trusted within their communities yet are excluded from formal banking because they lack conventional financial records. She describes an AI-driven approach that transforms alternative data from phones, telecom records, videos, and social media into financial identities and risk scores, enabling micro-business owners to access fair, tailored credit instead of relying on violent, predatory lenders. Over three years, these models have reached market-level accuracy and helped tens of thousands of entrepreneurs gain access to formal loans, illustrating how AI can make finance more inclusive when designed intentionally.
Stop Letting Fear Drive Your Money
Ken Coleman and Jade Warshaw co‑host a caller-driven episode focused on getting control of money by facing fear, shame, and relational pressure around finances. Callers discuss massive consumer and business debts, student loans, divorce settlements, housing decisions, and family dynamics around borrowing and lending money. The hosts emphasize practical baby steps, strong boundaries, living below your means, and choosing long-term freedom over short-term comfort or appearances.
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.
"We're in Way Over Our Heads With $1.5 Million in Debt"
Dave Ramsey and co-host Jade Warshaw take calls from listeners facing intense financial situations, from a young couple buried under $1.3 million in mostly business debt to people wrestling with car purchases, payday loans, and complex relationship money dynamics. They emphasize avoiding risky business and consumer debt, listening to internal red flags, setting firm boundaries when helping others, and aligning financial decisions with long-term goals and emotional health. The episode also covers topics like life insurance coverage, child support resentment, hiding wealth from a fiancée, grief after losing a sibling, and why 50-year mortgages are a dangerous political gimmick.
Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry
Travis Rosbach explains how dissatisfaction with existing reusable bottles led him to create Hydro Flask, a double-wall vacuum-insulated stainless steel water bottle. He describes his path through earlier businesses in fencing and sign-making, the technical and logistical challenges of developing manufacturing in China, and the scrappy early days selling bottles at markets and into retailers. The episode follows the company's rapid growth, financing crises, the arrival of an outside investor, and Travis's eventual decision to leave Hydro Flask.
"My Financial Advisor Told Us To Take Out A HELOC For A Tax Write-Off"
Hosts Ken Coleman and Rachel Cruze take live calls about money decisions, including retirement planning, debt payoff, parenting and consequences, college and career choices, and running small businesses. They consistently discourage debt-based tactics like HELOCs for tax advantages or student loans for ministry school, and instead promote cash-flowing expenses, simplifying plans, and aligning financial choices with personal values. Throughout, they emphasize budgeting, communication in marriage, and making hard lifestyle changes to get and stay out of debt.
You Can't Control the Past, But You CAN Control the Path Forward
This episode features a series of caller questions about debt, housing, business setbacks, medical crises, and difficult family and relationship dynamics, with the hosts offering practical, step-by-step financial guidance. Topics include tackling large private student loans, restructuring small business debt after a serious car accident, handling family conflict over unpaid damages, deciding whether to keep or sell a negative-cash-flow rental property, recognizing and leaving financially controlling relationships, and planning for retirement with limited time. The hosts emphasize focusing on the next right step, avoiding new debt, building margin, and choosing strategies that prioritize long-term stability and personal safety over short-term comfort.
You Still Have Time To Change Your Financial Situation
Hosts Ken Coleman and George Camel take calls from listeners about debt, relationships, business decisions, and rebuilding after crises. They walk callers through situations involving student loans, controlling partners, disability income limits, small business expansion, inheritance conflicts, and massive debt loads. The episode also features a debt-free scream from a couple who paid off over $200,000 and several discussions on how to prioritize insurance, retirement savings, and income growth.
Gymshark: Ben Francis. From pizza delivery to billion-dollar fitness brand.
Ben Francis tells the story of how he went from a student delivering pizzas and building websites to founding Gymshark, a global gymwear brand. He explains how Gymshark began as a dropship supplement site before pivoting into apparel, leveraged early YouTube fitness influencers, and grew rapidly while remaining bootstrapped. Ben also describes bringing in experienced operators, learning each function of the business, navigating a co-founder split, and eventually returning as CEO to lead Gymshark as a multi-hundred-million pound company with global reach.
Advice Line with Chet Pipkin of Belkin International
This Advice Line episode of How I Built This Lab features Belkin founder Chet Pipkin helping three early-stage entrepreneurs work through practical business challenges. They discuss adoption and positioning for dissolvable shampoo tablets, inventory and cash-flow planning for a fast-selling sports accessory, and how a massage tool company can expand into B2B and corporate wellness markets. Throughout, Chet shares lessons from building Belkin around solving real problems, managing capital constraints, and relying on grassroots demand instead of top-down sales pushes.
Advice Line with Niraj Shah of Wayfair
In this Advice Line episode of How I Built This Lab, host Guy Raz and Wayfair co-founder and CEO Neeraj Shah take calls from three founders seeking help with branding, financing, and career-risk decisions. They discuss how to clearly communicate a novel cooking ingredient (CookStix), when and how to seek funding for a mineral sunscreen brand (Daily Shade), and how a founder of a solo-women-travel housing app (HerHouse) should think about leaving a well-paid job. Neeraj also reflects on his long co-founder relationship, Wayfair's scale and focus strategy, and the non-linear nature of entrepreneurial journeys.
It's Time To Stop Surviving And Start Winning With Money
Hosts George Kamel and Jade Warshaw take live calls about handling money using the Ramsey "baby steps" framework. Callers navigate issues including divorce and business ownership, large RV and housing debts, career and income problems, retirement planning, insurance products, and moral questions around inheritances. The episode emphasizes staying out of debt, building emergency funds, investing wisely, and avoiding complex or risky financial products and decisions marketed as "opportunities."
Advice Line with John Zimmer of Lyft
Host Guy Raz speaks with Lyft co-founder John Zimmer about his transition out of day-to-day leadership, the emotional and mental health challenges of stepping away, and his interest in building new, mission-driven consumer businesses. Together they take calls from three founders: a UK inventor of a soap-mixing showerhead seeking to scale to the U.S., a rucking gear entrepreneur struggling with inventory financing and tariffs, and a craft chocolate maker wrestling with work-life balance and long-term employee ownership. The episode focuses on practical advice around focus, financing, go-to-market tests, and personal sustainability for founders.
Dumb Financial Decisions Stunt Your Financial Growth
Dave Ramsey and co-host George Campbell take live calls from listeners dealing with student loans, car debt, housing decisions, family conflicts, and major life transitions like divorce and marriage. They repeatedly emphasize staying out of debt, planning for worst‑case scenarios, aligning spouses on money, and making conservative financial choices that prioritize stability and freedom over short‑term desires.
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.
Advice Line with Tony Xu of Doordash
This Advice Line episode of How I Built This features DoorDash co-founder and CEO Tony Hsu joining Guy Raz to coach three early-stage founders through strategic decisions. They discuss when to expand a product line beyond the core offering, how to think about raising capital versus using debt while maintaining control of a growing CPG brand, and how a small, mission-driven meat company can differentiate and educate consumers in a crowded "grass-fed" market. Tony also reflects on DoorDash's evolution, his approach to managing stress, and what he wishes he'd known as a first-time founder.
Hope Always Lives on the Other Side of Hurt
Ken Coleman and George Camel take live calls from listeners facing a wide range of financial and emotional challenges, from catastrophic investment scams and oversized mortgages to student loans, car debt, retirement fears, and business decisions. Throughout the episode they apply the Ramsey Baby Steps, emphasize living on a budget, avoiding debt, and prioritizing long-term peace over short‑term comfort, while also acknowledging the emotional weight of grief, shame, mental health struggles, and family dynamics that intersect with money decisions.