Brent Underwood had a business idea: buy an abandoned town and turn it into a tourist destination.It didn’t work. Mostly because he tried running it remotely.Then he moved in. He started looking around, diving into old mines, and finding old treasures.He shot video of what he saw and of his renovations. That got hugely popular on social media, help…

Ryan Deiss’s business was too chaotic to grow beyond a few team members. So he tried creating SOP’s, you know those how-to docs that every business is told to create, but few people end up using.He figured there had to be a better way. Through experiments with he came up with “an operating system for companies.” He says this approach helped him gro…

He built Art.com through the early days of the internet, despite the dotcom bust, and through heavy competition….After all that work, the company sold to a much bigger company….And that’s when the lawsuit came.You’ll hear how Joshua Chodniewicz built that business and how his latest business, Fundify, is changing startup investing by making it supe…

Allbirds were the sustainable shoes known to be worn by Marissa Mayer, Jennifer Garner, and every dude I knew when I lived in San Francisco. How did the company get so big and where is it now? I invited the founders Tim Brown and Joey Zwillinger to talk about it. Tim Brown and Joey Zwillinger are the founders of Allbirds. Previously, Tim was a foot…

This founder found a niche that Airbnb didn’t reach and rode it to $6 million in revenue.Steve Satoru Naito’s Anyplace, accommodations come with big monitors, high-speed internet, an office setup, ergonomic chairs, webcams, and key lights, all tailored to create an optimal environment for remote work and zoom calls.In this interview, you’ll hear St…

My vision for this interview was to hear Noah Kagan’s process for launching companies, like the $80+ million / year AppSumo – the process he wrote about in his book, Million Dollar Weekend.We did that. You’ll hear his step-by-step business launch process.But, when I asked him how he was proving his process, he told me he was creating an alternative…

Video Husky started with a challenge. Justin Tan challenged himself to get 10 customers in 90 days for his new venture. The company grew to over $1 million in annual sales by providing flat fee remote video editing services.In this interview, we explored how he found his initial customers, how he pivoted to more profitable customers, and the inner-…

When I interviewed founders of online courses and asked about their communities, they often said they host them on Facebook. “That’s where everyone is” was the answer. Sometimes they’d use Slack, but FB was dominant. So how did Circle break through? That’s what founder Andrew Guttormsen & I breakdown. Andrew Guttormsen is the Co-Founder of Circle.s…

They used TikTok to promote their podcast, but podcasting is painful. There’s no discovery. It’s hard to grow. And there’s little audience feedback. Meanwhile, their short videos took off. This is the story of how the Our Future creators grew their short video business, generated revenue and sold it to Morning Brew. Michael Sikand and Simran Sandhu…

The clearest line to a business success is solving big pain. That’s what Benny Rubin did. Senders.co, optimizes email deliverability for businesses. You’ll hear how he came up with his business idea, how he got clients, why he left the business and why he’s back. And Benny will give you some suggestions for getting better results from your email ca…

How did Ali Abdaal reach over 5 million YouTube subscribers? How did he build his business? what insights can he offer to aspiring content creators? You’ll hear about that and about his new book, Feel-Good Productivity. Ali Abdaal is an ex-doctor turned YouTuber, Podcaster, entrepreneur and author. His book is called Feel-Good Productivity. Sponsor…

Before we started, I asked Alyssa Ravasio, why she didn’t model her company on other marketplaces. “Why don’t you encourage more people to buy land near national parks and turn them into campgrounds that they list on Hipcamp? It’s a good way for entrepreneurs to make money and for Hipcamp to grow your inventory.”She didn’t seem happy with my sugges…

Jess Mah was listening to my interviews when I first connected with her, just like you are now. We got to know each other and I invested in her first startup, indinero. It aimed to take on Quickbooks, before pivoting to bookkeeping services.After watching her grow as an entrepreneur and pilot, we lost touch for years. We recently reconnected and I …

Lloyed Lobo believes anyone could have founded Boast, a company designed to help businesses secure R&D tax credits. However, when asked about why he built it to tens of millions in revenue when others didn’t, he attributes it to community.Lloyed cultivated a network of entrepreneurs through local meetups and a significant annual conference, many of…

Today, SocialBee is a fully functional social media management tool. But at first, it was a guy secretly servicing his customers by using publicly available tools like Google Sheets and Zapier.That buy was Ovi Negrean. In this interview, he talks about how he did that, while his cofounder wrote their company’s software. And how the services part of…

Yaniv Makover didn’t intend to launch Anyword, the AI writing tool for marketers.He set out to help publishers like the New York Times buy social media ads so they could grow their readerships. At first, humans wrote those ads. Then, one day, he experimented with getting writing help from BERT, the tool Google released in 2018, long before OpenAI l…

Seven months ago, Bhanu Teja P saw his Twitter timeline fill with AI talk.He had an idea. What if web users could use a chat-like experience to talk with the content of their sites?He wasn’t sure it would go anywhere, but it would be a good way for him to learn about AI. So he spent a weekend building what became SiteGPT. It took off immediately. B…

The change: cutting expenses.Wistia was on track to lose $3 million per year when the founders bought out their investors with borrowed money. Chris Savage & Brendan Schwartz told me that meant the Wistia team had to be maniacal about cutting costs.But why couldn’t they do it before? And cutting expenses isn’t enough to grow a business? What else d…

Ritesh Agarwal was an entrepreneurial teen in India who loved to travel. So he created a travel search engine.One obstacle to growth was the subpar customer service provided by the local hotels.So he tried something novel: he helped hotels improve. He modernized their lightbulbs. Rewarded staff when customers gave high reviews. Etc.It worked. Hotel…

Hiring has been a huge issue for me. And in a past interview with Cameron Herold, I brought it up because he’s the founder of the COO Alliance, the world’s leading network for the second in command.I don’t get embarrassed by a lot of stuff. If you heard my interviews, you hear me get pretty frank about my flaws, my mistakes. But this issue is somet…

A topic we don’t talk about on Mixergy is how to actually manage a company. I remember when I was in NYU as an undergrad I loved all my business classes, but management just didn’t feel like me. I always thought of the guys in Dilbert but entrepreneurs were the ones who were creating, the ones who were doing. Mixergy’s grown and I’ve been running i…

About a year ago I realized that no matter how much effort we’ve put into my email list, I could never double the response rate. We kept growing it, but people were not using email much.So I started looking around for solutions and I started looking at bots. Bots are basically software that communicates with humans via a chat app. I came across one…

I’ll be honest with you. I felt guilt about an interview that I did years ago with today’s guest. This was back in, let me see here, 2013. I interviewed Sam Ovens about how he built up this consulting business and was teaching people how to do consulting.I thought maybe I got taken for a ride. It was too good to be true. Then I started hearing peop…

How does a former lawyer build a multi-million dollar company that teaches social skills.Jordan Harbinger is the co-founder of The Art of Charm, a company that teaches confidence and emotional intelligence. Jordan Harbinger is the co-founder of The Art of Charm, a company that teaches confidence and emotional intelligence, and the host of The Jorda…

On August 4, 2008, I posted a video up on Mixergy where I looked up into the web cam on my computer and I said “I failed.” And I said that I was going to shut down my invitation business and start doing interviews with entrepreneurs and people in general who I admire so I can learn from them and take back what I’ve learned from them to build a more…

A few weeks ago, Andrew was interviewed about his inner doubt by Samantha Alford of WomeninBusinesspodcast.com.I (Arie Saint) thought it was too good not to share with our audience, so I’m publishing it on Mixergy.Check it out and let’s talk about it in the comments. Samantha Alford, the founder of the Women in Business Podcast. Sponsored by Walker…

Update: based on the comments we’re getting, Jermaine sent this PDF about Automation.How does a high school senior from the inner city turn $70 into a multimillion dollar instruction web site?Jermaine Griggs is the founder of HearAndPlay.com, which trains musicians to play by ear, trains them to play by ear with online music lessons and piano video…

How does a wristband help a founder build a $169 million company?Ryan Allis is the founder of iContact, a provider of email marketing tools for small businesses. And a company that was recently sold for $169 million to Vocus.Here’s a quote from the last time I interviewed him, “we incorporated in July ’03, lived in the office, slept on futons, cook…

Many founders I interviewed on Mixergy told me about how their companies virtually disappeared after they sold them. But 4 years after selling Reddit to Conde Nast, Steve Huffman is so proud of how much its grown that he’d be happy to still own it.I asked him to teach me how he grew his community, why some Y Combinator-backed founders, like him, su…

The founders of Airbnb are guys who couldn’t make rent a few years ago, but they kept turning desperation into creative solutions. In October 2007, eager to make extra money, they noticed that local hotels were booked up because of a conference. So they pumped up some inflatable mattresses and listed their place online as an “air bed and breakfast.…

You listen to my programs because I don’t do the cute “let’s get to know the author” interviews that others are known for. I hunt down information that you can use because I’m passionate about helping you build a business that your great-great-grandkids would admire you for.That’s why I kept digging in this interview. I want you (and me too, frankl…