This week’s guest Pat’s business centers on one of the most hyped and controversial investment forms ever – crypto currency. His company The Giving Block is at the forefront of crypto-philanthropy, bringing a new generation of investors together with non-profits. Despite market turbulences this is one hot sector and his team has ballooned from 5 to 100 strong. But the speed of success comes with its own hurdles - how do you sculpt company culture and your hiring strategy when you’re ...
Oct 25, 2022•39 min•Ep. 72
Many great entrepreneurial ideas were spawned in response to the pandemic. For this week’s guest Kyle it all began with him wondering how he could recreate the in-person feeling of reading bedtime stories to his child in Canada when he was stuck in Texas while the borders were shut. He also worried about how he could stop kids like his from falling behind. His solution is the Edsoma app. So far everyone loves it – Shaquile O’Neill even just joined his advisory board! ...
Oct 18, 2022•34 min•Ep. 71
Many people dream about their passion project becoming a full time gig but Allison is one of those rare people who made it a reality. Her love for honey bees became the Siller Pollinator Company and the initial momentum was gratifying. But growth has stalled and this has her at a juncture… Can Marc help her find her scalability sweet-spot? Listen in for actionable tips on finding your focus and getting your business buzzing. Want a deeper dive into these topics? The pape...
Oct 11, 2022•39 min•Ep. 70
Have you ever wondered what people do with the advice that Marc gives them on the show? Well, David Silberman, co-founder of PingPod , is here to tell you just that. The first time he and Marc talked, David was trying to strategize the growth of his ping pong venue business and one of the hot topics was whether to buy or lease locations. Now that the company has been in business for a while, find out how things have evolved.. and what has real time data told him about the key rent vs lease...
Oct 04, 2022•20 min•Ep. 69
How earth friendly are the so-called “earth friendly” products? In the opinion of this week’s guest Justine Potashnik - not very. But she believes she has the answer in her Advanced Soapberry Formula, derived from Himalayan tree nuts. A product like this has a higher cost to create than its competitors, which has her at a juncture - should the company take a lower margin to get onto shelves faster or focus on being premium? Listen in for Marc’s tips on how to make the pivotal decisio...
Sep 27, 2022•34 min•Ep. 68
Belissimo Hats has achieved something rare in today’s market – the company has an enthusiastic celebrity following without ever having to pay a dime in influencer marketing money. They can count mega stars like Jamie Foxx and Snoop Dogg among the fans who just love to post about wearing their product. But the problem is co-founders, brothers Levi and Yossi Chayo, are still trying to do it all themselves. Are their worries about delegating getting in the way of the ...
Sep 20, 2022•34 min•Ep. 67
Faith has a patent pending product and she thinks it’s time to take it out to investors. Trouble is, as an Entrepreneurship & Marketing Junior her live pitching experience for The Shaving Step was limited to student pitch contests. So what does that mean now that she wants to get real world investment? Listen in for a masterclass from Marc on how to get yourself ready to take your product out to the market, with actionable advice not just for young entrepreneurs but ...
Sep 13, 2022•26 min•Ep. 66
Natasha’s dream wedding went up in flames just before the big day. As she picked up the pieces of the breakdown of her nine year relationship, she had a realization: she was in way more need of all those items from her gift registry now than she had ever been when she and her fiancé were still together. As she moved back into her parents’ basement she had a lightbulb moment - there was a whole potential industry that could be created to help people like her get back on their feet af...
Sep 06, 2022•38 min•Ep. 65
Have you ever wondered what people do with the advice Marc gives them? This week’s guest Paul Fontanelli was in the planning stages of his Bolder Adventure Park when he appeared as one of the first guests on the show. His business is an ambitious indoor venue out of Grand Prairie, Texas, which seeks to bring together everything from rock climbing to ice-skating under one massive roof. He had questions not just about launching the business, but also about the tricky work-l...
Aug 16, 2022•23 min•Ep. 64
Sometimes entrepreneurs get so caught up in making their idea perfect, they forget to collide it with reality. Is that what’s happening to this week’s guest Reilly? His site Fleur.ai seeks to disrupt and democratize the art world. But it’s been tough. It’s an idea he and his co-founders passionately believe the world needs but it’s also a pitch that Marc’s heard a few times before. So what makes Fleur different? Have they got enough data to prove their premise? Lis...
Aug 09, 2022•41 min•Ep. 63
Ben is stuck. He’s the founder of outdoor pop-up concept WEDriveIns , which repurposes disused urban parking lots as drive-in movie theaters. City officials have been gratifyingly swift to support the project which provides Covid safe entertainment and brings customers to shopping areas. It all looks so promising… So why can’t Ben scale? Well, he needs the permission of the movie studios to use the technology to get him there. And, they ain’t budging. This mindset reminds Marc ...
Aug 02, 2022•26 min•Ep. 62
Matt has an intriguing question - can a founder work just six months of the year and still have a successful business? Frightmare - his UK based scare attraction - turns a great profit every year. But while the event itself is seasonal, he’s realized that to be a success the business needs backroom staff year round. But he’d rather spend the off season in his camper, driving between the ski resorts of Europe. Can a work-life balance really extend to taking 6 full months of Van...
Jul 26, 2022•33 min•Ep. 61
Krystina decided to take the leap and try to make her home- bakery business her full time gig just before the pandemic hit. While most people would have hit pause, she instead reimagined her offering and The Messy Cookie home kit was born. Big names like Wayfair and Ebay jumped on board for her delicious virtual team-building escape. But while she’s been able to get in the virtual door once, she’s struggled to get repeat business from the big companies for her cookie dec...
Jul 19, 2022•33 min•Ep. 60
Some industries don’t want to be disrupted, but that doesn’t mean you should step back from the fight! This week’s guest Alex Koefman knows he has a solution that surgeons like him all over the world need – but he needs to form partnerships with medical device companies in order for his SurgeryTV app to be successful. The trouble is, they just aren’t biting. The current system of creating an archive of videos involves a wearying series of steps including thumb drives, home download...
Jul 12, 2022•31 min•Ep. 59
When bars and pubs across the world closed during the pandemic, so did their game nights… For this week’s guest Mark Walsh it was a heart-stopping moment as British pub quizzes were his business. He immediately set to work reimagining this unique style of trivia entertainment for remote times by creating his Kwizzbit app. The growth has been so fast that his lean team has been working to redevelop the platform to be able to host up to 100,000 players at a time. &nbs...
Jul 05, 2022•42 min•Ep. 58
There are few industries more resistant to disruption than education… But despite the odds, this week’s guest Benny Boas seems to be making some headway. He’s the founder of Upright Education, a bootcamp-style program aimed at helping adult learners rapidly re-skill in tech. The course is intended to be white-labeled at colleges. But while the program runs at a fast pace, the company’s growth isn’t… The market changes so fast, shouldn’t it be self-evident to higher education in...
Jun 28, 2022•29 min•Ep. 57
City red tape seems so baked into American life, that it stopped being a problem people even bothered trying to solve. But when Covid hit, it forced the opportunity for change. Businesses – especially restaurants - faced fast changing regulations and had to be able to get the new permits they needed to operate at speed, or face going under. No business, means no city tax and the city itself facing a funding shortfall. This presented the opening for this week’s guest Catherine Geanuracos to move ...
Jun 21, 2022•31 min•Ep. 56
Where to put the mountains of trash humans create is a problem that only seems to keep growing. Recycling is one part of solving the problem… the other is having consumer products last longer so we don’t create as much garbage to begin with. That’s the thinking of this week’s guest Chris Burrage, founder of San Francisco based Proclamation Goods. With some savvy social media, the company’s core product – an ultra durable three-piece pan set – is becoming a sensation with the s...
Jun 14, 2022•31 min•Ep. 55
Stephanie’s cracked the hardest part – her Austin, TX, designer boutiques have seen record growth this past year despite the pandemic. She knows for a fact she’s taking sales away from the big hitters like Nordstroms, Revolve and Amazon - her customers just prefer the personal touch she brings to the sales experience. But now that she’s setting her sights on expanding into other cities she’s got a hurdle to overcome – if the reason her clients love Estilo is because the experience fe...
Jun 07, 2022•32 min•Ep. 54
In the summer of 1998, Reed and I flew up to Seattle to meet with Jeff Bezos to discuss nothing other than potentially selling Netflix to Amazon. It was a decision that would have serious implications. Listen to me tell the whole story in this free chapter from the audiobook of the international bestseller: That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea , now available in Paperback! The paperback edition is out now in all good bookstores and online: w...
Jun 07, 2022•34 min•Ep. 53
When you look at social media it seems like founders all live like rockstars. But this belies the reality. The truth is, being a founder can be one of the toughest, loneliest tasks you’ll ever face. It’s not just the long hours and financial pressures… studies show three quarters of entrepreneurs are affected by mental health issues. So why isn’t Start-Up Stress more talked about? And when you’re facing it, what should you do about it? Can you ever admit you’re hav...
May 31, 2022•47 min•Ep. 52
Karl is faced with a puzzling subscription problem: he has plenty of downloads of his Cofeesup app – but his conversion rate from free trial to paying customer is surprisingly low. His solution to lift up neighborhood cafes over the mega marketers like Starbucks seems like a no brainer – you can get three cups of specialty coffee a week for just $8 a month… and the cafes even get supplied with free beans. So why isn’t his growth as caffeinated as his product? Listen in as Marc ...
May 24, 2022•43 min•Ep. 51
Is the old adage still true, that it takes money to make money? That’s what this week’s guests Lauren Arshad and Jen Cefaly are trying to figure out. They are the co-founders of Los Angeles based Design Hive , an edutainment company that creates hands-on STEAM workshops for both kids and adults. The duo are brim full of ideas and are poised to grow but both they - and their capital - are spread thin… Is it the right time to raise? Listen in as Marc dissects predicaments faced by ever...
May 17, 2022•28 min•Ep. 50
How best to unleash your niche? That’s what has Paul stumped. He’s the founder of a company called Cicero Learning, a business that helps families with the problem of global education access on a bespoke basis. It’s an educational method referred to as “World Schooling” which has become a hot topic thanks to the pandemic when laptop wielding parents realized that certain job types can now be done from literally anywhere in the world. But how can you best get customers educated on niche pr...
May 10, 2022•36 min•Ep. 49
Is it possible to make big profits from a free consumable product? This week’s guest Josh Cliffords certainly thinks so. By selling ads on the side of bottles he’s been able to establish his brand FreeWater at lighting speed in his hometown of Austin, Texas. His flair for posting viral TikTok videos has sent his message around the world. Josh has ambitious goals - creating the world’s first free supermarket in which all the products are ad-backed and free-to-consumer, and wit...
May 03, 2022•33 min•Ep. 48
It’s no secret that the pandemic hammered small businesses - especially those with brick and mortar locations. But this week’s guest, Angela, wasn’t going to let her thriving math enrichment business close, even when her store had to. As a prime example of the power of the pivot, she’s actually managed to more than double her customer base and take her Philadelphia local business Trapezium Math, national by moving it online... But all this potential for growth has her at a cros...
Apr 26, 2022•34 min•Ep. 47
She’s worked with celebrities like Kendall and Kylie Jenner, brands like Adidas and magazines including Rolling Stone and Teen Vogue… She's even been a judge on Miss USA. But fashion photographer Sophie Elgort has hit a career juncture faced by many would-be entrepreneurs: how do you scale when your business is you? She thinks she’s created a solution in her new company ClickHouse, which does back-to-back portrait photography pop up sessions to create “headshots” - photos that peopl...
Apr 19, 2022•31 min•Ep. 46
Army vet Cooper is the founder of SoBet, a new peer-to-peer sports betting and social media platform that targets the elusive Gen-Z consumer. But it’s a pitch that Marc has heard a thousand times before… and most of those pitches failed to make it. Can this West Point grad prove both to Marc - and to the market - that his mix of reducing the juice and onboarding influencers is enough to get his platform off the ground? Listen in for Marc’s tips for trying to find success in a crowde...
Apr 12, 2022•29 min•Ep. 45
How do you support entrepreneurial spirit in your child? That’s what Marc explores in this week’s episode with the help of the first ever quartet of co-founders to appear on the show. Elementary schoolers Julianne, Zachary, Maxfield and Mark have created beverage brand Astronade and caught Marc’s attention with their plucky marketing plan that even wound in their local mayor. Could the kid factor be the secret sauce? Listen as Marc gives a masterclass in how the youngest...
Apr 05, 2022•23 min•Ep. 44
James is an adventurer in both life and business. But when your career is breaking world records how do you turn that into a sustainable business? He thinks he found his answer when he created his wilderness team building program My Adventure Group… and he’s getting rave reviews. The trouble is, he’s just not getting enough customers. Can Marc help James modify his offering and approach to navigate a better path? Listen in to find out. Want to be a guest on ...
Mar 29, 2022•30 min•Ep. 43
