My guest today is Ron Shaich, founder of Panera and chairman of CAVA. The headlines will tell you that Ron built Panera into a $7.8 billion company, but the real story is far more interesting.  Available Now: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Transcript | YouTube | X His philosophy is simple: Be long-term greedy, not short-term stupid. + Members have …

Steve Wozniak is the engineer who built Apple.  Then he did something Silicon Valley still doesn’t understand: he gave millions of his own money away to early employees, walked away from power, and refused to play the game everyone else was playing. While HP rejected his design and competitors built walled gardens, Wozniak’s philosophy of open architecture, …

Anthony Scilipoti is one of the sharpest minds in investing. He’s the President and CEO of Veritas Group of Companies. He called the collapses of both Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Nortel before they happened, and now he has some thoughts on AI. We talk about asking better questions, reading the fine print, the role of short …

The incredible story of Jim Clayton and how he built Clayton Homes. When the bank forced him into bankruptcy at 27, he started rebuilding the very next day, following an unconventional playbook: refusing to lower standards, vertically integrating everything, and playing relentless offense during downturns.​​ While the home industry collapsed in the 1970s, 1990s, and 2000s, Clayton …

Tracy Britt Cool is the co-founder of Kanbrick where she is applying what she learned at Berkshire Hathaway to the middle market.   In this episode, you’ll learn how she went from writing a cold letter to Buffett to being sent in to fix struggling Berkshire subsidiaries, how to evaluate a business, the types of people to avoid at …

Hetty Green was the richest woman you’ve never heard of. In the late 1800s, she built a fortune worth billions today in a world designed to stop her. Women couldn’t vote, couldn’t own property, and weren’t even allowed on the stock exchange floor. She was a force that couldn’t be stopped. She bought entire towns, crushed railroad …

My guest this week is Barry Diller, one of America’s most successful businessmen. At 83, he chose to publish a deeply personal book and open up about his successes and failures. With surprising candor he details the rules he’s lived by: trust first, confront directly, and make the call when the clock starts. In our …

Ed Stack built Dick’s Sporting Goods from a struggling family store into an empire of more than 800 stores and billions in sales. Along the way he nearly lost everything. Multiple times. This episode is the story of what he did, how he did it, and the lessons you can learn. Available Now: Apple Podcasts …

Lulu Cheng Meservey is one of the sharpest minds in communications today. Lulu is known as the go-to strategist for CEOs, founders, and policymakers navigating high-stakes moments. In this episode, she explains how to grab attention in a noisy world filled with AI-slop, appeal to human psychology, and build trust instead of farming engagement. Available …

Fred Smith founded FedEx on an idea everyone told him would fail and built it into an $88 billion empire that changed how the world moves. In this episode, we dive into how he built FedEx and the lessons he learned along the way.  Available Now: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | X | Transcript This …