Episodes

Daymond John joins Guy Raz for an Advice Line episode to field questions from early-stage founders, including Cristopher from Chicago seeking to scale his family salsa brand from farmers markets to retail, Darcy in Australia looking to broaden his protein bar brand’s messaging beyond core fans, and Seema in Canada wanting tactics to boost B2B sales for her ethical kitchen linen line. Daymond also shares what makes a standout Shark Tank pitch and reflects on the 10-year legacy of How I Built This, while inviting founders to submit their own business questions for future episodes.

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Carlton Calvin returns to the Advice Line to help early-stage founders work through real business bottlenecks. Sean Barasa asks how to grow his party game Eulogy beyond 1,000 units, Shereen Tippett wants to escape Etsy saturation and build a direct-to-consumer stationery brand, and Mark Ganter needs a strategy for his premium espresso martini when the market is racing toward canned convenience. Guy Raz moderates as Carlton shares practical guidance on licensing, social presence, product focus, and trend timing.

Guy Raz sits down with Laura Modi to discuss how a pharmacy run at 11 p.m. became Bobbie, an infant formula startup now holding nearly 4 percent of the U.S. market. After leaving Airbnb, Modi fought through FDA shutdowns, manufacturing delays, and investor skepticism before Bobbie launched in 2021. She explains how a public apology turned a recall into a manufacturing partnership, why she turned away new customers during the formula shortage, and how moving to Washington put policy change at the center of her strategy. It's a story about resilience, regulation, and building trust in one of America's toughest...

Guy Raz sits down with Bobbi Brown to unpack how she launched Jones Road Beauty at 62, right after her non-compete expired. The Advice Line then turns to three founders facing very different scaling problems: Mark wants to turn a clinic-only cabbage-leaf rub into a real brand, Abby is trying to grow beyond her live-stream dependence, and Henry needs to broaden a coffee-specific mouth rinse into a lasting oral-care company.

Salma and Nima Fotovat turned the gut punch of losing their first business into the foundation for MadeGood, now a leading national snack giant. They share the hard-won lessons from that early failure, the strategic pivots that built their beloved allergen-friendly, kid-approved snack brand trusted by families across the U. S., and actionable insights for entrepreneurs looking to bounce back from setbacks and scale a mission-driven food business.

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Guy Raz sits down with Serena Dugan and Lily Kanter to reveal how two founders turned a Mill Valley baby boutique into a $20 million luxury home goods empire—and nearly lost it all to a predatory investor. Their story is a masterclass in surviving unplanned success, financing production with customer deposits, and fighting to keep control when the people writing the checks want a different company than the one you built. What follows is one of the most instructive cautionary tales about outside capital ever told on How I Built This.

Chris Riccobono returns to the Advice Line with an unvarnished update on UNTUCKit: tariffs, wholesale expansion, and the operational grind of keeping a growing apparel brand moving. Three callers then push him on harder problems. Adrian Alvarez wants Aero Shorts to outgrow its volleyball niche and compete with bigger athletic brands. Preet Anand is searching for awareness channels for Snug Safety that fit a trust-based, older demographic. Derek needs a real plan for Hockey Ninja now that NHL clearance is in hand, and he is choosing between social media, equipment managers, and a player partnership.

Chuck Surack transformed a mobile recording studio in his mother's Volkswagen bus into Sweetwater, the largest online retailer of musical instruments and pro audio equipment in the United States. By rejecting price competition and instead building every customer relationship around deeply knowledgeable sales engineers, he created a billion-dollar company that still operates from his hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Guy Raz sits down with OtterBox founder Curt Richardson on the Advice Line to help three product-driven founders break through scaling and positioning walls. Andy Jeremiah wants to franchise his live game-show business nationally before proving the model remotely. Marissa Valenzuela needs a path to broaden distribution for her fairy-tale inspired teas without losing their narrative charm. Vince Giudice wants proof that premium sustainable baby gear can compete on value, not just ideals. Curt argues that clarity comes before scale, and the brand story has to sell before price or features ever enter the conversation.

After waiting too long to pay his restaurant bill, Aman Narang thought there had to be a better way. His first idea - a mobile payment app - flopped, but that failure revealed a much bigger opportunity. Restaurants were trapped by outdated, expensive point-of-sale systems locked to on-premise servers. So Aman and his co-founders built Toast, a cloud-based operating system for restaurants from scratch. They worked from an unfinished basement, crashed their first launch, survived investor rejection and COVID, and grew Toast into a company that now powers more than 20 percent of U.S. restaurants.