Episodes

Tim Ferriss joins Guy Raz for a live Advice Line session, taking calls from three entrepreneurs navigating very different growth challenges. Lauren Menard scales GOB's mycelium earplugs across music venues and DTC while raising a seed round. Emily Bordner decides between wholesale expansion and brick-and-mortar growth after a viral Taylor Swift moment. Kimberly Becker contemplates shifting K. Becker Designs to a pre-order model. Ferriss offers frameworks on parallel verticals, low-cost experiments, and redefining success beyond revenue.

Brian Smith turned a $500 boot import into UGG, one of the most recognizable footwear brands in the world. In this episode, he shares how a surfer's eye for a product gap, repeated near-bankruptcies, and a refusal to compromise on authenticity built a global icon. From Southern California surf trunks to Deckers' billion-dollar empire, it's a story about resilience, brand building, and betting on a product no one else believed in.

Jeffrey Hollender, co-founder of Seventh Generation, joins the HIBT Advice Line to discuss building a mission-driven business grounded in a Native American principle. He explains the origin of the company's name, the early obstacles of bringing sustainable household products to market, the operational crisis that nearly ended the company, and what he learned from eventually leaving the CEO role to let the business enter its next phase.

From waiting tables to launching Justin’s Nut Butter, Justin Gold shares his scrappy, unplanned journey to reinventing mainstream peanut butter. He breaks down testing small-batch nut butter recipes in his Denver kitchen, spotting the market gap for additive-free spreads, and navigating early scaling hurdles to turn his personal hobby into a nationwide CPG staple. Viewers walk away with actionable lessons on building a values-driven, ingredient-transparent food brand from the ground up.

Guy Raz brings back Sarah LaFleur, founder and CEO of M.M. LaFleur, to field real-time questions from founders navigating self-doubt, pricing perception, and shifting consumer behavior. Two callers pitch their businesses - a muscle-recovery soap and tick-protective socks - and Sarah offers practical, hard-won advice drawn from rebuilding her own brand through COVID, a bank collapse, and near-failure.

Jensen Huang sits down to recount how NVIDIA went from selling 250,000 defective chips and laying off two-thirds of its staff to building the most dominant company in the world by market capitalization. Guy Raz unpacks the near-collapse, the $5 million bet with Sega, and Jensen's decade-long wager on CUDA when every investor was running for the exits. It's the story of what it actually costs to build something most people said couldn't be done.

Guy Raz sits down with former HIBT guests Che Wong, Hernan Lopez, and David Neeleman for a special Advice Line mashup. Three founders call in with growth challenges: Christina Latraverse wants to scale Seagrass Pottery beyond Florida, Jim Kersley weighs retail expansion for Lemur Strap, and William Carroll looks to change how consumers think about tool rentals. Each caller gets candid advice on branding, distribution, and breaking ingrained buying habits.

John Gabbert transformed a shattered family partnership into Room & Board, a modern furniture empire worth half a billion dollars. After his father's company reneged on a handshake deal, John refused to abandon his vision for accessible modern design. Starting with $500,000 of his own money in 1990, he built a brand that proves patience and authenticity beat hype every time. Today, with 22 showrooms nationwide, his furniture graces homes across America—a legacy built not on family approval, but on quiet persistence.

BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti joins Guy Raz on the Advice Line to help founders tackle scaling and brand differentiation challenges. Anthony Cortez of MotionFlix wrestles with franchise versus partner-led expansion for his outdoor cinema business. Melissa Bermudez of Unrefined Foods seeks to stand out in the crowded healthy food market. Peretti's core insight: in an AI-driven world, human connection and obsessive storytelling are the last sustainable competitive advantages.

Guy Raz sits down with Gregg Renfrew to trace the full arc of Beautycounter: a clean-beauty brand she founded in 2013, scaled to nearly $1 billion in value, lost control of after a private equity buyout, and ultimately reacquired out of foreclosure to rebuild as Counter. She explains why safer-product standards were never enough to guarantee founder control, and how she is now designing a new distribution model around commissioned brand partners instead of the old multilevel sales force. The conversation is about ambition, public failure, and the surprisingly narrow window a founder can get to try again.

David Neeleman, the aviation entrepreneur behind JetBlue, Azul, and Breeze, shares hard-won lessons on scaling airlines without losing soul. He argues that true leadership means hiring people who care more than you do, and that cutting costs at the expense of culture is the fastest way to destroy a brand. From choosing the right airplanes to building teams that treat customers like family, Neeleman's advice cuts through the noise of typical business platitudes.

Two brothers turned a dying product category into a half-billion dollar lifestyle empire by selling not ties, but a feeling. Shep and Ian Murray built Vineyard Vines from scratch, capturing the essence of Martha's Vineyard summers in every stitch. Their journey from corporate drudgery to brand builders shows how emotional connection can transform even the most stale markets.