We made our phones smarter, faster, but harder to put down; wwe tethred to it. Sleke’s co-founders are asking what happens when we optimize technology for something else.

What a strange contradiction to modern life.

Our technology has never been more robust. Our phones can operate businesses, move money, navigate cities, and connect us to almost anyone.

And now AI promises to accelerate every digital interaction at hyperspeed.

Yet it has never felt harder to simply separate ourselves from our phone.

That tension is at the center of my conversation with Austin and Brennan, co-founders of Sleke.

They aren’t anti-technology. They’re asking a more interesting question:

What if our mobile technology did what we needed and then got out of the way?

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Connection without the obsession

The idea for Sleke originated while Austin and Brennan were living abroad.

They used Instagram and Facebook to stay in touch with people back home. But those same platforms continually pulled their attention away from the life happening directly in front of them.

They wanted the utility of a smartphone without being glued to it.

When they couldn’t find that middle ground between an everything-phone and a “dumb phone,” they decided to build it themselves.

Their product philosophy can essentially be reduced to:

Complete the task. Get off the phone.

That’s a provocative idea in an economy that has spent years optimizing for the opposite.

More sessions. More clicks. More notifications. More time spent.

But this conversation isn’t only about how Sleke is building a phone.

It’s about the choices companies make when designing technology and the choices the rest of us make when using it.

For founders and leaders: Is more engagement actually success?

Through hundreds of early customer conversations, Sleke boiled down what people actually needed from their phones into five categories:

Messaging. Money. Maps. Music. Life management.

Their filter for additional functionality is simple: Does this help someone solve a real-world problem, or does it encourage them to stay on the device?

That question is worth borrowing.

If you’re a founder, CEO or senior executive, consider what your organization is actually optimizing for.

A banking customer doesn’t want to spend more time in a banking app. Someone making a reservation doesn’t want a 20-minute experience. And an employee using AI doesn’t need another platform demanding attention—they need it to remove work.

So what?

The metrics we’ve traditionally associated with successful technology, time spent, sessions and engagement- aren’t automatically synonymous with customer value.

Sometimes a great product should make itself temporarily unnecessary.

Now what?

Look at one important customer journey in your business and ask:

What is the customer actually trying to accomplish, and how quickly can we help them accomplish it?

Then examine every additional click, notification, feature, and prompt between those two points.

Some may generate value.

Others may simply create engagement.

That distinction will become increasingly important as AI gives companies the ability to insert more technology into virtually every interaction.

For the rest of us: Stop treating all screen time the same

Sleke originally focused heavily on reducing screen time.

Then its users complicated the thesis.

What about reading a book? Learning a language? Using a fitness app?

Those activities can increase screen time while still contributing something meaningful to someone’s life.

Brennan described users wanting to “choose their own adventures,” deciding which digital activities deserve a place on their device rather than treating everything on a screen as equally problematic.

So what?

The goal probably shouldn’t be to use technology as little as possible.

It should be to use it intentionally.

Twenty minutes of reading isn’t necessarily equivalent to twenty minutes of scrolling an infinite feed.

The more useful question becomes:

Did I choose to do this or did the technology choose for me?

Now what?

Try auditing your phone by purpose rather than screen time.

When you reach for it, notice whether you’re there to communicate, accomplish, learn or consume.

Then identify the apps where you routinely enter with one intention and emerge 20 minutes later doing something completely different.

Those are probably better candidates for intervention than your total daily screen-time number.

For founders: Your earliest customers can be your product team

There’s another lesson in Sleke’s story that has almost nothing to do with phones.

When the company began selling in 2024, Austin and Brennan intentionally kept marketing limited.

They wanted customers with what Austin called the “hair on fire problem”—people frustrated enough by their existing smartphones to tolerate an early product and actively help improve it.

For roughly the first six months, they spoke with every user every week. As a bootstrapped company, those conversations helped determine where limited resources should go.

So what?

Early-stage growth can create the illusion of validation.

Deep customer understanding creates something more useful: direction.

Now what?

Before spending more to acquire your next thousand customers, ask what you’ve learned from your first hundred.

Who feels the problem most intensely?

What workaround are they already using?

What do they repeatedly ask you to fix?

And are you building from those signals—or from assumptions?

For all of us: Where does the technology ultimately send you?

Toward the end of our conversation, Austin made an important point.

Getting people off their phones isn’t enough.

There will always be another screen.

The bigger question is what happens after we put it down.

Technology can help facilitate community, relationships and real-world experiences rather than replace them. As Austin put it, intention ultimately determines much of technology’s benefit or downside.

That leaves two very different questions coming out of this conversation.

For the people building and leading companies:

Are you designing technology to capture more of someone’s attention—or to give some of it back?

For the people using it:

Is technology helping you do what you intended to do or quietly deciding what you’ll do next?

We’ve spent decades asking what else technology can do.

Maybe the more interesting question in 2026 is:

What can better technology give back?

Time. Attention. Focus. Connection.

For founders, that’s a product opportunity.

For the rest of us, it’s a choice.

And increasingly, I think both matter.

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A restaurant chain is turning surplus food into a conduit for combatting hunger. A professional-services giant is allocating $100 million to helping its workforce build distinctly human skills. And Uber is cutting thousands of jobs to remove organizational complexity. Different businesses, same question: What does your company actually reinforce every day?

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🍗 RONNY SAGE: PURPOSE WORKS BETTER AS INFRASTRUCTURE THAN A CAMPAIGN

Guest: Ronny Sage, Founder & CEO, ShoppingGives
Episode: Ep. 36 Ronny Sage, Founder & CEO, ShoppingGives
Published: November 28, 2023
Revisit the Ronny Sage episode

When Ronny recorded with me on the Worthy for Thirty podcast, he explained that ShoppingGives works through three interconnected pieces: identifying the right cause relationships, incorporating social impact throughout the consumer journey, and then managing the compliance and measurement needed to understand whether those programs actually work. He also shared examples where brands saw more than a 40% increase in customer lifetime value among consumers who participated in giving programs. (Worthy for Thirty)

That conversation came back to me this week because Chick-fil-A kicked off Hunger Action Month with plans to match up to $1 million in donations to Feeding America partner food banks (you may have heard of Feeding America through my conversation with Marcin and Amit at Mission Craft Cocktails) across more than 40 markets. But the more interesting story is the operating system supporting it: its Shared Table program now involves more than 2,700 restaurants and 1,600 nonprofit partners, redirecting surplus food into meals rather than treating hunger relief as an isolated event. (Chick-fil-A)

That distinction matters.

A donation is an event.

Repetition becomes part of the business model.

Ronny’s contention wasn’t that every company should partner with a cause at checkout. It was that when impact is linked to how a company already operates, and measured with the same seriousness as other business initiatives, it has better odds of surviving budget cuts, leadership upheaval, and changing marketing priorities.

The Worthy idea: If your mission disappears when the campaign ends, it probably wasn’t embedded deeply enough. Also a reason why we submitted an SXSW panel — to help mission-minded / focused brands on how to embed that mission into their business infrastructure and foundation.

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🧠 DAN REICH: AI IS MAKING CURIOSITY MORE VALUABLE, NOT LESS

Guest: Dan Reich, Co-Founder, Troops.Ai and TULA
Episode: Ep. 13: Dan Reich, Co-Founder, Troops.Ai and Tula
Published: November 4, 2022
Revisit the Dan Reich episode

Dan had already founded, scaled, then sold businesses, while investing in numerous other companies, when I asked him what actually sustains entrepreneurs over time. His answer pointed to passion and curiosity: Are you genuinely interested in the problem? Are you willing to keep asking why it works the way it does and whether there is a better answer? (Worthy for Thirty)

Four years later, major companies are effectively putting a price on those qualities.

EY announced this week that it will invest $100 million in employee rewards tied to skills including judgment, adaptability, business acumen, experimentation and innovation as AI changes professional services. Awards can reach $25,000, and EY’s framing is newsworthy: technology adoption matters, but so does knowing what to do with the technology once you know how to use it. (Fortune)

Shopify COO Jess Hertz made a similar argument this week when she described the ideal AI-era employee as “X-shaped”: someone capable of developing depth across multiple areas while continuing to learn quickly as the work changes. (Business Insider)

For years, we assumed automation would make expertise more valuable.

It may also make learning velocity more valuable.

Knowing something matters. Knowing how to question it, connect the dots, and pivot quickly when the answer changes may matter even more.

Dan was talking about founders in 2022.

Increasingly, he may have been describing the employee of 2030.

The Worthy idea: In a world where information continues to get cheaper by the minute, curiosity becomes more expensive.

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✂️ MIKE + KASS LAZEROW: GROWTH CREATES COMPLEXITY. GREAT LEADERS REMOVE IT.

Guests: Mike & Kass Lazerow, Co-Founders, Buddy Media & Golf.com
Episode: Unpacking “Shoveling $h!t”: Mike & Kass Lazerow’s Raw Truths on Entrepreneurship & Impact
Published: June 5, 2025
Revisit the Mike & Kass Lazerow episode

Mike made a point during our recording that is easy to agree with and incredibly difficult to practice and execute consistently: startups have limited resources, so focus has to be ruthless. He and Kass also described Buddy Media’s culture in detail: transparency, celebrating wins, and keeping people connected as one of the many things that allowed the business to survive tremendous growth and even acquisition. (Worthy for Thirty)

This week, Uber announced its largest round of layoffs since 2020: approximately 3,300 employees, the equivalent of ~10% of its workforce. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the restructuring is intended to flatten management layers, simplify decision-making, and make the company faster as it competes in an increasingly complex transportation market. (Axios)

There’s a leadership lesson hidden within the layoff headline.

Companies spend years adding people, departments, and processes because growth seems to demand them.

Eventually, someone has to pose the question:

Is all of this helping us grow, or just proving how large we’ve become?

That’s the uncomfortable side of scale.

The challenge isn’t only knowing what to build.

It’s knowing what to stop doing.

The Worthy idea: Complexity accumulates naturally. Focus has to be intentional.

🚨 GUEST RADAR

Bill Shufelt → Athletic Brewing

Athletic Brewing named Dan Kleinman as its new CMO, effective September 8. Kleinman previously spent nearly a decade at Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits, including helping build Josh Cellars; the hire comes as Athletic increases national media investment and pushes from category pioneer toward a broader global brand. (Marketing Dive)

Rob Tod → Allagash Brewing

Allagash White was inducted into the American Craft Beer Hall of Fame this week, one of only five beers selected this year. The organization described it as a benchmark Belgian-style witbier, backed by awards from 19 competitions in the U.S. and Europe. (WGME2)

Luke Mickelson → Sleep in Heavenly Peace

The nonprofit’s eighth annual Bunks Across America is now underway from September 5–12, bringing chapters together across North America to build 12,000 beds for children who currently lack one. (Sleep in Heavenly Peace)

🧠 ONE IDEA TO STEAL

Companies tell us what they believe all the time.

The more useful question is:

What does the system encourage people to do?

Chick-fil-A built giving into restaurant operations.

EY attached money to curiosity, judgment, and adaptability.

Uber decided streamlining the org chart was valuable enough to restructure it.

That’s where culture becomes visible.

What gets rewarded gets repeated.
What gets repeated eventually becomes the company.

Until next week,

Eric

Worthy for Thirty

Doing good while doing well shouldn’t be mutually exclusive.

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Entry-level workers are struggling to get in the door and get hired. Experienced professionals are being displaced and replaced. And the conundrum is that employers still can’t always find the people they need to fill critical roles.

All of those things can be true at once.

That contradiction was at the center of my recent Worthy for Thirty conversation with Nicholas Wyman, Executive Director of IWSI America, and Dr. Deborah Williamson, Vice President of IWSI America.

IWSI, or the Institute for Workplace Skills and Innovation, operates at the crossroads of employers, job seekers, educators, and the government- more state than national- helping build and maintain talent pipelines through apprenticeships, skills development, coaching, and workforce programs.

But what really caught my attention during our conversation wasn’t the ability to try to predict exactly what work will look like five or ten years from now.

It was something much more useful:

What can we do today to set us up for a promising tomorrow?

Because the American workplace is undergoing several transformations at the same time. AI and automation are directly and indirectly impacting the tasks companies need people to perform. The COVID-19 pandemic permanently changed where and how many of us work. In-office, hybrid, or fully remote. Make your choice. Yet some experienced workers are struggling to re-enter the workforce, while younger workers, like recent college graduates, are realizing that getting that first opportunity can be unseemingly difficult.

And nobody knows exactly where all of this ends.

That uncertainty might be the intention.

Give up trying to control the future. Prepare to adapt to it.

Nicholas made an important distinction during our conversation: there are technical skills, and there are what he and IWSI prefer to call employability skills.

Technical skills are always changing or being updated. The software changes. The equipment changes. AI changes the workflow. Industries adopt new technology.

Employability skills stay with you through your career. The pejorative descriptor is ‘soft’ skills.

Reliability. Communication. Resilience. Curiosity. Adaptability. Working with others. Showing up when you say you’re going to show up.

It comes off as simplistic in an era infatuated with AI proficiency, but Nicholas broke it down even further:

“Be reliable and show up.”

He contends that doing those two things regularly provides employers a reason to give you a chance.

That sat well with me because we tend to discuss the future of work from the top down: AI models, labor statistics, economic forecasts, layoffs, interest rates.

IWSI approaches it from the inverse.

What does this particular person know how to do?

What might they be capable of doing?

And what is preventing them from getting there?

The overlooked skill might be the one you already possess.

One of my favorite ideas from the conversation was backwards design.

When people look for a job, Dr. Williamson explained, they often start with the job posting.

They read the requirements and ask:

Do I fit the description? Am I the one they’re looking for?

But that can be the wrong starting point.

Instead, look backward.

What have you actually done?

What problems have you solved? What environments have you thrived in? When have you led (this shows up in many different forms)? When have you worked under pressure? What have you built, organized, fixed, sold, taught, or improved?

Then ask:

Which of those abilities transfer somewhere else?

Dr. Williamson said IWSI often has to unpack those experiences through deeper conversations because people don’t often recognize the value of their lived, professional experience and the skills that come with it.

Nicholas is a great example himself.

He started his career as a chef.

Today he works in workforce development.

Those might appear to be completely different careers until you break the first one apart.

Running a kitchen requires managing people, meeting deadlines, dealing with customers, solving problems, coordinating workflows, and performing under pressure.

Those capabilities don’t magically evaporate when you leave the kitchen.

Your job title isn’t your skill set.

That’s a significant distinction for anyone who has been laid off, wants to pivot into a new career or fears their current role could eventually be eliminated by technology.

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Apprenticeships deserve a much bigger place in the American workforce.

There’s another idea we probably need to rethink: the assumption that education happens first and work happens second.

Nicholas described an apprenticeship as essentially a longer-term paid internship where you learn both on and off the job.

He knows the model personally. He entered the workforce through an apprenticeship after leaving high school and later continued his education.

His philosophy is simple:

The right education at the right time.

Learning doesn’t need to follow a perfectly linear progression of high school → four-year college → career.

You can work.

Learn.

Earn a credential.

Change industries.

Go back to school.

Learn something new.

And repeat.

That’s lifelong learning in a much more practical way.

And apprenticeships aren’t limited to the traditional vocational trades.

IWSI’s work includes pathways into occupations such as dental technicians, optical technicians, and pharmacy technicians, including a California initiative that connects people with disabilities to apprenticeship opportunities.

For employers struggling with talent shortages, that raises an important question:

Instead of continuing to search for the perfect employee, what if you helped create one?

Hiring someone isn’t the primary KPI. Retaining them is.

This might have been the most important point in our entire conversation.

I asked Nicholas and Deborah how they measure success.

The obvious answer would be placements.

How many people got jobs?

Nicholas retorted.

“We don’t just want the person to get the job... We want them to keep the job.”

That changes the calculus.

A placement is a moment in time.

Retention is an outcome.

IWSI spends a great deal of time on what happens before and after someone is hired: interview preparation, resume development, employer expectations, mentoring and coaching.

And importantly, Nicholas argues that a mentor shouldn’t necessarily be someone’s direct supervisor.

An employee needs somebody they can speak with when something isn’t working, sometimes about seemingly mundane issues, before a small problem becomes a reason to leave or be fired.

That has implications that extend beyond apprenticeship programs.

Employers spend enormous amounts of time, money, and energy recruiting people.

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Maybe the more interesting question is:

What are you doing during someone’s first 60 days to ensure they’re set up for success?

Nicholas went even further.

Forget the first 60 days.

Think about the first 60 minutes.

Does the person get the culture?

Do they know who to ask when they need clarification or have an important question?

Does someone actually explain the “unwritten” rules?

Do they feel comfortable raising a problem before it becomes something bigger?

Those tiny interactions can determine whether a new employee begins building confidence or immediately starts losing it.

AI makes human skills more important, not less.

I don’t subscribe to the idea that AI will simply eliminate work as we know it.

It will eliminate some jobs.

It will change or impact many more.

And it will likely create jobs we haven’t thought of yet.

Nicholas pointed toward sectors including healthcare, hospitality, tourism, and service industries as areas where human interaction remains integral, while acknowledging that some administrative and processing work is prone to automation.

But the bigger lesson from our conversation was this:

Don’t build your career around predicting which technology wins or which technology becomes preeminent. Build it around becoming increasingly useful.

Learn the technology. Always be a student — from recent college graduate to seasoned employee.

But also learn how to communicate. Do it well and concisely

Ramp up technical proficiency.

But also become dependable.

Develop expertise.

But remain curious enough to become a beginner again.

Because the people best positioned for the next version of work may not be those who perfectly predicted what was coming.

They’ll be the ones who learned how to keep learning.

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A five-step exercise you can do this week

If you’re going through a career change, entering the workforce, worried about AI, or just wondering what’s next, here’s an exercise inspired by Nicholas and Deborah’s advice.

1. Inventory your past.
Write down what you’ve accomplished across jobs, school, volunteer work, side projects, and life experiences. Don’t worry about whether it sounds impressive. Just get it on paper.

2. Identify the value.
For every experience, ask: What did this require me to be good at?

3. Know your attributes.
Are you dependable? Analytical? Energetic? Organized? Creative? Collaborative? Goal-oriented? Don’t just list them; substantiate them; find examples that demonstrate each one.

4. Find one thing you’re ‘missing.’
Look at the type of work you’re interested in and identify one credential, skill or experience employers constantly request. Then find a clear and compelling way to start learning it.

5. Get out there!
This was perhaps Nicholas’s most practical advice. Stop relying exclusively on online applications. Talk to someone. Volunteer. Ask for coffee. Follow up. Attend something. Make the phone call.

As he put it during our conversation:

“Don’t wait for your ship to come in. Swim out to it.”

The future of work may actually be the future of learning.

Near the end of our conversation, Nicholas told me that at the young age of 58, he’s taking guitar lessons

Not because he’s embarking on a second career as a musician.

Because it’s difficult.

He’s pushing himself to learn something new.

He also attends workshops and online courses in subjects that interest him, including areas outside his professional expertise.

I really appreciated that.

Because perhaps we’ve been asking the wrong question.

Instead of:

“What career will be safe from AI?”

Maybe it’s:

“Am I still capable and willing to learn something new?”

The workplace will always change; now even faster.

Technology will keep getting better.

Certain jobs will go away, and new ones will emerge.

The advantage won’t necessarily belong to the person with the perfect résumé.

It belongs to the person passionate about remaining curious, translating what they’ve already learned, developing what they’re missing, and keeping moving.

Dr. Williamson’s final advice captured that beautifully:

Take an inventory of everything you’ve accomplished, don’t sell any of it short, and build from there.

Worth considering this week

If your current job was eliminated tomorrow, which three skills would you take with you?

If you can’t answer that yet, that’s probably a worthwhile place to start taking inventory of both your skills and experience.

My conversation with Nicholas Wyman and Dr. Deborah Williamson of IWSI America is part of the Worthy for Thirty podcast, where I speak with leaders working at the intersection of business, purpose, and measurable impact. The audio version of this conversation is available wherever you listen to podcasts.

If this write-up was valuable, subscribe to Worthy for Thirty on Substack and send it to someone who’s entering the workforce, navigating a career transition, hiring talent, or simply trying to figure out what comes next.

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Last week, I wrote about protecting the principle while experimenting with the delivery.

This week, something different caught my attention: some of the biggest opportunities are hiding in plain sight.

Mac & cheese. Milk. Online creators.

None are new. All three are being retinkered.

And three conversations from the Worthy for Thirty archive suddenly feel particularly relevant. Stick with me here.

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🧀 MAC & CHEESE JUST DELIVERED A MASTERCLASS IN DISRUPTION

Barilla is acquiring GOODLES, the better-for-you mac & cheese company that launched in 2021.

The price wasn’t disclosed.

The numbers tell an incredible story.

GOODLES grew from 0.8% to 7.8% of U.S. shelf-stable mac & cheese spending in just three years. Even more interesting: the company says 80% of its sales come from consumers who previously didn’t shop the category or are now buying more of it. GOODLES will continue operating independently, with CEO Jen Zeszut and all 73 employees staying on. (The Wall Street Journal)

In other words, GOODLES didn’t just steal customers from the competition.

It made an old category interesting to new ones.

And weirdly enough, that sent me back to popcorn.

💡 THE WORTHY IDEA

When I sat down with Tom Leigh, co-founder of Tommy Popcorn, we discussed entering one of the oldest, most commoditized snack categories around.

Tommy’s approach wasn’t:

How do we make another popcorn?

It was closer to:

Where is the whitespace everyone else has stopped looking for?

The company examined search behavior to discover flavors consumers wanted but couldn’t easily buy. Then it layered those insights with unconventional flavors, experiential marketing and an intentionally mysterious fictional founder named Tommy. (Worthy For Thirty)

Tom’s lesson was that data can tell you where to play, but storytelling gives people a reason to care once you arrive.

GOODLES is an apt parallel.

It didn’t birth mac and cheese.

It reconsidered who mac & cheese could be for, improved the nutritional proposition and ensconced in a brand that looks nothing like the category incumbents.

Barilla certainly noticed.

Why it matters now → Founders love talking about creating new categories. Sometimes the bigger opportunity is reinvigorating an old category everyone else assumes has already been figured out.

Don’t ask, “What hasn’t been invented?”

Ask: “What hasn’t been reimagined?”

🎧 Revisit my conversation with Tom Leigh
How a Fake Character Is Building a Very Real Brand — February 4, 2026

🥛 CHOBANI IS BETTING $1.2 BILLION THAT MILK ISN’T FINISHED

Speaking of old categories...

Milk.

Chobani announced a $1.2 billion investment in Pennsylvania this week to establish its first dairy-product manufacturing operation in the state.

At full scale, the facility is expected to process more than 3 billion pounds of Pennsylvania milk annually, roughly 30% of the Commonwealth’s current milk production, and create more than 900 jobs. Chobani is also working on traditional dairy milk with higher protein and less sugar. (Pennsylvania Government)

Think about that for a bit.

We’re living through an era of oat milk, almond milk, functional beverages, protein shakes and seemingly endless beverage innovation.

And Chobani is putting $1.2 billion behind...

cow’s milk.

That brought me back to Sam Stewart of Mad Hippie.

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💡 THE WORTHY IDEA

Mad Hippie didn’t begin with a trend report saying the world needed another skincare company.

Sam and his wife Dana had a problem.

Living in Nicaragua and surfing frequently, they began to realize what all that sun exposure was doing to their skin.

They got curious.

Then they iterated.

A lot.

Sam told me the early products went through roughly 50 versions. The company first thought surfers would be its primary consumer. They weren’t. So instead of abandoning the underlying problem, Mad Hippie changed the audience and kept refining the solution. (Worthy For Thirty)

That’s the distinction.

Being committed to the problem doesn’t require being committed to your first solution.

Chobani’s bet on milk feels similar.

Consumers haven’t suddenly stopped caring about nutrition, protein or convenience.

The product delivering those benefits can change.

Why it matters now → Innovation doesn’t always require teaching consumers a completely new behavior. Sometimes you take something incredibly familiar and rebuild it around what consumers care about now.

Mad Hippie did it with skincare.

Chobani thinks it can do it with milk.

And $1.2 billion says they’re pretty serious about finding out.

🎧 Revisit my conversation with Sam Stewart
How Sam Stewart and Mad Hippie Built a Beauty Brand With Purpose, Patience, and Persistence — June 10, 2026

📱 THE CREATOR ECONOMY MAY BE APPROACHING ITS “NOW WHAT?” MOMENT

Creators became media companies.

Then brands reallocated billions of dollars in their media budget to fund them.

Now comes the difficult part:

Is the math, mathing?

Digiday reported this week that creator marketing may be approaching an economic correction, raising questions about whether influencer economics can sustain their current trajectory. At the same time, creator-focused companies continue attracting capital: CreatorFi announced a $45 million raise this week aimed at financing independent media. (Digiday)

Those two seemingly contradictory headlines sitting next to each other:

Money is pouring in.

Skepticism is increasing.

Which sent me back to one of the people who helped build the creator economy before got that label.

Elisa Camahort Page.

💡 THE WORTHY IDEA

Elisa co-founded BlogHer around a clear mission: create opportunities for community, education, exposure and economic empowerment for female bloggers.

When we spoke, her advice wasn’t “get bigger.”

It was:

Build for the people you serve, not for abstract scale.

And she was equally adamant about monetization: mission has to function as an operating system. It should influence partnerships, hiring, pricing and product decisions, not sit in a paragraph on the About page. (Worthy For Thirty)

That feels especially relevant now.

The creator economy spent years optimizing for:

followers → impressions → reach → sponsorships.

But sustainable businesses eventually have to answer harder questions.

Who are we actually serving?

What value are we creating and extracting?

Would this community still notice or care if the algorithm stopped helping us tomorrow?

Why it matters now → Distribution can make you visible. Community can make you durable.

The next phase of the creator economy may belong less to the people who build the largest audiences, and more to the ones who establish the strongest relationships with them.

🎧 Revisit my conversation with Elisa Camahort Page
Doing Good Without Losing the Plot — June 3, 2026

🚨 WORTHY RADAR

A few alumni worth watching this week.

Bill Shufelt → Athletic Brewing

Athletic’s relationship with endurance sports continues to get stronger. IRONMAN published the story behind Personal Record, its collaboration with Athletic Brewing, a non-alcoholic beer developed around post-race celebrations. (Ironman)

The review from my conversation with Athletic’s co-founder, Bill becomes more compelling: the opportunity wasn’t simply making better NA beer. It was making alcohol-free beer feel completely normal in places where beer already belonged. (Worthy For Thirty)

Luke Mickelson → Sleep in Heavenly Peace

Sleep in Heavenly Peace’s decentralized model is showing up across the country ahead of its September bed-building efforts. Lowe’s volunteers in Wilmington are preparing to build 125 beds for local children, while SHP groups in Oregon and elsewhere are organizing additional community builds. (WWAYTV3)

One bed becomes a chapter. A chapter becomes a network. A network becomes a movement.

🧠 ONE IDEA TO STEAL

Mac & cheese.

Milk.

Popcorn.

Skincare.

Creators.

This week’s stories reminded me that innovation has a branding problem.

We tend to associate it with inventing something nobody has ever seen before.

But sometimes innovation looks like something much less glamorous:

Look at something everyone thinks they understand and ask a better question.

GOODLES asked what mac & cheese could evolve to.

Chobani is asking whether milk can resonate with a new generation of protein-conscious consumers.

Tom Leigh looked at popcorn and saw unused storytelling territory.

Sam Stewart kept refining his brand’s skincare products until the market answered.

Elisa Camahort Page helped evaluate and reevaluate what an online audience could become when you treated it like a community.

You don’t always need a new category.

Sometimes you need a new way of seeing the old one.

Until next week,

Eric

Worthy for Thirty

Doing good while doing well shouldn’t be mutually exclusive.

P.S. 100+ conversations are now sitting in the show’s archive.

The best part isn’t figuring out which one is newest.

It’s figuring out which one the world just made relevant again.

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The lunches are packed.

Calendars are changing.

Sports and activities are starting again.

And across the US, parents are returning to that well-known end-of-day question:

“How was school?”

“Good.”

For most of us, that answer isn’t sufficient.

Dinner needs to get cooked. Homework needs to be completed. Someone has practice. Someone needs a bath. Tomorrow’s lunches won’t pack themselves.

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But after my recent conversation with Leah Shepherd, Executive Director of Victoria’s Voice Foundation, I’ve been thinking differently about that exchange.

Perhaps “good” is where the conversation should begin.

Not end.

Because as our kids begin another school year, establishing new friend relationshipss, flexing their independence, and spending more of their lives in places we can’t see, Leah’s message feels particularly relevant:

Prevention starts long before we think we need it.

And sometimes it starts simply by asking another question.

01. Return to school should also mean return to talking.

Victoria’s Voice started from unimaginable loss.

In 2015, David and Jackie Siegel lost their daughter Victoria to a drug overdose.

What ensued eventually turned into a mission dedicated not simply to responding to substance use, but to preventing another family from experiencing the same tragedy.

That differentiation matters.

Victoria’s Voice Foundation provides education designed to help parents recognize warning signs around vaping, drinking, drugs, mental health, and other potentially dangerous behaviors.

During our conversation, Leah kept coming back to two words:

“Prevention works.”

And there’s probably no better time to think about prevention than the beginning of a school year.

New classrooms.

New social circles.

New pressures.

And, corresponding to their age, increasingly independent digital lives.

We talked about how many of us grew up learning about sex and drugs.

Many assumed that talking about something might encourage kids to try it.

Leah believes the opposite.

Kids will experience difficult things regardless of whether adults prepare them for those times. She contends that communication and education give them a better chance of knowing what to do when they do.

That changes the question from:

“Is my child old enough for this conversation?”

to:

“Will I have had the conversation before they need it?”

02. Don’t settle for “good enough.”

This was the part of our conversation that hit closest for me.

I have two young kids.

And like every parent, I’m busy.

There are plenty of days when I just ask:

How was school?

“Good.”

What did you do?

“Nothing.”

And we’re talking about the next thing.

During the episode, I remembered something I’d watched a friend do with his son years ago.

His son gave him the standard answer about school.

But my friend kept digging.

What did you learn?

Who did you sit with?

Who did you talk to?

What happened at lunch?

At the time, I thought he was really probing.

Now I understand what he was doing.

He was creating a habit of conversation.

Leah took that idea even further.

If your child is on a social platform, don’t just ask whether everything is okay.

Ask specific questions.

Has someone you don’t know contacted you?

Has anyone ever offered you something?

Have you seen something online that made you uncomfortable?

During our conversation, Leah put it simply:

“Ask them. Flat out ask them. That’s how you’re gonna find out.”

That’s a line I’m taking with me into this school year.

Because our kids are getting older whether we’re ready for it or not.

The conversations probably need to grow up with them.

03. We don’t always know what our kids aren’t telling us.

This is the hardest part of Victoria’s story.

Victoria kept a diary.

Before her death, she sent a message to a friend saying that if something happened to her, she wanted it published.

Her parents eventually did that.

Today, Victoria’s actual diary is a key piece of the Foundation’s education work, supported by resources intended to help parents pick up on warning signs and know where to turn if they’re worried about their child.

Think about that for a second.

Someone can live in our home.

Eat dinner at our table.

Go to school every morning.

Answer “good” when we ask how their day went.

And still be experiencing something we know nothing about.

That doesn’t mean parents should live in fear.

It means curiosity rules.

Attention matters.

Specificity matters.

And making it routine to talk about uncomfortable things before something goes wrong matters.

The start of school gives us a natural reset.

Not just for bedtime routines and homework schedules.

For communication, too.

04. Prevention isn’t delegated to one organization.

One of my favorite parts of this conversation actually had very little to do with parenting.

It was about how Victoria’s Voice operates.

The organization doesn’t pretend it can solve every part of the problem.

Victoria’s Voice primarily focuses its education efforts on high school students, with some middle school programming. It collaborates with organizations that can reach students differently, including programs that begin conversations as early as elementary school.

Leah’s mantra:

“A rising tide lifts all boats.”

She doesn’t perceive other nonprofits working in drug prevention as the competition.

The more organizations partnering, the more kids they can reach.

There’s a big implication there.

Keeping kids safe isn’t exclusively a parent’s responsibility.

Or a teacher’s.

Or a school’s.

Or a nonprofit’s.

It’s an ecosystem.

Parents talking at home.

Teachers paying attention.

Schools educating.

Communities providing resources.

Organizations filling gaps.

And kids hopefully learning that asking for help isn’t something to be ashamed of.

One thing I’m evaluating this school year

I’m going to try to ask the second question.

Not every conversation with our kids needs to become an interrogation.

But I don’t want:

“How was your day?”

“Good.”

to automatically be the end of the conversation.

Tell me something funny that happened.

Who sat with you at lunch?

Who in your class had a bad day?

What’s that thing everyone is talking about right now?

Did anything happen today that made you uncomfortable?

What happened today that I wouldn’t know unless I asked?

Most days the answer will likely be nothing.

That’s fine.

Because we’re not only trying to uncover problems.

We’re creating the comfort that we can talk about things - anything

So if the day comes when something isn’t okay, hopefully that conversation doesn’t feel like you’re starting from scratch.

The conversation before you need it.

Toward the end of my conversation with Leah, we talked about stigma.

Substance use or abuse isn’t unique to one type of family, one neighborhood, or one demographic.

And believing “not my kid” can itself become dangerous.

Leah’s message to parents was unequivocal:

“If you think it can’t happen to you, I am here to tell every parent: yes, it can.”

It’s heavy.

Especially at a moment that’s supposed to feel optimistic.

A new school year. A fresh start.

But maybe that’s why now is the right time for this conversation.

Not because something is wrong.

Because nothing has to be wrong before we start paying attention.

Prevention isn’t panic.

It’s preparation.

It’s education.

It’s asking one more question.

It’s creating a home where uncomfortable subjects aren’t automatically off limits.

And it’s realizing that sometimes the most important conversation you have with your child is the one you have before you think you need to have it.

🎧 Worth(y) your thirty

My full conversation with Leah Shepherd, Executive Director of Victoria’s Voice Foundation, delves into Victoria’s story, overdose prevention, naloxone awareness, parent education, social media, stigma, nonprofit leadership, and what families can do before substance use becomes a crisis.

For parents specifically, I can’t think of a more relevant time to listen than the beginning of a new school year.

Listen to the full episode of Worthy for Thirty. It’s available on all podcast listening platforms.

And consider asking your kid one more question tonight.

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Chef Ed Porter has worked in award-winning kitchens, competed at the highest levels, vied for culinary dominance on national television, created music, produced films, and built a career around food. His biggest advantage? He still approaches all of it like a student who doesn’t stop asking questions.

Near the close of my conversation with Chef Ed Porter is when he gives himself a job title I’d never heard before:

“I am the executive intern.”

It reads or sounds like a contradiction.

It may also be one of the apt descriptions of what it takes to build a creative career today.

Because Ed has already accomplished a lot.

He studied and trained at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY - yes, that CIA. He worked alongside Marcus Samuelsson when Samuelsson was still an emerging 25-year-old chef. He’s worked and cooked across the US with stops in New York, Minneapolis, the Bay Area, and Houston. He was a contestant on Guy’s Grocery Games (and other TV shows you’ve probably heard of). He created an album pairing 12 songs with 12 courses. Today, he hosts the Taste Music Hear Food podcast, is developing a documentary series, and is working on a premium sorbet line.

But listen to him talk for five minutes, and you quickly notice that what’s written on a piece of paper isn’t really the full narrative.

Curiosity is.

And that story starts with a homemade coconut ice that was apparently pretty terrible.

🍧 INSIGHT #1: Chase the thing you can’t stop trying to figure out

Growing up in the Bronx, food wasn’t just dinner for Ed.

It was geography.

Culture.

Seasonality.

Sound.

He remembers neighborhoods through what they smelled like. Summer meant the jingle of the Mr. Softee truck. Particular foods defined certain holidays. Different blocks introduced him to entirely different cultures.

And somewhere along the way, Ed and his brother became fixated with remaking the coconut ices they bought on the street.

They grabbed Coco López, milk, and anything they could find in the kitchen.

The result?

“It was terrible, by the way. It was horrible.”

But the failed recipe was an early inflection point.

Ed wasn’t studying a cookbook. He wanted to understand how something was made and worked. He yearned for lived experience at a young age.

That instinct never went away.

He eventually taught himself to make peanut butter cookies by understanding variables and recipe structure. Later, when he needed knife skills but didn’t have formal training, he rode his bike to the library, found books using the Dewey Decimal System, purchased a $12 chef’s knife and practiced on sacks of carrots and onions.

There was no YouTube tutorial.

No TikTok chef.

No AI prompt giving him the answer immediately.

There was a simple question:

How do I improve?

Ed told me that the “never-ending quest of how and why” is still his north star.

That feels relevant in this moment.

We have more access to information than any generation before us. The competitive advantage isn’t necessarily having the answer anymore.

It’s deciding which question is worth asking.

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🎵 INSIGHT #2: Your unfair advantage may be the things that seem mutually exclusive

For years, Ed essentially lived two creative lives.

There was Chef Ed. And there was Musician Ed.

Food supported studio time. Music was the creative outlet he couldn’t let go.

But the two identities rarely shared the same room.

Then came Pressure Cooker.

While appearing on the Netflix cooking show, Ed wrote the chorus to a song. He completed and then recorded the full song after coming back home. He sent it to his castmates and the show’s producers.

They loved it.

The song didn’t make the show’s final cut.

So Ed decided to release it himself when the show launched.

It went viral and something clicked.

Rather than asking whether he should be a chef or a musician, he began asking a much more introspective question:

What can I create that the average musician can’t, and the average chef can’t?

His answer became Day Zero: a 12-song album inspired by the traditional 12-course fine dining experience, with each song paired to a course.

The listening party became a tasting party.

The audible met the edible.

And the concept evolved into Taste Music Hear Food: the podcast.

I love this because we’re often encouraged to find our lane.

Ed did almost the opposite.

He found the intersection between his lanes.

Food. Music. Culture.

Those turned into the three pillars connecting nearly everything he creates.

The implication isn’t that we need to combine two careers or passions.

These perceptively divergent paths may actually be the most differentiated thing about you.

🍽️ INSIGHT #3: Breaking bread is bigger than what’s on the plate

The deepest part of my conversation with Ed wasn’t really about cooking.

It was about human-to-human connection.

Ed believes there are four universal languages: food, music, love and, unfortunately, violence.

The first two fascinate him because they can cross borders without requiring translation.

You don’t need to speak someone’s language to realize when music moves you.

You don’t need to share someone’s background to value the food they’ve prepared for you.

And when we intentionally bring those experiences together, Ed believes something bigger can happen.

“When you sit down and break bread with someone and you have a reverence for the hands that prepare the food [and] the culture it came from, it’s hard for biases to exist in that realm.”

There’s an intimacy to feeding another person that we seldom stop to consider.

That’s why Ed isn’t particularly interested in food as consumption.

He’s interested in food as storytelling.

What if the music you’re listening to, the food you’re consuming, and the culture you’re immersing yourself in weren’t separate ingredients?

What if they were developed to tell a unified story?

That’s the question underneath much of his work today.

And it connects directly back to the kid growing up in the Bronx who understood neighborhoods partly through their food before he ever had the vocabulary to describe why.

💡 WORTHY OF NOTE

Near the end of our conversation, I asked Ed what advice he’d give a young creative trying to find their way.

His answer wasn’t “build a personal brand.”

It wasn’t “find your niche.”

It wasn’t even “work harder.”

It was much simpler:

Ask questions. Tell people what you’re trying to build. And get comfortable with admitting you don’t know, or better yet, identify what you don’t know.

Ed believes many of us have people in our networks who could help us solve the problem we’re facing.

We just need to tell them.

As he put it, too many people are trying to create in a vacuum when human beings are naturally communal. The best things, he argues, are made together.

Which brings us back to that unusual job title:

The executive intern.

You can become accomplished without deciding you’ve arrived.

You can be an expert and remain a student.

You can build a career around what you know while remaining relentlessly curious about what you don’t.

Ed has spent decades doing exactly that.

From a $12 chef’s knife to fine dining kitchens.

From cooking to television.

From television to music.

From music to podcasting and filmmaking.

And somehow, the pervading concept across his many endeavors is that he is trying to reverse-engineer a coconut ice in his mother’s kitchen.

Stay curious long enough and you never know where the question might take you.

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Worthy for Thirty explores the people building businesses, organizations and ideas where purpose and performance don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Where doing good while doing well is table stakes.

If someone forwarded this to you, subscribe today for stories, ideas and conversations worth carrying into your week.

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A 30-year-old brewery embraces change. A cocktail company incorporates purpose into its business model. Taylor Swift fans demonstrate how community creates impact.

I often think about conversations from Worthy for Thirty, especially when new events make discussed insights relevant again.

This week, three conversations came roaring back.

👀 A 30-YEAR-OLD BREWERY MAKES A 2026 MOVE

Craft beer is under pressure as consumers habits change while non-alcoholic and THC beverages gain ground.

Then Allagash Brewing hired Matt Place, a former Athletic Brewing sales leader, to run its 30-person national sales team.

I’ve recorded with both founders: Rob Tod of Allagash Brewing and Bill Shufelt of Athletic Brewing. Their businesses are different, but this hire connects craft beer’s past with its future.

💡 THE WORTHY IDEA

Don’t confuse growth with momentum.

Allagash has stood the test of time by protecting its craftsmanship, culture and values; not by chasing every trend. But longevity doesn’t mean resting on your laurels.

You can preserve what makes a company unique while bringing in people who understand where the market is going.

That isn’t jettisoning your DNA. It’s protecting it from irrelevance.

Why it matters now → Enduring companies understand the dichotomy of what must never change and what should.

🎧 Revisit my conversation with Rob Tod

🥒 LETS TALK ABOUT PICKLES

Mission Craft Cocktails launched a 25% ABV dill-infused Pickle-Rita as pickle-flavored products surge across snacks and drinks.

But the more interesting story is what happens after the purchase.

💡 THE WORTHY IDEA

Mission Craft Cocktails donates 1 meal to Feeding America for each bottle sold. It’s hard-coded in the brand DNA and unit economics!

For co-founders Amit Singh and Marcin Malyszko impact through combatting food insecurity is as important as making a great tasting product.

That matters as Feeding America reports that 48 million Americans, including 14 million children, experienced food insecurity in 2024.

The chain is simple:

🥒 Pickles trend
↓
🍹 Mission launches a Pickle-Rita
↓
🛒 Someone buys it
↓
🍽️ Part of the revenue fights hunger

Mission doesn’t ask consumers to choose between a great product and impact. A purchase creates both.

Why it matters now → If your mission only works when business is good, it isn’t really part of your business model.

Where does your mission show up in the math?

🎧 Revisit my conversation with Amit & Marcin

⚡ TAYLOR SWIFT FANS JUST TAUGHT A MASTERCLASS ON COMMUNITY

New York Cares received part of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s charitable giving as part of their wedding. Then the organization noticed Swift fans donating in meaningful amounts: $13, $26, $87 and $198.90.

So it created a goal of 1,989 donors and invited Swifties to volunteer.

The donations helped turbocharge ‘The Giving Era.’ More than 200 fans gathered at a Lower East Side school and packed 2,200+ backpacks with school supplies for NYC public school students. Many were volunteering with New York Cares for the first time.

That brought me back to my conversation with Executive Director Sapreet Saluja.

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💡 THE WORTHY IDEA

Build for belonging, not just conversion.

New York Cares could have treated the gift as a fundraising moment. Instead, it built a bridge from:

fan → donor → volunteer → participant

The lesson applies to businesses, too. Community originates with something people already care about. Your responsibility is to give that energy a platform.

Why it matters now → Don’t just ask, “How do we acquire more people?”

Ask:

“How do we give people who already care a reason to belong?”

🎧 Revisit my conversation with Sapreet Saluja

🚨 WORTHY RADAR

The alumni network is thriving.

Bill Shufelt → Athletic Brewing

Athletic Brewing partnered with MetLife Stadium, the New York Giants and the New York Jets, its first sponsorship covering two NFL teams and their stadium.

Run Wild IPA and Upside Dawn will be available throughout the venue.

The callback: Bill and I discussed normalizing NA beer in social settings. An NFL tailgate is about as “beer” as America gets.

Now Athletic is there.

That’s behavior change in public.

🎧 Revisit Bill Shufelt’s Worthy episode

Amit + Marcin → Mission Craft Cocktails

Mission is growing its margarita portfolio and national retail presence.

The question isn’t just whether its product line grows. It’s whether its impact model grows with it.

more SKUs → more distribution → more revenue → more meals.

Sapreet Saluja → New York Cares

New York Cares 2026 objective is to reach more than 70,000 volunteers this year.

The Swiftie activation points to a powerful model:

Don’t just find donors. Find communities and give them a way to serve.

🧠 ONE IDEA TO STEAL

Craft beer. Pickle margaritas. Taylor Swift fans packing backpacks.

They share one lesson:

Protect the principle. Experiment with the delivery.

Allagash protects its culture while evolving its business.

Mission keeps its 1 for 1 commitment while experimenting with products that consumers want.

New York Cares keeps service at the center of its operations while providing new ways to get people involved.

Eric

Worthy for Thirty

Doing good while doing well shouldn’t be mutually exclusive.

P.S. There are now 100+ Worthy for Thirty conversations in the archive. I’m going back to them to uncover ideas that continue to matter.

Sometimes the best insight isn’t new.

The world just caught up to it.

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The Conversation That Can Change Everything

There is a particular kind of pain that is easy to miss.

It is part of the person who looks like they’re doing fine. The person we believe is put together: great job, loving family, supportive friends, responsibilities, tons of hobbies, experiences, etc.

But inside, something is breaking.

That is where Jason Senzon found himself nearly nine years ago.

When Jason joined me on the podcast, he didn’t begin with his career, his company, or a polished version of his story. He described himself as a family man whose life looked like it was working while, privately, he was trapped in addiction, isolation, anxiety, and a growing distance from the people he loved most.

Then came a moment of truth.

At 1:30 in the morning on September 7, 2017, Jason woke his wife and told her: “I need help. It’s time.”

That sentence changed everything.

Asking for help is strength

For many people, especially men, asking for help can feel like you’re ‘weak.’ We are taught, directly or indirectly, to keep it together, power through, solve the problem ourselves, and avoid becoming a burden.

But Jason’s story offers a different definition of courage or willingness.

Courage is not pretending nothing hurts.

Courage is saying the thing you are afraid to say.

Courage is admitting that whatever you have been doing is no longer working.

Jason went to treatment for 28 days, then spent another month in a sober living house before returning home. At that time, his children were one and four years old. He now talks about the hope that they will know him as a sober father one day at a time.

That phrase matters: one day at a time.

Not a lifetime of promises and empty platitudes. Not a perfectly mapped path. Just the next right action.

Sometimes the next right action is a call. A meeting. A text. A conversation with a friend. A decision to tell someone, “I’m not okay.”

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We all carry things quietly

Jason made an observation that reaches beyond recovery: many of us become experts at suppressing things; not allowing them to come out.

We might call it stress. We might call it being busy. We might convince ourselves that we are simply tired, distracted, irritable, or overwhelmed.

But unresolved anxiety, grief, shame, fear, and pain have a way of demanding attention eventually.

Jason spoke about feeling uncomfortable in his own skin long before his addiction took hold. On the outside, he was succeeding socially, academically, and athletically. Yet inside, anxiety was always taking hold, and he did not know how to talk about it.

That is why conversations about mental health cannot begin only when there is a crisis.

They have to become part of everyday life.

They have to happen at home with our kids, with our partners, with our friends, and with the people at work who may be quietly carrying more than we realize.

A simple question can make room for someone else’s reality:

“How are you really doing?”

Not “How are things?”

Not “Everything good?”

Not the question we ask while preparing to move on.

The real question. And then the willingness to stay long enough to hear the answer.

What coffee has to do with recovery

Jason and his co-founder met in recovery. Together, they started Wyndcrofte Coffee around a simple idea: vulnerable conversations often start over a cup of coffee.

Coffee is not the solution to addiction, anxiety, depression, loneliness, or any of life’s more difficult realities. But it can create a setting for something important: connection.

It gives two people a reason to sit down. It slows the day down for a few minutes. It offers a familiar ritual that can make an unfamiliar conversation feel a little more possible.

Wyndcrofte is a for-profit company, but Jason and his co-founder built charitable giving into the business from the beginning. The Caron Treatment Centers and Release Recovery Foundation are their first charitable partners. Rather than wait until the company was bigger or more profitable, they began supporting nonprofit partners that help people access treatment and recovery resources.

That choice says something about the kind of business they want to build.

It’s about great tasting coffee, but there’s more.

It could help people feel less alone by fostering connection.

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Service without a scorecard

One of the most resonant ideas from our conversation was Jason’s view of service.

He said that if we help someone only because we expect something in return, we missed the point.

Service is not transactional. It is not a networking tactic. It is not a way to create a debt that someone else must repay.

It is a decision to do the next right thing because it is the right thing.

That can be hard in a world that constantly measures outcomes, followers, revenue, influence, and returns. But some of the most meaningful things don’t have an ROI attached to them.

You may never know what happens after you answer the phone.

You may not know whether the person you encouraged to seek help actually did.

You may never learn that your honesty permitted someone else to be honest, too.

Still, it matters.

If someone comes to mind, reach out

As you read this, someone may have come to mind.

Maybe it is a friend who has been quieter than usual. A family member who keeps saying they are “just busy.” A colleague who seems fine but has changed. Or maybe the person who came to mind is you.

You do not need the perfect words.

Try one of these:

- “I’ve been thinking about you. How are you, really?”

- “You don’t have to explain everything, but I’m here if you want to talk.”

- “Is there something you’ve been carrying alone?”

- “Would you want to grab a coffee this week?”

- “I care about you. You do not have to figure this out by yourself.”

One conversation may not solve everything. Jason is clear about that. But it can reduce the weight someone has been carrying. It can interrupt isolation. It can create a bridge to the next right action.

And sometimes, that is where change begins.

If this piece made you think of someone, share it with them. Not because you have all the answers, but because a small act of connection can remind them they are not alone.

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What happens when retail investors, social media, and AI start shaping stock prices as much as earnings calls do?

In this episode of Worthy for Thirty, I sit down with Katie Perry, CMO of Zerohash and author of the new book Ticker Shock, for a conversation that reframes how we think about markets, money, and the companies that move them.

Katie is on the front lines of financial infrastructure. Zerohash is the “AWS of crypto and fintech,” enabling companies like E*TRADE, Gusto, and others to build crypto products, move money instantly with stablecoins, and modernize how value flows. But what makes her perspective especially valuable is how she connects the dots between technology, regulation, narrative, and human behavior, technology, regulation, narrative, and human behavior.

Why markets are now communication systems

Katie’s core thesis in Ticker Shock is simple but powerful: companies can no longer treat investor relations as a back-office function. In a world where retail investors dominate the narrative, visibility, emotion, and timing are strategic levers. A brand campaign, a viral moment, or a CEO’s LinkedIn post can move a stock faster than an analyst note.

She explains how IR teams now need “social listening” systems, how marketing and investor relations must stop living in silos, and why companies that fail to understand this shift will lose control of their own story.

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The rise of the retail investor as a market force

We dig into how retail investors went from meme-stock punchlines to a force that shapes perception, coverage, and even institutional behavior. Katie shares examples from GameStop to Palantir, showing how retail can:

• Set the narrative tone for a stock

• Influence how analysts and institutions think about a company

• Force leadership to respond in real time

Her point isn’t that retail “owns” the market. It’s that they own attention—and in modern markets, attention is leverage.

Crypto, stablecoins, and the infrastructure you don’t see

Katie breaks down what Zerohash actually does in plain language:

• They’re not a crypto token or a trading platform.

• They’re the infrastructure layer that lets companies add crypto capabilities without building everything from scratch or navigating every state’s licensing regulation.

• They enable stablecoin payments, instant cross-border transfers, and new ways to move money that most people will never see, but will absolutely feel.

She also talks about why regulation is an accelerant, not a brake, and how the involvement of major institutions (BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, big banks) is quietly normalizing digital assets faster than most people realize.

The new playbook for founders and leaders

If you’re a founder or executive, this part is gold. We discuss:

• Why video, social presence, and authentic storytelling are becoming table stakes for leaders

• How charismatic CEOs like Jensen Huang or Alex Karp can become strategic assets if the business fundamentals are in place

• What “being media-trained” means in an era where every clip can live forever

Katie’s background in journalism, marketing, and investor-facing media gives her a rare lens on what it takes to lead in public.

The origin story behind Ticker Shock

One of my favorite moments is when Katie shares how the book came to fruition: a 3 a.m. idea, a cold email to a Wiley editor, and a year of turning hundreds of interviews with CEOs and CFOs into a cohesive playbook. She talks about:

• Writing through uncertainty

• Why she’s targeting universities and professors as much as practitioners

• How she defines success beyond sales: sparking better conversations about how companies communicate with investors

Why this matters now

Whether you’re a founder, investor, marketer, or just someone trying to understand where finance is headed, this episode is a masterclass in how narrative, infrastructure, and technology are converging.

Katie’s message is clear: the future of money isn’t just about new assets or new tech. It’s about storytelling: who gets to tell the story, how fast, and to whom.

If you enjoyed this, subscribe to Worthy for Thirty for more conversations with founders, investors, and operators who are building the next chapter of business.

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When Your Life Makes Sense in Reverse

Most people want a straight line.

A clean story. One that starts with an idea, moves through a plan, and ends with success.

But real careers rarely work that way. More often, they look messy while they’re happening and obvious only after the fact.

That’s what makes Alex Fredericks’ story so compelling.

He is the founder of ToneWell, an AI wellness platform that turns a 30-second voice note into personalized insights about energy, body, and readiness. But if you only look at ToneWell, you miss the point. The real story is not just about what he built. It’s about how every earlier chapter in his life prepared him to build it.

Music. Consumer goods. Brand building. Touring. Problem solving. Reinvention.

At first glance, those things may look unrelated. They are not.

The Skill Was Never the Title

Alex does not define himself as your typical founder. He does not lead with startup language or a polished origin story. He talks about being a problem solver.

That matters.

Because too often, people confuse a job title with a skill set. They think the path matters more than the pattern. Alex’s path says otherwise. He started in music not because he wanted attention, but because music helped him move through the world as a dyslexic child. Later, he moved into consumer goods, where he learned how to understand products, people, and why something works.

The through line was never the industry.

It was the instinct.

He sees things. He understands how they fit together. He works backward from the outcome.

That is a founder skill, whether or not anyone calls it that.

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Reinvention Is Not Random

There is a version of career growth that treats reinvention like a dramatic pivot. One day you are in one world, the next day you are in another.

But most reinvention is quieter than that.

It is accumulation.

Alex’s years in the music business taught him how to adapt, move fast, and figure things out with limited resources. Touring bands meant solving the immediate problem: Where are we going? Where are we sleeping? How do we keep moving? What is the next decision?

That kind of experience does something important. It teaches you not to freeze when conditions change.

It teaches you that execution matters more than identity.

And that may be why ToneWell makes sense. It is a company built by someone who has spent years learning how to translate chaos into action.

The Best Ideas Often Come From Real Life

ToneWell is built around a simple but provocative idea: your voice may carry signals about your body and your state of readiness.

That idea feels futuristic, but it is also deeply human.

It does not ask people to become something else. It asks them to pay attention to what they already have: their voice, their rhythm, their presence. In a world full of complicated wellness promises, something is refreshing about a product that starts with something familiar and accessible.

That is part of why this conversation stands out.

It is not about technology for technology’s sake. It is about using technology to notice patterns in everyday life that people usually ignore.

And that raises a bigger question: what else are we overlooking because we are too busy looking for complicated answers or perhaps are distracted?

The Hard Truth About Building

Alex says he had never really thought of himself as an entrepreneur until now.

That is interesting, but it is also revealing.

A lot of people imagine founders as people who wake up with a startup identity already intact. In reality, many founders become founders by doing founder work long before they use the word. They adapt. They ship. They solve. They keep going when things break.

They connect the dots along the way.

That is what makes the work real.

Not the branding. Not the label. Not the language.

The work.

Alex’s story is a reminder that entrepreneurship is often less about declaring yourself and more about proving, over and over again, that you can move an idea into the world.

Key Takeaways

• Your career does not have to be linear to be meaningful.

• The skills that matter most are often hidden inside earlier, unrelated chapters.

• Reinvention is usually built through repetition, not sudden transformation.

• The strongest ideas often come from close observation of real human experience.

• Founder identity is less important than founder behavior: adapt, solve, execute, repeat.

• Be of service in whatever you pursue to either the people you market to, or the vocation or industry you’re in

Something to consider

Not every path looks strategic while you are walking it.

Some paths look like detours until one day they look like preparation.

Alex Fredericks’ journey is compelling because it illustrates how a life created through curiosity, resilience, and problem-solving can eventually become a company. And maybe that is the lesson underneath all of it: the work you do before the thing you are “supposed” to be doing is often the very work that makes the future possible.

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No drinks. No substances. No fun, supposedly. No social life, supposedly.

MJ Gottlieb is building the opposite story.

On the Worthy for Thirty podcast, the Loosid co-founder laid out a vision that is part recovery, part product strategy, and part cultural correction: sobriety is not the thing that shrinks your life; it’s the thing that makes a fuller life not just possible but attainable.

What started as his own reckoning became a company built around one clear thesis: people struggling with addiction, loneliness, and mental health need more than advice. They need community, tools, and a place to belong.

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That’s what makes Loosid matter and stand out.

It’s not just a sobriety app. It’s a place where people in recovery, or simply choosing a different way to live, can find connection, accountability, dating, and support without having to navigate it all alone.

In other words: it is a startup with a moral center and a real business model.

For founders and operators, the lesson is clear. MJ and his co-founder didn’t scale a message. They scaled a solution. They looked at the treatment world, saw how limited the reach could be, and built a platform that could help far more people at once. That belief, to evolve from one-off impact to repeatable infrastructure, is what separates a compelling founder story from a serious company.

For everyone else, the takeaway is simpler and more pressing.

If you’re sober, sober-curious, in recovery, or quietly struggling, Loosid is built around the idea that you do not need to be ashamed of needing support. You do not need to wait until your life falls apart to look for help. You do not need to navigate shame, loneliness, or relapse risk in isolation.

MJ said it succinctly: “service keeps you sober”. That concept pervades through everything he described, from community support to sober dating to the mental health resources embedded in the platform. The mission is not just to help people stay sober. It is to help them rebuild.

And that’s why this conversation lands.

Loosid is not chasing a trend. It is responding to a much larger shift: people are looking for healthier ways to connect, regulate, and live. Sober spaces, non-alcoholic beverages, breathwork, meditation, and digital recovery support are not fringe anymore; they are becoming part of the mainstream vocabulary of wellness. MJ and his co-founder are simply building one of the clearest brands in that category.

The most important thing he said may be the simplest: “We don’t care why you’re here; we just care that you’re here”.

That is not just a good tagline.

It’s a worldview.

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This conversation is about more than music. It’s about arts education, community impact, nonprofit leadership, and the idea that creativity can serve as infrastructure for healthier, more connected communities.

“Creativity isn’t something we consume. It’s infrastructure for healthier communities, stronger connections, and greater human dignity.”

Why this conversation matters

Monica and Camille trace the roots of Sing for Hope back to a moment of crisis, when they began singing for first responders in the days after 9/11. What began as a response to grief became a 25-year mission to bring the power of the arts into public spaces, hospitals, schools, elder care facilities, and communities that are too often left out of cultural life.

That framing matters because it shifts the conversation from “art as enrichment” to “art as necessity.” As they explain in the episode, the arts support health, dignity, connection, and well-being, and they should be treated that way.

What we talk about

In our conversation, Monica and Camille open up about:

• How they met at Juilliard and developed a friendship that grew into a mission-driven partnership.

• The early experiences that shaped their belief in the power of music and community service.

• Why Sing for Hope was born out of crisis, and how that origin still informs the organization today.

• How the Sing for Hope Pianos became one of the country’s most recognizable public art projects.

• Why they believe the arts are a social determinant of health.

• What it takes to build sustainable nonprofit programs that are both beautiful and operationally effective.

• How they think about access, creativity, and the role of artists in public life.

A few standout moments

One of the most interesting parts of the conversation is their reflection on how access to the arts shapes a person’s sense of possibility. Monica shares how music was present in her childhood through church, elder care performances, and community events, while Camille talks about how her family’s musical culture and public school music education influenced her path.

Another standout thread is that their effusiveness around the concept of creativity doesn’t have to be reserved for professionals. They referenced doodling, singing in the driveway, trying something new, and permitting ourselves to make art without judgment (work through the cringe!).

For founders and changemakers

If you’re building a nonprofit, a community initiative, or a mission-driven brand, this episode offers more than inspiration. It offers a framework.

Monica and Camille talk candidly about fundraising, scaling, partnerships, and the challenge of keeping a mission intact while building systems that can grow over time, all while remaining mindful of the reason they started 25 years ago. They also share how they think about long-term impact, from public art installations to arts curriculum development and healthcare partnerships. For anyone interested in social impact, arts entrepreneurship, or nonprofit storytelling, this conversation is packed with practical insight.

You can listen to this full episode on Substack or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Ahem, doing good while doing well.

I sat down with Rob for a wide-ranging conversation about how Allagash grew from a fledgling brewery built with used equipment into one of the most respected and admired breweries in America. What ensues is not just a story about beer, but a case study in endurance, operational excellence, and values that are actually embedded in the business. The foundation that has allowed Allagash to stand the test of time and competition!

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Why this conversation matters

Rob’s origin story is unusually relatable: he graduated from Middlebury with a geology degree, spent time working construction and restaurant jobs, stumbled into brewing, and quickly realized he had found a craft (no pun intended) that combined science, mechanics, creativity, and hard work. He did not begin with a polished master plan; he began with curiosity, grit, and a willingness to build something from the ground up. Perhaps intangibles that successful founders need to tap into when moving from abstract to reality.

Connect the dots!

That origin matters because it helps explain why Allagash never became a company built around trends. Rob describes choosing a Belgian-style wheat beer at a time when very few people even knew what that meant, then spending the first decade hearing, in effect, that the beer was cloudy, strange, and unlikely to sell. The lesson is timeless: if you want to create something durable, the goal is not to be instantly obvious; it is to be worth discovering. Or said even more simply, make something that you like and that you would use or consume. Then decide if it should be shared with the world.

The Allagash model

The transcript makes one thing clear: Allagash is not simply a brewery; it is an operating philosophy. Rob repeatedly returns to the idea of doing the work well, improving the process, and treating the team as the engine of the company rather than a backdrop to it. He talks about investing in raw materials, quality control, equipment, logistics, and culture as interconnected parts of the same system.

That philosophy shows up in Allagash’s latest Benefit Corporation (B-Corp) Report, which breaks down how the company’s sustainability work touches nearly every part of the operation. The report highlights carbon capture that reduces emissions by more than 18,000 pounds annually, a de-aerated water system that saves ingredients and labor, and partnerships that repurpose millions of pounds of spent grain and yeast each year.

The numbers are striking, but the deeper story is that Allagash treats sustainability as an operational discipline rather than a branding exercise. The company says it diverted 98% of brewery waste from landfill, maintained water use at 3.4 gallons per gallon of beer, and redesigned logistics to reduce shipping miles and eliminate unnecessary plastic.

Leadership lessons

What makes Rob’s journey compelling is that he sounds like a founder who has stayed close to the work. He talks about walking the floor, keeping his door open, spending time with employees across departments, and remembering that credibility comes from participation, not posture. That is one reason his leadership feels sincere rather than performative. Being of service to your employees and community is certainly not a tactic. No job is too big or too small for him to lend a hand.

“The best companies aren’t built by finding one breakthrough. They’re built by getting a little better every year for decades.” - Rob Tod

He also makes a strong case for patience. In the early years, Allagash nearly failed, a bank pulled the loan, and the company spent a decade grinding through uncertainty before the market caught up. His response was not to chase the next trend, but to keep refining the product, the process, and the team until the business could stand on its own.

That mindset is especially relevant now, when many founders are tempted to optimize for speed, novelty, or algorithmic attention (e.g., trends). Rob’s case study suggests a different benchmark: build something distinctive enough that it still matters when the market changes around you.

Culture as strategy

One of the most resonant parts of the episode is his discussion of culture. Allagash’s purpose is to “brew with integrity and build community.” It appears in employee benefits, volunteerism, internal innovation, and the company’s habit of giving people across roles a voice in product development and business improvement.

“We’re never resting on our laurels here. We’re always trying to improve.” - Rob Tod

That approach matters because Allagash is not using culture as a soft concept; it is using culture as a strategic advantage. The company’s report notes that employee engagement surveys help guide internal priorities, and the brewery has been named one of Maine’s Best Places to Work multiple times.

He also describes long-term rituals like five-year Belgium trips for employees, which create cross-functional bonding and reinforce the company’s identity. Those are the kinds of details that make a business feel alive, memorable, and human, and they are exactly what separate a transactional company from an enduring one.

What you will leave with from listening

This episode is for founders, operators, nonprofit leaders, and anyone trying to build an organization that lasts. It offers a practical reminder that mission is not what you say; it is what you repeatedly design, measure, reward, and protect.

If you listen closely, you will hear a blueprint for building trust: start with authenticity, stay close to the work, help improve and deepen everyone’s responsibility, and never confuse growth with momentum. Rob Tod’s Allagash story is a rare confluence of humility (his self-awareness is off the charts), precision, and persistence. The kind of story that can change how people think about leadership, not just beer.

We can cheers to that!

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Some conversations make you think differently about a topic you thought you already understood. This episode did that for me.

I sat down with Diego Mariscal, founder of 2Gether-International and returning guest, now co-host, Mindy Scheier, founder of Runway of Dreams and Gamut Management, for a conversation that started with disability inclusion but quickly morphed into something much bigger: how mission-driven founders build, lead, and scale when they stop treating access as an add-on.

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That idea feels especially relevant right now. In May 2026, the labor force participation rate for people with disabilities ages 16 and older was 23.9%, compared with 67.6% for people without disabilities, and the unemployment rate was 9.1% versus 3.8%. Those numbers are not just statistics. They’re a reminder that too much talent is still being left out of the room.

And that’s exactly why this conversation matters.

Diego shares the personal story behind 2Gether-International and how being born with cerebral palsy shaped his perspective on resilience, adaptability, and entrepreneurship. What stands out is not just the journey itself, but the reframing: the idea that disability can create a kind of leadership muscle that businesses desperately need. Tenacity. Problem-solving. Creative adjustment. The ability to keep moving when the system wasn’t designed with you in mind.

Mindy brings that same clarity from a different angle. Her story begins with her son Oliver - who has muscular dystrophy - inspired her to push the fashion industry toward something more inclusive and more functional. That effort ultimately helped lead to the first mainstream adaptive clothing line at Tommy Hilfiger and later to her starting Gamut Management, where the work is about helping brands build with people with disabilities, not simply market to them.

What I loved most about this conversation was how practical it became. Diego talked about building accommodation into the budget from the start. Mindy talked about inviting disabled people into product development before something goes to market. Both of them kept coming back to the same core idea: inclusion works best when it is built into the DNA of a company, not added on later as a fix.

That message should resonate with every founder and operator, whether you’re building a startup, managing a team, or trying to make your product more useful to more people. The lesson is simple, but not easy: if you design for the margins, you often end up building something better for the mainstream too.

That manifests everywhere in this episode: in the stories, in the examples, in the way Diego and Mindy challenge the assumptions baked into how businesses think about access. It’s a conversation about entrepreneurship, yes. But it’s also about dignity, systems, and what it really means to build something that lasts.

“When accessibility moves from accommodation to innovation, it doesn’t just change lives, it changes businesses, industries, and what’s possible for everyone.” - Diego Mariscal

If you care about leadership, innovation, accessibility, or mission-driven business, this one is worth your time.

A few things you’ll hear us talk about:

• Why disability inclusion is a business advantage, not a charitable endeavor.

• How founders can embed access into their operating model from day one.

• What adaptive design teaches us about building for more people.

• Why the future of entrepreneurship should include more disabled founders, more disabled consumers, and more disabled voices shaping the table.

This episode is for the builders who want to do more than just grow. It’s for the people who want to build in a way that actually reflects the world they live in.

And maybe that’s the bigger takeaway here: the future doesn’t need more companies that simply fit the old model better. It needs companies willing enough (hello, Ryan Berman) to redesign the model itself.

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“Most entrepreneurs don’t burn out because they’re lazy. They burn out because they keep building businesses that demand more of them than they were ever designed to give.” — Jen Aly

In this conversation on the Worthy for Thirty podcast, thanks to Boardy.Ai, I got to sit down with coach, TEDx speaker, and entrepreneur Jen Aly to unpack what happens when success stops feeling sustainable and what it looks like to build a business that supports your life instead of consuming it.

Jen’s story is one of reinvention, resilience, and honest self-awareness. She opens up about moving through burnout, bankruptcy, rebuilding her career, and eventually creating a business model rooted in freedom and flow. For entrepreneurs who feel exhausted, overcommitted, or unsure how to keep going without sacrificing themselves, this episode offers both perspective and a practical path forward. It helps that Jen has ‘walked in the shoes’ of some of her founder clients and can see what they’re experiencing by stepping into their shoes.

One of the most valuable themes in the episode is Jen’s refusal to romanticize hustle culture. As she says, people may assume that a coach is someone who is chasing “a quazillion dollars,” but her work is actually centered on the opposite: creating time freedom, defining prosperity personally, and helping clients build businesses that feel aligned with who they are now. That perspective makes this conversation especially relevant for founders who are successful on paper but drained in reality.

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Jen also shares how her nomadic lifestyle has changed the way she thinks about business and energy. Living in new places has forced her to create stronger structure, accountability, and community, even while prioritizing flexibility and freedom. That tension between possibility and the need for sustainable rhythm is something many entrepreneurs will recognize immediately.

The episode dives into how Jen works with clients. She explains that many of the people she supports are experienced entrepreneurs in their forties and fifties who want to redesign their businesses around their current lives, not their old identities (Hello, James Clear & Atomic Habits!). Whether it’s an acupuncturist who wants more leverage and less time in the office, or an astrologer who wants to shift from one-off sessions to a more sustainable, long-term offering, Jen helps clients rethink both their business model and their relationship to their capacity.

This is where her Freedom and Flow framework comes in. Jen walks through her five-step process: clarifying vision, reverse engineering an aligned life and business, leveraging genius and simplifying for flow, creating systems and rhythms for sustainable momentum, and expanding confidence through accountability and support. It’s a thoughtful, practical structure rooted in reality that works for entrepreneurs who want more than motivation; they want a real reset.

The conversation also touches on burnout symptoms that are easy to miss. Jen points to dread, resentment, loss of impact, and physical depletion as signs that something is off. She describes burnout not just as being tired, but as a disconnect between the work someone is doing and the life they actually want to live — we all yearn for a life of fulfillment. That distinction is powerful for creators and founders who may be ignoring the early signs because the business is still growing.

We also dove into the role of identity in transformation. Drawing from James Clear’s book Atomic Habits, the conversation underscores that lasting change often starts when someone stops identifying as “burnt out” and starts seeing themselves as a thriving, creative business owner with autonomy and direction. That shift in identity is often what makes the difference between temporary change and long-term reinvention.

Another memorable part of the episode is when we discussed AI and its impact on founders and their businesses! Jen shares how she, personally, uses tools like Claude as a thinking partner, especially for writing and ideation, while still emphasizing the irreplaceable value of human connection, experience, and coaching. Ai doesn’t exude empathy or compassion or basic human understanding. For entrepreneurs navigating the fast-changing landscape of work, this section adds a timely layer to the conversation.

By the end of this episode, one thing is apparent: this is not just a talk about burnout. It’s a conversation about designing a business and a life - in alignment - that can actually be sustained. For the burnt-out entrepreneur who wants more freedom, more clarity, and more alignment, Jen offers a clear reminder that success does not have to come at the detriment of your wellbeing.

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A quick FYI: Kustom Entertainment is a live event production and ticketing company focused on delivering memorable fan experiences through concerts, festivals, and transparent ticketing. It also owns and operates Country Stampede and strives to make the full event experience clear, fair, and high-value for fans and artists alike.

What stands out most is his belief that trust is built through clarity, consistency, and an eagerness to listen, whether that means being frank about ticket fees or making sure fans get above-and-beyond value from any festival or concert they pay to attend.

For leaders in any industry, Stan’s perspective is a practical reminder that transparency is not just a brand value; it is a business strategy. His approach to ticketing, event production, and audience feedback shows how companies can strengthen loyalty by making the customer experience simpler, fairer, and more respectful.

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Legacy Meets Leadership

Stan’s story begins with legacy. We talked about his father, Bud Ross, whose innovations in guitar amplifiers and pedals helped shape music history and taught Stan the importance of quality, reliability, and humility. That foundation still influences how Stan thinks about business today: build something people can trust, and then keep improving it.

He also shared how being raised around music and creative people gave him an early appreciation for passion and craftsmanship. His dad built amps and pedals for Johnny Cash, the Grateful Dead, John Fogerty, and more! That background helps explain why he sees business not just as operations and revenue, but as a way to create meaningful experiences for artists, fans, and partners.

Why Transparency Wins

One of the clearest themes in the conversation was Stan’s frustration with hidden ticket fees and his decision to build Kustom Entertainment’s own ticketing systems that show the full price upfront. He explained that consumers are already comparing multiple platforms, so the company that is most honest and simplest to use often wins their trust. That is a valuable lesson for any leader: if customers feel surprised at checkout, the relationship is already damaged. When it comes to both a frictionless fan and artist experience, vertically integrating the value chain wins.

Put another way, transparency reduces friction. When people know the full cost and understand what they are getting, they are less likely to feel manipulated and more likely to return. In a marketplace where trust is fragile, that kind of clarity becomes a competitive advantage.

Listening to Fans and Fixing Problems

Stan offered a concrete example of how listening to feedback can improve a business quickly. After acquiring Country Stampede, one of the biggest complaints was food variety, so the team responded by bringing in a wide mix of food trucks to broaden the festival experience. That is a simple but powerful model for any founder or operator: identify the real complaint, pinpoint what you can control, and make a visible change.

He also described how the team follows up with attendees after events to ask for suggestions, ratings, and artist requests for future lineups. That kind of feedback loop turns audience feedback into a management tool instead of a marketing afterthought. The message is straightforward: if your customers are telling you what is broken, treat that input like operational intelligence.

Lessons for all Leaders

There were several actionable ideas in Stan’s comments that leaders can apply beyond entertainment. He explained that his team tries to make events feel worth more than the price of admission, which translates well to any business focused on retention and loyalty. He also stressed the importance of being present, solving problems in real time, and staying close to the work instead of hiding behind titles.

As I like to say, Coach John Wooden, who coached UCLA basketball in the 60s and 70s and won multiple championships, was known to ‘sweep the floors’ after practice. No job was beneath him. Stan uses a similar mindset, which all leaders should heed: humility and being human win at the end of the day. The ability to acknowledge and address faults while understanding where the consumer is coming from is an advantage vs. the competition.

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In this episode, I had a chance to speak with Sam Stewart, co-founder of Mad Hippie (Dana, his wife, is his co-founder), to unpack how a personal problem while living in Nicaragua turned into a purpose-driven beauty brand with staying power.

Sam’s story is a great reminder that meaningful businesses are rarely built in a straight line. My mind immediately went to the childhood parable ‘tortoise vs. the hare.’

Mad Hippie began with late nights, a chemist friend, dozens of product iterations, a scrappy SEO strategy, and a willingness to listen when the market said, “not yet.”

From Surfboards to Skincare

Sam and his wife were living in Nicaragua, surfing often, and noticing the toll all that sun was taking on their skin. Instead of shrugging it off, they got curious. They started exploring ingredients that could help protect skin from oxidative stress, testing ideas, and eventually building the first versions of what would become Mad Hippie.

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What’s interesting is how real the origin story feels. This wasn’t a big-VC-backed launch or a polished brand concept dreamed up in a boardroom. It was a real problem, a real lifestyle, and a real attempt to build something they could believe in.

‘Purpose-driven businesses don't start with a pitch deck. They start with a problem you've lived with long enough that solving it becomes personal.’ - Serial Entreprenuer, Michael Lazerow

The Long Game

One of the clearest themes in the conversation is that building a durable company takes patience, humility, and repetition. Sam discussed the 50+ iterations of early products, learning that surfers weren’t the best core audience, and then pivoting toward a larger natural skincare market.

That willingness to adapt mattered. So did the discipline to keep going when a Whole Foods buyer told him no one in Boston would buy a product called ‘Mad Hippie.’ Instead of taking that as a final no, Sam treated it as feedback, kept refining, and eventually entered the Whole Foods region by region before scaling nationally. Persistence is key, especially when you’re driving value.

Building With Intent

A big part of Mad Hippie’s appeal is that the brand’s values weren’t added later as marketing polish or a facade. They were built into the brand’s DNA from the beginning (sounds similar to Mission Craft Cocktails, for instance). Sam explains how the company has donated a dollar from every web sale to conservation, used recyclable and sustainably sourced packaging, and built recycling programs that make it easier for customers to do the right thing.

That intentionality also shows up inside the business. Mad Hippie invests in employee benefits, values respectful communication, and hires with cultural fit in mind. Sam is clear that building a good company means treating people well: customers, team members, and the planet included.

Lessons For Founders

• Start with a real problem, not a trend. Mad Hippie came from Sam and his wife noticing sun damage in their own lives, then building around that need. Get curious!

• Expect your first idea to be wrong. The brand began by targeting surfers, then pivoted when that audience didn’t respond the way they hoped.

• Iterate until the market gives you a signal. Sam described making about 50 versions before landing on products and packaging that resonated.

• Let scrappiness be an advantage. Early SEO helped Mad Hippie attract tens of thousands of site visitors a month without a huge budget.

• Don’t confuse a ‘no’ with a final answer; treat it as a ‘not yet.’ A Whole Foods buyer initially dismissed the name, but Sam and the brand kept improving and eventually scaled through the chain.

• Build a company you can be proud of. From packaging to donations to hiring, Sam kept returning to the question: Does this feel good, useful, and aligned?

• Hire people who are not the same as you. Sam emphasized the value of putting together a team with diverse strengths, not just people who think like the founder.

• Keep learning longer than feels necessary. Sam credited books, podcasts, and relationships with other entrepreneurs for helping him grow over time.

Why It Resonates Now

This conversation lands because it speaks to a moment so many founders are in right now: overloaded channels, shifting consumer behavior, AI search, TikTok Shop, influencer fatigue, and the pressure to grow fast. Sam’s and what I imagine the company’s perspective are refreshingly grounded. He and his team are not chasing shiny-object tactics; they’re focused on authority, consistency, long-term partnerships, and staying useful to the customer.

That makes this episode especially valuable for entrepreneurs who are trying to build something meaningful without burning out or losing the plot. It’s a reminder that the best brands usually aren’t the loudest ones; they’re the ones that remain consistent and stay true to their values even as they scale!

‘Til next time.

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In this Worthy for Thirty podcast episode, that foundation becomes the basis for a larger conversation about what it really takes to build something meaningful: not just a company, but a community; not just momentum, but trust; not just growth, but staying aligned with your values as the stakes rise. Elisa speaks with the clarity of someone who has lived through the messy middle of entrepreneurship and come out with a sharper sense of what matters most.

“Our mission was to create opportunities for community, education, exposure, and economic empowerment for women who blogged.” - Elisa Camahort Page

What makes this conversation especially valuable is that it doesn’t stay in the abstract. Elisa is clear about the choices founders face when mission and monetization collide, and she offers a first-hand point of view molded by years of building, scaling, and evolving in public. For aspiring entrepreneurs, that means a rare chance to hear how ideas become reality when they are combined with discipline, patience, and a desire to start before everything is perfect. For the seasoned entrepreneur, it’s a reminder that experience does not completely remove uncertainty; rather, it simply teaches you how to make better decisions inside it.

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A major throughline of Elisa’s experience is the importance of optional thinking: not getting trapped by one path, one identity, or one definition of success. Elisa’s reflections on community-building, capital, authenticity, and AI point toward a more flexible model of leadership, one that values adaptation without losing purpose. She makes a compelling case that entrepreneurship is not only about scale but also about judgment: who you work with, what you protect, and how you decide what “enough” looks like.

Key takeaways

• Build for the people you serve, not for abstract scale or something ephemeral
  Implication: The strongest businesses grow from a clear understanding of what your audience actually needs, not just wants.
  How to implement: Spend time listening before growing or expanding; talk to customers regularly, identify recurring pain points, and let their real-world problems shape your roadmap.

• Treat mission as an operating system, not a slogan.
  Implication: Values should be a guide for daily decisions, not just marketing language or a tactic
  How to implement: Use your mission to evaluate partnerships, hires, pricing, and product choices, and ask whether each move strengthens or dilutes your core purpose.

• Don’t confuse funding with success.
  Implication: Capital is a tool, not a trophy.
  How to implement: Define milestone-based funding needs, explore alternatives to venture money, and raise only when the capital clearly advances a specific next step.

• Protect authenticity by setting boundaries.
  Implication: Being real does not mean sharing everything.
  How to implement: Decide in advance what you will and won’t disclose, create clear personal and brand boundaries, and stay consistent in how you show up across channels.

• Stay flexible about what success looks like.
  Implication: Entrepreneurship is a moving target, and your strategy should evolve with it.
  How to implement: Revisit your goals quarterly, assess whether your current model still fits your life and business, and be willing to change course when the facts change.

• Use AI as leverage, not replacement.
  Implication: New tools can expand your capacity without replacing your judgment.
  How to implement: Use AI to brainstorm, prototype, research, and draft faster, then apply human judgment to decide what is useful, ethical, and worth pursuing.

For newer founders, the takeaway is to build with intention and stay close to the people you serve. For experienced founders, the reminder is to keep questioning whether your current model still matches your values, your market, and your life. Elisa’s story ultimately suggests that the most durable businesses are built by people who know how to hold both ambition and integrity at the same time.

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What a great way to extend last night’s celebration of an incredible nonprofit with a slew of Broadway stars; a new epsiode with a founder who’s doing exceptional work in the space!

On this episode of the Worthy for Thirty podcast, I sat down with Bobby Gibson, Co-founder of LuxGive, to unpack a model that is helping nonprofits turn luxury travel into a smarter fundraising engine. Bobby breaks down how LuxGive works as a no-risk, high-touch partner: nonprofits set a reserve price, keep everything above it, and only pay LuxGive through that reserve price if the experience sells.

A win-win for everyone!

What makes this conversation especially relevant for nonprofit leaders is that Bobby is not offering a generic fundraising pitch; rather, he is describing an infrastructure layer designed to make auctions streamlined and intuitive, more professional (hello, concierge service), and more effective. Bobby details how LuxGive helps nonprofits with curation, marketing collateral, a nonprofit portal, concierge-level service, and a consultative process that matches the right experience to the right audience. He also described one of the biggest epiphanies for partners: a single LuxGive destination experience can be sold multiple times, allowing nonprofits to monetize a broader slice of their audience than they could with a one-off donated item.

Think in experiences, not specific weeks.

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The data is supportive.

The broader nonprofit landscape makes this approach timely. A 2025 NonProfit PRO report found that 77% of nonprofit professionals reported consistent or increased auction revenue, and 90% expected that trend to continue, signaling that auctions remain a durable fundraising channel worth optimizing. At the same time, donor-engagement research continues to show that trust, clear impact, and compelling experiences matter; Yale researchers found that framing a nonprofit as a source of solutions (like a consumer experience, making it frictionless) significantly increased intent to donate, and that trust-building, data-driven communication, and emotional connection all strengthen engagement.

LuxGive sits right at that overlap, helping nonprofits showcase an experience that feels premium to donors while generating meaningful revenue for mission-driven work. Psst, past non-profit guests, you’ll be hearing from me.

For nonprofit leaders, the takeaway is straightforward: this episode is worth your time if you want to rethink auctions as more than an annual event and see them as a strategic tool for revenue, donor excitement, and relationship-building. Or better yet, you’ve been reluctant to try auctions because you may think it doesn’t fit in your model. Bobby and team would like to tell you differently.

Bobby and his co-founders’ perspective is especially invaluable because they’re steeped in hospitality; having started and sold Travel Keys to Accor, which then turned into onefinestay before they turned their sights on the nonprofit world.

Any nonprofit leader I’ve spoken to has said raising money is #1 on their priority list. If your team is looking for new ways to raise more while creating better donor experiences and reducing operational friction, this conversation will give you a fresh lens on what’s possible.

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Fun fact: Peter is the longest-tenured active trader and one of the most photographed traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Also to the creators reading this: take the risk. Reach out. Send the cold email. I met Peter at a SXSW panel

This conversation is not just about trading. It is about how people make decisions under pressure, how fortunes are built and lost, why markets punish emotion, and why discipline still wins when the world is moving faster than common sense. Peter’s story runs from his New York City roots and family resilience to the NYSE floor, where he learned that opportunity rewards those who keep showing up.

If you are a founder, investor, creator, or simply someone trying to make better decisions in a noisy world, this episode is worth your time because Peter connects market mechanics with life mechanics. He makes the case that investing is not a get-rich-quick fantasy; it is a long-game discipline, a probability game, and a way to build a legacy instead of buying more stuff.

Peter is not looking backward. Through Wall Street Global Trading Academy, he and his partner, David Green, are training retail traders, both new and seasoned, with structure, mentorship, and risk awareness instead of hype. That matters because the barrier to entry into equities trading is lower than ever, but the barrier to staying in the game is still high.

What makes this episode especially resonant is Peter’s larger perspective: he sees the market as a living organism shaped by war, oil, AI, social media, institutional behavior, retail enthusiasm, and the psychology of fear and greed. He also sees the upside in all of it, especially for younger people willing to learn, adapt, and treat the market like a vocation rather than a casino.

I encourage you to listen to this episode, which will leave you thinking differently about money, attention, risk, resilience, and what it takes to create value in a world that rewards both speed and substance. It is a conversation with practical takeaways, but it is also a reminder that behind every chart is a human story, and behind every winning strategy is a mindset.

“Wall Street is not a get-rich-quick scheme.”

What this means now

The implications extend beyond trading. Peter’s perspective suggests that the winners are the people who can identify signal in noise, control downside, and avoid turning a temporary edge into a permanent loss. In today’s business landscape, that translates to clearer decision-making, faster adaptation, and stronger risk discipline when markets, customers, or platforms suddenly shift.

He also makes a strong case that accessibility changes the game, but not everyone who enters survives it. That reflects what we see in business: lower barriers to entry create more competition, but the people who last are the ones who learn the rules, manage cash flow, and keep their heads when everyone else is chasing the next shiny thing.

Steps to consider

• Treat every major decision like a trade: define the upside, downside, and exit before you start.

• Build a habit of taking profits or locking in wins earlier instead of waiting for perfection.

• Stop confusing motion with progress; not every market move, business trend, or opportunity deserves your capital or attention.

• Invest in what you understand and observe in daily life, whether that is consumer behavior, software adoption, or brands people already use.

• Separate excitement from conviction. If your thesis cannot survive volatility, it is probably just a mood.

• Keep building skills that compound over time: judgment, patience, pattern recognition, and emotional control.

• Use setbacks as data, not identity. Peter’s message is that resilience is not optional; it is the price of entry.

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