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Bobby Finan started in the craft distillery business when he was 21, and co-owned his Tommyrotter distillery at 23. From failed early business ideas, to inspiration from Shia Labeouf, to now winning Gold Medal awards for his gin, Bobby talks about making it as a millennial.  Thanks to our friends at MailChimp for sponsoring the show!

Jeff Coleman and Jules Lambert run PROBAR in Salt Lake City, Utah. Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus stuff from each episode. Thanks to our friends at MailChimp for sponsoring the show!

Robert Mermin is a clown who ran away from home and started his own circus, Circus Smirkus. It's an incredible story from pitching Dr. Seuss (yes, that Dr. Seuss), to juggling his way out of the USSR.  Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus stuff from each episode. Thanks to our friends at MailChimp for sponsoring the show!

Jason Fried is the CEO of Basecamp. Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus stuff from each episode. Thanks to our friends at MailChimp for sponsoring the show!

Almost any time you walk into Piccolo’s Restaurant in Hoboken for a cheesesteak, you can hear Patty lumbering around, coming out of the kitchen every once in a while to curse out his favorite customers. In his restaurant, his regulars call the 60-odd year old “Patty Boy”, a vestige of the time when his father ran the restaurant and Patty was the boy helping out in the back. Now the boy is very much a man, but keeps the 61 year old restaurant operating in a very similar fashion to the way his father used to do it. No menu, and the options for the cheesesteak are “with” or “without” onions. But the city around Piccolo’s is changing, and in Patty’s words, “the restaurant will die with me”. There is no succession plan. Piccolo’s is situated in the south of Hoboken, where his father bought the plot of land where the restaurant sits for $1,000 in the 1950’s. It started out as a late-night spot serving the bar next door that used to host acts like The Temptations while they were still trying to make a name for themselves. In the 1960’s it became a daytime spot that became known for the cheesesteaks it still serves today. Patty isn’t the most successful character we’ve had on the show. His marketing wisdom can be summed up in 3 or 4 words: “I don’t know”, with “f***ing” being the optional one. But if there is a paradigm of the old-school restaurant owner, who loves his customers as much as his restaurant, Patty is the guy. In a building that may one day be a Jamba Juice or a Chop’t, the foul-mouthed, unapologetic Patty is going down slinging cheesesteaks. Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus stuff from each episode. Thanks to our friends at MailChimp for sponsoring the show!

Laurie Woolever is a writer and Anthony Bourdain's assistant. She and Anthony are releasing a cookbook called Appetites this fall. Pre-order it on Amazon. Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus stuff from each episode. Thanks to our friends at MailChimp for sponsoring the show!

Paula Varsalona has designed and made over 60,000 dresses during her long career in New York City. Originally from Independence, Missouri, Paula arrived in the 70's and started out living with 5 girls in a one-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side and finding work where she could.  The bridal industry wasn't easy, and she was hired and fired a few times before venturing off on her own. In the 1980's, she opened her own shop with a partner and quickly lit up the NYC bridal scene. In an industry that was surprisingly male-dominated, she became one of the most popular designers in the country. "People threw money at me", she says, somewhat reminiscently.  In this interview, I was struck by how demanding the design profession is. Paula is in her 60's now. She says she tries to get one day off per month. And design is literally the first step in a very long process to sell something. The outcome of a designers work is affected by so many other variables like seasonality, marketing, cheap imitations. And yet Paula gives the impression that the entire success of that dress is in her craftsmanship. Maybe it is. 

Marty Raney runs the Alaska Stone and Log Company in Wasilla, Alaska. He's also on Discovery's Homestead Rescue. His site is MartyRaney.com. Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus stuff from each episode. Thanks to our friends at MailChimp for sponsoring the show!

Stephanie Rothstein Bruce is an inspiration to a lot of athletes because of her real stories of being a mom and a professional athlete. Some of those fans might not even know that she also has a successful organic energy bar business. Stephanie formed Picky Bars with two other athletes: Jesse Thomas and Lauren Fleshman. In the beginning, the product was created specifically for Jesse, who was gluten intolerant and needed a bar to provide the right energy balance for a triathlete. After a year rolling together “balls of mashed up dates” with some other foods, Stephanie googled how to build that into a business. An industrial kitchen and a chance article in Runners World got them kickstarted, and now they are sold from REI, Trader Joe’s, as well as their unique subscription-based e-commerce store. As another shot at the Olympic dream passes, Stephanie also talks about how she can represent Picky Bars as a pro athlete, knowing that her career as a runner is a short one.  Thanks to Stephanie and our sponsor Mailchimp

Aaron Draplin runs the Draplin Design Co. in Portland, Oregon. His new book, Pretty Much Everything, is available at ddcbook.com. Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus stuff from each episode. Thanks to our friends at MailChimp for sponsoring the show!

Dave Nevogt is on his “third or fourth” online business, he doesn’t really remember. And it is not as if the previous companies have failed, some of those ventures hit $2 million+ in annual revenue. But in David’s words, “a lot of online companies have short life spans”. So David’s e-commerce business and fledging SEO business were eventually made obsolete by Amazon and Google’s changing algorithm. Now on his third—or fourth—David thinks this one will last, but also knows that it really doesn’t matter. David’s current company, Hubstaff, provides tracking software for remote teams. If you’ve got a remote team member Hubstaff will track the amount of time they worked, take random screenshots, and even measure a user’s “activity rate” to gauge how productive your workforce is. In addition, Hubstaff offers tools to help with payroll, invoicing, scheduling, and all other myriad needs of remote teams. Since being founded in 2012, Hubstaff is now doing well over $1M annual revenue. Hubstaff decided early on to do something that very few small business do. They publish their metrics. That means that anyone can see how much money Hubstaff makes, how many users they have, and how many folks have cancelled that month. It’s definitely “a little scary”, says David, but it is part of the mission of being transparent. It helps engender trust, and get on podcasts. On the negative side, it can also inspire copy-cat businesses but David says it is all about execution. David is an absolute zen master when it comes to productivity, digital marketing, and remote team management. In terms of tangible nuggets of advice, David is full of them in this episode. And for those who really want more, we can recommend his website. Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus stuff from each episode. Thanks to our friends at MailChimp for sponsoring the show!

Peter Metcalf ran Black Diamond Equipment from 1989 to 2015. Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus stuff from each episode. Thanks to our friends at MailChimp for sponsoring the show!

Allison Robicelli moves fast. The woman who got engaged only 6 weeks after meeting her husband and co-owner has opened a store in Brooklyn, closed it, grew a wholesale business, opened another store, wrote a book, closed another store, and is now building the prototype for a new franchise model in Baltimore. Robicelli’s Bakery grew up during the Great Cupcake Movement in New York City during the 2010’s. But unlike the now-defunct Crumbs, Allison recognized the headaches involved with keeping up storefronts that only sell $4 cupcakes, and quickly transitioned her business to a wholesale business, baking top quality baked goods and selling those to restaurants and coffee shops. Nowadays, Allison says that they are thinking 10 years down the road and she has a few predictions for the food industry. Especially where she operates in New York City, the food industry is a challenging place. “I know restaurants where it’s a packed house every night that are lucky if they make any money at the end of the year”. Increasingly, Allison sees food moving towards the delivery model with websites like Seamless and GrubHub doing well. Not just because it is economical to move restaurant operations away from high foot traffic (read: high rent) areas, but also because of the “No Pants Incentive”. Nowadays, more and more of us can work, socialize, entertain, and now feed ourselves from behind our computer screen. Hence, the incentive to wear pants is diminishing especially when your laptop provides all the leg warmth you need. Which is also an economical way to repurpose heat energy from your laptop. But I digress… Robicelli’s had some really great thoughts in this one about where the food industry is going and what they are doing to adapt to that with their new franchise model in Baltimore. We think they’ll come out ahead. Why? Because we like eating cake with no pants on, that’s why.

  Chris Linton came to this country from Trinidad as an illegal alien in 1990. After spending 7 years working as a day laborer starting at $40 per day, he ended up getting his citizenship and launching C & M Floors in Hoboken. C & M floors has now been in business for 20 years, and Chris credits a lot of his success to some hometown help.  Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus stuff from each episode. Thanks to our friends at MailChimp for sponsoring the show!

James Nelson and Jeremiah Tallerine run Bravado Spice, a hot sauce company in Houston, Texas. Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus stuff from each episode. Thanks to our friends at MailChimp for sponsoring the show!

Freddy Zeideia started and runs The King of Falafel and Shawarma in Astoria, Queens. Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus stuff from each episode. Thanks to our friends at MailChimp for sponsoring the show!

Peter Shankman stumbled upon a multi-million dollar business when he started e-mailing his journalist friends from his couch. Founder of Help a Reporter Out, Peter tells the story of getting his business started, selling it, and how to get in touch with other busy people.  Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus stuff from each episode. Thanks to our friends at MailChimp for sponsoring the show!

Ashley Albert and Jonathan Schnapp are the founders of the Royal Palms Shuffleboard Club in Brooklyn, NY. Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus stuff from each episode. Thanks to our friends at MailChimp for sponsoring the show!

Michael Miqueli is the founder of San AntonioBrokerServices, a trucking company in North Bergen, New Jersey.Sign up for our newsletter togetbonusstuff from each episode.Thanks to our sponsor MailChimp.

Brad's an electrician in Dorset, Vermont. He employs 10 people, has 1600 customers, and has a masterful command of the English language when it comes to backwoods slang. We caught up with him in his barn for this interview. Brad shared what is was like to buy a business from his father, how he keeps business flowing in a "little hick town", and what he thinks the upcoming workforce could learn from the old guys. We're taking a break to record more interviews but we'll be back online soon. Thanks so much for listening! Sign up for our newsletter to get information about the upcoming season 2!