Starting Small

Jonathan Ward ended up on Broadway at seven years old by complete accident. His mom signed him up for an open audition on a trip to New York, mostly just to kill time, and he landed the part in Peter Pan. That turned into a full childhood acting career — Charles in Charge, his own show on Fox called Beans Baxter, and the lead role in Fern Gully next to Robin Williams. He was never actually famous, in his words, just famous enough to get a stalker, which is ultimately what pushed him out of the business entirely. Cars had always been the real thing for him. He'd been restoring them in a one-car garage since before he had a license. In 1996, he and his now-wife quit their entertainment jobs on a whim after a trip to South Africa and started TLC — short for Toyota Land Cruisers — with a dozen trucks, a $10,000 loan from his sister-in-law, and a website he traded a truck for because he didn't know what a web designer was. The neighbors in his industrial park ran a betting pool on which month the business would fail. Years in, Toyota's then-chairman personally called his shop and asked him to prototype a modern FJ40. Jonathan built three versions, Toyota's board picked one, and that work eventually shaped the FJ Cruiser. He took the money from that job and used it to build something fully his own — a ground-up, computer-designed version of the FJ40 with a modern V8, instead of the junkyard-parts approach everyone else was doing. Mickey Drexler, the guy behind Gap and J.Crew, told him not to cut a single corner to hit a lower price, and bought the first one himself. That truck became ICON. Years later, Ford's CEO — someone Jonathan had known back when he worked at Toyota — personally called and asked ICON to build a one-off Bronco to tease the model's comeback. Ford's own engineers didn't think it could be done. When it showed up at SEMA, Ford's team pulled it straight onto their own booth. TLC eventually got sold off so Jonathan could focus entirely on ICON, which now builds fully bespoke Broncos, FJs, and classic Chevy trucks — and has a customer base loyal enough that over 30% of owners come back for a second, third, or fourth vehicle. Make sure to check out ICON at: https://www.icon4x4.com/   Check out my new book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4kRKGTX Watch our mini-doc - Starting Small: The Raw Truth Behind Entrepreneurship and the American Dream: https://youtu.be/eHuq93wIxs0?si=eDB-ycngvWNapRLO Visit Starting Small Media: https://startingsmallmedia.org/ Subscribe to exclusive Starting Small emails: https://startingsmallmedia.org/newsletter-signup Follow Starting Small: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/startingsmallpod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Startingsmallpod/?modal=admin_todo_tour LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/cameronnagle   Starting Small is powered by Riverside.fm, the AI-powered platform that lets you record, edit, repurpose,and distribute studio-quality content as easily as if you had a crew behind you. Check them out now at https://creators.riverside.com/CameronNagle

Jamie Siminoff invented the video doorbell in his garage. Five years later, Amazon acquired his company, Ring, for approximately $1 billion. In between, he appeared on Shark Tank, turned down Kevin O'Leary's offer, and went on to build what became one of the show's most successful businesses. The story behind Ring is far more complicated than a doorbell. Jamie spent years building companies, learning telecom infrastructure, and figuring out which ideas could grow into something meaningful. When DoorBot appeared on Shark Tank in 2013, the business was still operating under serious financial pressure. The exposure helped drive a surge in sales, giving Jamie the opportunity to rebuild the product and scale the company. We talk about the fear that someone else would build the billion-dollar business he envisioned, the decision to expand Ring from a video doorbell into a broader home security platform, and the pressure of delivering on the $1.15 billion in trust Amazon placed in him. Jamie also shares why he returned to Ring after stepping away, how AI is opening new possibilities in home security, and the potential of Firewatch, which uses Ring cameras to help create more accurate wildfire maps for emergency response. Make sure to check out Ring at: https://ring.com   Check out my new book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4kRKGTX Watch our mini-doc - Starting Small: The Raw Truth Behind Entrepreneurship and the American Dream: https://youtu.be/eHuq93wIxs0?si=eDB-ycngvWNapRLO   Visit Starting Small Media: https://startingsmallmedia.org/ Subscribe to exclusive Starting Small emails: https://startingsmallmedia.org/newsletter-signup   Follow Starting Small: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/startingsmallpod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Startingsmallpod/?modal=admin_todo_tour LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/cameronnagle   This episode is brought to you by Behr. I'm right in the middle of a full exterior and trim refresh on my property, and I'm using two of their top lines to get it done — Behr Marquee and Behr Premium Plus. Marquee is one of Behr’s most advanced paint and primer lines, offering one-coat coverage in hundreds of colors and exceptional fade resistance, and it holds up beautifully on siding, trim, doors, you name it. I'm pairing that with Behr Premium Plus for the interior and exterior trim work, giving everything a clean, durable, long-lasting finish. Behr's been trusted for decades, and once you see these two products side by side on a property, you understand why. Whether you’re planning a room refresh or a full home transformation, head to Behr.com to find the right products for your next project. And when you're ready to get started, stop by your local Home Depot or shop online at HomeDepot.com.

Walter got his first job at four years old sweeping a lumber yard in Edna, Kansas, a town of 150 people. At seven, his dad co-signed a $125 bank loan so he could buy a pig — and the bank required him to come in quarterly to review his own P&L. By his senior year of high school, that one pig had grown into a fifteen-head cattle operation. One week into his freshman year of college, a rare kidney condition put him in and out of hospitals for three years. From a hospital bed, he taught himself how to produce concerts — a dream he'd had since watching one at his county fair at age seven. At twenty, he met another sick kid whose wish was simply to go to prom and graduate high school. Walter produced his first concert to raise the $70,000 the kid needed for care, using a loan secured against sponsorship contracts he hadn't even finalized yet. They raised $71,000. On the drive home, he decided he'd never put a ceiling on what he could achieve — and told himself that night he'd one day produce concerts for George Strait and Garth Brooks, and produce a presidential inauguration. He'd done all three by age 35, including Donald Trump's 2017 inauguration, and went on to run private events in 76 countries, including parties for billionaires the public never hears about. When COVID shut down live entertainment entirely, Walter refused to furlough his full-time staff — he sold his house and his office to keep paying them. Ninety days in, on a solo road trip to clear his head, he passed three drive-in movie theaters in one afternoon and had an idea: stage concerts broadcast to drive-ins nationwide. Within two days he had 125 theaters signed up. Within five days, Garth Brooks agreed to be the first artist. Within three weeks, 725,000 people were in line for tickets. That summer, Walter's company hosted 1.7 million people safely across drive-in concerts with Garth Brooks and Metallica, inventing the live-stream-to-theater technology from scratch. Kinzie Foods started as mason jars of his aunt's barbecue sauce, given away as gifts for years until the requests got expensive and time-consuming enough that his wife told him to just start charging. He priced it at $20 a jar hoping people would stop asking. Orders spiked. He doubled the minimum. Orders spiked again. He went from strangers' kitchens to his own garage to a real production warehouse, cold-messaged CEOs of major condiment brands on LinkedIn for advice, and built a lineup of bold, unexpected flavors — Pickle, Espresso, Pistachio, Jalapeño Lime, Dubai Chocolate — designed to get used at every meal, not just backyard barbecues. Kinzie Foods is now in 70+ stores just months after launch and recently took first place at the largest BBQ sauce competition in the world. Make sure to check out Kinzie Foods at: https://kinziefoods.com   Check out my new book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4kRKGTX Watch our mini-doc - Starting Small: The Raw Truth Behind Entrepreneurship and the American Dream: https://youtu.be/eHuq93wIxs0?si=eDB-ycngvWNapRLO Visit Starting Small Media: https://startingsmallmedia.org/ Subscribe to exclusive Starting Small emails: https://startingsmallmedia.org/newsletter-signup Follow Starting Small: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/startingsmallpod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Startingsmallpod/?modal=admin_todo_tour LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/cameronnagle   Thank you to this episodes mid-break sponsor, Gozney. A couple years back I had founder Tom Gozney on the show, and it's still one of my favorite stories we've ever featured — the guy started building pro-grade ovens for restaurants before bringing that same technology home, and now Gozney's become the name in outdoor cooking. Their lineup covers everyone — the Roccbox for portable, take-it-anywhere pizza nights, the Dome for the full hybrid, wood-and-gas experience, and the Arc line for something compact that still hits restaurant-level heat. We just got their Arc XL in for hosting, and if you know me, pizza and having people over is basically my favorite combination — this thing gets to 950 degrees and turns out a 16-inch pizza in about 60 seconds. Whatever setup fits your space, Gozney's built something for it. Check out the full lineup at https://us.gozney.com/   Starting Small is powered by Riverside.fm, the AI-powered platform that lets you record, edit, repurpose,and distribute studio-quality content as easily as if you had a crew behind you. Check them out now at https://creators.riverside.com/CameronNagle

Meredith Cook grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, one of four kids in a small house with two working parents. She was later diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, which made traditional school a struggle, so she skipped college and trained as an esthetician instead — working odd jobs on the side, including driving medical specimens between cities at night for quick cash. She spent nearly a decade working under a Charlotte dermatologist after literally walking office to office asking to work for free just to learn. After her second son was born, she felt a disconnect she couldn't explain — not herself, foggy, disconnected from her kids and the people around her. She pushed through it quietly for years, assuming it was just what motherhood felt like. The turning point came when her brother, training for an Ironman in Wilmington, started experimenting with hemp and CBD for his own recovery and encouraged her to try it. Her husband bought everything on the shelf at the local health food store. The fog lifted — but so did her trust in what she was actually putting in her body, once she realized the hemp industry at the time had zero transparency or testing standards. Her husband's connections in agriculture led her to a friend growing USDA organic hemp through a pilot program. She started taking their clean product, felt like herself again, and started sharing it with her mom, her mother-in-law, and friends — watching a business snowball entirely from word of mouth. In 2019, she officially launched Green Compass with her brother and husband, built on a referral-based model where the people sharing the product were the same people who'd felt it change their lives. It grew to $40 million in revenue in two years, almost entirely without paid marketing or PR. When that channel began to shift industry-wide, Meredith resisted changing course longer than she probably should have — she was emotionally invested in the community that built the brand. Eventually, alongside customer surveys and community input, Green Compass transitioned to a DTC model, now generating roughly 80% of revenue from recurring subscriptions, with a growing lineup that includes Core Bloom, a broccoli sprout and mushroom blend, and more product innovation on the way. Make sure to check out Green Compass at: https://greencompassglobal.com   Check out my new book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4kRKGTX Watch our mini-doc - Starting Small: The Raw Truth Behind Entrepreneurship and the American Dream: https://youtu.be/eHuq93wIxs0?si=eDB-ycngvWNapRLO Visit Starting Small Media: https://startingsmallmedia.org/ Subscribe to exclusive Starting Small emails: https://startingsmallmedia.org/newsletter-signup Follow Starting Small: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/startingsmallpod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Startingsmallpod/?modal=admin_todo_tour LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/cameronnagle  

Alysa Seeland grew up on her grandparents' dairy farm in northern Illinois, chased a Division I volleyball scholarship through high school, and pivoted to speech and debate when she realized the sport wasn't going to be her path — placing second in the state of Illinois for original oratory her senior year. She studied communications and English literature at Gordon College, then cut her teeth in marketing at a Boston fintech startup that went through Techstars, learning firsthand how founders build trust with customers from scratch. Five months after her first son was born, a medical crisis nearly cost her life: emergency surgery, and a surgeon telling her to expect a second procedure within months. Instead of scheduling it, she found a decades-old book, "Nourishing Traditions," and went on a five-week bone broth diet. She never needed the second surgery — and went on to have five more sons. That personal healing became FOND. She sold her first jar at a farmers market in New Braunfels, Texas in 2015, working out of a commercial kitchen with her husband dropping her off, hoping she wouldn't come home in tears. She sold out. From there, FOND won a People's Choice Award through H-E-B's Quest for Texas Best program, landed a Whole Foods and Sprouts partnership, and grew into a genuinely regenerative supply chain built on direct farmer relationships instead of concentrate. In 2022, while raising a Series A, the co-manufacturer's facility burned down, wiping out over $4 million in product against a $150,000 insurance payout — all while she was pregnant with her sixth child. She walked away from the raise, put her own equity up as collateral for a $3 million rebuild loan, and launched an internal initiative called "Break It and Rebuild It" to get every channel profitable or cut it loose. Eighteen months later, FOND launched its tallow line and came back stronger. Today the company is profitable, debt-free of outside investment, growing 48% year over year, sold in H-E-B, Sprouts, Whole Foods, and now Albertsons — all while Alysa homeschools six boys.   Make sure to check out FOND at: https://fondregenerative.com/   Check out my new book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4kRKGTX Watch our mini-doc - Starting Small: The Raw Truth Behind Entrepreneurship and the American Dream: https://youtu.be/eHuq93wIxs0?si=eDB-ycngvWNapRLO Visit Starting Small Media: https://startingsmallmedia.org/ Subscribe to exclusive Starting Small emails: https://startingsmallmedia.org/newsletter-signup   Follow Starting Small: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/startingsmallpod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Startingsmallpod/?modal=admin_todo_tour LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/cameronnagle