Tied Up in Brazil, Broke in Sri Lanka, and Evan Cassidy Still Built a 7-Figure Agency
Description
What do you do when you’re hogtied at gunpoint in a Brazilian penthouse? Or broke in Sri Lanka trying to make a business work from scratch?
For Evan Cassidy, those weren’t hypotheticals—they were chapter one.
In this raw and revealing episode of Founders & Empanadas, Joshua Eidelman sits down with Evan to unpack the wild, global journey that eventually led him to build Booming Brands, a white-labeled video editing agency now producing 4,000+ videos per month.
They cover:
- The violent home invasion in Brazil that changed Evan’s life
- The freelancer trap most digital founders fall into
- How to tell when a startup is failing—vs. when you’re just quitting too early
- Why founder skills don’t scale (and how to grow into a real CEO)
- A tactical system for finding product-market fit in services
- The difference between resilience and denial when chasing a vision
If you’ve ever wondered whether to keep pushing—or finally let go—this conversation will hit home.
📌 TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 – Intro + Empanadas
2:00 – Leaving corporate life for Brazil
4:30 – The home invasion story
9:30 – Faith, fear, and navigating chaos
12:00 – Moving to Sri Lanka + freelancer years
16:00 – Failed course launch + debt
17:30 – Iterating into Booming Brands
22:00 – Traits that don’t scale from founder to CEO
26:00 – Leadership mistakes that haunt you
29:00 – Picking yourself up after failure
32:00 – Final hot take: Don’t diversify too soon
🎧 Full episode available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
United States
