Going Deep with Aaron Watson

Jon Shanahan is the cofounder and Chief Marketing Officer for Stryx, a cosmetics and skincare company focused on serving men.   Jon has helped the company earn over 120 million organic views on TikTok, scale to millions in revenue, and launch in major retailers including Target, Nordstrom, and CVS.   Prior to founding the company, Jon built a brand and YouTube channel called The Kavalier focused o...

Jake Thomas is an expert at writing YouTube video titles. He has parlayed his experience writing more than 4,000 titles into his company, Creator Hooks.   Prior to founding Creator Hooks, Jake helped build a channel from 70 to 200k subscribers   After leaving to start his firm, he landed clients that include Hubspot cofounder Dharmesh Shah's personal channel and The Infographics Show.   In this ep...

Listen to Adam Haritan, founder of Learn your Land, discuss getting lost in a bog and hearing your calling.

Adam Haritan is the founder of Learn Your Land, as well as a wild food enthusiast, researcher, and forager. He is launching a new course, Trees in All Seasons .   He learned the value of wild food foraging while studying nutrition at the University of Pittsburgh, where he discovered just how beneficial wild foods could be in optimizing human health.     Wild plants, on average, are more nutritious...

Matt Blocki is the founder and CEO of Equilibrium Wealth Advisors. Matt is also a co-founder of Wealth Advisor Training, which was founded in 2022 to help provide resources to the top wealth advisors around the country. Wealth Advisor Training gives advisors a comprehensive education platform to give better proactive advice and develop systems to scale their business.   Matt regularly speaks in th...

Mark Nelson is the managing director of the Radiant Energy Fund, which advises governments, nonprofits, and industry about nuclear energy.    Mark works tirelessly to prevent early closures of nuclear plants around the world a nd has attended the UN climate conference in Glasgow as a delegate from the American Nuclear Society. His efforts span the globe, working to save nuclear plants from Germany...

Eric Jorgenson is the author of the Almanac of Naval Ravikant, a GP in the seed investment-focused Rolling Fun, and the creator of the course Building a Mountain of Levers .   Eric also has a podcast called Jorgenson’s Soundbox and was part of the founding team of Zaarly, proximity-based, real-time, buyer-powered market platform.   Eric has condensed the wisdom of Naval, a prolific entrepreneur an...

Christopher Nguyen is the CEO and cofounder of Aitomatic, where he aims to redefine how companies approach AI in the context of life-critical, industrial applications.   As a multiple-time tech founder, Christopher has played key roles across a wide range of technology startups. He has also operated in large corporations where he has built the first flash memory transistors at Intel and spearheade...

Brandon Grbach is the CEO and cofounder of Steel City. Steel City is a family-owned boutique offering Pittsburgh-inspired, vintage tees, sweatshirts & accessories.   Grbach started designing t-shirts for his friend’s skate shop, but when the shop shut down, he continued on his own.   Now, he and his wife own a thriving business with over 20 employees, a distinct brand, and a habit of growing ~50%...

Rob Walling is an investor, writer, podcaster, and serial entrepreneur. His last startup, Drip, was an email marketing software company that was bought by Leadpages for millions in 2016.   He also has been helping bootstrapped startup founders since 2005 and now runs the first startup accelerator for SaaS bootstrappers, TinySeed.   Rob also hosts the podcast “Startups for the Rest of Us”, which ha...

Sam Parr founded The Hustle, which he eventually sold to Hubspot for tens of millions of dollars.   The Hustle was born from a conference he started, called Hustle Con, that showcased non-technical startup founders and their strategies for success. The Hustle ended up garnering an audience of millions of subscribers and was able to operate profitably as a new media startup that was not overburdene...

Doomberg is the anonymous publishing arm of a bespoke consulting firm. Their firm provides advisory services to family offices and c-suite executives   The firm’s principals apply decades of experience across heavy industry, private equity, and finance to deliver innovative thinking and clarity to complex problems.   They maintain their anonymity to ensure the privacy of their clients, the soverei...

Richard Aulenbach founded RPA Engineering in 1989. He has run the firm for over 30 years and expanded to a team of over 70 people.   RPA Engineering serves a wide variety of markets including pharmaceuticals, power, and government.   Richard has had extensive experience in landing large deals, recruiting technical talent, and surviving bad business partners.   In this interview, Richard and Aaron...

Jennifer Smith is the cofounder and CEO of Scribe, a modern software solution for documenting and teaching company processes.   After graduating from Harvard Business School, Jennifer joined McKinsey where she helped the largest companies on the planet implement better processes. With an appetite for efficiency, she searched far and wide for a solution that reduced the friction between finding a b...

Abhi Godara is the founder of Rytr, a content marketing startup that uses artificial intelligence to help marketers with their content.    He has been working in the digital marketing industry since 2006 as a writer, content strategist and SEO professional.   Previously, he worked as an operator VC at TLabs, India's biggest early-stage startup accelerator, where he recruited and assessed 1000+ tra...

Eric Satz is the founder and CEO of Alto, a platform for investors to use their retirement accounts for investing in alternative assets, such as private companies, real estate, cryptocurrency, equity crowdfunding, and marketplace loans.   The firm enables investors to better diversify their IRA and 401(K) accounts into higher-return, long-term alternative investment opportunities.   For a long tim...

Tucker Max is a NYT bestselling author and cofounder of Scribe Media, the premier professional publishing company that has helped people like David Goggins, Tiffany Haddish and Dan Sullivan publish their books.    Tucker started as a blogger on his website, tuckermax.com and has built out a substantial string of entrepreneurial wins, including some angel investments.   In this episode, Aaron and T...

Joe Wynn is the cofounder and CEO of Seiso, a cybersecurity firm based in Pittsburgh, PA. His firm offers Chief Information Security Officer services to clients and other forms of penetration testing.   Joe has over 25 years of experience in information technology and uses that to help companies of all sizes organize InfoSec governance, manage risk, and align security programs to industry framewor...

Dr. Rita Baranwal served as the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).    Dr. Baranwal led the office’s efforts to promote research and development on existing and advanced nuclear technologies that sustain the existing U.S. fleet of nuclear reactors, enable the deployment of advanced nuclear energy systems, and enhance the U.S.A.'s global comm...

Jason Yanowitz is the cofounder of Blockworks, a digital media company launched in 2018 focused on the intersection of cryptocurrency and finance.   They have experienced explosive growth as they have scaled to eight figures in annual revenue, dozens of podcasts, and a rapidly growing audience hungry to make sense of crypto.   Jason and the Blockworks team have scaled while bootstrapping (not rais...

Wes Kao is the cofounder of Maven, the world’s first digital platform for cohort-based courses. In just one year, the Maven team launched over 100 cohorts, saw dozens of instructors make $10K, multiple made $250K+, and raised a $20m Series A from Andreesen Horowitz.   Their course creators include Anthony Pompliano, Li Jin, Sahil Lavingia, Shaan Puri, and Sahil Bloom.   Prior to starting Maven she...

​​Aye Moah is the co-founder and CEO of Boomerang, the most popular extension for Gmail and Outlook which enables millions of people to email more effectively with artificial intelligence.   Aye has over a decade of experience in bringing category-creating products to market. She is an innovator with multiple patents and has scaled revenue with a consumer freemium model and a bottoms-up B2B SaaS m...

Jesse Pujji currently serves as Founder & CEO of Gateway X and as Executive Chairman of Ampush and MySubscriptionAddiction.com.   Prior to GX, Jesse co-founded and was CEO of Ampush. He grew Ampush to over 100 Ampushers, managed over $1BN of digital media spend, and partnered with brands such as Dollar Shave Club, Uber, Birchbox and Hulu.    Prior to Ampush, Jesse started his career with short sti...

Colin Huwyler is the CEO of Optimus Technologies, a firm that designs and builds EPA compliant biodiesel conversion systems (“Vector Systems”) with integrated telematics to allow medium and heavy-duty diesel engines to operate on up to 100% biodiesel in temperatures to -20F.    Colin founded the company in 2010 after previously founding Fossil Free Fuel, a renewable fuel company.    Optimus Techno...

Ricky Stanzi is a professor and coach within the GOATA (Greatest Of All Time Athletes) system. GOATA’s goal is to hone in the most effective transfers of energy in the body and make those muscle movements second nature.   Ricky was formerly a football quarterback in the NFL, CFL, and Big Ten. He was drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs in the fifth round of the 2011 NFL Draft and played college footb...