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After four years and 250 episodes, I'm stopping the weekly Beyond A Million podcast. I won't say it's gone for good, but I'm putting a bookmark in it for now. I started the podcast to have good conversations and to support Easy Pay Direct: landing clients, giving our leads useful content, and eventually building top of funnel.  Some of that worked well, and some of it I never fully committed to. Right now, most of my time and energy is going into EPD Commerce and agentic commerce, and a weekly show no longer fits those goals.  I talk through what the podcast did for me, where it fell short, and why I think choosing focus over doing everything at once is the right call.  Thank you to everyone who has watched, listened, and shared along the way.   Watch on YouTube:  https://youtu.be/rHXm-fvfUJY     Let's Connect: Website | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitter | Facebook

What happens to entrepreneurs when AI and robots can produce nearly everything we currently get paid to produce? That's the question I wanted to explore with Daniel Faggella and Jesse Elder. A huge part of modern life is organized around making money. We go to school to develop skills, build careers and businesses, compete for resources, and use capital to create more opportunity. But if AI keeps getting better at doing economically valuable work, some of those assumptions start to break down. We talk about what capitalism could look like when human labor becomes less necessary, whether abundance actually means everyone gets everything they need, and why simply opting out of technological change may become harder than it sounds. We also get into a bigger question entrepreneurs should be thinking about now: What makes you valuable when intelligence and execution are increasingly cheap?   Watch on YouTube:       Let's Connect: Website | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitter | Facebook

Today I'm talking to Daniel Faggella, who built and sold a $2 million ecommerce business so he could go all-in on artificial intelligence years before the rest of the business world caught up. Daniel is now the founder of Emerj, an AI research and media company that works with companies like NVIDIA, Google Cloud, and Salesforce. He also hosts the AI in Business podcast, where he's spent years building relationships with the executives responsible for some of the biggest AI investments inside enterprise. What makes his business especially interesting is that its value has very little to do with how many people download the podcast. Daniel built a network around people who had relatively little influence when he first started talking to them, but would eventually control massive budgets as AI became a priority. We get into where AI actually stands inside large companies today, why smaller businesses may have an advantage over enterprise, and how Daniel thinks about positioning yourself around a market before the money and attention arrive.   Watch on YouTube:  https://youtu.be/jyZf8woo2aU     Let's Connect: Website | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitter | Facebook

Today I'm talking to Austin Armstrong, a longtime digital marketer, founder of Syllaby and AI Marketing World, and someone who has built millions of followers across social media. Austin has spent more than two decades studying how attention works online, and this conversation is largely about how that's changing with AI. We talk about how he approaches content creation today, why Facebook has become his highest-ROI platform, what actually drives virality, and how he uses AI without fully automating his personal brand. We also get into the business side of AI, including how Syllaby evolved from a productivity tool into an AI content platform, why the company had to change its target customer and pricing, and what Austin thinks happens to SaaS as AI agents become more capable.   Watch on YouTube:  https://youtu.be/H7HCrACJ5UQ      Let's Connect: Website | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitter | Facebook

I'm sitting on a private jet with Tom Patterson and Chandler Bolt, and the obvious question comes up: when does this kind of spending actually make sense? Once your business starts producing real money, the decisions don't necessarily get easier. Do you keep pouring everything back into the company? Spend more to save time? Pay for experiences and access to better rooms? Or are you just copying the lifestyle of someone who's ten years ahead of you? We get into the tension between frugality and leverage, why entrepreneurs can spend years being able to afford something before feeling comfortable buying it, and how trying to look successful can actually hurt your credibility with the people you're trying to impress. We also talk about the role relationships and proximity play as you scale—and why being around people operating at a completely different level can change what you believe is possible.   Watch on YouTube:  https://youtu.be/b9Mqz1Mn0a0     Let's Connect: Website | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitter | Facebook

Britnie Turner built her real estate career by deliberately going where other investors wouldn't—high-crime neighborhoods, overlooked properties, and land that banks didn't even want to finance.  That approach eventually helped her make tens of millions of dollars. But what interested me was why she was willing to make bets that looked irrational to almost everyone around her.  Britnie went from waitressing, living in her car, and working for free to becoming one of Nashville's biggest rehabbers, developing entire communities, and eventually owning a private island in the British Virgin Islands. Along the way, she built her businesses around a much bigger mission than simply making money.  We talk about what founders miss when they only pursue obvious opportunities, why conviction can matter more than having the perfect plan, and how building wealth gave Britnie the resources to take on problems far bigger than real estate, including disaster relief and human trafficking through Aerial Recovery.   Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/NRW3DtCg5eM     Let's Connect: Website | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitter | Facebook

Thanh Pham has spent 15 years studying productivity, and over the last five he's gone deep on implementing AI inside real companies. That means he's seen the difference between AI that actually changes how a business operates and AI that simply helps someone finish a task a little faster. That's the problem we dig into. If you're still using AI to shave a few minutes off work you were already doing yourself, you may be missing the bigger shift: changing who does the work in the first place. We talk about what Thanh hands to AI versus a person, how AI is changing the roles founders should be hiring for, and why companies that get this right could start moving dramatically faster than everyone else. We also get into what separates a million-dollar founder from entrepreneurs running much larger companies, why Thanh deliberately blocks several hours every week for something most founders never put on their calendar, and where human judgment still matters even as AI takes over more of the execution.   Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/8jr0wVYCDtw     Let's Connect: Website | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitter | Facebook

A lot of founders hit seven figures and assume they've built a business. But if sales slow down, decisions stall, or customers feel the difference whenever they step away, they may still be self-employed. Jeremy Shapiro has built companies across SaaS, ecommerce, technology, and services. He's seen the same pattern repeatedly: The hustle that creates momentum early on eventually becomes the thing holding the business back. We talk about why founders stay trapped in low-value work, how technology can quietly create more complexity, and why growth often stalls when you keep relying on the same channel, habits, or people. We also get into niche strategy, the hidden costs of building your own software, what separates a valuable mastermind from an expensive networking group, and why an SOP is useless if another person can't produce the same result.   Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/1_P-QPKxfO4     Let's Connect: Website | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitter | Facebook

I bought a lake house in Austin and discovered I was paying city taxes even though the city wasn't providing water, sewer, trash collection, or electricity. Julie Drenner helped me legally remove the property from Austin's tax rolls. But that uncovered another problem: the city could still regulate what I build, how I remodel, and how I use the property through its extraterritorial jurisdiction, or ETJ. If you own, develop, or invest in real estate, these overlooked jurisdictional rules can quietly affect your taxes, construction timelines, rental income, and resale value. Julie explains where property owners may be losing control, why cities have little incentive to make these rules easy to understand, and what every investor should investigate before buying or developing their next property.   Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/vtxGRN4XDko     Let's Connect: Website | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitter | Facebook

Dean Guida started Infragistics at 23 to build UX/UI tools for professional software developers. Thirty-seven years later, the company operates across six countries, its software is used by more than two million developers, and its customers span the entire S&P 500—including Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, Exxon, Intuit, and Bank of America. But AI can now generate functional software in minutes. So what prevents a company like Infragistics from becoming obsolete? I wanted to understand which parts of software AI will commoditize, where lasting competitive moats will still exist, and why Dean believes the idea that software is disappearing has been dramatically oversold. We also talk about how he built a multi-8-figure company without outside capital, why he might raise money if he started again today, and what founders need to build once grit alone is no longer enough to scale.   Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/3hogPdPFiX8     Let's Connect: Website | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitter | Facebook

Today I'm talking to Jim Donnelly, a founder who has built and scaled businesses across travel, real estate, wellness, and longevity medicine. He built an online travel community with 300,000+ members that later rolled into Travelocity. He developed luxury real estate that still holds Charlotte's record for price per square foot. He co-founded Restore Hyper Wellness and helped scale it to 225+ locations. Now, he's building Humanaut Health, a longevity medicine company with $10M-per-clinic potential. But the interesting part isn't just what Jim has built. It's how he keeps moving into completely different industries and finding the opportunity before everyone else sees it. A lot of founders fail when they jump categories because they assume the same playbook will work again. Jim sees it differently. He's clear about what transfers from one business to the next, what doesn't, and why the best opportunities are often hiding inside big categories that already exist. We get into how he builds brands people actually care about, why he'd rather have fewer customers who love him than more customers who only like him, and the biggest lessons he learned after raising $140M in private equity.   Watch on YouTube:      Let's Connect: Website | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitter | Facebook

Today I'm talking with Geoff Woods, author of The AI-Driven Leader and founder of AI Leadership, about why so many founders are using AI on the wrong problems. Geoff helped drive Jindal Steel & Power's market cap from $750M to $12B in four years, and one of his points really stuck with me: you don't get beyond a million because you write great emails. But that's exactly how a lot of entrepreneurs are using AI right now. Writing emails, cleaning up inboxes, building random agents, and mistaking activity for leverage. That's the trap. AI can make you feel productive while you point all that horsepower at work that doesn't actually move the business forward. Geoff walks through what it looks like to flip that: using AI as a strategic thought partner instead of an errand boy, why most leaders are skipping steps they haven't earned yet, and how to think about AI in a way that improves decision-making, focus, and team performance. Geoff also shares what he learned helping scale a multi-billion-dollar company, why letting the right fires burn is part of leadership, and the move his assistant made to rewrite her own job description and 100x her role. If you've been treating AI like a faster Google, this conversation will reframe what it can actually do for you as a founder.   Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/beMjviX1_B8     Let's Connect: Website | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitter | Facebook

Today I'm talking to Matt Gallant, co-founder of BioOptimizers, a supplement company generating $10M a month with a larger mission to help people live healthier for longer. Matt started with a simple realization: if he could get great at marketing, he could build a business in almost any category. That belief eventually led him into health, supplements, and BioOptimizers—but not without some hard-earned lessons along the way. We talk about the moment the business nearly fell apart, how Matt thinks about creating maximum customer value, timeless marketing principles, and the question he believes every entrepreneur needs to ask as markets get more crowded and customers become harder to win.   Watch on YouTube:     Let's Connect: Website | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitter | Facebook

Today, Cameron Herold (Founder of COO Alliance) is back on the podcast to talk about one of the biggest reasons companies stop scaling: bad hiring. We get into why impressive resumes can be misleading, how to tell if someone has actually done the work, and the hiring mistakes that quietly cost companies years of progress. Cameron also breaks down why most entrepreneurs are never properly trained to interview, how he thinks about screening for culture, and what founders miss when they rely too heavily on resumes, references, and gut feel. We also talk about the side of entrepreneurship people rarely admit in real time: burnout, loneliness, identity, alcohol, retirement, and what happens when the business stops giving you the same hit it used to.   Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/SCNzMOVeO48     Let's Connect: Website | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitter | Facebook

AI isn't just creating a software boom, it's creating an infrastructure crisis. As demand for AI explodes, the real bottleneck isn't chips or models anymore. It's power, cooling, permitting, and the ability to build data centers fast enough to keep up.  Jason Van Gaal has spent more than a decade solving exactly that problem. After building and exiting multiple data center companies — including one of the largest Canadian tech exits of 2019 — Jason is now taking on his biggest project yet: building a $10 billion AI data center campus in Alberta powered by its own energy infrastructure. In this episode, we break down the future of AI infrastructure, why data centers are becoming power companies, the realities of scaling massive industrial projects, and what Jason learned from building, exiting, and starting over again.   Key Takeaways with Jason Van Gaal From Two Exits to a $10B Swing  Hire People Better Than Yourself  Cutting Build Time to 120 Days  Financing 400% Growth Without Imploding  How He Invests After the Exit  Why He Came Out of Retirement  Why Alberta Won the Build  Busting the Data Center Water Myth  Noise, Infrasound, and Tinfoil Hats  What Happens If Approvals Fail  Why He Stays in His Lane  Why Scaling Fast Is a Trap  Learning Just in Time vs Just in Case   Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/eRR-PLNkVtQ     Let's Connect: Website | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitter | Facebook