Austin Holmes just dropped a conversation with Jack Yan that's equal parts typography obsession and global hustle.

The guy went from a 5-year-old noticing the lowercase 'j' had no tail in his classroom to becoming New Zealand's first font designer exporting to the world. Now he's running Lucire (pronounced Lou-CHAIR-ay) a fashion magazine that went from online to print in 2004, before anyone thought that was possible. Oh, and he launched it in a country of 4 million people while thinking globally from day one.

His best stories? Not the overnight wins. It's being rejected by every font foundry, then his mom buying him $395 software that changed everything. It's missing the only font designer in the Southern Hemisphere by one week, then saying "screw it" and doing it himself. It's being told "there are no font designers in New Zealand" after he'd been exporting for 4 years. It's shipping floppy disks to distributors before the internet made it easy.

Quick gems from the episode:

→ Not having things always drove him to make it, couldn't afford the $5 lettering book, so he memorized and drew his own fonts

→ When you're isolated at the bottom of the world, you either think local or think global. He chose global.

→ His first magazine cover model? Jennifer Siebel Newsom (now California's First Lady). Small world.

→ Conscious capitalism wasn't trendy, it was necessary. He partnered with the UN Environment Program for sustainable fashion in 2002.

→ Virtual companies in the '90s weren't a choice, they were survival. No zoom, no Slack, just email lists and flying to meet people.

The FBI story at the beginning? You'll have to listen for that one.

Check out Austin's Overpressure podcast if you want conversations about building something from nothing, exporting from nowhere, and paving the way for an entire industry.