Austin Holmes just dropped a conversation with Stephen Semple that's equal parts marketing wisdom and partnership lessons.

The guy's in his 60s and started with a Bachelor of Commerce in marketing back when they were teaching direct mail instead of social media. Now he's running a performance-based marketing agency in Ontario, Canada, where his team shares in client growth, copywriters earn more than market rate, and nobody has to become a manager to make good money.

His best stories? Not the quick wins. It's working for free during COVID to keep retail clients alive when they were completely shuttered. It's turning case studies into stories that got 700,000+ views on his TEDx talk (when the average is 1,200). It's taking a jeweler from $1 million to $30-40 million in sales. It's watching Getto Heating and Air Conditioning go from financial distress to a $500 million private equity exit in seven years, all through story-based campaigns.
Quick gems from the episode:
→ Origin stories build trust: tell the moment you started, the emotion behind it, the person you talked to first
→ Performance-based models create natural alignment. When you grow, they grow. Celebrate together.
→ Don't pull people onto big stages too early. Reps matter. His podcast is 230 episodes in the early ones weren't as good.
→ When clients fight your core principles, part ways. They haven't bought into your process.
→ Emotional first, logic second, it's not just a saying, it's how decisions actually get made
→ Find a mentor who's already figured it out. Roy Williams handed him a business model that took 20 years to build.

The snowboarding lifestyle in a small town north of Toronto? Just a bonus.
Check out Austin's Overpressure podcast if you want conversations about building systems that work, partnerships that matter, and creating something you never want to retire from.

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.

Austin Holmes just dropped a conversation with Samuel Watt that's equal parts business strategy and mushroom hunting wisdom.

The guy went from selling rare Scottish whiskey in the US to building Watt Advertising, a Google Ads agency that doesn't just generate leads, but tracks them deep into the sales pipeline to actually move the needle on revenue. Now he's running the business from Washington State while foraging for morels in the Pacific Northwest.

His best stories? Not the vanity metrics. It's helping clients understand that qualified leads matter more than volume. It's following prospects through the entire journey to ensure real ROI. It's recognizing opportunity when it's sitting right in front of you, like a carpet of 60 morels you almost walked past.

Quick gems from the episode:

→ A human plus a computer beats either one alone garbage in, garbage out still applies to AI

→ Pattern recognition in business is like mushroom hunting: your brain gets better at seeing opportunities the more you practice

→ The in-between is getting eaten up, it's either fully human or infinitely scalable

→ Sometimes your biggest opportunities are right in front of you, camouflaged by familiarity

Check out Austin's Overpressure podcast if you want unfiltered conversations about building, growing, and seeing what's actually there.