Joe Rotondo (founder of SmearCase) left a corporate job to create frozen cottage cheese (Froco). Stay with me, Joe moves with intention and has a huge amount of wisdom to share for career shifters or early-stage founders. Joe has shifted from exercise science to sustainable denim to bagels to corporate and now to disrupting the ice cream aisle.

This one's about betting on yourself, knowing when to quit versus persevere, and building a business around your life instead of the other way round.

Key quotes

📚 Books mentioned

• Atomic Habits — James Clear
• Awaken the Giant Within — Tony Robbins
• Extreme Ownership — Jocko Willink
• Alex Hormozi (referenced for the "confidence = receipts" idea)

If you're saying to yourself, "I'll do it when the timing is better " then dive in.

Megan Black and Eliana Field-Marsham are childhood friends turned co-founders of Sonni, a next-generation mineral sunscreen brand they launched 11 months ago. Before that: Estée Lauder, McKinsey, Little Spoon, and two MBAs between them.

We get into:

1. what it actually feels like to leave a job you love;
2. how a solo founder became a co-founding partnership;
3. the consideration of the female biological clock and career paths; and
4. why "not now" quietly becomes "not ever" if you let it.

Listen in to the reality of building something from the ground up — in real time.

Find Sonni at https://sonniskin.com/ and @sonniskin on Instagram.

Debs Brocklesby was a performance analyst for the New Zealand Olympic Cycling team — a specialised, high-achieving role she'd built her identity around. She's now the founder of Stoked NZ, a multi-million dollar towlie company that started from her garage.

In this episode, we get into:

1. What it feels like to be stuck in a job that looks great on paper
2. How Debs let go of who she was professionally and started over
3. Limiting beliefs — and why they don't disappear when things start working
4. Rebuilding after your original career dreams are dashed
5. How to press forward in the face of adversity
6. How she built Stoked NZ from her spare room with no money, no business background, and no plan B
7. What it means to build something genuinely purposeful — not just profitable

Debs resource recs:

Start With Why — Simon Sinek (book)
Chapter One — Daniel Flynn, founder of Thank You Social Enterprise (book — the one that's horizontal instead of vertical)
A vision board — and the practice of writing a letter to yourself as if your goals have already happened (a practice she learned from her psychology mentor)

If you're stuck on a career ladder you've climbed and can't quite see how to get off it, give this a listen.