695 episódios
- Chris and Jake Yap were two weeks from shutting down. A billion-dollar
retailer had copied every product they launched and sold them for one
tenth the price, then put it in the news - buy this coffee table from us
for $499, or from them for $49. They'd burned their business savings,
their personal savings, and taken out personal guarantee loans chasing
speed. Jake was telling his wife he wasn't sure he could make rent. Then
in those two weeks they made one switch that changed everything:
instead of testing designs, they started testing problems. Little Lively
launched last October, grew 30% compounding month on month, went
worldwide in the same month it launched, and now spends around $600,000 a
month on Meta.
In this interview, Chris and Jake break down the exact testing framework
that found their winning product, why they killed 700 SKUs to bet
everything on one, and how they built an internal AI agent that runs
across their entire company.
What you'll learn in this interview:
• The switch from testing designs to testing problems - and why it saved
the business in two weeks
• How they turned $10 wireless chargers off Alibaba into $300K cash in
their first year
• The Abundance Framework: testing up to 1,000 designs a week before
ever committing to production
• Why fast-fashion-style furniture drops became a vicious discount cycle
that nearly killed them
• How suppliers with 60-day payment terms effectively became their
investors - and the relationship approach behind it
• The 60 ROAS launch: what happens when you actually solve a real
problem
• Why they now welcome copycats - and how being 4-5 years ahead on the
roadmap makes competitors into free marketing
• Why they launched worldwide in the same month instead of proving one
market first
• "Australia is small and hard, the US is big and easy" - the contrarian
take on market selection
• Caesar: the company-wide AI agent living in their Slack that their
team used to build an entire ERP system from scratch
If you're running a DTC brand, drowning in SKUs and discounts, or trying
to figure out how to find the one product worth betting everything on,
this conversation will fundamentally change how you think about focus,
product testing, and what it takes to come back from the brink.
WANT TO GROW YOUR BRAND WITH META ADS?
Join the Foundr Operators Waitlist → https://foundr.com/operators
HOW WE CAN HELP YOU SCALE YOUR BUSINESS FASTER
Learn directly from 7, 8 & 9-figure founders inside Foundr+
Start your $1 trial → https://www.foundr.com/startdollartrial
PREFER A CUSTOM ROADMAP AND 1-ON-1 COACHING?
→ Starting from scratch? Apply here →
https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-start-application
→ Already have a store? Apply here →
https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-growth-application
CONNECT WITH NATHAN CHAN
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/nathanchan
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanhchan/
CONNECT WITH LIFELY
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/lifelyhome/
LinkedIn →https://www.linkedin.com/company/lifelyhome/
Website → https://lifely.com.au/
CONNECT WITH JAKE YAP
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/jake-yap/
CONNECT WITH CHRIS YAP
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-yap-185964198/
FOLLOW FOUNDR FOR MORE BUSINESS GROWTH STRATEGIES
YouTube → https://bit.ly/2uyvzdt
Website → https://www.foundr.com
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/foundr/
Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/foundr
Twitter → https://www.twitter.com/foundr
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/company/foundr/
Podcast → https://www.foundr.com/podcast 693: (Solo) How I Built a Billion Dollar Network From Nothing (And How You Can Too)
10/08/2026 | 9minI get this all the time. DMs, emails, some version of "hey Nathan, can I pick your brain?" And I get it, the intention is good. But here is what that message actually says to the person receiving it: I want your most valuable asset, your time, and I am going to give you nothing in return.
Here is the thing: I grew up in the suburbs with zero entrepreneurial connections. No successful friends, no business-owning parents, no network to speak of. Every single room I have ever been in, I built my way into from nothing. And the principle that made it possible is stupidly simple.
In this episode, I share the serve first, ask later framework and walk through exactly how I used it to land interviews with Richard Branson four months into building Foundr, connect with Gary Vee, Mark Cuban, and Arianna Huffington, and build a network that has carried me through some of the hardest seasons of my career.
Here's what you'll take away:
Why "can I pick your brain?" is broken and what it signals to the person on the other end
The one question that should drive every networking interaction: how can I genuinely help this person and expect nothing in return
How framing the ask around someone's mission, not your need, is what got Richard Branson to say yes to a four month old magazine
The actual playbook for building from zero: how to figure out your currency, find the right person, and reach out with a specific offer tied to what they are working on right now
Why stopping putting successful people on a pedestal is the mindset shift that changes how every conversation starts
Why you need both peers and mentors in your network and what each one does for you that the other cannot
If you have been waiting until you have more followers, a bigger platform, or something impressive to show before reaching out to people you want to learn from, this episode will show you that you already have more to offer than you think.
If you're loving this solo series, I'd love to hear your feedback. Email me directly at nathan@foundr.com — I read every reply. Hope you enjoy it.
WANT TO GROW YOUR BRAND WITH META ADS?
Join the Foundr Operators Waitlist → https://foundr.com/operators
HOW WE CAN HELP YOU SCALE YOUR BUSINESS FASTER
Learn directly from 7, 8 & 9-figure founders inside Foundr+
Start your $1 trial → https://www.foundr.com/startdollartrial
PREFER A CUSTOM ROADMAP AND 1-ON-1 COACHING?
→ Starting from scratch? Apply here → https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-start-application
→ Already have a store? Apply here → https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-growth-application
CONNECT WITH NATHAN CHAN
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/nathanchan
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanhchan/
FOLLOW FOUNDR FOR MORE BUSINESS GROWTH STRATEGIES
YouTube → https://bit.ly/2uyvzdt
Website → https://www.foundr.com
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/foundr/
Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/foundr
Twitter → https://www.twitter.com/foundr
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/company/foundr/
Podcast → https://www.foundr.com/podcast- Narelle Plapp started Food for Health twenty years ago making recipes
for patients who couldn't find allergy-friendly food on any shelf. She
loaded her first Woolworths order by hand - 14 pallets that showed up
via fax and had to be paid on delivery, funded by $13,000 from her
parents. One SKU eventually did over $2 million in a single retailer.
Then she did something most brand founders never attempt: she borrowed
$8 million, bought a paddock, and built her own factory. Nine years
later, Grain and Bake is a $35 million business - targeting $45 million
this year - manufacturing for some of Australia's biggest food brands,
running 24 hours a day, five days a week.
In this interview, Narelle breaks down what it actually costs to
manufacture an allergy-friendly bar, the brutal reality of retailer
margins most founders don't see until it's too late, and how she
convinced the bank to back a factory before she had a single confirmed
customer.
What you'll learn in this interview:
• How she got her first Woolworths ranging by making sure friends and
family bought out every trial store
• Why she borrowed $8M to build a factory on a paddock - and the soft
commitments from brands that got the bank across the line
• What it actually costs to manufacture an allergy-friendly bar - the
hidden 10-hour cleans, swabs, and 8-person cleaning crews most founders
never budget for
• The $0.40 per bar reality - and how to work backwards from RRP to know
if your margins will survive retail
• Why retailer category margins have jumped from 35% to 55% minimum over
20 years - and what that means for your P&L before you pitch Coles
or Woolies
• The 13-week clock: how long you have to prove velocity on shelf before
you get cut
• How a $4M investment in automated cartoning increased her line output
by 30% - and why she passed the savings to her brand clients
• Why she trawled Europe to find the right oven - and what it takes to
commission a factory when you've never built one before
• The Grain and Bake client model: why manufacturing for other brands
makes her a partner in their success, not just a supplier
• What she'd tell every CPG founder before they pitch a retailer - the
whiteboard session that changed one AFL footballer's entire business
plan
If you're building a CPG brand, trying to understand the real cost of
manufacturing and retail at scale, or just want an unfiltered view of
what Australian food manufacturing actually looks like from the inside,
this conversation will fundamentally change how you think about supply
chain, margins, and what it takes to build something that lasts 20
years.
SAVE 50% ON OMNISEND FOR 3 MONTHS
Get 50% off your first 3 months of email and SMS marketing with Omnisend with the code FOUNDR50. Just head to https://your.omnisend.com/foundr to get started.
WANT TO GROW YOUR BRAND WITH META ADS?
Join the Foundr Operators Waitlist → https://foundr.com/operators
HOW WE CAN HELP YOU SCALE YOUR BUSINESS FASTER
Learn directly from 7, 8 & 9-figure founders inside Foundr+
Start your $1 trial → https://www.foundr.com/startdollartrial
PREFER A CUSTOM ROADMAP AND 1-ON-1 COACHING?
→ Starting from scratch? Apply here →
https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-start-application
→ Already have a store? Apply here →
https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-growth-application
CONNECT WITH NATHAN CHAN
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/nathanchan
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanhchan/
CONNECT WITH NARELLE PLAP
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/narelleplapp/
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/narelle-plapp-27b3771a/
Website → https://grainandbakeco.com.au/
FOLLOW FOUNDR FOR MORE BUSINESS GROWTH STRATEGIES
YouTube → https://bit.ly/2uyvzdt
Website → https://www.foundr.com
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/foundr/
Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/foundr
Twitter → https://www.twitter.com/foundr
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/company/foundr/
Podcast → https://www.foundr.com/podcast 691: Anastasia's $850K Brand Collapsed To $42K A Month - Then She Tripled It Herself
05/08/2026 | 51minAnastasia Chapman came up with the idea for her brand where all good bathroom ideas start - sitting on a toilet, hiding a competitor's product she was too embarrassed to be seen with. She developed the formula in an Airbnb in Cape Town, mixing batch after batch and testing them by dropping samples into wine glasses of water. She hand-poured her first 50,000 units in her mum's garage. Then, after her biggest-ever year, a trademark dispute forced her to legally change the brand name overnight - and the meta ads machine she'd built her entire business on collapsed within two months. This is the story of the rebuild.
In this episode, Anastasia is unusually candid about the whole messy arc: building Loui (formerly Lou Drops) as a complete e-commerce beginner, scaling to $850K on the back of just three winning ads, watching it crash to a $42K month after the rebrand, and clawing her way back by finally taking control of the ads she'd always outsourced.
What you'll learn in this interview:
The exact validation method she used before spending real money - handing friends five numbered samples and a "poop scorecard," then living with the product in her bathroom for months until she got it right
Why she developed the product in 2022 but didn't properly launch until 2024 - and how she kept a full-time job while the business slowly proved itself
How a trademark cease-and-desist forced a full rebrand right after she'd paid for 30,000 units of packaging - and the timeline she had to negotiate just to sell through existing stock
The hard lesson about platform dependency: how being reliant on three winning ads and one outsourced media buyer left her exposed when it all stopped working
Why she fired the person running her ads and took the account in-house - and what she discovered was actually being wasted once she understood the numbers herself
The specific ad account restructure that turned things around: consolidating from scattered lookalike campaigns and multiple ad sets into a cleaner ABO testing structure
The unit economics that actually matter beyond ROAS - add-to-cart cost, cost per purchase, frequency, and hook rate - and how knowing her kill threshold changed how fast she tests
Why founder-led ads beat every expensive UGC creator she hired - and how a skit ad she was mortified to film "started printing money" overnight
How she structures a solo founder's week around three "big rocks," swallows the toad first, and protects her time from busywork and AI rabbit holes
The retail arm quietly growing alongside DTC - now in over 300 stores - and why an outside audit of her website and offer unlocked the next stage of growth
If you're a solo founder who feels like the whole business rests on your shoulders - or you've built something on a channel you don't fully control and you can feel how fragile that is - this episode will hit home. Anastasia's story is proof that the answer usually isn't a white knight who rides in to save you. It's the far less glamorous work of understanding your own business well enough that nobody else has to.
SAVE 50% ON OMNISEND FOR 3 MONTHS
Get 50% off your first 3 months of email and SMS marketing with Omnisend with the code FOUNDR50. Just head to https://your.omnisend.com/foundr to get started.
WANT TO GROW YOUR BRAND WITH META ADS?
Join the Foundr Operators Waitlist → https://foundr.com/operators
HOW WE CAN HELP YOU SCALE YOUR BUSINESS FASTER
Learn directly from 7, 8 & 9-figure founders inside Foundr+
Start your $1 trial → https://www.foundr.com/startdollartrial
PREFER A CUSTOM ROADMAP AND 1-ON-1 COACHING?
→ Starting from scratch? Apply here →
https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-start-application
→ Already have a store? Apply here →
https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-growth-application
CONNECT WITH BY ANASTASIA CHAPMAN
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/iamstais/
Brand Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/tryloui/
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/anastasia-chapman/
Website → https://tryloui.com/
FOLLOW FOUNDR FOR MORE BUSINESS GROWTH STRATEGIES
YouTube → https://bit.ly/2uyvzdt
Website → https://www.foundr.com
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/foundr/
Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/foundr
Twitter → https://www.twitter.com/foundr
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/company/foundr/
Podcast → https://www.foundr.com/podcast- At some point, if you are building a DTC brand and getting traction, someone is going to reach out. An aggregator, a private equity firm, a bigger competitor. And most founders have no idea what to do when that happens because nobody ever walks you through it.
Here is the thing: that cold email landing in your inbox is not random. There are analysts sitting in offices right now scraping the internet for fast growing Shopify stores, looking for founders who might be ready to tap out. And they are hoping they caught you on a bad day.
In this episode, I walk through everything I have learned about acquisition conversations, from the first time someone tried to buy Foundr twelve months in, to the advice I gave a close friend that led to a life changing exit after fifteen years of building.
Here's what you'll take away:
Why you always take the call, even if you are nowhere near ready to sell, and what you can learn from it
Why the worst time to sell is when you are desperate and the best time is when everything is working
The questions to ask in any acquisition conversation that will teach you more about your own business than years of operating alone
How to hold your cards close without shutting the conversation down entirely
Why businesses are bought not sold, and what that means for how you should be approaching your growth right now
The warning signs that a buyer is trying to get you to sell it in your mind before the deal is done, and what that costs founders who fall for it
If you have ever received one of these emails and did not know whether to reply, delete it, or get excited, this episode will give you a clear framework for handling it the right way.
If you're loving this solo series, I'd love to hear your feedback. Email me directly at nathan@foundr.com — I read every reply. Hope you enjoy it.
WANT TO GROW YOUR BRAND WITH META ADS?
Join the Foundr Operators Waitlist → https://foundr.com/operators
HOW WE CAN HELP YOU SCALE YOUR BUSINESS FASTER
Learn directly from 7, 8 & 9-figure founders inside Foundr+
Start your $1 trial → https://www.foundr.com/startdollartrial
PREFER A CUSTOM ROADMAP AND 1-ON-1 COACHING?
→ Starting from scratch? Apply here → https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-start-application
→ Already have a store? Apply here → https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-growth-application
CONNECT WITH NATHAN CHAN
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/nathanchan
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanhchan/
FOLLOW FOUNDR FOR MORE BUSINESS GROWTH STRATEGIES
YouTube → https://bit.ly/2uyvzdt
Website → https://www.foundr.com
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/foundr/
Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/foundr
Twitter → https://www.twitter.com/foundr
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/company/foundr/
Podcast → https://www.foundr.com/podcast
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Sobre The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan
Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan.
About the show:
For over a decade, The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan has been a leading entrepreneurship podcast for open-book conversations with, by, and for founders. Whether you're starting, building, or dreaming about your business, The Foundr Podcast is where you can access experienced founders who've been in your shoes to learn their proven methods, lessons from failure, and inspirational stories.
Past guests include Emma Grede, Mark Cuban, Neil Patel, Kendra Scott, Alex Hormozi, Trinny Woodall, Tim Ferriss, Sophia Amoruso, Simon Sinek, Tony Robbins, Amy Porterfield, Ed Mylett, Michelle Zatlyn, Reid Hoffman, Scooter Braun, Dany Garcia, Marc Lore, Ariana Huffington, Pat Flynn, Lewis Howes, Jordan Harbinger, and many more.
About the host:
Nathan Chan is the CEO of Foundr and the creator of The Foundr Podcast. Chan literally started from knowing nothing. He was just an average guy working in a 9-5 job he utterly hated. He knew nothing about entrepreneurship, nothing about startups, nothing about marketing, and nothing about online or how to build a business. In the past decade, Chan's built Foundr into a global leader in entrepreneurial education, helping tens of thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs start and scale their businesses.
Need help with your business?
Visit foundr.com/foundrplustrial to join a global community of entrepreneurs, gain access to proven strategies, and fast-track your business growth confidently.
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