A cashew, a cave, and a credit line changed everything. We sit down with Rebel Cheese co‑founders Fred and Kirsten to map the real path from an elegant 1,200‑square‑foot deli in Austin to a D2C‑first brand backed by Mark Cuban—without losing sight of profit, people, or product quality. You’ll hear how they bootstrapped the first buildout, kept margins front and center, and then weathered COVID by turning front‑of‑house staff into delivery drivers, setting up online ordering in days, and using PPP and EIDL the way they were intended: to protect jobs and buy time.

A New York Times feature resulted in new customers and orders from coast to coast, exposing gaps in operations that they quickly closed. With demand rising, they secured multiple rounds of SBA financing first to build out a 9,000‑square‑foot facility and later to acquire it. They applied an operator’s lens to every dollar: if CapEx didn’t lift contribution margin, it waited. That mindset paid off when Shark Tank called. Mark Cuban made his fastest offer after tasting their cave‑aged vegan cheeses, and closing the deal meant meeting diligence as extensive as SBA underwriting. The upside wasn’t just capital—it was discipline. They rebuilt fulfillment for cold‑chain reliability, turned spikes into systems, and made D2C their primary engine.

We also get into the strategic acquisition of a stall in NYC’s Essex Market, why owning more of the vertical reduces marketing costs, and how a team that started with dishwashers now includes leaders who grew from day one. Expect candid talk on ROI‑first growth, balancing speed with sanity, and the playbook for combining equity and debt without losing control. If you care about e‑commerce logistics, CPG financing, and building culture while scaling, this conversation delivers practical insight and genuine heart.

Enjoyed the episode? Follow and rate the show, share it with a founder who needs a realistic financing roadmap, and message Keith on LinkedIn at Keith Kohler1 with your biggest takeaway.

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A hit song funded a hit dessert. Matt, the founder of Hiatus Cheesecake, went from baking with his mom to serving fine dining rooms, then navigated a leap into Whole Foods and, later, Kroger’s Go Fresh & Local Accelerator. We unpack the real story behind the glossy headlines: how a single anchor restaurant paid for a commercial kitchen, how packaging and UPC readiness opened doors with distributors, and how a pandemic-era retail launch became a proving ground for operations, data, and grit.

We dig into the messy middle every CPG founder knows too well: cash flow gaps that stretch from purchase orders to 60-day terms, the pressure to choose between making it yourself or handing the recipe to a co‑packer, and the costly consequences when packaging fails at scale. Matt shares the financing stack that actually moved product—royalties, bar income, family checks, CDFIs, microloans, distributor-enabled ingredient buys, and PO financing partners—plus the vendor negotiations and constant communication that kept trust alive when delays hit. The packaging crisis forced layoffs and a hard pivot to foodservice, but it also sparked a smarter rebuild with domestic packaging and tighter supply planning.

Along the way, mentors and cohorts helped turn a product pitch into an investor pitch. A $25K win, a lean crowdfunding raise, and cleaner financials attracted advisors ready to invest in a clear path to returns. If you’re building in food and beverage, you’ll walk away with practical tactics on retail readiness, distributor onboarding, cash flow management, co‑packer evaluation, and how to present numbers investors actually believe. More than anything, you’ll hear why hope isn’t blind optimism—it’s the discipline of shortening the time between a setback and a solution.

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The most dangerous myth in entertainment is the lone genius. We sit down with LA creators Byron Manuel and Rich Morrow to show how community, discipline, and smarter money beat that myth—and how filmmakers can keep far more of their work.

Byron and Rich trace their path from athletics to the arts, sharing how structure, coaching, and resilience translated to sets where permits fall through, lights die, and life happens mid‑shoot. Then we lift the hood on traditional film financing: investor capital, recoupment, and the 50-50 profit split that often leaves artists dividing a thin slice. We compare that to a small‑business approach—clean books, recurring revenue, bank lending—and walk through why paying single‑digit interest can be wildly better than giving away lifelong equity.

This conversation is equal parts playbook and pep talk. We cover practical steps to set up a production company, document profits, and become lendable; how to stack funding with debt, incentives, and pre‑sales; and why day rates, while tempting, trade away ownership. We also get real about mental health, the power of a trusted partner, and the belief that art can save lives. Community isn’t a buzzword here; it’s the engine that makes films possible and keeps creators in the fight when the nos pile up.

Looking ahead, Byron and Rich are building an ecosystem: a new podcast to teach the business of creativity, films that reflect millennial stories and amplify underheard voices, and a collaborative studio model that says we don’t wait, we create. If you’re a filmmaker, actor, or storyteller who wants control, this is your blueprint for financing, ownership, and impact.

Watch Swoon on YouTube, The Black Network, Samsung TV, and Roku. Follow Visionary Vue on YouTube and Instagram, and connect with Keith on LinkedIn at KeithKohler1. Loved the episode? Subscribe, share it with a creative friend, and leave a review to help more artists find the path to ownership.

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What if your fundraising edge isn’t a prettier deck, but the energy you bring into the room? We sit down with Miami operator and “crypto guy” Kyle Sonlin to unpack how conviction, curiosity, and consistent behavior become the signals investors actually trust. The journey winds through a decade of Miami tech growth, the post-remote shift in capital access, and why in-person time still matters when you’re reading character and momentum.

Kyle pulls back the curtain on tokenization in plain language: move cap tables to a shared digital ledger, compress the compliance burden, and make private markets more liquid without ditching guardrails. He connects this with the JOBS Act’s broader investor base and explains why automation is no longer a nice-to-have when you’re handling cross-border investors at scale. Then we get tactical: how he reversed the pitch by collecting buy-side mandates first, why family offices decide differently than VC funds, and how “side quests” become the hidden gateway to real checks.

The standout story is a $75 million oil refinery acquisition completed with a crypto-to-fiat bridge in minutes, solving a payments headache that would have dragged for months through traditional rails. From there, Kyle outlines Global Settlement’s capital stack and strategy—multi-layered SAFEs, deal-specific SPVs, a network token aligned with clarity on the rules, private credit and trade finance, and a fully backed digital dollar to move money globally with speed and compliance. Threaded through it all is tenacity: flying to Asia on a credit card, rebuilding during a dry market, and betting on a thesis grounded in real-world frictions and practical tech.

If you’re a founder or investor navigating family offices, cross-border capital, or the future of private markets, you’ll walk away with a playbook that is equal parts relationship and rigor. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s raising, and leave a quick review telling us the biggest financing bottleneck you want solved next.

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What if your financing strategy was as clean and simple as your ingredient list? We sit down with Hector Gutierrez of JOI, the plant base brand built on “just one ingredient,” to unpack how a concentrated product, a flexible channel mix, and disciplined cash flow turned a pre-pandemic seed round into a profitable, resilient business. From the early days of almond paste sold B2B to cafés to a brand platform that spans DTC, Amazon, foodservice, and select retail, this is a masterclass in using the right capital at the right time.

Hector walks us through the investor dinner that galvanized their seed raise, the overnight shift when foodservice collapsed and e-commerce exploded, and the systems they put in place—3PL, Amazon, Shopify—to capture demand. We dig into the real numbers behind growth capital: merchant cash advances, Amazon and Shopify lending, AR financing, and how to decide between fixed or percentage remittances. The tactical takeaway is clear: map your cash cycles by channel, prioritize suppliers to protect inventory, and let your model decide the instrument.

We also get personal about the psychology of fundraising. Scarcity vs abundance, valuation vs dilution, and why “raise because you can” can backfire if the fit isn’t right. JOI’s approach favors profitability as leverage, retail as a credibility and awareness play, foodservice as a margin engine, and DTC as a data-rich community channel. With new products rolling out, partnerships with Whole Foods and Target, and foodservice formats designed for speed, JOI proves that resilience is a strategy you can scale.

If this helped you think differently about capital, channels, or unit economics, follow the show, share it with a founder who needs it, and leave a quick review so more builders can find these conversations.

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Keith Kohler launches his new podcast "How I Financed It" with a candid conversation featuring Ora Organic co-founders Ron and Will, who share their decade-long journey from maxed-out credit cards in the beginning to sustainable profitability today.

The founders reveal how their personal motivations—Will's frustration with supplement transparency during his "junk food vegan" days and Ron's family health challenges—fueled their mission to create plant-based, organic supplements with traceable ingredients. Their financing path unfolds like a masterclass in entrepreneurial resilience, starting with $150,000 from friends and family, progressing through SBA loans, and leveraging a Shark Tank appearance to secure a million-dollar convertible note.

What makes this conversation particularly valuable is the founders' transparency about pivoting when necessary. They explain why they scaled back retail operations despite initial success, focusing instead on direct-to-consumer channels where their marketing dollars worked harder. When the pandemic dried up equity markets, they resisted the common advice to "take a hatchet" to their business, instead making incremental efficiency improvements that preserved growth while achieving profitability.

The conversation offers a wealth of practical financing wisdom rarely shared so openly. Will admits he would have "started with the finance side earlier," focusing on profitability from day one, while Ron emphasizes maintaining relationships through difficult times. Their recent equity financing marks not an overnight success but the culmination of calculated decisions, strategic pivots, and unwavering commitment to product quality.

Whether you're bootstrapping your first venture or navigating growth challenges in an established business, this episode delivers invaluable insights into financing options beyond the traditional equity path. Connect with Keith on LinkedIn at Keith Kohler1 to continue the conversation about financing strategies for your business journey.

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Margarita Womack never intended to build a frozen empanada empire. Eight years ago, she was a PhD scientist with Colombian roots who simply wanted to help a friend secure a visa through a small catering business. Today, she's the founder of Maspanadas, with over 50 employees, a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility, and nationwide distribution.

This candid conversation reveals the complete financing journey behind Maspanadas, from kitchen table experiments to multi-million dollar fundraising. Womack shares how she bootstrapped initially through catering and farmers markets, discovering empanadas were her bestsellers and pivoting the entire business model. When expansion required capital, she turned first to family, securing $150,000 to take over an existing manufacturing facility – the first step in a financial journey that would eventually include convertible notes, SBA loans, and a seed round that dragged on for nearly three years.

The pandemic brought both crisis and opportunity, forcing Maspanadas to pivot when it lost most of its food service business overnight. Womack's science background proved invaluable as she methodically tested and validated each business decision, expanding into private label manufacturing while gradually building retail presence. Through it all, she invested "every single cent" her family had, even using her home as collateral for equipment loans.

What makes this story particularly powerful is Womack's honesty about the personal toll of entrepreneurship. As a mother of three balancing multiple roles, she dispels the myth of "having it all," instead describing how she learned to focus on one priority at a time while building a company that now provides opportunities for dozens of employees, many of whom are immigrants like herself. She's even established a foundation to help employees with financial literacy and accessing community resources.

Ready to start your own entrepreneurial journey? Learn from Margarita's experiences navigating the complex world of CPG financing, and discover why persistence, adaptability, and community might be even more important than the money itself.

From a comfortable engineering career to the brink of financial collapse and back again, Myles Powell's entrepreneurial story embodies both the exhilarating highs and crushing lows of building a CPG food brand from scratch.

What begins as a childhood love for family dinner conversations transforms into Myles Comfort Foods, a journey that tests Powell's resilience at every turn. With remarkable candor, he recounts the path from homemade barbecue sauce experiments to landing products in Target and Whole Foods – a path marked by maxed-out credit cards, personal loans, and even debt collectors calling daily at the lowest points.

Powell's evolution is fascinating: starting as a civil engineer who couldn't imagine doing the same job for 40 years, becoming a bootstrapping entrepreneur making sauce in commercial kitchens, then cycling between full-time business ownership and returning to corporate stability when finances became too precarious. The vulnerability with which he shares these transitions offers rare insight into the emotional and financial realities facing food entrepreneurs.

Perhaps most valuable are the hard-earned lessons that emerged from his struggles. "Know your customer better than you know yourself" and "grow within your means" stand as powerful counterpoints to the typical startup narrative that glorifies rapid expansion and massive fundraising. His concept of "the responsibility of freedom" perfectly captures the double-edged sword of entrepreneurship – the autonomy comes with immense accountability.

The turning point comes when Powell makes the difficult decision to shut down operations in 2022, regroup with a co-founder who complements his skills, and relaunch with a more strategic, sustainable approach. This reset demonstrates that entrepreneurial success often requires stepping back before moving forward.

Want to understand what really happens behind the scenes of building a food brand? Listen to Myles Powell's raw, unfiltered story of persistence through financial hardship, the mental toll of entrepreneurship, and ultimately finding a path to sustainable growth in the challenging CPG landscape.