When founders say, “We’re ready to grow — now what?” they’re usually staring at a cold engine with no momentum. In this episode, Matt and Anne unpack why early-stage marketing feels impossible, why 90–95% of ideas fail, and why A/B testing is useless before you have volume. They dig into the real levers a small business can control: consistent output, memorable creative, and accepting that momentum is built — not predicted. From paid tests to guerrilla tactics to simply talking to someone about your idea, this conversation reframes how to think about growth when the engine hasn’t started yet.

🚨 Stuff You’ll Want to Remember:

• “Marketing works when you actually like doing it.” — Matt
• “Ideas start from conversation. Go talk to someone.” — Anne
• “You can control your creative, not the outcome.” — Matt

📡 Where to Find Us

• Anne → Fix & Form - LinkedIn
• Matt → ChipBot - LinkedIn

We sit down with marketing strategist and podcast host Kristi Mitchell, whose journey from corporate burnout to seven years of thriving entrepreneurship is anything but ordinary. Kristi opens up about her rocky exit from corporate life, the unexpected push from her husband that reignited her business, and the uncomfortable-but-transformative leap into full-time ownership.

We get into the messy reality of early clients, learning to trust yourself, surviving (and evolving through) a pandemic, and why “living in the gray” might be the most powerful skill a founder can build. Kristi shares how she shifted from doing all the marketing “things” to helping founders fall in love with marketing — by embracing authenticity, clarity, and a whole lot of inner work.

From boundaries and burnout to inbound strategies and personal evolution, this conversation is packed with insights on building a business and a self you’re proud of. And yes… Anne and Kristi absolutely go all-in on the fraud-filled world of SEO.

🚨 Stuff You’ll Want to Remember:

• “You have to get comfortable in the gray — that’s business ownership.” — Kristi Mitchell
• “Marketing starts working the moment you stop forcing it.” — Kristi Mitchell
• “People do business with people. Just be yourself.” — Kristi Mitchell

📡 Where to Find Us

• Kristi → UNF*DGE Your Marketing Podcast
• Anne → Fix & Form - LinkedIn
• Matt → ChipBot - LinkedIn

Matt and Anne dive into the strange tension between being wildly busy yet weirdly unfazed by it. Matt’s been running on four to six hours of sleep while juggling new ChipBot features, US Open training, and a schedule only a “partial nomad worker” could maintain — yet insists he’s not brain-dead, just operating in “GPT-5 Thinking Mode.” Anne challenges him on how he stays functional, which leads them both into a conversation about adrenaline, flow, burnout, and why table tennis gives Matt something business never can.

🚨 Stuff You’ll Want to Remember:

• “Hard decisions are the easiest ones — it’s the small ones that stop you in your tracks.” — Matt
• “Your kids’ memories are built from the input you give them.” — Anne

📡 Where to Find Us

• Anne → Fix & Form - LinkedIn
• Matt → ChipBot - LinkedIn

Matt and Anne sit down for a wide-open conversation about one of the biggest questions hovering over today’s tech world: Are we living in an AI bubble? They break down the trillion-dollar AI contracts, why enterprise AI pilots are failing at staggering rates, and how data pipelines—not the models—are the real bottleneck. From trust, regulation, and bias inside the weights… to AI as a household tool… to whether companies have already squeezed as much juice out of AI hype as possible, they pull the thread all the way through.

🚨 Stuff You’ll Want to Remember

• “AI isn’t failing because the models are bad — it’s failing because companies don’t know how to execute.” — Matt
• “The world is one big test case right now.” — Anne
• “We reward AI for looking right. That’s the dangerous part.” — Matt
• “Raising a family today isn’t just expensive — it’s a cultural tug-of-war.” — Anne

📡 Where to Find Us

• Anne → Fix & Form - LinkedIn
• Matt → ChipBot - LinkedIn

Matt and Anne strip away the motivational-poster clichés and unpack the uncomfortable reality behind the phrase founders love to use but rarely define honestly. Anne opens up about the tension between ambition and parenthood, the limits of her available time, and how she’s restructuring her days to protect her flow state. Matt breaks down why “all in” is less about hours and more about output — and why you can’t be fully committed to two things at once without sacrificing quality.

🚨 Stuff You’ll Want to Remember:

• “All in means you stand by your cards regardless of the outcome.” — Matt
• “You can’t be fully committed to two things and expect full-quality output.” — Matt
• “Flow state happens when your body isn’t in the way and your mind is clear.” — Matt
• “We control how we spend our time. That’s the reminder.” — Anne

📡 Where to Find Us

• Anne → Fix & Form - LinkedIn
• Matt → ChipBot - LinkedIn

Matt and Anne go deep into the real psychological engine behind entrepreneurship — the difference between being driven and being ambitious, why founders often operate on little sleep, and how creativity hits at 2 A.M. when you’re chasing a breakthrough. Matt breaks down how he finally cracked Reddit ads after 20 days of failures, why pattern-breaking beats templates, and how AI-powered manga-style creatives unexpectedly outperformed everything else.

🚨 Stuff You’ll Want to Remember:

• “Once you’re in the creative space, you’re on your own.” — Matt
• “We hire for vibe and compatibility, not talent alone.” — Anne

📡 Where to Find Us

• Anne → Fix & Form - LinkedIn
• Matt → ChipBot - LinkedIn

Matt and Anne go deep into one of the most uncomfortable truths of entrepreneurship: realizing you might be the bottleneck. Anne shares a massive breakthrough about her role inside Fix & Form, why she's stepping out of day-to-day operations, and how she’s restructuring the entire business to scale. From hiring a Director of Ops (or chief-of-staff-type generalist) to rethinking deliverables, deadlines, and client flow, Anne walks through the mental shift that got her here.

She also reveals Fix & Form’s bold new direction — going all-in on becoming Denver’s premier luxury branding agency, ditching national virtual work, niching into the Denver metro experience, and redefining the internal systems needed to support bigger, longer, more transformational brand projects. Matt challenges her thinking along the way, pressure-tests assumptions, and highlights the make-or-break points for competing locally.

🚨 Stuff You’ll Want to Remember:

• “If you stop to fix ops, it’s really hard to kick back up in biz dev — it’s left-brain vs. right-brain.” — Matt
• “I’ve been trying to be a person I’m not. And it’s been holding us back.” — Anne
• “Don’t wait for the perfect hire. One big client can fund the next step.” — Matt

📡 Where to Find Us

• Anne → Fix & Form - LinkedIn
• Matt → ChipBot - LinkedIn

Matt and Anne dive into what it really feels like to run a company while juggling detail-oriented work, shifting identities, marketing experiments, and the constant pressure of “the one task that keeps everything alive.”

Anne breaks down her complete overhaul of November — canceling commitments, resetting availability, rebuilding boundaries, and finally owning how her energy, cycle, and creative demands shape her productivity. Matt shares the three buckets he uses every single morning to survive ChipBot’s dynamic chaos, plus the real emotional cost of ignoring the one thing that truly moves the business forward.

If you’re a founder juggling vision, execution, burnout prevention, and the guilt of needing more flow-state time… this one is going to hit deep.

🚨 Stuff You’ll Want to Remember:

• “What is the least amount of hours for the greatest amount of outcome today?” — Matt
• “I control the energy of my calendar — that’s mine.” — Anne
• “Detail-oriented mode only matters if it serves the burning problem.” — Matt
• “Canceling is clarity — not failure.” — Anne

📡 Where to Find Us

• Anne → Fix & Form - LinkedIn
• Matt → ChipBot - LinkedIn