Founder's Journal

Hosted by Morning Brew

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637

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Jun 2025

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About the show

Alex Lieberman, the co-founder and Executive Chairman of Morning Brew, gives you an insider’s look into building businesses. Alex explores the founder’s journey, from the painful challenges of 0-to-1 to the powerful frameworks that help you scale to millions in revenue as well as the emotional rollercoaster that is present throughout.

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60 recent

June 30, 202527 min

The secret business weapon

Alex Lieberman (@businessbarista) talks about EOS, an operating system for running & scaling your business successfully. In 2019, Morning Brew used EOS to scale the business from 15 people and $3 million in revenue to 300 people and $75 million in revenue. Michael Girdley is an entrepreneur and content creator who has a holding company of 12 businesses that do $100m in annual revenue. Michael is an EOS expert, having read Traction (which is the Bible of EOS dozens of times) and applied EOS to all of his portfolio companies. By the end of this episode you’ll understand how EOS works, have tools to apply it to your business, and understand if it’s a framework you want to understand more deeply. Links: Traction by Gino Wickman: https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Get-Grip-Your-Business/dp/1936661837 EOS Tools: https://www.eosworldwide.com/eos-tools — Thanks to our presenting sponsor, Gusto. Head to www.gusto.com/alex — Check Out Alex’s Stuff: • storyarb - https://www.storyarb.com/ • growthpair - https://www.growthpair.com/ • distro - https://youdistro.com/ • X - https://x.com/businessbarista • Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-lieberman/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June 25, 202513 min

How to Find Your Zone of Genius

Alex Lieberman (@businessbarista) takes you through an exercise to recalibrate and focus on his zone of genius. The zone of genius is work that you do that brings out the best version of yourself. Follow this super easy, super quick 3-step process to find your own zone of genius. — Thanks to our presenting sponsor, Gusto. Head to www.gusto.com/alex — Check Out Alex’s Stuff: • storyarb - https://www.storyarb.com/ • growthpair - https://www.growthpair.com/ • distro - https://youdistro.com/ • X - https://x.com/businessbarista • Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-lieberman/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June 23, 202535 min

How to Get Your First 1,000 Users

Today’s read is by one of my favorite startup creators, Lenny Rachitsky. The essay, How To Kickstart & Scale a Consumer Business, breaks down the seven proven strategies to acquire your first 1,000 users as a B2C startup. I’m going to read through each of the strategies, share some examples that Lenny provides, and provide some of my own thoughts on early growth. Original essay: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/consumer-business-find-first-users — Thanks to our presenting sponsor, Gusto. Head to www.gusto.com/alex — Check Out Alex’s Stuff: • storyarb - https://www.storyarb.com/ • growthpair - https://www.growthpair.com/ • distro - https://youdistro.com/ • X - https://x.com/businessbarista • Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-lieberman/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June 18, 202525 min

13 Dangerous Psychological Biases

In 1995, Charlie Munger gave a speech called the Psychology of Human Misjudgment, which contains 25 psychological tendencies by humans that can lead to bad decision making & bad outcomes. Today, Alex shares his 13 favorite & provide examples of how they impact your abilities and success as an entrepreneur. Link to the original speech: https://fs.blog/great-talks/psychology-human-misjudgment/ Link to Poor Charlie’s Almanack: https://www.amazon.com/Poor-Charlies-Almanack-Charles-Expanded/dp/1578645018 — Thanks to our presenting sponsor, Gusto. Head to www.gusto.com/alex — Check Out Alex’s Stuff: • storyarb - https://www.storyarb.com/ • growthpair - https://www.growthpair.com/ • distro - https://youdistro.com/ • X - https://x.com/businessbarista • Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-lieberman/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June 16, 202515 min

How to Crush a Quarterly Offsite

On this episode of Founder’s Journal, I teach you how to crush a quarterly meeting. V/TO: https://www.eosworldwide.com/blog/whats-in-your-v-to Rocks 101: https://www.eosworldwide.com/blog/creating-the-best-rocks — Thanks to our presenting sponsor, Gusto. Head to www.gusto.com/alex — Check Out Alex’s Stuff: • storyarb - https://www.storyarb.com/ • growthpair - https://www.growthpair.com/ • distro - https://youdistro.com/ • X - https://x.com/businessbarista • Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-lieberman/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June 11, 202524 min

How to deal with imposter syndrome

Today I share my experiences with imposter syndrome and some techniques I use to cope with it. — Thanks to our presenting sponsor, Gusto. Head to www.gusto.com/alex — Check Out Alex’s Stuff: • storyarb - https://www.storyarb.com/ • growthpair - https://www.growthpair.com/ • distro - https://youdistro.com/ • X - https://x.com/businessbarista • Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-lieberman/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June 9, 202516 min

How to Not F*ck Up Your Meetings

Let’s face it…most meetings suck. Even when they’re set up with all the best intentions, they often end up being a waste of everyone’s time. So what can be done? Alex Lieberman has 7 important lessons to keep your meetings under control. By incorporating these lessons, you’ll know when a meeting is needed or not (Hint: most of the time, it’s not). — Thanks to our presenting sponsor, Gusto. Head to www.gusto.com/alex — Check Out Alex’s Stuff: • storyarb - https://www.storyarb.com/ • growthpair - https://www.growthpair.com/ • distro - https://youdistro.com/ • X - https://x.com/businessbarista • Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-lieberman/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June 4, 202525 min

Early days building a decacorn

Alex hands the mic to Josh Reeves, co-founder & CEO of Gusto. Josh walks us through major milestones in the first 12 months of building a multibillion dollar people platform. — Thanks to our presenting sponsor, Gusto. Head to www.gusto.com/alex — Check Out Alex’s Stuff: • storyarb - https://www.storyarb.com/ • growthpair - https://www.growthpair.com/ • distro - https://youdistro.com/ • X - https://x.com/businessbarista • Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-lieberman/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June 2, 202523 min

Focus, fresh eyes, and pet psychics

Alex does a Founder's Journal variety show, covering some of his favorite topics from the week: - Building one company vs. many - The power of channel partnerships - Pet psychics exist? - AI audio business idea - Great product thinking — Thanks to our presenting sponsor, Gusto. Head to www.gusto.com/alex — Check Out Alex’s Stuff: • storyarb - https://www.storyarb.com/ • growthpair - https://www.growthpair.com/ • distro - https://youdistro.com/ • X - https://x.com/businessbarista • Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-lieberman/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

May 28, 202517 min

I'm raising money

Alex talks about raising a preseed round for Distro & some takeaways from the process thus far. — Thanks to our presenting sponsor, Gusto. Head to www.gusto.com/alex — Check Out Alex’s Stuff: • storyarb - https://www.storyarb.com/ • growthpair - https://www.growthpair.com/ • distro - https://youdistro.com/ • X - https://x.com/businessbarista • Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-lieberman/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices