The Business Method: Interviewing Billionaires, Billion Dollar Founders & the World’s Most Successful People 🎧🔥

2-10 minute high-performance clips delivered to you Monday & Friday from our top interviews

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Today we’re diving into a conversation about one of the most important shifts happening in business right now. Did you know the fastest-growing segment of entrepreneurship and business ownership is actually women? And at the forefront of that movement is today’s guest, a true powerhouse whose story is as inspiring as it is game-changing.

Our guest is Suneera Madhani — a visionary entrepreneur, FinTech innovator, and champion for women in business. Suneera is the trailblazing founder of Worth, a revolutionary platform that uses patent-pending AI technology to help small businesses gain fair access to capital. It’s a bold, brilliant idea that’s leveling the playing field for entrepreneurs everywhere.

But her story didn’t start at the top. Before founding Worth, Suneera built Stax Payments from the ground up, transforming a simple idea into a multibillion-dollar company with over $140 million in recurring revenue. Along the way, she made history as one of the first female CEOs to build a unicorn — a rare feat in the male-dominated world of FinTech.

Her journey is one of resilience, grit, and relentless ambition. From selling credit card machines out of the trunk of a Volkswagen Beetle to being laughed out of boardrooms, she’s faced every challenge head-on and proved the doubters wrong time and again. Today, she’s not only a successful entrepreneur but also an angel investor, advisor to more than a dozen boards, and a sought-after speaker who’s shared her wisdom on some of the world’s biggest stages — from Meta and Harvard Business School to South by Southwest and beyond.

In this episode, we’ll unpack Suneera’s incredible rise, her mission to shatter ceilings for women in business, and the lessons she’s learned while bootstrapping billion-dollar ventures, navigating biases in leadership, and balancing the demands of entrepreneurship with family life.

It’s a masterclass in leadership, resilience, and what it takes to redefine an entire industry — and you’re going to want to hear every word.

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Listeners, today’s episode is a masterclass in innovation, tech leadership, and entrepreneurship from someone who’s seen it all.

We’re joined by Ross Buhrdorf, one of the foundational figures in the rise of the internet. As the founding CTO of HomeAway, Ross helped scale the company to a $3.9 billion acquisition by Expedia. But that’s only part of the story. Before that, he was at the heart of one of the internet’s earliest search engines—Excite.com—which at one point was bigger than Google.

Now, Ross is back in the arena with his latest venture: ZenBusiness, a mission-driven company helping millions of entrepreneurs start and grow their own businesses with confidence and ease.

In this conversation, we go deep on:

  What it was like building Excite.com in the early days of the web

Whether you’re a founder, a tech enthusiast, or someone dreaming of launching your own business, this episode is packed with powerful takeaways and firsthand wisdom from a true digital pioneer.

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https://www.zenbusiness.com/

[email protected]

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Many of us entrepreneurs in the internet/tech world are younger. Most of us are in our 20’s and 30’s because we grew up with computers.  Every now and then we get a guest that has been involved with tech and internet companies since before the Dot Com Boom and it is exciting to hear their stories because it seems like they have seen it all.

Today’s guest is Ross Buhrdorf and he is the founding CTO that worked with the global giant HomeAway.com for eleven years until they sold to Expedia for $3.9 billion.  Ross was also involved with one of the first major search engines Excite.com that was once bigger than Google. Today, Ross and I chat about his time with Excite and HomeAway and what it was like building these companies up to become tech giants.  Later in the episode, Ross shares with us about how he sets goals and how he uses neuro-linguistic programming to help create the success that he has had. Lastly, Ross shares about his newest venture Zen Business, that is helping entrepreneurs incorporate easily for a very low cost in any state of their choosing. 

In this episode, we explore:

✅ Why Ross Lives in Austin, Texas

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https://www.zenbusiness.com/

[email protected]

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Listeners, welcome back to the pod! Today, we have an extraordinary guest—a true business mastermind who has shaped the strategies of some of the world’s most successful companies. Jay Abraham is widely regarded as one of the greatest marketing and business strategists of all time, and he’s here to share his wisdom with us.

Known as the “$50 Billion Man,” Jay has worked with over 10,000 businesses across 1,000 industries, helping them unlock hidden revenue, scale exponentially, and gain a competitive edge. His expertise has influenced Fortune 500 companies, small business owners, and top entrepreneurs looking to maximize their impact and profits.

As the author of The Sticking Point Solution and Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got, Jay has developed powerful frameworks for growth, differentiation, and business success. His insights have transformed industries, and today, we have the privilege of diving deep into his game-changing strategies.

In this episode, we explore:

This conversation is full of proven strategies, deep insights, and practical wisdom that can transform the way you approach business and life.

In addition to his written work, Jay hosts the Breakthroughs at The Beach event, a three-day intensive workshop where business owners receive personalized strategies to unlock significant growth and profitability. The upcoming session is scheduled for May 7-9, 2025.

For more insights from Jay, connect with him on:

Let’s dive in.

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After interviewing nearly 30 billion-dollar founders, one thing is clear: They commit long-term. If you’re expecting massive success in 2-3 years, you’re thinking too small. Give it 10 years and watch what happens! 

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In 2007, I learned a life-changing lesson: the difference between a victim mindset and an accountable mindset. This episode breaks down how shifting your perspective can transform your success, relationships, and daily life. Tune in to learn how to take control.

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2-10 minute high-performance clips delivered to you Monday & Friday from our top interviews

I love incredibly successful people that still have the down-to-earth human touch. It is really enjoyable to talk with them and understand why they are who they are.  Today’s guest is one of those people and yet so much more. Janice Bryant Howroyd is the founder The ActOne Group and she is the very first African-American female to found a billion dollar company, and yes you heard me right, a billion dollar company.  

What is even more impressive about Janice is that speaking with her was like talking to an old friend. She is incredibly relatable and really a caring and authentic human being.

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Chris:

And the person I ask is Janice Bryant. Howroyd the first black woman to build a billion dollar company. 

Want to hear what she has to say. Let's hop into it. Going back to what you mentioned earlier in the interview, when you talked about your mind bouncing around all the time, Ray asks, how does Janice keep her mind in check and stay focused when it's all over the place and you see the world as a kaleidoscope?

Janice:

But I, I, I deeply, deeply enjoy letting all the light come in, let all of it come in. And then once I filter it toward an initiative. Or, or a team effort, then I believe, as a matter of fact, my team will tell you, , one of my quotes they most often use is discipline ain't a dirty word. It's not a dirty word, you know, so I think that helps balance if that's what you're going at.

I'm a highly disciplined person. .

What is your filtration process there? , you know, we all get crazy ideas and they bounce around our head and we want to start this like new side hustle or new business or new project. , what are the ones that, what's your process for finding out which ideas are legitimate and the ones you want to continue to work towards?

Oh, great. So there are four questions I asked myself. One, and this is kind of formulaic for me, Chris, so I can rattle it off. One is what do I want from it? If I do it. What's the outcome? What's the goal of it? What do I want from it? The next question is, what do I want from it? In the next 12 months, depending on where your energies are already obligated, you've only got so much time in a day that you can give.

Even though all of us have the same amount of time to work with. So what do I want from it? The ultimate? What's it going to do? What's it going to be? Then what do I want from it in the next, , 12 months? What will it take to get to the next 12 months? And that's a biggie because entrepreneurs tend to tend to be, , exuberant in our thought about our own capacity.

And then the fourth question is, what value will it have? You know, I'm very interested in being certain that the space I occupy, I leave better than when I got there better is in quotes because we all can define it differently, you know, and so that's how I filter to get to does this idea stand right now.

The other thing I do is that, okay, so I live with an iPad. I'm on an iPad right now talking with you. I love, love, love, love, love iPad. Yes, I own stock in Apple, and yes, I bought it when it was a really good deal, but I love iPad anyway, and it allows me to do so much. And my notes section is busy. I am a fierce note taker.

So I will write things down in my iPad and then I have a regular check in system where I go back. Is it still as clear to me as it was when I wrote it? If it's not, check, you know, and I move it. And so I systemize. ideas that come into my mind or initiatives. I also do that with asks when people are asking things of me, I do it that way as well.

Mom used to do it much less, uh, complicated. She would say, oh, I'll come back to it later. If I can't remember what it was, it's gone. Or if it's burning at me and turning at me that I got to get back to it, then it's up there. You know, I think some people call it putting a pin in it.

Yeah, I always tell myself if the idea keeps coming back to me, it means something that I should work towards or something I should implement.

Janice:

It can, it always doesn't mean that though. Sometimes, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, seriously. Sometimes it's the gateway to something else.

Good point. Yeah. Good point. 

And boom. There, you have it. You guys, Janice Bryant. Howroyd I love this because I, and I don't know if you can relate often feel guilty because of this beautiful mess up here. My mind, my thoughts, not harnessing them better, not using them better, not being more productive. And sometimes, , our minds can just go down rabbit holes. 

And the next thing, you know, two hours went by and we don't even know, , what happened and we forgot the task that we're working on. And I love that Janice says that she loves this beautiful mess in her brain. She absolutely loves it. She says that probably it looks like Einstein's hair and she has no agenda or no care in the world to organize it. 

She just lets it in. And filters it as best as possible. Absolutely. Absolutely incredible answer. 

And if you guys take away anything, what are the four questions that you need to ask yourself? If you want to filter through all these thoughts in your head, right? 

So what would Janice say? One. What do I want from it? Great question. Two what do I want from it in the next 12 months? Also a great question. This helps implement the short term thinking and also the long-term thinking. Is it worth my time and activity in the next 12 months. Maybe I should postpone it, or maybe I should implement it immediately, depending on what it is. 

And three, the third question. What will it take for me to achieve in the next 12 months? Again? Revisiting that question of how much time and effort and energy it will take you to achieve this idea that you have in the next 12 months and the last question.

And probably the most important. What value will it have? Will it raise the bar of my business. Will it raise the bar of my life will raise the bar of my relationships. Is it a priority or is it something that we can postpone until later? And I also love what Janice said about thoughts that are reoccurring, that you really think you should do. And I have this, I actually wanted to start a second podcast at one point. This was probably about four years ago. And I was just chewing on this idea for a new podcast and I thought it was so good and so juicy and it would be so successful. And I was convinced, , by another,, another podcaster, that's a good friend of mine and somebody I look to for advice like this, and he kept telling me, no, do not start a new podcast. 

Do not start a new podcast. What he said is expand on your current podcast. And that's why now we have almost 200 high-performance episodes. So the high-performance are the short episodes. They're generally like this one, two to 10 minutes, , from the longer interviews that we do. And I took his advice and I'm very glad that I did. Cause I didn't have the time or bandwidth to run a second podcast and I'd be exhausted and that podcast would be stagnant now. So sometimes we have these great ideas. And like Janice says they're actually a gateway to something else. 

It doesn't mean that idea is the actual thing. So. We're going to wrap it up there. You guys remember those four questions? One. What do I want from it to what I wa what do I want from it in the next 12 months? Three. What's it going to take for me to achieve in the next 12 months and for what value does it give? 

Whenever you have a thought or an idea to do a new thing? We're going to leave it at that. You guys, if you haven't checked out Janice's episode yet. Please do you won't regret it? It's episode number 544. And interview with the 32nd richest woman in the world. Make sure you check it out. 

If you like what you're hearing and you want to make sure you don't miss any of these tips, please subscribe. Here or here or wherever. Subscribe. Leave us a review and share with your friends. 

We'll see on the next episode. 

2-10 minute high-performance clips delivered to you Monday & Friday from our top interviews

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2-10 minute high-performance clips delivered to you Monday & Friday from our top interviews

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[00:00:00]

Chris: She was born in the segregated south in extreme poverty, one of 11 kids, and she built a billion dollar company. You guys welcome to the high-performance tip number 189. Of our podcast. And today I want to feature Janice Bryant. Howroyd Janice is one of the most inspirational people that I've interviewed out of 500 people. 

And what's really amazing about her is that, like I mentioned, she started in a segregated south born in 1952, where there was white people on one side of the neighborhood and black people on the other side of the neighborhood and she was born one of 11 kids in extreme poverty. 

Nevertheless, she still made her way to found and build a billion dollar company. And not only that, she was the first black woman to build a billion dollar company. 

She stands at the top of the list as the 38th richest woman in the world, and, she talks specifically in this episode, how she gained an abundance mindset and how her family, her parents taught her to have an abundance mindset and to dream. Even though she's in an extremely racist and suppressive environment during her youth for the first 24 years of her life. Let's hop into it with Janice Bryant. 

Howroyd. 

Janice: I was born in 1952 One of 11 kids, the fourth of 11 kids, same mom, same dad in Tarboro, North Carolina. , , so that can tell you a lot about just what was happening in my community at that time 

we were a segregated community, Um, , we were segregated in many ways, not just racially, but racial segregation. offered the segregation of economics and I'm glad you said we were economically poor because we were spiritually rich, quite wealthy if you think of it, and aspirationally we were full.

Mom and dad wanted for us the world that they dreamed was possible, but they didn't put boundaries on us about how that could be achieved, meaning they didn't want us to only do the things they thought we should do. Nobody had to be a doctor or lawyer, you know, a candlestick butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker.

But they did insist that education would be a platform for that. That was the hard hitting thing in my home growing up. And I never saw anybody outside of a teacher or a preacher who held a professional job who was African American unless I got pictures and stories of them from old print magazines. , there was Essence.

Ebony. Essence came later. There was Ebony. There was Sepia. And are you, are you familiar with the Georges? , the family? No, no, no. The Georges were, were the, , porters along trains. Along the rail tracks that ran from south to north on the east coast. And rather than bother to learn John or Fred or Joseph's name, everyone was called George or boy.

Okay. Okay. Wow. The George is my, my grandfather was a George. Okay. He hated it. His name was Daniel. He worked that line for many years. And nobody knew his name. , and so, they would bring products and, and, and, , items to us that we couldn't get locally. So nobody was selling black magazines in Tarboro, North Carolina.

Black focused magazines. So we'd get Ebony, Jet. Sepia delivered by the George's and everybody waited for the train to come in on the day that the magazines would come and that's where I started to get ideas about the possibility of what a black person could do And a black woman could do . We weren't seeing black people on TV.

And that was so big for us. We'd all rush home. What does that got to do with the way I grew up? Everything I grew up with a full faith in what America is and what the world is like, and, um, and could be for me and that I had a place to shape it despite what was going on day to day.

And that was the power. And I think the faith that our mom and dad put in front of us, 

[00:04:54]

Chris : There you haven't you guys, what do you think? Hearing stories like that make our difficulties in 2024 seem incredibly small. And irrelevant. And I would imagine very few listening to the podcast grew up in an environment that has equal or worse than Janice's, but nonetheless hearing a story like that really makes us think that anything is possible. Not only any, not only is anything possible, but, what is important. Is that we focus on the positive side of life. And we surrender to our dreams . And go after them with everything that we have. So, leaving you with that. I want to ask you. 

What did you take away from Janice's story? It's a powerful one. If you haven't heard Janice's full episode, I recommend you checking it out. I believe it's episode number 544. , interviewing the 38th richest woman in the world. Janice Bryant. Howroyd. And if you want to make sure you don't miss any of these tips, please subscribe, leave us or view. And share with your friends, see you on the next episode.