TMF PREVIEW | Make Friends with Mike Lazerow

Summary

Podcast Summary: Travis Makes Money

Episode: TMF PREVIEW | Make Friends with Mike Lazerow
Host: Travis Chappell
Guest: Mike Lazerow (Author/Entrepreneur) and Guest Investor
Date: February 18, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode offers a sneak peek into an upcoming episode of “Travis Makes Friends,” focusing on the intersection of creator-led businesses, the importance of relationships in entrepreneurship, and the unconventional paths people take to financial success. Travis sits down with author and entrepreneur Mike Lazerow, discussing the evolution of creator-driven brands, the role of luck and timing in business, and actionable lessons for building networks and giving back.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Creator-Led Businesses and the Power of Distribution

• The panel discusses the rare nature of raising venture capital for traditional consumer product brands and how creators can break that mold.
• Creator Passion: Mike emphasizes the necessity for creators to genuinely pour their passion into their businesses.
• Notable Examples:
  • “Something like Prime with Logan Paul KSI… there’s just no way that they were going to fail with that. They have way too many subscribers in two geographic locations.” (Guest Investor, 01:38)
  • The story of “Sour Strips” is highlighted, showing that even smaller creators can scale hugely successful brands.
• Mike Lazerow: “[W]hen you combine business with distribution and passion… there's no better place to find your purpose or your passion than like a company that you run.” (Author/Entrepreneur, 02:22)

2. Building Beyond Personality Brands

• Discussion shifts to “Liquid Death” water as a brand with its own ‘voice’, showing that the brand itself can be the creator, not necessarily a single person.
• “Liquid Death has a voice, correct?” (Author/Entrepreneur, 04:03)
• “That voice is like they spend ten grand on a video, but the idea is so good.” (Author/Entrepreneur, 04:10)

3. The Value of Building in Public and Networking

• Mike stresses building relationships, giving value, and sharing along the journey rather than operating in isolation.
• Advice to Entrepreneurs: “Not don’t just build your network, but build in public, connect with people, share, build distribution.” (Author/Entrepreneur, 04:46)
• The regret of not continuing public engagement after the sale of Buddy Media shows the importance of ongoing connection.

4. The Buddy Media Story and Importance of Timing

• Buddy Media’s growth as a social media management system is explained: “Software that lets you control all of your social media, from publishing to ads to analytics.” (Author/Entrepreneur, 05:32)
• Mike attributes the company’s massive success to both hard work and significant luck:
  • “It's a sprinkle of hard work, potatoes, and a fuck ton of luck.” (Author/Entrepreneur, 09:44)
• He credits the vision of Zuckerberg and early belief in Facebook when it was a riskier bet:
  • “We picked Facebook at a time that like MySpace, LinkedIn, Friendster were bigger than them. But we thought… Zuck’s vision for the social web was so compelling.” (Author/Entrepreneur, 09:44)

5. The Process and Purpose of Writing “Shoveling: A Love Story”

• The motivation to write their book came from Mike’s wife, Cass, and served as a way to capture their entrepreneurial lessons.
• “She really kind of outlined it. I did the writing. She tried to edit…” (Author/Entrepreneur, 11:21)
• The process was both cathartic and sometimes challenging for their marriage.
• The book was designed not just for high-profile entrepreneurs, but for small business owners:
  • “We wrote it for the pizza parlor owner, for someone who's running a salon. So it's written for the 5 million businesses started every year…” (Author/Entrepreneur, 12:44)

6. Focus, Content, and Giving Back

• Mike advocates for focusing efforts (“You can do anything, you can’t do everything”) and shares how he and Cass frequently reassess priorities.
• The couple is now focusing on content creation and legacy impact through investments, speaking, and helping other entrepreneurs.
• Podcasting and writing have brought them new, meaningful relationships:
  • “This whole process has done two things. One is I've learned who my friends are… If you want to know who really supports you, write a book.” (Author/Entrepreneur, 15:23)
  • “It just opens up opportunities. Like, we've met so many awesome people who we will do business with, like real people who are also hustling.” (Author/Entrepreneur, 15:55)

7. The Philosophy of Networking and Generosity

• Mike encourages young people and entrepreneurs to focus on helping others first:
  • “You may think you don’t have anything… but you know something, you know something about AI, you know something about sports betting… or you know someone who does.” (Author/Entrepreneur, 17:40)
• He shares how giving—whether it was giving Gary Vaynerchuk office space years ago—has created long-term, unexpected returns:
  • “Whatever you have, even if it's not a lot. Give. And we're in a time when, like, especially young men, like, don't have that mentality. It's like, they're very extractive. Like, what can I take?” (Author/Entrepreneur, 18:43)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On creator brands:
  • “Those are like conglomerates. I look at those as like the new P&Gs of the world.” (Author/Entrepreneur, 01:55)
• On luck in business:
  • “It's a sprinkle of hard work, potatoes and a fuck ton of luck.” (Author/Entrepreneur, 09:44)
• On networking and giving:
  • “So whatever you have, even if it's not a lot. Give.” (Author/Entrepreneur, 18:43)
• On focusing your efforts:
  • “You can do anything, you can't do everything.” (Author/Entrepreneur, 14:17)
• On creating relationships via podcasting:
  • “If you find yourself in the boat of lacking solid relationships, then just start a damn podcast.” (Guest Investor, 15:05)

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Timestamps of Important Segments

• 01:06: Mike Lazerow on creator-led businesses and the importance of passion
• 01:38: Guest Investor on the inevitability of creator success stories (Prime, Mr. Beast)
• 02:22: Author/Entrepreneur on the synergy of business, distribution, and passion
• 04:46: Advice to young entrepreneurs: Build in public and connect
• 05:28–05:53: Buddy Media’s core social media management product
• 09:13–10:42: The role of luck and timing; betting successfully on Facebook
• 11:21–12:44: Collaborative writing process and purpose of their book
• 14:01–15:23: Refocusing on content, building legacy, and relationships gained through podcasting and writing
• 17:03–18:43: Mike’s advice on generosity, building networks, and the lasting impact of giving

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Conclusion

This episode delivers rich insights on how today’s moneymakers, whether creators, entrepreneurs, or small business owners, can leverage authentic relationships, public engagement, and a spirit of generosity to build businesses and networks that matter. Drawing from real stories and the lived experience of Mike Lazerow, listeners are reminded of the power of focus, resilience, lucky timing, and most importantly, giving back along the entrepreneurial journey.

Transcript

[Travis]

What's up, moneymakers? Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money podcast. Today I'm giving you a sneak peek of this week's episode of my main show, Travis Makes Friends, a podcast all about the most valuable asset that we have in our lives, our relationships. So whether we're talking about your network, your marriage, your friendships, or even your relationship with yourself, these conversations are designed to help you grow, connect and level.

[Guest Investor]

Up in all areas.

[Travis]

I've sat down in person with everyone from world class athletes and entertainers to bestselling authors, entrepreneurs, and even former presidents. And you're going to love the snippet from this week's episode. So take a listen and if you're feeling it, go check out the full conversation over on Travis Makes Friends. Let's get into it.

[Guest Investor]

And it's fairly atypical for a company like that to raise venture funding, right? Like, you know, you don't see a ton of, like, physical products or water or even supplement brands that are like, we need to go raise $10 million in venture capital.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

It's hard. I mean, we don't do it. It's. We've. I've done one CPG deal. We're software where, you know, we' you know.

[Guest Investor]

Well, you need the potential economies of scale to get the massive return that you're looking for. One out of the 40 companies to actually be successful.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

You need, you know, there are companies that attempt to do it. Typically it's insiders in the industry who have distribution or now creators. A big believer in, like, and I'm not creatorless companies. And I'm not just talking about Prime. I'm talking about, like, what are you passionate about as a creator and how do you, like, really put everything, every ounce of your being behind this?

[Guest Investor]

I love that, you know, the sour strips.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

Yeah, of course.

[Guest Investor]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a crazy story to me.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah, that was a. Because that was, that was one where.

[Guest Investor]

I looked at where it's like, it's duplicatable as a creator, where you look at, you know, something like prime with Logan Paul KSI. It's like there's just no way that they were going to fail with that. They have way too many subscribers in two geographic locations, you know, both of them leading the chart. Like, yeah, of course, Mr.

[Travis]

Beast.

[Guest Investor]

Anything that he touches is going to do well.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

Those are like conglomerates. I look at those as like the new PNGs of the world.

[Guest Investor]

Sure, sure. But then you have this other kid, forget his first name, last name tuning though, who I think he had, like, 100,000. 150,000 subscribers. I want to say it was mostly fitness or something like that. He just loved sour strips.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

Yeah, I know the story.

[Guest Investor]

Just wanted to create something. Made some sour strips, and then few years later, sells for 100 million to Hershey. You know, it's like, well, that's not a bad.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

Put a bunch of acid on candy. And like the. What really is awesome is most creators who make it. And I put you in this category, like, you are a business person. You're not just like talking to random schmucks. Right. And when you combine business with distribution and passion. Because, you know, as we write in the book, like, there's no better place to find your purpose or your passion than like a company that you run. And when it all comes together like it has with Gary Vee. Right. Who's now an influencer, but also like just a great business person. He built like a business person first. Yeah, he built his dad's. When he came to me, he basically had built his Dad's company into $70 million a year sales and said, Listen, I'm 34.

[Guest Investor]

I didn't know it did that much.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

Oh, now it's more. But he's like, that's crazy. I'm 34. I've worked my dad since I graduated from. Since college. Never made more than 100,000. He won't give me equity. I don't have money for an office. Can I use your conference room? Which was about the size of this, which he then filled up with 30 people with AJ and you know, these college friends, and then they're off and running. Right. Because he focused on customers. And. And so I think now it's like, I love creator led businesses. Love and Slow Ventures is doing a great creator fund. Yeah.

[Guest Investor]

Liquid Death was sort of the opposite of that, where it was like the. The brand was the creator, if that makes sense. Like, it wasn't. It wasn't a figurehead. It wasn't a single per. It wasn't a personal brand that was leading that charge. But the brand was so good at commun to the audience that it was sort of looked at like a creator LED brand.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

It is a. I mean, Liquid Death has a voice, correct?

[Guest Investor]

Yeah. It's a creative.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

And that voice is like they spend ten grand on a video. Yeah, but the idea is so good, right? I mean, look at any of their ideas.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

I just saw one recently that was posted.

[Guest Investor]

It was about like the big. The big can, small cans.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

It's the best. It's the best. And like Wait till you see next year. Like, I can't talk about any of this stuff. But it's only getting better because they now have, like, tens of millions of followers and data and, like, and most importantly, when you're a creator, whether it's liquid death or you or anyone, like, the brands are coming to you. Right. Like, the collabs are coming to you. It gets easier. And so if you're like, you know, I tell young entrepreneurs all the time, like, not don't just build your network, but build in public, connect with people, share, like, build distribution. I wish we continued after Buddy Media, but we were a little burned out and we just stopped. Now we're kind of picking it up again. Yeah.

[Guest Investor]

On the creator side, you're saying.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

Yeah, just putting content out that people value.

[Guest Investor]

I see.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

Yeah, yeah. But I wouldn't look at it as like, we're creators or influencers, but if we can help entrepreneurs, like, get to the future faster. Sure. Or help executives get to the future faster, like, they'll follow us and hopefully do business with us.

[Guest Investor]

So with Buddy Media, what was the product that ended up really scaling the company?

[Author/Entrepreneur]

Social media management system. Okay, it's a.

[Guest Investor]

But it was a software.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

Software software that lets you control all of your social media, from publishing to ads to analytics. And it was the most powerful, both from what it could do because we had, like, you know, we had hundreds of employees, unlike some of the small ones. And, you know, it was built for kind of big companies.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

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[Guest Investor]

Even sure what I was doing, to.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

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[Author/Entrepreneur]

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[Author/Entrepreneur]

That needed like security onboarding of different teams, different languages. We had offices in Singapore and you know, London and where were other Australia, you know, la, San Francisco, Chicago. So we, we touched customers and we were, we held their hands in many ways. Onboarding them. Yeah to social just like companies are onboarding to AI right now and doing really well.

[Guest Investor]

And again, another great example of like putting in the work, doing everything that's required, working overtime. Great idea. Executed well. Sprinkle a luck sprinkle of timing to be able to hit Facebook when everybody realized they all of a sudden needed to be advertising on Facebook. And there's a huge period of time where it went $10 million being spent in annual Facebook ads to $2 billion being spent in Facebook.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

Yeah, P and G. That's what they did. And it's not a sprinkle of luck.

[Guest Investor]

It'S a whole helping.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

It's a sprinkle of hard work, potatoes and a fuck ton of luck. Because. And I say that not in a self deprecating way. We picked Facebook at a time that like MySpace, LinkedIn, Friendster were bigger than them. But we thought, I thought, you know, Zuck's vision for the social web was so compelling when he had 20 million people. I met with them when they had less than 200 people in Palo Alto above the pizza place and like, wow, it was just incredible. Like it was like you could feel it happening. The fact that they actually executed and like created like it was not only lucky for the business, but I was able to invest in Facebook and it just became a. It was very lucky because they could have was run by a bunch of kids who could have fucked it up, who should have. Most of them.

[Guest Investor]

And a lot of them did. There's thousand other Facebooks too, that tried to do exactly what Facebook did that have.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

And they tried hard, if you saw the movie, to screw it up. So it's like these things don't even. They got very lucky, you know, like, why didn't these other companies get it right? Yeah, like Built Rewards. Great company. Right. Why didn't another credit card company say you could pay your rent with our credit card? Right. Like there's so much that goes into that success. Which is why I'm so excited as someone who's not the smartest guy in the room. Like, make your own luck. Like be there, be on the field when it happens. You can never get lucky if you're not like rolling the dice or actually doing something.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

So why did you write the book?

[Author/Entrepreneur]

I mean the simple. I didn't want to. My wife, Cass, it was on her bucket list. And I knew that it was like we writing a book would be. Me as a journalism grad. I see. What I didn't know, she'd saved all of our lessons. So she really kind of outlined it. Okay. I did the writing. She tried to edit. She had better at editing, but yeah, like the first few. We actually had some marital issues at the beginning because I'd like write a chapter and she'd be like, actually, it's taking me back to that time where I was, like, not happy. She'd be like, I don't like it.

[Guest Investor]

Okay, well, let's write it then.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

No, I'm like, okay, what do you not like? It's just not doing it for me.

[Guest Investor]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

That's not editing.

[Guest Investor]

Right?

[Author/Entrepreneur]

Here's what I wrote. Like, and then she'd sit down and, like, we talk it through. And then the second chapter is a little more. We would do it on Sundays because we have, like, a lot of, like, work, so we took Sundays to do it. We're empty nesters now. And eventually we loved it because we got so many stories. It was like 500 pages. Cut it down to like, I wanted, like, a really tight, practical. Yeah. But fun. Like, you know, these. Some of these stories I talk about, including Liquid death. And, you know, it was goofball Gary showing it. Literally showing up at our door because we were in the social media space, sitting in hotel rooms like Travis from Uber, Kevin at Instagram at south by Southwest, talking about, you know, how Kevin would never sell his business and Travis's vision before he launched. And so we had a front row seats to the creation of a lot of great businesses. But we wrote it for the pizza parlor owner, for the someone who's running a salon. Yeah. So it's written for the 5 million businesses started every year who don't have the safety net of venture investors who are all in, who are family businesses, like Cass and me, who the, you know, wife maybe cooking or the husband cooking and the other one up front on the restaurant. And the reaction's been great. I mean, that's. It was a bestseller because we worked hard. We didn't want to write a book called Shoveling a Love Story about this entrepreneur's messy path to success and not.

[Guest Investor]

Work to do the book.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

Yeah. We're like, if we're going to do it. And that's the part we didn't understand of, like. So we did a lot of speaking, a lot of, like, podcasts, and we've loved it. Yeah. Traveling together now, like, getting paid to speak, which is kind of still weird. But.

[Guest Investor]

Yeah, I was gonna ask, like, what. You know, what with what you're doing now versus building, operating, and stuff like that. Have you found podcasting or. Or writing or speaking? Is there something that you enjoy more than the other things?

[Author/Entrepreneur]

So I love content. I mean, I went to journalism school and so we're having a lot of fun with the cast and Mike Brand, and we have some, you know, great stuff planned for next year, like ticketed events and, you know, going to college campuses and like, super fired up. And so one of the lessons of the book is focus. Like, you can do anything, you can't do everything. And so we were hyper focused forever. We did like one company at a time when we launched the venture fund, then we launch our kind of private equity business buying businesses, and now we have the book. And so just last Saturday we did our own, like, focus exercise. What do we want to focus on? And so we cut a lot out. And it's basically venture running businesses. We don't run them. We have operating partners. And then we really want to invest in content. We think that that's, I mean, it's a lot of. It's like more legacy, like, can we touch more entrepreneurs? Can we help companies? But it's fun. I mean, we wouldn't have meet. I wouldn't have met you, right? Like, you would just be another voice in my, like, podcast.

[Guest Investor]

That's one of the nice things about this, man. I've preaching this for the past, like seven or eight years, but it's like, if you find yourself, if you find yourself in the boat of lacking solid relationships, then just start a damn podcast.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

You know what I mean? I like around others, I don't want my own. I love just hanging out.

[Guest Investor]

Well, you're not somebody who lacks relationships, you know what I mean?

[Author/Entrepreneur]

That's true. But still, this whole process has done two things. One is I've learned who my friends are. So if you want to know who really supports you, write a book. So there are people who we've made, you know, over one, well over over $50 million, who basically said that all budgets for books, you learn a lot about people, right? And literally my response, like, are you like, are you shitting me? Like, is this like, are you punking me? Are there cameras here?

[Guest Investor]

What do you mean you don't have budget for this?

[Author/Entrepreneur]

Like, oh, no, this is like, that was a different firm. And now I'm like, I'm like, you made millions off it, right? So that's the one thing which is, that's pretty wild, you know, pretty cool. And then the second thing is about the book itself. It just opens up opportunities. Like, we've met so many awesome people who we will do business with, like real people who are also hustling. Like, I don't know if you know Ryan Alford, who we love, who's awesome. Ryan Alford from South Carolina. He came up to our launch party and like these are people who will be friends for the next 50 years of our life. We think we have 50 years left. We probably don't. I've got like artificial heart and stuff, but I'm 51.

[Guest Investor]

You have an artificial heart, you said?

[Author/Entrepreneur]

Yeah, like heart valve and it's been rebuilt.

[Guest Investor]

Wow.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

So I don't have 50, but we're planning as if we do. Cass is older, but she looks younger and will live longer. And you, every part of your life is like a different phase. Right. You outgrow friends. There's some people you realize are toxic, some people you realize you should have spent more time with. You meet like we're a few firm believer that we'll meet our best friends like any day.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

Like there are people now who have are I consider best friends who I've met in the last five years now. They're not immediately best friends. Like you got to spend time you got usually go together with and we love that. And that's what this process has done for us. And I would encourage everyone to like get out of their house. Yeah. Like even if you're not going on podcasts, just like show up. And it's nerve wracking. Like I see this with my son and with other young entrepreneurs, but just show up and say, how can I help? How can I help? And you may think you don't have anything as like a, you know, eight year old or whatever. However.

[Guest Investor]

Yeah.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

I don't think there are a lot of eight year olds, but there are a lot of eight year old entrepreneurs. But if you're 21, you're like, oh, but you know something, you know something about AI, you know something about sports betting because you've bet you know something about, you know, whatever.

[Guest Investor]

Yeah. Or you know someone who does.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

Yeah. And just have that mentality forever of like, how can I help? And you will get like, we look back, like, why did we give like a quarter of our office space to Gary Vaynerchuk? It was such a stupid business decision from us. I thought it was a goofball. I thought he had it. Whatever it is. I don't think I could have said no to him. He was exactly the same. And like that gift we have gotten back so many. Like we did a three hour live stream on a holiday we made up called National Shovel Day, which was on National Garden day on like April 16th. And literally he sat on a live stream and we sold 1500 bucks. Wow. To his community. Right. Like from this gift that we did, expecting nothing in return.

[Guest Investor]

Right.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

So whatever you have, even if it's not a lot. Give. Yeah. And we're in a time when, like, especially young men, like, don't have that mentality. It's like, they're very extractive. Like, what can I take?

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Right.

[Author/Entrepreneur]

And at the end of the day, you're gonna need to find a spouse. You need to find, like, a way to support yourself, if not other people, way to protect other people. Scott Galloway's talking about now. And it all starts with this mentality of giving and not just sucking out of the system.