Breaking the Barrier
Most entrepreneurs and leaders keep their faith and their business in separate rooms. The best ones don't. Breaking the Barrier is a video podcast where host Nick Madden sits down with successful founders and executives who refuse to compartmentalize. Each episode draws out the real playbooks behind building companies with both excellence and conviction.
Episodes
Desperate People Buy From Startups: Invest in Missionaries vs. Mercenaries — Faith in Silicon Valley
David Mount sits down with Nick Madden to break down what Silicon Valley gets right when it is working at its best, and what any founder can take from it. David, founder of G2 Venture Partners, spent 10 years at Kleiner Perkins before his team spun out to invest where technology meets industry and energy.
He explains his mentor John Doerr's line between missionary and mercenary founders, why venture is a repeat game, the old invest...
Ben Davis sits down with Nick Madden to break down how a 24-year-old with three years of experience walked away from the number-two seat at a fast-growing insurer, signed an SBA loan two weeks before Lehman Brothers collapsed, and opened a luxury barbershop club on the day of his son's second open-heart surgery.
Ben built The Gents Place with his wife into a national membership-based barber and business club through franchising, an...
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Breaking the Barrier's Founding Sponsor: US Digital Partners
US Digital Partners provides full-service digital marketing support rooted in Catholic values. Need help navigating marketing strategy, lead generation, or even AI search visibility? Start here
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Bahigh Acuna sits down with Nick Madden to break down the part of a business most founders overlook: the go-to-market. Bahigh was Spotify's first man on the ground in Mexic...
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Breaking the Barrier is Sponsored by US Digital Partners (founding sponsor). Find out how US Digital Partners helps chip away at your goals by delivering a customized roadmap of marketing tactics and methodically at www.usdigitalpartners.com
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ABOUT
Phil Berry sits down with Nick Madden to break down how a distributorship doing $400,000 a year, bought on a cashed 401(k), became a health company running near $100 million. Berry ...
Episode description
Raul Hernandez Ochoa sits down with Nick Madden to break down what AI actually changes for a business owner. Raul — founder & CEO of Do Good Work, who's helped generate $50M+ in revenue and overseen $25M+ in ad spend across teams in 12+ time zones — argues the real prize isn't cutting costs. It's 'net-new value': taking a client past 'finished,' and building a locally-owned AI 'harness' on your ow...
Episode description
Christopher Check, president of Catholic Answers, sits down with Nick Madden to break down what it means to run a mission like a business — and why faith and work were never two separate fields. A former US Marine Corps artillery officer and nearly two-decade media leader, Check has helped grow the largest lay-run Catholic apologetics apostolate to its best year ever, and he talks candidly about measuring e...
Joe Pomeranke sits down with Nick Madden to break down how you build a business worth a billion dollars — and then give it back to the people who built it. Over nearly two decades at Arco, Joe helped grow a design-build firm from roughly $100M to $1B+, compounding at more than 50% a year for eleven years, on one conviction: in a service business, people are your only asset. He walks through what an ESOP actually is, why he'd ...
Rob Hays sits down with Nick Madden to break down what it takes to lead when everything is on fire. Rob took over as CEO of the publicly traded Ashford Hospitality Trust in April 2020 — and within a weekend furloughed 93% of nearly 13,000 associates, ran 700-room hotels with three people, watched revenue fall almost 100% in two months, and defaulted on $4.5B of mortgages across roughly 130 hotels. His father's response: "welc...
Scott Weeman sits down with Nick Madden to break down the addictions that quietly come with ambition — pride, control, and money — and the honesty it takes to name them. Scott is the Executive Director of Catholic in Recovery, the national nonprofit he built over the last decade around a combination of the 12 steps and the sacraments. He explains why “no one enters recovery on a winning streak,” how the firs...
David Niccolini sits down with Nick Madden to explore a side of business few founders never see. After being invited to a founder table that included former Secret Service and U.S. Senate security leaders, David co-founded Torchstone — a risk-mitigation firm that's hit the Inc. 5000 multiple times — and later co-founded Evidentity, a data company that traced forced labor through global supply chains to more than 100 com...
Nick Madden sits down with Rob Kaczmark to discuss the unexpected journey from getting fired from Catholic radio to building Spirit Juice Studios — a media company that now generates over 1 BILLION views and produces thousands of videos every year.
Rob shares the behind-the-scenes story of the early failures, financial sacrifices, creative risks, and leadership lessons that shaped the company over nearly two decades.
Professional burnout is often the result of a lack of structural discipline rather than a heavy workload. In this episode, Nick Madden and Jeremy Aranda introduce the "3:30 Stop" challenge, a practical exercise in time-blocking that forces leaders to end meetings early to review the day and plan for the next. By creating this strategic margin, executives can transition from high-intensity work to being fully present for their famil...
Jeff sits down with Nick Madden to break down why culture and strategy are not separate things, the 7-question filter he uses before committing to any business opportunity, and what backward planning from a 3-year vision actually looks like in practice.
Jeff draws from his experience helping lead an energy consulting firm through a turnaround that ended in a $300M sale, co-founding Undivided Life, and taking ownership stakes in org...
As co-founder of Presidio, the first pro-life health insurance company in America, Bob Hogan is building a values-aligned alternative in one of the most complex and regulated industries in the country. Bob sits down with Nick Madden to unpack 100+ failed pitches, constant course correction, and what it takes to execute under pressure when nothing goes to plan.
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Flip Howard sits down with Nick Madden to break down what actually drives long-term business growth without overcomplicating it. Flip explains why taking action beats waiting for the perfect strategy, how the right people can transform or break a company, and why most entrepreneurs overthink instead of simply executing better than their competition.
Flip draws from building Lucid Private Offices to 26 locations across four state...
Tim Lyons sits down with Nick Madden to break down what actually makes a leader effective when the stakes are high. Tim explains why every organization needs skeptics (and how to use them), how to build a set of “no-BS buddies” for real feedback, and why a “personal board of directors” might be the most underused tool in an entrepreneur’s life.
Tim draws from decades at Haggar Clothing, including se...
What does it actually look like to build a business without leaving your faith at the door?
This is your first look at Breaking the Barrier, real conversations with proven entrepreneurs and founders on leadership, failure, and the practical wisdom behind building with conviction.
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