OnlyFounders

Anne Gillaspie
  • 4.9 (59)
  • Entrepreneurship

Honestly real conversations with founders who are building businesses, communities, and movements while breaking patterns, and leading with radical truth. No varnish. No script. Just showing up as humanly possible with your host, Anne Gillaspie.  Anne is the CEO & founder of Fix & Form | A Denver Branding Firm, co-founder of 10toLaunch, building launch ready brands in just ten days, and Anne Speaks where she activates global audiences with bold keynote speaking. She is raising three incredible kids with her partner in crime in Denver, Colorado. 

  1. Aug 6

    The Real Reason Most Founders Never Plan Their Exit with John Taylor | Ep05

    What happens when the guy who built a podcast marketing agency also builds the AI tool designed to make that agency obsolete? John Taylor isn't afraid of the answer. He's already got a number in mind, and the day someone hits it, he's gone. John is the CEO of Act3 Agency, a San Francisco based podcast marketing agency, and the founder of PodAgain.ai, an AI powered podcast promotion and content platform launching in weeks. Act3 already serves podcasters directly; PodAgain scales that same intelligence, including content repurposing, competitor gap analysis, cross show networking, and analytics driven episode ideation, into a self-serve SaaS built to turn static back catalogs into constantly working assets. In this episode, John and host Anne Gillaspie go far beyond the pitch: Why John calls PodAgain his own "self-destruct button," and is fine with itBuilding a company you can sell on purpose, with a life already planned on the other sideWhat 7 months a year on tour (MTV Music Awards included) teaches you about partnership and absenceMarriage, divorce, and being a "cycle breaker" after watching parents make it work for 66 yearsWhere AI should sit in a founder's workflow, as leverage for a human, not a replacement for one John's blunt take on relationships lands just as hard as his take on building: "An affair is not the problem, an affair is a symptom of a problem." And on the exit he's already building toward: "When anybody offers me this number... I will retire, and you will not see me again." This one moves fast between founder strategy and hard-won personal truth, sometimes in the same sentence. Resources and links (John Taylor) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jtnorcal/ Website: https://podagain.ai/ Agency: http://act3agency.com/ Watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/-b0BMvv3YRE Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PuNBpWpZKzCnuwmFQOPI4?si=97a26df7e350478a Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/onlyfounders/id1832541527 Follow Anne Gillaspie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annegillaspie/ Follow Anne Gillaspie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annegillaspie/ Join Coffee Club: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSevT9HVr57sn4fFUVpsWpcO-ZMeQKgftrg19tdVXPPrM5xQIQ/viewform Visit our website: https://theannegillaspie.com/  If this conversation resonated with you, subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with another founder who needs to hear it.

    The Real Reason Most Founders Never Plan Their Exit with John Taylor | Ep05

  2. Aug 4

    How Saying Yes Built a Business | Elissa Zylbershlag | Ep04

    She built a mentoring program before she knew it was her business. What happens when the thing people keep pulling you aside to do quietly becomes the thing you can't stop building? Elissa Zylbershlag, M.Ed., is the Founder of Work Wise Labs, helping new leaders build the confidence to lead, manage, and hold a room. She's spent 20+ years in professional development, with leadership roles at the Anti-Defamation League, the NJ State Bar Foundation, and the NJ Division on Civil Rights, and she's Certified in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. She built her own IP-rich curriculum from scratch and grew her practice from 3 paid programs in 2023 to 7 the next year, all while working full-time. Now she runs monthly public workshops and coaches leaders through the exact confidence gap she's had to close herself. In today's episode, we talked about: • Pricing yourself for the first time, and why "I don't know what to charge" isn't a character flaw, it's a rite of passage •  Why every discount should cost the client something too ("that value is the value") •  The moment she blurted out a service she hadn't built yet, and landed a six-month contract anyway • Bombing a 250-person keynote after crushing the same room two years earlier, and what that taught her about the difference between a facilitator and a speaker •  Her framework for confidence as a fundraising thermometer: insecurity first, then the skill, then the stumble, then the win Pull quotes: "We are all in the same business, and that is the business of making money." "Facilitation is guide on the side. Speaking is sage on the stage." She still doesn't have a will. But she's got a company, a client list, and a keynote she's determined to nail, Toastmasters and all. Resources and links (Elissa Zylbershlag) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elissazylbershlag/ Website: www.workwiselabs.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workwiselabs/ Watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/20jKUdIdaQ8 Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PuNBpWpZKzCnuwmFQOPI4?si=97a26df7e350478a Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/onlyfounders/id1832541527 Follow Anne Gillaspie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annegillaspie/ Follow Anne Gillaspie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annegillaspie/ Join Coffee Club: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSevT9HVr57sn4fFUVpsWpcO-ZMeQKgftrg19tdVXPPrM5xQIQ/viewform Visit our website: https://theannegillaspie.com/  If this conversation resonated with you, subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with another founder who needs to hear it.

    How Saying Yes Built a Business | Elissa Zylbershlag | Ep04

  3. Jul 28

    The Founder Mindset Nobody Talks About | Paige Arnof-Fenn | Ep03

    "I don't believe in failure. You either learn something, or you're successful. There's no third option." That's the mindset that took Paige Arnof-Fenn from Wall Street burnout to Coca-Cola boardrooms to founding her own branding empire.  Paige Arnof-Fenn is the founder & CEO of Mavens & Moguls, a global branding and digital marketing firm based in Cambridge, MA. Her clients include Microsoft, Virgin, venture-backed startups, and nonprofit organizations. A Stanford University and Harvard Business School grad, she serves on several boards and is a popular speaker and columnist for Entrepreneur and Forbes, but long before the bylines and board seats, she cut her teeth at P&G and Coca-Cola, the two most brand-obsessed companies on the planet, before betting it all on the dot-com wave and never looking back.  In today's episode, we talked about: The two-week gut check that told her Wall Street's paycheck wasn't worth its lifestyleWhy P&G is "marketing boot camp", and why the same rigor that trained her also frustrated herDitching a corporate corner office to become the oldest person in a startup full of skateboards and piercingsRunning guerrilla market research on the beach, same-day data, same-day website changes, decades before "move fast" was a sloganThe hardest lesson of running her own company: knowing when loyalty to early hires becomes a ceiling on growthWhy she uses LinkedIn as a background-check tool, not a highlight reelSeparating self-worth from outcomes, "you either learn something or you're successful"Pull quotes: "What makes a great movie doesn't necessarily make a great career path." "I don't actually believe in the concept of failure. You either learn something or you're successful." From backing out of a Wall Street office building in the '80s to backing herself into an ampersand-branded firm that's outlasted Facebook, Paige didn't just study marketing. She became her own longest-running case study. Resources and links (Paige Arnof-Fenn) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paigearnoffenn/ Website: https://mavensandmoguls.com/ Watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/9DkL0LScoZ4 Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PuNBpWpZKzCnuwmFQOPI4?si=97a26df7e350478a Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/onlyfounders/id1832541527 Follow Anne Gillaspie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annegillaspie/ Follow Anne Gillaspie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annegillaspie/ Join Coffee Club: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSevT9HVr57sn4fFUVpsWpcO-ZMeQKgftrg19tdVXPPrM5xQIQ/viewform Visit our website: https://theannegillaspie.com/  If this conversation resonated with you, subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with another founder who needs to hear it.

    The Founder Mindset Nobody Talks About | Paige Arnof-Fenn | Ep03

  4. Jul 20

    “I Taught Empathy for Years Before I Used It on Myself” | Rob Volpe | Ep02

    What happens when the "soft skill" everyone tells you to hide turns out to be the thing that built your business? Rob Volpe spent nearly two decades running Ignite 360, a consumer insights and strategy firm he bootstrapped, self-funded, and grew without ever missing payroll — before exiting through acquisition. Along the way he became known as the Empathy Activist, author of the award-winning Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation at a Time. His work is built on a simple, contrarian bet: empathy isn't a personality trait for the soft-hearted, it's an underused strategic tool that most leaders have talked themselves out of using. In today's episode, we talked about: • From qualitative researcher to founder, and the "old tapes" that told Rob empathy was a weakness, not a superpower • The contract that said "EMPLOYEE" in all caps, and the full body "no" that ended his path to ever working for someone else • Building Ignite 360 on relationships, not job postings, and why he hired for his own weaknesses first • The clients who wanted empathy in the work but not in the title, and what that says about the current cultural moment • His midlife crisis, the day the acquisition finally closed, and learning his business and his identity were never meant to be the same thing • Letting go of "should" on newsletters, talk titles, and recovery, and trusting his own timing instead "Don't let 'should' get in the way of good." On empathy at work: it's not a bug in the system, it's a feature we were literally born with. Rob spent his career teaching brands to notice what people actually feel underneath what they say. Turns out the hardest person to read that way was himself — and it took a contract, a cat named Domino, and one very loud "no" from the universe to get him there. Resources and links (Rob Volpe) Website: https://www.robvolpe.expert/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EmpathyActivist Book: Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation at a Time: https://www.amazon.com/Tell-More-About-That-Conversation/dp/1774580896/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0 Newsletter: https://readingbetweenthelines.beehiiv.com/ Watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/Rf7C2mbxg3s Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PuNBpWpZKzCnuwmFQOPI4?si=97a26df7e350478a Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/onlyfounders/id1832541527 Follow Anne Gillaspie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annegillaspie/ Follow Anne Gillaspie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annegillaspie/ Join Coffee Club: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSevT9HVr57sn4fFUVpsWpcO-ZMeQKgftrg19tdVXPPrM5xQIQ/viewform Visit our website: https://theannegillaspie.com/

    “I Taught Empathy for Years Before I Used It on Myself” | Rob Volpe | Ep02

  5. Jul 14

    My Founder Story: Anne Gillaspie on Dying (and Being Reborn) as a Founder | Ep01

    What if the version of you that built your first business had to die for the next one to exist? Anne Gillaspie doesn't think that's a metaphor; she thinks it's happened to her three times. In this first-ever solo episode of OnlyFounders, host Anne Gillaspie steps out from behind the mic and into the story herself. She's the founder and CEO of Fix & Form, a Denver branding firm that's quietly rebuilt itself twice in 12 years, and a keynote speaker whose talks on truth-telling and burnout have started drawing crowds who want more than a business card exchange. This episode marks a reset for the show itself, a pivot from co-hosted banter to raw, unfiltered founder testimony, starting with Anne's own. In today’s episode, we talked about: • From brand manager to solo founder, and her "happy divorce" from her old identity • The three-month depression that accidentally launched her business • Why Fix & Form killed retainer marketing for one-time transformations • Miscarriage, motherhood, and rebuilding herself, more than once • Launching Anne's Coffee Club for founders who want real access "I believe that we have many rock bottoms. I believe that we have to die several times to reinvent ourselves and be reborn in this lifetime." She closes the episode with a story about a single birthday candle — and why, at 41, it was the first birthday she'd ever actually had. Watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/ELCol0jHRKg Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PuNBpWpZKzCnuwmFQOPI4?si=97a26df7e350478a Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/onlyfounders/id1832541527 Follow Anne Gillaspie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annegillaspie/ Follow Anne Gillaspie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annegillaspie/ Join Coffee Club: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSevT9HVr57sn4fFUVpsWpcO-ZMeQKgftrg19tdVXPPrM5xQIQ/viewform Visit our website: https://theannegillaspie.com/ If this conversation resonated with you, subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with another founder who needs to hear it.

    My Founder Story: Anne Gillaspie on Dying (and Being Reborn) as a Founder | Ep01

  6. Mar 24

    067: Why Not Me? Orly Zeewy on Female Entrepreneurship, the Bubble Wrap Story, and Redefining Failure

    In this episode, Anne and Matt sit down with Orly Zeewy, brand strategist and author of the upcoming book Why NOT Me? The Female Guide for Entrepreneurship, to unpack the unique challenges women face when building a business. Orly shares the story of her book's title—born from the universal imposter syndrome of "Why me?"—and explains why female founders need to embrace failure as feedback rather than a reflection of their self-worth. They also explore the dangers of "ugly babies" in business, including the surprising origins of bubble wrap. The group discusses why over-coaching can paralyze your progress and the flawed pricing mentalities that hold so many female entrepreneurs back. Whether you are navigating product-market fit or learning how to stand firmly in your zone of genius, this conversation is a masterclass in pivoting with purpose and finding your community. 🚨 Stuff You’ll Want to Remember: "Perfection is the enemy of good. This is what I hear from women all the time." — Orly"Do not let coaching stall the doing." — Anne"Failure is the whole, is the backbone of entrepreneurship. Because if you don't fail, you don't grow." — Orly"Just because it comes easily to you does not mean it has no value." — Orly📡 Where to Find Us Orly Zeewy → Zeewy Brands - LinkedInAnne → Fix & Form - LinkedInMatt → ChipBot - LinkedIn

    067: Why Not Me? Orly Zeewy on Female Entrepreneurship, the Bubble Wrap Story, and Redefining Failure

  7. Mar 19

    066: Is AI Killing SaaS? The Builder Bug and Why Execution Beats Planning

    In this episode, Matt and Anne dive deep into the rapidly shifting landscape of software development and how AI is empowering non-technical founders to build their own bespoke solutions. They discuss the current headwinds facing the SaaS market , the addictive nature of the "builder bug" , and why relying on common sense and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) can bridge the coding experience gap. Finally, they explore the ultimate dividing line in business today: why those who execute and ship quickly will outpace those who get stuck in endless loops of overthinking and planning. 🚨 Stuff You’ll Want to Remember: "For the folks that know what they're doing, AI is is an accelerator. And for the folks that have no no idea, AI is a detriment to their future." — Matt"At the core minimum, you need common sense to build up the experience gap that you have." — Matt"Don't let coaching stall the doing... you don't need coaching. You don't need more thinking. You need to just go do and go execute." — Anne"That information value is gone now. So what is remaining? Your ability to execute." — Matt📡 Where to Find Us Anne → Fix & Form - LinkedInMatt → ChipBot - LinkedIn

  8. Mar 17

    065: The Real Silver Tsunami, AI Mentorship, and the Future Workforce

    In this episode, Matt and Anne debate the looming impact of the "silver tsunami" and what it actually means for the future of business and the workforce. While Anne argues that older generations provide irreplaceable human mentorship, culture, and relationship-building skills that AI cannot replicate, Matt contends that task-based AI tools and video tutorials are already replacing the need for traditional corporate guidance. They explore whether the real generational business opportunity lies with the tech-savvy, well-capitalized 45-to-55 demographic, and how declining birth rates will force a massive shift in corporate productivity over the next two decades. Oh, and they also compare their coffee routines and how they use caffeine for peak productivity versus socializing. 🚨 Stuff You’ll Want to Remember: "The generation between 45 and 55. In my opinion, that's the silver tsunami wave..." — Matt"What you can't get when you type in a prompt to AI... is the mentorship from a human being that has personal stories and lived experiences." — Anne"I argue that promotions and excelling in your career happens from relationship building skills, which I don't believe you can learn on AI." — Anne"It's not exiting, there's less people entering. That's actually more scarier than the people exiting." — Matt📡 Where to Find Us  Anne → Fix & Form - LinkedIn Matt → ChipBot - LinkedIn

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4.9
out of 5
59 Ratings

About

Honestly real conversations with founders who are building businesses, communities, and movements while breaking patterns, and leading with radical truth. No varnish. No script. Just showing up as humanly possible with your host, Anne Gillaspie.  Anne is the CEO & founder of Fix & Form | A Denver Branding Firm, co-founder of 10toLaunch, building launch ready brands in just ten days, and Anne Speaks where she activates global audiences with bold keynote speaking. She is raising three incredible kids with her partner in crime in Denver, Colorado. 

Information

  • Creator
    Anne Gillaspie
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    72
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 OnlyFounders
  • Show Website
    OnlyFounders

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