A PodLab showHow It StartedReal founders. Real stories. No fluff.

Where $1M+ founders share the raw truth about building a business.

How It Started
The show

Not another business podcast.

Most business podcasts sound the same. Polished stories, highlight reels, “here’s what I did right” without the context of what went wrong first.

How It Started is different. It is a conversation about the failures, the pivots and the lessons learned the hard way, with founders who built real systems.

What we talk about
  • The origin story: how you got here
  • The turning points: the decisions that shaped everything
  • The systems you built: what actually works
  • The lessons: what you’d tell yourself five years ago
The format
  • 45 to 60 minutes
  • Conversational, not scripted
  • In the Pods in Las Vegas, or remote
  • Raw, honest, real
The host

Hiram Andino, Founder, PodLab

Hiram Andino didn’t start as an entrepreneur. He started as a combat Army veteran who brought military systems thinking into the business world.

He built PodLab in Las Vegas on one idea: record once, sell forever. The show is where he asks other founders how they got there.

“Most founders hit the same walls. The only difference is how fast they recognize the pattern and build the system to break through.”
Hiram Andino on deployment in Afghanistan
Hiram Andino on deployment in Afghanistan
The journey

From the grind to a system.

From New Jersey to Las Vegas, and from the grind to a system that runs without him.

  1. 01Origins
    New Jersey to Las Vegas

    From humble beginnings in New Jersey to the move to Las Vegas. High school, early years, building the foundation.

  2. 02Military
    Combat Army veteran

    Joined the Army, deployed to Afghanistan. Leadership under pressure.

    Where systems thinking was born
  3. 03Corporate
    Sales to General Sales Manager to Corporate Director

    Started in sales at the world’s most famous dealership. General Sales Manager in six years, then Corporate Director for the whole dealership group: hiring, onboarding, training every position, customer service.

    Built systems across an entire organization
  4. 04The first attempt
    Opened PodLab. It failed.

    Launched PodLab. It didn’t work. Hard lessons about positioning, systems and founder dependency.

    Failure as teacher
  5. 05Proof of concept
    Cardone Ventures, hire number one

    Joined Cardone Ventures as the first hire for event sales and business development. Six months of high-performance validation.

    Proved the model worked at scale
  6. 06The relaunch
    PodLab, second time around

    Relaunched with clarity on positioning, systems and delivery. The grind to $1M. Got beat up on the way. Paid the price.

  7. 07The breakthrough
    Duplicated himself into video

    Strategic 4K video assets that sell 24/7. Systems that make delivery easy. Systems that get paid. The founder taken out of the middle of every sale.

    Record once, sell forever
  8. 08Today
    Helping founders do the same

    PodLab duplicates founders’ best sales conversations into video and systems, so growth stops depending on their hours.

Episodes

Listen to How It Started.

Full episodes are on YouTube. Watch the channel

Be a guest

Want to share your story?

If you’re a $1M+ founder with a story worth telling, we want to hear it. Recorded in the Pods in Las Vegas, or remote.

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