Becoming Self Made is Relay's original video podcast, hosted by Wall Street Journal best-selling author and money expert Mike Michalowicz. We set out to create a show that centers and celebrates entrepreneurs who started small and experienced real, relatable setbacks on their journey to creating something big. We know from our customer research and conversations with thousands of business owners that the journey of ownership is just as important to them as the end result. As our show slogan says, "success isn’t just what you build, it’s who you become".
Each episode of the show tells the real story behind a small business founder (some household names, some pillars of smaller communities), their setbacks, their pivots, and the personal transformation that came with building something from the ground up. The show exists to make good on Relay's brand promise to center the stories of small business owners and to create a safe space for learning, vulnerability, personal revelations, and shared understanding in the small business world.
Becoming Self Made Season 2 was built to give small business owners something they can rarely find in one place: honest, unfiltered founder stories from owners who started small without VC investment sharing practical lessons listeners can apply to their own business the next day. Every strategic decision, from guest selection to channel mix, was made to serve those goals.
The guest strategy focused on pillars of specific business communities rather than the largest celebrity names, because small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) learn more from founders whose journeys mirror their own than from household names whose scale feels out of reach. Season 2 features seven guests across finance, food, dance, craft manufacturing, lifestyle retail, experiential design, and independent retail advocacy. Each one is a peer story that a small business owner can see themselves in.
The season ran from June through August 2026 as a fully omnichannel campaign, structured into five phases: Pre-Launch, Pre-Promotion, Launch Week, Sustain, and Wrap. Every team at Relay worked from a single week-by-week plan, with clear deliverables across brand, design, social, lifecycle, PR, influencer, paid media, content, video, and copy, so that every asset reinforced the same founder story.
Two signature elements deepened the show's impact on listeners. First, the “Lifeline” segment opens every episode. Guests sketch out the highs and lows of their business and personal journeys on a line drawn onto a physical posterboard in the studio space, then that same line is brought to life through on-screen animation. This segment immediately creates the sense of the guest (who may on the surface feel larger-than-life in terms of their success) as a real person with intense struggles that you can see right on the page. This segment creates shared understanding and instant relational chemistry with the viewer who is a small business owner undoubtedly experiencing similar ups and downs in their personal and professional lives. This is the moment most business podcasts skip in favor of jumping right to the guest’s long list of accomplishments which usually serves to create distance between the guest and viewer rather than connection.
Our second signature element in the show is dynamic b-roll. We consider b-roll a vital aspect of guest selection. We ask ourselves how we can continue the story of each business owner by inviting the viewer into their space. The b-roll gives the show a real sense of place and breathes life into what can be a stagnant or repetitive in-studio-interview-style show sequence.
What makes Becoming Self Made unique is that we treat the podcast as a primary brand platform for SMB education and engagement rather than a single content channel strictly for entertainment. Every guest becomes an entry point into a different business community. Every episode feeds a landing page, blog post, newsletter, short-form clips, YouTube Shorts, paid creative, PR pitches, and influencer touchpoints, so the practical lessons inside each conversation reach small business owners wherever they already spend time. We source guests by asking what our customers can learn from them from day one.
Since its Season 2 launch in June 2026, Becoming Self Made has ranked in the top 1% of podcasts globally by first-week downloads, averaging 13,241 downloads per episode against an industry benchmark of 4,579. Total Season 2 deliveries reached 123,142 across downloads and Spotify streams, a 21x increase over Season 1, with unique listener reach growing 27x season over season.
The show carries a 4.9-star rating on Apple Podcasts and holds more listener reviews than 75% of all shows on the platform. Followers across Apple and Spotify grew 48% in a single season, and the show's all-time consumption rate of 64% outperforms the industry benchmark for its format.
On YouTube, Becoming Self Made has amassed 87.7K episode views and more than 1.1 million views on its Season 2 trailer. Guests have included Tiffany "The Budgetnista" Aliche, whose episode drew 311K views, along with Andrew Ahn, Tim Milgram, Jamie Deering, the founders of Beekman 1802, David Stark, and Caroline Weaver.
Becoming Self Made proves that small business owners want more than tactics. They want stories from operators who built something real, and Relay is building the media home where those stories live.
