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The Failure Factor

Where entrepreneurs get real about their stories and turn failures into lessons for success.   Hosted by Megan Bruneau, The Failure Factor explores the journey of business owners, entrepreneurs and thought leaders who have faced significant challenges, persevered through adversity, and emerged triumphant providing listeners with insights to navigate their own entrepreneurial paths   There's a myth out there that failure is career-ending and that success is achieved without any bumps in the road. In reality, it's surviving rock bottom what gives entrepreneurs the experience, confidence and edge that ultimately causes them to thrive.   Packed with actionable insights, vulnerability, and inspiration, each episode aims to help you navigate your own challenges and grow stronger through adversity.
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Now displaying: November, 2025
Nov 19, 2025

Jack Savage, Founder & CEO of Everyday Dose, built a 400,000-subscriber functional coffee brand from his dad's garage—but not before spending years as "the dumb kid" who needed extra time on tests, wore a suit on planes hoping to meet someone important, and cycled through ADHD medications that left him with facial tics and shame.

In this conversation, Jack opens up about the scarcity mindset he inherited from watching his father's business collapse, the $500K investment deal that fell through at the last second (leaving him in tears), and why discovering he had the CYP1A2 gene—which makes 50% of us caffeine-sensitive—changed everything about how he formulated Everyday Dose.

He also gets real about the unglamorous parts of scaling: living in his dad's garage at 33, battling a massive counterfeit crisis that cost the company customers and reputation, getting rejected by VCs who made him question his worth, and learning that friendships (even in business) have to be earned, not assumed.

Through it all, Jack kept returning to one framework: Dharma. Are you good at it? Are you passionate about it? Are you making an impact? Does it make you money? This conversation is about finding that alignment—and what happens when you finally do.

Key Takeaways & Topics

  • Jack’s early experiences with ADHD, shame, and overcompensating through ambition
  • Why taste and clinical dosing became Everyday Dose’s differentiator
  • Building supply chain and formulation knowledge from scratch
  • Moving into his dad’s garage and bootstrapping the first version of the brand
  • VC rejection, self-worth, and learning to scale without outside validation
  • The emotional toll and operational cost of battling large-scale counterfeit products
  • How Jack defines dharma and why alignment is a founder’s most reliable compass
  • Retention as a strategy: treating existing customers better than new ones
  • Why "you can do anything, but you can't do everything"
  • His weekly retro practice with 35 team members: what's going well, what's not, what needs to change
  • The hidden gene that affects 50% of us and why Jack built a coffee specifically for slow caffeine metabolizers

The Failure Factor Podcast was brought to you by Off The Field Coaching. Explore working with one of our coaches at http://offthefieldcoaching.com 

Hosted by Megan Bruneau: therapist, executive coach, speaker, Forbes contributor, and host of The Failure Factor. For more info, visit https://meganbruneau.com  

Everyday Dose on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everydaydose 
Everyday Dose: https://www.everydaydose.com

Megan on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meganjbruneau 
Megan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/megan-j-bruneau-m-a-rcc 

Subscribe to the podcast newsletter at https://thefailurefactorpodcast.com 

Nov 5, 2025

Jewel went from a busking teenager living in her car to selling 30 million records worldwide—then walked away at the peak of her fame. While the world saw success, she was navigating panic attacks, trauma, and agorophobia. She realized she had broken a promise to herself made years earlier: to become a “happy, whole human—not a human full of holes.”

In this conversation, Jewel reveals how she built a career on her own terms—even when those terms seemed irrational to the industry—and how she continues to redesign her life today with the same commitment to peace over profit. She shares spiritual lessons she learned while growing up in rural Alaska, why she believes we should look at anxiety like we do food poisoning, and the opportunity for "breaking down" she's looking forward to next. 

Today, through her Inspiring Children Foundation and the Not Alone Challenge, she’s helping others do the same by providing mental health tools for people who don’t have access to therapy, privilege, or a safety net.

Entrepreneurs will recognize familiar terrain here: risk, self-doubt, scaling what works, walking away when it doesn’t, and the personal evolution required to build anything that lasts.

Key Takeaways & Topics

  • Leaving an abusive home at 15 and choosing agency over circumstance

  • Turning down a $1M record deal to prioritize long-term well-being

  • Why fame triggered old wounds and how she restructured her career around values

  • The concept of “emotional inheritance” and rewiring harmful programming

  • Anxiety as an ally: using discomfort as a decision-making barometer

  • Making happiness measurable and non-negotiable as a founder

  • How to walk away or redesign when your dream stops working

  • The Inspiring Children Foundation and Not Alone Challenge: democratizing mental-health tools

  • Creative reinvention at 51: shifting into art and entrepreneurship again

 

The Failure Factor Podcast was brought to you by Off The Field Coaching. Explore working with one of our coaches at http://offthefieldcoaching.com 

Hosted by Megan Bruneau: therapist, executive coach, speaker, Forbes contributor, and host of The Failure Factor. For more info, visit https://meganbruneau.com  

Jewel on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jewel
Not Alone Challenge: https://notalonechallenge.org

Megan on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meganjbruneau 
Megan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/megan-j-bruneau-m-a-rcc 

Subscribe to the podcast newsletter at https://thefailurefactorpodcast.com 

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