The Innovators is a new show about how people actually build. Not slogans. Not hype. The work. Each episode starts with a pitch, then gets into the choices that make or break a young company. We ask basic questions that most founders avoid. Who pays you. Why do they stay. What broke. What did you fix. The goal is simple, help real builders sharpen their story and pressure-test their plan, while giving listeners a clear view of how a business grows from zero.

Our first guest is Dani Dufresne, founder of Aux Co. Think of Aux Co as a plugged-in production brain for small agencies and brand teams. Not a vendor line item you add at the end. A team you invite in at the start. Dani came up through film and commercial production, then spent years inside big agencies. She saw a pattern. Small, sharp creative shops had ideas worth making, but not the overhead for full-time producers. Big holding company shops had budgets, politics, and habits that dragged the work off course. The result was friction, waste, and flat outcomes.

Aux Co is her answer. The firm embeds early, helps shape the creative into something that can be made on time and on budget, then brings the right crew to the table. Agencies keep the client relationship. Aux Co supplies an executive producer mindset and a deep bench. It is white label when needed. It is visible when that helps. The goal is the same in both cases, protect the idea, spend money where it matters, and keep the quality bar high.

Dani’s view on incentives is blunt. A freelancer takes a brief and gets it done. An in-house EP at a big shop might default to the same three vendors. Both paths can work, but both can settle. Aux Co set itself up to question decisions early, to tell a client when the plan is off, and to push for better options that fit the money and the clock. That only works if you get in the room before the pitch goes out. So they do that, often without charging for pitch support, and earn their keep in production.

The model scales in a quiet way. Retainer clients get producers embedded in Slack, in email, in the office when needed. When a brief lands, Dani assigns specialists for that job, not whoever is idle. She oversees the start, then steps back while her team runs the shoot, the event, the build. That frees creative teams to focus on the idea, not vendor whack-a-mole. It also keeps the work fresh, since the roster is wide and curated. The firm avoids the bad habit of reusing the same production company out of comfort.

We talked about the risk in this kind of service. It looks like staff, it acts like staff, but it is not headcount. Finance teams want cost clarity. Dani keeps pricing simple, hourly or flat packages, small retainers that roll over, production fees that track the real job. The promise is speed and fit. You get the right director or developer in days, not months, because the list is already built. You pay for what you use. You keep quality up because the team can say no when something does not line up with the mission you stated at kickoff.

There is also a cultural point. Aux Co looks for clients who see questions as care, not conflict. That matters. A lot of work fails because no one raises a hand when the plan drifts. Dani builds teams that ask why, tie choices back to the brief, and hold the line. It sounds small. It is not. It is the difference between a film that lands and a film that sits in a drive.

Where is this going. Dani sees brands moving back into the world. Less empty feed. More real life. Community events. Collabs with local groups. Experiences that get people to close the laptop and do the thing the brand stands for. That shift needs producers who can work across formats, from a quick social shoot to out of home to a live build. It also needs partners who can move fast without cutting corners. That is the lane Aux Co lives in.

Why start The Innovators with this story. Because it shows the point of the show. A clear pitch. A simple problem, the gap between idea and execution. A practical fix, bring senior production into the room before the sell, keep it lean, keep it honest. You can argue with the approach. You cannot say it lacks a plan.

If you run a small agency, this episode will help you rethink when you call production. If you run a brand team, it will help you weigh headcount against access. If you are a founder, it will push you to name your edge and the tradeoffs you refuse to make. That is the tone we want every week. Take the pitch. Pull on it. Find the weak points. Leave with a tighter story and a better path to revenue.

New episodes will follow the same line. Founders, operators, and makers walk us through what they sell, how they sell it, and how they keep clients. We keep the talk plain. We push for numbers when it counts. We respect craft, but we do not hide behind it. We ask about the first ten customers, the hardest hire, the month that almost killed the company, the new plan that kept the lights on. We want lessons you can use on Monday morning.

If you want to learn more about Aux Co, visit theaux.co, or look up Dani Dufresne on LinkedIn. If you want to pitch on The Innovators, send a short note with what you build, who buys, and why they stay. Keep it tight. Keep it real. We will bring questions. You bring proof.

When you talk to Diane Yu, you hear the mix of humility and steel that makes a founder stand out. She’s the co-founder and CEO of Tidal Wave, an AI company that is trying to modernize one of the most entrenched and slow-moving sectors out there: mortgages.

Her take is simple. We live in a world where everything else moves fast—food, rides, even love—but mortgages drag on, slow and archaic. Tidal Wave is her answer: an AI-powered mortgage point of sale system that does the hard work of evaluating and completing applications before an underwriter even looks at them. It’s not flashy, but it’s practical. And in this industry, practical is revolutionary...