Send us a text The FTGN Merch Store is Live!! Help Support the site with official FTGN Gear! Erin Wade, founder and former CEO of Homeroom, a mac-and-cheese restaurant in Oakland, to discuss her latest book: The Mac and Cheese Millionaire: Building a Better Business by Thinking Outside the Box and her journey from being an unfulfilled attorney to a successful entrepreneur. Erin opens up about the lessons learned while building a company culture that balances freedom with structure, and how she turned her passion into a thriving business. Joe and Erin dive into the power of titles, leadership, and the importance of creating a workplace that people genuinely want to be a part of. Episode Topics: Erin’s transition from law to the restaurant industry. The balance between freedom and structure in leadership. How facing struggles shaped Erin’s entrepreneurial journey. The role of intentional culture-building in business success. Leadership beyond titles and the power of influence. Watch the interview here . Erin Wade is a best-selling author, chef, and entrepreneur. Erin opened a cultishly popular restaurant, Homeroom , which has been covered everywhere from Cooking Channel to The Wall Street Journal . She authored The Mac & Cheese Millionaire, the best-selling The Mac and Cheese Cookbook , and a viral op-ed in the Washington Post about her restaurant’s solution to sexual harassment that was named one of the publication’s best of the year. Erin's work on business culture has been covered in Forbes and The New York Times , and she was named one of thirty-five “World-Changing Women” by Conscious Company magazine. Erin has a public policy degree from Princeton and a law degree from UC Berkeley. She lives in the Bay Area with her family and an array of surfboards. A special thanks to this week's sponsors! Veteran-founded Adyton . Step into the next generation of equipment management with Log-E by Adyton. Whether you are doing monthly inventories or preparing for deployment, Log-E is your pocket property book, giving real-time visibility into equipment status and mission readiness. Learn more about how Log-E can revolutionize your property tracking process here ! Exray a veteran-owned apparel brand elevating the custom gear experience. Exray provides free design services and creates dedicated web stores for units My favorite coffee is veteran-owned Alpha Coffee and I've been drinking it every morning since 2020! They make 100% premium arabica coffee. Alpha has donated over 22k bags of coffee to deployed units and they offer a 10% discount for military veterans, first responders, nurses, and teachers! Try their coffee today. Once you taste the Alpha difference, you won't want to drink anything else! Learn more here .
