Every founder carries something they'd rather nobody knew about. A bad call, a wasted year, money that went nowhere. The instinct is always to bury it and keep moving.

Dr. Maria Nemeth did the opposite, and it changed her life. She was a clinical psychologist—the person others came to for answers—and she still loaned $35,000 to a man she'd known for three months.

A little voice told her not to. So did half her friends. She signed anyway.

It was a Ponzi scheme and she lost every dollar.

She hid it out of embarrassment until a reporter called the expert to ask what kind of person gets taken by these deals. Maria realized she was that person. So, she said it out loud and let the paper print it.

That one moment of telling the truth opened the door to everything that followed: the money work, the Oprah show, and the coaching academy she's run for 26 years.

It makes you think about whatever you're still hiding and what might happen if you finally said it out loud. The mistake isn't the thing holding you back. The silence around it is.

Maria got taken, told the truth, and built a life's work on it. That's a founder story if we've ever heard one.

🎧 Listen now and discover what can happen when you stop hiding the truth.

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Home furniture brand Blu Dot blew up on CTV with help from Roku Ads Manager. Here’s how:

After a test campaign reached 211,000 households and achieved 1,010% ROAS, the brand went all in to promote its annual sales event. It removed age and income constraints to expand reach and shifted budget to custom audiences and retargeting, where intent was strongest.

The results speak for themselves. As Blu Dot increased their investment by 10x, ROAS jumped to 2,308% and more page-view conversions surpassed 50,000.

“For CTV campaigns, Roku has been a top performer,” said Claire Folkestad, Paid Media Strategist, Blu Dot. “Comping to our other platforms, we have seen really strong ROAS… and highly efficient CPMs, lower than any other CTV partner we've worked with.”

Using Roku Ads Manager, the campaign moved from a pilot to a permanent performance engine for the brand.

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