Mike Clem, CEO of Sweetwater, joins Toph Day for a candid conversation about what it really takes to scale innovation inside an established company without losing the culture that made it special in the first place. Mike shares his journey from small-town Indiana to Purdue to building early e-commerce systems, then joining Sweetwater in 2003 when the website was a $4M channel and helping grow it into the world’s leading music tech and instrument retailer.

They unpack Sweetwater’s relationship-first business model, why the company plays the “long game” instead of chasing quarterly optics, and how Mike thinks about innovation beyond just technology—through customer obsession, expertise, and incremental improvement. The episode also explores the rise of the creator economy, how AI is reshaping music-making, and what it looks like to keep a founder mindset even as you become the incumbent.