Podcast

What started as a way to connect with women beyond my book, quickly became a heart-centered show for ambitious women at the intersection of entrepreneurship, self-trust, the consumer brands I’m obsessed with, featuring the brave founders behind them. The podcast is currently on hiatus so I can focus on building my family and career, but here are some of the top episodes all time. Enjoy!

Episodes

Halfdays, Ariana Ferwerda

CEO & Co-Founder of Halfdays, Ariana Ferwerda, sits down with Stef to discuss what it takes to create a technical outdoor gear company for the modern woman. We get into:

  • Designing technical gear from scratch

  • Finding and hiring key people

  • Fundraising from family, friends, and institutional investors

Flex, Lauren Wang

CEO & Founder of Flex, Lauren Wang, sits down with Stef to discuss what it takes to disrupt the period care industry. We get into:

  • The pros and cons of doing YC

  • Fundraising from institutional investors

  • Surrounding yourself with people who see your potential

Burst, Brittany Stewart

President & Co-Founder of Burst Oral Care, Brittany Stewart, sits down with Stef to get discuss how to disrupt an established industry with not just great products, but a distribution model that no one else was exploiting. We get into:

  • The importance of understanding financial fundamentals when building a capital-intensive business

  • Conversations to have early in a Co-Founder relationship

  • Seeing your career as a training-ground for being a future-founder

Homecourt, Sarah Jahnke

CEO & Co-Founder of Homecourt, Sarah Jahnke, joins Stef & Lauren to discuss the behind the scenes of co-founding a home care company with celebrity, Courteney Cox. We get into:

  • How to co-create a company vision when the seedlings of an idea have already been planted

  • Finding whitespace in how a category is positioned in the mind of consumers

  • The importance of trusting the timing of your life and career

Outdoor Voices and TYB, Ty Haney

Founder of Outdoor Voices and TYB, Ty Haney, sits down with Stef & Lauren to discuss building in an emerging industry, and why customer obsession is the only way. We get into:

  • The differences and similarities between building a consumer brand and tech company

  • The importance of community in building consumer brands

  • Applying lessons from your first company in your second build

De Soi, Scout Brisson

CEO of De Soi, Scout Brisson, joins Stef & Lauren to get into the behind the scenes of coming in as a General Manager, then CEO, for a Non-Alc brand co-founded by celebrity Katy Perry. We get into:

  • How constructive feedback can be career-defining

  • The difference between co-founding and co-creating a vision as a CEO

  • Why you shouldn’t limit yourself to only exploring careers that align directly with your path in formal education

Omsom, Vanessa Pham

CEO & Co-Founder of Omsom, Vanessa Pham, sits down with Stef & Tasha to discuss building a loud, proud, and totally disruptive Asian food brand in the tired ethnic aisle. We get into:

  • How to have the DNA embodied in everything from product to launch events

  • The lessons learned developing recipes with chefs, but formulating for shelves

  • How they approached raising capital in a very intentional way — finding aligned investors to put on their cap table (including >50% women and minorities)

Avec, Dee Charlemagne

C0-Founder of Avec, Dee Charlemagne, joins Stef to discuss the behind the scenes of building a category-disrupting beverage company. We get into:

  • If an MBA from Columbia + an undergrad degree from Harvard is worth it

  • How only co-founders with very different backgrounds could see the whitespace in the culture for cocktail mixers

  • The real reel of how to fund your startup before even thinking about taking on institutional capital (hint: keep your job)

Remedy Place, Dr. Jonathan Leary

Founder of Remedy Place, Dr. Jonathan Leary, sits down with Stef & Lauren to discuss his vision for creating a better-for-you social club where members bond over cold plunges, IV’s, and body treatments that make you feel well. We get into:

  • How he funded the vision for Remedy Place

  • What it’s like working with celebrities like Kim Kardashian, and which Kardashian was the best cold-plunger

  • Advice for future founders entering the wellness space

Leisure, Steve & Alex Michaelsen

Co-Founders of Leisure, Steve and Alex Michaelsen, join Stef & Lauren to discuss what it takes to bring a RTD beverage brand to life from their kitchen. We get into:

  • Why any successful brand MUST have a point of view on the world

  • How your career is a training ground for founder-life

  • The power of getting creative to raise their initial funding round, getting their community bought in from day 1 and being able to hold off on institutional funding until they were ready

Cayla Gray, Kelly Kussman

Founder of Cayla Gray, Kelly Kussman, sits down with Stef to discuss what led her to create a clean, luxury fragrance brand, and how her career in supply chain and strategy helped her build a profitable business from day one. We get into:

  • How a traumatic health scare led her to Cayla Gray

  • How, as a Type A, she plotted her exit from Corporate America

  • Her vision for scaling a clean, luxury fragrance business without raising institutional capital

Onekind, Madison Ruggieri

Co-Founder of Onekind, Madison Ruggieri, joins Stef to discuss what it took to develop La-Mer-quality skincare at regular consumer prices. We get into:

  • The power of being a curator before a creator

  • Why she and her brother chose NOT to take on institutional funding and scale the business with a lean team instead

  • How she thinks about product development

Ritual Hot Yoga, Lindsey Kaalberg

Founder of Ritual Hot Yoga, Lindsey Kaalberg, sits down with Stef to discuss the behind the scenes of creating a cult-following hot yoga brand and business. We get into:

  • The early days of Ritual Hot Yoga, a vision, a gritty studio, and an addictive class format

  • The real reel of expanding to their first studio

  • How Lindsey’s formula was surprisingly perfect for becoming a franchise business-model

Sweedies, Olivia Sheehan and Rachel Pichman

Co-Founders of Sweedies, Olivia Sheehan and Rachel Pichman, join Stef & Lauren to discuss how they concepted their clean, snackable cannabis brand. We get into:

  • How their careers in luxury beauty translated perfectly into identifying a whitespace in the cannabis industry for women

  • What it took to lock down their first big retail account

  • The challenges of scaling a cannabis brand with all the regulatory red tape

Blade, Roisin Branch

Chief Marketing Officer of Blade, Roisin Branch, sits down with Stef and Lauren to discuss the behind the scenes of creating a luxury private flight business. We get into:

  • How Blade got it’s start transporting friends and family

  • Roisin’s approach to branding and marketing having built Soul Cycle, Equinox, and cut her marketing teeth in the CPG biz

  • The differences between running a publicly traded company and a private company

Pinch, Elan Mosbacher

Co-Founders of Pinch, Elan Mosbacher, joins Stef & Lauren to discuss how they concepted and launched their concierge med spa aka the Uber of Botox. We get into:

  • How his career building a parking app (Spothero) lent incredibly useful knowledge for building Pinch

  • The unique challenges and opportunities of building a two-sided marketplace

  • The broader vision for where Pinch is headed and why

Alice, Charlotte Cruze and Lindsay Goodstein

Co-Founders of Alice, Charlotte Cruze and Lindsay Goodstein, join Stef & Lauren to discuss how they came up with the idea for Alice functional chocolate. We get into:

  • The benefits of functional mushrooms and why they chose chocolate for their first two products

  • The different types of functional mushrooms and what you should be taking to improve your health 

  • Their predictions about functional and psychedelic mushrooms will being a massive consumer trend in the future