The Irresistible Factor

Everyone wants to build a great brand. Nobody wants to wait. But what if patience is one of the most important competitive advantages a founder can have? Kyle Feigenbaum took an unconventional path to entrepreneurship, leaving a career in finance to walk dogs before launching Healthybud, a pet wellness brand focused on one simple idea: gut health for dogs. In this episode of The Irresistible Facto...

What happens when you create a product people have never seen before, designed to help them do something they've always struggled to do? On this episode of The Irresistible Factor , Kristi Bridges sits down with James McGoff, founder and CEO of Ohm, and Tiffani Davidson, VP of Marketing, to talk about the challenges of bringing an entirely new kind of wellness product to market. Ohm's Re...

When COVID shut down Katie Lee's restaurants, she had one goal: keep her business alive and her employees working. Within two days, her team had developed a frozen version of their wood-fired pizza. Six weeks later, they'd sold approximately 50,000 pizzas. What started as a desperate pivot became an entirely new business. In this episode of The Irresistible Factor , Kristi Bridges sits d...

Before You Make It, Make Sure Someone Will Buy It. People saying they'd buy your product means nothing until they actually do. And confusing enthusiasm with demand can be a very expensive mistake. On this episode of The Irresistible Factor , I talk with Christine Annie, founder of Aletha Health , about the difference between having a great idea and proving there's a market for it. Before...

The instinct that makes you a successful founder can become the thing that keeps your brand small. Founders are wired to see opportunity. Actually, they have to be. They see a product that doesn't exist yet and think, Why not? A retailer shows interest? Go. A new channel opens up? Try it. A new product you could make? Let's make it. That relentless belief in possibility is often exactly...

One sentence from my conversation with Morgan McLachlan has been stuck in my head: "We're outsourcing our wisdom." It's easy to hear that as an argument against AI. It's not. It's a reminder that technology can accelerate our thinking, but it can't replace our judgment. As founders and marketers, we're asking AI to write, research, brainstorm, analyze, summa...

Jean Thompson did not plan to run a chocolate company. She just couldn’t let it die. Jean was an early investor in Seattle Chocolate when an earthquake destroyed the building the company was renting. No earthquake insurance. Broken machinery. A condemned building. A business that might not survive. So she stepped in. Not because she had a grand plan. Because she loved the brand and didn’t want to...

She had the distribution. She had the buyers. She had the product. And she shut it down anyway. This week on The Irresistible Factor, I welcomed back Alison Cayne . A few years ago, she came on the podcast to talk about building Haven's Kitchen. This time, she came back to talk about something founders rarely discuss publicly: How she knew it was time to walk away. What struck me most was tha...

“We’re Not Building for Scale. We’re Building for Disruption.” I’ve interviewed a lot of founders, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say that before. And, it completely changed the way I thought about this conversation with Del Alfonso, founder of Harmony Baby Nutrition. Because most founders talk about scale as the goal: More stores. More distribution. More volume. Del talked about changi...

“Let It Be Easy.” “Let it be easy.” That was one of my favorite moments from my conversation with Yasmin Crystal Santos, founder of Altar Native. Not because building a company is easy. Clearly, it’s not. She’s dealing with: inventory shortages changing manufacturers regulatory hurdles fundraising decisions international expansion And somehow… she still feels calm. Not passive. Not naive. Calm. An...

“If Someone Slams the Front Door in Your Face, Go to the Back Door.” That was one of my favorite lines from my conversation with Kim Hehir, co-founder of Brutus Broth. And honestly? It might be one of the best descriptions of entrepreneurship I’ve heard in a while. Because Brutus Broth didn’t grow into a 20,000-store brand by following the traditional playbook.  They grew because they kept asking....

Sold a Little. Learned a Lot. Most brands try to skip this part. They go straight to scale. More distribution. More spend. More everything. And then wonder why nothing sticks. I interviewed Scott Forsberg and Ed Klein on the podcast this week, the founders behind a chocolate brand called Vine to Bar. On the surface, it’s already a great story:  Upcycled Chardonnay grapes Science-backed benefits Be...

You Don’t Have to Build the Biggest Thing. You Just Have to Build the Right Thing. Most of the conversations I have on this podcast are about growth. Scaling. Raising capital. Winning in crowded categories. This one isn’t. And that’s exactly why I love it. I sat down with Ugo Urberti Foppa, founder of a retreat center in Portugal called Quinta Marugo. On paper, Ugo’s not my typical guest. No big b...

The brands that win in crowded categories aren’t chasing trends. They’re built from something real. In this episode, I sit down with Rudy Aldana (Co-Founder & CEO of PARCH) to break down what’s actually happening in non-alcoholic—and why most brands are missing it. What we get into:     •    Why non-alc isn’t about health—it’s about identity     •    The real reason consumers feel “off” when t...

There are some categories where it feels like the world does not need one more brand. Fitness is one of them, especially Pilates. So when I sat down with Michael Ramsey, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Strong Pilates, I wanted to understand how they’re breaking through in spite of that. This was the line that stayed with me: The problem wasn’t Pilates. It was everything else people still needed.    That’...

Most wearables track one thing at a time: steps, sleep, heart rate. Nanowear is building something entirely new: a single piece of fabric that acts like a full physical exam whenever you wear it. CEO and co-founder Venk Varadan started the company nearly ten years ago with his father, Dr. Vijay Varadan, after discovering a breakthrough textile that can read the body without adhesives or multiple d...

When Arisa Katayama had her daughter in LA during COVID, she did what most first-time moms do: focused on the birth and the baby, not herself. Then the fourth trimester hit. Sleep-deprived, still breastfeeding late into the night, she kept opening a half-empty fridge filled with leftovers and frozen pizza, realizing there was nothing truly nourishing or postpartum-safe for her. That moment became...

Reinventing Practitioner Commerce with Jon Armstrong When tech entrepreneur Jon Armstrong set out to simplify his own supplement routine, he uncovered a much bigger problem: practitioners were losing patients, and profits, to Amazon. His answer was GetHealthy.store , a turnkey e-commerce and marketing platform that gives health and wellness professionals custom storefronts, operational support, an...

After two decades in biotech and a near-fatal heart attack at 43, Gary Seelhorst realized that success without self-awareness isn’t sustainable. He left corporate life to build Prime Peak Executive Coaching , a practice that helps leaders align peak performance with personal well-being. What started as volunteer work guiding veterans through career transitions has become a fast-growing, referral-o...

Economist turned founder Mette Dyhrberg didn’t plan to enter healthcare; she just wanted her life back. After collecting six autoimmune diagnoses in her twenties, she started tracking everything she was doing, eating, and feeling for months and months. She then used that data to uncover the cause of her symptoms and reverse them within 16 months, something that the medical community was not able t...

Radiologist turned founder, Dr. Cristin Dickerson, didn’t plan to run a company, she just wanted to do her job. But after seeing hospital acquisitions triple imaging prices and claims processes fail patients and doctors alike, Dr. Cristin looked to an unlikely category to find a solution. She built Green Imaging: a “Travelocity-style” marketplace that buys unused scanner time, bundles the entire e...

“It was very hard to accept, but I had to face the reality that our business was never going to give us the return we deserved. That was a mature set of decisions, to give up on dreams and accept defeat,” she says. As you can see, Kelly Spillane has lived both sides of the CPG journey. She started in Ireland as a founder, building a jam and marmalade company with her sister and even landing on sup...

What began with Matt’s own martial arts injury grew into a business model that now includes international instructor training, wellness retreats, and tailored protocols for everyone from elite athletes to entrepreneurs. His story is both exciting and inspiring.  But building Cold Club hasn’t been easy. Matt has had to navigate the realities of entrepreneurship, scaling globally, wearing every hat,...

For Emily Stein, the path from Stanford scientist to startup founder wasn’t straightforward. What began with a deeply personal motivation, preventing her grandmother from losing more teeth after a stroke, has turned into building Primal Health, an international company tackling one of healthcare’s most overlooked problems: oral health. Emily has led Primal Health through the challenges of launchin...

If you’re trying to sell ideas, products, and technology in the Healthcare industry, this podcast is for you. For Brendan McAdams, sales in healthcare isn’t about pushing products, it’s about creating real fit, listening deeply, and helping founders build businesses that last. As the founder of Kiinetics, Brendan has worked with health tech startups and entrepreneurs to navigate one of the toughes...