Minutes With Mike

On a turbulent December flight home, Andrew Yeager told himself that if United was playing Rhapsody in Blue when he walked off the plane, he needed a plan B. It was. A friend he ran into on a later flight brought him into the beauty industry. He tells Mike how audio architecture turned a no from Ann Taylor into a client, what custom cosmetics taught him about memory, and why a personal endorsement...

Nicole Moodie spent twelve years building the operations behind a growing beauty brand. The weekly meeting she started went from forty-five minutes of battles to twenty of solving problems together. She tells Mike how she got sales and operations working from one version of the truth, what she looks for in a hire that a resume will never show, and why she plans three years out rather than ten. Con...

Getting into retail is one problem. Staying there is a different one. Brian Evangelista runs commercial strategy at Neuro, the smart gum brand that went from TikTok Shop to Walmart, Costco, CVS, and 7-Eleven. He tells Mike what actually changes when an online native brand hits a national shelf, why he thinks you have to act like an owner to build a category, and the sell story that keeps Neuro out...

Emily Perez started an Instagram page for Latinas in beauty. It is now a nonprofit with a board, a Pepperdine accelerator, and corporate partners. She went looking for an organization like that in 2020 and could not find one, so she built it, for four years, alongside a full-time corporate job. Emily tells Mike how she decides whether it is working, the regulatory call indie brands defer and pay f...

Yarden Horwitz built a platform that predicts which beauty trends will last. She is still the first to say the data cannot make the call for you. The co-founder of Spate sits down with Mike and co-host Ayla Anaya to get into how a rising star differs from a sustained riser, why consumers say one thing and buy another, and why she still calls Google search so telling. Plus the one metric she would...

Ask the client what they prefer. After 26 years on both sides of the marketing table, that is Katie Rosholt's first move with a new client. She joins Mike to get into the modern media mix, what AI summaries mean for how brands get found, and why she now promises clients less upfront so she can deliver more. All while building SOCIETY's first US office, now kicking off its third year. Connect with...

Carmine Montalto named Facial Fuel with a big black notebook in Madison Square Park. The concept came first. The name came last. He joins Mike for a candid conversation about how beauty products actually get named, the words Kiehl's refused to use, the all-pink shelfie that made him build Skincarma, and why ChatGPT is now his best friend. He also has thoughts about your eye cream. Connect with Car...

Octavia Morgan's own body rejected the fragrances she loved, so she learned to build cleaner ones. She joins Mike and co-host Alfonsina Messina for a candid conversation about going from farmers' markets to Ulta Beauty, the scent she almost scrapped three months from launch, and why she thinks the industry got gender wrong. Plus the question her partner asks that keeps her from running herself int...

Our generation of parents is way too involved, and Michelle Freedberg says it from the therapist's chair. Twenty-plus years after her first job at PIMS, she joins Mike for a candid conversation about parenting kids who need you less, what happens when the carpooling slows down, and why learning to run a podcast at 50 was its own reward. Connect with Michelle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-f...

Sherry Fang never signed up to be an influencer. She says anyone with a message to get across is one now, and trust keeps getting more expensive. Sherry hosts Soft Power Project and spent years training executives to communicate. She and Mike get into why you cannot change anyone through persuasion, what she gave up when she left a two-million-download podcast to start over from zero, and the hard...

Minutes with Mike is now The PIMS Influence. Mike Ryan sits down with Sherry Fang to explain the new name, and what four years and more than 60 episodes taught him about the people who really move beauty and CPG. A candid conversation about reinvention, influence, and what comes next. Connect with Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pimsmikeryan/ Connect with Sherry: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sher...

More creators. More content. More, more, more. Brit Starr says that is not how creator marketing scales. Depth comes first, or the scale does not hold. Brit and Mike get into why brands don't own their own stories anymore, the move from campaigns to community, and the half of every creator relationship that usually gets forgotten. Connect with Brit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/britmacstarr/ Connec...

Chaz Giles says the best AI results don't start with the technology. They start with your people. So why do most companies get it backwards? Chaz and Mike dig into what it takes to make AI augment a team instead of sitting unused, and how to tell real results from hype. Connect with Chaz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chazgiles/ Connect with Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pimsmikeryan/

Is ESG dead in beauty? Maggie Spicer says the opposite. Strip away the politics, and sustainability is just good business, and the brands that treat it that way are the ones that hold up when tariffs and regulations hit. She joins Mike for a candid conversation about greenwashing, supply chain visibility, and the one mistake that quietly drains beauty brands. Connect with Maggie: https://www.linke...

Do not rush into retail. Amy Kapolnek has said it to 112 brands across 24 countries, and she has seen what a million-dollar PO does to a brand that isn't ready. She joins Mike for a candid conversation about channel strategy, the fractional executive model, and why she thinks clinical results are about to flush the vibe brands out of beauty. Connect with Amy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amykapolne...

Social commerce only works when brands treat TikTok Shop as infrastructure, not a campaign. Pete D learned that inside TikTok, and now runs his own TikTok Shop agency. He joins Mike for a candid conversation about why discovery on the feed and the sale in the store are the same journey, how to tell if TikTok Shop is even right for your brand, and what really separates affiliate creators from influ...

After a decade as a creator. Aja Dang has thoughts on where brand-creator relationships go next: brands become the creator. She joins Mike for a candid conversation about her own pivot era, the AI brand deals she walks away from on principle, and what changes when a brand decides to build its own creator function in-house. Connect with Aja: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajadang/ Connect with Mike: h...

Maria Karr says the unboxing experience is a story, not a box. After two decades across agency, in-house, bootstrap, and incubator seats, she has built brands at every scale. She joins Mike for a candid conversation about why brand affinity comes before paid creator deals, how "cheap, fast, or quality, pick two" still drives 99% of project decisions, and what Maesa learned building AI-generated wo...

Devin Graciano took protein out of professional haircare and built Goldie Locks around what she saw from the chair. She joins Mike for a candid conversation about going back to school for chemistry as a working stylist, how her partnership with McKenzie Turley actually works, and how a bootstrapped team thinks about influencer PR boxes when the budget isn't $50 million. Connect with Devin: https:/...

The offices Jenny Wolf's commercial clients ask for don't feel like offices. They feel like home. Jenny, founder of Jenny Wolf Interiors and The Huntress, joins Mike to talk about why home is a feeling, not just a look, her "10% design, 90% problem solving" framing of the work, and a Hudson, NY, auction story that ends in 2026 with a piece she first spotted in a 2016 magazine. Connect with Jenny:...

Ian Michael Crumm built Boys in Beauty around a simple idea: beauty doesn't have to be gendered. In this candid conversation, Ian walks Mike through the line connecting his esthetician practice, his Times Square billboard for the Melanoma Research Foundation, and his collective to democratize beauty for men. Inside: why community beats audience size, what brands get wrong about the men's market, a...

Mike Rovner has spent 30 years in New York advertising and now runs a successful independent shop. Whether he's teaching his City College grad students or the junior creatives at TiNY Ad Agency, he tells them the same thing year after year: an execution is not an idea. A candid conversation on why most creative work fails the insight test, what AI gets right and wrong, and the open secret of influ...

Conor Begley and Joe Cloyes spent $25K testing the top 20 US beers. What they found led to Fathers Brewing, a clean American lager that won gold before it hit Whole Foods. A candid conversation on the clean beer playbook: why taste had to win before the clean story, how they ran a Super Bowl activation while selling in two counties, and why the real influencers in beer are bartenders, not Instagra...

Bryan Daniels turned brewery spent grain into a granola bar business. What's it like to run the whole thing solo? He tells Mike how a beer hobby became All Good Craft Granola Bars, what closing his cafe taught him, and why compostable packaging is back on the roadmap. Connect with Bryan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryan-daniels-vb/ All Good Granola: https://www.allgoodgranolabars.com/ Connect wit...

Nick Howard has a three-part framework for where AI actually works inside a company. Most businesses skip straight to the tools and miss the strategy entirely. He tells Mike why the first conversation should never be about technology, what he learned building a podcast to 1.8M downloads, and why the most exciting AI isn't the public-facing stuff. Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nhow...