Hitting The Mark

Dan Lilienthal and José Chayet co-founded [untitled], a sacred place for work-in-progress music used by hundreds of thousands of artists and producers, including Justin Bieber, Hayley Williams, and Geese. The brand was recently awarded one of Fast Company’s 10 most innovative music companies of 2026.

Tyler Strand co-founded the creative operations platform Air, a tech company that could easily be seen as a media agency. Air is empowering Creatives in the age of AI, and the entire brand is built on smart brand marketing. The team is putting out all kinds of crazy campaigns that most Creatives wish their agency would let them run, thereby building a bond and a community that reaches far beyond t...

15 years ago, Charles Brun started C-Concept together with two of his best friends. A B2B2C company that made reading glasses, founded by friends who saw a need for stylish readers for their Parisian moms. Fast forward to today, and the name has changed to IZIPIZI, and the company is selling design-forward eyewear for all occasions in thousands of stores around the world.

Alisa Sparks quit her government finance job to get into interior design without any formal training. She tested her theory, and the market responded. Today, this bold move sees her at the helm of Linden Creek, a home staging and interior design franchise with over 20 locations nationwide and many more planned.

Eugene Kang grew up stocking shelves in his parents' gas station convenience stores, then one day took a mesmerizing bite of beef jerky at a small roadside stand, tracked down the maker, and eventually bought the business with his aunt. Fast forward to today, he grew Archer into America’s No. 1 premium jerky brand with 30 SKUs in 30,000 locations nationwide, and on this episode he shares all the l...

Miki Agrawal founded the period underwear brand THINX, which everyone listening to this show remembers for its ad campaign running in the NYC subways, featuring grapefruit and eggs to represent menstruation. In 2019, Miki founded TUSHY, where she rebranded the modern bidet. Her latest venture stopped me in my tracks: HIRO Diapers, the world’s first diapers that are digested by Fungi.  In this epis...

Kegan Fisher, together with her husband, co-founded the Frank Darling brand to revolutionize the fine jewelry industry. One fine piece of copy from the brand’s website reads, “The hardest thing on Earth is now a little easier. We’ll be frank, darling. The diamond industry benefits from confused customers.” What began in a Brooklyn apartment has grown into a nationally recognized brand with nine br...

Lucy Goff is the founder of LYMA, the buzzy London-based brand providing 'the world’s most powerful skin longevity system.’ A LYMA Laser runs you $2,700, and the LYMA Laser Pro sets you back $6,000: a significant investment, and a challenging brand positioning to defend in a highly opaque industry. This episode focuses on how Lucy and her team have created a new niche with significant success from...

Michael Browning Jr. is the Founder and CEO of Unleashed Brands, the parent company of youth enrichment franchises that serve millions of families annually across 1,400 locations, including Urban Air Adventure Park, The Little Gym, Snapology, Premier Martial Arts, Class 101, XP League, and Water Wings.  Michael and I delve into the business of building and expanding magnetic franchise brands: How...

Katerina Schneider, founder and CEO of Ritual, has redefined the supplement industry through transparent science and sourcing. In this episode, we revisit her launch of Ritual a decade ago—while she was pregnant—driven by her inability to find a supplement brand she could trust. We explore how her company challenged industry norms, treats customers as “Chief Health Officers,” leverages branding to...

Jake Danehy runs the apparel brand Fair Harbor, which has repurposed nearly 40 million plastic bottles into best-selling apparel. He started the company in college with his sister and scaled it into a multi-million-dollar values-led brand. We talk about his childhood beach days in Fair Harbor, which inspired the brand’s name, how you can launch with as good as no funding, that you never own your b...

Yousuf Ahmed made his way from the music industry via Goldman Sachs to upcycling leftover oats (a byproduct of making oat milk) into what he describes as plant-based and protein-packed upcycled crunch puffs that taste like summer camp and save the world. When I prepared for the show, I saw that his company, B-Sides, had just announced that their brand design had fallen a bit flat with consumers an...

5 years ago, Jen Pelka was the founder and CEO of The Riddler, a beloved champagne bar located in San Francisco and NYC, where she offered hundreds of champagnes to a clientele of mainly badass women, quite similar to the team who served them. Then the pandemic hit, and fast-forward to today, where Jen is the Co-founder and CEO of Une Femme, the fastest-growing sparkling wine brand in the US.  Jen...

Brian Sheng is the CEO and Co-Founder of Aquaria, a tech startup that literally makes water out of thin air. The company supplies premium drinking water for homes, businesses, and outdoor spaces and backup water generators that are completely independent of plumbing infrastructure. The brand was named one of TIME magazine’s best inventions of 2024 and has secured 102M in funding for large-scale Aq...

Ben Christensen founded Cambium, a company that is building better supply chains, starting with wood, to make it possible to source every material in a regenerative way. This approach creates local jobs and is done just as efficiently, if not more efficiently, than it is today. And Ben and his team put storytelling at the core of their business, so not-surprisingly, their brand design and messagin...

Before starting chocolate brand Spring & Mulberry, Kathryn Shah was a brand strategy consultant who served as the Vice President of Global Marketing at Pantone and the Brand Manager for Veuve Clicquot Champagne, two brands 99% of us love and look up to. It was a trip to India and a cancer diagnosis that led to her launching her startup Spring & Mulberry, a line of date-sweetened chocolate bars. Af...

Many of you know Jeni Britton from episode 28, where we did a deep dive into Jeni's Ice Creams, which she started at age 22 and now sells in 80 scoop shops and 12,500 retailers with an annual revenue north of 125 million.  Today, we dive into a new chapter of Jeni's entrepreneurial journey with Floura. Floura is a next-generation fiber company that currently offers fiber bars, which she calls Frui...

This is the first time I get to say ‘welcome back’ on Hitting The Mark as I had Till Janczukowicz, the founder of Berlin-based IDAGIO, which is often described as 'the Spotify for classical music,' on episode 21. But this is not a Let’s catch up with Till episode to check in on IDAGIO. Instead, I recently saw that he is preparing for an exciting brand launch that features none other than John Malk...

Ilay Karateke is on a mission to bring Labneh to kitchens around the United States, or maybe this is more of a sprint than a mission because her brand, BEZI, is moving fast. Product development started in the kitchen a year ago. Today, they're in stores across New York City with e-commerce starting in December, and I can almost assure you that national distribution will follow shortly. This is one...

Together with his brother, Ben Checketts co-founded Rhone, an athleisure wear brand inspired by the quality of Lululemon and the urge to craft a stand-out label for men.  The brand is driven by the pursuit of mental fitness and Ben’s philosophy on branding is both refreshing and insightful.  We talk about naming, focus groups, how brands are shaped yet set free – a lot like children are being rais...

Matt McLean ventured into the organic juice business 25 years ago with one goal: to fuel families with uncompromised nutrition. Today, Uncle Matt’s Organic produces the #1 bestselling organic orange juice nationwide. Matt is hustling the same way he did 25 years ago with new product launches and market expansions happening as we speak. We talk about how his initial packaging design was hitting the...

Aleksandra Medina and Katrin Kaurov co-founded Frich (which stands for 'F***ing rich'), a financial literacy app for Gen Z that breaks the money taboo and makes it a social topic.  Frich busts into the world of corporate finance backed by a brand that could not be any more differentiated and authentic. With their fists in the air, Aleksandra and Katrin lead with transparency in an opaque space and...

Episode 109 brings us Rockwell Shah, the CEO, and N.B. Patil, the Co-Founder & CTO of Ozlo, an innovation startup in the sleep technology space. All three of Ozlo’s Co-Founders are former Bose veterans and they acquired and licensed assets from Bose to resurrect the discontinued but beloved Sleepbuds. This episode is a fascinating conversation about building a new brand on existing IP, the fragile...

Joan Nguyen is the Co-Founder and CEO of bumo, a brand that provides outstanding on-demand childcare for families and employers. Bumo considers itself in the business of 'parent care' and today you can learn all about the TLC she and her Co-Founder put into crafting the bumo brand very hands-on, strategic, and filled with raw authenticity. Trust is bumo’s brand DNA, but with an audience of new par...

Bennett Maxwell is the Founder and Chairman of Dirty Dough, one of the fastest-growing restaurant concepts in the US with 70 locations and another couple hundred in development. In this episode, we get to hear how Bennett’s authentic reaction to a lawsuit that could have taken the business out instead created brand buzz, helped build his tribe, and added to the company's growth.  We dive into the...