Hitting The Mark

David Coté and Julie Poitras-Saulnier run LOOP Mission which collaborates with major food industry actors to save perfectly good, but rejected products discarded before reaching grocery stores and transform them into products such as juices, smoothies, sodas, beer, gin, soaps, and dog treats. I have to be frank and I can cut this intro very short: I have a complete brand crush and to me, LOOP is i...

Nick Green is the Co-Founder & CEO of Thrive Market, a membership-based online platform that makes healthy living easy and accessible to all. Since launching in 2014, Thrive Market has grown to more than 1 million paying members and become a touchstone example of a mission-driven company at scale. In addition to offering great natural and organic products at affordable prices to its members, the c...

Christina (Fagan) Pardy founded Shit That I Knit, a brand of sustainable high-quality knit-wear that one would say besides its name– although the contrary is true – has become known around the world. Christina was recently on the TODAY show and Shit That I Kit was the official Team USA brand partner for beanies and mittens this past Winter Olympics, which is rather spectacular. Here is an entrepre...

Gardar Stefansson co-founded Good Good, a company from Iceland that makes waves around the globe with its no-sugar-added breakfast and brunch products. To me, startups like Good Good are extremely exciting since they have to embody all the components of great brand strategy: From starting with a niche product for a niche audience - while allowing the brand name and design to survive any pivots - t...

Andy Hunter founded Bookshop.org with a mission to disrupt Amazon’s book sales and put them back into the hands of bookstores.  He sees his brand to be the MC and hands the mike over to the people who sell and love books. A mesmerizing uphill battle that you can witness him slowly winning by means of passion, dedication, and shared values between bookshop.org, physical bookstores, and last but not...

Brice Partouche founded Satisfy, a performance fashion brand for runners to unlock the high.  He wouldn’t say it, but I can: Satisfy is quickly developing into a cult brand and we spent ample time talking about Zeitgeist, culture, and community.  Brice and I discuss how NFTs can be used to create access to a brand, the link between running and creativity, and how every product line starts with a s...

Adam Rich co-founded Thrillist by sending out an e-mail newsletter to 600 people about things to do in NYC. Well, as they say, the rest is history.  I talk with Adam about how a newsletter turned into a trusted brand and a global multi-platform media monster hitting the eyeballs of more than 300 million people a month, how understanding and sticking to your brand’s DNA is key to brand growth, how...

Together with Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Michael Mohr founded Houseplant, a lifestyle brand rooted in cannabis that creates and curates thoughtful, design-led original products. By unifying the words “house” and “plant,” the brand has created an entirely new cannabis experience through curated, one-of-a-kind expert insights from Rogen and Goldberg that marry perfectly with well-designed, premiu...

Doug Zell is the Founder of Intelligentsia Coffee, a beloved brand that established itself as a leader in what came to be known as third-wave coffee. Intelligentsia embodies a quest for superior quality and sophisticated design, but it is furthermore about the overall impeccable brand experience that those of us who have visited one of the 15 US locations have come to expect. Doug is a masterful b...

Angela Jia Kim founded  Savor Beauty with a strong brand ethos inspired by a career as a concert pianist.  What caught my eye about Angela's brand was how she checks off all the boxes a brand in her space should, and she does it seemingly with ease: farm-fresh small-batch organic products, cutting-edge technology, 100% non-toxic clean formulas, made locally, supporting various deserving communitie...

David Neeleman is the Founder of 5 airlines and changed the way people experienced surprise and delight by flying JetBlue.  During the pandemic, he launched his latest airline brand, Breeze, and I sat down with David to talk about what branding means to him, what makes great company culture, how a book inspired the JetBlue brand, and his preferred airline naming process (in the case of JetBlue the...

Chris Boyd is the Co-Founder of Monday, a Southern California distillery that crafts non-alcoholic spirits such as gin and whiskey.  The brand is only a year old and its impeccable design caught my eye from day one.  Chris and I talk about how community and authenticity are key to building his brand. And he is walking that talk as he has 1,366 shareholders to who he is reporting. And of course, we...

Chris Meade, 28 years young, a Forbes 30 under 30 nominee, invented a new sport with his co-founders that mixes Four square with Volleyball.  Today you can catch Crossnet on ESPN and the product sells in over 3,000 locations in the US and around the world.   Chris and I talk about naming not only a brand, but a sport, how to create not only momentum but a movement, the latest in digital marketing,...

Vicki von Holzhausen utilizes her background as a designer for Audi and Mercedes to innovate on materials that are truly sustainable through her eponymous vegan leather bags and accessory brand.   Vicki and I discuss the weight of her brand promise, The Conscious Code, how she bootstrapped a luxury brand, how she showcases accountability by using her last name as the brand name and so much more. ...

Kara Goldin is the Founder and CEO of Hint, Inc, the brand synonymous with the leading unsweetened flavored water in the US, loved by millions.   Within minutes of listening to Kara, you will understand why she became as successful as she has and why she is such an influential voice in business.   Kara shared an outpour of crucial lessons for both entrepreneurs and marketers alike, and her first b...

Natasha Case founded Coolhaus with her then-girlfriend – now-wife – in 2009. Inspired by her architectural background and a drive to create the best ice cream sandwich available, the couple bought "a piece of shit postal van masquerading as an ice cream truck’ on Craigslist for $2,500 dollars and towed it to the Coachella Music Festival using AAA." The rest is history. Today Coolhaus is the top wo...

Jeremy Parker bought the url swag.com to disrupt the boring and outdated promotional products industry. Swag should stand for something new, and be bought differently, and it should be stuff people actually want to keep.   That vision turned into reality as swag.com had 2000% growth over the last three years, made it onto Number 218 on Inc’s Top 500 Fastest Growing Companies list, and counts TikTo...

Max Johnson built a tremendously impactful business over the course of the last 4 years through simple necklaces that celebrate female goddesses and leaders. The brand, Awe Inspired, was born out of Max's mother’s desire to empower fellow cancer survivors. From the journey of blindly walking into brand agencies on Madison Avenue to learning how personalization and shared values are key to the futu...

You must have been on a social media diet to not have stumbled upon TRUFF’s masterfully designed array of truffle-infused sauces. But TRUFF is not solely a social media sensation, you can find the brand anywhere from Whole Foods to Neiman Marcus, and from the U.S. to Australia.   The two Co-Founders, Nick Ajluni and Nick Guillen, have a knack for brand building and now that I have tried their prod...

Eddie Hartman created LegalZoom 20 years ago with two friends and built it into the best-known legal brand in the United States. LegalZoom has over 4 million customers and more than half of all Americans know the brand.   I have been a customer for a mighty long time and having this chat with Eddie was just incredibly stimulating and rewarding. We talk about how celebrity lawyer Robert Shapiro bec...

In the last episode we were in Iceland, today we are in Australia, and finally, we have a B2B brand on the show again: A tech brand that is in the business of converting, retaining, and growing your customers with delightful personal video messages sent at just the right moment.   But Bonjoro is not your typical tech company – it has brand and culture at its heart. It is about creating customer lo...

Björn Steinar Jónsson runs Saltverk, which produces hand-harvested sustainable sea salt using only energy from geothermal hot springs in the northwestern fjords of Iceland. Saltverk's salt-making method is based on the traditional methods of the 17th-century, which means that during the entire process they leave zero carbon footprint.   The salt is used in many of the world's best restaurants (g...

Interior designer Nicole Gibbons set out to 'take the pain out of paint' through her brand Clare where she has pioneered an easier, faster, and more inspiring way to shop for paint.   Fast Company proclaimed “The Warby Parker of paint is here” and Nicole has just been named one of Inc’s 100 Women Building America's Most Innovative and Ambitious Businesses.   In a fascinating conversation, we dive...

Shivam Punjya is the founder of the luxury handbag label behno which is designed in NYC but made in India. behno operates at the intersection of ethical thinking and luxury design, a space I have always been very interested in.   Further, behno’s mission is to redefine and bring awareness to the character of “Made in India”, and to set a new standard for Indian factory manufacturing that improves...

Emmanuelle Magnan is the Founder of the Parisian flower studio Pampa.   Those of you listening to the show frequently know that I love to talk with founders of internationally known brands like Rotten Tomatoes and Evernote just as much as with smaller brands that are unknown to many of you, but that I feel are doing something unique in their space or with their brand.   Pampa is doing both as they...