Shilpa Reddy, CMO of Down Under School of Yoga and former Marketing VP at Acorns, maps her journey from fintech to wellness and explains why the same principles drive both: make time-tested tools accessible, and build a community that keeps people engaged. She breaks down her three-stage marketing flywheel, and shows why marketers must dismantle the false divide between direct response and brand storytelling. The conversation moves from Acorns’ spare-change investing to Down Under’s community-driven yoga. She interrogates the role of podcasts as the new TV, the measurement gaps left by ATT, and how authenticity risks becoming uniform in an AI-saturated content world.

Questions Shilpa answered in this episode:

• What drew Shilpa from Acorns to running a yoga business?
• How curiosity and human-centered marketing let her adapt across industries
• What is the three-stage marketing flywheel, and how do you know when to move from one stage to the next?
• Why brand and performance are one continuum, not opposing forces?
• How LTV makes the case for brand investment with a CFO
• Why podcasts function as the ‘new TV’ for reach, trust, and ad effectiveness?
• How marketers should balance host-read storytelling with direct response calls to action?
• How AT&T’s affected mobile marketing measurement
• Why authenticity should mean varied storytelling, not uniform brand policing
• What advice Shilpa gives to early-stage wellness founders with no marketing budget?

Timestamps:

• (0:00) – Intro; Shilpa’s journey from Acorns to Down Under Yoga
• (2:00) – Growing up with yoga, curiosity, and career pivots across industries
• (3:50) – Acorns’ mission and how it relates to yoga
• (8:00) – The three-stage marketing flywheel explained (fit, LTV, brand)
• (13:50) – Signs you’re ready to move between stages (NPS, brand love, data)
• (15:15) – Making the CFO case for brand investments through LTV
• (17:00) – The orchestration problem: aligning funnel mechanics with brand reach
• (19:00) – Podcasts as the new TV: hours consumed, trust, and ad-to-content ratio
• (24:40) – ATT’s impact: creativity up, measurement lagging
• (26:20) – Authenticity vs. uniformity: the danger of AI-generated generic content
• (29:30) – Advice to early-stage wellness founders: start with your most loyal clients
• (55:00) – Wrap-up: Down Under Yoga, on-demand classes, how to connect

Quotes:

• (12:30) – “Stage one is finding who your product is loved by. Stage two is increasing their lifetime value. Stage three is broadcasting your brand story.”
• (15:30) – “LTV almost by definition is long-term. It allows you to justify investments in brand.”
• (19:10) – “Podcasts are the new TV. Americans average three hours a week, and the trust in the host feels one-to-one, not one-to-many.”
• (27:20) – “Authentic does not have to mean uniform. It’s the opposite. It means telling varied, engaging stories rooted in what you stand for.”

Mentioned in this episode:

• Acorns
• Down Under School of Yoga
• Shilpa’s Linkedin