Startup to Storefront

Today's guest is Tarin Calmeyer, founder of Remote Team Wellness, a company that strives to reduce stress in the workplace. In what is truly a sign of the times, they offer their wellness and meditation classes through video conferences. While we've talked a lot about how companies have had to pivot to a post-Covid environment, this is the first company we've featured to have been born out of the lockdown. Tarin recognized that just because companies weren't all working under one roof didn't mean that she couldn't offer her services to keep morale and mental wellbeing high. If anything, the prevalence of video conferences meant that she could reach a much wider audience than ever before. This is truly a prime example of finding the silver lining in a dark cloud.

Listen in as we cover everything from why Tarin strives to do everything with intention, why she teaches that movement, mindfulness, and emotional intelligence are the three tenets to wellness, and she also leads us through a meditation session that is sure to leave you centered and relaxed.

Today's guest is Orlando Soria, the designer, author, and the host of HGTV's Build Me Up. Build Me Up is feel-good television at its finest, as the show features Orlando renovating homes for people going through major life changes. Some of the episodes also feature our very own host, Natalya Cappellini! The show stands out for Orlando's ability to listen and add his expertise to his client's tastes and suggestions; taking their trepidation and uncertainty about the next chapter in their lives and giving them an inspired new home that ushers them forward while still paying homage to where they've come from.

Listen in as we cover everything from what it was like to grow up inside of Yosemite National Park, why he hires partners and not employees, and we give him perhaps his greatest challenge of all: redesigning Nick's bedroom.

Today's guests are Gloria Lu and Victoria Fu, co-founders of Chemist Confessions, the skincare brand that started as an attempt to break down the overly complicated and purposefully confusing world of beauty products. They were industry insiders working at L'Oréal, and they were fed up with the lack of transparency in how the Big Brands marketed to consumers. Since they're both actually chemists (hence the name), when they tackled misconceptions and broke down the basics of healthy skincare, people listened. They were able to amass a passionate and loyal fanbase before eventually expanding into their own line of skincare products.

Listen in as we cover everything from what would happen if you only applied sunscreen to one half of your face consistently over ten years, the three most basic and essential skincare products, and—in accordance with one of their most popular hashtags—we decode that ingredient list.

Today's guest is Jason Richardson, founder of golf apparel company Bad Birdie. Golf can be an electrifying sport; look no further than how many people tuned in to watch Tiger Woods in his prime, or just listen to how loud the average player gets when they sink a long putt. But if you ask most people, when they think of golf, they think of stale country clubs where a bunch of old guys putz around in attire that hasn't changed since the '20s. As in the 1920's. Jason wanted to change that stereotype, but as you just heard, he started the company as a way to make a couple extra bucks. Sometimes it takes an outsider's perspective to know what you've got. And after that fateful meeting, he dove headfirst into growing Bad Birdie into a company that reminds people just how much fun golf can actually be.

Listen in as we cover everything from how a missed putt by Robert Herjavec allowed him to keep an extra 5% of his company, how he wants to make the sport of golf more inclusive, and find out why he doesn't actually play that many rounds of golf.

Today's guests are Kim and Tim Lewis, co-founders of CurlMix, a brand focused on clean beauty hair products for —you guessed it—curly hair. This is the second company that they've started together, but they'll be the first to tell you that their first was a failure. Still, they grew from the experience and attribute the success of CurlMix to the lessons learned from that first failed business. As you'll learn in this episode, Kim and Tim are innovative, driven, and work exceptionally well together. We've had a few founders on this show before who are married, and it's always immediately apparent why both the marriage and the company are successful. Kim and Tim perfectly complement each other's skillsets and have such infectious energy that it's a no-brainer why they were chosen to appear on not one, but two TV shows.

Listen in as we cover everything from how they funded their first company on Tim's winnings from Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, how they grew CurlMix's sales from $140k to $1M in only one year, and why it's so important for them to be the entrepreneurial role models they never had while growing up in Chicago's South Side.

Today's guests are sisters Chrystle and Cat Cu, co-founders of the hottest thing in the floss market since…well…ever. Imagine the last time you bought floss, or for some of you, imagine that you've ever bought floss. You walk down the aisle in the store and you see a bunch of companies basically selling the same thing. It might have different packaging or flavor, but the product itself might as well be indistinguishable from one company to the next. And they're all just kind of bland. And this is the part of the problem that Chrystle was running into over and over at her dental practice. Try as she may, she couldn't get her patients to floss. Here's the part we can all relate to, every time we go to the dentist and they ask how often you've been flossing, we either lie or feel some variation of "not enough". So faced with this recurring problem, Chrystle teamed up with Cat and together they built a better proverbial mousetrap.

Listen in as we cover everything from how they piggybacked off the popularity of coconut oil to launch Cocofloss, how they set their first price point just to break even on shipping costs, and much more

Today's guests are Kendall Bird and Sage Grazer, co-founders of Frame, a mental wellness network that is a one-stop-shop for therapy. On the user end, you can search around and connect with therapists, and on the back end it allows the therapists access to the tools they need to run their practice. This is therapy for modern times. The stigma around therapy has been eroding for a while now, and I truly think it's for the better. We all need to feel heard, we all have problems, we all are fighting our own battles, and if you turn to a licensed professional to help you grow, all the more power to you.

Listen in as we cover everything from how Kendall and Sage went from running a lemonade stand as kids to launching Frame earlier this year, why something as simple as movement is such an important part of mental health, and we learn of the existence of therapist influencers.

Today's guest is Dr. Jason Wersland, founder of Therabody. The journey in creating Therabody has been a very personal one for Dr. J. In 2007 he was cruising around LA on his motorcycle when a car cut him off and sent him flying. The recovery from that crash was long and frustrating, prompting Dr. J to invent the first iteration of Theragun, an instrument that helped his body heal through percussive therapy. Theragun was far from an overnight success though, and Dr. J spent years trying to convince anyone who would listen about the benefits of using one. But over time, as Theragun found its way into the hands of more and more people, the feeling was undeniable. Now, with the launch of a new line of CBD products, the company formerly known as Theragun has become Therabody.

Listen in as we cover everything from how a fateful knock on his door from a famous stranger convinced him not to give up, why innovation leads science, and why Dr. J believes the three most important attributes in an entrepreneur are persistence, consistency, and delusion.

Today's guest is George Gascón, a candidate running for the office of Los Angeles District Attorney. To quote an editorial from the L.A. Times from October of last year, "There is a strong case to be made that aside from the presidential race, the most important item before voters in 2020 will be the race for L.A. County D.A." The reasoning behind such a bold prediction is centered on the relatively high incarceration rates in L.A. county. The two-term incumbent, Jackie Lacey, has made a name for herself as being tough on crime. So when George Gascón entered the race running on a platform to end mass incarceration, the death penalty, and to enact police reform, people took notice. His platform has only increased in relevance since the death of George Floyd instigated America's racial reckoning. Gascón has since garnered the support of progressives such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, as well as musicians John Legend and Common.

Listen in as we cover everything from how he's running his campaign during the age of Zoom/social distancing, the difficulties of changing structural problems within policing, and how he plans to change them, and we go into the specifics of his plan to completely reform L.A.'s system of mass incarceration.

Today we've got a two-for-one special. Our guests are Mark McTavish and Brendan Brazier. Together the two of them are revolutionizing the American cider industry by sitting back and letting Mother Nature do its thing. While that might seem a bit simplistic, they realized that there's no need to add any extra sugar, water, or substances to their cider. They literally juice the apples and let them sit for 3 months before canning them and selling them. That's it! That's their process! And let me tell you from my own taste test: I'm a big fan. Mark says that anyone can do this at home, but I'm going to keep letting them do the work so that I can enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Listen in as we cover everything from how Mark was inspired by the day-drinking culture in Northern Spain, how many apples you have to juice to get one serving of cider, and why the wine industry has lobbied to make it illegal to put ingredients on anything over 7% alcohol.