The Empowered Challenger

Licensed nurse Suzie Welsh Devine always wanted to connect her passions for business and health. While working at a fertility clinic, she saw an opportunity to make a real difference in people’s lives, by breaking into a market she felt was saturated with complication instead of guidance.

With that goal in mind, in 2016 Suzie founded BINTO, short for “Bun in the Oven.” The direct-to-consumer women’s health company is disrupting the market by providing personalized supplement subscriptions.

The idea is to help women avoid unnecessary prescription interventions during their fertility journeys, and in other stages of their lives. In the process, Suzie also seized the chance to change the supplement business as a whole, simplifying the entire process.

In this episode, Suzie talks about how BINTO is expanding to revolutionize the women’s health industry, providing preventative solutions for all kinds of health problems a woman might face.

When Stan Chia joined Vivid Seats as its CEO, he was excited about giving the profitable online ticket marketplace a stronger consumer-facing identity.

Stan, who previously held executive roles at Grubhub and Amazon, joined the online ticketing company at a time when the secondary ticket market was growing by double digits year over year...

...then the pandemic hit and live events ground to a halt. As Stan puts it, events were the first “to shut down and almost the last to come back.”

On this episode of the podcast, Stan talks about steering the company through the pandemic and how he’s positioning Vivid Seats to win consumers’ hearts (and dollars) as the pandemic moves into the rearview mirror.

Listen in to learn how Vivid Seats differentiates itself in the online ticketing space through partnerships with Rolling Stone magazine, and why Stan doesn’t believe in focusing too much on competitors (even though he respects what they do).

Sneakers! Michael Rich has been obsessed for almost as long as he can remember.

From his retail beginnings at age 16, Michael learned all aspects of the shoe business before launching Psudo, a DTC sustainable sneaker brand.

“These are your ‘running around’ shoes, not your running shoes,” Michael says on this episode of The Empowered Challenger.

Listen to this episode to learn how Michael is creating a show brand made entirely in the USA, how he thinks about customer acquisition (it’s all about the brand), as well as his vision for creating a “circular brand” that customers can return for repurposing and get a fresh look.

Known among her friends as the person to call for design tips, Ariel Kaye realized that she had an opportunity to use her passion for interior design to start a home goods company.

But instead of creating just another brand that sells bed sheets, towels, and other products for the home, Ariel wanted to create a company that prioritizes its relationship with customers — in a way she wasn’t seeing in the industry.

She started Parachute to do just that.

After years in advertising, Ariel used the knowledge she’d acquired in the ad world about cultivating relationships with consumers to be a foundational part of her new company.

Now, as Parachute expands product offerings beyond sheets and pillowcases, Ariel wants to continue revolutionizing the way we see our home goods.

Tune in to this episode to hear how she changed career paths to fulfill her dream of challenging the home goods industry from the inside.

Kim Malek built a successful ice cream business around one central idea: community.

As the CEO and co-founder of Salt & Straw, Kim disrupted the idea of a typical ice cream shop by building an inviting, accepting environment that showcases local artisans and unique flavors.

Kim's career started at Starbucks, where she worked in marketing when the iconic coffee brand only had about 30 stores nationwide. With previous marketing experience at companies like Yahoo!, Adidas, and (RED), she learned a lot about what it takes to build a global brand.

"I always like to say I learned enough to be dangerous about a bunch of different things — operations, real estate, branding, but most importantly… building a company based on people and how you treat people," Kim says on this episode of The Empowered Challenger.

On this episode, hear Kim discuss how she built a “farm-to-cone” ice cream brand, words of wisdom she got from former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and how she launched Salt & Straw’s ecommerce business (with a little involvement from the Wall Street Journal).

When Chuck Cohn was struggling with a difficult college calculus class, he had a hard time finding the right place to access resources to help him improve.

So he decided to take matters into his own hands.

Chuck launched Nerdy, a direct-to-consumer platform connecting students and subject matter experts, with $1,000 from his dorm room. Now, Nerdy is a publicly traded company with a $1.7 billion valuation.

In this episode of The Empowered Challenger, Chuck discusses the path from upstart challenger to industry leader, as well as how he plans to continue to lead in an increasingly crowded field.

“It might just be how I'm wired, but I've always felt like I had a target on the back or a little bit of a chip on the shoulder,” he says.

Listen to the episode to learn about how Nerdy approaches customer acquisition and how Chuck thinks about Nerdy’s competitors in the online learning industry.

At Purple, the direct-to-consumer “bed in a box” company that is challenging the mattress industry, Burke Morley uses his creative background to turn the typically dull and stressful experience of buying a bed into something luxurious and fun.

Burke joined the team in 2018 as Vice President of Brand & Executive Creative Director. It was after the brand had a hugely successful ad campaign that played off the “Goldilocks” fairy tale. He wanted to expand on that success — while taking things in a different direction.

It’s critical for mattresses, which have a unique and atypical sales process. “We can't really anticipate when people are going into that buying cycle,” Burke explains on The Empowered Challenger. “So we have to be in the air with a positive impression so that when they do move into that buying cycle — where we're at the top.”

Tune in to hear how Burke is creating a more premium experience for the brand, how the mattress’ unique technology is incorporated into advertising, and how Burke is positioning the brand to move out of the bedroom.

Luxury beauty doesn’t have to carry a luxury price tag.

That’s the concept behind Beauty Pie, a fast-growing and industry-disrupting beauty brand. Beauty Pie positions itself as the “luxury Costco for beauty products.”

For a monthly fee starting at $10, consumers get “backstage access” to premium products at lower costs, Rob Weston, Beauty Pie’s Chief Marketing Officer, explains on this episode of The Empowered Challenger.

“We want to literally share the beauty pie — essentially the spoils of the beauty industry — with consumers.”

When it comes to winning over customers, Rob, a marketing vet with more than 20 years of experience, says it’s about embracing the conversation and leading with utility.

“The experience of what you're selling has to come first and then you market it ... you've got to get the utility right,” Rob says of marketing a digital challenger brand. “It's got to be the default choice, and then you begin to tell your stories. There's no point in doing it in the other order.”

Tune in to this episode to find out how Rob thinks about spending marketing dollars (new customer acquisition!) for the unique online beauty brand, how the pandemic affected Beauty Pie’s business and what comes next.

When Tom Szaky founded TerraCycle, a company that recycles what has previously been un-recyclable (like cigarette butts and coffee capsules), he didn’t so much as disrupt an industry as create a new one altogether.

“We’ve been doing this for 18 years, and I don’t think people really started waking up [to the importance of recycling] until 2017 or 2018,” Tom says.

As the world accumulates more trash and becomes more aware of the climate crisis, companies like TerraCycle have had even more of a tailwind to keep growing.

On this episode of The Empowered Challenger, Tom shares how he realized entrepreneurship wasn’t just a way to achieve fame and fortune, and could make a meaningful impact. He also talks about how he’s overcome various challenges to run a successful and pioneering business that’s changing the world of sustainability.

Stuart “Stu” Landesberg has been an environmentalist for as long as he can remember.

Growing up with tree-hugging, composting parents, Stuart knew from a young age that he could help change the world by creating a business focused on sustainability. Using eco-friendly brands like Seventh Generation as his inspiration, Stuart founded Grove Collaborative, which provides “everything you need for a sustainable home,” including natural cleaning supplies, shampoo and conditioner bars and toothpaste, among other items.

After a rocky start, Grove Collaborative is now a large, thriving company, employing over 1,000 people and being sold nationwide at Target. And Stu has stuck to his sustainability mission: the company aims to be 100% plastic free by 2025.

On this episode of The Empowered Challenger, learn how he’s gone from dreaming about saving the Earth to making real change in how people use (or, preferably, don’t use) single-use plastics in their homes.