Unpacked with Casey Armstrong

On this episode, Jolie CEO and Co-Founder Ryan Babenzien joins us to unpack:

• The shower moment that turned years of whiteboard thinking into the idea for Jolie, a filtering shower head positioned as a beauty and wellness product, not a plumbing fix
• Why having the lowest return rate in footwear e-commerce at GREATS still wasn’t enough to make it a good business, and how that frustration became the “one size fits all” blueprint for Jolie
• Selling GREATS to Steve Madden, planning to take four months off afterward, and lasting four weeks before starting Jolie
• Why Ryan believes a brand can be built on word of mouth alone, a philosophy he traces to a broader lifetime of observing human behavior rather than just his earlier years as a talent agent in LA, and how giving away the first 150 units of Jolie turned into nearly 80,000 pieces of user-generated content and a 70% conversion rate in four and a half years
• Why Jolie leans into being the “bad boys of beauty,” including the truck ad that told New Yorkers their shower water was dirtier than the truck itself
• The clinical trials Jolie started funding as soon as the company turned a profit, and the growing list of benefits, from less hair shedding and breakage to improved skin elasticity, they’ve since proven
• Why a nearly overlooked retention problem, an unsubscribe flow that sent just one email and no texts, got fixed fast once the company’s new president, a former summer intern, was asked to focus on it
• The surprising culprit still driving most of Jolie’s subscription churn, failed credit card authorizations rather than people actually canceling, and why Ryan admits they haven’t fully automated a fix yet
• Why Ryan thinks the venture-backed world’s obsession with celebrating capital raises and headcount is “crazy,” and how a friends-and-family round, after regretting how little he raised at GREATS, shaped a five-person team now doing $65 million a year
• The hands-off hiring philosophy that followed years of personally approving every product photo at GREATS, and why Ryan says most people who claim they don’t want to be managed are actually wrong about that
• Why the company is named after his wife, and how she’s made peace with having a shower product named after her

Learn more about Jolie at jolieskinco.com

On this episode, Ritual CEO and Founder Kat Schneider joins us to unpack:

• Arriving in Brooklyn from Crimea at four and a half with $50 and a suitcase, living in a welfare hotel, and the lesson she took from her parents: your circumstances don’t determine who you become
• Losing her first job out of college when Lehman Brothers collapsed, and the moment she realized she loved the decks and design more than the financial models
• Why she left running Troy Carter’s investment fund while four months pregnant, and what happened when she told him she was starting a company (he became her first investor)
• Walking the supplement aisle pregnant, unable to find a prenatal she trusted, and the “founder gut” instinct that led her to chase down the owner of the four-letter domain ritual.com until he agreed to swap
• Why she threw out her first round of branding, the first money she raised, and the story behind the Ukrainian yellow and blue she didn’t realize she’d chosen
• The investor who told her she could “either start a family or a business, but not both,” and why pregnancy, postpartum, and perimenopause were dismissed as niche when together they make up the whole women’s health experience
• Why the supplement category exploded from 4,000 to over 100,000 products in 30 years with almost no regulatory updates, and why “clinically studied” has no legal definition
• What it takes to put $5 million into human clinical studies, why they’re harder and more expensive with women as subjects, and Ritual’s commitment to clinicals on every product by 2030
• The prenatal study on folate vs. folic acid, and the postnatal study showing how a mom’s supplementation affects the quality of her breast milk
• How Ritual got SB 646 passed in California, and what the team is pushing for in Washington on heavy metal limits, clinical claims, and ingredient transparency
• Why Kat launched with a multivitamin and waited two years to release a prenatal, and how her earliest customers are now entering perimenopause
• Why she says running a business in this category is an “onion parfait,” and what a theater program taught her about not letting her daughter quit
• Biking her three kids from Hollywood to LAX with luggage in tow, and why her daughter told the team they’re now working for the six-year-old

Learn more about Ritual at ritual.com

On this episode, Hyro CEO and co-founder Steve Chapman joins us to unpack:

• Why Steve turned down a safe corporate job with a baby on the way and put his long service payout into Hyro, a bet he now calls "extremely irrational"
• Why Hyro skipped paid posts and put ten of Australia's top creators on the cap table, and the three questions Steve asked each one before they got in
• The "cold start" problem every founder faces, and why Steve says ownership beat a $100K paycheck for the influencers who backed Hyro
• Why selling out nine times is a nightmare, not a win, and the growth math that leaves a brand at 30% month over month "four times behind" within a few months
• What it felt like to lose $100,000 on a first startup, then get a cease and desist from Facebook right after it deleted the integration the whole business ran on
• Why Steve walked away from the nootropic brand he built to 7,000 stores and $60M in sales rather than sign a 3-5 year earn-out
• Why Steve would run 12 to 18 months of hard DTC before launching in retail, and the 120-day cash conversion cycle that makes retail so brutal for a fast-growing brand
• How Steve uses AI agents to run 80-90% of Hyro, and the "Hyro AGI" that sits in the middle of the company reading everything
• Why Steve moved a seven-month-old and a two-and-a-half-year-old across the world, and why he says you can't run the US as a side hustle
• The story behind Steve running a marathon in a giant Hyro mascot suit, and the moment 7K in when he called his wife to say a sub-three was off the table

Learn more about Hyro at https://drinkhyro.com/

On this episode, Taste Salud CEO and co-founder Tyler McCann joins us to unpack:

• Meeting his co-founder Josh Leyva at the gym, and realizing an influencer with an audience plus an operator with supply chain experience was a stronger formula than either alone
• Eight years at MusclePharm, watching it grow into a $180 million Costco staple with Tiger Woods as a spokesperson, then watching it collapse after new ownership tried to do too many things at once
• Bringing that lesson into Salud by staying disciplined about one hydration line instead of chasing every trending category
• Starting with just 500 units of one flavor, selling out completely on launch day, and fulfilling those first orders by hand out of their own houses before finding ShipBob
• Building the brand around three pillars: authentic Latino flavors rooted in Josh's heritage, only one gram of sugar, and 2-in-1 benefits in every product
• Getting a DM from a Walmart buyer with no profile picture that turned into their first retail deal, and why starting with 500 stores instead of going chain-wide was the right call
• Why nailing one retailer before chasing the next gave them a stronger story that eventually led Target to reach out directly
• Watching their horchata flavor go nowhere for months, then become a top-3 seller almost overnight once TikTok Shop discovered it
• Sponsoring the Mexico national soccer team, activating at Coachella, and experiencing Día de los Muertos in Oaxaca as part of building the brand
• Staying bootstrapped for five years by choice, why that discipline forced better decisions, and where they stand now on raising venture capital

Learn more about Taste Salud: https://tastesalud.com/

On this episode, Perelel CEO and co-founder Victoria Gioia joins us to unpack:

• Why her daughter's birth sent her down a research rabbit hole into the gaps in prenatal vitamins, and how that became the idea for Perelel
• Building the first OB-GYN founded vitamin company, and why she needed a medical co-founder who put her patients first
• Quitting her job in January 2020, three months before Covid hit, to start a supplement brand from scratch
• Locking in a manufacturing partner just weeks before shutdowns, then finishing the entire process over video calls with no in-person site visits
• Why they refused to cut a single SKU, even when nickel-and-diming every other cost, because conception, each trimester, and postpartum all needed their own product
• Shipping the very first orders from her own house, with a pallet arriving that morning, to hit their September 30th launch date
• Why "always by her side" became both the founding philosophy and the origin of the name Perelel
• Building credibility as an online-only brand with zero retail presence, and the line she wouldn't let the brand cross on marketing claims
• Landing a Today Show feature that traced back to the same building at 30 Rockefeller Center where she started her career in investment banking
• What it's been like running the business while surviving her own version of "thriving in the chaos," from Covid logistics to family life with four kids

Learn more about Perelel: https://perelelhealth.com/

On this episode, Arrae CEO and co-founder Nish Samantray joins us to unpack: 

• Using wedding savings instead of throwing an actual wedding to start Arrae with his wife and co-founder, Siff, right as the world shut down for Covid 
• Why Nish and Siff called their breakout product "Bloat" instead of overthinking a clever name 
• How Arrae brute-forced its way into the top of the TikTok Shop category before anyone had figured out a playbook 
• Why Target and four other major retailers all came to Arrae first 
• Going from fully DTC to five of North America's biggest retailers in five months 
• Nish's biggest regret 
• Running a company that's roughly 90% women as one of only two men on the team, and how staying data-driven instead of personal made product decisions easier 
• The "find your lanes" rule that keeps Nish and Siff from stepping on each other as co-founders, and why he says arguing hard, and often, is the key to a healthy partnership 
• Why the entire team still works out of Nish and Siff's house, closets and all, and the second home they just bought to make a little more room for it 
• What Nish learned about speed working across the US, India, and Japan earlier in his career, and how that shaped the culture he built at Arrae 

On this episode, PetLab Co. Co-CEO Stephanie Lee joins us to unpack:

• Stephanie's "hungry, not just smart" hiring filter, and the interview questions she uses to find out if a candidate wants the job to be their whole hustle, not just a paycheck
• The blunt piece of advice a former founder-boss gave her about disagreeing openly but committing fully once a decision is made, and why she still thinks about it today
• Her "don't touch anything for the first 30-60 days" rule for any new senior hire, and whether she actually followed her own advice when she joined PetLab
• The year a manufacturing plant got struck by lightning in the middle of Covid, and how she triaged a business that was drowning in supply chain chaos all at once
• Why PetLab pulled out of Germany after a nine-month launch, and the cultural blind spot that trips up so many DTC brands going international
• How a co-founder's "I just want to do creative marketing, can you run the rest of the business" conversation turned Stephanie from COO into co-CEO
• Her honest take on when a founder-led company should hand the reins to a professional CEO, and how PetLab is thinking about that gap today
• Why PetLab put itself through two rebrands to build a more "scientific," trust-first brand, and the hidden cost that came with heavier bottles and higher shipping fees
• What the 12-month process of getting acquired actually looked like, and the part of it that surprised her most

On this episode, Step One Clothing CEO and Founder Greg Taylor joins us to unpack: 

• Starting with $800 to his name and living on a friend's couch, and the moment a billionaire's friend told him his underwear idea had a "0.1% chance" of ever making a dollar 
• Why Greg flew to China's Canton Fair with no brand, no samples, and no name, and got laughed out of factory after factory before one agreed to work with him 
• The "cup sizes for men" idea that seemed absurd to manufacturers but became the breakthrough behind Step One's anti-chafe design 
• How Greg ran quality control on shipping containers from Australia during Covid, without ever setting foot in the factory, by weighing boxes over video call 
• Why the "pair for a pair" referral campaign spiraled out of control, with customers destroying their old underwear on camera in increasingly unhinged ways 
• What it actually felt like to ring the bell at the Australian Stock Exchange as the sole shareholder, with no outside funding, no co-founders, and no debt, and why the real moment happened a week earlier 
• Why Greg compares being a public company to everyone being able to see exactly how much money is in your bank account 
• The out-of-the-blue LinkedIn message from John Lewis that turned Step One into a UK retail brand almost overnight 
• Why Greg says the single hire that most changed the business wasn't in marketing or ecommerce, but a chief legal officer 
• How fatherhood forced Greg to put rigid boundaries around his time, and the "be the dumbest person at the table" philosophy behind how he hires 
• Why Greg believes AI is about to drive the biggest shift business has seen in a hundred years 

New episodes of Unpacked with Casey Armstrong drop weekly. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

On this episode, Shopify President Harley Finkelstein joins us to unpack:

• Why Harley says entrepreneurship is "the greatest equalizer," and how watching his refugee father and his grandfather's egg stall shaped how he thinks about starting a business
• The research Shopify did into why the average tenure of an S&P 500 company has dropped from 30 years to under 20, and what that taught Harley about building a "100-year company"
• Why Shopify deliberately ships features before they're fully baked, and which parts of the platform, like checkout and payments, are never allowed to break
• What happened when Harley typed the same request into ChatGPT and Google looking for a screen-free phone for his daughter, and why one sent him to Best Buy and the other sent him to a small independent brand
• The eye-opening stat Harley shared on Shopify's earnings call: over 70% of orders coming from AI agents are for products outside Shopify's top 100 categories, and what that means for small merchants versus big box retailers
• Why Harley believes agentic commerce is the first truly "merit based" discovery tool, and what separates lasting celebrity brands like Emma Chamberlain's coffee company from one-hit-wonder influencer launches
• The story behind Fire Belly, the seven-figure tea company Harley started during the pandemic with his best friend, and why running his own Shopify store makes him a better product leader
• Why Harley calls himself and Shopify "spiky, not well-rounded," and how knowing exactly what you're good at shapes how he spends his time as president
• The "cha-ching" sound that Harley calls the secret handshake of the Shopify merchant community, and the story of hearing it in a random airport

On this episode, True Classic CEO Ben Diamond joins us to unpack:

• Why landing a plane on Catalina Island can feel like flying off a cliff, thanks to a runway optical illusion most pilots never see coming
• Ben's 3-part hiring filter (wisdom, intelligence, attitude) and the interview questions he uses to find out if someone actually has grit
• Why 2025 was the hardest year of Ben's career...and the most rewarding one
• What a Foreign Trade Zone is and how it nearly fixed True Classic's cash flow problem overnight
• Why True Classic built its customer relationship online first, years before it ever touched retail or wholesale
• How Ben splits inventory across the website, Amazon, Costco, and True Classic's own stores without one channel cannibalizing another
• The customer story Ben tells at every single All Hands, and what a father-son trip to Costco taught him about the limits of digital ads
• Why Ben calls "work-life balance" a myth and time-boxes his day instead, from 5am starts to protected hours with his daughters
• Why Ben says AI already makes him a 1,000x CEO, COO, and CMO, and why he thinks even that's underhyped
• Why Ben doesn't care about the CEO title, and the Elon Musk comparison behind what he's actually chasing