Where The Dogs Of Society Howl

She drinks seven beverages a day and is building a company around the one that actually works.

Vy Vo is the founder of SpaceTime, a performance drink built for the people who can't afford a crash. Founders. Traders. Engineers. Operators. People whose whole livelihood depends on staying sharp.

She's in the CPG trenches. Real operations. Real supply chain chaos. Real fundraising conversations in a market that doesn't exactly hand money to physical product brands.

Jeff Litcofsky 😂 and I sit down with her on Where the Dogs of Society Howl. We're going to look at what CPG actually costs you. The ops nightmares that don't make the pitch deck. The capital reality. The founder psychology that keeps you in the game when everything is telling you to quit.

And yes. We're talking about all seven beverages.

Most communication is broken.

Not a little off. Actually broken.

Dan Roth has spent 15 years in advertising, journalism, podcasting, and corporate comms doing one thing: fixing it. He works fractionally. Goes in fast. He figures out what's not working and why. Then he fixes it.

We're getting into:

Why most CPG brands blow it before the buyer even picks up the package

What fractional creative work actually looks like when it's done right

Creative leadership — what it is and what it isn't

His take on a word he uses to describe himself — and why it's not what you think

The conversation will be blunt, honest, and useful.

Set the reminder. Come hang.

Your living room is a confession.

On this show we sit down with Dagmar Holub, founder of Interior Odyssey.

Her path: an MA in History and Philosophy, teacher training that included state exams in Psychology and Pedagogy, then design school at KLC Chelsea Harbour, before project work and awards took over!

Her thesis: home isn't a showroom. It's a mirror. Most people decorate around the parts they don't want to see.

Sound familiar? Same fog I see in brands every week. Mixed signals. Buried proof.

A storefront dressed up to hide what's actually inside.

Maslow said normality is the biggest obstacle to growth. Dagmar applies that to floor plans. I apply it to brand identity. Same disease, different walls.

We're talking power, conformity, identity, and what has to break before real change happens. Personal, funny, a little uncomfortable.

42% of you voted for the UAP/Paranormal/Fringe Topic. So we are diving in.

Let's talk about the extensive history and current events in our strange world.

Sure, we all know the big ones:

Atlantis

Ancient Egypt / The Giza Pyramids

Göbekli Tepe

The Nazca Lines

Magenta, 1933

Roswell, 1947

The Patterson-Gimlin Film, 1967

The Phoenix Lights, 1997

The Tunguska Event, 1908

The Maya

Loch Ness

TicTac

Orbs

Chris Bledsoe

Tridactyl Mummies

Portals

Skinwalker Ranch

Hauntings

Etc.

But there are so many others, and I know for a fact that many of you have experienced things without explanation. I know I have. So, we are going to share, learn, and maybe, just maybe, blow this wide open.

Thanks for joining us Gavin & Rod!

Growth is easy to talk about.

Leading people well while building it? Different story.

This week on Where the Dogs of Society Howl, we’re joined by Sondra Shannon, CEO of Gatemaster Tech and host of Live with Sondra.

We’re getting into:

Theme Parks & Destinations

Customer experience

Scaling with intention

Messaging and story

Creative leadership and the human side of success

Sondra brings the spice, blended with warmth, honesty, and real leadership experience, including stepping into the CEO role while pregnant with her third child.

This one should be sharp, human, and worth your time.

Everybody loves a winner.

Fewer people understand what it costs to become one.

This week on Where the Dogs of Society Howl, we’re joined by Amber Balcaen:

NASCAR driver, entrepreneur, speaker, and a serious force.

Amber is the first Canadian female to win a NASCAR-sanctioned race in the U.S. and the only Canadian female currently competing in the ARCA Menards Series.

We’re getting into:

Building your own lane in a world not built for you

Mindset, resilience, and performance

How she raised millions in sponsorship

Why storytelling matters in brand partnerships and what she’s building through Driven and hashtag#AskAmber

Because Amber is not just driving.

She’s building a business, a platform, and a brand.

This one should be fast, honest, and fired up.

Startup culture loves one kind of ending:

The glossy one. The big exit. The polished founder post dressed up as humility.

But that is not how most businesses end.

This week on Where the Dogs of Society Howl, we’re joined by Alison Cayne, founder of Haven’s Kitchen, founder of Choulie, and host of In the Sauce.

Alison built Haven’s Kitchen from a Manhattan cooking school into a nationally recognized CPG brand in more than 5,000 stores. She’s also spent years talking with founders about the real side of brand-building, not just the version people post after a raise.

Now, with Choulie, she’s building again with a sharper point of view and a different kind of clarity.

We’re getting into:

What it really took to build Haven’s Kitchen

What happened when the company came to an end

What Alison learned from an exit that was not the one startup culture glorifies

What years of founder conversations taught her and what it means to build again with less fantasy and more truth

Because the best founder lessons do not only come from the victory laps.

Sometimes they come from what people usually edit out.

This one is honest, sharp, and very real.

Most brands say they’re data-driven.

A lot of them are just spreadsheet-rich and story-poor.

This week on Where the Dogs of Society Howl, we’re joined by Russ Abstein, founder of Catman Analytics Group and Senior Director of Category Management at Utz.

Russ has spent 30+ years turning giant data dumps into actual shelf wins, helping brands move from “here’s a pile of numbers” to “here’s why this belongs on shelf and how it will sell.”

So we’re getting into:

> What category management actually does

> How data becomes a story buyers can use

> Why brands still drown in numbers

> What makes a retailer lean forward

> Where shelf wins really come from

And because Russ lives two blocks from the Atlantic and loves surfing, we may also explore the fine art of going from dashboards to surfboards when the business world starts foaming at the mouth.

Because if you can’t tell the story simply, it’s just an expensive bunch of numbers. This one should be smart, practical, and human.

This week on Where the Dogs of Society Howl, we’re joined by Michael Politz, founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, author of Guide to Restaurant Success, and a guy whose work lives right at the intersection of media, commerce, branding, and influence. He’s also tied to the PR%F Awards and CPG Awards, which puts him right in the middle of how brands get recognized and how recognition actually works in the market.

We’re getting into:

What makes a brand worth noticing

The difference between attention and traction

What awards can actually do for a business

Where founders get branding wrong

What scaling challenges still wreck good brands

Mike Tyson, Crüe, Vegas, and how to get seen without becoming just more industry wallpaper.

Also, any man associated with the Bluetooth logo (tune in to find out why), restaurant growth, magazine publishing, and industry awards is probably not bringing dull opinions.

This one should be sharp.

If you care about branding, CPG, hospitality, restaurants, growth, creative leadership, or the messy business of getting chosen in a crowded market, show up.

Everybody is asking the wrong question about AI.

Not just:

- Will it take jobs?

- Replace people?

- Flatten creativity?

But this is really the better question:

Why are so many humans already operating at half-strength before AI even enters the room?

This week on Where the Dogs of Society Howl, we’re joined by Jeff Chen, founder of Personal Singularity and CEO of Odyssey Films.

Through Odyssey Films, Jeff worked with major brands on storytelling and communication. That work exposed a deeper problem: too many organizations know how to sound human, but have no clue how to build places where humans actually thrive.

This one should be smart, strange, and very human.