Brand Builder

This week we have a special bonus episode. We’re releasing one of our favorite interviews featuring Roman Tsunder, the mastermind behind WORLDZ and PTTOW. If you haven’t heard, WORLDZ is a global summit that unites tomorrow’s leaders with CEOs, CMOs & cultural icons to create the world of tomorrow. The driving force for Roman has been his belief in what he calls “irrational generosity,” something he believes is actually the key to successful leadership.

This week on the podcast we have an in-depth conversation with Julie Rice, a co-founder of SoulCycle and a Partner at WeWork. SoulCycle’s rise is now the stuff of legend. Julie and her fellow co-founders took the fitness and business worlds by storm, and grew a fanatical customer base by focusing on who they wanted their customers to become.

Jane Buckingham is the CEO of consumer insights firm Trendera, a bestselling author, and an expert on the generational factors shaping the modern workplace. In this long form interview, she breaks down how Millennials have reshaped work culture as we know it.

For those not yet in the know, matcha is a fine powder made from stone ground green tea leaves. On the show this week this week is Matcha expert and evangelist Graham Fortgang, the co-founder of MatchaBar. MatchaBar provides sustained energy and focus via their energy drink Hustle, which is made from ceremonial-grade Matcha. You won't believe how deep this story goes.

This week we have Maggie Patton, the co-founder of Bitsy's, to tell us about the evolution of their brand - and how they're building a movement by focusing on the small things. We caught up with Maggie on the tail end of the Bitsy’s positivity tour. In this interview, Maggie goes to some unexpected places (the living room of an unofficial cookie museum in Philadelphia) and draws inspiration from some unexpected sources (Pat Benatar).

We’ve talked a lot on this show about how your internal culture informs your external product and brand. But this week we look at this dynamic from the other direction - how a customer-centric mindset should influence the way you think about your company’s culture. This idea has a name - “Employee Experience” - and it’s top-of-mind for CEOs and people-focused leaders at high performing companies. To help us understand it all, we have Kelly Keegan, the Sr. Director of People at SnackNation.

This week on Brand Builder, Lenny & Larry's founder Barry Turner and EVP Aaron Croutch. The pair walks us through the history of Lenny and Larry's, a pioneer of the baked nutrition category. Just your average 25-year over night success story.

What comes to mind when someone says the words "frozen food"? Probably dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets, ice cream, or the long forgotten TV dinner hanging out in the back of your freezer. And that's the problem. What most people don't know is that freezing food - particularly produce - has a ton of health and nutrition advantages. For instance, did you know that blueberries have 200% more vitamin C when frozen versus fresh after 3 days? Rachel Drori is here to change all that.

There's no doubt that today, speaker and best-selling author Marcus Buckingham is a master communicator. You’d probably never guess that for the first eleven years of his life, this master wordsmith and public speaker... couldn’t speak. So what changed? That’s precisely what we dive into in this week’s episode - overcoming the challenges that hold us back from becoming exactly who we want to be.

This week on Brand Builder we talk to Lisa Curtis, the founder and CEO of Kuli Kuli, the company that is taking moringa mainstream. Kuli Kuli has been featured in more than 350 national publications and around 10 national broadcasts - including MSNBC and Good Morning America - all without hiring a PR firm or writing a single press release. In this episode, SnackNation CEO Sean Kelly talks to Lisa to learn the DIY tactics they've used to attract serious media attention.

The next time an ROI-obsessed executive or board member questions why you're so heavily invested in something “fuzzy” like brand, throw this quote back at them: "We were able to get to $40M, no marketing spend." That's Rosie O'Neill, the co-founder and co-CEO of Sugarfina, and our guest on this week’s Brand Builder. In this conversation with SnackNation CEO Sean Kelly, Rosie credits their emotionally resonant brand for helping make them a word-of-mouth sensation.

"Millennials are the modern hippies. They got to Coachella and want the world to be a better place - that was the insight.” That's Livio Bisterzo, the CEO of Green Park Brands, makers of Hippeas. This week, we talk to Livio about taking a consumer-oriented, Big CPG approach to building startup brands. Plus, he fills us in on the consequences of launching in Starbucks, why he's bullish on billboards, and why he believes Millennials are today's hippies.

A few years ago, “incubation” wasn’t a term you really heard in CPG at all. That's definitely changed. But many - if not most - of the food incubators we see today are modeled after something like TechStars: the incubator provides mentorship, funding, a community, all in exchange for an equity stake in the company. Sometimes that’s a great arrangement for founders. But not always. Chobani has come around and turned this model on its head.

This week on Brand Builder we speak to someone who claims to have discovered the world’s healthiest nut. And by the looks of it, he’s on to something. Darin Olien is widely recognized as an authority on plant–based nutrition, supplement formulation, and elite performance programs. He’s also a global superfood hunter, and he and the team at Barukas are on a mission to bring the obscure baru nut to the masses.

When people in the food industry meet Robyn O’Brien for the first time, they often remark, “You don’t look like one of them.” "Them" presumably meaning the stereotypical food activist. And in a way, they're right. Robyn is a self-described “conservative Texas mom” raised in a military family, and admittedly, the last person you’d expect to be leading a crusade to reform the food industry. Yet she is leading a movement to fundamentally rethink what goes into our nation’s food sup