You can now get a discount on your Botox or Brow lift at… Erewhon? The latest partnership between Erewhon and med spa startup Ject isn’t just a publicity stunt. It’s a bigger signal: medical aesthetics has gone fully mainstream. In this episode, Sammi unpacks how Botox went from cosmetic approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration just 14 years ago to a $17B industry with more than 10,000 med spas across the U.S. She breaks down the forces behind the boom like loosened regulations, cash-pa...
Feb 27, 2026•13 min
Jesse Draper has heard it all: “nepo baby,” “charity fund,” “too niche”—and she turned every jab into fuel. After getting laughed out of rooms while raising her first fund, Jesse built Halogen Ventures into one of the earliest venture capital funds explicitly focused on backing female founders, now with 85+ portfolio companies and multiple unicorns. In this episode, Jesse breaks down how she actually evaluates startups when they’re early (and sometimes barely making their first dollar), the metr...
Feb 24, 2026•1 hr 12 min
Starbucks didn’t lose to a cooler coffee chain. It lost to itself. Today, Sammi unpacks how one of the most dominant brands in modern retail engineered its own slide and what new CEO Brian Niccol is doing to fix it. From nixing pickup-only stores and cutting a quarter of the menu to investing $150K per location and betting on traffic before margins, Starbucks is attempting something rare: looking backwards to move forward. Sammi breaks down the latest numbers showing U.S. traffic rising for the ...
Feb 20, 2026•13 min
Gregg Renfrew didn’t just build a beauty brand; she helped create an entire category. Long before “clean beauty” became a marketing buzzword, Gregg was lobbying Congress, reformulating products, and turning a mission-driven idea into Beautycounter, a billion-dollar company acquired by private equity. But the story didn’t end with the sale. Months after the $1B deal closed, Gregg was pushed out of the company she founded. What followed was a cascade of leadership changes, falling sales, and one o...
Feb 17, 2026•1 hr 20 min
When the most legendary makeup artist in the world, Pat McGrath, finally launched her own beauty brand, her hero product sold out in minutes. Within three years, Pat McGrath Labs was valued at $1 billion. Today, it’s in bankruptcy court. Today, Sammi dives into the dramatic rise and unraveling of Pat McGrath Labs. Valued at roughly 25 times revenue, the brand was suddenly operating under hypergrowth expectations that clashed with its luxury positioning and deliberately controlled expansion. As s...
Feb 13, 2026•18 min
AI is no longer a future trend—it’s already reshaping how countless people work. And few people are closer to that shift than Aparna Chennapragada, Chief Product Officer for AI experiences at Microsoft. In this conversation, Aparna pulls back the curtain on how AI is actually being built into everyday work. She shares her bold two-year prediction for how work will change, tips for using AI to ace your next big meeting, and what Gen Z expects from the tools they use every day. They also get hones...
Feb 10, 2026•57 min
Aldi is quietly becoming the fastest-growing grocery train, without flashy stores, massive advertising budgets, or endless product choice. In this episode, Sammi breaks down how the company’s deliberately simple model (limited assortment, extreme cost discipline, productivity obsession, and private-label strategy) has allowed it to grow rapidly while competitors struggle with rising prices and complexity. Drawing on her own experience training to be an Aldi District Manager, Sammi explains the o...
Feb 06, 2026•18 min
What does it actually take to build a beauty brand that feels timeless? Today, Sammi sits down with Dianna Cohen, founder and CEO of Crown Affair, the cult haircare brand that made slowing down a competitive edge. Before Crown Affair, Diana was behind the scenes of some of the most talked-about consumer brands of the last decade (Away, Outdoor Voices), Then, she walked away to build something quieter, more intentional, and way harder to pull off. In this conversation, she breaks down how she cho...
Feb 03, 2026•1 hr 9 min
Chiara Ferragni wasn’t just an influencer, she was a case study in how to turn social media fame into a multi-million-dollar business. And then a pink Christmas cake almost destroyed everything. Today, Sammi breaks down the scandal that triggered regulatory fines, a criminal fraud investigation, mass sponsor exits, and a collapse of more than 90% of company revenue in a single year — all tied to a holiday charity campaign that raised major questions about transparency in influencer marketing. Bu...
Jan 30, 2026•10 min
Sammi sits down with Stacy Martinet, Adobe’s VP of Marketing and Communications, for a behind-the-scenes look at how one of the most influential creative companies is thinking about AI, creativity, and trust. Stacy shares why AI’s biggest “unlock” isn’t replacing creators— it’s getting rid of the blank-page panic and helping people start faster, whether you’re a student, a solo creator, or a CEO building a global brand. They get into the real ethics questions: what data goes into generative AI m...
Jan 29, 2026•33 min
Today Sammi sits down with Nicolas Jammet, co-founder and Chief Concept Officer of Sweetgreen—the fast-casual brand that helped take “healthy food at scale” from a niche idea to a national movement with nearly 300 stores and a $5.5B IPO. Nicolas traces Sweetgreen’s origin story from Georgetown campus chaos (including a stolen laptop that nearly derailed opening week), to a three-founder partnership that has stayed intact for almost two decades, to taking the company public at the literal peak of...
Jan 27, 2026•55 min
There was a moment when carrying a Coach bag felt cringe. Today, Coach is one of the hottest brands among Gen Z, with demand exploding and bags selling out. In this episode, Sammi unpacks how one of the most unlikely retail comebacks of the decade happened: a story of disciplined restraint, thoughtful pricing strategy, and creating sub-brands. Coach proved that the fastest way to lose relevance is to chase volume, and the fastest way to regain it is to rebuild meaning. Sammi breaks down the stra...
Jan 23, 2026•14 min
Today Sammi sits down with Rebecca Shostak, co-founder and CEO of Flodesk—the email platform bootstrapped to profitability just two weeks after launch. In this conversation, Sammi and Rebecca trace the journey from Rebecca designing merch for Rihanna and Linkin Park, to running a Photoshop template shop, to finally fixing the “giant WTF” of ugly, broken email tools with Flodesk. Then they get spicy: Rebecca explains why she thinks “marketing is dead” and the traditional funnel is over, why socia...
Jan 22, 2026•58 min
This episode is the second half of a two-part look at women’s media in 2026. Last week, Sammi sat down with Brittany and Gabriel Hugoboom, the couple behind Evie Magazine—the self-described “conservative Cosmo.” Today, Sammi is talking to Sami Sage, co-founder of Betches, a media company with a comparatively left-leaning audience that helped define millennial feminism, internet satire, and the way Gen Z gets its news. Sami shares how Betches went from an anonymous blog on a couch in 2011 to one ...
Jan 20, 2026•1 hr 12 min
Today, Sammi breaks down the unraveling of Saks Fifth Avenue — a luxury icon that survived wars, recessions, and cultural shifts, but couldn’t survive its own merger math. Through stalled vendor payments, junk-bond debt, leadership shake-ups, and a failed $2.7B Neiman Marcus merger, Saks entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy and set off a ripple effect far beyond Fifth Avenue. This isn’t a “department stores are dying” story — it’s a case study in how private equity, financial engineering, and legacy re...
Jan 16, 2026•15 min
This episode kicks off a two-part exploration of the modern women’s media landscape. Today, Sammi sits down with Brittany and Gabriel Hugoboom, the husband-and-wife team behind Evie Magazine — a publication often described as a “conservative Cosmo.” Next week, she’ll speak with Sami Sage, co-founder of Betches, a media company with comparatively left-leaning readership. Brittany and Gabriel Hugoboom created Evie with the goal of building a women’s media brand centered in femininity, beauty, and ...
Jan 13, 2026•1 hr 8 min
While tech investors chased ad-based creator platforms, OnlyFans did the opposite—and made billions. Today, Sammi unpacks the counterintuitive decisions that turned OnlyFans into a cultural lightning rod and a creator-economy juggernaut. From dodging the App Store tax and outsourcing discovery to TikTok, to the economics of fan intimacy and the infamous adult-content ban, Sammi explains why OnlyFans works and what makes it nearly impossible to replicate. Plus: can the platform really expand beyo...
Jan 09, 2026•13 min
Jenn Hyman built Rent the Runway on a contrarian insight back in 2009: women were already “renting” their clothes—borrowing from friends, cycling through fast fashion, and returning special-occasion outfits with the tags still on. Today, Jenn shares how she turned that overlooked behavior into one of the most influential fashion-tech companies of the last decade, why social media made outfit repetition feel impossible, and what fast fashion still gets wrong about how women actually shop. Jenn al...
Jan 06, 2026•1 hr 4 min
Most people think restaurant reservations are about demand. They’re not. Today, Sammi breaks down the quiet power struggle happening behind your hardest-to-get dinner reservations — and why credit card companies, not restaurants, increasingly call the shots. From OpenTable’s early dominance to Resy’s cultural takeover and American Express acquisition, Sammi explains how reservations became a tool for loyalty, data, and consumer control. Once you see how the reservation system really works, you’l...
Jan 02, 2026•11 min
Building a business in public is hard. Building one when people already think they know you? Even harder. Today, Sammi sits down with actor and founder Rebecca Rittenhouse to talk about reinvention—on her own terms. Rebecca shares how she went from studying business at UPenn to taking a sharp left turn into acting, landing her breakout role on The Mindy Project, and ultimately channeling those skills into launching her clean, brow-focused beauty brand, Privet Beauty. Instead of launching with a ...
Dec 30, 2025•1 hr
2025 was a transformative year. In this episode, Sammi shares the biggest lessons she’s internalized since launching her podcast this spring. She leaves no stone unturned and recounts her biggest milestones, mindset shifts, and the challenges she faced while building her business. From beginning her year at Amazon to creating her podcast studio and launching 'Social Currency,' Sammi details her leaps of faith and the importance of having a strong personal brand… and gets a little emotional in th...
Dec 26, 2025•21 min
Rebecca Minkoff’s origin story is not a glossy founder fairy tale—it’s a closet-bedroom apartment, a $3.25/hour internship, $60K in debt, and a single Rebecca Minkoff designed tee that ended up on Jay Leno. Today, Rebecca breaks down how that moment got her foot in the door—and how the next viral moment, the Morning After Bag, almost didn’t happen (FedEx late, no movie placement)… until it sparked the kind of sellout momentum every founder dreams about. Then she gets brutally honest about what i...
Dec 23, 2025•51 min
Women in corporate America aren’t burned out because of how much they’re working—they’re burned out by how much the system isn’t working for them . Today, Sammi breaks down the latest Women in the Workplace report from Lean In and McKinsey, and the findings are more alarming than the headlines suggest. For the first time in over a decade, women are less interested in climbing the corporate ladder—not because they don’t want success, but because the ladder itself is broken. Sammi unpacks the data...
Dec 19, 2025•12 min
Today, Sammi sits down with Andrew Chau, co-founder of Boba Guys—the brand that helped turn boba from a niche drink into a mainstream American obsession. Andrew takes us back to the very first 2011 pop-up and the early decisions that shaped Boba Guys’ identity: choosing authenticity over gimmicks, educating customers on Asian culture without westernizing it, and designing drinks that were as aesthetic as they were meaningful. He reveals how Boba Guys became the blueprint for modern café trends—a...
Dec 16, 2025•1 hr 9 min
A blockbuster lawsuit just exposed the biggest fear in retail—but it could backfire spectacularly. Today, Sammi does a deep dive into Williams Sonoma vs. Quince, a case that’s revealing a seismic consumer shift: shoppers no longer believe legacy brands deserve legacy prices. Sammi breaks down why Quince’s billion-dollar rise is shaking old-guard retailers and how comparative advertising became the new frontline of the dupe economy. If you want to understand the next chapter of retail—pricing, br...
Dec 12, 2025•12 min
Luana Lopes Lara didn’t just build a unicorn— she overturned a 100-year old ban, sued the regulators and became the youngest self-made female billionaire in the process. Luana co-founded Kalshi, the CFTC-regulated prediction market that lets you trade on the outcome of real-world events. Kalshi is one of the fastest-growing tech companies in the country; in fact, since Sammi spoke with Luana, Kalshi’s valuation has gone from $5 billion to $11 billion. Luana shares the ripple effects of the 2024 ...
Dec 09, 2025•52 min
Today, Sammi breaks down all things Meadow Lane—the Tribeca grocery store that launched like a luxury fashion drop and spiraled into one of the most chaotic openings New York has seen in years. Founded by Sammy Nussdorf, the heir to a billion-dollar distribution empire, Meadow Lane was positioned as a bespoke, Manhattan-made answer to Erewhon. The result? A fandom of over 140,000 followers before the store even opened. But that hype came with consequences. During opening week, Meadow Lane faced ...
Dec 05, 2025•13 min
Building a beauty brand that celebrates Latin culture while competing on a global stage is no small feat—but for Babba Rivera, it’s not just business— it’s personal. Babba founded Ceremonia to create a haircare brand rooted in Latin heritage, ritual, and community. Today, Ceremonia is one of the fastest-growing brands at Sephora, has raised over $11 million, and just took home an Allure Beauty Award. In this conversation, Babba shares how she built a company that’s as mission-driven as it is pro...
Dec 02, 2025•1 hr
Celebrity brands never release their numbers — until now. Beauty brand e.l.f. didn’t just acquire Hailey Bieber’s Rhode… they published every single line item of the company’s P&L. From shockingly low cost of goods sold to a 9x marketing efficiency ratio, Sammi unpacks why Rhode operates more like a billion-dollar conglomerate than a three-year-old celebrity brand. You’ll hear the real story behind the billion-dollar headline, why e.l.f. revealed Rhode’s financials days before earnings, and ...
Nov 28, 2025•13 min
Many people say the healthcare system is broken. Julia Cheek, is trying to fix a key part of that system: diagnostics. Julia is the founder and CEO of Everlywell, the pioneering at-home health testing company that turned diagnostics from something that happened to you into something you control. Since launching in 2015, Everlywell has become one of the fastest-growing companies in consumer health and has raised more than $200 million—proving that convenience, access, and empowerment aren’t just ...
Nov 25, 2025•1 hr 7 min
