Unfinished Business

Unfinished Business
  • 5.0 (11)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Weekly

Meet the operators behind Hulken, a brand that's done $100M+ in sales since launch with a team of seven and no VC funding. Before Hulken, Alex Schinasi and Lee Rotenberg each built and exited software companies. Now they bring that builder mentality to consumer: fast, lean, unconventional. Every week they get into the parts of scaling a consumer brand nobody posts about: inventory tradeoffs, retail margins, collab terms, and what AI actually replaced. For founders and operators who want specifics, not theory. Presented by Structured Agency and Horatio, both used by Hulken to scale.

  1. 5d ago

    The Repeat Customer Playbook: How to Build a $1M Brand | Auroro Founder

    Tiffany Chao left an 11-year career to go all in on AURORO, the fine jewelry brand she started with $10,000. A year in, she couldn't pay herself, so she did what she thought a real brand was supposed to do. She hired a consultant, built a collection for retailers, and stepped back from social. Then the holidays, the biggest season of the year, never came. So she threw out the playbook and went back to her own taste, her own stones, and her own camera. AURORO went from $550K in sales to $1M the next year, and today 67% of its customers come back to buy again, many of them sending thousands of dollars for pieces they've only ever seen on a screen. Alex and Lee dig into how she built that kind of trust online, how she prices custom pieces when the price of gold changes every week, whether a couture trade show is worth the capital, and how she runs the business alongside her co-founder. In this episode: - Why following a consultant's retail playbook stalled her first full year - How she earned enough trust for clients to pay $6,000 by Venmo - Pricing custom jewelry when gold moves every week, and why she now buys it by the kilo - What a 67% repeat rate means for customer acquisition - Couture trade show or direct to consumer: where the capital should go - Getting comfortable on camera as an extroverted introvert - Why she introduced lab-grown stones, and where she won't use them This episode is brought to you by: Structured Agency: Where strategic guidance meets strong execution. Structured is a growth agency for DTC e-commerce brands, bringing paid media, lifecycle marketing, creative strategy, and CRO together into one integrated system built for profitable growth. Learn more and request a free audit at structured.agency/unfinishedbusiness Horatio: Horatio builds dedicated, AI-enabled customer support and back-office teams for fast-growing e-commerce, fintech, and healthtech brands. Every team is trained on your brand's voice and workflows, so you can scale support without sacrificing quality. Unfinished Business listeners get $2,000 in launch credits at hirehoratio.com/unfinishedbusiness Subscribe for new episodes every week. Follow AURORO on all platforms: @auroroworld, auroroworld.com Chapter Timestamps 00:00 Cold open01:19 Leaving an 11-year career, then not paying herself02:05 Hiring a jewelry business consultant06:51 When the holidays didn't happen08:51 Building a community on Instagram10:05 How clients trust a $6,000 Venmo payment11:56 Couture trade show or direct to consumer17:35 Pricing when gold changes every week20:43 From $550K to $1M23:05 How many customers come back26:34 Running the company with a co-founder28:11 Showing the messy side on social32:21 Designing new pieces, stone first36:01 The icons and her bestsellers38:08 Lab-grown stones

  2. Oct 20

    2026 Black Friday Playbook: How You Can Make Millions in Q4

    Hulken made millions on Black Friday 2025, and Alex and Lee are already planning 2026 differently. Their best campaign last year went only to existing customers, and the Black Friday email that beat their Cyber Monday send had no design at all. In this solo episode, Alex and Lee open up the Black Friday playbook for a brand that's almost always short on inventory: who gets the deepest discount, which products never go on sale, why their salesy content flopped, and why they'd rather sell a bag at full price in December than on sale in November. In this episode: - Why existing customers got 30% off when new customers never will - Not all sales are created equal: protecting margin when inventory is tight - The salesy BFCM graphics that bombed, and the reels that actually converted - Early access by email and SMS a week before Black Friday - The plain text Happy Thanksgiving email that outperformed Cyber Monday - Building an SMS list from scratch with Structured - Why the first half of December brings their highest margin sales - How they decide whether a new product gets discounted Make sure you subscribe to Unfinished Business for the exact playbooks on how to run and scale your DTC business. This episode is brought to you by: Structured Agency: Where strategic guidance meets strong execution. Structured is a growth agency for DTC e-commerce brands, bringing paid media, lifecycle marketing, creative strategy, and CRO together into one integrated system built for profitable growth. Learn more and request a free audit at structured.agency/unfinishedbusiness 🎧 Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:12 Two months out from Black Friday 01:47 The best campaign of 2025: VIP early access 02:42 Why existing customers get the bigger discount 03:25 Discounting with limited inventory 05:13 Not all sales are created equal 06:24 Don't change your content strategy for BFCM 07:46 Early access a week before Black Friday 08:40 The plain text email that beat Cyber Monday 10:07 How Structured built our SMS list 12:13 Full price in December over discounts in November 13:15 The first two weeks of December 13:39 Know your numbers 14:15 Discounting new products

  3. Oct 13

    How to Sell Millions in High-Ticket Products (41-Minute Masterclass) | Kevin Chen @ iRestore

    Kevin Chen (sells a red light therapy helmet that can cost more than a thousand dollars, takes months to buy, and takes six months to show results. Every DTC playbook says to start with a $30 impulse buy. Kevin went the other way, and he'll be the first to tell you he wouldn't recommend it. It started with his dad's quit-smoking laser clinic, a business where helping customers meant never seeing them again, and a last-ditch pivot into hair loss with the family business one bad bet away from shutting down. Alex and Lee ask Kevin how you sell an expensive product in a category where "you're snake oil until you're proven." He walks through listing on Amazon six months before he had a website, calling his first 100 customers one by one for testimonials, the ABCD framework he uses to build trust in every ad and email, why he turned down wholesale deals that later sank a competitor, and why he says Costco pays him to advertise to 15 million households. In this episode: - Why his dad's quit-smoking clinic was a business you couldn't win - Starting on Amazon before having a website, and what his first 100 customers were worth - The ABCD trust framework for health and beauty brands - Why owning your price and your channels beats fast distribution - How to market a product with a 2 to 3 month sales cycle - The Costco math: huge reach, thin margins, and the highest return rate of any channel - Why he keeps customer service fully in-house - The marketing playbook he says every 0-to-9-figure brand is running in 2026 - His "who, not how" rule for leading a 100-person team Subscribe to Unfinished Business for candid conversations with founders who've actually done it. This episode is brought to you by: Structured Agency: Where strategic guidance meets strong execution. Structured is a growth agency for DTC e-commerce brands, bringing paid media, lifecycle marketing, creative strategy, and CRO together into one integrated system built for profitable growth. Learn more and request a free audit at https://structured.agency/unfinishedbusiness Horatio: Horatio builds dedicated, AI-enabled customer support and back-office teams for fast-growing e-commerce, fintech, and healthtech brands. Every team is trained on your brand's voice and workflows, so you can scale support without sacrificing quality. Unfinished Business listeners get $2,000 in launch credits at https://hirehoratio.com/unfinishedbusiness 🎧 Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:10 Why launch a high-priced product? 02:11 His dad's quit-smoking laser clinic 04:21 Pivoting with no runway left 05:51 Owning your price and your channels 10:23 Selling on Amazon before having a website 11:13 Calling the first 100 customers 13:42 The ABCD trust framework 15:29 Building a 20,000-member Facebook group 18:11 Selling a 1,800 dollar product vs. a 30 dollar one 26:32 Getting into Costco 29:28 The real cost of Costco 34:12 AI and the company brain 45:46 Who, not how 52:59 The 2026 marketing playbook

  4. Oct 6

    Learn How to Make Millions with Email Marketing in 52 minutes!

    Hulken pays Structured $8,500 a month. In Q4 last year, the email and SMS channel Structured runs for them drove more than $3.3 million. Even in a dead summer month with barely any inventory, it still brought in over $540,000. Belynda Murray is the retention strategist at Structured who has run Hulken's email and SMS for the past two years. She sits down with Alex and Lee to open up the playbook: how Hulken went from 4 to 6 emails a month to 10, the two numbers that tell you you're sending too much, why VIPs got a steeper discount than anyone else, and how unengaged subscribers get saved for Black Friday instead of deleted. In this episode: - The ROI math behind $8,500 a month and $3.3M in Q4 - Why Hulken sends 10 emails a month, and the two metrics that tell you it's too many - The spam complaint rate she keeps under 0.01%, and why she'd rather see unsubscribes - How early access for VIPs became the top campaign of Black Friday - 11 days, 17 sends, and a quarter that finished up 36% year over year - The plain-text email from Alex that turned into a new series - Why a $10 welcome offer beat 10% off - Red flags when hiring an email agency, including how they use AI Subscribe to Unfinished Business for candid conversations with founders who've actually done it. This episode is brought to you by: Structured Agency: Where strategic guidance meets strong execution. Structured is a growth agency for DTC e-commerce brands, bringing paid media, lifecycle marketing, creative strategy, and CRO together into one integrated system built for profitable growth. Learn more and request a free audit at structured.agency/unfinishedbusiness Horatio: Horatio builds dedicated, AI-enabled customer support and back-office teams for fast-growing e-commerce, fintech, and healthtech brands. Every team is trained on your brand's voice and workflows, so you can scale support without sacrificing quality. Unfinished Business listeners get $2,000 in launch credits at hirehoratio.com/unfinishedbusiness 🎧 Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:36 Meet Belynda from Structured 02:09 The play that changed Hulken's email and SMS 04:21 Rethinking VIPs for a bag brand 05:33 How Hulken landed on 10 emails a month 07:41 The two metrics that say you're sending too much 09:33 When customers are ready for a second purchase 11:07 Building SMS from scratch 14:12 Why $10 off beat 10% off 16:15 Black Friday end to end 18:21 11 days, 17 sends, up 36% 20:35 $8,500 a month, $3.3M back 26:27 The plain-text email from Alex 29:18 Agency red flags, including AI 33:16 Klaviyo and deliverability 37:38 Winning back unengaged subscribers 42:22 Why month-to-month works 46:32 Rapid fire: best and worst emails 50:14 Does send time matter?

  5. Sep 30

    How to Go Viral Repeatedly with $0 Marketing | Hot Girl Pickles’ Co-Founders

    Leah Marcus and Yasaman Bakhtiar posted about a pickle company every day for months before they had a single jar to sell. The first videos were trends, and the trends flopped in the way that matters: views came in, followers didn't. So they changed the format to two women documenting the build, and people started tuning in like it was a TV show. That series became Good Girl Snacks, the brand behind Hot Girl Pickles. Erewhon, Whole Foods nationwide, Forbes 30 Under 30, a $3M seed, and zero dollars of paid media until a few weeks ago. Alex and Lee go past the founding story and into the machine. What posting every day actually buys you, how a comment section and a packaging breakdown built the community, why Whole Foods made them redesign the jar, how three weeks of retail data closed a funding round in a week, and how two best friends split a company between them without a real fight. In this episode: - Why trends get views and never get you followers - The hook that turned a pickle company into a daily show people watched - What $0 customer acquisition really costs, and when it stops working - The three different jobs your feed, reels, and stories should each be doing - Why Instagram outperformed TikTok for a brand built on raw video - How organic cucumbers and a single growing season forced a fundraise - Why they keep every hate comment instead of deleting it This episode is brought to you by: Structured Agency: Where strategic guidance meets strong execution. Structured is a growth agency for DTC e-commerce brands, bringing paid media, lifecycle marketing, creative strategy, and CRO together into one integrated system built for profitable growth. Learn more and request a free audit at structured.agency/unfinishedbusiness Horatio: Horatio builds dedicated, AI-enabled customer support and back-office teams for fast-growing e-commerce, fintech, and healthtech brands. Every team is trained on your brand's voice and workflows, so you can scale support without sacrificing quality. Unfinished Business listeners get $2,000 in launch credits at hirehoratio.com/unfinishedbusiness Subscribe for new episodes every week. Follow Good Girl Snacks on all platforms: @goodgirlsnacks, goodgirlsnacks.com Chapter Timestamps 00:00 Cold open02:30 Posting before there was a product04:17 Splitting a company between best friends08:22 The first hire and the outside help13:15 The marketing stack, and Instagram vs TikTok16:11 $0 CAC and moving product off real shelves17:29 Designing a jar for the shelf22:54 Why posting every day sells product25:10 The hook that broke them out30:02 The Forbes comments33:08 Turning cucumber disasters into content35:06 Marketing to Gen Z36:30 Buy into a world, not a product37:35 Why they raised, and closing a round in a week42:04 The weekly social plan47:02 The scariest part is starting

  6. Jul 28

    The Minimum Viable Company: How We Run a $50M Brand With Just 7 People

    For most of their careers, Alex and Lee believed a bigger team meant a stronger company. Now they believe the opposite, and they've got the receipts: $50M in revenue last year with seven full-time employees and payroll running at just 4%. In this solo episode, they make the case that in the AI era, headcount has flipped from a status symbol into a warning sign. They break down what they call the "minimum viable company," where maximum revenue per employee beats a swollen org chart every time. The model runs on three layers: lean in-house leadership, a network of agencies for specialized work, and an AI layer where every team member has their own assistant handling the project management that used to go to junior hires and interns. The engine underneath it all is a company "brain" built in Notion that their agents plug into. In this episode: - Why Alex and Lee now read "I have 30 employees" as a sign a company is doing it wrong - The exact numbers behind their claim: $50M, seven people, 4% payroll - How the AI layer replaced the junior hires and interns they used to rely on - Why they built their company "brain" in Notion, and how their AI agents plug into it - The hiring rule they live by: wait until you literally can't, then demand a clear ROI - Why speed, not headcount, is the real driver of winning (and losing) - The honest downsides of a tiny team, from taking out the trash to dropped balls Subscribe to Unfinished Business for candid conversations with founders who've actually done it. 🎧 Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

  7. Jul 14

    How This CPG Founder Went From a Kitchen Experiment to 7,000 Stores

    Katie Lefkowitz was a lifelong Snickers fanatic when a colon cancer scare and a doctor's orders to cut sugar should have ended that relationship. Instead, she went home and started experimenting with date-based caramel in her own kitchen. Katie is the founder of Harken, the better-for-you candy brand now in nearly 7,000 stores including Walmart, Costco, Sprouts, and Kroger, with Whole Foods launching this fall. Before Harken, she was COO at CAULIPOWER, the original cauliflower-crust pizza brand, and that food-world network is how a printed-out prototype with stickers on it turned into Harken's first national retail deal. In this episode of Unfinished Business, she walks through how that deal happened (including a calendar invite with no explanation attached), why she skipped the usual direct-to-consumer playbook entirely, and what she's learned running a five-person team through a Costco launch. Our biggest takeaways: - How a colon cancer scare turned into a national candy brand - The unmarked calendar invite that got Harken into Walmart - Why she walked into her first retail pitch with fake, printed-out packaging - The case for skipping DTC and going straight to retail - Running investor relationships through a monthly two-hour office hours block - Why Harken is overhauling its packaging in Q3, and what drove the change - The fiber stat she says is moving more product than any ad Subscribe to Unfinished Business for more unfiltered founder stories. New episodes weekly on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

  8. Jun 30

    The Hidden Cost of Scaling Our DTC Brand Without VC Money

    Every episode, Alex and Lee talk about how fast Hulken is growing. This one is about what that growth actually costs. For the first time, they get candid about the messy middle of scaling a bootstrapped, vertically integrated brand: chronically out of stock on their bestsellers, rerouting inventory away from their own website to protect retail relationships, and discovering that the model that built them is now the thing holding them back. They get into why being sold out can be both a brand asset and a real liability, why their lowest reviews have nothing to do with the product, and how they're testing new products outside their own factories to keep the core team focused. It's an honest, mid-sprint debrief on omnichannel growing pains, told from inside the company, with no VC safety net and a Q4 they can't fully announce yet. What you'll take away: - Why "we're always sold out" is a harder problem than it sounds - How they decide which channel gets limited inventory when there isn't enough to go around - Why retail partners now come before their own DTC customers - The real reason great products still get three-star reviews - How tariffs and shipping costs reshaped their inventory decisions - Why they're launching new products with outside manufacturers - How they're planning 2027 while fighting to stay in stock this yearNew episodes of Unfinished Business drop weekly. Follow on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts so you don't miss the next one.

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5
out of 5
11 Ratings

About

Meet the operators behind Hulken, a brand that's done $100M+ in sales since launch with a team of seven and no VC funding. Before Hulken, Alex Schinasi and Lee Rotenberg each built and exited software companies. Now they bring that builder mentality to consumer: fast, lean, unconventional. Every week they get into the parts of scaling a consumer brand nobody posts about: inventory tradeoffs, retail margins, collab terms, and what AI actually replaced. For founders and operators who want specifics, not theory. Presented by Structured Agency and Horatio, both used by Hulken to scale.

Information

  • Creator
    Unfinished Business
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    49
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Unfinished Business
  • Show Website
    Unfinished Business

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