Unfinished Business

Unfinished Business
  • 5.0 (10)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Weekly

👋 We're Alex and Lee, serial entrepreneurs and multi-exit founders. Our journey has made us magnets for the challenges ambitious women face in career, family, and personal fulfillment. We're launching a platform for honest discussions about conscious entrepreneurship, career growth, and holistic success. We'll explore topics like mastering self-promotion authentically, transforming imposter syndrome into career catalysts, balancing work, family, and well-being, innovative strategies for entrepreneurial success, and much more.

  1. 6d ago

    Going From $50M to $100M: How We Use Partnerships As Our Biggest Growth Levers at Hulken

    Two things have been true at Hulken since year one: no dropshipping, and only say yes to collabs that actually earn it. On the eve of launching their most complex product development yet (a full pattern collab with Posh Peanut), Alex and Lee sit down to work out, on camera, what they actually think now. This is a solo episode. No guest filter, no rehearsed takes. At $50M, the playbook isn't finished. The most honest thing you can say is that we’re still breaking rules we set when we were smaller. If you're building a product brand somewhere between "we're figuring this out" and "we've figured this out," this is the real version of that conversation. What's in this episode: - The reason Alex and Lee said no to dropshipping for years (and the exact conditions that finally changed their minds) - Alex's 3 non-negotiables for every brand collab - Why Lee won't say yes to any retailer that won't buy inventory upfront - How the Beautyblender collab landed Hulken backstage at the Grammys and the Oscars (the bag, not them) - The "position of power" test that tells you when your brand is actually ready to dropship Subscribe to Unfinished Business on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

    19 min

  2. May 26

    The DTC Trap That Built Juliet Wine's Retail Empire | Allison Luvera

    Most founders building consumer brands think DTC is the goal. Allison Luvera knew from day one it was just the testing ground. Getting into Whole Foods, Costco, Safeway, and Total Wine with five employees and a patented box wine format was a three-year plan built on intentional price testing, customer research, and unit economics priced for retail before she ever walked into a retailer. Allison is the co-founder and CEO of Juliet Wine, one of the fastest growing wine brands for women in the US. She came up running luxury marketing for some of the biggest names in spirits, and took everything she learned about how big brands operate to build something they couldn't easily copy, a patented cylindrical format that creates a brand moat in an industry that's notoriously hard to protect. This conversation covers the full journey: why beverage alcohol never had a DTC golden age, how she navigated the skepticism from distributors even after proving DTC traction, the copycat wine brand that literally used her co-founder's hand in their marketing photos, and why she thinks fundraising should come with a warning label. Highlights: - Why Allison priced Juliet for retail margins on day one, even while selling DTC only - How 70% of Juliet's customers had never considered box wine before they found her - The three-tier alcohol distribution system and why it makes DTC structurally difficult at scale - The story of a major wine corporation stealing Juliet's photography and her public LinkedIn response - Why exits in alcohol happen earlier than most industries and how that shapes her fundraising strategy - What it actually takes to get into Whole Foods as a five-person team - The Sephora analogy: why women in wine have always been forced to choose between quality and brand Subscribe to Unfinished Business wherever you listen to podcasts and if you loved this episode, make sure to leave a review. Learn more about Juliet Wine at julietwine.com.

    29 min

  3. May 19

    What Most DTC Founders Get Wrong About Entering a Crowded Category | Greta Meyer

    Greta Meyer started Sequel in a college classroom. She and her co-founder identified a physics flaw in the tampon that nobody had fixed in almost 100 years, and spent years navigating FDA clearance, manufacturing partnerships, and a medical device regulatory process most founders would have quit on. They launched DTC, spent almost nothing on ads, and built their brand through partnerships instead. Yankee Stadium reached out to them. So did the Indiana Fever. The thing that makes Sequel work is also the thing that makes it hard to copy: radical focus. They're not trying to reinvent the whole menstrual experience. They fixed one fluid mechanics problem and built everything around that. In this episode of Unfinished Business, Alex and Lee sit down with Greta to talk about what it actually takes to break into a commoditized, legacy-dominated category when you can't out-spend the incumbents and the product itself is invisible to the consumer. In this episode: - Why "we're not trying to solve everything for everyone" is the strategy, not just a line - How Sequel redesigned a class two medical device on a retrofit of existing machinery, and why that constraint was actually the unlock - Building brand in a taboo category without making it feel taboo - Why Yankee Stadium and the Indiana Fever came to them, and what that taught Greta about how to find partners worth having - The zero-ad growth playbook: organic social, affiliates, and stadium-as-acquisition-channel - Why going DTC first, before retail, gives you the customer data and the brand credibility you need to walk into a retailer from a position of strength - What she'd tell a founder who's about to do outreach to a partner they want: wait - The team structure behind a 6-person operation running a medical device startup - How Sequel is thinking about Amazon, and why TikTok Shop was the right test before it Greta is the kind of founder who knows exactly what she's building and exactly what she isn't. If you're entering a crowded market and wondering whether you need a huge ad budget to compete, this one will reframe that question entirely.

    33 min

  4. May 12

    The DTC math most founders refuse to do (until it's too late) | Suze Dowling @ Pattern Brands

    Suze Dowling has seen the inside of more DTC brands than almost anyone. As co-founder of Pattern Brands, a multi-brand home goods portfolio she's been building since 2018, she doesn't just run one brand. She runs five at once on a shared services team, which means she watches the same mistakes play out across categories, price points, and growth stages, over and over again. The biggest one: founders who scale before the math works. In this episode of Unfinished Business, Alex and Lee sit down with Suze for one of the most honest DTC conversations they've had. She talks about what she actually looks for when acquiring a brand, why she's shut down companies that were still profitable, and why the DTC equation most founders ignore is the thing that determines whether your brand survives. In this episode: - The DTC math equation Suze uses to diagnose any brand: revenue = AOV x conversion x sessions, and why most founders try to scale before all three are working - Why profitability was Pattern's non-negotiable when the rest of the industry was chasing growth at all costs - How she decided to shut down profitable brands, and why she calls it opportunity cost, not failure - The thing founders lie to themselves about most: product-market fit - What running five brands simultaneously teaches you that one brand never could - Why she still calls five customers herself every week, by phone - How tariffs forced the hard calls she already knew she had to make - Pattern's global team structure and how she got lean before lean was the obvious move - Where she stands on AI right now, and why not using it is "truly petrifying" to her Suze is the kind of operator who has made the expensive mistakes, learned from them, and built a system around never making them again. If you're building a DTC brand right now and you're not sure whether your math is actually working, this one is for you.

    37 min

  5. Apr 14

    Inside Hulken: How Our CBO Built a $50M Community-Led Luxury Brand

    We turned the mic around. For the first time on Unfinished Business, Alex and Lee are interviewing someone from inside Hulken, their own Chief Brand Officer. Tara Seruya has been working with Alex and Lee for over a decade. They first met at Ivy, their first company together. When Hulken came along, Tara came with it. She's the person behind every brand decision that resonates: the Supreme collab, the Oscars, the community of makeup artists, hairstylists, and set designers who carry Hulken everywhere and post about it without being asked. In this episode, Alex and Lee ask her everything. The things that worked. The things that surprised them. The expensive editorial shoots that didn't land. The authentic, messy UGC that outperforms everything. We covered: → What luxury actually means: Hulken is "conceptually not luxurious." But it makes you feel unstoppable. → The organic-first paid strategy: Hulken never runs content on paid until it proves itself organically. → Obsession over content skills: Hulken find superfans who were already carrying the bag every single day and ask them to tell their story. Tara explains why that distinction changes everything → The creative community told us where to go: Makeup artists, hairstylists, prop stylists, and set designers were using Hulken organically before there was a brand strategy around it. → Solving a real problem: Alex on why none of the brand, the collabs, or the cultural moments would have mattered if the product wasn't genuinely solving a daily problem for real people. → Brand content vs. paid content: How Hulken keeps these lanes intentionally separate → Branding advice. In ASMR. Lee asked. Tara delivered. If you want to understand how a product goes from utilitarian rolling bag to cultural icon (without losing itself along the way) this is the blueprint. Listen and subscribe everywhere you get your podcasts!

    32 min

  6. Apr 7

    How We Built a $50M Consumer Brand with 7 People

    Seven people. $50 million in annual revenue. One brand that somehow manages to feel like it's everywhere. If you've ever wondered how Hulken actually works (the operating model, the org chart, the tools, the strategy), this is the episode. This week on Unfinished Business, there's no guest. It's just Alex Schinasi and Lee Rotenberg, co-founders of Hulken and co-hosts of this show, getting into the questions they get asked most often: How do you run a brand this size with a team this small? How do you think about brand vs. growth? What does AI actually look like in your day-to-day? And what's actually coming next? Alex and Lee built Hulken from scratch into one of the most recognizable product brands in the DTC space: a rolling bag that started as a practical solution and became a cult object. They did it with a lean team, a very deliberate agency model, and a relentless focus on what actually moves the needle. In this episode: → The $50M with 7 people model: Why Hulken runs on a lean in-house team and a carefully chosen agency network → Alex's recent aha moment: growth and brand have completely different north stars, and treating them as the same function quietly dilutes both. Here's what changes when you split them. → Building AI systems at Hulken: The first AI agent they're building internally → The Claude Cowork morning routine: Alex's exact setup → Why the fact that Hulken isn't a Hermès bag is one of its biggest brand advantages → Hiring AI agents instead of humans: Why the question isn't just "should we hire?" but "should this role be a human?" → What's coming next: Collabs, new products, and a few things they can barely talk about yet This is the most behind-the-scenes episode they've done. If you're a founder, a builder, or someone who's been following Hulken and wondered how the machine runs, this one is for you. New episodes of Unfinished Business drop every week. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and follow along at @unfinishedbizpodcast.

    22 min

  7. Mar 31

    How Dylan Munro Invented a New $130M DTC Category and Built a Factory to Protect It

    They cooked dog food in a rented kitchen in Queens. Their friends thought they were insane. That was 2018. Today, Spot & Tango is a 100% direct-to-consumer, subscription dog food company doing $120-130M in revenue and growing 60% year over year. This is all with zero retail shelves, 95% subscription, and a $35M factory they built themselves to protect a category they invented. Dylan Munro is the co-founder and COO of Spot & Tango. Before this, he was at McKinsey, diligencing DTC brands for private equity firms. He grew up in Canada in an entrepreneurial family and always knew he wanted to build something of his own. When his co-founder Russell was cooking human-grade dog food in a studio apartment on the Upper East Side and neighbors kept asking to buy it, Dylan was introduced at exactly the right moment. They quit their jobs, rented an incubator kitchen in Queens, and started making dog food by hand. In 2020, they launched UnKibble: a freeze-dried, human-grade dog food that was genuinely unlike anything on the market. They called the category "fresh dry." No one else was doing it. They sold through four months of inventory in four days. That was the signal. They raised money, built a $35M factory in Allentown, Pennsylvania, brought manufacturing in-house, added over 20 points of margin, and went profitable in late 2023. They've been growing double-digits every year since. On this episode of Unfinished Business, Alex and Lee sit down with Dylan for one of the most practically dense DTC conversations they've had, covering the real mechanics of how Spot & Tango actually scaled. In this episode:- The website quiz that added 10-15 questions between a visitor and checkout and doubled conversion while cutting CAC in half (yes, more friction = better results) - How they scaled creative throughput 10-20x: hundreds of pieces a month, 70% UGC, a systematic outreach process to source creators, and a full AB testing operation on Meta - Why Dylan calls himself and his co-founder "golden retrievers" and how the discipline of saying no built a $130M business - The decision to spend $35M on a factory (and exactly why it was the right call) - The "fresh dry" category: what it is, why nobody else was doing it, and why owning the manufacturing was the only way to own the category - How Spot & Tango uses TikTok - The D2C vs retail debate they have all the time and where that conversation is right now - Pop Gum: the dental chew they launched 7 months ago that's already at $10M+ ARR Dylan is the kind of operator who does the unsexy work, thinks clearly about the fundamentals, and has the receipts. If you're building a DTC brand and trying to figure out how to actually scale efficiently, this episode is for you.

    34 min

  8. Mar 24

    The Bootstrapped DTC Founder's Playbook with Ben Cogan of Beanstalk

    The DTC era of "raise money first, ask questions later" is over. And Ben Cogan saw it coming. Ben is the co-founder of Hubble Contacts, one of the original DTC brands, which grew to $100M+ in revenue and earned him a spot on Forbes 30 Under 30. He then founded Mockingbird Strollers (now in Target), Agora (a DTC acquisition firm with $120M raised and $200M+ across its portfolio), and Beanstalk, the invite-only DTC conference that's become one of the most sought-after gatherings in the space. Before all of that, he was at Boston Consulting Group and got his first taste of early-stage DTC at Harry's in 2014. In this episode, Ben gives Alex and Lee a candid masterclass on what it actually takes to build (and keep building) a profitable DTC brand. He's seen the boom. He's seen the bust. And the thread running through every brand that's made it? Profitability from day one. We covered: → The VC-backed DTC reckoning: Companies that went public in 2021 are down 80–90%. Meanwhile, the bootstrapped brands that grew on profitability and cash flow are the ones getting acquired at the best multiples. The playbook has flipped and founders need to know it. → Why 80% of retail is still offline: Even outside of grocery. Ben breaks down why meeting your customers in stores isn't just a revenue play… it makes your existing digital spend more efficient by giving buyers one more touchpoint to actually convert. → The $20–25M omnichannel threshold: Ben's rule of thumb for when going online-only stops working and what happens to your incremental Meta spend when you cross it without a retail presence. → Attribution in an omnichannel world: Triple Whale and Northbeam are useful, but Ben's most impactful attribution strategy is also the simplest: geo tests. Pull your Meta spend in specific states and watch how your offline (Target) numbers respond. → Bootstrapped = the best acquirable business: Why Agora specifically looks for profitable, bootstrapped companies and why "you can't hide if you're bootstrapped" is the ultimate test of product-market fit. → How to think about an exit: When does it make sense to sell? What do strategic acquirers actually want? Ben breaks down what the best acquisitions have in common and what role scale, omnichannel presence, and founder involvement play in making a deal work. → Playing defense on dupes: Alex and Lee get real about the copycats coming for Hulken and Ben explains the only answer that actually works: keep building the brand the dupes literally cannot replicate. → Beanstalk: What Ben built, why it's invite-only, and what he hopes the DTC community gets out of showing up. This is the episode for founders who are building profitable businesses the hard way without a safety net, without VC subsidies, and without anywhere to hide. And who want to know exactly where that path leads.

    31 min
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5
out of 5
10 Ratings

About

👋 We're Alex and Lee, serial entrepreneurs and multi-exit founders. Our journey has made us magnets for the challenges ambitious women face in career, family, and personal fulfillment. We're launching a platform for honest discussions about conscious entrepreneurship, career growth, and holistic success. We'll explore topics like mastering self-promotion authentically, transforming imposter syndrome into career catalysts, balancing work, family, and well-being, innovative strategies for entrepreneurial success, and much more.

Information

  • Creator
    Unfinished Business
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    40
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Unfinished Business
  • Show Website
    Unfinished Business

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