The Empowered Challenger

By: Door No. 3
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  • Summary

  • Unless you’re a category leader, your brand is likely in a struggle for attention in a crowded consumer marketplace. Fortunately, your business’s challenger nature may be the very thing that sets it apart from the pack. On The Empowered Challenger Podcast, Prentice Howe of Door No. 3 talks with founders, marketers and thought leaders to explore the tactics that challenger brands leverage to steal market share and topple giants.
    2019
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Episodes
  • Suzie Welsh Devine | BINTO

    Suzie Welsh Devine | BINTO
    Oct 19 2021
    When Suzie Welsh Devine saw women struggling to find the answers they needed at overcrowded fertility clinics, she knew there had to be a better way. At the time, Suzie was a women's health and fertility nurse, but she came from an entrepreneurial family. Seeing a gap in the market, she combined her business savvy, passion for women’s health, and personal insights into fertility treatments to create BINTO, short for “Bun in the Oven.” She hopes that the company will change the way we see women’s health, supplemental treatments, and the medical industry as a whole.“Wouldn't we be better off focusing on preventative medicine over inpatient care?” Suzie asks in this episode of The Empowered Challenger. “Are there other ways of handling things before we move to prescription drugs? That’s really what we’re interested in.” Suzie founded BINTO in 2016, with $20,000 she’d saved and without traditional investors. Initially, she targeted the supplements to women receiving fertility treatments. Using the industry-disrupting powers of direct-to-consumer selling, and personalized marketing and products, BINTO is challenging an industry that’s been tough to crack. Since then, Suzie has started looking beyond fertility treatment, at other elements of women’s health that need a revamp. “I think we’re just at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to our potential, and what we want to be,” Suzie says.  Featured Challenger👱‍♀️ Name: Suzie Welsh Devine⚙️ How she challenges: Through BINTO, Suzie hopes to provide women at all stages of life with monthly supplement subscriptions customized to their needs.💊 Company: BINTO💎 Noteworthy: Suzie knew she wanted to go into nursing after a trip to Malawi with the Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance when she was 16. She got her nursing degree from the University of Virginia, and is still a licensed nurse.       🔍 Where to find Suzie: LinkedIn | Instagram Challenger Wisdom Highlights from the conversation appear below.💡 Challenging your expectations of yourself“The world of wellness was always floating in the back of my mind as something I was passionate about and really interested in. Did I know this was going to be my career? No, not a clue.”💡 Offering convenience is disruptive “Five years ago, no one was doing what we're doing. We really believe in personalized medicine, and we’re direct-to-consumer. We aren’t sold on a shelf and we don’t use bottles: Everything comes in easy, grab-and-go daily packets. As a nurse, I know that medication adherence is huge, and that means your supplements too. Building the brand in a way that’s easy for customers is key.”💡Taking on the market clichés“We're a scrappy startup, and we didn't work with an agency off the bat. It was just the team creating [the packaging]. In the fertility market, [the marketing] is a lot of baby bumps and hot pink. We wanted it to feel warm and fun and inviting, without having baby bumps everywhere.”  💡 Tuning out the background noise“People who haven’t built something think they know how to build something better than you do. I’ve had to learn that everyone has their two cents, and they think building a company is easy. Just take it with a grain of salt, and ignore it like white noise in the background.”💡 The new way to advertise“We do traditional pay-per-click ads, and we do some influencer work. Social media has been one of the biggest benefits to starting a brand today. If you’re starting a brand, you need to be present on social media channels. Instagram has been a phenomenal way for us to gain customers for a lower cost.”💡 Harnessing the disruptive power of personal connection “Word of mouth is really powerful. Any time that I can get in front of a group of women or potential customers, it sells. We used to do a lot of live events [before the COVID-19 pandemic]. Accessing fertility communities and doctors’ offices through B2B partnerships is also very powerful for us in terms of sales, because it speaks to trust. If someone’s doctor is telling them they trust a brand, they’re more likely to buy it.”💡 An alternative to traditional investors“I'm really glad that we were able to test things without a lot of investors involved. A lot of running a startup is throwing darts on a dartboard, and testing, and figuring it out. We were able to do a lot of the testing and figuring out on our own, so that when we have fundraised, we haven’t had to go through many painful points.”💡 Customers first, competition second“It's about our customers. If I get caught up in what other people are doing, then I forget about our core customers and I'm not serving them. Of course, it’s important to be aware of the competition, have a pulse on it, and know what's going on in the market. But we need to focus on our business and serving our customers, giving them what they need and creating products ...
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    27 mins
  • Stan Chia | Vivid Seats

    Stan Chia | Vivid Seats
    Oct 12 2021
    When Stan Chia joined Vivid Seats in November 2018 as its CEO, he was excited about giving the profitable online ticket marketplace a stronger consumer-facing identity. Stan, who previously held executive roles at Grubhub and Amazon, joined the online ticketing company at a time when the secondary ticket market was growing by double digits year over year. Then the pandemic hit and live events ground to a halt. As Stan puts it, events were the first “to shut down and almost the last to come back.”On this episode of The Empowered Challenger, Stan talks about steering the company through the pandemic and how he’s positioning Vivid Seats to win consumers’ hearts (and dollars) as the pandemic moves into the rearview mirror. With fans excited to get back to concerts, sports and other kinds of live entertainment, Stan says trust is critical when you’re the company selling people their tickets. Consumers want to be assured that gathering in crowds will be done safely and that purchasing tickets is a hassle-free experience from a provider that will stand behind purchases. Even before COVID-19 upended life as we know it, Vivid Seats was building out its loyalty program, which enabled consumers to earn rewards on every transaction. Now, Vivid Seats has enhanced the program in an effort to make it “almost infallible from the value that we deliver to customers,” Stan explains. Now, anyone who uses the Vivid Seats platform earns 10% on every ticket purchase. Plus, the program looks for ways to add “surprise and delight elements,” such as exclusive parties and experiences. It’s part of Stan’s plan to “emerge stronger” from tough times. Tune in to this episode to hear more about how Vivid Seats differentiates itself in the online ticketing space through partnerships with Rolling Stone magazine and more, and why Stan doesn’t believe in focusing too much on competitors (even though he respects what they do).  Featured Challenger🧑 Name: Stan Chia⚙️ How he challenges: As the CEO Vivid Seats, an online marketplace for live event tickets, Stan places a significant emphasis on building recognition among consumers looking for a safe and trusted place to get tickets online. 🎟️ Company: Vivid Seats💎 Noteworthy: Stan was born in Singapore and served in the Singapore Armed Forces when he was 18 years old. He learned a lot about leadership during his military service, including the importance of leading by example — “I don't expect anything of anybody that I wouldn't be willing to do myself,” he says. 🔍 Where to find Stan: Twitter | LinkedIn🔍 Where to find Vivid Seats: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook Challenger Wisdom Highlights from the conversation appear below.💡Fans are itching to get back to live events (safely) “What we look at is safety first and foremost, making sure that as we facilitate events like this, that we're really understanding and considerate of comforts and discomforts of customers, right? As the world tries to figure out what the future looks like … there is a huge amount of pent up demand after 14, 15 months of total isolation as we were in lockdown. What we've seen now across the spectrum — music festivals selling out and record pace … there's a lot of excitement from fans to get back, but I think, also, certainly confidence that they can do that and they will do that in a safe way.”💡Leveraging a rewards program as a differentiator “One of the things we decided to differentiate ourselves on was a rewards program….we were one of the only rewards programs out there where every transaction you bought, you would earn something on that. And we said, Hey, also, we're going to build an amazing app. We're going to make sure all of these great personalization features are there. And between August of 2019 through February of 2020, we saw our app volume go from about eight to 9% to 40% of our volume. So huge adoption from consumers … they appreciated the design that our product and our engineering team had put into that as well as the value of our rewards program.”💡People love buying event tickets online — but trust can be a challenge “The challenge in this industry [selling tickets online] … is this a safe industry? Is this a place where you can get tickets? Like, who am I buying from? Who's going to stand behind this? Is it hassle-free? Am I protected as a consumer? I think that's something the industry faces and something that we've really tried to get ahead of.”💡Having a clear brand that resonates with consumers “We want our brand to be synonymous again with consumers when they think about live events. The emotions that we believe we represent to someone who wants to put their faith in us. So trust, value, service, all of these things … we want to make sure that truly our consumers feel that on the brand side … When you think of Vivid Seats, it's about experiencing it live, and celebrating the power of ...
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    31 mins
  • Michael Rich | Psudo

    Michael Rich | Psudo
    Oct 5 2021
    Michael Rich has been obsessed with sneakers for almost as long as he can remember. Michael got his start in the shoe business at age 16 when he sought out a job selling shoes at his local mall. After college, he went on to work on the manufacturing side and traveled across the world making shoes in foreign markets. For years, he dreamed of creating a sneaker brand of the future. Finally, he launched Psudo, a DTC sustainable sneaker brand, in 2019. “These are your ‘running around shoes,’ not your running shoes,” Michael says on this episode of The Empowered Challenger. Sustainability is core to the brand. The upper part of the shoe is made from recycled plastic water bottles. The sneakers are made in a Milwaukee-based solar-powered shoe factory, while its packaging is made from 100% recycled content. Psudo shoes are also made entirely in the U.S. While shoe manufacturing is rare in the United States — Michael estimates less than 5% of the shoes Americans wear are created domestically — he was determined to make it part of Psudo.And though it wasn’t easy, he’s found the benefits of domestic production to be significant: more control over the process, nimble response to customer demand, and shorter manufacturing runs.Marketing the challenger brand hasn’t been easy — especially for Michael who didn’t come from a digital marketing background. He believes Psudo’s innovative design coupled with the brand’s commitment to transparency are key ingredients for Psudo’s growth. Ultimately, Michael believes in the magnetism of a good brand narrative: “[P]eople will be reaching out more and more to do collaborations, to have the opportunity to do a podcast like this … I think one thing kind of takes care of the other.” On this episode of The Empowered Challenger, he also discusses his plan for creating a “circular brand” that customers can return for repurposing and get a fresh look.  Featured Challenger🧑 Name: Michael Rich⚙️ How he challenges: Michael is the founder and owner Psudo, sustainable sneakers that are made in the USA and sold directly to consumers. 👕 Company: Psudo💎 Noteworthy: Michael has been immersed in the business of sneakers since he was a teenager. When he was 15 years old, he started trying to convince a local shoe shop owner to hire him.        🔍 Where to find Michael: Twitter | LinkedIn🔍 Where to find Psudo: Facebook | Instagram Challenger Wisdom Highlights from the conversation appear below.💡Starting a challenger brand requires persistence “Every entrepreneur, if you ask them at the end or in the middle: if you knew how hard it would be to get here, would you still have done it? And I've bet a lot of people probably might say no, but then when you're sitting here and you have this little nugget of a company and you want it to be something more, it just inspires you to push forward. There are a lot of highs and lows as an entrepreneur and running a business … It's making sure this UPS shipment got delivered … all that logistical stuff that goes into running a business.”💡On creating a new product with a familiar feel (and a lot of of transparency)“The main thing that I wanted to do as an entrepreneur … I wanted to innovate a product that was unlike anything else that was on the market, but make it feel very familiar. And I also wanted to be very transparent about how I'm doing it, what I'm doing … that type of honesty doesn't exist. And when I look at our benefits and our branding and what we bring to the table, I think it has plenty of room for growth. And, what we call scale in this industry is what we're aiming for — and it doesn't happen overnight, and it certainly takes longer than anyone wants.I'm sure all the other brands would probably say the same thing.”💡A defined brand is your best customer acquisition strategy “We are working on Psudo 2.0 — what that looks like, what that voice is … dig deeper into the manufacturing and really tell exactly what we're doing … if you do that, then the other part of it — the customer acquisition, the business — will come. … we have proven the concept, people like the sneaker, the main thing is just really focusing on that brand ethos, voice … I feel like that third part, the business side of it, will just be there.”💡When customers behave like customer service reps“What I love more than anything is when a customer might reach out and ask a question online. Maybe it's more of a general question not to the brand specifically. And then the reply comes from someone else in a real positive manner. That's the best, because that's way better than me answering that same question or anyone from my team.” 💡Creating a ‘circular brand’ for ongoing customer relationships “My holy grail, blue ocean is to create a circular brand where you buy a pair of sneakers, you return them back to me, they get recycled into a new pair of ...
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    31 mins
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