From IBM to Founder: The Skills That Actually Matter | Laura Loughran | Factor Form

Shamil Malachiyev: Hello, everyone. Today on the Founder's Code podcast, my guest is a founder and general manager at Factor Form. In her spare time, she advises and invests in startups, as well as writing a thoughtful blog about tech, product, and the psychology of work. Please welcome Laura Loughran.

Laura Loughran: Hello, hello. Thank you so much for having me, Shamil. I'm really excited to be here.

Shamil Malachiyev: Likewise, great to have you. Can you give us an intro to what you do at Factor Form?

Laura Loughran: Sure. Factor Form is a supplement company. We create thoughtfully formulated supplements that are clinically backed, use real food, whole-food ingredients, and have proven efficacious results. And at Factor Form, I run the whole business. I oversee everything from growth and marketing to operations to product formulation - everything it takes to run a supplement business. Of course, it's not me alone. I have a wonderful team who supports me across all of these different domains to make the business work.

Shamil Malachiyev: Fantastic - and we'll go a little bit deeper on that as well. To start off, to have a good understanding of who Laura is, could you talk us through your upbringing?

Laura Loughran: Sure, happy to. I grew up in New Jersey - great state. I feel like it gets a bad rep, but I can only say good things about growing up there. As a kid, I was very competitive, very intense, very sporty. I was mainly a swimmer - that was my main sport, and I swam in college - but I also did every other sport under the sun. Having that balance between academic and athletic was really important for me as a kid: being able to try different things, build different skills. If something wasn't going well in one class, I could be successful on the field, things like that. So I always encourage young people - it doesn't have to be sports, but pursue your passions, whatever they are, outside of just academics, because it will pay dividends down the road.

Shamil Malachiyev: Was it your own prerogative as a kid? Were you going to your parents saying, guys, I want to try this? Or was it: hey Laura, you have to try this, we're going to take you there and you have to perform. Which one was it?

Laura Loughran: My parents definitely set a high bar. I think the term that was thrown around in my generation was tiger parents - which is very different from helicopter parents, by the way. A tiger parent, which my mother certainly was, is somebody who's hugely protective of their children and also sets a high bar: wants them to achieve things, throws them into everything, encourages their successes, sits with them through their failures, and encourages them to be a more dynamic person. A helicopter parent - I think most people are familiar with the terminology, but if not - is a parent who's so protective that they don't let their kids fail at things. I definitely failed at a lot of things along the way. But the curiosity and the willingness to try things that was embedded in me by my parents is something that has really paid off, not just in my career, but in my life as well.

Shamil Malachiyev: And how did they react to the failures? For example, if you had a game or a competition and you didn't come first - were they supportive at those times?

Laura Loughran: Such a good question. Okay, I'm being vulnerable here, but that's what this podcast is all about, right? Just to paint a picture of what I was like as a kid: in my very first ever travel soccer game - which in the States happens around second grade, so how old are you then, eight? Super young - I remember being so excited. My parents drove me; it was a really big deal to me at the time. And we lost - my team lost 4-1. I'll never forget the score; it's burned in my memory forever. At the end of the game, I was so upset. You know, at the end of the game you go and shake hands, or high-five the opposing team - you have to be respectful. Go easy on me here: I remember slapping the hands of those girls as hard as an eight-year-old possibly could. And that should give you a little insight into my competitiveness. I did not take failure well as a kid. I think it's something I'm still continuing to learn - but that's part of the fun of it, right?

Shamil Malachiyev: I often feel - because of many other founders who've come on this podcast, and some of my friends who are also founders - one of the stories that runs through all the lines is that we didn't feel like we were enough when we had the failures. It was almost like we had to achieve to deserve love from our parents. And we spend our whole lives trying to prove ourselves, to earn that love. You can be 50, 60 and still be using the same motivational fire. It does serve as a source of motivation to keep driving - even though you may no longer be trying to prove something to your mom or your dad, it still works as an internal engine.

Laura Loughran: Definitely. I'd be curious - what about you? Do you have a defining moment yourself as a kid, that you think about, that is illustrative of who you are and how you've become what you are?

Shamil Malachiyev: There is one, with judo. I went to judo when I was little, because in my family, the guys have to be doing sports. And the first match I got into - the parents are sitting all around the place - the first match, I lose. And I remember the kind of support that I wanted: "hey, dude, don't worry, you're a kid, it's just a competition, you'll get better with time". But I was met with silence instead. Now I can understand it - the same kind of pressure was put on my father, and he never quite healed from that or learned to act differently. Through a lot of my childhood my father was very controlling and strict. We always had to perform, me and my sister - she's a careerist, she builds careers. And I've come to terms with using that as fuel, when I saw other people do the same thing. Do you ever feel like, with everything that you do, you're still trying to prove yourself?

Laura Loughran: It's a great question, and it's such a good insight you've picked up - this phenomenon of almost having a chip on your shoulder. When I look back on my career and my life, it's ebbed and flowed. I've had certain times where I've felt - not "I've made it" necessarily, but: I am where I want to be. And then I've had other times where I felt like I'm ready to brute-force whatever I need to in order to get to where I think I should be. What's changed over time is not that underlying fire, but the ability to tolerate the space when I'm not where I want to be - not beating yourself up about it every day, being patient and saying: okay, I'm not exactly where I want to be, but I'm going to get there. I'm going to wake up every day and work towards it, and not be so in the suffering of the day-to-day. Because that can really take a toll on you.

Shamil Malachiyev: How did you get through that transformation? I'm probably still going through it, actively - because you are suffering, and inside, you're basically choosing to suffer. The main thought in my head is: your suffering does not change anything. You could just be in a good mood, and things would be just as shit as they are otherwise. Did it take time to get to that point? Are there rituals you use to take care of yourself during those times?

Laura Loughran: Oh my gosh - I'm by no means an expert. It's an ever-evolving target. But the more you go through things, the more data points you have that show you: oh, I do come out the other end. And the more times you go through that cycle in your life, the more confidence you gain: okay, I can go through it again. I don't want to say "peace of mind", because I don't want it to seem like we're all over here resting on our laurels - that's not what it is. But you can be a little kinder to yourself along the way.

Shamil Malachiyev: It's the sense that you'll make it out alive no matter what.

Laura Loughran: For sure. It's necessity, right? That teaches you resilience. You're not as resilient at 15 as you are at 35, because you haven't gone through as many hardships.

Shamil Malachiyev: So for anyone younger listening to this: there is no wisdom here. You just have to get through it - suffer enough times, come out alive on the other side a sufficient number of times, and decide that that's just how the journey is. That's part of the reason I started this podcast: to show people what to expect on this journey. So it doesn't crush you - it's not all rainbows and butterflies. And at the same time, this is the best place to grow and learn, because there's always something to do, always somewhere to learn.

Laura Loughran: Exactly. And for all the listeners: if there's one takeaway from this conversation, it's exactly what Shamil is mentioning. You look at people who are quote-unquote successful and you think: my God, they never had a bad day in their life, they never went through hardship - every morning they woke up and they were successful. And that's just not true. And as soon as you know that, you think: well, if they also went through those things, then I'm going to be fine.

Shamil Malachiyev: Can you tell us about your experience at a large company like IBM? That's a big thing I'm still undecided on. There are a lot of founders who just jump into building companies without any prior experience working for other companies - understanding the structure, the motivations, how to manage all of this - and they just build things from what they perceive. And there are others who take years to learn how businesses are built, how they operate, how you manage people, how you interact with them. How much of that shaped you? What kind of experiences played a role in your formation?

Laura Loughran: Wow, such a great question. I have so much respect for people who jump right into the founder thing from the get-go. I didn't have the confidence, the chutzpah, the insanity - whatever you want to call it; it is part of it. It felt so out of reach at the time. When I joined IBM, which was my first company out of school - to be honest, I had no marketable skills. I was 21. I had a lot of lofty goals, but no compass for how to achieve them. I actually credit IBM with giving me the space to learn what it means to be a professional, what it means to work in tech. And because IBM is such a big company, I was able to do a lot of different things there. It really was the springboard to where I ended up in my career today.

Shamil Malachiyev: Is this the place that shaped your direction towards being a product manager?

Laura Loughran: Yes. I would love to tell you the story of how I became a product manager - again, in the sake of transparency, and so everybody knows that sometimes it's a right-place-right-time thing. When I was hired at IBM originally, I was hired to do consulting. And it turns out I was not good at consulting. Maybe I wasn't on the right projects, maybe I wasn't hired in the right year. But what I always tell people is: consulting versus product management - they're about as 180 from each other as you can possibly get. In consulting, you're executing. Somebody gives you a task, you do the task. It can be a strategic task, but still: you are given the prompt, you return a statement of work, and you never really get to see it through. And that drove me nuts. I wanted to be the one with the autonomy.

Maybe that's why consulting wasn't such a great fit for me. In fact, it was such a bad fit that IBM came to me after about a year and said: Laura, we need you to do something else at this company. How about product management? At the time they were piloting an entry-level product management discipline within the company, and they were taking people from the consulting practice - we were really the guinea pigs of this new program. And I thought: I don't know what product management is. I don't know how to build software. I don't know anything about this. But I will do anything to get out of consulting.

Obviously hindsight is 20/20, but as soon as I started in product, I just absolutely fell in love with the building - the ability to create, the agency you have at such a junior level. Even if you're a junior PM, you're running a team. How many entry-level people run teams? You're responsible for the work output of five to six engineers, a designer, other folks on the team. That's a lot of responsibility. The role has evolved so much - what it looks like today is very different from when I started almost 10 years ago. But I always encourage young people, especially ones who aren't exactly sure what they want to do, to try product, because it builds you such an amazing foundation to go on and do any number of other roles, within or outside the tech world.

Shamil Malachiyev: How easy was it for you to compete with everyone else at IBM? Because you have an athlete background - did that come into play? From what I know, athletes are the ones who know how to use discipline and persevere through pain to achieve goals.

Laura Loughran: I always credit my athlete upbringing for the success I've been able to achieve in my career. There's a stat that keeps getting thrown around - and I'm going to be wrong about the number, because I've seen probably three or four different percentages - but of women in leadership or C-suite positions, I think somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of them were college athletes. So there's definitely something there in terms of resilience and discipline. But that doesn't have to come just from sports. It can come from music or theater or any hobby you have. Just sticking with something is what's important. And I lost the thread of your question - you're going to have to re-ask.

Shamil Malachiyev: How did all those skills that being an athlete gave you help you handle the competition within IBM?

Laura Loughran: Ah, yes. One thing I will say is: finding good mentors makes all the difference in your career. And often you just stumble upon them in your day-to-day. When you're early in your career, you have a lot of energy - you want to work, you want to work hard, you want to do well - but you don't know what the right things are to focus on. You don't know how to prioritize, you don't know how to spend your time, you don't know what matters and what doesn't. And that's where mentors come in.

I remember being at IBM on this team building a blockchain platform - which, looking back on it, I had no business doing anything like that. And my team of engineers actually sat in a different office than I did. I was in New York, in Manhattan, and they sat in an office about a 40-minute train ride north of the city. The first time I tried to get on a call with one of the engineers, their boss - the engineering manager, the person who oversees the team of engineers - came into the room, heard me asking this engineer questions, and essentially shut it down. He said: don't bother my engineers. Go do your thing and let me do mine.

It felt like a virtual slap in the face. I'm 24, 25 - I didn't know how to react to that. And I remember talking to my mentor about it and asking him what to do here. He said, Laura, get your butt on a train and go sit with them. Even if they tell you they don't want you there - go sit with them, become friends with them, ask them questions, be curious, and you'll figure it out.

So that's what I did. For the next 12 months, twice a week, I would leave Manhattan on a train, go up to Yorktown Heights, and sit with the engineers. And that's how I learned. About a year into doing that, we were in a big meeting - my boss and hers, I don't even know how many layers of IBM leadership were in that room, because this was a pretty high-profile product we were building. And that same engineering manager who had essentially told me to leave his team alone spoke up in this meeting. And he said, in front of all of these important people at IBM, that ever since Laura had joined the team, things had gotten back on track. I was so shocked I nearly fell out of my chair. But it was such a good reminder: I went out of my way - I got up and I went to the office - but it's really just the little things. You do the little things, day over day, and it adds up. It compounds over time. So don't be discouraged if you get a no. Don't feel like it's so onerous to make progress. Just do one little thing every day, and you're going to get to where you want to be.

Shamil Malachiyev: That reminds me of a conversation with a friend of mine who practices stoicism. There was one part that really stuck with me - I'm not hugely stoic, but part of it is: focus on what you can control. You can control taking disciplined action daily. You cannot control the result. You would not have been able to control that lead engineer's reaction or how he spoke of you - but you could control showing up and getting on with it. I think it's a lot easier for anyone to live life if they only focus on the things they can actually control. Whatever happens afterwards - the universe will provide the necessary lessons. And you've also talked about being in the right place at the right time. What is your relationship with luck?

Laura Loughran: There's a quote - again, I'm not going to get it exactly right; I distinctly remember it being on a wall somewhere in my elementary school - and it's something to the extent of: the harder I work, the luckier I get. I think that is the case. What it means is that the harder you work, the more you put your hand up, the more you take that extra step, the more opportunities open to you. It's not always right away. Even thinking about where I am now versus where I was a couple of years ago - I couldn't have foreseen the turn my career and journey took. But I was putting in the work day after day, waking up excited, grinding, learning. And when you do those things, that's when doors open. Luck is really just a manifestation of hard work and timing. That would be the equation if I had to write it out on a whiteboard.

Shamil Malachiyev: I see so many people doing practices in their life - like meditation - that help them almost align with the universe. Maybe it's just the difference between people being spiritual. Do you consider yourself spiritual?

Laura Loughran: I can be a little earthy, definitely. The older I get, the more I think about the mind-body connection, our connection to the earth, and how to stay grounded. It's about: how do you best prepare? How do you get your mind and body right so that you can work as hard as you can? It's a delicate balance. People like you and me and the listeners on this call - often what happens is we push a little bit too hard. Over time you have to learn where those lines are. I had to learn that pushing yourself too hard is actually a disservice to your long-term career, and taking care of yourself in the day-to-day - whether that's meditation, or working out, or a phone call with a friend, whatever brings you down and grounds you - is just as important as all the other things. You need that balance to have a sustainable and healthy career - and life.

Shamil Malachiyev: I see so many people getting burnt out because all they do is work. They don't exercise, because any hour spent doing something else is an hour not spent working on your thing. Do you think that to be a good and effective founder - an effective person at your craft - you need to take care of your energy levels, through exercise and meditation? Maybe you have some practices that keep you on your game.

Laura Loughran: Yeah, absolutely. And I think the rhetoric around this is changing, in a good way. I see it a lot in parenting too - my brother is a parent, a lot of my friends are parents - and it used to be: sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice. It's becoming a little more acceptable to say: I'm actually a better parent if I exercise twice a week. Which feels counterintuitive - and the same goes for careers. The mindset shift I had was to include the things I need to stay grounded as part of my blocks of work. For me, exercise is key. I have to move my body. It doesn't have to be anything crazy - the amazing thing about living in New York City is you can walk everywhere. Sometimes 10 minutes of stretching is all I have time to fit in, and that's good too. Considering those pieces as part of the work helps you make space for them. Because you're right: if you work, work, work all the time - sure, maybe you can do that for a couple of weeks, a couple of months, maybe a couple of years if you're young - it will catch up with you, and then you end up in a worse position. It's like the old fable of the tortoise and the hare. You think you're getting ahead, and maybe you are to some extent - but life is seasons. You have to think about the long term.

Shamil Malachiyev: Have you ever struggled with being assertive? A lot of people struggle to show firmness - when managing people, they're trying to be nice, because they want to be liked by everyone. But to make the shift to orienting yourself around the results of the business, you have to start caring more about the business, and being a kind person rather than a nice person. Was that something you had to learn?

Laura Loughran: Yeah - that's something I'm still learning, and it is one of the most important skills you can develop. It didn't come naturally to me, on both sides - I think receiving feedback also didn't come naturally to me. But again, having that mindset shift: the more I fail, the more I learn. Therefore I'd rather know - tell me what I'm not doing well, and I'll do it better. And the same goes with your team.

There's this amazing book that came out a few years ago, Radical Candor. I think it's probably the best illustration of the line you walk between being clear and firm, but not being mean. And it depends on the person - I manage a team of six, and everybody responds to feedback differently. But the best achievers, the people who are eager to do well - they love it. They respond to the challenge. I always try to frame it that way: hey, this is something you can work on. This is an opportunity for you. How amazing is this - something you can action to get better. I probably sound like a broken record at this point, but it's all about the mindset shift: how do you share information, how do you portray things to your team in a way that excites them to do better? It's a delicate balance.

Shamil Malachiyev: Before we move on to your journey at HelloFresh and Factor Form - could you give a bit of advice on mentors? Everyone says you need to find mentors, people who can talk to you. But at the same time, I see a lot of people struggle to answer: who can be my mentor? Who do I reach out to? My friends? Somebody a thousand miles ahead on their journey, or somebody at the same level as me? What would you advise in terms of who to look for and how to reach out?

Laura Loughran: It's a great question, and mentors are a tricky one, because you can't force it. Sometimes we would all love for - I don't know - Tom Brady to be my mentor. But he's probably not a great mentor for me, because we don't have anything in common career-wise. We don't have other ties. We don't have shared experiences. With mentors, it's a little art and a little science. Typically, the best mentor relationships are the ones that happen more organically: somebody you know at work who's maybe a little more senior than you, but isn't your direct manager. That's probably the best place to start - somebody at your company, not on your direct team, somebody you look up to or work tangentially with, who you have good rapport with.

And look - being a mentor is an incredible, amazing thing, and people are very willing to do it, as long as you ask. Whether that's an email, or you find them in the office. And if you want a mentor who's not at your company - if you feel very strongly that X person is going to be an amazing asset to you - make it as simple as possible for the person you're asking. In the email, explain: this is who I am, this is what I'm doing, this is what I'm trying to accomplish - do you feel like this is something you could help me with? Everybody's busy, and people want to help. But if you put too much of the onus on them to figure out how to be your mentor, it's probably not going to be as great a fit. Does that make sense?

Shamil Malachiyev: Yeah, absolutely. And it's very similar to the feedback I give to younger guys: a lot of people would be surprised at how often people say yes. It's something that benefits them as well - they love to share, and to feel the value of their own experience.

Laura Loughran: Absolutely.

Shamil Malachiyev: Okay, slowly getting to Factor Form. Can you tell us how you came to join HelloFresh? Because it's a big change from IBM - International Business Machines, technology everywhere, the cutting edge - towards something a little more down to earth, more practical, I would say.

Laura Loughran: A little bit more tangible, perhaps - yeah, that's the word. Much like most things in my career - again, for the sake of transparency - it was a bit of an accident. I left IBM and joined a health-tech startup in New York in April of 2020, just as COVID was hitting, which was an insane time to make any move. I was there for a bit, and then I got laid off. I joined another startup in the health-tech space - and on day one, I realized it wasn't the right fit for me.

Shamil Malachiyev: What happened? How did you identify that it wasn't the place?

Laura Loughran: A lot of the processes and the culture that I had left IBM for - or because of - I saw reflected in this new company. And it just wasn't what I wanted. Also, the business was a B2B software company, and B2B versus B2C is just totally different. Your buyers and your users are not the same people, so everything from how you build software, to how you sell it, to how you build the business is different. And I was dead set on wanting to be in D2C. So as soon as I joined, I thought: okay, I'm going to need to make another move.

It was a tumultuous year. But as I was looking to make another move, I was chatting with a former colleague from IBM who'd ended up at HelloFresh. And Shamil - he was having so much fun. You could just see it in his face that he loved what he was working on. At that point I was so tired, and so sick of interviewing. I thought: I just want to be somewhere where the people are having a good time, where the culture is really strong, where there's a lot of agency to grow and try things. And I really trusted this colleague - he'd been a product manager at IBM with me. So I took a leap. I said: all right, I'm going to try HelloFresh, let's see what happens. I thought I would do it for a year and then move on to something else - I just really wanted that direct-to-consumer experience on my resume, because I was finding it difficult to make the B2B to B2C transition in product. And as soon as I got to HelloFresh, it just felt like an amazing fit. The rest is history.

Shamil Malachiyev: What was it like coming from the corporate world into something where you actually want to talk to the users - and the users are not corporate people, they're people who consume the products?

Laura Loughran: I loved it. I love direct-to-consumer. I love being humbled by customers day in and day out. You come up with an amazing feature idea and think: my gosh, this is going to change everybody's life. And then you run a user test and the person says: I don't see a button. And you think: well, okay, that didn't go as expected. But it's so awesome to have that connection with your customers and really think about the psychology of it all. That's what I love about direct-to-consumer and feature building.

The culture at HelloFresh is so special. They're a German company, which a lot of people don't realize - their headquarters are in Berlin. So there are a lot of European influences in the company, which I think gives a very nice balance.

Shamil Malachiyev: What is the European influence? For everybody sitting in Europe wondering - what's the European influence?

Laura Loughran: The biggest one that sticks out to me, Shamil, is one of the tenets at HelloFresh - one of the DNA values is called "egoless environment". The company is so data-driven, so focused on analytics and results, that it takes the ego out of decision-making. It doesn't matter if it was Laura's idea or Shamil's idea. What matters is: did it prove results? And it just makes it a lot easier to work in those types of environments, because it's not personal. We're all working towards the same goal, and we have the tools - data, analytics, hypothesis-driven experimentation - to know we're going in the right direction.

Shamil Malachiyev: I would always get the sense that the US is all about competition - working hard, working six days a week, seven days. And then you look at Europe and it's: should we make Friday a vacation day as well? Maybe a five-hour workday? So maybe you were talking about a better work-life balance.

Laura Loughran: They do work hard in Berlin, they do. And certainly - we've talked so much, Shamil, about this mindset of who you are and what you do being separate. Related, but not the same thing. In Berlin, and in Europe in general, they know that. They think: if this doesn't go well, we're going to go and try something else. They don't put all of their self-worth into their job. Which I think is very healthy.

Shamil Malachiyev: I just need a second to think about that, because I haven't taken that perspective. A lot of the people I know just destroy themselves - even if it's a brick wall, they continue hitting it, because "that's my identity, that's who I am". And I notice a lot of founders who build large companies and then sell them - they exit, and then they're faced with: okay, who am I without that identity of founder of that company? That's a scary process that can take, from what I hear, five to ten years on average - rediscovering yourself. Have you ever asked yourself that question? Who is Laura, if not a product manager and founder of a nutrition supplements brand? What kind of answers do you get?

Laura Loughran: Absolutely. It's something that I grappled with pretty early. Going back to IBM - remember this high-profile piece of software we were building. I remember looking at our P&L - essentially the forecast for the revenue we'd expected to deliver for the year versus where we landed, which was nowhere near it in year one. It's a little art and science, right? We all know that. And this was the first time I'd ever seen a P&L. I thought: oh my gosh - are we going to get fired? Are they going to close up shop? And I remember calling my dad and saying: what do I do? I'm 24, I don't want my career to be over, I need to find a job. And he said to me: Laura, work is what you do. It's not who you are.

So the older I get in my career, the more tenured, the more I recognize: yes, I am a founder and a CEO of a brand. I am a product manager by training. But I'm also a friend. I'm a sister. I'm a daughter. I'm somebody people can rely on. I'm a tennis enthusiast. And all of these things are important too. Even if the business takes a nosedive, or you get laid off - you don't lose the essence of who you are. And that's a good thing.

Shamil Malachiyev: And then we get to Factor Form - the first time you've put yourself in the shoes of a CEO, taking full responsibility for the outcome. How did that feel?

Laura Loughran: Listen, let me tell you - it ain't easy. But isn't that the fun of it? I will be super honest here: when we first launched, the first few months the business was live, I felt like somebody's foot was on my neck. I felt the weight of the responsibility. It's a lot. And I think about how lucky I am to be incubated within a company like Factor, which not only has resources, but also has mentors and people who can support me. I look at founders who are doing this completely solo, on their own, and I have the utmost respect for people who do it that way - because it's not easy, and it's very lonely, especially in those early days. Because I don't have a co-founder. It's just me.

My advice: get a co-founder. Get somebody who can help carry the load for you. But if you are a solo founder like me - massive respect - make sure you have community, whatever that means. If it's a peer advisory group, if it's a mentor, if it's a group of friends you can confide in. You're going to need support, because as much as you feel like you can lean on your team, it's not the same. They're not in it the way you are when you're the founder, the leader, the CEO, whatever it may be. And you're going to need that support to get through the day-to-day.

Shamil Malachiyev: And what group did you find for yourself? Founders in New Jersey?

Laura Loughran: Great question. Again, I'm very lucky that there are a bunch of other brands under my parent company, so there are other founders and general managers going through a lot of the same things I am. But I also joined a community of ex-athletes here in New York, and there's a peer advisory group component to it. That was part of the reason I joined: I just needed people I could be honest around, be vulnerable around, and say: hey, I'm struggling with this, or I had a really hard day. You don't want to put all that burden on your team. It's been incredibly helpful to have another outlet for those things.

Shamil Malachiyev: And how often do you feel like things are going well, going as planned? In terms of percentage of days - is it like 5% of the time it's a good day?

Laura Loughran: Oh, that's a good question. There are bits of dark days. Let's say 50-50, sometimes. Is that good?

Shamil Malachiyev: Fifty? That is fantastic.

Laura Loughran: I was thinking 10 originally - maybe it's lower than that. But hey, this is true for everybody. Everybody feels this. How often do we look back on a day and say: you know what, two thumbs up? It's part of the process.

Shamil Malachiyev: That's another thing about finding the peer group: unless you're willing to be vulnerable, you're going to feel lonely, because you'll only be able to interact with people who say "this is the best day". They post on LinkedIn once a week during the hype - okay, something went well, let's post about it, everything's going great. But they're missing out on so much authentic connection over what it actually is. That's life in entrepreneurship: shit hits the fan almost every week, twice maybe, where you have to make decisions. It's not just about the product or the users - it's also the people working for you, navigating conflict. You have to be a psychologist, a mentor for people, and at the same time think about the P&L and the product-market fit. There are just so many things to juggle. What are some of the hardest decisions you've had to make as a CEO so far?

Laura Loughran: Shamil, they're always people-related. Those are the hardest decisions. Always the hardest - because good leaders care about their teams and their people. And starting out, this has been one of my biggest learnings: your team is not your family. It's not personal, it's business.

Shamil Malachiyev: It takes so much experience to be able to say that. So many people don't get that.

Laura Loughran: It is tough - and maybe you get it one day and then you forget it the next; it's ever-evolving. But you have to think about it from the mindset of the collective. Okay - a mentor told me this once, and I'll share it because it really struck me, and hopefully it will help some of you. This was the light-bulb moment that helped me make that shift. He said to me, he said, Laura, everybody on your team knows who the weakest link is.

And when he said that, it was like 10 light bulbs went off in my head. First of all: that's so true. How often have we been on teams - even when you're super junior - where everybody knows who isn't pulling their weight? And if everybody knows, then me, as the leader, I'm letting the whole team down. I'm negatively affecting the entire team. Thinking about that, and remembering my own experiences on teams when I was junior and there was somebody dragging the team down - and listen, it's not intentional, people aren't bad actors necessarily - but you have to think about the collective. You have to think about how to maintain the health of the team. And sometimes, for individuals, staying on the team isn't the best thing for them either. Everybody wants to feel good, like they're pulling their weight, like they're a high performer. Sometimes you have to let people go so they can go and find that as well. But it's not easy.

Shamil Malachiyev: That is actually a very powerful way to put it: everybody on your team already knows who the weakest link is. And I think what has often helped me is believing it's a lot about the culture. There are cultures where it's okay not to try to be your best every day, where it's okay to take it chill. And maybe there are places for people like that, where they'll feel at home - where they won't be stressed, and they'll enjoy the part of their life they're devoting to their professional life as well.

Laura Loughran: Yeah. And the way I like to frame those conversations is: I believe the best in people. I believe that there is a correct role for every person, in which they're going to be at their best. And maybe it's not the role they're in. I've said to people before: this is what you're really good at. If I had a role on my team that was perfectly tailored to those things, I would put you in that role, and you would be successful. But I don't have that role on my team - or the role that you're in requires X, Y and Z other things. I've found that's a really helpful way to frame it for the underperformer as well. It's not a black-and-white thing; it's a fit thing, a puzzle-piece thing. It has to work on multiple facets. It takes the fear away from it, and then it becomes: you're right - everybody deserves to be in a role that's right for them. And sometimes you've got to try a few things to find it.

Shamil Malachiyev: And do you trust your gut feeling on these things? Somebody comes in, first time on the job, you get on a call with them, and two minutes in you're thinking: maybe I just need to give them another two weeks. In your experience - should you trust your gut, or is it okay to take it slow?

Laura Loughran: Trust your gut. I think sometimes we second-guess ourselves. We think: no, let's give it more time, or maybe I'm overreacting. No. Your intuition knows. I find that it can be difficult to articulate - I think that's why it's hard for us to trust our intuition: I can't explain to you why I don't have a good feeling yet, or why I have a great feeling about this person. But in my experience, your intuition is typically right. And if you're unsure about somebody - let's put it this way: if you're not over the moon about a candidate in the interview process - my mother always used to say this to me. She always said, Laura, maybe means no.

Shamil Malachiyev: And it's important to put emphasis on this, because I get faced with it a lot. Every time you make a new hire, sometimes you see them work for two weeks and think: I don't know, but let's give them some time, they seem to be getting accustomed. Because you think: it's only been 10 days, what can a person do in 10 days? But the gut feeling - I learned it from a book, I think it was Winning by Jack Welch from GE; another of his books was about gut feelings, trust your gut. It's something I'm coming to terms with too.

And the industry that you're in - I know a lot of people in tech and AI don't understand how difficult this industry is. For example, a lot of people will know the brand Goli - the gummies - who even had Jennifer Lopez as one of their ambassadors, and went bankrupt within three years, leaving a huge hole in the industry. What have you learned about making a supplements business work? I've had two and a half years of experience building a supplements business in Ukraine. And I've noticed that if you see everyone advertising a lot, it doesn't necessarily mean things are going great. Sometimes the more advertising you see, the more desperation there is in the market. What has your experience been so far?

Laura Loughran: Yeah - supplements is a wild ride. Making supplements is very different than selling supplements. That's what I'll say. I think the brands that do well are the ones that build the best stories - the best unique, human, personal touches that resonate with people. Because - and this is true of all businesses - the lower the barriers to entry, the higher the marketing competition. Think about supplements. Take electrolytes: electrolytes are salt, magnesium, a little bit of flavor - maybe 10 ingredients. Any person can develop an electrolyte formula with a co-manufacturer, slap a label on it, and sell it to customers. And when the barriers to entry are low, the marketing competition is high, high, high. This is true of any business, not just supplements. So make sure you know: what is your niche? What is your story? Get super specific about what that is.

When you look at the winning brands of the last couple of years - obviously AG1, and now we have Grüns, the gummy brand, and Create, the creatine gummies - the ones that stay laser-focused on what they're trying to achieve, the story they're trying to tell, and the persona they're trying to attract: those are the ones that make it big.

Shamil Malachiyev: What about marketing and advertising? When you're a product person, you listen to the people, and then you try to build and give them exactly what they're asking for. But when it comes to spreading the word about your product and getting people to trust you and use you in their daily lives - before maybe 2012, 2015, it was enough to just run Google ads and Facebook ads and people would know about you. Then it switched to influencer marketing - now you need the most popular people, TikTok, athletes everywhere, to show that it's not just you who likes the brand. And now it's moving towards AI-created content - you can create AI personas holding your product and advertising it. What is going on in marketing right now in the US?

Laura Loughran: That is a great question. Honestly - I came from tech, I came from product. Marketing is insane. It's like being in Las Vegas and you're just playing slot machines. That's how it feels. The euphoria of running paid marketing is addictive. That's what I'll say about marketing.

But I'm so curious how AI is going to shape the future of marketing. Because again - when you lower barriers to entry, when a thing becomes ubiquitous... now everybody can create a video with an AI persona talking about their product. I think it's going to become much, much harder to stand out if everybody is doing the same thing. I actually think, especially in this world of AI, we're going to swing back to celebrity and authenticity - people with real credibility. Influencers are going to continue to stay super relevant; hopefully the mechanics change. But people are looking for trust and proof, and they're going to get that from trusted sources - whether that's influencers, or athletes, as you mentioned, or when I say celebrity, I mean people of note, people that others look up to. So I'm curious how this swing is going to go, because if everything is equalized digitally, it's going to require something else to stand out. It's crowded out there.

And one of the other things I'm excited about, Shamil - if everybody's on an even playing field digitally, and I've been reading articles about this concept and having conversations about it recently - I think experiential marketing is going to become really big. Community-based events, things that are in-person, pop-ups, those types of things. Because we're lonely. We want to connect with other people, and with brands - we want to feel connections. I think those are the types of things that are going to become more and more important. Now, they're difficult, because they're hard to measure - attribution, and scaling is hard. But again: if everybody's doing the same things, it's going to be the brands doing different things that are successful.

Shamil Malachiyev: Well, I guess this is going to be a challenge for the marketing managers and sales teams within companies. Because I like online advertising for how easy it is to scale - you pick your geography, take your best creatives, test them, and see which one has the lowest cost per click-to-buy. In the future, we'll have to think about a lot of other variables.

Laura Loughran: Yeah, absolutely.

Shamil Malachiyev: And what do the next five to ten years look like for Laura?

Laura Loughran: Oh my gosh. I like to ask myself this, and I say it out loud to people and they laugh at me, but I think it's important: what am I going to be when I grow up? Because I don't know. And part of it is staying curious about what's coming. If you had told me five years ago that I was going to be founding and running a supplement company, I would have thought you were crazy. Five years ago, my five-year plan was probably to be a head of product. And now that feels like too small a job. That's only been five years - who knows what the next five are going to bring.

I recently did this workshop with a former NFL player - awesome guy. And one of the quotes he said, that really resonated with me, that I want to share with all of you, is: play a bigger game. Don't just think: okay, I want to get promoted, I want to move up, I want to get this, that and the other thing. If you set a bigger game for yourself, you're going to be way more motivated to get after it and stick with it.

And a lot of five-year plans, achieving ambitions, where you end up - a lot of it comes down to what you're doing in your day-to-day. Are you excited? Are you passionate? Are you working towards things? I remember talking with this girl - sorry for all of my side-tangent stories - many years ago when I was interviewing, before I ended up at HelloFresh. She was telling me she was looking for a new role because she felt like, in her current role, she had stopped learning. And so often we're slow to pick up on that. We're on autopilot, going around, doing our thing, smooth sailing - and then you wake up one morning and think: I haven't really learned anything new in six months, a year, two years.

So that's why staying open, staying curious - as we talked about earlier with luck - matters. You never know when it's going to strike. You never know when the timing is going to be right. But you want to be ready. So do things that you're passionate about. And it doesn't all have to be so prescriptive and work-related - "I'm going to read three articles a day and learn how to code". No - things that excite you. Go visit art museums, or learn French. I'm a huge believer that flexing different kinds of muscles pays dividends in the end. There was a study that came out recently about athletes: when young kids do multiple sports for longer - a lot of people specialize quite early these days, but if you hold off on specializing (so not just swimming, which is what I did, but also lacrosse, and soccer, and what have you) - they actually end up more successful, because you're forced to learn different skills for longer. And the same goes career-wise. So chase your passions, take that French class, learn how to cook. All of these things will contribute in ways that are hard to see.

Shamil Malachiyev: Wow. And on this fantastic note, I believe that's a wrap. I want to thank you so much for sharing so much - even I came away with so many ideas and so much thinking to do over the weekend now. Thank you for bringing your most authentic and vulnerable self. I think a lot of our listeners will really appreciate and connect with those stories, because I really believe that every single person is going through some part of the journey you've described. So thank you for that.

Laura Loughran: Yeah, of course. And thank you so much, Shamil, for sharing your stage with me. I think your podcast is so incredible - it gives a peek under the hood at what founders are up to. It's so inspiring, and it gives everybody the courage to go after their own dreams as well.

Shamil Malachiyev: Thank you. Appreciate it.