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Today’s guest is Jim Sustar, President and Co-Founder of Trademark Global. Jim and his brother started out home selling on eBay after college, before deciding to turn it into a business. In the early 2000’s, Trademark accurately predicted that a turning point had arrived for e-commerce businesses, and changed their mission from acting as an online seller, to supplying and distributing products for mass market retailers.  Today, Trademark Global is a Consumer Brand Manufacturer that provides an “Endless Aisle” solution for retailers like Amazon, Wayfair, and Walmart.

Today’s guest is Jim Welsh, who is the Senior Vice President of Western Digital. Jim’s love for electronics led him to become an expert in external storage,  launching the first external hard drive in the market at Maxtor. Jim then went on to become General Manager of Western Digital, where he has successfully led the consumer electronics unit and reached the brand’s #1 worldwide share position for external hard drive storage since 2006.

Today's guest is Greg Hoffman, Founder of the brand advisory group Modern Arena and former Chief Marketing Officer at Nike. Greg has spent over two decades strategizing and influencing Nike's brand at every major sporting event, focusing on themes of equality, sustainability, and empowerment through sport. Greg and Guru take a deep dive on these themes as well as Greg's new book, "Emotion by Design: Creative Leadership Lessons from a Life at Nike."

Today’s guest is Kristina Lambert, Executive Vice President at Pilgrim’s. Kristina is a Bentonville native who started her incredible career as an intern at Tyson Foods, where she held several positions over 20 years, including Vice President and General Manager. In 2013, she was named to the 40 Under 40 list by NWA Business Journal for her work at Tyson building brands from the ground up. In this episode, Kristina shares her insights with Guru that led her to lead Prepared Foods across multiple companies.

This week we sat down with Esi Eggleston Bracey, who was on the path to becoming a Biomedical Engineer when she fell in love with marketing and brand management. Esi shares her learnings from over 25 years of working with P&G, leading the merger of Coty and P&G specialty beauty business, and eventually landing at Unilever as the EVP and COO of Beauty & Personal Care.

Today’s guest is Lisa Curtis, Founder & CEO of Kuli Kuli, the first brand to bring the superfood moringa to the US market. Lisa shares with Guru her incredible story, from her discovery of moringa in the Peace Corp to launching her multi-million dollar brand in 11,000 stores across North America. Lisa was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2018 and offers valuable lessons on entrepreneurship, scaling, and the future of food retail.

Today’s guest is Vince Jones, Senior Vice President and Head of E-Commerce at PepsiCo.  Guru and Vince dive deep into Vince’s personal story about growing up in the Midwest, how he went from consultant at Accenture to Walmart during the dot-com boom, then to C-suite roles at eBags and Bluestem Brands.  Vince shares lessons from his career and insights he’s gained while leading e-commerce for the iconic company, PepsiCo.  Enjoy our first episode of 2022!

Today's guest is Max Rangel, CEO & Global President at Spin Master.  Guru and Max cover lessons from all across Max's global career, from P&G, The Hershey Company, SC Johnson and now as CEO at Spin Master. Enjoy our final episode of 2021 :-) 

Today's guest is Sandeep Dadlani, Global Chief Digital Officer at Mars Inc.  Fun fact, Guru and Sandeep grew up in the same town!  They cover Sandeep's 16+ year career at Infosys before exploring the story of how it led him to becoming CDO at Mars.

This week's guest is Sri Rajagopalan, Chief Omnichannel Commercial Officer at General Mills. Sri has had an illustrious career across companies like Frito-Lay, J&J, Revlon and now General Mills, and this episodes dives deep into all the lessons he's learned along the way. If you enjoyed this conversation, we encourage you to check out Sri's podcast at www.cpgguys.com

This weeks guest is Claudine Patel, CMO at Post Consumer Brands. Prior to joining Post, Claudine was the CMO of NA Health at Reckitt, a role she rose to just 9 months into her time at the company. Her career spans iconic brands owned by companies like Kellogg Company, Kraft Foods, and The Coca-Cola Company and this episode highlights some of the amazing lessons learned over that span of time.

Jim Sanduski started his career in the mailroom at a bank in Omaha — when he was just a junior in high school. He was an aspirational teen, juggling active involvement in multiple youth leadership and professional development organizations, and took advantage of opportunities that stretched and challenged him, like studying abroad in Japan for two years.  It was interesting to talk to Jim and learn about how influential some of those early experiences were in shaping his career path, which led him to key roles at iconic consumer electronic brands, including Sony, Samsung, HP, Panasonic and now Sharp. Our conversation covered many great learnings on leadership, risk-taking, navigating difficult career decisions and the benefits of international exposure and experience.