Blog

A basic water filter pitcher typically costs around $20 to $40. Rorra, a startup water filtration company known for its stainless-steel countertop system, is asking $249 for its new version.

That’s a lot of money for a water pitcher. So what makes founders Brian Keller and Charlie Carlisle think people will pay a premium for it?

Part of their pitch is that this isn’t your typical plastic pitcher. Rorra’s version is made from borosilicate glass and stainless steel, and uses the same proprietary technology as the company’s larger countertop system. 

Keller and Carlisle recently joined the One Day with Jon Bier podcast to talk about the new product and what they’re doing differently the second time around as founders.

Going all in before they had a product

Keller and Carlisle had one advantage when they started Rorra. They’d done this before. The two previously worked together at Love Your Melon, the apparel brand known for donating hats to children battling cancer, so they had already been through the process of building and exiting a company.

But Rorra required a different kind of sacrifice. They didn’t have a finished product. They didn’t have sales. What they had was enough early research to convince themselves there was a business worth pursuing.

Then came nearly two years of working full-time without making a sale.

There were plenty of moments when the plan looked shaky. One early prototype of Rorra’s countertop filtration system was roughly one-and-a-half times the size of the final product. Carlisle described it as a giant “Stanley Cup-looking thing.”

A bigger problem came when they thought they were nearing launch. Their engineering firm told them the product needed another three or four months of work.

Keller said they had to “remodel the whole business” and make sure they had enough cash to get to launch.

Rorra eventually launched its countertop filtration system, followed by a filtered showerhead. Keller said the company did eight figures in sales in its first year and expects sales to grow two to three times this year.

That growth has given them room to expand beyond the products that built the business. Their latest invention is the $249 pitcher.

Why pay $249 for a water pitcher?

The pitcher is Rorra’s attempt to take the filtration technology from its larger countertop system and put it into a more portable form. But Keller and Carlisle didn’t want to make another cheap, plastic pitcher. 

“Go back to the 1950s refrigerators,” Carlisle said on the podcast. “They used to last for 40, 50 years. How do we get back to that really wonderful, durable, and oftentimes self-serviceable culture?”

The difference is in the materials used. The 13-cup Rorra version is made from borosilicate glass and stainless steel, with no plastic touching the filtered water. Rorra says its filter reduces PFAS, lead, microplastics, and dozens of other contaminants. It also lasts for up to 200 gallons.

Using AI

But durability doesn’t necessarily make consumers want to spend $249 on a pitcher. Keller and Carlisle still had to figure out how to sell it.

That’s where Keller tried something unusual. While working on the launch strategy, he fed the plan into AI. But rather than ask whether it was a good plan, he told the AI it had already bombed.

Keller said he built the launch plan himself, fed it into AI, and told it: “This was the plan. It completely failed. Tell me where we went wrong.”

The exercise identified some potential problems. Keller said AI warned that Rorra wasn’t a big enough brand to sustain the lengthy pre-launch period he had envisioned and suggested the company was trying to communicate too many selling points at once.

So they changed the plan, shortening the pre-launch period and narrowing the message.

The strategy appears to have worked. Rorra says the first batch of pitchers sold out, with a second batch scheduled to ship in October.

Beyond the pitcher

The pitcher may be Rorra’s newest product, but Keller and Carlisle are already thinking beyond what sits on the kitchen counter. They see an opportunity to build a water filtration brand that follows customers outside the home.

“Right now, when you go to fill your water bottle up at an airport or the gym, that brand is not the same brand that you can buy for your house and vice versa,” Carlisle said.

Rorra plans to keep developing consumer products, but Carlisle said the bigger opportunity could be creating a “fully integrated, filtered water platform that transcends environments.”

Rorra is also entering a new stage as a company. Keller and Carlisle have relocated the business to Austin, where they plan to build out their team and work together in person after running the company remotely for its first three years.

Keller believes this stage can be particularly dangerous for a fast-growing company.

“Businesses go to die between 20 to 50 million,” he said. To get beyond that point, he said, founders need to keep innovating while hiring the right people and maintaining the speed that got them there in the first place.

For now, Keller and Carlisle have a more immediate test in front of them: finding out how many people really are willing to spend $249 on a water pitcher.

A basic water filter pitcher typically costs around $20 to $40. Rorra, a startup water filtration company known for its stainless-steel countertop system, is asking $249 for its new version.

That’s a lot of money for a water pitcher. So what makes founders Brian Keller and Charlie Carlisle think people will pay a premium for it?

Part of their pitch is that this isn’t your typical plastic pitcher. Rorra’s version is made from borosilicate glass and stainless steel, and uses the same proprietary technology as the company’s larger countertop system. 

Entrepreneurs are often told that success comes from taking risks. The advice sounds inspiring, but the best leaders rarely take blind risks. They make informed decisions with measured risk.

Over the years, my brother Sterling and I have expanded healthcare companies, entered new markets, launched new service lines and managed through disruptions ranging from Hurricane Harvey to the pandemic. Along the way, I’ve learned that successful risk-taking is less about courage and more about structure.

Every major decision carries uncertainty. The challenge is determining which risks deserve pursuit and which deserve patience. Whenever I face a significant decision — an expansion, a partnership, a new investment, a strategic pivot — I rely on a simple three-part framework to evaluate the opportunity and the downside before moving forward.

Why most leaders struggle with risk

Many entrepreneurs fall into one of two categories. The first group moves too quickly. They become excited by an opportunity and focus almost entirely on the upside. Revenue projections look promising, the market appears attractive, the idea feels exciting. The second group becomes trapped by analysis. They spend months gathering information, building projections and waiting for certainty before acting.

Certainty rarely exists in business. But the alternative to waiting for it isn’t operating without knowledge. Effective leaders balance optimism with preparation: They pursue opportunities while planning for the setbacks that could occur along the way. That balance is the foundation of the framework below.

Part one: Evaluate the opportunity

The first question I ask is simple: What happens if this works?

Too many business owners evaluate risk without fully defining the reward. Before considering obstacles, I want to understand the opportunity itself. Does this decision move the company closer to its long-term vision? Will it create meaningful growth or strengthen existing capabilities?

When my brother and I evaluate expansion opportunities, we begin by asking whether the opportunity aligns with our broader mission. We are careful to avoid growth that creates complexity without advancing our long-term goals. A good opportunity should create leverage, not just more revenue.

One exercise I recommend is writing down the three best outcomes that could result from a decision. It forces you to think strategically rather than emotionally. If the upside is limited, the risk may never be worth taking.

Part two: Analyze the downside

The second part of the framework is about protection. I ask myself: What is the worst realistic outcome?

Notice I said realistic. I evaluate what could reasonably go wrong and whether the organization can absorb the impact.

During the pandemic, many business owners faced challenges they had never anticipated. Those with strong financial reserves, adaptable operations and contingency plans had far more options than those operating without safeguards. That experience reinforced one of my strongest business beliefs: Resilience is a competitive advantage.

Before taking a major risk, I work through four questions:

• How much capital could we lose?
• What operational challenges could emerge?
• How would this affect our team?
• Could we recover if the decision failed?

If the downside threatens the survival of the organization, I either restructure the opportunity or walk away. Protecting the downside keeps you in the game long enough to benefit from future opportunities.

Part three: Assess adaptability

The final component is flexibility. I always ask: Can we adjust if conditions change?

One lesson from periods of uncertainty is that adaptability often matters more than the original plan. During the pandemic, healthcare providers had to rethink how care was delivered. Those who adapted quickly recovered far faster than those waiting for conditions to return to normal. Whenever possible, I look for ways to reduce commitment while increasing learning. Can we test the concept before making a larger investment? Can we launch a pilot? Can we enter a market gradually instead of all at once?

The ability to pivot creates options, and options reduce risk.

Knowing when to pivot versus persevere

One of the hardest leadership decisions is whether to keep pushing or change direction. Many entrepreneurs quit too early. Others stay committed long after the evidence suggests a different path.

The key is separating temporary difficulty from structural problems. Temporary setbacks require persistence. Structural problems require adaptation. Persistence should always be tied to evidence: When data shows progress, continue. When evidence consistently points elsewhere, adapt.

Treat failure as information

Failure carries value if you are willing to study it. Too many people view unsuccessful outcomes as personal defeats. I prefer to view them as feedback. Every setback contains information about assumptions, execution, timing or strategy.

Some of our most valuable lessons came from situations that did not unfold as planned. Those experiences helped us build stronger systems, make better decisions and avoid bigger mistakes later.

After every major decision, successful or not, I conduct a simple review:

• What assumptions proved correct?
• What assumptions proved wrong?
• What would we do differently next time?
• What did we learn?

Leaders who consistently extract lessons from experience improve their decision-making over time.

Before your next major decision, evaluate the opportunity, analyze the downside and assess your ability to adapt. That simple framework has guided Sterling and me through expansions, market disruptions, partnerships and the hardest leadership calls of our careers.

Entrepreneurs are often told that success comes from taking risks. The advice sounds inspiring, but the best leaders rarely take blind risks. They make informed decisions with measured risk.

Over the years, my brother Sterling and I have expanded healthcare companies, entered new markets, launched new service lines and managed through disruptions ranging from Hurricane Harvey to the pandemic. Along the way, I’ve learned that successful risk-taking is less about courage and more about structure.

Every major decision carries uncertainty. The challenge is determining which risks deserve pursuit and which deserve patience. Whenever I face a significant decision — an expansion, a partnership, a new investment, a strategic pivot — I rely on a simple three-part framework to evaluate the opportunity and the downside before moving forward.

For many leaders, isolation has little to do with being alone. You can sit in meetings all day, work on busy teams and have a full calendar and still be isolated. The isolation I mean is being the only one, or one of very few, in the room: the only woman at the leadership table, the only person of color in the meeting, the only one whose background and lived experience look nothing like everyone else’s. It means having no one nearby who shares your vantage point, no one to quietly ask, “Did that feel off to you too?”

That kind of isolation shows up quietly in the decisions leaders make every day. You volunteer for one more project because you want to prove your value. You spend an entire weekend preparing for a meeting that probably required half the time. You replay conversations in your head, wondering whether you should have spoken sooner, waited longer or chosen different words.

Over time, those decisions become habits. Eventually, the habits become your leadership style. I know because I lived it.

Early in my career, I worked in a finance division with more than 200 people. Only two of us were Black women. Every weekend, I prepared for Monday’s meetings as though I were studying for a final exam. I anticipated every question, rehearsed every answer and reviewed every detail. At the time, I thought I was becoming a better leader. Every extra hour of preparation felt like an investment in my future, and every carefully rehearsed answer felt like proof that I belonged.

Looking back, I see something different. I was becoming an excellent survivor. Survival teaches you how to anticipate risk, manage perception and avoid mistakes. Leadership demands something different. It asks you to think strategically, build relationships and create opportunities for other people to succeed. Those are very different skills, and many leaders spend years developing their survival skills before they work on becoming better leaders.

Through my research with hundreds of Black women leaders and my own experience, I have seen these same patterns emerge again and again. The good news is that once you recognize them, you can begin replacing survival strategies with leadership strategies.

Isolation changes the way you see yourself

One of the first things isolation steals is perspective. When no one else in the room shares your background or lived experience, there’s no one to help you make sense of what just happened, so every setback feels personal. A rejected idea becomes evidence that you should have prepared more. Tough feedback becomes proof that you still have something to prove. Eventually, every challenge starts with the same assumption: What did I do wrong?

One question changed the way I evaluate difficult situations, and I still come back to it today. Is it me, or is it the room?

Sometimes important decisions happen in spaces where you have very little access. Sometimes the barrier has very little to do with capability. Learning to recognize that distinction helps leaders spend their energy solving problems they can actually influence instead of carrying responsibility for issues that belong to the organization.

The next time you hit a setback, pause before assuming you need another certification, another late night or another weekend of preparation. Ask whether you’re trying to solve a personal challenge or a structural one.

Isolation can make hard work feel like the only strategy

Many accomplished leaders respond to uncertainty by working harder. I certainly did.

The challenge is what that habit does to you when you are the only one. Hard work becomes a place to hide. If I just prepare enough, produce enough, carry enough, maybe my difference stops being the first thing people notice. It does not work. The work grows. The isolation stays. And now you are tired on top of it.

Effort was never the thing standing between me and where I wanted to go. Being the only one already takes more out of you than the job does. More hours do not fix that. They just wear you down further. And a worn-down leader is not leading. She is surviving in a nicer title.

One of the clearest findings in my 2025 research is that the leaders who lasted were not the ones grinding hardest. Work-life alignment predicted perceived success more than anything else I measured. More than promotion. More than pay. Endurance never moved people. Sustainability did.

Every few months, audit your calendar. Which activities move your career forward? Which ones simply prove that you’re dependable? Those answers often reveal where your leadership energy should go next.

Isolation can shrink your circle

When you feel different from everyone around you, it’s easy to hold people at a distance, and relationships can become transactional. Many leaders approach networking by collecting contacts because they believe a bigger network automatically creates more opportunities.

I prefer something I call “friend raising.” Friend raising starts with genuine relationships long before opportunity enters the conversation. Sponsors speak your name because they know your judgment and your work. Those relationships grow through trust rather than convenience.

That shift also changes the way you approach relationships. Instead of asking, “Who should I meet?” start asking, “Who already knows my work well enough to advocate for me?” Those people are often much closer than you think. A trusted colleague or someone you’ve collaborated with across departments can become a stronger champion than someone you meet once at a conference.

Relationships grow through consistency. A monthly coffee or a thoughtful check-in builds the kind of trust that lasts far beyond a networking event.

Build a leadership life bigger than one organization

One of the strongest findings from my research surprised me. Leaders who sustained success rarely depended on a single community. They built several. In the 2025 data, community connection predicted success too. The women with strong community ties reported higher self-esteem and deeper fulfillment, even the ones who were not advancing fast. The circles were not a comfort. They were a strategy. One circle understood their day-to-day work. Another included peers across their industry. A third had very little to do with work at all. Those relationships provided the perspective and the sense of shared experience that being the only one inside an organization cannot.

One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is expecting one organization to meet every professional and personal need. That’s an impossible expectation for any workplace. The same is true for founders and business owners, who often have no true peers inside their own companies.

A broader community gives you perspective when work feels discouraging. Industry peers remind you that your challenges are rarely unique. Friends outside your profession remind you that your identity extends beyond your title. Internal colleagues help you navigate today’s decisions, while outside relationships help you think about tomorrow’s possibilities.

This week, identify one relationship you could strengthen in each of those three circles. Small investments today often become the support system that carries you through tomorrow’s challenges.

Lead from choice, not survival

Being the only one in the room changes you. It sharpens your awareness, strengthens your resilience and teaches you how to read people quickly. Those strengths deserve to stay. The survival habits deserve a closer look. Every leader eventually reaches a point where the habits that once protected them begin limiting them. The goal is to decide which habits still serve your leadership and which ones belong to an earlier season of your career.

The best leaders eventually stop asking, “How do I survive this room?” They begin asking, “How do I lead well wherever I am?” That shift changes far more than confidence. It changes the kind of leader you become.

For many leaders, isolation has little to do with being alone. You can sit in meetings all day, work on busy teams and have a full calendar and still be isolated. The isolation I mean is being the only one, or one of very few, in the room: the only woman at the leadership table, the only person of color in the meeting, the only one whose background and lived experience look nothing like everyone else’s. It means having no one nearby who shares your vantage point, no one to quietly ask, “Did that feel off to you too?”

That kind of isolation shows up quietly in the decisions leaders make every day. You volunteer for one more project because you want to prove your value. You spend an entire weekend preparing for a meeting that probably required half the time. You replay conversations in your head, wondering whether you should have spoken sooner, waited longer or chosen different words.

Over time, those decisions become habits. Eventually, the habits become your leadership style. I know because I lived it.

A founder I work with hired a marketing agency eight months into his startup. Solid agency, good reputation, reasonable contract. Six months later, he had a beautiful brand deck, a content calendar running like clockwork and a social presence that had grown by a few thousand followers. He also had no new customers he could trace back to any of it.

When I asked what success had looked like in the original scope of work, he went quiet. “I guess we never actually defined it,” he said.

That conversation comes up more often than I’d like. Not because agencies are dishonest or founders are naive, but because the agency-client relationship for an early-stage startup is structurally set up to produce the wrong outcomes if you don’t actively design it otherwise. Agencies are very good at delivering what they can measure, and what’s easy to measure and what actually moves your business forward are often two different things.

What founders get wrong before the contract is signed

The most expensive mistake happens before the agency does a single hour of work. Most founders go into a retainer conversation thinking about outputs: how many posts per week, how many emails per month, what the deliverables look like. Agencies are happy to have that conversation because deliverables are easy to define and easy to demonstrate at the end of the month.

What almost never gets discussed is what the business actually needs to look different in six months for this engagement to have been worth it. Revenue from a specific channel, a pipeline that didn’t exist before, customer acquisition cost coming down measurably. These are harder to commit to, so most agencies won’t volunteer them as success criteria unless you make them.

Before you sign anything, you should be able to answer two questions clearly. First, what does this agency believe is true about your market or your customer that your current strategy isn’t acting on? If they can’t answer that with specificity, you’re buying execution without a point of view, which is rarely what an early-stage startup needs.

Second, how will we both know in 90 days whether this is working? If the answer involves impressions, follower counts or share of voice, that’s a signal worth paying attention to.

Why vanity metrics survive so long in agency relationships

Founders often sense something is off well before they act on it. The reports look active, the team seems engaged, there’s always something to show on a call. The problem is that activity and progress are easy to conflate when you don’t have clear baseline data and a specific number you’re trying to move.

Agencies don’t push vanity metrics because they’re trying to obscure poor performance. Most of the time they push them because those are the metrics they can reliably influence within a retainer. Follower growth, engagement rate and content volume are things an agency can control. Whether any of that converts to pipeline depends on your product, your sales motion and your pricing, all of which extend well beyond their scope. So they report what they can defend, and founders accept it because the alternative is an uncomfortable conversation.

The way to break this cycle is to agree on a shared “signal metric” before work begins. Something that sits between a vanity metric and a revenue outcome, specific enough to be meaningful but close enough to the agency’s work to be fair. For a B2B startup, it might be demo requests from organic channels. For a consumer brand, it might be repeat purchase rate among customers acquired through content. Whatever it is, get it in writing before month one.

The red flags founders ignore because they’re excited

Most founders can spot a bad agency in retrospect. The harder skill is spotting the signs during the pitch, when everything feels promising and the deck looks polished.

An agency that can’t point to a client whose business measurably grew because of their work is a red flag, not a gap they’ll fill with your company. Ask for two or three examples where a client saw a specific business outcome they can trace back to the agency’s work, something with a number attached and a clear line of causation, not just “we grew their social presence.”

Watch for agencies that build strategy entirely from your brief without pressure-testing your assumptions. Good agencies push back. They ask whether your positioning actually resonates with the buyer you think you’re targeting, whether your conversion path makes sense given your price point and whether the channel you want to invest in is where your customer actually makes decisions. If the strategy process feels like they’re mostly agreeing with you and adding production value, be skeptical.

And pay attention to who is in the room during the pitch versus who will actually be doing the work. The senior team that closes the deal and the junior team that runs the account are often very different groups of people.

What a productive retainer actually looks like

The founders I’ve seen get real value from agency relationships share a few habits. They treat the first 30 days as a diagnostic, not an execution sprint. They push the agency to pressure-test assumptions about the audience, the message and the channel before any significant production begins. This slows things down initially and sometimes creates friction, but it almost always produces better outcomes than moving fast on a strategy nobody has genuinely stress-tested.

They also maintain a clear internal owner of the agency relationship with enough context to evaluate the work critically, not just approve deliverables. When the person managing the agency doesn’t understand the commercial goals deeply enough to push back on a content calendar, the relationship drifts toward activity for its own sake very quickly.

Your first marketing retainer is a significant bet. The agencies that will serve you best are the ones willing to be held accountable to a number that actually matters to your business. If they’re reluctant to have that conversation, that tells you something important before you’ve spent a dollar.

A founder I work with hired a marketing agency eight months into his startup. Solid agency, good reputation, reasonable contract. Six months later, he had a beautiful brand deck, a content calendar running like clockwork and a social presence that had grown by a few thousand followers. He also had no new customers he could trace back to any of it.

When I asked what success had looked like in the original scope of work, he went quiet. “I guess we never actually defined it,” he said.

That conversation comes up more often than I’d like. Not because agencies are dishonest or founders are naive, but because the agency-client relationship for an early-stage startup is structurally set up to produce the wrong outcomes if you don’t actively design it otherwise. Agencies are very good at delivering what they can measure, and what’s easy to measure and what actually moves your business forward are often two different things.

OpenAI’s robotics push comes with salaries of up to $500,000.

According to a recent report from Business Insider, OpenAI is going big on robotics — and backing its focus with sizable salaries. At the time of writing, the startup had 27 robotics jobs open on its careers page, up from 11 openings in May. 

The roles included hardware, data collection, software and prototyping. They come with base salaries ranging from $177,000 to $500,000, plus equity and bonuses. For example, one role as a robotics software engineer in San Francisco pays $255,000 to $325,000 in base pay and offers additional undisclosed equity and performance-related bonuses. The role requires at least five years of professional software engineering experience developing systems in robotics. 

OpenAI offers generous benefits as well, including a 401(k) retirement plan with employer match, paid parental leave of up to 24 weeks and daily meals in the office. 

Inside the job postings

The highest-compensated role is a machine learning engineering position focused on the systems that handle robotics data at scale. The job involves building the underlying infrastructure to process, store and move training data across large networks of computers. It carries a listed base salary of up to $500,000. 

Cornell mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Guy Hoffman told Business Insider that the robotics job postings indicate that OpenAI is creating a “custom robot design team.”

The startup is recruiting engineers to develop robot hardware, including the motors and mechanical systems that power movement. 

The openings also include a lab technician who would build, test and refine robotic systems, as well as an in-house lawyer assigned specifically to the robotics group. 

One job asks the candidate to manage OpenAI’s data collection facilities. Unlike language models, which can learn from the massive trove of text and images online, robots need real-world examples of people, objects and machines interacting in physical environments. That data is harder to find, so robotics companies must frequently capture it themselves or purchase it from specialized providers.

OpenAI’s robotics aspirations

The language in the job listings frames robotics as a major long-term bet for OpenAI. One posting described the team’s mission as advancing general-purpose robots and working towards human-like intelligence across multiple types of robotic machines. 

Another job lays out an even broader aspiration: A future in which “everyone” has a personal robot “doing anything they need.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has become increasingly direct about the company’s plans to move from software into physical machines. 

In an interview on the podcast Sources earlier this month, Altman said that OpenAI will “definitely do a humanoid” and “other form factors as well,” or other robot designs suited to different jobs. 

Altman pointed to data centers as a likely early use case, suggesting that purpose-built robots could help operate and maintain the enormous computing infrastructure powering AI. Longer term, he described a consumer vision in which people own personal robots capable of handling a wide range of everyday tasks.

OpenAI’s robotics push comes with salaries of up to $500,000.

According to a recent report from Business Insider, OpenAI is going big on robotics — and backing its focus with sizable salaries. At the time of writing, the startup had 27 robotics jobs open on its careers page, up from 11 openings in May. 

The roles included hardware, data collection, software and prototyping. They come with base salaries ranging from $177,000 to $500,000, plus equity and bonuses. For example, one role as a robotics software engineer in San Francisco pays $255,000 to $325,000 in base pay and offers additional undisclosed equity and performance-related bonuses. The role requires at least five years of professional software engineering experience developing systems in robotics. 

When new creative employees join Oatly, the onboarding starts with a single instruction: “Unlearn everything you know about marketing.”

According to Oatly creative director Michael Lee, that’s the only way to build a truly distinctive brand voice: You must operate without the guidelines that bind most other companies — including how decisions are made, how teams are structured, and how the brand voice is even defined.

For example, most big companies have a “brand book.” It’s a style guide that defines how the brand looks and speaks, so that every touchpoint is consistent. But Oatly does not have one.

“We’ve always kind of refused to do kind of brand books,” Lee says. “Whenever we work with a partner, they’re always asking us about our brand book. And we don’t have one because as soon as you do one, you feel like you have to stick to it, and we’d rather have the freedom to just do something completely different if we felt like it.”

For a company that’s grown into a global provocateur beloved for its packaging and relentlessly human tone, that freedom matters enormously. Here’s what Lee’s approach reveals about what it actually takes to build a brand with real perspective — and why it gets harder, not easier, the bigger you get.

The Oatly origins

Oatly launched in Sweden in 1994, originally positioned as oat-based alternative to dairy. Its branding was quiet and boring.

Things began to change in 2012, when Toni Petersson became its new CEO. John Schoolcraft him joined him as chief creative officer, then eliminated the entire marketing department and rebuilt it with creatives at the center of the business. Their goal: Transform Oatly into a brand with personality and international appeal.

Schoolcraft’s new model was unusual. Oatly’s creative team (which named itself the Department of Mind Control) would operate largely on its own. It would write its own briefs, set its own strategy, and execute its own work.

Schoolcraft departed in 2025, but that structure still remains.

“No one really can veto what we’re doing,” says Lee, who joined as creative director in 2017, the same year Oatly entered the U.S. market. “It’s not like we’re presenting to any marketing director or sales guys.”

This is a genuinely rare setup, but Lee believes it’s a vital one. If you want a distinct brand voice, he says, you can’t just hire creative people and hope for the best. You must remove the layers of approval that instinctively sand down anything provocative, and empower creatives to truly own and operate their work.

But with great creative power comes great creative responsibility.

“When things go well, great. But you also have to take it in the chin when things don’t go well,” Lee says. “Then you must have the wherewithal and courage to continue being at that edge.”

Oatly’s creative director, Michael Lee.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Oatly

A Brand Voice is a Feeling

That unusual corporate structure has produced an unusually voice-driven product. Oatly is full of creatively distinct decisions, and speaks in a funny, often provocative way that helped turn the brand into something beloved and distinct.

Here are a few of those unusual choices:

• On the front of its carton, the name Oatly appears like this: OAT-LY. Why the hyphen? Just because it looked cool.

• The side of its oat milk carton is full of dense, self-referential, constantly changing text. One version began: “Before we wrote this sentence, there was a lot of empty space on the side of this package and we didn’t know what to do with it…”

• Its marketing often follows suit. One billboard said: “Why do giant oat-milk ads have to ruin cool neighborhoods?” Another said: “Maybe a social media celebrity will take a photo of this poster and you will see it on Instagram and like it way more than you do right now.”

• Oatly once described oat milk as “like milk but made for humans.” That prompted a lawsuit from Sweden’s dairy lobby, which Oatly then (ahem) milked for a lot of public press and sympathy.

But despite Oatly’s distinctive voice, Lee says he can’t exactly explain what’s “on brand” for this brand. Nor does he want to.

“There is an Oatly idea, and there is… that is not an Oatly idea,” he says. “How do you know? I don’t know. It’s just you develop a feeling. You develop this sense for what feels Oatly and what doesn’t feel Oatly, and it’s hard to wrap words around it.”

This might sound frustrating for anyone seeking a repeatable process. But Lee’s point is that a real brand voice resists being reduced to a checklist. It must become a fluid, ever-evolving thing.

“A lot of what I’ve spoken about — a company acting human and doing human things — is easy to say, and it sounds kind of normal,” Lee says. “But the reality within corporations and businesses it is extremely difficult. Because as everyone knows, when you go into a company, suddenly it’s company speak. You talk like you wouldn’t talk at home.”

As a result, he says, brand leaders often become police officers: Their jobs are to create guidelines that feel safe and prevent bad ideas. But Lee thinks a creative leader should do the opposite, by building enough shared instinct for everyone to recognize a good idea. That way, they can collectively reject ideas that are safe but don’t feel true to brand.

Courage Gets Harder As You Scale

Startup founders often lament: If only I had the marketing budget of the big guys…

But Lee says startup founders should take advantage of their size. When you’re small, it’s easier to take large risks. “It is much harder to be disruptive and courageous with your brand at the $100 million level than it is at the $10 million level,” he says. “That, I think, is the most difficult challenge — to maintain that edge and continue to be disruptive.”

At scale, every campaign faces more scrutiny, more internal stakeholders, and more pressure to protect what’s already been built. This is when most brands quietly sand off their edges, he says. They trade their original voice for something safer.

So how do you preserve that creative integrity? Lee says it all goes back to fundamentals: How are you structured? And is the company truly built to support creatives? Commitment must come “not from just the creative director, but the entire company, from the top all the way down,” he says.

That’s one more reason he’s grateful for the structure at Oatly.

When there’s no brand book, the creative team must constantly shape and refine the brand itself. When there’s no layers of approval, the creative team feels a deep obligation to get it right. And when a new team member is told to “forget everything you know about marketing,” they can start to define a new way for themselves.

When new creative employees join Oatly, the onboarding starts with a single instruction: “Unlearn everything you know about marketing.”

According to Oatly creative director Michael Lee, that’s the only way to build a truly distinctive brand voice: You must operate without the guidelines that bind most other companies — including how decisions are made, how teams are structured, and how the brand voice is even defined.

For example, most big companies have a “brand book.” It’s a style guide that defines how the brand looks and speaks, so that every touchpoint is consistent. But Oatly does not have one.

We have all been to traditional events — trade shows, in-person meetings, client gatherings. Sure, they play a significant role, but they are no longer the only way to build relationships and move opportunities forward. The world of business events has changed — permanently. The question isn’t whether to use virtual events; it’s how to use them effectively to build trust, create engagement and close business.

Done well, a virtual event can position your company as a trusted advisor, deepen relationships and accelerate the sales cycle. Done poorly, it becomes just another ignored webinar, a “non-event.”

Why virtual events fail

The biggest reason that virtual events fail is that companies try to simply produce them as a replica of an in-person event. That doesn’t work. I know this from firsthand experience.

I worked with a large customer during Covid-19 on a virtual presentation. It was a flop. They had planned an in-person event and just thought they would run it, as is, for a livestream. I tried to explain why that would not work but I could not get through to the key decision-maker. At the start of the event, things seemed to be fine, but it did not take long for attendees to start to drop off, and by the end, there were just a few diehards still there.

This experience illustrates some key learnings.

You cannot command the same attention virtually as you can when you are standing face-to-face with your audience. The content must be altered to be consumed virtually. And do not try to cover the same amount of information in a virtual presentation as you do in person.  Companies often choose presenters that are not “camera- friendly.” They might be passable with a live audience, but they put the virtual audience to sleep.

My CONNECT framework

Over the years, I have helped produce a variety of virtual events for global giants and smaller, innovative companies. The ones that really made an impact were packed with content, highly produced and fun. Yes, fun — not the dry, training type of presentation, but personal and interactive. To make virtual events repeatable and effective, I developed a simple framework called CONNECT. That is because the real goal of any virtual event is to create connection at scale. So, what does the acronym stand for? Here is the brief explanation.

C – Clarify the outcome

Every successful virtual event starts with clarity. Before you think about content or speakers, define the result you want. If you don’t define the outcome, the event becomes unfocused — and your audience will feel that. Clarity drives alignment. When your objective is clear, your message becomes stronger and your audience response improves. What do you want this event to do?

• Generate new leads or qualify prospects
• Move prospects further down the funnel
• Move stalled opportunities forward
• Create buzz for future efforts
• Strengthen existing relationships
• Position your team as the trusted advisor

Each of these outcomes requires a distinctive style of presentation. A focused objective will guide every decision you make—from content to speakers to follow-up.

O – Observe your audience

Your event should not start with what you want to say. It should start with what your audience needs to hear. Today’s customers expect relevance. They want to feel understood. Ask “What would be genuinely useful to them right now?” When you answer that well, your event becomes valuable. Use what you know about your customers to build an experience that makes them feel understood.

N – Narrow the content

One of the things I often say during my trainings is “less is more.” In this case, less content is more impactful. Content that works in a ballroom or the showroom does not work on a screen. That is why you must carefully design the content. Get to the point quickly, build in interaction and do something fun and surprising. I have lots of ideas, but spoiler alert: I won’t share them here.

N – Nominate the right presenters

Not all great presenters translate well to virtual. The best virtual presenters may not be immediately obvious.  You need people who can connect through a screen. Look for presenters, and most importantly — test and prepare them. A strong presenter builds trust. A weak one loses it quickly. One of the most overlooked factors in virtual event success is the presenter. Here’s the surprising truth: Some people who struggle on stage or in person thrive on camera, and some dynamic in-person speakers fall flat virtually.

E – Engage throughout

In a virtual event, engagement is not optional, it’s essential. There are no casual passersby and no room energy to rely on. You must create interaction intentionally. Engagement creates attention. Attention creates trust. Think beyond the slides and presentations. Try to break content into shorter segments and include live interaction. Ask questions early on and maybe use polling features or other technology tools to keep people engaged.

C – Communicate the value

If people don’t attend, nothing else matters. Your promotion must clearly answer: “Why should I spend my time on this?” Don’t sell the event. Sell the value of attending. Some people try to do cheesy giveaways. A discount on a product. A fifteen-minute consultation. A template for a process. A giveaway is fine, but it must have perceived value.

T – Take action after

The event is not the finish line — it’s the starting point for sales conversations. This is where many opportunities are lost. Have a clear follow-up plan because sales happen after the event.

Your event should lead naturally into the next conversation. I have seen clients do a great event and then walk away. Without follow-up even a major event loses momentum and value. Have a clear follow-up plan that includes an immediate thank you, a way to share the resources and a clear next step.

Here is the bottom line. Virtual events are not going away. They can be a great tool for your business, but virtual events don’t succeed because of technology. They succeed because they create connections. And when you consistently CONNECT, you don’t just host events… you create opportunities.

We have all been to traditional events — trade shows, in-person meetings, client gatherings. Sure, they play a significant role, but they are no longer the only way to build relationships and move opportunities forward. The world of business events has changed — permanently. The question isn’t whether to use virtual events; it’s how to use them effectively to build trust, create engagement and close business.

Done well, a virtual event can position your company as a trusted advisor, deepen relationships and accelerate the sales cycle. Done poorly, it becomes just another ignored webinar, a “non-event.”

Why virtual events fail

The biggest reason that virtual events fail is that companies try to simply produce them as a replica of an in-person event. That doesn’t work. I know this from firsthand experience.

Anyone thinking about launching a startup will quickly discover there are a lot of rules. Find a cofounder, raise venture capital and go to Silicon Valley — stat. If you want to succeed, you’d do well to follow the playbook, or else face total, humiliating failure. 

I was aware of those rules back when I was starting my business back in 2006 — and I ignored them. As the acclaimed author Toni Morrison wrote in her 1992 novel, Jazz: “What’s the world for you if you can’t make it up the way you want it?” 

Contrary to conventional wisdom, there are actually a lot of ways to build a successful startup, and I’ve pursued more than a few of them. Here are three choices I’ve made that have bucked the trends, and why I’d make them all over again.

1. Play the long game

From its earliest days, I wanted to make sure Jotform wasn’t a flash-in-the-pan startup that entered the world with a VC-backed bang before quietly fizzling out. In other words, I always viewed my entrepreneurial journey as a long game. 

For me, this took a few different forms. For one, Jotform entered the world as a free product. That’s right — I didn’t earn a single cent on it for the first two years of its existence. Why? Frankly, I just wanted to see if people would use it, without the obstacle of a price tag standing in the way. 

Shortly after its release, I got my answer — a resounding “yes.” Giving Jotform away for free provided invaluable information about the features users wanted, so by the time I was ready to introduce a paid version, I knew exactly what direction to pursue. 

I also didn’t go to Silicon Valley. In fact, I went the other way. After I quit my full-time job in New York City, I hopped on a plane in the opposite direction of California’s land of tech, back to my parents’ home in Turkey. If I was going to be giving Jotform away for free, I needed to save money. 

Was it glamorous? Hardly. But I was far less interested in creating the appearance of success than I was in actually succeeding. I had faith in my product and my long-term vision, but as a bootstrapped founder, I didn’t want financial stress to cloud my creativity. Now, San Francisco is just one location of Jotform’s seven global offices — and yes, I did eventually move out and buy my own home.

2. Teamwork as a business strategy

For a long time, Jotform was run by an incredibly lean team. But as it began to grow from just a small handful of employees, I noticed our productivity was stagnating. 

Building a healthy company culture has always been one of my chief priorities as a founder, so this sudden drop in morale was deeply troubling. In order to get my growing team back on track, I took a hard look at how we functioned when we were smaller, and discovered that the secret to our success had actually been our size. 

The solution wasn’t to scale back, but to replicate the environment we had when there were only five of us — a team stocked with different roles, each bringing unique strengths, all in the service of a single product.  

Not only did I break our then-15-person company into groups of three teams; I doubled down on building cohesion by designing an office specifically to accommodate the new structure. I hired an architect to build rooms that could hold a maximum of six people, furnishing each pod with its own whiteboard and glass door. Each person’s workspace was visible to the others on their team — they didn’t have much individual privacy, but that wasn’t really the point. My goal was to make them feel like their own unit, working toward a common goal. 

It worked. Creativity and productivity immediately spiked, and from that point forward, I’ve preached the gospel of cross-functional teams to anyone who will listen. Now, we have 130 such teams, and I credit this structure to Jotform’s continued ability to grow and innovate, even after 20 years.

3. Saying ‘no thanks’ to remote work

In the years after the pandemic, working from home became the rule rather than the exception. As grateful as I am to have had the flexibility to allow our teams to WFH in 2020, these days, everyone is back in the office. 

It’s not that we weren’t able to function as a remote-first office; we were. But something was missing, and I noticed it most acutely with new hires. They’d be onboarded from their home offices or kitchen tables, without the warmth of in-person introductions or the ability to ask a nearby colleague about the ins and outs of the intranet. The disconnect was palpable. 

And so, once it was safe to do so, everyone returned to the office. Almost immediately, productivity increased and morale shot up. We resumed our tradition of weekly team lunches and product launch celebrations. Working from home may be an attractive option for some companies, but for us, it’s a no-go. Our company culture is simply too intrinsic to our success. 

I can’t tell anyone else how to run their organization, and I don’t intend to try. That’s the thing about being a founder: You get to make your own rules. If something isn’t working, change it. Build the business you want to be a part of.

Anyone thinking about launching a startup will quickly discover there are a lot of rules. Find a cofounder, raise venture capital and go to Silicon Valley — stat. If you want to succeed, you’d do well to follow the playbook, or else face total, humiliating failure. 

I was aware of those rules back when I was starting my business back in 2006 — and I ignored them. As the acclaimed author Toni Morrison wrote in her 1992 novel, Jazz: “What’s the world for you if you can’t make it up the way you want it?” 

Contrary to conventional wisdom, there are actually a lot of ways to build a successful startup, and I’ve pursued more than a few of them. Here are three choices I’ve made that have bucked the trends, and why I’d make them all over again.

You’ll probably recognize this person. Technically exceptional, deeply knowledgeable and trusted with the company’s most important work. Whenever a difficult challenge arises, they’re the person everyone counts on to solve it.

Then they’re promoted into a leadership role and something changes. They begin to create problems for the people around them. They might interrupt, overcorrect or take over. They may overlook others’ contributions or communicate in ways that leave team members feeling diminished. Eventually there’s fallout: Talented employees stop speaking up, avoid them or leave the team altogether.

This leader isn’t the bad guy. Most of them are relying on the same strengths that have served them throughout their careers, because that kind of clear right-or-wrong, black-or-white thinking was essential. Calculations are accurate, or they aren’t. A system works safely, or it doesn’t. After all, no one wants a building that only “kind of” stands up.

But people aren’t buildings. The skills that made this person so successful are not necessarily the ones they need to be an effective leader. The challenge is helping them recognize that this chapter in their career depends on something new — bringing out the best in others.

Understand the hidden cost of ineffective leadership

A technically strong leader may continue producing excellent results, but a person’s individual output is just part of the story. 

What happens to the talent? Pay attention to how strong employees respond to the leader. Do they want to join the team and stay there? Or are they transferring, leaving or finding ways to work around the leader? When people stop raising concerns or contributing ideas, the team may still appear productive, but it is losing something important.

What happens to the team’s capability? Consider whether people are becoming more capable — or less capable — under this leader. If the leader always supplies the answer, corrects the work or steps in when the stakes rise, team members don’t get to develop their own judgment. That leads to a culture of dependence rather than confidence.

Stop treating high performance as an exception to leadership standards

While behavior belongs to the leader, tolerating it belongs to the organization. A company may spend years rewarding expertise, responsiveness and heroic problem-solving. Only when the interpersonal cost becomes impossible to ignore does it expect different behavior. The leader is responsible for changing, but the company also needs to own the pattern it reinforced. 

This matters even more when the organization says it values collaboration, respect or developing people. If an influential high performer is repeatedly exempted from those expectations, employees understand the real message: Results matter more than how those results are achieved. Employees learn what the organization truly values by watching which behaviors it rewards, excuses and addresses.

Require a broader definition of performance

At higher levels, success can’t be measured by personal output alone. Do talented people want to work with this leader? Can the leader influence without controlling? Does the team become stronger because they lead it?

Technical expertise still matters, but readiness for a higher level also depends on whether the leader can strengthen the people around them. It’s up to the organization to help make this happen. 

Build an honest diagnosis in 3 steps

That kind of change requires more than telling them to work on their people skills. It’s showing them where the gap is. There are three key steps to make a hard conversation as clear and productive as possible:

Step 1: Define the true cost of the leadership gap. Look at turnover, engagement, HR time, workarounds, succession risk and dependence on one person. Labels such as “This leader is difficult” or “This leader needs more emotional intelligence” don’t actually identify what needs to change.

Step 2: Provide a reason to change. High-performing experts often see themselves as protecting quality and keeping the work on track. Change becomes more compelling when it connects to something they want, such as greater influence, a larger role or a team that can perform without constant intervention.

Step 3: Show the gap between intention and impact. Give the leader specific feedback they can observe and practice.

• You intended to move the meeting forward; people stopped contributing. 
• You intended to protect quality; the team became dependent on you. 
• You intended to help; others experienced it as taking over.

We all know that change is hard. And it doesn’t happen all at once. Learning a new behavior is much like learning a dance: At first, the leader may not notice a misstep until they have stepped on someone’s toes. With practice, they catch themselves slipping back into familiar habits and adjusting in the moment. Eventually, the new steps feel natural, and the leader can pay attention to how others are responding. That’s when lasting change begins to take hold.

Help leaders become value multipliers

We’ve seen why technical expertise and individual performance aren’t a substitute for leadership. The opportunity lies in organizations expanding the definition of what value is. When leaders develop new skills and take greater responsibility for their impact on others, it becomes visible in the confidence and capability of their teams. Only then can a leader’s expertise become a value multiplier — for themselves, their people and their organization.

You’ll probably recognize this person. Technically exceptional, deeply knowledgeable and trusted with the company’s most important work. Whenever a difficult challenge arises, they’re the person everyone counts on to solve it.

Then they’re promoted into a leadership role and something changes. They begin to create problems for the people around them. They might interrupt, overcorrect or take over. They may overlook others’ contributions or communicate in ways that leave team members feeling diminished. Eventually there’s fallout: Talented employees stop speaking up, avoid them or leave the team altogether.

This leader isn’t the bad guy. Most of them are relying on the same strengths that have served them throughout their careers, because that kind of clear right-or-wrong, black-or-white thinking was essential. Calculations are accurate, or they aren’t. A system works safely, or it doesn’t. After all, no one wants a building that only “kind of” stands up.

The FIFA World Cup 2026 was an enormous moment for small businesses connected to sports and live events, including stadium vendors, sports bars, jersey shops, parking operators and hospitality businesses near arenas. Sales jumped 4.1% in June for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in host cities, compared to just 1.8% for comparable cities that didn’t host matches, driven in large part by a 16.7% spike in spending from non-local visitors. The NFL season brings another huge opportunity for small businesses, provided SMBs apply the operational and technological lessons learned from the World Cup. 

How fans engage with sports has changed dramatically. Today’s fans don’t just watch; they also browse, stream, share and purchase in real time, both in-stadium and from their couch. Direct social media links drive instant impulse buys. Mobile apps handle food and merch orders without the wait in line. Digital drops and inventory alerts create urgency. The commerce surface has expanded, and for small businesses willing to meet fans where they are, so has the opportunity.

A challenge as big as the opportunity

Small businesses in FIFA World Cup 2026 host cities saw a substantial increase in sales, but those sales didn’t come without challenges. Handling surges of online volume and foot traffic was a test of preparedness, especially of one’s connectivity resilience. Nearly 500 terabytes of data moved across all World Cup hosting stadiums throughout the tournament. That’s the equivalent of streaming HD video continuously for more than 30 years.

While network providers, venue operators and local governments started planning years in advance to upgrade infrastructure for the World Cup, small businesses discovered they too had to beef up their own networks and connectivity solutions. The ones that did were ready when it counted.

Turning World Cup wins into NFL season wins

The small businesses that succeeded during the World Cup are heading into the NFL season with a smarter playbook, one that hinges on effective use of technology to capitalize on spikes in foot traffic and online visitors.

Those same tools and strategies can carry them through the NFL season and sustain the momentum the World Cup created.

AI-powered point-of-sale (POS) systems can alleviate the pressure of sales rushes, using pattern recognition and predictive analytics to anticipate spikes in demand, optimize supply chains and keep inventory levels in check so small businesses don’t fall short when it matters most. Smart POS systems also automate administrative tasks and enhance product look-ups, freeing owners and staff to focus on the customer in front of them. 

Beyond the register, contactless and mobile payment options keep the line moving – because with fans on the go and every second of game-day momentum counting, the last thing a small business needs is a bottleneck at checkout.

Meeting customers where they are

The World Cup also proved that the opportunity isn’t limited to whoever walks through the door. With 20 billion video views across platforms, fans were watching — and shopping — from everywhere. A well-built digital storefront or digital platform that loads fast, handles traffic spikes and integrates with social commerce channels lets sports-adjacent SMBs tap into that remote fan base, turning a local business into one with national reach. 

Anwar Dougsiyeh, founder of Lotus Rosery, an events and brand experience company in Atlanta, experienced this firsthand while coordinating a large-scale World Cup watch party and festival that welcomed more than 20,000 guests. Using AI to audit his festival’s digital customer journey, he discovered that visitors were dropping off before completing their RSVPs simply because the button wasn’t prominent enough. One design tweak later, RSVPs increased by 70% — a reminder that a great digital presence isn’t just about getting people to show up; it’s about making it easy for them to say yes when they do. 

More transactions bring more risk

An uptick in foot traffic and transactions is great for business, but it also attracts unwanted attention. The volume of financial activity that comes with large-scale sporting events makes SMBs a target for hackers and scammers, and most small businesses can’t afford dedicated IT or cybersecurity staff to fight back. Fortunately, artificial intelligence (AI) has lowered the barrier to entry for cybersecurity solutions that can automatically flag anomalies and identify fraudulent activity, giving SMBs an always-on line of defense. 

The right tech stack is a non-negotiable

Small businesses have more opportunities than they’ve ever had. They can even compete with larger competitors in ways that weren’t possible just a few years ago. Technology has evened the playing field and lowered the barrier to entry. For small businesses, that also means having the right tech stack is no longer a luxury. It’s a necessity.

Mario Jaramillo, founder of The Robot Agency, a creative and experiential agency based in Houston, used the World Cup as an opportunity to show what a small agency could do when backed with the right technology.

When a World Cup contract came his way with a razor-thin turnaround, his team used digital research, rapid prototyping and AI-assisted ideation to go from concept to visual prototype in just a few days – work that would have taken weeks through a traditional creative workflow. This allowed Mario’s agency to present something the clients could see, react to, and ultimately experience, rather than asking them to imagine it. It’s a mindset shift as much as a technological one, and it starts with having the right stack in place to move fast when the moment demands it. 

Think of it like a sports franchise: the best roster in the league underperforms without a strong coaching staff, a solid game plan and the infrastructure to execute. For small businesses, connectivity is that infrastructure. It’s what allows every other tool — AI, mobile payments, digital storefronts, cybersecurity — to perform when the pressure is on. Build that foundation right, and the rest of the playbook follows.

The FIFA World Cup 2026 was an enormous moment for small businesses connected to sports and live events, including stadium vendors, sports bars, jersey shops, parking operators and hospitality businesses near arenas. Sales jumped 4.1% in June for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in host cities, compared to just 1.8% for comparable cities that didn’t host matches, driven in large part by a 16.7% spike in spending from non-local visitors. The NFL season brings another huge opportunity for small businesses, provided SMBs apply the operational and technological lessons learned from the World Cup. 

How fans engage with sports has changed dramatically. Today’s fans don’t just watch; they also browse, stream, share and purchase in real time, both in-stadium and from their couch. Direct social media links drive instant impulse buys. Mobile apps handle food and merch orders without the wait in line. Digital drops and inventory alerts create urgency. The commerce surface has expanded, and for small businesses willing to meet fans where they are, so has the opportunity.

A challenge as big as the opportunity

Small businesses in FIFA World Cup 2026 host cities saw a substantial increase in sales, but those sales didn’t come without challenges. Handling surges of online volume and foot traffic was a test of preparedness, especially of one’s connectivity resilience. Nearly 500 terabytes of data moved across all World Cup hosting stadiums throughout the tournament. That’s the equivalent of streaming HD video continuously for more than 30 years.