The founder and CEO of Madison Reed, Amy Errett, started her career in finance, and before long, was managing large teams through sizeable changes. She’s become known as a leader who creates, and navigates, organizational change. Her secret isn’t in strategy–it’s in leading with love, and with an open heart. She explains to host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin how building a fast-growing company is like putting the right variables into a Petri dish and letting it flourish.

Amy Errett might be a natural leader, and an expert team-builder–but she wasn’t always a founder. She spent her early career in banking and investment companies, before turning to venture capital. But once she was at the table with startup founders, making decisions on who deserved funding infusions…she realized she wanted to be not in her seat…but rather, the CEO’s seat. She founded Madison Reed in 2013 out of San Francisco as a hair-color subscription brand. She’s grown it–even as the pandemic shut down 12 beauty bars she’d opened across the country–to a company that has raised more than $220 million, in part from Jay-Z’s Marcy Ventures. Now, she has her sights set on opening 20 more stores in 2022, and hiring up to 800 people. Amy spoke to host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin about her rich career and her thoughts on leading growing organizations through big changes–including navigating the unknown, seeing around corners, and helping large teams make dramatic shifts.

The co-founder and chief executive of Strava explains how storytelling is wrapped up in being able to take risks. He first ventured into the unknown in 1995, wanting to build a community of athletes. He didn’t know how that story would end–and it certainly wasn’t immediately successful. His company has grown to 100 million athletes in 200 countries–and he tells host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin that along the way he’s learned to take chances to “get to create the story.”

When Michael Horvath, the co-founder and CEO of Strava, meets with employees, he doesn’t just start saying what he’s thinking. Instead, the first thing out of his mouth is: “what’s on your mind?” His company, Strava, is an app that serves 100 million athletes, to help motivate their movement, connect them with a community, and improve their safety. And these days, it’s a company of more than 400 people–which has both informed, and necessitated, Michael’s leadership style–which is a lot about listening, and letting employees grow into their passions and skills.

The co-founder and chief executive of Colossal Bioscience is setting out to de-extinct the 4,000-years-extinct woolly mammoth. As his company grows fast, he has a goal to be totally transparent about the company’s audacious moon-shot mission–one that a lot of people think is impossible. To that challenge, he brings his skills as a diligent student, and a marketer, who can translate complex systems and concepts to a broad audience.

By the time he teamed up with Harvard geneticist George Church to found Colossal Biosciences, Ben Lamm had founded, built, and sold five companies. This one would be the most audacious yet: Its goal is to create disruptive conservation technologies, including, to de-extinct the woolly mammoth. Yes, it is actively working to edit elephant genes to create a cold-hearty herbivore to help decelerate melting of the arctic permafrost, and, thus, prevent release of 600 tons of carbon a year. It’s also working with existing species-conservation efforts globally–and hopes to apply its technology to save animal populations from going extinct. But with the audacious mission comes a lot of questions–and many critics. Lamm told host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin that he learns more from his detractors than from his supporters–and he welcomes both hearing from them, and, in a couple cases, he’s actually hired them to work with him.

The co-founder and chief executive of Full Circle Brands manages three sustainability-minded international brands out of New York City. He tells host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin how he boost productivity by keeping his meetings short, and cramming them all into one day. Plus: When his team is in the office, he plays jazz–and orders comfort food. 

He and his co-founder dreamed up their company over an unconventional Thanksgiving dinner in Shanghai. In 2009, they launched Full Circle, a line of sustainable household goods–and set out to change consumer perception about “eco” products. Today, they run three brands, including Full Circle, For Good, a line of household disposables, like compostable bags, and Soma, a line of filtration, pitchers, and bottles. He spoke with host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin about building a sustainable supply chain, bootstrapping his business from the start, and why his companies’ giving-back pledges of profits are so meaningful to their teams.

If there was a super-simple way to tweak the whole way you think about an experience…would you do it? Serial entrepreneur Toni Ko, the woman behind NYX Cosmetics, Perverse Sunglasses, and, most recently, Bespoke Beauty Brands, explains to host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin how she changes her wording to change her perspective.

Her family emigrated from Korea when she was 13 years old, and serial entrepreneur Toni Ko has since founded three different–each totally fascinating–companies. Her first, NYX Cosmetics, made $4 million in its first year, and, within a decade, was in beauty aisles of Target nationwide. But with growth, came some sacrifices–and, within years, she sold it to L’Oreal for a reported $500 million. A non-compete agreement meant Ko was locked out of the beauty industry for five years, a time during which she learned some of her most important life and entrepreneurial lessons–including how to stop worrying and focus on finding simple solutions to her own complex problems. Host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin explores with Ko how she coped with selling her company, what she created (sunglasses company Perverse) in the meantime, and how she’s back with a new company that’s creating brand new cosmetics in partnership with influencers, celebrities, and designers. It’s called Bespoke Beauty Brands, and for Toni, building it came with its own new learning curve.