Shilpa Reddy, CMO of Down Under School of Yoga and former Marketing VP at Acorns, maps her journey from fintech to wellness and explains why the same principles drive both: make time-tested tools accessible, and build a community that keeps people engaged. She breaks down her three-stage marketing flywheel, and shows why marketers must dismantle the false divide between direct response and brand storytelling. The conversation moves from Acorns’ spare-change investing to Down Under’s community-driven yoga. She interrogates the role of podcasts as the new TV, the measurement gaps left by ATT, and how authenticity risks becoming uniform in an AI-saturated content world.
Questions Shilpa answered in this episode:
- What drew Shilpa from Acorns to running a yoga business?
- How curiosity and human-centered marketing let her adapt across industries
- What is the three-stage marketing flywheel, and how do you know when to move from one stage to the next?
- Why brand and performance are one continuum, not opposing forces?
- How LTV makes the case for brand investment with a CFO
- Why podcasts function as the ‘new TV’ for reach, trust, and ad effectiveness?
- How marketers should balance host-read storytelling with direct response calls to action?
- How AT&T’s affected mobile marketing measurement
- Why authenticity should mean varied storytelling, not uniform brand policing
- What advice Shilpa gives to early-stage wellness founders with no marketing budget?
Timestamps:
- (0:00) – Intro; Shilpa’s journey from Acorns to Down Under Yoga
- (2:00) – Growing up with yoga, curiosity, and career pivots across industries
- (3:50) – Acorns’ mission and how it relates to yoga
- (8:00) – The three-stage marketing flywheel explained (fit, LTV, brand)
- (13:50) – Signs you’re ready to move between stages (NPS, brand love, data)
- (15:15) – Making the CFO case for brand investments through LTV
- (17:00) – The orchestration problem: aligning funnel mechanics with brand reach
- (19:00) – Podcasts as the new TV: hours consumed, trust, and ad-to-content ratio
- (24:40) – ATT’s impact: creativity up, measurement lagging
- (26:20) – Authenticity vs. uniformity: the danger of AI-generated generic content
- (29:30) – Advice to early-stage wellness founders: start with your most loyal clients
- (55:00) – Wrap-up: Down Under Yoga, on-demand classes, how to connect
Quotes:
- (12:30) – “Stage one is finding who your product is loved by. Stage two is increasing their lifetime value. Stage three is broadcasting your brand story.”
- (15:30) – “LTV almost by definition is long-term. It allows you to justify investments in brand.”
- (19:10) – “Podcasts are the new TV. Americans average three hours a week, and the trust in the host feels one-to-one, not one-to-many.”
- (27:20) – “Authentic does not have to mean uniform. It’s the opposite. It means telling varied, engaging stories rooted in what you stand for.”
Mentioned in this episode:
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