They lied to you about the “Startup Playbook.”
If you’ve ever raised money, built a product, or tried to scale a business, you know the massive lie I’m talking about.
Every business book and LinkedIn guru pushes the same clean, linear fantasy: Write a plan, raise some cash, follow the steps, and watch the revenue roll in.
It looks great in a PowerPoint deck. But in the real world? It’s garbage. Real entrepreneurship is chaotic, messy, and mostly about surviving the things you never saw coming.
On S2.E15 of the (un)conversations podcast, I sat down with Katie Sterns, the visionary founder and CEO behind Blyngz Luxury Technologies. Katie doesn’t do polite, surface-level interviews—she went deep into what it actually looks like behind the scenes when everything is on the line.
Katie has already built a million-dollar revenue company, and now she’s scaling a billion-dollar tech empire to challenge the biggest legacy giants in the world. She showed me exactly why those giants should actually be looking over their shoulders.
The Stuff Most Founders Only Whisper About
We didn’t just talk about strategy; we mapped out the chaotic reality of building a massive business. Here are three radical truths from our conversation that completely flip conventional business wisdom on its head:
1. Stop Obsessing Over Features. Build a Brand’s Soul.
In the tech space, everyone is terrified of copycats. Katie’s take? Let them try. If a competitor can copy your code or your manufacturer, they will. Your product specs are a commodity. But they can’t steal your identity, your authenticity, or your why. Stop fighting over product features and start building an unshakeable brand fortress.
2. The “Jet Ski Strategy” (How to beat Apple and Sony)
How does an early-stage startup compete with bottomless corporate R&D budgets? You don’t try to out-spend them—you out-maneuver them.
“Massive corporations are like the Titanic... Yes, they’re giant and they’re huge, but I can protect myself... I’m on a little jet ski. They can’t pivot. They can’t move quickly.” — Katie Sterns
While a multi-billion-dollar cargo ship takes two years, fifty board meetings, and a mountain of bureaucratic red tape just to approve a product feature, a founder on a jet ski can execute a pivot instantly to serve their community. Big tech has scale, but startups have speed.
3. Neurodivergence is an Entrepreneurial Superpower
For years, traditional corporate environments treated divergent thinking as a deficit to be managed. We went deep into why having ADHD is actually Katie’s greatest unfair advantage as a founder. It keeps her prefrontal cortex open and unfiltered, allowing her to synthesis chaotic data points rapidly and spot the cross-sectional connections between luxury style and high-end hardware audio engineering that standard brains miss entirely.
🔨 Backs Against the Wall: The “You Betcha!” Grit
Katie’s resilience isn’t theoretical—it was forged in the trenches of running her previous business, the You Betcha! box, a local artisan curated gift box company.
When COVID-19 hit and traditional corporate gifting ground to a halt, she didn’t throw in the towel. With her back against the wall, she used orthodox, outside-the-box thinking to pivot fiercely—turning a catastrophic supply-chain threat into a massive B2B revenue opportunity by supplying an entire VA hospital.
That is the definition of founder grit. When you’ve survived a crisis by sheer force of will and creativity, taking on Silicon Valley doesn’t feel scary—it just feels like the next logical step.
In a tech landscape that often feels cold and transactional, Katie operates on a different frequency: Character and loyalty over everything. You can copy a product, but you can never copy a community that trusts the person behind the brand.
Inside the Episode:
The Myth of the Linear Process: Why there is no step-by-step guide to building a massive business.
The Pandemic Pivot: How Katie saved local makers and unlocked new revenue models during a global shutdown.
Data vs. Gut: The hardest decision a leader faces—knowing when to trust the spreadsheets versus when to trust your intuition.
The Capital Trap: The fatal mistakes early-stage founders make when they inject late-stage venture capital too early.
Timestamps for the Impatient
00:00 - Screw the “Startup Playbook.” Do This Instead
02:16 - The Vision Behind Blyngz Luxury Technologies
06:13 - Being (Un)wavering: Commitment and Character
08:45 - The Dark Side: Balancing obsession with real-world relationships
14:43 - Real-World Pivot: Sourcing during a global crisis
24:38 - Protecting your brand identity vs. your product
34:12 - Why having ADHD is an entrepreneurial superpower
48:50 - Combining sociology, big data, and consumer research to validate ideas
1:09:15 - Common pitfalls founders make with late-stage capital
Screw the “Startup Playbook.” Do This Instead
⚡ The Quick Breakdown
If you only have three minutes, here is the quick, (un)filtered reality check:
Stop obsessing over features. If your only selling point is your product specs, you’ve already lost. Anyone can copy your tech, but nobody can copy your brand’s soul.
Use your size to punch up. Big tech companies aren’t slow because they’re inept; they’re slow because they’re massive, bureaucratic cargo ships. As a startup, you’re a jet ski. You can turn on a dime—so use that speed to outmaneuver them.
Lean into your weird. Stop trying to manage your ADHD like it’s a flaw. My divergent brain is the exact reason I can see market gaps and solve chaotic crises while everyone else is still panicked.
Connect with the Visionaries
Katie Sterns is the founder and CEO of Blyngz Luxury Technologies, pioneering AI-integrated audio platforms designed specifically for women. She actively invests in and advocates for women’s economic power, helping them align their wardrobe with their worth. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
Dr. Alison Schmidt is the CEO of Unconvention, leverages over two decades of organizational psychology expertise to advise elite global leaders. She is the strategic partner and unfiltered truth-teller for executives ready to defy conventional limits and drive true transformation. Connect with me on LinkedIn
Psst... Enjoying the show?
Seriously, thanks for listening. Most podcasts just repeat the same polished PR scripts, but we’re actually getting into the messy, human side of these (un)conventionally excellent leaders—the obsession, the pressure, and what is keeping them up at night.
It’s the absolute best way to back the show so we can keep making exactly what you love to hear.
💬 Let’s hash it out in the comments...
Are you currently building your business by a playbook that feels broken? What is your “jet ski strategy”?
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