Ventures & Visionaries Podcast with Mordy Hackel

Episode 19: Building a Business Around Trust, Purpose, and Sustainable Growth

What happens when you choose trust over hyper growth?

In Episode 19, Mordy Hackel sits down with Kate Assaraf, a 20-year beauty industry veteran, conscious capitalism advocate, and founder of DIP, to explore what happens when a business chooses trust, sustainability, and long-term relationships over traditional growth-at-all-costs thinking.

Kate shares how she built a word-of-mouth-driven beauty brand without relying on Amazon, influencers, or heavy Meta advertising—and why she believes profitability and purpose don't have to be mutually exclusive.

In This Episode

Why trust can be more powerful than traditional digital marketing
How DIP built a beauty brand around real-world customer needs
Why sustainability has to work in practice, not just in marketing
What happens when protecting your product means taking on more risk
Why hiring people smarter than you can strengthen a company
The hidden risks and costs behind hyper growth
How customer relationships shape business decisions
What businesses can learn from the growing crisis of trust in commerce
Why leaders need to pay attention to problems they cannot immediately see
Kate's advice about taking risks and being open to the adventure of life

Building a Beauty Brand Around Trust

Kate explains how her experience in the beauty industry shaped the way she thinks about marketing and consumer behavior. After seeing how similar products could be positioned and sold at dramatically different prices, she became increasingly interested in what actually drives people to buy—and what happens when consumers stop trusting the information being presented to them.

Rather than building DIP around traditional advertising and influencer marketing, Kate focused on creating genuine relationships with independent retailers, salons, surf shops, and other people she describes as "truth tellers." The goal was to create a brand where recommendations came from real experiences rather than simply being bought.

When Sustainability Has to Work in the Real World

For Kate, sustainability isn't just about using the right words or putting an environmentally friendly message on a package. The product itself has to perform in the real world.

DIP's conditioner bars were designed around the actual conditions customers experience, including surfing, swimming, heat, and travel. The bars needed to work, last, and remain practical while eliminating the traditional plastic bottle.

Kate also challenges the idea that sustainability simply means buying an "all-natural" product. DIP combines sustainability with hair science and performance because, in her view, a sustainable product that doesn't work is unlikely to create lasting change.

Protecting What You Can't Afford to Lose

One of the biggest challenges came when DIP's contract manufacturer filed for bankruptcy. Kate suddenly had to make a difficult decision: find another manufacturer and potentially risk losing control of the formulas and exclusivity, or take on the much larger risk of building her own manufacturing operation.

She chose the latter. Kate built her own manufacturing facility and was able to bring displaced workers into the new operation. Some of the same people who helped make DIP in its early days are still involved in making the products today.

The decision illustrates a larger principle behind the business: sometimes protecting what makes your company different requires taking risks that don't look attractive on a traditional growth spreadsheet.

Why Leaders Need to Hire People Smarter Than Them

Kate talks openly about the importance of surrounding yourself with people who have knowledge and expertise you don't have. Instead of trying to be the smartest person in every room, she believes leaders need to put the right people in the right seats and create an environment built on mutual trust.

That means being willing to hand responsibility to people who understand their areas better than you do—and trusting them to contribute to the direction of the business.

The Hidden Cost of Hyper Growth

Growth is often presented as the ultimate measure of business success, but Kate questions what happens when growth becomes the goal rather than a result.

She discusses the pressures that can come with big-box retail and rapidly increasing sales velocity, including chargebacks, unsold inventory, operational pressure, and the financial risks that can sit behind impressive-looking revenue numbers.

For Kate, hyper growth can become a "poisonous dangling carrot" when businesses pursue scale without considering whether the underlying economics and relationships can support it.

Building a Business That Gives Back

Kate also shares how emotional connections with customers influence the way DIP operates. The company has directed profits toward organizations including Surfrider and the Great Lakes, while also making individual customer problems a priority.

She tells the story of a customer whose shower rack scratched her bathtub. Instead of treating the issue as simply a customer-service expense, the company paid to help fix the problem.

For Kate, those decisions come back to the same principle: build the business around people rather than treating customers as transactions.

What Happens When Trust Breaks Down in Commerce?

The conversation also explores the broader issue of trust in online commerce. Kate discusses incentivized reviews, digital pollution, returns, chargebacks, and the growing difficulty of determining which information and reviews consumers can actually trust.

She believes businesses will continue to face disruption as both companies and consumers respond to systems that can be manipulated. The challenge is creating commerce where trust is based on genuine experiences rather than incentives or artificial signals.

Looking Beyond the Problems We Can Already See

Kate discusses the environmental impact of plastic pollution and the effects that can be difficult to see immediately. What happens to plastic after it leaves our hands is part of a much larger system involving waterways, aquatic life, and ultimately humans.

Her message is simple: businesses and consumers need to pay attention to the consequences that aren't always visible in the moment.

A Lesson in Taking the Adventure

When asked what she would tell her 22-year-old self, Kate's advice is straightforward: take risks, move, be open to life, and embrace the adventure.

Her perspective reflects many of the themes throughout the conversation—trusting yourself, being willing to make unconventional decisions, and remembering that there is only one life to live.

About Kate Assaraf

Kate Assaraf is a 20-year beauty industry veteran, conscious capitalism advocate, and the founder of DIP, a beauty brand focused on high-performance hair care with a more sustainable approach.

Through DIP, Kate has challenged traditional beauty-industry practices by focusing on product performance, long-term customer relationships, sustainability, and word-of-mouth growth.