Scale Like a CEO

Scale Like a CEO: Eric Sheinkop on Building Trust, Delegation & Company Culture

• Justin Reinert • Season 1 • Episode 52

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Fake reviews waste time and money, and everyone knows it. We sat down with Eric Scheinkop, founder of the Desire Company, to unpack how expert-led, real-world product reviews can restore trust for shoppers and deliver clarity for retailers—while building a company that scales without losing its soul. Eric shares the origin story behind putting veterinarians, doctors, pro athletes, and even astronauts in front of products, and why a simple seal of authenticity gives customers the confidence they’ve been missing.

The conversation moves from product truth to organizational truth. Eric walks through his shift from do-it-all founder to leader who teaches, delegates, and protects quality without bottlenecking growth. We dig into the hard stuff: why your best seller shouldn’t manage sales, how a single bad leadership hire can set you back a year, and the moment he embraced a quarterly org review to spot overflowing buckets before they break. You’ll hear the “rubber vs glass ball” framework for prioritizing, and how thrice-weekly all-hands align a remote team without drowning people in meetings.

Culture sits at the center of it all. Eric and his co-founder intentionally hire for ethics and kindness first, then skills—because trust is the product. He’s candid about learning to welcome feedback, building psychological safety so even interns speak up, and giving leaders autonomy to act like CEOs of their lanes with an “ask forgiveness rather than permission” bias. If you care about scaling with integrity, designing a team that moves fast, and creating customer trust that compounds, this story is a playbook you can use today.

Enjoyed the conversation? Follow the show, share it with a founder who needs it, and leave a review to help more builders find us.

Speaker:

Welcome to Scale Like a CEO. In this episode, host Justin sits down with Eric Scheinkop, founder of the Desire Company, to explore the challenges and strategies of scaling a business. They discuss essential leadership skills, the art of delegation, building a strong company culture, and how the desire company is revolutionizing product reviews with trustworthy, expert-driven content.

Justin:

Eric, thank you so much for joining me on Scalec at CEO. Just to get us started, if you wouldn't mind, give us a 90-second intro to you and your business.

Eric:

Yeah, so I'm Eric Scheincupp, created the Desire Company. Created it because shopping I found just became way too labor intensive. All of the fun that used to come with shopping and discovering products kind of went out the window in the last 10 years. And it became increasingly hard to find the right product, to know which products to trust, to know which products had good reviews, bad reviews. The same product has one and five-star reviews all over it. Come to find out, those are both paid for. So we created a company that allows true experts, whether they're veterinarians or doctors or Olympic athletes or even NASA astronauts, to test and use products, and then they're able to review them, talk about them in a very real-world use case scenario. What the product is, how it works, what are the results that you could expect, and who it's recommended for. And those videos now live all over retailers' websites, digital as well, and they all have our stamp on them, the desire company stamp. So when you see the seal, you know it's real. And it's been working phenomenally well.

Justin:

It's really great. I know I can understand the challenge of going through reviews. And I look at the top and I look at the bottom, and I'm like, wait, am I any better off? Because sometimes it's challenging to discern kind of what's real in there. So let's talk a little bit about how you've grown your business as you've grown over the years. What was one of the biggest shifts that you had to make personally as you move from being kind of a founding team of one or two to being CEO of a growing company?

Eric:

Or it's always delegating tasks because it's faster to do it yourself than sit back and teach at the beginning. And so it's very hard to get out of that mindset where it's like I could just do this myself quickly on the extra half hour knocking this out or doing whatever needs to be done. But the truth of the matter is stepping back, teaching somebody how to do it, then the company is able to grow while you focus on something else. And we have a big saying which is learn one, do one, teach one. And so we're very much into empowering our company, our staff, our team to then grow their team and train their team up to keep on building that way. But I would say giving up the control, giving up the power and letting people run with it and do their job, that's always a challenge.

Justin:

Yeah, and that's I hear that from so many founders. I'm curious, what was the hardest role or task to let go of as you were delegating?

Eric:

So in our company, we actually produce all of the content. So I went from contacting all of the talents myself, getting it scheduled, being on set, directing, helping with the edits, selling it into the brands, helping every aspect. And I would say letting go of that control of quality control, I think, is for me. That's the hardest. Then when it comes to my executive assistants, giving up your calendar and travel and all of that, and putting that in somebody else's hands, is always nerve-wracking. One big thing in our company is we always say you gotta hire people smarter than you. So every hire needs to be smarter than the next, and smarter than the founders, and smarter than everybody else on the team. And so you got to trust that they know what they're doing. Even if it doesn't seem the best way to get a result, you gotta trust that they know what they're doing. You hire them for a reason and you just gotta let them do their thing.

Justin:

Yeah. And speaking of hiring, I'm curious how you approach hiring from the outside for leadership roles versus how often are you building and grooming inside the organization for those leadership roles?

Eric:

We uh we're very fortunate to have a number of people who have been with us five, six, seven years now. So those people just naturally grow into leadership. Now, I would say sales is different because you don't want your best salesperson to become the sales manager. You want them out there selling. So you do have to look outside the company for that position to grow the sales leadership. And it's a challenge, it's a massive challenge, and that's an area that we struck out on several times. And when you make a bad hire in that area, that will set you back months, if not a year plus, and waste a ton of money. And unfortunately, we like many startups, we went through some of the wrong hires in that department and finally took our board's advice and we went with a recruiter and hired the recruiter, and it was eight months of work. You hire them for a reason because they do something, one specific thing, and they do it incredibly well. So we got we were very fortunate with the hire. But yeah, hiring for a leadership position, it's challenging. Now, I would say, you know, one of the benefits is my co-founder is my wife. She was an executive at Coca-Cola, and she decided to quit her job to start this company together. And so the one of the commitments that we made very early on was about the culture we wanted to build, the people that we wanted to work with. And if we had a choice, we were going to do that very deliberately. So focusing on the culture that we wanted and then making sure that people fit within of that. That's probably delayed our growth in certain areas a little bit, but it's certainly worth it coming to work every day and enjoying the people you work with.

Justin:

Yeah, getting the right people in the organization is so critical to performance, to alignment in the organization. I'm based on kind of what you've identified for for what the culture is. And then as you're selecting new talent, what are some of those things that you're screening for?

Eric:

Be a nice person. That's I would say that's number one is again, like we have the choice of who we want to work with when you're the one making the hiring decisions. And even when we hire recruiters or we have other people in the organization, the number one thing is we have to work with people we enjoy. You spend more time with your co-workers than your family many times. And it's very, very important who somebody is, especially with our company. What we provide is solid, authentic, trustworthy product information. So the morals and ethics of the company are incredibly important. And that resonates with each individual in during work hours and outside of work hours. We were just nominated by the Better Business Bureau for an award in ethics. And that only comes through when you have really good, ethical people in the business thinking about how to provide that true, trustworthy, authentic experience to shoppers. So a lot of it is more based on who that individual is versus the resume that they may have.

Justin:

Yeah. Well, congratulations on the award for ethics. And I think that is definitely a critical component of the product that you are providing is that you have some ethics and some trustworthiness in the way that you are providing that information via via reviews. Absolutely. So as your company grew, what were some signs that maybe your team structure needed to change and how has it?

Eric:

Yeah. So we do quarterly reviews of the org structure. And it's actually incredibly helpful just to lay out the org chart and look at it and see what responsibilities are falling into one bucket that are overflowing. And that bucket needs to, we need to expand that team and delegate some of those responsibilities to other people on the team. So I mean, we see a lot in in production and post-production and now pre-production and all of the things that stem from something that one person was capable of doing to now that we're filming on pretty much every single day, you need bigger and bigger teams to support that. But then when it comes to leadership, having a true sales team, but also sales enablement, marketing, all of those teams coming together that all used to be under one person or two people. And now having leaders for each one of those responsibilities who grow a team under them, uh, that becomes important. I think that an analogy that we talk about a lot is there we're gonna drop balls. Like there are too many decisions to be made, there are too many things happening. You're gonna drop some balls, but you have to know which balls are rubber or plastic, and it's okay if you drop them, versus which balls are glass. And if you drop them, that's a big problem. So that continuous, constant communication. We're primarily a virtual organization, and headquarters is in Chicago, our biggest studio is in Chicago, but every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, the entire team comes together, the entire company comes together on Zoom. We talk about any roadblocks, any priorities that need to get shifted. And I find that really helps everybody else understand and keep committed to the priorities at hand.

Justin:

Yeah. Well, that coming together that regularly seems like it would also really help with maintaining alignment in the organization. So I'm curious that had to have come from potential maybe misalignment. I'm just curious, what's been the toughest part of maintaining alignment as you've grown?

Eric:

It is that disseminating the information from the executive team down throughout the organization. That's always the challenge because we have so many conversations, especially with my wife and I being the co-founders, we're talking all night about business far too frequently. And so sometimes we have discussions and make decisions that we don't necessarily do the best job of communicating and also communicating the reasoning that got us there. So that's what the Zoom calls are for is like, hey, we're making a decision to go in this direction. Now let's step back and help explain how we got here. That is the challenge, though. The we have four executives in the country, I'm sorry, in the company, really five. And the decisions and conversations that we have at that level, we want to make sure everybody understands how it is that we got there, why we're doing something. Because otherwise, when people don't understand, it seems like a waste of time. And then whether they do it subconsciously or consciously, they start having their own priorities come into play. And that's what we have to avoid. That's what we do avoid by having the regular conversations.

Justin:

Great. That's great. I'm sure those regular conversations are helpful. And also I'm sure that there's a great opportunity then for people to ask questions or raise concerns. Yeah. So I'm hearing a bit, we talked a little bit about you being very explicit about the culture that you want for the organization, one that is everyone is nice to each other. I'm curious, as you're building into the future, how are you defining what culture will look like?

Eric:

So we one of the big things is if you see something, say something. It's very important. Anybody in the organization, I mean, anybody, even if they're an intern, if they see something and they think, huh, I wonder why they're doing it this way. It would be much faster if we did it this way. Please bring it to our attention because the truth of the matter is I don't come from the industry that I'm in right now. I come from the entertainment media industry. So working within retail and doing certain things. A lot of things we just did as in any startup, you put a band-aid on it and you just keep on moving. And somebody coming in with fresh eyes can look back and be like, huh, there's a way to fix it that would make the entire structure and foundation stronger. So if you see something that could be done better, that you question why we're doing it a certain way, I want to hear it. That's a very, very important part of our of our culture. The vision for going forward is again when we have company gatherings, nobody wants to leave. Everybody enjoys hanging out with each other. And that is important to maintain, and that becomes increasingly difficult, especially as you hire more senior people and people who are used to a corporate structure and they come into a startup. It's a challenge, but that real personal connection to the people that you work with is always going to be important to us.

Justin:

Yeah. And going back to that first piece of you know saying something, if you see something, that can be really challenging to really genuinely encourage people to do that. And it requires um, you know, high levels of psychological safety. How are you how are you ensuring that you have that psych safety in the organization that people feel comfortable to speak up?

Eric:

That's a good that's a really good question. It's something that I've struggled with, and I could tell you, I've done this before, I scaled the company. One of the things I struggled with the most was that. And if somebody ever said something like that they thought something could be done better, I used to take it as a personal attack and I would get it defensive. Having to realize it is not a personal attack. They're just trying to help the organization, they're trying to help the company, they're trying to make everything better, having the ability to feel secure enough to stand back and be like, you know what? That's a great idea, and we're gonna implement that solution. It's a learning. I certainly did not start there. Getting to that point and letting people know, look, we're all doing the best we can, and we're gonna continue hiring people who are specialists in certain areas that used to be our responsibility, and they're gonna see ways to do things differently. So when they bring it to us, that's something to be celebrated, that we're gonna do things more effectively, more efficiently, and it's gonna be a better result for everybody.

Justin:

Yeah, that's a really great learning that you've that you've had because you know, sure enough, if we get defensive when people bring us feedback, that is the number one way to shut down that psychological safety. You know, if we if someone brings us feedback and we snap back or try to defend it, we're just not gonna get feedback anymore. So it's great that you've made that pivot. You know, what else are you doing today to prepare your next layer of leaders to continue building that future of the culture you want?

Eric:

Yeah, it's it is something that we talk about regularly. I think that's really important. Is we we all strive to not just support the culture, but carry it forward in our own way and make sure that every onboarding with every new hire, they're they're not hearing that just from me or just from my co-founder. They're hearing that from the CFO, they're hearing that from our chief of staff, they're hearing that from the head of production, they're hearing that from every person in the organization. If you see something, say something, we want that feedback. Going back to the feedback, my wife and I we were joking about this this morning because we heard somebody say you shouldn't call it feedback, you should call it feed forward. Because when someone hears I've got feedback for you, they get defensive. That's ridiculous. People need to not be so defensive. And I understand, again, I was, but we shouldn't have to change the idea of what feedback is to not offend somebody. We have to understand we're doing it for good reason. We're not, it's not an insult. It's not, again, it's just not a personal attack. It's just here's what I'm seeing that could be better. Let's do this because it's gonna make life better for everybody, and that's really important.

Justin:

For sure. So if someone joined your company tomorrow, what would you want them to say about your leadership in five years?

Eric:

Great question. We do have somebody who's onboarding starting tomorrow, actually. I would say that we clearly communicate the vision, the challenges, how we want to be seen, heard, talked about, and felt in the retail, retail media, content ecosystem overall, and that they have autonomy to go do things the way that they best see fit to achieve. Exactly that. So I'm somewhat of a difficult boss because most people are like, I trust you until uh you show me that I can't. I'm kind of always been the opposite opposite by nature, is I don't trust that you're gonna get this done until you prove that you can. And then once you prove that you can, you have my loyalty for life. Like I'm all in, I trust you, you've earned it, go do it. And I think we're also, you know, because of that, we do say ask for forgiveness rather than permission if you're not hearing back from somebody, if you ask a question, if you want to do something, and that's something we have to remind ourselves as executives too a lot. Kyle went and tried to hire a consultant to work on this aspect that he needed help with over here. And we're like, but that's what we asked him to do. We can't be mad at him. Like, that's what we asked him to do, ask for forgiveness rather than permission. And we have to remind ourselves of that all the time. But hopefully that's the type of thing people feel that they're their own entrepreneur, that they're their own CEO of their area of the company, and it helps us build together faster.

Justin:

That's great. Eric, I've really appreciated the conversation today. Thank you very much for your time. If folks want to get in touch with you, what is the best way to do so?

Eric:

Yeah. Website thedesirecompany.com, LinkedIn is slash the desire company or slash Eric Shinecup. You could reach out Eric at thedesirecompany.com. I get all of those. And you will start noticing the desire company seal all over review videos, whether it's on Roku or or Hulu or Best Buy or Walmart or wherever. And so when you do, I love to hear from you. I love to know like, hey, I saw that. That was really helpful. It's amazing.

Justin:

Great. I'll be looking out for it. Eric, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you, Jess. I appreciate it.