Don't Fit in Boxes: Sifu Edward & Sifu Julliana Armstrong Sit Down With JVZoo's Laura Casselman (Part 1)
Adapted from the recorded conversation; the guest's words are verbatim. The questions are reconstructed and voiced by Sifu Edward and Sifu Julliana Armstrong.
🎥 Video podcast coming soon. The complete interview will play here once published. The full conversation is transcribed below, and the audio edition will be available on sifuarmstrong.tv.
In a new Sifu Armstrong interview, the JVZoo CEO and former Radio City Rockette makes the case that creative and analytical aren’t rival instincts. They’re both required to build anything worth building.
Laura Casselman spent years living two lives most people assume can’t coexist. For part of the year she worked a corporate job; for three months every winter, she danced with one of the most famous stage troupes in the world. In the first half of a two-part conversation with Sifu Edward and Sifu Julliana Armstrong for the Warrior Intelligence Series, Casselman (now CEO of the online marketplace JVZoo) explained why she never treated that split as a contradiction to be resolved.
The Rockettes, she said, need no introduction to the scale of the commitment. “It is the world’s most famous precision dance troupe,” Casselman said, noting the group traces back to the 1930s. Making that stage meant years of work before she ever set foot on it, work she carried out in parallel with a growing corporate resume, because she refused to treat either pursuit as optional.
“I truly believe that, as human beings, we don’t need to fit into boxes. We can use both sides,” Casselman said. “I have a very creative and a very analytical side and for me to be fulfilled, I need to exercise both of those.”
That refusal to specialize followed her out of the dance world and into a technical field she had no formal training in. When her then-husband, JVZoo co-founder Chad Casselman, was earning a master’s degree in computer science, Casselman taught herself the material alongside him rather than let the gap between them widen. “I never wanted him to not be able to speak to me about it,” she said, describing trips to Barnes & Noble to buy books on Java, JavaBeans, and .NET, taking notes until she understood the coursework as well as he did.
The same instinct, in her telling, is also the origin story of JVZoo itself. The platform’s founders were internet marketers frustrated that their existing tools wouldn’t do what they needed and weren’t being fixed. Rather than keep requesting features from someone else’s roadmap, they built their own. “You identify a problem and you provide a solution, which is what most internet marketers are doing,” Casselman said. “They solved their own problem, which is the great way to start any fabulous product.”
It’s a small sentence carrying a large idea, and the Armstrongs returned to it more than once during the conversation, that the clearest way into a new venture isn’t chasing an existing playbook, but naming a real gap and closing it yourself.
Part 2 of the conversation continues Casselman’s story and publishes separately.
It’s a philosophy that maps directly onto the warrior’s path the Armstrongs teach: refuse the false choice between disciplines, and build the whole person instead of settling for half.
In This Conversation
- Life inside “the world’s most famous precision dance troupe”
- Why Casselman refuses to choose between her creative and analytical sides
- Teaching herself Java and .NET at a bookstore to keep pace with her husband’s degree
- How JVZoo’s founders built the product they couldn’t get anywhere else
- The founder’s instinct: identify the problem, then provide the solution
- What’s ahead in Part 2
The Full Conversation
Sifu Julliana Armstrong: This is a conversation I asked for personally, because our guest lived the exact arc I live: she was a world-class performer who became a builder. A Radio City Rockette (one of the most disciplined performance stages on earth) who is now the CEO of a major marketplace. I am a competitive martial artist who co-builds this federation. So when Laura says she refuses to fit into boxes, that she needs both her creative and her analytical side to feel alive, I understand her in my bones.
Sifu Edward Armstrong: And what I respect is the builder's instinct underneath the artistry, the company she runs exists because someone identified a real problem and created the solution. That's the founder's whole discipline. Between the two of us, we couldn't have picked a better guest.
Our guest is Laura Casselman, CEO of JVZoo. Laura, welcome.
Laura Casselman: Hello. Thank you for having me.
Sifu Julliana Armstrong: Before internet marketing and JVZoo. You had a life on one of the most elite stages in the world. Tell us.
Laura Casselman: Yeah, so I've only been with JVZoo for a little over four years now. Previously, I not only was in New York City dancing professionally with the Radio City Rockettes, but I was also simultaneously building my corporate resume. So I would work three months with the Rockettes each year, and then I would go and work in corporate America the rest of the time.
Sifu Julliana Armstrong: The Rockettes. That's a serious troupe.
Laura Casselman: It is. It is the world's most famous precision dance troupe. It's been around since the 1930s, and if we had to relate it to something you may know in Europe, it would be the Tiller Girls.
Sifu Julliana Armstrong: That's a striking contrast, the precision dance floor and the corporate world at the same time. How do you fit both in?
Laura Casselman: Well, I don't sleep a lot, number one. I never have. I truly believe that, as human beings, we don't need to fit into boxes. We can use both sides. I have a very creative and a very analytical side and for me to be fulfilled, I need to exercise both of those, so I was really fortunate to be able to do that. Of course, I worked in the dance world for years to work my way up to the Rockettes. When I made the Rockettes, it is a Christmas show and while you sign a year-long contract, you're only required to work the Christmas Spectacular.
Sifu Julliana Armstrong: "We don't need to fit into boxes." That is the whole truth of what we build. People want to make you choose. You're either an artist or a fighter, either creative or disciplined, either the performer or the operator. It's a false choice. The warrior trains the body like an athlete and studies like a strategist, and refuses to amputate either half. You worked years to earn the Rockettes stage and simultaneously built a corporate career. That's not two people, that's one whole warrior.
Sifu Edward Armstrong: So how did someone with that background discover internet marketing?
Laura Casselman: Certainly. So in the early 2000s, during the dot-com bubble, I was married to Chad Casselman, who is of course the original developer and the Chairman currently of JVZoo. But Chad and I had companies together. We worked in this together. So I always knew that I never only wanted to dance, and so when I get around people that have information I don't have, I usually want to ask a million questions and absorb it all and study. When Chad was getting his master's degree in computer science, I never wanted him to not be able to speak to me about it, so I would go to Barnes & Noble, the bookstore, and I would get the books. I'm a speed reader, so I would read them all, making tonnes of notes on Java, JavaBeans, .NET, all the coding he was learning, so that I would understand it as well.
Sifu Edward Armstrong: That's the hunger I look for in an operator. Not "that's not my field," but "I'll go read every book until I understand it too." A dancer teaching herself Java at Barnes & Noble is exactly the refusal-to-fit-in-a-box your wife just described, aimed at a whole new discipline.
Sifu Edward Armstrong: For those who don't know JVZoo. It's become the engine in the middle, connecting a person with a product to an army of people who'll sell it for them. How did it start, and what does it actually do?
Laura Casselman: Sure. So JVZoo started with our founders who were internet marketers who were having issues with the current platform they were using. It didn't do everything they wanted it to do. They kept requesting new features, and they weren't getting them, and so they solved their own problems, which is the great way to start any fabulous product, right? You identify a problem and you provide a solution, which is what most internet marketers are doing. So they identified their own problem in this industry, and they created the solution.
Sifu Edward Armstrong: "You identify a problem and you provide a solution." That's the founding of everything worth building, including this federation. We didn't set out to compete in someone else's system. We saw a gap no one was serving and built the answer. Laura, thank you. This has been a genuine pleasure, and we look forward to Part 2.
Laura Casselman: Thank you for having me.
Sifu Julliana's closing word: Laura is proof of the thing I most want every young warrior to believe: you don't have to choose which half of yourself to keep. She danced on the world's most famous precision stage and taught herself to code at a bookstore, and both are her. The warrior is not either the artist or the strategist. The warrior is both, refusing to choose. Don't let anyone put you in a box, least of all yourself.
Sifu Edward's closing word: Underneath Laura's refusal to fit in a box is a builder's instinct: identify the real problem, and create the solution. That sentence built her marketplace and it built our art. Bring your whole self, study every discipline like you were born to it, and then solve the problem no one else will. We don't entertain warriors. We create them.
Laura Casselman, CEO of JVZoo; former professional dancer with the Radio City Rockettes. (This written feature covers the bridged version of the conversation. Hear the full interview on sifuarmstrong.tv. See also Part 2, Issue 122.)
ILLUSTRATIVE RESULTS. Any revenue, enrollment, margin or retention figure in this conversation is either a documented result from one of our own operations, a figure the guest reports about their own business, or an illustrative example, never a projection of your results.
Nothing here is financial, legal or tax advice.
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This conversation is part of the Sifu Armstrong Warrior Intelligence Series: interviews with world-class performers, builders, and thinkers, filtered through the lens of the warrior's path.
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