Tough Skin: Sifu Edward & Sifu Julliana Armstrong Sit Down With JVZoo's Laura Casselman (Part 2)

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 Rockette-turned-CEO returns to the Warrior Intelligence Series to trace the discipline the stage beat into her straight into the boardroom.

Laura Casselman has already told her story once, in Issue 101, about refusing to fit into a single box. This second conversation with Sifu Edward and Sifu Julliana Armstrong goes somewhere more specific: the tough skin that a professional dance career builds, and why it can’t be taught any other way. “It develops a tough skin,” Casselman said of her years dancing with the Radio City Rockettes and beyond. “You learn to not be shut down by the word no, to be persistent, to keep honing your skills, to keep learning, to keep going no matter what, and that transfers into the business world in a way that you can’t teach.”

That armor was forged under a level of discipline most people don’t associate with a chorus line. “Everything is choreographed, from the beginning of the show to the end,” Casselman said, describing Radio City Music Hall as “a very corporate business” where “you’ll never meet any more regimented dancers.” Even costume changes follow a fixed sequence, identical every single performance. It’s precision in service of art, not against it, the same principle behind drilling a form until it disappears so the artistry underneath can finally surface.

That discipline is now the CEO of JVZoo, the online marketplace and affiliate network she helped grow into a platform serving over 900,000 active affiliates. Casselman was direct about what drove her to clean up an industry she describes as heading toward the Wild West. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” she said, tracing the standard back to her father’s own business and her upbringing in the American South. “Integrity in business absolutely means so much to me... I want to lie my head on the pillow at night and go to sleep with no problem.”

That same steadiness shows up in how she handles pressure the rest of the industry treats as a crisis. Describing the scramble to meet a GDPR compliance deadline, Casselman said her team turned the deadline into something bearable rather than a source of dread: “When the tough gets going, you’ve got to get going with it.” No complaining, just execution. Set to a Taylor Swift song blasting through the office while the work got done.

What emerges across the conversation is a portrait of discipline as the foundation of everything else, the dance career that demanded total consistency, the founder’s insistence on personal integrity even when nobody’s checking, and a refusal to let hard deadlines become excuses to slow down. It’s the same architecture the Armstrongs build on their own mat: precision repeated until it becomes invisible, standards held even when convenience says otherwise, and setbacks met with forward motion instead of complaint. The dancer who takes the correction and comes back the next day is training the exact same muscle as the warrior who drills the form one more time.

In This Conversation

Why professional dance builds a tough skin no lecture can install
The regimented, “everything choreographed” world behind the Rockettes' polish
How Casselman transitioned from corporate executive to JVZoo CEO
Her father’s “do unto others” standard and why integrity drove an industry cleanup
Turning a GDPR deadline into a Taylor Swift singalong instead of a crisis
Where to find Laura Casselman and JVZoo

The Full Conversation

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: We spoke with Laura once before, about refusing to fit into boxes, and I wanted her back, because there's a deeper thing I recognise in her: the tough skin the stage builds. She's the CEO of JVZoo, Female CEO of the Year, and she's blunt that the thing that made her unstoppable in business isn't a business skill at all. It's what the dance floor beat into her: take a no and keep going. That's a competitor's soul, and I had to talk to it.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: And underneath the resilience is a standard. Laura cleaned up an industry that was becoming the Wild West, for one reason. She wants to lie her head on the pillow at night. That's the founder's real job: not just to build, but to raise the bar for everyone around you. I wanted our operators to hear both halves.

Our guest is Laura Casselman, CEO of JVZoo. Laura, a real pleasure to have you back.

Laura Casselman: Thank you so much for having me.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: Have you always been this ambitious? Because I sense this drive goes way back.

Laura Casselman: I think so. I can recall back to selling Girl Scout cookies when I was a child and wanting to sell the most Girl Scout cookies. When I was three years old, I knew I was going to dance in New York City with the Radio City Rockettes at the music hall. So yes, I've always been a goal-setter and a go-getter. I knew at a very young age that I loved dancing and that I wanted to go out and make my mark in the dance world. I also understood that the dance world was not forgiving for ageing dancers. It was a young person's career. So I knew I'd have an early dance career, which I did, dancing professionally from my teens through my twenties. But I also knew I wasn't going to be the person to retire from dancing to open a dance studio. That's great for other people; it just wasn't for me. I always wanted to be involved in the business, in the decision-making, to know what the ingredients were that made someone's business successful. So while I was still under contract with the Rockettes (you work the Christmas season, then you're free to do other jobs), I built out my corporate resume, so that when I retired from dance, I stepped straight into my first executive role.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: This is the part I most want to sit with. What did dance actually give you that transferred into business?

Laura Casselman: I definitely think it transfers. Dance, and anything in the arts, builds tough skin. People like to think that people in the artistic world are more in tune with their emotions, that they'll cry and whatnot. I don't know any dancers like that, and I know quite a bit of them. It develops a tough skin. You learn to not be shut down by the word no, to be persistent, to keep honing your skills, to keep learning, to keep going no matter what, and that transfers into the business world in a way that you can't teach. You can't teach people how to have thick skin. Tough love doesn't necessarily do that. People are either born with the drive to keep going, keep learning, keep building no matter how many times they're knocked down, or not. And that makes great salespeople. It's why I transferred into sales originally. I knew how to take a no and keep going.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: "You learn to not be shut down by the word no." That is the single most important thing a competitor ever develops, and you're right that no lecture installs it. You earn it under pressure. Every correction from a coach, every loss, every "not good enough" is a rep of tough skin. The athlete who keeps coming back is building the exact armour that later lets her walk into a boardroom and hear "no" as just the first word of the conversation.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: People imagine the Rockettes as pure artistry, but you've described it as ferociously disciplined. Tell me about that.

Laura Casselman: Well, it goes both ways. JVZoo is a fun company, we love to have fun where we can, but Radio City Music Hall is a very corporate business, and the Rockettes, you'll never meet any more regimented dancers. Everything is choreographed, from the beginning of the show to the end. Even your costume changes are choreographed. You don't change a shoe first one day and then change your hat first the next day. Everything is the exact same way, every single show, every single day. So there's a lot that carries over into either career.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: "Everything the exact same way, every single show, every single day." That's a kata. That's a form. People think precision is the enemy of art. It's the foundation of it. You drill the movement identically ten thousand times not to become a robot, but so that the discipline becomes invisible and the artistry can finally breathe on top of it. The Rockette and the martial artist train the exact same way.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: So what actually led you to JVZoo?

Laura Casselman: I was already in the corporate world, an executive with a physical therapy national chain, when I started conversing with my ex-husband (someone I've always conversed with, no hard feelings there), and he's one of the original founders of JVZoo. He let me know they were growing so quickly they were hitting operational roadblocks, like many companies do with growth, and needed to put processes in place. So he said, "I'd love for you to meet one of my co-founders and the current CEO." I flew into South Carolina, and the CEO at the time, Bryan Zimmerman, drove up from Florida, and we met. It was a slow transition into me working at JVZoo. We wanted to make sure it was the right fit, not just for me but for them, especially considering my ex-husband worked there and was one of the owners. So we took our time to make the right decision.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: For anyone who doesn't know it. What is JVZoo, and how big is this network?

Laura Casselman: JVZoo is an online marketplace and an affiliate network. When you have a product to sell (or a great idea you evolved into a product), but you don't know how to get it in front of the masses, you list it on JVZoo. We give you the tools to sell it, you hook in your payment processor, we manage and track the sale. But you can also reach our network of over 900,000 active affiliates who have buyers lists, and they'll email their lists about your product if it fits their niche. And it's free to sign up. We don't charge you a penny until you make a penny. We never charge a monthly or yearly fee. We want to tie our success to our users' success.

As for recruiting affiliates, a lot of people forget that working online should be very similar to working in person. Just as if you met someone face-to-face, you'd introduce yourself and let them know how you could help them, rather than "how can you help me?" You want to do the same online. Say, "Hello, here's how I plan to promote your product," or "here's how my product can help your customers," as opposed to "can you please go promote my product?" It's more of a "let me help you." And then it comes full circle. It's a network, and networking is key.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: "Let me help you," not "help me." That reciprocity is the exact reputation an Academy Commander builds. You serve first, you lead with value, and the network turns toward the person who gives. It's the same law whether you're recruiting affiliates or building a community of warriors.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: You've watched thousands of people launch their life's work on your platform. What's launch day actually like, for them and for you?

Laura Casselman: As far as what we're able to do, there's no limit, although we've had a launch that shut down the PayPal gateway. It was nerve-wracking, we thought our tech was broken, and then we realised, "Oh my gosh, it's PayPal." We had to work with PayPal to whitelist us. When people like Paul Ponna, consistently one of our top vendors, open the cart, an astronomical number of sales comes through instantly, and it grows every time, because the word is out that their products are incredible and serve their customers, so people trust buying them. While it's a little stressful for us, we do it every day, so we're used to it. It's more stressful for the sellers, because they put so much time into these products. They're their babies. They're launching their child into the world and they want it to be successful. So at JVZoo we have a thing on launch day: we know who's launching, and we know people are in what we call launch mode. They've had no sleep, they're stressed, they're nervous. So on those days, we allow those people to be short and snippy with us, because we know tomorrow they're going to say, "Oh my gosh, I made the most sales I've ever made." They've had a moment to get a cup of coffee or a nap. So we just ride the roller coaster with them and cheer them on the whole way.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: "We ride the roller coaster with them and cheer them on." That's a corner. That's exactly what a coach does when a fighter's about to walk out under the lights. You absorb their nerves, you forgive the snap in their voice, because you know what it costs to put your baby in front of the world. Grace on the hardest day is what real support looks like.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: You did a great deal to clean up an industry that was becoming the Wild West. Why did that matter so much to you?

Laura Casselman: I grew up in the southeast of the United States (the Bible Belt), but more than that, it's the way my parents raised me. My father owned his own business, and it was very much "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." You don't want to be cheated, therefore you shouldn't cheat other people, and integrity in business absolutely means so much to me. If anyone ever questions my integrity, anyone who's ever done business with me would know it isn't even a possibility. I'm going to protect myself too, because I know not everyone has my best interest at heart, but you want the reputation of the person who does it the right way. Otherwise your business is going to be short-lived. I want to lie my head on the pillow at night and go to sleep with no problem.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: "I want to lie my head on the pillow at night." That is the whole standard, and it's why you raised the bar for an entire industry, because a clean operator forces everyone around them to clean up too. That's the founder's deepest responsibility. You don't just build your own house well. You make it harder for anyone near you to build a shoddy one. Integrity isn't the soft part of business. It's the load-bearing wall.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: And when GDPR came at everyone like a freight train, you just... turned it into a Taylor Swift singalong and got it done. That attitude is everything.

Laura Casselman: GDPR wasn't our first time having a deadline for a law changing. This is old hat to us. We get announcements that a country is implementing a law, and we react, because our users are international. Even as a US-based company, we help our users do business in their countries and abide by their laws. We don't say, "That doesn't apply to us, good luck with that." We're in it with our users. When GDPR was happening, the Taylor Swift song "Look What You Made Me Do" had just come out, and we'd be in the office slaving away to get everything changed by the deadline, singing that song but about GDPR, "Look what you made me do." It was a way to make it fun, because that's what JVZoo does. When the tough gets going, you've got to get going with it. So you play your music, jam it out, get your team involved, and get the work done. Don't complain about it, just get it done.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: "When the tough gets going, you've got to get going with it." That's a champion's relationship with adversity. You don't flinch at the hard thing, you turn the music up and go straight through it. Complaining is just friction. Get in it, make it bearable, get it done.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: What's ahead for you and JVZoo, and where can people find you?

Laura Casselman: We've got a lot in store, constantly updating and releasing new things. We just released a new leaderboard to show where affiliates are placing on a launch, since a lot of our vendors give prize money to their top affiliates. It puts more excitement behind it. And one thing I'd add for new product sellers: there's so much information out there on how to do this, on our Facebook page, within JVZoo, in other groups. Ask questions, of course, but chances are what feels like the first time anyone's asked your question, it's probably been asked a hundred times before, so the answer's already out there. Just get going. You can go to jvzoo.com. It doesn't cost a penny to sign up and get started. And to learn more about me, lauracasselman.com.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: Laura, thank you so much, a genuine pleasure both times. Good luck to you and the whole team at JVZoo.

Laura Casselman: Awesome. Thank you.

Sifu Julliana's closing word: Laura confirmed the thing I believe most: tough skin is trained, not given. The dancer who takes a thousand corrections and comes back the next day is the same person who builds an empire and hears "no" as the opening word of a negotiation. And she reminded me that precision (everything the exact same way, every single show), isn't the death of artistry, it's the foundation that lets artistry fly. Drill the form until it disappears. Then dance.

Sifu Edward's closing word: Laura cleaned up an industry for one reason (so she could sleep at night), and in doing so she forced everyone around her to raise their standard too. That's the founder's real work. You don't just build your own house well; you make it harder for anyone near you to build a shoddy one. Serve first, keep your integrity as the load-bearing wall, and when the hard thing comes, turn up the music and go straight through. We don't entertain warriors. We create them.

Laura Casselman, CEO of JVZoo (jvzoo.com), 2018 Female CEO of the Year; former professional dancer with the Radio City Rockettes. More at lauracasselman.com. (See also Part 1, Issue 101.)

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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