By Sara Ashley O'Brien | Photography by Ellen Fedors for WSJ. Magazine

Lauryn Bosstick is sitting in a makeup chair, wearing a red Skims pajama set and taking sips from a trio of beverages: a green juice, a heavy-metal detox smoothie from Cafe Gratitude's collaboration with the "Medical Medium" Anthony William and a large water bottle filled with iced coffee.

"I can only have one," Bosstick, 38, says of the caffeine as she logs into a virtual meeting. She's in her third trimester with her third child, a fact that her team is hoping to trade on.

"If you're pregnant and you're trusting the brand to take that when you're pregnant, it proves the point," Gillian Couturier, president of Bosstick's Skinny Confidential brand, says. They're discussing the company's $55 beauty salt, an unflavored powdered supplement that combines electrolytes, colostrum and pearl powder -- one of the myriad products Bosstick has evangelized to her followers. (She has continued to use this during her pregnancy but recommends that customers consult a doctor before doing so.)

Since 2011, Bosstick has acted as a "human guinea pig" for a massive audience of beauty and wellness obsessives, testing products and procedures and delivering "the skinny" on them. She's endorsed salmon-sperm facials, raw milk and reiki as a way to flip a breech baby based on a do-your-own-research approach to self-care. At a time when influencers are seen as lifestyle experts, her recommendations have held significant sway over consumer choices. She has capitalized on her audience with a line of consumer goods, two books with a third on the way, and a video podcast, "The Skinny Confidential: Him & Her Show," which has hit the top of Apple Podcasts' Education category.

This week, Bosstick and her husband, Michael Bosstick, are fresh off a private jet from Austin to Los Angeles to record more than a dozen episodes of their popular show. Guests include celebrity brand architect Emma Grede, doctor and TV personality Drew Pinsky, billionaire businessman and politician Rick Caruso, the influencer couple known as Pookie and Jett, and journalist Piers Morgan.

The Bossticks' interview style is playful and unchallenging, making the show a welcoming press stop for high-profile guests, including Ivanka Trump, Chelsea Clinton, the "gentle parenting" guru Becky Kennedy and the motivational speaker Tony Robbins. Now in its ninth year, the program served as the launchpad for a podcast network, Dear Media, in 2018. The company now produces around 100 shows geared toward women. Michael is its founding CEO; Lauryn is a founding partner.

Building on its success is the Skinny Confidential product line, which launched in 2021 and is headed by Lauryn. It sells bamboo-based, chlorine-free toilet paper; face rollers; caffeinated sunscreen; "beauty salt"; and mouth tape. The tape generated more than $7 million in sales last year after launching in February. (The company declined to share overall financials but provided unit sales for some popular products.)

"I'm like a bloodhound dog," says Bosstick, sitting at the Dear Media office in West Hollywood, which is peppered with Skinny Confidential products wrapped in millennial-pink packaging. "I've tried everything."

Getting 'the Skinny'

The eldest daughter of two entrepreneurs, Lauryn Evarts worked her way through college at San Diego State University, where she majored in theater arts. She taught barre and Pilates, and bartended at night to make ends meet.

In 2011, a year after graduating and during the height of the blogging era, she started a blog called the Skinny Confidential, where she would share recipes and fitness tips. It evolved into a place for learning how others were managing their beauty, workouts and careers, Bosstick says.

"I wanted to know what Cindy Crawford has on her vanity, what a model is eating, and share my secrets, but make it one big resource," she says. "I would reach out to micro-influencers, supermodels, the everyday girl. I got [model and actress] Charlotte McKinney, that allowed me to go to another 100 people and say, 'I just interviewed Charlotte McKinney. Can I now interview you?'"

Michael, who went to the University of Arizona, met and dated Lauryn when they were in middle school. They split up at 15, then rekindled their romance toward the end of college. In 2014, they got engaged.

The following year, Lauryn underwent corrective double jaw surgery to fix issues exacerbated by a car accident, which caused her face to swell dramatically. "I flipped the camera on him and started filming him for Snapchat, and people really liked him," she says. He was a foil to her, "very panicked, very organized, almost anal, and they thought it was hysterical." she says. "And then one day he was like, 'Let's launch a podcast together."

In 2016, just a few months before getting married, the couple introduced "Him & Her" as an experiment in unscripted, unedited conversations. Today, it is a full-fledged production that attracts listeners looking "to optimize their life," says Bosstick. The audience is mostly female and between the ages of 25 and 45, she says.

From Hollywood Stars to Fringe Thinkers

Bosstick says she is willing to entertain almost any guest so long as they have "a good story." The show is general-interest: One episode might feature a Hollywood star, then next a hypnotist and the next a CEO. Questions about lifestyles and routines dominate the interviews. In the exploration of those topics, "Him & Her" brings on the occasional guest with fringe ideas.

The show's rise comes as people are increasingly turning to lifestyle personalities for guidance on how to live their lives, be healthy and care for their children amid growing institutional skepticism and an ever-fragmented media landscape.

"I think they lack fear of judgment. They are comfortable in their own skin," said entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, who learned Lauryn was a fan of his 2009 book "Crush It!" and was one of the podcast's early guests. He appeared again in 2024. Vaynerchuk said that while the term 'authentic' was overused these days, the Bossticks were "more authentic than a lot of other couples that are in the public domain."

Bosstick's life experience, losing her mom to suicide when she was 18, having a family member struggle with drug addiction, becoming a mom, are things she pulls from in interviews. As the couple prepares questions for Piers Morgan, Michael raises the journalist's stance on Covid vaccination, which he initially emphatically supported but now regrets, as a possible topic. "He completely changed his opinion," he says. "I don't know if you want to go down that road with him."

"You can ask him that one," says Lauryn, as she takes bites from a large container of steak from Erewhon. (She is a proponent of eating one "bowl of meat" a day.) "I just am sick of hearing, 'Covid, Covid, Covid.'" The topic didn't come up in the interview, which aired in early May.

The show has landed press-shy guests like Ivanka Trump, who said on the show it was only the second podcast she had done. Bosstick says she knew going into the interview that listeners wouldn't want to hear solely about her experience as the former senior advisor to her father, President Trump.

"My goal was just to come from a really nonjudgmental space and hear her story, but I also wanted to hear what was in her smoothie and her beauty tips and what kind of creatine she took," she says.

Ice Rollers and Toxin-Free Toilet Paper

The Skinny Confidential started selling its own products in 2021, starting with a thick, pink facial ice roller, inspired by Bosstick's jaw-surgery experience.

"I took a dildo to a manufacturer and I was like, 'This is how I want it to feel,'" Bosstick says of designing the product, which has done more than $15.8 million in sales since its launch.

"She's so hands-on," says TSC's president, Couturier, who was initially brought in to help design the ice roller with Bosstick as a contractor before joining the brand full-time. Couturier recalls Bosstick advising on elements like where the groove of a thumb should be situated on the device. "If it was too high up, you wouldn't be able to reach all the way back on your jawline. I mean, it's so specific."

On LTK, a platform where influencers can earn commissions on sales from shopping links and partnerships, the Skinny Confidential is one of the top influencer-founded brands in the beauty category. Searches for its products on LTK are up 936% from the first quarter of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024.

In addition to its own site, the products also sell on Revolve, Amazon and Nordstrom. Last year, the brand saw 65% year-over-year revenue growth. In April, it launched toilet paper. "No one wants to wipe their intimate areas with the chlorine and the formaldehyde," Bosstick said.

The Skinny Confidential, which has 17 employees and is based in Austin, has done many brand collaborations, selling everything from humidifiers to supplements, alcohol and cookie dough, and taking a revenue share. Bosstick says she has personally invested in more than two dozen startups. Many of the founders or executives involved in these companies have also been featured as guests on the show. Some guests appear on the show as part of paid sponsorship deals.

Sabeena Ladha, the founder of "better-for-you" snack brand Deux, worked with the Skinny Confidential on a co-branded cookie dough, which sold 20,000 units over the course of two limited-supply "drops."

"On the day of launch, it did more revenue than the day that we were on 'Shark Tank,'" says Ladha, who has also appeared on the "Him & Her" show. Bosstick invested in Deux, as did Dear Media's investment arm.

Ladha, who has been following Bosstick's career since her early blogging days, said her appeal was that she wasn't afraid to diverge from popular opinions. "It's appealing to people who aren't so cookie-cutter," she said.

The Skinny Confidential is exploring partnerships with hospitality brands, to broaden its distribution and brand awareness. She envisions customized mouth tape being stocked in guest rooms.

"Why is there not an ice roller in every Vegas hotel?" Bosstick asks in one meeting. "Because when you drink too much there and you are filled with casino smoke under your eye bags, there needs to be something that depuffs you."

Write to Sara Ashley O'Brien at sara.obrien@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 14, 2025 13:00 ET (17:00 GMT)

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