The Cassey Ho Story | Popflex & Blogilates
What do you do when the person who loves you most tells you that your dream is a path to failure? Today's episode is about exactly that moment — and what gets built on the other side of it.
Cassey Ho is the founder of POPFLEX and Blogilates — two eight-figure activewear brands with over twenty million followers and a presence in every Target in America. Her parents immigrated from Vietnam, rebuilt their lives from nothing, and had one ask of their daughter: be a doctor or a lawyer. At sixteen, Cassey told her dad she wanted to be a fashion designer. He told her she would fail, make no money, and have no friends.
She built anyway. In this episode I talk about what it actually cost her along the way — the body image struggles she's been honest about publicly, the years of online hate that nearly broke her, the moment she almost quit everything, and why she was genuinely afraid to put her own face on her own packaging at Target. I also talk about what it means to be the first — the first Asian fitness instructor on Target shelves — and why that matters beyond the business. This one goes deep. I think you need to hear it.
-
Welcome back to Fifteenish. This is Leah. Hey, hey, friends.
So picture this, you're sitting across from your dad at the kitchen table after dinner, and you tell him about the thing that you have been working up the courage to say for months.
You want to tell him about your dream, the real one, the one that you have been sketching in notebooks and thinking about in the shower and building in your head for years.
And then he looks at you and he says, you'll fail, you'll make no money, and you'll have no friends. I could only imagine that hearing that response from your dad, nonetheless, would feel like the air got sucked right out of the room.
I want you to actually feel that for a second. Feel the heaviness of that statement. Imagine it, your dad telling you that the thing that you want most, the thing that feels most like you is going to lead to failure.
No money and no friends. Before you've even tried, before you've even started, what do you do with that? Well, today's founder got that exact conversation at 16 years old, and what she built from it was so incredible.
Her name is Cassey Ho. She is the founder of Popflex and Blogilates, which are two eight-figure activewear brands with over 20 million followers and a presence in every target in America.
Now, going back to what her dad predicted, well, she proved every single part of it wrong. This is the Cassey Ho story. Cassey was born in Los Angeles to Vietnamese Chinese immigrant parents.
Her parents immigrated from Vietnam, both left mid-college, both starting completely over in a country where they didn't speak the language and didn't know anyone. Her dad became an engineer and her mom worked as a cake decorator.
They did this so that the next generation could build something stable and respected on a foundation that they'd sacrificed everything for.
So when Cassey said that she wanted to be a fashion designer, you have to understand why that felt like betrayal to her dad.
He wasn't intending to be cruel, it's just that he had seen what happens when things fall apart and he wanted his daughter to have something solid, something that nobody could take away. Cassey said it herself.
She said being raised by Asian immigrant parents instilled this sense of working really hard, and tirelessly, and being resilient no matter what.
That was their gift to her, work ethic and resilience, and the belief that you could build something if you just kept going. But that gift came wrapped up with expectation. And the expectation was become a doctor or a lawyer, not a designer.
2:44
From Biology to Pilates
So she studied biology, she had a full scholarship at Whittier College, she was pre-med and on the path doing what she was supposed to do. And the whole time she was sketching. She had been doing it since she was probably six or seven years old.
She wasn't just doodling, she was actually sketching out full designs, evening gowns, wedding dresses. She had kept these big binders stuffed with drawings that she had made in spare moments throughout her whole childhood.
She had a fashion internship in college, she taught herself to sew, and at some point she went into the LA Fashion District, she bought vegan leather and gold chains, and she hand made herself a bag to carry her yoga mat to class because she couldn't
find anything on the market that was both cute and actually functional. Her Pilates student saw it and immediately wanted to know where she got it. Well, she made it herself.
That bag, that one problem that she solved for herself, would eventually become Popflex, but she just didn't know that yet. She was just a pre-med student who couldn't stop designing things.
She had also gotten into Pilates, she had bought a DVD at 16 to get in shape for a pageant, and she ended up getting hooked. She started teaching herself.
Eventually, Cassey auditioned to teach a class at a gym near her college, even though she wasn't certified, but she did know it well. She walked in and she did it anyway, and she developed her own style. It was called Pop Pilates.
They were basically the classic Pilates moves, but set to pop music. It was fast and fun. The workout felt more like a dance party than a punishment.
Her students were obsessed. She was obsessed. She was teaching and designing and sketching and studying biology all at the same time.
While she was still on her dad's path, still doing what she was supposed to do. But in every other spare moment, she was building a completely different life.
In 2009, Cassey was graduating, and she had made a decision that she was going to move to Boston to train as a fashion buyer. Now, it wasn't exactly the fashion design dream, but it was the direction of the dream.
While she was excited for this next move, she was genuinely sad about leaving her Pilates students. So she posted a workout video on YouTube. It was only about 10 minutes long.
It was basically the maximum that YouTube allowed at that time. She recorded pop Pilates exactly like she taught in class, and she told her students, well, if you ever miss me, you can find me here.
It was just meant to be a goodbye gift to 40 people, but she kept posting once a week, then more, and people kept watching, and not just her students, but strangers all over the Internet who found her through searches and shares and just stumbled
across her comment section and stayed. Those subscribers climbed and the comments filled up, and Cassey kept making videos from wherever she was, filming on whatever she had, editing late at night after long days.
Now as a fashion buyer, she actually only lasted about eight months. It just wasn't it, so she quit. She bought a one-way ticket to China to chase the bag design industry and explore manufacturing.
Although she came back without a deal, she did come back with something clearer, a sense that she was closer than she had been before. She started teaching Pilates 12 times a week just to cover rent.
Yes, 12 classes, and then she'd have to come home and edit videos. Her family didn't fully understand what she was building.
You know, her dad wanted a doctor, and here she was teaching workout classes and posting videos on the internet, but she kept doing it anyway.
6:08
Body Image Struggle
This next part of her story is hard, and it's deeply personal, but I think it's really important to talk about. Cassey had struggled with her body image when she was a teenager.
She's talked about it publicly, and she's been really honest about it, which I respect a lot. She developed an unhealthy relationship with food and exercise. She was chasing an idea of what a fitness person was supposed to look like.
She compared herself to other instructors on Instagram, to every outside perspective about what her body should be, quote unquote. She said it became a physical war on her body.
Fitness helped her find a way through this, and movement became something that she did because it made her feel strong and capable, not because she was just trying to look a certain way. And then she built an entire platform around that idea.
Pop Pilates was all about feeling good. And then the audience grew, and with it, of course, came the comments.
Comments about her body, her weight, her face, whether she was thin enough to be teaching classes, whether she was qualified enough, whether she looked the way a fitness instructor was supposed to look.
Constantly, in her own comment section, these comments were just tearing her down on a platform that she had built. And she said, when I read some of these comments, they make me cry.
And she goes on to say, because I grew up being a little overweight, and I fought to have the body and life that I have today. And so she started changing.
She started modifying herself, you know, the way she looked or what she posted or how she showed up, just to manage what people were saying. She said she started modeling herself to appease the people criticizing her. She felt lost.
She had built this whole thing, and it didn't feel like she was being authentic to herself anymore. Can you just imagine that for a second? Building a platform in the millions and then slowly losing yourself inside of it.
And it wasn't because you failed, it happened because of the success. Because enough people were watching that that noise got so loud, and it drowned out your own voice, your own mind.
She said that there was this moment that she was just ready to quit everything, Blogilates and Popflex, all of it.
8:23
Fashion Pivot Success
Thankfully, she didn't, but she did pivot. She instead started leaning into the fashion content and stepped back from fitness content. And she said the moment that she did, not one person commented on her body.
The hate just stopped. And she said, it made me realize I was in the wrong industry all along.
Gosh, I mean, like that takes so much courage to just say that out loud and to look at the thing that made you famous and say, actually, this costs me too much.
And then to stay in that industry anyway, but just in a different way, that is straight bravery. When she launched Blogilates in the fitness section at Target in 2020, she almost didn't put her face on the packaging.
She was nervous and she wrote about it publicly and honestly. She said, I was afraid my Vietnamese Chinese face and skin color would turn off some customers who weren't used to seeing someone who looked like me in their stores.
I thought it would hurt sales. I just want you to sit with that for a second. This is a woman with millions of followers, a decade of building a business, and she had a platform that had already changed the fitness industry.
But she was still genuinely afraid that her own face, her actual face, the face she was born with, would cost her sales. That's not insecurity.
That is a woman who spent her whole life watching fitness and wellness and beauty shelves that didn't have anyone who looked like her on them. She had this whole lifetime of implicit messaging that said, this space wasn't built for you.
But she put her face on the packaging anyway. And she said, I don't want other little Asian American girls walking into the fitness section at Target and not seeing anyone who looks like them.
She was the first Asian fitness instructor to appear on shelves at Target and I applaud her so much for doing the right thing. And in April of 2024, Taylor Swift posted a YouTube video promoting her Tortured Poets album. And guess what?
She was wearing a lilac skort. It was the pirouette skort by Popflex, a design that Cassey had patented herself. Within minutes, it sold out.
Then every color sold out. She ended up having 16,000 pre-orders. Cassey said that when she found out she couldn't even feel it.
She was feeling everything and nothing at the same time. And then in early 2025, Blogilates launched at the front of every target in America. She had 1.1 million units of her affordable line her audience had been asking for for years.
And half of it sold out in a week. She said it felt like winning the Retail Super Bowl.
11:13
Proving Them Wrong
She got there despite her dad saying, You'll fail. You'll make no money and you'll have no friends. Now her dad, he wasn't wrong about the world that he understood.
He had left a country in collapse. He had rebuilt from nothing. He knew what it felt like when things fall apart and there's no safety net.
And he wanted his daughter to have a net. But he didn't know about the world she was going to build. He couldn't have.
The internet didn't exist the way it does now. The creator economy didn't exist. And the idea that a Vietnamese American woman could post a Pilates video as a goodbye gift just to 40 students and end up at the front of every target in America?
Yeah, that wasn't a visible path. It wasn't even a path. She had to create that.
And she did it while studying biology, while teaching 12 Pilates classes a week, while scrolling past comments about her body from strangers on the internet, while being afraid to put her own face on her own packaging, and while almost quitting
everything. Her dad said she would fail, make no money, and have no friends, and she proved every single part of it wrong.
I think about those words a lot, about how a prediction like that from someone that you love, someone whose opinion matters more than almost anyone's, can either stop you completely or light something in you that never goes out.
And for Cassey, it lit something. And then she went on and built 20 million followers, two eight-figure brands, a patent court that Taylor Swift wore, and a spot at the front of every target. So what have you been told that you can't do?
What option have you been given that you've been afraid to choose because someone else once told you that it was the wrong one? What would you build if failure wasn't the thing that you were most afraid of?
Because somewhere out there, someone told you what your options were. Maybe it was a parent, maybe it was a teacher or a boss, or even just the voice in your own head that's been running that story for years.
Maybe you've been living inside those options ever since, without ever questioning whether they were actually yours to begin with. Well, let me tell you, they weren't yours. So remember, the only failure is never finding out.
Thanks for being here. I'll see you next week.
Sources & Disclaimer
Fortune — Popflex Founder Had 3 Choices Before Building Her Fashion Empire (September 2024)
South China Morning Post — Meet Blogilates YouTuber and Taylor Swift Favourite Cassey Ho (2024)
We Are Resonate — Asian American Fitness YouTuber Cassey Ho Discusses Her Parents' Immigrant Story (October 2019)
Wikipedia — Cassey Ho entry
Grokipedia — Cassey Ho entry
Morning Honey — Fitness Instructor Cassey Ho Encourages Others To Use Your Story (2021)
YouTube — How I Built 8-Figure Businesses by Defying My Parents | Cassey Ho | Secrets to Success (September 2024)
Cassey Ho's personal blog — blogilates.com
All facts shared in this episode are based on information available at the time of recording. Any personal reflections, interpretations, or opinions are my own. If anything is found to be inaccurate, I'm happy to issue a correction.
