Is owning your own warehouse worth the headache? Or is it a siren song that will slow your growth? 

Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case and Lomi), Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern), and Curtis Matsko (CEO, Portland Leather Goods) dig into two of the most expensive decisions in ecommerce. Should you own your warehouse or outsource fulfillment to a 3PL? Can a founder ever truly step back from the company they built? 

They break down the owned warehouse versus 3PL debate, covering when flexibility beats cost savings, and why high-growth brands get burned by leases. From there, the conversation shifts to founder identity and succession, what Tim Cook’s Apple exit and Doug McMillon’s Walmart departure reveal about leadership transitions, and why the skills that built your company can quietly become the thing holding it back. 

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“We’ve never had anyone do four deals in 60 days.”

How do you build two nine-figure brands with no outside investors and a Facebook ads background as your only real edge? 

Zach Stuck, founder of Easy Street Brands and co-founder of Hollow and Mars Men, joins Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi) and Sean Frank (CEO, Ridge) to break down how he turned an agency into an eight-figure exit and cold-started two nine-figure brands in opposite categories.  

Closing four deals in 60 days and an L Catterton round, Zach’s brand building decisions are laid on the table. He walks through nearly losing Homestead keeping Hollow alive, and lays out the ecommerce strategy for building from zero. He closes on what the holdco model requires to work and why most operators get it wrong.

Is your incrementality testing giving you accurate data or are you burning budget on a broken signal?

Austin Harrison (CEO, Northbeam) joins Sean Frank (CEO, Ridge) and Katy Mimari (CEO, Caden Lane) to challenge the most repeated advice in ecommerce measurement: that longer tests are always better, holdouts are interchangeable, and incrementality alone is enough to make media decisions. They break down when a growing brand needs incrementality versus MTA, and how running tests inside a noisy environment can produce weeks of data worth nothing.

Sean pulls from Ridge’s own results to show how layering incrementality on top of MTA unlocked YouTube spend that in-platform data never would have justified, while Katy’s botched first test proves clean test conditions matter as much as the tool itself. They also dig into why moving up funnel on Meta is outperforming conversion campaigns at scale, and what separates the fastest-growing ecommerce brands in 2026 on creative.  

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“The obtaining of money is a lot easier than stewarding that money well.”

Sean Frank (CEO, Ridge), Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern), and Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi) dig into one of the most-requested topics from listeners: how do owner-operators pay themselves? And what should they be aiming for? The hosts walkthrough salary benchmarks, distribution strategies, and the honest math behind building long-term wealth in consumer.  

The conversation goes deep on the tension between pulling money out now versus betting on the asset long-term, creating a business that outlasts you as CEO, and why chasing one big exit can be the very thing that ruins the deal. They also get personal by sharing what they’d tell their younger selves, the difference between financial security and financial freedom, and why the number you think you need is almost always wrong.  

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How do you build a DTC telehealth platform from scratch and play the long game right? 

Tim Doyle, founder of Eucalyptus and incoming SVP International at Hims & Hers, joins hosts Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi) and Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern) for a wide-ranging conversation on building, scaling, and exiting one of the most ambitious DTC healthcare companies outside the US. 

Tim traces his path from political media buying in Australia to launching a multi-brand telehealth platform across multiple continents and the hard lessons in between. The conversation covers Tim’s “salary cap” approach to talent building, how Eucalyptus turned clinical outcomes into its most powerful marketing asset, and why he believes bold creative scripts remain the most underrated lever in consumer marketing.

“The right person does nothing but print money.” 

Sean Frank, Matt Bertulli, Curtis Matsko, and Katy Mimari get into a heated debate on the hardest roles to hire in ecommerce. Nobody agrees. And that’s exactly the point. 

The conversation tears through five make-or-break positions: (1) head of product, (2) head of growth, (3) head of Amazon, (4) creative strategist, and (5) head of influencer. Along the way, they expose why CMO is the shortest-tenured C-suite role for a reason, how a wedding photographer became a top-performing CMO, and what it takes to lock down great talent before they go build something on their own. 

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What happens in ecommerce when obesity is cured?

Sean Frank (CEO of Ridge) and Matt Bertulli (CEO of Pela Case x Lomi) dig into one of the biggest health-and-wellness trends they’ve seen in their careers: the GLP-1 wave and how it’s rewiring consumers. They cover who’s about to get crushed and who’s sitting on a gold mine.  

From the collapse of plus-size apparel and the slow death of junk food to the rise of fiber, longevity, and gut health, they map out the second and third-order effects. They also get into why ecommerce is still the fastest engine for CPG growth, and what Sean sees as the next ingredient trends worth betting on — colostrum to hair loss to mental health.  

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Could one bad supplier decision bring your entire ecommerce brand down?

Curtis Matsko (CEO, Portland Leather Goods) joins hosts Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi) and Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern) to pull back the curtain on one of the most misunderstood decisions in consumer goods: vertical integration. Curtis built North America’s largest leather bag manufacturer in Mexico not by grand design, but out of pure necessity.  

The conversation covers why owning your factory can 10x your business or burn millions of dollars, and how China’s manufacturing dominance is being driven by robotics, not just cheap labor. They unpack how the coming wave of AI-powered robotics could reshape fulfillment and production faster than most operators expect, and close with the one move each host credits with 10xing their own business.

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“Marketing’s job gets a lot easier when they have new products to sell.”

Curtis Matsko (CEO, Portland Leather Goods) and Katy Mimari (CEO, Caden Lane) join Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case and Lomi) to tackle one of our most requested topics. How to create and launch new ecommerce products.

Each host brings a unique perspective. Curtis runs a 280k square-foot production facility and releases fresh products three times a week. Katy built Caden Lane into a 5,000-SKU brand by staying obsessed with what moms want next. Matt’s approach is on-demand, sustainable manufacturing balanced with high-velocity releases for new variants, colors, and sizes.

Together, they unpack the art + data behind merchandising large catalogs, when to raise prices versus when to hold, and how to know when to kill a product before it quietly bleeds your business dry. Plus, Curtis reveals his secret (selling) weapon — an Insiders Facebook Group with +200k members.

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What happens when your bank promises you $20 million, strings you along for a year, and then rips it all away the same week you need it most?  

Sean Frank (CEO, Ridge) and Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi) sit down with Curtis Matsko (CEO, Portland Leather Goods) for a raw conversation about how ecommerce brands fund growth. 

Curtis shares one of the most gut-punch founder stories in Operators history. Wells Fargo promised him a $20–25M line of credit, demanded $2M back overnight, and nearly killed Portland Leather Goods at the exact moment he had ~$14M tied up in a brand expansion. He survived a year of not paying suppliers, negotiating week-to-week, and somehow came out more profitable than before.

The three dig into the real math of affording growth without investors. Why it’s “impossible, but you have to do it anyway,” how supplier relationships are the single best source of working capital leverage, and why the cash conversion cycle will break your business if your margins aren’t right.  

They close with one of the most important warnings for early operators — stop counting revenue, start counting what’s left. 

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