- 1 hour 47 seconds12 Lessons These Ecommerce Founders Wish They’d Learned Sooner
What are the secrets to winning in ecommerce that nobody talks about?
Matthew Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi), Jason Panzer (President, HexClad), and Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern) reveal 12 lessons for anyone building a brand from the ground up. This is what they’d tell their younger selves if they ever got one more shot.
Secrets like why it takes a decade for your brand to earn its name and how walking away from weak products makes grit pay off. After that, cash gets a hard look because even strong margins can still starve your reserves. Also included are quick hits like customer obsession, copying your first product, hiring slow, and firing fast.
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2 September 2026, 1:00 pm - 46 minutes 22 secondsHow to Create a Product From Prototype to Launch: Operators Build (E2)
What does a real product development process look like when 9-figure operators are betting their own money?
Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern), Sean Frank (CEO, Ridge), and Curtis Christopherson (Chief Growth Officer, Ammortal) sit down mid-build on Winks, a family sleep supplement, to make product decisions. Go behind the scenes on flavor count, purchase order size, pricing, sourcing, and the supply chain mistake from Trevi that cost hundreds of thousands to fix.
This is an actual founder meeting. Recorded, unedited, and real money at stake.
Mike breaks down the MOQ math behind every multi-SKU decision. Sean argues for the smallest possible capital bet. Curtis brings the manufacturer’s-eye view. It ends with one flavor, $75K inventory budget, and a purchase order due in two weeks.
If you’re figuring out how to launch a new product from scratch, this episode was made for you.
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31 August 2026, 1:00 pm - 1 hour 36 minuteseBay Resellers to 14M Pairs of Underwear: Shinesty’s Co-Founders
How did two guys flipping “junk” build a brand that’s sold 14M pairs of underwear?
Jens Nicolaysen and Chris White (Co-Founders, Shinesty) join Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela & Lomi) and Katy Mimiari (CEO, Caden Lane) to unpack how their eBay account grew into Shinesty. The secret isn’t strategy. It’s personality.
They trace the jump from estate sales to beloved online retailer. One midnight email changed everything overnight. Fart blocking underwear and deviled egg prints became fan favorites. It’s proof that irreverent marketing keeps ecommerce customers opening every message.
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27 August 2026, 1:00 pm - 1 hour 5 minutes10 Best AI Use Cases for Ecommerce in 2026: Ranked by CEOs
Sean Frank (CEO, Ridge), Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi), Jason Panzer (President, HexClad), and Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern) rank the ten highest impact ways ecommerce brands are using AI in 2026. The four disagree loudly before landing on a group ranking none of them expected going in.
Sean says AI chatbots now handle nearly every routine support ticket. Mike takes it further with a model that predicts each customer’s next purchase and updates hourly.The pattern repeats in content, where generative AI now handles static images at Ridge and Pela for a fraction of the old cost.
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26 August 2026, 1:00 pm - 1 hour 18 minutesEvery Step to Start an Ecommerce Business Revealed: Operators Build (E1)
“We’ve done it before. Can we do it again?”
Five executives put half a million dollars on the line to start a new ecommerce brand. Operators Build follows every step, in public. You get the math, the disagreements, and the cost of launching an online business in 2026.
This is not dropshipping. We bought inventory, formed an LLC, and registered our domain name: https://getwinks.com The plan? Shopify and paid social (Meta) with online marketplaces like Amazon and new channels like TikTok added as the numbers earn it.
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Curtis covers the category and the year they spent on the product + inventory management (sourcing, co-manufacturer, 3PL). Sean frames subscriptions and the CAC goal. Cody runs email and social-media marketing with AI to keep OpEx low. Mike pushes for constraints while Matt argues for high conviction, one big bet.
24 August 2026, 1:00 pm - 1 hour 13 minutesBuilding Solo Past $1M in Only Year One: Help an Operator Out
Help an Operator Out (HAOO) is a series where real business owners join the podcast with live questions. In this episode, Christopher Francis (Founder & CEO, Home Plunge) brings the hardest problem in year one: growing without doing every job himself. He turned a personal need into a $1.4 million business in a year and a half.
The conversation covers pricing and offer strategy. It also gets into Amazon, TikTok Shop affiliates, and AI support. Sean pushes for a sale structure built for a high-consideration purchase. Mike frames the manual support work as margin compression Christopher isn’t tracking. It’s the same problems most seven-figure founders eventually face.
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19 August 2026, 1:00 pm - 1 hour 41 minutesHow Magic Mind Turned a Spreadsheet Into National Retail Domination
“Everyone who said I was too early, they got on my investor updates.”
Can product market fit be created, or can you only position yourself to catch it?
William Hicks (Co-Founder & CEO, Magic Mind) joins Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern) and Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi) to unpack how a Silicon Valley spreadsheet of nootropics became a national retail brand. This episode gets into the real mechanics of product market fit at scale.
Raising a seed round took dozens of rejections. Hicks kept those investor relationships warm for years afterward. From there, DTC gave way to national retail distribution. Merchandising discipline mattered more than ad spend. Subscription retention gets a breakdown too, along with the honest math behind CAC payback and lifetime value.
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13 August 2026, 1:00 pm - 49 minutes 32 secondsWhy People Buy: A Practical Guide to Consumer Behavior in Ecommerce
“People buy things to fill gaps in their life.”
Sean Frank (CEO, Ridge) and Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi) unpack consumer behavior in ecommerce. They cover the emotional triggers behind buying, the offers that convert, and the buying journeys online shopping takes today. The real driver of your marketing strategies is the offer itself, not the checkout experience.
People buy out of convenience, fear of loss, identity, and scarcity … long before logic enters the picture. Ridge’s expansion from wallets into rings shows how one brand layered new customer angles onto a single product. Influencer partnerships, social media, user-generated content (UGC), and paid ads each serve a different role in building trust.
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12 August 2026, 1:00 pm - 59 minutes 37 secondsHow Ecommerce Founders Get Rich: Exits, Dividends, Debt & Salary
What are the five ways ecommerce owners actually get paid?
Sean Frank (CEO, Ridge), Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi), Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern), and Curtis Mastko (CEO, Portland Leather Goods) break down five real ways ecommerce operators get paid. Each path trades speed for risk, and none of them is easy money.
Valuation sets the ceiling, and buyers lean on EBITDA multiples to get there. Distributions are where most operators get paid, if they resist reinvesting too much. Debt speeds that timeline up, though it comes loaded with risk. The episode ends on salary, pitting one founder’s restraint against another’s ambition.
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5 August 2026, 1:00 pm - 1 hour 22 minutesInside the Affiliate Marketing Strategy Behind BK Beauty’s Growth
“We ended up selling twenty-two thousand units that day.”
How did two founders build a multi-million-dollar brush brand without outside investors?
Lisa Jauregui and Paul Jauregui, Co-Founders of BK Beauty, join Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case and Lomi) and Katy Mimiari (CEO, Caden Lane) to break down the affiliate marketing strategy that took a makeup brush brand from a living room operation to millions in sales. No outside funding. No paid influencer deals.
Lisa built a beauty audience on YouTube for five years before BK Beauty launched. A brand focused entirely on brushes for years before expanding into new categories. That focus led the brand to handle twenty two thousand orders in a single day, all fulfilled in house. The conversation covers creator tiers inside TikTok Shop, and why margin matters more than almost anything else in ecommerce.
Operators Titans is brought to you by AppLovin and Fulfil.
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30 July 2026, 1:00 pm - 47 minutes 39 secondsHow to Build a $100M Brand: 8 Rules from Leaders Who Did
“The scale is not going to fix your problems.”
What separates a hundred million dollar ecommerce brand from the rest?
Sean Frank (CEO, Ridge), Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi), Jason Panzer (President, HexClad), and Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern) break down the eight rules to build a hundred million dollar ecommerce brand in 2026. These are not theories: each host has built a brand at this exact scale.
Mike breaks down why Trevi chased profitable unit economics for a year before scaling. Sean calls reorder revenue the ultimate cheat code, and explains why he built Ridge around chasing it. Jason closes on hiring rigor, where a LinkedIn check now decides every offer.
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