- 1 hour 11 minutesWhy Founders Have to Become Their Own Best Marketer
Help an Operator Out (HAOO) is a series where real business owners join the podcast with live questions. In this episode, Elaine Tran (Founder & CEO, Dippin’ Daisy’s) brings the hardest problem in owning a factory: keeping the lines running without drowning in inventory.
The conversation covers owning a factory versus buying from suppliers, managing excess off-season capacity, and launching a new category without it flopping. Sean makes the case that contract manufacturing for other brands can keep the lines running without adding to her own glut. And everyone lands on the same fix nobody’s using: better ecommerce marketing + merchandising.
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22 July 2026, 1:00 pm - 1 hour 11 minutes$450M, 6 Brands & 4 Countries: Why Sunil Agrawal Refuses to Stop
“I feel this is bigger than dot com.”
How does a $450 million publicly traded jewelry brand build a live shopping empire that predates TikTok by nearly two decades?
Sunil Agrawal (Founder, ShopLC & VGL Group) sits down with Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case and Lomi) and Katy Mimari (CEO, Caden Lane) to pull back the curtain on 46 years of building one of the most vertically integrated businesses in the world. He started as a gemstone lapidary and grew six retail brands without ever once considering an exit.
Sunil runs a live shopping operation most DTC operators have never seen. He launches 100 new products every day. His top customers generate $20,000 in lifetime value. He fired his robots when the ROI math didn’t hold. He moved four brands to Shopify in five months because AI did most of the coding. And he still measures the business not in dollars but in meals delivered.
Operators Titans is brought to you by AppLovin and Fulfil.
Fulfil: The ERP built specifically for DTC and ecommerce brands, integrated with over 400 3PLs so your inventory, purchasing, and financials never fall out of sync. Ridge runs its entire operation on it. See why here: https://9ops.co/fulfil
AppLovin: Get access to the Operators channel expansion playbook, online masterclass, and up to $5k in ad credits here: https://www.9operators.com/paid-growth. Or skip the waitlist and launch your ads today with our Operators-exclusive link: http://applovin.com/9operators.
16 July 2026, 1:00 pm - 1 hour 17 minutesRoman Khan: The Ecommerce Logistics Play Worth $10 Billion
“If someone can do the same revenue in 12 hours, basically out of nowhere, it does lower the value of brands.”
What does the collapse of traditional brand equity mean for founders still building toward an exit?
Roman Khan (Co-Founder & President, Peak21) joins Sean Frank (CEO, Ridge) and Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case and Lomi) to make one uncomfortable argument: the playbook for building and buying ecommerce brands is broken, and most founders haven’t figured that out yet. After three years acquiring DTC businesses, Roman stopped. The reason cuts to the heart of where dropshipping, ecommerce logistics, and brand valuation are all heading.
His Hong Kong summit surfaced the shift in real time: Meta partnership ads back at the top of the stack, Applovin minting operators spending six figures a day, and TikTok-first brands doing $12M months on skeleton crews. The conversation covers why dropshipping from China is nowhere near dead, how Quince is building the AWS of ecommerce logistics, and the one thing Roman tells every founder under $100M in revenue: take out dividends, stop waiting for a buyer, and get honest about what your company is worth.
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15 July 2026, 1:00 pm - 1 hour 13 minutesHelp an Operator Out: 8-Figure Dog Brand That Needs a New Growth
"You will not be happier at nine figures. I’ll just tell you that right now."
What does an operator do after building an 8-figure brand entirely on one dog breed?
Help an Operator Out (HAOO) is a new series where real business owners join the podcast with live questions. In this episode, Garrett Yamasaki (Founder & CEO, We Love Doodles) brings his crossroads: a bootstrapped, Amazon-heavy pet brand that crossed eight figures and needs to decide whether to go deeper in its niche or wider into new dog breeds. The answer is less obvious than it sounds.
The conversation covers capital allocation, the difference between product-channel fit versus product-market fit, and why consumables change the LTV math entirely. Mike makes the case that moated niche distribution builds more durable enterprise value than any paid channel. And everyone lands on the same uncomfortable truth. The business you already built is the one most worth protecting.
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8 July 2026, 1:00 pm - 1 hour 36 minutes100% Growth for 8 Years: IQBAR’s Will Nitze & Jess Greenwood
“You are not trying if you’re not getting sued.”
How did IQBAR go from a $90k Kickstarter to a nine-figure retail, DTC, and Amazon giant?
Will Nitze (Founder & CEO) and Jessica Greenwood (CMO) join Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi) and Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern). This is the product launch strategy and CPG marketing playbook they wish existed when they started.
Will and Jessica detail their early tactics and walk through every funding round: from $625K at a $4M valuation to $5.5M at $50M. They doubled revenue every year for eight years, kept the team at 15 people, and never dropped below 50% ownership. Mike and Matt close on what killed dozens of competing bar brands in 2022 and why IQ BAR survived.
Operators Titans is brought to you by AppLovin.
Get access to the Operators channel expansion playbook, online masterclass, and up to $5k in ad credits here: https://www.9operators.com/paid-growth. Or launch your ads today with our exclusive link: http://applovin.com/9operators.2 July 2026, 1:00 pm - 1 hour 16 minutesOpening Retail Stores vs. Going Wholesale: What the Numbers Say
Should you open your own stores, or let the big retailers do the heavy lifting?
Curtis Matsko (CEO, Portland Leather Goods), Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi), and Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern) go head to head on one of the biggest channel decisions a consumer brand will face.
Curtis went from a spite-signed lease to 16 owned stores, while Mike turned a $9 million Sam’s Club bet into 10,000 wholesale doors. This episode breaks down these two different paths and what each model actually costs you in competency, capital, and control, why the wrong channel for your product category is almost impossible to recover from, and what private equity is really looking for when they come knocking on an omnichannel brand.
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1 July 2026, 1:00 pm - 1 hour 8 minutesOur 2026 Ecommerce Audit: Wins, Mistakes, Lessons & What’s Next
“Whoever can spend the most money is going to win.”
Sean Frank (CEO, Ridge), Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi), Jason Panzer (President, HexClad), and Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern) audit the first half of 2026. The focus is a sound ecommerce growth strategy for Q3 and Q4. No guests, no fluff. Just what worked, what blew up, and where they’re placing their bets.
Amazon leads the conversation, with Sean up over 100% year over year on full assortment parity and Mike beating Liquid IV on a $4 blended CAC. Wholesale gets a harder look, with Sean holding a big-three PO and an 18-month runway to shelf. The group then pulls apart margin profile as a competitive weapon, why most consumable brands are quietly heading toward a reckoning, and what it takes to set a spending floor competitors cannot match.
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24 June 2026, 1:00 pm - 1 hour 35 minutesHow a $1.5B Pet Brand Wins at Ecommerce Marketing: Whisker’s CEO
“We built our iPhone before we built our Apple.”
How do you scale a hardware brand from $7M to $1.5B without chasing cheap CPMs?
Jacob Zuppke (CEO, Whisker) joins Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi) and Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern) to break down how a self-cleaning litter box company became a $1.5B brand through US manufacturing, big creative swings, and a deliberate omnichannel strategy.
Jacob breaks down the marketing that fueled a decade of growth, including how TV outperformed Meta for years, and why Whisker held off Amazon until branded search volume made the case impossible to ignore. He also gets into the Whisker app, which logs 4.7 million cat weigh-ins per day, and why that software layer is where the brand’s omnichannel strategy gets its deepest competitive teeth.
Operators Titans is brought to you by AppLovin.
Get access to the Operators channel expansion playbook, online masterclass, and up to $5k in ad credits here: https://www.9operators.com/paid-growth. Or launch your ads today with our exclusive link: http://applovin.com/9operators.18 June 2026, 1:00 pm - 1 hour 8 minutesHow Ridge’s Annual Revenue Hit +$250M & Sean Became a Dad
What does Ridge’s annual revenue growth 2025–2026 look like when you launch three new categories at once?
Sean Frank (CEO, Ridge) joins Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi) and Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern) to get into what it looks like when a founder goes all-in on ecommerce product expansion while navigating new fatherhood, a tough M&A market, and a company that had to reinvent its growth story.
Sean breaks down the Shark Ninja model. Ship fast, cut losers, never wait on a five-year roadmap. He walks through what made the Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) partnership succeed where a $4 million celebrity deal would have failed. Finally, he gets candid about fatherhood and the DTC acquisition market, where over 70% of deals since 2022 drew zero bids.
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17 June 2026, 1:00 pm - 1 hour 14 minutesHow to Pick a 3PL Without Getting Burned: Red Flags, Green Flags
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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10 June 2026, 11:00 am - 1 hour 29 minutesFrom $10K Losses a Day to an L Catterton Deal: Zach Stuck’s Full Story
“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.
Operators Titans is brought to you by AppLovin.
Get access to the Operators channel expansion playbook, online masterclass, and up to $5k in ad credits here: https://www.9operators.com/paid-growth. Or launch your ads today with our exclusive link: http://applovin.com/9operators.4 June 2026, 1:00 pm - More Episodes? Get the App