🥵 Burnout + How to Launch Products


We interrupt your regularly scheduled stack to bring you something …

 Timely, practical, and heartfelt 

❤️‍🔥 Panagiota Hatzis (VP at HexClad) 5 ways + 10 tactics to tackle Q4 burnout

🚀 Mike Beckham on how to launch new products in new verticals — 6 steps

👻 Top-5 stories from this week’s news with summaries and a spooky bonus


Panagiota Hatzis

VP of HR, HexClad

Five Ways + 10 Tactics to Address Burnout Amid Q4

Long hours. High expectations.

Constant monitoring of all platforms to see if your ads are sending it. Anticipating customer service inquiries and working with your new 3PL to make sure it’s boxing your product to your new packing standards.

In short, Q4 is a lot.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed at work, you’re not alone.

The last three months of the year are prime time for burnout. As some of the most eager and entrepreneurial people I’ve ever worked with, the stress is inevitable.

But that doesn’t mean it has to get the better of you. Here are 5 ways + 10 tactics to get a grip on burnout in Q4 …

 1. Surrender 

Accept that the demands of Q4 in ecommerce are high and will impact your schedule. That’s not specific to your company, that’s specific to working in this industry.

The mental shift here matters.

🚫 Say no if you think saying yes to something is going to stress you out more while distracting from your KPIs. Avoid the guilt of canceling at the last minute up front.

🏝️ Time off doesn’t happen magically. Plan ahead for time off in Q1 as something to look forward to. For leaders, proactively encourage your team to do the same.

 2. Deal 

Dealing with your stress is different than dealing with the thing that causes your stress. Read that again.

Take time to address what is stressing you out, and then find 20 minutes of physical activity to help close the stress cycle.

☯️ Stress is binary. You have to process it both physically (the key time is 20 minutes) and psychologically — like asking for help when you need it.

🧠 If you’re thinking about work over the weekend, your brain literally cancels your rest … from being restful. Recite the ABCs to distract your mind. Seriously.

 3. Acknowledge 

Burnout isn’t limited to work. You can feel burned out from parenting, coaching, volunteering, and working.

Make sure you’re considering all the contributing stressors to your life — in and out of work.

💪🏽 Take a percentage inventory of how much each main area of your life is “stressing you out.” Be honest about it and reflect on how you can flex up or down.

🔟 If you’re in a relationship, rate how stressful your day was on a scale of 1–10. The person with the lowest number helps carry the weight; highest gets a pass.

 4. Both/And 

Experiencing burnout doesn’t necessarily mean you hate your job (or whatever it is causing you stress). You can be burned out and love what you do.

Don’t overthink it or place too much weight on any one aspect of how you’re feeling.

🤗 Embrace the both/and perspective on life. It can change how you view anything and everything. Many things can be true at the same time, and that’s okay.

✅ Write down the 3–5 things that give you life the most. Then, find an accountability partner to make sure you fit in at least one of them once a week.

 5. It’s Okay 

Stress isn’t necessarily a bad thing! Being stressed is healthier than staying in your comfort zone. Prolonged stress unaddressed over a long course of time is unhealthy.

More than just okay, stress is unavoidable. What matters is finding ways to deal with it head-on.

🆚 Reframe how you’re thinking of stress. Instead of “bad” and lasting forever, define it as natural and temporary. How you talk about it to others and yourself matters.

🫀 Pay attention to your body. Like they say — it keeps the score. Take little breaks for self-care during the busy season and plan for bigger ones afterward.

Burnout isn’t something you can avoid in totality. Stress is bound to happen. Ambition almost guarantees it.

If nothing else, accept it.

As a leader, pick one or two tactics (the emoji paragraphs) to focus on with your team each week. If you’re interested, here are some additional resources:

  • Burnout (book + workbook) by Emily & Amelia Nagoski, also has a PDF for the workplace
  • Hooky Wellness quiz takes 5 minutes + ends with personalized recommendations
  • Anything from Brene Brown,​ her podcast with the Nagoski twins is the perfect place to start

Or come listen to me speak more on this topic next Monday at the not-too-late Black Friday panel. Some of the best DTC brands and leaders will be presenting there, too!


THE FEED


The Pro’s and Con’s of Being a CEO

Reza Khadjavi, Motion Founder, on Building a Creative-first Approach to DTC Marketing


Mike Beckham

President, Simple Modern

At Simple Modern, we have been working to expand into a new product vertical we believe can significantly alter the trajectory of the business.

As we move into launch mode, we’ve gone through the following steps to set ourselves up for success …

1️⃣ Pick an asymmetric opportunity

Consumer products have a lot of downsides as a business model, but one of the major upsides is that successful products are incredibly asymmetric.

They can easily be 100x or 1000x returns over time.

Look for opportunities that provide this kind of explosive upside and prioritize them when you can.

2️⃣ Nail the product & production

It does not matter how well you do anything else with a launch … if the product is a dud.

We’ve found that the most successful way to develop a great product is to work with a manufacturer that supplies successful players in the vertical you wish to enter.

In this case, we found a partner who already has two companies doing over $50M run rates in the space we’re entering.

3️⃣ Gather customer feedback

The internet makes it easier than ever before to understand what customers want. We have used surveys and focus groups to understand more about the product category.

The worst mistakes we’ve made have always been when we decided to move decisively in a new direction without making sure it was what our customers wanted.

Business is a pretty simple game.

You serve customers; they pay you for it. Don’t get ahead of yourself when launching a new product.

Talk to customers and potential customers to ensure you are funneling your efforts into an area that excites them.

4️⃣ Appoint a single-threaded leader

Organizations will always prioritize the cash cow.

This focus can prevent new and disruptive growth paths from ever growing into their potential.

We set this new venture up as a subsidiary of Simple Modern, but we created a new CEO position for this business unit.

It isn’t always necessary to go to this extreme, but at a certain scale you need at least one person who is completely focused on the success of the new venture.

5️⃣ Plot the path to potential victory

It is essential that you have a plan for success that involves more than hope and “good marketing.”

You should be able to point to …

Strategic and structural advantages that will allow you to carve out a piece of the market.

We feel confident in this case that our distribution relationships, existing brand equity, and number of units sold each year give us a clear advantage over competitors in this new market.

In addition, you should understand your sales channel plan and have a clear vision of how you get your first 1,000 customers in your primary channel.

6️⃣ Live with the results

Nothing is guaranteed.

You can do all the above steps and still have a product that fails to achieve traction.

But the list above helps you to position yourself for success, and that’s all you can ask for when trying something new.


THE TRENDS

This week’s top-five trending news stories, curated by the editor of CPG Wire


1. Keurig Dr Pepper Bets on GHOST: Press Release

Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP) is buying a 60% stake in energy drink + cereal brand GHOST for $990M.

KDP will purchase the remaining 40% in 2028. Founded in 2016 by Dan Lourenco and Ryan Hughes, GHOST’s net sales have more than quadrupled over the past three years. Along with C4 Energy, KDP now has a formidable energy drink portfolio.

 BONUS  👻 Scary Good Breakdown

Drew Fallon — former CFO at DTC heavyweight Mad Rabbit and founder of IRIS (an ecommerce-first financial platform) — broke down the entire KDP x GHOST deal in his usual data-heavy, long-form, fiscally-savvy brilliance.

2. BelliWelli Grabs $10M: WWD

Gut-focused wellness brand BelliWelli raised $10M in Series B funding from Invus, an existing investor. Launched in 2020, it’s known best for probiotic nutrition bars & fiber supplements.

3. Habiza Reveals Colorful Brand Refresh: Twitter

LA-based hummus brand Habiza dropped a fantastic brand refresh. It added bold colors and focused on communicating differentiators: clean ingredients + unique flavors.

4. J.M. Smucker Sells Voortman for $305M: Food Dive

The owner of Uncrustables is selling Voortman Bakery to Second Nature Brands for $305M in cash. J.M. Smucker acquired Voortman last year as part of its $5.6B deal for Hostess.

5. REOME Raises $1.4M: BeautyMatter

UK-based prestige beauty brand REOME raised $1.4M in fresh funding from Rianta Capital. Joanna Ellner, a beauty editor and brand consultant, launched REOME in 2023.


A WARNING

Next week, we’ll resume our tech + vendor series.

Ridge‘s CEO, Sean Frank, will be taking over the newsletter. If you haven’t experienced him before (especially on X), please consider this a warning …

Sean does not pull his punches. Nor is he “safe” for work.

He is, however, a brilliant operator. And a genuinely caring human who pours himself out to help others.

There will be profanity. There will be raw reviews + wildly valuable recommendations. There will be blood.

And it’ll end with exactly what Sean would do if he were starting over today.

With thanks and anticipation,
Aaron Orendorff (Executive Editor)


Operators Newsletter

Get weekly guidance from the world’s greatest nine-figure executives, ecommerce marketers, and DTC-content creators. The minds behind Ridge, HexClad, Simple Modern, Lomi, Pela Case, Jones Road Beauty & more — curated by Aaron Orendorff.

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