Stop. Keep. Double. Start.

Those four words could reshape your entire year. The catch?

Only if you set aside time to not just read this email … but actually apply it.

We’re already 5.4% through 2025.

Let’s not waste a second ↓

📊 Connor Rolain with a thank-you-page (profit) calculator

🤝 Mike Beckham reveals four questions to reshape 2025

📅 Matthew Bertulli on creating all-year marketing moments

Along with this week’s biggest consumer headlines and executive summaries.

Connor Rolain

HexClad, Head of Growth

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Mike Beckham

CEO, Simple Modern

Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in a series centered on two questions we put to each Operator.

What’s your biggest lesson from 2024? And your biggest strategy for the year ahead?

On January 1st, 2025 (New Year’s Day), I set aside a few hours to reflect and plan. It’s a structured review that starts with my calendar from the previous year.

I take note of all the significant events — personal and professional. I evaluate where I invested my time. Then, I categorize all of last year’s activities into four questions.

What do I want to …

Stop doing?
Keep doing?
Double down?
Start doing?

This process unearths my behaviors from the past I want to continue pursuing and the new ones that I need to add.

Keep (2024): Culture & Relationships

The behavior I know I want to carry forward is a focus on culture and relationships. Why? Because …

Business is primarily about your ability to attract, manage, and motivate people to your cause.

The best people will usually have a surplus of opportunities. If your organization’s value proposition begins and ends with compensation, then you’re going to have a difficult time adding the best talent. And an even harder time keeping them.

To hire the best, you need a distinctive value proposition others cannot match. You want to have the best overall compensation package that is a bundling of several different types of value.

Here are some examples that we have aggregated in our work culture …

Relationships: Working with people you genuinely trust, respect, and enjoy.
Mission: Having a purpose to the work that is bigger than “Make the profits go up.”
Development: Helping people build and grow in skills that increase their future earning potential.
Ownership: Providing everyone at least some equity-like upside through our ESOP program.
Transparency: Sharing company numbers intentionally + the thought process behind decisions.

What’s more, I’ve learned my enjoyment of work is highly impacted by the people I work with.

When it comes to job satisfaction, who we work with is often more important than what we do.

I feel fortunate to run a company with a clear understanding of the culture we were trying to build from day one. That gave us clarity on the type of person who fits with Simple Modern.

The result is a team that’s happy, productive, and aligned. I don’t take that for granted, and I know that I will need to keep that a priority. The moment I start to assume our culture will continue to be healthy is when things start to go sideways.

As I like to say, “Culture is like a garden. It only thrives if everyone picks the weeds, everyone fertilizes the soil, and everyone waters the plants.”

Start (2025): Qualitative Judgement

The new behavior I want to focus on making important business decisions based on the qualitative judgments of our team.

One of Simple Modern’s biggest strengths in the early days was our ability to use data to understand trends we could capitalize on. It has served the company well for almost ten years.

We used quantitative judgments to identify channel and product opportunities that were white spaces in a competitive market.

But, we are entering a period where we cannot go to the next level exclusively by following the data. We now have to outgrow some of the habits that were foundational to our success in the first decade.

The harshest thing I can say is that we have not been doing a good enough job of being distinctive.

We are in a very competitive market that has become fashion-oriented. If we aren’t putting forth a compelling and differentiated product, then we won’t continue our torrid growth.

We want to be at the front of the next wave in our category, so we are going to trust our judgment and make moves before it is obvious in the data.

Sometimes, we will be wrong — I’m learning to be okay with that. The beauty of a founder-led and owned business is that we have the latitude to try things that might not work out.

I’m excited to use the scale and capital we’ve amassed to launch into the second decade of building Simple Modern.

I’ll end with an observation and encouragement.

I was recently in Palm Springs for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year ceremony. Many great consumer brands were there — like Kitsch, Dude Wipes, and Caden Lane.

As I met the other founders up for the award, one of the things I noticed was that most of the brands were 8-12 years old.

It reminded me that it takes around a decade to build something significant in consumer.

This is a race that is won through persistent excellence. Let’s all use 2025 to continue building exceptional businesses.

THE FEED

Passport Acquires Brand Access

Our 2025 DTC Predictions Review

Matthew Bertulli

CEO, Lomi & Pela Case

Inventing Moments This Year, Next Year & Every Year

Most consumer categories have a natural seasonality to them, a moment in time when there are a lot of consumers “in-market” for that product.

Facebook’s ad platform is very good at finding these people in those moments. We all know the obvious one: Black Friday.

But what happens when you’re out of seasonality? How do you create demand as a brand? How can you give the consumer a reason to buy … right now?

We spoke about this briefly on a recent podcast.

It’s the reason Sean does Ridge’s sweepstakes in September — historically, a terrible month for them (for most).

After the recording, I was talking with my head of marketing for Pela. This episode kind of haunted me.

Have we done a good enough job coming up with reasons to buy when the consumer isn’t naturally in-market?

Answer: I don’t think so.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think you can turn every month into November + December.

But why can’t we raise the ceiling on slower months? Why do we need to just take the slowdown as something that’s immovable?

There’s so many ways to do this.

One thing Pela has done is tap into global events. Things like World Ocean Day or Plastic Free July.

These aren’t your usual gifting holidays.

They’re moments celebrated by people around the world that we can show up for and be part of the conversation.

Pela has a design-driven product, so we can trend-jack more easily than most consumer goods. Your product doesn’t need to change to meet these events. You can also create campaigns that are content + story first vs. product-first.

There are 12 months in the year.

Two of them are taken care of for you. July has the 4th and Prime Day (participate or ignore). That’s one more down.

May has Memorial Day; use it. September has Labor Day; go after it. January is a banger if you’re in health. There’s Valentine’s Day (February), Mother’s Day (May), and Father’s Day (June).

For many of us, more than half the year already has events where the consumer is conditioned to spend.

That feels less intimidating of a problem to solve.

The Trends

Curated by the editor of CPG Wire, this week’s five biggest consumer-news headlines.

1. Spindrift Sells Majority Stake to Gryphon: Food Dive

San Francisco-based Gryphon Investors acquired a majority stake in Spindrift, a popular sparkling water brand that launched in 2010. Bill Creelman, Spindrift’s founder & current CEO, will retain significant equity and transition to the role of Chairman.

Replacing Creelman as CEO is Dave Burwick, a beverage industry veteran and the former CEO of Peet’s Coffee and The Boston Beer Company.

2. Proper Good Secures Funding: PR Newswire

Proper Good, an Austin-based purveyor of ready-to-eat meals, raised $2.6M in equity funding from existing investors and board members. Previous investors in Proper Good include YETI Capital, The Artisan Group, and Doug Bouton — the co-founder of Halo Top. Proper Good is best known for its soup line, but it also sells oats and pasta.

3. Bridges Acquires KT Tape: Athletech News

KT Tape has been acquired by Bridges Consumer Healthcare, a consumer healthcare platform comprised of nine OTC and personal care brands. Founded in 2008 and based in Fork, Utah — KT Tape is a leader in the kinesiology tape category. It partnered with Palladin Consumer Retail Partners in 2014.

4. AG1 Partners With True Food Kitchen: LinkedIn

AG1 announced a new partnership with True Food Kitchen, the better-for-you restaurant chain with 45 locations across the U.S. From January through March, two AG1-powered beverages will be available chainwide at True Food Kitchen. AG1 has been testing a lot of interesting channels lately.

5. Unilever Optimizes Brand Portfolio: Yahoo Finance

In addition to selling Unox and Zwan in late December, Unilever just divested its retail pasta sauce range in Germany. Unilever has been actively divesting non-core food brands to focus on higher-priority ones. These divestment sprees oftentimes coincide with buying sprees, so look out for Unilever to acquire a scaled food brand or two in 2025.

Interested in sharing your own biggest lesson + biggest strategy? We’ve got one open spot left in this series!

Hit reply and let me know. As always, Operators only.

With thanks and anticipation,
Aaron Orendorff 🤓 Executive Editor