If last week’s newsletter was solace in our struggles, next week’s will be a battle cry by Sean Frank.
Today? Today is a celebration.
Not only because we hit a profound milestone. Not only because that milestone was marked by the most perfectly fitted guest possible — Harley Finkelstein.
It’s a celebration of the ecommerce community itself …
🥳 Mike Beckham on three lessons from Shopify’s president
🏆 Cody Plofker reveals your hidden “goldmine” + calculator
🤝 Five biggest headlines from this week in consumer news
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Cody Plofker
CEO, Jones Road Beauty
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The Hidden Goldmine You’re Overlooking
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Mike Beckham
CEO, Simple Modern
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Last week’s podcast with Shopify President Harley Finkelstein marked our 100th episode. I never would have expected us to make it to a hundred. Beyond the milestone, our conversation resonated deeply with my own experience.
Although we lead very different organizations, I’ve walked a similar path to what Harley described.
In particular, three lessons struck me.
- On Leadership
- On Change
- On Community
Leadership & Finding Your Own “Spiky Object”
Whether as a brand or an individual, finding your “spiky object” allows you to become best in the world at something you might not otherwise master.
We are not well-rounded generalists. We don’t look good in suits, nor do we want to.
We have the self-awareness to ask:
“What is my point? What is my superpower? What is the thing that I want to develop the most?”
Don’t become a riverstone. Don’t become more rounded. Become something very specific but incredibly valuable — valuable to the extent that anything that is not that would cause an increase in your opportunity cost.
Harley defined his as being the best storyteller in the world related to the domain of commerce technology.
Of course, spiky objects only come to the fore at a certain stage of growth.
As a startup, “getting s*** done” and being a generalist who produces value wherever you can are all that matter. When your business expands, you and your people become T-shaped — still possessing wide, horizontal skills but going deeper into one that delivers disproportionate value.
At scale, distinctiveness is what you need most. Ruthless specificity in one domain.
Let me give you two examples.
I’ve been CEO of Simple Modern for 10 years. Functionally, I’ve had five different jobs because my team’s needs define the role.
During the early days, I wore every hat imaginable — running sales meetings, building financial models, and managing our Amazon advertising. I developed strong competence in these areas that were pivotal to establishing success.
The most challenging leadership lesson I’ve learned is that reaching your full potential requires not using many of your strongest skills.
When stressed, my first inclination is to work on sales or build a spreadsheet model. This isn't what my team needs. They need vision, coaching, encouragement, and resources to fix the issues causing the stress.
The pitfall for leaders is taking refuge in skills where we have the most confidence. The five most toxic words a leader can say are: “I’ll just do it myself.”
Instead, I have had to identify and discipline myself to act in the service of developing others. My spike, my distinctiveness, my greatest efficiency … depends entirely on being a servant leader.
Being spiky also applies to the products you create.
Great consumer brands aren’t built on being marginally better; they're built on offering something unique. Sometimes, it is exceptional functionality. Sometimes, it is a unique aesthetic. People are happy to pay a premium for distinctive.
Change & Compounding Your Competencies
I resonated with Harley’s observation about longevity and context as well.
In our transient culture, the compounding competencies that come from extended periods with a team are severely underrated. It is one of the big cheat codes in business.
There is so much value when you combine someone who is in the pursuit of greatness or wants to be the best at what they do — very competent, but also has tenure.
This idea of having long-tenured leaders at your company and just general people at your company is really valuable because you can pattern recognize a lot easier when you’re looking at something over years.
When Harley described watching Brennan Loh develop from a 22-year-old intern into a 36-year-old running Shopify’s brand, I recognized that same sequence in our best team members.
People who have grown with us and understand both what we do … and why we do it.
At the same time, what Harley called “the law of ecology” — that a species must grow at an equal or greater rate than its environment to survive — creates the perfect tension.
Companies that survive aren’t necessarily the strongest or most well-funded. They are the most responsive to change.
If Simple Modern had followed the traditional retail playbook, our brand would simply not exist. Every gatekeeper thought our idea was stupid or that the market was already saturated with competition doing it well.
The beauty of platforms like Shopify and Amazon is that they allowed us to bypass those gatekeepers and get directly in front of customers. It turned out that once we could reach customers, we could win their business.
When it comes to longevity, I’ve observed that many businesses fail not because their core idea was flawed but because they couldn’t adapt quickly enough.
Businesses that have survived for decades have usually transformed themselves multiple times.
This is something we’re constantly thinking about — how do we maintain our core values while evolving our approach to match the changing landscape?
Community & Playing a Non-Zero-Sum Game
Perhaps the most powerful insight is how the ecommerce community differs from other industries. A unique abundance mindset exists among ecommerce entrepreneurs.
Instead of viewing everything as zero-sum, we recognize that when the category grows, everyone benefits. Even when our competitors do great marketing, they’re expanding demand — and that’s a win.
There is something so remarkable about this weird f****** community. It’s weird, right?
Even though we’re all operating at scale, there’s a little bit of a neighborhood vibe to this whole thing. There’s a community aspect that I don’t think exists outside.
I don’t know how it happened. I take no credit for it. But I’m really happy I’m in it because the version of this 20 years ago, 200 years ago, was incredibly zero-sum. If I did better, you did worse.
And I don’t think that exists in this community.
The ecommerce community has a unique quality of being competitive but collaborative.
Shopify grew from the grassroots up, built by people teaching themselves through hustle and determination. Usually, it works the opposite way — where big companies use something first before smaller customers adopt it.
What’s even more interesting is how we learn from each other’s mistakes. Every entrepreneur has stories of costly errors or failed initiatives. By sharing these openly, we help others avoid the same pitfalls. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel if someone else has already solved a problem.
There’s an empathy that comes with building something and understanding how hard the process is — a connection to anyone else who has put in the work.
This is why podcasts and newsletters like ours have been much more enjoyable than I anticipated.
The people who tune in are truly grateful and supportive. Rather than protecting trade secrets, we’re genuinely interested in sharing with each other. It reminds me of a quote …
“Never look down on someone when you hear them say a word wrong because it means they taught it to themselves.”
Thank you to Harley. Thank you to Shopify. And above all, thank you to you — our listeners, our readers, our community.
Harley on Operators: 100th Episode
Tecovasgate: Is This Growth Marketing?
BONUS EPISODE Never Waste a Crisis
Curated by the editor of CPG Wire, this week’s five biggest consumer-news headlines.
1. PepsiCo Buys Poppi for Nearly $2B: CNBC
It’s official. PepsiCo has acquired better-for-you soda brand Poppi for $1.95B (more than 3x sales). The deal includes $300M in anticipated tax benefits for a net price tag of $1.65B.
Lately, PepsiCo has been building up its better-for-you portfolio. Last year, it purchased Siete Foods for $1.2B and bought the remainder of Sabra for over $240M. Acquiring Poppi for $1.95B is PepsiCo’s biggest beverage deal since they bought Rockstar Energy for $3.8B in 2020.
2. SipMARGS Raises Funding and Relaunches: The Spirits Business
Canned cocktail brand SipMARGS relaunched with $3M in funding from Palm Tree Crew, Alix Earle, and a number of strategic backers like Michael Rubin, Brad Garlinghouse, and Steve Aoki. Partnering with Palm Tree Crew and Alix Earle — two media and nightlife powerhouses — ought to help SipMARGS cut through the noise.
The company also announced a new distribution agreement with Southern Glazer’s across the Eastern Seaboard.
3. Grove Collaborative Acquires 8Greens: Business Wire
Grove Collaborative, an eco-friendly consumer products company, acquired 8Greens for an undisclosed sum. Founded in 2015 by husband-and-wife team Dawn & Jamie Russell, 8Greens was an early mover in the daily greens supplements space.
The acquisition offers Grove Collaborative greater exposure to the fast-growing wellness space.
4. Feastables Delivered Massive Growth in 2024: Fast Company
Feastables, the fast-growing chocolate brand founded by YouTube prodigy MrBeast, generated over $250M in sales in 2024. The company also posted a profit of $20M. This is a particularly impressive feat, given that Feastables launched in January of 2022. For context, it took Celsius Holdings over 15 years to surpass $250M in annual sales.
5. Diageo Pulls Plug on Accelerator Arm: Global Drinks Intel
Global spirits giant Diageo is pulling out of its partnership with Distill Ventures, a bev alc brand accelerator that launched in 2013. This is a surprising move, considering that Diageo sourced a number of acquisitions — Mr. Black, Seedlip, Ritual Zero Proof, and Tipplesworth — via Distill Ventures.
(EXTRA) BONUS EPISODE
Can’t get enough of Tecovasgate?
Then, tune in to hear it straight from the horses’ mouths. Not a typo — plural. The man who kicked off the “growth marketing” controversy, Taylor Holiday, was joined by Tecova’s CMO, Krista Dalton. Far beyond the ad itself, it’s an incredible look behind the scenes at exactly what leading marketing at a +$200M DTC-to-retail behemoth looks like.
Oh, and if you haven’t … be sure to welcome Krista to the DTC community on X with a follow! Despite Mr. Holiday’s initial apprehension, she is very much a real person — with a very real profile picture now.
From the Editor: A Personal Note
You might not know this, but I got my start in ecommerce over a decade ago freelancing for Shopify. Soon after, I went full-time and began leading written content at Shopify Plus.
Long story, short …
I fell backward into the career of a lifetime.
I had no business writing about ecommerce when I started — let alone “enterprise” ecommerce.
Not only did Shopify take a chance on me, but it also invested in me, coached me, and connected me to the community that both Mike + Harley spoke about.
I’ll be forever grateful to Harley, Tobi, Tommy Walker, Shopify, and (above all) the community that welcomed me … and continues to let me call it my professional + personal home.
With thanks and anticipation,
Aaron Orendorff 🤓 Executive Editor
PS: The outpouring of requests to join the Operators Slack in response to last Monday’s newsletter was phenomenal. If you’re stuck in the pending-approval channel, please bear with us as we sort through everyone who applied to join!
Promotional disclaimer: Special thanks to Aftersell for sponsoring this week’s newsletter.
