🤐 Sam Parr pulls back the curtain on what happens after founders sell

🤖 Matthew Bertulli shares six AI use cases he’s using to drive financial impact

📊 Connor + Sean Frank reveal the one and only metric “that really matters”

💰 Connor MacDonald drops five not-too-late tips for your Prime Day plans

As well as the five biggest headlines from this week in consumer news, with executive summaries and links.

Aaron Orendorff Executive Editor

Rich or Dead? The Truth About Exits

Ever wonder what founders actually do after they sell a company? Or what they wish someone had told them before?

To find out …

And we got our hands on an exclusive copy of the report they normally reserve for members only. It highlights purchases, regrets, and the biggest misconceptions that trip up founders.

One founder bought houses on an island and put everything into Solana. Others went straight for McLarens and Aston Martins. An agency owner threw out everything and lived in Airbnbs.

47% of founders with earnouts got less money than expected. Founders who sold at “perfect market timing” had the highest regret rates. And 13% didn’t make any major purchases at all.

Most of these conversations don’t happen publicly. They happen behind closed doors and in group chats.

Grab it before it goes exclusive again …

Matthew Bertulli CEO, Pela x Lomi

“What Are You Using AI For?”

This might be the most popular question I’m getting right now. From friends, email subscribers, and even the founders I work with one-on-one to build their brands.

About a month ago, we hosted an Operators meetup in LA at the Hexclad HQ. We had 30+ brands come out and spend half a day with us. We talked about the state of marketing, opening physical stores, and (of course) AI.

No question, AI was the topic everyone was most interested in. I have a bunch of takeaways from my time spent with these world-class leaders, but (above all else) it’s this.

Which brings me to today’s email.

What are some easy wins for brands right now with AI? Where is AI production-ready? Where can you and your team use it to generate actual value for your business?

To answer these questions, I thought it best to provide some examples from my own company and some of the things I’m seeing other brands do.

I’m going to give you six examples.

Each of which is driving meaningful financial impact on our businesses today.

Social Content Trends

I’m not talking about mining social media platforms for trends. I’m talking about quickly hijacking them by using AI to make your own version of something trending.

From talking baby podcasters to your product as a toy, AI is taking over social media and there are opportunities weekly to easily jump into the stream.

Selling anything usually means solving the distribution problem. How do I reach people? Social media is a firehose that never stops pumping. AI is helping us tap into the stream.

Brand Voice

This is one of my favorites.

You can use ChatGPT or Claude to train AI to write consistent copy in your desired brand voice.

Gone are the days where different people in the company all wrote copy a little differently. You used to need big, slow-to-make brand books to establish brand voice so that everyone in the company represented the brand accurately.

Ideation: Packaging, Ads, & More

I’m using this regularly. I can now use AI models to quickly produce visuals that help me explain ideas.

From packaging to ad creative angles, it’s never been easier to communicate an idea beyond just your words.

Use the tools to visualize concepts that you can then pass on to someone else to refine and polish. This has dramatically sped up our ability to go from concept to production-ready.

Category Expansion Research

Deep Research by ChatGPT is a real gift.

I’ve been using it to do market research on potential new product categories for our brands. I’m even using it to help me better understand brands we are looking to acquire.

It used to be very expensive to get this kind of work done, often requiring you to hire outside consultants. Is Deep Research perfect? No. Will it get you 80% of what you need? Yes.

Save the $50k fancy report from a consultant and just get the 80% result. It’s probably got everything you need to take action.

Influencer Outreach

We’re working on this in our company, but I’ve also seen some impressive demos from other startups that are tackling this problem.

It’s very human-time intensive to identify, reach out, and negotiate product gifting deals with influencers.

Trust me, we gift hundreds of Pela Cases every month to creators all over the world. It isn’t a cheap program to run because of the human labor.

AI will help you with this.

Turning Marketing Briefs to Usable Assets

Our brand, Pela Case, drops new designs every week.

Because of the various phones they need to fit, that’s 50-100 new products (SKUs) added to our site every week.

Think about the copy, images, and videos we need to pull this off. Even though each drop is a “collection,” we still need to produce a lot of assets.

My team loves to design products. We want to focus there.

We don’t necessarily want to focus on the production of assets after we’ve designed the products. This is where AI comes in.

We can take a marketing brief, give it to AI, and have it generate much of the assets we need as a company.

 One Final Note 

I’m clearly very bullish on the impact AI will have on consumer brands. So bullish that I’ve started an AI roadmap and training company with my brother.

We want to help brands identify easy, high-impact areas where AI can be immediately valuable.

Most companies have no idea where to even start with AI. They think it’s a gimmick. A toy.

We want to train your team to be more productive using AI. We want to help companies adopt AI right now … not years in the future when all your competition has already figured it out.

If this sounds like something you want help with, we’d love to chat. Maybe we can help your company?

Hit reply if you’re interested or email me — m@mattbertulli.com — and we can set up time to talk live.

Connor MacDonald Ridge, CMO

The Only Metric That Really Matters (According to My Boss)

One of my top strategies at Ridge coming into this year was building out onsite personalization to support our retention efforts. Why? Here’s how Sean put it last week:

Our major events — like Father’s Day — are outstanding examples …

For us, this all begins with signed-in shopping.

Using Rivo, we’ve recognized and activated over 725,000 accounts to support showing a personalized, relevant onsite experience to returning customers.

So far this year, during our major sale periods, we’ve been able to serve retention and LTV offers to specific cohorts based on their data, from the announcement bar to checkout.

But in general, my thought has always been …

Sign in more people, make that experience of them being on your site better because they’re signed in — you know who they are, you can serve them more relevant information.

When those elements are better, then they’ll naturally begin repurchasing more from you. I think we’ll see more brands adopt signed-in shopping as a base layer in supporting LTV efforts.

If you care about the same “only metric that really matters,” find out how …

THE FEED

​How Being Likeable Can Make You Rich​

​DTC Marketers, Where Are You Wasting Your Time?​

Connor MacDonald Ridge, CMO

Prime Day Playbook: 5 Not-Too-Late Tips

Amazon’s Prime Day starts tomorrow.

Here’s the playbook that Connor Rolain (HexClad) and I (Ridge) discussed for using DTC strategies to maximize one of the largest shopping moments of the year.

1. Take Advantage on Your Website

While Amazon drives the majority of our revenue during this period, we run a “Prime Time” sale in parallel on dot(.)com to capture the general shopping demand that exists.

HexClad does a nice job differentiating its offers between platforms with different bundles and individual item discounts.

Also, don’t call it “Prime Day” on your site. Bezos hates that.

2. Send Email & SMS Traffic to Amazon

I saw this being discussed last week and think it’s a no-brainer; we have done it for years.

People want to shop on Amazon during Prime Day. Send them to where they want to shop. We focus on dot(.)com traffic before and after the Prime Days themselves.

3. Always Use Amazon Attribution Links

This way, you can measure which channels are driving revenue (even with short cookie windows), plus earn a % back on attributed sales in the form of credit on future fees.

4. Drive Amazon Traffic Directly From Your Site

HexClad is more aggressive than Ridge here and uses on-site banners + exit intent pop-ups to direct people to get individual products on Amazon.

They drove 25-30k clicks to Amazon with their exit intent pop-up from people who would likely have otherwise left empty-handed.

Personally, Ridge will try more of this this year.

We both create separate attribution links for each placement: email campaigns, SMS, exit intent, on-site CTAs, etc. This lets you see what’s working so you can double down next year.

5. Paid Traffic to Landers With CTAs to Amazon

The last tactic we discussed — but have not tried.

Ridge has seen success with Meta view content campaigns all year, and I wonder if optimizing for button clicks to Amazon from dot(.)com landing pages couldn’t lead to similar, highly incremental results.

Since Meta can’t track Amazon conversions and attribution links are pretty flawed, you’d probably need to pair with a geolift test.

And that’s the plan — let us know what we missed!

The Trends

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

1. L’Oreal Acquires Color Wow: Cosmetics Business​

French beauty giant L’Oreal has acquired Color Wow, one of the world’s fastest-growing professional haircare brands.

Founded in 2013 by serial entrepreneur Gail Federici, Color Wow’s sales are said to be in the $300M range and the company was seeking a $1B valuation.

For L’Oreal, this was their second major transaction of June after they purchased a majority stake in skincare brand Medik8 at a €1B valuation. Gail Federici previously co-founded John Frieda Professional Hair Care, acquired for $450M in 2002.

2. Neutonic Grabs Funding to Scale in the US & UK: Tech EU​

Neutonic, a creator-led nootropic energy brand, just secured $3.7M in funding at a $20M valuation. Founded by James Smith and Chris Williamson — two creators with massive audiences — as well as Luke Betts and Shan Hanif, Neutonic sells productivity-focused supplements and energy drinks.

Since launching, the company has generated more than $10M in sales and sold over 3 million cans. Investors include Codie Sanchez, Dan Martell, Alan Barratt, and many others.

3. Bloom Launches BFY Soda Range: Nutra Ingredients​

Fast-growing beverage and supplements brand Bloom just released Bloom Pop, a better-for-you soda line. Five nostaglic flavors like Shirley Temple and Strawberry Cream are currently rolling out at Walmarts across the country.

Bloom expanded into the energy drink category last July and has sold more than 35 million cans since launch.

4. Bubbies Acquired by Marubeni Corporation: Business Wire​

Bubbies Ice Cream, the #1 mochi brand in the natural channel and the fastest-growing brand in conventional grocery, was acquired by Japanese investment firm Marubeni Corporation. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

Originally founded as an ice cream shop on Oahu in 1985, Bubbies eventually launched a premium line of mochi ice creams for the retail channel. Bubbies will leverage Marubeni’s global resources and supply chain expertise to scale their retail footprint worldwide.

5. Shore Capital Partners Secures $450M for F&B Fund: Business Wire​

Chicago-based private equity firm Shore Capital Partners raised $450M for its third food & beverage fund. Co-founded in 2009 by Justin Ishbia, one of the co-owners of the Phoenix Suns and the Chicago White Sox, Shore’s F&B investments include Sweetmore Bakeries, Whetstone Distributors, and FirmaPak.

 Are They Available? 

I’m still getting questions and requests for last month’s Operators Assemble event.

1. Yes, they’re available
2. Yes, even if you didn’t sign up
3. Yes, you can have them right now

Every single one of the growth + leadership keynotes, all three breakout sessions — (1) leadership, (2) marketing, and (3) finance — the lighting panelists, and even the unpublished AMA podcast. Everything is one form fill away!

With thanks and anticipation,
Aaron Orendorff 🤓 Executive Editor

PS (Disclaimer): Special thanks to Rivo for sponsoring this week’s newsletter.

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