Billions in Ecommerce Deals & How to Build a Brand Worth Buying

Welcome back to a special episode of the operator's pod. Today we are digging into M&A. This is everyone's favorite topic and there has been a flurry of transactions and consumer over the last few weeks. Billions and billions and billions of deals. Everyone from Gruns to Unilever McCormick to Marsmen create wellness fuel. We're gonna dig into why those deals are happening. What are the characteristics of these companies? Which is you be thinking about if you want to sell your brand? Is it good to be a startup? Is it good to be an incumbent? What does winning look like right now? Ultimately all of this comes back to first principles. AI is of course top of mind, but what is it that makes for a great business and a great brand? Joining me today is Mike Beckham, you know Mike, and friend of the show Curtis Masco. He's the CEO of Portland Leather Goods, D to C monster, retail behemoth, multi-nine figures per year, knows his stuff, but before we get into any of this, we can't do it without some mention of our sponsors. So thank you to fulfill to Rich panel to Northbeam, Sarah Sandelick's post script and after sell, let's get into it. I'm gonna set the table for all of us today because very recently we've had something like seven major consumer deals like four or five billion dollars in confirmed transactions in consumer. And then we saw Marsmen raise money from Elcat, create just raise some more money at the same time, all birds just got acquired for $39 million in a take private. After I think after torching like $550 million, so that's interesting. It seems like we have the strategic sir back, which then means the PE firms are probably back coming back. You've got legacy conglomerates buying. If you're running a consumer brand right now, is the party back on? Like it feels like the exit window might be opening, but at the same time, the operating window might be closing. Like there's this tension with tariffs and AI and like, should you be an incumbent? Should you be new? I got so many questions for you guys today because I know your thing. I know Curtis is thinking about it. Mike, I'm pretty sure you're thinking about it. But let's start off like it's clearly not 2021. We're not at the peak of of COVID in consumer. But the deals that are happening, these are big. Mike, what? What should people be taking away from all of this? Like your consumer operator, your building and company right now, what is the thing that you want or what's the thing you're thinking of? So there's a level so this. Let's go really high level. Money, investment money is going to want to flow to where they think there's durable future cash flows. And what's interesting about this moment in time is that there's more uncertainty about that than in a long time. Where are the durable cash flows when and through it can totally blow up a SaaS business in one announcement, right? When you literally have model announcements or product release announcements from one company, taking billions, tens of billions of dollars off the stock market, it begs the question of like, okay, where is safe? And I think that historically, if you look at private equity, venture capital, one of their favorite places to stick money with SaaS. Huge margins. It was just a great place to invest with the kind of economics of the returns you're trying to create. And I think everybody is looking at SaaS and they're like, I have no idea what happens to SaaS. If you do, great, you're going to make a boatload of money, but nobody really understands where software is going to go and how it's going to evolve from here. And so in general, what AI is doing from an investment perspective is it's causing everybody to kind of go back to the drawing board and saying, well, what are the things that I really expect to be generating cash flow? Five years from now, 10 years from now, no matter what happens here with AI, which nobody really knows what that is. And I think one of the conclusions that the investment community seems to be reaching is, well, there's still going to be physical products and especially consumable products that that market's not going anywhere. It's not like, AI is going to replace my need to drink milk or to get protein in my diet or just stay hydrated or whatever. And so it's leading to real opportunity in consumer that we haven't probably seen in a while. I mean, even in 21, if you looked at the deal flow, most of it was going to technology. And now we're going through a period where a lot of the money is flowing to places other than technology. And I don't know if it's like a timing thing where we just happen to see a lot of these deals announced, but I do know from behind the scenes, there are quite a few other high profile consumer deals that are out there that we'll get announced over the next year. So it feels like a sea change. And if you listen to this and you're in consumer in some way, the best news I have is that right now, it seems like the consensus is shifting towards owning a consumer asset is one of the more protected asset classes from AI. And that's a great thing if that's the asset that you're building. Dealing with Big Box retailers means EDI connections. And that's often a trigger for needing an ERP system. We've been using EDI connections to Costco forever and the only way that we really solve that problem, make it seamless, is through fulfill. EDI adds complexity to everything you do and fulfill solves that complexity with their connections to their systems. You need fulfill to move from being just a D to C brand to being a true multi channel brand because Big Box retailers are going to require you to connect to their systems using EDI. Let me tell you, it's way easier if you do it with fulfill. Curtis, is there with what Mike is saying, if you go a level deeper, so obviously consumables, we all see that. Like that's the trend. It's like this is all beauty in food and bev or some kind of consumable. None of us here, I mean, Mike, you have Trevye, Curtis, you sell products that are not consumable, but I think people buy a lot of them. What do you think is outside of just a consumable piece? Like what do you think is so good about consumer? Like what what does a brand have to do to build up to build to a point where they can exit like this? If you're talking about the exits right now, they all have something in common to when I did art festivals. Okay, so I would go out to art festivals, I would sell my products and you notice there was generational things. Okay, young people want things that they can carry around. That's how I looked at it. They would buy a journal to put in their bag because they're an apartment, they're at college and they're going to leave the house in the morning with their bag. So they want their iPhone, their iPhone case, something they have with them. They're going to go party and they're going to come back at midnight. Okay, so that's what they want. People middle of age, they want to buy things for their house and then older people like 70 and older, they wanted they could put in their garden. We call it crap on a stick like anything you would buy and you put it on a metal thing and you put like they bought things for their garden. I cannot wait for the tie in here. I literally have no idea where you're going. It was very true. But now if you're looking for something that has that long turned those legs, if you want something in the consumer, you want something to grow. All the companies that are doing something right now is something you put in your mouth or you put to make look better. Okay, I'm going to take this supplement to get healthier. I'm going to eat this food regularly so I get more healthy. I'm going to put this blush. I'm going to put this the odor at. I'm going to put something that is a younger market, right? That are folks that are active on that all the different social media platforms. And if you capture them now and you can build that brand, these big folks feel they can scale them for five to 10 years. So if you want that 20 to 40, get a consumable that goes like, hey, our products are not consumable, but people do buy a great deal of them. But look at all the deals that are happening right now. It is nutrition. It is health. It is deodorant. It is makeup. It's something small, easy to make quickly to fill the demand, send it out in high margins. Yeah, there's a couple of patterns there, right? So some of a lot of these deals that domestic manufacturing. So like all the products are pretty insulated. They're not as susceptible to all this global macro that we've been talking about. The other thing is they're all incredibly on the channel. So like, yes, they're consumable, but like these guys are scaled up in retail. Like this is this looks like these look like Warren Buffett deals. Like these are like Warren Buffett paint coals. They would say that the best investments were ones that if you went to the moon for 20 years and you came back, people would still be using the product. And I think that that's kind of what we're saying is that a lot of these are things that you can imagine people using for 10, 20 years. So the potential, like my way of thinking about it is one of the reasons why consumables is where a lot of the heat is right now. It's two fold. One is that the LTVs, just like the length of time that somebody could use your product, I probably still eat and drink things that I first got on in college, you know, and I'm not going to say how long ago that was, but it was more than a year ago. And that that's not uncommon to me. That people can get onto some of these things. And then it's like, oh, yeah, I use this this shade of blush. And I've used it for 30 years. Like what's the LTV on that? And then I think that the other thing that you're kind of pointing at that is that we all know that CPMs are going up. And I don't think there's any belief that CPMs will come down in our lifetime. It's a chart that probably only goes one way. And if that's the case, then user acquisition costs will only rise over time. So the companies that are finding these really good valuations are the ones that have engines of customer acquisition that they can sustainably repeat is the way that I think about it. Can you sustainably get new people in the door where there's positive, unique economics? And you really, I don't know, having OmniChannel makes that a lot easier. I'm not going to say it's impossible with digital only, but what we have found is it's a heck of a lot easier when you also have physical retail. No, I think the multi-channel thing, Curtis, is like, it speaks to a quality of revenue and a durability. Revenue going back to my first point. Like, Curtis, you're opening stores, right? You're not selling, I don't think you sell wholesale, but you're definitely opening a lot of stores. I see McCoy always talking about opening more PLG stores. So it does seem that the, and obviously CPMs, Mike, can we pause for a second, Matt? I want to know, Curtis, do you see that as more of an acquisition or LTV player? Is it both? You know, we grew our company on Neta like everybody does. We got some great extensions in lifetime, and you're like, where do we go from here? And we had such a love for our product that we went to retail stores. And I put the first one up as I've said many times as a joke, I thought it would fail. I literally put it up to prove my employees wrong. And the thing took off and I'm like, how did it make that much money? And they're like, well, you don't have all the shipping costs to send to each end consumer. We don't have our marketing online. You're not buying the CPMs. People come in, you pay some people, and it worked. So now we have 15. I think we have three more going up in the next month. But here's the big one. Three more next month. Yeah. So you are really scaling in that. Well, they work. Yeah. That's how they work. What's up, operators? Welcome to the Rich Panel ad read. Rich panel has been a sponsor for over 12 months. I've been a paying customer for over 12 months. And guess what? I just renewed to pay again for another year. We have cut our SaaS Bill in half and automation dropped our cost per ticket by 70%. Our C-Sat has also improved from 88%, which is still really good to 96% best in class all powered by Rich Panel. I told them last year, hey, you guys need to do the same thing with returns. And now Rich Panel has a returns portal. It's built to cut down your tickets and convert more refunds into exchanges. They do the heavy lifting, data import, self service retention flows, team training, all of it. And it'll be live in two weeks. If you want to save 30% guaranteed on help desk and now returns, book a demo. And then you get to the buildouts cost money, man. Like there's there's there's like it's like open in a restaurant. There's a buildout cost to every store, although I mean, you're doing it in a very efficient way. But what we try to do everything efficient, but yeah, sure, there's a cost, but here's the thing as well as they work and as profit as they are, we've started on TikTok two weeks ago. And we're doing $200,000 extra a day because of TikTok. Let me ask you a question about that Curtis. When you're doing TikTok and I'm just going to make an assumption here, you're focused on acquisition and not really profitability in that channel, right? And that's that's really what I hear from everybody that that's everybody. Everybody has conceded that TikTok is an acquisition, but not, you know, probably I would even say it's not a acquisition, Mike. I think it's genuinely it's awareness and it's content generation. Yeah, it's it's both. So like kind of stick with that idea, the problem with water bottles and I don't know if handbags are the same way, but the problem with water bottles is if you saw somebody a really good water bottle, how frequently do they need to come back to you? And what we found is not that frequently, you know, like that thing elastom for a year or two. And so maybe you sell them half of another order in the first year if you saw them a really good water bottle. And so if we're for simple modern, if we're going to use TikTok, it has to be awareness generation, but it's easy to see if you're a consumable, if you're a makeup brand, if you're a electrolyte company, if you're a protein shake or whatever, that's not the case. You can be underwater fairly significantly on that first transaction with them. And the economic still look quite good on a six or 12 month basis, even before all of the kind of like the awareness halo that we talk about. So this is another reason why I think you're seeing investors gravitate towards consumables, because they're just starting to realize if a lot of this goes back to LTVs and the reason my LTVs are so important is customer acquisition, then it starts to make a lot of sense that if you're going to be really active in acquisition on meta, on TikTok, wherever you've got to have the kind of LTVs where you can spend significant money up front. Well, dude, that there's $5 trillion in market cap between Google and Facebook. There's a lot of incentive for CPMs to knock it down. Like that's a lot of trillions. So yeah, I mean, I think that the smart money is saying that if CPMs and CAC is going to go up forever, then who can pay the most? And it's the people who get the most dollars in the other end of it. And I would even argue that like in a world where SaaS is getting compressed, like pricing in SaaS is going to get compressed or it's just going to change entirely. Like we had a good chat with Omit from Rich Panel on this. We're probably going to see software go to a tokens plus model. Probably as opposed to a per-seat model instead of a per-seat or whatever else. So then if that's true, like who's got the most money to be paying the ad platforms? Even if you look at TikTok shops, TikTok shops, it's still an ad platform. You're still using your seeding products, you're getting a lot of creative content, but then you're still sticking all that content into GMV Max, whatever the hell they call it on TikTok shops. It's still paid media. So and those CPMs aren't going down. Like same thing. So my favorite takes about the SaaS thing, by the way. I know this isn't the primary thrust what we're talking about, but I'm starting to come around to the idea that the big winners of AI are going to be the incumbent SaaS. Like I think that, I mean, they are the best positioned. And yeah, their margin structure is going to get disrupted and they're going to have to stop giving out stock like it's candy with stock-based compensation. But they're the ones that already have the user basis. People want them to win. Like we want Adobe or you know, Canva to provide the best solution. We want that. And if we have to go elsewhere, we will, but we would prefer them to figure it out. And so they're going to be the ones that if they figure out the right pricing model and they're willing to do the hard work organizationally, they're going to be the ones that reap all the benefits because they're going to go from needing whatever 50 engineers to maintain a portion of their business to like three or one or something. And so I actually am kind of coming around to this idea in SaaS, which brings me back to consumer, which is it's starting to become clear to me that the way the market is trending is this idea that the incumbents are going to win from AI. Yes. You really kind of have to develop a perspective. Is it the best time ever to start a small company? I think it might be true, but I think it also might be true that the biggest winners in the age we're going into are the people that had pre-existing distribution, pre-existing customer bases and that they were most able to kind of bring in AI and reap the benefits just almost immediately and extend their lead. I think in SaaS, Mike, I put this in our chat. I think with the software, we're all going to buy a lot more software. Well, that's certainly what my credit card says. Yep, but absolutely. Like we're all going to buy a lot more software. It's going to come out of people. Let's just stop beating around the bush. That money's got to come from somewhere. The current model of people, like the part of your G&A where software's going to come out of is going to be the people part. Well, maybe, but in the longer run, Matt, that's kind of a scarcity mentality. It's like, you believe that AI grows the economy. Then it's like, maybe we just spend a lot more on software and that's just excess value created. All right. I was going to say in the short term, we're definitely coming out of people. In the long term, I completely agree. And I think in the short term, investors are not long term thinkers. No, like, no, it's, be honest. Okay. They're moving around. They move around so quickly that it's like a flight of capital right now going, I actually think like the consumer looks really great right now because SaaS looks really bad. Where the consumer is like the, what is it? Where the best looking leper and the like that same and the land of, and the land of blind men, the cyclops is king. Yes. Like consumer is like a really good looking cyclops right now. Because everything else is so scary. And I think Mike, the, your comment on like on where capital is moving. The other thing I think about is like AI is the massive risk on investment at the moment. Right. And there's only so much money if you're a capital allocator. There's only so much money you're willing to put into anthropic or into open AI. You're not going to put all of it in. Is as good as those businesses are, you're still just not that like every rulebook says you shouldn't do that. So some amount of money has to go to a what's safe. And I think right now consumer staples consumer all just looks safe. Because you were going to say something. Sorry, man. I'm not going to give these investment bankers and these big people as much credit. I think they're bored. We started this conversation off and we mentioned, hey, anthropic got killed because of one announcement. No, they didn't. They made a decision. And one man and Maverick's going to be angry at me for saying this through a bomb and said, we don't want to work with them. They're not giving us. We have been living on one man's whim since for a year and over a year now, right? Whether it's tariffs, whether it's war, whether it's all of these things. One man controls and everyone's been sitting back saying, okay, we're going to wait for it to stabilize. We're going to wait for it to settle down. Well, guess what? It's not settling down. So they're sitting around on this. money for a year and everyone's AI, AI, AI, and they're like, yeah, AI can go crazy too. Like we need to diversify some way. Where do we go? And so that's why I'm talking to people right now. There are lots of people who say, Hey, Porton leather goods, you guys are just booming. We want to talk to you. These guys have money and they want to allocate it into something that's going to jump. These guys aren't geniuses. They've been doing this thing. And they went to college. They asked these questions that they don't even understand the answers to. Let's talk about your LTV. Let's talk about this. Let's talk about multi channel. They sound like marketing people are magicians. You try to explain in depth what you're doing. They have no clue. They're just reading us sheet, trying to guess what's going to happen. And some of these, Hey, low cost of goods, lifetime value, subscriptions. People going to do it. We can make it in the US. It's small. It's censorship. They love that stuff. So they just want to get some money out there. And that's why some of these people are doing these big deals right now. That's my belief. And I'm someone who gets calls every day to work on these things. So right now, everyone's itching to give out money. There is a, I've been talking to a few bankers recently. And there's a ton of deal. Like there's a lot of deals happening. So I think Mike, you mentioned this at the onset. Like there's a lot of stuff that's still not even announced that's being worked on. And then there's a ton, the flip slide to this guys is there is a ton of distressed asset deals like tons. I talked to three bankers last week. And all of them are like, yeah, we're just hunting out quality right now because there's so much stuff like commercial large banks are tightening credit in both the US and Canada. So you're seeing a lot of companies are like, I know a company that literally had their line of credit pulled last week for no good reason. Just like they pulled it. And he's like, I don't understand why. And it's like the banks like we just tighten, we're tightening up our debt facilities right now. So he's fine. He makes a ton of cash. I just lot of huge business. He's fine. But it still was shocking to me to hear that. And at the same time, I don't know if you guys think about this too much, but like to me, it's all connected. Consumers buying behavior is absolutely shifting. One of you guys mentioned the whole like health thing. Like people are buying things that they can like make them make them healthier. Like, well, this is a trend. The GLP one wave is freaking insane. You got to think this is going to shift buying behavior even more. Well, it's already, yeah, it's already happening. It's already happening, right? So like the macro picture in consumer, while all this deal making is happening, I'm like, this also feels like it's getting harder. You know, like are we are we on our fence or defense here? One of the one of like that first principles ideas is that why does disruption happen? And the reason it happens is that you build a company based on an insight and a great team. And then as time goes on and your company is successful, people leave, they go on to other projects, people get fat and happy, technology changes, you know, and you just the surface area, you kind of open up flanks for a new hungry challenger to come in and and take you down. And the thing that's interesting about AI is that I think it reduces your flank if you're an established company is kind of why I'm starting to lean towards the incumbents that it's like, you know, we've all talked to companies where like, for example, social, they just have no clue, you know, and they're not even like to Curtis's point, they're not even asking the right questions. And but it's easy to imagine a world a year or two from now where that doesn't really matter. They can just tell their AI like, hey, I need my social to be good, you know, and that's like the extent of direction they need to give to actually have a pretty coherent good strategy around social and spending and influence or outreach and all that stuff. And so I think generally the idea that the incumbents are going to be able to hold on to their to their leads is probably, it is probably where I come out right now and that this is one of the reasons why I kind of view this as a land run period where it's a really good time to be launching brands. It's a really good time to be scaling brands because there's going to be a point where it's harder. This kind of my take and I we live in this kind of echo chamber. And so I constantly like, man, we're behind, we're not going fast enough, you know, whatever. And it's like, no, you're like the people around me are like, you're insane. Like you are like in the like, you're so far out in front of the average company in person that you even understand, but it's just the people that you run with are like all in on this. So I do think we're on the front and like everything we're talking about, we might be five or 10 years out from this stuff really getting, you know, fully recognized in the average company. I have no idea, but I do think that there is this unique window of opportunity right now for operators to really take advantage of tools that are widely available, but not widely used. Long time sponsor Northbeam is launching incrementality later this quarter. This means that you can now have the trifecta of marketing measurement all in one platform. That is multi touch attribution, medium x modeling and incrementality holdouts all inside of Northbeam. You can automate that lift testing end to end, unify results with your MTA and your MMM. This is a lot of letters, but if you know, you know, and you can start to cut what doesn't work and you can scale what works and you can do this all with confidence. This is why this is such an incredible ad to Northbeam Northbeams incrementality measures what results marketing is actually generating not just what they're claiming. As a CEO, that's like music to my ears. A side up now and you can lock in 50% off unlimited tests for the year. And the macro like the all of this shipping nonsense with the straight of her mose like inputs cost going up like Curtis, do you do you think about this crap at all or are you like now it's temporary just keep moving and what Mike said like this is the best time in history to be operating screw all that. Welcome to being a CEO and a founder and entrepreneur. You have to hold two things in your hands at all times and they they don't make sensors cognitive dissidents, right? I read the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal every single day. I did my PhD work in political science. I get on and I read the news and I get scared off my mind. And then I go and tell everyone that the world's going to be great and everything's going on our side. I met Mike for the first time I saw him in person at the hex flat offices in LA. Yeah, yeah. And the one thing I remember is on stage, he was up there and he said, Hey, people who have a lead who already have a company built, they're going to do better in all the disruption that's happening. And I believe that's true. But we're talking on this podcast. And this is the best podcast that there is out there to talk to people who have a million or a five or a 10 or 20 best one. If you've got that, you listen to the each one of these and you're going to learn something. I learned something that day. If you get the lead, it's easier to keep that lead. But you get the lead by building systems over time. So if you're talking about AI search coming up, you're not like I have to scam the system and create AI content to create AI content. No, it's did you have a PR company? Are you putting out content for the last year? Two, three, four, this stuff takes time to build like people have a lead because they built things. So sometimes when you're saying, what can I do today to make money today or what's the investment for long term? You have to be putting some time and energy into building things for the long term because in three years, you're going to be really glad that you did. You know what Curtis? Okay, so like this is an interesting point guys. Consumer, I've long said this. I know we've all said this in the show like consumer is very much a long game. And it's not and what I always find interesting, Mike is if you talk to an investor, their worry is that consumer is not very durable. They're like the consumer preferences change all the time. My argument back is like, no, they don't. Their brand preference might change. But consumer preferences, that takes a long time to move. Right? Like these trends that happen in consumer, they don't come along for a year. Like maybe if it's a la booboo, like a stupid stuffy thing on the purse, but like broad big trends, health, wellness, like better for you. That is not a one or two year trend. Like it is actually a very durable tailwind that's going to go on for quite some time. It makes no sense to me, right? Like you said that you get rich, you get fat. I'm like, we've always done that as a species. But for some reason, right now we're going to get like, we're not going to get fat and happy. We're going to get fit and unhappy. I don't know what the reverse this is. But these trends are, I actually do think that these trends are durable. And I think Curtis is making a really good point. Like you want to be operating from this place of like stacking bricks and compounding. Doesn't matter how fast AI goes. It doesn't matter. Just do the damn boring work in consumer. Because that's where it's durable. What I've come to the conclusion of is that being a good operator now requires thinking in first principles, instead of thinking in front pages. And that if you try to build your business around the latest headline, you're just constantly going to be chasing shadows. And you're going to constantly be guessing and and often guessing wrong about what the next thing you should do with your businesses. Instead, you have to think from first principles about the market and about the consumer and about what creating value looks like. Put your head down and focus on those things. I cannot tell you where oil will be in six months. Nobody can. Obviously, just look at the volatility in the chart. But I know that people are still going to care about their health and their wellness. They're going to care about it even more than they care about it today. I know that people are going to want, you know, like they're going to want faster shipping, not slower shipping. They're going to want lower prices, not higher prices. They're going to want, you know, like, this is the thing that the great investors and business owners do is they say, I am going to look at the timeless principles and I'm going to build around those and I am going to try and not be distracted by the day to day. One of the more interesting examples of this, I was reading about a famous investor and one of the most powerful things that they did is super counterintuitive. So if you are running a hedge fund, running a mutual fund, you have a Bloomberg terminal. Now maybe that won't be the case in five or ten years, but today with the way that that industry works, you have a Bloomberg terminal. That's the brain that has all the quotes, the latest data, the latest news, and everybody just kind of lives on their Bloomberg terminal. This investor was making the point about thinking long term, which is the point Curtis is making, you're making that. And in their office, they did something really simple. They put the Bloomberg terminal on a desk and there was no chair at the desk. And the reason why there was no chair at the desk is that they intentionally were saying, we have to have a terminal in the office, but this is not a thing you spend hours looking at. You might go over there to look up a piece of information or to glance at it, but this is not where you spend your day because it's all about short term data. And that's not really how you make winning investment decisions. You think I'm longer chunks of time. And so that same principle is worth asking if you're an operator. It's like, where are you over indexing on Twitter and the noise of today, the news, the volatility of a stock or an industry today? And how can you reduce that exposure? And if you're going to over index on anything, over index on human nature, and on the things that you know are true today, five years from now, 10 years from now, that's how you build a really successful business. Curtis, do you think that the, this is on Mike's point that do you think that the consumer, this whole trend towards wellness? Is this part of like a broader and even bigger trend towards like more intentional consumption? I come back to this whole GLP one thing often guys. I don't know how much you follow the space, but like, it's having second order effects that I don't know that people saw, right? So like people who are on some version of a GLP one or whatever, I don't know technical terms, these things. I can't pronounce all these. Okay. But the, their sex drives are lower. They desire less. Right? So like if you desire something like intimacy less, do you then change your consumption habits? Like broadly, right? Or, and then if you combine that with AI is like Mike, you're hitting it on the head. The news cycle on X, if you are on there all the time, you feel so far behind. Like as an operator, you were like, oh my God, I'm the dumbest person in the room. I'm not doing any of this. So like I look at AI right now and I'm like, it's producing such an amount of noise. Like we thought social media was bad. Oh my God, no. That the snap back, the push back to this is I just want less, I want less. In general, I want less. So like you got GLP ones, this like reduction of desire, then you have all this noise coming from these AI companies and all the people that are like up their ass. I just don't want to be online. Like that's sort of where I get to. I'm like, I'm going to turn the internet off. I'm not open. Oh man. Or are more people feeling this way? Like, it might be only one. So I get you complete. I run my day in three phases. Okay. I get up in the morning. I have coffee. No one else is around and I write a LinkedIn post or do a video. Okay. I go on a LinkedIn. It's my thoughts. It's my quiet time. It's what's actually happened to me that day. Okay. I read some stuff. I don't read too much. Occasionally, I'll go on to Twitter and I'll see you post something or Sean Frank and then I'll look down a little bit farther and it's just this crazy stuff. And I'm like, no way Twitter is not for me. And I jump off. I've never been on Twitter for more than three minutes. So that is just too much chaos in my brain. So the first phase is me getting my thoughts together and writing on LinkedIn. That's why you're mentally healthy, Curtis, by the way. Yeah. There's a direct correlation between mental health and time on Twitter. But I go to work all day long and love it. That's on day to day building long terms, solving problems, what's the biggest problem. And that's just so much energy. And then at night, I go home and I watch romantic comedies or sports in a team that I don't care about. So Mike has it the worst way because when his team plays, he cares. And if I care about a team, I get so angry if they lose, right? I love if I love a team, I can't watch the game. I wait for the result. If I don't care, I'll watch it and I'll really enjoy it. So my evenings are never about conflict. I'll watch Brooklyn 9.9. I'll watch the good place. I'll watch K dramas. Nothing with conflict in it. And then I'll take a bath and I'll sit around and I'll go to bed and I'll start that thing over again, right? That's just Mike day. So it's like mixes things. I don't want too much conflict. I create enough crazy and conflict in my life, just being me out there and work that when I get home, turn this stuff off. Do you do, because do you think this is like, I don't know, I guess that I'm maybe my friends are just all too old. Like you guys were all just too old. But there's definitely a trend here. And I'm even noticing it with younger people in our office. They're just less online. Like they absolutely are. They're being more intentional with how they consume. They're very concerned with like, is this AI or not? Like that's a big trend right now. Like America. And if you look at like all survey data in the States, like people do not like AI, like broadly, this is a negative sentiment. If you're looking for a trend, if you want the trend that's occurring, everyone's trying to spend less time online, but it's so intoxicating. They can't. They think they are, but they can't. The next thing is community. It's community and some is either community online and then getting it off line. It's them connecting to other people in a real way is the next trend for the next 10 to 15 years. And this is what Hudson with comfort would say is that ultimately like that propelled, you know, the success that we've they've had. But think about what Curtis is saying. That is a timeless need of human beings to feel connected to others and first principles. It's the first principle. It's like you don't have to like people would rather be healthy than unhealthy people would rather feel known and cared for than unknown and alone. You know, like and great business owners are able to think in first principles of a human condition and say, if I address the human condition and the needs that are never going anywhere, then like it's impossible that my business will suddenly not have demand one day. And and that's why I think that today you have an opportunity that the more and always there is more disruption, the more distraction, the harder it is to focus on that. But we see every week on this podcast, we see people that are breaking through the noise and creating really significant value, great businesses. But usually at Matt, you and I've done a bunch of these with with Titans and with operators. When you dig down, dig down, dig down, you realize that they've just found something about the human condition that was true 5,000 years ago. Oh my god. 5,000 years from now. And that's what great business people are able to do. Yeah, it's the Wubel thing, right? Her whole like zero. It's like that you just want to accomplish something. It's like that's such a human thing. I just want I want to do something hard because I feel good when I do something hard. Well, and ironically, this is worth pausing and talking about because you just mentioned like the sentiment on AI and I think you could more generally say like this is the sentiment about technology. Yep. I am large. Like I think people are using AI as just a placeholder for technology. The sentiment is very negative. And I get it like for me personally, I took everything on my phone that I significantly use off about a week and a half ago because I'm like, I just don't want to be on my phone. I do not want to be doing that much screen time and I feel better, you know, like and I think everybody is kind of making the same kind of observation. Technology AI without trusted data is shooting in the dark and building that position from scratch, dealing with tablo, dealing with data pipelines, dealing with all that. It doesn't have to be your headache. You can hire Sarah's analytics to handle that stuff for you. Sarah's IQ gives your leadership team a single shared view of the truth. Contribution margin, channel performance, customer economics, all can be answered instantly with the power of Sarah's analytics. Do not fall behind. Sarah's analytics is experts. They've set it up for Ridge, Hexclad, hundreds of other brands speak to them today. Can I say whatever AI tool you already use and you can put that right on top of your personal data privately, securely and you can start talking to your data like your favorite chat bot. One of the reasons why I think the sentiment on technology and AI has turned so negative goes back to the DRO, which is a need that every human has that transcends time is the need to feel like your day mattered and you accomplished something of purpose. And it is very depressing, the idea that you can't offer anything that the technology can't do better, quicker, less expensively. Like that is not, you know, like in the software community right now, there's this real existential kind of dread. They all see the right. writing on the wall. It's like, at best, your job is babysitting a computer, basically going forward. And just like hitting a proof, you know, like, and kind of like that, that clip of all the people at the slot machines at Vegas, where it's just like, you know, they're all just hitting the button. It's like, that's what Cloud Code is kind of turned some of this into. And so my kind of optimistic view is that's not what the future is going to look like, but it's a great example of another one of those unknowing human needs. If you help people feel like they made their day count, they accomplished something, there will always be a market. And there will always be people that are ready to pay you for that. It's the programmers. It's like first principles for programmers is everybody devolves or evolves into a parent. You're just your Clouds dad, okay? Or mom, just make sure it doesn't like barf on itself. That's your job right now. Freud would try something to say about what you're saying. I'm not sure what it would be, but okay, so all this to say then, if you're thinking incumbent versus challenger, Mike, you brought this up and Curtis, I'm curious your thoughts on this, that we've got a several year period here. Who knows how long where you can just build things so much easier, right? And the incumbents, like I like to, sometimes I think Mike, you and I were talking about this, like, you know, simple modern, you could say is an incumbent, Portland, other goods isn't incumbent. You guys have been around for a while. But like if we're really looking at the scale of consumer, the incumbents are proctering gamble and unilever and Coke. Well, that's that's the biggest acquisition. That was in the income. We're talking about these people raising $20 million rounds. The big announcement was unilever and McCormick creating a $6 billion company. Like that is that's that's and that's significant. You know, it's significant when you're like talking about two of the real big dogs being like, you know, what I think it's the right time to merge. And it tells you something about their view of the world that they think being bigger is better than being smaller right now, which is interesting. And and I agree Matt, like, yeah, it's like on some scale, I guess we're incumbent and established, but on the larger scale of the US economy, we're still a very, you're actually a challenger, right? Like ultimately, like the way that you run your company, the way that Curtis, you run your company, you guys are actually the challengers of broader consumer, like going for share of wallet. What else can you build? Curtis, I know you've been looking at you and Mike actually share this. Like you guys are both wanting to build other brands and other categories on the same way. I just want to build brands. I just think this is the best time in history to be doing that. But I am Curtis, I'm curious like, do you would you rather what do you think it's a it's good to tell people right now is a great time to start or is it going to get harder and harder as Mike is saying? Like every day, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It's a great time to start. It's always a great time to start. Like it's the famous Lord of the Rings quote, the job that takes long, this is the job that's never finished. My old gaffer used to say, right? Like the, it's just like, yeah, you start. Things go up and down. You can over analyze everything. It's, it's a cocky, egotistical way that I look at the world, but I'm going to say it because for people who watch this, a lot of them think the same way. And that is you need to be better than 90% of the people out there. Do 100% agree with that. You do. Now the good news is 60% of them suck. I remember being and taking those elastic tests when I was young. And they're like, Hey, you're in, you're in Montana and you're in the 98 99% style in all of these things. You're like, wow. And then you talk to Doug who's the idiot in the class. And he got 78. And you're like, who's 77% worse than Doug? Right? Like, you know what I mean? Like there are people who are going to make the wrong mistakes again and again because they're just out there flailing along. The right time to start in business is right now. There is not what podcasters ask. What, if you could break it down to one secret like, like, oh, the worst question in the world. The answer is it's not one thing. It's you've got to grow as your company grows. You've got to be better at making decisions, hiring people and all of that. And the time to start that is right now. And as the world changes, you change because you become more competent in doing that. And everybody Matt does that. Mike does that. Sean does that. Everybody does that. You're better now than you were a year ago. So everyone who watches this podcast just has to say, I start now next week. I'll be better. I'll make some mistakes in a year or two. I'm looking on the incumbents. I'm talking to those people who are starting now saying, dude, you started two or three years ago. One idea, right? It's always start now. The one thing is actually just what you guys keep hanging on. And I think Hudson said it, it's funny. I got a bunch of feedback for the Titans episode with Hudson because Hudson's like, I think I'm the greatest consumer operator out there. And then he went on to clarify. It's like, and I think Sean should think he thinks that way too. Yeah. And like everybody, you all entrepreneurs that I know that are successful have an irrational optimism and an irrational leaf in themselves. It makes no sense. You know, like none of us have any amount of like, there's no past history that we're taking from saying, like, oh, I can definitely do this. And it's like, no, no, I can do it. I know I can do it. How do you know it? I don't know. I just can't. That is like that's such a core thing to people who build my partner often says, my partner says, you have more confidence than you have any right to have. You've never done anything in your life to make you that confident. But your confidence is your super bow. Yes. And I'm like, okay, I guess so. I have no ability to look backwards and to go through mistakes. I only have the ability to say, what did I learn and how do I go forward? Okay. So, I'm so driven. Okay. So here on this then, what you guys are making me think of right now is like, all right, we're all saying it's like, it's a great time to be starting. Go out, build a brand. Like Mike, you're building brands, Curtis, you're building brands. I'm doing it. Like, it's a great time to start on this other side. These massive deals are happening and you're constantly hearing from guys like you who have established companies who are on the channel who are like, they have lots of things that are making them successful. If you were to break down like right now, I'm going to go out and build a winning brand. What do you think? Like, are you still telling people on your channel super important? You got to get there as soon as you can. Profit versus growth, consumable. Like, are there things that you're like guys this again, maybe not first principles, Mike, but like characteristics of how you're thinking about building brands today. Like, what can you give people to say like, look, this is how I'm thinking of them. This is what's important to me and how we're going to do it. I just like to leave people with like, okay, here's some structure to this. Here's the single best piece of advice I can give. I've worked with countless people trying to start businesses. I'm the entrepreneur and residents at OU. Your business being successful. The most important thing is that you find a channel where you can sustainably acquire customers profitably the end. Like, all the other stuff is secondary. Can you find one channel where you can sustainably, that means over and over and over again, perpetually acquire customers where it's going to be positive economics. And if you can, you've got a business, you've got cash flow, you've got a future. And if you can't, none of the other stuff matters. And so when I'm evaluating new business models that we want to get into, that is absolutely at the very top of the waterfall is what is that channel? And why do I think I can sustainably acquire customers profitably? And part of that, actually, there's an implicit question in there, which is, how am I going to get better than market returns in that channel? Because if I use the same approach that everybody else is in that channel, whether that is Walmart or Amazon or Target or TikTok or D to C, then I am not going to be able to sustainably generate a profit. So I have to understand what it is. What is the unique value proposition that I am offering that is going to allow me to generate those excess returns and that consistent user acquisition in that channel? And sometimes that's saying, I have a better price than others. I can bring the same product with the same quality at a better price or I can be a product that fits and meets a customer need that none of the other products in this space are meeting. And I know there are people ready to pay for it. Or whatever it is, you have to have some kind of unique differentiator competitive advantage that makes it possible to sustainably acquire positive economic people in one channel. And then you build outward. Do you curse? Do you think that that obviously, I mean like that a man mic, but is that category dependent or is that more founder? Like what's more important there? Like, Hammer, it's like, you know, some operators like, I'm sure Hudson would tell you or whoever's really good at TikTok shops, like Jordan, who runs social commerce club, TikTok shops is where they would start. They'd start from the channel because that's their skill set. Can I take a step at that? When I think about it, I think about your company, whether it's one person or 70 people, you have a unique set of assets. It's like a fingerprint. No two companies have exactly the same set of competitive advantages and assets. And the answer to the question that I just pose comes back to what are your unique set of competitive advantages? It just so happens with me that I never really cut my teeth on medads, but I know Amazon. And so it is completely true that I'm able to see and take advantage of opportunities on on Amazon that others would not see. A really simple example of this that's coming, we will get into a category on Amazon that if I told you, you would say, that's interesting, but sounds suicidal, but we're gonna win. And I understand how to win in that channel because of my unique experience. As a founder entrepreneur, you have to be able to have the self-awareness to assess, where do I have unique advantages? And where do I not? And that's almost as powerful is that I know all the areas where, like there's nothing special, I like to think I'm a smart guy, but like there's a lot of areas where I do not have any kind of particular unique advantage. And so I don't try and play in those areas. I try and maximize my chances to win by playing in areas where I've got the biggest unique advantages to me. - Curtis, so curious your thoughts on this. I have so many. - So I spent a winter in a zen monastery in the Northwest. It was me and eight of those months. And I remember-- - I remember. - An absolute was wonderful winter up literally the top of a mountain. And I remember the chosen saying, "As long as you're centered, you'll be able to make the decisions that life throws at you." I really was angry because Mike just nailed that. Like it's not multi-channel. It's what channel can get you new customers at a profit. And you pour everything into that until you get good enough that you can go to that next one and the next one. You don't say, "Oh, I just read that this is what we do." TikTok's the way to go. That the thing is, and please, I mentioned this earlier about TikTok, okay? We're doing $200,000 a day more. Every single day since we started TikTok 11, 12 days ago, okay? Now, only 90,000 to 100,000 is TikTok. But all of our other areas are making more money because of TikTok. If you had not set up profitability on those other ones, you couldn't pay or the acquisition, Mike nailed it. Find out a way to get a new customer at a profit. How can you test it very, very quickly and expensively and learn how to get a new customer? Once you have those basics, then you make the decisions to build that over that. You don't look at the news. You don't look at a podcast. You don't look at the reels and say, "Oh my gosh, I got to jump there because everyone's doing it." He nailed it. 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Good job. Well, that's why I cut mine and cut that off. I was like, Curtis is gonna crush this. I gotta jump the line and say it before Curtis does it. No, look, it's listening to both of you. Have you ever seen the Japanese, is it like the Ike guy thing? Like the overlapping concentric circles of like, what are you good at? What makes you happy? What is the world value? It's that, right? Like Mike, I've watched you do this. Like you have a set of things that you know really well and you seem to be picking moves as far as brands and categories that line up with the things that you know really well. Which to me makes a ton of sense, right? Yeah, like I think it's a counter almost to what Hudson was saying is that I am not the best at many, many, many things. Yeah. And I think that's a strength that I know that. But I might be one of the best at very, very few things, but that's enough, you know? Like I have, somebody I know from growing up and he is like a Priatop 20 neurosurgeon in the world. And I was asking him about it. And he's like, basically, I'm an idiot in like 99% of my life. Like I barely know how to like, you know, run the dishwasher. But I have this very specific skill set and the market really values that, you know? Because he knows how to operate on brains in a very particular way. And so the market's willing to pay him millions of dollars a year to do that. And that's the way the business is. I don't have to be the best at hardly anything. I just need one or two things that I'm really good at. And then I can provide for myself my family, my kids, generations to come, the community around me. And that's the inspiring thing about business. It does seem intimidating where it's like, well, I've got to be an expert on TikTok shops. And I've got to be a guru at Meta ads. And I also have to be, you know, a genius at operational efficiency. And I've got to be able to project the price of oil. And I've got a crawl inside head and understand what he's likely to do when this sedative tariffs run out. And I've got to, you know, and on and on and on. And no, you don't. You need to find one or two things that you can be really, really great at. And then you need to focus on them. And the more you focus on them, the better you'll get at them. And you'll build something of value. And maybe someday somebody will come and give you a check for that. Or maybe every year it'll just pay you some money. But you'll have a better life either way. And that's what makes business great. And that's what makes technology and where it's going great is that it is going to democratize access to building things of value. And it is going to help with people out of poverty. It is going to help people get away from working from somebody else to create value, to having their own vision and to having more flexibility. And these are all great things. This is what we celebrate with this podcast. How do you guys think founders, operators should be spending their time right now with respect to AI? Because like there is a limit to what it's going to do for a consumer brand at this moment in time. Like it's not going to-- I'm not running a better ad account because of AI, not really. So Curtis, how much time are you spending on this? You and I know you and I are spending a lot of time on this. But Curtis, I'm curious, in this grand world of like, you just got to pick things that you can be really great at and focus on them. Like how do you think about this? So the fun news is I have an opinion on everything. So if you ever asked me, I'm going to have an opinion. But on AI, I'm going to go back and hop off the computer and talk about something that Mike mentioned very early on. He said, first of all, let's talk about this at a high level. You have to be a CEO or a founder to say that. Because if you talk to any of your employees or all these startups, they want to talk about all the noise down at the bottom. Part of what we do, Matt, I know you do it. Mike, I know you do it. Say, I understand all this garbage down here. Let's talk about it at a different level. Let's look in at it on this. So we have people using AI coming up with things doing all of this stuff. And my job is to say, let's look at it from a higher level. We're not doing it enough. We're doing it too much. We need to put the-- because when I make a decision, I'm saying we're going to take time, money, and people, and we're going to put to award that. And it's going to save us time, money, or people. It's going to make us more money over the long term. So I have to look at that. Are we using AI? Absolutely. I'm using it to simplify the way that I view the world. I am not on cloud-creating apps like you guys. I am not on-- I don't know all of these things. But I've hired some really smart people that I talk to every day that I'm saying, let's look into it. Come back to me and tell me in three or four simple sentences why this is going to work. I don't want to-- you guys are younger and smarter than me. I do not want to be involved in that all day every day. I think it clogs up the simple way I look at the world. But if you're not jumping into this heavy meaning, every question you have say, could I solve that more quickly? It's so simple. When people ask me a question, I'm like, I wish you had a device that you could literally ask that same question to. And it would answer that right now. I wish we could look into some of these things that we do. We have that. Our first instinct is not to use AI to solve our problems. And we have to train our brains to saying, first of all, can I solve this and what's coming in the long term? I'm not up-- and as much as you guys, I am not. But we use it. I love it. It's the reality of the world. And it's going to make your opinion offline of taking all that information and making decisions that change your company that's going to make the difference. Mike, I'm so-- like, let's go to you on this one. They ask Sam Altman, what would you not use AI for? And he said, well, I don't think I would ask it about the meaning of life. And there's something pretty interesting there. And I'm going to make a really generalized observation. Our ability to think high level and our ability to think about meaning and purpose is being impaired by our technology, how online we are, and how often we go to our technology to answer questions for us. It's ironic, because if you listen to the people that are on the front rows of building this, what they're saying is, yes, it will be able to do anything. However, the thing that we're going to do, that is going to create leverage is understanding how to deploy that power. And that is more of a first principles question. That is a question that only comes from somebody who is able to think about the world and how they want to impact it and what they want to build and how that's going to create value. And so the point, I use this analogy because I think it's really effective. Arabian Knights, you know, the Aladdin story, he finds a magic lamp. And if you rub it, the genie comes out and he grants you three wishes. And the story is really about how difficult it is to answer the question of if a genie could do anything, what would you have it do? How would you use those three wishes? I think AI is a nice placeholder for the genie that imagine the technology does get to the point where it can do anything. You know what that still doesn't answer? Is it doesn't answer the question of what is it worth doing? What is it worth building? Only you can answer that. And that the people who will succeed won't necessarily be the most technologically smart. There'll be the people that have the vision of what is worth spending my time towards building. And that the tools to help them to build those things are going to be more capable, more abundant and more inexpensive than ever before, but they can never solve the question for you of what is worth doing. You have to do that hard work. And those are going to be the people that thrive in the years ahead. Can I expand on what you're both saying? And I think I also think, Mike, at the same time, this is one of those instances where lots of things can be true at the same time. I think you should be spending as much time on it as possible. And I think the reason for that is this word understanding, which is what you just said. I think every operator, every CEO needs to understand this at the level that they understand every other very important part of their business. Like, I know enough about my supply chain to be dangerous. I know I can build factories now. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm the one doing it, but I still know enough to be dangerous. I know if somebody is like doing it right or not, I know enough about how to run an ad account, but I'm not flipping the switches, but I still know enough. And I think this is a new area for operators because most operators don't know a thing about how software works. Not even one, we just know it works. And I negotiate the price of it. That's like been the history of software and most brands is like, does it work and how much? And I think this is a unique time where like I am seeing operators, like non-technical people getting in the weeds, trying to figure this out. The ones that are doing it well are doing it from a place of, I need to understand how this is going to add value to my business, like where can it provide leverage? And the ones that are doing it wrong are the ones that are trying to become software engineers. And I've been saying this a lot lately to people, I'm like, just because you can code doesn't mean you should. If you're scaling any commerce brand today, ads alone aren't enough. Afterself focuses on the one moment that every brand already owns, after checkout, and turns the post-purchase moment into more profit. Monetize every order with post-purchase offers and thank you page experiences without disrupting checkout or hurting conversion. Enterprise grade tech used by Gap, ticket master, Macy's and Target, now driving results for brands like True Classic, Hexclad, Ridge, and Jones Road. I would know. This is the reason I ended up buying three pans from Hexclad instead of two. Afterself is already generated over $1 billion, an additional revenue for e-commerce brands, revenue that doesn't require more traffic or higher-cap. So check out Afterself and tell them that the operator sent you. Well, and I'm gonna try and bring it back to what we've been talking about today. It's funny because my observation, just talking with other leaders, the podcast is that AI has become almost like the death star with this tractor beam, no matter what you set out to discuss, somehow like at the end you're talking about AI. But let me bring this full circle back to M&A. Practically the reason why M&A is always the most popular thing we talk about is that it's really the way that you can have your life completely financially changed overnight, right? Someone buys what you've built and that can not only transform your life, but it can transform your children's lives. And people, descendants you haven't even, haven't even born yet. And so I do wanna make an observation here, which is that people aren't gonna buy what you've built because of some clever clawed integration, right? That can be a tool you use, but they are going to buy value that you have created and as the technology has become more powerful, don't look at that as a substitute for value creation. It can be a great tool that you use in the process of creating things of great value, but it is not the value. And so we will continue to explore, how do we use these tools? But the types of things that investors pay for are long-term competitive advantages that as Curtis said, take months and years to build and technology can be an aid in a tool in that, but it is not the thing. This is the unsexy stuff like building a team with great culture. Building a brand that really means something to thousands to millions of people. Building a supply chain and manufacturing partners that really trust you and are really partnered in things with you or your own manufacturing, developing intellectual property that other people cannot produce regardless of how much money they have. These are the kind of things that investors are happy to pay you for. And so use the tools available to help build those things, but never conflate the two. The tools are not the value. The value is still and always will be in these things like these unique competitive advantages. - Love that Curtis, do you want the final word? I want to wrap this show up because that's a great, this is a great way to place to end. - You did great, man. Thanks for guiding us along through this. I just, when Mike was talking, I was thinking of philosopher Bertor Russell who said philosophy is not to figure out the question. It's to figure out what questions we should ask. And I think that's AI. I think it's figuring out the right things to use it for is number one. And then I want to tell all these operators that are starting at one million right now or at zero and they're today, they think they want to start that and we've motivated that. The great news is if you build a $2,000,000,000 company, you will be a much better person because you can't do it if you're a person. Like the growth personally that you make is equal to the company growth. So when you look back, you won't even remember that person that you were because you have to get more integrity, more thoughtful, better with people, better at salesmanship, better at making the hard decisions, better everything that you do, you're gonna be a better person. You wanna know what to be an entrepreneur? It's the best way to become the person that you meant to be. It's hard, it's rough, and you get it at the other end and you feel like you can take over the world. - Yeah, ultimately what you're both saying is how you actually build a great valuable business. That's a challenge. - Yeah. - All these deals that are happening, that's what they did. That's it. Boys, this was fun. I like this one. This is gonna be a great app. I appreciate you both. I got to take notes now. That's how I know we have a good episode is I leave you and I'm like, I gotta write things down. - As opposed to most episodes where Matt just tunes out and this one he actually might learn something from. So hopefully you did as well. - I just gotta take some notes. - All right guys, that's a wrap.