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“You are not trying if you’re not getting sued.”

How did IQBAR go from a $90k Kickstarter to a nine-figure retail, DTC, and Amazon giant?

Will Nitze (Founder & CEO) and Jessica Greenwood (CMO) join Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi) and Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern). This is the product launch strategy and CPG marketing playbook they wish existed when they started.

Will and Jessica detail their early tactics and walk through every funding round: from $625K at a $4M valuation to $5.5M at $50M. They doubled revenue every year for eight years, kept the team at 15 people, and never dropped below 50% ownership. Mike and Matt close on what killed dozens of competing bar brands in 2022 and why IQ BAR survived.

"You will not be happier at nine figures. I’ll just tell you that right now."

What does an operator do after building an 8-figure brand entirely on one dog breed?

Help an Operator Out (HAOO) is a new series where real business owners join the podcast with live questions. In this episode, Garrett Yamasaki (Founder & CEO, We Love Doodles) brings his crossroads: a bootstrapped, Amazon-heavy pet brand that crossed eight figures and needs to decide whether to go deeper in its niche or wider into new dog breeds. The answer is less obvious than it sounds.

The conversation covers capital allocation, the difference between product-channel fit versus product-market fit, and why consumables change the LTV math entirely. Mike makes the case that moated niche distribution builds more durable enterprise value than any paid channel. And everyone lands on the same uncomfortable truth. The business you already built is the one most worth protecting.

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