Neuro didn’t fight for checkout shelf space first. They built a nine-figure online business through TikTok Shop, creator marketing, Amazon, and DTC, then used that momentum to walk into Walmart, Costco, CVS, and 7-Eleven with demand already proven.

In this episode of the DTC Podcast, Eric talks with Brian Evangelista, Chief Commercial Officer at Neuro, about creating a category that didn’t exist, running an affiliate program with tens of thousands of creators, and what actually changes when a digitally native brand wakes up as a real retail business.

Built for DTC founders scaling from $5M–$100M who are trying to turn ecom momentum into retail distribution.

We also get into:

• Why TikTok Shop worked so well early on, and what changed when it got pay-to-play
• How creator incentives shifted once GMV Max rolled out
• The retail launch strategy behind Walmart, Costco, CVS, and 7-Eleven
• Why retail completely reshapes your P&L, ops, and marketing stack
• The hidden operational tax of moving from DTC into omnichannel
• How Neuro frames category creation vs stealing share
• The strategy behind the “Your Gum Is Dumb” sloth campaign
• Why brand marketing started making sense only after retail expansion

Who this episode is for: DTC founders, retail operators, consumer brand marketers, TikTok Shop teams, and brands considering omnichannel expansion.

What to steal:

• Build demand digitally before asking retail to believe in your category
• Use creator momentum as proof for retail buyers
• Treat retail launches like media moments, not inventory placement

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The consideration phase is collapsing thanks to LLM shopping.

Awareness still happens on Meta. Conversion still happens on a PDP. But the comparison and research middle, the part brands have spent a decade optimizing, is increasingly happening inside an LLM the customer already trusts.

20% of holiday shoppers used an LLM in their purchase path last Q4. Google I/O just demoed one-tap concert tickets from a photo. Amazon folded Rufus into Alexa for Shopping. The behavior is moving fast enough that operators need to start preparing for Q4 now.

Eric sits down with Aves and Daniel from Pilothouse to unpack what’s actually happening and the work brands can start this quarter.

Inside the episode:

• Why customers trust their LLM more than your ad
• Daniel on why he stopped going to Amazon to compare vitamins
• The persona mismatch that hurts brands more than it used to
• Why reviews and earned media matter more than your landing page
• What changes for abandon cart and retargeting
• Two operator-tested audits to see if your brand shows up in ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini
• For founders and operators who want to be recommended when the customer asks.

What to Steal:

• Three things you can do this week.
• Run the prompt audit. Take your top five Google queries, run them through ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Track who gets recommended, who gets cited, and whether you show up at all. Daniel uses this as his baseline before any other AI-visibility work.
• Pick one brand truth and repeat it everywhere. Scattershot positioning loses to consistent positioning. If every ad pitches a different angle to a different persona, an LLM has nothing coherent to summarize about you.
• Add dates to your blog posts and PR pages. Recency factors into LLM citation. Old content gets de-prioritized even when it’s accurate.

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Charlie Cole watched FTD go from a $1.8 billion publicly traded company to a $60 million bankruptcy auction in eight months. His first day as CEO was March 23, 2020, the first day of national lockdown.

Before that he ran digital at Tumi, Samsonite, Lucky Brand, and Shift Nutrition. Today he’s interim Chief Digital Officer at Thuma.

This episode is a tactical sit-down on what actually drives growth right now in a Meta + AI world.

In this episode:

• Why “creative is the new targeting” is only half the answer
• The exact death spiral most DTC brands follow on the way to margin collapse (no sale, semi-annual sale, sale page, sitewide 20%, Amazon, done)
• How Charlie engineered personas at FTD across customer, consumer, and event
• The florist’s choice insight: highest NPS in the category, by 20-40%
• The 2011 Dr. Oz campaign that nailed funnel congruency before anyone called it that
• Why personalization was a misnomer until about two years ago
• The three “swimsuit for vacation” shoppers who should never see the same page
• Why YouTube is still massively underutilized, and why most brands run it wrong
• The product question that decides whether any of this matters

Who it’s for: DTC founders and operators scaling from $10M to $250M who want to grow without turning their brand into a discount machine.

What to steal:

• Build acquisition around your highest-LTV segments, not your lowest CAC
• Treat creative and landing pages as one system, not two teams
• Stop letting platforms grade their own homework on attribution
• Audit where you sit on the discount death spiral before it owns you

Timestamps:

0:00 Career Journey Into Ecommerce

2:48 Inside the FTD Turnaround

14:20 How Customer Behavior Changed During COVID

23:18 Creative Is The New Targeting

36:05 AI’s Biggest Ecommerce Unlock

43:02 Why Most Brands Test Creative Wrong

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Braydon’s back on AKNF with the most tactical AI-for-agencies episode we’ve recorded.

Eric opens with a Jeff Shannon line worth the whole listen: AI right now is a giant stack of two-by-fours that everyone got handed for free. By itself, it’s not a chair, it’s not a house, it’s not a sofa. The value shows up when someone actually builds something with it.

Then Braydon walks through what he’s been building.

Inside: connecting Claude to Motion to audit ad-to-landing-page mismatches, then having Claude vibe-code a new PDP in HTML in 6 hours instead of a week in Instapage. The Microsoft Clarity connector that nobody’s talking about (free heatmaps, free recordings, API access). The Higgsfield connector for generating raw 4K assets through Claude with Nano Banana Pro and Seedance. Why Claude Design is worth experimenting with for brand-sensitive clients. And a peek behind the curtain at Gary and Blanche, the AI media buyer and creative strategist Jeff is running on DTC’s own Meta account.

Plus: why the em-dash is dead, the semicolon problem nobody’s solved, and the actual reason Claude reads cleaner than ChatGPT for enterprise work.

If you’ve been “playing with AI” and want to actually build something with it, this is the episode.

Catch the DTC and Pilothouse crew at The Whalies May 19 in LA.

Timestamps:

00:00 AI Is Raw Material

02:36 Why AI Needs Human Builders

04:18 Claude Building Landing Pages

10:02 AI-Powered Heatmap Analysis

16:36 Higgsfield + Claude Creative Workflow

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Katie Sturino built Megababe with 60,000 followers, two co-founders who’d never had chafe, and an MOQ of 20,000 units stacked in her parents’ garage. Eight years later it’s profitable, in Target, Walmart, CVS, Nordstrom, Anthropologie, and on Amazon. Never raised a dollar. Never grew less than 33% year over year.

In this episode Katie walks through how she built a category that didn’t exist. Manufacturers didn’t know what chafe was. Press didn’t know what chafe was. The Today Show hit on June 30, 2017 and they sold out every unit by July 1. Then the real work started.

Inside: why retail is when the grind begins (not when you’ve made it), why she still ranks “people just dealing with it” as her biggest competitor, the husband-given marketing fix that solved deodorant aisle confusion in one sticker, the accidental Amazon Super Bowl ad placement, why their hemorrhoid product is a top seller on Amazon, and the moment her sister convinced her soap was worth doing.

Plus the new “I’m Not Fine Index” campaign, why NYC taxi ads outperform every digital channel they run, and the one piece of advice Katie has for anyone shipping a product in 2026.

Catch the DTC and Pilothouse crew at The Whalies May 19 in LA.

Timestamps:

0:00 Building a brand around chafe

2:58 How Megababe started

11:00 Selling out after the Today Show

14:10 Retail growth at Target and Walmart

20:05 Why Megababe started advertising

27:10 Building a real brand voice

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Abby and Taylor from Pilothouse settle the loudest debate in media buying right now: does velocity equal strategy?

Short answer: no. Long answer: this whole episode.

Inside, Abby (art) and Taylor (science) break down what a real creative system looks like under Andromeda, how to spot AI slop in an ad library at a glance, and why the squint test is still the fastest way to audit your output. They get into the frequency spike that hit when one apparel brand over-segmented celebrity drops, why Taylor still runs legacy Advantage+ Shopping campaigns three years later, and how a Nick DiGiovanni partnership ran at 0.5 ROAS on platform but pulled a 6 ROAS once Northbeam’s 60-day window kicked in.

Plus: why gifting ads should still target women, three exercises to run on your ad account before Q4, and the difference between feeding the algorithm and spamming the button.

If you’re making 50 ads a week and not sure any of them are doing a job, this one’s for you.

Catch the Pilothouse and DTC crew at The Whalies May 19 in LA, and our DTC operator dinner May 20.

Timestamps:

0:00 Why velocity isn’t strategy

2:38 The problem with endless ad variations

5:12 Best Meta account structures today

8:07 How to audit creative quality

14:08 Building a real creative system

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Full Glass Wine Co.

Neha Kumar joins the podcast to break down how Full Glass Wine Co. acquired 7 DTC wine companies, integrated them under one operating system, and scaled to a $200M platform in under two years.

This wasn’t a “buy brands and hope” strategy. Neha explains how COVID-era DTC brands overbought inventory, ignored unit economics, and optimized for growth over profitability — creating one of the biggest acquisition opportunities in modern ecommerce.

For DTC founders scaling from $5M–$50M who want to improve retention, fix unit economics, and build operational leverage across brands.

Inside the episode:

• Why subscription models quietly broke a lot of DTC wine businesses
• The exact operational changes Full Glass uses to make acquisitions profitable in 60–120 days
• How they centralized shipping, finance, SMS, and retention while preserving each brand’s identity
• Why retention, not acquisition, became the core growth engine
• The hidden downside of emailing subscription customers too often
• How Wink’s 7M-email quiz funnel became a massive acquisition asset
• Why customer segmentation matters more than product assortment in brand acquisitions
• The “three legs of the tripod” framework for building durable DTC companies: marketing, finance, and operations
• Neha’s “Year of Yes” mindset shift inspired by Willy Wonka that changed how she built companies

Who this is for:

Operators, retention marketers, DTC founders, PE-backed ecommerce brands, acquisition entrepreneurs, and anyone trying to scale profitably after the cheap-CAC era ended.

What to steal:

• Move from monthly shipments to higher-AOV quarterly bundles to fix shipping economics
• Centralize infrastructure, not brand voice
• Treat retention like the business engine, not an afterthought

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro to Full Glass Wine Co

2:18 Why DTC wine brands struggled after COVID

6:12 How Winc collapsed from inventory overload

8:05 The 3-part formula for profitable DTC brands

10:05 What Full Glass looks for in acquisitions

13:05 Centralizing customer service across wine brands

15:02 Building brands around customer identity

17:42 The Willy Wonka “year of yes” mindset

21:58 What happens after acquiring a company

24:45 Why subscription models don’t work for wine

29:12 Storytelling vs transactional retention emails

32:18 How Full Glass approaches retention marketing

35:05 Managing inventory and cash flow in wine

37:15 Trusting intuition as an operator

40:18 How Full Glass is using AI internally

42:05 Are the next generation of entrepreneurs ready?

45:00 What’s next for Full Glass Wine Co

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Meta attribution has changed, and most brands are still reading performance the same way they were a year ago.

Jacob, Head of Socials at Pilothouse, walks through what’s different now. Click-only attribution, incremental measurement, and how those shifts affect the way conversions show up in your dashboard.

If you’ve noticed numbers feeling off lately, this will help you understand why and what to actually pay attention to.

For DTC founders and marketers spending $50K–$500K/month on Meta who want to understand what’s actually driving conversions.

• What click-only attribution removes from reporting
• How incremental attribution works in practice (without the fluff)
• Why conversion numbers feel different even when performance hasn’t changed much
• Where Meta data and third-party tools start to diverge
• How Pilothouse is thinking about reporting and decision-making now

Who this is for:

DTC operators, performance marketers, founders scaling paid social

What to steal:

• Check incremental conversions alongside total before making changes
• Look at channel performance in context of total revenue, not in isolation
• Use Meta data as one input, not the final answer

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

02:28 Meta’s New Attribution Shift

05:03 How Incremental Attribution Works

08:11 Conversion Windows and Optimization

10:15 Why Better Signals Improve Meta Performance

13:02 Agentic Ads Explained

16:02 AI Business Agents and Customer Conversations

18:05 Setting Up Meta’s AI Agents

19:28 AI Ad Automation and Testing Strategies

21:14 Q2 Meta Performance Trends

23:02 Why Meta Reduced Over-Attribution

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We surveyed 540+ DTC operators on how they plan and forecast. This episode, we break down the data and see why most brands are stuck reacting. We’re joined by Laura Thompson, co-founder of Three Ships Beauty, one of the few who’s figured out how to run a tight, fast, 8-figure brand without drifting into chaos, and Mike Chiasson, Senior Solutions Engineer from Keen Decision Systems, to pressure-test the Three Ships Beauty playbook against the data.

Grab your free copy of the report here: https://www.directtoconsumer.co/thereactiveloopreport

In this episode:

• The biggest gaps in how DTC brands plan
• Why “revenue is a lagging indicator”
• The bottom-up forecasting Three Ships uses
• The KPI ownership system across the whole team
• When scenario planning is worth the time, and when it’s just noise

If you’re a DTC operator past $5M who wants to stop reacting and start running a solid plan, this episode is a must listen.

Timestamps

0:00 Planning vs reacting in ecommerce

2:03 Why most brands only plan 1–6 months ahead

4:02 Bottom-up forecasting vs top-down forecasting

6:06 Scenario planning and external market risks

9:02 When media spend actually works harder

11:01 The reactive loop hurting DTC brands

14:03 Why brands over-invest in bottom funnel

15:06 Weekly KPI reviews and forecasting systems

18:02 The danger of reacting to noisy data

20:04 Leading vs lagging indicators in ecommerce

23:02 How talent impacts business performance

24:58 Product launch delays and forecasting pivots

26:53 Scenario planning for tariffs and supply chain risk

31:55 Should brands worry about oil shocks?

35:34 The biggest gap between planning and execution

38:02 KPI systems that drive accountability

42:16 The right way to plan for growth

44:02 Why reactive brands fall behind

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Helen Smith built Roo & You from hand-sewn mask lanyards in 2020 into a 100,000+ customer brand, and didn’t touch paid ads for the first 3.5 years. In this episode she walks through the Facebook community that became her growth engine, how she landed Warner Bros and Harry Potter as a licensing partner without a media buyer, and what scaling through a tariff war actually looks like behind the scenes.

For DTC founders scaling from $1M to $10M who want to lower CAC and build a real retention moat.

What we cover:

• The mask lanyard side hustle that funded her first container of play couches
• How a private Facebook group became Roo & You’s primary growth engine
• The one-strike kindness rule that keeps the community alive
• Cold-DMing Warner Bros on LinkedIn (and getting a yes)
• Why licensing is a marketing channel, not a revenue play
• Adding tariffs as a line item instead of a stealth price hike
• Launching an affiliate program in November for existing customers

Who this is for: Founders leaning too hard on paid, or operators who want to build a community moat before they scale spend.

What to steal:

• Show up in other people’s communities for months before launching your own
• Set strict community rules on day one, not after things go sideways
• Make tariffs a visible line item to keep customer trust intact
• Hand affiliate codes to existing customers before paying creators who’ve never used the product

Timestamps:

00:00 Building a brand through community

02:00 Using data to make better decisions

04:00 Handling tariffs and margin pressure

06:00 Launching through Facebook groups

08:00 Early demand and product expansion

10:00 Finding manufacturers and testing products

12:00 Pricing, value, and product longevity

14:00 Organic growth without paid ads

16:00 Transitioning into paid advertising

18:00 Leveraging community for content and growth

20:00 Licensing deals and brand partnerships

24:00 Structuring better partnership agreements

27:00 Challenges with licensing approvals

29:00 Why partnerships are for marketing not growth

30:00 Founder confidence and building in public

37:00 Expanding into the US market

40:00 Choosing the right marketing agency

42:00 Turning customers into advocates

47:00 Advice for founders building a brand

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