2026, eTail Palm Springs_Keynote Panel_From Surviving to Thriving_ Proven Strategies for DTC Brands to Fund, Scale, and Pivot in a Shifting Market

Moderator: Hi, everyone. Last day. Are you guys ready? Yeah. Yes. I'm Adelsa. I'm trying to pull a Kendall and Kylie and only go by my first name since it's pretty unique. But I am a marketing consultant and a podcast host of Evolve Voices. And I'm so excited to be here with you guys today, uh, especially for this theme, 'cause in both roles, I've sat with operators and founders talking about today's theme, which is embracing retail's fast lightning evolution.

And I couldn't have a better list of panelists to talk to. So, uh, so excited to kick it off. So please welcome your panelists here, uh, Julie, Russell, Robert, and Jeremiah. Hello, guys. Hey. I am so excited to finally get to meet some of you in person. It-- there's nothing like in-person meets, right? Um, but I wanted to start off with a quick round of introductions if it's okay with you guys, and Julie. If you could give me your name and where you work.

Julie Matrat, CEO, Society6: Yes. Good morning, everyone. I'm Julie Metrat. I'm the CEO of Society6. We're a wall art, home decor, and lifestyle brand. The big differentiator with us is that we work with independent artists, um, and they create design for all the products that we sell on the site.

Russell Breuer, Founder & CEO, Spot & Tango: Great. Um, good morning. I'm Russell Brewer, CEO and founder of Spot & Tango. We are a pet health and wellness brand. We make awesome pet food products. They're all human grade using fresh, whole ingredients based in New York City. Um, we are a hundred percent D2C subscription.

Robert Cardiff, CEO, Laundry Sauce: Hey, what's up, everybody? Thanks for joining, uh, on this last day. So my name is Robert Cardiff. I'm the founder of Laundry Sauce, the best-smelling laundry detergent.

If you haven't tried it, you've got to try it. But beware, you won't go back to the generic stuff. So just, um, caution there. But yeah, super grateful to be up here, and thanks for coming.

Jeremiah Curvers, CEO, PolySleep: Good morning, everyone. Happy Thursday. Last day. You can catch up your flight, hopefully, uh, without delays. Uh, my name is Jeremiah Curvers. Ten years ago, following a double herniated disc, I decided to start, um, Polysleep. We're a direct-to-consumer brand based in Canada. Uh, we now pivoted towards B2B, uh, white label, and we're now a manufacturer as well. So very happy to be with you this morning.

Moderator: Well, thank you all for being here. Uh, today's panel is From Surviving to Thriving: Proven Strategies for DTC Brands to Fund, Scale, and Pivot in a Shifting Market.

We all would want to start a brand. I s- you know, I floated that in my head, but it's hard. Uh, I mean, like, it is hard to bootstrap and, and your question on your mind is, "How do you get this thing done?" And so we have these panelists to help us start there. Um, in the early DTC days, it was all about growth, and in the past few years, we've dialed it back and it's all been about profitability.

So now my question to you guys is, if I put a gun to your head and said, "Growth versus profitability," where are you today? Um, so I'll start with Robert. Uh, what matters most?

Robert Cardiff, CEO, Laundry Sauce: Yeah. So Longer Shots is four years old, so just had our four-year, uh, anniversary, uh, a couple months ago. Um, so super young company and, uh, that has been, uh, something that's changed since we started.

So, you know, the first, I would say, three years were grow at all cost, burn whatever money you need to burn, and, uh, I don't know if that was, uh, intentional, you know? I think we just, like, got really excited and wanted to grow as fast as we could. Um, but doing that got everybody excited. Yeah. You know? And so one of the things for us is, like, we, we have always been raising money, you know?

So, like, as a founder, me and my, my two business partners, it's like that's, that's like a part-time job all the time. And then, um, you know, we brought on a, a... We got lucky and had a venture fund out of New York invest, uh, about a year ago, and that's when they were like, "All right, guys, like, let's settle down a little bit and let's think about, you know, what is your EBITDA?"

You know? And, and that was more... That was just as important as growth. Like, so if the question is, you know, if I had a gun to your head, you know, what would you do, you know, profitability or growth? I'd say you have to continue to grow, but not at, uh, a heavy loss every month. You know? So if you're growing, if your growth rate is solid and you're breakeven, like, that's not a bad place to be.

I think that's the sweet spot. Um, but I think with strategics nowadays, what I'm hearing is that they, they do want-- they don't wanna just have a company, they don't wanna acquire a company that's just losing a ton of money because that's a problem they gotta fix, but they do wanna see growth and EBITDA and a, and a healthy balance. So now we work with a, a CFO, and that CFO, we're constantly looking at what is 2026, 2027, 2028, and over the next few years, like, that EBITDA is growing.

Moderator: So what did you guys just hear here? The tough exchange between growth and profitability. I'm still hearing both. Yeah. So I'm going to actually do a quick show of hands on what matters most and start with growth today. So who out of the four of you is prioritizing growth?

Robert Cardiff, CEO, Laundry Sauce: Still, still doing that.

Moderator: Yeah, and then the three of you pri- prioriti- prioritizing profitability today. Yeah. It's Jar-

Russell Breuer, Founder & CEO, Spot & Tango: I, I was gonna say, uh, both. I mean, to, to echo Robert's, um, story, I, I call them the science experiment phase- Yeah ... in like zero to two. You're figuring it out, looking for product market fit. Um, so it was grow, grow, grow, obviously, um, to attract either investors or demonstrate that there's a role for you in the marketplace. That, that focus then on profitability, I think, for the bear market, everyone said, "Oh, EBITDA," and like, you know, like conserve cash.

Our business is now eight years old. We're nine figures. Um, very humble beginnings. It was me in a studio apartment with my wife. Uh, it's cliche but true. Um, the, the last couple of years we have focused not only on high growth, like 50% plus year over year, but we've looked at the metrics. We've looked at ways to boost LTV and the contribution margin of the business on a P&L basis, and we have found ways to maintain and manage CAC and get CAC lower despite lower spend month over month on the marketing side- Okay

such that we're getting very good paybacks on our cohorts. It's, we're a DDC subscription model, as I mentioned. When the math works, the EBITDA shows up, and so for us, we've been able to maintain profitability at a very high rate of growth. So for us, it's not one or the other, it's doing both. But I think crucially being very disciplined that there is a cap on your CAC, and the cap is what is your LTV and what is the margin of the business? Without those factors in play- That really governs how quickly you grow. So again, this, I think for us, it's kind of a growing up. It's a, a bit of a maturity along the way.

Moderator: Well said. I, I love hearing this from Russell because Spot & Tango was actually on really solid footing when you guys had to go to raise capital.

Uh, so a lot of questions are when you're trying to grow is how do you, how do you get money for this thing, you know? Uh, so talk to me about that path of where, where you were when you started to consider outside capital for Spot & Tango, um, and why you didn't before.

Russell Breuer, Founder & CEO, Spot & Tango: Sure. So we, we were a, a bootstrapped business in, in the early days. Yeah. You know, self-financed. You know, I think my grandmother invested $5,000. It was, like, very much homegrown. Um, so, so for us, we were rapidly seeking product market fit, um, and we achieved, like, significant growth. Uh, we launched a product called UnKibble. Um, it's a pet food product. We- it's fresh dry. We like to say it's the benefits of a fresh food diet and the convenience of kibble.

So it's stored in the, in the pantry. We launched that business, and it grew from zero to $20 million of revenue in six months, um, which is a great headline. Operationalizing growth was very difficult. Yeah. Um, so at that stage, we decided to raise capital. One, we wanted to lean in and focus on acceleration versus treading water.

We-- in pet, there's really no ceiling, and so we wanted to be aggressive, take share, and continue scaling very rapidly. That required equity dollars. To enable that growth, we insourced and built a dedicated facility, and that required an e- a blend of equity and debt. So, um, it, it was very much a balance, but again, my, my kind of shared experience is if you can raise zero and own 100% of the cap table, that would be incredible.

Um, and, and oftentimes it's this introspective of what kind of entrepreneur do you wanna be? What legacy do you want to leave? And, um, ultimately, I think people need to think about, uh, uh, last comment, so I don't wanna take the stage, but i- is building relationships within the, the investment community is really important- Yeah 'cause you may wanna raise one day. Yeah. And so I think fostering those, those dynamics over time is

Moderator: important. So building relationships, and one thing before I move on, is how do you know when the timing is right? Like, I think that's, like, th- that signal. Like, when, when should I pu- push for more?

Russell Breuer, Founder & CEO, Spot & Tango: Yeah. I- i- in our experience, it was hypergrowth. It was hypergrowth and a, a need, a business necessity to fulfill demand on the supply chain side. Without it, we would not have survived by relying on third parties. So there, there was a clear market indicator that-

Moderator: Of break, breaking in there. Yeah. Um, I-- now Jeremiah and Julie, both of you, when it comes down to it- You either go out, raise capital at, at some critical juncture, or you find new ways to grow within your business.

And I feel like that's kind of cool. Like, uh, you can retain some, uh, some of your equity and be able to just grow as you go. So with Polysleep, Jeremiah, you expanded into a new entire revenue stream. Yeah. B2B white label market, and I'm sure a lot of people here are wondering, well, how do you identify that thing? I... Like, the magical new r- new segment, uh, new, uh, new vertical. How did you do it?

Jeremiah Curvers, CEO, PolySleep: There, there's, um, multiple ways. To go back to what we were discussing about, I think there's no clear choice between growth or profitability. Ultimately, as CEO in particular, not necessarily founder, but as CEO, uh, your job is to execute the plan.

Whoever buys the plan often is the, the person or the wallet that's gonna fund you if funding is needed. So when you have a three-year strategy, in our case, we clearly saw during COVID that that rapid growth in our segment was saturating. Um, cost of acquisition was increasingly high. It's a very competitive market with very deep pockets, and we already were seeing a couple of either bankruptcies or company going public being delisted.

So, um, in my case, what I did is I pivoted towards instead... Uh, I zagged instead of zigging. Everybody was going into a multi-product category selling bedrooms rather than just mattresses. Mm-hmm. And I sold the idea to a large manufacturer that we would be the best incubator they could have to understand the direct-to-consumer market, bring that within their team, and build a much stronger CRM, data platform, way to go to market to produce goods for our competitors, and they loved the idea.

So for a year and a half, I worked really hard on our technology inside, how do we gather data, how are we able to facilitate that- Mm-hmm ... so that we could sell our product white labeled for a competitor. Um, and we opened category that I would say really are not sexy- ... but extremely profitable. Um, the mining industry, the carceral industry, uh, heavy industries were not even something I was thinking about three years ago.

Um, but just being able to offer a better night's sleep to someone who's in, who's in an oil rig, uh, really f- fulfill our promise, which is helping people sleep better. So I would say what you gotta stick to is your plan. Where do you see your business in three years? And from there, how could you be a master at executing it, and sometime readjusting it because COVID, nobody would've been able to, to- Yeah

predict how the market would've shifted. Um, so I would say that's probably the biggest advice I could give to people. Really try to Make sure you understand your plan, you understand how to execute it, but also how valuable it is when you have a CEO or an executive team that is able to communicate that plan to the whole organization. Um, so that clarity worth, uh, every penny, and that's usually what investors like to see as well because that confidence translate into the capacity to deliver.

Moderator: Did I hear you say you were looking outside to competitors to see what was out there? Or, or was it a signal internally like, you know, "I'm tapped out. I need to go outside. Now let me look." Yeah, like what was that process like?

Jeremiah Curvers, CEO, PolySleep: Yeah. So we ha- we invested heavily into our brand because obviously when you buy a mattress, uh, and you do that every seven to 10 years, uh, the, the, the brand equity is very important. Mm-hmm. And it, it's extremely, extremely expensive nowadays to, to get attention, so, uh, your marketing efficiency ratio is extremely low.

Moderator: Yeah.

Jeremiah Curvers, CEO, PolySleep: To a point where because there was so much competition, the barrier of entry to, to start a mattress brand is extremely low. You go see a manufacturer with a $50,000 and you could have a brand up and running tomorrow, but then what? Right? And that's what was happening in the market. So what we said instead is- Being a manufacturer where you need 200,000 plus square feet, and very heavy equipment, and millions and millions of investment before going in is definitely a higher barrier of entry.

Mm-hmm. So let's try to find a way to get there, because our only other solution would be to sell to a retailer- Yeah ... like all the other brand did. And unfortunately, by doing that, I would've diluted the brand, because we wanna be known over the next 20, 30, 50, 100 years hopefully, as one of the most reputable mattress company, not a company that sells rugs, and bedsheets, and, and bathrobes, and, and all sorts of things, right? But we would have had no choice because you need to activate that long-term value.

Moderator: Yep.

Jeremiah Curvers, CEO, PolySleep: Right? You need that repeat. Absolutely, yeah. If you stay DTC- Yeah ... you have no choice but to- Yeah, yeah ... because y- you can't just survive acquiring a customer at $1,000 when you sell- Mm ... a $1,000 product every 10 year.

Moderator: Got it.

Jeremiah Curvers, CEO, PolySleep: And this is where you need to, like I said, think of a plan that would be the best outcome for your business, and then prove your team first, and then your investor how you will execute that plan.

Moderator: Who, who knew I would come out of here wanting to be in a mattress business? Yeah. But yeah, yeah, th- that's, that's what I'm coming out of here.

And now, Julie, for you, I've, uh, I'm sure a lot of you have been in this role where there's a new segment or a new revenue stream that appears, sometimes you have to cut back. So you had that tough job, and I would love for you to walk us through, you moved into curating your pro- product volume, uh, uh, from a huge, huge product volume to a more curated assortment. Uh, so it required tightening things up. What were the first signs that you saw that that was needed in your business?

Julie Matrat, CEO, Society6: Yeah. So for those of you who've known Society6 for a long time, we used to be a print on demand open marketplace. We work with hundreds of thousands of artists, infinite artists, infinite number of designs.

At some point, we actually had three billion SKUs in our catalog. So just to give you a point of reference- Wow ... a large Walmart has 200,000 SKUs. So you take 15,000 Walmarts side by side, and that was the size of our assortment. Wow. Um, for a long time, it was our competitive advantage, drove long tail SEO- Mm-hmm infinite choice for customer, and at the time, that was what customer wanted. And so it really drove a rapid top line growth for us up to the other side of the pandemic. And then the first sign that more was not helping happened when the economic environment changed, particularly for the Walmart home decor category.

Um, as many of you here have experienced, traffic became very expensive in 2021. And after, um, promotions were hard to support, logistic cost exploded, and customer expectation actually changed after the pandemic So what we realized, uh, when we look closely at the number was pretty uncomfortable. That scale that we sought was our competitive advantage actually was masking very weak unique economics- Mm-hmm and subsidized CAG. So we made a pretty simple but revealing decision, and we said, "Okay, what happen tomorrow if I cut down marketing by half and I stop promotion?" We actually-

Moderator: You stopped promotions? Okay.

Julie Matrat, CEO, Society6: I'll, I'll talk more about that. Yeah, yeah. But I, I'm, I'm being extreme- Yeah, yeah, yeah ... but it's to give you an example, right? Yeah. What would happen? Would we still sell product? Mm. Would customer come to the brand, and would they actually come back? Um, and would all products still be selling profitability, profitably? And, and the answer is that the vast majority of our assortment didn't pass the test. Um, we realized that actually the majority of those three billion SKUs either didn't sell or didn't drive any traffic.

Mm. And those that did, once you look at the true contribution margin, not just COGS, had very weak, um, unique economics, um, very thin margins. Um, and so we... That's when it kind of click, and we said, "Okay, let's, let's also look at our customer signals." We look at our site performance, and particularly pages that had a very wide assortment, so category pages, PLPs, and we realized that bounce rate were really high on those pages.

Um, CVR was low, and more importantly, when we started talking to customers- We got signals of choice overloads. Um, what customer wanted from Society6, it was not more product. They wanted better quality, they wanted consistency across the assortment, and then they wanted our help to guide them on what to, to buy.

Russell Breuer, Founder & CEO, Spot & Tango: Mm.

Julie Matrat, CEO, Society6: Um, so we could have gone both way. We could have done what many brands do- ... and kind of optimize around the edge, you know, cut, cut, cut here and there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, renegotiate with vendors. Thankfully, no more vendors is here today. But I'm sure everybody does the same thing. We negotiated hard with vendors.

Russell Breuer, Founder & CEO, Spot & Tango: Yeah.

Julie Matrat, CEO, Society6: But, but we actually made a bolder, bigger decision. We said, w- "Yes, we have an emotional attachment with the concept of open marketplace. We love our artists." We had built a really large community of artists. We had almost 500,000 artists at one point, but we say, "We're gonna be pivoting away from that model to a curated retailer." The first thing that we did was to fix the un- the unit economics. And so we look at the true contribution margin across the board, by product, by marketing channel, campaign, international market, and then we made some pretty drastic decision. Uh, many retailers are, well, ask themself, "What am I gonna be selling next?" Yeah. We ask ourself, "What should we stop selling?"

Robert Cardiff, CEO, Laundry Sauce: Mm.

Julie Matrat, CEO, Society6: So we pull back away from the apparel category, for example, because that was not core to our business. We completely remove all our outdoor assortment because the margins were too thin, and then we temporarily shut down international market because we just couldn't make the shipping economics work for us.

Um, and that's, uh, and then we cut down our assortment significantly. We went from billion SKU to a couple of hundred million. Um, it's a simplification that sim- simple, as a word play. Um, but actually it had a lot of cascading benefits for us.

Moderator: Yeah.

Julie Matrat, CEO, Society6: Um, and the first one was imagine in the past we were diluting all of our marketing budget across three billion SKUs. We were not really able to focus that limited marketing budget into SKUs that allow us to acquire and return customers, but SKUs that have high NPS, high return rate that we know customer love and want more of. Um, that was the first thing. But also it means that suddenly your marketing team, instead of spending all their effort and all their time on acquiring customers, um, and really fueling that growth with acquisition, we pivoted the focus on owned and operated channel.

Mm. Email, organic social. We heard a lot about all of that this week. Um, obviously SEO and AEO. Um, and so that was the, the, the most important thing for us. It was to really rebuild the unit economics. But remember that we were built as a business as an open marketplace, so we were never built as a retailer.

Moderator: Mm-hmm.

Julie Matrat, CEO, Society6: And that was a bit of the challenge. We realized very quickly that we couldn't move as fast as the market. So we had to support that shift with a structural shift. Uh, we migrated our storefront to Shopify, uh, so that we could have the best e-commerce tools at our disposition, and we completely pivoted the backend, uh, to a more agile OMS.

Uh, we didn't do all of that modernization of the infrastructure for aesthetics obviously, although please come to our site. It's beautiful. This is a beautiful site now. Yeah, it is a beautiful site. Yeah. So, uh, if you haven't shopped at Society6 in a while, um, you should come. I think it's a much better site than when we were on open marketplace. But my point is, it was not about aesthetics, it was about speed, agility, flexibility, and also very importantly, um, reducing our tech cost.

Moderator: Yeah.

Julie Matrat, CEO, Society6: Um, it-- we used to spend twenty percent of our revenue on tech, so that really allow us to be much more efficient and, and reduce significantly on cost. Um, funny enough, I mean, for us, the key strategic decision, as I said, right, was not to decide what to sell next, but what not to sell.

It was making sure that scale was not masking some weak economics and really rebuilding the unit economics so that we could earn the right to grow again, but grow with much higher contribution margin, much higher NPS and repeat rate, so that we had a business that could actually sustain the test of time.

Moderator: So interesting from Jeremiah what to buy, from Julie what not to buy. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, it, it's an exercise. Before I move on to Robert to the brass tacks of executions and operations when you're in a DTC business, how long does this process take? It is a, a retail is a fast-moving market, and it sounds like you did a lot.

You were looking at your SKUs, you were looking at competitors, you were looking at customer insights. Like how fast did that, this process take?

Julie Matrat, CEO, Society6: Ah, from head to start we had to raise funds to do some of the migration. I would say two years- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm ... but really the last six months were the biggest change for it.

That's when we migrated our front end or back end, cut down our catalog- ... pared down that catalog. Um, transformation, by the way, is not fun for the faint of heart. Mm. It is really hard, and it is much easier to optimize around the edge than to say, "We're gonna, you know, remove all the foundation and rebuild new."

But the advantage of doing that is you're really building a much healthier business. So yes, it's scary. Yes, it requires realigning the team, and that's hard sometimes. Yeah. It, it ... We had to make some team decision because while some people may be fantastic in a growth environment, they struggle in a transformation environment. It's not necessarily the same kind of people that you need in the organization. Um, but we had to rally the team and make sure that everybody was on board with the mission.

Moderator: Yeah. Ah, doing more with less, probably, uh, something you guys have all heard, uh, in what you're doing today. Uh, and I think Robert, as I thought about it, I mean, you guys didn't think we were gonna get through a session without talking about AI, so here it is.

Um, you thought of how to do things smarter at, at La- at Laundry Six, uh, Laundry Source. And so as you were thinking of it, you built this AI brain, which you call, which I think is a great buzzword. Yeah. Um, tell us more about why you thought it was a priority and how you got it done.

Robert Cardiff, CEO, Laundry Sauce: Yeah. Uh, I mean, one thing I, uh, I came here last year at retail, and everybody's talking about AI, and I was just like, I was kind of listening and I'm like, none of that seems actionable to me. And it was super annoying, you know, 'cause it's like we're all talking about AI, but like, what, what, how can you actually implement it as like, uh, you know, an employee or an owner or, or what- or manager or whatever. And, uh, so like, if, if you don't get anything else from this conference, it's like we have like a two to three year window where all of us can learn and start to build the habit of using AI, large language models every single day.

And everybody on your team needs to do that. And as a part of measuring their, this, their success as an employee or a team member or whatever, it needs that utilizing AI workflows in their, their, their system in their day-to-day is critical, uh, you know, to, to, to keep pace with, you know, what we're gonna see transpire in the next two to three years.

So anyways, that's like, you know, my soapbox, uh, talk there. But, um, what we, you were talking about with this AI brain, so- The, what we're trying to do at Laundry Sauce is we have a small team, and it's like instead of hiring more people, how do we just make everybody more productive? And that's, you do that with AI.

And so, you know, we have a couple different layers. And so the way we're, like, looking at it is it's like we have this foundational piece that we are calling the AI brain. It's a stupid name, but- Um, and, and then we have the, uh, the, the brand, so the context of the brand, that's like an, the next layer. And then from there it's workflows, so like using AI, you know, supply chain, marketing, um, you know, w- whatever it is, uh, you know, weekly reports, whatever.

That's like the AI workflow. And then there's like the different AI platforms like Gemini and Claude and ChatGPT, right? So and then those are like the individual uses. So like we ... That's kind of like our framework for thinking about AI. And so f- this AI brain that we're, that we're building right now is, is basically like everything that we have is in the cloud, right?

So in terms of like all of our SOPs and like our financials and like everything. So like, a- and then you have Slack and Gmail and Google Drive and, you know, you have your calendars and like you have, you know, everything on your, your team members. And so we are building this AI brain and ingesting all that data.

So all of our Shopify data, our Amazon data, like every single thing that possibly is in our business, we're putting into a large language model, a secure enterprise, you know, Claude- Yeah ... uh, Anthopic, um, you know, model. And so then as, not just like as the founders, but also like everybody in the business, you can start to ask questions about the business.

So as an example, it's like, "Hey, like, you know, how can we optimize supply chain?" It's got like context for the entire business, and it'll give you ideas, and then you can go build it. Or, "Hey, like, how is this person doing from a performance perspective?" Or, you know, "What products are, you know, need to be optimized?"

You know, and, "What products do we need to remove?" And, and so like this, if you have everything put into this AI brain, think how fast you can like ask questions and get answers. So that's what we're working on. And then of, of course the other layers, the, the brand, the workflows, and then the daily AI.

Moderator: I'm gonna go hard on you on this one. Yeah. But like, it, it's always fun when people say, "Try all these new things," but I have a day job, you know? Mm-hmm. Like how ... I have to learn all these things. Like- Convince me that I should invest my time. Yeah. Like, what, what, what hours have you saved on, on something that I should know about?

Robert Cardiff, CEO, Laundry Sauce: Yeah. Okay, so like, just to s- okay, that's a, a really good question. Yeah. So, uh, as a f- as a founder i- in running a business, like, it is hard to pull myself out of the daily da- day-to-day. Like, there's just so much stuff, you have so many emails, you have so many meetings. And so what we are-- we have found, and it took some time, is to look for somebody that can actually go implement the things that we're trying-- that we want to do.

Like, we're setting the strategy, and so we found like a, an AI expert that can literally just go to work and do it. So that's- Okay ... that's like the AI brain piece. Like, and then also the AI workflows, it's like, oh, we have a, our supply chain manager, you know, she has a, a, a weekly report, and she spends three hours every Tuesday doing that.

It's like, well, can we use AI to, to do that? And so it's like I have her record her entire process for that, that weekly report and, you know, she does a, a Loom video, and then she, like, s- has an SOP. And so then we give all that information to this AI expert, and instead of her trying to stitch that together and learn how to do it, we actually have that specialist come in and do that.

Um, so f- a, a practical example for me is, um, you know, we're, we still are a very small company, so like I pay all the bills. Um, and so, you know, getting all those receipts, we have a bookkeeper, you know, we have a, a CFO, but I still wanna be the one where the money's going out, like, I see it. And so, you know, that's quite a process.

You know, you got QuickBooks and you've got, you know, uh, the, the payroll, uh, the pay, the software to pay it and, and then, like, tracking, you know, what needs to be done. And so that's a wh- uh, you receive all the invoices. And so we're using, uh, this platform called N8N. It's an AI workflow platform, N, Nancy, eight, N.

And you, you utilize, you know, ChatGPT or Claude, and you can basically create... And it's the, my workflow that I spend an hour a day doing, so five hours a week, we are-- I am opt- I'm optimizing that whole workflow with AI So that's like a practical example. Um, and then just like on a day-to-day, like I am using Claude as my favorite, but I use it literally all day long.

I mean, you know, the simple thing is like, "Hey, like, make this email sound more professional," to, um, uh, a great example is, you know, like I have this contract, like I need to review it for red flags be- you know, so I can speed up the, the review process. Um, you know, or, uh, you know, uh, I'm putting together a development plan for a person, you know, like, can you outline a development plan?

And so like, it's like everything you do, like y- you need to build that habit of the first thing you do is like, okay, like what prompt do I need to do to, to, to understand this-

Moderator: Yep ...

Robert Cardiff, CEO, Laundry Sauce: action better? Yeah. And so like if, if you all aren't doing that every day, like my dad, he, he owns a business and like, he's, he's the farthest thing from using AI ever.

And, and I'm like, I'm like, "Dad, like whatever task you have, like you have questions, like send them to me." You know, 'cause he's not using it, but he should be using it. He's running a business, you know? And so it's like if you miss this opportunity, it is a huge miss. So like, just that's my, my one thing is like, don't miss this amazing opportunity we have.

Moderator: I love it, yes. Um, if you can't-- all can't do one thing, we're about to close, but I just love everything you guys have said. Uh, and hopefully wherever you are in the stage of your journey, either you're thinking like Russell and thinking, "How do I build intentionally so I can get the right capital?" Or you're thinking like Jeremiah and saying, "Hey, where can I find a new revenue stream for what to buy?"

Or Julie, what not to buy, and then how to execute, uh, what Robert is saying, which I know is so hard with all your teams and pushback, but all of these are just nuggets for how to build this thing and run this thing. And I'm excited, uh, that you got to hear from this panelist. Thank you all.

Robert Cardiff, CEO, Laundry Sauce: Cool. Thank you.

Julie Matrat, CEO, Society6: Thank you.