Episodit
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Alvaro Gellings co-founded Day One with Arda Saatci, Germany's largest creator, 2.5 years ago. They launched with the Cyborg Season campaign: Arda ran 3,000 km from Berlin to New York, generated over 1 billion organic views, and hit seven-figure revenue on launch day. No paid media at launch. Day One is now an 8-figure business growing 400-500% year over year.
Everything from this episode, structured into a free playbook:
https://www.elevatorgoods.com/talks/alvaro-gellings
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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@alvarogellings
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alvaro-gellings-495692230/
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
01:47 What is Day One and the Cyborg Season launch
04:55 Why Alvaro started building in public
09:00 How he started
14:10 What building in public actually gave Day One
16:39 500-2,000 job applications from a single Instagram Story
17:30 Network effects: founders and billionaires reaching out
20:28 The satisfaction of showing what it actually takes
28:09 Where Day One is now: 8 figures, 400-500% YoY
33:13 International expansion and the athlete partnership model
37:25 The 43,000-person WhatsApp community
39:37 Org chart, key hires, and the COO hire
44:39 The three hires Alvaro would make today
47:51 Leadership style and who he wants to become
51:33 Advice for new entrepreneurs in 2026
1:01:29 How to start with almost nothing: the ad validation tactic
1:06:53 Rapid fire round
1:13:56 The building in public trap: the biggest mistake first-time founders make
1:17:08 Best investment ever made in the company
#ecommerce #dtc #brandbuilding #entrepreneurship #dayone #sportswear #buildingbrands -
Ryan Babenzien sold Greats, the first D2C footwear brand, to Steve Madden. Then he built Jolie into the #1 filtering shower brand in the world. $50M in revenue, profitable for 15 of 17 quarters, with Meta at just 25% of the total marketing budget. This is the full anti-paid playbook.
Everything from this episode, structured into a free playbook:
https://www.elevatorgoods.com/talks/ryan-babenzien
In this episode:
- How to set a hard cap on Meta spend before it owns your margin, and what to put in the rest of the mix instead
- Why Ryan's North Star is first purchase profitability, not ROAS, and how that one decision changed every other number in the business
- The pre-launch brand playbook: how Jolie seeded brand in New York before the product existed, using curated events, oysters, and zero paid media
- The question every founder must answer before launch: what do you actually want out of this business, and what does the exit look like?
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Follow Elevator:
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Website: https://jolieskinco.com/ -
Puuttuva jakso?
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Nick Shackelford has spent over $200M on Meta ads and runs paid for 7 DTC brands that all share one thing: a subscription engine underneath them. His agency, Structured, spends north of $15M a month. He flew to Hong Kong and sat down with us to break down how he actually picks products and runs brands in 2026.
We’ve consolidated everything from this episode, into one playbook. Download it for free: https://www.elevatorgoods.com/talks/nick-shackelford
In this episode you will learn:
- How to know if a product is worth backing before you spend a dollar, and the five traits that make scaling easy
- Why the best products sell themselves on repeat, and the simple math that tells you if your business will ever flow
- How to run ad tests that teach you something even when they fail, and why patience is what most founders run out of first
- Why anyone can copy your entire brand overnight now, and the only two things that still protect you
- How to decide what to keep and what to walk away from, using the framework Nick runs across 7 brands
- Why equity is usually the wrong trade early in your career, and what actually keeps great people around
Follow Elevator:
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Website: https://www.elevatorgoods.com
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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamnickshackelford
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickshackelford
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:00 From soccer coach to $100M on Facebook ads
04:00 Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and getting close to the manufacturer
08:30 The state of e-commerce in 2026
13:00 Smoke testing and the bath bomb that flipped overnight
23:00 The Easy-Win product filter
24:00 The seasons of subscription
30:00 The real moat in e-commerce
40:00 Reasons, seasons, lifetimes
44:00 Hire the young gun, Batman and Robin teams
52:00 Why equity is a trap
58:00 Telehealth, GLP-1, and the next wave
1:18:00 Recession-proof DTC
#ecommerce #dtc #paidmedia #subscription #shackelford -
Most e-commerce brands are boring. They copy each other, lead with product specs, and wonder why nothing sticks. Bob Verlaat, co-founder of Hears and Dore & Rose (OOAK Brands), has spent two years doing the opposite, building brands that people talk about without being paid to.
Everything from this episode, structured into a free playbook:
https://www.elevatorgoods.com/talks/bob-verlaat
In this episode:
- How to define your brand's reason for existence and use it as a filter for every event, partnership, and content decision you make
- Why Bob argues that 5K on an offline event returns faster than 5K on a Meta awareness campaign, and the logic behind it
- Why most brands are boring, and the specific mistake Bob says operators make when they try to stand out
- The one signal Bob looks for to know his brand is working, and why it has nothing to do with followers, ROAS, or engagement
Follow Elevator:
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Follow Bob Verlaat:
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Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
02:00 What brand actually means, and what it is not
06:00 Product first or vision first: how Bob thinks about launching
10:00 Why a worryless life became Hears' north star
14:00 Events vs. Meta ads: which one returns more
20:00 How to know when your brand is working
26:00 Most brands are boring. Here is why.
30:00 LTV, post-purchase surveys, and the retention play most operators ignore
34:00 Rebrands: when they are worth it, when they are not
38:00 Rapid fire: Pinterest, new project, micromanaging, and freedom
Mentioned in this episode:
- Hears - https://hears.com/
- Dore & Rose - https://doreandrose.com/
- OOAK Brands - https://ooakbrands.com/
#ecommerce #dtc #brandbuilding #dtcmarketing #elevatortalks #operatormindset #ecommercebrand -
HiStrips launched in summer 2024 with one product and no creator budget. Eighteen months later, their affiliate channel is bigger than paid media. 1,500+ creators. $0 upfront spend. One person whose only job is managing the army.
Sam Posthuma breaks down the full system: how they built it, how it feeds the ad account with 100-200 pieces of creative per week, and how it unlocked a partnership with Juan LeBron, the #1 padel player in the world, without a pitch deck or a budget.
Get the free playbook for this episode here: https://www.elevatorgoods.com/talks/sam-posthuma
In this episode:
- How HiStrips recruited 1,500 creators without paying anyone upfront
- The three-bucket system: proactive seeding, inbound interest, direct outreach
- Why they never script their creators and what happens when you do
- How organic UGC becomes paid ad creative and how the weekly feedback loop works
- Why their AI creative performed well on every metric and sold nothing
- How social proof at scale brought Juan LeBron's team to them
Follow Elevator:
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Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
01:00 - What HiStrips is today and where it's going
03:00 - Why creative sits above media buying
05:30 - Keeping creative inside the founding team
08:00 - How the creator army was built from day one
09:40 - The army structure and how it actually runs
13:00 - The three-bucket creator outreach system
17:00 - Why HiStrips never pays creators upfront
21:00 - From organic UGC to paid ad creative
24:00 - The weekly feedback loop between media buying and creative
27:00 - AI UGC: what the data said vs. what the comments showed
30:00 - What the creator army has unlocked beyond paid ads
34:00 - The two moats in e-commerce in 2026
38:00 - Rapid fire
#ecommerce #dtc #contentmarketing #creatoreconomy #histrips #brandbuilding
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Vince Nijhof co-founded OOAK Brands. In this episode he sits down with Monish at Elevator Talks and breaks down every system behind it.
If you sell online - whether you're just starting out or already scaling - this is the most practical conversation on ecom we've ever recorded.
Download the free Vince Nijhof operator playbook here: https://links.elevatorgoods.com/episodes/vince-nijhof
Connect with Vince:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vincevn/
X: https://x.com/VinceNijhof
Monish Sabnani (Host):
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/msabnani93/
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Elevator Talks:
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!
Work with the founders of OOAK Brands: https://ooakbrands.com/advisory
Subscribe for bi-weekly conversations with operators building real brands.
What we cover:
00:02:52 - Intro
00:03:32 - Who is Vince Nijhof and OOAK Brands
00:07:59 - The $20M/month reveal
00:11:01 - How to pick a product
00:14:48 - The 9-figure product filter
00:16:00 - Unit economics and ROAS targets
00:23:45 - Creative strategy and awareness stages
00:28:54 - The 7-pod creative team and leaderboard
00:32:37 - Intent over volume: the one-shot-kill doctrine
00:35:04 - Ad channel breakdown: Meta, Google/YouTube, TikTok
00:37:21 - The Amazon effect: how channels feed each other
00:41:13 - Funnel strategy: pre-landers and listicles
00:47:00 - Upsells and AOV
00:50:36 - Brand building vs performance marketing
00:54:07 - Long-term brand building and R&D
00:55:59 - Cash flow and scaling infrastructure
00:59:07 - Where ecom is heading
01:01:00 - Emotional marketing: angles as emotions
01:04:45 - The AI stack
01:10:57 - Omnichannel strategy
01:17:33 - Building a brand holding: the long-term vision
01:23:49 - The real moat in ecom
01:28:34 - The foundation for scale -
📘 Full playbook from this episode (free): https://links.elevatorgoods.com/episodes/notorious-foodie
Every framework Notorious broke down - the 6 revenue streams, the creator-to-brand launch sequence, the content flywheel behind Notorious Cookware. Bookmark it.
20M+ followers. Instead of maxing out brand deals, he built a real business. Monish sits down with Notorious Foodie to break down how.
00:00 Intro
00:47 The anonymous food diary — 5 years, zero monetization
04:38 Steak 101: the TikTok video that hit 10M overnight
10:49 When the first brand deals came in
20:22 One-man-band era: editing, negotiating, pricing on intuition
22:11 The 6 pillars of a creator business
27:28 The delegation mistake every creator makes
32:05 Notorious Cookware: why start with a chopping board
35:42 Designing the chef's knife in Japan
37:36 The affiliate-driven content flywheel
39:07 Why creator product launches flop — and why his didn't
42:03 Zero paid ads, zero CAC
44:52 Short-term drop vs. long-term brand
52:21 The fastest way to kill your creator brand
01:02:44 The face reveal
01:06:44 How creators should actually use AI in 2026
01:18:22 The 6 pillars, recapped
🔗 ELEVATOR
Website: https://links.elevatorgoods.com/
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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elevatorgoods/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/100218103/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0mXtIpIq4driEruAccEqkL
🎙️ GUEST
Notorious Foodie: https://www.instagram.com/notorious_foodie/
MODERATOR
Monish Sabnani is a Managing Partner at Elevator Goods.
X: https://x.com/msabnani93
LinkedIn: / monishsabnani
#ElevatorTalks #NotoriousFoodie #CreatorEconomy #dtc -
Danny Yeung turned a dinner with David Beckham into the fastest-growing supplement brand on record. In 12 months. We break down exactly how - the product, the partnerships, the unit economics, and what most DTC brands get completely wrong.
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0:00 Intro
0:03 The David Beckham dinner
3:31 Building the formula
13:53 Month one: $581K
15:46 Why 98% D2C
20:38 Paid ads at scale
25:18 The unit economics
34:54 Operations at hypergrowth
42:13 Running a public company
45:36 Stock drop from $1B to $50M
53:37 Eating problems for breakfast
58:00 The moment that stands out
1:02:13 Advice for founders
About Elevator Goods:
Elevator Goods is the home for modern DTC. We build brands, back creators, and bring founders together through capital, free education, and community.
Learn More: https://links.elevatorgoods.com/
About the Moderator:
Monish Sabnani is a Managing Partner at Elevator Goods.
X: https://x.com/msabnani93
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monishsabnani/ -
Roman Khan runs $200M+/year in ecommerce across multiple brands.
In 2018, he nearly went bankrupt. That moment changed everything. In this conversation, he shares:
→ The supplier framework that protects your cash flow
→ Why world-class operators run single digit opex
→ His hiring philosophy (and why he avoids US talent)
→ The micromanagement system he swears by
→ How to budget when you can't predict supply chain
→ Where he's putting his time and money in 2025
No surface-level advice. We share the frameworks that scale.
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:30 Q4 Learnings and What Went Wrong
6:51 Building for Exit vs Quick Cash
11:55 Planning the Next 5 Years
20:03 Origin Story
31:01 From Rocket Internet to Peak 21
38:00 Inventory Management Framework
53:29 Day in the Life at $200M/Year
1:04:17 The Micromanagement System
1:10:04 Why You Should Avoid Hiring in America
1:18:41 Company Culture and Retention
1:26:00 Investment Strategy
1:31:13 Where the Alpha is Going: SEO, Reddit, TikTok
1:35:42 Rapid Fire Questions
About Elevator Goods:
Elevator Goods is the home for modern DTC. We build brands, back creators, and bring founders together through capital, free education, and community.
Learn More: https://elevatorgoods.com/
About the Moderator:
Monish Sabnani is a Managing Partner at Elevator Goods.
X: https://x.com/msabnani93
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monishsabnani/
