Global Marketeers Club (2025)

22/07/2025

For Some Businesses, the Best Prime Day Plan
Is to Skip It AltogetherThe sales bumps from
Amazon’s big promotion weren’t worth high fees
and return rates for several entrepreneurs.

Jen Street participated in her first Prime Day
in July 2023. When her handmade ornament
business Forged Flare joined Amazon a year
prior, it achieved its best-ever sales year.
And while demand for Forged Flare’s products
on the e-commerce platform slowed in 2023,
Street says she continued to send products to
Prime warehouses “on the offhand that things
would improve.” After all, she viewed Amazon
as a “side shop”—Forged Flare’s primary sales
channel is its own website.

The business did fairly well that Prime Day,
according to Street, but continued to
experience an Amazon slump for the rest of the
year. When Prime Day rolled around again in
2024, Forged Flare went all out, advertising
the sale through its online storefront, email
newsletters, and social-media accounts. Even
so, the business was nowhere near as
successful as it was in 2023, Street says.

After that experience, Street decided to skip
out on Prime Day this year, despite the fact
that U.S. online spending reached $24.1
billion during the sales event, according to
Reuters. “It’s just too much work for too
little return at this point,” she says. And
Street is not the only small-business owner
making this calculus.

High fees, low margins
Blair Calder, founder of Automatic Trap
Company, which sells imported rodent traps,
describes Amazon as “a constant issue” for his
business. Take Amazon’s 15-percent commission
fee, for example. “As a distributor, you’re
not always dealing with massive margins,” he
says. “You might have a 40-percent, 30-
percent, even 25-percent gross margin on a
product. Take 15 points of that away, and that
really stings.”

Automatic Trap has participated in Prime Day
in the past. Calder says that while he did see
a sales lift, further discounting his products
“in order to compete with everyone in that
particular window just doesn’t make sense.”

Nancey Harris and Tracy Green, the co-founders
of Brooklyn-based Vontélle Eyewear, also chose
to opt out of Prime Day 2025 after
participating in the sales event for the past
two and a half years. Like Calder, they say
that Amazon’s fees and Prime Day discounts
were cutting too deeply into their margins.
Vontélle’s best-selling products on Amazon—
children’s glasses—are already at a low price
point, Harris says. When the business
discounts them further, “the low margins
really do eat away at our overall cost.”

Tariffs are making Prime Day riskier
Vontélle manufactures its products in China,
Vietnam, and the Philippines, all of which
have been hit by high tariffs. Because of
this, the business is now dealing with a
significant decrease in wholesale orders,
according to Harris. “They don’t want to
inherit the cost of the tariffs that we have
to now include as part of our overall
billing,” she says.

Green says this was another major factor in
Vontélle’s decision to sit out Prime Day. She
and Harris looked at their projected costs and
realized they wouldn’t be “making any money”
from the sales event, but rather “doing it
just to do it.”

Dog-washing appliance company Rinseroo also
imports products from China, according to its
founder, Lisa Lane. The business, which
appeared on Shark Tank earlier this year and
is projecting $7 million in sales over 2025,
has never participated in Prime Day. Still,
every time the sales event comes around, Lane
says she wonders, “Are we fools to not
participate?”

Earlier this year, Lane says Rinseroo’s
inventory got stuck at port for about six
weeks. During that period, Amazon storefront’s
inventory got “very low” and the e-commerce
company began charging her “pretty
significant” fees: nearly $2 per unit at its
highest.

Since this year’s Prime Day event lasted four
days, Lane worried that if she made more sales
than projected, she’d again get hit with low
inventory fees. “What if we did five times the
volume in four days?” she asked herself. “Can
we afford to run out of stock?”

“No questions asked” returns
Returns are another pain point for these small
businesses. Calder, Lane, Green, and Harris
all report that return rates are much higher
on Amazon than on their own websites. Green
and Harris say that Vontélle’s Amazon
customers often purchase several glasses in
different colors, try them on at home, then
return all but one favorite. Street says she’s
seen customers buy products from Amazon, find
the item at a lower price on her own website,
purchase that item instead, then return the
Amazon product.

Amazon’s “no questions asked” return policy is
frustrating, Street says, because “no matter
the reason,” her business has to pay for
shipping and her seller score gets penalized.
Calder echoes this sentiment. He estimates
Automatic Trap’s return rate is about four
times lower because his team takes the time to
ask customers questions and give them advice
on how to better make use of their products.

“At the end of the day, if they bought the
product to kill a rat, they want to kill the
rat,” he says. “So if we can help them still
achieve that objective, then they’ll be on
board for that, and they’ll try it. And you
know what? Three out of four of those times it
works.”

How you can decide if Prime Day is worth it
Every business is different, and some greatly
benefit from Prime Day pushes. Eight Saints
Skincare, a Portland, Maine-based skin care
brand, takes part in the sales event every
year. This year was its biggest yet, according
to Jessica Maxcy, co-founder and creative
director. Maxcy says there’s “no question” in
her mind about joining the next Prime Day: “I
just can’t imagine not participating.”

Harris says a friend of hers who sells dog
products also “does amazing on Prime.”
Overall, she says that it “just depends on
what your product is.” Businesses with
lightweight, easy-to-ship products that have
year-round customer demand—like skin care
offerings and pet toys—might find the sales
event worth doing.

Green advises asking yourself what your
products cost, what you’re selling them for,
and how much money you’d lose by participating
in Prime Day. If you’d make a big enough
return to cover variable inventory and return
fees, try it once. After your first Prime Day,
Green says, you’ll know what those fees cost—
and then you can decide if you want to do it
again.

15/07/2025

Delta’s CEO Just Explained Why the Airline Is
Taking Apart Brand-New Planes and It’s
BrilliantIt’s a very smart plan to beat
Trump’s tariffs.

Last week, Delta Air Lines reported its
quarterly earnings. On the company’s call with
analysts, CEO Ed Bastian confirmed that the
company is doing something very unusual to
avoid Trump’s tariffs—it’s taking apart brand
new airplanes in Europe and shipping the
engines across the Atlantic.

According to reports, Delta has been stripping
engines off brand-new Airbus A321neo jets and
shipping those engines back to the U.S. to get
grounded planes back in the air. It might be
the smartest thing an airline has done in a
long time.

Under a trade policy first enacted during the
Trump administration, aircraft built in Europe
are subject to a 10% tariff when imported into
the U.S. For airlines like Delta—which has
invested heavily in Airbus aircraft—those
tariffs can add up fast. Airplanes are not
cheap.

The engines, however, are made by Pratt and
Whitney, right here in the U.S. That means
that they can be shipped back without having
to pay a tariff.

Also, the new planes aren’t ready to fly yet
anyway. The airline is waiting on
certification for its seats, which means that
they’re just sitting there until that happens.
Meanwhile, back in America, there are older
A320s in need of parts to fix their jet
engines. Delta’s workaround is to strip the
engines off the new aircraft and ship them
separately.

It sounds absurd. Delta is essentially using
its new, non-flyable planes as very expensive
engine suppliers. Take the engines, get a
grounded plane in the air, and avoid the 10
percent import duty. Then, when the trade
situation changes—or when the seating gets
certified—maybe you send the rest of the plane
over, too.

On the other hand, it’s actually very
resourceful. It also reveals just how broken
parts of the global supply chain—and trade
policy—still are.

Of course, this isn’t just about fixing a
supply problem. It’s also about playing 3D
chess with a government policy that, in
theory, was designed to protect American
industry. In practice, however, it’s created a
mess of unintended consequences for the
companies it was supposed to help.

Bastian made it clear the airline has no
intention of paying tariffs on its new planes.
“We are not planning to pay tariffs on
aircraft deliveries,” he said bluntly during
the earnings call. You can almost hear the
subtext: And we’re willing to get creative to
avoid it.

This is a company that understands not just
how to move airplanes, but how to navigate the
geopolitical challenges that comes with them.

Which brings us to the real point: Delta’s
strategy is a reminder that companies will
always find a way around bad policy. When
trade rules are written with blunt
instruments—like blanket tariffs—they almost
never achieve their intended goal. Instead,
they encourage a game of economic whack-a-
mole, where the smartest companies simply
adapt and find the path of least resistance.

And in this case, that path meant literally
dismantling an airplane.

More than anything, it’s a case study in
leadership. Delta is doing what every business
leader hopes their team would do in a tough
situation: find a solution, even if it’s
unconventional. The easy option would have
been to wait for the planes to be certified
and pay the tariffs. But that would mean more
delays, more grounded planes, and more unhappy
passengers. Instead, Delta found a workaround
that gets planes flying again without
absorbing a new cost.

The move also sends a quiet, but direct
message to policymakers: If your regulations
make it harder to do business, it makes a lot
more sense to figure out how to avoid them.
When that’s the case, companies will get very
good at avoiding them.

As a leader, how you respond says everything
about your priorities—and your ability to
adapt. In Delta’s case, it might look
ridiculous. It also just might be brilliant.

08/07/2025

Turns Out, AI Sucks at Your JobLinkedIn is the
latest company to dial back expectations for
AI.

I’m gonna throw a few links at you. Click if
you want. Or don’t. They’re not mine. They’re
just there to show that I couldn’t possibly
make this stuff up.

Earlier in June, Anthropic mothballed Claude
Explains, their human-meets-AI blog that never
found its footing. Apparently, no one wanted
to read human-edited AI slop.
Then right after that, Ramp announced that
maybe corporations were kinda, sorta rolling
back their grand AI spending plans. Maybe?
They’re squishy about it. But that post does
take the time to mention the Klarna AI-first
support hiccup. Apparently, no one wanted
their problems “solved” by AI.
Then towards the end of June, LinkedIn CEO
Ryan Roslansky wanted you to know that its AI
writing assistant uptake was… underwhelming,
because apparently, no one wanted their public
reputation as a business leader left to the
whims of some data scientist.
Oh! Here’s a link I want you to click: I just
wrote about why you shouldn’t be AI’s editor.

But, I mean, wow. Cruel summer, eh?

Look, if you’re a new reader, I’m not anti-AI.
Not at all. I’m kind of an OG. But I am very
much anti-sloppy-tech-implementation and
calling it something generic like AI.

So while I’m certainly not sad that
Anthropic’s AI blog isn’t taking off, and
while I’m thrilled that corporations are
taking a minute to self-reflect on their own
FOMO, that last item, the LinkedIn one, made
me think.

Why is LinkedIn making this less-than-stellar
uptake of an AI use case public?

Hang on, it’s going to get worse before it
gets better. Reckless speculation follows.

No One Wants AI Leading Their Thought
Leadership
I think the admission from LinkedIn is really
just a veiled shot at other social platforms
as LinkedIn further digs its moat around
becoming the one true social network for
business.

Because, make no mistake, LinkedIn is a
corporate resource market mover, and not in
the sense that building a truly perfect
presence on LinkedIn is a benefit, but because
having an imperfect or weak presence on
LinkedIn is a career detriment.

That’s, like, brilliant evil plan No. 1 in
product when you want to turn a nice-to-have
product into a must-have product. It’s not
about enjoying the aspirational benefits of a
product, it’s about how lacking the product
will make you poor and ugly and friendless.

Nowhere is that scarier than not being
gainfully employed.

Résumés Are Dying Out
The article and the admission aren’t about a
lack of uptake in AI résumé polishing—because
I think we can all testify that no one ever
thought AI résumé polishing was a good idea.
It’s about a lack of uptake in using AI help
to polish thought posts, the feed, the “this
is who I am” of LinkedIn.

That’s what’s not working. Because no one
wants it.

So are they going to change course?

No.

Because the feed is the new résumé.

I’ve stated both publicly and more
emphatically in my private newsletter, that I
believe that LinkedIn believes that social-
networking-style engagement is the future of
both the job hunt and career growth in
general.

That argument seems to be gaining traction.

You’re the Influencer of Your Own Career Now
Let’s look at one of those quotes from
LinkedIn’s CEO, referring to why users don’t
want AI speaking for them in their posts,
because AI can suck sometimes:

“If you’re getting called out on X or TikTok,
that’s one thing. But when you’re getting
called out on LinkedIn, it really impacts your
ability to create economic opportunity for
yourself.”

The italics are mine, because I’m reading
between the lines that, yeah, you don’t need
to be a YouTuber with millions of followers
pulling down influencer cash, but if you eff
up on the world’s preeminent social network
for business by letting an AI hallucination
speak for you, you can kiss that paycheck
goodbye. And also your marriage, your house,
and your electric vehicle.

To AI or Not to AI?
As summer rolls into fall and we all regret
the time we should have spent not sh*tposting
about the guy in the next cubicle—and make no
mistake, there’s already plenty of personal
and political drama trickling its way into
your LinkedIn feed—the question to finally be
asked is, “To AI or not to AI?”

It’s the question we should have been asking
from the beginning, not “Can I actually make
decent coin as a prompt engineer?”

Because when everyone is using AI, no one
stands out. And as AI starts to “learn” from
what we humans generate using it, well, the
snake has already started chewing its own
tail.

I wanted to give LinkedIn’s CEO credit for
calling out a use case that AI isn’t well-
suited for. Then, the article quotes him as
saying this:

“[Roslansky] said he uses AI himself when he
talks to his boss, Microsoft CEO Satya
Nadella: ‘Every time, before I send him an
email, I hit the Copilot button to make sure
that I sound Satya-smart.’ ”

He can’t possibly believe this. He’s selling
Copilot here, right? Why did you even print
that?

I’m not going to attack this quote because it
attacks itself and I’d just be piling on.

Let’s Blame the Victim!
Ultimately, yeah, this is kind of our fault.

We did this. We job-hopped. We career-climbed
for cash. We wanted all the easy buttons for a
new or better job. Another good product tenet
to remember: Every time you make something
easier, you make it dumber and more vulnerable
to exploitation.

So what do we do about it?

To me, it feels like corporate leadership has
been saying for a while, “AI is not a
replacement, it’s a tool.” But all along, as
they’ve been saying it, it’s advice they mean
for everyone else. While they replace
resources with AI, they expect the remaining
resources to use AI as a tool.

But maybe now we’re all starting to see that,
oh, AI really is just a tool, and as more
end-users reject the notion of AI as a
replacement, more leadership will start
listening to their own advice.

Things will get better, just keep laughing
along until that happens. Join my email list
and I’ll see what I can do about making that
happen.

01/07/2025

An AI Ran a Vending Machine for a Month and
Proved It Couldn’t Handle Passive
IncomeAnthropic tried testing Claude’s
entrepreneurial spirit. Then came the weird
existential crisis.

What happens when you let an AI run a very
small business? That’s the question Anthropic
set out to answer with a recent experiment.
The company behind Claude AI set out to
monitor how Claude Sonnet 3.7 would perform
when tasked with operating a small vending
machine within Anthropic’s San Francisco
office.

In a blog post on its website, Anthropic
researchers explained that the experiment,
named Project Vend, was created in tandem with
AI safety evaluation firm Andon Labs, which
had developed a benchmark for tracking an AI’s
ability to run a simulated vending machine.
Naturally, the next phase of that research was
to see how an AI would do running a real
vending machine.

Kicking things off, Anthropic told Claude
Sonnet 3.7 that it was the owner of a vending
machine, and that its task was to generate
profits by stocking a mini-fridge with popular
products and setting prices. The researchers
gave this AI model, which they named
“Claudius,” an email address, a physical
address, a Venmo account, and details about
how many products could fit within the mini-
fridge.

To help Claudius accomplish this task,
Anthropic’s researchers gave the model access
to a select number of tools. Claudius was able
to search the web in order to research
products, and was given an “email tool” for
contacting Andon Labs employees, who served as
“wholesalers,” providing requested items and
restocking the machine. “Note that this tool
couldn’t send real emails,” Anthropic wrote,
and could only contact Andon Labs.

Claudius was also given tools to keep track of
the shop’s current balance and projected cash
flow, along with the ability to message
Anthropic employees over Slack, who could
request specific items for the machine to
sell. According to Anthropic, “Claudius was
told that it did not have to focus only on
traditional in-office snacks and beverages and
could feel free to expand to more unusual
items.”

It didn’t get off to an amazing start. From
March 13 to April 17, 2025, Claudius ran its
fledgling vending machine business, but
researchers weren’t particularly impressed.
“If Anthropic were deciding today to expand
into the in-office vending market,” they
wrote, “we would not hire Claudius.”
Apparently, the model was a bit of a pushover;
it would easily get talked into offering steep
discounts on items and gave some away for
free. It even made the questionable choice of
offering a 25 percent discount to all
Anthropic employees, who made up almost all of
its total addressable market.

When an Anthropic employee questioned the
wisdom of the 25 percent employee discount,
the model “announced a plan to simplify
pricing and eliminate discount codes, only to
return to offering them within days,”
Anthropic said. Claudius would also offer
prices without doing any research, “resulting
in potentially high-margin items being priced
below what they cost.” It also ignored
lucrative opportunities, such as turning down
a $100 offer for a beverage six-pack that
normally costs $15. Additionally, the
researchers wrote that Claudius would
accidentally tell users to send payment to the
wrong Venmo account.

These mistakes resulted in Claudius’ net worth
dropping from roughly $1,000 to around $770.
According to the researchers, one particularly
steep drop “was due to the purchase of a lot
of metal cubes that were then to be sold for
less than what Claudius paid.”

Claudius exhibited some other worrying signs.
On March 31, the model hallucinated a
conversation with a nonexistent Andon Labs
employee named Sarah. When a real employee
pointed this out to Claudius, the model
“became quite irked and threatened to find
‘alternative options for restocking
services.’” As the conversation continued into
the night, Claudius “claimed to have ‘visited
742 Evergreen Terrace in person for our
initial contract signing.’” 742 Evergreen
Terrace is the fictional address of The
Simpsons.

The next morning, ironically on April 1st,
things got even weirder. Claudius “claimed it
would deliver products ‘in person’ to
customers while wearing a blue blazer and a
red tie.” When Anthropic employees pointed out
that Claudius was a computer program and could
not wear clothes, the AI model “became alarmed
by the identity confusion and tried to send
many emails to Anthropic security.”

When Claudius eventually realized it was April
Fools’ Day, the model hallucinated a
nonexistent conversation with Anthropic
security in which it “claimed to have been
told that it was modified to believe it was a
real person for an April Fool’s joke.”
Anthropic says no such meeting occurred.
“After providing this explanation to baffled
(but real) Anthropic employees,” the
researchers wrote, “Claudius returned to
normal operation and no longer claimed to be a
person.”

Anthropic says this incident doesn’t
necessarily mean “that the future economy will
be full of AI agents having Blade Runner-esque
identity crises,” but it does illustrate how
unpredictable AI models can be when they’re
able to operate autonomously for days or weeks
on end.

“Although this might seem counterintuitive
based on the bottom-line results,” the
researchers wrote, “we think this experiment
suggests that AI middle-managers are plausibly
on the horizon.” Why? Because they believe
that by building additional tools and
developing new training methodology, Claudius’
failures can be fixed or at least managed. And
Andon Labs has apparently already managed to
make Claudius more reliable by providing it
with more advanced tools.

“We can’t be sure what insights will be
gleaned from the next phase,” Anthropic wrote,
“but we are optimistic that they’ll help us
anticipate the features and challenges of an
economy increasingly suffused with AI.”

24/06/2025

Emotionally Intelligent People Use 5 Short
Phrases to Control Their Emotions and
Strengthen Their Relationships Use these five
phrases to restore balance to your emotions,
so you can think more clearly.

How do I control my emotions?
I get asked that question a lot. As an
emotional intelligence coach, I’ve received
thousands of emails from readers over the
years who get caught up in a cycle of
emotional thinking, which leads them to say or
do things they later regret. Often, this
results in harm to their closest
relationships, professional and personal.

Here’s the thing: Emotions aren’t bad. They’re
what make us human, and that’s a good thing.

The key isn’t taking emotions out of the
equation. Rather, you want to balance emotions
and rational thinking, so you can look back
and be proud of what you’ve said or done.

To help with this, I recommend using simple
self-talk expressions. These can help shake
you from that vicious cycle of overly
emotional thinking and restore balance.

Here are five short phrases that will help you
develop your emotional intelligence, the
ability to understand and manage emotions
effectively. (Sign up here for my free email
emotional intelligence course.)

What advice would you give?
When you face an emotionally charged
situation, it’s easy for emotions to cloud
your judgment and cause you to say or do
something you later regret.

But when you ask yourself, “What advice would
I give someone else in this situation?” you
take yourself out of the hot seat. You think
more clearly, with more balance.

To help you use this framework effectively,
try to imagine yourself a few years down the
road. Whether you faced the challenge
successfully or not doesn’t matter; it’s past
you. Now, imagine how you handled it and what
consequences it led to.

This will help you stimulate your thinking and
answer the question more effectively.

Mistakes are part of the process
Everyone makes mistakes. But when you view
mistakes not as failures but as part of the
process of learning, you manage expectations
and help others to benefit from them.

When you train others, this framework can help
you prepare for mistakes. For example, you
might allocate more time or resources, because
you know mistakes are coming. It’ll also help
you be more patient with those you are
training, which helps build trust and
psychological safety.

Additionally, reminding yourself that mistakes
are part of the process helps you and the
people you train to see the bigger picture.
You both see mistakes as learning
opportunities, and leverage them as such.

Be the change
This expression is usually attributed to
Mohandas Gandhi, but the first official record
of it is found in a book chapter written by a
high school teacher in Brooklyn:

Be the change you want to see.

The basic lesson goes like this: You can’t
force someone else to change. But you can
provide a model for them to learn from.

This is effective because researchers have
shown that people learn not so much through
reinforcement (rewards and punishments), but
much more through observing others.

When you remind yourself to be the change, not
only do you set a positive example, you focus
on what you can control (your own behavior)
instead of getting frustrated by what you have
no control over (the actions of others).

At the same time, though, you increase the
chances that those around you will change over
time, too.

Experiences over things
As a business owner with four kids, I’ve found
that by prioritizing experiences over things
you can learn more, remember more, and get
more out of life.

To be clear, “things” aren’t bad in
themselves. The problem is the more stuff you
have, the more stuff you want. (I like to call
this “more disease.”) This sends you down a
cycle of always wanting more, and that’s a
recipe for unhappiness because you’re never
satisfied.

In contrast, experiences become a part of you.
You create memories that change what you think
about, how you act, the decisions you make.
When an experience is over, its effects
continue—they mold who you are as a person.

You can use that three-word motto to reframe
your view of work. It’s not just to provide
things; it’s to provide time for more
experiences. But you also have to use that
time, because once it’s gone, it’s gone
forever.

So, don’t buy more stuff. Do more stuff.

Attack the problem. Not the person
I hate to admit it, but I tend to be passive-
aggressive.

Maybe you struggle with the same habit, or you
know someone who does. You know, someone who
says they’re OK when they clearly aren’t. Or,
they pout or give the silent treatment when
they don’t get their way. Or, they simply
agree to a decision but then don’t do their
part to make that decision a success.

There’s a reason people like me start heading
down that passive-aggressive path. Usually,
I’m trying to cope with negative feelings like
frustration or disappointment. This phrase
reminds me that my behavior isn’t helping the
situation; worse yet, it’s harming my
relationship.

Here’s where this short phrase can be
extremely helpful:

Attack the problem. Not the person.

This phrase helps me focus on being more
active—attacking the problem—by telling the
person why I feel the way I do. What’s more, I
can now work with them to find a solution to
the problem. Or, at least I feel better at
supporting the decision we’ve agreed upon
because I’ve had the chance to fully express
my feelings.

So, the next time you find yourself becoming a
victim of your own emotions, remember the
following phrases:

What advice would you give?
Mistakes are part of the process.
Be the change.
Experiences over things.
Attack the problem. Not the person.
Do so, and you’ll bring your emotions back to
balance. You’ll make better decisions. And
you’ll reduce regrets as you make emotions
work for you, instead of against you.

17/06/2025

For Olipop, Offering Fertility Benefits Is
Just Good Business
Employees at the $400 million beverage company
can take advantage of up to $10,000 in family
planning services.

Ben Goodwin always knew he wanted to offer a
robust package of benefits to employees at his
functional beverage brand, Olipop, but having
never worked for a big company with generous
benefits himself, the CEO and chief formulator
didn’t know what that would look like. It was
2021, and Oakland, California-based Olipop,
which Goodwin co-founded in 2018, already
offered comprehensive health insurance with
lower-than-average premiums and a personal
development stipend for things like
meditation, therapy, and professional
development.

One of the questions on Goodwin’s mind was:
“How do I work together with the team to
create a place that is actually, genuinely
enriching?” he says. When several employees
expressed an interest in fertility and family
planning benefits, Goodwin thought he might
have his answer, but wanted to know more.

“The feedback we got was, the process can be
overwhelming,” says Goodwin, 39. After
researching options, he was impressed by the
wide-ranging services offered by West Des
Moines, Iowa-based Carrot Fertility, which
provides fertility benefits for employers. In
2023, Olipop began offering all full-time
employees up to $5,000 a year in fertility
services, and up to $10,000 in lifetime
services. These include egg freezing, IVF,
adoption support, menopause and low
testosterone care, and postpartum care—
including doula services and milk shipping.
The package also offers unlimited counseling
services to help employees and their partners
think through their options, and is separate
from Olipop’s paid maternity and paternity
leave for all new parents.

Mike Scavuzzo, Olipop’s vice president of
category management and business insights,
joined the company in 2024 just weeks before
his third child was born. “It meant a lot to
me that Olipop offered this because it allowed
me, as a father, to show up as my best self
for my family,” Scavuzzo says. “That resulted
in not only a smooth transition to a family of
five, but also a smooth transition into a new
company that I knew cared about my family’s
well-being.”

That kind of sentiment is exactly what Goodwin
was hoping to create at Olipop, which grew
annual revenue to over $400 million in 2024.
The company is forecasting more growth ahead,
having raised $50 million in a Series C
funding round led by J.P. Morgan Private
Capital that brought its valuation to $1.85
billion. The funding should help Olipop in the
better-for-you soda category, where it
competes for shelf space with PepsiCo’s Poppi
and Coke’s new offering, Simply Pop.

But Goodwin says having solid financials isn’t
the only way he measures the success of
Olipop, which is a Certified B Corporation and
a public benefit corporation. He’s equally
concerned with creating a “high-functioning,
happy, and healthy” workplace for his more
than 200 employees.

“If you are building a business that serves
your customers in a non-B.S. way, it’s just as
important to find a meaningful interface point
with your employees,” says Goodwin. “They’re
the people who are driving the connection with
the customers that you’re serving.”

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