Risk Smarter, Grow Faster: AI-Driven Lessons for DTC Brands

Speaker A: Foreign. Most founders don't fail because they move too fast. They fail because they wait too long to take the right risks. Hi there, I'm Carrie Curran, B2B Revenue Growth Executive advisor, industry analyst and host of Revenue Boost, a marketing podcast. If you're a DTC founder still playing it safe, hoping the algorithm will fix your customer acquisition costs or the next agency pitch will save your pipeline, this episode will shake you out of it. In Risk Smarter, Grow Faster AI Lessons for every DTC Founder Needs to know Now I sit down with David Larango. He's a growth strategist who helped Forever 21 and Nick's Ice Cream explode to nine figures and who now helps brands escape the slow death of risk aversion through AI powered, Test and learn growth. Because here's the truth. We're entering a new era where AI can help you strike gold or bury you in generic content in wasted space. Spend and the difference. It's how you think David breaks down why waiting for the right moment is killing your growth. How to use AI like a shovel, not a shortcut to dig for repeatable results. Why smart testing actually looks like and why 99% of founders quit right before it works. Why AI won't replace humans, but it will expose average thinking and how to build an insight engine that helps you fail faster, learn faster and win bigger picture this a content and performance loop. So dialed in your brand starts compounding while others burn out. It's not magic, it's math, mindset and a smarter way to use AI. Stay tuned to the end where David shares the moment one of his clients almost quit, then struck gold a week later. You do not want to miss this mindset shift. If you're serious about growth, press play. This is the edge DTC leaders need to win the next 12 months. Let's go. So welcome David. Please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.

Speaker B: Well, thank you for having me, carrie. David Larango, 15 plus years DTC Ecom retail experience. Began my career at the wonderful company, helped build out their internal digital discipline. Was head of EE comm at Forever 21 and then helped Nick's Ice Cream scale and then got our second round of funding over 100 million which is about a billion dollar valuation I think in 2022 and then uh now have a digital full service digital agency that we run called Startup Accelerators.

Speaker A: Excellent. So David, talk about, you know, you've been in the industry for a long time and you've seen seen a lot of evolution, especially when it comes to E Comm or Retail media. Um, talk about kind of what you've seen just over the last 10 years.

Speaker B: Yeah, there has been, I mean what I love about digital is that it changes. When I first began my career, Digital budgets were 15%. Um, at the Wonderful Company it was maybe 15. And I got lucky if I got 15. And I was like, oh, digital, right. Was the whatever scraps. Now reverse that, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Now digital are the largest chunks of dollars usually. And then if you have retail presence than, than tv, a lot of changes certainly. So just from a macro level, digital, you kind of become digital forward digital first. Um, Omnichannel is another thing that I've seen really change over in the last five years too. Right. So businesses used to just be Amazon, but they used just be retail or maybe they're DTC now. How do we have a retail presence? How do we have an Amazon presence? How do we have a DTC presence? Those are big changes. And then finally, I'd say even the last several years just changes that I'm seeing overall in the ecosystem is the impact of AI to be able to allow brands to kind of take it on, on their own and to be able to start their own businesses and run their own businesses. Now, um, kind of talk about just some things that I've seen at a macro level which have been really interesting over the last 10 years when you kind of have these phases where uh, we, you know, we work with startups. Vast majority our startups are growth startups that are growing and scaling 20, 30 million ann. But you kind of think about early on in the startup phase, you needed to be an institutional player or have institutional dollars or knowledge. Right. You think of Silicon Valley, Silicon beach, right. In California, um, where I spend still some, some of my time. Um, you had to know people to be able to do a startup. Right. So that, that then quickly changed during what I'm call, I call lockdown, lucky phase during lockdowns where capital just rained on your head and you would literally be drowning in it. Right. 0% interest rates, a great time. So owner founders got a little cocky and arrogant and egotistical. Oh, we don't need this, we don't need that. We're doing it on our own. We know how to do this on our own. Well, um, so, you know, now, um, move forward quickly. E Comm and owner founders can't do it on their own anymore. Now they're kind of scraping by for dollars, they're scraping by for margins. And that's changed again. So now institutional data, knowledge, background, relationships have changed once again to where these early stage startups who are a lot cockier than they were now, they're now bleeding cash because they didn't build out the fundamentals in the way that, you know, somebody like myself had seen being in the institution, working with Fortune 500 brands or billion dollar companies. So that now has changed. So you, it is, you still should be a startup, but now you have to be more thoughtful about how you're a startup. Right. So those kind of whipsaw back and forth. I see this. Eventually of course, when the cash comes flowing back, you're probably going to have an influx and then everybody can do it on their own again. But what doing it on your own is going to mean something again, different than it was. So I've seen those two, I'd see these, these two changes and they, they are intermingling in a way and I think AI as it grows is probably going to allow new companies to emerge in a completely different way than even they did, you know, 2020, 2021.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's, you're, it's, you're so spot on with the changes in the evolution and yeah, we saw that with the startups kind of doubling down on investment or even just private equity and VC funding leaning in and then. Right. As you said, it's a lot harder today. Um, you mentioned AI and of course, especially in marketing, we can't go a minute without talking about AI. So kind of tell me more about your perspective of how AI is really changing things from a platform perspective and a strategy perspective.

Speaker B: Yeah, from a platform and from a targeting perspective, AI is great in a lot of ways. AI is, there's, there's some nuance to this. AI is only as good as the data that it has.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So you have your major players, right. Your Nvidia's, your obviously your Googles, your metas that have a heck of a lot of data, that targeting capability and both, uh, certainly as we're media buyers and thinking about what I do kind of for a living in my team, the targeting capabilities within AI are fantastic and they have allowed companies to scale and look at their valuations in meta and Google. That is back in the, you know, rewind the clock a little bit. We, you know, a large part of a media buyer's value is being able to find their audiences, target their audiences. That's still certainly a part of it when you really need to scale your business. But the tools themselves, whether it's Advantage Shopping or pmax in Google or any other tool that you're going to use those AI capabilities to learn and find and model your audiences and your segments are fantastic. So that is changing it in ways that I think solely over time. Both Meta and Google want to do away with media buyers. They want to allow the, they want to allow the owner, founder to spend what they would spend on someone like a me or someone on my team to spend it within the platform. That's changing the game in a lot of ways. Um, it's also changing the game creatively where there's more and more and more and more and more AI content. But if you follow and look at any post or page with AI content across anything, and I challenge anybody who's listening to this to go and do that, you see a flood of hate for AI content. Flood of hate. No, no, no, no. We hate this. And now, uh, there's this velvet, Velvet, um, Sunset or Underground. There's this controversy around this, um, um, AI music in Spotify. And it's Spotify paying to kind of have their own um, AI there. It's not Velvet Underground that's the real band, but it's another one, something similar. And it's pretty much mediocre kind of sounding music. But there is a torrent of backlash against this. Right. So there is this and I think it's. I think it's. There's some moral component we want to allow for artists and creators to, to make their dollars. Yeah. But I also think it's kind of this human AI component. And I think it's also, you know, artists are paid well for a reason. Good brands have great content for reason. Um, humans recognize junk. Right. So the junk is people do not want. What they don't want is their feed to be flooded with mediocre AI garbage.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so that, that piece of it brands need to be aware of. I have one brand that we're working with. It's a, um, it is a, um, low Bev Alcohol brand and we're toying with AI. But you, if you're a brand that thinks AI is going to be your brand unless you embrace it so fully and completely and make fun of it, I think you're risking, um, alienating. Right. So it's kind of this new. It's not political, but it's kind of a political football. Like humans versus AI. But I really think it's more good content versus junk.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And people do not want their feeds filled with junk. So that too. Right. And in terms of creative creativity and branding and marketing, use it thoughtfully. Um, and I think the ways that we use it, it's planning, it's strategy, it's thinking about nuances, it's making it almost a partner in a way to allow it to take over some of the, I would say more tedious elements of strategy and components but then really mine it. So you think of it as like an AI assistant, you don't think of it as an AI, um, um, creative benchmark. So it's changing the ways in a lot of ways in what we're doing. But I don't, I don't think the core of marketing is going to change really. I think it's still going to be those that stand out, those that are interesting. But certainly on a targeting perspective and a modeling of your audiences that has rapidly shifted in the last two years and I think for the most part easier and better for at least startups to get into the fray than it would have been more costly to do earlier several years ago.

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. I mean we're seeing that, that the platforms are making it easier for self service for startups to kind of go in, um, founders to figure out how to buy on the platforms as you mentioned, through their tools and AI provided by Meta or Google. But to scale to your point you really need those high level operators, you need that um, that level of expertise. So talk about why that's so important and why, you know, agencies and brands can't plan out, plan those roles to be replaced by AI.

Speaker B: It's a great question. Thoughtfulness, analysis and strategy. AI can do to some degree, but then how do you implement? How do you think through? How do you be competitive? I think that is an element that I can only see what is now and compare what is now, not what is in the future and not what the opportunities are to scale into the future now. Maybe it can, but really you think about it, it can only model what it has. It could probably future cast and it will to a degree. But how accurate is it going to be? How accurate is it going to understand cultural and cultural shifts and cultural changes and cultural attitudes? Right. So if you're looking at something like a Gen Z, it can kind of know what Gen Z does, but what is the next brand innovation going to be? I think analysis is something that AI will do from almost a technical standpoint, but it won't be able to plan and strategize in a way I think that's going to be meaningful to take all the totality of everything you're doing from Meta, Google, your audiences, Your segmentation, your P Ls I think it's going to do. And I do think, look, this will happen. So it's not like anything that we do necessarily couldn't be replaced.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: But I think the element that I'm seeing that AI is capable of doing is tasks and task creation. It's really not great at building beyond that. And so what ends up happening is you will run your ads, then you don't know what to do next. It's the what do you do next that we're going to be able to do that an AI can't do. An AI will probably try to model off of something else that's been done, but it doesn't come up with ideas that don't just already exist. Right. It's pulling from data when it, look, when it becomes so amazing that it can make new ideas from thin air. That's what humans do. I think that also we're incentivized to do that for X, Y and Z reasons. Right. We're, we're physical beings and I think that changes the game. So that part of it and having that human element, it's not going to be able to do. So strategists, digital strategists, digital planners, ecosystem builders are what I can't do. It's a good tool to utilize to help you optimize to, to scale to some degree, but really scaling your business beyond that, at least right now I can't do that. And it will try, it'll have elements. But then even within that, how do you implement that strategy is a whole other ball game. Right. How do you manage people? And frankly it just becomes weirdly for a lot of other owners, another tool that they have to manage, and all of a sudden we have another tool to manage. What do you need a person to manage it? So you're not going to, you're not going to get away from it. Uh, we're weirdly inundated with too much tech. And then how do you manage the too much tech? Right? Whether there's a lot of tech stack going on, too much tech stack building. So I think ultimately you're going to need people to manage this stuff. It just will be the case. And I mean, I can't tell you how many tools that we have that we could use that we love, that you still need people to use. Right. And it's like we have too much going on now in our brain. So it's another great tool, but I don't think it's eliminated the need to have people manage it and people strategize and that's kind of what our role has been and shifted in I'd say over the last two years.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I mean that's great to hear for all of the marketers and media buyers that uh, are in fear of losing their um, jobs to AI. Now um, you talked about how you're using AI um specifically for your clients for E commerce or direct to consumer. So can you talk about the perspective and examples of how you're using it and what the perspective is there?

Speaker B: Mhm, yeah. For several brands we are certain, I mean we're using Advantage Shopping within meta. So the way that I tend to use AI right now, I'll give you examples. But for, from the brands we're using, like I mentioned the alcohol brand or several fashion brands that we work with or even cpg, uh, we tend to use ASC as a learning model, understanding, testing and learning creative, what our audiences are, what our segments are. So we kind of use, we use the AI in a way to understand and learn against what we think um, is performing well and then we build some other audiences and segments around that. This is, and it's slow but sure. So we have one, I mean one of my um, clients, we took a Nike which is a, which had no revenue and now we're doing um, you know, 30, 40, 50. We're doing you know, 50 plus in revenue from few months in.

Speaker A: That's great.

Speaker B: And what it did, what we used is AI to learn and to test the creative, to test the messaging, to test the segments over time. Lather, rinse, repeat that and then we got more learnings. Those learnings also then optimized our site. It's an ecosystem, it's a feedback loop that is also true. Same for Google, we're letting PMAX kind of allow us, you know, you put everything in there. How do you read and how do you interpret, how do you learn from the data that you're giving to team giving to these tools to then optimize your brand and your site. Right. So we're using it in those ways. Other ways that um, I'd say friends have used that I haven't quite. Um, one of my friends, he's a, he's a CMO at a bank and he uses this to put together kind of entire proposals or outlooks for and then even you know, P L sheets for um, the businesses that he's looking at or evaluating. I think a lot of, you know, not in my industry, probably everybody's thinking about this in Their industries. Right. I bet you banks are using this to like they've been using models for a very long time. So this is nothing new. But then how do you do this in terms of risk? How do you assess risk? How do you look at risk? So they do it that way for us we, til we do it in terms of maybe some marketing analysis. Right. And you can ask ChatGPT or Gronk, whichever Grok, whichever one you're using, uh, whichever one you're using, um, to allow you to do some cursory analysis and then you can play it back. I mean I think these tools are incredible if you utilize them in a way that is to like reinvigorate your own thinking.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So we do that Right. As well. And um, even tracking and reporting and so there's a lot of ways that we are using it tactically, we're using it Carrie in a small way on creative but frankly and I, I hate, I hate most AI creative. Uh, I think it's terrible, I think it looks terrible, I think most people even know it. But you can utilize it in a way. Right. It's a tool, it's, it's, it's a paintbrush, it's a color, it's something else on your canvas. It shouldn't be your entire ecosystem. It may be one day. I haven't seen anyone do it. But we are utilizing it I would say as a tool across whether it's strategy, whether it's analysis, whether it is creative. Um, we are using that one certainly with uh, tracking and tagging and understanding even our performance within each of these platforms.

Speaker A: Great growth doesn't happen in silos, it happens in community. At Pavilion we know that when smart operators come together, big things happen. That's what GTM 2025 is all about. You'll meet CROs, CMOs, VPs and RevOps leaders who faced the same challenges and found repeatable scalable solutions. Come for the strategy, stay for the relationships that fuel your next stage of growth. Don't wait. Grab your ticket now@attendgtm.com yeah I agree. I mean that's where I've seen it really excel as well is the more rapid analysis, um, data feedback performance, um, to your point to uh, ingest that and use that to drive your strategy. And one of the things we um, talked about is the challenge of brands um, that are risk adverse and how the adoption of AI and kind of moving into the future trends, how that needs to change. So talk about what you've seen from that perspective and what Brands really need to be thinking about. Yeah.

Speaker B: I mean it's, there's always a level of caution when you're a business owner. And I do want, I, I believe in exercising caution. It's one of our core principles which is, you know, proof of concept before you invest. Horror stories that I've had where Those that invested 30,000 in inventory and had no proof of concept, I'm like, that's. That, that hurts me. That hurts me as a, as an owner, founder.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But embracing risk is really critical. Uh, how do you stand out in today's world?

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: If you're just trying to play it safe, so to speak, you're going to get crushed. Right. You're going to get crushed in any which way. Where do you embrace? You have to risk embracing like fully, fully, fully knowing where you are still calculated. But you can't just go out again. Remember the days of, uh, a drop ship and drop ship, you could just do your thing. And now that's gone. So I think as an owner, founder, when you get into this, you need to have the mindset that this could completely fail. And I'm okay with that. The worst place that I find most owner founders are in that hard for us to work with them is they are cash strapped or they're nervous, um, about cash. It's not. You don't make good decisions based on those kinds of emotional places that you're in. So you need to say, yes, I'm willing to do this. I'm going to do whatever it takes. Those are the ones that win. Yes. Yes. It's always a yes and yes. And intelligently. I'm not saying to take dumb risks by any means, but if you're not willing to, you're going to languish and you're going to eventually, slowly, um, die. Right. And I, and those are the ones that are lucky that just die over time. But I've even seen, you know, especially in CPG land. Right. Take calculated risks. We've seen some of those with like a Bud Light. Maybe not calculated risk the right way. But I admire any brand that is trying something, I would say new in the way that they're approaching their business. And so that's where we have to live in the next five years. If you're just going to play it safe. I think safety is out for a little bit. Um, and I think the landscape has changed. So yes, owner founders have to embrace it. They have to be comfortable with not knowing, but they should also. Again, someone like me who's going to Advise. You do not need to spend $10,000 to learn. You could spend a thousand. We have brands that spend 1500amonth that can got to the point where they're doing 20, 30,000amonth. It's, uh, but it is about having enough of a risk mindset so that you aren't in a privation mode.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Because if you are, you will, you know, it's, um, he who has. He who has much. Much is expected or much is given. He has little. Even that which he has is taken from him. Right.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: It's a saying in the New Testament, but it's true in business and I've seen it. It's especially true now. You have little, um, even the little you have will be taken from you. So act with faith and act with, um, faith that your, your, your risk will be rewarded.

Speaker A: Yep. Yeah, no, that's, that's such, um, powerful advice. And I think to your point, these days brands need to be remarkable. You, you have to catch the attention of the buyers who are distracted by all sorts of devices, uh, and other media. And without making those investments, like you said, investing in a partnership like yours or testing into the new platforms, um, you need to make that, be comfortable making those investments. So I think that's really helpful, um, advice. So thank you for sure.

Speaker B: Yeah. Risk there. Take it and take it smartly. I will say most that we work with are, do feel that way. They are thoughtful about it, but also giving it enough time. I mean, one final note on that is we've had. I mean, Nanki is a great one. I'm using them as a good example because we had probably about a month and a half of middling results. And Dean, who I've worked with for years, said, you know, it feels like we're just at that point. And he's like, so many businesses leave right when they're at the point of striking gold. I'm like, dean, that's. And guess what? We struck gold one week later. Right now, there wasn't pressure, which was nice, but I think you have to keep. There's a grind moment and we're going quickly back to AI. The grind moment is these platforms, they do need to learn, but once it does learn, you will find your gold. It's like a prospector searching for gold. Right. And they're going to the 1800s. We're doing the same thing. And so it's a test, learn, test, learn, test, learn. I think we didn't talk about that as a mindset too. You have to be open to test and learn and fail, test and learn and fail. But as long as you are learning within those failures incrementally, you are going to get there. Right. And whether whatever your metric is failure is not bad. If you know why you're failing and you know what you're moving toward. That's actually the.

Speaker A: Any.

Speaker B: Any which way we learned. I know very few of us are LeBron James. We're starting lineup basically when we're born, right?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Right.

Speaker B: Very, very, very few.

Speaker A: Yeah. It brings back the, the fail fast. Like test and fail fast and pivot like, that's. Those are the learnings that are needed to your point to, to make it to the next level.

Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. I mean, I watched an interview with, um, one of the, um, heads of Netflix and he wanted to test and learn, but he didn't learn and test quick enough. And the Netflix model they had, it was like, oh, you buy and you rent it and you take it in. And he had tons of tests. It's a really good interview watching him. But he said the one that ended up working was the subscription one that they didn't really think was going to work. And what he said he wished he would have done sooner is just try and test and learn quicker and not be stuck on his own ideas when they weren't working.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And obviously he's incredibly successful and built, you know, a vast media empire. And I think what I look at that and I even tell owner founders this today, which is don't be stuck on your idea if your market is not responding to it. You do not have a product that the market wants. Like, that is hard still for owner founders to get their heads, heads wrapped around. So part of, again, what I do as a coach, when I do coaching is getting them to think about, hey, you don't have anything precious until you have something that works right. And uh, right now you are almost a scientist and you're going to find what works. You have a vision, you push for it and then you learn and you test and learn quickly. But you'll be open to these learnings also that are going to pivot. Right. If you do that. And this is why a lot of VCs, why a lot of VCs will invest in people and not even product. Because if you find the right person, just like I hire, I'm like I find the right person, I never even need to be on a call with them. M. Yeah, that's what they're going to look for. And it's a person's Mindset, it's a way that they do business again, it's something that like I can't do. Right. You're hiring now. I think the hiring for talent and even thinking about investing in the person and then what they're looking for in their mindset is crucial. So that's another one of those. I mean that's always been the case but I hear that a lot more. I invest in people. I myself too, when I invest it's people. I trust them to do the job. I will invest in them. Right. Or their company because I just know, I know how they're thinking.

Speaker A: Yeah, no that's, that's so smart. Again, two point. Especially for founders that are startups scale up and so going back to AI and, and how it's um, obviously pervasive across all of our strategies and activations these days. What do you think is next for AI and marketing, especially for E commerce and direct to consumer.

Speaker B: That's a great question. What do I think is going to happen next? And then what do I. I'm going to do. I think what's going to happen next is a flurry and flood of awful content. Uh, everybody thinking that they're making great stuff. Everyone thinking that AI is going to fool up people. It won't surprise anyone who's doing this. Surprise, surprise. It won't. Save your dollars, save your time, save your energy. That is in the short term, not even the short to medium term. Everyone's going to try to be cheap. Uh, don't. It's. But it's going to happen because the allure of cheap content is just too enticing. Um, in the short to uh, medium term in terms of what it's going to do. I think AI will change the way that we think about everything. Whether. And I think there's a lot of naysayers out there and there are a lot of people that are worried. I'm really excited. Thinking about ways that you can model behavior. Thinking about ways that you think psychological profiles. I met somebody who has this AI model that they're building out which is they're trying to map the way human brains think and process problems within each individual way. So they're not worried or thinking or care about the term of consciousness because they don't find that that is something that you can really create or recreate. Right. It may be all these. But what they're doing is trying to model the way that we learn language. They're trying to obviously which you already have. But they're trying to model the way that we do problems, they're trying to model the way we understand creativity. So they're building these complex models around the way that the human brain processes information. That is incredibly interesting because that. Now, okay, how does David process strategy? I have another one. He's um, owner, founder of um, a public kind, uh, of relations firm. But they're really doing research. Ah, they're building a model that allows you to do kind of, um, oppo research. You can put that in there. And what does OPERA research looks like? What are you looking for? Right, so these are ways in which humans think that they're going to model off of. And I think that's really fascinating. That I think is the short to medium term because then, not that you can make people like me obsolete, you're still going to need somebody to use it. But that is the way of the future to being able to understand how we're going to use it in a much more functional way. Um, and I do think then too, the learning on how consumers behave is going to get stronger and stronger and stronger too. Predictive analytics is obviously already there. But then how can you model and map this? Um, I also think this, um, this is one of those that I really believe in. But the future is being able to sell my data to AI and giving it to companies in microtransactions. Because ultimately, again, back to AI is only as good as the data it has. So do we as humans, as an endeavor, do we believe that AI is the next giant leap for human beings? I think it is. But every time that's ever happened in human history requires sacrifice. And the sacrifice is going to be our data and even our personal data. Hey, AI, take everything from my biometric scans to what I'm doing to what I'm searching, please use it for the betterment of learning. I think that's a hurdle that everyone's going to have to get over, frankly, and I think they will. We just don't realize we're already doing it every day. But it's a concept that we are very terrified of for whatever reason, but we have no fear of climbing a pole to build a building to fall off of it. Right. It's just a fascinating kind of fear, um, that we have about. It's my data. But at the end of the day that I think that is a future and not even just my channels, of course, what we manage but us is again, a human. The human endeavor, the experiment of being human, so to speak, is going to rely on how much we trust and get to give our data to learn. Because it's going to blow our minds when it has true, uh, quant trillions and trillions, zillions of data points to gather to model off of. So the more data it has, the better it's going to be. And I do think the data modeling is going to blow our minds in the next five years, maybe even the next three. But as like it, as it already has.

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely agree with that. So David, this has been super helpful, um, and really interesting your perspectives and uh, examples, um, really valuable. So for the people who are listening and they're leaning in thinking, okay, I need to, I'm hearing David, I need to get started. Like what, what should um, founders brands think about now when it's to kind of level up or what they're doing with AI today?

Speaker B: Great question. Um, I had, I talked to Riley. We did a podcast together and he said he's dedicating 10 to 20 minutes every day to learning something about AI. That is absolutely what I recommend too. Whether it's learning about new tools. I mean there are a lot of them guys, those out there Google this stuff. It blows my mind. And something that I would say, any owner, founder, right? Like I, when I started, I was the young gun and digital was a new thing. Ha. Funny now that you know all of that, like it was all about print and it was all about tv. Um, we're in that moment where David could be that old guy, right, that he just dovetails off and he's the sales guy, he's Jim, still selling media that nobody's watching. Right. Uh, I don't want to be those guys, the gyms and the Bobs and the Davids of yesteryear. So, ah, you should be up to date on it. Learn it. Learn the tools, learn them, use them, use them. Um, don't get caught, don't get caught, um, in the dust. I really recommend that even if it seems kind of scary, even you, heck, use chat GPT it just ask it questions every day because then you're going to, oh, start asking more. And then you realize it starts to learn and you train it and then you train its voice. I, I'd say just start there. Um, um, but then there are a lot of other tools that I highly recommend looking at. I mean the thing, there's just so many. So just start, start doing it. It's like anything. Like you want to learn an instrument, you want to learn anything, just go ahead and do it. You're not going to be perfect at it. You may find a new love, you may find something new that you're like, wow, I never even knew about this. So immediately just, you know, today, create a chat GPT account. Use the free one. Create a Gemini account. Use the free one. Grok. Use the free one. Whatever you're using, just do it. Go in and just explore. Have fun. It's a new. It's a new playground.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, definitely agree with that. And so, David, how do people get in touch with you to learn more about your agency and in your expertise?

Speaker B: Yeah, you can go to Startup accelerators. A IO. I should know. My own website IO. Startup accelerators IO. And, um, you can fill out that form, but also hit me up on LinkedIn. I usually reply there. And then if you want to have these conversations, I love having those too. So fill out that form. But as long as you put a good subject line on LinkedIn, I'm usually there. There's a lot of spam in LinkedIn, but I promise I eventually will get to it. So two great ways.

Speaker A: Excellent. Well, thank you so much, David. Really enjoyed, uh, our conversation. I learned a lot. So thank you for sharing your expertise.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Carrie, thank you for having me. This has been fantastic.

Speaker A: Huge thanks to David Larango for cutting through the AI hype and dropping tactical gold for D2C leaders. From smart testing to mindset shifts, David reminded us that growth comes from strategic risk, not safe bets. And that AI should amplify your thinking, not replace it. If this episode hits home, share it with a founder in your network who's navigating similar challenges. And don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. It helps us reach more marketers and founders ready to build smarter, just like you. We'll see you soon.