Juliana Casale

It’s been nearly a year since I decided I was going to build the seltzer brand I always wanted to see on shelves. As I prepare to soft launch this week (!) a few things I’ve learned: 1. Ask stupid Qs 2. Shoot your shot 3. Relationships are everything 4. You’ll never feel ready

@iiiitsandrea Whut

Meat cereal is real... 🚨‼️‼️

@iiiitsandrea I personally love what he’s doing! Very similar to my mission at @waterballoonco

everyone wants to hate on him for doing a soda when he’s been literally talking about his love of Shirley temples, poking fun at the dumb functional drinks and actually showing up at grocery stores to demo his soda based

@iiiitsandrea Love this for you 😂

the guy I’m using for engraving is this old guy who does it from his garage shop and has an eagle and American flag as a mailbox I can’t believe I have to text him this 😂

@RosenZone @vacation_inc I need a review!!

When @vacation_inc says wild cherry, they mean it.

@Seanfrank Would be curious to see how Toronto and Vancouver stack up.

LA is in a recession. Tech is out. Hollywood left. 1 house has been built since the fires. LA is having its worst decade since the 80s

@MonicaGrohne Huzzah! You haven’t missed much 😒

Have been locked out of my account for like a year but I'm back :)

@PaulVoge It’s all happening

Finally

In case the tiny type stops you from reading - the Epstein Files contain horrifying sexual assaults on underaged girls as young as 13 by the President and his cronies that span a decade.

@GoldenAgeTimes2 @jaketapper I would also need a psychiatric evaluation if someone did this to me.

@jaketapper Those pesky little details..

DOJ has since killed this link. This is what was there:

@heyitsalexP The truth. It hurts.

@eliweisss Oh my god, so glad you both made it out in one piece!

5 cops chasing someone at 80mph. Guy slammed into us trying to escape. Side airbags deployed. iPhone auto-called 911. Car called 911. Whole back wheel ripped off and side destroyed. Car Totaled. Noah and I walked away seemingly without a scratch..? Modern cars are incredible.

@taskmaster Ughhh the FOMO! Please come to Toronto next!

@seanfrank Congrats on your future baby! Gamechanger.

My year in review: How did ridge do? Operators? How am I doing? How much money do I make posting on X? All your questions answered... RIDGE Wins: 1- We grew mid-double digits. Not 100%, but more than 9%. That feels like a win at our scale. 2- Every single month was 8 figures in revenue. 3- HALF of our revenue isn't the wallet anymore. 4- Survived the ops nightmare that is tariffs. 5- We found the best new category for us: phone cases. This is now an 8-figure product line, and could do $50M NEXT YEAR. LOSSES: 1- We cut team size by a lot. On Liberation Day, we cut 12 team members. Why? We didn't know what was going to happen. We had COGS get more expensive, we had ops shutdowns (couldn't get stuff out of Mexico), and we thought the economy might implode... Luckily everything worked out, but we had to protect our cash and lower burn. 2- Shut down EverydayCarry .com. I spent over $1,000,000 on it, and it just wasn't where the puck was going. The rise of AI, the destruction of SEO, and the changing affiliate landscape made the site less valuable. So we gave it to the founder for $1. 3- Some bad product launches. I talk openly about mini knives: $300k buy, $94k in sales. So I am underwater on these. And these are the worst, but I have 3-5 things like this just sitting in my warehouse. Takeaways and future- Look, this ended up being a GREAT year for Ridge. But the first 6 months... SUCKED. I was stressed, not sleeping, I fainted once. Cash was king and our king was taking body shots left and right. It all worked out. We just had our biggest, most profitable year... but it looked BLEAK from Feb-June. What's the future of Ridge? Well, we have a very good understanding of where the brand is going. For the first time, I think we see ourselves clearly. Good product roadmap, good distribution- still privately held, still bootstrapped. And we are on pace to hit a BILLION in sales by 2030. OPERATORS Wins: 1- Revenue doubled. Jason won't let me share numbers, but it is a multi-million-dollar enterprise. 2- Reach doubled. We are reaching tens of thousands of business owners a week. 3- Hired Aaron to make the content GOOD. We were early to founder-first, ecom-first, weekly podcasts, but our content should be best-in-class. And Aaron is working on that. 4- Launched TITANS. A pure rip of how I built this, and our attempt at a higher-production show. LOSSES: 1- Shut down a spin-off. FOPS was good, but it just didn't work. We have to figure out how to do a finance show. 2- Didn't expand into new verticals enough. I want Amazon Operators, I want Warehouse Operators. We didn't do enough here, no new newsletters. I think the superpower is very niche, hidden conversations, brought to the world. So I want to do more of that. Takeaways and future- This is my hobby. It takes 5 hours a week. We turned it into a good business. I think we are doing a service to this industry. We are trying to bring honest, practical tips and stories to help people building brands right now. The future is bringing in more voices and more shows. I want to hear from more brands. I want to be an incubator for the next generation of operators. Slowly, but surely, we will get there. PERSONAL Wins: 1- My wife and I are having a baby. 2- I invested in 6 startups. 3- Spoke at 4 events, went to 6 industry events. Losses: 1- I didn't hit a lot of my resolution goals. Wanted to walk 15k steps a day... hit 14k. Wanted to hit 150k followers... at 84k. Wanted to make 4 YouTube videos... made 1. Wanted to join 2 boards... joined zero. Takeaway and future- Look, I am blessed: great wife, great house, great job. Good friends, fun hobby. I get paid for thinking and making decisions. I get paid for writing this. Last week, a childhood friend died. Her brother was best friends with my brother. We were in grade school together. But she always had her battles. She lost those battles at 30. I am very proud to have made it to where I am. Now, X analytics: I have made $10,464 this year from posting. I have hit 47 million impressions this year. I gained 30,768 followers. My most liked post was a joke reply at 64k likes. My most impressions were on a quote tweet at 1.4M. Summary of X- This is also for fun. I took 2 months off this year while I had to go do real work (rebuilding Ridge because of tariffs). But it is good to see this platform improve. I think creator revenue sharing is a net positive for the world. Platforms should share the revenue with the people who make the platform better. I think the core product has gotten better. You just need to mute words and people more. But the reach is undeniable. Never shot a video, never had to edit anything, and nearly 50M people saw my posts. And I drove $50,000 in trackable sales for ridge . com. Huge W

@ChereneAubert Congrats Cherene!! Love this for you.

I was tired. Not of the work. Not of the responsibility. Not of the hours. I was tired of limiting my impact to one brand. So I left. Two months ago, I walked away from my dream job … quietly.

@nickgraynews This looks really cool: masqueradenyc.com

What in NYC is interesting and cool now? I’m in NYC this weekend with Lauren and want to see art or retail stuff & be inspired The HoNY exhibit at Grand Central and the Frick Museum are top of my list so far

@rabahrahil 🤪

I just. Wow. Enough internet for me today.

@mbertulli Would love to hear more from 6-fig founders, tbh! I just want to be able to pay myself 😅

THERE IS A HUGE PROBLEM WITH PODCASTS For years I’ve talked to my friends about it. For years I did nothing. That problem? All large podcasts only have the very biggest names on their shows. The biggest authors. The biggest founders & CEOs of the Fortune 500. All of them…NOT RELATABLE! Don’t get me wrong. I love hearing founder stories. It’s probably my favorite form of entertainment. But that’s all it is. Entertainment. I’m getting nothing from these big shows of any value. I want to learn from people who are steps away from where I am, not hundreds of miles into the atmosphere. It’s cool hearing Jensen talk about how he runs NVIDIA, but that’s a FOUR TRILLION DOLLAR COMPANY! I decided to stop complaining and do something about it. Today we’re launching a totally new show here at Operators. We’re calling it Titans. AppLovin has stepped up to make this show possible. Side Quest → HOW COOL IS THAT!? AN S&P 500 COMPANY!!! These are conversations between us and the operators of larger consumer brands. We dig into their story. Their history. What drives them. How they’ve grown revenue into the $100’s of millions. All the mistakes that we operators can actually learn from. Nothing is off limits! Are these going to be entertaining? Of course. I’ve cried laughing on some of them. But more than entertaining these are going to be RELATABLE. These are your peers. Fellow consumer founders who’ve built incredible brands. Founders with stories you won’t find on the top 5 business podcasts. Stories that need to be shared! Today we’re dropping Episode 1 with one of our favorite founders and brands. You can watch the whole thing in the next post. But that’s not all.

@iiiitsandrea I love the concept! It’s exactly what I’m trying to do with @waterballoonco - provide an alternative to soda that uses real sugar and doesn’t try to be functional, just delicious. I really hope it does well.

I love Olipop But this isn’t a prebiotic soda and Olipop didn’t invent soda 😭🤣 if anything Stiller’s feels more of a copy of a Dr Browns

@ChereneAubert I applaud your efforts 😉

As a beauty brand executive, I apply skincare and makeup frequently to make sure I really understand the business.

@johnhickey1970 @dtcgrowthsummit @Shopify @QueenDTC @lovevalgeisler @social_savannah

Poll #2 Who should I ask to MC the @dtcgrowthsummit It’s in NYC 7/23/25 We have 12 great DTC speakers and I’d be a crappy MC. I just want to take video and show my screenshots of @Shopify