What separates entrepreneurs who scale from those who stall? Every week, Beyond Fulfillment host Dave Gulas sits down with founders, CEOs, and business builders for raw, unfiltered conversations about what actually works — and what nearly broke them.
You'll hear from leaders like David Meltzer, Susan Sly, Brian Esposito, Darren Jacklin, and Susan Bratton, plus the next generation of entrepreneurs quietly building remarkable companies. No polished PR answers. Just hard-won lessons, pivotal decisions, and strategies you can apply immediately — whether you're just starting or already scaling.
If you're serious about entrepreneurship, leadership, business growth, and building on your own terms, this is your show.
Follow now and never miss an episode.
Leaving Corporate Life To Help Retail Brands Scale w/ Rebecca Fitts
You can be in corporate one minute and gone the next. So how do you take years of enterprise real estate experience and build your own lane?
Recorded live at ShopTalk Fall in Nashville, Dave Gulas sits down with Rebecca Fitts, founder of Double 03 Retail. Rebecca spent years navigating high-level corporate roles across major mall leasing companies and DTC leaders like Warby Parker before choosing entrepreneurship over the corporate ladder.
She launched Double 03 Retail to advise emerging brands opening physical locations and to decode the new rules of consumer discovery through her Substack, The Wild West of Retail.
In this episode:
Leaving corporate security to build a boutique retail advisory
Navigating retail real estate when physical space is at an all-time high
How the "Discovery Economy" shifted from mega-influencers to niche creators
Using custom AI as a thought partner without losing the human connection in retail
Timestamps:
00:00 Preview
00:38 Welcome to ShopTalk with Rebecca Fitts
01:33 Overcoming early consulting fear and building client trust
02:35 "Year of the Snake": Choosing entrepreneurship over corporate roles
03:22 Physical retail real estate today: Art, science, and low vacancy
04:02 What Double 03 does & the Wild West of Retail Substack
05:47 The Discovery Economy: Mega-influencers vs. niche creators
07:24 Leveraging AI as a thought partner and building custom retail tools
08:12 The AI boundary: Why the human touch is still king in retail
09:00 The hard reality of solo entrepreneurship and missing office culture
09:44 Refusing to quit: Owning your platform through market waves
Key takeaways:
Physical retail is an art and a science. With retail vacancies at historical lows, finding space requires creative broker relationships alongside data analytics.
Niche creators win the Discovery Economy. Audiences are shifting away from massive followings toward hyper-engaged, specialized voices that drive real conversion.
The human is still king. Use AI to streamline content and strategy, but keep real people at the front lines of high-friction customer experiences.
Connect with Rebecca:
Substack: The Wild West of Retail
LinkedIn: Rebecca Fitts on LinkedIn
Support & Episode Partners:
💼 Max Capital Hub: https://maxcapitalhub.com/
🌊 Oceans Talent: https://hire.oceanstalent.com/dave_gulas
About Beyond Fulfillment:
Beyond Fulfillment is a weekly show about the people and operations behind growing e-commerce brands, hosted by Dave Gulas, co-founder of EZDC 3PL.
Follow on Apple · Spotify · YouTube.
Need a fulfillment partner? Visit https://www.ezdc3pl.com/. (https://www.ezdc3pl.com/)
#RetailTrends #ECommerce #RealEstateAdvisory #DiscoveryEconomy #RebeccaFitts #ShopTalk #BeyondFulfillment
27 Oct 2026
The Funnel Is Dead - Why Shoppers Now Buy in 15 Seconds w/ Chelsey Alexander
A purchase decision can now happen in 15 seconds on TikTok Shop. So why are brands still planning around a funnel?
Recorded live at ShopTalk Fall in Nashville, Dave Gulas sits down with Chelsey Alexander, founder of OpenGate Consulting. Chelsey spent 12 years at Procter & Gamble. She then served as VP at a high-growth Amazon 3P seller tech startup and as Commercial VP at Bayer Consumer Health.
She launched OpenGate to break down the information silos and gatekeeping that hold brands back in e-commerce and retail media.
In this episode:
Why the traditional sales funnel has collapsed, and what replaces it
Building compounding consumer relationships instead of chasing loyalty
The gap between executives' AI ambitions and middle management's bandwidth
Why real strategy means deciding what not to do
Timestamps:
00:00 Preview
00:33 What OpenGate Consulting does
01:40 From 12 years at P&G to an Amazon 3P seller startup
03:24 Realizing enterprise digital problems are universal
04:51 Starting an agency without a playbook
07:03 "Where to play, how to win": strategy is knowing what not to do
08:33 Why founders overshoot growth, and how to scale on purpose
09:38 The death of the funnel
11:04 Compounding relationships vs. brand loyalty
12:01 The AI gap: executive ambition vs. middle-management bandwidth
13:00 Fixing implementation: operational discipline and "straight talk"
Key takeaways:
Build for the instant purchase. On platforms like TikTok Shop, discovery and checkout happen in the same moment. Loyalty is harder to hold, so each platform needs its own reason for a shopper to come back.
Strategy is a list of no's. Decide which channels, services and customers you won't chase before you try to scale.
Close the AI gap in the middle. Leadership's AI plans only work if middle managers get training, time and a way to report what's actually working.
Connect with Chelsey:
Website: opengateconsultants.com
LinkedIn: Chelsey Alexander on LinkedIn
YouTube: Chelsey Alexander on YouTube
Support & Episode Partners:
💼 Max Capital Hub: https://maxcapitalhub.com/
🌊 Oceans Talent: https://hire.oceanstalent.com/dave_gulas
About Beyond Fulfillment:
Beyond Fulfillment is a weekly show about the people and operations behind growing e-commerce brands, hosted by Dave Gulas, co-founder of EZDC 3PL. Follow on Apple · Spotify · YouTube. Need a fulfillment partner? Visit https://www.ezdc3pl.com/.
#RetailMedia #ECommerce #DigitalStrategy #OpenGateConsulting #ChelseyAlexander #ShopTalk #BeyondFulfillment
22 Oct 2026
From Almost Quitting to $74M Raised: Gather AI’s Sankalp Arora
Live from ShopTalk, host Dave Gulas sits down with Sankalp Arora, Founder and CEO of Gather AI. Starting the company straight out of university after earning his PhD and working on DARPA's world-first fully autonomous defense helicopter, Sankalp set out on a mission: to digitize physical operations using autonomous warehouse drones and AI cameras.
In this episode, Sankalp opens up about the "joyous and painful" reality of building a world-first technology. He shares the breaking point three years in—crying in a customer parking lot at 10 PM ready to refund investors—and how a supportive board member helped him push through. Today, Gather AI has raised $74M, scaled to a team of 120, doubled-to-tripled revenue year-over-year, and helps major warehouse operators find millions of dollars in lost inventory while giving workers their lives back.
Key Timestamps:
00:00 – What is Gather AI? Digitizing physical supply chains using off-the-shelf hardware
00:50 – From DARPA autonomous helicopters to warehouse inventory AI
02:25 – Conducting 175 customer discovery interviews before spinning out the company
03:40 – The breaking point: A 10 PM call from a customer parking lot on the verge of quitting
05:05 – The inflection point: Scaling from $2.5M to $74M in total funding
06:00 – Scaling leadership: Managing 120 employees vs. a 5-person dev team
07:33 – Operating as CEO: Maintaining a "Day One" mentality
08:35 – Culture hack: Hiring for agency over structure and assigning problems instead of tasks
09:38 – The emotional reward: Helping warehouse managers find $1.5M in lost stock & get home to their kids
Key Takeaways:
Validate Before You Build: Conduct extensive customer discovery (175+ interviews) to locate pressing pain points before trying to match technology to a market.
The Power of Board Support: Having investors and board members who offer constructive support during low points can save a startup from closing down prematurely.
Hire for Agency, Not Structure: Fast-growing startups thrive when employees are comfortable with high agency, taking ownership of complete outcomes rather than just closing individual tasks.
Maintain the Ability to "Dive Deep": No matter how large an organization grows, effective founder-CEOs must retain the ability to dive straight into deep operational issues when things break.
Featured Guest Info:
Guest: Sankalp Arora (Founder & CEO of Gather AI)
Website: gather.ai
LinkedIn: Gather AI on LinkedIn
Support & Episode Partners:
💼 Max Capital Hub: https://maxcapitalhub.com/
🌊 Oceans Talent: https://hire.oceanstalent.com/dave_gulas
#Entrepreneurship #WarehouseAutomation #SupplyChain #AI #GatherAI #SankalpArora #ShopTalk #BeyondFulfillment
Inside a recent episode
From Taxi Driver to CEO: Surviving Setbacks & Scaling Fast with Brook Shephard
Published 10 Feb 2026 · Transcript excerpt
[…] So when that business finally, when you finally realized like to pull the plug on that and then you went, you went and got a job, right? So because we see that happen with a lot of people and they kind of give up on entrepreneurship after the first failure. And so so many of the successful people we see out there have had multiple failures before they really had a company that wins. So what was the mindset like at that time when you kind of got knocked out on that first venture? Well, I don't know that I got knocked out as much as I, that's, that's, it is sure I got knocked out, but I always think of it as I was self aware enough to know that I needed more skills and I needed to develop my tool kit. […]
Pod Engine is an independent podcast discovery and analytics service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by this podcast. Artwork and show content belong to their owners. Full legal notice.
Explore this show Podcast research with Pod Engine
