0 to $50M in 24 Months: The Explosive Growth Story of BRĒZ

Aaron Nosbisch is the founder and CEO of BRĒZ, a cannabis social tonic beverage designed as an alcohol alternative that offers a euphoric, feel-good effect without the downsides of alcohol. He built his expertise in e-commerce from an early age, launching multiple internet brands and scaling previous ventures like MONQ (portable aromatherapy diffuser, 0 to $15 million in three years as CMO), and running Lucyd Media, the world’s largest cannabis social advertising agency, which run 80% of meta ads for the cannabis space.

In this episode of DTC Pod, Aaron unpacks everything from finding product-market fit, to assembling the right team, creative launch strategies, understanding unit economics for food and beverage DTC, leveraging organic and paid media, and building a durable flywheel by combining DTC and retail.

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What you’ll learn:

• The unconventional DTC playbook that enabled BRĒZ—a beverage brand in the notoriously tough DTC category—to hit $50 million run-rate, with 80% of sales through their own site.

• How solving his own problem (wanting an alcohol alternative that actually felt good) led to a unique product and rapid product-market fit.

• The role of high AOV, subscription-first thinking, and relentless customer attention in enabling DTC success despite expensive shipping and logistics.

• How leveraging a founder’s real-world problem, a lean resource model, and tactical risk-taking enabled Aaron to validate and scale with minimal capital and tiny production runs.

• Tactics for fueling early momentum: doing literally everything to move customers (packing cans by hand, emailing from business cards, founder-led FaceTime-style ads), and why building in public was crucial.

• How layering DTC and retail together formed a powerful growth flywheel—activating physical retail through the brand’s highly engaged online customer base.

• The realities of cash flow, supply chain constraints, and the importance of being ruthlessly pragmatic about burn, resources, and iterative learning during hypergrowth.

Some takeaways:

• DTC beverage “doesn’t work”—unless you ignore the rules. Aaron launched despite the infamous reputation of beverage DTC, focusing on high AOV, great margins, ruthless shipping logic (passing costs to customers), and instant subscription options.

• Early validation was scrappy and hands-on: initial batches were just 200 cans, labeled manually and demo’d at a cannabis conference; initial leads were gathered by hand; the newsletter started from business cards.

• Growth isn’t about magical spend or creative—product innovation AND real distribution both matter. “A great product and great distribution: you can’t really have one without the other.”

• Forget the “ask for permission” mentality: early on, use what you have, move fast, pre-sell if you need to, iterate daily, and aim for momentum over polish.

• Don’t overcomplicate: a single home page, one PDP, one lander, compliance in every touchpoint. Focus on genuine customer experience and make every part of the path to purchase frictionless.

• Lean into unique founder narrative and personal touch: Aaron’s FaceTime-style ads, meticulous focus on product experience, and “build in public” transparency differentiated BRĒZ from faceless beverage upstarts.

• Cash is everything. The company grew as a “flywheel,” reinvesting every sale into inventory, prioritizing profitability, and scrambling through constraints on the supply chain.

• The secret sauce was not just hacking DTC, but layering DTC and retail: by building a direct relationship with tens of thousands of consumers, BRĒZ was able to activate instant retail sellouts through targeted emails to existing customers whenever entering new stores.

• As the brand scales, the channel mix is evolving: retail is now approximately a third of BRĒZ’s business and will grow, but DTC remains a unique moat, not just an afterthought—a massive retail hack.

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Where to find Aaron Nosbisch & BRĒZ:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronnosbisch/

BRĒZ: https://www.drinkbrez.com/

In this episode, we cover:

00:00 Introducing Aaron and BRĒZ

05:06 The “alcohol alternative” white space and product vision

13:21 Launching a DTC beverage: initial capital and inventory

20:32 Validating demand, managing resource constraints

25:44 First ads and sales: founder content, guerilla tactics

34:07 Early CACs, ad budgets, and optimizing for LTV

38:22 E-commerce vs retail: channel mix and growth phases

46:50 Key takeaways & where to follow Aaron and BRĒZ

Referenced:

MONQ: https://monq.com/

Lucyd Mediahttps://www.wearelucyd.com/

Benzinga Cannabis Capital Conference: https://www.benzinga.com/cannabis-conference

Important Notes:

• Aaron’s core belief: You don’t have to ask for permission—just start, even at absurdly small scale.

• Focus on principles, not tactics. Every brand is different, but the keys were: discipline, resourcefulness, and a bias for action.

• Market timing is everything. BRĒZ was born not just from a product insight, but seizing a window created by changing consumer preferences (alcohol alternatives) and shifting cannabis regulation/ad environments.

• Cash flow is the real boss. Hypergrowth will test every system and assumption—always brace for supply/inventory shocks, and communicate transparently with customers.

For founders and marketers alike, Aaron’s journey redefines the playbook: start small, validate real demand, optimize for cash, and only then light the gas for omnichannel scale. As he puts it: “If we don’t have margin, we don’t have mission”—a mantra as true for upstarts as for scaled brands.