Hey everyone,

Welcome back for another bite to chew on.

You probably haven't heard of Foster Coulson. And that's by design.

His grandfather fought in World War II, came back, and built a road construction company. His father expanded it into logging, lumber, and eventually the largest aerial firefighting company in the world. 

The family business was worth hundreds of millions. Foster's path was set. The empire was his if he wanted it.

But he walked away.

Today, Foster runs The Wellness Company, Scriptful, and multiple other brands doing nine figures in revenue. 

We sat down with Foster to break down the decisions that got him here. They're not the ones you'd expect. And they're definitely not the ones most founders are willing to make.

On the Menu:

Let’s get into it.

You can watch the whole conversation with Foster here:

Listen on Spotify 🎧 and Apple 🍎 as well.

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Foster Coulson says this to his team a hundred times a day: "You can only scale to the size of your infrastructure."

It sounds obvious. But if it were actually obvious, most DTC brands wouldn't be failing at scale.

The problem starts with how easy it is to launch today. You can spin up a Shopify store in a weekend, generate product images with AI, and open a Meta ad account in 12 minutes. 

That low barrier creates a specific type of founder: one who never learns how to actually build a business.

Foster learned the opposite way.

When he graduated school, he skipped university and went straight into the logging industry. His family's philosophy: start from ground zero and work your way up. 

So Foster spent years bucking logs, falling trees, running chainsaws, pulling lumber. He learned every part of the operation before he was allowed to run anything.

At 21, he got his shot. 

The family made a multi-million dollar investment in a new business Foster would run: engineered wood products. His wife was pregnant. He had employees in manufacturing. He had a great product.

He launched. 

Zero orders.

Why? He had a product, but no distribution. 

Distributors didn't know it existed. Retailers said customers weren't asking for it. Foster had built the thing but hadn't built the system to sell it.

So he built the system. 

He researched building permits and sent samples to every architect on permits over $500K. Thousands and thousands of samples. Architects started speccing his product. Building stores called distributors. 

Eventually, he landed in Home Depot, Lowe's, and Menards.

The lesson: you can have the best product in the world, but it means nothing without the infrastructure to distribute, fulfill, and support it at scale.

Today, Foster runs The Wellness Company and several other brands doing nine figures in revenue. Every customer acquisition is profitable on the first purchase. 

Most DTC brands can't say that.

When Foster talks about infrastructure, he doesn't mean your tech stack. He means the entire system: 

Most DTC brands obsess over acquisition instead. They test new creatives, try new influencers, and chase the next Meta campaign.

Then growth comes and the business collapses.

Orders ship late. Customer service breaks down. Inventory runs out. The founder burns out.

Infrastructure work isn’t the shiny fun part of building a company. That's why most founders skip it.

But Foster understands that the unsexy work compounds. The sexy work doesn't.

Testing a new creative might lift revenue this week. Building proper fulfillment systems lowers your costs forever.

The Wellness Company is doing 9-figures in revenue and barely uses Meta, Google, or TikTok. Instead, they're running TV ads and direct mail.

Here's why Foster walked away from programmatic advertising entirely.

The attribution problem isn't just broken—it makes profitable scaling impossible.

Someone scrolls past your ad on Monday. Doesn't click. Doesn't engage. Six days later, they search for your brand and buy. Meta counts that as a conversion from the ad.

Foster's reaction when he learned this: "It's like a 7-day trail on seeing an ad. I'm like, is this legal? Can they legally advertise this?"

You think your ads are working because the dashboard says so. You increase spend. But actual cash flow doesn't match. You're burning money on "conversions" that would have happened anyway.

Foster's diagnosis: "You have no hope of being successful if you're relying on these platforms that are designed by algorithm to suck every penny out of you."

But the attribution lie isn't even the biggest problem.

The real damage is what programmatic platforms do to how you think about acquisition.

Upload a creative. Within 30 seconds, you see impressions and conversions. You can refresh the dashboard every five minutes.

That instant feedback is addictive, and it trains you to optimize for the wrong things.

That instant feedback trains you to think short-term. Test five colors of the same image. Try new influencers. Chase whatever worked yesterday. 

The entire focus becomes: did this specific creative work right now?

That's marketing. Reactive. Tactical. Optimization-focused.

Advertising is different. 

It's strategic. It's building sustainable channels before you see results. It requires committing to placements and creative without real-time dashboards telling you it's working.

The problem: when platforms make testing too easy, nobody learns to build actual acquisition strategies.

But the channels that actually work? They're the ones nobody wants to touch because they're too hard.

TV requires filming commercials, booking spots, and measuring success without instant feedback. Direct mail requires design, list building, and waiting for responses.

They're hard and underutilized. That's the entire opportunity.

The Wellness Company is a major spender on TV and direct mail now. Not because Foster has some secret creative advantage. Because he's willing to do the work that requires patience and commitment.

When everyone uses the easy platforms, those platforms get saturated. CPMs rise. Competition increases. Profitability tanks.

Hard channels have the opposite dynamic: low competition, better economics, actual sustainability.

Foster's principle: "If it was easy, everyone would do it. Everybody uses the programmatic platforms because they're easy. And now all of the original traditional marketing angles are underutilized."

Here's what that means for founders:

If you're burning money on Meta while wondering why cash flow doesn't match the dashboard, you're not alone. But the arbitrage isn't in finding better creatives or cheaper CPMs.

It's in choosing channels where nobody else wants to compete.

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Here's the mistake most founders make: they build the business first, then bolt on a mission statement later to make it look less greedy.

Foster did it backwards. He started with the mission, then figured out how to make it profitable.

During the pandemic, Foster watched people get shamed and harassed for making their own medical decisions. He wanted to build companies that helped those people.

But he also had to ask himself a hard question: "Am I full of shit?"

Plenty of founders talk about being "mission-driven" while their business model says otherwise.

Foster built The Wellness Company with a specific philosophy: sometimes you lose money on purpose. Because it's the right thing to do.

But that philosophy creates a problem: how do you actually balance purpose and profit without destroying the business?

Foster's learned there are two ways founders get this wrong:

Failure Mode 1: Chase purpose too hard, forget you need money.

You want to get the product to everybody. Change lives. So you overspend on customer acquisition. Burn cash trying to reach everyone. Offer massive discounts to "make it accessible."

You go out of business.

If you chase the purpose too hard, you forget you need money to keep going. You can't afford to acquire more customers if you're losing money on every one.

Failure Mode 2: Chase money too hard, lose your soul.

Every decision gets optimized for margin. You cut corners on product quality. Say yes to partnerships that don't align with your values because the money is good.

You become another commodity brand that stands for nothing.

Foster makes lots of decisions that aren't in the best interest of the bottom line. And he's never going to ask permission for that.

Take a few examples from how Foster actually runs his companies:

These aren't marketing plays. They're decisions that cost real money. Foster's okay losing money for the right thing.

So how do you actually make these calls without falling into either failure mode? Foster's framework is simple:

1. Will this help people?

If the answer is no, don't do it. Full stop.

2. Can I afford it?

If you can't afford it, you can't do it. Running out of money doesn't help anyone.

3. Does it align with who I want to be?

Look yourself in the mirror. Are you being the person you want to be? Or are you justifying something that compromises your values?

You can't achieve your purpose without profit.

Purpose without profit is charity. You'll help some people until you run out of money.

Profit without purpose is just another commodity business. You'll make money until someone undercuts you.

The goal is building a business where both reinforce each other. You make money so you can do more good. You do good in ways that strengthen the business.

When you're responsible for employees, customers, and the impact your business creates, the weight is real. But if you're using profit as a tool to create good, the weight is worth carrying.