How to Scale a Subscription DTC Brand Without Killing Cash Flow
If you're running a high-LTV or subscription brand and treating first-order profitability as sacred, this episode will challenge that assumption.
In this episode of The Free to Grow CFO Podcast, Jon Blair sits down with Karl O'Brien, co-founder of StoreHero, to break down what actually separates the high LTV/subscription game from every other DTC growth model. They dig into why LTV velocity — how fast contribution margin accumulates — matters more than total lifetime value, why a 3-4 month CAC payback window (6 months max) should govern how aggressively you spend, and how segmenting cohorts by subscriber vs. non-subscriber, offer, and SKU reveals counterintuitive plays like losing more money upfront to drive subscription opt-in. Karl also shares a real example of a supplements brand that doubled 3-month profit by shifting from a single-product sample pack to a multi-product starter pack, plus why inventory planning for subscribers should be treated completely differently than new customer inventory risk.
If you're scaling a subscription or high-LTV brand and want to stop leaving profit on the table by over-protecting first-order margins, this one's for you.
Episode Links
Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/
Karl O’Brien - https://www.linkedin.com/in/karlobrien/
Free to Grow CFO - https://www.freetogrowcfo.com/
StoreHero - https://storehero.ai/
Key Takeaways
LTV velocity matters more than total lifetime value.
A healthy high-LTV brand should target CAC payback within 3-4 months
Losing more money on a new customer to drive a subscription opt-in can counterintuitively pay back faster than a smaller loss on a one-time purchase.
Transcript
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Chapters
00:43 Introduction to the High LTV Game
03:19 Understanding LTV and Customer Acquisition Costs
06:12 The Importance of Payback Periods
09:09 Analyzing Customer Cohorts and Retention
11:44 Strategies for Improving LTV
14:15 Balancing CAC and LTV
17:01 The Role of Inventory Planning in High LTV Brands
19:51 Final Thoughts
Jon Blair (00:43)
All right, we are back and I am super pumped to have my buddy Karl O'Brien from Store Hero back on the show. Karl, what's up, man?
Karl O'Brien (00:52)
Great to see you, Jon. Always good to catch up.
Jon Blair (00:54)
Yeah, was this your second or third time on the show? I don't know. You've been on at least once. I feel like it's been twice. I'm not sure.
Karl O'Brien (01:00)
Yeah, i it's o our conversation's always great to the extent that I I'm p piecing my head what was recorded and what isn't, but it's always pretty organically.
Jon Blair (01:07)
I know every we should be recording every every one of our conversations should be a podcast in all in all honesty. But I'm I'm glad to have you back on. we're talking today about what we at Free to Grow CFO call the high L TV or subscription game. And so to set the stage for the conversation, we've been talking a lot about the fact that Free to Grow CFO does something unique, being a D T C focused, fractional CFO firm.
We have developed what we call the FTG growth marketing game playbook. What we've learned over the years and working with over a hundred brands is that every D T C brand is playing one of three growth marketing games, either the high LTV game, the new customer dominant game, or the apparel game. It's important to put a brand in one of those three buckets because they all have different, they all have different unit economic factors, different new versus returning customer sales.
dynamics and that dictates what the brand needs to do from a playbook standpoint, from a tactics and strategy standpoint to scale fast, profitable, and cash flow positive. And so today we're going to dive into the high LTV game. So to get us started, Karl, from the pers from your perspective, what differentiates the high LTV game or subscription game from the other games that a brand can play as they're trying to scale?
Karl O'Brien (02:33)
Sure, it's such an in it's a great way to put it, and we do something really similar where we talk about it as kind of profit now, profit sooner, profit later. And I think de definitely touching on the same points. And practically, I think one piece that I know in our conversations, free to grow, you guys do this really well. And at Store Hero, we try to do it well is pull the kind of marketing metrics and put them in the context of your fundamental business principles. So like let's think about this in a in in the most rational way possible. Like, what am I willing to pay to acquire a customer?
Jon Blair (02:40)
Mm, mm.
Karl O'Brien (03:03)
well the answer to that is gonna be well, what am I getting in return? And for us it really falls into those two categories, or th those three categories. I'm gonna be willing to give up my margin on my first order, not because it's I'm a charity, it's because I know there's more for profit to be to to come later. So again, to be really precise around how we think about that, it's it's a lot of these kind of people will have heard
us I'm sure talking about this in the past, but maybe often don't institute it. It's like, well, what do you mean by LTV and what time period are you looking at? There those are the logical next questions. From from our perspective, it needs to be fully loaded cost of goods. What sort of profit am I actually generating? And that's overtime. So if I can clearly see I generate fifty dollars of profit on first order, 75 by month two, and ninety-two by month three, I can
Jon Blair (03:39)
Yeah.
Karl O'Brien (04:01)
I'm in such a clear position to assess the value of that customer to go back to that question because I know what I'm getting in return.
Jon Blair (04:08)
Well, okay, so there's an important distinction, and you made this at the end, right? Which is that it's not just what are you gonna get in return, it's when are you gonna get it, right? Because there is actually a different we've realized there is actually a second high LTV game. Generally, we see that in apparel. You there is generally a brand that has raving fans, does have high LTV, but it's over a much longer time period.
And so those brands generally can't afford to lose money on new customers. We call our our first order profitability rule for most apparel brands is we call break-even-ish on new customers. And sometimes if the brand's been around a long enough and there's like multiple years of returning customers, they might be able to turn a small loss on new customers. But it's not a when you differentiate this from the subscription game, the high LTV subscription game.
You can actually have an accelerating loss on new customers, potentially, if you have the right LTV dynamics. And so one to summarize this for the audience, it's like it's not just LTV in margin dollars, not revenue dollars. It's LTV velocity. How fast does it accumulate? And generally speaking, to differentiate this from the apparel high LTV game, we have to see sufficient LTV in margin dollars.
Typically within a three to six month period. I even like to see it. Well, here's something I want to debate with you or because you look at a lot of data just like I do on the cohort side. I tell a brand without looking at any of their data, generally speaking, you've got to break even. Your CAC needs to get paid back by your LTV and margin dollars by month six at the latest, but generally month three to four is where we typically like to see that. There is
nuance depending on a lot of different factors. But what's your what is what is your perspective on that?
Karl O'Brien (06:07)
Definitely. I think ultimately there has to be a solid rationale, I would say, for any time you want to go over maybe that three month, and especially if it's six, you're probably working your way backwards and kind of fixing maybe a lack of a profitability focus in the business. But practically, you know, oftentimes as well, I think after you get to that point, the customer that you're kind of on that concentric circles of the work Meta and Google have to do to go out, take your budget and grab and find those customers, you know, you're gonna see a reduction in quality in some of those cases. The other piece as well is
Jon Blair (06:32)
Yeah.
Karl O'Brien (06:37)
Okay, it's you know, it doesn't do you much justice to say, Okay, I get profitable after month six if my average subscription lifespan is seven months or you know eight months or whatever.
Jon Blair (06:47)
For sure. Yeah. Yeah. So you have like one month of generating profit from that cohort, right?
Karl O'Brien (06:51)
Exactly. And even in a broader context, I see this in our kind of profit L T V view is like, okay, well practically, you know, if you're doing all that work, let's say you generate now fifty dollars a profit on first order and you that incrementally grows to maybe sixty dollars by kind of month twelve, let's say. So n you know, an opposite to this scenario we're talking about. You know, let's think about it in a logical format. You're not gonna give up fifty dollars to gain an an extra ten. That doesn't make sense. So it's again, y You need to be selfish
In your business, like you, if you're putting that investment in, you need to see that return in a reasonable period of time. And the other piece I'd say on that as well is like oftentimes people will go back and you know, figure what the logical next question here is like, okay, how can I map out what are my customer acquisition cost scenarios? how much should I be willing to spend to acquire customer? And what does that do for my business over time? But
You know, off at the same time, you're you're working from a much more solid foundation if you understand that true profit LTV. And there needs to be a logical rationale as to why you gave that up. People that I think are more aggressive and waiting a bit longer is they have a much more mature repeat customer base that they they they can absorb that kind of kind of cash flow burden. I know when when we spoke previously, I used a similar analogy, but it's like you're giving a mini loan to that customer, waiting for them to come back.
Jon Blair (08:06)
Exactly. Exactly.
Jon Blair (08:17)
Totally.
Karl O'Brien (08:18)
and repay. They need to be you need to give that loan on good terms and know it's for the greater good for your business.
Jon Blair (08:25)
Well, okay, so a couple of things I want to I'm we're going a little out of order, but I I wanna dive into this because whenever I talk to a brand and I haven't seen their data, I say six month payback at the longest, but I really bet it's probably gotta be three to four months. We do have bigger brands we work with that are maybe doing twenty, thirty, forty million in revenue. They've been around for many years. And when you say that they're kind of their cohorts or their customer base is more mature, what I think about is this analogy of like layers on a cake.
Right. If you're a brand that's only been around for a year or two and people drop off in on average at month nine, when you get to year two, you're really on the layers of the cake only go back to nine months ago. But let's say we have a couple brands we work with that are even doing like maybe 12 to 15 million in revenue right now, but their like 24 month LTV is crazy. Right. So if you go out to if you're at any point in time,
You have layers of the cake that go back two years. So you're getting all of this LTV from not just the last three months, four months, six months, twelve months, twenty-four months, and beyond. That is a brand that maybe we might be able to stretch the payback out now to six months or seven months, but it relies on knowing how to analyze the data in the right way to give you the certainty that you can take a bigger risk on that loss. There's one other thing you mentioned about like.
making a loan and you talked about the word investment. You do have to look at this from a finance perspective, which is kind of a return on investment over time and and factor in the time value of money. You mentioned that like let's say by month seven, you're gonna break even in month six, and by month seven you have ten dollars in lifetime you know, contribution margin, and your CAC was five dollars, you made five bucks on a $50 investment.
Over six or seven months, you gotta you gotta annualize that and say, like, was that a sufficient return on capital? Right? Was that sufficient for the risk of waiting six months to break even and waiting seven months to make a five dollar profit? And and so this does actually become come back to risk versus expected return at the end of the day. And so I'm just throwing this out there because it's not all just a
Jon Blair (10:50)
you know, back in the day, I feel like during COVID and like when the e commerce like COVID boom was happening, people were just like, if your CAC to LTV is three to one, you're good. And it's like, well, maybe. And is that is that revenue LTV, revenue based LTV? Over what time period are you talking about? Cause if your revenue like CAC or LTV to CAC by month twelve is three to one, it might be okay. It probably isn't, especially if you're
Karl O'Brien (11:03)
Shm.
Jon Blair (11:18)
It especially once you convert that to gross margin dollars. So these are the things you need to think about. So let me just summarize and then I want to dive into something else here. So with a high LTV brand, subscription brand, you have sufficient LTV in margin dollars and velocity, meaning that by month three or four, generally speaking, you can break even, but that it keeps accumulating beyond that break-even point, sufficient enough to provide like enough profit to make the risk of losing money on new customers.
worth it. Okay. That's what we're talking about here. Let's now talk a little bit about like, you know, I'm just curious, where do you where do you see in your conversations with brands and looking at brands data, where do you usually see CAC to the CAC to LTV game break down? Is there a common thing or things that stops working at a certain amount of scale that brands should be looking out for?
Karl O'Brien (12:13)
Sure. I think ultimately it's gonna be, you know, different sides of the coin in in each brand, of course. But naturally it always comes down to two things. It's either the retention isn't as maybe strong as they would have hoped, and they're investing for a customer that isn't driving additional incremental margin, or that acquisition cost has crept up to the extent that, you know, they're waiting till month two and three and four and five to acquire the same volume of customers. So again, in the reality of of business, you know
They're often the drivers for these things. They're not often a it's a positive situation where okay, we're just scaling into it and then it it kind of happens. That's that's definitely a a a big part of it. I would say the way the way I would try to encourage brands to look at it is and and it's one feature that's been really well received from a Store Hero perspective, is lifetime value by first purchase. Because I think that actually takes this conversation from like you you
Jon Blair (12:51)
Mm. Yes.
Jon Blair (13:06)
Mm.
Karl O'Brien (13:11)
Get a view of where you are at a business level, and you understand where where you are versus where you need to be. But now it's like, okay, how do we actually do something about that? So if we take a look at what are all the products that are requiring customers, what sort of profit does that customer does that product drive us on first order? And based on customers buying that first, what does their LTV look like over time? So the the that's obviously really interesting for its own sake.
To know, okay, product A has a much better retention rate, it's a better foundation, but practically it gets to solve the underlying challenge that someone is even trying to explore in the first place, which is actually instead of crossing my fingers and hoping that my meta acquisition cost drops, how can I give myself the most amount of levers in front of me to control a positive outcome? And one of those reasons is if I can give myself an ability to spend more.
Jon Blair (14:04)
Totally.
Karl O'Brien (14:08)
To kind of really put this in perspective. A great example of like a high LTV Supplements business, they they launched a starter pack, you know, a a trial pack. it was a really low profit per order. Their channel performance looked really poor, but we could re immediately see that exposing a customer to multiple products within the family of of the brand meant that we had a to a ton of different opportunities for them to find a product that they were interested in, and the profit after three months.
was twice as high as to as compared to doing a a sample pack of one of their products. So in in in that case they've the same they've the same kind of revenue, conceivably, they've the same marketing spend, but they've focused on the underlying behaviour that gives them more room to spend and actually helps that LTV without doing anything else.
Jon Blair (14:44)
Interesting.
Jon Blair (15:00)
Okay, so there's yes, there's a couple things that we need to kind of like drill down on here that I want to make sure the audience hears. The first one is the way that I think about it is like a seesaw, right? That's the metaphor. And the seesaw is CAC and LTV accumulation, I call it, but at LT velocity LTV velocity over time. You may start, you analyze your cohort model with a CFO or with Store Hero's data.
And you're like, okay, I am shooting for a three month payback, right? And the with the data that I have, that means I can spend up to a $50 CAC, right? And so you go and you try to spend as much as you can up to a $50 CAC. But then what do you need to do? You need to stop, look at the data again, measure, and say, Hey, did the CAC to LTV Seesaw stay in balance? Because what
What what One of the things that Karl is saying is like If the CAC side of the seesaw starts to go up and LTV's not keeping up, right? You're gonna have to pull back spend or do something to drop CAC back down to bring the seesaw back in the other direction. You actually don't want LTV to get out too far ahead of CAC because then you're actually leaving new customer acquisition on the table. And so you're like, You're playing this balancing act game. of like.
You are trying to push CAC as high as it can feasibly go, but you're trying to keep pushing LTV up to balance out that seesaw. And if you can And that's b basically the game that you're playing for the rest of your life when you're when you're playing the high LTV game. And so that's the first thing I wanted to kind of reiterate. The second thing is that looking at segmented cohort analysis, that's kind of what you're talking about, like whether it's at the offer level.
Or the SKU level, you do need to get segmented and go a layer or two deeper to understand what is driving your new customer acquisition and what's driving your LTV. Certainly there are more, I'll call it like funnel level or global level tactics, like how are you running your email marketing and whatnot, but you also need to go back and look at like what offers and SKUs are really driving acquiring a new customer and what's the LTV of that cohort of customers. So
Jon Blair (17:23)
One thing we like to do on the CFO side, at the very least, is is look at a cohort model from the perspective of subscribers versus non-subscribers. Right. And one thing that we found, and I I I actually want to get your any like takes or stories you have about this. One thing that we found is that one thing that you can that that has been very successful for high L TV brands that we've worked with is helping them.
To actually lose more money on a new customer in exchange for a subscription opt-in. And it's counterintuitive, but it's because when we look at the cohort data for subscribers, it has such higher LTV velocity over time that we can pay back a steeper loss, actually, even quicker sometimes than we can than we can pay back a one-time purge or a non-subscriber acquisition.
And so we've been able to counterintuitively help brands offer an even steeper, you know, subscription opt-in discount, lose more money in month one, but by month six and beyond, they're way more profitable. Do you have any takes on that?
Karl O'Brien (18:33)
we see it all the time. Like I think the the the resounding point there as well is like I think it's it it you know everything is is difficult. I'm not saying ev anything is easy, but I often see think it's easier to get the right you know, even if it's a a a good offer, if the LTV can prove it out to capture more profit later on, then oftentimes trying to maximize profit on that first order. Because realistically
It's you don't need to do it, and it's actually a di more difficult job sometimes. Like I had a a call with a brand there in the last couple of days only, and one of their big focuses was actually try to can we reprice to give ourselves more margin on first order? And I was kind of saying you've actually a consumable product. Your LTV is really strong. To to add an extra incremental, maybe two, three dollars of gross profit on first order,
resets your expectations versus competitors in an otherwise competitive category. If you actually get somebody to come back one more time, you generate five times more profit than that. So therefore, in other words, if 20% of your customers come back once more, you've captured the same level of profit, you've served the customer better who's gotten validated your business by purchasing one more time, and you have had no negative consequence of passed on additional cost.
Jon Blair (19:26)
Totally. Yep.
Karl O'Brien (19:50)
So it's like I think oftentimes what can often happen happen with kind of you know our media buying being the levers in front of us on a daily basis, that causes us sometimes to to make all our changes through that prism. spend adjustment, should we spend more or less? If you can put yourself in a position where you have more levers in front of you, you have more optionality, then you can see again easier pathways to actually achieve the underlying goal you want to achieve.
Jon Blair (20:19)
Yeah, it's the reason why you just made such an important point right now. The reason why we are rallying our CFO service for D T C brands around this growth marketing game playbook is ex it is because of what you just said, which is that You need to know when and where to get your profit in each of these games. And if you try to get your profit in the wrong spot.
you're you're you're just leaving profit growth and cash flow on the table. And I'm I'm not saying that to scare brands. I'm saying that because I me and my team did not realize that four years ago as clearly as we realize it today. And it it's the truth. If you are trying to overemphasize first order profitability in a high LTV brand, you might actually be
You might actually be damaging your profitability and not even realize it. I actually talked to a brand recently that's doing eight million dollars a month in revenue. And I looked at their cohort model and I was like, dude, why are you making money on on first orders? Like we should be losing money on first orders. And he's like, Well, honestly, like I don't have a CFO, so like I'm I'm scared to lose money on on first orders. He's like, I can I? And I'm like,
Yes, I I'm looking at just a couple of data points and I am certain how much can you lose? I need to you know, we need to work together and we need to dive deeper to see how much you can lose. But I am certain that just based on the L T V that I'm not even converting to margin dollars. You know, when you look at a cohort model and rev in revenue dollars and you don't even need to convert it to margin dollars, you're just like, I know this works. I don't know the exact CAC target, but like you should be spending more. I was just like, dude, I know you can spend more. And he's like, Okay, like I'm
I'm willing to listen, but like I I and until I get a CFO, I'm not doing it because I'm scared. And and I think that is such an important thing to understand, that like a lot of r a lot of times the reason why brand founders are not following this playbook is just because they don't have the the confidence to know that it's giving them a higher ROI than trying to protect first order profitability. And that that's why I'm like, that's why I got you on the show.
Jon Blair (22:44)
That's why we're like we're trying to hammer this message out in our marketing because We want brands to know this is possible. It is possible to do this. You just gotta have the right data and you have to have the right people on your team, right?
Karl O'Brien (22:57)
A hundred percent. Like it's the equivalent of I think sometimes it feels like to do nothing is a safer bet, but to do nothing not scale is an action in and of itself. So ultimately like we we see this as well, even in the context of things like platform based ROAS, with in the absence of information. Yeah. I know I'm I'm I'm bringing it down to rabbit hole.
Jon Blair (23:08)
For sure.
Jon Blair (23:16)
dude, don't please don't start me on platform based Roas. I've I've been fighting I've been fighting lots of brands about that recently.
Karl O'Brien (23:22)
Yeah, especially and I think it's is if it's true in this category of customers more than anyone else. It's like it feels like a higher ROAS is safer. And you and ultimately like I the the kind of the confusion and malaise around like
all the air in the room being taken up by kind of fighting attribution tools rather than clarity on these three numbers has just meant that we haven't even got to this higher level of conversation a lot of times. We're still fighting around which channel deserves which kind of split or halo you know ball you know part of the halo effects. So in this context, like this I'm sure there's plenty of reasons for that. I know across Europe there's like a bit of an aftershock from like even f the financial crisis, you know, that's coming up probably fifteen years ago, more than that at this point, but there's all
Jon Blair (23:48)
For sure.
Jon Blair (24:04)
Totally.
Karl O'Brien (24:07)
these kind of over you know last if effects even even COVID in the last couple years you know making sure that you know you know those kind of you're dealing with the situation in front of you and I think oftentimes I'm sure you find the same the expectation is like us as a store hero yourselves as a as a C Factional CFO okay we're gonna come in and we're gonna be the pessimists in the room and pull back do less contract your activities but actually
That's not often the and and they're these are the most exciting conversations, I'm sure, for yourself as well. Whenever you see that cohort chart. So for anyone who doesn't have visibility on that, I'd really recommend it's such a clarifying point to see the realities of your business. Like what's been really exciting is we've had a bunch of businesses raise big rounds, and you know, it would nearly be like the the core.
part of their pitch deck was that story or LTV page or profit LTV. It's it's it's really exciting when when there's an opportunity to be gained there.
Jon Blair (25:03)
I love it.
Jon Blair (25:08)
And I look, I want to be clear. I understand that that it can be complicated to process that, you know, lifetime LTV and margin dollars against CAC. It it it it's challenging. I'll like honestly, most CFOs don't understand it. And the the thing is though, as the founder
You do need to understand why these dynamics matter, but you can bring people and resources onto your team to be the experts to understand it at a very detailed level. That's where SaaS tools like Store Hero and service providers like Free To Grow CFO can come alongside you and do the detailed work, right? That you don't need to do. You just need to understand the takeaway.
And you need to understand the high level dynamics and you need to understand like them enough to be able to say, yes, let's make this decision. Right. And so, so just remember that you don't have to do this all alone. There's one thing I want to dive into before we before we close up here, how inventory planning impacts the high L TV game. I have some really strong opinions about this.
But I'm just curious, what is your take on why inventory planning is so critical to the high L T V game?
Karl O'Brien (26:39)
Hundred percent. I think, you know, the you know, it's not all kind of investment expression. It's like past performance doesn't indicate f future return. Okay, but it certainly gives it you know, gives us a pretty good indication sometimes, especially if you've built up as a business a pretty good model of of what that looks like. I think practically
Jon Blair (26:49)
Yeah.
Karl O'Brien (27:01)
you have this kind of fire hose of spend driven through ad channels that ultimately works based on certain principles been in in in in your business. Like I think these high LTV businesses are in as as strong a position as anyone to actually be able to model that stuff out. Like we see businesses who don't aren't developing like think about something like furniture is like the inventory planning is so difficult to do because ultimately every customer
feels like a new customer because it's so long by the time they're actually coming back. So like the the piece that's been really interesting from our perspective is actually piloting features within our our cloud connector for Store Hero. So think about that as like a a really intelligent tool to validate and understand your sales, marketing and profit all in in the conversations you're having with these tools. If you can actually take that context and apply it back
Jon Blair (27:36)
For sure.
Karl O'Brien (27:59)
to your inventory and demand planning, it's so beneficial because there's so much modeling you can do there, which is which is exciting. But I think like again, it's the benefit of having I think someone like yourselves that understands the the messy practical real world realities of implementing this fancy plan. You know,
Jon Blair (28:03)
Totally.
Karl O'Brien (28:17)
You know, it's you know, oftentimes it can you know, th these plans can fall down in execution if they don't deal with, okay, the realities of of your business. And again, you can do there's so much you can do to kind of cr reverse engineer that. I know we've had a ton of conversations on that.
Jon Blair (28:32)
Absolutely. Yeah, man. I mean, inventory planning is so key for this game because if you run out of subscription inventory, that's like the cardinal sin. If you run out of SKUs that are on subscription, you can kiss that LTV goodbye and the whole CAC to LTV game breaks down. And so it's critical to get at the very least your subscriber inventory nailed. And one other thing that we help brands think through is like the segments of risk of your inventory. So your new customer forecast is actually the riskier.
Inventory forecast. That's why you're saying with furniture, it's so much riskier to do inventory planning because almost every purchase is a new is a new customer. And it's a lot harder to forecast new customer acquisition than it is subscribers or repeat purchase, right? And so you got to think about your your demand plan in terms of your new customer demand plan and your, you know, returning customer demand plan. And you don't want to screw up the returning customer demand plan.
And in fact, you should probably even order a little bit extra. And and you you actually can because the subscription de-risks that inventory purchase quite a bit. So, anyways, look, man, before we wrap up here, can you just tell everyone a little bit about Store Hero and where they can find more information about you guys?
Karl O'Brien (29:49)
Yeah, no problem at all. And and great to chat as always. From from my perspective I started in
As a founder of a digital marketing agency working with e-com brands, getting that vantage point of trying to kind of give a clear picture of marketing and finance. So, from a storegier perspective, it's very much built in that view where in order to make active decisions, whether I'm an agency, whether I'm brand, whether I'm kind of a in a management team of a brand, I need to be able to understand the profit impact of my decisions. So, people like yourself, Jon, the at the results at the end of the month are actually those decisions that have been
made on a daily basis are being done it through the lens of profitability. So for a store hero and that's by way of a unified dashboard. But now actually for the majority of our users it's interacting with our AI growth coach which sits it within your Claude account and instead of your team grabbing scattered chat GPT screenshots without proper business context, it understands your goals, your margins, your products, your full view of your business to give you really
sense checked, reliable recommendations that are extremely clarifying to help translate not only data but turn it into clear actions, which has been really exciting to do.
Jon Blair (31:02)
So awesome, man. I love what you guys are building over there. And Karl, like seriously, thank you for coming back on. The way that you break down the high LTV game through your actual experience as opposed to just theory, it's the exact kind of clarity that our audience needs. They're making big decisions about trying to scale the high LTV game to grow fast, profitably, and cash flow positive. And so thanks again, man. I always love having you on, and we'll definitely be doing this again soon.
Karl O'Brien (31:28)
Likewise. Thanks again.
