Don’t Fall Victim to These DTC Finance Myths

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast, Jon Blair and Jeff Lowenstein discuss common finance myths in the DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) world. They focus on three main myths: the necessity of a 13-week cash forecast, the need for overly granular financial projections, and the advantages of working with e-commerce specific firms over horizontal firms. The conversation emphasizes the importance of understanding the purpose behind financial models and forecasts, advocating for a more strategic and less rigid approach to financial planning in the e-commerce space.

Key Takeaways

• You Don’t Always Need a 13-Week Cash Forecast

• Granularity in Financial Models Should Serve Decision-Making, Not Complexity

• Ecom-Specific Finance Firms Deliver More Value Than Generalist Firms

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

Jeff Lowenstein- https://www.linkedin.com/in/freetogrow-jeff/

Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/

Meet Jeff Lowenstein

Jeff was previously leading M&A efforts at ecommerce aggregator Boosted Commerce where he was the 5th employee. He built processes across M&A, finance and operations to support rapid growth from 0 to 30 brands under management in 2.5 years.

He previously co-founded and exited an app for Shopify merchants and spent time in the Strategic Finance departments of Etsy and Caesars Entertainment. Jeff holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

He’s worked with hundreds of brands over his career and founded Free To Grow because of his passion for supporting entrepreneurs and helping them succeed. The analytical and financial tools he has developed over the years are specifically crafted for the modern consumer brand.

Transcript

~~~

00:00 Introduction to DTC Finance Myths

01:29 Myth 1: The 13-Week Cash Forecast

12:38 Myth 2: Need for Granular Financial Projections

26:49 The Importance of Financial Modeling

30:06 Myths in Financial Forecasting

31:05 E-commerce vs. Horizontal Firms

39:15 The Value of E-commerce Expertise

44:57 Leveraging Network and Experience

48:00 Closing Thoughts

Jon Blair (00:00)

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast where we dive deep into conversations about scaling a DTC brand with a profit focused mindset. I'm your host Jon Blair, founder of Free to Grow CFO. We are the go-to outsourced finance and accounting firm for eight and nine figure DTC brands and today I'm here with my co-founder and partner in crime, Jeff Lowenstein. Jeff, what's happening brother?

Jeff Lowenstein (00:28)

Good morning Jon, Happy New Year everyone. Glad to be back on. Let's do it.

Jon Blair (00:33)

So today we're gonna have, I think, a really fun conversation. We're gonna talk about what we see time and time again are very typical DTC finance myths. And so the point of this episode is for us to bust, myth bust, so to speak, three very common finance myths that we come across again and again in the DTC world, because we don't want you to fall victim to these.

So honestly, we're just gonna dive right in today and we're gonna get into myth number one and Myth number one. I mean this is something that we come across I mean constantly and I would say I'm even seeing it come come up more and more frequently this myth is I must have a 13 week cash forecast now before we get into talking about some examples of Where we've seen this?

come into play and how we've actually helped our clients in a different way. I'm just curious, where do you think the 13 week thing came from? Cause it's just like everyone seems to say 13 week. I have no idea, but I find it funny that that's such a pervasive idea. Is it cause it's 13 weeks is one quarter? I don't know, man.

Jeff Lowenstein (01:54)

I mean it must be 13 weeks is one quarter for those who don't know 52 weeks in a year Divided by 4 is 13 right and so that's an easy nice number But you know you could do it longer you could do it shorter

weekly cash flow is important for sure in some situations but there's no rule that every single brand needs exactly 13 week cash flow all of the time and in fact it's definitely a bit of a it can be a waste of time if it's not needed for your brand.

Jon Blair (02:30)

Well, okay, so here's something that's interesting. The reason why I asked that question, I was kind of joking, but it's like, where did that number come from? Who came up with that number in finance land and made that the prevailing idea? The question you should be asking yourself is, how many weeks of weekly cash visibility do I need and why? Right, you need to have a good reason. You don't just make an

This is gonna come up time and time again in this conversation, but what's the reason behind why you're creating such a forecast or such a report? Jeff, do you have any thoughts or like examples of where you've seen weekly cash forecasting being needed or not needed?

Jeff Lowenstein (03:21)

Yeah, it's a good question and I mean there's a couple brands that we work with that come to mind. Just recently this question came up. When you're fighting...

day to day and cash is real tight, then yeah, it makes sense to have a weekly cash flow plan to show all the ins and outs, right? It's gonna show all your receipts coming in, all your payments out, meaning could be for inventory, could be for overhead like payroll, could be paying off credit cards. It's important to get the timing of those right when you are in a cash crunch.

But that doesn't mean it needs to be 13 weeks exactly. In fact, it often is really only helpful in the next four to six weeks, I would say. You don't really have such great visibility beyond the next four to six weeks, and the accuracy drops off substantially.

when you don't have that visibility, right? So I think that's an important caveat is like shortening the timeframe, making it easier on yourself and having much more conviction in the numbers is one area where it could be very helpful. And then I would also add, like there's another nuance here, which is a lot of businesses are very seasonal and in your slower months.

you have less revenue coming in and you're also building up inventory ahead of the busy season. And so in those times of the year, it might make sense to make sure you're not flying too close to zero in your...

in your bank accounts. there could be like seasonal times, there could just be tough times where it's needed. But I would never say that like it's always needed all of the time as like a blanket rule. What do you think, Jon?

Jon Blair (05:12)

Yeah,

a couple of really great points there. One is seasonal use of weekly cash flow. I have a client, one of the very first clients at Free to Grow CFO. I served them as a fractional CFO for like the better part of two and a half years. And there was twice that we needed to use it. And we, in that case, we tried six week visibility. And we said like, hey, six weeks is really easy to pull together. We can pull together quickly.

If we decide we need more, let's tack on additional weeks, but let's not like pour over spending all these hours on a 13 week cash forecast if we really need to know how are we gonna do in the next two to six weeks, right? And so we activated this forecast twice and guess when they both were? The weeks leading up to Black Friday, right? Where we had a lot of inventory on hand and we knew sales were coming, but we were...

Things were tight because we had a lot of cash tied up in inventory, but we knew it was for a good reason. That was Black Friday, Cyber Monday coming up. And as soon as, you know, the, the faucet of cash inflows turned on during the holidays, we stopped running that weekly model. And again, so like it had, there's a good why behind that. There's specific situational questions we were seeking to answer as a management team. Right. I do want to point out one other thing too. That.

is we're assuming, Jeff and I are assuming here, that you have a monthly financial model that you're using at the same time, right? So like, I don't want to differentiate, lot of the brands, and I think you'll have something to say about this, Jeff, because you have a couple very recent examples. There are several brands who come to work with us and they have no monthly model and they only have a weekly model, right? And so, and it's 13 plus weeks, I've seen one that was 53 weeks, which is crazy. And...

Jeff Lowenstein (06:58)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (07:05)

And so again, this assumes, think about using both of those models for the time horizon that answers the questions that you want to answer with each of those models. So think about where they overlap, but don't waste time duplicating the visibility that you get in each of them, right? Like I know you've got some examples and thoughts around that too, Jeff.

Jeff Lowenstein (07:30)

Yeah, mean, so we started working with a brand just this past fall. I think we started in November. And there was both a very detailed weekly forecast.

for cash flow purposes and also a monthly financial model. And what we found was that the monthly was not really getting any attention and was basically not used, even though people were spending time preparing it. The weekly one was very detailed and it had a lot of assumptions, a lot of...

complexity. And when we, you know, we had an honest conversation with the owner and we said like, Hey, you're in a good enough place where you're not fighting every day to make payroll. We think there's a lot more strategic value in this monthly model. If you can look out three, six, nine, 12 months, understand seasonality, understand your margins from a higher level, you're probably going to get a lot more out of that. And so we actually, in this case,

put both the weekly and the previous monthly to the side and started from scratch with our own Free to Grow version of the monthly. And it's been going great. It's been going much better. We can have really in-depth discussions about strategy and product launches and things like that, rather than just reviewing numbers. In this case, the weekly forecast, they weren't fighting to make payroll. they were reviewing all those detailed numbers, but it wasn't really moving the needle.

or the brand owner. So in this case, we found it helpful to put that to the side.

Jon Blair (09:15)

Yeah, and like going back to asking the question why. Why do I need any given financial model? What questions am I seeking to answer, right? So like if you're saying, hey, I fear I'll go out of business, then there's a use case for a more detailed, maybe longer time horizon weekly cash model. Do I need, or let's just say that your why is I needed to make AP payments this week.

Well, oftentimes I see a two to four week weekly cash plan is plenty fine for making AP payments, right? At Guardian Bikes, we didn't, the reason why I think the 13 week thing is funny is because we didn't go look up how far out our weekly cash model should go. We chose 13 weeks. I read this book called, it's actually called Future Ready. And it's not about the numbers behind forecasting. It doesn't teach you all these models.

Jeff Lowenstein (09:50)

Sure.

Jon Blair (10:13)

It's about the theory and the strategy behind forecasting and what it tells you amongst many other things. It's a fantastic book. I recommend anyone read this because it's not just for finance. It's not just for finance nerds. It's also, you know, it's very applicable to like a founder. But is that the time horizon for any forecast in this case, we're talking about a weekly forecast.

Jeff Lowenstein (10:16)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (10:39)

That time horizon should exist because strategically you need to have visibility at the furthest out that that forecast goes. And if you don't need visibility, if the visibility you need stops before your forecast time horizon, you're wasting time, right? And you're making something more complicated. Because at the end of the day, forecast exists to make decisions around. They don't exist to predict the future. We chose 13 weeks. Why? Because our manufacturing lead time.

was 13 weeks. And we were in a very tight season of building a lot of inventory and we needed to see how these really big vendor payments were panning out on a weekly basis going out 13 weeks. As 13 weeks was the furthest out that they're, like if we committed, if we placed a PO today, a payment would be due in 13 weeks more or less, right? So that was the.

Jeff Lowenstein (11:37)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (11:38)

There were there were no payments that we could even forecast beyond 13 weeks because we hadn't placed POs for that yet So again have a strategy behind why you're using this and really figure out Where is weekly needed? Versus where is monthly needed and at Free to Grow our financial models forecast the P&L and the end cash flow and balance sheet so you have a weekly or you have a sorry you have a monthly view and so you know

Asking why the time horizon should be X number of weeks, what questions you're going to seek to answer with that, and being willing to activate and deactivate weekly cash flow situationally is actually just a wise use of time and resources.

Jeff Lowenstein (12:28)

I was going to go deeper on something you just said actually. Our second myth, I think, on the list, why don't you share that before I share my next one.

Jon Blair (12:38)

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Nice segue here. So the

second one, and we've talked about this a little bit, but we'll go deeper. Myth number two that we're gonna bust here is I need a super granular, sophisticated financial projection model to make sound decisions. Jeff, take it away.

Jeff Lowenstein (12:55)

This one gets me jazzed up because I feel so strongly. So the answer is you don't, obviously. You need a model that's detailed enough to get you to make decisions, informed decisions, right, about...

levers to pull in your business, right? And that's really the North Star that we as Fractional CFOs are trying to achieve and help our brand founders with. But really, what we were just talking about, the length of your weekly cash flow forecast, also whether you need one at all, is in asking those questions, is in service of saving time and effort. And I want to talk about time and effort.

Myth number two, not having too much of a granular forecast is also saving you time and effort. And why is that so important? As an ecomm founder, you have so, so, so many things to do on any given day that you don't have time to sit, even if your fractional CFO had endless hours to sit with you for two hours a day and go through every detailed financial.

metric and number. You as a founder don't want to nor should you be spending time on all that stuff. You need the highest quality financial information in the shortest amount of time that can lead to a good decision. And that's really the service that we're trying to provide and the end goal that we're trying to provide. It's not about just saving you time for the sake of time, right? It's giving you your hours back so you feel confident.

in those decisions, right? And that you're walking away from that meeting, not spending more time trying to figure out stuff that you're still wondering about or asking other people for other information. You have the ability to go and make decisions fairly quickly, right? So that's like something that I care a lot about because that's really what we get excited about as CFOs is like, okay, the analysis was done well. We saved time by simplifying it and only focusing on what matters.

therefore the brand founder was able to quickly and confidently make a decision about something in their business. So yeah, that's that's that gets me excited. How about you?

Jon Blair (15:21)

way.

Yeah, man, there's too much that we could talk about on this. This is probably a whole episode, seriously. Couple things. We need to stop asking, can I analyze this? And start asking, should I analyze this? Right? And why? Because an e-comm speed wins. Things change constantly in e-comm. So you over-engineer a model or a report.

Jeff Lowenstein (15:46)

Yes.

Jon Blair (15:50)

Dude, we see this all the time. We saw this all the time at Guardian Bikes. We see this across our existing clients. You over engineer this crazy report and then guess what? Something changes and that structure doesn't work anymore, right? And so here's what we're not saying. We're not saying make this super rudimentary financial model that is not useful. We're saying build the granularity where the granularity matters. Use the 80-20 rule. What are the 20 % of variables?

levers that you actually want to act on and should act on as the founder to produce the 80 % of the results that you're looking for and I gotta be honest with you. I'm not trying to like 80-20 is a cliche that we see it time and time again. There really is only 20 % of the levers that you're polling, right? And in our world, generally, this is a little bit of a generalization, but it holds fairly true across most our clients. It's

It's ad spend profitability and it's inventory, right? And I would say even oftentimes people come to us with the ad spend profitability being like the thing they're trying to understand first and foremost. And so what might this look like in practice? It might look like, hey, let's not waste a bunch of time going line by line on everything that makes up your fixed overhead. Let's use the recent trend in the financials and put one number for fixed overhead, but let's dive deeper on the marketing analytics, right?

and the marketing model, and let's look at LTV and first order versus repeat orders, right? Now, can we build out granularity over time? Yeah, but let's be, we look at it from the startup perspective, like the classic lean startup is like MVP and iterate, right? MVP and iterate. So we actually try to get a model out, and I can say this with a lot of confidence without making Jeff who runs all our operations feel nervous that I'm saying this in the marketplace.

We get the first model up in a few days. It's up in a few days from when you sign on with us and we put it into action. We start having conversations around it with the client immediately. So you can start taking action and then we iterate every month. Every, there is not a month we're not working on the financial model. Right? And so after working together for months or years, we're crafting it into what is needed to make decisions, but we're always only changing the variables.

Jeff Lowenstein (17:46)

Yeah

Jon Blair (18:14)

that we're seeking to make decisions on. I know you have a lot more to say about that though, Jeff.

Jeff Lowenstein (18:20)

Yeah, I mean, you nailed it. But yeah, thanks a lot. Now everyone's going to say, hey, I you can start a model in 24 hours. So thanks for that, Jon. But I mean, it's true. We are very particular about having a really, really solid core model that we can get up and running very quickly and answer initial questions. And from there, we iterate. Literally, later this afternoon,

Jon Blair (18:27)

Hahaha!

Jeff Lowenstein (18:48)

we're reviewing the second version of a model with a new client that we just started with literally just last week. And this second version has a lot more detail than the first one about their inventory ordering plan. And so we're to go really deep and help them understand their cashflow dynamics much better. And it's interesting because in this call later today, I actually don't think the numbers in the model that we show up with are going to be

What's interesting? Sure, we'll look at them, but that's a starting point. The real value is in when we look at the model on a screen share together, talk about, what if you do this? What if you do that? Push this number up 20%, that one down 20%. How does that flow through the rest of the model? And what does that do to our cash flow? And it's those conversations that I think are really valuable, where it's like,

What if we do this? How does that impact the numbers? And what if we do that? That's how you get more of an internal intuitive feeling of your own business, right? It's not like your fractional CFO is showing up and saying, here's the forecast and here's what you have to do. know, we're not, we're not prescriptive in that way. We're collaborative in the sense that like we're looking at the numbers and trying to all as a group, get an internal sense of the dynamics.

how a business behaves. It can be very different from one to the next. You could be in different categories that have different margins, marketing efficiency levels, different lead times, different payment terms. All those things play a big role in the cash flow dynamics of any given business.

Jon Blair (20:37)

Yeah, you know, one thing I always say is like, hey, building out a forecast or a financial projection doesn't just, doesn't predict the achievement of goals. People taking action against what that model tells us about if-then relationships, right? Cause and effect relationships. It helps you figure out where people should take action to achieve your goals. You don't just build out a projection and go, our goal's 10 million.

Jeff Lowenstein (20:54)

Great.

Jon Blair (21:05)

Looks like this projection says we're gonna hit 10 million. Sounds great, we're gonna hit our goals. It tells you what levers you can, it tells you if you pull this lever, this is what happens. If you pull this lever, this is what happens. So it's not a predictor, but the whole concept, the definition of a model, right, is that it helps us understand the world that we're in in a simplified manner so that we can take action, right, and hopefully pursue, hopefully,

create the desired outcomes that we want to create in our businesses. Another thing that I wanted to mention that we always talk about is just like another best practice, model should be as granular as is needed to make the decision that's at hand. Like with the decision you have right in front of you. Don't try to make it as granular as you need for every decision the business ever has to make ever in the future. The key decisions that are at hand. And the beauty is,

We don't do modeling from like a stat, what's called static budgeting, which is you just set a model for the year and you come back to it and that's your model for the entire year. We re-forecast every single month and by doing that, we then make the model for that month as granular as it needs to be for the decisions at hand in that month, right? And so it's all about taking steps and, and, and, and,

And not just iterating, it's about taking action and iterating as you realize there are new actions that need to be taken. Right? And so in many ways it takes the pressure off of you to have to get it all figured out. You have to get the whole future of the, of the business figured out right now as you build the model. And, and I like one other thing, what are, so,

This concept for me originally came about because I had a crazy model at Guardian Bikes. Like it was super crazy. It was so granular, SKU level. It was connected to the S&OP and inventory planning model. So it actually kicked out how much needed to be purchased at any time. And I actually like what what are your thoughts? What is your opinion or what have you seen an example?

about like issues that get caused when you join up S&OP or inventory planning models to the financial model.

Jeff Lowenstein (23:38)

So I've been dealing with this my whole career, I haven't always been in the e-comm world, this tendency, I've always been in corporate finance and strategy roles. And so there's always this tendency of if we just go a little bit deeper, we just do.

a little bit more analysis. we just break it down with this other dimension of looking at the data, the answer might be there. And I get it, and I've done it. As an owner of a business, you don't want to leave any stone unturned or you don't want to miss something for lack of hard work. And that's the tendency.

However, you can easily make yourself crazy with all that work. And it's not that helpful at the end of the day. And furthermore, you can't update it on a monthly basis or hold yourself accountable to it. It's just unwieldy.

Jon Blair (24:39)

Bingo. Bingo. That one's the tough one.

Jeff Lowenstein (24:46)

And so like, you can break everything down more and more and more granular on every single dimension, but especially in this ecomm world where you have so much data across so many different parts of the business, it's often not helpful to do the whole thing every single time. be clear, you do need to go super deep in certain areas at certain points in time. One brand that I am the CFO for, we've gone super deep on their shipping and fulfillment invoices, transactions,

like we're working with the 3PL to get like more data than just the invoicing and get like transaction level invoicing to really understand where some of the costs are going and if we can improve those. That's not something we need to do every month but it's super helpful to get a better understanding and make decisions on that you know this couple of months that we're working on it. So that's just an example like I've been through it throughout my whole career where like you can

yourself very crazy doing everything to the lowest level of detail but at the end of the day you know you have to consider what's going to move the needle.

Jon Blair (25:56)

Yeah, and you also come into play when you're joining inventory planning and S&OP models. For those of you guys that don't know what S&OP is, it's Sales and Operations Planning. It's basically the demand forecasting at a SKU level and then the replenishment inventory planning at a SKU level. When you connect that to the financial model, you also create interdepartmental-like dependency.

where if the inventory team is behind, the CEO or founder's like, hey, I need an answer to this question on cashflow. And whoever owns the FP&A model is like, dude, I can't update it. I'm waiting on the inventory team. And you don't need to, I used to think it had to be connected. Again, this book Future Ready completely changed my perspective. And it actually specifically says, do not ever connect those two models. Bring over the data that is needed.

Jeff Lowenstein (26:20)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (26:49)

to inform the financial model and also just get good at running scenarios like, if they buy this much inventory, you can sit down with your inventory team and say, what is the range?

of possible inventory purchase scenarios and they can usually give you something even if they're not done reconciling inventory or done calculating their latest PO and that's okay and there's one other thing that's been hitting home with me recently that I want to mention and this is like Jeff Bezos from Amazon just talks about this all the time and I think it's really really applicable to financial modeling and forecasting. Is a decision reversible?

Because if a decision is easily reversible with minimal impact, right? If it gets reversed, then you shouldn't really even model at all and you should just do it. Or you should do the simplest form of modeling and then you should go. And, but you should say, here's the point at which I'm going to reverse this, right? And I'm going to go back to what we were doing before. If a, now Jeff Bezos says on the other side of the spectrum, if something is really hard to reverse, and the cost of reversing it.

Jeff Lowenstein (27:35)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (27:58)

is large, then maybe you should make another pass at the analysis. And so I'm drawing and there's a spectrum that exists between those two points, right? But like that's really important. I sell a lot of times clients ask me to model something and I'm like, I don't think we need to model it, right? Or you can spin up a quick sub model, just a brand new sheet in Excel and just model that thing in isolation. And, that's okay for that decision. It doesn't have to be interconnected into the financial model. And so I think

Jeff Lowenstein (28:06)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jon Blair (28:27)

Reversibility and difficulty to reverse and cost of reversing decisions is very important to consider in financial model and granularity as well.

Jeff Lowenstein (28:40)

I think it's, I remember that quote from Bezos, it's like a door one decision or door two decision, something like that, right? Yeah, I'm a big fan of the side calculations as well. Like you don't need to flow something through your full restatement model if it's just like an idea or improvement you're talking about. If you want to know the impact of adding an upsell app to your checkout,

Jon Blair (28:48)

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Jeff Lowenstein (29:09)

pretty easy to do a side analysis to look at increasing the unit economics by some percentage or increasing your AOV. the right metric is, that's an easy thing to calculate on the side. It doesn't need to be fully baked in if you're just going test it out. So yeah, we do that kind of stuff all the time.

Jon Blair (29:36)

So as a recap, first two myths we've talked about, I must have a 13-week cash forecast. And then myth number two, I need a super granular, sophisticated financial projection model to make sound decisions. We've given you several examples, thoughts on best practices, mistakes we've made. What's the common theme? Ask yourself how granular and how far out in the future any forecast needs to go and why it needs to go.

out that far or be that granular. It should be in service of the 80-20 rule. It should be in service of getting visibility on the 20 % of variables that really, really matter. And most importantly, you should be able to take swift action. You should be able to take action quickly. And if your financial model, your monthly financial model or your weekly cash forecast are not allowing you to take good imperfect action on a regular basis,

because you're always waiting for the perfect action and never taking it, then you've got some issues with those forecasts. these are principles that we live and breathe here at Free to Grow. Quite frankly, we created these guiding principles for our team because we made these mistakes when we were working in-house at brands and we don't want to make that mistake for our clients. We want to help them take swift action quickly and on a regular basis.

So myth number three that we're gonna close up here with, horizontal firms that serve all industries can help my e-comm brand scale alongside healthy profit and cashflow. So we had a really cool episode several weeks back with Lio Pinchevski, he's the founder and CEO of FinalLoop, a really cool automated e-commerce general ledger accounting software. And he had a lot.

to say about this. And actually, funny enough, we know this, Jeff, because we run a finance firm, finance and accounting firm that specializes in e-commerce, but he actually said it in words that caused me to go like, huh, he's so right, and we don't pay enough homage to this. And so, since then, I've realized that we really need to be

Be willing to talk about this and be proud about the fact that Free to Grow is a bunch of e-commerce, accounting, and finance nerds, like straight up through and through, no exaggeration. What are your thoughts, Jeff, on like how much why an e-commerce focused firm like ours or any other e-commerce focused firm out there can serve an e-commerce brand from a finance and accounting perspective so much better than a horizontal firm that

quote, serves all industries.

Jeff Lowenstein (32:34)

Well, I have one word. Bench?

Jon Blair (32:38)

For sure.

Jeff Lowenstein (32:39)

No,

yeah. It's really interesting. mean,

It's only become more more clear as we've gone through building Free to Grow and working with more brands.

challenge and how poor some of the bookkeeping can be outside of vertical specific firms. you know, Ecom is an amazing industry because it's the easiest thing to start. Anyone with an idea can go in Alibaba, find a supplier, spin up a Shopify store. There's very low barriers to entry and that's amazing. But what people don't always realize is that the financial piece and specifically the bookkeeping

is actually much more difficult than other industries and so they don't think about the books when they're starting a brand, right? They say, okay, any old accountant can do this and there's real nuance to getting it right. I mean, sure, you can pay 200 bucks a month to a bench and you can get a cash basis version of your books but it's not gonna help you make decisions. Sure, you can file your taxes that way and technically

boxes checked, your books are done, but getting real insights into your business takes a whole different level of understanding and knowledge, right? Everything from recognizing revenue between...

gross to discounts, refunds, Shopify fees and getting those all booked appropriately, but also in the right date, timeframe. That's not straightforward. You need someone who knows what they're doing. And then furthermore, the whole balance sheet challenge is hard for people who don't deal with inventory based businesses on a regular basis. And it's detailed work, but it's super important to have a system to get all that stuff right. Otherwise, you you don't have good data

and the foundation of the house you're building is shaky, right? That's scary stuff. So it's super important. And I think there are some quality generalist firms out there, like they're good at what they do in general. But when it comes to e-comm, if you don't have specific industry expertise, it's gonna be really hard.

Jon Blair (35:03)

Yeah, 100 % we obviously we've talked a lot in our content about the traps that brands fall into using ecomm or using bookkeepers that don't understand ecomm and getting crappy books. On the FP &A side though, I'm starting to develop a very firmly held belief that I didn't have when I was just running one brand.

at Guardian Bikes, now that we've served dozens and dozens of brands, I'm starting to realize that, and you mentioned the balance sheet, right? There's the balance sheet, why does the balance sheet matter for an e-comm brand? That's the real question, right? Like, why does the balance sheet matter? Because as a DTC brand, or even a multi-channel e-commerce brand, even if it's not full DTC, but if you're heavily,

Jeff Lowenstein (35:45)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (35:55)

Selling straight to the consumer either through a marketplace or through your own Shopify store your own DTC site You are taking all the inventory risk yourself as the brand and you're placing the bet that you're gonna sell it Let's contrast that to a brand. That's heavy on the wholesale side So like maybe a food and Bev CPG brand do they have to manage a balance sheet? Of course they do but they get big POs from retailers and they're like, alright

This is committed, right, to a customer. And so I'm not saying that managing inventory is easy. It has its own challenges, but there's this real big added risk as an e-commerce brand. You're buying big bulk orders of inventory and you're selling them to the consumer one at a time. And so the pressure that that puts on your cash flow via your balance sheet is actually a lot, there's a lot more at stake there.

Jeff Lowenstein (36:27)

Mm-hmm.

Jon Blair (36:53)

for an e-comm brand. And then additionally, you look at ad spend. You know, when you have, again, a big wholesale or physical retail-focused brand, there are certainly sales and marketing costs, but your sales volume is not really tied to how well you can spend ad dollars. It is in the e-comm world, and you're spending big-time ad dollars as you continue to scale. And so, why am I bringing this up?

because really good e-commerce bookkeeping gives you transparency on like margins which help you assess ad spend efficiency, right? And it also gives you really clear transparency on inventory on the balance sheet which are both uniquely, they're uniquely e-commerce specific challenges, right? And so if you have a horizontal, I'll give you an example. I won't name any names, but we have two clients.

One is an early client that's a service business that we don't serve anymore because we're focused on e-comm now. And another one is an e-comm brand. Both of them, we parted ways like mutually that like it wasn't a fit for us anymore and it wasn't a fit for them. And they both ended up with a fractional CFO at the same exact firm. And funny enough, the same exact fractional CFO within that firm. And so this CFO

is now serving a service brand, a service business, and then also serving an omni-channel consumer goods brand. I'm not saying he can't handle it. I'm saying he has to solve two completely different sets of challenges in any given day when he's serving those two clients. Me and Jeff and our other fractional CFOs in our accounting team, all we talk about is the 30 plus e-commerce brands that we're serving every single day.

And so we see the same challenges again and again and again and again and again. We can share those learnings across our clients and we are abreast of all the changes in the e-commerce world because we are just immersed in that world. And so are all of our partners, our adjacent service providers and all that kind of stuff. And so we can actually, you may get an okay, you may get served fine at a horizontal firm, but you're definitely missing some value.

of with a team of nerds that are just doing e-commerce all day.

Jeff Lowenstein (39:20)

preaching to the choir here. I agree.

Jon Blair (39:23)

What are some things that come to mind for you when you think about opportunities that an e-comm focused firm has to take advantage of pattern recognition and shared learnings across the client base?

Jeff Lowenstein (39:36)

Wow.

Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's core to what we do. So we do have the internal process and mechanisms to share learnings, weekly meetings, biweekly meetings. I'll give a couple of examples. So 2025 planning was something we've gone through with most of our clients over the last few months. And we came together as a group and shared like, hey, here's how

we think best practices should be to set a plan and think about managing that throughout the year. Obviously, there's nuance for each client, but a general process is helpful for each brand. Another one that we did recently was Black Friday, Cyber Monday planning.

That was amazing, right? There's probably not many other groups that are coming together saying, hey, what are the best practices and analyses and support we can give our brands during such a crucial time while they're busting their butt? What can we do to support them? So those are a couple of examples of what we've worked on recently. trying to think. mean, we have templates for just about

every type of analysis we've done in the e-comm world. Sometimes it's a deep dive on demand planning, We have a template for that. Sometimes it's a deep dive on marketing efficiency and LTV to CAC analysis, right? And like, you know...

Every e-com brand has different numbers, but in general, it's the same overall analysis that needs to be done. So those types of things are not only available to us at Free to Grow, but it's part of our onboarding that we explain to new people on the team. Like, hey, here's where we keep this library of templates and analyses that we like to do for our brands.

Jon Blair (41:48)

Yeah, and I think one, I didn't realize this when we started the business and started growing it, but there's another real, actually, this is a huge advantage of working with an e-comm specific firm. It's the ecosystem connections that we have in e-commerce. And so actually most recently, top of mind, there's something about the turn of the year and people starting to look for, you know, new service providers and we get asked all the time.

What are the marketing agencies that you're recommending? What are the lenders that you're recommending? And the thing is, we can go and we can say, hey, go talk to this agency because we know that they did a really good job in your product category. Or they did a really good job for the stage that you're in, right? We've seen them solve the problem that you have before. Same thing with lenders. Like, hey, we're gonna have you.

we're gonna recommend this lender, but it's because we have three other clients using that lender and they have the same issue that you have, right? And so when you're in the e-comm world day in and day out, you develop ecosystem relationships. Jeff and I both had a really deep e-comm network before joining forces and then when we got to bring it together, you know, I feel like one of the biggest superpowers we have is we probably have one or more people

that we could connect you with to solve any problem that you're having that Free to Grow can't solve with our service, right? And you're not necessarily gonna get that at a horizontal firm. And I will say, Nick Kirby from Flexport, he's a local sales executive out here in Austin, I was on his podcast like a couple years ago, and he said something that again was like, kind of blew my mind. And I was like, I wonder if this is true or not.

But two years later, I can say it is definitely true. He goes, hey Jon, I think you're selling yourself short. I actually think that if an e-comm brand comes to Free to Grow, they get more value than the average full-time CFO. And here's why. Because an e-comm brand in the lower to middle market, from a full-time CFO perspective, has a budget where they're probably gonna hire someone.

who isn't that experienced, maybe they used to be a controller and this is like their first shot at growing into being a CFO. They're learning on the job, right? And they're figuring it all out. They're building the plane while it's flying. But you've got a team that's been in e-comm for years and years and years and years and for a fraction of the cost of someone full-time who's fairly junior, they're getting actionable advice really, really quickly. And I was like, huh.

I've never thought of it that way. But I wholeheartedly believe that, that we do provide more value for the lower to middle market than a full-time CFO for a cheaper price. But why? Because we're Ecom vertical specific. That is the superpower. So, is there anything else that comes to mind on your end, Jeff, in terms of just like the advantages of being vertical specific?

Jeff Lowenstein (44:57)

Thank

Well, I'll give, while you were talking, I thought of two specific examples to make it more tangible for people that I wanted to share. So on the ecosystem and our network, we had a really great example just recently where there's a brand we are the CFOs for.

It's not me or Jon, it's another person on the team who does an awesome job. And she was saying, hey, you're managing your own ads. This feels wrong. This feels like you're not nearly as efficient as you could be based on my experience in other places. And she brought that to the group and we discussed it. And we actually said, hey, there's an agency that we know does good work that

we can ask to do a free audit, a free recommendations without selling their own service. Because of the Free to Grow relationship with that agency, we were able to get free value provided to that brand. And everyone walked away from that saying, that was really helpful. And thank you so much for bringing them in. That was an idea that we actually brought to the brand. It wasn't them asking us. So that was a pretty cool example that we just had. And then the other thing I wanted to just

mentioned you're talking about is as a fractional CFO you see a breadth of different brands within the same industry so your experience might be better. I think we need to go calculate Jon how many Black Fridays we've been through as a firm.

Jon Blair (46:48)

For sure, for sure, man.

Jeff Lowenstein (46:49)

Because the

number keeps rising every year. And that's pretty cool. We have data that we can use. And we do use it a lot of the time for certain analyses, like, hey, how are my metrics compared to benchmarks? How am I doing? And we do some of that. But we probably don't even do enough of it, nor do we advertise it enough. So I think that's an exciting opportunity for us as well.

Jon Blair (47:10)

sure.

Yeah, and I mean, I could be wrong, but just thinking off the top of my head, if you think about each client as a Black Friday, right? Because like how many brands, like we've, think collectively, we've been through, and if we go back to previous jobs that we had in e-commerce, all of us like before this, right? We're for sure like close to a hundred or more Black Fridays, I'd have to say, like between the whole team.

Jeff Lowenstein (47:25)

Yeah, that's what I mean.

that's a good point too. Yeah.

If you include prior jobs

within the team, I'd say we're over 100. Yeah.

Jon Blair (47:48)

Yeah, and

that's important. You don't want someone who's been through their just one or zero or a couple Black Fridays, because everyone knows when you're scaling an e-comm brand really fast, guess what? Every Black Friday gets bigger than the one before, meaning what? More at risk with the ad dollars you're spending, more at risk with the inventory you're buying, and so you want people who've been through it before. Well, unfortunately, we've got to land this plane, but this is a...

Jeff Lowenstein (48:03)

Thank you.

Jon Blair (48:15)

This was an awesome conversation, even better than I thought it could have been. Just as a recap, what we're talking about here is don't fall victim to the common DTC finance myths out there. You don't necessarily need a 13-week cash forecast. You don't need the most granular, sophisticated financial model to make sound decisions.

Vertical specific ecomm or DTC focused firms are gonna serve you way better than horizontal firms that serve all industries You know if anything we talked about here piqued your interest and you're like hey, how could Free to Grow potentially help my DTC or ecomm brand? Consider going to our website and filling out the intro call request form because one thing we can do that's literally no risk and super easy to set up is an intro call and our free CFO audit

Our free CFO audit gives you as a brand founder a test drive of the insights and recommendations that we can make as CFOs. And it's all fully confidential. It's an NDA and giving us access to your Shopify store and your accounting system. And it's just a really low risk way to see like, am I actually missing out on financial insights by not having a fractional CFO? So.

You know, if you're interested in learning more, consider going to our website, freetogrowcfo.com and filling out that intro call request so we can do a free audit. But you know what? If for now you're just enjoying the content, consider following me, Jon Blair, or Jeff Lowenstein on LinkedIn. We're posting tons of helpful tips every week and month on scaling a profit-focused DTC brand. And man, this is fun. Jeff, I'm gonna have to have you back soon and we're gonna pick the next three myths.

and we're gonna bust them together,

Jeff Lowenstein (50:06)

This was great. Thanks, Jon.

Jon Blair (50:09)

Cool. Well, until next time everyone, scale on.

The Future of Ad Spend Attribution

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast, Jon Blair and Michael True discuss the intricacies of scaling DTC brands with a focus on marketing measurement. They explore the transition from traditional click-based attribution to marketing mix modeling, emphasizing the importance of understanding the relationships between various marketing channels. Michael shares his journey from the music industry to founding Prescient AI, a platform designed to provide insights into marketing performance across multiple channels. The conversation also touches on the challenges of measuring retail performance, the impact of iOS 14 on digital advertising, and the role of AI in enhancing marketing strategies.

Key Takeaways

• MMM is essential for brands expanding into omnichannel marketing with significant top-of-funnel spend.

• Tools like Prescient AI can help scale profitably by uncovering relationships between channels that traditional attribution methods miss.

• The future of marketing measurement lies in combining MMM with other tools to create a full picture of brand performance.

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

Mike True - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeljtrue/

Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/

Prescient AI - https://prescientai.com/

Meet Mike True

Mike True is the co-founder and CEO of Prescient AI, which provides AI-driven marketing mix modeling solutions for omnichannel brands. Prior to starting Prescient, Mike was responsible for helping clients of App Annie, IBM, and Oracle generate millions of dollars in revenue through the implementation of various artificial intelligence and analytics solutions.

Transcript

~~~

00:00 Introduction

05:48 Understanding Marketing Mix Modeling

11:58 Navigating Post-iOS 14 Challenges

18:11 Insights on Retail and Delayed Sales Data

25:49 Understanding Diminishing Returns in Ad Spend

32:02 Integrating Prescient AI into the Marketing Tech Stack

38:07 Closing Thoughts

Jon Blair (00:01)

Yo, what's happening everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast where we're diving deep into conversations about scaling a DTC brand with a profit focused mindset. I'm your host, Jon Blair, founder of Free to Grow CFO. We're the go-to outsource finance and accounting firm for eight and nine figure DTC brands. Today I'm here with my buddy, Michael True, co-founder and CEO of Prescient AI. Michael, what's happening, man?

Michael True (00:25)

What's up, Jon? Good to see you, brother.

Jon Blair (00:27)

Yeah dude, I don't know if you guys are feeling the same way but we're like kind of in this sprint right now between Thanksgiving and and like the Christmas season in terms of like I don't know if you guys are seeing the same thing but in our world everyone has gotten through Black Friday Cyber Monday so they're starting to think about 2025 what improvements they they may need to make for us on the accounting and finance front I'm sure there's people thinking about how to measure their marketing better but are you guys

Are you guys kind of a race to the finish line before people start disappearing for Christmas?

Michael True (00:58)

It's interesting this year where, you know, we had, there was some brands, I would say that pre Black Friday Cyber Monday, we're starting to think about tech stacks for 2025. And then we've got some, some in bounds and some re-engagements post Black Friday Cyber Monday, really digging into 2025. We made it a pretty clear priority or a pretty clear like requirement. You know, during certain weeks, there was no outreach to anybody that was not a customer. Just let people, you

Jon Blair (01:09)

Mm-hmm.

Michael True (01:25)

stay heads down on one of their busier times of the season. So starting to pick back up now for sure.

Jon Blair (01:29)

For sure,

for sure man. Well, I'm stoked to have you on the show. Today we're gonna be talking about, well, marketing measurement, I'll say in general, but more specifically, getting more specific about marketing mix modeling, which you guys do over at Prescient AI, versus what I'll call the more traditional click-based attribution, which is what I would say the vast majority of founders in the DTC world that we operate in.

are used to using to measure marketing performance. But before we dig into that on a more detailed level, I'd love to hear a little bit about your background and your journey to founding Prescient AI.

Michael True (02:10)

Yeah, so my background has always been in big tech. was largely in the database world at Oracle IBM, then moved into the analytics world over at IBM and then into their Watson team, which was, I don't know if the folks might remember, is this little AI thing that beat Ken Jenner on Jeopardy, long time ago.

Jon Blair (02:25)

yeah.

Yep, definitely remember that.

Michael True (02:31)

So my focus is predominantly on like financial services and the healthcare system, know, deploy, flying around and deploying software across at that time, physical servers, like an x86 server. And then started to see the migration to the cloud. Yeah, it was just nothing to do with DTC for a long time until, until recently. I've met my co-founder, Cody. I had been dabbling around in some ideas in like the AI space and found myself into the music space, trying to predict tours for record labels. And,

COVID hit and touring went away. Got really lucky that that happened honestly, because the shift had, the focus had shifted for labels. When COVID hit everybody's inside. Well, what are people going to do when they're inside? They're not going to go to a tour. They're going to stream music. And so there's attribution in the music industry had not really existed because there's no Google analytics behind Spotify and Apple. So there's no last click. yes, I met my co-founder, Cody.

Jon Blair (03:10)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, for sure.

Interesting.

Michael True (03:26)

I'd like to consider him the Michael Jordan of research science in this field. He's a very competitive researcher. We met and we started building, he started building models and I started selling models to a major label. And they did a really good job of being able to measure, forecast and optimize marketing spend for Cardi B and some really cool artists during their early 2020, 2021.

Jon Blair (03:52)

That's awesome, So I actually was a touring heavy metal musician for a number of years. And so I've, yeah, this is real. That's probably a whole nother podcast episode, but the music business is interesting in a number of different ways. you know, I'd love to, so how did you go from that kind of like marketing analytics in the like label world to, you know,

Michael True (03:58)

No way, is this for real? It's awesome.

Jon Blair (04:20)

kind of this focus on e-commerce, digital advertising in more of the DTC or like omni-channel e-comm space.

Michael True (04:27)

Yeah, great question. It was February of March of 2021. And we predicted Cardi B's number one single up at 96.3% accurate by recommending the label to ship from X channel to X channel to X channel X channel and then predict how many streams she'd get compared to their existing spend. Predicted at 96.3% accurate was like a big win for us. And we weren't too sure what we're going to do next with the technology.

But I'm sure everybody on here will remember April 26th of 2021, the day when Apple announced iOS 14.5. And my co-founder called me and was like, hey, which industry do you want to go to? He's like, I think we should go raise capital and I think we should build a SaaS platform. This model can work across any dollar spent online, like which vertical do you want to start with? So we talked to like healthcare and financial services and ultimately made the bet on e-commerce at the time.

Jon Blair (05:02)

for

Michael True (05:22)

because just like streaming, e-commerce was exploding and we had made a bet that the technologies that were being applied to solve for iOS 14.5 at the time was the right call, right? was Meta, people were still pumping on Meta Google and a pixel was really, could really solve for that. We had some Prescient, which means having knowledge of foresight and would have meant before it occurs that.

Jon Blair (05:37)

Yep. For sure.

Michael True (05:48)

brands would start to want to scale into top of funnel. They would want to go more omnichannel. And we're going to have about a two year head start on the research of these models. Because everything that matters is the math, right? All that matters is the math. And we have the math infrastructure. We had a head start. And so yeah, we started in DTC, shipping to Amazon. We're coming out with a retail model here in Q1 as well. Yeah.

Jon Blair (06:12)

Nice.

Dude, that's awesome. I love that. So I want to start with just like the fundamentals, because I think that, you know, we work with dozens of DTC brands and I think still, well no, I mean, it's very clear that still, you know, kind of the go-to is Triple Whale, which has a number of different issues in my personal opinion. But I think they're starting to

the vast majority of brands are starting to get exposed to this concept of marketing mix modeling. So like at a basic level, what is it and how does it differ from traditional kind of click-based attribution?

Michael True (06:56)

Yeah, for sure. first and foremost, it's like, the MMM is not the source of truth. The MTA is not the source of truth. Incrementality is maybe the closest thing at a point in time you're going to get to source of truth. Source of truth is the marketer. There's just a variety of different ways to measure something that are trying to give you the ability to do data like measurement triangulation. I'd say a good example, we send Triple Whale I don't know, two to five deals every week for sure.

Jon Blair (07:06)

Sure.

Mm-hmm.

Michael True (07:22)

and so I guess the difference of a brand that would come to us and say, Hey, we're on, we're on Shopify, we're on Meta and Google. They don't need an MMM. They're going to be onboard to our platform and then leave our platform because it's just, they don't need that sort of measurement at the time. Right. But when you're a brand that is starting to go into YouTube, TikTok, podcast, linear TV, new channels like app loving really hot top of funnel. If they have a DTC plus Amazon presence, even better fit for an MMM model. And so.

Jon Blair (07:44)

Mm-hmm.

Michael True (07:51)

What an MMM is not trying to do is trying to say, Jon Blair saw this ad, click this ad, click this ad and have a deterministic customer journey. What an MMM is trying to do, I always say like an MTA is going to tell you a lot about a little. So it's going to tell you a lot about some of the transactions that came through deterministically. Traditionally, a media mix model would tell you a little about a lot. So it's going to tell you a little bit about the relationships between all of your channels and your revenue on kind of a time series path.

Right. So one is a statistical model and then one is a deterministic model. So what is that causal relationship to, Hey, I'm increasing my spend. I'm sure a lot of the brands are seeing this. I'm increasing my Meta spend on my YouTube spend, but I'm starting to see some of my Amazon sales go up or I'm starting to see some of my retail sales go up or I'm starting to see, you know, our top of funnel for just our DTC store. Right. I'm starting to see like our last click is starting to take a whole bunch of credit where maybe it didn't deserve to have that credit in first place.

Jon Blair (08:50)

For sure, so am I correct in saying that like when we're talking about a brand where a tool like yours and just marketing mix modeling in general can start to become really valuable is when they have heavy top funnel spend and they have more than one channel where sales are potentially converting. That the more a top of.

funnel spending you have, the more sales channels you have, the more potentially valuable marketing mix modeling can become. Is that correct?

Michael True (09:23)

Yeah,

I wouldn't isolate it to being a requirement to be an omnichannel sales brand. But if you're a brand that's like four, we like to see five channels and above. call it like our sweet spot. Four to five is considered a good fit for us. Three to four gets kind of dicey. Anything less than three is just not a good fit for this. But you know, we'll have some brands. And then there's a sense of like, we have brands that are, you know, on Shopify and they're Meta Google YouTube. And we'll talk to them saying, well, we're planning to go into Tatari.

Jon Blair (09:42)

for sure.

Michael True (09:53)

you know, next year we're planning to have you in the podcast. We'll onboard them to the platform so our models can start learning their data from the channels they were spending on. And then as they start to layer on these new channels, we're able to pick them up, you know, at a much higher, much faster, if you will, to start being able to give them a pulse on how that new channel is performing.

Jon Blair (10:14)

So if you have a brand that is in that sweet spot, we'll call it five channels, right? Heavy top of funnel spend. If they are sticking with one of these more traditional click-based attribution tools like Triple Whale, what are some of the things that common pitfalls that you see that might get brands into trouble if they're just using.

something like that, and they're not considering using marketing mix modeling for measurement.

Michael True (10:45)

Well, the pixel or an MTA is not designed to measure a statistical relationship between, you know, views and, in revenue. It's really looking for that click. so when you get more biased towards bottom of funnel, it's not going to allow you to feel as confident in the measurement of, how is this heavily view based channel like connect the TV or YouTube actually driving our sales? And so

Jon Blair (11:01)

Mm-hmm.

Sure.

Michael True (11:11)

When we, quick aside on this, like when we first came in to decide to start with e-commerce, I interviewed close to a hundred DTC marketers. And the thing that I found out was, is I was trying to get to their why of like, measurement? Like, what is it? What is this why? A lot of people, like, I just got married. I want to buy a house. I'm paying off student loans. I have all these bills to pay and I'm coming into work.

and I'm being tasked to scale this business, I know that I can't do it anymore on just these two channels. I need to go into these top and funnel channels. And I just want to feel confident every day that like, I'm going to make the right bet, right? And so without leveraging an MMM, which they're designed to do, you know, that level of confidence is, you know, is not as strong when you're making those spending decisions.

Jon Blair (11:44)

for sure.

Totally.

Yeah, yeah, no, mean for sure. It's, in the post iOS 14 world, I'm always hesitant to say post iOS 14 world just because it's such a cliche at this point, right? But I've been in e-commerce for long enough to know what it was like then and what it's like now and how different things are from, in terms of having that confidence of like, I'm spending a dollar here and it's driving this. I feel confident in the connection to the revenue it's driving, right?

Michael True (12:08)

You

Jon Blair (12:28)

in the post iOS 14 world and I'll just say it's actually not iOS 14 in my opinion. It's that e-commerce is becoming more saturated, right? It's still growing. It's still growing at a nice clip, but there is a low barrier to entry to just fire up a Shopify store and fire up an Amazon seller account and start spending ad dollars. It doesn't mean that every brand is

you know, really sound with their marketing fundamentals or has really great products or even has a great customer experience, but there is a lot of competition, right? And so because of that, it's, it's driving brands to have to be really meticulous about understanding how profitable their spend is in any, any channel. And I would even venture to say that in many cases, the average brand is having to expand into more than just a Shopify channel a lot quicker.

than they used to have to say seven years ago. Seven years ago, you'd still could be like a first mover in a product category, DTC. you, and I mean like at Guardian Bikes, when I was at Guardian, we brought on a lot of people who left Tuft & Needle after the, they merged with Sealy Simmons. And they scaled to nine figures in revenue with very little top of funnel. A lot of it was Google.

bottom of, like, because they were the first mattress company to sell mattresses people were already searching it. That's a way different game than like, I need to find the next new set of eyeballs that I need to get to, right? I need to keep leaning into top of funnel and I think I need to get into a new channel and I don't have a lot of confidence of how that's gonna impact the bottom line. So it is, it is a stressful, stressful thing. I would say the one that we see most commonly and I've talked with Will Holtz who works with you quite a bit about this.

is understanding the difference between or how to think about how Shopify versus Amazon is performing when you're spending heavily on a top of funnel channel like Meta or YouTube. We see that all the time with the brands that we work with, And what I can tell you from a CFO's perspective is that there's no doubt that they're connected, right? But measuring the degree to which they're connected, right, is a different story.

What kind of advice do you have or maybe not even just advice, like how can a tool like Prescient help with understanding? You're spending heavily on top of funnel channels. You've got an Amazon store and a Shopify store. How can you guys help a brand discern how that top of funnel spend is driving each of those storefronts?

Michael True (15:09)

Yeah, and again, it comes down to the triangulation of, what are you seeing within your Amazon store, right? That's very deterministically based off the conversions that are taking place in there. With with Prescient and typically MMMs, you would see an MMM run once a quarter. And this is a big education thing we've been working people on. It's like once a quarter, maybe once a month, it's at the channel level and it's giving you a cross channel media measurement and maybe some recommendations on how to spend.

which unique to our platform, it allows people to test and iterate very quickly. So we have what we call halo effects, which essentially is we're taking credit from the bottom of funnel. So search across Amazon search across, you know, Bing and Google, and we're redistributing that credit up to the top of the funnel where we have the highest confidence that the likelihood that the awareness from this campaign is actually what drove conversions over onto Amazon. for us,

We do this at the individual campaign level. The models will run every single day. And so as you start to shift and test new spends based off of what you're seeing with our halo effects. a good use case of this would be, you know, a large cookware brand was spending on Mountain. And when they were looking inside of Mountain, the performance was not that strong, but we were showing incredibly strong performance. Well, because Mountain was only measuring over to their DTC store.

Right. And so when we started to say, actually, there's a lot of people that are sitting on, you know, their TV, probably on their laptops, they see your ad and then they go search, can we find a prime deal on Amazon and go search that way? So the granularity of what we're allowed them to do is being able to make very rapid and dynamic decisions on how to reshift their spend for non Amazon ads and then look at that impact and quantify that impact over time compared to, you know, how they were previously spending before. So.

Jon Blair (16:36)

Mm. Yep.

Yeah,

that's really interesting. Do you have any other examples that come to mind of like how you've helped one of your clients like really unlock but make decisions based off of the data in your platform to really enhance? I mean, obviously scale, but at the end of the day, profitable scale.

Michael True (16:58)

Thanks.

There was a brand, it's about a hundred million dollar beauty brand and they had Tatari turned on. He's become a good buddy of mine. Had Tatari turned on, actually down in Austin too. And he turned it off because they needed above a three row ass. And so it was like, I they have 2.67. So when they onboarded, they onboarded the Tatari and they can go back a year. And so he's like, I think that there were these two campaigns that were actually pumping that weren't getting credit. So we onboarded him.

We had all of like what the platform reported was being shown and we hadn't run the model yet. Bing was showing like a 22 ROAS and he's like, dude, that's way too high. I'm like, so what do think it is when we run the model? He's like, I think it's a six. So we turned on the model, ran a couple of days later, the insights come back and we had Bing at a 4.65. So the Delta between 22 and 4.65, we're gonna be redistributing that credit.

up to campaigns at the top of the funnel. Now they are DTC plus Amazon brand and their ROAS was actually just under 4.5. And so they turned Tatari back on and when they turned it on, they were able to go back and look at some of these like saturation plots, right? We'll be able to show them like, hey, where's your sweet spot of spending? know, you're oversea, if you spend two dollars and make $10, you can't expect to spend $2 million and make $10 million. Eventually there's going to be some diminishing returns. And so.

Jon Blair (18:38)

For sure. Yep.

Michael True (18:40)

our team would work with them and we started very carefully scaling and testing the Tatari channel after they onboarded. we'll be coming out with a pretty cool use case here in the coming weeks of how they're able to successfully scale that channel and continue to scale that to this day, continuously optimize the spend. And so there was a retroactive play of saying, hey, I onboarded to the tool. I was able to go investigate and confirm some of my hypotheses before with your MMM.

We turned the TV back on, worked with our team to scale it and we're seeing great problems and results from there.

Jon Blair (19:15)

So I'm actually curious, and I think probably maybe specifically in the retail channel, like physical retail, but there's probably some other top of funnel channels that I'm not thinking of that probably have the same issue. How do you guys deal with, we'll use retail as an example, you've got a channel where the sales...

the actual bottom of the funnel like sales conversion signal might be delayed depending on what retailer you're using and how quickly that data is available. How does that play into your models being able to provide insights about a channel where it may take a little bit to understand really what sell through is?

Michael True (19:58)

You're saying the example would be you have a brand that's selling in Target, Walmart, Costco, and that retail data might come in at certain granularity. You might get some DMA level data that comes in weekly versus just total sales that comes in monthly. Is that what you're asking?

Jon Blair (20:05)

for sure.

For sure. Sure.

Yeah, yeah. Like how do you guys deal, how do you guys advise brands on working with these data sets that come in? It's not like plugging into a Shopify store, right? Or an Amazon store. What is some advice or how do you guys work with some of those channels to get as timely insights as possible?

Michael True (20:36)

Yeah, so we leverage all of their existing media channels. So the data that when they onboard to our DTC chip platform, it's 12 to 16 minutes point and click and just all of that, you all of your paid social, your GA and your Amazon DTC data. For retail, it really comes down to, we have some retail clients that own their own POS and own brick and mortar stores. And that just data comes into a database. We pull it from there and we can run the model. but there's other examples where, you know, you're getting Costco data once a month.

Jon Blair (20:55)

Yeah, that's nice.

Michael True (21:04)

We've come out with what we call, it's like a configuration offering. It's more of a, you have a dedicated research scientist, right? You have a dedicated engineer and our team is working with you on just getting exports of that sales data. We ingest it, we run it through our models and then we actually come back with like a customized retail readout, which is going to show them the exact same thing as you would see with your DTC, within our DTC SaaS platform. So.

Jon Blair (21:17)

Nice.

Michael True (21:30)

Where are you overspending? Where are you underspending? What is that optimal budget? How accurately we back testing against the last 12 weeks of your sales? The last read we just did was at 98.2 % accurate, which was remarkable to see as researchers in this field. But it's a very similar output. It's just a human walking you through based off of whatever cadence you're going to be getting those sales data from. So it's a little bit more customized.

Jon Blair (21:47)

Nice.

That stuff's super important because we've worked with several brands that are in the higher eight figures pushing into nine figures and physical retail becomes kind of a like a must at that point, right? Like in this day and age, it's not to say that there aren't e-comm brands that reach nine figures. are, but I see them as the exception, not the rule. It's not like back in the day, Tuft & Needle could get to 150, 200 million and not have to get into physical retail where that ship has sailed.

But so, we're advising a lot of brands that are on the upper end of eight figures and pushing nine, like how to think about, how to think about the fact that these are all heavy top of funnel digital advertising spenders. Meta, YouTube, maybe even Connected TV, and that absolutely drives the physical retail channel to some degree as well, right? It's not a completely separate channel.

Michael True (22:54)

question.

Jon Blair (22:55)

So what, for you guys to able to provide some analytics about that is like, I think incredibly, incredibly important because in the past, I'd say like seven to 10 years ago, retail was kind of this black hole if you're a DTC brand expanding into physical retail. And I was like, hey, I'm sure we are driving some demand, but measuring exactly what we're driving is really, really hard. I would even venture to say, and I'd be interested to know if you have any,

kind of anecdotal kind of evidence of this, but like I've actually even seen if you can prove out, if you can start proving out a connection between your spend and sell through inside of a physical retailer, you can actually really start influencing the buyer's decisions on future purchase orders showing like, hey, you're getting free advertising spend from our efforts on Facebook and YouTube.

And here we've got this great model that Prescient AI put together for us where we can actually show you that. Like to me, I think that's a huge game changer when it comes to negotiating with buyers at Target and some of the big retailers.

Michael True (24:07)

Yeah, so we'll 100 % right. Because with the models, it's going to forecast out. And if they get in data, we have a mattress company. If you get data by the DMA level, we can actually start forecasting out what we think those predicted sales are going to be over the next quarter by DMA and start forecasting out what we think the change of CAC or new customers or ROAS is going to be by DMA or product category or SKU by DMA. And so it gives them a lot more ammunition to being able to go have those conversations.

Another interesting thing, think, just for folks and they're thinking about the omnichannel kind of retail spaces, we spoke with both Meta and Google and, know, Google Meta has now coming out with like a kind of think about it like an advantage plus shopping, like that sort of, you know, programmatic model, if you will, but doing it and being able to tie sales from their digital ads into retail stores. So the same thing with Google being able to do that. then, you know, if they're able to track your

Jon Blair (24:54)

Yeah.

Yeah

Michael True (25:04)

phone and have the IP address seeing a conversion in that location of that store. Now they're starting to trying to stitch together that relationship just as we're doing. We're just doing it across all channels, but Meta and Google are now starting to try to optimize for that as well.

Jon Blair (25:16)

Interesting.

That's interesting, man. So I'm curious, one, because, you know, Free To Grow, we work specifically with fast-growing, profit-focused ecom brands. They're not, they don't have a bunch of venture backing, right? So like, every dollar they, every incremental dollar they spend on ad spend, they need to have some confidence that it's driving incremental profit, right? Or at least incremental contribution margin dollars. One conversation we're always having with clients is, you know, to expect,

and being able to absorb diminishing returns over time because as you're scaling, we see diminishing returns. I'm curious, like, your models, do diminishing, when you talk about forecasting, do a lot of the diminishing returns get factored in based on, like, statistical models showing those diminishing returns in the historical data? Are there other methods you guys use? I'm just kind of curious about that.

Michael True (26:20)

Yeah, we'll plot out. It's one of our biggest, I would say, points is a quick aside on that is typically saturation plots have to use linear regression models. Everybody's seen the linear regression models where they're trying to show what is that plot. We figured out a way using some proprietary machine learning models to do non-linear regression models. so instead of trying to, what does that mean is a linear regression model is going to assume that connected TV and Meta.

Jon Blair (26:32)

Yeah, for sure.

Michael True (26:47)

have a similar shape of saturation, right? Because it's trying to fit that line to the historical data. What we try to do is we try to find the shape of the data so our saturation plots can look like a camel's back. They can look really wonky, right? What it allows us to do is really pinpoint historically what is that sweet spot of where you should be spending, right? But we also allow brands to do is run simulations. And so on the fly, right, you can type in, hey, well, what if I increase my spend to X amount, right?

Jon Blair (26:51)

Mm. Yep.

Michael True (27:17)

It's going to show you on the saturation plots where you end up and then what is the forecast over a certain time period compared to your existing spend. it's kind of like showing what is the incremental growth based off of adjusting my spend from here to here. So we allow the users to manually do that, but now our models just scan every single campaign factors in things like seasonality of the business, the buying cycles of the products, and it'll tell them exactly how much to spend on each campaign.

and then forecast out with a certain level of confidence what we think that predicted CAC will be. What do we think that predicted top line revenue? What do we think that ROAS is going to be? So it's a much more dynamic ability to look at saturation plots and then kind of tinker around and pull levers to see what will happen on the forecast.

Jon Blair (28:03)

That's interesting, man. That's super interesting. And I mean, it makes sense. Like the thing about linear, I've seen guys in their content on, you know, LinkedIn and Twitter talk about like these linear regression models to basically forecast the diminishing returns of your ROAS or MER. And like, the thing is they're just overly simplistic in my opinion. And such that like, these are real dollars that people are spending that they're nervous to spend. You can't have...

Michael True (28:29)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (28:31)

Like now every model is a model. Like the definition of a model is it is a simplified version of reality and it's not perfect, right? But it's gotta be close enough that you're not, that you've got some confidence in using it, right? I'm just curious, like obviously there's, there's, details that are like beyond the scope of this conversation and some of this is proprietary. So like, obviously I don't expect us to get into all this, but like walk me through how AI or machine learning.

is supporting what you guys are doing and how that is really kind of a game changer or like a, you know, a tailwind for you guys for having these really, really, you know, trustworthy models.

Michael True (29:13)

I would say the traditional a lot of the MMM's you'll see in this space have leveraged existing research papers that have been used since 1962, right? And some different sort of flavor of that, but they were always designed to do more longer term planning, saying, hey, well, here's how much you should distribute at your channel level. We'll run it a quarter later. We'll do something sort of retroactive and then being able to try to learn from this last three months to try to make a better season for next month.

These machine learning models, they call it, they leverage it like a Bayesian prior. So they have sort of prior beliefs based off of prior belief, meaning what is that saturation plot? What is that measurement? What is that seasonality based off of all of the learnings from your historical data? Now those priors can get updated with new data sets that comes in every, from in our case, they come in every single day from the ad platforms. So we're seeing what you made on Shopify. We're seeing all your GA data. We're seeing

how much you spent by channel, by campaign, what is the reported attribution from the platforms. And those will hit the models and the prior beliefs can change based off of the measurement, can change the measurement and the forecast based off of that new data that's coming in. And so it's kind of an always on robot that gets smarter and smarter as you go. the key thing, and I would just encourage any folks that are using an MMM or thinking about using an MMM is they do not like

Jon Blair (30:22)

Hmm.

Yeah.

Michael True (30:38)

consistency at the same spend thresholds. They want to see as much experimentation as you can. So you can start to see these saturation plots move. last point is the unique value of ours is I do that. We use the same dummy. It's an actual client, but we anonymize it. And sometimes we'll come in and do demos and I'll see three days before the saturation plots looked very different as they started to test their spend. So it's very unique to us. can almost

know, Cam from Hex Clad says it really well is like, it's kind of weird because yours runs at the frequency of an MTA, nearly every, it runs every day, almost at the granularity of going down to the individual campaign level. And it's doing all of these forecasting optimization models and halo effect models. And so, yeah, it's just a lot of statistical math that's learning from as much data as possible and looking for as much change as possible.

Jon Blair (31:32)

That's cool. what would you, what advice would you give if you got a brand that's healthy eight figures scaling their, you know, their, they've got multiple channels that say they're at five or they're approaching five and they're interested in getting something like Prescient going and they do. But what, what does the, what does Prescient replace in the tech stack and what does it not replace? What are some other things that you think that, cause I know that that can be a misconception with attribution, right? I see it all the time with like,

Triple Whale it's gonna do this. No, no, no, it's not gonna do that. It is good at this and I'll give it credit for that. But like, what will it replace and what will it not replace? And in your opinion, what are some of the other marketing tech stack tools that still should sit alongside a tool like yours?

Michael True (32:17)

I I kind of, I'll base it off of like what I see with like, you know, the guys at Jones Road and Hex Clad of like their form of triangulation. And again, they're very sophisticated in their approaches here, you know, Cody will, hey, Cody from Jones Road, I turned on YouTube, we ran an incrementality study, right? And just to validate like the incremental of this new channel, but it's only at a point in time.

Jon Blair (32:26)

Mm-hmm.

Michael True (32:41)

Then they match that up against what our measurement is and it matches up and it's like, well, now I feel confident in what Prescient is saying. And then they would use our optimization model, right? So now they've gained confidence in YouTube. They're looking at us for like, okay, well, what should we do next? Cause incrementality is only going to tell you what's happened at a point in time, but what do we do next? And how do we start to measure that in an ongoing basis where I have to continuously running all these tests. And so they looked at our saturation plot, scaled that spend, and then he ended up running a holdout, a three cell holdout after.

and the results match perfectly. And so now he's validated YouTube with us as this channel and he feels really confident in scaling that channel. Now on the other side, a lot of these brands, pretty much every brand we onboard is using an MTA when they start using us, but they realize they need to use us to scale top of funnel. The majority are large enough and they're hungry for data and they're using this from a triangulation perspective to look at creative analytics within Side Triple Whale because we're only going down to the campaign level.

Jon Blair (33:37)

Yep.

Michael True (33:39)

But I have

Jon Blair (33:39)

Yep.

Michael True (33:39)

seen recently some of the brands that they're like, hey, I have such a good pulse on my Meta in my Google, right? Through the platforms and just running these channels for so long. Like, do I really need an MTA anymore? If I have such a good pulse, I really need to be focusing on YouTube and TV and making more of an investment and focus on the MMM side of the house. And so I've seen a blend of it across different brands. Some are taking the trifecta of incrementality, MMM plus MTA.

I foresee the future being more of an incrementality plus MMM approach.

Jon Blair (34:12)

Yeah, you know what? I I think I totally agree with you that regardless of the specific tools you're talking about that there's this triangulation approach, right? That we recommend the same thing. Brands ask us all the time, what tool should I be using? I'm like, well, I do believe that the answer is different depending on what channels you're spending in, what channels you're selling on. But either way, there's not a single source of truth, right? And generally speaking, platforms...

Michael True (34:16)

Thank you.

Jon Blair (34:40)

Triple Whale and the like can be great for getting really granular, like you said, like creative testing and measurement of how creative is doing, right? But at the same time, no matter what, and even if you layer in like Prescient AI alongside that, we still as CFOs need to say, how many contribution margin dollars are we driving every single day? Because that's the financial North Star is that like, as you're scaling up and down, right?

that we're actually producing more or less profit and we know that profit is going in the same or different direction than what these other tools are saying. And so there's a financial, there's like a true financial measurement which for us tends to be contribution margin dollars. You may get really granular with something that's not, you know, an MMM, but then have MMM alongside that and you can get kind of, I think about it as like a three dimensional view about how your marketing is performing, right? And so,

Michael True (35:31)

Nice.

Jon Blair (35:35)

You know, the point that I wanna make for the audience is that like, don't get trapped in thinking there's a single tool that's gonna do it all. It comes back to strategically understanding your brand, the channels you spend in, the channels that you sell in, and understanding what you're trying to gain and achieve out of scaling, right? Different brands have different goals, and so you should match your tech stack with

the strategy and ultimately the goals that you're trying to achieve. Because at the end of the day, all of these resources and tools, they exist as tools to help you get to where you're trying to go, right? And so, what I was really hoping we could do, which you've done a fantastic job, is get people to understand where MMM should sit in the tech stack, when it's maybe you're not a good candidate for it, when you are good candidate for it, and then,

Michael True (36:15)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (36:32)

really what else do you use alongside of it? And I think this is super helpful in that regard. What other, just like, what other, I'm assuming you've talked with tons of brands who are considering using your tool. What are some of the common misconceptions you see out there about MMM where like brand founders are regularly kind of it wrong in terms of assuming that the tool can do something that it actually can't?

Michael True (37:01)

There's a shift of focus and education that we've learned a lot from. A lot of these brands were never familiar with an MMM before this, right? They came in the 60s and when the internet came, like they went away, MTA was there. You know, you could track everybody on the internet. Taking the time to understand and work with us or any MMM is what is the model trying to tell you and how does the model work, right? And not thinking about it in a lens of an MTA.

right? Shifting that focus and saying like, what is the larger story here versus across all of our spend versus really trying to like break apart the model, right? Because there's statistical models, right? And so making sure that when you onboard one, you're in the right time to use it. And like I mentioned, like, we will not onboard in any brand that is not in the right fit for an MMM, right? And it's the right fit is going to be when

Jon Blair (37:31)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

for sure.

Michael True (37:58)

you're aggressively looking to scale top of funnel. You're going omni-channel and, or you have, you scale top of funnel in the past and you thought it performed better and you want to go back and look at, you know, you want to look at those results from a more holistic angle.

Jon Blair (38:12)

I love it man, this is super helpful. before we land the plane though, I always like to end with a personal question. And so my question for you today is, what's a little known fact about Mike True that people might find shocking or surprising?

Michael True (38:15)

you

A little known fact about Mike True that might find shocking and surprising.

Wow, that's a really good question.

Jon Blair (38:39)

You heard mine earlier with the touring metal band, so...

Michael True (38:40)

Might not be surprised.

I enjoy jumping out of airplanes and I still get petrified every time I'm about to do it, but I like jumping out of planes. And shout out to Hans from Broomate. We went in San Diego at the Seminan Conference. This dude walks up with his own gear and he was like, this is my 320th time jumping out of a plane. Craziness.

Jon Blair (38:51)

man.

I still haven't done that

man. Kudos to you for being able to do that. That is, I don't know if I ever will. Maybe I will, maybe I don't know, who knows. that's, okay, there you go. There's a way to connect for sure man. Before we do, no pun intended, land the plane here though, where can people find more information about you and about Prescient AI?

Michael True (39:13)

Maybe in Austin. Maybe we throw a DTC skydiving event the third week in Austin. I love it.

Yeah, I've been very active on LinkedIn this year. So hit me up on LinkedIn. It's Michael, Michael True of Prescient AI. I'm on Twitter now. And then, yeah, if anybody wants to just learn about MMM in general, hit me up on LinkedIn or can reach out to me directly. It's mike@ prescientai.com and we got a chat and make sure you've got the right people to support you as you think about it.

Jon Blair (39:56)

Yeah, I highly recommend reaching out to Michael if any of this piqued your interest. What they're doing is really, really cool stuff. as you're scaling your DTC brand and you're expanding into additional channels and you're leaning more on top of funnel, there is a place for the tool that they're building in your marketing mix to really understand measurement. And again, be able to scale profitably with confidence. So definitely hit up Michael if you're interested in learning more about this.

Also don't forget, if you want more helpful tips on scaling your profit-focused DTC brand, consider following me, Jon Blair, on LinkedIn. And if you're interested in learning more about how Free To Grow's DTC accountants and fractional CFOs can help your brand increase profit and cash flow as you scale, check us out at FreeToGrowCFO.com. And until next time, scale on. Thanks, Michael.

Michael True (40:43)

Thanks, Jon. Appreciate you.

The Secrets of Elite DTC Brand CEOs

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast, Jon Blair and KC Holiday discuss the challenges and strategies for scaling DTC brands, focusing on the importance of overcoming burnout, implementing effective systems, and the value of mentorship. KC shares his entrepreneurial journey, insights on the different types of burnout DTC CEOs face, and frameworks for improving efficiency and decision-making. The conversation emphasizes the significance of community and storytelling in business, encouraging leaders to embrace their roles as culture builders.

Key Takeaways

• Burnout can be categorized into upward, stagnant, and downward burnout.

• Continuous improvement of systems is necessary as the business evolves.

• Tenacity in initial problem-solving should be applied to all business areas. Scaling is fundamentally about removing constraints.

• Decision-making should prioritize reversibility and impact.

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

KC Holiday- https://www.linkedin.com/in/kcholiday/

Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/

Daily Mentor - https://dailymentor.co/

---

Transcript

~~~

00:00 Introduction

02:00 KC Holiday's Entrepreneurial Journey

06:00 Understanding Burnout in DTC CEOs

11:50 Frameworks for Overcoming Burnout

17:43 Building Effective Systems and Processes

23:51 The Importance of Focus and Prioritization

24:40 Removing Constraints for Business Growth

26:46 The Firefighter Analogy in Entrepreneurship

28:08 Decision Making and Reversibility

30:38 Forecasting Financial Outcomes

34:23 The Importance of Mission and Values

39:09 The Journey of Entrepreneurship and Community Support

41:07 Closing Thoughts

Jon Blair (00:00)

Yo yo, what's happening everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast where we dive deep into conversations about scaling a DTC brand with a profit-focused mindset. I'm your host, Jon Blair, founder of Free to Grow CFO. We are the go-to outsource finance and accounting firm for eight and nine figure DTC brands. And today I'm here with my buddy KC Holiday, CEO, coach and head of Daily Mentor. KC, what's happening man?

KC (00:26)

What's up man, thanks for having me on, appreciate it.

Jon Blair (00:28)

Yeah, thanks for joining me like first thing on your Monday because you're Pacific time, right? You're on the West Coast. you are. Nice, nice.

KC (00:34)

No, I'm actually East Coast now, so you're good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm in

Raleigh, North Carolina, so you're good. You got me at lunchtime, so I put down the sandwich and figured I'd spend some time with you. You're good.

Jon Blair (00:40)

Okay, perfect. Okay, there

we go, there we go, we go. Well, we're both from Orange County, I think. So, I think that's where I, I still got the 714 area code. don't, 949, dude. For sure, for sure. Well, dude, I appreciate you joining, man. I know it's a busy week. all sprinting towards, you know, probably taking some amount of time off for the holidays. So,

KC (00:47)

Yes.

man, I'm 949. So there's a little rivalry. think there's a little internal rivalry that exists between those area codes.

Jon Blair (01:07)

But look, what we're gonna talk about today is something that's super near and dear to my heart. know, KC's doing something that I think is incredibly cool. Like I mentioned, CEO coach runs a business called Daily Mentor. But what KC's all about, you know, from my research on his website is how to become an elite DTC brand CEO. But I would say for me, more importantly, how to beat burnout and create the systems you need to be energized.

and high performing as a leader. And so, if you follow any of my content, you know that even though I'm a DTC finance guy, I'm talking about this kind of stuff a lot, so I'm pumped for the conversation. Before we dive into that stuff, I'd love to hear a little bit about your background and your entrepreneurial journey to joining and being a part of Daily Mentor.

KC (02:00)

Absolutely, man, I'm happy to share. And again, appreciate you having me on. my journey in entrepreneurship started...

Gosh, it's humbling to say this, but about 15 years ago. And as you mentioned, I primarily work with DTC CEOs. I've worked with CEOs in other industries as well, but sometimes I think your experience is the first place you look in terms of how you can best help people. And when I was in my early 20s, about 23, 24, I was trying to be an actor in LA. As you can see, that didn't work out all too well. But I had a different path, and I started my first e-commerce brand called Qalo, Q-A-L-O. We were the creators of the silicone wedding and I started it a few months after marrying my wife, realizing that wearing a metal ring was a pain and decided to just launch my own brand, bootstrapped it, had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

But had a lot of great people around me that were able to serve as mentors and advisors for me and come in and help me in the early days. And so I started that company with a buddy of mine. Fast forward a few years, we were number 151 on the fastest growing companies, Inc. 500 list. We sold a, I think by the time I exited in 2019, we'd sold a couple hundred million dollars worth of these silicone rings, which still blows my mind. I know it blows other people's minds as well that it happened, but had an incredible group of people that we built it alongside.

So that was my initial venture into DTC. We were also an omnichannel brand. So we sold in about 4,000 retail locations on Amazon and Shopify as well. So I cut my teeth very much in that industry and growing that company and ran it until 2019 just before COVID, which was crazy timing in hindsight, but sold in early early 2020 like like November, December 2019, January 2020 is when we sold it, which is nuts. Yeah. And then COVID I think hit in March of 2020.

Jon Blair (03:35)

Yeah.

Crazy dude, right before. Yeah.

KC (03:45)

So my wife's Australian so after selling Qalo I stayed with the company for about a year to transition everything and then I ended up picking up and moving to Southwest Australia so Perth Which is where my wife's family is and so I was there for a couple of years and I had the opportunity to Help manage a corporate venture fund for a billion dollar insurance company out there Which was really interesting because my background was in that eComm space for you know the six or seven years and then all of a sudden you get into venture capital and not a lot of venture capital in Ecom, know, a lot of SaaS, FinTech type companies, DevTech, which is a thing, which is crazy. And so I had the opportunity to work with this fund. We had about, I think, 20 companies under investment at that point. It about a $40 million fund. And then we also had, which was really cool, an internal venture studio. So we actually had full-time employed entrepreneurs that were responsible for spinning up business ideas that were funded by the fund as well, that they were responsible for scaling. And my job there was to help coach and work with the founders of the portfolio and then also to help coach and mentor the entrepreneurs internally that were part of the venture studio that we were running. And through that I learned very much, one, about how a lot of other industries work, which is great. And I think it provided me a lot of well-rounded experience in my ability to coach CEOs. But also that I loved the idea of coaching and the idea of mentorship. And for me, think very much looking back at my early days, people advised me and came in in the early days because I was a dude that had no idea what I was doing and helped and so the idea now of paying it forward from just like, like a, a good thing to do perspective but also realizing there's a lot of stuff that I wish I would have known when I was a 24 year old founder of a eight figure company. In terms of systems and management and practical applications to scaling a company that now that I have, you know, 10 years of experience and I can look back, I can actually really help people and so.

unexpectedly my family moved back from Perth when COVID ended because we were locked down over there. And then I immediately went into CEO coaching. So I did that for about a year and then Daily Mentor started. And so Daily Mentor started just more than a year ago. So in about October of 2023. So I've been running that for now about the last year and that's primarily where I spend most of my time.

Jon Blair (06:00)

love it. When we first met, there's a lot of parallels to your background and my background in terms of like, I was on the founding team of Guardian Bikes. We started in the e-comm world in 2015, 2016, selling on Shopify and Amazon. And we had no idea what we were doing in the e-comm. I mean, like, we were just trying stuff and, you know, we...

Did we learn a lot and did we come away from that experience like having a lot to offer other e-comm founders and operators? 100 % but we are learning the lessons ourselves and so when it comes to coaching, I always like to say like a coach helps you go further faster because you can learn, you can skip the mistakes that the coach has made, right? The coach has made the painful mistakes and they're there to offer wisdom based on these real life mistakes and learnings that they've made.

KC (06:42)

Yep.

Jon Blair (06:52)

And ultimately when I started Free to Grow, it was, I wanted to pay it forward as well, right, that I had made all these mistakes for seven, eight years in eComm I was like, hey, but I know how to do this from a finance and accounting perspective, so let me start a fractional CFO shop that basically, you know, takes this playbook that I developed of scaling a brand from an operator standpoint on the finance and an operation side, and let me package it up and come alongside these founder CEOs who,

They're more visionary leaning, right? They're more marketing leaning. They're more product leaning. A lot of them are product leaning because like they found this gap in the marketplace that got them really excited, right? And they found this product to close that gap and really do good in the world. But they don't want to deal with the numbers and the, and the financial systems, right? Or I'm sure as you see the operational systems, that's not necessarily their forte, but this thing they started out of passion and ultimately all of like trying to create freedom for themselves, right?

KC (07:21)

Yeah.

That's it. Yep.

Jon Blair (07:48)

actually they become enslaved to after scaling to a certain size if they don't have those systems in place, right? And that's where I see a lot of burnout begin, right? And so from your perspective, what are some of the common reasons you see DTC CEOs get burnt out?

KC (08:06)

Yeah, and I think there's specifics to DTC because we live in this...

weird obsessive game with Facebook marketing or meta market. It's like we are so addicted to what this is because it's such a massive growth mechanism for our companies, for a lot of our brands it's the only growth mechanism that we have. And so we have this addictive codependent relationship with Facebook advertising. Where not all companies have that, right? Some people see it in different ways as well. But the way that I choose to classify Burnout, I actually put it into three different categories that is what's the cause of burnout for founders.

Jon Blair (08:14)

for sure. Yeah.

Totally.

KC (08:40)

a lot of people view burnout through this lens of mental health. And I think yes, I think that absolutely plays a role in it. But when you hear burnout talked about online, on social media, whatever, a lot of times it's people that are working for companies that are overworking. Or they're like, they aren't fulfilled in their work. And as a result of that, they're saying that they're burnout. Well, I think if you're actually the owner of the company or the entrepreneur, it's a bit different. So I categorize it in three different types. So there's upward burnout, there's stagnant burnout, and there's downward burnout. Okay, so upward burnout is actually an interesting one that a lot of people don't

But it's the sneakiest one and that is that things are actually working and they're working really well And as a result of it you are doing more and more and more and you're committing to more and more things So I draw the the parallel of that where it's like if you go to the gym and you start to see those abs poke through You're now at the gym twice a day three times a day four times a day because you're seeing something that's working and a lot of people externally would look and go That's what he it's working. Why is that? That's not burnout. That's that's not a bad thing It's like yeah, but you nobody in their right mind

Jon Blair (09:18)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

for sure.

KC (09:39)

should be working probably the amount of hours that that entrepreneur is working, but also what starts to happen there is they start to prioritize that thing over other areas of their life. And I think an undiversified soul or mind is one that leads to burnout in that way. And what I mean there is all of a sudden it's like a drug. Like that notification on your phone of Shopify...

Jon Blair (09:51)

Mm-hmm.

KC (10:00)

Boom, another sale, another sale, another sale, and you just pour yourself more into it. So that's one. The other is stagnant, and that is where things aren't going anywhere. You're kind of just, yesterday looks like today, you're pretty confident tomorrow's gonna look like today, you aren't really sure of where to go, things are kind of working, so they're not necessarily broken, but it's more languishing is where I would put that. And then there is the downward, and this is more of like turnaround type stuff. This is nothing's working, I'm doing everything I can,

Jon Blair (10:01)

Totally.

for sure.

KC (10:30)

revenue down is down 50 % this year than it was last year. Now all of a sudden I am trying to will my way to a successful company and as a result of that, that's when you start peep see people start diving in devices. You see people start, you know, looking for escapes in other places because they're just doing so much to make this thing work and it's not happening.

Jon Blair (10:50)

Yeah, I actually really appreciate that you classify burnout in those three different ways, because I actually believe that burnout is not a single thing either. it is, and it depends on a number of different things. Like actually, I was listening to a podcast recently, there's this guy named Jon Acuff, who has written a couple really interesting books, and he claims, he believes that...

KC (11:01)

Mm-mm. Mm-mm.

Jon Blair (11:17)

The vast majority of people who say that they're burned out are actually bored and they more have not found something fulfilling, right? And so they're actually not overworked. They're not working too many hours. They're underutilized and they're under leveraged, right? But I would venture to say just from my experience and, you know, our business in a different service comes alongside the same group of people that your business does, right? And what I tend to see as

KC (11:21)

Mm. 100%. 100%.

Yep. Yep.

total.

Jon Blair (11:46)

Probably be and we also specifically work with growing eComm brands, right? So we're working with a lot of brands that things are working. They're working well. They're growing. They're profitable and What we see burning out CEOs as they got into the business again They a lot of them had a product a love for a product and ultimately they had a love for the problem that the product solves that got them really energized, right? totally totally 100 %

KC (11:50)

You

Yep. Exactly. Yeah.

Yep. And even the customer too, right? Like, hey, I actually want to help people. This is cool.

Jon Blair (12:14)

And then as the business starts scaling, at first they're doing everything. Maybe they have an EA to help with some of the admin stuff or like a back office person, but they're doing the inventory ordering. They're overseeing the ad buying. They're overseeing the product development and it works. It's at the beginning. And then they start getting into eight figures and they're like, dude, I can't hold all this stuff down. And they've failed to systemize and delegate, right? And focus themselves and the work that they do every day.

KC (12:34)

Mm-mm.

Jon Blair (12:43)

in the areas where they can be in the intersection of passion and proficiency. That's how I think about it. How do you think about what is the framework or frameworks that you use to get these DTC CEOs who may be experiencing burnout as they scale? While they're successful from an outsider's perspective, what are some of the systems or frameworks you help them think through to get them focused on where they can really thrive within the business?

KC (13:12)

Yeah, the first place I start is with empathy, which by the way, I think is a drastically overused term in life, especially in business. But what I mean by that is...

I've been in a situation, and you mentioned earlier experience is the best teacher. I've been in a situation where genuinely I'm trying my hardest and I don't know what to do. Because I've never done it before. So I always try and start, and the first question I ask people on coaching calls when they're bringing problems to me and they're beating the crap out of themselves because they don't know how to solve it. It's like, how many times have you solved this problem before? Well, I never have. So then why would you expect to have the instructions to do it? Right? And so I think I start there with the recognition of like, hey, you're not bad for not knowing how to do this. You just don't know how. So that's ultimately why it is that we're here.

Jon Blair (13:33)

Totally.

For sure.

KC (13:52)

So I try and break it down.

I'll give you kind of like a high level and then if you want to go deeper into anything we can. Because it's actually I think a bit simpler than people want to give it credit for. So I break it down into people, process and systems. Right? Now those words are again all drastically overutilized. So people I think, let's go a little bit deeper there. So that is how do we get this person help? Now what a lot of people I think do is they, one they don't ultimately know who is out there to help them. They don't know what it is in their current tasks that they can actually get help with.

and they don't know if they should hire somebody for $10 an hour or somebody for $200,000 a year. And so the first thing that I try and do is I basically ask them to audit their time. So like, let's just, what are you spending all of your time on?

Jon Blair (14:30)

for sure.

KC (14:38)

And then basically go put a dollar sign next to whatever those tasks are. And if you believe that that is a high leverage, high value task, that it's going to be really expensive for you to replace, I want you to put a lot of dollar signs next to it. And if you feel like this is a task that you could get off of your plate, that is easy to teach somebody else, that you feel like this exists out there, then I want you to put one sign next to it. And then you can actually look at that and we try and figure out how you buy back your time one step at a time. So the idea about hiring a head of growth for a founder or a head of is a pretty daunting task. So I say, don't we just start with what feels like the easiest thing to do? Maybe we just get somebody to do your demand planning for you, or maybe we just get a bookkeeper in that can just reconcile your finances in a timely manner and give you some insight into the finances of the company. Would that be helpful? Absolutely. So I try and just start in the people side, which is ultimately like people build companies. That's what it is, and no founder's ever done it by himself. So we audit there and we actually look, okay, what's the first thing you can do to get something off of your plate so you can continue working on the most important things. think what I see a lot in Daily Mentor which is very odd but I guess in theory it makes sense is people try and hire for what they're really good at first. So they go okay let's say I'm an incredible growth marketer. I understand Facebook ads, I understand creative, I'm building 50 landing pages a day but I hate finance and I hate operations but they feel like

Jon Blair (15:50)

Mm.

KC (16:04)

Part of them becoming a CEO, so making this transition from founder to a CEO is, I'm supposed to be doing the boring stuff because that's what business school teaches me is running a business is, right? And so what they'll do is they'll go, I got to hire a head of growth so then I can start focusing on ops and I can start focusing on finance, which to be honest, if you had a CFO, they would probably tell you to get the hell out of their office because you have no business being in there, right? Like, but somehow they think, and so they spend all this time trying to find a head of growth so they can work on ops and

Jon Blair (16:27)

Yeah

KC (16:34)

They're really bad at ops and finance so they don't enjoy it and then they micromanage the head of growth because it's actually what they care most about and so I kind of look and I go let's identify what you don't like doing, what you're not good at in your own company and what is a low-cost task that you can delegate and let's start there. So that's the people side. The other then is the let's go to systems again another vague term so practically what do I mean by that?

So I look at systems as categorized in three different things. So one is frequency of meetings. Now that might be with an external agency that you utilize. So how frequently are meeting? What are we meeting about? And what's the objective within each of those meetings? So that's like a collaborative team environment. Then there's a communication system. And this is mainly like a remote work environment, which most people are operating within. So how are we communicating with external partners? How are we communicating with one another as a team? A tool like Slack is a perfect thing to insert into that there. And then the other is the project management tool. So I call that the mission control center, similar to the way that NASA has a mission control center and probably SpaceX does too. That when somebody is responsible for getting to the moon, it's all the sweaty people smoking cigarettes in that one room, stressed about it actually getting there. Like that's the mission control center for NASA, right? So I think you have a project management tool that represents that. Now within that tool is a combination of the goals that the company has, the objectives that it's focusing on in that moment.

Jon Blair (17:43)

Yeah.

KC (17:56)

all of the standard operating procedures for how everything gets done in the company and then all of the training manuals, all of the links to the external resources, everything lives in that sole place. So if you as a founder can actually start to build that onboarding people becomes a lot easier, right? Because now you're just dropping them into the Commission Control Center, they can look around and find whatever it is that they need to and you trust that they have ultimately what it is that they need. And so it's a combination of those three things allows you to optimize a lot of the systems that you're working with as a company and

And then beyond that, you can throw systems as like your tech stack. So like, what are you doing for, how are you doing bookkeeping? You are you a QuickBooks company? Are you a Xero company? Are you using A2X? Are you using Jon Blair? The world's greatest CFO, right? So, like, and then what are you doing if you have an attribution tool? How are you, all of this, the performance of the company lives within that. And then finally, it's the process. And process is just a fancy way of saying who's responsible for doing what in what amount of time.

And so I break that down as it's I just call it your areas of responsibility sheet and the simplest way to do that if you're an early stage CEO is Literally write down every single thing that gets done in the company every single thing go put the initials of the person next to it Who's responsible for it? There's two names in that box Somebody else could probably be doing something different if your names and all of those you have to figure out whose initials you can get in there and if nobody's initials are in there then it's probably something you should be doing or maybe it's a good thing that it is you're not doing that but it creates a lot of clarity and all the things that actually need to get done.

Jon Blair (19:25)

Yeah. So, so I, in a former world, I actually still do this a little bit on, on the side, but was an EOS coach and EOS was what we implemented at Guardian Bikes. This EOS is just for those of you who don't know, entrepreneurial operating system. It's, it's very similar. I mean, very similar, almost the same. just has, there's kind of their own way of doing it. And it's, you know, they've got, yeah, exactly. But, at the end of the day, these are the fundamental, this is the fundamental blocking and tackling.

KC (19:32)

There you go. Yep, as an example of it. Yep.

Like their own language. Yeah, absolutely.

Jon Blair (19:54)

right of scaling. Scaling is not just spending a bunch on ads and driving revenue through the roof. Is that a part of it? Yeah, that's a part of it, right? But scaling, really scaling is building a business, right? And a business means something that's bigger than the founder. And it's, and like, it is the, I would say just being the founder of Free to Grow CFO and then also working alongside eComm founders.

KC (19:54)

Mm. Yep.

Yes.

Jon Blair (20:23)

Deciding to start a business, right, yourself or even with a partner, and then scaling it and needing to build a business that is bigger than yourself is just about the hardest thing in the world you could choose to do besides having a bunch of kids. You know, which is another form, I think. I actually think there's a lot of parallels between having a family with a bunch of kids and scaling a business. That's for probably another episode, but it is not...

KC (20:36)

Yes, I would put children up there.

Jon Blair (20:51)

What is key, right? What I'll like kind of, you know, draw out in the stuff that you just went through. What's key is that there's more people than just you, right? There is intention behind deciding who does what and there's clear accountability. And if two people own something, zero people own something. One person can own something, right? There are gonna be two different people that own producing the same result.

KC (21:01)

Mm.

Yep.

Jon Blair (21:20)

right, for a different set of customers or products or whatever, but they don't both own each other's work. That's incredibly important. And then the other thing is there's a way we do things here, right? Process, system, there's a way that we at this brand do things. Now, here's where I see a lot of people get frozen and kind of paralyzed by fear.

KC (21:33)

Yep. Yep.

Jon Blair (21:46)

and not starting to do some of these things that KC's talking about. And next, I want to get your opinion on this, KC, but it's that they overcomplicate it and they think that they have to figure out all of those things in their entirety all at the same time, right? When in reality, actually these frameworks that KC just laid out, you'll be doing this for as long as you're running that business and they will keep evolving. You have to start and it's actually more of a discipline. It's more of a journey.

KC (21:51)

Yeah, go.

100%.

Jon Blair (22:13)

that you revisit these things and you tweak them on an ongoing basis as you continue to scale. And so you can't get locked up by going, I've gotta figure out all the people, all the processes and all the systems. No, all you need to do is figure out what's obvious to you right now. Because then eventually that'll break down or pieces of it will break down and then you'll need to evolve it to what's then obvious at that time. And you just need to never stop, right? And as long as you do that, you'll be ahead of the vast majority.

of other businesses out there who don't take the time to develop this discipline. Do you agree or disagree and what else do you have to add to that?

KC (22:49)

Yeah, I think you gotta eat what's on your plate. I say that all the time, it's like...scaling companies is about solving the next problem. You know, and I think if you're at, like I grew up going to Sizzler, right? Like if you're at Sizzler, like you look at the buffet, it's overwhelming, man. It's like there's hundred problems that live there and it's like that's the next 10 years of your company, but just start with a couple of things that are on that buffet and start there because if those are the largest constraints in the business right now, you have to prioritize solving that thing. And then the really cool thing is that you do it once, you...

Jon Blair (23:04)

Hahaha!

KC (23:22)

probably you're gonna make a few mistakes along the way, none of them are probably gonna destroy the company, and you're gonna learn how to do it, and you're gonna do it better the next time. And I think to your point is, it's really interesting because I think that there are, and I see this as different qualities in people, some people are better at it than others, but they figure out initially, they do whatever it takes in the beginning to make it work, and a lot of times that's growth, right? I can sell, I can run Facebook ads, I figure out how to sell this one product. But then they lose...

like the spirit that helped them solve that initial problem, when all of a sudden it extends to other areas of the business that makes it feel more real than just that thing. You know, and I'm like, I had a call with somebody this week and I'm like, guys, the same tenacity that you started the company with, you have to take that tenacity and now apply it to the other areas of the business that are the current constraints of the business. And I think perhaps it's easier said than done, but that's where I see a lot of it is people get in their own heads about over-complicating it or making it harder than it needs to be. Like all of the conversations

Jon Blair (23:55)

Mm.

for sure. Yep.

KC (24:20)

with founders and Daily Mentor that are like stressing about whether or not they should be giving a thousand dollar bonus or a fifteen hundred dollar bonus to someone and genuinely that the service is better than what I'm about to tell you right now but genuinely they go I don't care move on go do something else like that's not that you know that's not the thing in the business that's going to stop it from being successful but because it's new we get hung up on it a lot

Jon Blair (24:36)

for

Yeah.

Well, there's a couple of things you mentioned that I want to draw out. Scaling is about removal of constraints. That's incredibly important, right? Because there are, there's there's a numerable number of things you could solve or address in the business. But you as the founder, and especially CEO, if you're going to sit in the seat of CEO, you have to be able to say, this is our biggest constraint. I'm going to, I'm going to be laser focused on removing this.

KC (24:47)

Yep.

Jon Blair (25:09)

And I'm going to allow by saying yes to being laser focused on that, you're saying no to a thousand other things, but you're saying no to things that are not as important as removing that constraint. And I will say as the founder of my own business and having scaled previous businesses before, I would say personally, that's the hardest thing is because at the beginning you do have to handle all those non-important things at the same time. Right. But as you grow,

The opportunity cost of you addressing something that is not the constraint, right? At the expense of not removing the constraint, the opportunity cost is ever increasing as you continue to scale. And the reality is what I've started to realize, and I actually personally believe this is actually more of a, this is more of a universal truth in life, not just in scaling a business. I think that everywhere in life,

KC (25:47)

Mm.

Yep. Yep.

Jon Blair (26:04)

You need to, what one of my previous pastors used to say is major in the majors. Don't major in the minors, right? And that meaning, focus your time wherever it is vocationally, family-wise, managing your health and fitness. Focus on the constraint. Focus on the important thing. Focus on the real thing of valuable and let all the minors, let them be out of hand.

KC (26:09)

Yep.

Jon Blair (26:28)

Let them be messy. Let them be unmanaged. Because if you waste your time trying to manage those minor things, you will die not managing the major things, which are the things that actually matter.

KC (26:29)

Yep. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

But yeah, businesses go away because people solve the wrong problems. That's why they do. Like it's not often because nobody's doing anything. It's often because people are doing the wrong things. And I think one thing that I want to highlight too as well because this is a new reality that I think is uncomfortable for a lot of people. And you touched on it earlier of like, you're going to keep this business doesn't necessarily have an end date to it. Like you're doing this thing and it's going to go as long as you want it to.

Jon Blair (26:46)

for sure.

for sure.

KC (27:03)

What people do in the, like if you use the analogy of a fire, if you're a firefighter as a CEO, and that's the analogy that's used a lot of times, it's your job is to determine what the largest fire is and to go put that fire out. But I think what, and this is the challenge of entrepreneurship, I think, is it doesn't mean that the small fires go out. They keep burning. You have to be okay with them still burning, right? Like it's like you're looking at your house and you're going.

Jon Blair (27:22)

For sure. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

KC (27:27)

Okay, could save this room, I could save that room, I could save the umbrella by the pool. Like, we gotta let that thing burn, man. Like, let's let that thing go for the sake of saving this thing and stopping this from burning. But there are fires all around you. And I think that's where people get very distracted is they go, I want to put all of the fires out. And you can't. You have to be okay with some burning.

Jon Blair (27:42)

100%.

Well, okay, so here's another concept that I want to talk about related to decision making that your bonus example made me think of. So I listened to a interview that someone had with Jeff Bezos a number of years ago, and he talked about the importance of decision making and the reversibility of decision making. And he was like, look, the CEO should make very few decisions in the business. The CEO...

KC (28:08)

Yep. Yep.

Jon Blair (28:16)

Most, he goes, I would even venture to say that most decisions in a business, whether it's made by the CEO or not, just shouldn't even be made, right? Or the ones, and then I would go to say that the vast majority of decisions that do need to be made don't even need to be thought about. They need to just be made and then you need to move on. The ones that need to be poured over are the ones that have the biggest potential impact and the smallest chance of or ability to reverse them. If it's hard to reverse something and there's a big impact of it,

KC (28:42)

Yep. Yep.

Jon Blair (28:46)

then you should, he said, pull more data and analyze it one more time, right? But, so this has been really helpful for me with scaling and even advising some of my CFO clients with scaling. like, hey, okay, well how reversible is that decision? So let's take the example of hiring someone. I've actually used this many, many times. Hey, we wanna hire a head of growth, right? Like, gonna pay them 15K a month. Like, I'm really nervous that they're...

you know, if they don't do their job, they're going to put us out of business. go, wait, but hold on. If they wouldn't weren't doing their job, would we let them go? Or would we just pay them 15 K a month forever? And I go, and furthermore, can we clearly define what their goal is? Right. And how much time they have to achieve it. And can we make it very clear and measurable? And so can we say, Hey, you have 90 days to increase our contribution margin dollars per month by 20%.

And if that's not working, we have to have another conversation. So what's your max downside? 45K. Your max 15K times three. Will 45K put us out of business? No, we can reverse this quick enough that it won't put us out of business. So reversibility is very important to consider in, the impact of the decision. What are your thoughts on that? And like what kind of other decision making principles do you advise your, you know,

your people on it Daily Mentor.

KC (30:11)

Yeah, look, I think that's spot on. I think the gap where... And one thing I want to be very careful of is not to... Because we have experience doing it, not to oversimplify it for people that are also watching this that may not believe these things are as simple as we're trying to make them to be. Honestly, that's part of why Daily Mentor exists. It's because we sit here and we go, yeah, just choose the largest constraint. The problem is people go, I don't know what the largest constraint is. I don't have experience with these 10 different constraints.

Jon Blair (30:27)

for sure.

Totally.

KC (30:38)

So,

and a lot of it is the capacity to be able to predict the outcome of each of those constraints going away or continuing to exist. So this, and this goes to right up your alley. So.

The reason I think people struggle to make that decision in your example, and I literally have a video on my social media talking about that exact thing of like, three months in, if it costs you 10 grand a month, it's a $30,000 decision. You spent 30 grand in your ad account last week. And you didn't even think about it on a bunch of ads that don't work at a .7 ROAS. Right? So let's not try, let's hold these things with equal weight, because the dollars are equal weight, because ultimately it's about how we're investing those dollars. But I think that...

Jon Blair (31:07)

For sure. Yeah.

KC (31:16)

If you're looking at this decision, what people fail to do is they fail to forecast the impact financially to the company. Like, there are a lot of people in Daily Mentor, and these are brands, guys, that are seven, eight-figure brands. These are not first-time entrepreneurs in every case. They're not people that have never sold a thing. These are people that are really successful, really sharp people. And I jump on, and it's like, okay, well, hire them as head of growth example. 15 grand.

That's 45 grand. Okay, so have you forecasted what the future of this company looks like from a budget's perspective with that amount of spend as an OPEX against what revenue is coming in the next three months? No, I don't have any of that stuff. And I'll give you another example. There's a guy that is thinking about...

restructuring his manufacturing to either continuing to do it as it is, which is a really quick turnaround but not as high quality of product process versus injecting versus investing in a bunch of tooling. That's going to be a really expensive decision. And the first thing I said to him was map out both scenarios financially.

Jon Blair (32:14)

Mm. Yep.

KC (32:22)

And then based on that, and to your point, I think there's other things. There's reversible decisions, irreversible ones. There's, is this going to lead to differentiation or not? Is there IP associated with like, there's a lot of intangible assets that come along with that as well that I think you have to take into account, but.

The first scenario in a lot of these is map out the financial outcome of what's going to happen. And if you're comfortable with the risk of losing that money or placing that bet, then go ahead and move forward with it. But if you don't have that scenario, if you and your mind haven't played out what could happen, then I think it's really hard to make decisions. And so that's one of the first pieces of advice I have is create the scenarios.

Jon Blair (32:58)

Well, and you know, so that's funny that you mentioned placing bets. People ask me all the time, like, well, what's the benefit of a fractional CFO for my scaling brand? I'm like, being able to place risk adjusted bets. And what does risk adjusted mean? One aspect, I think a very important aspect of risk adjustment is that there's not an unlimited downside. It's not gonna drain every dollar in the bank account and put us out of business, right? We're limiting our downside, just like a great

day trader, a day trader puts what? Stop limits on their trades. Meaning that they could be wrong in the wrong direction, but if they go in the wrong direction too far, they trip that stop limit, it sells their position and they lost money, but they didn't lose every dollar. It wasn't a zero sum game, right? And scaling is a game of removing constraints and placing risk adjusted bets. And here's the thing. Here's what we know. We know that our forecast is wrong. We don't know 100 % of what's going to happen. But the value in forecasting is if this happens, if A happens, this is what B looks like. If C happens, this is what D looks like. And if B, which I really don't want to happen, happens, this is what I would do. This is what I would do to live to fight another day, right? And so a CFO more helps you play out scenarios, right? They don't have a crystal ball.

KC (34:04)

That's it.

That's it.

Mm.

Jon Blair (34:23)

But that's the game, that's a big part of the game is scaling is, I know another word that is really like used like or phrase is used way too much, test and learn, iterate, right? Like, but it is, it's a series of iterations, right? It's just that every time you iterate, you're not gonna place such a big bet that it could put you out of business, right? And so there's another thing that I wanted to get your take on related to burnout, which is you talked about, you know, communication.

KC (34:34)

Yep.

Jon Blair (34:52)

and part of communication is how you communicate like, you know, the business's purpose and guiding principles and things like that. What is the importance from your perspective of things like mission, purpose, core values as it relates to keeping a business on track and also helping find that tenacity that you referred to earlier, right, to see it through the next constraint or the next problem that you need to overcome as you're scaling your business?

KC (35:22)

Yeah. I- I would classify those components, right? So the, you these cultural statements or these things that help shape ultimately, you know, how we behave, what it is we're trying to achieve, and how we define success. So if I asked you just in any environment, would defining success, knowing how we plan to achieve it, and having certain behaviors that make sense in order to go achieve it, would that make sense to you? Yeah, absolutely. It would make sense to you for a children's birthday party to have certain things, right? Certain desired outcomes, things like that.

Jon Blair (35:50)

for sure.

KC (35:51)

So I think people can and it's funny people have a very visceral reaction to an adverse reaction to a lot of these terms right because I think what's happened is there's a lot of consultants that have come in and said well you guys need a vision and a mission and values and that's gonna solve all your business problems and the guys like dude I haven't eaten in a week man like so take your vision and put it somewhere but I do think that it is critical because you have you are a

Jon Blair (36:10)

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

KC (36:18)

culture builder as the leader of a company. Whether you like it or not, whether you want those phrases or not, you at least in your head have an idea of what success looks like for you in the future. You have an idea in your head about why you're showing up to work each day and ultimately what you're trying to achieve. And you also have an idea in your head of the type of people that you want to come work for you. That right there is the vision, the mission, and I call them principles or the values of the company.

Like that's it. So I think just like you're talking about, people tend to over complicate these things. They over glorify these terms. What it is, is a clear tribal like cultural guide for the people that are basically signing up for what it is that you're doing. Because in the early stages of a company, people don't come to work for the company, they come to work for you the leader.

They do. And I think a lot of people don't realize that. They go, no, my, you know, this like foot fungus product that I'm selling is so exciting. Like everybody wants to come. No, they don't. They want to come work with you because they think you're building a really cool thing and they want to be coached by you and led by you and developed by you. But they also want to know where the company's going because everybody in this life, life collectively, movies, social media, business building, brands, it's all about storytelling. Everybody.

Jon Blair (37:05)

Totally. Totally.

KC (37:33)

And everybody in their life wants to attach themselves to a story every single day. And so you're the author of it as the founder of the company and other people now are going, I want to be a part of that story. So in five years, I can look back and tell everybody what I got to be a part of. So then it's your job as leader to say, well, then in five years, this is where we're going and this is the story you'll get to tell. Why don't you come help me write it?

Jon Blair (37:48)

Totally.

KC (37:55)

And that's ultimately what it is. So to your point of all of those, think that they're overutilized in the early days of a company because I think people are just figuring out what the heck they're trying to do in the early days. But I do think that they're critical to do even before you bring people on because it helps allow people to attach themselves to the bigger story that's being written.

Jon Blair (37:57)

Totally.

We had, and me having like run EOS for like the better part of close to a decade, I think one, I always tell this to brands when I'm coaching them on EOS and we do this within our own business as well, Free to Grow, which is like, don't sweat it. Just write down what you think the purpose of your business is. Write down what you think your core values are and guess what? It's okay if they change, right?

This guy, Jon Acuff, I mentioned earlier, he likes to talk about like trialing a goal, right? Like he's like, dude, why do we have to be like stuck with a goal that we write and we realize a couple of weeks later, like this goal sucks, it needs to change. He's like, trial it. Yeah, right. Like there's no reason, like you have the freedom, like trial your core values, trial your mission, trial your purpose, right? And then as you continue to the business, it'll start to become clear and clear. And there'll be some things from your first draft that's stuck, right? And never go away.

KC (38:53)

It feels suffocating,

Jon Blair (39:09)

And there'll be some things that you're like, this needs to evolve, you know? And so like, anyways, like I would say in all of the stuff that we've talked about here, just get started, like just get started and take the pressure off yourself to like nail it perfectly. But additionally, you know, I mean, look what, what KC's doing over at, at Daily Mentor, like get a coach, you know, they, you know, the saying goes, like you can't read the label from inside the bottle, right? And, and

you're busy, you're running an e-comm brand, you're a freaking busy person, right? So like, coaches can help you slow down and reflect, right? And see outside of your day to day. And so like, get a coach and just start, and start to just love the journey of trying to get a little bit better every single day. Because at the end of the day, that's what compounds over the course of two, three, four, five, 10 years. It's like, I'm just gonna start.

KC (39:46)

Yeah, 100%.

Jon Blair (40:05)

using these disciplines and I'm just gonna never stop. And it's actually, at least in my experience, it's the paralysis of wanting perfection that keeps people from continuing to go and just being free and like, I'm just gonna try to work on the next thing, the next thing that needs to be done today, right? And that will compound over the course of a decade in much bigger ways than most people realize.

KC (40:30)

100 % man and I think to your point about the paralysis of keeping people People and this is what social media is created in the world is people especially founders believe that all the other brands in the world have it figured out I'm the only one that has no idea what I'm and so you're like in this scene like I look I see that brand on Instagram or I saw them in Nordstrom last week like they must they're perfect. They haven't all figured out They've never had any inventory issues. They've got a bunch of cash. I'm the only one in the world that's struggling

Jon Blair (40:43)

Yeah, for sure.

KC (40:57)

And it's just not true. And that's been one of the coolest things about starting Daily Mentor, which just for anybody listening, if you don't know what Daily Mentor is, so it's a mentorship community for brands that are on a trajectory to a million dollars or doing over a million dollars of revenue currently in the DDC space. And what we do is we combine the founders of these brands.

into what we use as our Slack community. into a community and then within that community you have direct access to over 20 experienced DTC mentors. So that's everything from retail expansion to we have four Google mentors in the community. our goal is that there's no problem in the world that a mentor within Daily Mentor can't help you solve. And it's for a monthly fee. also have the other, we have about 300 brands currently in the community.

So the reason that I brought this up is that you get to get within this community, and I've even had great exposure to this as well, is there's 300 other brands and you go, man, like everybody in here is just trying to figure it out. And some people are really good at those things and they're not very good at that and I'm really good at that so I can contribute to this person there. So not only do you get access to all these great mentors and experience people that have been there before you.

Jon Blair (41:53)

Yeah, for sure.

KC (42:04)

You also get access to other founders as well and you start to realize that collectively together we can all learn and grow and develop but nobody's got it figured out.

Jon Blair (42:13)

Yeah, man, I mean, we work with nine figure brands that from the outside, they're like considered DTC darlings and we know what's going on internally. And yeah, is there financial success in some of them? Sure. But guess what? They're trying to figure out how to remove the next constraint. And quite frankly, in many ways, the next constraint at nine figures is actually a lot harder to figure out than the one to figure out at seven or eight figures. like, and by the way, not to discount those, cause those ones are really hard too.

KC (42:20)

That's it.

That's it.

Jon Blair (42:42)

But what I'm saying is that it's not all fun and games at the top. It's actually in many ways even harder, right? And so look, man, I love what you guys are doing. The heart in it is like super, super awesome. I highly recommend anyone who is interested in learning about joining this community. Definitely check this out. mean, KC is full of just like a ton of knowledge, but so are the mentors in the community.

KC, before we land the plane here, where can people find a little bit more information about you and Daily Mentor?

KC (43:11)

Yeah.

Yeah, so I'll start with Daily Mentor. So if you just go to DailyMentor.co, spelled all the ways that you would expect, you can get to the website. And through that, can, if you're interested in joining through that, can book a call with a member of our team that can give you more information on the community, how it all works. Feel free to also send me an email. It's KC, just the two letters, KC@dailymentor.com.au. Davey is the original founder of Daily Mentor, is who I grew it with. And so we're in Australia, and we have some members that are in Australia.

Australia, some members here in the US, but that's why the .com.au email address. It's also a global community, which is awesome. you know, we're about, you know, about 30% Australia, 70% the rest of the world. So it's incredible getting to talk to other founders. If you're thinking about expanding internationally, you can talk to a founder that's in France that can help you navigate that landscape. So feel free to email me or if you want to send me any messages on social media, it's ITSKC, just the two letters KC, holiday on Twitter or TikTok or Instagram or any of the platforms.

Jon Blair (43:53)

Yeah.

KC (44:15)

So feel free to give me a follow there. That'd be awesome.

Jon Blair (44:18)

Awesome, awesome. Alright, final question. What's a little known fact about KC Holiday that people might find shocking or surprising?

KC (44:27)

when you, when you, when I saw in the sort of the, the lead up to this call today, I saw this question, nothing stressed me out more. I can talk to you about, I'll talk to you about inventory. I'll talk to you about all the things. And then it was like, what's something interesting about me? My gosh. I think a fun one, I've been on two game shows in my life. That's kind of fun. So I was on family feud with my family back in the day and yeah, dude. And.

Jon Blair (44:38)

You

Dude, heck yeah.

Dude, you were. I watched that show religiously

when I was a kid,

KC (44:51)

religiously growing up, right? So I was on that and we smashed and then I was the reason that we lost. I was the third...

Jon Blair (44:59)

Hahaha!

KC (45:00)

It still haunts me to this day. So you can see I'm getting emotional talking about it. Where it's like we were up 292 to nothing and then it was the final round and like if they steal at the end they basically they give them all the points. I don't know why it works that way. But anyway it does. And so the question was, which anybody listening might find this interesting, is what's a profession somebody would go into in order to become famous?

And I was a young, impressionable, I think I was about 17 or 18 at the time. So the answers I think were on the board were like a musician, an actor, and a chef or something like that, right? Whatever it was. we strike, strike, and the third one came to me. I think I said like painter or something and I got it wrong. And the other family stole it. And I'll give you guys three seconds to try and think about what you think it might be in your head. Do you have a guess for what it might be, Jon?

Jon Blair (45:52)

Yeah. What? You're talking about the top one? Like, yeah. Yeah. the fourth one. So you as actor, musician, what was the other one?

KC (45:53)

What do you think it is?

Yeah, so just one of them. we had three of the four. And with the fourth, there was four total answers. And the fourth one,

actor, musician, and I think it was, I think it might have been a chef or something like that was the other one.

Jon Blair (46:10)

honestly, the only thing that comes to mind is president.

KC (46:13)

my gosh, he was politician, that's what it was. That's what it was. Okay, so this is, like I was a kid, like, I thought that was public service, man. People are just, we just want to serve their community, isn't that what it is? And fast forward to today, don't... Yeah, right? Yeah, so I was a politician. So anyway, that was fun. And then I was on a $3 million game show pilot for ABC way back in the day. And won a bunch of money from my mom. So that was pretty cool. So that was fun. So those are some fun facts about me, yeah.

Jon Blair (46:15)

my gosh, dude, that's funny.

Yeah. I don't know if I would have gotten it though. I don't know if I would have got it though.

Dude, that's awesome.

Dude, that is super awesome. Most people haven't been on one game show, let alone two, so that's pretty rad. That's pretty rad.

KC (46:45)

Yeah, it was a phase of my life,

I think. I was in that LA vibe, know, so that's just what they think everybody in LA does. I guess I did some of it.

Jon Blair (46:53)

That's awesome man. Well look KC, I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to come chat about this stuff. Again, this topic's near and dear to my heart. This is super important. Like, there's a lot of great things to take away from this. If any of it interests you, definitely reach out to KC. But I would say generally, just remember, it's all about getting started, loving the discipline, loving the journey, and then surrounding yourself with other like-minded people and mentors that can help you along the way because

The end of the day, we all have problems that we're gonna experience and face that we've never solved ourselves. So surrounding yourself with the right people is a massive unlock as you're scaling your brand. Also, don't forget, if you want more helpful tips on scaling a profit-focused DTC brand, you can consider following me, Jon Blair, on LinkedIn. And if you're interested in learning more about how our Free to Grow CFOs, DTC accountants, and fractional CFOs can help your brand increase profit and cash flows you scale, check us out at freetogrowcfo.com.

Until next time, scale on. Thanks for joining, KC.

KC (47:53)

Thanks, appreciate it.

How to Navigate Debt Options for Scaling DTC Brands

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast, Jon Blair and Melissa Cafagna discuss the complexities of debt financing for DTC brands. They explore various debt options, including merchant cash advances, lines of credit, and SBA loans, while emphasizing the importance of choosing the right financing partner. Melissa shares her journey to Settle and how the company provides unique capital solutions tailored for eCommerce brands. The conversation highlights the critical role of fractional CFOs in navigating financial decisions and the significance of understanding inventory management in relation to capital needs.

Key Takeaways

• Over-leveraging or picking the wrong debt partner can jeopardize your business.

• MCAs are often easy to access but come with high costs and risks to cash flow.

• Debt isn’t inherently good or bad—it’s a tool. The key is choosing the right type for your specific stage of growth and strategy.

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

Melissa Cafagna- https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissacafagna/

Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/

Settle - https://www.settle.com/

Meet Melissa Cafagna

Melissa Cafagna is a passionate advocate for mission-driven brands, known for her customer-focused approach and her role as a 'financing fairy godmother.' With extensive experience in the financial industry, she is dedicated to helping small businesses grow through innovative and personalized financing solutions. While living in Europe for three years, Melissa transitioned from finance and accounting to sales, gaining cultural insights and developing a dynamic empathy that shapes her approach to building relationships. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her family, exploring Chicago’s beautiful parks and city centers, and immersing herself in hip-hop and R&B music. 

About Settle

Settle is the best way to power up your brand’s cash flow and operations—designed specifically for consumer brands ready to grow. With a unified platform tailored for 'finventory' management, you can seamlessly plan, purchase, manage, and pay for inventory, all in one place. Automate payments, 3-way match purchase orders, and real time accurate COGS. For businesses that qualify, Settle Working Capital offers founder-friendly financing, so you can Settle now, pay later, and scale confidently. Join brands like Thread Wallets, Truvani, and Olipop to confidently scale for what's next. Learn more about Settle today.

Transcript

~~~

00:00 Introduction

01:18 Melissa Cafagna’s Journey to Settle

06:01 Understanding Debt Options for E-commerce Brands

12:02 Evaluating the Pros and Cons of MCAs

18:01 Understanding Asset-Based Lending (ABL)

28:15 Navigating Cash Flow Challenges in E-commerce

39:34 The Role of Fractional CFOs vs. Accountants

44:37 Exploring SBA Loans and Their Limitations

51:07 Closing Thoughts

Jon Blair (00:00)

Yo, yo, what's happening everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast where we dive deep into conversations about scaling a DTC brand with a profit focused mindset. I'm your host, Jon Blair, founder of Free to Grow CFO. We're the go-to outsource finance and accounting firm for eight and nine figure DTC brands. And today I'm here with my pal, Melissa Cafagna like lasagna. She runs capital partnerships at Settle and also calls herself

Melissa (00:25)

Yes.

Jon Blair (00:30)

the financing fairy godmother depending on what social media channels you find her on. Melissa, you have been a fan of my content for quite some time and I appreciate that and it was great to finally meet not too long ago. And now to have you on the show, how are you doing today?

Melissa (00:40)

long time.

I am doing well, kind of just coming off the high of a wonderful break for Thanksgiving. So good to be around loved ones. And I feel well rested. So I'm so excited that we planned this on this day. I feel like so much gratitude. So thank you for asking. And I definitely don't run Capital Partnerships, but I like to think I sometimes run the show. No, but I totally don't. And yeah, is it okay if I introduce myself right now?

Jon Blair (01:17)

100%.

Melissa (01:18)

Awesome. So I get.

asked this question a lot, like how did I end up at Settle? I actually went to school for accounting and did the whole public accounting thing, pivoted to working at a modeling agency in LA and was there for quite some time doing accounting and kind of just had this quarter life crisis where I'm like, what am I doing with my life? And decided to pivot into sales after doing this amazing sabbatical in Europe, which that's like a whole can of worms that can be talked about another

but I sometimes feel like I've lived like four different lives, just with like the craziness that I've been through when it comes to like my career and like my personal life. But then I finally decided like I'm gonna go all in on sales, but I also wanted to stay close to FinTech just because it just felt like a, because they still definitely had like this, I would say like joy around like accounting and finance and helping businesses, specifically small businesses, but it definitely made sense with my

my background to pivot to fintech and worked at a couple tech companies related to like Ecom businesses, Amazon businesses, and then ended up at Settle, which I love the team there. We're an awesome bunch and we have the best manager, shout out to Chris. So yeah, that's basically how I ended up there. And now basically helping founders with capital and inventory software.

which has been a delight. We're solving some real problems. Like, who doesn't need money? Who doesn't need to try to optimize their inventory? It's such a nightmare for so many brands. So yeah.

Jon Blair (02:53)

Hahaha

I love it. So a couple things, the joy around accounting and finance. That brings a huge smile to my face because I always joke one of the core values at Free to Grow CFO is passion. whenever I talk about this with the team, I'm always like, guys, we're crushing this one because the deep conversations that five to six people will have on how to reconcile a Shopify merchant account and the arguments we'll get into to make sure it's done right.

is just about the most passionate, nerdy, joyful accounting and finance conversation we could be having. so if you listen to the show at all, you know we're nerds about that around here. so I'm looking forward to chatting because as Melissa mentioned, Settle actually has its hands in a few different areas in the eComm and CPG world. in particular, Settle has for quite some time now offered

Melissa (03:33)

I love it.

Yeah.

Jon Blair (04:01)

It's kind of like debt financing products. And we have several mutual clients with Melissa and the Settle team. And what we want to talk about today is just how to navigate debt options for a scaling eComm brand. There's, unfortunately, to be quite honest with you, there's a lot of misinformation out there in the marketplace about the different debt options and whether they're good or bad or how much they cost, what...

Melissa (04:13)

Yes.

Yep.

Jon Blair (04:27)

lender protections or liabilities you have as the borrower. I actually think that out of all of the topics that we encounter as CFOs at Free to Grow, the navigating debt options is actually the one where we see the most misunderstanding, misconceptions, misinformation. And we spend a lot of time educating brands on like what the different options really are, why they're different, what it means in terms of

Melissa (04:46)

Interesting.

Jon Blair (04:57)

what it means in terms of liability. And so today, we're gonna break a bunch of this down. There are, yeah, demystify with your financing fairy godmother, Melissa Cafagna So, all right, so to get started, we're not gonna get through it all, unfortunately. We might have to have you back. But let's talk about some of the, just outline what some of the different debt structures

Melissa (05:03)

Yes, let's demystify.

Happy too.

Jon Blair (05:27)

are that are out there, right? Why don't you go and just riff just the ones that come to mind. What are some of the different options I'll add any that that you don't put on the list and then we'll start talking about them further.

Melissa (05:32)

Sure.

Amazing.

Obviously, one of the first ones that come to mind are MCAs, just because I speak to lot of emerging brand founders who maybe it's their first or second time looking for capital, debt capital specifically. And so a lot of times these MCAs are pouring a ton of money into marketing and advertising. So oftentimes it'll be maybe like...

Jon Blair (05:44)

Mmm.

Mm.

Melissa (06:01)

Or it's just the ease of it, right? Like for a Shopify capital, for example. And so definitely, I feel like for a lot of folks, that's going to be one of their number one options just because they're getting targeted. Whereas a lot of totally, yes.

Jon Blair (06:15)

We see that constantly. I mean, almost every brand that we encounter

on the CFO side when they are either using MCAs or recently used MCAs. And by the way, for those of you that don't know the terminology, merchant cash advances, right? And we'll get into this in more detail in a second, but like super common. Why? Because basically because of Shopify Capital, ClearBank, or now rebranded as ClearCo and Wayflyer, which have those three have focused

Melissa (06:25)

Correct. Yes. Correct.

Yeah.

Yes.

Jon Blair (06:46)

on eComm as part of their, a big part of their go-to-market. And one of the reasons, at least from, in my opinion, one of the reasons they focus on eComm is because the transparency of, well, because of the daily receipt of cash, right, from merchant accounts, you know, hence merchant cash advances. They're actually just pulling forward future cash flows that you're gonna receive from the credit card processors, right, and they're lending you kind of like in bulk.

Melissa (07:00)

Correct.

Exactly.

Jon Blair (07:15)

ahead of time, right? And so that's MCAs. What are some of the other common debt structures that you see D T C brands encountering out there?

Melissa (07:21)

Yep.

Sure, definitely like line of credits, SBAs loans as well, ABLs, asset-based loans. I would say those are like primarily the ones that I personally see. I've seen some pretty wild debt stacks, we call them, where some folks have maybe like five or six different merchant cash advances that they're working with to stay afloat.

Jon Blair (07:29)

Mmm.

Melissa (07:53)

or a business that just has like one line of credit and that's it. So we like see so many different kinds of debt stacks or maybe you have credit cards. Like there's a myriad of ways to kind of make this work for your business. And that's why you need to talk to guys like Jon and Jeff because they're gonna like advise you on the best way to figure out what that debt stack's gonna be. Because it's like, do you wanna buy inventory with a credit card? I see brands do it.

Jon Blair (07:53)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Melissa (08:21)

Sometimes it makes sense. I remember talking to this one founder who's very emerging still. But let's say she was like a one to five million in sales. But she was still buying inventory on credit cards and doing no interest credit cards. And she was getting really creative with it, which I love. But at a certain point, you need something a little bit more sophisticated once you get to certain levels for your business. So I think it really just depends. And I think it's great to have the advisement because if not, I'm going to say this like three times, feel like choosing the wrong debt partner could mean the failure of your business. so I think understanding who you're going to partner with, whether it's a short-term thing or a long-term thing, seek help, seek advisement. Yeah.

Jon Blair (09:00)

Yeah.

Yeah, well, yeah,

no, mean, I think obviously we're gonna unpack a lot here with this, but let's say it this way. I think first off, I have a lot of empathy for brand founders, right? Scaling an eComm brand is just about the hardest thing you could choose to do in the business world. And it's capital intensive. Why is it capital intensive? What does that mean? That means it takes a lot of capital. And what is one of the primary reasons?

Melissa (09:18)

Yeah.

Totally. No joke. Yeah, totally.

Jon Blair (09:40)

inventory, have to carry inventory. Service businesses generally are not capital intensive because they don't carry inventory, right? And so because of that, you have two major sources. You've started a capital intensive business, so you have generally two major sources. We'll say three major sources of capital. There's your vendors, that's accounts payable and trade payables. There's equity investors, right? And then there's debt lenders, there's debt providers.

Melissa (09:41)

Absolutely.

Jon Blair (10:09)

There's technically a fourth, is profitability and retained earnings, right? But those are kind of your sources of capital. Why do most founders not want to just sell a bunch of equity? Because the cost of equity is expensive. It's expensive to you as the founder to sell part of your business, right? And retained earnings, you may have tight retained earnings and seasons of scaling because you're focusing on growth. So there may not be a ton there, right?

Melissa (10:14)

Yep.

Absolutely.

Yep.

Jon Blair (10:35)

And

then when you're starting, especially when you're emerging and you're in the first several years of your brand, you probably don't have really incredible payment terms with your vendor. So your vendor payables are not like a significant enough capital source. So that leads us to what debt, right? And hence why we're having this discussion and why it's so pervasive with DTC brands to have to understand how to choose the right debt. So here's what we're gonna dive into. We've laid out common forms of debt, MCAs.

Melissa (10:43)

Exactly.

Totally.

Jon Blair (11:04)

lines of credit, ABLs, are somewhat related, SBA loans, and I kind of added term loans, which can roll up under one of those categories. But here's what you need to consider. You shouldn't pick a debt partner just because they say, we'll offer you the money that you need. It needs to be tied to your strategy, and you need to understand why you're going to use that provider. And you need to consider things like, what are the underwriting requirements?

Melissa (11:11)

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

Jon Blair (11:33)

What are the lender protections and what are your liabilities? Is the borrower, what does it cost the capital? And then what is the capital flexibility and the capital amount? It's not just one of those things. It's all of these things that you have to take into account. So let's start with MCAs. From your perspective, what are some of the most common reasons why people take on MCAs? And when considering strategy underwriting,

Melissa (11:44)

Yep. Yes.

Jon Blair (12:02)

lender protections, cost of capital, all those things. Where do you see MCAs being good and or bad?

Melissa (12:03)

Yes.

Yeah, great question. Honestly, think founders like going back to the empathy thing, they have so much on their plate. And the last thing they want to do is go through like a really lengthy underwriting process to get more money when they have a vendor that they're probably late on paying already and they need to get that inventory into their 3PL. So they just need money fast. needs to be easy. And so I like I get that.

Jon Blair (12:22)

for sure.

Melissa (12:38)

And so I think with the MCAs, it really is the easiest form of capital you could probably get. So I think that's why I have a lot of empathy for these founders, because it's like, have so many competing priorities, and you at the end of the day have to weigh, like, you sometimes when we make the decisions that we do, it's just like, do I want to pay more for doing the thing that's easier? Sometimes, yeah, that makes sense, you know? And so, but...

Jon Blair (12:53)

Yeah.

Melissa (13:07)

really, I think, understanding how this debt is going to impact your bottom line, which enough people don't talk about. Your cash flow, ultimately, as well, is really important. On that topic, what do you consider are the scenarios in which you've seen MCA debt work? Because we can't say that it doesn't. We know that it's very expensive. But can you like?

Think of a scenario where you've seen that successfully executed.

Jon Blair (13:38)

Yeah, you know what's funny is I used to just have this blanket opinion which is like MCAs are always bad. I will say 95 % of the time the way that I see them being used, they are bad and there's a better source of capital. But I have become a believer in the 5 % that I've seen where it's a good idea, which is if one, if it's truly a short term need and it's truly like to bridge you from one place to another, right?

Melissa (13:50)

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Yes.

Jon Blair (14:08)

And then the second thing is if you don't need the maturity or the payback to line up with your inventory levels. And so let me dig a little bit deeper to explain this a little bit more. The reason why if you just need the capital for a few weeks or a few months and you don't really see the need coming up again anytime soon, it might be okay to go to the MCA, which by the way, annual effective rate 25 to 50%.

Melissa (14:19)

Yeah, break that down a little bit. Yeah.

Yeah.

Jon Blair (14:38)

annualized

effective rate like that's actually how much these things cost. The cheapest I've ever seen it is 20. And that's because it took a long time to pay that back. But they're very expensive, but you might want to go that route because all you do is click a button and maybe answer a couple of questions and you get the capital. So there's like no underwriting. It doesn't take much time. It's unsecured. It is, in my opinion, it's not fully unsecured because they do have rights to the percentage of revenue or collections that they take from you. So

Melissa (14:48)

Correct.

Literally.

None.

correct.

Jon Blair (15:08)

Yeah, do they not, they're not filing a UCC one, which is a blanket all asset lien on the business, but they do have rights to your cash inflows. So it's not totally unsecured, even though they call it unsecured. But if you only need it once, maybe twice, and you don't see this recurring need, it may just be easier because if you go look at SBA loans, lines of credit, ABLs, other term loans, not always, but oftentimes the level of effort and your cost of

Melissa (15:19)

Totally, yep.

Jon Blair (15:38)

getting that thing underwritten, providing all the documents and the analysis, and then even paying upfront fees for getting those loans closed. If you're not using it regularly, those fees and that effort of getting the loan approved, that actually might make your annual effective rate against the capital you actually borrowed possibly really, really high, right? And so actually the MCA may be just a little more expensive, but just easier. Here's the problem.

Melissa (15:45)

Yep.

Yeah.

Jon Blair (16:06)

I rarely see brands only need debt just once and then never need it again. And why is that? It's because as you're growing and almost every eComm brand is seasonal, right? So there's peaks and valleys to sales, which means there's peaks and valleys to inventory. That means your working capital expands and contracts, right? As the business, as your sales seasonally go higher and go lower. And as you're growing,

Melissa (16:11)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (16:34)

to meet the next sales growth goal, you always have to buy more inventory than you did the last time. And so because working capital is expanding and contracting based on seasonality, but then it also overall is expanding because you're growing and inventory is growing, unless you're getting more capital coverage from retained earnings, equity investors, or your vendors, you need more and more debt as you continue to scale.

Melissa (16:41)

Right.

Jon Blair (17:02)

to finance your inventory as you're growing. So rarely do I ever see this one time need for MCAs actually play out. And that's why it's so uncommon. But I will say this. They will try to convince you that you can, what do they call it? What do they call, they have this term, that you can top up. Meaning like you can take another draw once you've gotten down to a certain percentage, right, of like paid back of the MCA.

Melissa (17:10)

Right, absolutely.

Mm-hmm.

Correct.

Jon Blair (17:32)

But if you're just gonna let it, that's called a revolve. If you're let it revolve like that, just get a line of credit that can actually revolve. You know what I mean? Because it's gonna way cheaper and way more flexible.

Melissa (17:37)

Right.

100%. And at that point, it is worth going to doing the due diligence that you need to do. And I think with the seasonality that these businesses have, use that slower season to apply for debt. Because that'll be the time where you can get yourself set up, and you will no longer have to worry about this.

Jon Blair (17:47)

Totally.

I'll make another comment on that as well, is if you the right bookkeeping and CFO partner, like Free to Grow CFO, we can do a lot of the heavy diligence information for you. Like when we've worked with Settle on the few mutual clients we have, the data that you guys need

Melissa (18:15)

Right?

Jon Blair (18:21)

we're the ones pulling it, right? And we're actually even the ones looking at it before we send it to Settle and making sure it does it make sense. Is there anything we need to explain to the lender that we know they're gonna have a question about, right? And so it can get a lot easier. The underwriting is a lot easier when your bookkeeping is clean and on an accrual basis, meaning you have a clean balance sheet. And when you have a fractional CFO,

Melissa (18:31)

Yes.

Totally. Yes.

Jon Blair (18:48)

who can help interpret it to, it can help be the interpreter between the lender and the brand. Cause oftentimes, well actually this is a great question for you, Melissa. I know this for a fact cause I know I'm friends with a lot of, you know, not just people at Settle, but other lenders. There's this, there can be this barrier between the lender and the founder where like the lender needs something and the founder without a CFO doesn't fully understand how to get the lender what they need.

Melissa (18:54)

Yes.

Totally.

Yes.

Jon Blair (19:17)

Do you

see that and what are some examples that you see?

Melissa (19:20)

That's a good question. I would say Settle is a bit of an outlier because we're like very education first. So we try to be like mini CFO for you as far as just explaining this. But a lot of lenders do not work this way because they don't have the business or financial acumen. And like for the folks that work at Settle, for example, they have been doing working capital for a long time. So they know what they're doing.

Jon Blair (19:37)

for sure.

Melissa (19:48)

But that's like a really good question. would say that from the stories that I've heard at other lenders, I would say it's more of like a transactional partnership where it's just like, I need to do and say whatever I need to get you across the line to close on this capital. And less like partnership where I'm like, what questions can I answer to make sure you feel comfortable with this? How do we differ from the other partners that you're looking at?

How are we better? How are we worse? Right? And being able to advise there. But I do think if you do not have a partnership oriented lender that you're talking to at like the beginning of that like sales cycle, let's say, you need to speak to somebody who can walk you through that process because, and again, shameless plug, Jeff and Jon at Free to Grow, because I was going to say like...

Jon Blair (20:18)

for sure.

Hahaha.

Melissa (20:44)

This is the reality, right? A lot of lenders, just they're not always looking out for what's in the best interest for you in the business, right? And like they have quotas, they need to make sure business is good on their end. Makes sense, right? You always have competing priorities, but at the end of the day, like I have heard of like absolute horror stories where, for example, there are a lot of lenders that they don't even look at your balance sheet. That means they're making an underwriting decision based on half of your business.

And guess what? They may potentially over leverage you with debt. And that means that they don't necessarily care about what is in the long-term interest of your business. Now, they may be a good short-term thing, but over leveraging you, there are times where unfortunately for us, like as a lender, we have to say no, because the business simply has too much debt. And we do not, though we could give them debt because of a myriad of other reasons, like growth is great. We have to say, sorry, we can't help you.

Jon Blair (21:11)

Yeah.

Melissa (21:40)

You're over leveraged right now, but let's speak in six months. consolidate that, handle that, figure out what you have to do, because we do want to work with you. I don't know if that answered your question, but yeah. Yeah.

Jon Blair (21:43)

for sure.

No, no, mean, no, there's some great, mean, I will take it a step further and say that like

debt is, think, I think that you can hear, you know, you can hear like voices, competing voices out in the marketplace about like debt, debt is good or debt is bad, right? Leverage is good. It enhances return on equity. Debt is bad because it's risky. know, Dave Ramsey, debt is evil, right? Which I'm a huge Dave Ramsey fan personally, by the way, but like,

Melissa (22:03)

Totally. Right. Yeah.

Right.

Right.

Jon Blair (22:18)

The point I'm making is that I actually believe that debt is neither good nor bad. It's a tool, right? And it's a tool to be utilized in the right way and responsibly, just like any other business tool. And just like with any other tool in business, you can use it in the wrong way and in a way that actually creates more risk than reward. And so part of that, like Melissa was just referring to, is that you do need to be mindful of how much debt you take on because

Melissa (22:18)

Yeah.

Exactly, yeah.

Totally.

100%.

Jon Blair (22:48)

I believe that to some degree, if you're going to grow your eComm brand quickly, even if it's profitable, you just are going to need some amount of inventory financing. And it's because very few, and I'm talking about like one out of a hundred brands that I encounter have a good enough, what's called cash conversion cycle, which without getting into like all the details, basically, basically it means how for an eComm brand.

Melissa (23:00)

Totally.

Jon Blair (23:16)

how many days of your inventory are being financed by your vendors, basically, right? Most of the time, very little, very few days of inventory are being financed by your vendors. And one out of 100 eComm brands I talked to has really aggressive payment terms and it finances a lot of their inventory. And so the amount of debt they need to finance their inventory is actually very little. That's very uncommon. And so,

Melissa (23:19)

Correct. Yeah.

Yeah.

Correct.

Very,

yeah.

Jon Blair (23:42)

So just be aware of the fact that you do need to be mindful of how much debt you take on and not all debts made equal and too much can be too risky. So I wanna talk about lines of credit next here. And I wanna talk about lines of credit and ABLs because there are asset-based lines of credit and then there are lines of credit that have nothing to do with ABLs. let me.

Melissa (23:55)

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, okay.

Yes.

Jon Blair (24:10)

kind of define this and then we'll dive in to where we see these used well and not so well advantages and drawbacks. So a line of credit, just like it sounds like, it's something that you can draw up and pay down a lot of times kind of at will, right? Within certain limits. Some limits are what's called asset based and that's where ABLs come from, where they will only let you borrow a certain percentage of your accounts receivable.

Melissa (24:17)

Let's do it.

Jon Blair (24:39)

and or your inventory value at any point in time. So ABLs are kind of like a form of line of credit where they're tying the maximum amount you can borrow to some asset based, hence asset based lines or loans as the name. Where, just what comes to mind for you of what you see as like advantages, drawbacks, where they're used well, not used well.

Melissa (24:49)

correct.

Yeah.

Yeah, great question. I mean, definitely the biggest advantage I would say is cost. And generally a lot of brands will graduate from using something like Settle or maybe a basic line of credit to an ABL so that they can access more. Because sometimes like basic like lines of credit, let's just call them that. Those don't they aren't great at actually giving businesses like proper sizing.

Right? Like it's usually something very small. And so they generally have to graduate into that. So definitely cost. on the cost, the caveat is to make sure you actually understand your true cost of capital. Because ABLs will tell you like, you know, this rate. But then there is like a facility fee and, you know, auditing fees. yeah. And so it's like, and then like calculating your true APR based off of that. Because oftentimes you'll find, well, I could just go with this other provider who

Jon Blair (25:33)

yeah.

Underwriting fee. and maintenance. Yeah

Melissa (26:01)

maybe requires a little less due diligence on an ongoing basis because ABLs do require a lot of due diligence and you know, have to make sure your books are constantly clean and then they're going to the cons. There's sometimes like present to be an issue based on that valuation that you said where it's like, hey, I'm getting an amount of financing based on how much inventory I had, but shit like what do I do when I just like sold through all my inventory? Cause Black Friday's was bananas. And so being able to adjust from that.

perspective. So I think that's where it can be limiting. And so a lot of times what I'll see is at that point founders will then kind of have to take on like a second form of debt to kind of fill in that gap until they built up their inventory. And so that that's what I've seen. Yeah.

Jon Blair (26:49)

Okay, wait, this is a, no, I saying, so I have a lot of experience with ABLs because

of being in the CPG and Ecom world for so long. This is probably a whole episode. So I'm gonna try to be brief and be fair to the different ABL lenders out there, because I am friends with a lot of them. And by the way, I wanna be clear. All of these debt types serve a purpose for the right business, the right strategy, the right season, right? And again, coming back debt or even these, yeah, all of these different debt products, they are not good, they are not bad, they are tools, but understand these, these different components of them that we're walking through so that you can use them for the right reason at the right time. That's the whole point of this conversation, okay? And so let ABL's lines of credit, let's talk, from my perspective, where I see this work well, what some of the pros and cons are, one, that you brought up, in transit inventory. On ABLs, generally speaking, inventory that is not in a warehouse domestically, in the United States, is ineligible. And so if you have an advance rate, let's say it's 60%, meaning that you can borrow up to 60 % of the cost of inventory, you cannot finance 60 % of what's on the water or a prepayment you need to make to the vendor. what like Melissa was just referring to this, can get caught in this chicken or the egg game where you have not enough inventory, you're actually very profitable, you're crushing your sales goals, you're growing super fast, I've had several brands where I've had this issue. They're killing it. But they don't have enough cash to buy the next big container or containers they need to buy and they need to make payment for those while they're in transit.

the ABL will not finance that in transit inventory unless you convince them to give you what's called an over advance. Over advances used to be really common before COVID. They're much less common today. Now, you can ask. I always say, like you miss 100 % of the shots you don't take. I always ask as a CFO, right? And they're not impossible, but they're becoming less and less prevalent and it's why.

Melissa (29:00)

Hmm.

Yeah, absolutely.

Jon Blair (29:14)

Lenders don't want to lend against something that's in China, right? That they can't seize or that's on a boat that they can't seize or that's on a truck that they can't seize. If it's in a warehouse, then they have a lien on that, on the goods that are at that warehouse. They can go seize them if you don't pay the loan, right? So that's, so in transit inventory is a big, big, huge problem for scaling DTC brands. And it's usually the most common reason why I see an ABL get removed from the running for growing eComm brands where I tend to see it start to work is when they've reached a size and scale and enough profitability in the business, enough retained earnings in the business that there's this capital base that they have that if they momentarily need in transit financing, they can use that capital base for the in transit piece, or they've developed enough relationship with their vendors that they've figured out how to get 30 day payment terms and that 30 days can, that floats the in transit, right? But if you're an emerging brand, which is most of the brands that we work with, surprise, like, another misconception I guess I'll throw out there is I think a lot of brands think like, by the time I hit 10 million, maybe 20 million, I'm good. I have a brand that's doing 50 million a year in revenue and they still have this problem. So it depends on multiple factors. The other thing I wanna mention, you mentioned the sizing.

Melissa (30:16)

Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jon Blair (30:41)

This is where the distinction in my mind of bank versus non-bank comes into play. If you're using a bank, so you're using a Chase, a Wells Fargo, a Bank of America, the advance rate on inventory is usually 50%. And I mean, yes, can you ask for more? Can you try to negotiate more? Yes, but they're usually not going to start there. They're very rigid. Non-bank, you can get up to like 75%, maybe 80%. The standard is probably starting at 55% and you can push them to get to 60, 65. And if you're elite, you can maybe get them in the seventies or the eighties, right? But that money is more expensive than bank, they'll, non-bank ABL lender will lend you more, they'll give you a bigger line. I mean, I love, I have friends at Chase and Wells Fargo and Bank of America, but they know that, they know, cause I've told them and they know, the emerging brands we work with, a lot of them are not in that box, where they'll offer a $30 million brand a million dollar line of credit for inventory. A non-bank ABL lender may offer that same brand $3 million, right? And like a 75 % advance rate instead of a 50 % advance rate. So those are just a couple things to consider. I can tell that you've got, the fairy godmother has some comments.

Melissa (31:42)

Mm-hmm.

Which is a big difference, yeah.

Yeah. No, I like, I know

I kind of want you to dig into like what that underwriting process is like so that, you know, founders are aware like how much time is this going to take? What am I expected to do on a regular basis to make sure I'm in good standing with my ABL? Things like that.

Jon Blair (32:07)

Mmm. Yeah.

Totally.

Yes, so ABLs are probably out of all the loans that are on our list, those are the ones that have the heaviest underwriting and require the most. Maybe they're fairly similar to like SBA loans on the front end of underwriting, but where they differ is the ongoing underwriting and compliance is I think far more.

Melissa (32:36)

Mm-hmm.

Jon Blair (32:46)

substantial with an ABL than other types of loans that have heavy underwriting on the front end. And here's why again, cause it's asset based, meaning that every time the lenders max allowable limit on the line or balance on the line is directly tied to the snapshot valuation of an asset on the day that you take the draw. And then they also test it periodically. Usually they test it monthly.

it's not uncommon to see them test it weekly though. and then they'll test it more heavily, quarterly or, or a couple of times a year. So what does that mean when they're testing it weekly? that means that you have to put together what's called a borrowing base report. let's say, let's just say that it's tied to inventory valuation. Cause for an eComm brand that doesn't have AR or has very little AR inventories, usually the asset based. That means you have to prepare a report of exactly what you have on hand and the landed cost value. Now I see Melissa cracking a little smile because the word landed cost value, that's like a whole nother podcast episode. that's something that, but like, so if the, getting into all the details, tracking your landed cost and what's on hand today, every week is a lot of work. Most brands don't do it. and if you try to do it, it's usually wrong and, and it's not, it's not the brand's fault. It's just a lot of work and it's hard, right? and so you have to prepare this borrowing base and you, whoever, usually the CEO founder, you have to sign it and you're signing it, certifying saying, I am certifying. This is accurate because the bank is giving you a percentage of that value of that asset value available to draw. So you have to do that every week or every time you do a draw or at least monthly, and then usually quarterly or at least a couple of times a year they do what's called an inventory appraisal where they request all of this. They basically re underwrite the loan more or less. It's a mini version of the underwriting you went through at the beginning. And it's because they're double checking that the economics are the same in the business, that your margins are the same. They'll even oftentimes send someone physically to your warehouse to do a physical count to test, to make sure that you're borrowing against an asset that exists physically in reality. And it's not some fake made up thing.

Melissa (34:51)

Yeah, what you just went through, yep.

Yes.

Mm-hmm. yeah.

Jon Blair (35:13)

And the reason this is all required is because everything's tied to the asset base. So they have to have, they have no other data feed to confirm that the asset base that they're using to borrow or to lend against is actually real. so when is this worth it? This is worth it when the advance rate is right. The partner is right. It matches your cash conversion cycle the right way. And the ebbs and the flows of your working capital, if there's a good match there, right. Then it can be worth the effort. And if it's a lender who is truly helpful, that can quickly expand line sizes and is willing to give you over advances when you need them situationally. We had a great partner like this at Guardian Bikes. And then at some point it stopped working because they couldn't do in transit and in transit was our need for that season. Right. And so what's the point of making all this? The level of effort put in, choose the line first and foremost that the actual capital availability moves in concert with your working capital needs. Don't use one that doesn't match and that fights against your working capital needs. Then and only then decide if you want to put in the work to get that loan and maintain that loan.

Melissa (36:18)

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely.

Absolutely. And I would also say looking into kind of vertical specific ABLs is super important because nine times out of 10, they will be more understanding of what a CPG ABL cares more about cold chain logistics on your supply chain and if you're managing that better, right? Versus somebody who, maybe, I'm not sure you guys were with at Guardian, but that is not an issue. So really finding somebody who understands what your specific supply chain for your specific, I would say like eComm or market vertical is, is super big. And that's why Settle is so big on helping CPG and eComm because we know it well. We understand the problems that those founders are going through and we really believe we have a solution that actually helps with that. So I would say that in every kind of lending product that you think about, at this point, right? In the era of fintech, there is likely a vertical type that will help you much better. And so that's definitely something to consider when you are shopping around. But yeah, my gosh, Jon, as you can see, is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to different financing products. I was also learning things here. When it comes to ABLs, a lot of the things that you said I was aware of, but other things that I was not aware of just because Settle is not an ABL, but we work

Jon Blair (37:31)

Totally.

Melissa (37:54)

and do like lot of trainings into understanding how they work. so absolutely spot on and definitely a lot of due diligence. I think, yeah, it's just really the saying comes to mind is the juice worth the squeeze when it comes to this financing product. And when are you at that level of sophistication where you're kind of comfortable with, yeah, totally, right. Yeah.

Jon Blair (38:09)

Totally.

be able to manage it. Yeah. Well, and that's another reason,

like actually, I think the vertical specific thing you mentioned is like, don't underestimate the importance of that. That's actually why Free to Grow. We are vertical specific. We are bookkeeping and fractional CFO for growing eComm brands. And it's because we can provide so much more value by understanding your business model and your scaling challenges at a deep, deep level than someone who's horizontal trying to learn those lessons with you, right? And the lending partner thing from a vertical perspective is just as important.

Melissa (38:45)

Yes. Absolutely. I know. Yeah. I know. Sometimes I'll go to like these. I love all of our accounting partners, but sometimes I'll go to their pages and the amount of verticals that they serve where it's like 10 to 15 different verticals. I'm like, sure, you can have a different accountant that has like a specialty, know, or CPA that has a specialty into that specific vertical, but make sure if you are going that route that they have somebody who knows their stuff, you know, and has like that background and can advise in that. But if not, I always recommend doing the vertical specific thing for sure. based on kind of the earlier conversation that you like were talking about, talk to me about like the importance of actually using a fractional CFO versus your accounting firm when it comes to making decisions like this, because I have seen, you know, accounting firms advise on capital, but sometimes, yeah, it's like, is that really the best thing where I've even seen certain accounting firms, you know, refer to settle, but we're probably not the best solution for them based on certain things that I see. So talk me through like how I guess what's your edge in that space? Because you talked about a lot of things that I think maybe if you are a CPA and hey, I used to be an accountant, so no shame or shade here. You know, exactly. Yeah. So which I think most folks are, right? And so kind of talk me through the advantages of going with somebody who actually has that CFO background, like fractional CFO, and that is what they've been focusing on versus kind of just saying,

Jon Blair (40:13)

Hey, so did I. So I was an accountant first too, so.

Melissa (40:30)

Yeah, we provide fractional CFO services, but that's not really like their specialty.

Jon Blair (40:32)

For sure.

Yeah, it's funny because I had a post a couple weeks ago about the difference between an accountant and a CFO and I believe you were the first comment and you said, woo, this, you said this, this was spicy, Jon. So, okay, so in its simplest form, accountants are focused on the past and CFOs are focused on the future. Now, unpacking that, there's a lot underneath those two bullet points but, accountants are specialists at recording what has happened in a way that it can be interpreted by various parties, right? To make different decisions about the future. So accountants are 100 % needed from a bookkeeping standpoint. And I'll even say in terms of tax accountants, they're needed as well because tax compliance and tax savings is a huge, important thing for a growing profitable brand. But.

Melissa (41:17)

Yes, totally.

100%.

Jon Blair (41:30)

It's not the same thing as a CFO, right? A CFO may have come from an accounting background, but a CFO also may have come from an FP &A or an investment banking or a private equity background. They don't have to have come from an accounting background. Now, they need to know how to use financial statements, which are prepared by accountants, right, to make forward-looking decisions, but they don't have to actually be the preparers of said financial statements, right? And so a CFO, there are a lot of people out there, hence the post that I made a couple weeks ago, and I talk about this a lot in my content. If your CFO is really just a glorified accountant, they're not a CFO. It doesn't mean they're useless. You still need the accounting. But a CFO is a strategist who helps you build the vision you have in your head as a founder of the future you're trying to build. A CFO helps enable that, right? They use...

Melissa (42:03)

Hehehe.

Yes. Yes.

Jon Blair (42:26)

Amongst other things, they use the data that accountants record to help make those decisions. But they understand things like forecasting, scaling in an, in an eComm from the eComm vertical perspective, they understand how to scale ad spend profitably. They understand how to build teams profitably. They understand how to manage inventory and they understand again, amongst other things, how they understand

Melissa (42:44)

Yes, so important.

Jon Blair (42:55)

capital structure. They understand how to think about retained earnings versus equity, outside equity capital versus debt capital and how to stack those things, going back to capital stack, to stack your capital in the most optimal way such that it meets your needs so that you have the capital you need to invest and achieve your growth goals. But at the same time, balancing that, against risk and liability to lenders and cost of capital. And so it's not optimizing for either one of those. I'm not optimizing just for capital availability or just for cost of capital or just for liability. I'm looking at all three of those things and I'm saying, how can I, as the CFO help the founder achieve their goals while keeping all of these three in balance? Right? And so CFOs are enablers.

of achieving your goals and we know how to take tools, debt being one of those tools, and how to advise the brand founder on how to use those tools to get from where they are today to where they want to go.

Melissa (44:05)

I love that. Look at that. I just want to start a business just so I could work with you guys.

Jon Blair (44:09)

man, so really quick, because I want everyone to get a chance to hear about Settle's Capital solution. what I'll do just in the interest of time is I'll give everyone a quick high flyover of SBA loans and term loans, and then we're going to go to Settle Capital. So SBA loans, I have a lot of experience with this because of being in the emerging brand world. SBA loans.

Melissa (44:17)

Yeah.

Yes, let's do it.

Jon Blair (44:37)

They seem, there's a lot of allure around them because they are lowest cost of capital because they're subsidized by the government. And it's like, man, I can get that much money for that little amount, but it's a trap if you're really trying to scale. And the reason is heavy underwriting, lots of restrictions around your cap table and other things that you could potentially trip, tons of liability and you can't really remove any of that liability. You're gonna have a PG, it's guaranteed. You actually can't negotiate that out.

A lot of stuff you can't negotiate because the government won't back it if you negotiate those things. So if you're willing to put up basically your personal net worth, it could be a great way to get a cheap source of capital. But if you're growing fast and you think you need to refi that SBA loan soon, it's probably not worth all the fees and all the underwriting because you're gonna end up replacing that capital source with a more expensive one. You can refi an SBA loan with an SBA loan.

Melissa (45:15)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (45:36)

But again, it comes with all those same restrictions and all those same liabilities. so it, I see SBA loans better for businesses that are stable and not growing super fast where you can actually keep that source of capital for a long period of time. They do have ABLs, but usually it's a term loan, meaning you're paying it back over an amortized period, usually five, seven or 10 years. And so unless that meets your needs and you're not growing super fast and you don't think you have to refi it soon.

Melissa (45:46)

Yes. Yes.

Right.

Jon Blair (46:06)

SBA loans tend to not be the greatest solution. I learned this the hard way. We got a couple of SBA loans at Guardian Bikes and we had to refile out of both of them because we were going so fast and they no longer met our needs. And where did we go after that? Non-bank ABL. And so that's a little bit about SBA loans, but settle capital. We talk about MCAs, lines of credits, ABLs, SBA loans and term loans. Where is Settle different? And how do you see the way that you structure your capital solutions as really providing an edge to brands and like actually meeting their needs.

Melissa (46:41)

Yeah, good question. Oftentimes it requires a lot of education. I speak to a lot of CFOs, fractional CFOs, accountants and founders. And it's kind of hard to wrap your head around Settle because I do think it's kind of unique in the way that it works. And the reason being is because I think it's a super valuable resource to brands where they're like, I don't know, this sounds too good to be true. It's really this simple. And I'm like, yeah.

One on the underwriting end, as far as it just not being like the super time consuming, lots of due diligence that we do, but we do enough to make sure we're going to provide you with a capital solution that is healthy for your business. So that's really important. So I would say that when talking to founders about this, I really like to kind of position us as far as like where you are with your business, where maybe you...

don't want to use MCAs anymore, right? And you're like, I can't do that anymore. It's sucking up my cashflow. I'm tired of giving a percentage of sales. But maybe you're not sophisticated or large enough yet for an ABL or a large line of credit. You don't have the sales yet for that because a lot of ABLs do have minimum revenue requirements. So that's kind of where I think Settle fits perfectly.

When it comes to cost too, we're nudged right there with much lower APRs compared to MCA and only a little bit higher compared to ABLs and lines of credit. what we honestly do is really provide a solution to founders, to CFOs who are just looking for a simple, meaningful solution to pay for inventory that makes sense for their business.

And so essentially you can kind of think of us, our founder Alec came from the company Affirm. You can kind of think of it as like a B2B buy now pay later for your inventory and ad spend. The fact that we even include ad spend shows you how like focused we are in helping eComm brands who are very focused on that as well. And the way we work is we finance your invoices to your vendors and then you pay us back later. What that allows us to do is provide you with better rates because some of our competitors, what they're doing is just advancing you money and charging you a premium for that. But we're taking a little bit more of a different approach when it comes to our risk. But what that does is allows us to provide value so that we can actually provide a cost for you that makes sense for your business and won't. I would say like...

compromise your margins too much compared to an MCA. And at the beginning of your business, that's super important to weigh that out when you're thinking about a debt solution, right? How does this actually impact my margins, my retained earnings, like Jon was talking about? So I would say if you are a business that is over MCAs, you don't want to deal with somebody taking a percentage of your sales. You don't want to deal with a daily, weekly kind of payback.

but you don't quite qualify for those larger kind of solutions like ABLs or larger lines of credit. Settle is the perfect solution for you. So I'm always happy to talk to somebody, even if Settle is not the right solution at the moment. Like I talk to founders all day about just debt in general, hence financing Fairy Godmother. I will have a conversation with you. Anybody on my team will have a conversation with you on how we can help. But last thing I wanted to say is we also rolled out our inventory management solution.

Jon Blair (50:17)

Yeah, I was gonna ask about that.

Melissa (50:18)

That also we're really looking to solve, because we understand the relationship between capital and inventory so much and how important that is to your business. But now we want to provide an additional tool to helping founders really get a good understanding of their inventory, how that's connected to AP, which we've talked about on different occasions. And we're really just looking to be a very CPG ECOM focused light ERP that really

is solving real problems for founders. so yeah, if that's something that you need to understand your land of COGS you need a one source of truth solution for your inventory, we're happy to also have that conversation as well. So yeah.

Jon Blair (51:03)

Yeah, I definitely recommend just checking it out because Settle can run your AP workflow, right? And you can just use it standalone for AP management as a solution, as an alternative to bill.com, right? But inside that, there is an IMS capabilities where you can actually purchase and track inventory at landed costs. And then if you need financing for purchasing inventory, you can do that all native in the platform as well. So you can manage your AP, your inventory and finance it all in the same place. So I highly recommend checking it out.

Melissa (51:31)

Boom.

purchasing cycle. Yeah. Yes.

Thank you, Jon.

That was beautiful. More to come, too. We're building more.

Jon Blair (51:43)

Yeah, yeah, I'm looking forward to it. so, I mean, we're gonna probably have to have another conversation on the show with you because we only got through, we didn't get through it all, but we got through a lot of really meaty stuff. And so, before we land the plane though, I always like to ask a personal question. So, in addition to being a fairy godmother on the side, what's another, what's a little known fact about Melissa that you think, people might find shocking or surprising.

Melissa (52:14)

Yeah,

I honestly, it's my go-to and it's so easy anytime I start a new company or I'm like meeting a new group of people. This always shocks folks, but I'm actually a triplet and so it kind of, yeah.

Jon Blair (52:25)

Wow, that's awesome.

Melissa (52:27)

It kind of comes with like a myriad of silly questions. Like, can read each other's minds and things like that. it's quite like the conversation booster because I got a lot of questions. I don't usually lead with it. we just did our our I don't even though I just brought it up right now. But like a lot of people, we just did our Settle offsite in Cedar Lakes. If you need somewhere to do a retreat, please go there. was phenomenal. But it a lot of people had no idea and they found out like after they've known me for like a year, like you know, or year and a half or however long it's been. They're like, wait, what? And I'm like, yeah, you know. But yeah, it's pretty wild. people are like, what's that like? And I'm like, I don't know. Like, what's it like being a single child or somebody with just like a sibling that's one year younger? You know, it's not that different, I guess. You know, but it's pretty wild. My sisters, yeah.

Jon Blair (53:11)

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

question is really for your parents.

What was that like? Not for you, right?

Melissa (53:16)

Right, I know, I know, totally.

Wild, wild, lots of love, but so much fun. yeah, was my sisters are my best friends. So we call each other womb mates. And yeah, so it's definitely a fun fact for sure. What about for you, Jon? What's I mean, does anybody ask you like what what's like a fun fact for you? Yes.

Jon Blair (53:30)

Hahaha!

Yeah, that's funny. I love having guests who actually like turn the tables on me. I mean, some

people know about this because I recently, I recently like, I guess announced this or like made it a part of my content. But 12 years ago, I was in a touring thrash metal band called Fates Demise. And I still write heavy metal music to this day. I'm actually working on a record, short one, four songs.

Melissa (53:58)

I love that.

Jon Blair (54:07)

almost done writing it and my hope, my goal is to launch it or to release it sometime in 2025. So when I'm not chasing around my three little kids and growing, Free to Grow and helping eComm Founders scale, I am writing heavy metal music and I thoroughly enjoy it.

Melissa (54:07)

That is so cool.

Amazing.

Ooh, full plate. I love that. You

know why I love that? Because I feel like sometimes folks in finance or accounting, and I get this bad rep that like, you're like right brain, da da da. But it's like everybody has a creative outlet, likely. They just sometimes don't know it. Sometimes it's as obvious as I am a musician, right? But like...

Jon Blair (54:36)

Totally.

Melissa (54:42)

Everybody has like the ability to be a creative and a logical person like in their trade maybe, but then they have like this amazing creative outlet. So I love that. Hopefully, you know, maybe when the kids get a little older, you can start maybe touring for that.

Jon Blair (54:47)

Agreed.

I have this dream that I'll somehow get a band together and we don't need to go on some really long tour, but even just like a week or something, I love playing music on stage live and so one of these days I will get a chance to do it and let my kids watch. Well, Melissa, this conversation was jam-packed full of...

Melissa (55:07)

Yeah, something. That sounds amazing. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's the best. Yeah.

That sounds amazing. Awesome.

Good stuff.

Jon Blair (55:25)

really practical information about a topic, debt financing, that is front and center for every brand that I encounter. So I appreciate you coming on and dropping knowledge on some of these areas that quite frankly I don't think there's enough education in the marketplace about, so I appreciate your willingness to do that. Before we completely land the plane though, where can people find out more information about you and about Settle?

Melissa (55:43)

Yeah.

Yeah, you guys can find me on LinkedIn. Melissa Cafagna is my name on LinkedIn. And we'll make sure to link that so you guys can give me a follow. I love talking about CPG brands. I post about CPG brands all the time. Founders within the CPG world specifically, they're so inspirational to me. And Settle, www.settle.com. Do not settle for a lame capital solution, just kidding, all capital solution are great yeah, yeah, they are, they are. Okay, but Settle is the best, we're the best, I'm sorry. No, but yes, www.settle.com. You can also reach out to me on LinkedIn as well. You can slide in my DMs, I'm happy to just direct you in the right path, whatever you're interested in, yeah.

Jon Blair (56:21)

Yeah

Hahaha

Definitely reachout to Melissa if you have any questions about how Settle can help you guys with either AP inventory management and or inventory financing. don't forget if you want more helpful tips on scaling a profit focused DTC brand, consider following me, Jon Blair on LinkedIn. You'll see Melissa probably in some of the comments there. And if you're interested in learning more about how Free to Grow's DTC accountants and fractional CFOs can help your brand increase profit and cashflow as you scale, check us out at freetogrowcfo.com.

Jon Blair (57:10) And until next time, scale on. Thanks, Melissa.

Melissa (57:13) Bye. Thanks for having me, Jon.

How to Love the Journey Scaling to 7-Figures and Beyond

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast, host Jon Blair and guest Clay Banks discuss the realities and misconceptions of starting and scaling an e-commerce brand. They explore the importance of enjoying the entrepreneurial journey, learning from failures, and the significance of simplicity in product development and marketing strategies. Clay shares insights from his entrepreneurial journey, including the rapid success of his brand GloriLight, and emphasizes the need for creativity and authenticity in marketing. The conversation also touches on the role of faith in entrepreneurship and the best practices for raising capital.

Key Takeaways

• Simplicity in product design leads to faster market entry.

• Invest in creativity to drive growth and attract investors.

• Understand your North Star metric to guide your business.

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

Clay Banks- https://www.linkedin.com/in/claybanks/

Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/

InPaceLine - https://www.inpaceline.com/

GloriLight - https://glorilight.com/

Meet Clay Banks

Clay Banks is a seasoned entrepreneur and growth strategist with a proven track record of bringing ideas to market and scaling them to success. Over 23 years, he has co-founded or led eight companies, raising more than $7 million in seed and venture capital. Specializing in go-to-market strategy, Clay has successfully launched over 23 hardware and software products, driving their adoption across direct-to-consumer and B2B channels.

In 2022, Clay achieved a successful exit, selling his equity position in HavenLock—best known for its appearance on ABC’s Shark Tank and features in Forbes, TechCrunch, and Entrepreneur—to a venture capital firm. Today, Clay focuses on advising and investing in early-stage startups and short-term rental properties, leveraging his expertise to help founders navigate growth and achieve market fit.

Passionate about enabling visionary entrepreneurs, Clay offers mentorship and consulting in growth strategies, eCommerce scaling, and operational excellence. Outside of business, he’s a five-time Ironman, published author, and dedicated advocate for turning big visions into impactful results.

Transcript

~~~

00:00 Introduction

02:14 Clay Banks' Entrepreneurial Journey

08:25 The Pursuit of Freedom in Entrepreneurship

19:17 Scaling GloriLight: Lessons Learned

27:07 Simplicity in Product Development and Marketing

27:33 Validating Product Assumptions Quickly

29:24 Lessons from Past Failures in Marketing

32:53 The Importance of Authentic Content Creation

37:34 The Journey of Content Creation and Its Purpose

38:45 Best Practices for Raising Capital

44:09 The Role of Purpose in Brand Success

51:35 Faith and Control in Entrepreneurship

55:07 Closing Thoughts

Jon Blair (00:01)

Yo, yo, what's happening everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast where we dive deep into conversations about scaling a DTC brand with a profit focused mindset. I'm your host, Jon Blair, founder of Free to Grow CFO. We're the go-to outsource finance and accounting firm for eight and nine figure DTC brands. And today I'm here with my buddy, Clay Banks. He's had his hands in so many things. I wasn't exactly sure.

how to introduce him, but as of today, he is the founder of GloriLight a growing e-commerce brand, and he also runs a coaching business called InPaceLine, kind of a strategic growth firm that helps accelerate visionary brands. He's got a much more extensive background than just that, which I'll let him tell in a second, but Clay, thanks for joining, man. How are things going in your world today?

Clay Banks (00:53)

Glad to be here, Jon. Today's Cyber Monday, so things are going good for us today. Our plan is working as designed. I'm able to take time away from those busy hours of e-commerce hype season and come be with you. So I'm glad to be spending our time today together.

Jon Blair (01:10)

Ha ha ha!

Yeah man, call this, at Free to Grow, we call this the eCommerce Super Bowl, Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend, and there's like so much build up to it, so much prep. Most brands have been prepping for not just weeks, but months, and depending on lead times, maybe back in the early summer, starting to plan out purchases, and so it's definitely an exciting weekend for the eComm world, but look, thanks for joining. This, this, we're gonna chat about today is honestly near and dear to my heart. I've kind of coined it realities and misconceptions and lessons learned of starting and scaling an e-comm brand. Now I will say the concepts we talk about today, there's gonna be plenty that are more universal to just business in general, right? Starting and growing a business, but as we always do, we'll be chatting about specific examples and strategies around scaling an e-comm brand.

But the bottom line is, you know, I'll just come out right at the beginning of the episode letting everybody know, what we're here to talk about is that at the end of the day when you decide to start and scale a brand, it's all about loving the journey that you're on, honing the craft, not necessarily getting to an end point. And we have a lot of stuff to unpack around this subject today and I'm excited for the conversation. So before we dive into chatting about that though, Clay, walk us through your entrepreneurial journey. It's extensive.

And walk me through it and how you got to where you are today

Clay Banks (02:49)

Yeah, I first kind of got my first bug, so to speak, when I was a sophomore in college. I went to the University of Tennessee back in 2001. I got it right here. I keep it right here on my desk. I published this book called A Voswalk. It's a compilation of fan stories about how they became a fan of the University of Tennessee. And that was back when Amazon was just a bookstore. Put yourself back into 2001.

Jon Blair (03:16)

Hahaha

Clay Banks (03:19)

People still bought books at Borders Books and those types of brick and mortar stores. Back then, crowdsourcing wasn't a thing, wasn't even a term, but we went out to tailgates across campus and we crowdsourced stories from people. And we published those in the book and got the rights to put the power T on it and got the color orange, which was patented, and sold them across the state. And every Books-A-Million Borders book, Sam's Club,

Walmart, Walgreens, all across the state and had three business partners. Still very dear friends with those guys today.

And after selling an entire couple of football seasons worth of books, we looked at our bank account and there was no money there. There was no profit margin. And it was a tough lesson learned. When we sold the book for 20, it cost us about $9 to print it, but we sold it to distributors, the bookstores, for around 11. So gross profit was really around about a couple bucks, but by the time we paid gas and marketing expenses

Jon Blair (04:09)

Hahaha

Clay Banks (04:30)

and we had enough for a couple burritos after that. But really fell in love with the idea of entrepreneurship and the idea of controlling my own destiny and not having a limit on my potential. I carried different jobs. I worked different economic development roles, recruiting companies to the state. Through that, I was always reading books or listening to podcasts about entrepreneurship, about raising venture capital, about scaling up brands, about building teams. I'd started a handful of companies that that never really got out of the gate. I started a mobile web development company that built mobile websites for Blackberry phones. So if you can remember back when you had the Korty keyboard, we built websites or small micro sites for Blackberrys. We built, I did a tech transfer company out of the University of Memphis. Never got the first dollar of revenue with that one.

Jon Blair (05:22)

Hahaha.

Clay Banks (05:40)

It took a handful of kind of getting up to the plate and striking out to kind of really understand what entrepreneurship was about. And then in 2014, I partnered with a guy and we invented and patented a home security product that could detect and prevent home break-ins. And this was a very complex product to make. was metal stamping, powder coating, injection molding, firmware software, electronics that communicated over to an Android and iOS that communicated to Google and Alexa and then ultimately we spun that product into a product that we sold into schools to prevent active shooters from getting into classrooms and that one we raised at the time when I left the company about seven million dollars in capital from about 90 different investors and you know, a team of about 13 people growing that business. So yeah, that's a little bit about my journey. Shark Tank, season 10, yeah, go back, one of the most watched episodes, I think in the most shared episode of all time. We can get into that if you want to.

Jon Blair (06:42)

And Shark Tank, don't forget, don't forget, don't forget Shark Tank.

That's actually how we met. Well, the funny thing is that's actually how we met when I first started. So Clay has a very tight connection to the beginnings of Free to Grow CFO actually. I first left Guardian Bikes, another Shark Tank company, and I served, in addition to the CFO role, I served the business as the COO. And I was out just networking, calling on my network literally a few weeks into having started Free to Grow.

and was talking to another fellow Christian who was like, hey man, you've got to meet this other guy. He's out in Tennessee who, and that was Derek or, depending on who you're, who, how you know him, Derek or William, I believe. And he lives, I believe on Clay Street. And I told him my story. I told, I told Derek slash William my story. And he was like, and it included Shark Tank being a COO. And he's like, you have got to meet my friend Clay.

Clay Banks (07:33)

Derek, yeah.

Jon Blair (07:54)

who was a founder of a Shark Tank business and he was the COO and he's looking for his next thing. And so I met Clay just a couple weeks into having started Free to Grow. And so that's one of the reasons I'm so excited about this conversation because we just hit it off immediately with just, I mean, effectively just sharing stories and ideas and thoughts about the right and the wrong way to think about scaling a brand. And even got to work on a project together, a brand called Curb Cover.

that was really exciting and a lot of fun. okay, there's a couple things that you mentioned in your background that I want to kind of like dive in on. One is this concept of like freedom and controlling your own destiny, right? I always say, talk about this a lot in my content, that like, why did you get into business in the first place, founder? Usually the word freedom, or the idea of freedom, is somewhere in there, right? That's like, that is the entrepreneurial ideal.

is that I'm gonna pave my own path and I'm gonna be free to work on the things I want to work on and hopefully become financially free through my business, right? And so we at Free to Grow, we work specifically with profit-focused e-commerce brands. there's this tight connection between being profitable and being able to control your own destiny, right? What are some of the things that come to mind when you start thinking about freedom, entrepreneurial freedom, and either where you see that go right or you see it go wrong.

Clay Banks (09:27)

Yeah, I've taken 23 plus years to kind of really realize this, that I'm more passionate about the process of...

doing the work it takes to build something bigger than yourself. The result, well at first I started out thinking about the result, about the finish line of what that would look like when we exited, we IPO'd or whatever the dream was. I can tell you it's always gonna be something different than what you expected. And I kind of just began enjoying the process it takes to get a brand to, know, to...profitability and then to, you know, first revenue and then profitability and the first one it took a good seven years for us to really hit a good stride in revenue and then when I sold that company the next one I started, company called GloriLight, was much faster because the lessons that I had learned in the previous one were

there weren't many headaches, weren't as many, you know, where to go. know, most of the path was at least figured out for that business and it got to profitability much faster, it got to scale much faster, albeit it be a simpler product, but...

To me, I just love building something bigger than myself and enjoying the process. I'm a five-time Ironman. you know, ran down the red carpet five times in different countries here in end in the US and I wouldn't do that if I didn't like training every day, every week, you know? And I enjoy the process of getting, the finish line is what everybody sees. It's the stuff that people don't see that I enjoy.

Jon Blair (11:12)

for sure. Well, yeah, you know, it's funny.

Totally.

Well, you know what though, if you study any part, like quote successful person, this could be an athlete, it can be, you know, someone like Warren Buffett or Mark Cuban, you know, presidents, like you, if you study someone who you admire in terms of their accomplishments, you know what's the common theme that you find behind all of them? They were all like super obsessed with the process, with the journey, right?

and the outcomes of accomplishment and success, that just ended up being the results of being obsessed with the journey, right? And I'm a musician, I'm a heavy metal musician and like heavy metal guitar players are like the best guitar players in the world in my opinion. And when I watch some of them play, I can get this feeling of like, man, where did they find, where did they learn these shortcuts from?

And when I go and I watch YouTube videos or I read articles about these guys, you find out they practice 12 hours a day for years, right? And even to this day, they maybe don't have to practice 12 hours a day anymore, but they still have to maintain, right? They have to maintain, they have to always push themselves. And so if you are just living, in my experience, if you're living for the end, that's when you experience burnout. Because what you do is you push yourself to these,

unsustainable limits, right, going, this will pay off when I reach the end. And you realize you don't know if you will reach the end, when you'll reach the end, or what the end will even look like. And so if you want to be sustainable, you've got to just enjoy the process. Do you agree with that? And do you have anything else to add to that?

Clay Banks (13:04)

know, a thousand percent. When I first started Haven Lock back in 2014, my business partner and I kind of both agreed, okay, this is like a 10-year plan and we were gonna put everything we had into it for 10 years, but our vision was this big elaborate like IPO slash

Purchase buyout by another company where we would we would all go and we would rent out a big room and you know all of our investors and friends and family would be there and we would have a nice dinner and that was kind of the the dream right, but when when when I sold my portion of that business I sold it to a venture capital firm when the money hit my bank account and I was done and I'd signed off on all the papers and everything was I was completely divested of that company

I looked at my wife on the couch, we had a glass of wine and we're like, it's done, cheers. It was not that big. That thing I'd built up in my mind was this big event. And ultimately, it was still a successful event, but I got to share that with my wife, but it wasn't what I was planning. That's okay, right? And now looking back, it was those...

Jon Blair (14:00)

Yeah

Clay Banks (14:18)

You know, I was working two jobs. I was working for the state of Tennessee recruiting companies. It was my full-time day job. So I was getting up at like four or five in the morning to work on this company and then work until about seven or eight in the morning, then go to that job and then come back and then work until sometimes midnight working on the company. And fortunately, I don't have to have that kind of cadence and rhythm now, but

There's something to be said about what's done at dark is brought to the light, right?

It's those things that you do when no one's looking and the consistent reps that you have to put in You mentioned like playing the guitar You've got to learn those skills and those skills never really go away so that They just compound on each other you get better you get faster You get better at making decisions you get better who you pick to work with like that's another big one for me It's like I can now

Jon Blair (15:08)

Totally.

Totally.

Clay Banks (15:18)

decipher like character traits a little bit better than I could early on. So yeah, these all take, you know, reps and practice to learn those skills.

Jon Blair (15:31)

I'm actually not, I'm not exaggerating at all. I'm getting the goosebumps right now because I'm a lifetime entrepreneur just like you as well. And these lessons that we're talking about, this is the life of an entrepreneur. And like to me, this is what lights me up, right? Is like, hey, even though I haven't had that end all be all, whatever, liquidity or monetization or exit like event yet, right?

I'm growing as an entrepreneur and I'm becoming wiser, right? And the thing that's hard, here's the thing that's hard. I want everyone listening to this to just like for a moment, like free themself of the burden of like, of the idea they have in their mind about what their life and their business is supposed to be like. Cause the reality is, and I'm speaking from a place of like pure vulnerability right now, we get down because we don't.

We can't reconcile where we're at today with this lavish idea we have in our mind as entrepreneurs. And it's so hard because you go out there and you're like, I mean, you get on LinkedIn or you get on Twitter, you see the content, you read the books and you're like, damn, all these guys got to figure it out. They're freaking crushing it. Like look at Mark Cuban, look at freaking Warren Buffett, look at Kobe Bryant, like any, look.

Clay Banks (16:49)

any of the middle micro-influencers out there that are, it's a perceived thing that they got it overnight and those people earned it and it took them a long time to get there and most people can't justify that.

Jon Blair (16:53)

Totally.

Totally.

And to this day, but I'll even say, and I know I'm just gonna go out on a limb and just say, I know you feel the same way. We still question ourselves every single day. Like every day I'm like, man, I'm not good enough. Every day I'm like, what's Free to Grow? And like in reality, we serve 31 brands. I met Clay less than three years ago, I had one client. We have a...

Clay Banks (17:26)

was gonna say, there's like one or two.

Jon Blair (17:28)

We have a team of 10 people that are all amazing and the founders we work with are awesome and like, I bet you next year we'll be at 40 clients, maybe even more than that. And I'm not saying that to brag, I'm saying that like, we are succeeding and every day I wake up and I'm like, man, what, is it enough? And like, where am I failing, right? And so I'm saying this because I want, if you're listening to this episode, you're listening to this episode because you're looking for tools and tips and tricks.

Clay Banks (17:44)

Is it enough?

Jon Blair (17:58)

to do a better job of scaling your brand. And right now I just wanna free you and say, just keep going, just stay in the game. Be willing to say, it's only a failure if you don't learn from it, right? And failure is an event, it's not a person, it's not you, it is an event. And here's the beautiful thing when you're ready to finally embrace failure, is you can say, hey, that event failed.

that thing failed, that decision failed, that product failed, that ad campaign failed, but I'm alive and I'm gonna live a fight another day and I can sit down and I can say, okay, what went right, what went wrong, and what am I gonna change? And if you do that, I've got on my screen here in my notes, Clay started eight businesses, six failed. Six out of eight failed, right?

two became million dollar plus brands and the most recent one, GloriLight, which Clay basically just started, that one happened the most quickly, right? Like years and years into the game after failing, right? And so where I'm leading with this is like, Clay, let's talk about GloriLight, an eComm brand that reached seven figures faster than any of your other businesses. Walk me through just the first things that come to mind, the learnings from your previous business failures that allowed you to start this business so much more wisely and achieve that scale and profitability so much more quickly.

Clay Banks (19:27)

So let's dive deep here. When I looked at GloriLight and the idea behind it, first of all, it's a kids night light that projects.

Bible verses onto the ceiling. Okay, and it's got this little tray that you put in these these discs and it it shines a light through the film onto the ceiling. So it's in high definition. When I first got this idea from a business partner Matt, I looked and said, how fast can we get to an income producing product? Right? And before, my whole entrepreneurial journey before, it was like, let's build a product that people would love, but we overcomplicated it. We made it too complicated. It took forever to get to market we had to have it connected to apps and all this other stuff, all this extra bells and whistles that really the core value of it was preventing a home from being broken into. So my now learning is how fast can I get something to market that adds

Value to someone without being too complicated. could have we could have made this way complicated We could have tried to create an app that works with it We could have tried to create a community of people sharing Bible verses and and teaching their kids We could have tried that right? But no, let's just try to first get out the light as fast as possible to start, you know gauging The opportunity and I think a lot of times entrepreneurs have this big vision and they try to have it all ready before they go to market and you have to kind of really start with what you think is the magical power that you have in that product or that idea that really provides that desired outcome that you want people to have and get to market much sooner. So with GloriLight, we were revenue positive within the first probably maybe 60 days, 58, 60 days. And the reason it took that long was because we had to order the product and have it manufactured and shipped here, right? I think we could have gotten it done sooner, but the first one, took me about four and a half years.

It's a big difference. Yes, it's a different product, but now I'm looking at when I'm coaching other entrepreneurs, it's like how do we strip out all the bells and whistles and focus on the one thing that just makes you unique? Let's start with that.

Jon Blair (22:09)

Really quick, I want to draw something out here and then we'll keep going on the lessons that you learned that help you to get Glorylight started and scale a lot faster. There's a financial concept here that you're drawing out or that you're dancing around that I want to just explicitly say because I see it a lot with the dozens of brands that we work with and the other dozens of brands that I talk to and we don't end up working with, which is that when you're sitting down and you're designing a product,

Right? One, it has to truly start with meeting a need. Right? And you're talking about like that one thing that like drives value to the consumer so that they'll even want to vote yes for that product with their dollars. Right? But then there's a second thing that I think, I think it's more intuitive for founders to go like, I get that. Like, let's get some revenue traction. Right? But the second thing is, and this ties back to the simplicity piece of what you're, what you're walking through here is like,

Is there enough margin in this product for it to even make sense to scale it? Right? Like you may get revenue traction and at the price point and you're looking at your variable costs, there's just like no money to cover marketing. Right? And even if there is, there's knowing what your cack.

like the range that your CAC is going to probably sit in because you can't really affect that too much. There are just CAC bans at certain spend levels, right, for the most part. Can those even be covered by the unit economics of your product? And as you get more more complicated, right, there's more and more risk that that's going to drive more and more variable cost, which is going to leave you less and less on a unit economic basis for dollars to cover marketing. And then hopefully, cover more than marketing. Cover overhead and drop profitability to the bottom line. what have you seen using GloriLight as an example, like being more simple, what has that done for your cost and your margin structure for the product?

Clay Banks (24:12)

First and foremost it allowed us to bring on affiliates or content creators to tell our story. we were starting this brand, we sell to moms and grandmoms. Okay, that is our core demographic. 100 % moms and grandmoms. Guess what? I am not. I am not a mom or a grandmom and neither is my business partner Matt or my business partner Brett in this company. So we had to say, okay, who's going to be the face of the brand, the marketing, the outward position of the brand, right? So we had to make it so simple that any mom or grandmom could get the light and understand what it does, and so they could talk about it. We have over almost 400 affiliates now that are creating content on our behalf and sharing it on their social media accounts. So that is reducing our customer acquisition costs and our marketing spend, but we do supplement that. But if we were to try to create all of that on our own, that message wouldn't be as simple to come across. if we like with going back to the Haven Lock days.

We thought it was important for us to be a tech focused product, meaning it integrated with Alexa, it integrated with Google, it integrated with Android and iOS. It had digital keys and you could share encrypted keys and get a schedule when someone comes and goes, right? And all of our branding and all of our marketing was around the tech features and it was falling flat. Well guess what? People didn't care about that. People wanted to sleep safe at night.

especially women whose husbands traveled, right? And they were gone. The women wanted to be safe at home with their kids. So we repositioned the brand about being safe, about protecting your kids, having peace of mind and safety. And that's where our marketing took off.

when I say go to that one thing that has the value, find that one thing, right? And for Haven, it took us a long time to find that. And once we did, that's where it unlocked. But if we would have started there, we would have gotten to profitability, we would have gotten to better marketing earlier on than we did. And sometimes entrepreneurs, especially first or second time entrepreneurs, They want to build this big grand vision that's too complicated for people to understand right now. They can't really see it because they don't know that one thing that it's about or the value that it brings. we try to now coach brands to identifying what is that magical power that separates you from the others, right?

Jon Blair (26:57)

Yeah.

Well, and another thing too, excuse me, is that the more complicated it is, even if you can get the consumer to understand it, the more complicated it is to manage operationally. And the more complicated it is to manage operationally, oftentimes you see that that affects profitability negatively, right? Because it's so complicated. You have manufacturing challenges and issues.

There's probably just higher costs overall in your bill of materials. And so I think what Clay is getting at here is like, if you're trying to launch a brand or even just launch a new product, right, within your existing brand, figure out how to get something simple that really tests your assumption around what is that one thing. Get it to market as quickly as you can because the only way to really validate it is to get actual consumer feedback and the best way to do it is to try to sell it. But I see a lot of brands make big mistakes where they'll launch a big product and they'll do a big product launch and they're excited about the product. They're personally excited about the product, but they haven't validated what kind of traction it's going to get. And they order this big lot of it, right? It arrives. They do this launch campaign.

And if it flops, they're stuck with all this inventory and all this cash tied up in inventory. And now all of a sudden they're slashing prices, right? And so like they've, they're completely diminishing the value of the product. so, you know, just what, what Clay is talking about here is very practical advice for how to think about like validating what really moves the needle with consumers. What I want to ask you another question here, Clay, about GloriLight and like, you know, drawing from those learnings of your six failed businesses and your previous brand that did have a heavy eComm presence at Haven Lock. When it comes to the advertising and the marketing for GloriLight, in addition to the affiliate strategy, what else have you guys done that's been successful but that came from your wisdom of like previous failures and lessons learned?

Clay Banks (29:23)

Keep in mind, I've been involved in buying meta ads, Google ads for probably at least eight years, going on eight to nine years. Went through the iOS 14 changes, And where we used to create...

nicer, more polished, more produced content. A big lesson learned in today's world, we're in November of 24, this might change next year, but polished, produced content doesn't work.

Jon Blair (29:47)

Mm-hmm.

Clay Banks (30:01)

as well as it used to. So now we have to get into a rhythm or a cadence of creating more real, authentic, less polished, less produced content and being able to, as the owner of the brand, being able to let go of that. Because I see this a lot of times with businesses that I coach or work with is we'll go get a handful of affiliates to create some content for them and they'll go, well, the way they plated this or the way they set this up or the way they presented it, the lighting didn't look good or the audio wasn't good or the it didn't show this best feature of this product or it didn't show this best benefit of this product, you've got to kind of let go and your brand is what people say about you. It's not about what you say your brand is. And most of the time founders want to control that brand message.

Jon Blair (30:53)

Sure.

Clay Banks (31:00)

You have to in today's world you have to completely let your audience control that brand message and with GloriLight We have completely let go of what's been said And what we require from our affiliates and made it super simple. All they have to do is basically say yes I want to create a video and That's and we send them a light and then they post a video about it We don't we don't monitor if they posted we don't monitor what they said. We don't like it's basically

We're letting you get the value and you transcribe that to your audience, right? But we've made it simple for them.

Jon Blair (31:37)

will say, in my mind, what you're talking about here actually is very much related to the concept of simplicity and getting a product to market to test that one thing with consumers ASAP. When you're talking about creating content or creative, right, to use for advertising, how do you test it? You get it out the door and you test it, right? And so if you sit there and pour over perfection, what are you doing? You're just waiting longer to get it out in the marketplace and test it, right? mean, like even when we started this podcast, you know, I sat down with our, with my EA, Sherilee who you know, who does our marketing. And I said, Sherilee, I don't want, I want to start, I want to launch this podcast next week. And I don't care how perfect it is. Like we're, we're going to launch it and we're gonna just start and we're gonna learn along the way. And funny enough, like this mic that I'm using right now, it just came last night, I bought it on a Black Friday sale. I've had this crappy little $19 mic that I've used for the last 10 months running this podcast. It was good enough to just get started. And I actually have two new fancy lights that I bought on Black Friday sale as well that are sitting here that weren't here before. like, you know, but I...

Clay Banks (32:38)

Gotta do it.

How many podcasts have you done before that?

Jon Blair (32:56)

Yeah, we've done like 20 something and I've had clients and prospects reach out to me way more than I thought and say, hey man, I've been listening to the podcast, it's been helpful and the content is real deal. Like it's really actually helpful. And we're getting better at producing podcasts now, right? But we just started and you know what I mean? So go ahead, what do

Clay Banks (33:18)

Let's go back to this. We talked about putting in the reps earlier on. right? And entrepreneurs, especially first time entrepreneurs, this will drive this home. To be in the top 60 % of all podcasts on the internet, you have to produce two episodes.

Most people only do one and it doesn't go the way they think. They overthink it. They don't do the reps. They don't go on and book the next show and they fail. So if you want to be in the top 60%, two episodes. This goes if you're trying to raise capital, right? If you're trying to raise venture capital or raise capital, you can't just send out your deck to one investor, right? And it's over, right? And people say, well, I tried that, it didn't work.

Jon Blair (34:03)

and get a no and it's over.

Clay Banks (34:08)

That's a good example. To be in the top 90 % of all podcasts, you have to produce 20 episodes.

Jon Blair (34:16)

Woo, there we go baby, we passed 20. You wanna know something funny? I think what we're just talking about here is a universal truth, right, by the way, which is why we both have so many examples. I've been really into reading sales books recently, and do you know how many times you have to ask for the order on average to get the sale? Nine. And do know what the average is of what most salespeople ask? It's one, it's one time.

Clay Banks (34:19)

Alright.

Nine.

I was gonna say most people fail to ask at all. One time.

Jon Blair (34:45)

Most salespeople ask one time and it takes nine times. And there's this book I read by a guy named Daniel Priestley. I highly recommend anyone listening to this pick this book up. It's a short read and it's so, every page is helpful. And he talks about 7-11 foreign people. And what does that mean? It's that you need to have seven quality touches, right, in...

That's the seven and then four is in four different locations. So four different channels, right? And the 11 is, I can't remember what the 11 is, but what it has to do with is just that you need to be, his words are, don't be perfect, be prolific. And what does being prolific mean? Get started, crank it out, crank out the content, start writing a newsletter, start writing on LinkedIn. Like for us, we started on LinkedIn two years ago and you know what we did? I sat down with Sherilee and I said, hey Sherilee,

I wanna post once a week. And as soon as that got easy, I said, I wanna post twice a week. And as soon as that got easy, I said, I wanna post three times a week. Today, two years later, we have like quadrupled our following. get leads from LinkedIn all the time. And we post 12 times a week. And it seems completely easy now, right? But like we just got started and I've posted so many things that just like no one replied to, like no one commented on, no one liked. The impressions looked really crappy, but.

And still today, I'll be on a streak that I'm like, man, I'm crushing it. Like people are, engagements are killing it, impressions are killing it. And then I'll write something that I think is gonna be amazing and it just flops. And you know what, you just keep going. here, going back to the point of all this stuff we've been talking about, you know why I do it? Because I love the journey of creating content because I wanna be helpful. Because when I was on the founding team of Guardian Bikes, and I was learning how to scale a business for the first time, I was just, I had this insatiable desire to read books and listen to podcasts, because I didn't know anything about scaling a business, building a team, running an e-commerce brand, managing inventory, managing a supply chain, running financial models. I didn't know the last thing about any of that stuff in real life. And you know what got me through it was like having the right people around me and consuming content. And so, I want us, I want Free To Grow to produce content, because I want to be helpful. You know why? Because scaling an e-comm brand is hard and it's lonely and it's challenging and you wake up every day second guessing yourself as a founder. And I want to remind people that there are great resources out there that can help. And we just want to be one of those resources. And so like I create content because I love the journey. I check the metrics because I want to see what does well and what doesn't do well. And I want to learn from that, but I don't do it for the metrics. I do it to be helpful.

Clay Banks (37:34)

And I've found giving every time is more rewarding than the metrics. Just the process of me thinking through some content that I want to give someone, whether it lands or it doesn't, I felt rewarded by giving that away. I didn't hold it in. And maybe one day it might hit the right person and they'll learn from it. And that to me, kind of makes it all worthwhile when you're not seeing the metrics, you're not seeing the engagement. It's like, well, that's okay, somebody will get it one day and it'll hit home. But yeah, it doesn't all have to be perfect.

Jon Blair (38:17)

So I wanna ask you, you have a lot of experience with raising capital, both for your businesses and advising with some of the people that you coach on raising capital. Walk me through just the first things that come to mind about best practices, some of which may be surprising to founders or misconceptions by founders. What are some of the do's and don'ts for raising capital that you've learned over your years of doing it well and also failing?

Clay Banks (38:45)

First and foremost you got to understand rep count is important you to get good at raising capital You've got to pitch a lot of times a lot of people that I coach, they want to perfect their deck. That's that's the the pitch deck is usually nine times out of ten If not 99 % of the time the entry point And it's the linchpin needed to get you a meeting or get you a pitch Okay, it's typically the first thing that investors are gonna want to see before they even consider taking a meeting with you, right? a lot of times entrepreneurs raising capital think they have a good deck and they send it out and they're not getting any even the opportunity to pitch. So having a really good deck that's streamlined into the problem, the value problem in the market opportunity, right?

It's having that expectation that if I send this out to 10 people, they think they're gonna get 10 meetings. And actually, they'll probably get one or maybe zero. So you've gotta get into the reps of creating places for you to pitch. So what we did is we had this deck and it was always evolving. It was always this document that was continuing to evolve. But we didn't wait around for people to say yes to our pitches.

we started renting rooms and I would go find other entrepreneurs who were raising capital and say, hey, you invite your network of investors, I'll invite my network of investors and we'll have like a mini Shark Tank pitch. We'll rent out of room, we'll have some beer and wine and we'll invite as many people as we can. So that got me the practice or the rehearsal it needed to be able to pitch and sometimes nobody would show up other than the other two companies, right?

very, let's put this way, very few investors would show up, right? So we would have a couple other entrepreneurs and we would just critique each other and pitch and help each other, like just having those reps and you could see other people pitch their business and you start to learn from them, right? And that's one thing that I think is a misconception founders think is like, I'm just going to create this deck and I'm going to send it out and I'm going to get the meeting and I'm going to get the investment and it doesn't work that way.

You've got to go out there and practice and rehearse it. There were times where we were pitching a good 40 to 50 pitches a week, if not more. And some of those were groups of angels or syndicates where there might be 10 or so people on a call or in a meeting. But we were getting in the reps. And over time, you start to go back to yourself and go, I wish I would have said that differently. I wish I would have shown this instead of that.

Another thing is people get too comfortable pitching off of their deck. The deck is used to get the meeting, but it's more important that you build your own deck so you tell yourself the narrative of what you're going to say while you're building it. You're mentally building your pitch deck, usually 10 to 12 slides. You're mentally rehearsing over and over and over while you build your deck.

And that is how you ultimately tell your pitch, but you don't use the deck to tell it. It's more of a natural conversation that you have with an investor where you're actually taking product and you're showing them. You're putting it in their hand so they can touch it and feel it. It's a natural conversation instead of, look at my pitch deck and pitching slide by slide by slide. That's pretty, that's not authentic conversation, right? think those are big misconceptions that founders have. Very rarely would we use a deck to pitch when we were raising capital unless we were on stage pitching to an audience or we were in like a like an angel syndicate where we were pitching a bunch of investors at one time taking them through like a visual where we were remote like we were raising money during COVID so you know that was used to pitch it pitch the deck but now if you're gonna meet in person or a one-on-one call it's more conversational and you've got to be able to to tell the right things to get that investor of like why should I join in you and solve this problem or why should I join in you to go on this crusade together to this promised land that you're forecasting here.

Jon Blair (43:40)

So what this all makes me think of is I'm seeing this pattern, again, Free to Grow works with 30 plus profit focused and growing e-commerce brands and I talk to dozens every month as I am going through our sales funnel, because I manage all of our sales, and I'm noticing this connection between what we're talking about here and brands that withstand the test of time and ultimately achieve success.

And it's that the product, the brand is built around a really true mission driven purpose that the founder and usually the leadership team are just, they're truly bought into. They're not fake bought into it. They are bought into it, right? The most impressive growth and profitability rates that we see within the brands that we work with, there is this almost cult like following inside the business that like this product is making the world a better place, right? And in fact, that is the primary reason why I started Free to Grow in the first place because I believe that scaling an e-commerce brand is just about one of the hardest things you could choose to do in the business world. And it's lonely and it's challenging and you get into this, you start this business for, you get this allure of freedom and controlling your own destiny which you mentioned when we first started the episode. And then you almost get trapped by how complicated it is to scale it and turn a profit and manage the finances and also manage marketing and manage operations and customer experience and all of this stuff, right? And I just seen in my years of being in the e-commerce world, I've seen just this overwhelm and this stress and this oppression, this thing that was supposed to create freedom now becoming oppressive, right? And the one way that I know how to come alongside and help those founders is to give them the financial intelligence that they need to make decisions with confidence. As you grow, you have more and more people asking you for more and more money. Your ad agency wants more ad dollars. Your supply chain person wants more inventory. Your COO wants to hire more people. And guess what? As you grow, all of those decisions cost more and more money, more and more zeros at the end.

And if you don't have a CFO who can build out a budget and a forecast and a financial model and understands scaling an eComm brand from both a financial model perspective and a strategy perspective, if you don't have that, you're just going yes or no, we can or can't do that. And it's really a guess. And when you say yes, it's like, man, are we gonna run out of money? And if you say no, it's like, man, is this gonna, are we gonna stop growing? Because I just said no to that. And so,

The point I'm making is scaling Free to Grow as a firm is actually really hard. I have plenty of days where I second guess myself. But then I get the comments and the feedback from our clients about life before Free to Grow and life after, and how much more confident they are and how they can sleep easy at night and how we've helped them through really challenging situations that they couldn't have made it through on their own. And that mission that we're on,

That's what keeps us going. And I think it's no different for an eComm brand. I look at GloriLight or even look at Haven Lock. I know for a fact, you guys were like, we have to solve this problem, right? We're not gonna give up. We have to solve this problem. Guardian Bikes, making safer kids' bikes. It was like, we have to get these to market. We cannot let our competition beat us. We need to make the world a better place. That is what your why. That's one of the ways that you...

find the energy to stay on the journey, right?

Clay Banks (47:36)

And that why, when you go back to like, what are some misconceptions or pitfalls that founders make when trying to raise capital, is they can't quantify that why. We call it the North Star metric, right? What is the North Star your business is going after, and how are you measuring and tracking it? And it comes down to that why, right? It's the number of children we serve, right? The number of children that have a GloriLight in their home, that is our North Star. For other companies, it's something different, but...

But being able to articulate that to an investor and how you're getting traction against that North Star and how you're on your path to that North Star, that's what's building investor confidence. And that's the why behind what you're doing. And if you cannot articulate that, then the investor can't see the vision. So that's a big point that I think a lot of startup people that are raising capital make. Also,

Jon Blair (48:25)

Totally.

Clay Banks (48:32)

Another one is they're not really an investable type of company. Their growth isn't an outsized return big enough to get their return on capital. They're not playing in a big enough market or the potential for the exit isn't big enough to take that risk. And a lot of times people go, I just want to raise capital to grow my business. And I'll say, well, what's...

Jon Blair (48:50)

That's a big one.

Clay Banks (49:00)

What makes you think money is gonna help you scale this? And if they can't answer that question, then they're not an investable company, right? Then you usually say, I wanna invest in marketing or I wanna invest in inventory, right? No, you need to invest in creativity. Creativity will get you everything that you want.

Jon Blair (49:08)

Totally.

Clay Banks (49:21)

It'll bring in the capital, it'll bring in the customers, it'll bring in more sales, whatever you're looking for, you've got to invest in creativity. And when you're not creating, investors can't get behind that, right? If you're just asking for inventory money or you're asking for marketing money, that is hard to scale profitably, right? And it's a tough cost of capital too.

Jon Blair (49:33)

Yeah.

Totally.

Well, it's funny because I actually see the same dilemma that you're talking about. The economics, the game isn't big enough for that three to five. It depends on who you're investing, who's investing, right? Call it three to 10x return that you need, depending on what stage you're in and what kind of investors you're raising from. If that opportunity is not there, then the investors aren't going to invest. I see the same thing with unit economics and investing in scaling advertising. Is that you can't bring a product to market and then figure out the unit economics later that allow you to be able to afford a CAC that scales on digital ad channels, you have to engineer the unit economics from day one to be able to afford the CAC to scale in whatever sales channels you're trying to scale in. doesn't happen by accident. It has to happen intentionally, and it's the same way. Okay, unfortunately, I gotta land the plane here. I actually think we're gonna probably have to have you back, because we got through like half the agenda.

that we were gonna talk about, but it's because there's so many things that we can chat about between your experience, the wisdom that you have gleaned over the years, and just kind of the overlap that you and I have on how we see the business world. But before we land the plane, I would like to ask a personal question to everybody who comes on the show. And as I mentioned, I believe I mentioned earlier, Clay is a fellow Christian as well as myself. And I think it's really important to highlight that like faith shapes our journey and our mission as entrepreneurs and as business leaders. And so how does your faith shape your entrepreneurial perspective and your life as a business leader?

Clay Banks (51:34)

I used to think everything was in my control.

Jon Blair (51:40)

Hahaha.

Clay Banks (51:43)

And with successes or failures, I didn't go to God in every circumstance or every partnership or every, you know, and I just said, I can control this, right? I can figure it out if it goes bad. And now it's more like, hey, God's in control and I'm just a steward and I can't. To me it's a lot more comforting knowing that I'm not in control. He's gonna put the right people in front of me and he's given me the skill sets and the experiences to know and decipher who the right and wrong people are that I need to be working with. Over time it's just taking time for me to comprehend and learn that and now go there's some freedom in knowing that I don't have to make every decision. I don't have to, I can just lean on Him and He'll guide me in the way that where He wants to take this company. Specifically with GloriLight being a kids night light that projects Bible verses and the Word of God.

very on, the two guys that I'm in partnership with on this, we were like, is his company and we're just using our skill sets that he's given us to take it to wherever he wants us to take it. So there's no pressure. We don't have that pressure of getting some sort of outsized return and we don't have investors so we're not having to get, and there's some freedom in that. There's not as much pressure.

Jon Blair (53:19)

Absolutely.

Clay Banks (53:21)

And I know not every business can be like that But the more you think hey, man, I'm just gonna like turn this over to God and let him you know direct me like I got into our quickly. I know you want to end this here, but With when I was selling haven lock it got to be a very stressful situation

We had a board of directors, we had 90 plus investors, a lot to divide up, right? It got very stressful. So I went to the sport of Ironman to have that time with God. The longer I spent with God on a bike or on a run or on a swim or whatever I was training for, the clearer my mind got.

about how to respond or how to react or how to position or how to strategize the close of this sale of this company. And before I did not allow God in that amount of time, I was just making decisions on my own. So I definitely allow God to do his work and give him the time he needs and it'll turn out.

Jon Blair (54:32)

Man, I'm actually, getting goosebumps again because I was praying about this exact thing this morning in my morning quiet time that I feel this sense that my wife and I with our three little kids and the couple of businesses that we run, we have been just moving too fast and it's been so, we've been, we've just been trying to control, keep everything in order, right? Keep everything under control.

We've been trying to control everything as we all do, right? And it's been overbearing, completely overbearing. And I've been getting this sense of like feeling like I'm burning out. And luckily God has taught me that feeling burned out doesn't mean I need to give up. It doesn't mean I need to give up the efforts, right? Or what I'm trying to do, but it does mean that I need to give up control and let it happen in His way and at His pace, right?

And so there's a book on my bookshelf called At God's Pace. And I was this morning feeling like I needed to pick it up and reread it. And I think I just got the confirmation right now that I need to reread it. I was praying about it this morning just a few hours ago. Clay, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you coming on the show. This is kind of a full circle thing for me coming from like the first couple weeks of starting Free to Grow.

Clay Banks (55:43)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (55:57)

to having you on the show to talk about all these awesome things. Look, as a reminder for everyone, release yourself of the burden of trying to live up to this lavish vision you have in your head. Don't give up the visions that you have, but realize it's a journey. It's not an end, right? Work hard at loving the journey, work hard at making an impact, work hard at honing the craft, but give yourself a bit of a break.

You know, and if you're, and if you are a person of faith, maybe trust God a little bit, right, to take some of the burden off of your plate. So this is a awesome conversation. I know that everyone's gonna find it super valuable. Just as a reminder before we land the plane here, if you want any helpful tips on scaling a profit-focused DTC brand, consider following me, Jon Blair, on LinkedIn. And if you're interested in learning more about how Free To Grow's DTC accountants and CFOs can help your brand increase profit and cash flow as you scale, check us out at FreeToGrowCFO.com and until next time, scale on. Thanks, Clay.

Clay Banks (56:59)

Yeah, scale on. See you, Jon.

The Five F’s: A Holistic Approach to Entrepreneurship

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast, Jon Blair and Chris Lang discuss the importance of holistic health for entrepreneurs. They explore the five F's: Faith, Family, Focus, Fitness, and Finances, emphasizing how each aspect contributes to a balanced and successful life. Chris shares his journey in entrepreneurship, the significance of maintaining focus, the role of fitness and nutrition, and the necessity of financial education. The conversation also touches on the importance of setting boundaries between work and personal life to achieve long-term success.

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

Chris Lang- https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrislangsocial/

Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/

Move FWD - https://www.movefwd.co/

Key Takeaways

• Faith is Foundational: Why understanding your "why" and living with intention impacts everything from decision-making to resilience.

• Focus Wins the Day: Learn how eliminating distractions and playing to your strengths drives long-term success.

• Finances for the Long Game: Insights on cash flow management and staying financially viable in a world of distractions.

Meet Chris Lang

Chris Lang is a creative entrepreneur from Las Cruces, New Mexico. His focus on brand development and business strategy has helped launch multiple Shopify brands across the apparel, food, and wine industries, generating over 8 figures. Fresh Chile is now in the top 10% of all Shopify stores. He is working on donating over 1,000,000 meals to his community (currently 500,000).

Transcript

~~~

00:00 Introduction

02:32 The Birth of Move FWD

04:50 The Five F's of Life

09:30 The Role of Faith

11:54 Family Dynamics in Business

14:46 The Importance of Focus

22:02 Fitness and Mental Clarity

26:21 The Impact of Processed Foods on Health

28:38 The Importance of Nutrition and Sleep

30:29 Long-Term Success in Business

30:45 Understanding Finances in Business

35:35 Learning from Financial Mistakes

42:54 Setting Boundaries Between Work and Personal Life

48:27 Closing Thoughts

Jon Blair (00:00)

Hey, what's happening everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast where we dive deep into conversations about scaling a DTC brand with a profit focused mindset. I'm your host, Jon Blair, founder of Free to Grow CFO. We're the go-to outsource finance and accounting firm for eight and nine figure DTC brands. And today I'm here again with my good friend, Chris Lang. Chris, I think you're the first ever second time guest on the show. Thanks for joining, man. How are things going?

Chris (00:10)

That's a big honor. Yeah, things are going pretty well. Been a been a really great year overall as far as learning so much and yeah grateful to be here again.

Jon Blair (00:46)

Yeah, so today, last time you were here, we were chatting about one of the businesses. I would consider Chris to be kind of a serial entrepreneur. He's got his hands in several different things. We chatted about Fresh Chile the last time he was on, former client of Free to Grow CFO, and really we're chatting about kind of scaling marketing, but ended up having a really great conversation about story, which is something that's so front and center in your content, which I love. But today we're actually talking with Chris about his focus on a separate venture that he has. He's also co-founder of Move FWD. And today what we're gonna be talking about is something a little bit outside of kind of the getting into numbers and scaling, but something that is, I would say, probably even more important, which is how entrepreneurs build and live a life of holistic health, right? Because at the end of the day,

Chris (01:33)

Mm-hmm.

Jon Blair (01:42)

We're all humans. It doesn't matter if we are also DTC brand founders or operators. We are humans, right? And as Chris is a fellow Christian, as we believe, created by God, right? And so we're gonna talk about how entrepreneurs can live a balanced life that includes things like faith, family, focus, fitness, and finances. And so, before we get into chatting about that, Chris, know, the people who listen to show know a bit about your background as it relates to kind of leaning into starting and being a part of the Fresh Chile journey, but walk me through your journey to co-founding Move FWD and walk us through a little bit about what Move FWD does.

Chris (02:20)

Definitely Move FWD is a result of understanding life is more than just about business. And so it's about finding that balance and purpose and business and life. And so what I have noticed over and over again in business, whether it's been successful or whether it's been a, you know, so-called failure on paper, is that there's so many determining factors to what goes into each one of those opportunities. And it has to do with your faith, your family, your focus and your finances. And so I think that's where it's like, I wanted an opportunity to partner with someone, his name is Greg Bowles, he's out of Dallas and he owns the largest home inspection company in DFW area. But he's a friend that I've known, he's a former pastor and he does a lot of coaching consulting with other businesses and entrepreneurs. He was someone who was really strong and his focus and finances and he's also, you know, a of faith and his family are we go on vacations together. And so that's something that we kind of talked about. Hey, let's let's really team up because, know, I was really coming from a place where I was really broken, you know, about, I would say for a few years now and each day is kind of forward in that clarity.

Overall, it's just to help entrepreneurs balance beyond business their lives.

Jon Blair (04:23)

Yeah, man, this is something that's near and dear to my heart. This is manifested, this kind of holistic philosophy about business and life is something that is very pervasive in my personal and business life. I was, and I still am a little bit on the side, an EOS coach, an EOS, for those of you don't know, the entrepreneurial operating system. It's an operating system. It's an actual structure and framework for thinking about planning and running your business. And it doesn't matter if you like StratOps or EOS or you follow a guy like Michael Hyatt who has the full focus planner, whatever. You follow Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey has his own, I forget what his system is called, but all these systems are all, what do they all have in common? Intentionality and purpose, right?

Chris (05:04)

Mm hmm.

Jon Blair (05:19)

And when you get down to the root of it, why does that stuff matter? Because humans were created to live life with a sense of purpose. When you find people that are depressed, in my experience, when you find people that are depressed, they've lost their sense of purpose or they're wrestling with their sense of purpose, right? And when you find people that are happy, they're doing the things they're doing in life, whatever they are, business or otherwise, they're doing them on purpose, right? And the funny thing is, the phrase on purpose is a common phrase. I did this on purpose, right? But if you really think about those words on purpose, it's in alignment with a purpose that gives meaning to the thing that you're doing, whatever that is, right? And so these things, it's funny, in the system scaling up, they tell the people who are implementing that operating system into their business to first do a personal a one page personal plan. I believe it's OPP. And this grid that they create is a grid that across the top has time horizons. So like one year, three years, five years, next 90 days, but down the side it has faith, family, focus, fitness, and finances. The same, they call it the five F's, right? And the reason why we are gonna have a conversation today in relation to those five F's is because when you think about your faith, whatever it is,

Chris (06:36)

Okay.

Jon Blair (06:47)

You think about your family and you think about what you're focusing on, you think about your fitness and your physical health and you think about your finances. Those five F's are a great holistic way to think about your life and that when those things are in balance, we tend to be living life on purpose, right? So the five F's, faith, family focus, fitness and finances, why are those so important to you personally, Chris?

Chris (07:06)

Mm-hmm. Well, I believe it starts with my faith, number one. I mean, that's always the area that I want to make sure that...

you know, I have the most balance and harmony and I feel like that's where I haven't had in the past when I am sort of losing focus or what I feel is kind of not walking in God's path, you know, in my life and for my family's. And so, you know, if I'm not, if I'm not focused on my faith first and my family, you know, fitness, finance, focus, it all, it all suffers because of that. so faith is important too, because it's ultimately what I believe that I'm called to be on this earth for, is to be a servant and to serve others. And if I'm serving myself or serving my needs or serving myself in a loathing type of way, then everything else will kind of falter. so even though faith has always been important to me, as we learn in life, there's all these kind of peaks and valleys that we go through that where faith becomes a different priority for us. for me making it the priority every day that I wake up has been the overall change in my life.

Jon Blair (08:39)

Well, and so it's interesting that you say he starts with faith because you and I are both Christians, so we believe in the God of the Bible, right? Even if you don't believe in the same faith that Chris and I do, everyone, I believe, has some form of faith in their life. It, in more general terms, maybe, is what you believe about the purpose of mankind, right? And everyone believes in some purpose, even if that purpose is...for me to just live a selfish life and enrich myself. That is still your version of faith, right? And so, it actually, as a human, it has to start with faith, which is maybe we'll call it your worldview, right? Because that's the lens through which you're going to view your family, your focus, your fitness, and your finances. So actually, whether you think you have faith or not, I guarantee you do.

Chris (09:16)

Mm-hmm.

Right. Right.

Jon Blair (09:30)

We all do as humans. It may not be the same as mine and Chris's, but you have some view about the world and that's where it all starts, right? The second one, family. What is the importance to you, not just of family in general, but how that helps you excel in business and in life? Making sure that that's number two on the list.

Chris (09:30)

All

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah, you know, I think a lot of people think, you know, in business, I'm doing this for my family. I think that's kind of like the most common answer that we would probably, you know, hear I'm doing this for my family, doing this for my family. you know, if we really were to strip away if we weren't entrepreneurs, you know, or business people, and then what is our role in our family? And you know, for me, it is kind of to ingrain sense of security in them. And that security is not always financial. But it's a it's a loving security that they have. And so you know, for me, you know, making sure that they feel emotionally and physically loved is, is what kind of family means to me, it doesn't mean about just taking care of them. That's all a byproduct of kind of making sure that your family's emotional needs are taken care of because

Jon Blair (10:24)

Mm-hmm.

Chris (10:47)

We've seen it so many times where you have a lot of families where their physical needs are met through the roof, but emotionally, like the family's a wreck. Divorce is on the horizon. The kids are going to rebel. And that's something where my wife and I are just very intentional with our two children. And we are a family and these other things, they don't define us.

it may be what we do. But they don't define us. And we're there for each other, kind of first and foremost. And to that note, too, you know, my wife and I will be celebrating 20 years next, next summer. And thank you so much. And it's because we've learned that we're there to serve, you know, one another. And it's not always about our needs first. And it's not, you know, from a selfish view. But we're ultimately there.

Jon Blair (11:30)

Congrats, man.

Mm-hmm.

Chris (11:46)

for the same purpose of really to glorify God. And what does that look like through our marriage, through our family, and through our relationships?

Jon Blair (11:54)

It's funny, so our pastor always says, people always tell me that marriage is 50-50. He's like, marriage is not 50-50. It's 100%, 100%. Meaning that each person is in it 100% every single day, pulling their own weight in the marriage, right? In the relationship. I don't just come to the table 50%. If you think about any relationship, it's 100%, 100%. Like, you gotta be there, you're...in it 100% regardless of what happens on the other side, right? But I think another interesting thing I was thinking about as you were talking and like weaving in the entrepreneurial spirit with family is actually something you posted on LinkedIn I think over the weekend about your boys, having your boys with you at the farmers market, know, slinging goods from your, from one of your other companies, right? And the point being, the point being like there's a way that we can take what we do as entrepreneurs.

Chris (12:42)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jon Blair (12:53)

Right? And share that with our family and not just use the business, not just use being an entrepreneur to make money for the family, but to actually teach them entrepreneurial qualities so that they can carry on. This is the future generation, right? Our kids are the future generation and what gets kids excited? How do kids know what to do or what they could possibly do later in life? They have to be exposed to it. And that's a big job as parents. I don't expect every one of my kids to necessarily start a business or business is the way that I have. But I believe every person has to have some amount of entrepreneurialism. Because really, strip the word business aside, what is an entrepreneur? An entrepreneur is someone who sees a gap in the world and fills it. Sees a need that's unmet and fills it.

Chris (13:34)

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Jon Blair (13:47)

And so actually I think everyone has a duty to be entrepreneurial in some way, shape or form. I think stay at home moms have just as much of a duty to be entrepreneurial, right? By seeing an unmet need and pulling together resources. like actually here's another way to think about it. An entrepreneur sees the landscape of resources, things that could be pulled together to be used for something. They see a gap somewhere in the world with an unmet need and they go grab resources and they pull them together and they meet that need. You do not have to start a business to be entrepreneurial. And as it relates to being an entrepreneur and family, that's a big duty that I believe that we all have as entrepreneurs is to raise up the next generation of entrepreneurs, whether they're going to start businesses or not. So the next thing on the list of the five F's is focus. This is near and dear to my heart because I am a productivity nerd. I've read so many of the books. I'm a huge fan of Michael Hyatt. He has a book that was like, can see it on my bookshelf over here. It's like super formative in my life. It's called Free to Focus, right? And the older I get, the more that I find that my stress and lack of achievement is actually self-induced. I allow it to happen to myself. And you know what it always is? I lose focus. I allow the unimportant to creep in and block me from the important. And one of my other pastors, he used to always say, hey, are you minoring in the majors and majoring in the minors? Meaning like, if you're majoring in the minors, you're filling your life with these minor details, these minor like tasks and things that are not of major importance.

Chris (15:20)

Great.

Mm-hmm. Mm.

Jon Blair (15:41)

You wanna be majoring in the majors, not majoring in the minors, right? So talk to me a little bit about the importance of focus when it comes to being a holistically healthy entrepreneur.

Chris (15:41)

Right.

Yes, I think, you know, this is something that I am, I am in the midst of in my life of trying to understand what that means and also to achieve it meaning. On paper, I have eight different businesses that is not focus. Right on any level, you know,

Jon Blair (16:13)

Yeah.

Chris (16:16)

And so I'm actually in the midst of having all these difficult conversations with partners where I don't believe I can add value to this business anymore. I need to step away and I need to also have other conversations where, I need to double down on this business. What does that look like? And so, you know, for me, I think one of the

Jon Blair (16:33)

Mm-hmm.

Chris (16:38)

I don't want to say biggest lies. But we just think we can, you know, as entrepreneurs, we think we can just achieve anything once we've achieved one thing. And it's not the case, you know, I've, you know, have failed miserably at a restaurant and a coffee shop. Why? That's not my skill set. It's not e commerce. It's not digital marketing. And, you know, I felt spectacularly at both, right. So again, it was because I wasn't focused.

that have led to some of my biggest mistakes that have also cost me financially as well, right? So again, I need to make sure that I'm focused and in a way that I can be serving my partners from a business standpoint and in the greatest capacity that I can. And as you know, with Free to Grow, financial cash flow is the most important thing that we can achieve in business and and in profits. And so we need that. And when you diversify yourself to where nothing is really making money at the end of the day, then you're basically in a zero sum game because you've lost your lack of focus.

Jon Blair (17:52)

Man, there's a lot there that I want to dig into. No, no, mean, it's that such so a couple of things. One, I've actually I don't know. I know that you know, Nick Shackleford, but he he'd post a lot of content on LinkedIn about his various businesses and and what one thing he I think this was last week he was talking about. This made me feel better because I'm I'm kind of like you. I'm like starting.

Chris (17:54)

I'm... No, it is.

Yeah.

Right.

Jon Blair (18:19)

I'm looking at starting all these different things. I currently have three businesses. And sometimes I wonder like, is this a trap? Is this a mistake? And Nick was talking about in his content recently, think again, I think last week, he was like, I think there's a lot of people who would kind of condemn what I'm doing, owning so many businesses. But what I have done is I've brought in partners that compliment my weakness. They have a strength in that business, right? And the role that I play in that business is where I am strong, right? And so he's not, the point being he's not just going in, there's still intentionality. There's actually, what he doesn't realize is he's saying there is a focus that he has within each of those businesses. So I actually do believe there's a way, I do believe there's a way to start multiple businesses, but be very intentional about what your role is in each of those businesses. And what I think I'm starting to realize is, Free to Grow, me and my business partner, Jeff, we are the main operators in Free to Grow. For this season in life, Free to Grow is the right place for me to be one of the key operators. All other businesses that I start, I do not have the time to be the key operator. I can be...I can play some role in strategy, can play some role probably in marketing, possibly in sales, possibly coaching, maybe providing some capital, but I could not be the main operator in multiple businesses. And so there's this, we'll call it another dimension to focus, where you may be able to do something that appears unfocused, having your hand in a bunch of different businesses, but you can do it in a focused manner by deciding, what is the focused role that you will have in that business and then placing other partners and or key employees in the other areas that need focus that you don't want to or can't do well. And so I like to use a framework that comes from Michael Hyatt. He calls it the Freedom Compass. The Freedom Compass, basically takes everything you could possibly be doing for your business and he puts it into one of four quadrants. And the quadrant that he says makes you feel free and where you're the most valuable to the business is the quadrant in which there's an intersection of your greatest passion and your greatest proficiency. So you're really, really good at it. You're proficient, right? Proficient means really, really good. And it's one of your greatest passions. And if it's outside of one of those, you should either eliminate it, automate it, or delegate it. And so, that's a framework I use all the time. And the reality is when you're really focused on stuff that you're really good at and that you really love, you just find the energy to get it done. You don't have to search for the energy. You don't have to muster it up, right? And again, let's go back to family and faith really quick, because we're going through the five. Like if you feel alignment with what you're doing every day in any given business or businesses or even outside of business other areas in life that you're focusing on if you feel alignment with your faith your worldview of how things work in the world and what your purpose is you feel alignment with your family and the role that you have in your family and you feel like you're focused on areas that you are proficient at and really love man you're building the building blocks right of just like a great life and something that brings you energy every single day. So on the topic of energy, let's go next to fitness. Where does fitness fit into all of this and why is it so important for being a holistically healthy entrepreneur?

Chris (22:06)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I mean this one is weakened on a pack greatly as well too but the mental clarity that you know you receive every day from working out is unmatched. know it there's a there's a personality on Twitter I love he says he's gonna go see his therapist and it's like 225 deadlift you know what I mean he's just like I'm gonna go see my therapist right

And, you know, for me, I was, you know, I played, you know, played sports in college and I worked at multiple gyms in my 20s. And then life kind of happened and I got away from being in the gym. And so last December I committed to being in the gym again. And I just, found myself just amazed that, you know, I love this so much. Like, why, why did I stop? What, what, you know, what was it, you know, and

Jon Blair (22:44)

Hahaha

Chris (23:13)

And so just being back in the gym. And then also I went carnivore for a couple months. And that was life changing. It truly was in a sense of the mental clarity and energy and the ability to make decisions. And it is something that I don't know what the long-term effects of it are, but I plan to do it again. And I don't know for how long this time, but fitness.

it also is our nutrition and what we put in our body. again, we're not hunters and gatherers anymore. So, but you know, there's, you know, all these nutrients that our body needs that we used to receive, you know, and so, but it comes down to that. If we, if we want to have that balance where mentally we can be there in our faith and our family, you know, and our focus.

It kind of starts with our fitness. It's kind of, I don't know how we would map out this system, but it's something that's equally as important to everything else and the way that we approach each of the other areas of our lives.

Jon Blair (24:26)

Yeah man, it's crazy because I think my gut, this is just what my gut tells me if I'm wrong you can tell me but what when you said life happens it's like you have kids, you get married, you have kids and you're like my gosh my routine is all messed up because I have, you know for me I have three kids, you have two kids, you have a wife and multiple kids and you have to integrate your routines with their routines and usually their routines can be like in one way, or form, much less predictable than your own routines, right? And so like the first things to go are sleep, right? Especially like when you have an infant, like you throw sleep out the window, it just, you got to feed them every three hours, you got to attend their needs, keep them alive, right? And then like, if you're not even getting sleep, to me, I think about like fitness, like kind of like building blocks, if you're just not even getting enough sleep, yeah, you can go work out to offset the lack of sleep for a little bit, right? And it will work for a little bit.

Chris (24:56)

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Right.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jon Blair (25:22)

But eventually it loses its power and you've just got to get some sleep. That's foundation number one. And then there's the nutrition. Like you were just saying. And then there's some form of moving your body. We'll call it moving your body. Unfortunately, I played football and baseball and I injured my knee. I can't run anymore, which sucks. I love running. I love the pump from it. But I've also done a lot of reading and found that any sort of even just like medium intensity including brisk walking. If you do it regularly like at least five times a week the benefits to your heart and your body are actually massive. So it's actually not about how intense you go it's about doing something that you can just be consistent at right and and then on the nutrition side this is kind of a new journey that my family's been on my wife and I like it and it really kind of started with having kids is like starting to be more aware or become more aware of what is in all of this processed food that we're giving to our kids, right? And like you and I, I feel like we came from this generation, our parents were kind of like the first processed food generation and they like loved like my parents are big snackers and like, you know, like mass produced processed food kind of happened in their generation. And so it was very pervasive in our life growing up.

We didn't think anything of it But the man the thing that's kind of blows me away is just like the massive amounts of well the fact that everything is stripped of its fiber and Nutrients, right? So it's just like there's no nutrition and all of that stripped flour and and rice and all that kind of stuff But then the amount of salt and sugar that's in stuff is just like outrageous and I see it with my kids when they Have these snacks that are marketed to kids

Jon Blair (27:19)

they go crazy because of the sugar content in them and the fits that they throw when they can't get them. it's sort of, I read this book like, I don't know, several months back, actually written by a nurse and nutritionist who's also a Christian and her, she took it from the Christian perspective, which is like, our bodies weren't made to, you know, process this highly processed food that is like, devoid of all of its actual like natural nutrition. And as soon as we started eating more, you know, we're, we're, we're not 100% right? Like perfect at it, I'd say 70 to 80%. But just that 70 to 80 % has made all the difference in the world of like, how, how good we feel our brain's ability to process information and mental clarity and energy. And we need all those things to make it through the sport of business and life because

Chris (27:59)

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Jon Blair (28:16)

The sport of business and life and staying on course is exhausting. And so you cannot, I'm realizing more and more as I get older, especially as you get older, you've got to nail sleep, you've got to nail nutrition, and you've got to nail some form of moving your body. And when you do those things, everything is easier. It's crazy, you know?

Chris (28:31)

Exactly.

Right. It is. It is. It's wild. so sleep again. I used to be someone who would work till, you know, one, two in the morning, get four hours of sleep and just go. I can't do that anymore. I need eight hours. And I protect that. Like I love going to bed at 10 o'clock now. It's the weirdest thing. It's like, but it's like, yeah, you perform better with it.

Jon Blair (28:55)

Yeah, get in that sleep.

So, know, one thing that I'm realizing as we're talking through this game, we've gone through faith, family, focus, fitness. You know, back, whenever there's a big tech boom, there's always like a bunch of like, you know, productivity hackers that put out these crazy things about like, like how to, how to hack, you know, scaling your startup by sleeping one hour a night, like how to sleep hack, how to nutrition hack, and all of those fads they eventually, like eventually you burn out, right? What we're going through here today with the five F's, it's not just living a life, a business and personal life that's holistically healthy and that's on purpose. It's about living a life in business and in personal life that withstands the test of time. That keeps, so that you can go, you can execute for the long haul, right? Because I'm realizing success in life and business comes through the long game. Making it through the long game. It's not about timing your business perfectly or timing your investment perfectly. It's about staying in business or staying in the stock market for the most time, for more time than everybody else. And how do you do that? You stay on purpose with your faith, with your family, with your focus and your fitness. The fifth F we're talking about now, finances.

Where does finances fit into all this, Chris?

Chris (30:29)

Yeah, you know finances is different for everyone's kind of life goals Kind of like what we talked about, you know, what what do you value and we all have different reasons for you know, being in business or wanting to make money. And you know, it's interesting because right now, there's a huge influx of like, money Twitter, as we like to call it or money Instagrams, you know, and, and, you know, these guys have learned to make a lot of money and then where are they putting it? And we see the lambos and the jewelry and everything else. so just knowing that life is beyond, you know.

beyond material things, right? And so how do you want to set your, you know, your family up long-term and, and, you know, what cash do you need to focus on certain investments or certain businesses that you want to grow? Because businesses, especially businesses that are in growth require almost all your capital, right? And

So what do you have that's kind of cash flowing? Because I've been back up here, you know, I think if I were to go back, you know, a handful of years, you know, having a cash flowing business is really the most important thing that we can kind of do in the beginning of our career. And then if we want to go and start another business to solve another problem in the world, you know, understanding, that that cash flow is going to be needed for, you know, for you to live and for you to have savings or investments. And at this other businesses, we're going to require, you know, another set of capital that you could get through loans or financing or just self funding. so it's. I think it's it's one of the issues going back to what I was just saying with like money Twitter, it's like there needs to be more education in this space.

Jon Blair (32:43)

sure. Yeah, and one and I will say I'll take it one step further. Education that is down to earth and real and not that is clickbait headlines. I'm so sick and tired of the clickbait headlines. I think you you may have liked one of my LinkedIn posts from a couple weeks ago. I got I got an email from one of these like solopreneur gurus and the and the headline was like how I run an eight figure business four hours a week. And I'm like, I'm done with these headlines, okay? Because it's BS. And I guarantee you there's way more to the story, but that gets you to click, that gets you to buy his content, right? And that's why I've taken this position of like, no, really great entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs for their whole life. And so we're not racing to try to hit it big.

Chris (33:14)

Mm hmm. Yeah.

You

Right.

break.

Jon Blair (33:40)

and to time everything perfect, time the market, time the exit. We're trying to just build great businesses, right? That matter and like you're saying, have a financial model that's actually viable, right? And to stay in it for the long run because that's actually where wealth is built. Whatever form of wealth you're looking for. Whether you're talking about putting money in the stock market, you're talking about investing in real estate, you're talking about growing your own businesses. You will build if you make good decisions that have sound financial models to them, right? And you just withstand the test of time. You stay in it for the long run. You're gonna make, you're gonna build some amount of wealth. Are you gonna like leave opportunities on the table? Miss like selling at the top of a bubble? Of course. That's gonna happen. You can't time those things perfectly. And some people do get lucky. That happens. But...

Chris (34:08)

Right. Right. Right.

Jon Blair (34:37)

So much of this advice is based on these stories that are either clickbait and BS and they're sound bites that are pulled out of the truth and make it seem like something else or they are stories of people who are the exception and not the rule. The rule is build, make sound financially fundamental decisions and stay in the game longer than everyone else. That's the rule. The exception is I sold my tech company right before the dot com bubble burst. That's the exception. That is not the rule. Don't follow that business plan, right? And so I totally agree with you. It sucks because I'm actually, you can tell I'm fired up about this because it actually upsets me. It upsets me because people make money off of all these, off this quote financial education that is really kind of a get rich quick scheme disguised as not a get rich quick scheme, you know? and I think the other thing too that I want to say on the concept of finances is that you're gonna make mistakes we're all gonna make mistakes and it's okay like I guarantee you like the Rockefellers have tons of stories they could tell about all the mistakes they made Dave Ramsey's business was born out of a massive mistake where he had he basically was on the verge of bankruptcy right and so but

Chris (35:45)

Right.

Right.

Right. Right. Right.

Jon Blair (36:05)

But what we try to do as CFOs is help you make mistakes that don't kill your business. So you can still live to fight another day. Right, and go, made a mistake, but it didn't put me out of business. Here's what I learned, and I'm not gonna do that again. Right? And so, I mean, what are some of the most important lessons, besides, you've talked about this like cash flowing, like figure out how to get your business to cash flow, which is super important. Are there any other?

like stories from your eight businesses, right? That I mean, which, that's a lot of whether you feel like you made mistakes or they were quote failures or not, you just, learned a ton. What else did you, have you learned about finances that you're going to take into the next business that you started that you're gonna take into the, the fewer number of businesses that you're gonna double down on?

Chris (36:54)

Yeah.

Yeah, you know, to not trust your accountant blindly. This might be the number one mistake I think a lot of entrepreneurs make is, you know, we think our accountants are taking, dotting the I's and crossing the T's and it's not always the case. And so you need to be on top of your numbers every week, you know, every month. And that's a mistake that, you know, since I was busy focusing on everything else.

that has been expensive mistake in my life. think another, you know, is to not is to this is a hard one, because it's like, we want to solve a problem, the definition of business is solve a problem. And we are emotionally passionate to do so. And so a lot of our decisions are emotionally and so like, but there's a lot of times in your business when you're like, hey, payroll cannot be at this number, but we're emotionally attached to certain employees, individuals. And so we make a lot of emotional decisions and we need to make those decisions faster. And what I've learned that it's better for the employee long term and it's better for your business short term. we don't have, I didn't have the experience to know that, but I can say that will never happen again. so...

Jon Blair (38:00)

Totally.

totally.

Chris (38:25)

And then I think as a kind of, it's just a third takeaway is.

when you have something that cash flows.

to always make sure that you're always keeping that pipeline going. So again, there's multiple different types of businesses, but let's say for our audience, say it's an agency or consulting or coaching or services, keep that top of funnel going. Make sure that you're keeping the leads going and that you're not distracted by another endeavor and all of a sudden,

you haven't talked to anyone about your services in the last six months. And all of sudden, you're like, hey, what happened here, right? So that's kind of where that focus comes in is like, hey, making sure that things that are cast flowing that we are focused on them. And that whatever, even if it gets even if it means that, hey, I gotta get up a five o'clock every morning to do this, make time, make time to, to put your eyes, you know, on your accounting, on your numbers.

and on your cells. I guess I have to sum it up.

Jon Blair (39:34)

Totally. No, no, mean, you know this, and I actually talk about this a lot in my content. The number one issue we come across when we talk to potential brands that want to potentially work with us, the number one issue is that they had some CPA that knows nothing about e-commerce looking at their books or doing their books. so actually what that...

Chris (39:47)

Mm.

I know it's so hard.

Jon Blair (39:59)

meant was books that were being done in a way that were just optimized for tax returns, right? But not optimized for the owners and managers actually understanding how the business is performing and what decisions they might have to make based on that. And we just see it again and again and again and again and again. And you know, I say this a lot, you don't have to become, you don't have to go get an accounting degree, but you do need to know enough.

Chris (40:03)

Right.

Right.

Jon Blair (40:25)

that you know what good looks like and you know what bad looks like. And I'll even go as far as to say that if you're a founder, you have to know enough about marketing and sales and operations and accounting and finance, even if only one or two of those things are your focus, right? Like your personal focus. You have to know enough to know what good looks like and what bad looks like because you're still ultimately responsible for whoever you're delegating that stuff to or outsourcing that stuff to. And so, that is a great challenge, but that is why entrepreneurs who can crush that make the big bucks, because it's hard. But it's totally possible, right? It's totally possible. And then the other thing that you mentioned was, you know, you can't ever stop prospecting. Whatever business you're in. Doesn't matter if you're in an e-com brand. I a lot of e-com brands who like, we just want to cut ad spend. I'm like, well, what other prospecting are you going to do then?

Chris (41:12)

Right.

Jon Blair (41:20)

Like, because at some point that's gonna come back to bite you, like, you can never stop prospecting and there's a, there's a, I think a lot of people don't realize, no matter what business you're in, there's actually a longer tail than you think in terms of like first someone, first becoming aware of you and then finally buying. There are some people who become aware, they're in the market and they're like bam, perfect, this checks all the boxes and they buy. But so many people become aware and then, they're a part of the long tail, many months later, and they finally buy. And so if you think about, I mean, if you really think about the analogy of like a funnel, if you stop dropping people into the top of it, eventually there's no one coming out the bottom, right? And so it just doesn't matter what business you're in, that system has to always be tended to. Now, can you delegate that to someone else, to other people?

Chris (41:50)

Right.

Right. Right.

Jon Blair (42:14)

Yeah, you can. It doesn't always have to be used as the founder, but if no one is working on it, it will eventually dry up. It may take a long time. I actually think that's where the trap is, is that it can take months. Sometimes it could take years for the funnel to dry up, but it does eventually if you are not actively putting new prospects into it. So I think that's fantastic advice. So I think the last thing that I want to chat about here is boundaries between work and personal life. Do you have any sort of, I don't wanna say hacks, but like do you have any guiding principles that you use when it comes to setting boundaries between your businesses and then your personal life?

Chris (42:54)

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, you know, I think one of things that I take a lot of pride in is, even though I am a senior entrepreneur, it is my nine to five. So every morning I wake up my children, my wife and I make them breakfast and we make them lunch. We go outside and wave to them as they drive off to school. And you know, I have family, I have a little bit of one on one time, you know, with my wife and you know, and then I get ready and I come to work.

And when I'm here, and you know, might be five or six, you know, depending on the day. But while I'm here, you know, I'm solving problems. And then I go pick up my son from football practice. We go home, we make dinner as a family. We have dinner as a family around the table. And we spend time. So last night, my daughter and wife, they were painting each other's nails watching a TV show.

And actually what I did with my son last night is I really introduced the five F's concept to him. And we I actually bought him a full focus planner and we actually started filling that out. Awesome. That's awesome. And so we started doing that. And then, you know, we say, you know, good night to them. And so again, you know, those boundaries are in a sense of like

Jon Blair (44:08)

I love it. My full book is over here. I live and die by it. My wife has one as well.

Chris (44:25)

that faith and family and fitness, they're all the main focus before kind of business starts and ends. And so I would say that's the main thing that we try to focus on as a family.

Jon Blair (44:42)

Yeah, I love that. have a similar kind of similar kind of boundaries. mean, and actually Michael Hyatt, know I keep he's the one who invented the full focus planner, but he's a he's a big like the content, the books he's written his podcasts are big reasons or the driving force behind a lot of my guiding principles when it comes to the balance between work and family. But he always says like, you have to set a start time and you have to set an end time to your day. Because as an entrepreneur, no one's gonna set it for you. You have to set it for yourself, right? And so I actually have, no, no, yeah, exactly. I still think about business. Let me say something that might be freeing to people that are listening. I can't turn off being an entrepreneur, and I don't. But I can be present with my family at 5.30 p.m. every day, even if I'm still thinking about work.

Chris (45:17)

No, and our brain doesn't turn off.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jon Blair (45:40)

part of being an entrepreneur that doesn't ever turn off and that's okay. It's something I wrote about on LinkedIn recently. I've been in the season of writing on LinkedIn about stuff about giving grace to entrepreneurs. I think we're all so hard on ourselves. I know we are. We're all so freaking hard on ourselves and there's no one who's gonna, people rarely tell us we're doing a good job because we don't have a boss. We're our own boss and we're actually the hardest boss that we could ever have. And no one's gonna tell us to stop, right? No one's gonna tell us to stop. so I actually have my start time and end time in my calendar, and I bookend my days with meals with my family as well. I have a three-year-old and a two-year-old boy while my wife is taking my daughter, who's five, to elementary school. I make them breakfast every day.

Chris (46:09)

All right.

Yeah.

Jon Blair (46:32)

I put away the dishes for my wife. I do some things around the house. I clean up the house so that it's not absolute chaos when she gets back, because she does enough of that all day long, taking care of our family. And then I start my work day, and at 5:30 we have dinner every day, and that's when my work day is done. Every once in a while, and what I mean every once in a while, mean like a few times a month, do I have to log in at night? Yeah, I do, because I didn't get something done. But once the kids are down for bed, they've been bathed and they've been put down,

Chris (46:41)

Right. Right. Yeah. Right.

Jon Blair (47:00)

Every once a while do have to get a thing or two done on the weekend? Yeah So every once a while do I say hey? I'm gonna be late for dinner today because there's this thing that got scheduled and I couldn't move it Yes, but those are very clearly the exceptions not the rules and because I've placed those boundaries. There's friction There's friction to scheduling them and because they're in my calendar Whenever I like look at possibly scheduling something over them. I go. I'm scheduling over my morning time with my boys having breakfast or over dinner with my family. And so it's just there's, so if there's anything from all this, it's like set boundaries and be okay with it not being perfect. know, Michael Hyatt always says, if he's calls it mapping out your ideal week, and if your ideal week is 70% on point, that's the goal, 70 to 80%. It's not 100% perfection, right? But if you are 70 to 80%, in alignment with what you've intentionally laid out as your ideal week, which includes boundaries at the beginning and end of your day for your personal life, you will be living a life of far greater success, achievement, and intentionality than most people out there. So in closing here, I would like to close with a little fun little personal question. What's a little known fact about Chris Lang that you think people might find shocking or surprising?

Chris (48:27)

I know I mentioned this to you before, but that I learned to read, write, speak Cherokee as a child. So I was raised Cherokee in Oklahoma, and it's really what inspired me about the story. What was this nation trying to preserve its history, its stories, its language? And so I think that base is, yeah, I think that base is...

Jon Blair (48:50)

That's so cool.

Chris (48:53)

has given me a lot of perspective and I'm super grateful for that opportunity.

Jon Blair (48:58)

Can you still read and write, Cherokee?

Chris (49:01)

So I can't write or read. It's something like, mean, you know, if I were to go back, would say, Osiyo dtohitsu? which means hi, how are you? And then if they asked me how I was, I'd probably say, agiyosi which means I'm hungry. So I know how to get around and get fed. That's about it. know, so no, but it is something, it's a very complicated. I think it's a, you know how there's different levels and languages?

Jon Blair (49:10)

Yeah.

Yeah, I love it. love it. Yeah. No, that's all good, man. That's cool, though.

Mm-hmm.

Chris (49:31)

to learn, I think level five, I think it's like a level five as far as the how hard it is. And so it's not native, know, like, I definitely know more Spanish now than I know Cherokee.

Jon Blair (49:43)

For sure. That's cool, man. I love that. So before we land the plane here, where can people find out more about you and about Move FWD?

Chris (49:49)

Mm.

Yeah, movefwd.co is our website and @ChrisLang social across platforms is where you can find me.

Jon Blair (50:02)

Definitely check out Chris's content. I read it every single day. It's really, really awesome stuff. And definitely check out Move FWD. mean, look, I don't think there's an entrepreneur out there that isn't looking for holistic health and as Michael Hyatt calls it, the double win, which is winning at work and succeeding at life. And so if you're looking for someone to come alongside you and help you in that journey, check out Move FWD and see what they can do for you.

Chris (50:06)

Amen.

Mm-hmm.

Jon Blair (50:30)

And you know, don't forget, if you're looking for more helpful tips on scaling a profit-focused DTC brand, which is my area of expertise, consider giving me a follow, Jon Blair, on LinkedIn. And if you're interested in learning more about how Free2Grow's DTC accountants and fractional CFOs can help you increase profit and cash flow as you scale, check us out at Free2GrowCFO.com. And until next time, scale on. Thanks for joining, Chris.

Chris (50:56)

Thank you.

E-Commerce Accounting 101: Tips, Tricks, and Mistakes to Avoid

Episode Summary

In this episode of The Free to Grow CFO Podcast, Jon Blair sits down with AJ Stockwell, founder of Climb CFO and e-commerce accounting expert, to tackle one of the biggest challenges DTC brand founders face: keeping clean, accurate financials. Together, they dive into the essentials of bookkeeping for e-commerce brands, from spotting red flags to optimizing margins and ensuring financial clarity. Jon and AJ highlight a critical yet often overlooked mistake—misclassifying sales tax as revenue or expenses on the P&L statement. As AJ explains, sales tax is actually a liability, and including it on the P&L can seriously distort your brand’s financial health, impacting decisions around pricing, ad spend, and growth strategy. This episode is packed with insights to help founders maintain accurate records that drive smarter decisions.

Topics Covered in Episode:

• Biggest Red Flags in DTC Financials: Common errors in e-commerce bookkeeping that signal trouble.

• Holiday Cash Flow Management: Why December’s slower sales and post-holiday tax liabilities require extra planning.

• Landed Cost Accounting: Why it’s challenging for DTC brands and how to stay ahead with smart tracking of freight, duties, and fees.

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

AJ Stockwell- https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajstockwell/

Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/

Climb CFO - https://climbcfo.com/

Meet AJ Stockwell

AJ Stockwell spent a decade as the CFO and Controller of numerous e-commerce brands, both in-house and on a fractional basis through his firm Climb CFO. More recently, he has shifted his firm's focus to accounting education and helping businesses clean up their books rather than providing ongoing CFO support.

Transcript

~~~

00:00 Introduction

03:50 AJ Stockwell’s background

05:51 The Importance of Accurate Bookkeeping

12:01 Red Flags in Financial Statements

30:22 Navigating Financial Complexity in E-Commerce

36:43 The Importance of Accurate Costing Methods

39:45 The Challenges of Landed Cost Accounting

45:27 The Significance of Contribution Margin in Profitability

50:21 Closing Thoughts

Jon Blair (00:00)

Yo yo, what's happening everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast where we dive deep into conversations about scaling a DTC brand with a profit-focused mindset. I'm your host, Jon Blair, founder of Free to Grow CFO. We're the go-to outsource finance and accounting firm for eight and nine-figure DTC brands. All right, today, I gotta be honest, my guests, this is a long time coming, because this is one of my good buddies, and actually, to be quite frank,

He's someone who took a lot of phone calls from me the year leading up to starting Free to Grow CFO. He was kind of a sounding board of like AJ, should I do it? Should I not do it? And so AJ is actually like a super important person in the history of Free to Grow, whether you know it or not. So AJ, thanks for joining, man. I appreciate having you here. How you doing today?

AJ Stockwell (00:53)

I'm doing great, yeah, and it's awesome to be on here finally. I know we've been trying to make this happen, so I'm excited to record this and hopefully it's not the last time.

Jon Blair (01:03)

Yeah, 100%. So here's actually a little bit of history about how I know AJ. And he's gonna give his own background in a second, but AJ was formerly the controller of one of the early e-comm brands, Tuft & Needle. If you're an e-comm nerd, you've definitely heard of Tuft & Needle, probably heard a little bit about their story. AJ ran all kinds of stuff on accounting and finance for them as they were scaling super fast. At Guardian, we had hired a few people from Tuft & Needle, kind of post the merger that they had with SSB, and we were introduced to AJ through a former Tuft & Needle employee who was working at Guardian. AJ actually worked for us as a fractional CFO and controller for a period of time. That's where we met, but we stayed in touch after we kind of took those functions fully in-house.

And as I was wrestling with the idea of starting Free to Grow CFO, knew AJ was a perfect person to call, one, because we could have nerdy accounting conversations and both enjoy it. But two, he had started Climb CFO, which at the time was a firm that was focused on serving growing e-commerce brands as well. And so today we're gonna be talking about e-commerce accounting, tips, tricks. do's and don'ts. Super important topic and I couldn't think of anyone better to have on than AJ. The reason we're talking about this is because we just keep seeing time and time again when we come across brands who are interested in potentially working with Free to Grow that they don't even realize how messed up their accounting is. Oftentimes they'll have a sense that something's wrong because they'll look at the numbers and something doesn't seem right. Most founders have a picture in their head of where they think profitability is gonna land for a given month and then they get the P&L from their bookkeeper and they're like dude this is way off from what I was expecting. What is going on? Well, we're gonna actually dive into some of the most common issues and red flags that we come across That are probably driving your inaccurate bookkeeping. So what this is gonna do is it's gonna equip you as a founder to be able to Identify that you do indeed have a bookkeeping problem Where it's probably coming from?

And then which is gonna better inform you to know how to kind of decide on the next steps to go find the right person or people to help you get it fixed so that you can ultimately make timely and quality decisions based on your bookkeeping. So before we get into the details of all this fun stuff, AJ, if you could give the audience kind of a quick rundown of your background and your journey to where you're at today at Climb CFO.

AJ Stockwell (03:54)

Great. Yeah. So as you mentioned, I was previously with Tuft & Needle. I was their first accounting and finance hire a little over a decade now ago, which is pretty crazy to think about. There were about nine or 10 of us at the company then. And that year we did about nine million in revenue. Over the next four years, I helped grow the brand, helped build out the accounting and finance function as the company grew.

And then about four years after I joined, we completed a merger with Serta Simmons Bedding. And that was the time that I kind of ended up leaving the company. So those were really nice bookends, you know, being the first accounting and finance hire and then seeing it through that merger. And at that point, you know, the brand had well over a hundred employees and, you know, north of 150 million in revenue that year. So really.

astonishing growth, not something that I've personally honestly been involved in much or seen since Tuft & Needle. So it was a really incredible learning and growth experience for me. And then by the time I was getting ready to leave Tuft & Needle, I'd already been thinking about leaving the company for a little while just because I recognized that I liked working with earlier stage brands and working with smaller teams.

You know, my time at Tuft & Needle was kind of consumed with meetings and managerial roles and I liked to, you know, be kind of more boots on the ground helping grow a brand. And then the second thing that I recognized was that there was a real need out there for e-commerce brands, especially, you know, we're talking about 2018 or so now when e-commerce was really exploding.

And there was a great need for a higher level of accounting and finance guidance by brands who maybe weren't big enough where it would make sense for them to have a full-time CFO, but they still really needed a lot of the discipline and structure and kind of higher level guidance that comes from a CFO. So that's when I recognized the opportunity to start Climb CFO and start working with brands on a more dedicated but fractional CFO basis. And then more recently in the past year, I've actually sort of wound down the CFO practice and focused on sort of smaller scale projects and advising, especially around helping companies clean up their books and clean up their financial statements, which I know is kind of the big topic for us today. So it's perfect.

Jon Blair (06:43)

For sure. Well yeah, okay, so a couple things I want to kind of draw here. One, if you kind of read between the lines, AJ saw growth from nine million to very healthy nine figure revenue in four years, right? So like a lot of lessons learned there that a lot of people don't have not learned firsthand before themselves, right? And then two, I always say this, you as an e-comm brand need a CFO before you can afford one full time. That's something that we've realized that free to grow is a reality. And the good news is you don't need one full time before you can afford one full time. And today with firms like free to grow and others out there in the space that are able to provide CFO services on a fractional basis, it allows you to get the CFO expertise that you need to scale your brand profitably and with healthy cash flow, but at a price you can afford today, right? And so, you can, now that you've heard AJ's background, you've...

probably recognize why it made so much sense for me to pick his brain before we started Free to Grow because he was a few years ahead of me in you know starting a practice in kind of the same areas. But yeah, what we're going to talk about is we're going to talk about messy books, why clean books are so important and what it means for you as the founder if you're dealing with messy books and the potential like, you know, real big issues that it could cause for you. the first question I have, I touched on this a little bit in the intro, but from your perspective, AJ, why should brand founders care about accurate bookkeeping?

AJ Stockwell (08:39)

Yeah, so I think the list there is sort of endless. A couple of just like surface level sort of obvious things are, you know, from a compliance and reporting perspective, you know, making sure that you're getting your taxes filed correctly and accurately is crucial. And then from a financial reporting perspective, you know, if you're reporting to a board or investors or any external parties, you know, it becomes crucial to have

Jon Blair (08:44)

Hahaha

AJ Stockwell (09:09)

accurate numbers that make sense. And then, you know, nevermind if you're going to look for an acquisition or starting to raise money, they become even more crucial in those cases. But probably the most important and kind of the core of it is just being able to operate your business on a day-to-day basis, knowing what's actually going on, you know, having a clear windshield and seeing

what's going on in your business, understanding the health and the performance of your business on a day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year basis, and having confidence in those numbers. it sort of eliminates a huge unknown that shouldn't be an unknown when you're starting to have certain strategic conversations around whether it's a large investment in a new product line, into a retail store things like that or an infinite number of potential strategic directions that you might go.

Jon Blair (10:15)

Yeah, I love the analogy of the clear windshield. Like if you got a windshield that's got mud all over it, like how can you drive the car safely, right? And the other thing that I want to mention is that by virtue of running a DTC brand, you have chosen one of the more challenging verticals to scale within. Why? One, there's a ton of competition. Right? And there's more competition today than there's ever been because the barrier is super low to entry. Anyone can buy products, source products off Alibaba, fire up a Shopify store, start spending money on ads. So there is very low barrier to entry, which is one of the reasons there's so much competition. But just looking at the business model, you have a business that is largely driven by ad spend, which is a huge investment, and you hold inventory which represents another like complexity of the business and use of cash. And so, we always say like the reason, every vertical has a need for clean books. But I would say that some of the simpler business models can get by without clean books right, for a while, eventually they're still gonna need them once they get to a certain size. But in e-comm, you need them a lot sooner than other verticals because you're dealing with heavy amounts of ad spend and you're dealing with inventory, which makes things that much more complicated, which means there's actually more metrics and KPIs that help you understand financial health that you need to track than some other simpler business model. next we're gonna get into talking about some of the biggest red flags that we see over and over again. These are red flags that indicate like, hey, almost guaranteed there's a big issue with the books here. And because there's a big issue with the books, they're presenting information that is probably misleading when it comes to making operating decisions in your business. So let's chat first about sales tax. Because I actually see...

I run all the sales in Free to Grow and so I actually review the financials of every brand that we create a proposal for. And I actually see this more frequently than anything else in terms of red flags. There's some issue with sales tax that ultimately means there's an issue with revenue.

From your standpoint, what are some of the common things that you see on your end when you come across books and you notice there's a sales tax issue and what does that mean for the accuracy of those books?

AJ Stockwell (12:59)

Yep, yeah, so I agree with you that it's one of the top red flags and one of the first things to look for just because it can be so obvious. once I see it, it's a sign that, you know, this this review is going down a little bit different of a path and it's becoming, you know, more complex and I'm going to spend more time understanding what's going on with the company's books. The bottom line, and this is why it's so easy to kind of see.

Jon Blair (13:15)

Yeah.

AJ Stockwell (13:28)

The bottom line is that sales tax should not be anywhere on the P&L statement because sales tax is not an income when you're collecting it from customers. It's not an expense that you're paying out. It's not your tax. What it is is a liability and it's something that, you know, a company is just holding kind of on behalf of a tax agency. So that's why it's a liability.

because customers truly are the ones paying the tax. It's part of their cost and businesses have a responsibility basically to collect and then remit that tax to the taxing agencies. So anytime I see sales tax income as an income row, I know that there's a red flag. And if I see it also separately or in addition,

Jon Blair (14:17)

Ugh.

AJ Stockwell (14:26)

as an expense going out. That's kind of the second red flag. And those are probably the two most common places where I see it and it jumps out right away like a sore thumb. One of the, I guess, like quick, you know, deeper reasons why this can be an issue and not to get too far ahead of ourselves. But if you're reporting the sales tax that you collect as income,

Jon Blair (14:40)

Yeah.

AJ Stockwell (14:54)

and then the payments as an expense, then not only are you showing them incorrectly and maybe there's an argument that it's netting out in the bottom line of the P&L, but the much bigger issue is you're overstating your revenue. So you're looking at your financial statements thinking you're taking in more revenue than you actually are. And then if that expense is

Jon Blair (15:06)

hear that a lot.

AJ Stockwell (15:22)

lower on the P&L within the operating expenses or something like that, then that means that you're also gonna be overstating your gross profit margins. And you're gonna be thinking that your products themselves are more profitable than they actually are because you have this revenue overstated.

Jon Blair (15:32)

Mm, yep.

Yeah, so another way to think about this is...

you know, your margin ratios, right? So if we take gross profit margin ratio or gross profit margin like AJ was just talking about is you've got gross profit dollars divided by revenue dollars, right? Well, you're overstating revenue. So you're actually you're throwing your understanding of your margin ratios gets completely thrown off. If there's anything in your financials. And this is common. Most founders have some number of metrics that they divide into revenue, right? To get the margin

ratio and if the denominator is revenue and revenue is overstated because sales tax is in there, then that ratio is wrong, which means what? It means misleading data that may lead you to make bad decisions, right? And let's take it even one step further. What's the margin? What's the number one reason why I hear

DTC brand founders wanting to understand their margin ratios because they want to know how much they can afford to spend on advertising, right? Because what percentage of every revenue dollar is available to spend on advertising and then hopefully still have some left over to cover fixed overhead? Well, guess what? If you're calculating the wrong percentage because the denominator in those ratios is wrong because you've your overstating revenue by including sales tax,

AJ Stockwell (16:49)

Right.

Jon Blair (17:09)

you're making bad ad spend decisions that you may think are profitable and aren't or vice versa. And you don't want to be doing that because as you're scaling, you know, to seven figures and then to eight figures and then to nine figures, you're spending more and more ad dollars. And you want to know for sure with certainty, with confidence, what the impact is of those advertising dollars on the business's profitability. There's one other thing I wanted to note.

that you mentioned AJ is like, I hear a lot too. well, they just net each other out. Well, here's the reality. That's not maybe they net each other out in aggregate, right? And when I say like over a long period of time.

But the reality is we don't work with a brand who doesn't have different filing frequencies for different states, right? Like, and it depends on thresholds. Like, can start annually and then once you start collecting more, goes to quarterly and then it goes to monthly. Yeah, well, if you collect every single day and that hits your revenue, but you don't pay it out until three months later because you're a quarterly filer, it doesn't net each other. They don't net each other out on those three months leading up to when you finally pay it out. So like,

That's a slippery slope argument to try to hang your hat on. But here's another thing that I wanna dive into with you. And this one is actually the one AJ started with, which is sales tax collected as revenue, sales tax paid as an expense. That at least has.

AJ Stockwell (18:29)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (18:41)

You can identify that, you can see those things, right, in the chart of accounts and on the P&L. But there's this other one that's maybe like a little bit more, even a little more dangerous, which is you don't see sales tax anywhere. It's not on the P&L and it's not on the balance sheet. And what are some reasons that you, when you see that AJ, what does that start leading you to think may be going on?

AJ Stockwell (18:55)

rate.

Yeah, so there are usually two possibilities there. One is that the company is just outright reporting on a cash basis, whether it's just for the revenue of that portion alone or for all of their business. And I know we're going to talk about inventory as well. But one thing that that can show is the company is just reporting revenue on a cash basis, which most commonly what that will look like is

Jon Blair (19:18)

Mmm.

AJ Stockwell (19:35)

you know, in their bank feed, a deposit from Shopify comes through and they just post that to sales. But the problem there, of course, is that, you know, there's sales tax in there. There's there are, you know, fees probably taken out of it that they want to get broken out and things like that. So that's one. And that's probably the most.

Jon Blair (19:45)

Yeah.

AJ Stockwell (19:59)

dangerous in a sense. It's again kind of easy to recognize if you just look at the entries that are, you know, posting to the overall sales account on the P&L because you'll see that it's just those those deposits from the merchant processor. And then the second one is that maybe people are breaking out the way that they're entering their revenue and their transfers that are coming from their merchant processor.

but they're still just posting those sales straight into that main revenue account on the P&L. So anytime I'm looking at the P&L and looking at, I'm clicking into revenue and looking at the detail of that ledger to see how this is actually being posted.

Jon Blair (20:35)

Yeah. Yeah.

For sure, yeah, this is the second most common thing we see. And usually what we find is it's a CPA firm, a horizontal CPA firm, meaning that they serve like any and all industries. They're tax, they're really tax preparers. They're doing the books. And so they oftentimes are doing the books on a cash basis because it aligns with what, it aligns with the tax return strategy basically. But you know, the problem is again, going back to margins, the most common version I see,

is the first one that AJ walked through, which is that when you get a net payout that comes from Shopify every day or every couple days, that net amount that hits your bank account, they just post that straight to a single revenue general ledger account. The issue is it includes, it's actually inclusive of gross revenue, discounts, refunds, sales tax payable, and merchant processing or credit card fees. But even worse,

there's a delay between the sales, the actual orders and sales associated with those amounts. And so they may not even be posting it in the right month. A perfect example is like on, know, actually upcoming, where we're gonna see this a lot in our CFO audits is after this holiday season because Black Friday, Cyber Monday this year crosses over from November to December. So what that means is all these brands are gonna have a huge concentration of sales and incoming cash being generated

AJ Stockwell (21:47)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (22:13)

this last week of November, but a bunch of those Shopify deposits are gonna hit their bank in December. And so if your CPA or your bookkeeper's doing the books in this manner where it's cash basis and it doesn't include that breakout of those different actual P&L line items,

you're gonna see a bunch of revenue from November actually hit in December. There's a whole nother can of worms we could open up on like revenue recognition timing, but the bottom line is it may put your revenue in the wrong period, which can lead to bad decisions. It doesn't actually allow you to understand how much of that quote net revenue. I'm saying quote because it's.

partially wrong, is actually sales tax, is credit card fees, is refunds, is discounts, all of those things. It doesn't matter until it matters. And guess what? Guess when it's gonna matter? Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend, when you're giving big time discounts, you're collecting a bunch of sales tax, you have a whole bunch of merchant processing fees, you want that stuff recorded right so you actually know how it's impacting your profit and cash flow.

Is there anything else related to this AJ that you see like when the accounting is done this way, like what kind of trouble it can get a founder into in terms of decision making?

AJ Stockwell (23:35)

No, I think just the one step further is, and I know we have inventory on our list, but sort of same thing when you're considering how you're posting your cost of goods and costing out the inventory that you're selling, this cash basis of recording revenue only makes that more difficult and probably further incorrect depending on the way that you are.

Jon Blair (23:58)

Totally.

AJ Stockwell (24:04)

recording your cost of goods and your product costs especially.

Jon Blair (24:06)

Yeah, and because revenue minus cost of goods is gross profit.

You've got revenue from gross profit possibly in one period and cost of goods sold in another one. And so if you look, depending on the time period, you're looking at gross profit. It's wildly over or understated in one period and then corrected, quote, self-corrected and over and understated in the other direction in the next period. One other thing I want to point out, this is something that's probably less common for founders to realize, but you want to make sure the payables.

AJ Stockwell (24:16)

Exactly.

Jon Blair (24:42)

on your balance sheet are accurate every month and sales tax payable being one of those because cash in the bank is not all your cash, right? It can be very misleading. Again, especially after a big sale like right after Black Friday, Cyber Monday, you have all this cash and you're like, bam, there we go, baby. All this cash. But how much of that is due to taxing authorities, right?

AJ Stockwell (25:04)

Yep.

Right.

Jon Blair (25:09)

How much of that is due to your vendors in the form of accounts payable? How much of that is due on your line of credit which you extended to buy all the inventory for that sale weekend? And so I kind of made this metric up. It comes from the metric quick ratio. I call it what's your quick cash balance, meaning like take cash and you subtract your current liability. So your cash on hand and subtract AP, sales tax payable, and then maybe your line of credit.

whatever's due soon, that's the cash you actually own. You back out credit cards too. So you may have a million in the bank and you back out those other items, you only have 200K left over. So don't go on a crazy spending spree. You actually owe some other people money eminently. So that's another reason why you gotta make sure this stuff is accurately split out on the P&L versus the balance sheet.

AJ Stockwell (25:52)

Right.

Right. Yeah. And I actually just want to emphasize that even a little bit further because another common dynamic with Black Friday, Cyber Monday is that a lot of brands will have much slower sales in December, especially when that full weekend is in is actually in November. So what will happen is, you know, someone might be sort of planning their cash and they're just looking at what's in the bank account.

Jon Blair (26:18)

for sure.

AJ Stockwell (26:31)

and they know that they're gonna have lower sales receipts in December, but they might not be thinking about really the impact that those sales tax payments can have on their cash, especially as brands get to be.

Jon Blair (26:45)

Totally.

AJ Stockwell (26:48)

a pretty big size with economic nexus and everything. know, brands are filing sales tax in 20 plus states, know, 20, 30 more states for big brands. And that's a, that ends up being a lot of cash, especially when you go from.

a huge level of sales over the course of a weekend and then end up with a much lower than normal sort of level of sales. It's, when you have when you don't have those monthly fluctuations, it can be a little bit easier to sort of plan or you sort of like expect kind of the level of cash that's going out for those sales tax payments on a month to month basis. But I've seen people kind of underestimate those December payments.

Jon Blair (27:12)

Totally.

AJ Stockwell (27:35)

which can be really considerable.

Jon Blair (27:37)

That's a great point and actually going back to something I said at the beginning which is like hey Newsflash you picked a hard vertical right by getting into ecom You've got to spend a lot of money on ads and understand whether they're profitable or not You got to hold inventory and the third one is you're in consumer goods So there is seasonality like there are yes, there are some consumer goods brands that

that have less seasonality than others, but most of them have some form of seasonality. And so this, what AJ was just talking about, nailing your planning from a cash perspective becomes even more important when you have any sort of seasonal peaks and troughs, which so many consumer brands do. And that's again where getting the help from a CFO who understands these dynamics, is gonna just help you make decisions at just such a higher level of sophistication as you're growing your brand.

AJ Stockwell (28:34)

Yeah, and I think this is also like a really important sort of warning. And I'm just going to even further emphasize it for brands is this cash planning, like December cash planning should start maybe in the summer. I mean, obviously we're always planning, you know, ideally kind of 12 months in advance. But when it comes to the really tactical cash planning for the end of the year, it does need to start a little bit earlier and be a little bit more thoughtful. Because you also brought up things like lines of credit and vendor payables. And so a brand can get really bad whiplash when they come off of the end of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and they have maybe the highest cash balance that they've had all year. And then it turns out, my line of credit is based on the amount of inventory that I have. And suddenly I sold through a ton of inventory. So now my line of credit availability has gone way down. So I'm actually not necessarily even going to be able to draw back all of that line of credit balance. And then I have some vendor payments for some of those big inventory purchases and those need to go out. And then I have those sales tax payments. And then potentially one more thing is, you know, maybe I'm seeing higher returns in sort of a real time cash basis in December because overall sales are lower, but I'm seeing the returns from that big Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend. And these are, you know, four or five huge swings in cash that can really reduce a company's cash balance. And if they haven't planned for at least those items, you you can really run into trouble come the end of the year.

Jon Blair (30:40)

Yeah, great points. And again, reason there's such a need for...higher level sophistication in your accounting and finance functions in a growing e-comm brand, it's because of all these moving parts. AJ just did a great job of kind of going through a list of them, but not all businesses have these, but you're gonna have them if you're growing an e-comm brand, and so you need to have the right accounting and finance team to help you navigate them, because they're not going away, unfortunately. And as you grow, there's more and more zeros at the end of each of those items that AJ just went through, so there's more and more at stake.

So what I want to talk about next is inventory. Some of the biggest red flags that we see on a regular basis as it relates to inventory. So the first one I want to ask you about AJ is prepaid slash in transit inventory. It not being on the balance sheet. Why is this a red flag and what kind of issues does it cause?

AJ Stockwell (31:37)

Yeah, so like with the other topics, there are a few things that can be going on and numerous issues that this causes. But it comes back to kind of the core of understanding what is my current inventory position, inclusive of orders that are already out there and especially inventory that's already on its way to me know, if you don't have the prepaid inventory on your books kind of broken out separately and it's all lumped into inventory, or you know that it's coming, so I'm sort of treating prepaid or in transit similarly, just because once it's in transit, usually you'll have the invoice and that's kind of going into inventory.

You can get into issues if you're managing or looking at your cost of goods sold based on kind of your physical inventory on hand because if I just have one inventory row on my balance sheet and I'm asking my 3PL at the end of the month, what do you have on hand and I'm maybe adjusting my inventory to that or I'm using that to figure out what my cost of goods is then I'm gonna kind of overcorrect or go way too far in terms of what I'm costing out. And then maybe the next month, once they've actually received that inventory that I wrote off or costed out the prior month, all of a sudden it's looking like my cost of goods is higher. I didn't sell as many units, even though we have our sales numbers. So I think it again comes back to sort of the month to month fluctuations and items being posted in the wrong month but also just not having an accurate overall picture of where I stand with all the inventory that I own.

Jon Blair (33:29)

Dude, we see this so often and usually, I would say honestly 99 % of the time, it could even be 100 potentially. Matt Fowler, one of our accounting managers would probably be like, Jon, it's 100 % of the time, I don't know what you're saying, 99% there is no distinction between prepaid and in transit and on hand on the balance sheet. There's usually just like an inventory account. And if there's multiple, it's usually by product category, shirts, socks, hats, whatever, right? But to say what AJ just said in different words, if you don't have them broken out, you can't reconcile the general ledger balance to a physical count. Why? Because the general ledger balance, if it's all lumped into one inventory account, it includes prepaid in transit inventory and on hand. What's the problem with that? Prepaid and in transit will not be in the physical count that comes from your warehouse. So you're gonna compare apples to oranges, right? And when you go to true them up, on the financials, true up your balance sheet to the physical count, everything that was in prepaid and in transit and reality but lumped into that balance sheet balance, that all goes straight to cost of goods sold. But guess what? When it arrives the next month, it'll get subtracted from cost of goods sold. So cost of goods sold is too high one month and too low in another. And it's just, it causes a whole bunch of issues. But furthermore, the other issue is, what we see, this is more of an operational side effect, but it's super important, is that when we see that when brands don't have to track this for accounting purposes, they just don't track it period. So they don't even have an accurate accounting somewhere of what has been prepaid for and what is in transit, which is like a massive miss on just overall operational control to make sure that like you're getting from your vendor what you have prepaid for and to make sure that what is in transit fully arrives, right? And so we almost always, I think close to if not 100 % of the time are setting up a prepaid and in transit inventory bucket for the first time in most of our clients like history and

AJ Stockwell (35:36)

Right.

Jon Blair (35:50)

Usually to be honest with you if you guys end up if you're listening this you end up working with us and you're like my gosh, we don't have prepaid in transit inventory and my margins are all over the place I think this could be part of the problem. Keep in mind. We will not nail correcting it for you in month one unless you have a very detailed accurate historical tracking of prepaid inventory and in transit, which you probably don't and I don't blame you because no one's ever asked you to do it before and you haven't known why it's so important and what's at stake. So usually takes us two to three months. We try to help, we try to go back in the general ledger and look at all purchases that have hit the general ledger, whether it on a cash basis or an accrual basis, we'll try to go back many months, as far back as you think you have something prepaid or in transit, and we'll try to build out, we'll give you a list of things to choose from that's still outstanding.

But even then it takes usually several months to get this nailed down and it basically starts working when you figure out how to track this internally. So just know that like your accountant can't do everything for you historically in terms of cleaning stuff up. And this is one thing that usually takes a couple months to figure out and it's in partnership between who's doing your accounting and who's actually managing your inventory. So another thing that we see on the inventory side of things, well actually hold on, one other thing that I would love to get your take on. So let's just say we kind of take the corollary approach to this and we say, okay, we don't want to break out prepaid and in transit inventory, but we're also never gonna true up the balance sheet to the warehouse and we're just gonna expense to cost of goods sold our estimated product cost by SKU. Because we see that a lot.

What issues does that cause in your mind?

AJ Stockwell (37:43)

So in that case, I think the issue is that you're using estimates there. So you're sort of focused on a P&L approach, which again is common for when you have like a CPA firm, you know, like a tax firm kind of doing the books on kind of a cash basis, they might try to sort of estimate your actual sales, but they would be using an estimate often and that's a focus on the P&L and you sort of run into like a confirmation bias, I guess, because you've sort of decided in your mind and it's of course informed based on historical costs and that kind of thing. You kind of decided in your mind what the P&L amount should be for that cost of goods sold, but you're not looking on a regular basis at the true amount.

Jon Blair (38:13)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

AJ Stockwell (38:42)

And the only way to do that is to have a handle on your comprehensive current inventory position, meaning including what's been prepaid and what's in transit. And ideally also kind of breaking things out, not necessarily in QuickBooks, but somewhere by location. one thing like you mentioned, operational danger from sort of an internal controls perspective, making sure that you get what you paid for. But there's also operational danger in the supply chain team not knowing what is coming. And if you're not tracking your in transits well or prepaid as well, then you can end up double ordering for certain items and overbuying inventory so not to go too far on a tangent, but I guess coming back to kind of the P&L focus part, you know, if you're using incorrect estimates, then your balance sheet inventory is just going to perpetually either get higher and higher and higher if your cost of goods estimate is low or your inventory is going to perpetually get lower and lower and lower. And what I mean by higher or lower is

Jon Blair (39:35)

No, no, no.

AJ Stockwell (40:01)

not just from the dollar perspective, but the error is going to be magnified on a monthly basis, either higher or lower. And it becomes a serious headache, especially like I've started to work with brands whose accounting firm was focused on this product costs $10. So we're just going to cost out $10 per unit sold according to Shopify and never look at the balance sheet.

And that goes on for a couple of years. And then all of a sudden, you know, you could have hundreds of thousands or even in the millions of an adjustment that has to be made to the inventory. And meanwhile, it comes back to this idea of, you know, knowing where you truly stand, understanding your true profitability from a product and an overall business perspective and, know, making decisions about how much you can spend on marketing and things like that and knowing those correct margins is crucial. And that's why I always say there are sort of two, the process of recording cost of goods is sort of two steps. And it's, if you're using kind of a landed cost, you know, detail or matrix to calculate your cost of goods at first, that's fine. But there's step two, which is crucial, which is confirming the actual inventory balance on the balance sheet.

Jon Blair (41:13)

Mm-hmm.

Totally.

AJ Stockwell (41:30)

because that's what informs if you are using those correct costs.

Jon Blair (41:36)

Yeah, and furthermore too, there's another thing that we see it's an issue all the time, which is that like, we call it internally, we call it the direct method of applying cost because we're directly applying sales volume times product cost, right? As opposed to indirect meaning backing into it, right? From like, just beginning plus purchases minus cogs equals ending. Yeah, exactly. like,

AJ Stockwell (42:02)

like a purely balance sheet. Yes, there's the pure P&L perspective and then pure balance sheet perspective where you say, you know, what did I buy? What did I sell? Or where did I start? What did I buy? What's the ending? And assuming that that's cost of goods sold, right?

Jon Blair (42:11)

Yep.

Yeah, everything else is cogs. Yeah, but the problem with that one is it doesn't tell you anything about why it was higher or lower than you expected. You're just backing into it, right? And so we take a blended... Yeah, it's even worse. Exactly.

AJ Stockwell (42:25)

Right, exactly. And if you're not tracking prepaids and in transits correctly, then you're running into the huge issues we were talking about a few minutes ago.

Jon Blair (42:34)

Totally, totally, yeah. And so like we take a blended approach, which is we start with the P&L method. If you don't have an IMS, right? If you don't have an inventory management system, which a lot of brands in the lower to middle market don't. But like we do the direct method of applying cost based on your estimated landing costs straight to cost of goods sold. And then we look at the general ledger balance and we compare it to the snapshot physical count, right? And we actually, if we do make an adjustment,

We put that on a different cost of goods sold account so you can see the difference between the true up adjustment, the balance sheet true up adjustment and your directly applied COGS. So you can get a sense for how much each of those entries like really impacted your margin buy.

And furthermore, there are just things that you have to pick up every single month via that balance sheet true up which is like damaged goods, returns that come back in and either get scrapped or get put back into finished goods, marketing samples, things that just go out the door that don't make their way into a Shopify order, right, or into an Amazon order. And so like you have to make sure you account for those, because we've come across brands who have not done that for like four years, and yeah, the adjustment was like 650K, and we're like, hey, unfortunately we can't tell you all the reasons this is so far off. We can tell you theoretically that it's one of or it's probably multiple of reasons within this list of things of and like going forward we're gonna directly apply COGS based on your estimated landed cost by SKU and then we're gonna true up the balance sheet every single month to the physical count so this doesn't happen to you anymore but you know just know that you know I go back to the analogy of like if you're flying a plane right that's supposed to go from LA to New York and you're off on your compass heading by one degree at the beginning you're not veering that far off course, but four to five hours later you may be Heading in a completely different direction and so it's this little one degree off For a long long time all of a sudden puts you super far away from the destination that you were trying to get to and and so just that in mind that like it may not seem like a big deal today but if it goes on unreconciled for one two three four five years you're gonna find yourself way off down the line and the problem is if that results in hundreds of thousands of additional cost of goods sold that's hundreds of thousand dollars of cost that you've had over the last several years that you didn't think you had that you actually have and so the question is what decisions would you have made differently

AJ Stockwell (45:22)

Right?

Jon Blair (45:27)

if you knew about those costs. So there is a lot at stake here. There's one other thing. go ahead.

AJ Stockwell (45:32)

And I would say, I was gonna say these are also issues that get further magnified as you scale and as a brand grows. So again, coming back to the reason that you and I started our firms is just the importance of having accurate financials and understanding where a brand stands, even starting from the earlier stage.

Jon Blair (45:40)

Totally.

So I wanna ask this, we've touched on some things here, but like, what makes landed cost accounting easy in theory? I've got, for those of you watching the video this episode, I'm air quoting, easy in theory, but challenging in practice. There are actually a ton of reasons, but from your perspective, what makes landed cost accounting, accurate landed cost accounting, challenging?

AJ Stockwell (46:27)

So I think it's just the sheer number of sort of different components and the different moving parts to consider. So like one quick thing is, know, freight. Freight is not going to be the same per unit or very rarely gonna be the same on a unit basis for each order or for, and therefore, you know, for each unit that you have. But without.

you know, using a proper inventory management system, which I really believe that companies can get away with using or without using, you know, a really robust inventory management system early on if they have other good kind of processes and checks and balances. But freight is one of those examples of something that's going to fluctuate on pretty much a unit basis. Another tricky thing is, like I was saying, just the number of moving parts. Like you brought up returns. and that's another piece that is technically in transit inventory that people might not be considering when they're closing the books. And, you know, they see these returns in Shopify for, you know, October 31st, but those are not yet put back into inventory. So if we're just doing kind of a simplistic, you know, costing approach,

Jon Blair (47:41)

Mm-hmm.

AJ Stockwell (47:49)

But then also trying to reconcile to a physical inventory count and what we truly have on hand from a balance sheet perspective. There's so many different kind of moving parts that have to be considered that can be really difficult to track without the proper processes.

Jon Blair (48:09)

Totally. Another one is accruing landed costs because so accrual for those of who don't know is an estimate which would like economically from an accounting standpoint economically that either revenue or expense event has actually happens such that it should be recorded, but you don't have an actual transaction maybe or a source document that should drive you to record that transaction. And on landed costs side of the house, what happens all the time, you order something from China, right? It could even be domestically, but like China's a good example because it happens over, you order something, a freight forwarder moves it to the 3PL, it gets received, and on the day it gets received, it gets sold, right?

So it gets sold immediately because you're a low stock on that item. But guess what you haven't gotten yet? You haven't got the duties invoice from US Customs and you haven't gotten the freight forwarder to give you the invoice yet. And even worse, you call the freight forwarder and you're like, I need this invoice because I need to cost this inventory. And they go, hey, all the subcontractors that moved these goods for us, they haven't even billed us yet. So we can't get you the invoice. So what do you do? You actually have to accrue the freight costs as of the day that that stuff got received, right?

you're doing accounting on a monthly basis, there's a period crossover, right, from one month to the next, you at least need to accrue the costs, the estimated costs of the inventory received through the end of that month. And how do you do that? I mean, there are ways to do it. At Guardian, we would use the quote to try to estimate a cost, right? We had a table of duty rates by HTS code where we could get an estimated duties. It's never perfect, but we could accrue costs that are pretty close, right, as of the close of the balance sheet each month, but those are not trivial things to do and there actually is no document. There is no trigger unless you have the process. There's no trigger that says, hey, record this, like a deposit into your bank account or a bill coming in from a vendor. You have to have a process as a part of your month-end closed checklist to check for the need to accrue revenues and expenses and that further complicates landed costs.

All right, so unfortunately we got to land the plane here We're definitely gonna have to have you back to chat some more, but we always like to ask a fun personal question and so before we conclude, what's a little known fact about AJ Stockwell that you think people might find shocking or surprising?

AJ Stockwell (50:40)

I don't know about shocking or surprising. Maybe part of this is, but I really enjoy barbecue. like the craft of, you know, making barbecue and cooking barbecue. it's something that I've been, you know, not to use like a dramatic word, but kind of studying and practicing for the last six or seven years. and then this is a little more maybe surprising or interesting at the beginning of COVID. I actually recorded a series of cooking videos, like instructional cooking videos at my house. And I only did it for a little bit during COVID and you can't find them anywhere. But it's actually something that I've thought about picking back up in terms of recording cooking videos.

Jon Blair (51:26)

Heck yeah, I love that. I mean, I'm in Austin, Texas, so I love barbecue and I've gone on a kind of a little journey myself of learning how to make really, really good barbecue, so I love that. Before we end here, where can people find more information about you and what you were doing today at Climb CFO?

AJ Stockwell (51:29)

Yeah.

Yeah, so you can go to my website, climbcfo.com. It's a pretty simple landing page at this point. But like I was saying, my main focus now is sort of on bookkeeping cleanups and kind of smaller projects. So people can certainly reach out to me at aj@climbcfo.com if they have any interest in talking about something like that.

Jon Blair (52:12)

Perfect, yeah, and depending on who's listening right now and if you end up working with Free to Grow, there's a chance, depending on what your needs are, that you may end up getting connected with AJ through Free to Grow. So it's great to have you on, man. This is such an awesome conversation. Obviously I love that we get to nerd out, but just remember, your bookkeeping matters because it is the foundational, accurate data that you need to make great decisions as you're scaling your brand and scaling an e-commerce brand is one of the hardest things you could possibly choose to do so you gotta make sure your bookkeeping is right because if it is it's gonna make everything else easier on you. Don't forget if you want more helpful tips on scaling profit-focused DTC brand, consider following me, Jon Blair, on LinkedIn. And if you're interested in learning more about how Free to Grow's DTC accountants and fractional CFOs can help your brand increase profit and cash flows you scale, check us out at FreetoGrowCFO.com. And until next time, scale on.

Mini Episode: Why Your CPA Should Not Keep Your $10M Brand's Books

Episode Summary

In this mini-episode of The Free to Grow CFO Podcast, Jon Blair discusses the critical importance of specialized bookkeeping for e-commerce brands, particularly those generating close to $10 million in revenue. He emphasizes the inadequacies of using a general CPA for bookkeeping, highlighting the need for expertise in e-commerce consumer goods. The short discussion covers the differences between cash and accrual accounting, the necessity for timely financial data, and the challenges posed by tax deadlines that can hinder bookkeeping efficiency.

Key Takeaways:

• E-commerce bookkeeping is complex and requires specialized knowledge.

• Accrual accounting provides better visibility into cash flow management.

• You need timely and accurate financial data for decision making.

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/

Transcript

~~~

Jon Blair (00:01)

Alright, if you're a brand that's doing almost $10 million a year in revenue, and your tax accountant is the one doing your bookkeeping, you've got a big problem, and you need to make some changes. Why? Here's the thing. Most likely, your CPA, your tax accountant, is a very horizontally structured firm. Horizontal meaning that they serve all different kinds of verticals, maybe some service businesses, some manufacturing businesses, some solopreneurs, maybe some consumer goods brands. And by virtue of being horizontal, they just are not gonna understand the nuances of consumer goods and even more specifically, eComm consumer goods.

Here's the thing, eComm bookkeeping is hard in and of itself, consumer goods bookkeeping is hard in and of itself. When you smash the two together and you have an eComm consumer goods brand, you've got extra complicated bookkeeping, so having a horizontal CPA firm do your books is a bad idea. Once you get to 10 million or close to it, you need very solid financial data. And the way that you get that in the eComm consumer goods world is you work with a bookkeeping firm or an accounting and finance firm who specializes in eComm consumer goods. They’re going to be able to get you the financials that you need in a timely and accurate manner to support really sound decision-making.

So the first reason why having your CPA do your bookkeeping for your $10 million brand, the first reason why that's a bad idea is because they're probably horizontal and they're not vertically focused on eComm consumer goods. The second reason why it's a bad idea is actually because by virtue of being a tax accountant first, they're likely telling you to do your books on a cash basis just because that's easier for them to keep and it allows them to file cash basis tax returns really easily. Is that necessarily the best thing for you? Maybe it is from a tax standpoint, maybe it's not. Oftentimes I find it's actually not the best tax treatment is to do cash basis books and CPAs actually just tell you to do that because it's really easy to do selfishly.

But here's what I can tell you. If you've reached $10 million a year in sales as an e eComm consumer goods brand or close to $10 million in sales, you need accrual books. And so keeping cash basis books just because your CPA is telling you to do so because it makes it easy for them to prepare a cash basis tax return, that's a bad reason. That is not a good reason. You need accrual-based books so that you can truly understand month-over-month margin changes, and so that you can truly understand what's called your cash conversion cycle. Your cash conversion cycle basically tells you how well you're managing your cash flow, and most specifically for an eComm consumer goods brand, it's how are you managing your inventory and how are you managing your payables. With cash basis books, you have no visibility on that, and by the time you reach 10 million in revenue, you absolutely need to have a read on your cash conversion cycle.

Here’s the third reason why you shouldn't use your personal CPA to do the bookkeeping for your $10 million eComm brand. Because every time they get close to a tax deadline, your bookkeeping's gonna slow down. Most CPAs get your books closed in like three, four, five, six weeks. You don't have that kind of time running a growing eComm brand that's doing at least 10 million a year in revenue, right? You just do not have that kind of time every single month. You need your books closed in two weeks or less. Now, when they get close, when your CPA gets close to a tax deadline, either a personal tax deadline or a corporate deadline or even an extension deadline, so that means it's happening not only in March and April every year, but it's also happening again likely in September and October. They get super busy and guess what gets put to the back burner? Doing your books. And so, however long it normally takes them to close the books, it's gonna take even longer around tax deadlines and you don't have the luxury of waiting weeks and weeks to get your books done every month. They need to get done in two weeks or less so that you can use the data to make financial decisions and move on. If it takes four, five, six, seven plus weeks to get your books done, every year around tax deadlines, by the time they're done, that information will already be useless and you'll have moved on and made decisions blindly without any books to back them up. So to recap, three reasons why you should not have your tax accountant doing your bookkeeping if you're doing at least $10 million a year in sales.

One, because they're probably horizontally focused and instead you need an eComm consumer goods vertically focused firm doing your bookkeeping.

Two, because they're probably telling you to do it on a cash basis, which although that might be easy for their tax return preparation, you need accrual basis books to make sound decisions.

And three, because every year around personal and corporate tax deadlines, including extension deadlines, they're gonna get so busy that your books are gonna get thrown to the back burner and it's gonna take weeks and weeks and weeks for those books to get done.

3 Warning Signs Your Bookkeeping is Holding Back Your DTC Brand’s Growth

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast, Jon Blair and Jeff Lowenstein discuss the critical role of bookkeeping in scaling direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands. They highlight three warning signs that indicate poor bookkeeping practices, including the misclassification of sales tax, the absence of sales tax in financial statements, and the erratic swings in profit margins. Throughout the episode, Jon and Jeff stress the importance of having a clear understanding of your financial metrics and how they inform your decision-making process. They share real-world examples from their experiences with clients, illustrating the potential pitfalls of poor bookkeeping and the value of having a dedicated team that understands the nuances of e-commerce accounting.

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

Jeff Lowenstein- https://www.linkedin.com/in/freetogrow-jeff/

Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/

Key Takeaways:

• Contribution margin is your real top-line revenue. Understanding it is key to profitability.

• When you run your books on cash basis, you miss out on the true financial picture of your business.

• Erroneous bookkeeping can lead to poor
  financial decisions.

Meet Jeff Lowenstein

Jeff was previously leading M&A efforts at ecommerce aggregator Boosted Commerce where he was the 5th employee. He built processes across M&A, finance and operations to support rapid growth from 0 to 30 brands under management in 2.5 years.

He previously co-founded and exited an app for Shopify merchants and spent time in the Strategic Finance departments of Etsy and Caesars Entertainment. Jeff holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

He’s worked with hundreds of brands over his career and founded Free To Grow because of his passion for supporting entrepreneurs and helping them succeed. The analytical and financial tools he has developed over the years are specifically crafted for the modern consumer brand.

Transcript

~~~

00:00 Introduction

01:09 The Importance of Solid Bookkeeping Beyond $10 Million

02:15 Warning Sign #1: Sales Tax on Your P&L

08:34 The Impact of Poor Bookkeeping on Decision Making

14:12 Warning Sign #2: Missing Sales Tax in Financials

18:12 The Importance of Accrual Accounting in E-commerce

22:40 Warning Sign #3: Wild Margin Swings Month Over Month

33:04 The Role of Intentional Bookkeeping in E-commerce

39:12 Closing Thoughts

Jon Blair (00:01)

All right, what's happening everyone? Welcome back. Another episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast where we're diving deep into conversations about scaling a DTC brand with a profit-focused mindset. I'm your host, Jon Blair, founder of Free to Grow CFO. We are the go-to outsourced finance and accounting firm for eight and nine figure DTC brands. And today I'm here with my partner in crime, co-founder of Free to Grow CFO. Jeff Lowenstein, Jeff, what's happening, brother?

Jeff Lowenstein (00:32)

What's up? Good morning. Happy to be back here on the podcast, Jon.

Jon Blair (00:38)

Heck yeah man, happy to be back talking about the seemingly not important aspect of scaling a brand with solid bookkeeping. The reason why I'm saying that is because bookkeeping we see time and time again is often overlooked by the founders of the founding team in the early days and the way that I like to say it is that like getting your brand from say zero to 10 million, maybe a little bit less than that, five to seven, but we'll call it roughly, getting your brand to eight figures, you did it with decent or terrible bookkeeping in your gut. But when you're scaling beyond 10 million, you need rock solid bookkeeping as a foundation for financial analysis and ultimately planning and strategy. And so we're gonna get nerdy today and we're going to talk about three warning signs that your bookkeeping is jacked up. And remember, as we're talking through these, the context for you to think about these as a founder and operator is not that you have to understand all these nuances, but if you have one or more of these issues, your bookkeeping is jacked up, which is impeding your ability to make sound decisions, and it certainly is holding back your brand's growth. So we're here to help you identify these warning signs so that you can get in and you can fix them and you can move on to...better and brighter days scaling your profit focused brands. So let's start with number one. First warning sign that your bookkeeping is jacked up. We see this over and over again. Sales tax shows up on your P&L. To lay the groundwork for this discussion, sales tax doesn't belong on your P&L. It's a current liability, which we'll talk about in more detail in a second but sales tax collected, sales tax paid, no business showing up on your P&L as a revenue or an expense. Jeff, you see this a lot.

Jeff Lowenstein (02:45)

This is an easy one for us to point out and I quickly identify when the books are jacked up when we meet brands. This is an obvious red flag. it might sound weird, Like sales tax is something that the customer pays to me. And yeah, you pay it out later, but like it gets lumped into my Shopify payouts, right? And that's income that I receive. Well it's easy to make that mistake, right? And it's weird to think about, but that's why you need to work with a bookkeeper or a CFO that really knows e-comm, because we do see it a lot, and it really can screw things up in your books.

You can have dramatic swings, right? So really the right treatment is that it doesn't actually hit your P&L at all. It stays over on the balance sheet. You collect the cash and then it comes out as a liability that you record the liability and then you pay down the liability to the tax authorities, right? So that's how it should work. The problem is when people put it on your P&L, your margins get all screwed up because you have, it looks like revenue and you have extra revenue in one period with no cost then all of sudden you pay it out a couple months later and you have a massive expense with no associated offsetting revenue. And it's so obvious when we look at the brand's books, when we see this massive swing in margin, in margins, right? It's a very obvious mistake for us to point out. So it screws up your margins. You don't have a good understanding there. It screws up your understanding of your liabilities because you don't understand what's going on there. And then you're also not keeping clean revenue metrics either. This is something people don't talk about. It can screw up your efficiency metrics on the marketing side. So that's another point where we see people having issues. So I have a lot of thoughts.

Jon Blair (04:43)

Totally.

You know what though, I will say on that last one, what I was gonna mention is I actually don't blame brand founders and operators for getting this wrong. You know why? Because Triple Whale and Shopify include sales tax in their sales numbers. And so I actually think that Shopify and Triple Whale, and there's probably other tools out there that have the same issue, we just, see those day in and day out because we work with primarily DTC brands, but when you look at the sales dashboard in Shopify, that sales number includes sales tax collected. And when you look at Triple Whale and you look at sales and you look at ROAS, it includes sales tax. So unfortunately, you're being misled. You're being misled by two analytics platforms that are staples in the DTC world. So I don't blame you for getting this wrong. And quite frankly, it's aggravating that they have not fixed that yet because this has been going on for many, many years. But additionally, like Jeff was mentioning, there's a huge risk as a scaling DTC brand to looking at a ROAS number that in the numerator has sales tax included when in fact that sales tax collected is not a revenue item. I'll get nerdy on the accounting side should be classified as a current liability. The definition of a current liability is it's an amount due, an obligation that you must pay in the next year or less to somebody else. And that's what your sales tax collected is. You're collecting it on behalf of a taxing authority that you owe it to at a later time. Revenue, on the other hand, from an accounting standpoint, is income earned, earned through the fulfillment of services and goods, right, to customers or clients. Those are, by definition, two separate things. You did not earn that sales tax, right, that you get to keep based on fulfilling your order to your customers. You're just a pass-through, and pass-throughs, which means that it is owned by, definition by someone else who you're ultimately passing it through, it should be classified as a liability on the balance sheet. So it should never even touch your P&L in the first place. And the other important distinction that Jeff made, this is really important, margins. What's the denominator number in a margin ratio calculation? Revenue, sales, right? So if you have sales tax collected included in the denominator of your margin calculations, your gross margin ratio, your contribution margin ratio, any other expense to revenue ratios that you track as a brand, they're wrong. Cause the denominator is wrong because it includes sales tax collected. So I'm drawing these out. Cause what Jeff mentioned is those two points are really important. It's now all of a sudden bookkeeping, which didn't seem like a big deal. It's like, bookkeeping out of like, I don't want to deal with that. I'm the founder. I'm a product guy. I'm a sales guy. I'm a marketing guy. Well, guess what? That jacked up bookkeeping is actually making you think on the marketing side you're doing better than you actually are or on the margin side you're actually doing worse than you actually are because the numerator is higher, right? And so like this is, I just want to draw that connection for everybody between crappy bookkeeping bad decisions, right? Good bookkeeping good decisions. Jeff, you got something to say about that, I know.

Jeff Lowenstein (08:29)

Yeah, we're two finance nerds, so we're passionate about it, right? it's funny because our mission at Free to Grow is we want to support brand founders and help them scale profitably. And part of that is helping them sleep better at night and making quicker and more informed decisions. And so a big part of you what we're doing is we're trying to get these things right so that the founder doesn't have to worry about them. And it's an interesting, like, I think there's like a life cycle as to when this type of stuff becomes important. If you're starting out and things are humming and your MER is, you you're crushing it, maybe you're at a 5, it doesn't matter maybe if you're off by 10% in your MER metric because things are going, you're figuring out your channel mix, you're figuring out your products, what's working, and you're on fire. But you're going to hit a ceiling, Efficiency is going to go down 2.5, 2.4, 2.0, or maybe 3x MER. All of sudden, that 10% difference, so let's say it's a 3.0 MER you're measuring. Well, if the reality is actually that it's off by 10% because of sales tax, you're actually at a 2.7 or something like that, right? That's a huge deal, especially as you're scaling spend. So your budget is larger, your MER is smaller, but like that 10 to 10 has a much larger impact as you scale and things become less efficient. I think I understand why people don't care about this stuff in the beginning when they're trying to figure out, do I have a business here? What is my unique proposition in the market?

That makes sense. Bookkeeping is not your number one priority, but these types of details and financial metrics and, you know, they really do inform the decisions you make as you become more and more strategic and the thought process becomes more detailed and thorough as the numbers get larger, right? So like there is a natural life cycle to the decision-making process. It should change as you scale and you should be more exact about your numbers as you scale. that's a big part of how I think about it as well.

Jon Blair (10:53)

Totally.

Yeah, so a story actually that comes to mind right now with one of our clients, and this is very common. see this almost every single time when we onboard a new client. The other thing that you're not exact about in the earlier days is sales tax collection, right? Sales tax compliance. It's really hard to be compliant, and there's a cost benefit analysis, right, to that and like going and setting up tax accounts in all the different states through one of the various services out there like, it can be a waste if you're not actually getting enough traction, right, in multiple states to make it worth your while. And so at the beginning there's usually like very few sales tax accounts set up. A lot of times it's like in your home state wherever you're incorporated, maybe one or two other states. But once you get to like your 10 million or so in revenue, that's when you start bringing on like a ZAMP or a numeral, right, sales tax service to get you set up in basically every state in the country. And so I actually had a brand that scaled, that I was a fractional CFO for, scaled from 1.8 million to 35 million in one year, crazy ride. And along that, like in the middle of that $35 million a year, they were like, hey, it's time to get serious about sales tax. So they went and got Avalara set up and here's what happened. Before that, they were only collecting sales tax in their home state. So it was a very small amount. So the deviation between the variance between real revenue and revenue with sales tax was small and so it wasn't skewing their triple whale metrics by enough for it to matter. Then all of a sudden, it was this one April I remember, is April, Avalara turned on and they started collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars of sales tax a year. This is a brand doing five, six million a month at that time, their monthly run rate was that high. So all of a sudden, hundreds of thousands of dollars of sales tax. Now their revenue in triple whales overstated by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Jeff Lowenstein (12:24)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (12:53)

So I'm running my own MER calculations and spreadsheets and their marketing team is making decisions going, dude, we're killing it 2.6, 2.7. And I'm like, guys, it's 2.1. And they were like, no, it's not. Triple Whale says 2.7. And I'm like, hold on, let me reconcile this. And so I went through and reconciled it I found the exact delta was sales tax. And so there's another, there's a huge, I mean, that was a huge example. 2.1 was below where they needed to be. So they thought they were profitable and they were scaling spend and they actually weren't, right? So they were actually losing margin dollars. And luckily we caught it quickly. That was another benefit of working with me as their fractional CFO is we caught it and we caught it quickly. But they would have gone for months like that and gotten their financials done at the end of every month and not understood why they were so far off from where they thought they were throughout the month. These things are important and like Jeff said, bigger and bigger dollar amounts as you scale, they become increasingly important as you continue to grow. And actually what I wanna do is I wanna segue, I had this as number three in terms of the third warning sign that your bookkeeping is jacked up, but I wanna segue to this because it's about sales tax. it's that here's the other warning sign. So one, we just talked about sales tax shows up on your P&L, shouldn't be there, right? And can lead to bad decisions.

Two, you don't see sales tax anywhere on your financials. You don't see it on the P&L or on the balance sheet. warning sign number one is very important, but warning sign two might be even more important because what this likely means, or at least what I always see, is that when you don't see sales tax anywhere, there's a really good chance that your bookkeeper is recording revenue equal to the amount of deposits that come over from Shopify. And so they're just taking the deposits, which are net of, those are really net amounts, right? Net of gross sales, refunds, returns discounts, Shopify payment fees, and sales tax collected. And that's net amount, that single amount is just getting deposited straight to revenue.

I'm gonna pull my hair out because like this is actually a almost, I would say quite likely a bigger problem. There's cash basis, there's a whole bunch of stuff. Like Jeff, when someone's doing their accounting like that, like what does that do from your perspective as a CFO like to your like ability to analyze the financials? Where do problems show up there?

Jeff Lowenstein (15:18)

It's a massive red flag because you know if that's going on there's gonna be all sorts of distortions in the financials, but I mean if you're booking net payouts for revenue that's like sirens are going off. I'm like my goodness, there's massive issues here. It probably means all through financial statements there's cash basis going on and this is the thing about e-commerce, you really can't do a cash basis because...cash basis P&L is going to look crazy different than an accrual P&L. In particular, the most obvious example is that we buy inventory in large chunks often from China. We pay for that some deposit and then maybe 30 % down plus 70 % on shipment or on delivery or something. But then we sell it over the next three, six, nine months. And so the actual cost of selling the physical product is disconnected from the revenue if you're on a cash basis and we want to connect those things with an accrual P&L so we have a clean understanding of margins and a consistent understanding of margins right that's just one example we see the same thing with 3PL invoices and other you know marketing every line item I could go through but if it's cash basis, it's going to be really negative one month when you pay for inventory or whatever else, and then really positive in another month. And so you're not going to know, am I profitable? Am I not? What is it going to be on a go-forward basis? What's my margins over the last couple months or last year? You can't analyze these crazy swings. It's really challenging as a CFO to use historical data that's totally...incorrect and messy to forecast the future. Of course we do what we can with limited information, but we actually spend a lot of time trying to clean up the historicals when we work with a client that has a messy situation like that before we go on to do most of our forward-looking CFO analysis. And that's pretty important. So what would you add to that?

Jon Blair (17:59)

Well, actually, I mean, to just be super blunt with the audience, this may be a little too blunt, but I'm just getting, I'm getting really, I'm the one who runs sales at Free to Grow CFO, and I do all of our audits for all of the, you know, prospective brands we may end up working with, and I'm getting fed up with this kind of accounting, and what I'm realizing, actually, is that if your accountant is booking revenue, based on net payouts from Shopify, they just flat out don't understand e-commerce. Like fundamentally, like think about it. They don't understand what's embedded in that deposit. If they did, they probably wouldn't do it that way. But they actually don't even know that that is net of gross revenue, refunds, discounts, Shopify fees, and sales tax collected. They're just, and it's usually, honestly, it's usually a CPA that runs a very horizontal firm that just they're basically a tax accountant and they've been given the bookkeeping work by their client who just so happens to own an ecom brand. And so they're taking the information that they have and understand about ecom, which is almost nothing or very limited. And they're just reconciling bank accounts and credit card accounts the best that they can. And so I don't really necessarily blame the CPA, but they just flat out don't understand ecom. If they did, if they knew what was embedded in those in those deposits, they wouldn't be, even if they were doing it cash basis, they would at least split out gross, refunds, discounts, Shopify fees, but they literally don't even understand that. And so they're just booking it. And that's why Jeff was saying, if you see this, there's a good chance that there's a bunch of other stuff that's wrong. And it's actually because there's just a fundamental misunderstanding of how an e-com's accounting transactions even work. So it's likely that your books are riddled with issues even beyond the revenue. And even worse, like Jeff was mentioning, it's probably being done on a cash basis. And so you've got expenses in one month when they're paid and revenues in another month when you collect them. then I just, I work with very few brands that are not seasonal.

And so if you're seasonal, your costs when you're gearing up for that season are all gonna be before the season hits and all your revenues are gonna be when the season actually happens. And so how do you know if your margins are going up or are going down? If you're getting better on your, how do you know if that negotiation you did with your 3PL is actually making your margin better? You don't.

Jeff Lowenstein (20:50)

You want to know something that's interesting this year, Jon? I'm looking at the calendar right now. Black Friday is November 29th.

Jon Blair (21:01)

I know, I was looking at that, I was literally looking at that with, I can't remember, one of my clients and I was like, hey, we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to do a little bit of work to make sure that we get revenues and costs in the right period because you're gonna have this, all this revenue is gonna get slammed into the system on the last few days of the month and probably some of those orders are gonna ship out in December and you're gonna get invoices from the 3PL in December and

to for us to get those monthly margins right on an accrual basis, we're going to have to do a little bit of work this year. And so what Jeff's pointing out is, it the last, what were those dates again?

Jeff Lowenstein (21:43)

So Thanksgiving is Thursday the 28th and Black Friday will be the 29th. Cyber Monday though will be on December 2nd. So it'll be interesting, right? Because you'll have probably the sales that happen on Black Friday and Saturday the 30th will be, the payout won't come until December. And so if you want to, it depends, you your setup, right? But like that's something to be, to talk to your bookkeeper about right now and make sure they understand that the revenue generated and those expenses incurred from those sales happened in the right period. Obviously that's like a huge spike in sales.

Jon Blair (22:26)

Yeah. Dude, that's interesting. Dun dun dun. It's not just Black Friday for like your sales promotions. It's actually Black Friday for your accountant as well, because we have a we have a month end period crossover this year from November to December for Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend, which means accountants who are doing things cash basis are going to get found out this year much more than in previous years. So you're going to get exposed. That's for sure. That's for sure. The the. OK, so sorry. You said something about discounts when you were talking before that I just want to respond to as well, because this this really bothers me as there's a it's very easy to have a disconnect if your bookkeeper doesn't understand how to book discounts and refunds. You know, gross minus discount minus.

Jon Blair (23:02)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Lowenstein (23:20)

Refunds equals net. Let's say you go crazy and give a ton of discounts in one month. Well, you're going to have...you're have massive discount as a percentage of gross, but you still might have higher net sales because when you offer a great discount, people convert at a higher rate and you sell more product, right? And so I actually had a case where I was working with a client and they couldn't understand the way that their old bookkeeper was doing things. They're like, I sold so much product. How is it possible that I had way lower margins and I almost lost money for that month when I had such great sales?

What they didn't understand was that, yes, they were selling more units, but because those units were discounted so much, they actually lost money on a lot of those. so understanding that breakout and having those metrics clearly laid out in your financial reporting is like super important. You can't lose sight of that, especially during the holidays where you're going to have an increase in demand. It's very easy to let those discounts get away from you.

Jon Blair (24:08)

Mm-hmm.

Totally.

Jeff Lowenstein (24:24)

You have an overactive marketing team, right? You need to make sure that they understand the impact of those offers.

Jon Blair (24:32)

Well, let's take it a step further in like from an accounting standpoint why it's so important to get this right is because discounts and refunds and Shopify fees are legitimate per unit variable costs. That's what they really are, right? They're variable costs. And if you don't have your variable costs, broken out properly, you can't measure contribution margin. And contribution margin is the truth about profitability. And for those of you don't know, contribution margin, in my opinion, is your real top line revenue number. Because you don't keep 100 % of your gross revenue, right? You keep, after a sale, gross revenue minus discounts, minus refunds, minus...shipping and fulfillment costs minus landed product costs minus credit card fees. That's what you keep. And then you take out marketing spend, your variable marketing spend, and those are the dollars left over. So that's your actual top line. That's the real top line dollars, right, that are available to cover your fixed cost, your costs that don't go up and down when sales volume goes up and down. That is like a table stakes metric that we analyze and model and help our clients understand because it's the only way to really measure the efficiency of the business as you're scaling and to accurately assess if you're getting closer or further away from profitability. And you cannot do that if gross refunds, discounts, credit card fees, and even worse, sales tax collected are all lumped into this one net revenue number that is not even net revenue. So, and don't even try to calculate your other margin percentages if this is how the accounting's being done, because the numerator is not revenue. It's revenue net of all those other things that we just talked about. So interestingly though, the third warning sign that your bookkeeping is jacked up is connected to this, because we've already talked about how the sales tax issues can be one of the, the culprits, but it's that your margins swing wildly month over month. So third warning sign that your bookkeeping is jacked up, margins swing wildly month over month. So before we dive into this, just as a side note for everyone, we do this free CFO audit, right? It allows us at the firm to assess that there's a good fit on both sides for us to pull together the most well-informed proposal for our prospects and we also deliver some free value in the audit so that you can actually get a little test drive of what it's like to work with us. But the reason I mention that is because when I do these audits, I actually check for one, the first thing I check is, are margins swinging wildly month over month. And when I say that, mean, is the margin 50% one month and then 30 the next, and then 25 the next, and then 85 the next, and then negative 10 the next. When you see these wild up and downs like stock market like swings in margins, it's very rare that that doesn't indicate that there's an issue with the bookkeeping. We've already mentioned how sales tax can distort and screw up that calculation, but there's also cash basis accounting and there are other things. Jeff, when you see margins swinging wildly month over month, besides the sales tax that we've talked about, what are some of the other just like common culprits?

Jeff Lowenstein (28:12)

Yes, so I guess I went out of order because I mentioned the margins earlier. But what are the other culprits that caused margins to swing from month to month?

Jon Blair (28:16)

That's okay. It's all connected, man.

Jeff Lowenstein (28:28)

So a very obvious one is COGS like I was talking about before, you buy, of course you buy inventory before you sell it. It should be living on the balance sheet until it's sold. That's an obvious one. I also see a lot of issues with 3PL invoicing. That's a very common one where...It's a couple, it shows up in a couple of ways, right? Maybe the invoicing they give you, like the way that they pull the data, it doesn't map to when the sales are made. Another issue is like they could just invoice you late. And so sometimes we see people not accruing properly for that. They may lump, they may lump things together as well. like another common thing is your pick and pack fulfillment fee is often lumped in with like a shipping in freight out.

Jon Blair (29:21)

And maybe different periods too, like oftentimes, Pickpac will be for the whole month, like it'll be for a calendar month, but it'll be on the same invoice as shipping charges that cross over a month. And so that whole invoice actually needs to be broken up in order to get into the right period. I see that a lot too.

Jeff Lowenstein (29:26)

Yes.

Yeah, exactly. So yes, bingo. yeah, we try to pay attention, close attention to that. Obviously, 3PLs are pain in the ass to deal with, especially on the way that they invoice and bill e-commerce clients. so that's the...

Jon Blair (29:54)

And they're all different, no 3PL bills the same. I mean it-

Jeff Lowenstein (29:59)

They're all different. They all use different software. It's a pain. like you're not alone if you're struggling with that. But you know, we do look at it with a close eye to make sure we're getting it booked correctly. So that's an important one. And then, okay, so I'm just thinking moving down the P&L. So a lot of people have been forced off of credit card payments for Google Ads and onto monthly invoicing. And so make sure that you're getting those invoices for

a month to your bookkeeper in time for them to close the books rather than just, you know, if you're getting it, let's see, so it's September 30th today, if you can, your September invoice for Google Ads might be available on October 1st but not due until October 31st and then you might pay it in November. So if you're not careful, that could easily get booked in the wrong month.

you need to be paying attention to that. And that again is going to impact your marketing efficiency metrics and that's super important. that's another one that I would say is it's important for your overall financial margins but you're holding your marketing team and your agency accountable to those metrics as well. So that's super important.

Jon Blair (31:12)

Well, actually let's talk about that example. You brought a very interesting example up because you like, let's say the spend was for 9/1 - 9/30 but the invoice was dated 10/1 but then it's due or maybe you pay it November 1. So let's, let's go through each of those dates. If you do everything on a cash basis, the expense will be on November 1st, the month in which the cash is paid. If you just blindly post the bill on 10/1 the expense will be in October, which is the wrong month. So you actually have to have a keen enough eye to go, hey, I know this is dated 10-1, but the expense is for 9-30. And so we will either just date it 9-30 in the system so that it hits the right month or we'll manually accrue it via journal entry to pull the expense into September. But what Jeff just laid out is depending on how your bookkeeper is thinking about like either or incorrectly, or just like misses this like very important detail and isn't looking for it, you could end up with that bill in one of three dates and only one of them is correct, which is actually, you know, sometime in the month of September. And so that's like very, very important distinction. I think the theme I want to draw out is like solid e-comm accounting doesn't happen by accident. It doesn't happen by accident, right?

We understand, the reason why we are good at e-comm accounting is because we understand economically how these businesses work, right? And so we are looking for, and we understand, actually, and I know you can riff on this one, Jeff, because you say this all the time. When you go to analyze the financials, what are the metrics that matter? And doing the bookkeeping in service of those metrics existing accurately, right? Like Jeff calls FP &A ready or CFO ready financials.

Jeff Lowenstein (33:08)

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I guess I talk about it a lot. So this is something I do care about a lot. We're a CFO shop that offers bookkeeping. And so think that informs, like our DNA is as a CFO business, We're all...

experience in the e-comm sector in finance roles and that informs how we do the bookkeeping because we want the books to be clean and ready for analysis and so even without one of our Free to Grow CFOs, a brand founder can read the financial statements that our bookkeeping team prepares and very easily understand exactly what financial position they're in and they can make very quick and informed decisions based on those numbers and I care a lot about that. I have lot of pride in us getting our output delivered in that way and helps that standard. So I think that's super important, something that we do. I mean, we only do e-comm all day long, right? So that helps a lot. Everyone on our team understands what we're talking about when we say freight in versus freight out or understanding contribution margin. MER is something people know through every last person who works here, right? So that is super important for us.

Jon Blair (34:40)

Well, yeah, and so like again, it's intentional. It's bookkeeping with intention, right? Like Matt, one of our accounting managers who was my controller at Guardian Bikes. He has been scolded enough times in the last 10 years for not getting marketing spend in the right month that he is looking for all the signs that...marketing spend get put in the right month, even if, I mean, the number of times he's hit me up and gone like, marketing agency invoices are also notorious for this too. Where like, if there's a variable component to a marketing agency invoice, meaning they charge you a percentage of ad spend, the number of times I've had Matt come to me and go, hey, I just got this invoice for this agency a week late, it's dated in the following month, he's like, but like this needs to be accrued, right? He's asking, this needs to be accrued in the prior month, right? Because I can see this is for services rendered and ad spend last month. And so he's not just taking the invoice date at face value. He's actually thinking about what the transaction is and saying, I know the CFOs need to see ad spend in the same month of the revenue that is generated. And so the point that I'm making is that it's not just about turning over clean books and going like, look how nice and clean these books are. Like no one cares about that unless they're in service of something else. And what they're in service of is solid analytics, right? That actually help you understand month over month margins. And I'll even say cash flow because I know we're talking mostly about the P&L, but cash flow is all about connecting the balance sheet and the P&L together.

Right? That like the balance sheet tells a story that the P&L can't tell in isolation. And so if you've got stuff like sales tax on the wrong, like not on the balance sheet and on the P&L instead, like having accrual financials really in its simplest form without being an accountant means you have a solid balance sheet. Right? That's what accrual accounting means. And when you have a solid balance sheet, you can actually understand why profit and cash flow are not the same, which they never are in a growing DTC like consumer brand. And so, like there's intention and purpose and massive amounts of usefulness behind getting your books right. So, look, just to recap really fast, what we've talked about here is three warning signs that your bookkeeping is jacked up. One, sales tax shows up on your P&L. Two, you don't see sales tax anywhere on your financials and three, your margins are swinging wildly month over month. Jeff, before we kind of land the plane on this, is there anything else that you want to say about what it means to you to have solid books and why it's so important when you're trying to scale a brand?

Jeff Lowenstein (37:39)

I just think that there's, there comes a time in every brand founder's journey where they, I see how stressful it is and I get it, the whole thing is stressful. There comes a time when you're growing fast enough, you're making larger decisions, you have more people running around, you have more SKUs more channels.

If your financials are not solid and you don't trust them, you don't feel like you can make decisions on them To me that is like a very scary situation You feel like there's a you're building the plane while you're flying it, but you're not sure if the engine actually works, right and so that's what I see as our mission is like helping people understand. yes, this engine works, pour some fuel in it or no, your engine's actually broken. Chill out before chill out, fix it up and then go and maybe go and you need to turn left here or whatever, you know, whatever it is. like to me, like that is very real. And like, I, I see the mission of what we're doing is helping people, make better decisions in a very pivotal time in growing their business, right? So it's not just about sales tax, it's not just about the balance sheet, like you're saying, it's in service of something larger and we definitely live that and feel that every day with all the brands we work with. It's about helping the people behind them sleep better at night.

Jon Blair (39:13)

100 % said beautifully, I couldn't have said it better myself. If you want a team of e-comm and accounting nerds to pour over your books, definitely consider hitting us up because no joke, when we have some sort of an issue with one of our clients' books, you've got probably four, five, or six just of the nerdiest accounting and finance people sitting on calls pouring over what the solution is. You're probably honestly getting like six to seven hundred dollars an hour worth of labor on solving your problem for and not and we probably don't extract enough value out of that but the point that I am making is that it's all about accountants who really get ecom and DTC and that know that nailing the books is in service of a greater purpose, which is helping you grow your brand profitably and achieve your goals. So I appreciate you all sitting through this super nerdy conversation. We love talking about this stuff more than you know. But don't forget, if you want more helpful tips on scaling a profit-focused DTC brand, consider following me, Jon Blair, or Jeff, Jeff Lowenstein on LinkedIn.

We're both putting out content week in and week out that is honestly in service of just trying to help you scale your brand profitably. And if you are interested in learning more about how Free To Grow's DTC accountants and fractional CFOs can help your brand increase profit and cash flow as you scale, check us out at FreeToGrowCFO.com. And until next time, scale on.

DTC Hypergrowth and Overcoming Supply Chain Constraints

Episode Summary

This week on The Free to Grow CFO Podcast, Jon Blair is joined by Doug Schneider, COO of Heart & Soil, to discuss the challenges and strategies involved in scaling a direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand, particularly focusing on operational constraints, supply chain management, and the importance of leadership. Doug shares his journey from a biochemistry background to becoming the COO of Heart & Soil, emphasizing the significance of purpose-driven business and the need for strong relationships in supply chain operations. The conversation also touches on demand planning, inventory management, and the role of leadership in navigating hypergrowth.

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

Doug Schneider- https://x.com/DTCDoug

Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/

Heart & Soil - https://heartandsoil.co/

Key Takeaways:

• Effective demand planning is essential for managing inventory.

• Data-driven decision making helps reduce decision fatigue.

• Strong relationships with suppliers can provide a competitive advantage.

Meet Doug Schneider

Doug Schneider is the COO of Heart & Soil Supplements. As a founding manager, he played a pivotal role in scaling the brand from $0 to $50M in just three years.

Transcript

~~~

00:00 Introduction

02:36 Doug's Background and Journey to Heart & Soil

10:12 The Importance of Purpose in Building a Brand

14:41 The Role of Communication in Supply Chain Management

23:11 Leadership and Its Impact on Business Growth

35:14 Demand Planning Challenges During Rapid Growth

50:12 Closing Thoughts

Jon Blair (00:00)

All right, yo yo, what's happening everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast where we're diving deep into conversations about scaling a DTC brand with a profit focused mindset. I'm your host, Jon Blair, founder of Free to Grow CFO. We're the go-to outsource finance and accounting firm for eight and nine figure DTC brands and today I'm here with my good buddy, Doug Schneider, COO of Heart and Soil. Doug, what's happening man?

Doug (00:29)

Yo, Jon, thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it.

Jon Blair (00:33)

Yeah, it's funny actually to have Doug is out here in Austin as well. We are not in the same location. Currently, I'm maybe about like 20 20 miles away from him, but it's not often. Actually, I think the last person I talked to is in Austin was Dean, your CEO. So local local Austinite in the eComm scene out here, one of our beloved clients. And I'm super stoked to be chatting today because

Doug (00:50)

Mm-hmm.

Jon Blair (01:01)

What we're talking about today everyone is removing operational constraints during fast hyper growth. Because here's the thing, when you're scaling a brand, you have your major functions, operations, marketing, and finance. And what the scaling game becomes is which of those functions is the constraint today? Who's holding us back today? For example, at the beginning,

oftentimes it's marketing is the constraint. How do we acquire enough customers to even start growing fast? But as soon as you do that, typically operations becomes the constraint because they have to keep up with inventory and maybe they're stocking out. Then the operations team figures out how to get ahead of inventory and guess what becomes the constraint? Either marketing again, because it's gotta keep growing, or finance because we're running out of cash that's getting consumed by inventory. So it becomes this whack-a-mole game.

And I know from scaling at Guardian Bikes, the supply chain side, supply chain and operations side of removing constraints is a huge, huge challenge. Many of our clients are dealing with it. And so I couldn't think of anyone better to chat through this than Doug, given that, you know, he and Dean and the rest of the people on the founding team of Heart & Soil have scaled to a very healthy eight figure business very, very quickly. And so,

Before we get into chatting about operational constraints, Doug, it would be great if you could give us a little bit of a background, your background and kind of your journey to ending up at Heart & Soil.

Doug (02:35)

Sure. It was a little circuitous, I guess, but I actually, so my background, I got my undergraduate degree in biochemistry and I wanted to be a dentist when I got out of college. My stepfather is a dentist. So that was like my plan and you know, best laid plans doesn't always work.

Jon Blair (02:51)

Dude, my dad's a dentist. I love it.

Doug (03:04)

When I got out of college, was working in biotech while I was trying to get into dentistry. And I figured out that I really hated working in biotech and I wanted to do something else. actually I read, I probably read like two books that were really influential in what landed me at Heart & Soil. And the first one, I was probably like 25 years old and I read Zero to One by Peter Thiel. And that's some

Jon Blair (03:15)

You

Mmm. Yep.

Doug (03:34)

an idea in my head that I hadn't fully conceptualized before which was you know if you're like I'm like a pretty idealistic person especially when I was like 25 years old I was and this book kind of laid out this idea to me that if you want to influence things and see some change that really a business is the way that you do that in the United States and I think I was kind of of the idea that

Jon Blair (03:58)

Mmm. Love that.

Doug (04:03)

like you write your senator or something like that if you think things should change and then I just like snapped into focus to me like the business can be this really powerful vehicle for bringing about this you know whatever change or influence that you want to have and so that idea was cemented in my head then I read another book called Deep Nutrition

Jon Blair (04:06)

Yeah.

Doug (04:26)

by Catherine Shanahan And I was interested in nutrition because I was just a gym guy and I wanted to improve my performance in the gym.

looking at nutrition and when you look at nutrition there's a lot of contradictory information you can contradict every single thing that you find somewhere else and this book that I found really was like okay this is like a voice that I can trust and I'm gonna follow this and and one thing that she mentioned in the book was eating organs

Jon Blair (04:46)

Totally.

Doug (05:04)

and that this was like this missing piece in people's diet that we used to eat organs from like cattle, pigs, et cetera, and that we stopped doing it and that these really, really nutrient dense foods, and I was really captivated by that idea, and I kind of got going on this journey with nutrition and...

I was getting an MBA, I decided I wasn't going do dentistry, I'm going to get an MBA instead, I'm looking at this business world thing a lot differently now, and it would be great if I could do something in nutrition. That seemed like pie in the sky to me actually at the time, I didn't know what it was going to be, but this opportunity kind of fell in my lap because I was in some online communities that were discussing things like organs, it a very small community, a lot of weird people like me talking about this stuff.

Jon Blair (05:42)

Mm-hmm.

Doug (05:55)

I got hooked up with Paul Saladino who He was in his early people who don't know he's a huge influencer now in nutrition But in in his early days he was like this up-and-coming guy that only a few people knew about I got hooked up with him he he comes to me one day and says he's starting this company he wants me to help him come run it and Boom just like happened. I don't even know how it happened, but here I am

Jon Blair (05:59)

Got it.

I love it, man. So a couple things that I want to comment on. The first one is like the beauty of a business, right? I'm personally, I'm a man of faith, I'm a Christian, and I actually believe that businesses are like one of the most beautiful things created by God in terms of like it's this thing where you as an entrepreneur can follow a passion, right?

Doug (06:31)

Yes.

Jon Blair (06:49)

Go to seek to make a difference in the world, like a true difference. Fight back against a problem that you think is worth fighting for, right? And at the same time, if it succeeds, you make your customers' lives better, your business grows and you hire people and you make their lives better, and you engage with suppliers in which you make their lives better. And I just actually can't think of a thing, an organism, that can do that in such a way, anything close to what a business can do. there's a book I read a number of years ago by a guy named Donald Miller, who Donald Miller is a guy who talks a lot about guiding principles, frameworks for guiding principles. And I'm also a big EOS guy, which you might chat about in a little bit, because I know you guys are doing EOS. I was an EOS coach for a while.

It all starts with purpose, right? And I think even Jeff Bezos says, first you have to have core values because you can't find the people that you want to find without filtering them through core values. So then when you define core values and you find people who fit those values and then you give them a purpose or a mission and then you've got a company, right? And so you start with guiding principles first because if you don't have those things, things break down. Scaling a business is hard work and it never ceases to be hard work.

And you have to have that purpose and that drive to get through the tough parts. You gotta have the why and you gotta have a team that's bought into the why. So I really, really love that man. And I also think too that like what people, what a of people don't realize about Heart & Soil, you know, I would say from my vantage point, just cause a lot of people, I've actually come across this talking to a lot of people in the e-comm world. They're like, man.

You guys work with Heart & Soil, like you guys are definitely like a DTC. Like there's a lot of people who look up to you guys aspirationally, right? In terms of like your growth story. But what a lot of those people don't realize is it started with the purpose and the passion, right? And a great business was built around that. And it didn't start with a lot of econ brands. There's a low barrier to entry to starting an econ brand. Anyone can start a Shopify store, right? And source products off Alibaba from China and like

Doug (09:12)

Mm-hmm.

Jon Blair (09:15)

Bam, you've got a DTC brand. But a lot of those brands fail because there isn't actually any soul behind them. And in reality, we call it a DTC brand, not just a DTC retailer. A brand has true meaning and heart behind it. And so that's something that I want to make sure that everybody hears on this episode, because I talk about this a lot in our podcast, is like, look, we're not just building a company.

No matter what product category you're in, if you want long-standing success, you're not just building a company that sells products online. You're building a brand that represents some sort of a movement that has serious purpose behind it, and that's how you build a great business, matter what vertical you're in.

Let's chat about constraints, because you and I have, I mean, this has come up in conversations.

that we've had, whether we're grabbing a beer or another forum, I've heard you talk about challenges. what I wanna start around is like, first off, I already said the stage, like yes, operations and supply chain can become a constraint as you're growing. But you guys have some unique potential constraints because the product you're selling, you guys are very rigorous and serious and this is a part of your purpose about the quality and where your...

you know, your product comes from, right? Can you talk me through a little bit, like, about the rigor behind, like, sourcing the right ingredients and how that made supply chain even more challenging as you guys were scaling really fast?

Doug (10:41)

Yes.

Sure, so you kind talked about this purpose driven idea and the way that some e-comm brands pop up and they have to overcome obscurity. When we were launching, so Paul, one thing that people I don't think realize about Heart and Soil is that we kind of popped up out of nowhere but...

Paul Saladino, our founder, he spent four years before we launched building his personal brand. And when we launched this company, he had a decent sized audience that was ready to buy whatever he was selling. And that was the context when we started selling was there were people there that were ready to buy. Now, reason people loved Paul,

He was very particular about the science and the way that our products were developed was that it had to be of the highest quality. And that meant that the cattle that we were sourcing the organs from had to be grass-fed and grass-finished. Now, constraint number one is in the United States, there's not a lot of grass-fed, grass-finished cattle. It's like...

over 95 % of the cattle in the US are finished on something outside of grass. So that made us have to go look elsewhere, which was, and New Zealand was really the best place where we could get good volumes of, we believed, of grass-fed, grass-finished cattle organs. So we wind up going to New Zealand, and immediately when we launch, as you alluded to earlier, we had this big success.

So we're selling right away and the constraint became very obvious right away that it was going to be supply and this industry or this Segment of the market the supplement market, you know selling cattle organs is very niche. It's very new and the the constraint when I was given hey You're going to be in charge of operations and we launched and we we ran out of product

I'm trying to solve these problems, became obvious to me, the constraint is actually not the organs and the cattle. There was plenty of cattle in New Zealand that were grass fed and grass finished. The constraint was the capacity for freeze drying the organs. So that was like problem number one that identified right away. Okay, we've got this constraint. is the bottleneck that we're dealing with on our supply chain is freeze drying. So immediately I'm begging my manufacturers to give me access to the freeze-dried suppliers in New Zealand. I want to talk to them directly. They're guarding that relationship. And I'm eventually able to convince them that it will help all of us if I can talk to the guys in New Zealand and we can sort of make some plans to try and get this thing fed and scale because it was very obvious they were going to need to do some scaling too. That was like the big problem to solve in the beginning was we needed more freeze-drying capacity. I needed to talk directly to them because this thing was taking off faster than we thought it would.

Jon Blair (14:17)

Interesting.

Doug (14:27)

So there was a lot a lot of you know weekly Hour two hour meetings with people in New Zealand where you know the timing is all weird. talking to them It's their tomorrow or their day ahead. I can't remember is weird, but we were able to, by establishing those relationships directly with the supplier, even though the manufacturer was a little ambivalent about that, we were able to get them to buy into the fact that we could be their horse if they would feed us. So if they started moving more capacity toward us that they had existing and they made plans to scale, that they could ride us very far, that we felt like we had a lot of room for growth and we just needed the supply.

Jon Blair (15:16)

Yeah, so there's something that you're kind of like a conceptual thing that I've come to learn over the years with supply chain management that I want to draw out for the audience, which is that like, I mean, first off, from a product development standpoint, it is very important to be intentional and sophisticated about thinking about what is your bill of materials. Bill of materials definitely drives cost, right? But what I think, so I think people think about the technical side of managing costs and supply chain. But what I've learned, because I ran our supply chain at Guardian Bikes and so I had some firsthand experience of trying to keep up and deal with similar constraints. Actually, so much of it, actually so much of cost control and removing constraints on supply chain is literally just communication and being like relentless about communication. And it's all relationships because

Doug (16:10)

Yes.

Jon Blair (16:15)

The number of things, whether you're talking about getting payment terms negotiated or you're talking about a volume commitment and resulting in a per unit price decrease, the BOM the technical side of product development, yeah, that's great, there's importance to it, but that's not what you're leveraging. You're not coming up with some super savvy way to get cost out of the product because of the way that you are reformulating it.

you're leveraging a relationship and you're really, it's like all about communication. And so I think the point that I'm making is so much of supply chain cost control is actually like all soft skills, right? It's all EQ, it's communication, it's relationship building. Do you agree and do you have any more like to say about that?

Doug (16:51)

Yep.

my god, yeah, that was the, I mean, that became very obvious to me right away. Like when I first joined Heart & Soil, I'd never run a supply chain before. I didn't really know the first thing about it. But it was very clear to me that like, wow, we are really dependent on these other people and we need to build very good relationships with them. And the other thing that I found when dealing with vendors, especially on the supply chain, they might, you might have like rough spots where you're like, man, these guys stink, you know? These guys aren't doing what we need them to do. And I think a lot of people's first instinct is to say, okay, we need to find another vendor. Right, cut them.

Jon Blair (17:38)

Cut them, yeah, cut them.

Doug (17:41)

And my first instinct was like, okay, you go to another vendor, you're gonna have a new set of problems that you have to work through and you're gonna think that they stink. So what you need to do, or what I decided to do was like, okay, I think I have some role that I can play in making this vendor relationship better.

So it was about like identifying ways where we could have cleaner lines of communication. And what really needed to happen is like things need to be easy. Like they need to be really, really easy and boring. Like the guys on my supply chain team, talk to them about that all the time. I'm like, we need things to be easy and boring. That's when we're doing good. So when things get complicated, we got to go back and figure out, okay, what do we got to do to make this easy and boring? And like we instituted, or we made like systems, like shared spreadsheets and things like that with different vendors where we get together, we say, hey, this is how we think this can work. And they say, that's easy, that's good. And then all of sudden you go from, hey, these guys are not doing what we asked them to do, to being like, okay, now we're kind of clicking and things are flowing. But it takes that extra layer of accepting that you have some

responsibility in this vendor relationship and that there's some things that you should be doing to try and make the relationship better.

Jon Blair (19:03)

Totally.

You know what? This just got my mind thinking. There's a very, I think the guiding principle or the concept that you're drawing out here is completely the same as managing your internal team, right? Where like, when there's an employee who's dropping the ball all of a sudden, it's really easy to go like, cut him, I can find someone better, right? But I've learned over the years, and yeah, look. There are some times that you do actually have to get rid of an employee and those are hard conversations to have. But I think I've learned more and more and this comes back to my EOS kind of coaching perspective which is like, it's usually a core values thing. It's usually like they stick out like a sore thumb on a cultural thing where like it's toxic to the rest of the company, right? But if there's a technical thing that they're dropping the ball on, that's the leader's opportunity to step in and go, what's the gap that I can help you fill, right? Are we missing resources? Has the roles and responsibilities all of a sudden gotten away from you and they're like outside of your realm of expertise and you're feeling uncomfortable? Is there something going on in your personal life, right? And like, again, sometimes those conversations do lead to cutting that person, but I think I've realized more often that just like with vendors, Let's leverage the relationship. This person's worked for me for a number of years and done a great job up until this point. What's going on, right? And so like, it's a lot more of asking the right questions to really diagnose what all of a sudden is the root cause of this issue that kind of seemingly has come out of nowhere. And then working together to like, to solve that issue. Like, do you see the same thing with like, managing your internal team?

Doug (20:41)

Right.

Yeah, absolutely. It's exactly the same because I think you have to have like a... For me, I'm like my instinct, like you're saying someone on your internal team is maybe not doing as well. The instinct for me has to be like, well, where have I failed this person? Because normally I'm of the mind that like people aren't dumb. They just haven't been taught yet and that you need to go and do and play your own part in making sure that this person has what they need to succeed. And it's the same with the vendor relationships. And what I found is that...

With our supply chain the vendor relationships have had became like this crucial competitive advantage that we hold and what we did was we were very patient during that period where we struggled to keep things in stock now we and we worked very tightly with them. We did not you know Call them on the phone and like really give them hell it was mostly working collaboratively and what we found was when we built like this positive relationship that when we really needed something done, like we have that equity with those vendors where we can call them up and say, hey, we need this. And they say, we're going to get it done. I mean, it's worked for us where we can pick our spots to kind of play hardball and really press and that they will respond when we do that. That's just been my approach to it. And I approach it the same way with people on my team.

Jon Blair (22:27)

Totally, totally.

Yeah, dude, totally, I...

No, I agree. I read, I don't know, I'm a big reader. I read like two or three of Jocko Willink's books. He's most famous for Extreme Ownership, but he has this one, he has a newer book called Leadership Strategy and Tactics. And he talks about how like, you know, and he's talking about it from the perspective of a Navy SEAL. So you're talking about life or death situations, right? And so like it actually really puts in perspective this concept of you have to have a real relationship, not a fake one, to leverage when the going gets tough. You don't leverage fake relationships. There are a lot of leaders that try to leverage fake relationships and the person on the other side sees right through it and they're like, and they feel manipulated, right? And so actually it's not a coincidence that Free to Grow is first of our five core values as relationships. And it's because if we don't have real relationships internally and with our clients, we can't leverage them. When they really need to be leveraged. And even with working with our clients, like we have to have good relationships with them because sometimes we have to deliver really bad news or tell them to make a hard decision. Things like, hey, you gotta stop paying yourself so much. Things like, hey, I think you do have to cut payroll costs. I don't know who, but I think we have to do that, right? Like hard, hard decisions that need to be made. And you can't just say that. It doesn't land the same. If you don't have a real relationship to leverage. And managing a supply chain is no different at all. They're people on the other end and they're just an extension of your business, right? And like the thing I wanna make sure everyone hears is that managing supply chain and operations, there's technical aptitude that goes into it, but cost control, building a profitable business, it's so much the soft skills of learning how to.

Doug (24:26)

That's exactly right.

Jon Blair (24:43)

unlock value from people and that's people who work in your supply chain external of the business and people who work in your business because at the end of the day as you're scaling like Heart & Soil I think I was talking to Dean when I was hanging out with him yesterday your CEO he's like I think we're around 30 35 you know employees now when you eventually you guys will be at like 50 plus when you get to that point, you guys as the leaders cannot be going and checking on all the different metrics that all those people are responsible for. All you can do is build an environment where the value that exists within those people is being unlocked and they're looking after those metrics for you because you have unlocked the value and they're bought into the relationship and the purpose, right? That's actually, I'm...

Doug (25:16)

Right.

Jon Blair (25:36)

That's why when you go meet someone who works for a big corporation that has like thousands of people, everyone is so unmotivated. And they're literally just looking for the way to go work for a smaller business where they actually are known or start their own business or just climb the corporate ladder and make enough money that they can retire and not have to do that anymore. There are very few people I've met in a big corporation that are super happy because they are not truly being like poured into and nurtured and like really have the ability to own something and create value there. And so this is super important because it's counterintuitive. And again, I'm not saying to not get into the technical side of managing your costs, which we can talk about a little bit more, but like I would say what withstands the test of time as you scale and the team gets bigger and bigger and bigger and you as the leader and founder can keep your finger on the pulse of less and less and less. It's about unlocking value in people. That's just how it goes. That's why so many of the best founders are known as just like incredible leaders. Because that's the thing that unlocked the value in the business, Is leadership. And so actually, I want to talk a little bit about leadership here as you guys have scaled. Dean, had, Dean was actually, your CEO was the guest on our very first ever Free To Go CFO podcast episode. And we talked about leadership because Dean is a very... Dean is very intentional and passionate about trying to be the best leader that he can. He's like, in fact, we hung out on the lake yesterday and that's basically what we talked about the whole time because he's really always trying to figure out the next way to be a better leader. Like, how has Dean's like true heartfelt focus on the...

guiding principles and leadership impacted you as a leader and how do you see that like benefit the business?

Doug (27:42)

mean, Dean's motor is insane.

Jon Blair (27:45)

Yeah

Doug (27:47)

like and he has this like massive massive passion for exactly that like this the leadership stuff and the like time management stuff he consumes this stuff in his spare time like he's watching YouTube videos about he's reading books about it he's geeking out about it like that's what he cares about and he has this big motor and energy that when I first started working with him we clicked really really well and you know we started day one with the company and the company is super small and we were given the reins to this business we both felt really fortunate about that we both took it very very seriously and as the business started to scale we were constantly talking to each other about

upping our own game. That was very, very important. He was very obviously invested in doing that and becoming better and better and better. There was something that I recognized in him and I was like, I've got to do the same thing. We started to pour ourselves into what was going on on Twitter with the e-commerce community, starting listening to podcasts, reading books, whatever. We could do going to conferences soaking in as much as we could to learn as much as we could about ecommerce and trying to constantly up our game and it's still this ongoing thing where both yes and we're both built the same way where it's like you almost kind of like the

Jon Blair (29:16)

Mm-hmm. I love it. Forever.

Doug (29:28)

You'd like I don't ever think there's some you know at there's a what would have reached the end of the rainbow here And I'm gonna be good. I'm like I don't even like to you know I like the fact that I'm gonna have to keep going going going going and he's the same way So and that pervades the whole company is like we have to keep upping our game We have to keep improving like and I feel that when I went from you know I'm leading this small company that's made zero dollars to, know, I'm the COO of a company that's doing 50 million plus a year. But like, if I'm to be the COO of a company that's doing 50 million plus a year, like, I need to be a COO that's doing 50 million plus a year. Like, I need to have my game upped. And so...That's something that I think our team recognizes too, is that we're constantly trying to improve and we're constantly thinking about the future and we want the systems that we, so it went from, it's weird when you're in a startup, like you go from, like you yourself, if you're running a startup, you're doing tactical stuff every day and then all of a sudden,

as things start to scale, know, those hard skills of executing there tactically become less important and then the soft skills and the leadership and the strategic thinking rapidly start to become, and being like a cheerleader basically for your team and getting people motivated rapidly becomes like way more important. And making that shift, that transition was actually, Dean did it

Jon Blair (31:03)

100 % Totally.

Doug (31:17)

beautifully and We we really took a core group of people and we were able to kind of manage this massive hyper growth with this core group of people because Dean He was ready to make that transition into that leader and you know, know I'm his right-hand guy So I was right there with him too. But yeah, he's been a huge inspiration for me. It's just his work ethic is insane

Jon Blair (31:33)

Mm-hmm.

I love that.

I dude it's funny every time I hang out with Dean we find like another Dean and I have this really weird like overlap of interests like I'm calling it weird because it's like a very nerdy I'm like avid reader and like all the same kind of stuff and so we're just like talking about like EOS and weird leadership like okay

Doug (31:53)

Yes you do.

Jon Blair (32:06)

He texted me yesterday after hanging out at the lake on Sunday and he was like, hey, what was that thing you were talking about? I was like, I need to articulate this to the rest of the team. like, it was like an unlock for me. And I was like, it's the difference between objective planning and execution planning. They're not the same thing and they oftentimes get confused for one another. Objective planning is where are we going? What are we going to achieve? Execution planning is how? What are we gonna do to get there? They're not the same thing. And you gotta get into two different mindsets, right? And he's like, thank you, that's exactly, so like that's what he's texting me about after we hung out on the lake, right? Like, and so, but then he also likes obscure heavy metal, just like I do. And so like, so anyways, it's been, it's been fun getting to work with you guys and us all living in Austin so that we can have nerdy conversations over beers. But I love it, dude, I mean, and again, coming back to growth.

Doug (32:44)

Yep.

Yes, he-

Hahaha

Jon Blair (33:05)

I think there's this common misconception that growth happens because you just find the perfect product that no one is going to compete with you on.

Doug (33:05)

Yep.

Yep.

Jon Blair (33:14)

You source it cheaply, you sell it expensively, and bam, we have a business. it's no, like whether we're going back to the purpose at the beginning of this story, or we're talking about like what's driving the CEO and the COO from like just like a guiding principle standpoint, that's what keeps things moving. And like I have a kind of a mentor.

Doug (33:24)

Yep.

Jon Blair (33:36)

Ryan Rouse who's been in the ecom and like CPG space. I don't know if you know him. He's out here in a he's out here in Lake Way But he he's about eight years ahead of me in life three kids like me And so I look up to his perspective a lot and he always says like look dude. It's not about Timing the game. It's about the time in the game, right? And that's that goes with working out that goes with like any discipline. It's about spending time in the game

Doug (33:48)

Mm.

Mm.

Jon Blair (34:04)

but you find a game that you love playing so much that there's no way you're gonna quit and you're gonna spend the time in the game and you love the journey and that's why you're not worried about the end, right? Because the journey is...

Doug (34:16)

Right?

Jon Blair (34:18)

That's everything, right? And that's where these beautiful things get created. And so you gotta find a journey you want to be on, right? And that like you can't stop thinking about. And so anyways, I just wanna point that out because it's counterintuitive to what a lot of econ brand founders think when they start a brand and they wanna achieve success. So really quick, I wanna chat a little bit about the technical side of what you manage. I wanna talk about demand planning because

Doug (34:27)

Thanks

Sure. Yep. Yep.

Jon Blair (34:47)

Demand planning is this thing that everyone struggles with. This push-pull between marketing and operations, but also cash flow that you have to consider. What, from your perspective, what has been the hardest part about the demand planning process as you guys have been scaling so fast?

Doug (35:07)

So it was interesting because when, so our, what phase of business we're in right now, we went from like,

you know, from 2020 through 2020, halfway through 2022, it was like hyper growth, insane growth. And so demand planning, I was like, throw it all out the window. I don't, I don't want to hear it. Nothing that you say is happening. So I built, you know, a system and this might not be the way to do it, but I wanted to have some hard data to look at. And in our supply chain is still run this way where we look backwards at sales and we're saying, this is the sales volume for the previous 30 days and we have decision making around we want to carry this many days of supply. We want to have this many days of supply of raw material based on the current sales volume. And we're going to order based on current sales volume because

Our business is also a little bit different from other people's where we don't have big spiky moments in our sales. It's very steady and predictable. Our business is built around subscription, really. It's a product that has 30-day supply. We really focused on subscription because we thought we could get monthly recurring compounding revenue, and that was how we wanted

wanted to grow.

using the system of looking backward at sales data for but it's still current the previous 30 days and kind of Building our constraints around okay. Here's how much we order at a time, but it's all based on the current volume It gives us enough that we can we can adjust when we're making our finished goods To be able to make sure that we're staying in stock and we're always making sure that we fill subscriptions So that's another

Jon Blair (37:03)

Mm-hmm.

Doug (37:15)

thing for a business like ours is like we can we can demand plan for subscriptions that's easy for us because you can look at the current subscriptions and you know what you're gonna need to fill so we will cut off sales for a product for one time and keep filling subscriptions in the background like for the past two and a half years we've I don't think we've missed more than a day or two worth of subscriptions I would fill thousands and thousands so I would say like less than point

Jon Blair (37:33)

Mm.

Doug (37:45)

percent of subscriptions have been missed. Yeah, so we focus on, so that, you know, the subscription thing is easy when it comes to demand planning.

Jon Blair (37:49)

I love that.

Doug (37:56)

What we're dealing with now that we've gotten to a little bit more of a steady state with the growth where it's not hyper growth anymore and it's more steady, this recurring growth, we have things like we never did Black Friday before last year. And when we did a big promotion for Black Friday, we had this massive spike in sales that I wasn't anticipating on the supply chain.

Jon Blair (38:08)

Mm.

Doug (38:24)

we were able to weather it and kind of learn like, we can kind of expect.

Jon Blair (38:25)

Mm.

Doug (38:29)

this much, right? But we knew that where we had our inventory level for Black Friday, we were able to get through Black Friday, through Q5, and into January 1, where you get all the production slowdowns, and we still kept everything in stock. coming into Q4 this year, we were like, well, we know kind of what inventory level we need to keep to be able to weather that storm, because you're dealing with production slowdowns,

Jon Blair (38:53)

Mm-hmm.

Doug (38:59)

with massive spikes in sales and the planning that's going on with our manufacturer right now, we need to get to this inventory level by November, whichever November date and...

Jon Blair (39:14)

Yep.

Doug (39:15)

We've got to make this many bottles a month. We're projecting this many are going to be sold. So we're getting a little bit more sophisticated with how we're doing the demand planning. to begin with, I just needed hard data, especially when we were in hyper growth. It's like, me something that I can look at that can tell me. I don't want to sit here and make every single decision and agonize about it. I need a system that tells me what to do. So I need data. I didn't want the decision fatigue. I needed data that

Jon Blair (39:27)

Yeah.

Doug (39:45)

told me you need to order this much on this day.

Jon Blair (39:49)

For sure, yeah, and I think still one thing to draw on what you just mentioned, what you just talked through is that you're still thinking strategically. You have to have data to drive initial numbers of quantities and when is the drop dead date to issue that PO, but you're like, okay.

Doug (39:58)

Yes.

Jon Blair (40:09)

there's segmentation happening. Like one, I'm sure you have certain products that, you're thinking about subscriptions, like we're not gonna go out of stock on subscriptions. We're gonna fill subscriptions, right? And so that's like a strategic decision. And I think the point that I wanna make is a lot of people agonize over trying to cut the perfect quantity on your PO. You're just not gonna cut the perfect quantity on your PO. It's never gonna happen. I've never seen any company do it. Yeah, exactly.

Doug (40:15)

Yes. Yes.

Yes.

And you're not gonna make a perfect forecast either. So yeah, think agonizing about that stuff is like not good. And that we wanted, when I built that system, I was like, need to remove the decision fatigue and I need this thing to tell me what to do. And it's not going to be perfect. That was the thing too, was the reason why we were using

Data that was looking backwards instead of taking in like here's the forecast was the forecast were all wrong and Forecast forecasting is not easy. I'm not saying that as like our marketing team couldn't forecast well It's really difficult especially when you're the growth is like in that hyper growth phase to it was really hard to predict But you need systems this alludes to what I was talking about earlier You need a system that makes things easy and boring when you're doing operations

Jon Blair (41:04)

Yeah.

Doug (41:27)

like you can't be sitting there and agonizing about everything you need you need data that's reliable and you need to be able to make decisions very quickly but

Jon Blair (41:27)

Totally.

Doug (41:40)

you need to be grounded in something that you're gonna trust. like, we talk about, my guys on my supply chain team, sometimes, you know, our system is telling us to do something, and I'm like, wait, maybe we should do something else. And one of the guys on my team is like, you gotta trust the Sheets, man. We have to trust the system. I'm like, you're right.

Jon Blair (41:59)

love you. do. That is, I love what he's like. Here's the thing. You can agonize over trying to get it perfect from a, from like a forecast perspective, which you're not gonna do. I've seen enough brands. I haven't seen, dude, Amazon, their demand planning is very inaccurate. Like incredibly inaccurate. We sold vendor central at Guardian for a period of time where we were their vendor and like, but.

Doug (42:11)

Yes. Right.

Yes.

Jon Blair (42:25)

it was a system that they trusted the system, right? And the system would correct itself a little bit over time too, right? As more historical data, like you beat your forecast, that rolls into the next iteration of the decisions. And so what I always tell people is stop getting so afraid about leaving money on the table because you under order. You're gonna live the fight another day. And guess what? If you're building a brand with purpose,

Doug (42:30)

Yep.

Exactly. Yep.

Yep.

Jon Blair (42:52)

If people stock out, they're actually gonna want your product more. They're not gonna go, forget hard and soil, I'm gonna go buy something else. They're gonna be maybe a little bummed, right? But like, the desire, if you build a good product that stands for something and meets a real need, you can be wrong on inventory planning and you don't have to bet the farm on whether you, whether you,

Doug (42:57)

Exactly.

Jon Blair (43:14)

know, stock out or not, you know? And so look, I wanna ask you one other question. This is like the token question I gotta ask. My business partner Jeff is your CFO, right? How has Jeff been valuable in helping you manage the brand's P&L and or cash flow or just make better decisions?

Doug (43:18)

Yeah. Okay.

Yes.

One thing that when it comes to operations too, and I don't know how many people are gonna listen to this podcast and be like deep inside of supply chain and operations, but.

One thing that Jeff and I have worked on a ton is inventory reconciliation and reconciling the inventory asset value that we have on our balance sheet with what we are seeing in our own systems and making sure that we're adequately accounting for our cost of goods. so solving that puzzle has been really, really interesting and fruitful.

And I've worked with Jeff a bunch on this because it has been a little bit of a puzzle, but it's uncovered things for me and my team about, we didn't really understand our costs as well as we should have. And we've been getting deeper and deeper and deeper and understanding exactly where our inventory assets, because we have to buy our raw materials. A lot of companies don't have to buy their raw materials. You just work it with a man you

Jon Blair (44:39)

Got it.

for sure.

Doug (44:43)

You got your PQ. You know your quote and it's pretty easy, but we have raw materials that we have to buy You know we have we have the production costs with with the manufacturer and understanding how those costs are flowing through the supply chain to the end consumer like that challenge of just making sure that our that we're adequately accounting for for cost for our balance sheet has been like fruitful for me and my team to be

able to really, really go deep on understanding exactly how money flows through this business. And the other thing about Heart and Soil too,

Jon Blair (45:17)

I love that.

Doug (45:23)

is that our main cost center is cost goods. It's not paid acquisition like paid advertising. A lot of e-commerce companies are going to be spending the majority of their costs are going to land in paid acquisition. But we've had a lot of organic growth and there's reasons why we don't have to spend as much. But the main cost center in our business is cost of goods sold and

our profitability is dependent on what we do on the supply chain. And so lot of the conversations with Jeff are kind of about protecting...

Jon Blair (45:54)

Totally.

Doug (46:02)

Because our profitability is based on that, protecting that profit level, putting the guardrails on what we're doing with the supply chain, like having some simple heuristics and guideposts for ensuring that we can maintain that really healthy profitability that we have. with your guys' Reach Reporting portal, he's given me the cash conversion cycle and the inventory days.

as like two really important guardrails to be working with my team on to make sure that we're not over ordering things and kind of affecting the cash flow negatively and then decreasing profitability as well.

Jon Blair (46:38)

for sure.

I love that man. Yeah, I mean it's so hard to, you guys are just trying to keep product in stock, but understanding the financial impact is super important, because sometimes there's a counterintuitive impact on cash flow and profitability.

Doug (46:54)

Yes. Yes.

Yeah, the cash flows, that's the main thing is like if we're not Because if I just told the guys on my team never go out of stock You know we could we could order things like crazy like those those suppliers that we we had the problems with they've scaled things pretty effectively we can go get a lot more but But it would totally wreck the cash flow because that's where all of our cash gets tied up is in the supply chain

Jon Blair (47:13)

Yeah, exactly.

Totally, totally, totally, I love that. Well know Jeff loves working with you guys, he's gonna be out here next week for our Free to Grow quarterly planning and so I think we're both gonna see you guys in person which we're looking forward to but I know we gotta land the plane, we're going a little bit over here so before we do, I always like to ask a personal question. So what's a little known fact about Doug that people might find shocking or surprising?

Doug (47:37)

Yep.

Yep.

my gosh.

my god i didn't know you were ask me this let's see there's one that i'm like i don't know if i should share this but yeah okay yeah you know what it's kind of a fun little story i went i went to jail for a weekend it was something that happened to me when i was 23 but when i was in jail

Jon Blair (48:00)

Ha ha ha.

That's probably the one we want to hear.

Doug (48:23)

has been three days in jail. I won an arm wrestling competition between the inmates. Yeah. and this was not prison by the way. This is county jail. Very, very, very different. but there was a tournament that broke out while I was there and, I won it. And, yeah.

Jon Blair (48:31)

That's epic man. That is so, hey, we've all done things when we were 23 that we wouldn't do today. So no judgment here. I've got some crazy stories as well. When I was 23, I was finished my business degree and then like quit working and was touring in a heavy metal band thinking that that's how I was gonna make a living and I did very...

Doug (48:54)

Right. It's true. Thank you. Yeah.

Yep.

Jon Blair (49:10)

very shameful things while I was in that van. So like no judgment here brother at all. And I appreciate you sharing that. Before we land the plane, where can people find more info about you and Heart and Soil?

Doug (49:12)

Thank you. Yep.

So our website is heartandsoil.co but if you want to talk to me I'm on Twitter @DTCDoug.

Jon Blair (49:33)

Love that, love that. Well, Doug, this was an awesome conversation. We didn't even get to chatting about EOS, so I might have to have you back and we can chat, we can check in on how your EOS implementation's going over there at Heart and Soil. But, yeah, look everyone, bottom line is, the takeaway here is there's a lot of...

Doug (49:39)

Yeah.

Dude, I'm down. Yeah.

Jon Blair (49:53)

best practices and technical, there's a technical side to managing operations, but there's a soft side, right? Strategy, managing relationships, unlocking value out of your people and out of your suppliers. Don't miss the nuggets in this episode about those.

Doug (49:59)

Yes.

Jon Blair (50:11)

those concepts and so this was super valuable. I hope it's helpful to everyone and in closing, remember like if you want more helpful tips on scaling a profit focused DTC brand, consider following me, Jon Blair on LinkedIn and if you're interested in learning more about how Free To Grow's DTC accountants and fractional CFOs can help your brand like we've helped Heart and Soil, check us out at FreetoGrowCFO.com and until next time, scale on.

The Top 3 Mistakes DTC Brands Make While Scaling From $1M to $10M

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast, Jon Blair and Jeff Lowenstein discuss the common mistakes DTC brands make while scaling from one to ten million in revenue. They emphasize the importance of inventory management, the impact of marketing agency fees, and the necessity of regular financial reviews. This conversation provides valuable insights for founders looking to navigate the complexities of scaling their businesses effectively.

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

Jeff Lowenstein- https://www.linkedin.com/in/freetogrow-jeff/

Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/

Key Takeaways:

• It's better to risk stocking out than to overstock.

• Monthly financial reviews are essential for tracking progress.

• Understanding contribution margin is key to evaluating agency performance.
  

Meet Jeff Lowenstein

Jeff was previously leading M&A efforts at ecommerce aggregator Boosted Commerce where he was the 5th employee. He built processes across M&A, finance and operations to support rapid growth from 0 to 30 brands under management in 2.5 years.

He previously co-founded and exited an app for Shopify merchants and spent time in the Strategic Finance departments of Etsy and Caesars Entertainment. Jeff holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

He’s worked with hundreds of brands over his career and founded Free To Grow because of his passion for supporting entrepreneurs and helping them succeed. The analytical and financial tools he has developed over the years are specifically crafted for the modern consumer brand.

Transcript

~~~

00:00 Introduction to Scaling DTC Brands

01:21 The Badlands of Scaling: Key Mistakes

02:50 Inventory Management: The Fear of Stockouts

22:07 Marketing Agency Fees: Finding the Right Fit

32:14 The Importance of Monthly Financial Reviews

Jon Blair (00:00)

Hey, what's happening everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast, where we dive deep into conversations about scaling a DTC brand with a profit-focused mindset. I'm your host, Jon Blair, founder of Free to Grow CFO, the go -to outsourced finance and accounting firm for eight and nine -figure DTC brands. And today I'm here with my favorite guest, I don't know.

No disrespect to any of the other amazing guests that we've had on the show. They're all great. But I got my co -founder, Jeff Lowenstein, on. So yeah, I gotta say that I do have a little bit of favoritism there. Jeff, thanks for joining me, man. What's happening?

Jeff Lowenstein (00:39)

Yeah, happy to be back on the pod, Jon, and no disrespect to anyone else. I mean, you could say we're all tied for first for your favorite, favorite guests.

Jon Blair (00:50)

100%. We've got a little bit to live up to on this one. You were on Taylor Holiday's Bridges webinar last week, we've got to really crush this one. But I'm excited about what we're gonna be talking about. Last time I had you on, we chatted about LinkedIn post that I had posted maybe a couple months ago, and that got a lot of people talking. And today we're gonna chat about another one.

which is centered around the top three mistakes that I see DTC brands make as they scale from one to 10 million in annual revenue. Keep in mind, everyone, before we dive into this, these are not the only mistakes we see, right? and there's nuance to all of this, but there are three things that I see over and over and over again that plague brands that are scaling from one to 10 million, and I gotta be 100 % honest, the reason we're talking about this,

Scaling from one to five million is what I call the badlands. Where you have got product market fit, right, and you need to scale and punch through five million dollars and you've got to take enough resources to get to the other side of the badlands. You can't get stuck in the middle, because if you get stuck in the middle you've got to either retreat or push through and it's a really tough place to be. And I'd say depending on your product category and your business,

the badlands could extend all the way up to seven, eight, nine, 10 million. It's a tough, tough phase of the business. And so we just wanna share our thoughts on three of the biggest mistakes that we see brands make in this period of scaling in hopes that it will help you as you are pushing from one to 10 million and that you might be to glean a little bit of wisdom from what we're chatting about here today. So dude, let's dive right in to the first one.

Jeff Lowenstein (02:21)

you

Jon Blair (02:45)

Purchasing way too much inventory for fear of lost sales. Now, over the years, I've learned it's better to risk stocking out and live to fight another day unless you have excess capital, which most brands don't have at any point in time, but definitely not in 2024. Jeff, what are your thoughts about purchasing way too much inventory for fear of lost sales? You see this, what are your thoughts on it?

Jeff Lowenstein (03:12)

I mean, the only thing worse than not having enough inventory to sell is having too much inventory that you can't sell, right? So just think about like, which way would you rather be wrong is what I recommended. No one is ever getting this perfect. It's literally impossible.

you're placing a risk -adjusted bet on where you think things are gonna sell, how much of each SKU and variation is gonna sell. Let's just be honest, it's impossible to get it perfect. You're gonna miss, and you're gonna miss in places you...

didn't expect to, right? You might be super confident on one channel or one product category and then, you know, that's actually what you end up getting wrong rather than where you thought you might have issues. So it's just really freaking hard, right? You have the combination of marketing efficiency that varies day to day, month to month.

season to season, right? Especially we're about to enter the holidays and it's, you know, it's crazy times for everyone, especially the Black Friday Cyber Monday coming up. So...

I like to think about it like where would you rather be wrong? I like to show a little bit of restraint. Like I'd rather have some of my clients stock out a bit rather than being super over -inventoryed and having their cash tied up. Cause that cash crunch can kill you in a lot of ways. So that's typically where I try to push people if you have to choose one or the other. you know, it's a skill that you do have to hone over time, the inventory planning piece.

Jon Blair (04:39)

Totally.

Jeff Lowenstein (04:51)

you

Jon Blair (04:51)

Well, so there's a couple things that I want to point out there that Jeff just mentioned. One, inventory planning is really freaking hard and you will never get it perfect. No one gets it perfect. I've worked with companies doing $500,000 who are not getting perfect and I've worked with companies doing, you know, nine figures in revenue not getting it perfect. And so, take that burden off your shoulders, right, of like trying to engage in inventory planning perfection because it doesn't exist.

The other thing is, you know where this came from, this like topic in this post, is that on the founding team of Guardian Bikes, we made this mistake several years in a row. We lived to fight another day, right? But where did this show up the most? It showed up the most right before Q4, like Jeff was mentioning, right? That prime time is right around the corner.

Jeff Lowenstein (05:21)

Yep.

Jon Blair (05:49)

And then it showed up for us at the time, Guardian has since brought its supply chain back to the US, but at the time we were purchasing bikes in China. And so with Chinese New Year falling right after the holidays and shutting down the country for basically a month, we had to commit to springtime inventory, which for bikes was the other seasonal spike. And so the trick was, we're growing, you're growing, so last year's numbers for Q4.

and mind you for Q2 for the spring, your sales numbers should be bigger this year theoretically, right, than they were last year, but you don't know how big they're gonna be. And if you have really long lead times, you're committing to orders really early and even harder, you're committing to orders that need to be produced before Chinese New Year before you've even seen how you did during Black Friday, right? And so we had to play some massive bets.

Jeff Lowenstein (06:42)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (06:47)

And the trick is where the emotional or like kind of psychological bias comes into play is the fear of lost sales. Right? With the fear of lost sales, you're like, shoot, I may be leaving money on the table. Right? And so what Jeff mentioned about a risk -adjusted bet is like one way that we think about this from the CFO standpoint, and I'd love to get your

elaboration on this Jeff, but it's like what's the most that we can afford to buy with our capital structure, right? That can allow us to sell or to hit the highest revenue goal possible. But that if we totally whiff and we hit some minimum sales forecast that we feel really confident in, that we're gonna at least hit that, that we would still survive, right? We'd live to fight another day. Instead of betting the house and you either survive and thrive,

Jeff Lowenstein (07:29)

Thanks

Jon Blair (07:44)

or you die. You got any other thoughts on that, Jeff?

Jeff Lowenstein (07:49)

I always have lots of thoughts, And I know you live this with Guardian Bikes as well. okay, I have a couple things that I wanted to mention in response. So actually, I also have some experience from when I was at Boosted Commerce an aggregator. We actually were trying to buy a brand and what they were doing at that time.

They were growing very, very nicely year over year, consistent every month, consistent from January through, it must have been around this time of year, September, that we were looking to buy them. And the year over year growth rate was really high, like they were crushing it. And we were looking at, know, hey, we're about to enter Q4. But by the way, we have so much we want to order for the holiday season.

that we don't even think they can produce all this and also what we need for Q1 because they're gonna be out on Chinese New Year break during Q1, right? Which happens right after the holidays, which people often overlook that they have this...

Jon Blair (08:46)

Mm.

Jeff Lowenstein (08:59)

they were thinking, okay, we're gonna make this massive, massive order because that's what's needed to fund, you know, to fulfill all this demand that we're creating. Well, all right, let's look at the numbers a little more closely and they were crushing it all throughout the year up to that point. But if you actually look back at last Q4, they also had a massive, massive growth rate.

over the prior year. And so if you just look at it in terms of dollars, was, it was actually a crazy bet to say that we're going to actually grow, you know, another plus 75 % over last year's massive Q4. And so, you know, in making an acquisition, right? Like, you know, we were able to have some influence on that inventory purchase because, you know, we weren't going to buy it if we were uncomfortable with that. And so we worked with them to understand, let's, let's be a little more.

I don't want to say conservative, but it is conservative, right? Is the way we wanted to go with that. And basically what we're able to do is with the supplier, and again, this is a whole different conversation, you can have, basically giving more information to your vendors is always a good thing. And the conversation was, hey, here's roughly what we think we're going to purchase over the next 12 months, right? Here's the forecast. And that opened up, that transparency,

Jon Blair (10:09)

Totally.

Jeff Lowenstein (10:19)

opened up a whole new set of options. And so what that brand was able to do was give them that forecast. They would actually start making stuff in advance. And only when it was shipped out of the warehouse in China was the brand then paying for it. And so that was a much, much...

Jon Blair (10:39)

Mm.

Jeff Lowenstein (10:41)

cleaner, more agile supply chain because you can make much smaller shipments rather than saying like, hey, here's what we're ordering for Q4 and Q1, you know, ahead of those like really long lead times, which was a massive cash outlay that they would have been overstocked if they had done that. And so saying like, here's the next 12 months of...

sales we want to do, okay, so let's make that in batches and then only pay for that once we release those batches from your warehouse. And by the way, the amount you release, you can react to that in real time based on sales data. It doesn't need to be predetermined. It's a huge advantage and makes you much more agile. yeah, anyway. Yeah.

Jon Blair (11:23)

You know, I actually want to drill down on that a little bit because you brought up several, let's talk about strategic financial management concepts in what you're talking about here, right? So how do you reduce the risk? Going back to what Jeff said earlier, risk adjusted bets, right? So what are the dynamics or the levers that you as a brand can potentially strategically pull or maneuver to reduce risk? One that Jeff just brought up is

batch size, right, or purchase lot size. The smaller, more frequent releases of inventory you can commit to, the less risk there is in ordering more. And it's because you're committing to small lots at a time financially. The extreme case on the other side is like, you commit to a year's worth of inventory all at one time, massive financial risk, right, huge cash outlay at the beginning, and like, you're very reliant on releasing that cash.

Jeff Lowenstein (12:10)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (12:21)

over time based on sell through, right? like lot size and batch size is a huge one. The other thing is lead times. And there's actually a very tight connection between lead times and batch sizes. Like if you think about, we used to look at this at Guardian Bikes all the time, like how do we do like frequent releases, right, of product that there's kind of like always this continuous flow. And so when you think about like lead times,

If I always have this continuous flow of like SKU mix on the water at that time, like I may only... And if like what Jeff's talking about, there's a continuous production happening on the other side, right? At the manufacturer. They might have work in process or raw materials or components already ready to go that would decrease your lead time. We saw that at Guardian. Where like when we would order twice a year, they didn't have a stockpile of what they needed to get production going. But when we're ordering all throughout the year,

Jeff Lowenstein (13:12)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (13:18)

and they were kind of like getting these little drip campaigns, so to speak, right, of like shipping out product. They, if we had to change the SKU mix, they're like, cool, we already have those components, let's just put them on the line, let's change the line, and we can get those out the door in the next few days. So, like lead times, decreasing lead times. The other thing to consider is when you're, when you have a, this depends, this doesn't work for bikes, because air shipping bikes, you just, you lose money because of the size and the weight. But if you have a smaller product you can air ship,

If you're talking about a, for example, like a big sales period, like Q4, commit to what you feel comfortable committing to, put it on the water or the slowest, cheapest transit method to maximize your margin, but be okay with air shipping some if you have, if that does produce incremental contribution margin dollars and you place that shipment late, right, in the season once you see you're gonna stock out and yes,

Jeff Lowenstein (14:01)

Thank

Jon Blair (14:15)

Is your margin lower? Yes, but as long as there's incremental contribution margin dollars, it is still incremental to the bottom line. So that's another thing that I've done with brands before in the past.

Jeff Lowenstein (14:26)

How many Guardian Bikes did you airship? Zero.

Jon Blair (14:30)

We did not airship many, zero because we couldn't, but I always wished we could. We were always trying to figure out how we could and make money and we couldn't. But we have apparel brands we work with that can still turn an incremental margin profit, right, at airship. But unfortunately we could never pull that lever at Guardian. always wanted to.

Jeff Lowenstein (14:34)

Yeah.

Certainly. Certainly.

And there's another thing that I wanted to respond to that you said earlier, which is it's about maximizing revenue in a holiday period. there's also something about being understocked as a forcing mechanism

to preserve contribution dollars and contribution margin because in the, let's say you're overstocked you're holy crap, it's December.

Jon Blair (15:08)

for

Jeff Lowenstein (15:17)

First, we got through Black Friday and I have way, way, way too much inventory that I need to sell before Christmas here. What are you going to do? Well, the obvious thing is you're going to either increase budgets or increase discounts or both, right? If you really need to move inventory and that's going to absolutely decimate your contribution margin, right? And so the advantage of having that extra stock, you know, is not even there, right? And it hurts your overall P&L. It's not just like, it's only, you you can't just do that.

Jon Blair (15:30)

Mm -hmm.

for sure.

Jeff Lowenstein (15:47)

a certain amount of units, right, that affects your full business. And so if you think about it the other way, if you're understocked a bit, you're actually going to be able to preserve price much better and you're going to be able to be more efficient on your spend as well. So that's something to think about.

Jon Blair (16:03)

Totally.

Jeff Lowenstein (16:07)

those, you know, obviously you're not going to be at either extreme where you're like, hopefully, like, hopefully you're not discounting, you know, 30, 40, 50%. And hopefully you're not like cutting ad spend off altogether if you're under, if you're understocked. it does seem to me like based on my experience and the brands I've worked with, that it's a less stressful place to be in, be in, to have to say like, we're selling too well, let's preserve margin. that, that is usually a less stressful conversation for, for,

Jon Blair (16:26)

Mm -hmm.

Jeff Lowenstein (16:37)

the founder to have than slashing price and increasing budgets. What do you think about that?

Jon Blair (16:42)

That's a really good point. That's a really great point. And actually, you know what that made me think of too is... This is kind of the elephant in the room, I think. The thing you're not thinking about that's lurking right there, why is it that you're so scared to have to capitalize on this moment? In this case, we'll call it Q4. Why are you so scared of fear of lost sales?

And what I'm gonna bring up here is like the difference between building a brand that people are loyal to and they're gonna purchase from you at some point after the holidays versus a one -hit wonder and you acquire a new customer, they buy one thing from you and they never come back. At the end of the day, like you still have to build a brand and if you are truly building a brand and you stock out, yeah, you're leaving sales on the table for that period, but if you're building a brand that people really connect with and really believe in, they are gonna come back and buy when you're back in stock, right? If you're a one -hit wonder, yes, you're leaving money on the table, but like you've got bigger problems, which is you don't have a brand, which is what you need in the end, right? And so like, that's the other thing is, I think, I

You need to be very focused on strategic marketing. We're building a brand. We're selling things that people are gonna come back and buy again from us later, right? And like, the more and more that I work with DTC brands, I mean, because we don't just say that we are fractional CFOs and accountants for DTC companies. It's DTC brands. Because, at end of the day, the unique...

Jeff Lowenstein (18:22)

Great.

Jon Blair (18:25)

And I think even Taylor brought up something akin to this on the webinar last week. It's like, you can have a really great product, but unless you truly have IP locked up around the world, which basically no one does, and even eventually your IP, your patent is gonna expire, Eventually someone's gonna copy it and your profits are gonna get competed down to zero, right? But what doesn't get competed down to zero is building an amazing brand, right? And so at the end of the day,

It's about, when I say like, over the years I've learned it's better to risk stocking out and live to fight another day, it's not just that. It's over the years I've learned that if you're really building a brand, it's okay to stock out. And I'd rather stock out and build a brand that people are gonna come back and buy from later when I'm back in stock, than freak out and put my brand at risk, its existence at risk, by trying to go too big.

Jeff Lowenstein (19:22)

For those who didn't catch that, I did a webinar with Taylor Holliday on the Bridges series. It's on YouTube. It's posted on my LinkedIn. please feel free to check that out as well. What was the question, Jon? What was the problem?

Jon Blair (19:37)

No, mean look, at the end of the day, mean we're just kind of, no, I mean we're just, we're just riffing, it's, mean, look, there's one other thing I actually wanted to mention, and then we're gonna move on to the marketing agency one. There's, the statement is that, you know, I originally made that we started talking about is like, unless, says, unless you have excess capital, right? And so the one other thing I want to point out is, like, we have some brands that we work with, I have one that's my client, they took a

Jeff Lowenstein (19:50)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (20:07)

big swing last Q4 and they would have been put out of business had we not put the right debt facility in place that allowed them to be overstocked and they're selling a product that's not going obsolete, right? Obsolescence is a whole other thing, right? And yeah, so like what I, the, the, be careful.

Jeff Lowenstein (20:10)

Yes.

That's a whole different conversation. Yeah.

Jon Blair (20:32)

Debt is risky if you structure it the wrong way, but we as CFOs really were able to help this brand not only put the initial debt facility in place that got them the inventory, but once they realized they were definitely gonna be overstocked for a year plus, we helped them refinance into the right debt facility to help them sell down that inventory that again is not gonna go obsolete, right? And so they took a big swing and many brands, they quite likely would have gone out of business if they didn't have a CFO.

Jeff Lowenstein (20:46)

Yep.

Jon Blair (21:01)

to be quite honest with so that's another thing to just keep in mind. If you have excess capital, on the equity side, you're paying the cost of equity, which is really expensive, to take that swing, but maybe there's a reason you wanna take that swing. But CFO can also help you get the right debt facility in place to take that swing.

Jeff Lowenstein (21:20)

for sure. I think I know who you're talking about and I agree.

Jon Blair (21:24)

So let's chat marketing agency fees because the next thing that we see very commonly, this is super common, we work with about 25 growing e -comm brands and we see very frequently brands paying too much in marketing agency fees. Now, as I said in my LinkedIn post, I'm not saying agencies are bad because they definitely are not. But...

You can't pay 20 to 30K a month in agency fees if your annual revenue is only a few million dollars a year. And so what my initial advice was, choose an agency that specializes in working with brands of your size and has fees that align with your cost structure needs. What are your thoughts on this topic, Jeff?

Jeff Lowenstein (22:09)

Yeah, mean, of course, I agree. I think that a CFO can help you do the math. That's very simple. The agency fee, which is typically a fixed amount plus a variable, maybe a percent of app spend, right? The math that we help our clients do is what is the incremental revenue?

that that agency needs to generate to offset their fee. Because that's not a very obvious calculation that people are doing, right? They're just thinking, well, if I can get extra 10%, 25 % on my ROAS, then it probably pays for itself, maybe.

but we can actually help you figure out what that exact dollar amount is. So that's definitely like step one that I would do. I would also say...

Getting an agency to do an audit for you is super important, and getting their thoughts on how they would make changes to your account. What would they do differently? What would they do better than your current setup? Sometimes they have good answers and sometimes they don't. So really assessing them during that audit phase is quite important as well. And then lastly, like, I mean...

I don't know how many people have pulled this off, but I have heard of it in a couple cases. Why not negotiate for a percentage of contribution margin instead of percentage of spend so that the incentives are actually in the right place, right? Because that is their job at the end of the day, is to generate extra contribution margin dollars. They're gonna argue, they're gonna say, there's all these other things that are out of our control, but.

Jon Blair (23:50)

Totally.

Jeff Lowenstein (24:00)

If they're a true partner, I would hope that they're willing to at least consider that. So that's another tactic I would urge people to try.

Jon Blair (24:10)

So, Jeff just brought up a couple of really important things. Let's start first with profitability, right? The first thing that Jeff mentioned is the incremental cost of investing in that agency, is it actually profitable, right? Because it's not just, hey, an agency's getting me revenue. It's, is that agency generating more contribution margin dollars than their cost is, right? So just as a simple example, if you hire an agency for 10 grand a month,

does hiring them produce more than $10 ,000 of contribution margin incrementally compared to before you use them? Because if not, you're losing money on that agency, right? They have to produce more contribution margin dollars than they cost, right? But like Jeff mentioned, second to that, the agency has to understand their impact on contribution margin dollars or else how can they...

Jeff Lowenstein (24:49)

Right.

Jon Blair (25:04)

How can they ensure that they're generating more than what they cost? Right? And so that's another big topic in the marketplace that we see all the time is like, there are agencies who really understand contribution margin dollars and how to influence them. And there's others that don't. There's a lot that don't. And so like really doing your homework on like testing them on do they understand contribution margin dollars. And I would say that's a big place where we help our clients, right? Is that like,

Jeff Lowenstein (25:30)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (25:34)

we can help vet agencies. We can tell pretty quickly if they understand contribution margin or not. And we can help you and the agency understand what's the ROADS or the MER and the revenue that they have to hit for them to truly be a profitable investment, right? Because that's the reality. That's what they need to be or else that investment is losing money. Do you have any other thoughts on that, man?

Jeff Lowenstein (26:01)

Just the last thing I would say is your original question is, you know, can you spend 20 to 30 K a month if you only have a couple million dollars in revenue? And the answer is no, but I guess the thing that's hard about this, right, is like I'm victim to this as well. I'm on Twitter scrolling, I'm on LinkedIn scrolling. I see people on podcasts, on webinars talking about how they're killing it, right? And everyone's posting like how great they're doing. And...

First of all, like not all of that is true, right? Even revenue screenshots don't tell the full story. But the other thing is just like, think about what's right for me at the stage that I'm at, which is something you said earlier, Jon. There's some really, really great agencies out there that are doing really, really great work. And you'll see them posted about on LinkedIn, Twitter, whatever. And they probably are killing it, right? But.

Jon Blair (26:43)

Totally.

Jeff Lowenstein (26:57)

Think about what's going on internally, right? They might be working mostly with those large, like premium accounts that can afford to pay 20, 30, 40K because they are, you know, healthy eight figures or nine figures. And so if you're a much smaller client to them.

The question is like how much actual personal attention will you get on your account? And so there might be a smaller shop that is much happier to have you, that gets to devote more time into managing your ads or creative or whatever it is, right? And so just think about not just the brand name, but also the actual people that are gonna be working with you and the individuals behind it, I think is something that will really move the needle.

Jon Blair (27:21)

Mm

Yeah, you know what? You brought up a really great point there. This actually got talked about in the thread of comments when I posted this originally on LinkedIn, which was like, when you, it's really easy to like fall into wanting to work with like a LinkedIn influencer or a Twitter influencer who like has an agency, right? But like, or to follow a brand that you follow aspirationally and see what agency they use.

Jeff Lowenstein (28:11)

Right. Right. They... It worked for X. It must work for me. Right?

Jon Blair (28:13)

We actually, this happened to us at Guardian Bike, so we looked really... Totally, yeah. So we really looked up to a lot of the early DTC darlings and, you know, there was Harmon Brothers. I don't know if you've heard of Harmon Brothers out of Salt Lake City, Utah. They made all these direct response videos for like mattress companies and direct to consumer like grill companies.

And we were really enamored with Harmon Brothers and we went like we got to go work with them and we went and talked to them and like their fee was like We were like a two million dollar brand at that time was like, okay We definitely cannot afford that and they they referred us to another group out in Salt Lake that was like more aligned with our needs but they were kind of like the Harmon Brothers guys were like their mentors kind of situation, right and and so we and ultimately like we

Jeff Lowenstein (28:47)

Yeah.

cool

Jon Blair (29:07)

that actually ended up even not going over very well. Like it just, it didn't perform, that campaign didn't perform. But the point I'm making is we got sucked into the allure of like doing exactly what an aspirational brand that we follow did, thinking that that would work for our brand. like sometimes it does, but you had to think from a first principle standpoint about why that would or would not work.

with your brand, right? And so when going to work with an agency, like, you gotta think about things from a first principle standpoint. Like Jeff is saying, like, is this right for the stage that we're in? Why is it right or why is it wrong? What are the constraints that I have to deal with? What are the constraints on the margin side? Like, maybe they're crushing it for a brand that has 80 % gross margins and your brand has 60 % gross margins and an AOV that's half the size of that other brand. Like, you have to break it down and go, what do I have available in CAC?

Jeff Lowenstein (29:56)

Yeah. Yeah.

Jon Blair (30:03)

Right? You have to help inform that the agency can't do it for you and like if they're used to working with brands that have higher AOV, maybe it's not a revenue thing. Maybe it's an AOV and a margin thing. Right? And then like, like how much room is in the margin for your CAC. And so these are all questions you have to ask yourself from a first principles standpoint. These are all questions that a CFO that can help you think through. Right? In like crafting and vetting this relationship with an agency. And then there was one other thing that you mentioned.

that I think is really important and it's that like you have to well you actually didn't mention this directly but it made me think of it an agency may work for a season and not work for the next season and again this comes back to right like I've seen agencies crush it get a brand of 10 million and they're just not the agency to take that brand to 20 million

Jeff Lowenstein (30:50)

Mm. That's a great point. That's right.

Jon Blair (31:03)

Right, and so just know that like, that's something that you have to always be assessing. can't just assume a brand or an agency is gonna take you from one to a hundred million, right? You might have several along the way and maybe even insource some stuff along the way. So I don't know if you have any follow on thoughts to any of that, Jeff.

Jeff Lowenstein (31:21)

I mean, it's a great point and I think even the individuals within an agency might be right for you in different seasons as well.

Jon Blair (31:28)

Mm.

I've seen that play out for sure.

Jeff Lowenstein (31:32)

Yeah, we've seen people stay with an agency, but having a different person on the team brought in on the account can make a big difference. just because it's not working, you don't need to move agencies. You might need to just shake things up a bit internally as another option. Cool. Should we go to the next one?

Jon Blair (31:52)

So yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, I probably should have done this one first given that we're a fractional CFO firm, but we'll save the best for last, right? So the third point in this post about top mistakes that we see DTC brands make when they scale from one to 10 million, not reviewing financials and a forecast every month. Now, at minimum, you need to review your historical financials and a forecast model monthly. Why?

Jeff Lowenstein (31:58)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (32:22)

to assess if your actual execution is on track with your plan. If not, then you make adjustments. And waiting longer than a month to adjust can be way too costly. We can probably do a whole episode about this, but Jeff, what are your thoughts on reviewing financials and forecasts in every month and why from one to 10 million, that's so critical to be doing?

Jeff Lowenstein (32:32)

My gosh, well, you're talking to a finance nerd. So obviously I love this stuff. I've been in FP&A my whole career basically. And this is like what I love doing, right? It's understanding what are the financial trends? What are the financial margin profiles of your overall business? But then different channels, different SKUs, different decisions you make.

Inventory purchasing and on ad spend, you know, 3PLs, etc. Right? All these all these different little things, all these different decisions add up to a financial picture. And that review period, I think, is when you get to actually understand how you performed against your goals and against your plan. And to me, if you're not doing this review, you might be just, you know, it's like sailing without a compass, right? You're definitely going somewhere, but you may not end up where you want to go. You may end

up very, very, very, very far away. So this regular review process keeps you honest and keeps you on track. And something that, you know, we do that's table stakes with every client we work with is a simple variance analysis every month of what was my forecast? What were my actuals? Line item by line item.

where was I wrong? And you'll be, you you don't need to work with us, but you can to do this, but you can definitely do this on your own and just have the discipline of doing that every single month. And you'll see you're pretty far off in month one, but don't get discouraged. You're a little bit closer in month two and by month three, four, five, like that improvement will just get so much better very quickly. And you'll be like, okay, I have a much tighter understanding of my financials, right?

And then therefore as I go about making decisions in my business, you have now a gut feeling about how all those decisions are going to impact your financials that you maybe didn't have before. So that compass gets internalized as you do this monthly review process. So I'm passionate about it. It's the boring nerdy stuff in Excel that a lot of people don't like doing, but I do love it.

Jon Blair (34:47)

Totally.

Well, and so like, let's riff off that a little bit more. So, let's say, why monthly, right? Why monthly? Well, scaling a DTC brand is like insanely hard and everything is changing always, right? And so like, your supply chain costs are changing, your freight out costs are changing, your marketing returns and know, CPMs and CACs are changing all the time. And so,

Jeff Lowenstein (35:19)

Absolutely.

Jon Blair (35:31)

The reality is I've seen brands go like, I only need this like once a year or twice a year or every three months. like, no, you don't, like, if you're scaling from one to 10, remember, that's the context of this discussion. You're scaling, you're intervening on your system all day long. You're trying new creatives, you're maybe trying new ad channels, you're launching new products, maybe you're trying fully new sales channels, new suppliers, new 3PLs. So you're introducing all these variables that impact

Jeff Lowenstein (35:38)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (36:01)

your profit margin, your contribution margin and your fixed overhead, but furthermore, your cash flow, right? And so every time you're messing with your system, which DTC founders are doing all the time, rightfully so because they're scaling super fast, right? You need to then model and assess the forward looking impact of those interventions on your profitability and your cash flow. And so every single month, you're making decisions as a founder

under the assumption that the business has a margin profile, fixed overhead cost structure, and cash flow expectations. And guess what? Every forecast is wrong. So at the end of the month, you missed those in different directions. And so you need to regroup, have your CFO take you through where you missed and where you hit it, and then re -forecast forward, right? With all of those tweaks and changes that have happened to your business, re -forecast forward the future.

And then you make a new round of decisions. And it's it's rinse and repeat. You gotta do this every month for the rest of your life as long as you wanna scale a DTC brand. What are your thoughts on that stuff, Jeff?

Jeff Lowenstein (37:11)

I mean, yeah, 100%, but like something you said that I want to comment on actually is, hey, for all you e -comm founders that are listening to this, like...

Congratulations, you chose one of the hardest industries to be a founder in. Your financial profile is changing every month, like Jon was saying, for all these reasons. It's extremely dynamic. It's extremely complicated when you have multiple channels, multiple products with different margin profiles, doing different ad channels as well. So attribution is complicated, and you're looking at cohorts as well.

Jon Blair (37:30)

for sure.

Jeff Lowenstein (37:53)

Like all these things, all these different types of analyses have to come together for you to make decisions. You know, there's a lot of more simple businesses you probably could have started. So I have a lot of respect for the e -comm founders, especially, know, bootstrapping is particularly challenging. So I think it's important to acknowledge that as well and say like this stuff is really freaking hard a lot of the time.

Jon Blair (38:15)

Totally.

Jeff Lowenstein (38:20)

There's no perfect answers, but there is, you know, just trying to sort through the data in an organized and structured way to try to make the best decision you can in real time, right? So that's the type of stuff we try to help with.

I have a lot of respect to be a brand founder. You have to have a certain stomach for some of this stuff as well. you know, one of our missions, it says it in our company values as well, right, is we try to help brand founders sleep better at night, which is not always easy. And implicit in that is that they're already getting pretty bad night's sleep because it is so stressful. So I just want to comment on that.

Jon Blair (38:50)

Totally.

It's overwhelming, Totally, totally. Yeah, I mean, look, at the end of the day, what we are here to do is make sense of all of this complicated financial data and help you make sense of it quickly so you don't have to unwind it and figure it out on your own. Because chances are, just like most brand founders, you're product -focused and or you're marketing -focused, right? That's what got you in the business in the first place. And so...that the last thing you wanna do is try to learn how to do the bookkeeping and how to make sense of your numbers, right? And so, again, the whole point of this is to get you the insights and the strategic recommendations that you need grounded in your numbers to understand what happened.

How aligned is it with my plan? What new decisions do I need to consider? And then you go out and you execute for another month and then we regroup and we do it again. There are very few businesses that are as complicated and challenging to scale as an e -com brand. And so this is just like, this has to happen. There is...

I've even worked with very financially sophisticated founders and they still need this on the journey from one to 10 plus million because it just gets harder and harder and harder and harder to track in your head. So, well look, we do have to land the plane on this one and I feel like we could actually probably talk about all this stuff again to be quite honest with you and just have a whole new discussion on

different aspects of this topic. But like the bottom line is to summarize for everyone, scaling a brand, a DTC brand from one to 10 million is hard work, right? And we see very often three really big mistakes, purchasing way too much inventory for fear of lost sales, paying too much in marketing agency fees, and not reviewing your financials and a forecast every month. The good news is...

Free to Grow CFO or firms like us can help with all three of these things and more when it comes to scaling a DTC brand from one to 10 plus million. So that being said, before we do land the plane, Jeff, if you want to share really quick where people can find more information about you.

Jeff Lowenstein (41:18)

Well, you can find us on FreetoGrowCFO.com. You can find me on LinkedIn, Jeff Lowenstein. Twitter is @JeffLOW791. You know, we're the go -to option for outsource CFO and bookkeeping for growing profit-focused direct -to -consumer brands. So, you know, give us a shout, fill out the form, send us a request if you want to chat.

Jon Blair (41:47)

Absolutely. Well, everyone, thanks for listening to another episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast. Don't forget, if you want more helpful tips on scaling a profit-focused DTC brand, consider following me, Jon Blair on LinkedIn, or like Jeff said, Jeff Lowenstein. We got great content we're cranking out every single day. And don't forget, check us out at FreeToGrowCFO.com if you think we can ever be of service. until next time, scale on.

Jeff Lowenstein (42:13)

All right, thanks everyone. Take care, Jon.

Networking Your Way to eComm Success

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Free to Grow CFO Podcast, Jon Blair sits down with Tim Clark, founder of The Retail RX, to chat about scaling D2C brands with a profit-focused mindset, particularly in the realm of Amazon growth strategy. Tim shares his entrepreneurial journey, insights on transitioning from Vendor Central to Seller Central, and the importance of leveraging tech tools and networking to drive growth. The conversation emphasizes the need for brands to adapt to the evolving e-commerce landscape and highlights the role of RetailRx in helping brands optimize their operations and profitability.

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

Tim Clark - https://www.linkedin.com/in/theretailrx/

Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/

Key Takeaways:

• Leveraging tech tools can save time and improve efficiency.

• Networking is crucial for staying updated in the e-commerce space.

• Building relationships can lead to valuable business opportunities.

• Businesses exist to turn a profit or else they're
  just hobbies.
  

Meet Tim Clark

Tim has 25 years of experience selling products online across digital platforms including 15 years selling on Amazon. He has worked at startups helping them fuel profitable growth and has helped enterprise brands implement tech solutions to scale while streamlining efficiencies. Outside of revenue generation, Tim loves networking with good people and seeing young professionals grow in their careers.

Transcript

~~~

00:00 Introduction to Profit-Focused Growth

02:11 Tim Clark's Entrepreneurial Journey

05:57 Transitioning to Amazon Growth Strategy

09:59 Scaling Vendor Central Business

12:35 The Shift to Seller Central

19:37 Navigating Amazon's Complex Structure

25:54 Leveraging Tech Tools for Efficiency

34:41 The Importance of Networking

45:36 RetailRx: Helping Brands Thrive

55:37 Final Thoughts

Jon Blair (00:00)

Yo, yo, yo, what is happening everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast where if you listen to us, you know we're diving deep into conversations about scaling a DTC brand, but we're talking about doing it with a profit -focused mindset. Why? Because businesses exist to turn a profit or else, as I like to say, they're just an expensive hobby. I'm your host, Jon Blair, founder of Free to Grow CFO. We are the go -to outsourced finance and accounting firm for eight and nine figure DTC brands. And as you can see, today I'm here with my buddy Tim Clark from the RetailRx. Tim, what is happening, man?

Tim (00:38)

I just want to know on your podcast are you usually just talking are you using like throwing words out like EBITDA and in the red, in the black, you know, I'm, don't know all the cool like CFO kind of words, but I feel that you have some real good flex ones that you might drop today.

Jon Blair (00:45)

Hahaha

Yeah man, you know what, I'll be looking for opportunities to drop any of that stuff that we can. But you know what, tongue in cheek or not on that, we're all about growing a brand, right? gonna be talking about the connection to growth strategy and profit, right? Because you can't have one without the other. But we wanna be a resource to help brands scale, right? And there's all this,

crap out there about all different kinds of, hacks and tactics. We're trying to get real here. We're here to talk with real entrepreneurs like my buddy Tim and get the real nitty gritty of like what it takes to get in the trenches and scale a brand. And I couldn't think of anyone better to chat about this in the realm of Amazon growth strategy than you Tim. So before we dive into chatting more about I want everyone to hear a little bit about your background and your entrepreneurial journey because quite frankly, before I hit record, I was like, hey Tim, what do you want to talk about? You've done so many different things. You have your hands in so many different areas. What do you want to talk about, man? I feel like we probably have five or six episodes we could possibly do. So let's start a little bit with your background and your journey and then let's go from there.

Tim (02:11)

Yeah, background born and raised San Diego. And I'm 44 years old, which is pretty like I became the older guy recently. Like I feel I'm older guy in the company. And in some of these brackets you fill out, I'm now like bumping up, not a level up definitely, but like.

Jon Blair (02:26)

Yeah

Tim (02:28)

Dude, coming up, I loved video games and I would be playing, you know, Nintendo. I'd go over to a friend's house, play Sega and there was Nintendo Power, the magazine that you could pick up and you can read how to do secret moves that maybe people didn't know. And then there became like this joystick. mean, you would be playing track and field and you would get a pencil and you just like to go really fast.

Jon Blair (02:44)

yeah, I remember that, man.

Yeah

Tim (02:58)

Then they came out with this thing called the NES Advantage and you would hold the button down and it would be turbo and it would just be a game changer.

Jon Blair (03:06)

You

Tim (03:08)

Okay, that little button, a turbo button, that changed my life. I love video games in the arcade sense, which now they're coming back a little bit, but I've always enjoyed finding cheat codes in life that help me, you know, destroy an opponent if you're talking Street Fighter II, but also kind of, I don't know if game is the right word, but all of these platforms.

The eBay's the Amazon the Poshmark the Shopify all of I don't know if they call them Shopify the Amazon but you know, it's it takes a lot of hours they say 10,000 hours to master something and I know anybody in the digital world

If you are truly great at your art, you are putting in that amount of time. And a lot of the Amazon people you meet, a lot of the Shopify people, they're going to be highly ADHD with their minds going all over the place. But that is the way that you need to be able to react to the changes and pivot as necessary and go an entirely different direction. Yeah. Born and raised San Diego, video games, hip hop.

Sports I was always Playing baseball playing soccer playing basketball I was never the best on the field But I took a lot of pride in being a captain and being like yo yo yo come on or a hype man So I've always been that within a company as well if there's Tracksuit Tuesdays going on Like I'm coming when the flyest track suit you know what I mean, so I believe in

Jon Blair (04:36)

Hell yeah.

Yeah

Tim (04:48)

I'm 44, but in my mind, I'm still 15, 16, 17. And dude, haven't stopped, I haven't stopped, monstering up. And it's really cool in e -commerce to actually look at numbers. Top line revenue, always going to be a big thing. But once you get an understanding on your profit dollars, after everything has been clawed away and you see that growing and you see the business owners that you're working under like.

be super stoked and want to give you more budget to grow your business. I love that. And that's the success I've been able to see with Amazon going back to when I started in like 2009, 2010.

Jon Blair (05:28)

2009, 2010, man, I got on Amazon with Guardian Bikes in 2016 and that feels like looking back to 2016, like eight years ago, I feel like that was like the early days. Because in many ways it still was the early days, right, of Amazon. It was such a different platform. But like, going back to the very beginning of you getting on Amazon, like what was Amazon like then that might be surprising to people relative to how it is today?

Tim (05:58)

Yeah, I went to go work for a company called Skills. So Skills later got acquired. They're owned under the Inplus umbrella right now.

and working at Skills We didn't have a lot of people there and there was just kind of this, hey man, if I don't know how to do it, I'm going to learn how to do it. I'm going to figure it out. Sometimes I'm going to completely blow it and make a mistake, but I'm never going to make that mistake again. And there I had an entry level job. I was a logistics coordinator. I never knew what the word logistics meant. I had always worked in warehouses and mail rooms and worked on the flow of goods from

kind of manufacture to the distribution center to end customer if you're talking mailroom. And that was like the early stages of DTC people ordering and then shipping it to customers. anyway, yeah, over at Skills

Jon Blair (06:39)

Mm

Tim (06:50)

It was just one of the many customers that I was helping out the sales team on so my buddy Jeff Shade He ran the sales for some of the big accounts like Sports Authority Kind of wild to say that they're no longer around but Sports Authority Academy big five Amazon that made up kind of Western to Central region which Jeff covered and

Jon Blair (07:04)

Yeah.

Tim (07:14)

I just helped him out and as I was helping him out, I'm like, dude, this is crazy because Amazon carries every single item. Like it's not, know, Walmart might take an item or two, but Amazon carried everything. And then from my days of, yeah, let me stop there before I go on to 17 tangents.

Jon Blair (07:28)

Mm

so how did you transition from that initial role into Amazon growth strategy?

Tim (07:41)

Yeah, yeah, so I was helping out with Amazon and I remember when I started it was $250,000. Probably a top 20 customer of ours as Skills I jumped in, was helping my buddy Jeff and yeah, eventually I took over ownership and I would work with him on it too, but I worked with more teams internally and.

We ramped that business up to 17 million in five years. And I don't have an MBA. There was no Amazon school. There was nothing like that. I was just, I loved relationships. I've always built relationships with vendor managers, with buyers, and I always took.

Jon Blair (08:11)

Wow.

Tim (08:26)

chances, which are really gambles. And it's hard to justify that to a CFO, to a president and things like that. But in order to win on Amazon, yeah, you need to take some gambles.

Jon Blair (08:30)

for sure.

So you guys are selling vendor central. So for those of you that don't know, so it's interesting, there's still plenty of brands that are on vendor central, but I feel like it was bigger back in the day. Like it was more common back in the day. Guardian Bikes.

Tim (08:41)

Yep.

Dude, I remember the days before there was a marketplace. That was just crazy. Yeah.

Jon Blair (08:55)

For sure, yeah, before there was third party sellers, right? Yeah, I know, so like Guardian, when we got on Amazon 2016, both of them were prevalent, but obviously like the third party marketplace or what people know as Amazon Seller Central was starting to grow in popularity. We had a stint with Vendor Central where we sold direct to Amazon. They stock the goods, they're the seller on the listing, right? They take the inventory risk, they buy like big POs at a time.

But I've heard, I don't know if this is true or not, it would make sense based on seeing how few vendor central opportunities I see out there in the marketplace, but that seller central's actually vastly more profitable for Amazon, because they don't take on the inventory risk. It's like they're basically making advertising and service revenue basically for FBA. walk us through really quick

that business that vendor central business from 250k to 17 million like how did you do it? What were some of the mistakes you made like how did you guys pull that off?

Tim (09:59)

Yeah, mistakes we made. I don't know how to forecast anything. Like, I like selling things and knowing, I remember we had this item, it was a weighted jump rope.

Jon Blair (10:05)

Yeah.

Tim (10:11)

Walmart had the item in their stores like every door at Walmart and then all of a sudden they stopped ordering it from us So we had 30,000 units. We didn't have a channel for it. And I said, okay 30,000 units. Can I take some chances on it Tim? What does chant? What do chances mean? Okay. Here's my spreadsheet. Here's my plan This is what I do want to do across promotional dollars then it was that was when PPC was coming on Amazon So like an early mover on that spot

Jon Blair (10:39)

Mm.

Tim (10:41)

where somebody at my company now, shout out Kelsey Olenoff, like she got involved on the advertising side. So at first it was me and my buddy Jeff just kind of figuring it out, talking with all of these people, but as the business grew, you brought in marketing teams. I was sitting with the CFO at all times talking inventory levels, dollars, and different things like that. So it was very fast growth.

and you're not gonna be given like, Tim, go hire four other people right now. It's more, you have these people on your team, how can you get them to help you out? And so that was cool back in the days, know, I'd have different people helping me out on different things. Like I think about Scott Stroman, like he was helping me out on detail, he was a product guy.

Jon Blair (11:22)

Mm

Tim (11:35)

and he was doing product marketing things, getting information for me to build out my website. So now it wasn't me writing all the bullet points, it was Scott, give me some information on the product. Okay, let's figure out a cool way to write this. Now SEO comes into play. we better get the right keywords. And so there's all of these in the digital space.

There are so many shifts and transitions that can literally come out of nowhere. In the early days, man, like there's people that aren't ready for it and they lose market share and in order to get that market share back, you're gonna lose a lot of profit dollars in discounts and advertising. So with Amazon, was promotional dollars and am I getting off here?

Jon Blair (12:05)

for sure.

No, no, no, what I was actually gonna ask is at what point, so at what point did your experience personally start shifting towards seller central or did it?

Tim (12:35)

Yeah, so, you know, there was all of this chatter going back and you mentioned it before that that FBA is more profitable than 1P. I would totally disagree with that because I would run it on some depending on what categories you're in. You're absolutely right.

Jon Blair (12:43)

Yeah.

Well actually just to clarify, what I was talking about is I heard that for Amazon it's more profitable, that they make more money on the third party don't have to buy the inventory, right? Like they don't have to place these big POs and if you think about it, like it's kind of genius in my opinion, right? Because they don't buy inventory, you pay them 15 % as your seller, like listing fee, right? So they just get 15% and then,

Tim (13:01)

boom, boom, Yep. Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Jon Blair (13:19)

On top of that, you're paying them for storage, for all their warehouse operations, basically paying them as a 3PL. They're arbitraging their shipping rates where they're getting ridiculously killer shipping rates, but they're marking them up and charging them to you. And then you're spending your ad dollars on their platform. And so it's like, it's this like amazing bit. So I've heard that they're trying to get less people on Vendor Central and push them to Seller Central because they make way more money.

Tim (13:39)

it's.

Yeah, and there's been some big developments lately. I don't know if you've you've been up on Amazon 1P news or just Amazon news in general, but There were a lot of brands smaller tier brands Let's say and probably the three one to two million up to ten million vendor central accounts They got an email last week telling them you're not gonna have a buyer anymore. You need to shift over to seller central and that's that's

Jon Blair (14:04)

Mm -hmm.

I heard that.

Tim (14:14)

That's major. Now, the thing is, a lot of these same brands, they didn't have a vendor manager the last couple years to, you know what I mean? if you are wise, you would have been running a hybrid account. A hybrid account meaning you have a 1P vendor central account, and then you have a 3P seller central account. Here's the problem. Amazon doesn't want you doing both. 1P and 3P are siloed.

Jon Blair (14:24)

Mm

Yeah.

Tim (14:42)

They don't work together on a team for Amazon. They are completely siloed. 1P accounts want 3P business. 3P business wants 1P accounts. the other, yeah.

Jon Blair (14:45)

Totally.

Well, hold on, I want to riff on this a little bit more, because you brought up some things that I think a lot of people don't know about. I have experience with this because we did both at Guardian, and we ultimately moved to Seller Central, and then eventually moved off of Amazon a number of years later. But let's dive into this, because I think this is actually something that a lot of people don't, they don't know the inner workings, right? And so, back up really fast. One, just to clarify for everyone, 1P meaning first party.

Again, analogous with vendor central, you're selling direct to Amazon, they're the seller, right? 3P, meaning you're part of the third party marketplace, analogous with Amazon seller central, you are the seller, you as the brand are the seller, you're just using Amazon's site and you're using possibly FBA because you can't get Prime, generally speaking, because seller fulfilled Prime, whole other thing, but that's been largely decremented, right? It used to be a thing, but let's talk about what you were just mentioning with Amazon's structure.

Tim (15:35)

consignment.

Jon Blair (15:51)

and like as an org, right? The seller central, it's like the right arm doesn't know what the left arm's doing. We experienced this at Guardian. Like the people who run vendor central, accounts have nothing to do with the people that run FBA and run Amazon seller central. And they couldn't know less. They don't even know who each other are and getting them connected is next to impossible. Like, can you riff on that a little bit more so people can understand how this all works?

Tim (16:18)

Yeah, so you know originally what was happening on the one piece side is if

You know, over my career, I've worked at several different brands and some of them I had SKU counts from 200 to 300. Okay, it's very easy to lose sight of a SKU or two that goes out of stock for a particular reason. You can have the craziest back in the day, you could have the craziest spreadsheets ever, but a lot of this, unless you're looking at every single detail page often, you're not gonna know what's happening. So as you get better tools to track

Jon Blair (16:38)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Tim (16:54)

all of this going on, you might find out in the 1P world or the vendor central world that an item is CRAP out.

can't realize a profit, C -R -A -P. At that point, a vendor central or a vendor manager is going to work with the vendor and they're gonna get, they're gonna say, hey, we have a bad price match in the marketplace and in order for us to be profitable, we're gonna need $2 .11 per unit in funding while this item's at this price unless you can go update the price and work on it yourself.

Jon Blair (17:31)

Mm

Tim (17:32)

So.

from there you have some items that go out of stock or maybe items, you know, Amazon's ordering system is not picking them up. You are losing revenue because of this. So a lot of accounts, 1P accounts would have a 3P account under a different name and just kind of not a shell company per se, but you know, operating kind of on a hush hush independently. Then you're able to ship some units in of this item that Amazon 1P is not ordering. So 3P

Jon Blair (18:02)

Yep.

Tim (18:03)

ship in to FBA, fulfillment by Amazon, now you're starting to ring up some sales at a price point that you control. Boom, you lift.

Jon Blair (18:12)

Yeah, and you're competing with Amazon's 1P listing.

Tim (18:18)

But if they're out of inventory and now you have the buy box, meaning you're the one getting the sales and you're making more margin, now you got something. But then what Amazon's algorithms, they say, we're selling this unit, we don't have inventory, boom. Then you get the order all of a sudden for a lot more than you expected. And what you could do on the 3P side is play some games. I'm not gonna talk about those games.

Jon Blair (18:39)

Yeah.

Tim (18:47)

So then you you're ready to move 3P where 3P they've always had more tools. They've always had reporting They've always had more capabilities to get things done, but 1P vendors Every Sunday night you get all of those replen orders every single week You're going it's nice man. We're on the three peas. Yeah

Jon Blair (19:10)

Okay, okay, hold on. So you just, I literally had this exact experience at Guardian Bikes. So I know exactly what you're talking about. Just like, I know it too well, unfortunately. Because it's a challenge. So like, let's take a step back here. Let's talk about your scaling. You're scaling a brand, right? You have this opportunity to sell direct to Amazon on Vendor Central. What's the beauty of it? Like Tim said, you're getting bulk orders, right? And if you, eventually, this is probably like, we're gonna...

This would take us on a tangent, maybe I just say this and then we shut up about it. But like, if you get really good, which you did at Guardian eventually, we're like, hey, direct import orders, you buy containers straight from the factory. But let's leave that to the side, right? But so let's say it's all domestic, so you're just getting orders like Tim said, weekly, right? And you're fulfilling those, but it's not onesie twosie like on DTC, right? Or even just on Seller Central, where you're one consumer order at a time. You're getting bulk orders. That's nice, right? Because...

for a multitude of reasons, but you have invoices that you can invoice to Amazon that are tens of thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars. You can go factor those and borrow against them if you want cash flow immediately. There's all these different things you can do. It's nice to get those bulk orders, right? But what's the downside of all this? We used to get told this all the time, and I know you're gonna probably laugh when I say this, so the vendor manager, how many times did I hear like, yeah, the algorithm's just placing those POs?

And you're like, so there's like this mythical, it's like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, right? Everyone's always like, the algorithm, the algorithm, the algorithm. And you're like, hey listen dude, you guys keep buying, the algorithm keeps buying bikes that we know are not good sellers. They're colors, we know this from our DTC site, like why are you buying so many of that color, but the color that crushes it and is already stocked out, because it's already crushed on your Amazon listing,

You're not placing any more POs. And so we would start freaking out because the listing starts losing momentum. We're losing sales, right? People think the bike doesn't exist. And so we started our own Seller Central account and we would just have stock available. We wouldn't have the buy box when Amazon was in stock, but as soon as they went out of stock, we got the buy box, right? And like, quite frankly, we weren't at the time, we weren't necessarily trying to game the system. We were just trying to keep the listing from going down.

But we would be trying to like bang down the door. I'm actually not lying, one quarter, because we ran the company on EOS, we did quarterly planning. We did our quarterly planning in freaking Seattle, and didn't even tell our vendor manager we were showing up in Seattle. We were gonna just try to find him. And we like, we got there, we got there, and we had some meetings with Amazon FBA, the global team, I forget their name. Again, they don't know anything about our vendor manager. Completely different team, right?

but we just emailed our vendor manager like, dude, we're in Seattle, any chance we could meet up for lunch, right? And we had to do that because the freaking algorithm is like, it's just buying all these quantities that make no sense. We're getting forced to have to put up these seller central listings, right, just so that the listing doesn't lose momentum. Mind you, we're spending ad dollars on the vendor central side and on the seller central side. So we're trying to keep momentum and it's just like, it feels like a game of Whac -A -Mole sometimes.

And like no one's actually running the listing. It's just this Wizard of Oz algorithm, you know?

Tim (22:27)

I got a good one.

yeah, yeah, no, but some of the things that I love with Amazon, and this goes back to when I would play Street Fighter II back in 91, 92, there were these moves you can do. Guile could do a touch of death where he threw you without touching you. Doll Seam could turn invisible. Like you could turn off the, different things like that. So what is nice is, all right, let's say you have...

Jon Blair (22:50)

Yeah

Tim (23:01)

used to be able to do some bulk buys with Amazon and I'm trying to think what the program was called. Anyway, you ship in units to Amazon. They're sitting on a lot of stock. After 90 days it hits their aged inventory report and if they haven't been selling anything, they have auto -generated discounts that go.

So then what I would do is I would track that because now all of a sudden you're starting to sell more units. Then I would add a coupon on top of that. Then I would run advertising. Then I would discount it even more. Then all of a sudden this item that was just complete dead stock in your warehouse and their warehouse has finally gotten to a price where consumers want to purchase it. Me on the brand side, I'm literally going, you know, brand store.

Right there, smack on the front. You have an influencer talking about an item, direct them back to Amazon. Loves that external traffic coming over to Amazon. Now what happens, Amazon is moving through all that overstock.

at a crazy rate, but their system's not going, we have it discounted. So then Amazon, who was just completely effed with inventory, they come in and buy a ton of units off full wholesale, knowing that you're never gonna have to fund taking them back as an RTV. So I remember sometimes we'd be in these meetings and I'd say, they're ordering a year and a half supply of this product.

Jon Blair (24:37)

You

Tim (24:39)

And we were like, ship it, ship it, ship it. Get it out, get it out, get it out. And we'd be like, my God. So then it became, how can we get more of these deals placed? And that was like, that was the game, the advertising game. you have so many levers.

Jon Blair (24:53)

Yeah.

Tim (24:57)

You talk about your photography, your hero image, your secondary image, the advertising copy, the brand store, like all of these things can be A/B tested and tweaked till you find that right velocity. Then you get moving. Then your advertising game, it better be on point and you better have the right automations and you better have the right rules set up or else there's going to be a ton of wasted cash. Ton of wasted cash.

Jon Blair (25:24)

Okay, so I wanna drill into that. You've mentioned a couple times tech tools. You just mentioned automation. like, again, to set the backdrop for everybody, you have a big product catalog. You can't police. It's like, know, at Guardian Bikes, we didn't necessarily have this problem. We had like six or seven SKUs, maybe eight SKUs on Amazon. That's one thing. You've got several hundred SKUs. You're cranking on volume. Like, it's becoming more more complicated to like police things. Maybe you have vendor central as well.

Tim (25:29)

Yep.

Sure.

Jon Blair (25:54)

vendor and seller, even if you're just on Seller Central and you have several hundred SKUs. It's a lot to manage. What are some of the, I mean just run through some things that come to mind in terms of tech tools or automations or whatever that have been super, super helpful as you've grown these different brands on Amazon.

Tim (26:15)

Yeah, well, my experience going back to 2009 and 2010 really up until now is I've done the operations side. I know all of the pain points there and there's a lot of pain points and I've served every role on the Amazon side, including brand owner, because I have an additional brand called Second Childhood that's over to the side that's on 3P. But then, yeah, with that...

tools. You're growing a business. Okay, if a brand is growing itself, then you probably have other retailers are growing. Maybe your Dick's Sporting Goods business is growing and everybody's battling for advertising budget. Everybody wants headcount. you know, I would ask for headcount. And a lot of times it would be met with why can't you just do it?

And at first I'm like, dude, I'm already doing this, that and the third and things like that. And then I don't know. I've always had business leaders that would throw challenges on my lap to see how I'd handle it. And what I started to do is learn that I don't need to be inside of every single advertising campaign. I might have 200 advertising campaigns open that I'm going in manually. Okay. You bring on the right advertising tool.

They collect all that data. Then you set up rules for every ad campaign. Hey, if you have seven clicks and no sales and you've spent $10 over the past seven days, I want you to bring that bid down by 30 % or maybe I want you to negate it. And so you're now applying these smart logics to a portion of your business. But then...

I mean, I remember I used to have somebody that would help me every single week go to every ASIN, every Amazon detail page and mark what the price is so I could find out what had dropped and I could sell more.

Jon Blair (28:22)

Mm.

Tim (28:22)

Then all of a sudden you get these dashboards where it's like, you're tracking my BSR, my best seller ranking. When I see a best seller ranking improve, I'm literally, I'm going back to Street Fighter 2. I'm hitting the button because you have to move quick. Once you see an opening, you go hard because then you have the chance to break a bank. When you break a bank in the Amazon world, it feels amazing.

But these different tools, like I learned that I could do a lot of it myself. And then I started taking things like advertising that was taking me 15 hours per week. I got it down to 30 minutes a week. Just think all that, yeah.

Jon Blair (28:56)

Mm -hmm.

Wow. I know these tools are changing all the time, but what were some of the ones that you've used over the years that really were the most impactful?

Tim (29:12)

Dude, I mean,

Jon Blair (29:13)

just thinking about Pacvue from back in 2016. We were using that on our Amazon. Is Pacvue still around?

Tim (29:20)

No, I got I No, it was funny man. I got I Got to go to a conference. It was the IRCE show In Chicago internet retailer conference. I don't know what it stands for. I literally went to every single booth

Jon Blair (29:27)

Mm

Tim (29:38)

And talked with these people and they all gave me their pitch and I took away brochures I went back to my hotel at night. I had the craziest amount of imposter syndrome I've ever had because I'm like, how am I gonna learn all of these tools? Then when you kind of figure out how to use a fool it was Okay, then let me go back there. I got all these brochures. I'm trying to figure it out. my god, they all cost money What am I gonna do? I developed an early relationship

Jon Blair (29:52)

Mm -hmm.

Tim (30:07)

with Intentwise Intentwise on Amazon advertising side but me and Sreenath Ready yes

Jon Blair (30:08)

okay.

Yep.

that's their CEO, right? Isn't Sreenath their CEO? Yeah.

Tim (30:17)

Sreenath and I, we sat at a table at the IRCE and we sat and we talked about life, man, because I was on his platform and I bailed to go to Teikametrics, take a metrics, whatever it's called. You do that. You jump into new software because you want to see what can help you. Then I eventually came back to Sreenath.

Jon Blair (30:35)

Mm

Tim (30:38)

And Sreenath's always been a homie of mine. Like that dude looks out for me. I know what's going on in his family. Now ask me about my family and it's a real relationship. And so I worked with him very early on him and Raghu like building the platform. I would help them close customers and different things like that. But I learned how you can use this tech tool to save a lot of time. So it really started with Sreenath Ready And then from there.

Jon Blair (31:04)

How long has Intentwise been around for? I know who they are and I know them through Straight Up Growth, but how long have they been around for? Like how long have you known them for?

Tim (31:07)

Dude.

I would say like seven, six, seven years or something like that. And then I honestly, my whole hustle was I would see who was gonna be on Sreenath's podcast. And I would listen to these people just like you're doing and I'd say, wow, I wanna be friends with this guy. And I'd hit these people up and form relationships.

Jon Blair (31:18)

You okay?

Tim (31:36)

So along the way, there used to not be as many tools. Okay? But when you can take Daniela Bolzmann do you know Daniela?

Jon Blair (31:40)

Yeah.

Yeah, from, why am I blanking on her? The name of her company. Yeah, Mindful Goods, yeah.

Tim (31:48)

Mindful Goods, expert level, okay? Like what she does to a detail page. All right, you give them an ASIN. Then she shows, yeah, yeah, we can do new hero images, new secondary images. We're gonna do this. We're gonna update your copy. Then on your brand store, we're gonna do this.

For me, sometimes working at brands, you don't have those resource available to you. So somebody like, somebody like Daniella can give you amazing feedback on your detail page you never would have thought of. Then all of a sudden you have a tool. If you have an ASIN that needs a lot of love and you don't have the resources internally, you work with somebody like a Mindful Goods. There's ways where you can get money. I don't know, there's all of these hacks within the business, yeah.

Jon Blair (32:13)

Totally.

Mm

Totally. Well, no, I think you're bringing up a good point, which is that you don't have to bring, you don't have to do all these things yourself. You don't have to staff them all up with internal employees, right? Whether we're talking about, just to summarize a few things that you've mentioned, like going through all of your ASINs or like dealing with all of the campaign like bid strategies one by one, right? Or, you know, Daniela, we actually have a few mutual clients. Her company's been fantastic on,

getting listings optimized, which optimized listings both from a content standpoint, like creative slash content, and an SEO or keyword standpoint, super important for Amazon because it's so pay per click driven, right? And there's so much competition and it's not the same. When you drive someone to your Shopify store, they're not looking at another brand, right?

next to it on the same page, right? It's not the same strategy on Amazon as it is on your DTC store. And so I think the point that you're making that's super important is that like you don't in today's world, there's tech tools and there's outsourced service providers who can specialize in that thing that you need support on, right? And like, I mean, I I know brands that have a 10, 15, $20 million Amazon business

And their Amazon team internally is very small. It's either one person who's just like the director of Amazon or VP of Amazon or their VP of growth. Amazon is just one of the things that that person oversees and it's literally all tech tools and agencies or outsourced service providers that basically run that channel. It was a bit different in my experience 10 years ago.

You saw a lot of huge Amazon brands before Amazon got even more competitive that maybe like built a business to like 50 million a year on revenue or in revenue on Amazon and they had like a little Amazon department, but you don't really need that anymore. At least in my opinion. Do you agree?

Tim (34:41)

Yeah, I agree and I just, you you have some shared resources. Normally, I don't know what the brands I'm working at were in Amazon businesses anywhere from five to 15 million. You probably have maybe two people working on it and those people literally know how to do everything top to bottom. Now,

Jon Blair (35:00)

for sure.

Tim (35:02)

Then when you start scaling, you have more cash flow to operate out of as long as you're keeping your A cost down on the advertising and things like that, which is a challenge because there's more competition than ever. But.

was just always open to free audits. Anybody who wants to audit my business and give me feedback, I would take all the constructive criticism and I could wear it. I know there's a lot of people internally though, is they don't want their higher ups or they don't want these audits run because if somebody comes back and says, hey, you have 10 ,000 wasted dollars on this ASIN the last 30 days, somebody gets like super defensive. I just wasn't like that and I was able to

Jon Blair (35:41)

Mm -hmm.

for sure.

Tim (35:47)

get these software tools implemented, not all of them, but you get a few implemented and you can actually show how much time is being saved. And then you say, hey, with these seven extra hours per week, this is where I'm dedicating time and this is how I'm growing the business. And then it just becomes, the software tools can, you don't want them to be interchangeable. It would be nice that you could set it and forget it, but.

On the advertising side, you you mentioned PacView, there's IntentWise, there's literally Tenuity can manage your advertising. Straight up growth like Daniel. Daniel's a wizard when it comes to all of this. When I had him audit my business at CleverMade, I was like, dude, man, and Mark was, you know what, I'm like, you know, cause I'm like, he's gonna find a, here's the thing, man, you're never gonna be the best at anything.

Jon Blair (36:24)

Yeah, yeah, he is

Tim (36:40)

You gotta lean on other people that have these niches that they're amazing at. What Daniel was able to do on the advertising side. What Daniella was able to do. What Sreenath's been able to do. What Rohan's been able to do. Like if you're talking revenue recovery, all these different businesses. know, Rohan, what he's done with DimeTide. The technology, it's really the tech players that are involved.

And when you see rapid growth in a tech space and you see the maintenance on the tech improving constantly, it gives you that confidence to keep using it for your business.

Jon Blair (37:15)

I mean, I think there's a really important lesson for everyone to draw out of all of this, right? Is that the eComm brands of 2024 and beyond are scrappy, right? Like there is a period during COVID where brands got fat because honestly, because venture capital was chasing eComm because during COVID it was like, man, that was an asset bubble that was popping off, right? And during asset bubbles,

capital, outside capital gets attracted to that asset bubble. The people who are operating businesses in that asset bubble get fat, right? Their businesses get fat with overhead, they get lazy, they don't have the constraints of being profit -focused, right, and being capital -efficient. But those days are behind us, right? That bubble has burst, and now we're back to running scrappy e -com brands, right? That enlarged.

Tim (38:07)

I love it man. I love it and and you really like the LinkedIn game say what you want about LinkedIn but I go on to the feed and I read Martin Heibel I don't even know if it's Hubel or Heibel it's this dude out in UK the dude drops absolute gems about Amazon with fire emojis and all of this and you know if you're following him

Destiny Watson, I think that's her name. Like she's, you follow these five to 10 influencers in the Amazon space who drop knowledge. dude, when they would talk about Amazon, I would just be like.

Jon Blair (38:38)

Mm

Tim (38:51)

taking notes, learning, then going into vendor central groups on LinkedIn, seeing what people are talking about. You can't just kick it and do the same things you were doing a year ago. You have to go to these conferences. You have to listen. You have to talk to people. It's exhausting to network, but guess what, dude? You're gonna meet new people that are doing different things that you're not doing that you're gonna have to apply to your business. If you do exactly what you did last year, you're losing the next year. You're losing and somebody's coming to eat your lunch.

Jon Blair (39:19)

You know what, it's interesting, you know what I'm realizing right now, Tim, as we've just been riffing on various aspects of scaling an Amazon business, one thing that you've said in basically some area of your response to every question I've asked, you've talked about the relationship and the networking aspect of that thing,

whether it's like seeking out the tech tools or it's seeking out the right service providers or you're saying like following influencers or going to conferences and like trying to consume content, the bottom line is if you're scaling an eComm brand on Amazon and or your Shopify store, things are changing all the time. eComm is a hard space and it's always changing. And one of the ways that you keep up with the game,

is consume content and stay active in your network. What I always like to say is like you as the brand founder, you have got to create the space to get outside of your business, right? You've got to have the right systems, processes, and people in place to get outside of your business and get out into the marketplace to hear the chatter about what's going on. That's how you see around corners. That's how you stay up with the evolution and the thing about eComm.

is the one thing that's always gonna be the same is it's always gonna be evolving and it's always gonna be evolving super fast. so definitely take some of these stories that Tim has told here today and internalize that and go like, man, here's a guy who's been hustling to create a network and in that network gone like bam, here's all these resources that I can use to scale this Amazon business.

And you should be doing those things in your eComm brand as well. Don't ever underestimate the power of getting out into the marketplace, forging relationships, and drawing on those resources because it's gonna serve you super well. And I would even say it's 100 % necessary if you're gonna scale successfully over the long term.

Tim (41:25)

How crazy is this? Like, do you know what's, okay, so when I say revenue recovery, do you know what revenue recovery is? I don't know, like to me it's...

Jon Blair (41:32)

I -I -I -I do, but can you explain it for the audience?

Tim (41:37)

Yeah, you know, okay, Amazon's remittance process.

Okay, you got Cathy in accounting who's trying to make sense of however many Amazon fulfillment centers there are. Then when you have the weekly replen orders, you're sending out sometimes orders to every single distribution center that Amazon has. Then if you have 100 to 200 SKUs, think of how many line items are getting processed. Then Amazon takes their various backend deductions.

but they do it off a deduct from payment. So it's a chaotic remittance process where you're unable to tie things up from a cash application process. So you no longer can go after these, you know, on 1P you have backend programs. have co -op, have defective allowance, freight allowance. On the 3P side, you have FBA fees. Then you have like in -boundship. And so there's all of these things where Amazon,

takes money from you, but it's not, they're not doing it in a malicious way by any means. Like, dude, look how much Amazon scale. Do you think they're having the same issues that brands have as well? But there's these automated tools, some automated, some manual, some a mix that'll audit. They'll go back.

Jon Blair (42:36)

Mm

Totally.

Tim (42:57)

18 months they'll go back a few you know all the way up like three years and they'll go try to find dollars for you that you haven't been able to get with no work from your team Hey, what if I say hey Jon, do you want some free money right now? What would you say?

Jon Blair (43:14)

Yeah, I'm in. I'm in.

Tim (43:16)

Okay, now the people below you are saying, hey, if I show you that I'm gonna give you free money, then they're gonna look like they're not doing their job right. That's not the narrative. The narrative is, dude, you can't hire 15 people in accounting. So if you use these revenue recovery tools to audit back business, you go find money, you don't have to do anything. Literally all the disputes are filed, and you get money back directly from Amazon.

Jon Blair (43:24)

for sure. Yeah.

Tim (43:46)

on the 3P side, on the FBA side, used to be able to go back 18 months. Okay, you're talking loss damage, you're talking inbound shipments, FBA fees, these disposals, different things like that. Because I worked on the software side. I worked for ThreeCult, so I saw all this. Dude, October 23rd, you can only look 60 days back.

Jon Blair (43:53)

Mm

that sucks.

Tim (44:11)

It sucks, dude, there's so many brands that go back and get the 18 months and they're like, no, they're asleep at the wheel. They're asleep at the wheel. And it's crazy to me. You literally have one month to go get money back that you're not going to get ever again. And people are like, no, we got Cindy who handles all of that. And I'm like,

Jon Blair (44:28)

No, it's way too much work. So you know, 10 years ago or eight years ago, we were doing all that reconciliation ourselves with Guardian Bikes. Before these, some of these tools existed, but it was like they weren't as prevalent. We did all this manually. And I'm gonna just say right now for the audience, it is a ton of work and it's not worth the effort of the team if you can just outsource it. And probably, I would say outsourcing get better results actually. Like these tools are...

they find way more money than your team could find and you just pay them a cut and you still net way more than you would net if you did it yourself and you don't distract the team, you don't distract your team from where they can really add value. like what Tim is saying is like a very good example of how to leverage some of these services and or tech tools to go a lot further faster on your Amazon business. And a lot of times they're,

they're little known to a lot of brands, which actually leads me to my next thing. What I wanted to ask you about, Tim, is the RetailRx. What do you guys do at the RetailRx, and how do you help brands?

Tim (45:36)

man, it's crazy story, you know, so I've been on the brand side forever, you know, running Amazon business, but also going and calling on brick and mortar accounts, going to Bed Bath and Beyond for line reviews or Sports Authority Academy like these different ones. so I've just gained a lot of experience. And as I've used some of these software tools, I just saw that. Wow.

These tools are something that nobody's really using. And so I started to use my network to tell them like, hey, you know, have you tried Intentwise for advertising? No, we don't do anything for advertising. do, you know, so then I started talking about these various tools. So then I set up referral agreements with some of the solutions that I thought were best. And then the way it would work is I just use my network. I talked to a lot of the same people I'm talking with anyway.

Jon Blair (46:06)

Hmm.

Tim (46:32)

We're sharing tips. Like that's always happening. But now I have these tools and I've just spent a lot more time. I'm 100 % software world. I'm like tech tools and all of that. And so now I'm not on the brand side like I was in the past, but I'm able to help so many brands with these tools that they never knew about. Herschel Supply Company. I wear Herschel Supply Company. Like I love Herschel Supply Company.

Dude, found them a lot of money and helped with processes and visibility where, dude, that's major. So I'm able to work with brands with The Retail RX that I really care about and help them. And I'm the guy who opens up a jacket and has six different solutions to offer you.

Jon Blair (47:22)

Hell yeah.

Tim (47:23)

But brands don't pay me a penny. I get my cut from the solution. So they get free agency like help working with me. And then I give them a prescription to a healthy bottom line. That's the Rx. Well, dude, what happened was like during the pandemic.

Jon Blair (47:31)

Yeah.

I love it, hence retail RX. I love that, man.

Tim (47:44)

I deal with lot of mental health stuff myself. I'm not on pills, right? I've been on pills, you know, struggle sleeping, all of this. A lot of people on the digital side, we got the same struggles. Just a lot of people don't bring it up. During the pandemic.

I was like a therapist to a lot of people working at the company and here I'm going to get help, but I saw a lot of other people needed help. And so it just became, yeah, let's be friends with each other. Let's gain confidence. Then I'll talk about ways you can help your business. And I'm not that sales person going, Hey, you need to do this, this moment. No, I'm going to be, dude, what's going on? What music you listening to? What's going on with the Mets? The Mets need to slow down because my Padres are going, you know, when you build these types of relationships,

Then it's a yo check this out check this out and so now I'm selling software, but I'm selling To be able to go to somebody at a business find them money that they didn't know about they get to bring it to their boss and say I just found X amount of dollars if their boss treats them, right

It's not a pat on the back. It's not a high five. It's a, I'm giving you some, I'm giving you other opportunities or I'm gonna give you more money to spend on your Amazon business and to double triple what you're already doing. So now when you see that you can empower a director of eComm an account manager or something like this, normally it took them 10 hours a week to build their reports via spreadsheet.

work with like a merchant spring and you just get all of that data coming over. You work with Serenath who feeds the data over. You got to have somebody that can do sequel on your side. You got to have somebody that can build reports. That's somebody like a Scott Kennedy who's a G in the space. And so you really have to know you're never going to be on top of your game. So just know that.

But no, if you leverage the right tools, you can get up ahead of things. And then if anybody up above asks you about your business, what do you need? A report here, advertising info here, stock levels here, boom, boom, boom. You know how many ad hoc reports I used to have to do working at the corporate level that would take, where I'm not good at spreadsheets? I can do a V lookup, like you want me to do, no, no. Now.

just use dashboards and then you do data dumps and you do some pivot tables you put it into a it's clean so if people can just people if just can say hey I can't do everything let me use software tools then maybe you get to go watch Suzy play your soccer game at 3 30 p or go to a soccer practice or something like that because I've long been that guy like no I got to do this no use some software tools

Jon Blair (50:17)

I love that.

love that. for those of you who are interested in what Tim can connect you with, well a couple of things. One, what Tim's walking through here is that like the reality is that there are things you should be doing in your business and there things you shouldn't be doing in your business. But it doesn't mean that just because you shouldn't be doing them, those things don't need to still get done, right? And you know, we're in the year 2024 in the eComm world.

One of the great things is data availability, right? So there's like software tools out there that can help get all those things done, but give you the insights that you need to make really valuable scaling decisions, right? So it's just kind of like leveling you up to another level. you can go do that research yourself, or you can save a lot of time and a lot of money, and you can go to a guy like Tim at The Retail RX and you can just get the menu.

as he learns more about you and your business, you can get the menu of what he thinks can help you and why, right? So again, going further faster. like, Tim, like, before we shut down for this episode, where can people find more about you and The Retail RX if they're like, man, I'm like interested in learning more about these tech tools, right? Like, where can people find you? Where can people find more about The Retail RX?

Tim (51:57)

LinkedIn is going to be the main spot. Just LinkedIn, my own profile. Yeah, I post a lot of random stuff about tech, but it's all under Tim Clark. RetailRx, you know, I need to get some posts going on there, but I don't know. I don't want to say the wrong thing. You know what I mean? It's kind of anxiety posting different things like that. But yeah, reach out to Tim Clark and...

Jon Blair (52:00)

Tim Clark.

Nah, you just gotta go for it, man. You gotta just go for it.

Tim (52:23)

Another thing that I wanted to point out, I know as you're trying to end this, but like I met you through what Evan and Daniel did. They threw a happy hour. Like I got outside my comfort zone and started talking with Evan, started talking with Daniel, started talking with Sreenath, started like over and over all these names, but we were on that happy hour.

Jon Blair (52:36)

Yep.

Totally.

Tim (52:49)

There was 12 people. They gave us a DoorDash gift card so everybody got food. I walked away with like friendships out of there. Juran's my homie. Juran, everybody needs to follow Juran. That dude is hilarious, but it's not, it was Daniela, it was Juran, and it made people like normal at a time that wasn't normal. So like go to these conferences. Figure out who to watch. Dude, follow.

Jon Blair (52:55)

Yep.

Totally.

for sure.

Tim (53:19)

follow these people, watch the moves they're making, and then reach out to them. Because even if you think you...

Jon Blair (53:21)

Mm

Yeah, connect with them. real people, right? Look, I actually love this, Tim, that you're calling everyone to action here, like to wrap this all up, because again, if there's one thing that we've talked about over and over again in this episode, it's the networking, right? Yeah, we're talking about Amazon growth strategy. We're talking about how tech tools can aid you in going further faster. But at the end of the day,

Tim (53:33)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (53:53)

How did Tim find all these things? What has been a common thread in Tim's journey networking with people, right? And some of these other things we've talked about have just been the result of that. And Tim's exactly right. You're exactly right, man. I met you on that virtual happy hour. And actually I have got several people from that. That's how I know Daniela.

There's, you know, the other guys over at ATTN Agency who are down there in SD with you guys. We're super tight with them now.

Tim (54:19)

Bobby, whoever Bobby is, I saw these other.

Jon Blair (54:22)

Bobby, Bobby came to funniest thing a few months after that Bobby came to Austin where I'm at and was like, I'm gonna be in Austin. Like, let's go to dinner. And like we're good friends now. We have several mutual clients. They're a great agency. And I think what you're saying is important, which is that like, get out of your business, get out of your comfort zone, go reach out to people virtually and in person, go to these things.

Tim (54:46)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (54:47)

They're worth it and I will, here's how I'll kind of like tie a bow on this. At Free to Grow CFO, if you follow my content, one thing I talk about is our core values. Our first core value, it's first because it's most important, it's relationships. We're in the relationship business. We're not in the accounting and finance business. We're not in the scaling e -com brand business. We do those things but we're in the relationship business. Business.

is relationships. don't care what you sell, I care if it's a service, I don't care if it's a product, business is relationships. You study any, Andrew Carnegie, if you go back and you look at Mark Cuban, they all have very interesting stories around their ability to network and forge relationships. And so if there's one thing you can take away from this episode, it's that. Get out there, network.

connect with people, get out of your business, learn what's going on and take advantage of that thing that makes us uniquely human, right? Which is the ability to have real relationships. So, man, Tim, I love this. I'm gonna have to.

Tim (55:57)

I messed up that girl's name, can't. Dude, I don't even know. don't like I'm trying.

Jon Blair (56:00)

What was it?

You can't find it. can't find it. I'm gonna have to have you. You're gonna have to look that up. We're gonna have you back again in the.

Tim (56:08)

no, no, no, no, no, no,

Jon Blair (56:13)

Okay, you weren't that far off. think you said Watson.

Tim (56:17)

Yes, maybe her name used to be Watson. I don't know, but she's a good follow. Daniel Tejada, the guy Martin out in the UK. There's a guy named Don who drops gems. I'm trying to, Don Sullivan maybe. I don't know. Follow the right people. See what they have to say about Amazon. yeah, man, new pleasure to come on. Like I feel like we might have our own podcast after this. Like let's go.

Jon Blair (56:20)

Ha

Well, did you stop doing the RetailRx podcast?

Tim (56:46)

No, I'm gonna bring it back. it was, was my, know what I mean? Like it evolved probably more into like a mid 90s podcast, which is another one of my brand that's, you know, but.

It's really just somebody coming over shooting the shit and then showing some normalcy in everybody's life. And I think work life balance is a huge piece of this all. So all of these people working so hard, doing software hacks, different things like that also have some hobbies that are away from your work and not on your computer and things like that because it's only gonna make you better for everything that you're doing going forward.

Jon Blair (57:21)

I agree man, when you bring that back, hit me up, cause I'm from SoCal, I'll fly out to go see my parents for the week, I'll come down to San Diego and we'll talk about my days actually in San Diego playing in a signed thrash metal band. We played brick by brick, Jumping Turtle, Soma, the whole nine yards. that's, if you bring that back, I wanna be the first one back on that show and we're gonna be talking about my band that I...

Tim (57:28)

Yes. Yes.

Yes, dude.

I might grow, should we grow our hair out for it and just have like, okay.

Jon Blair (57:51)

Dude, I'm in, I'm in, I'm in. But yeah man, I appreciate you coming on man, this is definitely not our last conversation. Check out Tim on LinkedIn. If you're interested in how he could help you, definitely hit him up. And you know, as you guys know, if you want any more helpful tips on scaling a profit focused DTC brand, consider following me, Jon Blair on LinkedIn. And if you're interested in learning more about how Free to Grow CFOs,

DTC accountants and fractional CFOs can help you increase profit and cash flow as you scale. Hit us up, you can find us on our website, freetogrowcfo.com, and until next time, scale on.

Tim (58:31)

Scale on.

Growth vs. Profit: Can Your DTC Brand Have Both?

Episode Summary

This week on the Free to Grow CFO Podcast, Jon Blair chats with Dylan Byers, to discuss the speed of scale versus profitability for DTC brands. As DTC businesses strive to scale, many founders find themselves caught between driving rapid customer acquisition and keeping their bottom line healthy. Dylan, co-founder of Aplo Group, brings his extensive experience in growth marketing and financial modeling to explain how brands can navigate this complex landscape. He explains how financial modeling, growth marketing, and a deep understanding of margins can make all the difference in staying profitable as you grow. Listen in as Jon and Dylan dive deep into the strategies that help brands grow fast without sacrificing profitability. With clear, actionable advice, this episode offers a roadmap for DTC brands aiming to achieve both aggressive growth and financial health.

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

Dylan Byers - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylan-byers-046010149/

Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/

Aplo Group - https://www.aplogroup.com/

Key Takeaways:

• Understanding the economics of acquiring new customers versus driving repeat purchase is key to achieving profitability.

• Financial modeling and forecasting can help optimize growth marketing strategies.

• High operating leverage and gross margin
  can enable faster growth and more efficient
  cash flow.

• High velocity of lifetime value and repeat
  purchase can subsidize the acquisition of
  less profitable new customers.
  

Meet Dylan Byers

Dylan has worked with dozens of e-commerce brands ranging from 6 to 9 figures in revenue, bringing a strong background in consulting, media buying, and email/SMS strategy. Dylan thrives on the challenge of unlocking growth opportunities for clients.

At Aplo Group, Dylan's main role involves collaborating with the growth team to design and implement scaling strategies based on each client’s unique revenue and profit targets.

Transcript

~~~

00:00 - Introduction and Overview

08:00 - Can a DTC Brand Have Its Cake and Eat It Too?

13:09 - The Importance of Financials and Balance Sheet

18:12 - The Role of Gross Margin and Operating Leverage

24:37 - The Benefits of LTV-Based Businesses

26:27 - Fundamental Laws of CPM Costs and Diminishing Returns

28:21 - Building a Brand and Finding a Competitive Advantage

33:29 - The Limited Impact of Facebook Ads on LTV

40:36 - Simplicity and High-Leverage Tasks in Email and SMS

46:39 - Final Thoughts

Jon Blair (00:02.198)

Hey, hey, hey, what's happening everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast where we dive deep into conversations about scaling a DTC brand, but only with a profit focused mindset, because that's what we care about over here. I'm your host, Jon Blair, founder of Free to Grow CFO. We are the go -to outsource finance and accounting firm for eight and nine figure DTC brands. And today I'm here with my buddy, Dylan Byers, co -founder of Aplo Group a growth marketing agency that we collaborate with. Dylan, what's happening, man?

Dylan Byers (00:35.019)

Not much, happy to be here.

Jon Blair (00:37.42)

Yeah, man. This is actually my second call today with Dylan. We actually have a mutual client and we're on a client call earlier today. So should be able to nail this one because we've we've this is not a dry run. We've already chatted today and we're on and actually we're chatting about some of the exact same things we're going to be chatting about on this episode. So so what are we talking about today and why should you care? Well, what we're talking about today is the speed of scale versus profitability, right? How to strategically balance new customer acquisition with repeat purchase. Because the bottom line is, the way that I like to explain it is, too many brands out there like to have their cake and eat it too. They want to grow super crazy fast, but they also want to be super crazy profitable. And the reality is, when it comes to profitability, there's a lot of drivers of profitability, but when you start talking about profitability in the context of like speed of growth, you really have to, it really in my mind comes down to balancing the economics of acquiring new customers versus driving repeat purchase. So we're gonna get deep into that today, you don't wanna miss it. But before we do, I'd love to learn a little bit more about your background and your journey to co-founding Aplo

Dylan Byers (01:58.22)

Absolutely. So I got my start in eComm on an eCommerce business that I had two other co-founders at Aplo Group, Jacob Paddock and Liam Veregin And Liam and I had a business prior to Aplo Group, you know, didn't end up panning out, but it was a great learning experience. And that was about, I'd say roughly eight, nine years ago now. And in that experience, kind of got an initial taste for all things eComm. It was a great experience. I took that experience, jumped into agency work, worked at a email marketing agency for a little bit. And then eventually along with Liam and Jacob launched Aplo Group and initially started it as an email agency, eventually added paid ads. And now we really focus on growth marketing as a whole. So also do some financial modeling and forecasting work and kind of getting into today's conversation topics are really, really focused about kind of that balance between both growth and profitability.

So day -to -day at Aplo, I oversee our paid ads side of things. I do dabble a little bit in email and SMS still. It's all part of one giant funnel, but functionally, most of my work is in the paid ad space nowadays.

Jon Blair (03:12.686)

Love it, yeah. You know what? We met Liam originally at a conference, I believe in New York, or some event in New York. Okay, yeah, so you met my partner Jeff. And here's the reality. Performance marketing agencies, most of them don't call themselves growth marketing agencies. I actually like the name growth marketing agency better, but performance marketing agencies.

Dylan Byers (03:20.619)

Yeah, yeah. I was there too. I was there too.

Jon Blair (03:38.942)

They are a dime a dozen. There's so many of them, right? And like, there's this, I don't know, I don't believe it's a, there's been this emerging trend, I'm putting this in air quotes for those of you who watching the video of this episode, emerging trend of like talking about profit first, right? The reality is profit first has always been there. Businesses exist to turn a profit or else it's just an expensive hobby. That's the way that I like to explain it, right? But when there's an asset bubble, profitability, profit first.

can be set aside in the middle of asset bubbles. And that's not just in the Ecom asset bubble that we saw like, you know, during and post COVID, but that happens in every asset bubble. I think there's an asset bubble right now, an AI, right? And like, so like whenever venture money comes in and says, we don't care about profitability, we just care about growth. And investor money is basically like, you know, driving an asset bubble. That's when people forget about profitability. But what happens when that bubble bursts? Back to the fundamentals, which is a business exists to be profitable. So I actually think profit first has, that's just business, right? But now that people are talking about it, marketing agencies in the e -comm world are getting forced, their feet are getting held to the fire, right? In ways that it wasn't, you know, a few years ago. And the ones who get it, are excelling and the ones who don't, I believe, are being found out. Little by little, they're being found out, right? That they don't really understand the connection between what they're doing in growth and performance marketing and profitability. And so, what makes you guys different at Aplo from what I would call the average run-of-the-mill dime -a -dozen eCommerce marketing agency?

Dylan Byers (05:27.991)

Yeah, so a little bit over two years now coming up on three actually, we rolled out financial modeling and forecasting as a core kind of competency in most of our growth marketing clients. So for growth marketing to us, what that means is we're basically serving you on both paid acquisition as well as email and SMS. And I think part of the reason why we saw this trend a little bit early on was because we actually came from an email and SMS background first, which is functionally.

retention and trying to improve LTV, improve return on customer rates, so on and so forth. So we really understood that that return customer revenue from a contribution margin standpoint, which to me or to us is essentially profit after variable costs taken into account, not necessarily your fixed costs on a per unit sold basis, return customers often have a lot more contribution there. So when we looked at the ad space and looked at how everyone was setting up, you know, their KPIs and measurements and whatnot, we were like,

Jon Blair (05:57.24)

Mm

Dylan Byers (06:24.93)

this just doesn't make any sense. Like there has to be some relationship between first time and returning customer sales. And we had already had some experience with forecasting return customer revenue because to properly build an email strategy out, you kind of have to be doing that. So that's really how we got started into that. And I think that is functionally one of our primary differentiators. And there's a, I think there's a handful of agencies now that also focus in a similar space. And like my biggest advice is like, if you're going to work with a growth marketing agency, make sure they, you know,

Jon Blair (06:30.295)

Yep. Yep.

Dylan Byers (06:54.082)

have like a deep understanding of your financials and the financial outcomes you're trying to drive. Because if they don't, it's not necessarily that it can't work, but it's a piece of context that in my opinion is very much needed to properly allocate budgets inside of an ad account. So I think that's our biggest differentiator. At the end of the day, we know that brands care about one of two things, top line growth and or bottom line profit. And it's always a relationship between the two.

Jon Blair (07:22.382)

Totally.

Dylan Byers (07:22.419)

and we hold ourselves to the standard of that outcome, not what Facebook says or TikTok says or Klaviyo says or so on and so forth.

Jon Blair (07:29.826)

Yeah, I love it, I love it. That's where we really hit it off with Liam and have been excited to work with you on a mutual client. So here's the million dollar question of the episode. Can a growing D2C brand have its cake and eat it too? I .e. can they scale as fast as they want and also be wildly profitable?

Dylan Byers (07:59.117)

The on a dollar value basis maybe on a percentage basis probably not no Obviously if you take it as I feel like stretch it to an extreme so like I'll give you an example Let's say that you have a business that has a breakeven new customer ROAS of 2x Which is not uncommon ideally most businesses have better margins than that, but let's just say 2x

Jon Blair (08:08.124)

Mmm. I love that.

Yep.

Dylan Byers (08:26.222)

and return customer revenue is currently sitting at 30 or 40 % of the overall revenue pie. If you scale acquisition dramatically and maybe you have a huge total additional market, you have great ad account structure, a great large volume of winning creative, maybe you can keep on scaling it more and more and more. You're more and more new customers right around your break even point. The problem with that is that's adding like immediately basically nothing to your bottom line. So you're doing more in sales, but immediately in that...

period of time, whatever you want to measure it, let's call it a month, there is functionally no additional contribution margin added to your bottom line. Return customer revenue is somewhat fixed. Like you control it somewhat via things like sales, promotions, product launches, affected email and SMS strategy, but you're working in a fixed realm because there's only so many people you've acquired before. And that will not scale linearly most of the time if you're scaling super quickly. So to answer your point there, like, yes, you can have great profits there because you're not necessarily making less money.

but you're not making more money proportionally until that new customer cohort actually compounds over time. And the key thing there is that varies business to business. Like some businesses have terrible LTV, some have great LTV. And it all comes down to understanding your unique situation to set proper acquisition targets, to make sure that you're growing at the rate you want, but also being profitable enough. And then we can double -click further into that in the relationship between like profit and balance sheet and how that relates to growth.

over time and investing into inventory. when it's all said and done, in theory, you can have both, but where it breaks in our experience is that you have not enough profit per unit sold to reinvest into more units to maintain that growth rate if you grow too fast on the top first time customer side. So this is my favorite topic conversation. So happy we're chatting about it, but yeah.

Jon Blair (10:14.274)

That's why you're here, So yes, let's dive into this. We're gonna be chatting about this for basically the rest of the episode. So you put it very, very well, and I will honestly say that like.

probably the best and most concise in an understandable way that I've heard a growth marketer speak before on this show, which is why I want to have you come on. One way that I like to explain it to brand founders in kind of like non -finance terms is like, okay, let's think about repeat purchases as a subsidy, right? It's a subsidy of the margin because there's, let's just call it, generally speaking, there's little to no acquisition cost, right? So your contribution margin is really your

contribution margin sans any marketing spend, right? And so that is subsidizing your blended...

contribution margin for the whole business, right? So that subsidizes in many ways, that does subsidize in my opinion, how fast you can scale on acquiring less profitable, maybe even break even, or if you're really aggressive, unprofitable, first time orders, brand new customers, right? And so the speed at which you can have a healthy blended margin that produces profitability at the company level,

depends, the speed at which you can acquire unprofitable or very small profit per order on new customers is dependent on how fast you can push that repeat purchase subsidy back into the coffers, right, to acquire a new customer at a very small to no profit. And so that's why, that's why like a supplements brand that has a subscription where you buy every single month because you're buying a 30 day supply, they can scale a

Jon Blair (12:03.854)

they generally speaking, they can scale crazy fast at a really nice blended margin because that repeat purchase subsidy shows up every 30 days, right? Whereas like I was on the founding team of a econ brand called Guardian Bikes. We had repeat purchase, first order AOV was like about 300 and 12 month LTV was about 400, 24 month LTV was about 500. So there was LTV but

You don't buy a bike every 30 days for your kid, right? They're kids' bikes. You buy a bike and then maybe in another year or two years, you buy a bike, right?

that repeat purchase subsidy is coming in at a very slow rate, right, relative to acquiring new customers. So we actually had to be a lot more profitable on new customer orders in order to blend out to a margin that produced the bottom line that we want. So like, it really does become this balancing act, right? And again, relating back to the balance sheet, which Dylan just mentioned, that like,

How much capital do you have, how much capital cushion do you have to run at a lower profitability for a period of time? How much capital cushion do you have to purchase inventory again to replenish the coffers? You have to also balance P & L with the balance sheet.

Like what are some other things that are I would say like that you see that are common misconceptions about how this kind of like model of growth and profitability that we're talking about Dylan like what are some other common misconceptions that you usually have to like educate brand founders on?

Dylan Byers (13:43.16)

Yeah, I think one of the big things is for people who haven't looked at it like this in the past, oftentimes it's kind of going slowly before going too fast. Maybe there's a lack of confidence. Like you kind of want to wait to see the LTV play out because a lot of people may be even, especially if the balance sheet is healthy, you may be able to scale faster temporarily with less full funnel ROAS we would call it, which would lead to being

more new customer revenue as a percentage of total revenue. And if there's less contribution dollars from first time customer sales and there are return customer sales, naturally you're gonna be making less profit per unit sold on average. that's a kind of a, it can be a scary experience for someone who's historically operated at like a specific target. And I'm not saying throw profitability out of the door. All that matters is profitability.

But you can sometimes get even more profitability if you grow faster, especially if fixed costs are making up a high percentage of overall revenue. So one of the things we'll often kind of chat through is like, like we don't have to go all out right away. Like we can kind of do a month, measure the following month and kind of build a plan that's more manageable. Because especially you brought up like supplement brands or CPG in general, the benefit of that industry is that you often have

phenomenal lifetime value, but you often are also having less margin on first time customer acquisition because it's kind of been competed away faster. So some brands in CPG will acquire at a loss. And if you're doing that, that's even more scary when you're kind of betting on future profits. So it's often an exercise of risk management of like, how much are you willing to eat into contribution slash net margin this month for potential future gains?

Jon Blair (15:14.318)

for sure.

Jon Blair (15:26.488)

totally.

Dylan Byers (15:32.088)

Because again, especially if you're a bigger business, there's a lot of data, you can have more confidence in the historical data to repeat itself. But when you're scaling quickly, maybe going into different markets, this, that, the other thing, there's always a risk management discussion too, when betting on future revenues from return customers. So I'd say the risk management side of things in terms of how much you're willing to eat into now for future benefit is often one of the main conversations that we have. And then also being realistic about

how much you can actually impact lifetime value. So you brought up a super key point. I'm calling it velocity of LTV. So I would rather have, in some cases, 80 % of the max LTV realized in a 12 month basis in three months, even if I sacrifice the rest of the value that could happen between month three ish to month 12 and some hypothetical scenarios because

Jon Blair (16:04.63)

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Jon Blair (16:24.728)

Sure. Yep.

Dylan Byers (16:27.478)

that has a direct relationship into how fast you can reinvest into scaling. So sometimes there's conversations in certain cases where growth rate matters a lot and we want to try and speed it up is, is there ways to artificially get people to come back faster via certain promotions and or offer structuring to try and speed up the kind of like the return on invested capital, if you will, into acquiring a customer. So that's a conversation we sometimes have.

Jon Blair (16:52.942)

Totally.

Dylan Byers (16:57.089)

Again, even then it can be difficult to speed that up and it kind of only works in certain industries in our experience but ultimately those are kind of the two main things is like a having confidence in the future profitability playing out and then also a conversation of okay like the example you gave where the the The the LTV is very stretched out into over multiple years at the end of the day in that product category is probably not much you can do to actually encourage people to come back faster, but maybe in a

Jon Blair (17:24.376)

for sure.

Dylan Byers (17:25.631)

in a CPG product, maybe it's skincare as an example, maybe there's a specific product that is sold or a bundle that is sold that maybe their acquisition efficiency is little bit slower, sorry, lower, but maybe the velocity of lifetime value is way faster. So hey, let's take a little bit less on the front end and then gain more value quicker to again, speed up this funnel. So there's multiple kind of different approaches, but we really, really have a lot of conversations like, hey, what can we sell sometimes?

Jon Blair (17:41.048)

Totally.

Dylan Byers (17:54.605)

to not only improve our ROAS on the front end, but speed up the velocity of the lifetime value.

Jon Blair (17:59.948)

Yeah, I love it, man. There's another thing that I keep thinking about as you're going through this, which is that when you have a higher velocity of lifetime value of repeat purchases, you...

you have the ability also to, generally speaking, I see on the finance side, like, because you guys have a really awesome, you know, profitability model, right? When you overlay that over the cash flow models that we build as CFOs, one of the major inputs for CPG brands and specifically D2C or ecom heavy CPG brands in their cash flow equation is inventory, right? And like, if you have this high velocity of repeat purchase,

and it ultimately yields and you're able to scale really really fast.

you can actually take a lower margin as a percentage of revenue and keep inventory turns. You can be much more efficient with your cash because you're turning through inventory, right? The faster you're turning through inventory, the more efficient your cash flow is. So there's this huge opportunity, which is one of the reasons why we're so excited to meet you guys. There's this huge opportunity for an agency like you guys to really be looking at the profit equation the way that you do and for us to partner with you

on the cash flow side of the financial projections because they can become a constraint and or an enabler to the other, right? So like for example, there may be a reason why we wanna go more aggressive on dropping the blended margin or as you guys call it, the full funnel ROAS, right? To go much more aggressive on first order acquisition if I've got the cash flow, right? To actually be able to sustain that for a season.

Jon Blair (19:46.42)

knowing that we're placing a bet on the return we're gonna get in terms of like LTV and repeat purchase. And so a lot of times, like one of the challenges that brands have is like when they're just running on really tight cash balances, they get really scared about letting marketing draw.

seemingly draw margins down, right? Because they're like, man, I'm operating on such tight working capital, know, such a tight working capital equation right now. But when a CFO is able to come in and do things like help them manage their inventory more efficiently, maybe bring the right lines of credit into place or help them negotiate terms with their vendors to open up the working capital equation a little bit, you can all of a sudden, that in and of itself being more efficient on working capital can finance.

getting more aggressive on the growth side. I think another thing for us to mention here is fixed costs, right? Like,

and really like what we call in the finance world operating leverage. When you're operating a business with high fixed costs, which generally speaking in the e -comm or the consumer goods world, it's because you're doing your own manufacturing and your own fulfillment. So operations is not outsourced and is not a variable cost, but instead you've made it a fixed cost. When you have high operating leverage, getting to break even means higher, basically contribution margin dollars, right? To get to break even.

But when you pass that break even point, if you have excess capacity, you can start dropping massive amounts of contribution dollars straight to the bottom line, right? But the way that you would scale from a...

Jon Blair (21:31.999)

margin requirement standpoint or profit per order is different if you're, it can be different if you have a high operating leverage versus low operating leverage. Another thing is margins. And this is what I want to talk about gross margin for a few here with you. Because if you've got a product that has,

that you can really turn inventory quickly, and I would even say that has a high velocity of LTV or repeat purchase rate, you can generally afford a lower margin, at the gross margin level, right? But if you've got something that's a one and done purchase, or there's lot of space in between repeat purchases, in my experience as a CFO, it is much easier to do so with a really high gross margin.

to aid growth and why is that? Because you don't have LTV or repeat purchases to subsidize the first order acquisition. So you need to be profitable, as profitable as possible on that first order, which means hopefully you have a higher AOV and a high gross margin to open up CAC so that you can grow and still be profitable. Do you agree with that? Do you have any thoughts around that?

Dylan Byers (22:47.086)

Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think that there are some businesses that oftentimes like, often hire AOV, one and done products, where doesn't, there's not like a natural repeat purchase in place. Maybe the product really has a lifetime warranty because it lasts a long time. For those products, you definitely need to have very high healthy margins because you have to basically realize all of the contribution margin for the most part on order one. So you need a lot of margin left out, left, left over.

the worst thing would be like a one -time purchase product, low AOV, low margins, and it's gonna be hard to work with. One of the other things too that is so underrated about high lifetime value products is also the risk in making your bets on inventory. So obviously you'll have your inventory forecast, but when you have high repeat purchaser rates, even if you miss on a first -time customer forecast, there's way more kind of safety built in.

Jon Blair (23:35.821)

Mm.

Dylan Byers (23:46.008)

to return customers being able to churn through that inventory over time. Because profit and healthy balance sheet are two completely different things. And at the end of the day, you have to make sure both are in a good spot. we've seen at times, we see brands get into unhealthy balance sheet situations where they're overstocked on certain items more frequently when they're not high lifetime value businesses. Because there was a plan in place to maybe execute

Jon Blair (24:07.523)

Mm -hmm.

Jon Blair (24:11.203)

Mmm.

Dylan Byers (24:14.582)

on a first time customer basis and maybe it was overly aggressive or maybe it was from like, for whatever reason, if that doesn't go to plan, you have less customers, you have less kind of bets on your side of the table to actually get that demand sold through. So LTV based businesses have a few different benefits. I LTV based businesses are basically just mean businesses with healthy return customer rates where you can kind of think about your risk a little bit differently too.

Jon Blair (24:21.667)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (24:37.538)

Yep.

Dylan Byers (24:41.837)

for how big of a bet you make in the inventory, which also impacts your ability to grow fast.

Jon Blair (24:51.148)

Yeah, that's, man, okay, so when I started out in my career in e -comm, it was at Guardian Bikes. I was on the founding team. It was the two original founders and myself.

And it's a premium kids bike brand sold direct to consumer on Shopify and Amazon seller central for a period, but we ended up pulling off and still to this day just DTC on our Shopify store. They are like $300 to $400 bucks. So high AOV premium product, right? We've created we created raving fans who love the brand and it thinks and there's lots of word of mouth, right? There's definitely

repeat purchase, but it's a lower velocity LTV product, right? And so we had to just really nail the economics on thinking about bill of materials cost, thinking about, you know, shipping outbound shipping optimization, because we needed to open up, we did have an AOV of like three to 350, right? So we had some room when you start talking about like, CAC right? And enough CAC to sustain diminishing returns, because diminishing

returns are gonna happen, right, on Meta and elsewhere. But if you like contrast that with a brand that's a one -time purchase or like low velocity LTB and say their AOV is 75 bucks, right, as opposed to 350, and their contribution margin or their gross margin ratio is like on the lower end.

You just can't grow profitably because there's not enough, there's just not enough room for CAC.

Jon Blair (26:34.206)

at scale, like, you know, scaled up ad spend levels. Like, I think a lot of brands don't realize that, that some of these are just like fundamental laws of like what CPMs cost at sale, at scale, and that the fact that you're going to see like diminishing returns. what advice can you offer if you've got a brand or someone who's thinking about starting a brand or they're thinking about like developing a new product line, what would be your,

like Dylan Byers, this is my all -star list of criteria as I'm designing a product to allow the highest likelihood of being able to provide economics that allow you to scale quickly and profitably.

Dylan Byers (27:22.254)

I think obviously like all general statements through our exceptions and we still see like some brands with unique setups that you may not think would succeed, but they managed to do it. At the bare minimum, I would say after all variable costs, so cost of goods, cost of delivery, payment gateway fees, returns, so on and so forth, having at least 60 % margins left over, but probably even higher than that. It depends on the industry, but like there are some, we see clients that have much higher than that, it is possible.

Jon Blair (27:43.48)

Totally agree.

Dylan Byers (27:51.757)

That's like a core baseline. is just relatively rare that at scale you can achieve much above a 2X new customer ROAS. It still happens and there are brands that can do it, but oftentimes for a lot of industries, 2X is kind of like a common level. And at the end of the day, you have 50 % martins after, you're basically just breaking even. So it can vary, but I'd kind of start there. I'd probably pick a category that has high lifetime value.

Jon Blair (28:02.616)

Totally.

Dylan Byers (28:21.056)

Again, just so stability in the business, being able to be more profitable, there's benefits on the inventory planning side as well. I think that that is also a core thing. So focusing on at least that margin and having high lifetime value. also do think though that like, it is harder than it was five years ago to just come up with a half decent product and spin up Facebook ads. Like there is way more competition now and having some unique

Jon Blair (28:45.048)

for sure.

Dylan Byers (28:50.573)

edge is normally recommended to excel. And when I say unique edge, doesn't have to be any special, but you probably have to have like an actually unique product. Like being like the 100,000th skin cream company with no special unique concoction or maybe it's a brand partnership or maybe you have like, I know, the best margins ever because you happen to own a manufacturing facility. I don't know. There are these edge cases where you're like,

Jon Blair (29:00.344)

Totally.

Jon Blair (29:17.368)

Totally.

Dylan Byers (29:20.296)

you know, you have like, you have a competitive advantage. But the competitive advantage of being like really, really, really good at Facebook ads, there is still value there, but the arbitrage isn't as high as it was, say, five years ago. So you need to have, you need to have more. So I would only start if I have high margins, high probability of being a high LTV product, because you don't really know until you launch, but obviously like something consumable or replenishable. And then why

Jon Blair (29:31.938)

Totally. I totally agree.

Dylan Byers (29:49.375)

the starting line, like what is the actual competitive advantage I have. Yeah, that's my go -to.

Jon Blair (29:53.656)

totally. No, that's a great list. So when I started Free to Grow CFO

Not quite three years ago. only Ecom brand I worked with and for was Guardian Bikes, right? And so we're kind of like, and we started back in 2016. So I feel like, I mean, like we were had a Magento site and like Shopify had just like started coming out and we moved to Shopify reluctantly. Like, is this going to be like legit or not? Right? And so, so much different world back then in Ecom, there was a lot of, I would say DTC darlings who got founded around that time

Dylan Byers (30:15.767)

Nice.

Jon Blair (30:29.342)

couple years before who reached nine figures in revenue like spending on Google like bottom of funnel PPC right which that debt just doesn't exist anymore or like just crushing SEO and no one else in your product category is doing that right and you get to a hundred million in revenue that doesn't exist anymore I mean maybe there's a couple like very like like narrow niches where that that opportunity is available but not really and so

You need to, I mean, have to, you gotta start a, you have to create a brand, right? And like, and I always say DTC as a channel should provide some sort of an edge. There should be a reason why you're trying to scale DTC. For Guardian Bikes, we actually tried to scale brick and mortar before DTC. And what we found out is we made the safest kids' bikes direct to your door. That's where we ended, right? But we started brick and mortar, because that's where most bikes are sold. We had a patent on

on a brake that prevents you from flipping over the handlebars. SureStop brakes. We couldn't tell that story.

of what SureStop brakes were in a Walmart bike aisle or a Target bike aisle or an independent bike shop. We tried, it didn't work, and we realized the only way to tell that story, direct to consumer, right? All the creative, our website content, know, email was a big piece and the content that was in our email. And so D2C gave us an edge. And Guardian Bikes will be, I'm sure will be a nine figure brand before people know it at some

point in the future and it but D2C as a channel gave us an edge right and so like I always say in addition to the product edge or them or maybe the branding edge that you're talking about why D2C like is it is is there something unique that you can do in the D2C channel that other other people can't do right because CPG another great channels physical retail right but it's a different game

Jon Blair (32:33.536)

and finding an edge in physical retail is not the same strategy as finding an edge on D2C. It's also not the same as finding an edge on Amazon, right? And so, like, find an edge in the channel, right, that makes sense strategically for some reason. And then the other thing is, I see a lot of brands make mistakes on telling their ad agency, fix my LTV.

Increase repeat purchase rate. I have come to form the conclusion that that's not possible. I mean, I think there are are tactics which I'll ask you about in a second that can enhance, right, repeat purchase velocity. But I've come to form a very hard and fast opinion that LTV is designed into the product during product development. Do you agree and what are your thoughts on that?

Dylan Byers (33:29.496)

think that statement is mostly true, that it is kind of just a fundamental makeup of what you sell. think email and SMS can have impact on it, albeit maybe less than people think. So email and SMS as a channel is where you go to try and increase your lifetime value. Paid ads, the secret of, let's say you're trying to increase LTV with Facebook.

Jon Blair (33:42.775)

Mm

Dylan Byers (33:56.703)

You have to think about those conversions that take place in Facebook as a completely, you have to measure it completely differently. And the reason why is because there is way more touch points involved with getting someone to cross the finish line and purchase again than just saying, Hey, this is top of funnel reaching that new people and convert. There's way more touch points involved. saying it's all because of the ads is very hard to do. So in our experience, when running retention campaigns, if you just look at what's reported in an ads manager.

Jon Blair (34:04.024)

for sure.

Dylan Byers (34:25.326)

and you're specifically only trying to target people who have bought from you before, the incremental value of those conversions are normally going to be, in reality, much less than what Facebook is telling you. And that's why you probably don't want to use 7 -day click or 7 -day click one day view there. You want to use one -day click attribution to try and get closer to that. But even then, oftentimes there's going to be overlap some amount with a Klaviyo or a Sendlay or an Attentive or a Postscript or whatever you're using. So...

Jon Blair (34:42.806)

Mm. Yeah.

Dylan Byers (34:52.503)

There's pros and cons, the third party tracking, no tracking solution is perfect, but we are a fan of in those situations looking at that to actually get an idea of what ROI is. Or at the very least trying to exclude engaged subscribers from some of the email platforms in general for most brands, especially eight figure brands trying to scale to nine or seven figure brands trying to scale to eight. In our opinion, ads are predominantly just a new customer acquisition focus and

Facebook is not perfect if you run exclusions, your ads still serve to return customers and you can see it in the data that there are return customer sales that happen just as a byproduct of top of funnel. I'm a fan of looking at the new customer outcome from ads and then just knowing that there's some side benefit to return customer sales as a byproduct of running ads. We basically very rarely, very, very, very rarely will run dedicated remark reading or retention campaigns.

Jon Blair (35:38.595)

Mm

Jon Blair (35:41.944)

Totally. Totally.

Dylan Byers (35:51.095)

The way Facebook works nowadays is you have a core campaign that is set up to try and scale new customer acquisition. That's the goal for most brands with the setups that get ran nowadays. And a byproduct of it is return customer sales happen. Maybe a little bit different in different channels, but for most D2C brands, Facebook is still the predominant spender. So just kind of focusing on that one. But that's kind of my two cents there. I don't think ads meaningfully impact LTV at all.

Jon Blair (36:18.008)

For sure, for sure. In our financial models, we have a simplified version of what you guys do on your revenue builds, and we attribute all ad spend to first time, or like first time customer revenue. And it's not perfect, but it's close enough, right? I mean, it is in all, for all intents and purposes, gonna be close enough.

Dylan Byers (36:31.989)

as well.

Jon Blair (36:41.134)

So there's a couple other things that I was thinking about as you were talking. One, I just wanted to echo. I think we have maybe a similar number of clients to you guys at any point in time. We have like 25, maybe approaching 30 or so. So we see a decent little, you know,

sliver of data in econ brands and like we've you know, there's one brand in particular that when I started with them, they're doing 1 .8 million in revenue and today in two years later, they're gonna do 50 million but the year I started with them, we went from 1 .8 to 35, which is like insane, right? And I'd learned a lot about diminishing returns and where things kind of settle in at scale from a full funnel ROAS or MER standpoint and I just wanted

to echo that 2 .0 new customer ROAS, I've seen the exact same thing in brand scaling. Again, scaling from two million a year in revenue to 35, which is a big jump. there is, what I've found is that brands who can grow that fast and do it profitably, one, they keep their fixed costs very under control, right? And they scale massively. Yeah, no, I mean like,

Dylan Byers (37:57.645)

That's super key and super underrated. You don't need a huge team in eComm

Jon Blair (38:02.286)

No, and at scale, this brand had like 4% to 5% of their revenue was fixed costs, right? And I think as they're even trying to grow and expand into retail, they're getting up to like 10, 11%, which still is fairly low when you look at that across other like verticals, right? But they keep their fixed overhead low and they scale massively on that fixed overhead.

Dylan Byers (38:14.753)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (38:25.902)

but their gross margins, like going back to what you're saying, your fully burdened gross margin, which has all variable costs before marketing spend, is like 70, 75%. And so at a two MER, right, they still have, we'll call it a 20 to 25 % contribution margin. And then you back out 5 % of sales, maybe 10 % of sales for fixed overhead, and bam, you've got yourself a nice little EBITDA, right, or bottom line. And...

That's the way that it's done. Now, are there outliers? Of course there's outliers. I don't want anyone to think that like there's not outliers, but I very clearly see the brands that can go, that can do something that go from one to 50 million in just one and a half to two years and produce 15 to 20 % EBITDA margins. That's how they're doing it. Their gross margin is 75 % and then their marketing spend is about 50 and their fixed overhead is 5 to 10.

and they have themselves a nice little EBITDA margin. And so you have to think about that on the front end when you're designing products, can I have a like can this product actually support a 50, sorry, 75 % fully burdened gross margin, right? Can I turn a profit at the company level at a 2.0?

ROAS like, like if you can pull those things off, there's nothing is guaranteed, but that that's the makeup that makes it a lot easier to have your cake and eat it to go really fast on customer acquisition and turn a nice profit. There's two other things I wanted to ask you about. One is like sort of like this, I would call it like this mythical, is this true or is this not true? And I'd love to just get your take on it. And it's that like, I've heard

I don't think people talk about it as much anymore. I do still hear some people talk about this, but using Facebook to build the conversion, you're trying to optimize for is converting email signups, right? And then trying to convert people specifically through email flows or campaigns.

Jon Blair (40:36.246)

What are your thoughts, like again, I call this myth because I've heard people talk about it and in theory it sounds like a great idea, but I've seen brands try it and fail miserably. Like, have you seen it work to just focus on using Facebook to drive email signups specifically and then use email to convert them profitably?

Dylan Byers (40:56.654)

Almost never works. I've seen it work like a sort of like two or three times. I say sort of because arguably was it was probably equal to or worse than baseline conversion optimized campaigns and not at the same scale. So were you to scale it? That's debatable because you compare one initiative or one campaign at 20k a day or one campaign at 500 bucks a day. You can't compare those two things, right? They're a little bit different.

Jon Blair (41:23.587)

Yeah.

Dylan Byers (41:25.901)

The main reason is that you're not optimizing for quality. And then as a byproduct of that, just because you're getting a certain cost per lead, it doesn't always equate to the same eventual outcome. In our experience, one client we worked with comes to mind and they were selling products that kind of ranged from 500 bucks to thousands of dollars. And in that specific scenario, the consideration period was very

Jon Blair (41:30.019)

Mm.

Dylan Byers (41:54.789)

So the way in which we measured performance was we understood that outside of specific kind of sale periods, the ROAS was borderline unviable. The contribution margin was very low. However, kind of quarterly -ish, there would be a promotion and there would be a huge spike in contribution margin and sales. And the reason why was because what we were basically doing was there was a large percentage of the customer base who were cost -conscious.

Jon Blair (41:55.342)

for sure.

Dylan Byers (42:22.358)

and we would use email and SMS as a function of converting that customer base. And what we were looking at was the cost per email sign up on the pop -up. And that's a metric we frequently measure and look at for a lot of clients. And essentially what that is, is it's saying, hey, I know that I'm running these conversion campaigns. This is my cost per purchase like this week or this month. But I also know that on average, X percent of the emails I get

Jon Blair (42:34.253)

Yeah.

Dylan Byers (42:50.221)

between now and that next promo are gonna convert. And I know that on average they're gonna be worth this much to me. So I can also kind of think to myself, I have extra expected value in the future as a byproduct of the spend I'm spending today. And again, there's more risk in that. The math is not always the same every time you run these sales. So I always tell people that because it's like, you wanna make sure you're also not like dipping into negative contribution margin necessarily sometimes in the lead up.

Jon Blair (43:03.074)

Yep.

Dylan Byers (43:15.521)

But that is how I would think about it. Not so much lead gen on Facebook. Lead gen is when you're actually saying, on Facebook or on Instagram, give me an email. But on a website traffic basis where you're still optimizing for conversions and you're using your pop -up, there is scenarios where it's not like the only thing you're betting on, but it's a side metric that eventually may have some payoff in the future.

Jon Blair (43:23.468)

Yeah.

Jon Blair (43:39.022)

That makes sense, that makes sense. think that's really, really great advice. So, last thing I want to ask before we land the plane here is...

What are some of the core dos and don'ts for email and SMS given that that's like kind of, you know, that's where you guys started and you guys are, I'd imagine, really good at that. Like when you get a new brand and starts working with you guys over at Aplo Group, what is the checklist that you're going down of dos and don'ts that you commonly have to address to optimize repeat purchase and retention?

once you guys take over that side of the marketing mix.

Dylan Byers (44:21.325)

Yeah, for sure. I'll do my best to answer this one. I would say that some of most common things we kind of see for more advanced businesses is like incredible intricacies in their automations to a point where like if you just made like people will chase trying to improve a very specific flow for a tiny subset of customers. Like maybe you identify that 1 % of your customer base buys this category and you want to build out a specific flow for that specific thing that ends up yielding a tiny amount. That's a lot of work. You're adding a lot of net new emails to the entire construction of the email accounts. And alternatively, you may be able to create just as much value by split testing a subject line in your second, third or fourth Welcome Series email. So oftentimes we see like kind of like very complicated accounts for the sake of complexity.

Jon Blair (44:54.006)

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Jon Blair (45:12.206)

for sure.

Dylan Byers (45:18.85)

when there's simplicity actually could serve a superior outcome. I think that's like item number one. And then like I said, the other thing is especially brands that are often going from seven to eight figures and maybe even low eight figures to higher is naturally brands will frequently expand product lines and or even serve different types of customers. Like I'll use clothing and apparel as an example. Maybe you start off selling.

Jon Blair (45:19.224)

Yeah.

Dylan Byers (45:46.697)

women's clothing and then maybe you're transitioning to also selling menswear. You at some point have to think about, you have to treat these as almost two separate business units and build out a more customized experience for those types of people. And again, that's kind of counter to my previous point, but in this point, you're going after an entire new category, an entire new part of your business that you're gonna invest ad dollars into versus some small little, I don't know, maybe it's like women's socks that are red.

Jon Blair (46:05.144)

Sure.

Dylan Byers (46:12.929)

Like how many people buy those versus how many people like focus on the big things. Cause if you can make even a small improvement there, that may be a lot more in terms of actual dollar values generated than a large improvement to a super small subset of customers. So that's probably the biggest thing. Obviously like list health and engagement and making sure you're managing your list health is often overlooked. But in terms of like actionable kind of like funnel strategies, I would just always focus on like

Jon Blair (46:13.518)

for sure.

Dylan Byers (46:41.463)

When you're going through the list of things that can be worked on, like if this goes my way, what is the highest leverage thing I can spend time working on instead of trying to make something more complicated that doesn't have to be.

Jon Blair (46:52.738)

I think the leverage kind of filter is something that brands mess up a lot in just marketing in general, is getting really hung up on trying to take action in a spot that just likely doesn't have a lot of leverage when there's so much low hanging fruit, right? And I think that's true not just for retention, I mean, even for paid media and creative, mean like there's just, I just see a lot of, I think that's probably the hardest thing for brands is like there's so many things they could do. How do they determine what really has the highest leverage or potential leverage and what doesn't? And at the end of the day, that strategy in general, you can apply to all functions in your business is like we're always trying to tackle the next task or initiative or project that potentially has the highest leverage to get us closest to our goals. So I think that's like super super awesome advice Well, look, unfortunately for all the listeners where we've got to land the plane on this subject But before we go, I always like to end with a personal question So what's a little known fact that about Dylan Byers that people might find shocking or surprising?

Dylan Byers (48:15.63)

I'll answer a little bit differently. I'll circle it back to Aplo Group as a whole. So, Liam, Jacob, and I are actually all childhood best friends and we grew up swimming competitively together. So, used to, from when were little kids, show up at the pool like five in the morning and then swim a bunch of laps. So, we were all swimmers growing up. So, we've known each other for a very long time and it's really fun being able to work with your best friends every single day. So, that's one cool little fact that not a lot of people know about Aplo.

Jon Blair (48:26.06)

I love that.

Jon Blair (48:42.786)

Dude, I freaking love that. That is so awesome, man. That is so awesome. Well, listen, listen everyone. What we talked about here, unfortunately, is a view of marketing and growth and profitability that I truly believe is not being proliferated enough out in the marketplace. That's why I had Dylan here today. So Dylan, I really couldn't thank you enough for sitting down with me, chatting through this nerdy stuff, and dropping some knowledge for our audience, know, Free to Grow

Dylan Byers (48:46.775)

It is awesome. Yeah.

Jon Blair (49:12.96)

looks forward to working on more mutual clients with you guys now and into the near future. And before we shut it down here, where can people find more information on you and Aplo Group?

Dylan Byers (49:17.783)

Likewise.

Dylan Byers (49:26.743)

Best place is just to go to our website. So Aplogroup.com, that's where we have the most content and we'll generally have the most up -to -date information.

Jon Blair (49:35.756)

Love it, love it. Well, thanks everyone for joining today. Don't forget, if you want more helpful tips on scaling a profit -focused D2C brand, consider following me, Jon Blair, on LinkedIn. And if you're interested in learning more about how Free to Grow's D2C accountants and fractional CFOs can help your brand increase profit and cash flow as you scale, check us out at FreeToGrowCFO.com. And until next time, scale on.

The Silent DTC Brand Killer - Jacked Up Bookkeeping

Episode Summary

In this episode of The Free to Grow CFO Podcast, host Jon Blair sits down with Lio Pinchevski, founder and CEO of Finaloop, to dive deep into the challenges of managing inventory and bookkeeping for e-commerce brands. They discuss the importance of accurate and timely financial reporting, the difference between cash and accrual accounting, and the complexities of inventory management in the e-commerce world. With a unique background as both an accountant and an e-commerce founder, Lio shares insights on the complexities of managing finances for consumer brands and introduces the innovative solutions Finaloop offers. Tune in to gain valuable insights on optimizing your financial infrastructure for growth in the e-commerce space.

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

Lioran Pinchevski - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lioran-pinchevski-78807529/

Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/

Finaloop - https://www.finaloop.com/

Key Takeaways:

• Discover the financial blind spots DTC brands often face and the risks of using outdated accounting methods.

• Learn how automated accounting solutions can provide real-time financial data to improve decision-making.

• Understand why accurate inventory tracking and cost management are crucial for avoiding
  costly stockouts or overstocking.

• Gain clarity on the different roles of
  accountants and CFOs, and when to bring in
  specialized financial expertise.
  

Meet Lioran Pinchevski

Lioran Pinchevski is the Founder and CEO of Finaloop, the leading ecommerce accounting and inventory solution that combines software and expert services to deliver real-time financial data and insights for multi-channel DTC brands. And if you wonder how he ended up starting an accounting startup for DTC, it might be helpful to know that he is a tax lawyer and CPA who also founded his own DTC brand before—speaking of putting your hands together... A former lecturer at Tel Aviv University, Lioran, who acquired degrees in Accounting and Law from the universities of TLV and Michigan with top honors, left his position as Partner at PwC to start Finaloop. You can't make this shit up.

Transcript

~~~

00:00:00 - Introduction and Background of Lioran Pinchevski

00:03:03 - The Importance of Solid Bookkeeping

00:08:56 - Developing Financial IQ and Vertical Expertise

00:23:47 - Accrual Accounting for Measuring Margins

00:30:35 - Separating Tax Accounting from Financial and Managerial Accounting

00:32:26 - Accrual Accounting and Tax Books

00:41:32 - Challenges of Sales Reconciliation

00:25:22 - Navigating Inventory Accounting

00:38:06 - The Difference Between an Accountant and a CFO

00:57:29 - Final Thoughts

Jon Blair:

All right. Hey, hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast, where we're diving deep into conversations about scaling a D2C brand with a profit-focused mindset. I'm your host, Jon Blair, founder of Free to Grow CFO. We're the go-to outsource finance and accounting firm for growing D2C brands. Today, I'm here with my friend, Lio Pinchevski, founder and CEO of Finaloop.. Lio, what's happening, man?

Lioran Pinchevski:

All good. Thank you for having me.

Jon Blair:

Thanks for joining me from the other side of the world. What time is it over there in Israel? It's 5.30. Okay, okay, well, I appreciate you taking the time to join and I'm looking forward to what we're gonna be chatting about today. Today's topic is not letting your bookkeeping constrain your growth, which is really, really important. I'd say for any business, maybe I'm biased because I was originally an accountant before a CFO, but in the e-commerce world and scaling a D2C brand, having solid books is just so incredibly important because if you don't know, if you don't have tight reporting, that's not just accurate, but also timely, you don't have the critical, critical data that you need to make decisions and grow your business and achieve your goals. And so couldn't think of a better person to chat with than you. And, you know, to get started before we really dive into this topic, I'd love if you could give the audience a bit of your background and the journey to, um, you know, founding and starting Finaloop.

Lioran Pinchevski:

Yes, of course. So again, thanks for having me today. So I'm Lio. I'm a lawyer and accountant in professions. Spent most of my career with PwC, the big four accounting firm. Half of my time in New York, half of my time in Tel Aviv, worked mainly on international tax M&A, just M&A and acquisitions between really, really large enterprises. And also started a direct-to-consumer brand in the fertility space as a side hustle due to some personal pains of my wife and myself conceiving for the second time. And this is how I got exposed to the e-commerce, the multi-channel, I'd say, e-commerce world. And as a founder, I felt that I'm quite blind with my business. It started very early. The business grew into high seven figures. And even though I was selling very nicely, I was still blind about my financials. And I could hire some external resource but never got the results that I was expecting. So I kind of built my own visibility through, you know, pulling data from different sources. And then I said, hey, you know, my Direct to c onsumer brand is a very nice side hustle. But here there's an opportunity to build something that is really, really, really big. because I thought that if I am struggling with understanding my financials, and I'm an accountant, and I have a tax background, I just assume that many other founders are suffering from the same problem. And in a space that is driven by performance marketing, and every penny matters, and the margins are very low, I thought that this is a huge opportunity to make a difference in the in the econ and consumer brand space.

Jon Blair:

Yeah, I love that. I love that one, and you know, so it's interesting because as a founder, the founder of Finaloop,, right, you have an interesting background as an accountant, but then also an e-commerce founder, right? And so you, in my mind, have this very interesting, unique intersection of understanding what it's like to be the person who started the brand, which oftentimes is not an accountant, right? Most of the brands we work with their founders don't have any sort of accounting background. Maybe a finance background, but certainly not accounting, right? And as related as those things are, they're different. And they take a different skill set and technical knowledge. And so that's what I found super fascinating when we first met you was the understanding that you have of not just who your user is likely going to be for FinalLoop, but an understanding of the technical side of accounting, which I think has positioned you guys to make a lot of progress really, really fast on FinalLoop. And so for those that don't know, can you just explain what FinalLoop is and at a high level how it works?

Lioran Pinchevski:

Yeah, sure. So, FinalLoop is a real-time accounting system for e-commerce and multi-channel consumer brands. It just means, basically, that we work only with consumer brands, whether you sell online or also offline retail wholesale. But on the other hand, the fact that we are a vertical product help us make all the data very visible and in real time. So if you think about it on a more high-level basis, we basically replace three main functions, I would say. We're going to replace the different integrations that you use to bring your data from the different services. Then we are replacing the manual reconciliation work as part of the bookkeeping process. Third, we're providing more visibility. The visibility side can be through having up your KPIs, giving you better inventory management process. I'd say accounting, finance, and a little bit on the operational side with respect to inventory and costs.

Jon Blair:

Yeah, and so, you know, I've been doing accounting for about 16 years and in different verticals. Started in manufacturing, got into e-commerce when I helped start a brand about 7 years ago. We always ran a really tight ship internally of getting the books closed in like five, six, seven days, but it's a lot of work, right? There's a lot to reconcile, especially if you are selling through, say, Shopify and Amazon, and maybe you now, in today's marketplace, you've got some other marketplaces like maybe fair or like walmart.com target.com right and maybe then you maybe have a little bit of like actual i'll call manual wholesale where you got actually like invoice customers when you take all of those channels um there's reconciliations included in making sure the bookkeeping is done properly on all those right and as you add one of each channel if you're doing everything manually becomes it becomes uh I'd say exponentially more complicated and time consuming to close the month in a timely manner. And I would say at Guardian Bikes, the brand that I helped start, we were probably from, in my opinion, we were probably in the top 10% in terms of being able to close the books that fast because we're free to grow sits in the marketplace. You know, we talked to dozens of brands. every single month, and most of them are closing their books, if they're even closed, right? And they're not behind by several months, which many of them are. Maybe they're closing them in 30 days. And so the problem with that is what? First off, if you're a couple months behind, you just don't even know what's really going on in your business. All you can really look to is maybe some reports in Shopify and Amazon, and then look and see how much cash is in the bank account. But that's no way to run a consumer brand. But even if you close your books in 30 days, by the time you look at those numbers, e-com changes so fast. It's basically, honestly, pointless, except for getting your tax return done. Tax accounting is not the same as operational financial accounting and managerial accounting. What you guys are trying to do, the problem you're trying to solve, is very, very important. Even such that Free to Grow CFO is one of the many firms that's partnered with you guys. We have many clients on Finaloop.. Jeff, my partner, and myself are also small angel investors. Because what you guys are doing is really, really important and is, I think, the future of bookkeeping. When you were building the product, and even I know you're still to this day talking to a lot of e-commerce founders, besides the books being closed slowly, like I just mentioned, what are the other really big challenges that you see time and time again that e-commerce brands keep facing in getting their books done accurately and on time?

Lioran Pinchevski:

Yeah, so I think in general, I think the main goal here is every brand should establish, I'd say, the financial infrastructure internally, right? The financial infrastructure that you would use for making business decisions, for financial planning, budgeting, cash flow, what have you, right? So the issue is how you build your financial infrastructure. Now, I think there are two sides, right? The founder side, the brand side, and then there's, I'd say, the vendor, the discipline of accounting. On the founder side, I think the key there is, let's say, to develop that financial IQ that many of the brand founders may not have because they're coming from different backgrounds. So you mentioned that a lot of brand founders would come with a finance background. But this, in my opinion, or if we're talking with the brands, would be the minority. The majority of the brand founders would come from more marketing brand, you know, content, storytelling, you know, performance marketing background. And I think for for these brand owners, the key is to develop this financial IQ. They don't need to be accountants. They don't need to be finance people, but they need to get into this level of understanding of finance that they own the financial IP internally. just like they do with marketing, right? So if you go to a marketing agency, you don't bring a marketing agency and say, hey, deal with my marketing. I'm not going to do anything. I don't want to hear about it. Just bring me these customers, right? Because then you cannot manage the process. Maybe you're missing on stuff. Maybe you're missing on income. Maybe you can do things better. Or if things go south, you don't even know how to end it. So my belief is that on the brand side, founders need to acquire this financial IQ, this financial IP, that they can then go and manage their vendors and manage their processes. I think it's, you know, there's a lot of content, there's a lot of education around marketing in the market, in the space. But I think that the consumer brand space need more education. I think people like you, like Jeff, like other people in the space, doing great job in educating the founders and educating the market, those who don't naturally have the financial background. And I think as long as we see progress there, I think people would be able to establish better foundations in terms of the financial infrastructure that they have. On the vendor side, I think the vendor, meaning the accountants and the bookkeepers and the CFOs in the e-commerce space, I see it as a growing trend because accounting in general, it's a very generic, I'd say, vertical agnostic profession. When I was a partner with PwC, I did tech companies and I did pharmaceutical companies and sometimes I had real estate. you know, kind of the professions that you see a lot of industries. So I think one problem in getting proper financials and proper books in e-commerce is the fact that most of the accountants, bookkeepers, CFOs in this space would be horizontal. and not vertical. So you guys are super vertical, but 99% of the market will be horizontal. And then for somebody that is not focused on consumer brands, the knowledge gap is just huge. It can be great accountants, super smart CFOs, but consumer is just a different animal. And even if you're a great accountant, if you don't have specific knowledge in the specific space, your books, the books that you're going to produce would just, you know, don't speak e-commerce and would be unusable. So I think the trend of more and more verticality into the space is a super important trend. Yeah. So this is this is one part of the story. The second part of the story, which is kind of more, you know, why we started Finaloop is Consumer brand versus any other industry is just a complex very complex business. Yeah you know you have marketing and you have logistics and you have you know, you have back office and you have finance and you have sourcing you have product and You usually have very small team with You know problems of you know, big companies. It's usually solved with a lot of people. Yeah so very complex business, usually high scale of information. So even for a vertical, super talented, super smart person to take all this data and being able to reconcile it efficiently on time to close the month, not 15 days after the end of the month or 30 days after the end of the month, but every single day, so you can run your business efficiently. This is something that technology has to support. Even take myself as an example, I'm now at the point that I understand e-commerce financials really, really well. If you let me manually manage books of an e-commerce business, a multi-channel e-commerce business, I would probably end up with tons of mistakes. Not because I'm not capable, just because the level of data, the level of complexity is beyond the capabilities of a human being in absence of technology or technology empowerment.

Jon Blair:

Yeah, those are all really, I mean, we could probably talk for the rest of this episode just about the several things you brought up there, but there's a couple of things I want to summarize and draw out for the audience. One, my buddy Ryan Rouse, I think you might know Ryan Rouse also, Lio, but my good friend Ryan Rouse, he always talks about like, look, founders. Whether it's, you mentioned marketing and you mentioned accounting and finance, but you need to know enough, you don't need to become an expert, but you need to know enough to know what good looks like, right? And make sound decisions, because if you just fully outsource everything, including the understanding of the various functions of your business, you'll be rolling the dice about whether it's going to go well or not go well. And so you need to know enough to know what good looks like and to be able to make sound decisions and delegate properly. And accounting and finance are not excluded from that truth. And then the other thing that you mentioned is the complexity of e-commerce and consumer goods together. There's complexity in e-commerce separately. There's complexity in consumer goods separately. And then when you bring them together, there's a lot of complexity, especially when you're talking about multi-channel e-commerce. And so that problem, that complexity is something that's ripe for technology to come in and really streamline things and make them more accurate. And I think you pointed out something that I actually wanna dive a little bit deeper on. And this is because we see this all the time at Free to Grow. It's that there's a lot of traditional CPA firms that are very horizontal, like you're talking about. Their claim is we serve all industries. And I, you know, I think that there are some industries that are not as complicated where you can be horizontal and still do a good job. But I've yet to find a, we serve all industries, CPA firm or bookkeeping firm or CFO firm for that matter, step into e-commerce, e-commerce consumer goods and do a really good job. The ones that are horizontal have like a partner or, you know, a division. that is very vertically focused. But what we see is the bookkeeping is just wrong and oftentimes actually it ends up being super late. And I think the conclusion I've drawn is the reason it's late is because they get stuck. and they kind of put it to the back burner and kind of try to figure out the easy stuff with the rest of their clients and come back to their e-com consumer goods clients and go, and I see this a lot in inventory, where I'll see the same inventory number on the balance sheet for like three months and then it'll all of a sudden change. And it's because it took them three months to figure out how to try to tie into ending inventory, right? So I was going to ask you if you see the same thing. I don't even need to ask you that because you already mentioned you do see the same thing. I mentioned why I think it why why there's such poor quality bookkeeping for these horizontal firms. But do you have any other thoughts on like why the bookkeeping is tends to be slower and inaccurate when there's just a very horizontal firm?

Lioran Pinchevski:

Yeah, I mean, I think it comes down to, you know, knowledge, expertise and tools, right? If you serve cross industries, even if you're a big firm and you have kind of vertical e-commerce partner, this is not the focus of the firm, right? It's not where all the resources go to. So you guys, for example, right, you live and breathe e-commerce. You know, 99% of your customers are, you know, from largely from this space. So you wake up in the morning and say, OK, you know, I'm an e-commerce finance guy, right? If you are not an e-commerce finance guy, the chances that you will be able to grasp all the nuances that e-commerce and multi-channel e-commerce brands encounter in the day-to-day, just impossible. So I can tell you that I've never seen a horizontal CPA, bookkeeper, accountant, or also a horizontal software, right? The reason we started Finaloop, we basically said, okay, I'm an e-commerce guy, I understand that if we take this vertical, we can do just great, build a huge company and make a lot of money. The reason I said that is that I understood that verticality here is an extremely important factor. So to your question, I don't see how a horizontal professional would get books of an e-commerce brand right. And if I was an e-commerce founder, I would never go and get services from any firm that is not 100% focused on consumer brands.

Jon Blair:

Yeah, you know, so it's funny and this is, I'm smiling because we have a small team, right? We're a very tight knit team of all CFOs and accountants that used to work in-house at brands, right? And it's because I was a brand founder. I was on the founding team of a brand and so I'm very adamant about bringing people in. who have worked in a brand before because they've dealt with those complexities and those challenges and we have a we have a meeting we run our company on EOS for those of you who are familiar with EOS because I'm also an EOS coach on the side and there's these meetings we have our service delivery team has a meeting every week where we have a list of issues that we've either discerned ourselves or that clients have brought to us, and we're solving them in highest priority. And we always make this joke about the fact that like, Is there, and there probably is another firm out there doing this, but there's probably very few. Is there another firm that's getting this nerdy about e-commerce? Because everyone loves it. Everyone on our team, I can honestly say that everyone on our team loves trying to figure out e-commerce. And every time, there are times when we're like, man, This is really challenging. Like, should we go do something easier? And it's like, no, this is what we were made for, right? And this is what we were made for. And that's what keeps it fun. And to be quite honest, you know what I always remember, Lio? And I'm sure this is near and dear to your heart, being a founder yourself of a brand. I remember what it was like when we started Guardian Bikes and we didn't know anything about e-commerce and we were just figuring it out. And what keeps us going is like, no, no, no, there are more brand founders out there who are lost. who need us to stay in the game, right? And that's the truth, and when I hear a founder, there's actually nothing better, truly, than a founder who says, hey, my life was like this before free to grow, and it's now like this, and it's so much better, and I'm sure you hear that about Finaloop.. They're actually, that is the whole reason we do this, right? That's what gets us out of bed every day, is like we can't let down those e-com founders out there who have it, who are struggling and haven't found out about us yet and haven't seen how we can help them. So what I wanna talk about next is the difference between cash and accrual accounting, because this is like front and center to consumer, well, I mean, I don't wanna say it's just a challenge for consumer goods, but because these are inventory-based businesses, right? And like you mentioned, margins, you have to know your margins because of the impact of variable marketing spend, right? You're always spending dollars on Meta, Google, and you need to know how that's impacting your margins, because that's ultimately driving either more contribution margin dollars or less, right? And if you don't understand that concept and can't report on contribution margin dollars, and also understand what your balance sheet looks like and where your cash is going. Is it stuck in inventory? Are you paying your vendors too fast? Is it locked up in receivables? If you don't have those things down, running a consumer brand multi-channel is going to be so, so hard. So, in simple terms, from your perspective, what's the difference between cash and accrual, and why is it so important for an e-commerce consumer brand?

Lioran Pinchevski:

In very simple words, accrual accounting would be accounting for transactions when they actually happen or materialize rather than when the cash actually moves. So a very simple example, I consume the services of a marketing agency. I haven't paid them yet, but I know that contractually I have to pay them. This becomes a liability and it becomes an expense today and not in the future when I actually move the money, right? So this is the base concept of Equal. I do see inventory a bit differently because I still think that you can, and I'll tell you in a second what my opinion about that is, but you can essentially run a cash basis a set of books for an e-commerce brand, but still on the inventory side, not be cash basis, meaning inventory for me is not cash accrual, but rather purchase-based versus sales-based. Whenever you purchase inventory, you recognize an expense. or only when you sell the inventory. Now, I have a very strong opinion. In my opinion, regardless of what we're reporting for tax purposes, right, which is, you know, it's, you know, sometimes for tax CPAs, it's just easier to, you know, to report on cash basis and not on accrual basis. For some of them, it just doesn't matter. But for accounting purposes and measuring your business, you have to be on accrual. And my recommendation is for every brand, which is already six figures and obviously up, to just manage everything on accrual, which means books on accrual and inventory on sales-based basically recognize the cogs when the inventory is sold and not when you purchase the inventory. those who still want to manage the books on cash basis, the inventory still needs to be sales-based. So I don't see how an e-commerce brand can operate based on cash inventory accounting, which by the way, is also not the right thing to report from a tax perspective, but this is a different topic. The concept is, you know, it's very... Obvious, right? You can buy an inventory, a tranche of inventory today for $100,000. You keep it in the warehouse. You didn't sell anything. It's not an expense. Whenever you sell the inventory, then you have the COGS as an expense. And any other measurement would just destroy the way you track your gross margin, the way you track your contribution margin, the way you measure your business. Absolutely. So for me, managing the financials on a cruel basis, sales base for inventory, and there is no reason to do anything else because the expertise is there, you have people to help you with that, and the technology is there. So I don't see any excuse to keep things on cash whatsoever.

Jon Blair:

Absolutely. So I have the same strong opinion as you and the way that I explain it to founders who are just starting to try to kind of wrap their mind around the financial IQ that you mentioned earlier is one kind of outcome of proper accrual accounting is you get revenue and expenses matched right in the same month. And what I often see, and I know you guys see this all the time, I can tell immediately when a brand has issues with accrual accounting, because I see their margins as a percentage of revenue swing up and down like the stock market every single month. And the ones who have it very clean, yeah, there's a little bit of variability up or down a couple points, right? But it's very stable. And so here's the problem. On cash basis, you see these huge swings where maybe one month your gross margin is actually negative. because you recognize all the inventory you purchase in that month. Here's a perfect example. Right before the holidays, most of these consumer brands have a huge sales spike before the holidays. But what else happens a couple months back from that? Purchasing inventory. So you see a negative gross margin a couple months before the holidays, because they're gearing up on inventory and they're expensing their purchases to COGS. But then in Q4 when they sell it, their gross margin's like 99%, because there is no cost of goods sold that's recognized. But here's the problem. How do you then decide whether the impact of shipping costs and fulfillment costs and marketing spend in those months, how that's accurately impacting your margin? You can't, right? Because you've got your cost of goods sold two months back in a different month. And so when accrual accounting is being done right, you see very stable margins. But here's the real important thing. When you're on cash basis and your margins are swinging up and down, can you really tell if they're getting better or worse? No, you can't. So as a founder, you may not even know until it's too late that your actual cost of goods sold has been rising, right? You don't know.

Lioran Pinchevski:

You're blind, right? You're not managing the entire books. You can't measure anything. My nightmare as an e-comm founder was this state or this period of time when you're running your additional marketing dollar in a loss, right? So I was obsessed about the numbers because I couldn't cope with this idea of I'm running now this campaign and I'm like raising the bids and I'm getting crazy. Okay, I see the sales, but actually I'm like losing on this marginal sale. And if, as you said, if you if you do cash basis, you have no clue. You don't know. Just don't know. It's too, you know, there's too much fluctuation to be able to say this is what I sold and this is what it actually cost me.

Jon Blair:

Yeah. And so if you have timely books, like you're using a tool like final loop, right. And you're getting your books done every single day and it's on an accrual basis. When you see your cogs go up right in pretty close to real time, you can act on that and, and, and dig, dive down deep and figure out what's driving this. Can I do anything to get this, these cogs back down? Right. You can't do that if you're on cash basis. And I've tell, I think one struggle that I have, and by the way, I have no personal vendetta against CPAs. They serve a very important function within the whole ecosystem, but for the size brands we work with, 5 million to 75 million, 5 million to 100 million, but there's only a few up there. CPAs in large part are doing taxes. Taxes are a very important function within your business, but it's night and day compared to financial and managerial accounting, which you actually use to run your business. You can't let a CPA tell you, hey, I want to do your taxes on a cash basis. and assume that's the way you do your internal accounting for decision-making purpose. You have to separate those things, and that's actually something that is surprising to a lot of the brands that we work with. Because in the early days, the CPA did everything, right? Did the bookkeeping and the taxes, but you have to start separating those once you hit a certain size, right? At least seven figures, maybe even before. we start saying, no, no, no, look, if your tax accountant wants to do stuff cash basis, you have to consult with them on whether that's compliant and that's best for your tax situation. But we can still do the books accrual and it can be converted to cash very easily for them to do the tax return. That's no problem. So like, I just want everyone to know, listening to this, you don't have to go one or the other. You can have tax books and internal books and they do not have to be the same. Exactly. Um, so one other thing that will, like, I want to talk a little bit about the common challenges. Cause final loop is like really big in, in helping overcome this challenge. Um, the challenges on accrual accounting with revenue recognition and revenue reconciliation from your standpoint, what makes that hard in the e-commerce world and how does final loop help, you know, overcome that challenge?

Lioran Pinchevski:

Yeah. So I think the main challenge that we are dealing with every day on the reconciliation side is the ability to, I mean, regardless of, like, regardless of accrual, I'm going to touch that in a second. You have the base challenge of you have sales on Shopify. Amazon is connected to Shopify and Fair is connected to Shopify. And then Shopify itself, in the sales reporting, are including many things that are not really sales. So you get a very noisy picture of your sales in the different platforms. Absolutely. Then you can have sales in the different platforms. Let's say you sold something on Shopify to a wholesale or retail customer and you didn't collect the money, right? You're going to still have a sale in Shopify, but it was never got collected and you're not sure that it's a real sale. So there's a lot of work in getting to all these channels. Make sure that you don't have duplications. between the channels and that every single sale or sale component is indeed income, not duplication of income, not just like something that a Shopify returns app just hacked in order to push the returns back. So there's a lot of cleansing of the information that you have in order to get to the base income. And one of the ways that we are doing that, because I don't think it's possible to do it only with the Shopify API or the Amazon API. So the way we do it is by way of reconciliation. So we basically bring all the data from Shopify, clean the data, bring all the data from Amazon, clean the data, and then we reconcile it against the payment gateway. And then we reconcile the payment gateway against the bank. We call it three way reconciliation. And it's never perfect, it's close to perfect because if you think about it, it's not the people that build Stripe are not the same people that build Shopify and the people that build Klarna are not the same people that build Stripe. So every service, you talk a different language and you don't always have a footprint to say, okay, this is a sale of Shopify and here is the payment on Klarna or on Stripe that basically clears the specific sale. So there's a lot of data modeling and reconciliation done on that part. This is just like the base mission of getting into, this is what you sold. Yeah. After you do that, you want to ask, okay, I'm on a cruel basis, so I also want to know what I actually sold, meaning I already delivered or fulfilled the order and it's on the way to the customer, rather than I just got paid and maybe it's a pre-sale, right? So then there's another layer, which is the fulfillment layer of saying, I had this sale on Shopify or I had had the sale on Amazon, but this sale is fulfilled or not yet fulfilled. If it's fulfilled, it's income. If it's not yet fulfilled, then it's deferred revenue. It's not actually income. And only when the order is fulfilled, then you recognize the income. So you have two layers of complexities, defining what a sale is and reconcile it against the payment. And then the second layer is to say, okay, now, whether the sale meets the cruel definition of the sale of an income item.

Jon Blair:

Yeah, you said, okay, so the first, what you ran through the sales reconciliation, you said that super well, which I'm not surprised because that is one of the areas of final loop is like the most robust in terms of like dealing with e-commerce specific challenges. But that three-way reconciliation, like that's something that seven years ago at Guardian we were doing manually, right? Like pulling in sales and we, you're passing it through a clearing account and then pulling out of that clearing account all the payments we could actually identify And then confirming those then went from that clearing account to the bank account and they actually existed. And that was. I mean, that's a lot of work, right? It's a ton of work. And I will say, contrary to what a lot of people believe, like the WebGility and A2X, those different connectors, they don't do it correctly. In fact, we used those for a while, and we would manually check what those connectors were doing, and it was wrong. And we actually went back to doing it manually. seven years ago because why because those connectors were wrong as well and so that Unfortunately, I'm in the believe me. I we wished back then the connectors works. Believe me We were like hoping that they would work and they didn't and and I you know I haven't used them in a long time or I haven't used them in years But we just kind of we're kind of scarred from that and so we never we never went back to it but I will say we still have this challenge and We have this challenge that comes up kind of two-fold every single month. One, hey, how come my financials don't match the Shopify report? We get that all the time. And then how come my sales don't match TripleWhale? And TripleWhale has the same exact problem as Shopify in terms of what, and it's actually the TripleWhale one is, is really challenging because it'll report ROAS or MER using what some of those revenue pieces of revenue from Shopify that are not actually revenue. Like one that drives me crazy, sales tax gets included in there and sales tax is not revenue. It's a pass-through liability that you put on your balance sheet because you owe it to somebody else. And so to say that that should be included in your return on ad spend is just misleading. And so I've actually had brands say, hey, my ROAS is 3.5. And I'm like, no, it's 2.9. And they're like, what do you mean it's 2.9? And it was because they actually just started collecting sales tax. So they went from like zero sales tax to like 350 grand in sales tax because they just started using like a service like Avalara. And all of a sudden their ROAS, I'm like, guys, it's 2.9 but they're making decisions on 3.5, right? And those two different numbers have a much different margin impact. And so I'm just, I'm using this example to show everyone that like, What Lio's talking about is super important. It's not like just, oh, debits and credits and like, you know, like I don't want to get into accounting. You don't need to understand the debits of credits, right? Finaloop does that and there's accountants who can help, you know, like kind of help you understand it, right? But what you need to understand is if these things are not going into the right place, they're not going into the right buckets, you will make decisions that you think are gonna lead to one end and actually lead to another. That's the important thing to take away from all of this. And in today's world in e-commerce and consumer goods, there's just not a lot of margin for error, right? You need to make good decisions and when you make a bad decision, you need to know quickly that it was a bad decision so that you can change, right? And so I just wanna draw that out for everyone to understand. This is not just a couple nerdy accountants talking, although maybe we are, but this is actually really important stuff to your brand. And so understanding these basics is just gonna set you apart as an elite brand from just an average brand. So there's something I wanna dive into from here, Lio, that this really makes you think about inventory accounting. Because this is like, that's the other hairy beast in all of this, right? Inventory accounting. Where do you see brands struggle the most with getting inventory and

cost of goods sold accounting right?

Lioran Pinchevski:

So I would split it into, I would say the greater purpose, right? The greater purpose in managing inventory is to avoid stockouts, right? Which is a bad thing for growth, a bad thing for your momentum, right? So this is one side of things. The other side is not to overstock. Because this is going to kill your cash flow, right? So the brands that we see struggling on Finaloop and based on a lot of discussions with the brands along the way, are brands that are getting into this problematic cycle of, I bought too much inventory. I now have it in my warehouse. I didn't sell it quick enough and I need to finance it, so I'll take a loan. But the loan has 25% annual interest effectively, right? So now we are in this death cycle of like a really, really bad cycle where you can't sell your inventory, but you need to serve the debt. So you're saying, okay, this line of inventory is not great. I'm going to tweak and I bring this new product and you buy inventory again and you finance it again. And then you go, just, you know, your cash flow is just getting super negative and that's basically it. So you want to avoid stockouts on the one hand, but you don't want to overstock on the other hand. In order to get that right, I think you need to have basically two components. One is to get really accurate about the financial side of inventory, which is our main focus. Basically understand what your lended costs are, which is not trivial, right? Because there's the price that you purchase the unit. But you have shipping and you have customs and you have many different indirect costs that in certain cases can be more expensive than the price of the product itself. So you need a great mechanism to measure your landed cost and then do it in high scale, right? Because it's really a lot of POs, a lot of indirect costs and The way you measure it based on FIFO or based on weighted average, this is something that is very, it's not trivial to do it when you have great scale in your company. And the second part is many e-commerce brands would have raw materials, but then they're going to assemble the raw materials or they're going to create finished products from the raw materials. So there's, you know, the disciplines of recipes and assemblies and being able to transform raw material into finished goods and understand what are the financial implications from this transformation in order to understand what a single unit actually costs you. So this is on the finance side, and it's a great challenge. We recently launched a great tool to help founders with that. It's called Inventory IQ. So basically a full cycle from PO into COGS calculation based on FIFO. that helps you with that. The only thing that you need to do is just to inject the PO and then everything goes automatically from there. I think that the second layer is just like, you know, the unit tracking to really understand what you have in the different warehouses, which sounds trivial, right? You have single warehouse or two warehouses and you have FBA. But as a matter of fact, it's not very trivial. So many brands struggling to understand how many units they have today in the different warehouses. And you need better processes or great processes to actually being able to efficiently understand how many products you have in each warehouse. And the combination between the finance side of inventory and the physical side of inventory, how many units you have should give you a great infrastructure to really understand whether you are getting into stockouts and you need to raise a P.O. or whether you are just going to overstock by understanding what you have and kind of project what you need for the next project that you have on your marketing calendar and the promotions that you're expecting. This is the third component, which is demand planning. You have all these numbers. Now you can plan your demand and make sure that you are not run out of inventory or buy too much.

Jon Blair:
Yeah, there, there's a common theme here, right, that I keep hearing you say, and I'm smiling

because we deal with this so much. It sounds trivial, but it's not right. And that's like, whether we're talking about the revenue reconciliation and we're talking about landed cost tracking. It all sounds trivial and then you get into it in the context of an e-commerce consumer brand and it's very much not trivial. But here's the real hard thing, is even if you get a process down, let's say you get a process down on the inventory side to track landed cost for ocean shipments. But then all of a sudden you get low on stock and you start air shipping stuff, right? And so you have lots that are coming out air shipped and then other lots that are coming out ocean freighted and we've dealt with this a lot. Or you have to like move to another supplier for a period of time because you reach the capacity, there's an issue at one of your suppliers. So you start buying the same SKU from a different supplier, different supplier costs, maybe it's a different country so it's a different duty rate and different shipping costs. So it's all fun and easier, easier, more trivial when you're buying from the same place and shipping container rates are staying the same and you're always shipping via ocean. But that's, that's like a dreamland. That's not the e-commerce world that we live in. you've got those things changing all the time, right? And you're having to make really fast decisions. And so really the complexity comes into play of like, do you have the ability to track your landed cost as all those variables continue to change over time? And mind you, if you're growing, You're scaling, you're also just busy. You're busier with more marketing stuff. You're busier with more hiring. You're busy with all kinds of other stuff. And so having the right tool is super, super important on the inventory side of the house. Because as Lio mentioned, it's actually not just, there's the financial side of tracking inventory and that's incredibly important. It drives accurate accounting. But just tracking your inventory from a quantity perspective so you can do things like demand planning, it's also an operational thing that can really, really screw things up while you're scaling. So unfortunately, I see a lot of brands who are scaling into seven figures who say, I'll figure out the inventory stuff later. But when you get to later, it's a lot more painful and it's actually more dangerous for your brand's financial health because there's more money at stake. And so this is a really, really important one to make sure that you're focusing on as a founder, that you have the right systems in place to be able to handle inventory from a financial and an operational perspective.

Lioran Pinchevski:

And going back is always more complex more expensive than doing it today, right? You have this false notion of I'm going to focus on something else today and I'm going to deal with it later. But the later cost a lot of money because rewriting the past is just so much more expensive than setting up the processes today.

Jon Blair:

Absolutely. And here's the thing, I like to differentiate pre-product market fit from post-product market fit and scaling. If you're pre-product market fit, leave some of that stuff till later. You're just trying to get people to buy your product and buy it at a price that actually is economically viable. But once you've got product market fit and you're starting to scale, you should start with these processes immediately, because the longer that you wait, the more painful it's gonna be. And that goes for actually even just more generally, all your general ledger accounting, get the right system and people in place early on. And here's the beauty, look, seven years ago, when I was part of the founding team at Guardian Bikes, I was on the team full time, right? And I'd say seven, eight years ago, it was a lot more common to find a full-time accounting and finance team in a D2C brand. Fast forward to 2024, there are, besides free to grow, there's so many other, there's so many choices. You got software like Finaloop,, you have tons of firms, and even freelancer, you know, D2C focused, fractional CFOs and fractional bookkeepers and accountants. You do not need a full-time team anymore in the modern e-commerce brand. We work with brands that are, that are 60, 70 million a year in revenue, and there's not a single full-time person in their finance team, right? And we serve them well as fractional CFOs. Many of them are on final loop, right? And we help oversee the bookkeeping and final loop. So don't think that today in 2024, Having the right accounting system and personnel is cheaper than it's ever been. It's more accessible than it's ever been. So there's actually honestly very little excuse. There's no excuse to not do it early on, like there maybe was seven or eight years ago.

Lioran Pinchevski:

For sure. The barrier is so low now that you just need to get it done. Absolutely. I fully agree. Five years ago, the only way to do it is to bring somebody, because of the horizontal state of the market five years ago, you needed to bring somebody on board coach them, make them understand e-commerce before they become productive. Now people can just go to a firm like free to grow and get the value from day one as a fraction of help. There's no reason not to do it because it would just get more expensive down the road.

Jon Blair:

Absolutely. Last question before we land the plane. This is important to the discussion we've been having here. The difference between an accountant and a CFO. They're not the same thing. You may have people who were accountants who become CFOs. I started as one. Became a controller, became a head of finance, became a CFO. They're not the same thing though. And it's important that brands understand that distinction. I love how you guys on your site and in talking to brands kind of separate out financial operations from bookkeeping, from CFO, right? And I think it's a very logical kind of like segmentation. From your vantage point, what's the difference between an accountant and CFO and why is it important for brands to understand that?

Lioran Pinchevski:

Yeah. So, even accountants are split into two groups, which would be bookkeepers, right? The main responsibility of a bookkeeper is maintain the books as a foundation to the tax work, right? So, this would be the second type of accountant. You're going to have the bookkeeper. You're going to have the tax CPA. Both of them, in my logic, are accountants or under the term accountants. And then you're going to have the CFO, right? So under accountants, you're gonna have the tax CPA responsible for tax planning, tax filing. Then you're gonna have the bookkeepers. The bookkeepers are responsible to get your books 100% accurate with strong financial infrastructure to facilitate the work, of course, the tax filing, but mainly throughout the year, facilitate the work of the CFO. Now, I would say the main difference between the work of a CFO and the work of a bookkeeper, bookkeeper is looking at the past and the responsibility is to bring the past into a digital form of books, which is the financial foundation. You know, what we are trying to do is not to look at the past, but to look at the present, right? But we stop at the present. CFO for me is anything that comes after the present into the future, right? So it's planning, it's budgeting, it's making decisions that would impact the next quarter and the quarter afterwards. This is one side. And second function of a CFO, in my opinion, is to set the right processes, to set the right operational processes. Because what I see is that many people would go to the CFO and say, hey, you know, I need this budget and I need, you know, this inventory forecast and demand planning and helping with this decision. But then when you dig in, you just understand that You need two things. You need one, the financial infrastructure, so you need the books, right? You need the financials, but you also need strong financial and operational processes. in order to make all this plan and budget and cash flow practical. Otherwise, it's going to stay a tab in Excel and nothing actionable. So for me, the CFO is future-looking, dealing with planning, budgeting, decision-making, and processes. The responsibility of the accountant, other than filing the taxes, is to build this financial infrastructure so the CFO can do the work in a professional level without dealing with you know, fire drills and like, you know, the data is not strong and then drilling down into the books. And then people end up paying so much for CFO consulting, but have their CFO just dig and do the manual entries in the books. This is kind of how I see the space of, let's say, vendors in accounting.

Jon Blair:

Totally agree. We see way too many CFOs who are mostly accountants or mostly doing bookkeeping responsibilities. Really, accountants, like Lio said, are, from a financial accounting or a bookkeeping standpoint, they're creating sound records and reports that can be used by the CFO and management to build the future that you desire to build in your business, to achieve your goals, to understand risks and potential rewards of decisions, and to really look at making strategic financial decisions. And they're both very important to a scaling econ brand. It's not one without the other, right? It's a partnership but knowing where each should be focused is very important and not calling an accountant a CFO or a CFO and accountant is very, very important because they have distinct roles. It's kind of like finance and accounting. They're not the same thing. Are they related? Absolutely, they're related. They're not the same thing. Very similar with the concept of accountant and a CFO. So unfortunately, see, I don't get to have a lot of accountants on the show with me, so I actually really enjoy this, but we do have to land the plane, and I always like to end with a personal question. So here it is. What's a little known fact about you, Lio, that most people would find surprising?

Lioran Pinchevski:

Yeah, so that's probably the toughest question for me, so I'll just, you know, something from today. So we're now recruiting a lot of people, and one of the candidates I came to the office and say, where is Lioran's office? And the people here told them he doesn't have an office. So where does he sit? He doesn't have even a space. So it looked really, really weird. And the fun thing about this topic is that for years, I feel that my role is just to you know, be there and move between different places. But for almost six years, I don't have a permanent place to sit, which is right in big accounting firm, right? This is the thing, right?

Jon Blair:

Yeah, corner office, you got the view, right?

Lioran Pinchevski:

Yeah. But the level of your seating, right, whether you have space or an office or a corner office. Yeah. And, you know, people find it really funny.

Jon Blair:

No, I'm actually, to be honest with you, I think that's actually one of the best ways to lead is to not put separation between yourself and everyone. And you guys are a fast-growing venture-backed startup. There's a lot happening all the time, right? And so it's hard to not be kind of like, you know, kind of moving across the business depending on what's going on. And that now, that does explain why every time we get on a video call with you, that your background is never the same. That's definitely, that definitely makes sense now. Well, before we end, where can people find more information about you and about Finaloop?

Lioran Pinchevski:

So the easiest way would be on our website, finalloop.com. We would be very happy to help with everything accounting, have great collaboration with you guys, with your firm on many customers. So whether people just need to, you know, the bookkeeping alone or the bookkeeping with extra layers of proficiency that this is, you know, this is the place to find us and work with great partners like you.

Jon Blair:

Absolutely. And look, if anyone ever has any questions about final loop, you can always reach out to free to grow where we get the question all the time. Is final loop like the real deal? And I say, yeah, it's so much the real deal that we've invested in it and we're partners with them. So it absolutely is. And we have a growing number of clients that are on final loop and and so it's been a pleasure i mean i think we've been partnered for not quite a about a year or so and um it's been cool to see the platform get better more and more brands using it everyone get more comfortable and be able to leverage it more so i highly recommend it um i definitely check it out and actually final loop makes it very easy to try the platform out. I think you can get a 14-day trial. Incredibly, incredibly easy. There's very little risk to just giving it a shot, so definitely consider that. And look, as always, if you want more helpful tips on how to scale a D2C brand, consider following me, Jon Blair, on LinkedIn. And if you're interested in learning more about how Free to Grow's D2C accountants and fractional CFOs can help your brand increase profit and cash flow as you scale, check us out at freetogrowcfo.com. Lio, this was an awesome conversation. I might have to have you back one day just so I can have another accounting nerd to chat about all the things I can't talk with everyone else about. But thanks for joining and look forward to chatting soon. Thanks, buddy. Until next time, as we always say around here, scale on.

Scaling Advice From an Amazon and Marketplace Pro

Episode Summary

In this week’s episode of the Free to Grow CFO Podcast, host Jon Blair dives deep into conversations with Tana Cofer, founder of RosieRai an Amazon growth agency. They discuss the challenges and strategies for scaling a D2C brand on marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, and Target. Tana shares her expertise on launching products on Amazon, including the importance of strategic product selection, review generation, and understanding the costs associated with marketplace expansion. They also touch on the sequencing of channel expansion and the nuances of cross-channel marketing spend attribution. Overall, this episode is packed with actionable advice for brand founders looking to optimize their operations and achieve sustainable growth.

• Customer Data Utilization: Learn how to
  harness customer data to improve retention
  rates and drive more repeat purchases.

• Challenges of Scaling: Explore the operational and financial challenges DTC brands encounter during the scaling phase and how to overcome them.

Key Highlights:

• Balancing Growth and Profitability: Tana outlines the dangers of pursuing growth at the expense of profitability and shares tactics for achieving both.

• Leveraging Financial Data: Understanding your numbers is key. Tana breaks down how to use financial data to inform strategic decisions.

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/

Tana Cofer - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanacofer/

RosieRai - https://rosierai.com/

Glitter Faced - https://www.glitter-faced.com/

Meet Tana Cofer

Tana Cofer is the founder and CEO of RosieRai, an e-commerce growth agency focused on helping small to medium size businesses launch and scale profitably on any online Marketplace. With a passion for driving online business success, Tana leads her team in creating innovative strategies that deliver remarkable results for their clients. She is also a wife and mother of 3 children and enjoys spending her weekends in her jeep out in the Utah mountains. 

Learn more about RosieRai and request a free Amazon Account audit here: https://rosierai.com/contact

Transcript

~~~

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:05:30 - Tana's background and experience in e-commerce

00:10:45 - Importance of sequencing in strategy

00:18:05 - Strategies for getting initial reviews on Amazon

00:25:28 - Discussion on different agency pricing models

00:31:25 - The significance of sequencing in strategy

00:36:47 - Common mistakes and misconceptions when launching on a marketplace

00:41:43 - Considerations for upfront costs when launching on Amazon

00:44:02 - Cross-channel marketing spend attribution and challenges

00:50:47 - Final Thoughts

Jon Blair:

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the free to grow CFO podcast where. As you know, we dive deep into conversations about scaling a DTC brand, but it's all about doing it with a profit focused mindset. I'm your host, Jon Blair, founder of Free to Grow CFO. We're the go-to outsource finance and accounting firm for eight and nine figure DTC brands. And today I'm super stoked to have my friend Tana Cofer on, founder of RosieRai an Amazon growth agency. But that's not all. She's an ex-pattern director and has even launched her own brand, which if you listen to our show, you know how giddy I get about actual brand founders coming on the show because when you've got a service provider who has been a founder, there's just a contextual understanding of what it's like to be in your shoes. So I always love to talk to service providers who are also brand founders. So Tana, thanks so much for joining. I'm excited to chat today.

Tana Cofer:

Of course. Yeah, same. I'm excited to be here.

Jon Blair:

So the reason why I had Tana on is because in today's D2C world, there's just so much chatter about how hard it is to scale a D2C brand only. And when I say D2C only, like Shopify or your .com site only. Back in the day when I was scaling Guardian Bikes, what, that was like eight, nine years ago, there were a lot of kind of like D2C only darlings that were kind of like the first to market. They hit nine figures in revenue without having to expand to another channel. that's really hard to do these days. It's not impossible, but I'd say it's the exception and not the rule. So because of that, more and more brands are looking to marketplaces to expand into different channels. Obviously Amazon as a kind of the easiest kind of lowest hanging fruit marketplace to expand into and kind of the most like DTC, but there's, I see lots of brands expanding into Walmart, Target marketplaces. There's even some other interesting up and coming ones. And it's all because it's like there are channels that are easier to bolt on to achieve profitability than expanding into retail. So like today we're gonna talk about marketplace growth strategy. Tana has got a bunch of awesome experience that's gonna be super, super next level advice for everyone listening. So Tana, before we get into chatting about marketplace growth strategy, I'd love for you to just run the audience through a little bit of your background.

Tana Cofer:

Absolutely. Yeah. So hi, I'm Tana. My background is mostly in the world of e-commerce, you know, graduated and went straight into digital marketing, and I worked for a small brand. helping that brand grow online through email marketing, social, new product launches. And then one of my roles actually at that job was to kick off Amazon sellers. I worked for an MLM and most MLMs don't really want to be on Amazon.

Jon Blair:

For sure.

Tana Cofer:

That was part of my role, was actually kicking off sellers. And so then I realized, you know, it was one of those things where I'd go to my director and I'm like, why are we doing this? Because it's another channel that people can learn about the brand. And they're like, well, we just don't do that. And so I realized, okay, I think there's an opportunity here. And I found this really small agency called iServe at the time, who we all know now as Pattern. And they, they were looking for an advertising person to just kind of learn and figure out how to, how to advertise on Amazon and eBay. This is back in 2018 and it was fairly new. And I was like, okay, I want to learn. I think it'd be cool. And so they hired me and rose to the director, managed the team and, uh, was there for five years. And there I helped brands launch on Amazon, Walmart, Target, eBay. and figure out how to do a full marketplace strategy that included their Shopify to make sure we weren't, you know, directing customers away from their DTC. That's one of the biggest concerns we hear from brands is they want to add a channel. They don't want to just move people away from one to the other. Um, and yeah, that's what I did for five years. Then I left end of 2022, uh, really just cause I had three kids at the time and it was really hard to do, you know, the agency life, which we all know is not nine to five. Um, and, And then come home and be with my kids and go to the wrestling tournaments and the dance recitals and it was getting really difficult. So I decided, you know what, I'm going to step back. I'm going to freelance and do my own thing and be with my kids more. And that freelance turned into the agency that is Rosie Ray today, which is great. It was not the intention, but it was just a lot of brands wanted to work with me and I couldn't work with all of them. So I found a way to try and work with all of them. So yeah. And so now I'm here today.

Jon Blair:

I love that. We have such a similar story because, so I was, I helped launch Guardian Bikes, a DTC brand back in 2016. We started dabbling in Amazon in like 2017, 2018. So the same time, like I consider that to be the heyday, right? Just like really trying to just figure it out and did that for about five years. And then in 2022 left and started freelancing. Cause I too have three kids that are now five, three, and two. And, When I started Free-to-Grow CFO, I basically just wanted to freelance provide a service on the finance side that I did in the brand for so many years. And it just started catching on like wildfire. And I was having so much fun coming alongside founders and helping them make sense of things that were kind of like a foreign language to them. And I was like, you know what, there's a business here. And that's how we turned Free-to-Grow into a CFO agency, so to speak. Very similar paths and I love it. Going back to those early days of Amazon, it was an interesting time to get thrust into that channel and just try to figure out what was it like just in, like I said, what I think is the heyday, the early days of Amazon. What was it like just getting thrown into that and trying to figure it out?

Tana Cofer:

Yeah. When I went over to what was called ICER, they were like, we're not, we're not an agency. We're like, we're helping brands grow. We buy, you know, Pattern buys the product and then like resells it basically on the platforms. And so they're like, we're not an agency. And so I came in thinking like, I wasn't even sure how to like view this company. And they didn't really know how to like position themselves either as a company. They're like, we're just helping other sellers. And so at first it was more like just trying to figure out what our goal is at iServe slash pattern. Like what is our goal? And then once we kind of identified that, okay, we'll suck it up. We are an agency slash retailer. That's what we are. That's okay. Now, how are we going to grow these brands? It was a lot of, there weren't YouTube videos. Like no one really knew how to do it. So it was definitely like, um, like, and I had done Google and social, so it was like, Hey, well, could I use this strategy from Google and create some ad campaigns with, would that work? And then, you know, we'd have, I'd have times where I would spend the entire budget that I had in a month and like two days because I didn't structure it quickly. And like, you know, you kind of go through all those issues and there were times where, I don't know if you remember some of these times where Amazon, like the budget caps just wouldn't work one day.

Jon Blair:

I know. It was so crazy. We checked the numbers in the morning and we're like, what happened last night?

Tana Cofer:

Yep. And then you look at your sales and you're like, well, I mean, my sales were up, so that's great, but it wasn't crazy high. Then you'd call Amazon to get your money back. There were a lot of those incidents that it was nice because other brands were feeling them too. Other agencies were feeling them as well. I knew it wasn't just me. That's what was really nice was even though I had a manager at Pattern, he didn't know any more than I did how to grow brands on Amazon. It was just like a, here's the budget that we were approved, figure it out. I thrive in that environment. I thrive when I'm given the right tools or the tools available, and they're just like, go. Go, make mistakes, figure it out. So that's what we did.

Jon Blair:

You're bringing back so many memories. I won't get into them because then we'll never get to the other things we need to chat about, but I definitely just remember one story I'll share. I remember this whole debate with the first Amazon freelancer we used to do our ad buying of non-brand terms and branded. If there was actually opportunity to expand into non brand and we spend a lot of money trying to figure that out and it just didn't end up panning out for us. And I'm not saying that there's not a strategy there, but it was like some very valuable learnings about like there's a right and a wrong way to try to figure out how to expand outside of like. branded key terms or or keywords that like make sense like for us like kids bike like versus going for you know kids bike helmet and seeing if we can sell them a bike and so A lot of learnings on the right and wrong way to do that stuff. I want to start with the basics because a lot of the brand founders that we work with, they don't necessarily understand what a marketplace is. Some of them may, but from your vantage point, what is a marketplace and how is it different from just a pure D2C Shopify store?

Tana Cofer:

Yeah. So I would say a D2C shop, there is an intent to learn about your brand and buy your product when consumers are there. So I would say it's more of an intent to discover and learn about you as a brand. And on Amazon, It is not that way. Amazon is a very high, I'm here to buy, buy the best price item and they get it as fast as possible. So what the consumers are looking for is different. For sure. When you look at like the time they spend on the Shopify versus Amazon, they may spend more time on Amazon, but it's not because they're necessarily getting to know the brand and like their catalog. Although we try and move customers to the specific Amazon brand store so they can do that. But it's mostly trying to figure out what are all the different types. of what such and such product, self-tanners, like what are all the different top self-tanners? You know, what are their key learnings? Like that's the best place to go to find all of them. And so that's why I would say marketplaces allow consumers to find a wide variety of different brands within a category they're looking at. And from there, either they're going to buy on the marketplace or they will discover brands and that will then take them to your Shopify and your Instagram and your TikTok to learn more about you and become brand loyal to you.

Jon Blair:

Yeah, it's interesting. So like, we tried all those strategies at Guardian. When I say all those, I mean like, you know, what's the strategy for just acquiring customers like on the Amazon platform? Then what's the strategy, like the crafty strategy to get someone to come to the site, or come to the site and buy from there instead, or come to the site after their initial purchase, right? And so we tried things like, I'm just going, riffing off the top of my memory, we tried things like putting certain cards You know, in the bike boxes that would drive them to go register for something on the site and they can get something free or a discount on the site. And that was to get them to buy accessories and buy their next bike on the site. So we did we did things like that. some of them worked, some of them didn't. We tried a lot of different things like in the box like that. And then some other things you mentioned like the price sensitivity, right? Like when you're on your site, you're basically, or when you have a consumer on your site, you're like, you're like monopolize their attention at that point in time, right? And they're not looking necessarily they, they, they, I mean, we know that people go to Amazon and price shop against D2C sites, but in that moment, they're just looking at your site, whereas Amazon is recommending other products like it. There's other people who are bidding on those same keywords that they found you through. And so let's talk a little bit about like, I guess product catalog or merchandising strategy, including pricing on Amazon. For example, eventually, it took us years to figure this out, but at Guardian, we eventually were like, hey, we shouldn't have the exact same products on Amazon as we do on our site, and we should be very intentional about what the price points are and why we're offering that particular product on Amazon versus our site. What advice or thoughts do you have about that kind of a strategy?

Tana Cofer:

Yeah, it's a great question. Um, I have a lot of thoughts, but I would say overall, I would say don't, um, wait, wait, you're likely you launched your Shopify first. Let's say 95% of brands launched their Shopify first. I would say when you decide to go to Amazon, don't just think I'll just download and re upload all of the same products there because then you will have consumers who will move from your Shopify over to Amazon purely for ease of getting it to them within 24 hours, assuming you do FBA. For sure. And then when they do that, you're increasing the likelihood that they're going to compare you to other brands. You're literally putting yourself like right next to them on the shelf as opposed to your Shopify and your Instagram where you can control it. So I would say be really strategic in what items that you believe are your gateway to your brand. Like those top items that really get people to say, wow, you're You know vitamin C is the best vitamin C on the market. I now want to shop all of your products So every brand usually has you know, one to ten of those items that they would do our gateway That is what you want to make sure you launch on Amazon then the next thing is I would say you launch items that go on that go with those, that are adjacent to a vitamin C and a vitamin D, and a multivitamin, like things that can be paired together. Or you could do virtual bundles, things like that, cross-targeting. So that's how I would kind of view that strategy. I wouldn't just think, well we're a brand that sells vitamins, so I want to put all 100 of our vitamins on Amazon so people can shop the whole collection. That's what I wouldn't do. I think it's a waste of a lot of money at first. You can slowly launch more on Amazon as you learn and grow, but I would definitely be strategic with the purpose of Amazon, and that is to discover new brands that are in the right price range for a consumer, and from there, they will then check out your Shopify, Instagram, whatever. Or you could even have an insert that goes in and says, have you seen our other products? And it'll encourage them without saying so, because you can't tell them to go to your site, but it encourages them to try and learn more about you.

Jon Blair:

I love it, I love it. Yeah, so again, we were just figuring it out just like you at Guardian in the early days, and so we eventually landed on, I believe Guardian actually now is not on Amazon anymore, but that's mostly because they just really figured out how to nail DTC growth, and they ended up pulling their products off of there. But for a while, what we did, we had two product lines. We were that we sold the safest kids bikes direct to your door and we had a flagship product line, which was more expensive as the premium one. And then we had an entry point product line. We used to just duplicate the product catalog on both Shopify and Amazon. And then we got wise and we're like, nah, that doesn't make any sense for a number of reasons. And we could almost, we felt like we could prove cannibalization a bit through the data as we were kind of like doing incrementality testing. And so we actually switched to let's only put our entry price point bikes on Amazon. So first off, it was in a price band where it fit in with the price spectrum of competing brands, whereas our flagship bike just stuck out as being way too expensive for Amazon. It was a little more expensive, but it was much closer to the competition. And like if you bought a 16 inch entry level bike, which is, which at that time was our smallest bike. If you love the brand, there's a good chance you're gonna come back and buy a 20 inch bike when your kid gets big enough for it. But if you can't buy that bike on Amazon, and we have won you over as a brand, then you're gonna come back to our site and buy the 20 inch bike. So again, we're no geniuses. It took us many years of not doing that to get to that point. But that's like one example of the gateway product strategy that you're talking about that did turn out to be fruitful for us. Another thing we did eventually was like, when we got overstocked on an inventory position on a given SKU and we needed to move it, we would oftentimes take an allotment of inventory, move it to FBA and try to churn through that inventory on Amazon to kind of re-level the inventory position on that SKU.

Tana Cofer:

Yeah, that's a great strategy as well. You also want to remember when you launch anything on a marketplace, you get a little bit of a bump from Amazon as a new product, like a little bit. But in reality, you want to have reviews and ratings and things on the listing. So I would just say whenever you launch a product for anyone who's like, who will be listening, like the 30, 60, 90 day window is so key to your success on the platform. So make sure you have a really strong presence at the very beginning. and you have a plan to get those reviews, get those initial sales, even if you kind of force them to happen or you make no money because you spend a lot of ads on the beginning, that's what's going to set you up for success and Amazon will serve you more. So that's kind of my other advice. Whenever you're launching any product on the marketplace, when you launch so many, you can't do each individual one intentionally. You're just throwing them up there and then you end up advertising or picking your top five anyway. So just start with those top five. Give those the chance to shine. Then as you add more, you'll be able to move funds and give them each attention.

Jon Blair:

That's actually really good advice and that actually brings up something that I didn't think of in preparing for this conversation which is, A lot of when I think about roadblocks to and your barriers to entry with a lot of the brand founders I talked to one of the things that makes brand founders freeze is like Damn, I'm really nervous about getting that first tranche of reviews, right? Of going from zero to something respectable and it can feel insurmountable at times. If you don't know the right tactics and strategies to use, what advice do you have to like, like you're saying you're, you're, you're actually launching for the first time as a brand, your first allotment of products on Amazon and you have no reviews. Walk me through like some of the high points of your playbook of like what a brand should do to get over that reviews roadblock.

Tana Cofer:

Yeah, perfect question. So I'll share exactly what I did for Glitter Faced when we launched. Our goal was to get 100 reviews as soon as possible and we were able to do it in less than two months and here's how we did that. So we had five variations of our glitter, so five different colors. So I launched them all as five different listings at the very beginning and I rolled each one in what's called the Amazon Vine program. Oh yeah, we did that. you pay to have Amazon give a few consumers who are in this buying program free product in exchange for a review. They don't have to write a review, but 80% of them will write a review. And I don't know all the details for that. So you can do up to 30 for each one. I think we We did the 30, I believe, for all of them individually. And then after we gathered those reviews, we then merged the listings together. So then consumers won all the reviews that went out together. And then consumers could then shop blue, green, gold, shimmer, and pink all in one listing. So at that point, we probably had maybe 70 reviews that all came in from Vine. However, they're all Vine customer reviews, which means if you go to the review section, it says Vine customer review. It says so so, you know as a shopper. Okay, these people received free product right there of you It's still a great review people can still be honest But you also know they probably were a little kinder because they got it for free So they'll give me a five star instead of before so the next thing that we do is We do like what we call search find buy and basically you ask people who are already loyal to the brand And you you said like an email out and say hey You know, go check us out on Amazon, things like that. Remember to search our top keywords, and you tell them to search edible glitter for drinks, things like that, so that you have them search the keywords you want to rank on, and they'll buy on Amazon, because they're already loyal to you, they'll support you, and they'll write a review, and that helps you get the review and get the rank increases. The last thing I would say to do is leverage your brand and your presence on Instagram, whatever, to provide Like promo codes, discounts, things like that, if they prove they wrote a review on the platform. Amazon will ding you if you get too many reviews within the same zip code or in a certain period of time. because they know, okay, you probably paid for those reviews, right? And that's not what you're doing. Essentially, you just are asking your current loyal customers, hey, we're live on Amazon, check us out, here's a promo code for you to get 25% off if you buy on Amazon. And those people are more likely to write a review, because they're already loyal to you. So that's what I would say at the beginning, is use the Vine program, and use your current loyal customers to encourage them to check you out on Amazon, And a lot of brands don't like to do that because they're like, well, I don't want them to know we're there. And it's just like, it's 2024. They know you're going to launch there. Get over it. Just get over it. But don't put all your products there. Just put a select few, at least in the beginning. So you're just asking them, like loyal brands, to help you out. Go see. Go buy there. Walk through the experience. You're going to have some kinks. Maybe they get the wrong color. And you want the people who are first buying to be loyal to you So they don't give you a negative review because they got the wrong product. They would actually email you right? That's what happened to us the beginning Some people got product that was like did not work like it was melted or things like that They didn't write a review because they knew us or were loyal to us. So they emailed us I'm like, hey just so you know this happened. We then can reimburse them figure it all out without them just being all negative and so then we had to figure out that situation. So there's a lot of kinks you want to work out in the beginning with people who are a little more understanding.

Jon Blair:

So I just got to say, if you're listening to this episode and you're thinking about launching on Amazon and you're worried about getting your first hundred reviews, Rewind this episode and take copious notes on what Tana just walked you through. Cause I'm, I'm telling you from personal experience, it took us years to figure that out at Guardian. So like what she just laid out for you is going to save you years of time. And I can validate what she just went through is exactly what we figured out at Guardian bikes, but we figured out the hard way on our own, just making mistakes. So, um, that is, that is fantastic advice. And as I'm sure, you know, from where you sit in the marketplace, like It's a common concern of DTC brand founders who wanna move to Amazon, but they're like, I don't know how to overcome this roadblock. But that's another reason why you should consider, when you're moving to Amazon, find an expert like Tana or her agency or the like, because look, it's gonna save you a lot of money and a lot of time. It's really, really important. I know very few brands, and I'm talking big brands that do 50, 60 million in revenue, they're not doing their Amazon ad buying in-house. It's more common for me to see them doing their paid social and maybe their Google PPC in-house, but Amazon is largely being outsourced to freelancers and agencies who are just experts in doing that over and over and over again. So I highly recommend it. So I kinda want, oh go ahead.

Tana Cofer:

I was gonna add a quick plug-in to my agency. We have three different models that we actually do. One is an hourly. You tell me what you can afford and I'll tell you how many hours I can give you based on that and what I would do if I were you. I love that. I do that because I specifically help brands that are like sub 100 million all online. And I even do ones who are just launching on Amazon, like fairly fresh brands, just like I was earlier this year. For sure. And I want to do it in a budget that makes sense for you. You just make it less of my time. But hey, you're going to get it. We're going to do it right, right? For sure. So I put on that one model. The one that's more popular is my monthly retainer model based on percentage of your sales, yada, yada. And then my last one is I actually do a commission-only model. where if I'm helping you grow, I will also receive the benefit of that, but there's no monthly retainer. So I have these three unique, well, the middle one is less unique, but other unique options for brands to really help them launch and launch correctly and not be too worried about the upfront budget that it is. Cause a lot of agencies charge percentage of ad spend or like a very large, like 10, 15 K flat fee. And you won't get that with me.

Jon Blair:

Yeah, I mean it's, I'm seeing more and more agencies who are starting to go away from the percentage of ad spend model and it's just, you know, even percentage of revenue like as a commission is much different than percentage of ad spend, right? I agree. It truly is, that's more of an aligned metric in terms of incentive with the brand, right? Like increased ad spend is not always a good thing. No. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. I'm seeing that actually more and more brands are unwilling to work with a percentage of ad spend model. That's good. I'm not saying that if someone out there runs an agency and they do it that way, that it's wrong. There are good agencies who have that model, but I am seeing more and more pop up that don't do that. and I'm seeing brands, especially the, I'd say the brands that are under 10 million in revenue, the six and seven figure brands, like the percentage of ad spend model oftentimes just doesn't fit with their cost structure. It yields a fee that just like, they might as well actually hire someone in-house to just work on their brand 40 hours a week. So anyways, I think that's really smart what you're doing, especially with the six and seven figure brands. So I want to, there's this interesting thing that I'm seeing happen out in the marketplace. Like our CFO agency, like we work primarily with, we work with seven, eight, and nine figure brands. We have a big concentration in eight and we have some nine figure brands that we work with. But what I'm seeing is that like, D2C brand founders generally tend to know a decent amount about scaling on Amazon because it's a very common marketplace for brands to expand into after like getting some traction on D2C. But Walmart, Target, I'm even seeing like some Nordstrom and there's some other marketplaces like they're really starting to emerge more and more. And I'm seeing more and more brands consider moving on to them. Like what's your take on the opportunity in these other marketplaces and maybe what are some of the other ones, are there any other ones that I didn't mention that you think people should take note of?

Tana Cofer:

Yeah, there are a lot of marketplaces that are now really focusing on the growth of their online, which I think is great. I would say the additional ones that I just don't want to go unnoticed are probably Wayfair, Bed Bath and Beyond as well, and Ulta. I say these three because they are partnering with a lot of the ad tech that's out there, like the Criteos and the PackViews, to allow for agencies and for even brands to be able to advertise on those marketplaces. I think that when a brand is willing, or when a marketplace is willing to invest in making their marketplace so good that other people would want to advertise on it, I think that that is something to look for and to make sure that we're all just aware of. And with my experience with those platforms, they're still fairly new. They're not, none of them are as sophisticated as Amazon, even though I wouldn't really call Amazon super sophisticated. But they're not as sophisticated as them, but they are a lot of those smaller brands like wafer and a wafer Especially I would say is really surpassing Walmart and targets offerings right now and I think that's just having to do with their focus and And that also could just be my experience, because I work with a lot of home decor brands that we want to move to Wayfair, and that makes more sense than other platforms. But there are other ones that I wanted to make sure we talked through. However, I would just say if a brand is wanting to launch, start with Amazon first. It's the most opportunity. I would actually then say after that, do Amazon Canada and maybe even UK. There still is a lot more sophistication there, more capabilities, more opportunities, and it's a lot easier to move into those because all you have to figure out is labeling and your inventory movement because you're already on Amazon US. All you have to do is figure out that step within them and it's fairly, depending on your product, it's fairly easy. Some products, their current label, you're able to advertise. on Canada immediately when you launch the US. So I would just say, look at that first. And then I would then look at the other marketplaces, probably starting with Walmart, Target, Wayfair, probably the ones that I would recommend you start with, depending on what makes sense for your brand. All of those, Wayfair and Target, you need to be approved But you can just apply online. And Walmart, you can just do. Walmart Marketplace, you can just upload online. Right now, anyone can sell on Walmart Marketplace. So that's what's also fairly nice about launching on Walmart. You don't need the additional approval.

Jon Blair:

You know, the advice that you just gave about the sequencing is really important because the more and more that I am involved in helping brands scale, the more that I realize that strategy, good strategy, successful strategy, is so much about sequencing. Not necessarily what you do, but when you do it. And doing things in the wrong order is oftentimes, especially when you talk about channel expansion, expanding into channels in the wrong order can really cause super big problems and so I'm like really glad that you went through kind of what you see as a best practice for sequencing because that's, I think sequencing from a strategy perspective, I think brands, I think just people are good about talking about like what they think they should do and there should be far more conversation about like what's the order that makes sense? Because getting the order wrong can really screw things up as you scale in a number of areas in your business.

Tana Cofer:

Yeah, and I think a lot of people, they think, okay, I'll just get my products up on Walmart or somewhere, and then I'm just going to run a lot of ads and tell a lot of people and our brand and send emails to everyone who currently buys and say, we're on Walmart. And that is not a great strategy in my opinion, because Walmart and Target One thing to think about is those are marketplaces that are online and in-store. Because of that, the product type and category you are in is extremely important at the beginning of your setup. If your cell phone accessory was accidentally put into just like a I don't know, just electronics and not actually cell phones. All of your keywords, your SEO, all of that is focused around your relevancy in electronics. And so your ads will all serve differently. This is different than Amazon. It will serve differently than if you're sitting in the category of cell phone accessories. I had a brand that I worked with when I was in the baby section. You know, nose pickers, nasal aspirators, things like that. We tried to advertise for like three months on Walmart and we were really struggling. And I was like, what is going on? On the call with the rep, they said, Oh, did you know that your product is in the nail clipper? Like the baby nail clipper section. And I was like, no, but, but I was like, no, but why does that matter? This is like two years ago. I'm like, why does that matter? And they're like, well, when consumers are searching on Walmart, you have to remember they're also searching like for in store too. So like if they're searching nail aspirators, that algorithm is going to serve them things that are best in the nail aspirator aisle and category. And if you're not in that category, then the Walmart algorithm doesn't know to serve you. So I'm just saying, when you initially set it up, on every marketplace, but especially ones that have a brick and mortar, you have to get your organic strategy and that initial upload right before you even put any ad dollars in. And that's one thing that I really focus on when I launch brands is we have a full SEO strategy, organic, even an influencer strategy before we even run ads. Because I think those things and content is so important and it's key for conversion. So it doesn't make sense to just like, okay, I'll just spend 10K this month trying to drive traffic there. And it's like, well, you have to actually have a good listing with everything you need and be set up correctly in order to do that.

Jon Blair:

See, that's actually one of those things, just like the sequencing thing that I just mentioned, that a brand could figure that out on their own, but how long will it take and what would be the cost of figuring that out? And that's one of the advantages of working with service providers that are very narrowly focused on whatever it is that you're trying to do, whether it's a marketplace growth professional like yourself or like it free to grow. We just work with Econ Brands. That's all we do all day long. And so, you know, actually, you know, this is actually a little like insider story like at the beginning of us scaling free to grow. I used to think that our value prop was like you get you get what you need from a CFO But at a part-time price, right? Without having to take on the overhead of a full-time CFO. But what we actually started finding is that we provide more value than a lot of full-time CFOs who are not e-com experts. Because all we do is e-com. So even though we're only working on your business part-time, We've seen all of these issues and made the mistakes for you, right? Collectively across our team of e-comm CFOs many, many times. And we've seen other brands make mistakes and we can like, we can, we can save you a ton of time and send you in the right direction because we've just seen things over and over again. We're like, just don't waste your time there. We need to do it this way. Just like the setup that you're talking about with that initial product upload, as well as like. the sequencing of channels and so I just want to call that out because that was a surprise to me honestly even as the founder of free to grow like I used to think that we were it was about providing enough value at a part-time price but like oftentimes we're finding we can provide more value than someone full-time because if if you're on a budget as you're scaling you're not gonna necessarily be paying for the best of the best e-com CFO, right? You're maybe paying for a talented finance person, but this may be their first stint really getting a chance to be an e-com CFO. So they're making the mistakes and figuring it out like me and my team did when we were inside brands in the early days. So we got to make the mistakes on their dime, and now we're here to efficiently give you a lot of valuable insight. for a very competitive price. So anyways, I think what you're walking through here is a couple examples of how you can actually, if you find the right marketplace growth agency, for their fee, they're actually delivering far more value than a full-time person could. That's not always the case. There are agencies that don't pull that off, but that very much can be the case if you find the right one. So what I want to chat about next is what are some common mistakes and or misconceptions that you see DTC first brands make when they go try to launch into a marketplace?

Tana Cofer:

Yeah, I would say, I mean, some of the mistakes, you know, we already shared, which was launching your entire catalog there. I would say one thing that DTC brands make a mistake on is they also, I've had some who want to launch on Amazon, but they want to launch their products 25% higher, like the price point higher because they want to. incentivize people to come back to their D2C. And I've walked them through, I'm like, help me understand how that would work. Like, as a consumer, I see an item at 25% more on your website, so likely it's higher than the other competitors. You know, as a consumer, they're likely not even gonna consider you. So I don't think you're getting, I don't think you're getting what you want. Like, it's just one of those things where, like, I just hear that a lot. Like, I wanna onto Amazon.

Jon Blair:

I see that all the time. Yeah. I see that constantly, actually.

Tana Cofer:

Yeah, and so that's one thing where I don't understand. Maybe it's just me, but Amazon also scrapes sites. I know your GDC may not have a bunch of traffic, but at some point they'll scrape you and then they'll totally deactivate your account. and you have to deal with all of that because you're not allowed to do that. You have to give them the best price. I don't see a benefit to that strategy. Those are the biggest ones I see. I would also probably say I get a lot of people who come to me and they say, I want to launch on Amazon and I want to be profitable right away. And I'm like, I love that. You don't come to me then because there's a lot of upfront costs at first, right? Like that would be awesome. Let's have a goal, let's have a strategy, but let me know, like let me know your profit margins so I understand what that looks like for you. But there are, there are FBA fees, like when you do at least the FBA route and shipping and stuff. And your product at the very beginning, if you're going to be on page 10, you're going to have no rank. And so I will focus on your organic strategy and getting you those reviews for as little money as possible. Absolutely. So I won't recommend you use tools that you pay like $200 for a review because those exist. I won't recommend those. However, I would hope that you would say, I want to launch an Amazon Marketplace, and here's the test budget that I have to do so, and my goal is to break even after three months and make money at six, or whatever that is. Let's be realistic. That's the other thing I get a lot too, I would say, is they want profit immediately. That would be really cool and sometimes it does work but we need to be realistic with what it takes to grow in a marketplace.

Jon Blair:

Besides investing and getting your ranking up and reviews, are there any other upfront costs that brands need to be thinking about as they're putting together their budget to launch on Amazon?

Tana Cofer:

Yeah, I would say the biggest cost is that FBA fee when fulfilling, your storage fee if your product sits for too long, so we need to be strategic on how much product we send in, and then what's called the referral fee. And that's basically the fee you pay Amazon, but they're cut of your product sales. And for every product, it's a little bit different about what that is, but you should budget like 10 to 15% for that just to be safe. So I would just say those are the fees to be aware of outside of any advertising, marketing, the deals, promotions, any of those. Those are the fees to be aware of with your product. What I will say, a lot of brands that come to me assume their D2C will be more profitable to them than their Amazon. And some brands, that's correct. That is correct. It's cheaper for them to fulfill on their own. However, We've done a lot of research and for a lot of brands, the FBA fee and the speed at which consumers get it and the quantity that you can sell within a day because of all those things. actually could make your profitability higher on Amazon than it is on your D2C. And think about all of the staff you pay for to fulfill, all of your current products, that warehouse you're paying for, those storage fees. I would just make sure you do the math and you really think through the cost to sell a single unit within your current Shopify model, and then we can run the same analysis for Amazon. And likely, it's very similar. And a few brands that I started working with, it's actually cheaper for them to do Amazon FBA. So they even added the plug-in on their website that does buy with Prime to actually try and move customers to buy on Amazon because the fulfillment was cheaper for them. So that's one thing I would also say, a lot of DTC brands come to me assuming some things with Amazon in terms of like losing profit and such. And that's just one thing I would just say, let's do the research before we make that assumption, because you would be surprised.

Jon Blair:

Yeah, I mean, that's one of what you're bringing up is one thing that we do is like the bread and butter of what we do as e-com fractional CFOs at Free to Grow. So what we're doing is in our projection models, we're building out the unit economics or the margins for DTC, right? And then when a brand wants to go to Amazon or they already have both channels, we're building out a separate P and L in our projection model and in their actual historical financials. And we're looking at the margin differences and there's a complexity that I'm going to turn our conversation to in one second. That is like honestly a lot of debate around but what we find is that There are some brands where like, well, first off, generally speaking, and there are exceptions, it's not all like this, but generally speaking, advertising is cheaper on Amazon, right? And then when you add in the 15% referral fee, then think of it as a marketing cost, because it effectively is. It's still, for most brands, including the 15% referral fee, tends to be cheaper than what it costs to acquire a customer on D2C. There's a nuance because it depends. If you're a consumable, you might have a really crappy first order profitability on your website, but loyalty will bring that profitability up over time, so it totally depends. But what we often see is shipping is a little more expensive on Amazon, although there are products where it is Amazon's more efficient and it depends on again on your scale because if you're really big on DTC maybe you've got killer discounts that you've Negotiated with your 3PL or with carriers and that's why it's more efficient on DTC, but for newer brands oftentimes Amazon's pass-through cost can be less than than your cost because you just don't have sufficient volume on D2C to negotiate those costs down. So the bottom line is you have to look at the whole P&L including marketing to really understand the contribution margin, which is the true profitability of each channel. And that's something that we really help our clients understand so they can understand where the next marginal or incremental dollar spent can actually produce the most profitability for them. So that's definitely a very important call out that you made there. And now here is the debate. It's cross channel marketing spend attribution, right? Then you're spending heavily on meta and Google and you're also, you also have an Amazon store and Amazon, you know, is benefiting from some of that top of funnel spend. So the tacos looks really, really good. The marketing efficiency looks fantastic on Amazon. but you know you're driving at least some of it from your millions of dollars of meta spend. I'm sure you deal with this dilemma all the time and who's accountable for what in the different channels. Walk me through some of the challenges that you see there and maybe even some of the ways that you advise brands to navigate that challenge.

Tana Cofer:

The answer that everyone's looking for is how do I know? How do I know it's coming from here and here and there? Well, the best way to know is to do whatever you can to add an attribution tax, right? That's the answer. And then you'll see, we'll actually be able to see as best we can where everything is coming from. And for Amazon, Amazon has provided Amazon attribution tax. They've had them for years now. And a lot of brands are nervous to use them because they assume if I add this tag, that means I'm directing traffic from my meta over to Amazon. And I just want to say on this call, that is not how attribution tags work on Amazon. It is literally tracking if Because your meta ads are going to take them to your Shopify. If they then go to Shopify, and they then go to Amazon, that tag will tell you. That's what that tag is for. It's trying its best to help you just figure out. It's a tag. It's not a URL. It's not directing them anywhere. And it's trying to help you see, OK, where did they come from? Where did they buy? The other thing is your attribution links. If you track a sale, you also get a kickback. 5%. So if that is happening, if you're like, I think we're receiving $10,000 a month in sales from our meta. Okay, well, let's add the attribution tag, figure that out and get some of that credit back. Because Amazon wants you to do that. Like Amazon is incentivizing you to do that. That's the first thing I would say is try to find out if that's actually true and add the tags to see. The next thing I would say is, One, in my opinion, that doesn't matter where they buy. At the end of the day, the price is the same, your profit, you've done everything you can to make it similar. Your marketing strategy, every channel should help all channels, right? And that's how it works. As you're running TV ads, Facebook ads, people are going to then look you up on their preferred channel, right? Mostly Amazon, but it could be Target, it could be Walmart. They're gonna look it up on their preferred channel, so we will see an overall lift. My goal as a background, as a marketing director, that kind of thing, my hope is that you would say, okay, that was a win. It'd be nice to know exactly where it came from, but that was a win. Let's do it again. Now, let's maybe do it on a different channel or something to try and diversify it. Unfortunately, I don't have all the answers. All I know is that marketing spenders- Why not, Tana? All I know is marketing spend in one place will benefit the other places. That's why I would recommend adding the tags to try and see if we can get some data. And in my experience, you will see those sales are coming from Google or from Meta or wherever to Amazon Attribution. And the Amazon Attribution, the way I've set it up, but I'd recommend you do, is you have different tags for each channel. So that you are essentially like, here's my Google Attribution tag. So if people are going from any of my Google ads and they're going to Shopify and then they're coming to Amazon, it'll track right here. And I have one for email, and I have one for SMS, and I have one for this and this and this. Does that make sense?

Jon Blair:

Yeah, I mean, and look, I think what your point is, I'll put this in more kind of conceptual framework terms, like, there's no purpose, there's no single attribution method, whether you're talking about using triple whale, or using the tags you're talking about, or using some of these other like media mix model modeling, yeah, you know, you know, AI software is like, None of them are perfect. What my general advice is that you have multiple tools, right? And what you just mentioned in the tags is a tool. You use multiple tools to try to figure out what the attribution is, right? And some of it is, so like for example, and none of them are perfectly right, right? But like if you've got like, I think of it as triangulating. So like at Guardian Bikes, we did some of the tags that you're talking about. And then we also used Google Analytics. We also used post-purchase surveys. And then we also had inserts in the box to try to drive post-purchase surveys. we used all that data to try to triangulate what the trend appeared to be. And it's not perfect, but when you look at it from multiple angles, you can get at least a sense of the trend, right? And then additionally, we're always tracking what appears to be the trend. the marketing of MER on Amazon, the MER on Shopify, and then the blended MER, right? So like, the MER on Amazon, which is the inverse of Tacos, is like, it always, it will, if you spend heavily on top of funnel, like on Meta, it will be artificially low, right? And your, if you allocate all Meta and Google spend to your Shopify store, the MER will be artificially low, But if you look at the blended MER cross channels at the same time, if you see that remaining stable or even going up. you know that, like you're saying, the tides are rising across all channels. So again, none of those are perfect attribution or performance measurement methods in and of themselves. But if you look at it from multiple dimensions, you can triangulate if things are getting better or worse, right? And go from there. We're still generally fans of saying, use the in-platform attribution to make changes to ads, right? Yeah. at the tactical individual ad level, like use what the platform is telling you is working. But take a step back and look at some of these other ways of looking at aggregate attribution to assess if your overall marketing mix is profitable or not. That's kind of how we advise clients.

Tana Cofer:

Yeah, no, I think that totally makes sense.

Jon Blair:

So, unfortunately, we do need to land the plane here shortly, but before we do, because at Free to Grow, as I mentioned, when I started the business, there's a big personal life aspect to it, right? And much more missional. in terms of our reason for existence. And one of those reasons is that we want to give accounting and finance professionals an amazing place to work where they can be challenged and have fun, but not sacrifice their personal wellbeing. So because of that, because that's near and dear to my heart and to our company's heart, I always ask a couple of fun personal questions at the end of every episode. So I actually gave you one to prepare for, but I thought of a second one that I'll throw out there. as a curveball, but first off, what's a little known fact about you that you think people would find surprising?

Tana Cofer:

Yeah, I would say the most surprising fact about me is that I am a trained bodybuilder.

Jon Blair:

Nice.

Tana Cofer:

So, most random fact about me, I did a competition in June, took fourth place. Yeah, so I spend two to three hours in the gym most days.

Jon Blair:

So funny enough, I did not know that about you and my mom is as well. Um, so my mom, she's 67 and she competes a few times a year. And, uh, yeah, she's, uh, she is, uh, quite, I mean, her workout regiment, whenever she comes and visits, visits me, we're out in Austin, Texas. She's in Southern California. She somehow, I don't know why she does this to herself, but she somehow always schedules her trips out here during what she calls peak week, where she has to, you know peak week, right? And we have to buy, when we go to the grocery store, we have to buy this whole list of stuff. We're eating chips and salsa, and she's eating carrots and celery and salsa, and peak week, Every time she does a peak week, she always says, this is my last competition. I'm never going to do this ever again. I'm like, yeah, right, mom. That's what you said last time. But anyway, so I actually know about that. And I think that's very, very cool. So my surprise question was about being a mom of three, because as a dad of three, I'd say that I have learned far more about life being a father and trying to straddle being an entrepreneur at the same time than like any other kind of like balancing act in my life. When you think about being a mom, but also being an entrepreneur, maybe if you could share just a little bit of a thing or two that you use as a hack or a guiding principle to just like try to keep that balance as best as possible.

Tana Cofer:

Yeah, those are great questions. So I work a more unique schedule so that I can spend the afternoons with my kids. Because of that, I get up earlier in the morning, like 5.30 or 6, and I do a lot of the emailing and some of the stuff that isn't as strategic that I can do right when I wake up. I'll do some of that in the morning, then I'll spend breakfast with them, get them off to school. Summers are just insane. I don't know how anyone you know, survive.

Jon Blair:

My house is insanity. My house is insanity right now.

Tana Cofer:

I'm ignoring the summer months when I say this, but that's kind of what, you know, that's what we do. And then I get them off to their preschools or high school. Like I have kids with a variety of ages, so to the schools. And then I work until basically one or two and then I'm done. I'm done. I will, might open up my email or my computer once the kids are in bed, but I don't work the afternoon hours. And a lot of, I only have two people on my team, a very, very small team. And they also, I'm like, what hours work best for you? What can you do with me? Some of them are like, Oh, I like the afternoons because my kids do afternoon kindergarten, like perfect. Right? So we make it work so that everyone, everyone on my team, including me can live the life and the lifestyle that we're hoping for. And so that's what I do.

Jon Blair:

I love it, it's super important. We didn't do this on purpose. We have a small team, there's about seven of us full time. But it has turned out to mostly be parents of small kids that were on the brand side and decided to leave the brand side and wanted a little more flexibility but still wanted to do something challenging and fun. And I think one of the coolest things is that there's seven of us that all have little kids And we're just so in the same season of life. And there's a couple people who aren't, and that's totally fine. They still fit into the team well. But they also have kids, they're just a little more grown. And so we don't hide that like, hey, I was up all night because my kid had a fever. I've got to take my kid to get their blood drawn. And I had to bribe them with taking them to the museum. And so do you mind if I do that this morning? I had someone I was talking to last week who had to do that, and I'm like, dude, 100%. Because at the end of the day, here's the stupid thing. If you say no, guess what? They're going to do it anyways, and then they're going to just feel like they're hiding it from you. And it's just like, let people be who they are. If they do good work, and they're good people, let them be who they are. It's just – it's a virtuous cycle that just like really creates an amazing work environment and it's one of the things that keeps me going every single day here.

Tana Cofer:

I agree. The two people I've hired are stay-at-home moms. I just feel like they're the ones who want this unique lifestyle. They want it and if we can help some of those people get it, then we should. 100%.

Jon Blair:

We have three stay-at-home moms on staff so I'm right there with you. I love it. Well, before we end, where can people find more information about you, your brand, and your agency?

Tana Cofer:

Yeah, so RosieRai.com pretty easy to find. You'll learn more about me and what we do and what we offer. and then glitter-face.com. You can also find both of those on my LinkedIn, Tana Cofer, T-A-N-A-C-O-F-E-R and those are probably the best places to find me. I'm also on Instagram, you can see my bodybuilding pictures if you don't believe me there and yeah.

Jon Blair:

I love it. Well, this was an awesome conversation. I'm truly thankful that you came on. This is a topic. Of course. There's just a ton of advice here that I think is gonna be super helpful for our listenership and even some of our clients that listen to the show. So if you guys are interested in getting help on the Amazon or Marketplace growth strategy side, definitely hit up Tana. And don't forget, if you want more helpful tips on scaling a profit-focused DTC brand, consider following me, Jon Blair, on LinkedIn. And if you're interested in learning more about how Free-to-Grow's D2C accountants and fractional CFOs can help your brand increase profit and cash flow as you scale, check us out at freetogrowcfo.com. And until next time, scale on.

Five Harsh Truths To Scaling DTC Profitably in 2024 and Beyond

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Free to Grow CFO Podcast, Jon Blair is joined in the studio once again by his co-founder, Jeff Lowenstein to tackle the essential strategies for scaling a Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) brand profitably. The conversation delves into the challenges of managing in-house manufacturing, the critical move into physical retail, the importance of embedding repeat purchases into product design, and how high gross margins can drive growth through paid advertising. With their vast experience in helping D2C brands scale, Jon and Jeff provide invaluable insights and practical advice for entrepreneurs aiming to grow their brands sustainably.

• Explore how segmenting customer data and
  analyzing cohort behavior can provide
  valuable insights to refine your marketing
  strategies

• Understand the importance of designing repeat purchases into your product development to drive sustainable revenue growth.

Key Takeaways:

• Learn how integrating manufacturing and fulfillment processes can lower fixed overhead costs, positively impacting profit margins and cash flow

• Discover why scaling beyond $50 to $75 million in D2C often necessitates moving into physical retail to tap into a larger consumer base

• Grasp the critical balance between repeat purchase subsidies and first-order acquisition costs for profitable scaling

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

Jeff Lowenstein - https://www.linkedin.com/in/freetogrow-jeff/

Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/

Meet Jeff Lowenstein

Jeff was previously leading M&A efforts at ecommerce aggregator Boosted Commerce where he was the 5th employee. He built processes across M&A, finance and operations to support rapid growth from 0 to 30 brands under management in 2.5 years.

He previously co-founded and exited an app for Shopify merchants and spent time in the Strategic Finance departments of Etsy and Caesars Entertainment. Jeff holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

He’s worked with hundreds of brands over his career and founded Free To Grow because of his passion for supporting entrepreneurs and helping them succeed. The analytical and financial tools he has developed over the years are specifically crafted for the modern consumer brand.

Transcript

~~~

00:00:00 - Welcome to the Free to Grow CFO Podcast

00:00:30 - Introducing Jeff Lowenstein

00:02:50 - D2C and Vertical Integration: Challenges and Considerations

00:18:36 - The Role of Physical Retail in Scaling a D2C Brand

00:29:11 - Strategic Approaches to Physical Retain and Pricing Strategies

00:32:55 - In-House Manufacturing and Fulfillment

00:35:25 - Expanding into Retail with Consultants

00:37:08 - Repeat Purchase Strategy: Designing into Product Development

00:45:09 - Segmentation and Analysis for Repeat Purchase Behavior

00:47:45 - Importance of High Gross Margins for Profitable Scaling

01:01:00 - Final Thoughts

Jon Blair: All right, what is happening, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Free to Grow CFO Podcast, where we're diving deep on conversations about scaling a D2C brand, and it's all about doing so with a profit-focused mindset. I'm your host, Jon Blair, one of the founders of Free to Grow CFO. We are the go-to outsource finance and accounting firm for eight and nine figure D2C brands. And who do I have with me today? The infamous partner in crime, co-founder of Free To Grow CFO, Jeff Lowenstein. Jeff, it's weird to see you on a computer screen because I was just with you in person in New York yesterday, but great to see you. What's happening, man?

Jeff Lowenstein: Jon, you feel so close I could reach out and touch you through the screen. You're literally just here in this small office with me in New York City for the last 48 hours. So it feels weird, but also natural to be back in the little box on our computer where we spend so much of our time doing our work. Good to see you on the pod, and I'm happy to join and talk shop again.

Jon Blair: Yeah, man, it's gonna be good. We're gonna do something a little bit different on today's episode. There's a recent LinkedIn post I posted a few weeks ago that really kind of ruffled a lot of feathers and just got a lot of people talking about, I think, real issues and challenges with scaling D2C. And honestly, there was some really cool comments that I think even brought to the discussion some things that I wasn't thinking about. And it left such an impression on me. I was like, hey, Jeff and I should riff on what I talked about in this post because it wasn't just a post to just like get people all riled up. They're real true, they're beliefs of mine about scaling a D2C brand profitably. So, you know, the post was called five harsh truths about profitably scaling a D2C brand in 2024 and beyond. And the reason why I said 2024 and beyond is because some of these things weren't necessarily true in the early days of e-com. Back in 2017, 2018, when I was scaling Guardian bikes, not all these things were true. And so I just wanted to put something together where we could have a conversation about these things and just like elaborate on some of those points that, you know, you can't really be elaborate in short form content. And I think you have a lot of very interesting examples and additional perspectives on these topics from where you sit in the marketplace and your set of clients that you oversee versus the ones that I oversee. So, I mean, dude, let's dive in. Here's the first one. And this one, I did another post on this like a couple months ago and it actually upset a lot of people. That wasn't my That wasn't my aim, but it's about D2C and vertical integration. And so in layman terms, bringing manufacturing and fulfillment in-house. And what my statement was, was D2C and in-house manufacturing slash fulfillment don't mix. It drives too much fixed overhead, and unless you can reach a nine-figure annual revenue, it's gonna wipe out your profit and cash flow. Let's just riff on that, man. What are some of your thoughts when you hear that statement?

Jeff Lowenstein: Well, I don't think it's quite as hot a take as you think. I mean, I completely agree. It's really hard to run an econ business between getting your storefront in tip-top shape, getting fulfillment to the customer, customer service. There's so many things you have to get right and are hard to get right, and getting production in your own facility right on top of all those other things is really freaking hard. So I think there's that side of it, too. The great thing about a traditional econ business is that you have mostly variable cost P&L, right? And so Really, what you're getting at is switching from a variable cost COGS to a fixed cost, moving more of it to fixed cost. It's not entirely fixed cost. You still have your raw materials, right? But that can be great if you're able to scale into that and create operating leverage. But for most people, getting from zero to eight figures takes time and effort. Starting out of the gate producing your own product is a really big swing that's going to be hard to do without raising significant capital.

Jon Blair: Yeah, and you know what's interesting? Your comment about like the hot take. I didn't expect this to be a hot take, right? Like this was just an observation that we've had in working with several dozen brands at the same time, right? And seeing most of them outsourcing fulfillment and manufacturing and a small subset of them. Insourcing it and it does work for some brands, but generally we see it not work for brands, right? there are always exceptions, but Most brands have to deal with the rule not the exception and so like I was actually surprised when I wrote this post that so many people got fired up about it and what what I actually realized in the comments was that like there are a lot of people who either had figured out an exception to the rule and so they were like hey this is possible right or they were in the middle of trying this and they had a firm belief that it was possible and so like a couple things i want to say like one there are exceptions to the rule and the reality is in short form content you can't like write this long thing that caveats everything right you have to say what's mostly the universal truth right but another thing that i want to mention is that there's two And again, this is generally speaking, there's always nuance, but there's two ways that I have seen brands be successful on bringing manufacturing and fulfillment in-house. One is the obvious, or I think the obvious one, sales volume, right? They're able to scale enough to actually realize the economies of scale of, and of operating leverage of like converting more variable costs to fix costs, right? That's one. But the second one is there is a second one that is closely tied to DTC and this is why Guardian bikes decided to vertically integrate. because they needed control over the quality and the experience, but they were able to charge for that. in the D2C channel. And I want to like all caps charge for that, right? Because there are some brands that I have seen try to insource this stuff to control the experience, but they're not able to charge for that really amazing unboxing experience that they do by doing their own packaging and fulfillment, right? And so if you have a strategic sales advantage, sales and marketing advantage, that needs to be enabled by vertical integration, and you can charge for that, that is another way that I see DTC brands actually successful, but most brands don't figure that out.

Jeff Lowenstein: Do you agree? I agree. What I think you said, you said a couple of things that are interesting, which Again, there's always exceptions to the rule. So when does this work? It works when you're selling a product, you've designed a product that is truly differentiated and cannot be produced in a contract manufacturer setting, or it's so proprietary that you don't feel comfortable allowing someone else to produce it, or you're not confident in the ability of someone else to produce it. The other thing you need to think about is if you're going to start this way from scratch, is how large is that initial fixed investment? And so for those that do make this work, they're able to start with smaller production capacity, and then eventually you do have to turn that into larger and scale that, right? Totally. you don't want to go too big too fast, but you also don't want to be locked into the smaller one, right? Because you're, you're going to have to grow beyond that eventually too. I did recently actually invest in a brand. I do try to do a little bit of angel investing that is making their own product and it's going very well and they have a different methodology for production than the competition. And that's been a huge value add. It's been their competitive advantage. And so they're very happy with being constrained on the production side for the time being because of their in-house production. They can't produce quite as much as they would like to be able, or as they could sell. They are constrained for the time being, but they're okay with that because they're going to keep control of that process and they're going to be able to invest in a larger facility soon. And their whole business model really does revolve around that. I say that with the caveat that that is more of an exception than the rule. And so it does work for some people. But I think for most people, your time is better spent working closely with your manufacturer to design your product in a proprietary way that is still differentiated and using existing infrastructure that's already out there in the marketplace.

Jon Blair: Totally agree. Totally agree. To draw out an important theme here and what we're both saying, I don't want to sound like a consultant. The word strategy is overused in the consulting world. Is it strategic to insource these things? Is there true strategic value? Because if you think about it, like you said, there's fixed costs and there's upfront investment to getting this stuff up and running. So you do need to analyze if it's going to take X dollars to get this thing up and running. what is the strategic value that's being created either in being able to charge more and or lower costs over time or some other competitive advantage in the product and how long will it take for that set of advantages strategic advantages to pay back that investment. We did this analysis at Guardian Bikes and we actually distilled it down into like, hey, it's gonna cost X hundreds of thousands of dollars to get this facility up and running. We're gonna save this many dollars per unit on effectively outbound shipping. We're gonna save this much on containerized shipping because we could ship components instead of full bikes so we could fit a lot more in a container. And then additionally, we had a strategy for how we were going to reduce inventory levels and we're able to distill that down into like, Hey, it's going to take this many units sold to pay back this investment. Right. And we, we felt pretty confident in certain sales volumes we were going to hit. So when we went to go raise the money for it, we could say, Hey, we just need to sell this many units for this to pay for itself. And let us show you why we're going to be able to sell that many units in two years and this is gonna pay for itself in two years. It's about being intentional about the true incremental impact of making these investments and just doing a little bit of homework.

Jeff Lowenstein: Yeah, it's interesting. What you just said made me think of another consideration that I've seen with some of my clients that do make their own products. is the sourcing component is much more complicated when you're buying your own components, right, and raw materials. And especially if you're in a category where it's, you know, natural products or agricultural products, those components and raw materials might only be available at certain times of the year. And by the way, those MOQs might be way, way, way higher than what you would actually need to buy if you were just buying finished products from an outsource manufacturer. And so there's a whole different supply function, team, cash flow consideration that you need to consider. You might need to be storing products that are, you know, you might need to buy like two years of a certain component. two years of cover because the MOQs are so high when you're sourcing direct. So that type of stuff you don't always think about when you make these types of decisions. Totally. But it can really make everything a lot more complex.

Jon Blair: Well, and to distill, like to kind of like distill that down into a summary, there's fixed car, there's upfront investments to consider. There's the changes in variable costs, right? And margins over time post the changes. There's the changes in ongoing fixed costs after the, after this, but then what you're talking about, there's a change in working capital, right? Your inventory, uh, your, your inventory days, equation changes. This is a perfect example of where a CFO can help with a three statement financial model, right? Where the three statement financial model is not just projecting out the P&L impact, which is like the fixed cost changes and the variable cost and contribution margin changes, but it's also, you're also able to forecast What if inventory days change like this or like that because of, so like that three-dimensional view of projecting out the P&L, the balance sheet, and then ultimately the cash flow impact is really important. You can't, you shouldn't make one of these decisions just by looking at the P&L impact because like you said, there's very clearly a working capital impact but if not other reasons like definitely impacting inventory days but probably impacting AP days as well because you're now buying different types of materials and components from different vendors and you may be able to take advantage of better payment terms. I've seen it happen where you can get better payment terms with a component supplier versus the finished goods supplier. But I've also seen it work out in the wrong direction, which is all of a sudden you had really good payment terms or decent ones with your assembly factory. You're now the assembler and you go to these component factories and you're starting from scratch. And so this is where a CFO is really, really important to help you get that three-dimensional, three financial statement projection view of making a decision like this?

Jeff Lowenstein: Yeah. I mean, I'm just thinking about how the balance sheet changes, right? You have fixed assets all of a sudden with your machinery and what's going on on the floor. And then you have the inventory and finished goods, but you also now have all these components and raws you need to keep track of, uh, as well. So it gets, it gets quite, uh, it's quite a different balance sheet to take care of and make sure you're managing. And then even on the P&L, another thing is you're actually moving away from gross profit. You're moving costs out of gross profit in terms of COGS when you're buying finished products at a higher per unit cost. And if you make it in-house, now actually some of that cost is actually going to hit your payroll line, which people don't think about either. Again, that goes into the operating leverage conversation, but people aren't really fully thinking through what that means, right? You have people on the floor making the product, you might have managers, you might have other sourcing people running around doing things, right? So the payroll line actually goes up quite substantially as well.

Jon Blair: Yeah, and one thing, I mean, I've talked about this with several of our clients and our prospects is that like operating leverage It's called leverage for a reason, right? Leverage means it is something that you can leverage to your advantage, right? But it comes with a risk. And the risk is it takes more revenue to break even, right? When you have less operating leverage, it can take less revenue to break even. So that's the general disadvantage. But the advantage is when you cross the break-even point, the number of dollars that drop to the bottom line for every dollar of revenue after that is massive. Whereas if you have a mostly variable cost, like cost of goods sold, you keep paying the same variable cost no matter how much you scale up. And so it's a question of where the risk lies. Like for a company with a lot of operating leverage, the risk lies more heavily before your break-even point, right? And I would say again, it lies again when you scale past the break-even point, you have to make the decision of increasing capacity. Because then you have this new step you have to take up in operating leverage and get to break-even again. And so it's not a good or a bad thing. It's just a different game. And you have to be able to recognize it's a different game. And you have to have the tools from a financial planning standpoint to be able to make sound decisions as you're dealing with scaling with a lot of operating leverage.

Jeff Lowenstein: It looks like a staircase function. Your fixed costs are flat for a while while you're in your current facility when you make it in-house, and then when you move to a bigger one, it's a big jump up, and then you're flat for a while as you increase sales to the maximum in that facility. I actually have a client that I just helped with a fundraising deck and analysis for. They make their product in-house. The math that we did was we calculated at certain unit volume levels exactly how much operating leverage they would realize and how the margin expands. as they scale. And it's very clear. There's going to be a lot of margin points opened up as they continue along that path. And it's going to be a very profitable, successful business in the future. But the reason they need to raise money and the reason we're doing this exercise is they're still below that break-even level. And so there needs to be a cash injection to help get through and help invest in some of that growth. So it's exactly what we're talking about. We just put that together in the last couple weeks.

Jon Blair: So then let's talk about this, the next point from this LinkedIn post, which is related because in some way, because it talks about where is the volume out there for the brands, right? Like what channels are like high eight figures and nine figure revenue volume. And so what I said was the D2C brand with nine-figure aspirations must expand into physical retail. Sorry, that's just where the nine-figure addressable market lives. Getting to 50 to 75 million D2C can be doable, but if you want to scale beyond that, get ready for retail. Now, let me contextualize this a little bit. Back in 2017, when we started Guardian Bikes, there were D2C darlings that got to nine figures on their website. And crazy enough, we know some, we know them personally, like in the mattress industry, who got there without top of funnel spend, who got there all from spending on Google, like basically bottom of funnel, like PPC. Those opportunities generally don't really exist anymore because those were like the first movers in these D2C spaces, right? So that's dried up. We work with plenty of brands. I've worked with plenty of brands and we have several clients who have gotten to very healthy eight figures, right? But the ones that wanna push into nine, we do have a unicorn that is e-comm only that we won't name. That's pretty cool. But they're the exception. That's one out of 25 clients that we work with, right? If you wanna break through 50 to 75 million, you gotta get into retail. And it's just because That's where the high eight figure, nine figure addressable market is. That's where the consumer is. I didn't come up with this. Candidly, I talked about this on our podcast many months ago with Ryan Rouse and Ryan Rouse who's one of my mentors, was just like, dude, it's just the way it is. I'm not trying to say, I'm not trying to ruin your dreams. And he's like, by the way, if you wanna run a mid-eight figure brand, D2C only, and not expand to retail, he's like, that's okay. If you can sustain a competitive advantage and sustain your margins, you got strong repeat purchase. You should do that if that's what you want to do, but if your aspirations are to get to nine figures or high eight figures, physical retail is most likely a reality and it's just the truth of where the TAM is. What are your thoughts about that, man?

Jeff Lowenstein: There's a couple of things I want to respond to. You have my brain going in a few different directions. I think the last point is like really interesting. I think that there is a natural ceiling for some brands within direct to consumer and you can have a really profitable, stable business at that level. And so some brands actually that ceiling might be lower, uh, depends on the channels you're going to be in in terms of your marketing channels and all that depends, depends on your category there. I think I have this idea in my head and I actually, um, I respect, I, put a comment on Preston Rutherford's LinkedIn post about this the other day. That natural ceiling that Ryan is alluding to and that I'm talking about is really important to understand because every incremental sale you get beyond that is going to be super expensive for you to acquire, and it completely changes your margin profile. And more brands die by trying to scale too fast than the other way around. And so those extra incremental sales are going to be so expensive. And you'll get more sales. They will come, but they're so expensive incrementally that they can change your whole business. And you're going to invest in people. You're going to invest in spend. And it's not worth it a lot of the time. But I know it's hard, right? You're a founder. You've worked super hard at this. It's been multiple years, blood, sweat, and tears. You see the rich wallets and the true classic tees that have successfully done this. The truth is not every brand is meant to be a nine-figure brand DTC only. that mentality of I'm going to be the next simple modern or whatever is actually very harmful. And I'm not saying don't be ambitious. I'm just saying there is such a thing as going too hard and too fast. So yeah, that was one of the things that I wanted to respond to. And I think that's a little bit of a hot take. It's hard for people to respond to that when I say that, because it feels like I'm shooting down their hopes and their dreams when I bring up something like that. And like, oh, you're the CFO. of course, you're more conservative. And so I also struggle with like, you know, not not being too negative and like trying to, you know, rain on someone's hopes and dreams. But, you know, that is something I do feel very strongly about.

Jon Blair: Yeah, so do I. But but here's the thing, like, if you dig in, like, I've I've listened to a lot of interviews with the true classic guys over the years, like if you dig into their story, Dude, they struggled to get to where they got and when they got there, they really started getting squeezed on their margins. It was not like You know all sunshine and rainbows like it was like a constant fight to like what do we do with email? What's the next offer? Like what like it was it's I think the point that i'm making because i've worked with a couple brands that have gotten They were on their way to that and they were crushing it and seemed like everything just worked right on the way up to 50 million and that 50 million and beyond They still figured out how to continue growing, but it got really challenging. And not just the economics, it's like, what is the next thing that we try? Is it the offer? Do we need to think about product development? Do we need to think about channel mix? And in reality, what it is is that The next incremental dollar that you go to acquire, it just takes more strategy to get that next dollar of revenue. When you see a brand that gets to 100 million, I can guarantee you that it was a dogfight to make it happen. We knew a lot of people that were early on at Tuft& Needle. that worked for us at Guardian Bikes. And like, sure, at the beginning it was like crazy growth, but they really had to figure out, like once they started saturating certain marketing channels, they had to get really, really creative. And they had to do it on a budget because they were bootstrapped. from day one. They didn't take on any outside equity capital. And so like the ideas that they came up with to in a very bootstrapped way, try to do more top of funnel advertising was really, really interesting. They had this one billboard campaign, like funny enough, out of home billboards, like actually really, really crush it for them at a certain stage of their growth. And they had this one campaign that just like, I believe it was a black billboard with white writing and it just said, mattress stores are greedy, tn.com, right? And they bought the tn.com was the landing page for that to try to figure out attribution. But they were going around and they were buying up billboards that were sitting there unsold. And so the advertising companies were selling them at a discount for whatever period of time it took for someone. You could do month to month or like a short term contract for super cheap until someone would come in and buy a long term contract. So they're finding all these obscure billboard locations that had nothing on it. striking a deal with the companies that own them and coming up with these really provocative one-liners that would get people to their site. And I'm just mentioning that because you gotta get more and more creative, right? But at the same time, figuring out channel mix is really important. And one thing I wanna say about physical retail that I don't wanna sound like a broken record, but this is something that I've learned since we've been growing free to grow together and have worked with dozens of brands. Don't try to go into physical retail just because you feel like you're hitting a ceiling in other channels. Again, I hate to sound like a broken record. What is the strategy for going to retail? And I'm gonna be more specific instead of just say the word strategy. Why is that channel strategic for you? Because physical retail actually isn't strategic for every channel. Guardian bikes may never, ever, ever, go physical retail because that is not a strategic channel for guardian we have to tell the story of the safest kids bike that costs more in physical retail unless it's a single brand store and that is a guardian bike store We're not going to be able to tell that story. We tested it. It's very hard to do that on a Walmart bike aisle or independent bike shops. If there is any physical retail, strategically, Guardian probably has to do a single brand store like a Tesla store or an Apple store. The point that I'm making is Don't just say physical retail because I want to get to a certain amount of revenue. What is the channel? How can you use physical retail strategically? If you're a consumables brand and you're doing cosmetics, it's likely that Target's a no-brainer and there's something very strategic about going to Target. For Guardian Bikes, Target was not strategic for us and there's no way we would end up doing that. I think that's very important to just not, just try to expand into channels to get revenue, but to ask yourself, what is the next most strategic channel for me to actually have a competitive advantage or some unfair advantage in because of either my product or my marketing or something like that? What are your thoughts on that?

Jeff Lowenstein: No, I completely agree. I mean, it's, you know, we like to think that direct-to-consumer e-com is like the whole world because we're in the industry. we could, we all talk to partners and brands all day, but like there's, you know, I can't remember off the top of my head, but I mean, it's only what, like 15% of sales are online in the U S right. The rest is physical retail, some, something around there. So, I mean, that's where the consumer is. That's where they're shopping. You, you do need to go there if, if you're going to grow beyond a certain point, it doesn't mean it's right for every brand either. That's it may not be. a good option for everyone. Another thing to be strategic about and just to remember is you need to maintain and stay on top of your retail sales and your actual retailers in the same way that you are on top of your site, making sure nothing's broken, right? Just because you get a few POs to a few different stores and you send out some product doesn't mean it's all going to go well. Is your packaging and the way that you're shipping it out to those stores working well? Does it appear nicely on the shelf? Are you in the right aisle and category? All that type of stuff is important. And so I actually recommend working with a consultant that knows what they're doing. Totally. In terms of getting brands into stores and scaling up the number of doors that you're in. Going deeper in one geography first is another strategy or tactic really that I think does well for people because you get better feedback. If you show up in a few stores in the same geography and people see you more and more, I think there's a positive feedback loop there. And then you can also understand, you know, you're getting like your, your product velocity metrics within like a certain, within a set of stores, uh, and understanding those versus like overall sales, right. Is, is, is something that people need to, you know, unpack and not just look at the aggregate numbers.

Jon Blair: For sure. For sure. Yeah. I mean, and another big pain point, I talked about this with, um, Renee Hartmann on one of our previous episodes is like the, the, Multi-channel pricing strategy right becomes a really big challenge and something you definitely have to police and work with retailers on because like You do lose control over your pricing. You have to know that that's going to happen. Yes, there's an intentionality and a strategy to trying to work with your retailer on it, but there are just going to be times when that lost control is going to result in them doing something to your pricing. Going back to your comment or your suggestion about using a consultant, Use a consultant because they can help you go in eyes wide open. I was actually talking with Amazon Growth Consultant right before this on the other episode that I was recording today. We were talking about how if you find the right consultant, whether that's a fractional CFO like Free to Grow or it's Tana who I was just talking to who's an Amazon and Marketplace Growth Consultant or Renee Hartmann who's retail consultant, they can help you go further faster. Yeah, you gotta pay them a fee, but they've made all the mistakes, right? They've made all the mistakes that you are going to make if you don't have someone to help you go in eyes wide open and say, no, no, no, no, don't do it that way. I've made this mistake. I've seen many brands make this mistake. I know this may be counterintuitive, but you wanna go at it this way, and here's why. I think the challenge is, finding the right consultant because there are plenty out there who will cost you money and you don't get that value, you don't go further faster for the fee. It's just a comment that I want to make that especially Eventually, as you scale in retail and it becomes a significant portion of your revenue mix, you're going to want an in-house retail team. But you don't need to step out and hire a full-time in-house retail team when you're just getting launched. You're testing the waters and you're seeing how much volume you can get. That's the perfect time to use freelancers and consultants. to help navigate the various aspects of expanding into retail. And then if it sticks, because you can turn that consultant off whenever you want, and they're probably cheaper than a full-time person. But if retail sticks and you start scaling, then you can bring the most valuable roles in-house to support that. So anyway, it's just another thing to consider as you're expanding into retail.

Jeff Lowenstein: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, they can help you avoid a lot of unforced errors, right? So Walmart, for example, is notorious. If you don't ship exactly the right quantities in the right way, you know, like with the right inbound logistics, you're going to get charged out the ass for all these fees that you don't see coming and they're going to hit you. Only, you know, much later you're thinking you're, you're getting paid for your product, but between certain types of trade spend and all these fees and logistics fees, you know, your margins are. Everyone knows your margins are lower to begin with on wholesale, but you know, there's all these hidden fees that you may not know about, uh, going into it for the first time. So using a consultant can really help you avoid some of those or even like just understand what they are so that you can say. Maybe I'm not ready for Walmart. Maybe I need to get my own operations in order first. That type of decision is quite important as well.

Jon Blair: One other note I want to make. When I was talking to Tana on this episode earlier today, she was talking about the sequencing of expanding into marketplaces. In her opinion, you go Amazon, then Amazon Canada and UK, and then Walmart And then depending on your product category, like Target, Wayfair, and what I'm pointing out is what? A sequencing, right? And like I'm realizing the older I get and the more that I help, like we run our own business and work on our own strategy, but then also work on the strategy of the numerous brands that we serve. I think it's very common when you're talking about developing a strategy to talk about what we're going to do. I think generally people are really good at coming up with the what strategy, but I think that more attention needs to be paid to the sequencing. When you do something, I'm actually finding, as I get more gray hairs on my head, I'm finding that when you do something is actually oftentimes more important than what you do, and can lead to either success faster or setbacks. Now, that's where, again, where consultants have been really helpful to me in my life, like on the brand side, is they have some experience of doing things in the wrong sequence. Right? And say like, no, no, this is the right sequence to do it. And that will, that will add years back to your life that will add dollars back in your bank account and it will take a lot of stress. And so just wanted to make a call out about sequencing. Sequencing is really, really important. Physical retail maybe isn't the right second channel. Maybe you should go to Amazon seller central first, right? To squeeze out that next bit. of revenue, and then maybe you spend some time on the marketplaces, and then maybe you go to physical retail, right? And so, just some things to consider if you've got those big high eight figure, nine figure aspirations. Really think hard about the sequencing, right? And again, not to sound like a broken record, but why does that sequencing matter strategically? Like, ask yourself that question. Why would I want to go here first? as opposed to here first. And I think that if you bring the right people around the table to chat with and you challenge yourself with those questions, you'll probably make a better quality decision. Absolutely. What else do we have on the list? So, repeat purchase is designed into your product catalog during product development. It can't be fixed through advertising efforts. So, this one actually upset a lot of people too. And again, I wasn't This is not trying to make this a hot take, right? It's just I'm realizing, I mean, I have to look back to see how many total brands we've served. Maybe 35 in the last two, two and a half years, probably approaching 40. Right now we have 25 brands we actively serve. That sample, I've run single brands before this, but being able to see 35 plus brands over the last couple of years, it just really hit me hard that repeat purchase is mostly a product problem. Are there things that you can do with advertising to incrementally improve it? Of course, there are things. But all the advertising in the world can't fix a product problem. And if you didn't intentionally think about repeat purchase when you designed individual products and product lines and product roadmaps, you're doing yourself a big disservice and you're leaving it up to chance that repeat purchase actually happens. And so I'm actually starting to believe this really wholeheartedly the more brands that I work with that you've got to fix and design. You've got to design in repeat purchase up front, not on the back end. What do you think about that?

Jeff Lowenstein: Well, I totally agree. I don't even know I don't even see the other side of that argument. It's a behavior related to how you use the product that you're going for. If it's going to be used over and over again, that's fantastic, and it lends itself well to subscription, which is obviously great as well. But also, if you're a single-use Or single purchase product, right? That's also okay. You need to know that expecting repeat purchase in a place that it's not realistic can get you into trouble. There's another angle to this, which is if you have other products and other products that you can sell. that might be complimentary or cross sell. Once you have that, that person's information, um, that's not necessarily a typical repeat purchase because they've consumed the product, right? So in particular, home goods is a category where it's not as easy to get that repeat purchase like skincare or supplements or something like that. But home goods, I mean, If you have a great product, a great aesthetic, people like it, they're going to need a different product next month or next quarter. There is still an LTV there even though it may not be built into your exact first product or that product may not be consumable per se. That type of stuff is actually important to think about as well.

Jon Blair: Yeah, that's a really good point. That's a super good point. And I think, I think the other thing to keep in mind too, that to riff off of that repeat purchase velocity or frequency, you've got to, you just really need to consider that. And here's why. So I actually, I've known this, but I think I heard it articulated really well in a conversation that I had with Liam, one of the co-founders of Aplo G roup. a marketing agency that we have some shared client base with. So there's the way that I've termed it is that when there's a repeat purchase, one way to think about it is it's a marketing subsidy, right? That like when you have people coming back and buying stuff and you're spending no money on reacquiring them, that revenue with no acquisition costs is a subsidy or can be thought about as a subsidy to subsidize acquiring new customers. And you're on the seesaw, right? We're on one side of the seesaw. You've got repeat purchase subsidy. And on the other side, you have first order acquisition at potentially a very low margin, depending on how fast you're trying to scale. Because if you're scaling spend fast, your MER is going to take a dip fast. That's just how it works. It's going to take a dip fast. If you have the repeat purchase side of the seesaw rising, because there's a lot of frequency, like things are being repeat purchased with a high level of frequency, you're getting a bunch of subsidy that you can then push back down on the seesaw to acquire a bunch of people at a crappy margin on your first order, right? But as soon as that side of the seesaw starts to tick up too high and come out of balance, your profitability at the company level really starts to suffer. And you do need to either figure out how to increase the velocity of repeat purchase to rebalance it, or you need to pull back on that first order acquisition spend, right? And it's about scaling fast. So what I've actually come to learn is that scaling fast profitably is in large part determined by your repeat purchase velocity and how fast that side of the seesaw is rising to then take that money and push it back down into that first order acquisition. And if you're getting slow frequency, You cannot scale as fast. You can't scale as fast at a profitable level. It's just how it works. And so that's why I've started to realize supplements businesses can be just so fantastic because there's such a there's such a high frequency of repeat purchase. It's a noisy space, right? So you better be damn good at marketing and product. But if you can figure that out, it's an amazing business that can grow super fast, super profitably, because you have so much of this repeat purchase subsidy to push back into new customer acquisition.

Jeff Lowenstein: You said it very eloquently. I had not thought about the Seesaw analogy before, but I mean, those things being in balance or out of balance determines your growth rate, your profitability on the P&L, right, and how fast you're scaling. So the thing that I like to look at when I'm thinking about repeat rate and all this is not just looking at the cohorts. The cohorts are important and understanding how quick you're getting pay back on that acquisition cost. Or even better if you're first order profitable, right? Like you're increasing that contribution pretty quickly. But what I like to look at is actually segmenting. What I find in a lot of businesses, they look at the cohort in aggregate and they say on average I get you know, three more purchases in the next six months, right? Or like I have a $250 six month LTV. But if you segment that further and say, uh, you know, do I actually have some people that are buying five times, uh, in the, in the first three months and some people that are never coming back, obviously there are people that some people that never come back and some power users, but understanding those segments of your, customer base is super important and not something that's always so easy to find in the data, but you can actually see patterns like which, which product are they buying first and which product are they buying second, third, fourth, and fifth? Is it the same? Is it different? Where, where in the product category are people going? What's the easiest thing for them to buy the first time asking yourselves, yourself, all those questions, right? Allows you to understand the buyer behavior better. which can then feed back into better acquisition strategies as well. And so that analysis is something a CFO can help you with. A good marketer can do it as well. But when I think about retention and repeat purchase rate, I'm always thinking about segmenting it out rather than just looking at overall averages.

Jon Blair: Yeah, no, I mean, it's interesting you mentioned that because like, even going from like every level of segmentation you can do. I'm a big fan of like starting high level and then segmenting one layer at a time. Because if you try to like go all the way down to the most granular level, you can get lost. And there's a number of things that can cause issues. But like if you even just start like thinking about Okay, first you just see revenue across the business and spend, that's like blended. And then you go, okay, hold on, now let's go revenue and spend, MER by sales channel. And then let's go, okay, but what's the first order economics versus the repeat purchase revenue in each channel? And then you start going, like, when you start kind of cutting one layer deeper, one at a time, each time you get your, your intelligence quality goes up and you can make a decision on another lever or maybe a couple more levers. Averages are definitely something you still have to track to just see how everything is funneling or bubbling up to the top. It's really dangerous to draw too many conclusions off of highly aggregated blended averages. They are useful in their own right, but you have to be honest with yourself about what conclusions you can draw and cannot draw from using aggregated blended metrics versus segmenting them out.

Jeff Lowenstein: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I don't mean to get into like the attribution wars here. Like that's not where I'm trying to go and get.

Jon Blair: That's a good, that's a good webinar. Um, attribution wars. We can get will from prescient. We'll get someone from triple whale. Um, we'll get someone from, uh, North beam and let's like, here we go, baby attribution wars.

Jeff Lowenstein: Let's go. Cause the thing that gets complicated, right. It has you drill down to those lower levels is you can see data from a certain platform or from a certain attribution tool. And then, you know, maybe they don't make sense when you look at them, compare them side by side. Right. And so it is important to, like, actually have a really good feel and understanding of the highest level, you know, so you can for sure now and really, you know. understand how it all fits together because it is true that it's all interconnected as well, right? So that's a whole podcast and deep dive for another day. Totally agree.

Jon Blair: Well, let's go on. Let's go on to the next point here. This has turned out to be a meaty conversation. I love it. I had a feeling. All right. The profitable D2C brand that reaches 20 million plus in annual sales through paid advertising has high gross margins. plus or minus 80% and can turn a profit at a two MER. And so to contextualize this a little bit, what I'm getting at is that like, this actually goes back to that seesaw example in some ways, that like how fast you can grow, right, is highly determined on what your blended margin is, right? And without even bringing repeat purchase into the equation, from a blended margin perspective, the brands who can get to eight figures, like healthy eight figures in revenue fast, they're able to scale up, spend fast, and they're able to withstand quickly diminishing MER returns, but the reason they're able to withstand it is because their gross margin is so high. When they have really good unit economics, what we call contribution margin before marketing, which is net sales minus landed cost of goods sold minus shipping and fulfillment and credit card fees. When that number is really high, You can take a two MER, like 50% marketing spend, and still turn a profit. Here's what you have, the advantage you have at your disposal. And I've seen a brand that I worked with at Free to Grow do this. They literally went from scaling like, spending like tens of thousands on meta, to millions a month on meta. Really fast, and they were still profitable. And even though their marketing spend was 50% of revenue, their margin before marketing was so high, that they could withstand it and still turn a profit. And volume went up so high that even though their contribution margin was like less than 20% after marketing, they still turned a massive profit in dollars. And so I'm just, now hear me out here. I'm not saying if this is not your economics to quit and throw in the towel. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying you probably have to grow slower. That's what I just tend to see out there. What are your thoughts?

Jeff Lowenstein: Yeah, I totally agree. There's different ways to get there. I mean, look, this is not meant to be a math test, but let's just walk through that P&L that you kind of alluded to. And that's, I think, actually a really interesting one for certain categories for people to focus on, right? And so if your net sales is 100%, your landed cost of your product might be 20%, which gives you an 80% gross margin, right, which is Very solid then you might have another 20% between Shipping and fulfillment could be 15 credit card fees could be four or five. Let's call that bucket what we call variable order costs. Let's call that 20%. So now you have 60% left in contribution before marketing. That's what Jon was saying. 2x MER is the same as 50% of your net sales is spent on marketing. That's the same thing, right? So now our 60% contribution minus that 50% spent on marketing leaves you with 10%. And if you're below 10% on your overhead, if you're running lean, you can be above break even, right?

Jon Blair: Which the brand I'm referring to was at that time, right? Because they scaled from basically 1 to 35 million in one year, which is crazy. And their overhead was like 2 to 3% of revenue. So they turned a 7% profit and it's dollars. In dollars, it was a huge number of dollars. The founder was making money hand over fist in dollars, you know?

Jeff Lowenstein: That's amazing, right? Because what some people think about, right, is let's say I have really strong gross margins because I designed the product a different way or just because I have a really great manufacturer that no one else knows about. And so I have savings in my product costs and therefore high gross margins. A lot of people will just say, great, more profit. And that's a totally fine way to think about it. That is great. More profit in your pocket per unit sold. However, another way to think about it and sounds like this brand you're talking about did this. They took those savings and they said, I'm going to invest that back in marketing so I can scale further. Yep. And that that extra marketing spend might allow you to capture share from the competition. Right. If you're willing to spend a little bit more. because your economics are better, and you might be able to reach a lot more customers, and you make more profit by selling more units and scaling faster, rather than making more profit per unit on an ongoing basis. So hopefully I didn't confuse anyone with that example, but I think that's a really interesting strategy, is investing your gross margin savings back into marketing.

Jon Blair: Yeah, I mean, you and I, I can think of a few clients we have who just have these really killer margins before marketing, and they do have a decently low MER, like 2.25, 2.5, nothing stellar, but they've scaled up to 10 plus million, and they're turning a profit, and their overhead's super lean, right? Which actually, funny enough, segues into the last point from that from this post, which is to continue turning your profit at scale, see number four, which is what we just talked about with the margin and the two MER. See number four above and keep your overhead lean, like less than 10% of revenue. Achieve this through outsourcing instead of taking on massive headcount. This is part of why number one is a harsh truth. And if you remember, number one was in-house manufacturing and fulfillment. Don't mix with D2C, because it's hard to have less than 10% fixed overhead and have all that operating leverage. But so like, as Jeff actually, your example was really great because it outlined the interplay between contribution margin before marketing, ad spend scale, right, and volume scale, and then really lean overhead. Again, if you don't have this structure, I'm not saying throw in the towel, because there are brands that We have seen grow successfully who don't have this exact structure but the structure we're laying out here actually I have seen in my experience allows you to be much more aggressive and really lean into ad spend and not have to worry about your MER being higher than three which a lot of brands need to and just needing a three MER Again, without the nuance of repeat purchase and the strategy on product and whatnot, just needing that, relying on that, automatically slows down scale because there's only so fast you can scale at that MER. So mind you, what we're talking about here is the formula that we've seen several brands put into play that has allowed them to scale up really fast and turn a meaningful profit in dollars.

Jeff Lowenstein: Yeah, it's interesting to think about and by the way, it's not for everyone. Just because you can scale fast doesn't mean you should. Scaling a little slower and more steadily while making a healthy profit along the way is a good strategy for many people, too. And then I'll also make a comment. I think on all four or five of the topics, there's one common thread, and that's keeping your overhead lean. As CFOs, that's something we are super passionate about. It just gives you so much more optionality. It gives you so much more. flexibility. You don't need a full-time CFO. You could hire a fractional CFO, for example, right? Using great consultants on the retail side, like we were talking about, rather than hiring the head of retail, for example, that's super expensive. Those types of things. Using offshore talent. you know, always important as well. So, you know, that's always a common thread. You don't pigeonhole yourself into needing a certain amount of sales to break even. If you're, if you're lean on the overhead, right, that break even point is going to be much lower. So, so you really have so much more flexibility.

Jon Blair: Yeah. I mean, we work with this one brand that is doing like several hundred million in revenue. Uh, well, I guess they, they might do close to 200 on, on, on. e-com only. Again, one of our, that is the exception, not the rule, right? But their margins before marketing are not fantastic, but their overhead is crazy lean for the revenue size that they're at. And they make all their profit. They make all their profit, in my opinion, because of how lean their overhead is. And you know, it's only You know, generally speaking, 10%, this is a general 10% tends to be like, kind of like a, a mark, like a, a good goal to have, like, that's a healthy profit. Anything above that is like above normal or above market and is really healthy. These guys are at seven to eight, but dude, with their revenue volume, they're making like 19 to $20 million a year in profits. So like, yeah, seven or 8% bottom line. But you're going to tell me you don't, you wouldn't want to have a business that makes $20 million a year, even if the margin is 8%. I think, I think you might be okay with that. And so the point, I think the major takeaway is in all of this. It's not just that there's a single winning formula, right? It's about how to understand the dynamics of variable costs, fixed costs, and acquisition costs, and understand how, depending on how those are structured for your brand, it does dictate to some degree how fast and profitably you can grow. And so when you think about When you think about setting your brand up for success, you don't just set random goals and see if you get there. You actually build out some intelligence of understanding how your variable costs, or how your acquisition costs, or how your fixed costs are drivers of said goals that you want to achieve and you start messing with the drivers so that you are you're messing with the thing that is causing the effect that you want right as opposed to just setting goals and hoping that you get there and this is a big thing This is where, amongst other things, this is a big source of real value from a CFO, especially a CFO that understands D2C like our team does, is that we really understand the drivers of the growth and profitability equation for a D2C brand specifically, because we're D2C specialists. And furthermore, how they impact your balance sheet, so how they impact your cash flow. And so we're actually able to help you manipulate or leverage the drivers, right? And that is how you run a great business, no matter what, no matter what your makeup is of margin, no matter what your makeup is of repeat purchase or fixed overhead, is that you understand what truly drives it, and you understand how, like, if you move a driver in this direction, it should impact the business in this direction. And a CFO can really help you connect those dots. It's what we do every day. Um, I mean, that's it. We got through it. I mean, that was an hour, man. That was a pretty legit conversation. I, that was actually, that was actually a lot of fun. I hope that it was helpful for everyone that's listening. Um, I mean, just to be 100% honest, this is just, uh, this is just us taking a little sliver out of, uh, what it looks like for Jeff and I to wake up every day and just. And just work together at free to grow. And it's usually on a screen cause our team is all, all remote. Right. And so, uh, these kinds of the con conversations are, are what we're having every single day with the 25 brands that, that we serve as, as DTC CFO. So, um, I hope it was super helpful. Um, Jeff, we're getting you back on here many more times this year. I want to see more and more of your face and your thoughts on these ideas because it's just fun to share what we're learning from our clients because working with all these brands, it's really like drinking out of a fire hose and it's a really unique perspective that I've never really had before on the D2C market. It's really kind of cool.

Jeff Lowenstein: Oh yeah. Let's do it. I'm excited to come back on. And there's some people that are going to hear this and say, damn, that's what you talk about every day. That sounds terrible. You guys are a bunch of nerds. I'm not into that. But then there's some DTC people out there, too, that are going to be like, OK, this is my jam. These are my people, right? Exactly. Exactly. It's truly what we love to nerd out about all the time. So I hope you guys enjoyed.

Jon Blair: Yeah, before we shut down here, don't forget, if you want more helpful tips on scaling a profit-focused D2C brand, consider following me, Jon Blair, or Jeff Lowenstein on LinkedIn. And if you're interested in learning more about how Free-to-Grow's D2C accountants and fractional CFOs can help your brand increase profit and cashflow as you scale, definitely check us out at freetogrowcfo.com. Until next time, scale on.

DTC War Stories: What COVID Taught Us About eComm

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Free to Grow CFO Podcast, Jon Blair is joined by Nate Littlewood, founder and fractional CFO at Future Ready, to share their e-commerce war stories, focusing on the challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. They discuss the impact on their businesses, lessons learned, and strategies for navigating supply chain disruptions and financial challenges.

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

Nate Littlewood - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanlittlewood/

Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/

Future Ready - https://www.getfutureready.co/

Key Highlights:

• A deep dive into Guardian Bikes' pivot from brakes to premium bikes

• Importance of focusing on the long term in business decisions

• Managing supply chain disruptions and increased demand during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Financial modeling and strategic pivots for
  direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands
  

Meet Nate Littlewood

Nate Littlewood helps early stage founders navigate their toughest business decisions by providing insights and financial analysis catered to their individual needs. He is the founder of Future Ready, a fractional CFO business, as well as a Lead Mentor with the Food Future Co startup accelerator program. What really sets Nate apart from other fCFOs is his past operating experience as the founder of a 7-figure eComm brand of his own, plus his decade-long global career working on Wall St. 

Transcript

~~~

00:00:41 - Introduction and Background of Nate Littlewood

00:02:07 - Transition to Ecom War Stories

00:02:23 - Nate's Background and Journey to Starting Future Ready

00:07:35 - John's Background and Journey to Starting Guardian Bikes

00:08:13 - Guardian Bikes' Pivot Story

00:14:57 - Guardian Bikes' Experience During COVID

00:20:19 - Urban Leaf's Experience During COVID

00:25:22 - Lessons Learned from COVID Experiences

00:38:06 - Negotiating and Leveraging Relationships

00:43:37 - The Impact of Stocking Out vs Overstocking

00:46:08 - The Power of Differentiation

00:56:16 - The Fabled COVID Santa Story

01:01:39 - Final Thoughts

How Elite Profitable Brands Optimize Shipping & Fulfillment

Episode Summary

In this episode of The Free to Grow CFO Podcast, host Jon Blair sits down with Tony Runyan, Chief Client Officer at Red Stag Fulfillment, to discuss the intricacies of optimizing shipping and fulfillment costs to maximize profitability. Tony shares his unique journey into the logistics world and provides invaluable insights into how e-commerce brands can better manage their shipping strategies. From understanding dimensional weight to navigating peak surcharges, Tony breaks down the complexities of shipping in a way that's easy to understand. Tune in to learn how to turn shipping from a cost center into a competitive advantage.

Key Topics:

• Tony's background and path to Red Stag Fulfillment.

• Breakdown of shipping rates: actual vs. dimensional weight, zones, and surcharges.

• Practical tips for designing products with shipping efficiency in mind.

• Red Stag's origin story and its unique approach to solving e-commerce fulfillment challenges.

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

Tony Runyan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonyrunyan/

Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/

Red Stag Fulfillment - https://redstagfulfillment.com/

Meet Tony Runyan

Tony Runyan serves as the Chief Client Officer at Red Stag Fulfillment where he has been since 2017. Before working at Red Stag, Tony helped run a software company that primarily served major media brands including Disney, Fox Sports, and NBC Universal. Tony is married to his wife Read and they have three beautiful children: Jack, Ellie, and Silas. 

Transcript

~~~

[00:00:00] Welcome and Introduction to Tony Runyan

[00:02:23] Tony Runyan's background and journey to Red Stag Fulfillment

[00:06:52] The founding story of Red Stag Fulfillment

[00:10:16] Basics of how shipping rates work

[00:17:01] The impact of packaging on shipping costs

[00:23:57] Tips on carrier selection

[00:33:03] Strategic discount negotiation

[00:35:31] Self-fulfillment vs. using a 3PL

[00:43:39] Fulfillment network optimization

[00:53:46] Final Thoughts

[00:00:01] Jon Blair: Hey, hey, what's happening, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Free to Grow CFO Podcast, where we dive deep into conversations about scaling a DTC brand with what? A profit-focused mindset. That's right, we're always talking about profitability over here. I'm your host, Jon Blair, founder of Free to Grow CFO, the go-to outsource finance and accounting firm for eight and nine-figure DTC brands. Today, I'm super stoked to be here with my buddy Tony Runyan, Chief Client Officer at Red Stag Fulfillment. Tony, what's happening, man?

[00:00:32] Tony Runyan: How's it going? It's good to be here, Jon. Thanks for having me on.

[00:00:37] Jon Blair: Yeah, yeah. Tony and I go back several years. Guardian Bikes, our core fulfillment provider for quite a number of years, was Red Stag. So I've worked with Tony on that level, but have remained kind of friends and colleagues since then. So we actually chat once or twice a month. It's fun to actually finally bring some of those conversations onto the podcast, so I'm excited for everyone to be able to learn a little bit from you about what, what are we talking about today? Optimizing shipping and fulfillment costs to maximize profitability. And so here's the thing, why are we talking about this today? We're talking about this because obviously, in addition to cost of goods sold and marketing costs, which I feel like we talk a lot about those things on the show, the next biggest cost is fulfillment, right? As a physical goods brand, we're shipping everything, right, to clients. And in the D2C context, we're shipping direct to the consumer. We're not realizing really big economies of scale of palletizing shipments and shipping them to retailers, right? which is something that B2B focused brands really get to enjoy and D2C brands don't. And so understanding how shipping and fulfillment costs work and how to leverage the understanding of how these costs are structured is really important to remaining profitable as you continue to scale your D2C brand. Before we get into the nuts and bolts of shipping and fulfillment, I'd love to first just get a little high-level background from you on kind of your background and your journey to joining Red Stag Fulfillment.

[00:02:23] Tony Runyan: Yeah, absolutely. Happy to do that. So for me, the journey into the supply chain world or logistics and that sort of thing, I kind of took a curved path here. So I went to the MBA program at the University of Tennessee straight out of college, wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do yet. So that was kind of my next step. And while I was there, became a consultant for a software startup that was really focused in the media company. So, or in the media industry, I should say. And so spent a lot of time, actually almost 10 years working with the software company, helping build a product that helped engage users around interactive events and that sort of thing and sponsorships. And that company actually merged with an agency. And at that point of I think for me, there was just a change in terms of I lost some of that entrepreneurial spirit in what I was doing on a daily basis and was kind of looking for that next thing, trying to figure out how to scratch that in. So I'd actually reached out to Jordan Mollenhour, who was one of the founders of Red Stag Fulfillment. He was in the MBA program just a couple of years before me. And really just to have coffee and talk to him. And so those conversations kind of led him to walk me through Red Stag in the early days. I think at the time they had been in business about two years and it was really you know, very early on. And they've gotten to this point where they were going to start to scale the company. And we're looking for someone to really lead the engagement with existing clients to ensure that we're nurturing those relationships, understanding what those clients needed and that sort of thing. So that was just over seven years ago that I got involved with Red Stag. Didn't really know a whole lot about this world or anything about shipping or shipping parcel or anything. And I still remember Jordan told me, Hey, let me walk, walk you through this startup. I think it'd be something really exciting for you. And I walked through the warehouse for the first time and I saw all the product on the racking, and I saw the racking and the equipment. And my thought was like, this isn't a startup. Look at all these assets, you know? And I came from the software world, so it was literally like four or five guys in a room and some Amazon server somewhere, and that was all we had. So to see all of this, I was kind of thinking, oh, this is a lot more established than I realized. And then a few weeks into starting at Red Stag, I was like, yeah, this is definitely a startup, just in its own way. So it's been a blast to kind of ride this wave, you know, the last seven years. And lots happened, you know, COVID in itself was years of learning, so.

[00:05:16] Jon Blair: Yeah. I mean, I've, I've said it on other episodes. Um, cause it's the truth when I was, um, running guardian bikes in the middle of COVID alongside red stack. Cause you guys were our fulfillment provider at that time. I, everyone was so burned out. My whole leadership team, my whole like frontline management team, they were so burned out, especially anyone who was like, had anything to do with supply chain, because it was just like every day. Costs were changing. Transit times were changing. Will it show up? Will it not show up? Will the truck pick it up? You never knew, right? And I used to sit down with my leadership team and one of the things that I used to kind of use to rally the troops is like, guys, this is not going to go on forever. and you're getting a PhD in supply chain management. You will run circles around anyone who didn't have to go through COVID in the supply chain world. And I know it's exhausting, but you're going to come out of this having learned so much. One thing I want to ask you about RedStag actually that's interesting. This is one thing that really piqued my interest when I was searching for 3PLs because we were using a different 3PL originally that's big in the bike space at Guardian and we just weren't quite getting the service that we wanted. And so I was actually the one that went around and kind of shopped the market. And one thing that was really intriguing about RedStag was really how it was born. It was born out of like the actual frustration that the founders had trying to run an e-commerce brand. Can you just tell me a little bit about that? Because I think it's an interesting story.

[00:06:52] Tony Runyan: Absolutely. So the co-founders, Jordan and Dustin, had an e-com business that they were running and they really started to scale quickly. So they were originally fulfilling for themselves like a lot of e-com companies do in that the growth was so quick, they thought, hey, we've got to figure out how to work with the volatility of demand. We don't really want to focus on this whole fulfillment thing was kind of the thought, of course. So they started to begin that journey of finding a partner who could help scale with them. And I think, you know, They went through a few partners and there were, you know, one partner they used that did a pretty good job. They just couldn't scale quickly enough. They just weren't big enough. And then went more of like the national route search and went through, you know, kind of an interview process with a lot of different 3PLs and eventually landed on one, selected it. And what they found was, you know, kind of what they thought they were supposed to be and what they said they were going to be didn't turn out to be, you know, what actually happened. And there was a Christmas one year when one of the co-founders called the president of the 3PL and just said, look, I'm going to be down there, you know, tomorrow to help fulfill these orders. Like, I hope your team will join me because we are weeks behind trying to get these orders out. And he showed up there. And what he noticed when he was there is this is not something that can be fixed. by me coming down here. It's a cultural issue where they saw that the break rooms were in terrible shape and they were a mess and you didn't even want to go into the bathrooms. And this whole idea that the way that these employees were treated really directly impacted how those employees treated the job that they did. So that was a big, I guess, catalyst for why they said, hey, we're going to have to do this ourselves. And the other pieces were some of those big pain points, which are, number one, we want the order to ship on time, right? We wanted to ship accurately. So, hey, put the right thing in the right box. It doesn't matter if you, you know, you ship it out on time if it's the wrong item. And then the other was the inventory accuracy. Things like shrinkage really hurt them. And the thought that someone was allowed to lose or damage a certain amount of inventory with no consequence was just bizarre. You know, how is that okay? So, for sure, those are really the things that they kind of built RedStag on.

[00:09:24] Jon Blair: Those were the things I was experiencing at the other 3PL that I was leaving at the time. And so when I came across those guarantees, those service delivery guarantees, I was sold because I was experiencing that left and right. And when you're operating a D2C brand, I mean, I think this goes with any kind of brand, but D2C specifically, There's still like, you know, part of the D2C experience that you promise, right, as a brand is it's a better experience than going to a store, right? And if it's not a better experience than going to a store because you get stuff late or you get the wrong stuff in the box, then what is the consumer thinking? The consumer's like, man, I should have just gone to the store for that, right? And so it's really important that you nail that. It's incredibly important. It's one of the things that differentiates DTC from an in-store experience. And so, um, so look, I want to now chat about like. how do shipping rates actually work, right? There's all of this, there's all this jargon, there's base rates, there's fuel surcharges, there's peak surcharges, there's zones, like, what does it all mean, right? Like, what is it, Austin Powers, Basil, what does it all mean? Like, it just, bringing it back on that one. You know, when, when, if, if, when someone comes to you and it's like, Tony, I just think there's so much, I, I don't understand it all. How do you break down just the basics of how shipping rates actually work?

[00:10:55] Tony Runyan: Yeah, happy to do that. And what I'll say, it's parcel shipping. It's one of those things where the more I learn about it, the more I realize I don't know. You know, doing this seven years, and I think I've got all the nuances down only to like discover something new, you know, that impacts things. So I think carriers do a good job at keeping you on your toes. And it's a complicated thing. But that being said, there are some basics that can really help you get your head wrapped around it pretty quickly. For the most part, carriers do try to align cost with their labor and the effort required for them to deliver a package. So if you keep that in mind, most of the time it makes common sense when you walk through things. So really what you want to know is the size of the package, which includes the dimensions and the weight, and how far it is being shipped are the two primary things that impact the cost for shipping. So, I'll kind of break that down a little bit more because it's easy to do that. But the one thing you want to look at is what is the build weight of a package? And that is, there's the actual weight. Hey, this thing weighs 20 pounds. And then there's the dimensional weight. And that's a lot of things. It's been around a long time, but even now that some people get caught off guard about, which is, If you ship a feather in a box that's really big, historically, carriers would charge you for the weight of that feather, right? And they realize, wait a minute, this doesn't make sense. It takes up a lot of room on my truck. It takes a lot of room in the warehouse. So what they did is they created this, what they call a DIMM divisor. And so that, for example, for UPS and FedEx, it's length times width times height divided by 139, which is the dimensional divisor. And what they do is say, okay, we'll take that weight, and we call that the dimensional weight, and we'll take the actual weight, and whichever one is bigger, that's the one we're going to charge for. So that's kind of the first thing to understand. And because now all of a sudden your mind starts going through, oh, like, The size of the package matters. There's things we can do to adjust packaging to help us there if we're getting billed dimensional weight instead of actual. And then the next is the distance, right? If I'm shipping from Florida to California, that's a long way to go. And so the carriers do this by what they call zones, which most of the time is really determined by how many miles away is the destination from the origin. So, you know, I think you look at like 150 miles away is zone 2, you know, up to 300 miles away is a zone 3, and it goes all the way up and domestically is typically a zone 8 is the way that that works. Those are the two biggest determinants, but then what you can get into with larger packages are these other surcharges and even not just the size, but things you hear about residential surcharge. Is it going to a residence? Okay, there's more on top of that. Is it way out in the boonies, right? And then that's going to be a delivery area surcharge or an extended area surcharge. There's obviously a fuel surcharge that's on top of all of that. And then you get into what we call these additional surcharges, which are going to be things like, hey, if it's over 48 inches and it's longest side, then it's going to get hit with a surcharge. If it's greater than 30 inches on its second longest side, it's going to get hit with something. If it's more than 50 pounds, there's a surcharge for that. So there are a variety of surcharges based on the size as well. And then there's two other things I'll hit on that kind of make up what I'll consider the basics, which is First is what's called a reduction to minimum or a minimum fee. So all carriers will charge a minimum fee for a package, and this is when you're considering lighter weight packages more than anything, where There's a certain, it doesn't matter how high your discounts are, there's a certain minimum or a certain floor that a carrier is going to charge you for a package. And that is called the minimum. So you've got to keep that in mind. And then lastly, to your point, these peak surcharges are demand surcharges. And It's kind of interesting. So peak surcharges are things that carriers decided to add several years ago during the peak, during the holiday season. Because they're like, hey, we've got all this extra work, all these extra packages. We're going to add these surcharges on top to help us cover our costs to make sure we can deliver your package on time. Yeah, that makes sense. So they started doing that each year, and then came COVID.

[00:15:55] Jon Blair: But then they still tell you that, like, oh, we can't guarantee that this gets there on time. Oh, yeah. Because of demand. Exactly. Don't get a refund on that charge, though.

[00:15:57] Tony Runyan: That's right. There's definitely that window of time that doesn't matter how much they add to it. You're not going to get guaranteed. You move past that and we hit COVID, and now all of a sudden it was, hey, this whole time's peak. All during COVID, this is volumes like we've never seen. Again, something that makes sense. All this increased volume, they're trying to figure out how to handle it. So what they did is they extended the peak surcharges beyond peak to help continue to cover for those costs within their network. What we have found, of course, is that because it was outside of peak, a lot of folks were like, hey, when does this peak surcharge go away? So what do they do? They change the name from peak to demand surcharge. So now whenever there's demand or high demand, right, we're going to charge it. Where that doesn't really make sense or it starts to kind of break down is the fact that what we're seeing right now in the industry is there's a lot of capacity available. Guess what? There's still a demand surcharge. So even now there's demand surcharge available and what we see is You know, the carriers, FedEx actually originally pulled back those fees and a lot smaller. And then UPS announced in February that they were going to keep theirs at a certain higher rate. And what do you know, two weeks later, FedEx's went back up.

[00:17:20] Jon Blair: So it's always, it's always like a tit for tat with those two, with those two carriers. Like it's, I mean, I mean, penny for penny, not even dollar for dollar, like penny for penny. Okay, so there's a lot to unpack there. One thing that I want to call out is this concept of being intentional and being proactive when you're developing products, when you're actually designing products, right? Because there's a couple things that go into that. Part of a sound product development process is doing unit economic analysis. Unit economic meaning like what is the per unit cost of the product you're developing? And that's not just cost of goods sold, not just landed cost of goods sold. What is the per unit economic cost of shipping and fulfillment? And when we're at Guardian, when I was at Guardian Bikes, this is where I learned about how all this stuff works. looking at our unit economics for each of our SKUs, we were pouring over like, man, how can we pull half an inch out of this dimension, right, on this particular bike and get us below the threshold for that extra dimensional charge, right? And so, but we're going back to the drawing board and going like, okay, where do we put the wheel? Where do we put the, you know, where do we put the front tire? Where do we put the, How do we hang the handlebar? What if we did this? What if we did that? And the reason why we spend so much time doing that was because, you know, if you extrapolate the savings, let's say that the, you know, I mean at retail rates back then, at least the additional handling surcharge for dimensional was like

[00:19:08] Jon Blair: 14 to $16 a unit, right? If you, if you pull back your packaging on whatever dimension is triggering that and you get below that, $14 to $16 a unit is a massive savings. Extrapolate that across all your volume. It's huge, right? And so what I want to call out is that there is a lot of strategy and intentionality around designing the product such that it drives packaging that drives optimal shipping and fulfillment. And the problem is, If you are not intentional about that and you bring that product to market and then you find out about that dimensional surcharge after the fact, man, it's hard to go backwards, right? Cause you've got tooling out for packaging. You've got, um, I mean, even the number of times that we changed packaging at guardian, we had to go like, Hey, well, we've got the stock that we've got to completely deplete of the old packaging. And then we've got to make sure the factory changes to the new packaging. It is a huge effort to switch packaging. Now, if you've already got products that you've brought to market, I'm not saying don't work on your packaging. Most certainly do that, but the best time to do it is up front when you're designing and developing the product. I highly recommend get your 3PL or shipping expert to actually review your packaging. We used to send stuff to you guys at Red Stag when we were designing new products and go, hey guys, can you give us an estimate on the shipping cost and is there anything we're not thinking about? That's actually how we learned a lot of this stuff was from you guys giving us advice and like, ah, well man, I know you guys want to launch that 26 inch bike, but if you have that length dimension, Man, this is gonna be a really expensive bike to ship, so make sure you're proactive, make sure you bring your 3PL or shipping expert in on the front end. I think the other thing is, you brought up these minimum fees for each carrier, no matter how light or small the package is. In my experience, that is part of what drives that carrier selection strategy, right? Because, you know, there's certain minimums on FedEx and UPS that are higher than some other carriers. How, from your perspective, what are some tips on like considering the minimum fee across carriers, how that should drive potential different carriers that you might want to select for certain kinds of products?

[00:21:28] Tony Runyan: Yes. All great points. And first off, let me say to your point, we have seen what you mentioned so many times where we get containers of product only to find that there's a new fee that's going to get hit that was not considered. Right. And that will just destroy your unit economics. And an important part of that piece is if those additional handling surcharges. Also, you won't get hit with more than one on a package, but it's very important to know if it's over 50 pounds and greater than 48 inches, which one is it going to get hit with? For sure. Because you might design to hit to avoid one, but then you get hit with another. And another is if it's got straps on it, right? Say you designed it smaller and more compact. Hey, we're going to put these straps on here. So that'll take care of it. And you realize, hey, you eliminated those. But there's this fee called the additional handling packaging fee to where now that fee gets added.

[00:22:38] Jon Blair: We made that mistake at Guardian. I don't know if you remember that. I do, yeah. At one point, I believe the factory told us This is the other thing, the factory recommended we added the straps, and it had something to do with, it had something to do with pallet, or I mean, container loading, right? And a few other things. And so we listened to them. And then those got to you guys. And then we fulfilled those units. And we got tagged with that fee. And then all of a sudden, we're calling the factory and saying, get those straps off of there. Because like, Like whatever they charge us an additional fee to like load the container was cheaper than what FedEx was charging us for those straps. So, you know, I mean, some of it's live and learn. There's a lot to cover and there's a lot to know. Right. And so I'm not suggesting that any of you brands out there like. understand all of this to the T. I'm saying, make sure you have someone in your court and hopefully a 3PL who can really help you navigate these things. And like, they would be happy to review your packaging ahead of time because quite frankly, the 3PL doesn't want you to be upset. They want you to have great unit economics so that you can scale. And so both of your businesses can grow. Right. Um, so anyways, I know we kind of like went off a tangent, but carrier selection, what are some tips you have on like thinking through which carriers are better for, for different situations?

[00:23:57] Tony Runyan: Yeah, I mean, there's so many things to take into account. And I mean, you know, you can kind of go like this, this cheapest all route if you if you want, depending upon what your clients or your customers look for, right? Like if you have a customer who's very sensitive to transit times, that might change who you consider. But what I would say is we typically find, you know, FedEx and UPS For packages, if you're talking about a very lightweight package, there are so many, there's the minimum fee, then there's the residential fee, then there's the fuel surcharge, and all that stuff kind of stacks and adds on. Now, what they've done is they've began offering these economic type services like a SurePost, a SmartPost, some that use USPS and some that don't, but the key there is they use USPS, and the reason is, USPS isn't charging a residential delivery fee. So, the cost that you get there is all in. It's that fee plus fuel. So, what we do is we look at USPS, we look at Pitney Bowes or DHL, and then also some regional carriers even. who may be in a situation to negotiate even a little bit more. And so that kind of goes to the next point, which is having a 3PL that can help you dive into specific discounts can really be beneficial as well. Let's say that you just cannot uh, get your packaging down, you know, and it's still be quality to not hit an additional handling surcharge. Well, that's where it can really be beneficial to work with a partner to say, Hey, I've got to pay it. Uh, maybe I can get some sort of discount off of publish, which, uh, of course anybody can, can go and ask for it, but having volume, um, within a particular area makes that a lot more attractive for a carrier to discount it. And then that can be passed through to a brand as well. But to your point, we certainly look at typically for lighter weight packages, we kind of have certain shipping methods that we look at in certain carriers. And then as they get larger, of course, I mean, there are some carriers that won't even accept packages that are longer than 48 inches, right? Or that are more than 50 pounds, at which point it kind of narrows the scope of what you can consider.

[00:26:13] Jon Blair: Man, we're going to have to have you back on another time because I'm just looking at how much time we have left and like, you know, we're not going to get to everything in the next 25 minutes, but that's OK. So so there's a couple of things there that I want to that I want to dive into. Let's first go with like what I have learned over the years. And I think what we've talked about at this point is a good backdrop for the audience to understand this. What I've learned over the years is that like If you start thinking about if you want to start a brand or you're thinking about the next products that you want to bring to market for your brand, the holy grail is small and or light, higher price point, right? Heavy and or big, lower to medium price point. gets really hard. Why? Because shipping rates are driven by weight and size, right? And so if you have a low value product that is heavy and big, it's going to be really hard. It's actually one of the reasons why Beverage is really tough D2 C in my opinion because beverages are heavier. When you think about their weight compared to their size, they're heavy and they're low value. You're not selling a $100 beverage. The reason why things worked for us at Guardian bikes are heavy and big, but we had a high price point, right? It's hard, but we have a premium bike. We had a really high quality bike, safest kid's bike, direct to your door, can't flip over the handlebars because of our patented brake system. It's hard for mass market bike brands like Schwinn and Huffy, big and heavy, low price point. It's really hard for them to go D2C. That's an important takeaway for everyone listening to understand. If you're going to have a heavy, low price point product, B2B going through retail is probably your way to profitability because you can get economies of scale on shipping and fulfillment by either palletizing or even better, a lot of brands at the beginning, they use the actual retailer's shipping rates at the beginning and they just pass those through to you. And then it's a volume play because the retailer can order a lot of volume at once. This is a really important takeaway. There's a lot of brands who've made mistakes. And earlier in my career, I was naive and didn't understand this. A lot of brands who've made mistakes and not thought about this. And so, super important. Another thing is the strategic discounts, I'll call it. This plays into another question that I was thinking about when we were preparing. Not all 3PLs are made equal. I have my own opinions as to why they're not all made equal, but definitely one area is strategic discounts. Where is that 3PL focusing on negotiating their discounts? Before I ask this next question, I want to just set the stage for the audience. Here's the thing. Every brand that reaches scale, whether they self-fulfill or use a 3PL, part of their economies of scale and their improving profitability is 1000% through negotiating discounts with carriers. Every elite brand does that, right? Just getting a blanket discount across the board is a bad strategy unless you have products that are all across the board in terms of size and weight, right? But being very strategic on negotiating the right discounts is really important. And it's also important when you're going to choose a 3PL is understanding what has been their strategy for discount negotiation and where are their discounts concentrated? What kind of like advice or tips do you have about that subject, Tony?

[00:30:05] Tony Runyan: Yeah, no, I think it's a great point and one that we talk about frequently at RedStag because for us, when we started, our founders started, the product that they were shipping was heavier and more dense. So really, we kind of naturally started with carriers talking through, hey, what can you do for these heavier packages or larger packages? And what we found very quickly is like that is not the majority of the e-com space, right? When you think about an Amazon box or, you know, what, what is the, in terms of velocity of volume, it's 10 pound or less packages, right? Is what you see a lot of. So as a result of that, the majority of the 3PLs and partners that you see out there are going to have been negotiating a lot. a lot more aggressively on those lighter weight packages. And this is kind of, I'm not going to say it's a race to the bottom, but in reality, when you get down to where you're paying the minimum, right, for a service, you can negotiate even what's called the reduction to minimum. Like, hey, how much is a carrier willing to reduce that minimum amount to you for? You're still, you're working with nickels and dimes, right? Not dollars. And so what we have found is like a 3PL who says they do it all. It's probably not a very. accurate picture, or if they do, their rates are not going to be super aggressive across the board. They're going to have more, like you said, more of a flat rate across versus, hey, we've really focused on this area. So for RedStag, as we've grown, you know, we have definitely been originally in this heavier space. And then as what we found is naturally with heavier items came bulkier items. So this is where you hit the AHS or the oversized products. But just like with bicycles, you're going to have helmets, bells, pedals, accessories. So what we have found is that's where using alternate carriers can have an impact because I may go with, you know, one carrier and really negotiate oversize fees. And from there, we're able to filter and flow that oversize product through that carrier. But we want to be aggressive enough in the lightweight space to where you're able to ship an accessory or whatever the case. And I might use a different approach with a different carrier and target that. So then they win, the carrier wins that volume, this carrier wins that volume, and we both win in terms of the discounts. So there's definitely something to having a multi-carrier strategy in that piece as well, and not necessarily going, hey, This carrier gave me this. Can you match it? Hey, this carrier gave me this. Can you match it? Because at that point, you kind of get you do get into that race to the bottom. And at some point, they're gonna say, Where's this volume?

[00:33:03] Jon Blair: Yeah, for sure. I know that they'll give you a chance or two. And when you don't hit it, that's really hard to get back in their graces. Like I mean, you You lose your reputation and you lose your leverage with them. And there's only so many stories you can tell them about why the volume didn't come. So I totally agree with that strategy. I've come across a lot of 3PLs who who basically pitched that they are everything to everyone with those mass discounts across the board. And I'm always super skeptical because I know how it works. And I haven't really seen any carriers really be successful with that, quite frankly, or I mean, sorry, any three peels really be successful with that. Yeah. I mean, one other thing I want to mention, like this may go without saying for the people that listen to this podcast, but like One of the advantages to using a 3PL, especially in the early days, but this is going to actually segue into another question that I have for you, Tony, is like, you don't have the volume to negotiate really incredible rates, right? Like, but a 3PL does because they are able to consolidate the volume of a ton of different brands, right? And so they're able to, as a service, pass down a discount and a shipping rate you could never get on your own and still make a margin because 3Peels are in business as well, right? They got to make a margin. They can mark up their rate and you get a better rate, they make a margin, everybody wins, right? But there is obviously, and I know you deal with this all the time, Tony, there's obviously this allure of beginning to fulfill yourself at some point when you reach a certain volume because you're like, basically the theory, the general theory is I can cut out the middleman, which is the 3PL, right, and cut out their markup and their margin, and I can go get the, quote, negotiated wholesale rate myself, And yeah, I'm going to have to run a warehouse, but the savings that I'm going to get by cutting out the 3PL on the rates is going to more than offset the impact of start the fixed costs of operating a warehouse, right? Rent, the people, the equipment, all that kind of stuff. What are your thoughts or opinions on if and when self-fulfilling actually does become better for a brand? And what are your thoughts on how far can a brand really run with a 3PL?

[00:35:31] Tony Runyan: Yeah, that's again a great question. And one of those that's like, I'll give my standard answer and then also leave the the idea that it can be different for every brand, right? In a lot of ways. But like, I think what we see is really there tends to be, uh, like at the beginning phase of, uh, of an econ business, it may make sense to fulfill for yourself right at the beginning. Right. And while we say that is there could be, you're figuring out the packaging, you're trying to figure out what is it going to cost? Like if I ship these different sorts of boxes and you kind of get that understanding, you're able to do some very special, uh, individual touch and customizations to products, maybe when you're trying to build your customer base and get loyalty and create these experiences and that sort of thing. So I think like at the beginning, when your order is small, maybe low volatility and you want that customization, it makes sense. You might have to pay a little bit more on the shipping side as you kind of learn that. And then you kind of hit this point where, okay, now a 3PL makes sense, right? And I think our founders saw that same thing in their business. So as you do that, there are certain things you give up. For example, having someone walk out on the floor and, hey, these people order these three things and the system says to ship them separately, but I bet I can open this box and put something inside of that box. Well, some of that stuff can be programmed, but some of it, it's like, You don't have the expertise when you've got 300, 500, whoever, employees who are shipping for hundreds of different brands, right? So you kind of keep in mind, okay, there's going to be these experiences, which is why it might be even more important to tailor that stuff before it gets to the warehouse, right? As well as maybe you can do some special projects like kidding or something to do that stuff on the front end. And then to your point, That allows you to take advantage of the economies of scale of that 3PL, the shipping, but also it's on them to figure out the warehouse leases, the labor, handle the spikes in volume, and that sort of thing. And for sure, what we see is like this curve and there's like this sweet spot, right, where it works really great. And then, I mean, there's obviously a point at which you outgrow a 3PL. And I think depending upon the product category, like what you're doing within your industry and that sort of thing, those things can vary. But what I would say is, what you have to consider is, to your point, can you optimize for labor costs? Can you optimize for inbound and outbound costs? Like, can you optimize for transit times? Do you have someone who's an expert in real estate? Do you have in-house ops expertise? Do you have the capital? That's the other thing. You know, capital intense, it's a capital intensive business. If you need

[00:36:03] Tony Runyan: racking and you need to buy a pit equipment and you know, some of these other things that you've got to fund, can you do that and also buy enough inventory to keep your stuff in stock? Right. So there's going to be a capital aspect of that as well. And then just the matter of, do you want to deal with it? It's a headache. Like we know because we deal with it every day to deal with it. And it may be that you're big enough, you know, and that makes sense, but definitely an investment there. And a lot of factors go into it, but you're going to have to hit a certain velocity before it makes sense.

[00:39:09] Jon Blair: Yeah, and you know what, like, I mean, obviously, as a fractional CFO for D2C brands, like we see most brands use a 3PL, but we have a few that that self-fulfill and we get asked this question all the time. And I think of it the same way about as I do about in-house manufacturing, which is that it can represent a huge economies of scale and margin and profitability improvement. but you have to have volume. It's a volume play. Economies of scale, by definition, means like, you know, basically unit economic improvements that you get because of scale, right? And what I see, a mistake I see brands make is do it too early, is try to bring fulfillment and even manufacturing in-house too early. And generally, this is not a perfect answer it because there's a lot of nuance like Tony said as it relates to product category in each brand but like if you're not on your way to like 50 plus million in revenue and like probably like really setting yourself up to be a nine-figure brand it may not make sense to take over fulfillment. It doesn't mean that there isn't a place to take over fulfillment and it actually make profitability sense before 50 million, but generally speaking, you need to be doing at least that much revenue to really, really squeeze out the the value that you want out of it. And why? It's because there's a lot of fixed overhead or what is called operating leverage that you bring on to the business. And what operating leverage and high fixed costs do is it makes it harder to break even. You have to do more revenue to break even. That's the downside. The upside is once you pass your break even point, if you have excess capacity in those fixed costs, you start turning a massive profit after that. But if you keep growing, like Tony was saying, you are going to have to be able to source the next round of fixed overhead, which is labor resources, possibly bigger real estate, more equipment. And so you're kind of playing this stair step game where like, you know, you're not really that profitable because you brought on all these people. leases, equipment, and then you start scaling, and then you start turning a huge profit, but you keep growing, and you're like, man, I gotta get the next round of people, real estate, equipment, and you become very little, there's very little profit, but then you keep growing, and you start squeezing a ton of profit out of those assets, and so it's like, it's just a question, it's a different game. It's not a bad game or a good game, it's a different game, and so I always tell brands, like, listen, What are your goals? If you have goals and it looks like you can hit 100 million, yeah, at some point you're gonna need to bring this stuff in house, but be careful about doing it too early. And definitely make sure that you bring on some sort of a VP or leader who knows this stuff really well, who can put the systems, the processes, and recruit the people, because it is a whole, I know when Guardian went to self-fulfilling, which in my opinion, It made a lot of sense for Guardian once they hit a certain point, not just from a volume standpoint, but they had to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. for their brand. This is like they had to as a part of their strategy. And so it's hard to do your own manufacturing. and not impossible but but it's hard to do your own manufacturing and not also do the fulfillment if you're already going to acquire the real estate and bring all those people on board and put the systems in place right but um yeah but it is a huge effort it was a lot of work on guardian bikes to figure that out and they're still working on it every day and the company went from like 30 people to like There's like a hundred people at guardian bikes now. Right. And so it's, it's, it's just a different business and you've got to be ready to get into that different business, you know?

[00:43:04] Tony Runyan: And I don't want to leave out, there is the hybrid type, too, that we've seen, where someone has a 20,000-square-foot facility on their own. Maybe they're managing, but then they outsource that volume as well. And sometimes that can be a location-based benefit, where it's like they're on the East Coast and they can use a 3PL on the West Coast or vice versa, but it's also that partner can help handle some of the volatility and the spikes or even their growth into it while they're able to control some of the other parts of the experience in their own space.

[00:43:49] Jon Blair: Well, that was the perfect segue, I must say into fulfillment network optimization, which is the next thing I wanted to talk about. So, um, and yes, you're right. Like, like fulfillment, when you're talking about, uh, you know, optimizing your fulfillment network, meaning. Where are your fulfillment centers located and, and what, and I would say alongside that, what routes, what inbound freight routes are you taking? to get to that network. So it's not just, it's inbound plus outbound optimization, right? There definitely is a place for 3PL to aid in that, even if you have stuff in source. But let's just talk about the situation where you're using a 3PL exclusively, which is most of the brands that we work with. Fulfillment network optimization is a huge opportunity to improve profitability over time. But again, from my vantage point as a D2C focused fractional CFO, I see a lot of brands get too excited too early about this. It comes with As with basically everything else in the economy scale in fulfillment, there are huge opportunities, but if you do them wrong or if you execute them at the wrong time before you have enough volume, it can cause a lot of problems. So like what are the high level do's and don'ts or common mistakes that you kind of see out there when it comes to brands wanting to optimize into multiple FCs?

[00:45:10] Tony Runyan: Yeah, so the initial point is right there that you made, which is a lot of times there's like this excitement of, ooh, like seven locations, let's go, right? Yeah. And inventory management's hard. And it does it, especially if your product is coming from overseas where there's a huge lead time, right? That's a biggie. But even if it's coming domestically, making sure you have enough product in all the locations can be a huge beast to manage. And if you start, and for us, and this is what I'm more familiar with too, is if your products are more expensive, if they're larger, if they're bulkier and that sort of thing, then you also have to balance that with like, my inventory carrying costs. Now I need more of this expensive item to have somewhere and it costs even more if I stock out to ship it from the wrong location. So you definitely don't want to outpace your in-house expertise to manage the inventory. So that's that's one piece of it. And the other is is like what are your clients?But a couple things number one what what's the customer expectation right depending upon what you ship like if you're if you're shipping a cat fountain right or you're shipping socks or or it's something that's like a a medical-related thing that somebody needs, like if they're sick, they order it then, right? Okay, so the expectation there for the customer is going to be different, even though there's this overall two-day expectation built by Amazon, right? I think even with that, there's still this understanding with consumers' expectations, and COVID helped with this, where it's like, look, I get it. I ordered a bike, I ordered a chair, whatever it is. it takes three days to get there, that's not that big a deal. It's not like I needed it, right? And if I did, then there's this expedited shipping method that I can choose to get it there. So that's one thing to keep in mind is like, what is your customer expectation? Also, where is your customer? So like, we think about the product that you ship, and it's like, if you're shipping paddle boards, or if you're shipping something that's like used mostly in the wintertime in the Northeast, right? Or whatever it may be, The locations you choose could be different, right? It's not that important to have it maybe in some of these other areas. So you don't want to just do it because the overall U.S. distribution makes it look like it's the best place. You want to look at your specific customer data and say, oh, based on these things, it looks like these would be the best locations for us to ship. And the other thing is what we find, some e-com owners fall into is this idea of like, oh, having a warehouse at port. That's the way to go. And in some instances, it absolutely may be right. But think about like a California warehouse which may come with additional taxes, additional expenses, and that sort of thing. But you say, hey, I'm coming in from China to California. It's great. I can just get it sent straight over to this warehouse. I don't have to pay this fee. But what we like to look at is what we call the total cost of fulfillment. Because if you're looking at a container that comes in, and let's just say that it's got 500 items on it, and it costs you $1,000 more. to go from California to a state that's further inland, right? And so like on average, you're paying $2 more per unit to get it there. But what you find is because of your distribution of customers, you're able to save $2.50 on outbound costs, right? Whenever you ship it out. So now all of a sudden it's actually $0.50 cheaper to ship it inland. That's not always true, but it's something to look at. And a lot of times we have customers who might just look at one or the other instead of considering the entire picture. So those are a few of the things we see. 

[00:49:11] Jon Blair: Well, yeah. So I mean, really, when you're looking at fulfillment network optimization scenarios or potential decisions, what you should be looking for is the net cost impact of carrying costs, inbound freight, any freight transfers, and outbound. You can't just like, usually, usually, I mean, I think I would say actually always, in all the times I've ever analyzed this, whatever outbound savings you're gonna get by moving into multiple locations, you're always looking at that as kind of like, that's the gross benefit, and does that outweigh the cost of Carrying cost increases because you're going to have more minimum inventory levels you have to hold. Probably some inbound changes and you're going to have to forecast some amount of transfers or suboptimal shipments. It's the net of all of those things that really help you understand your profitability impact. One other thing I want to mention There's like this whole world of supply chain network optimization. You can hire really expensive consultants. They run all these fancy models. I'm not saying there's no value to those. We got lucky that we had Mr. Shane Strange on our team, who you know, and who was, it was a supply chain network optimization consultant before I brought him on board. And so most people don't get that. Those are all pictures of an ideal world, right? And we don't live in an ideal world. And so there is no such thing as optimal. It's closer to optimal, right? And it's the same thing when we build financial models for clients, like our financial model, when you look at the P&L projection, the balance sheet projection, cash flow projection, it's not meant to give you a perfect prediction of the future, right? It's meant to say if these variables turn out to be true. Here's what the output is going to look like. And we're always having to make some sort of, uh, we're gonna have to make some sort of judgmental, like adjustments to those models to account for the fact that we live in reality, not in an ideal world. So I just, I want to take that pressure off of founders. Like it's not a, you'll never be optimal. And as soon as you're optimal, your demand locations will change, something changes and you're gonna have to change again. So it's very much iterative. It's like, what's the best we can do today? And then let's analyze it on some regular basis. At Guardian, we used to analyze it quarterly, depends on the volume. and the volatility in your space, maybe annually is fine. It's more about revisiting it and just saying like, what incremental impact can we make? And if you keep making incremental impacts over time, you will find yourself getting economies of scale. And one other thing I wanna mention here too is just that like, going back to the, this is just kind of sum up a bunch of different things that we've been talking about into a single statement. When you're going out there and you're looking at four or three PL, It's not just about discounts, it's about where are the discounts, what are the service levels of the 3PL, and where are their locations. It's all of those things, right? And certainly there's other factors, but it's not just one dimensionally. This 3PL has a 69% discount, and this one has a 45% discount. You have to take into account, we actually went from a 3PL that had steeper discounts and moved to RedStag, which did not quite have as much steeper discounts, but we calculated the service level, the cost of products going out not on time and the wrong stuff being shipped, more than offset the fact that RedStag's discounts weren't quite as aggressive. And that's okay. It's the total cost of the relationship, right? That if there's one thing for everyone to like take away from today's episode, whether we're talking about how shipping rates work, talking about fulfillment network optimization, you're talking about, um, outsourced choosing a 3PL, it's the total net cost. Right. Um, of all of those things that you need to take into account. And so, um, I just want everyone to take that away from today's episode. Before we land the plane though, I always like to ask a personal question because at Free to Grow, the balance of personal and professional life is near and dear to my heart and it's a big part of our core values and guiding principles. You and I both share on the personal front, you know, as brothers in Christ, we're both Christians. We talk a lot about our faith and just how it shapes our personal life and our work life. And I just want to ask you for yourself, as a Christian, how has your faith shaped your personal and work life?

[00:53:59] Tony Runyan: Yeah, I mean, gosh, the short answer to that is in every way, right? And I think that, so for me, having the ability to have an impact that is eternal or overreaching and far beyond just what I do day-to-day in my life. If I can use my relationships that I build, whether that be at Red Stagger with our clients or in whatever whatever I'm doing as part of this to establish a longer standing relationship, to be able to share others the love of Christ and the kindness that we are shown as Christians with that. One incredible thing to do. And it's really easy, I think, to get caught up in the minutiae of day to day and what, you know, our jobs, right? And then to not be able to step back and look at, hey, it's about a lot more than that. So, you know, it's great to be able to have conversations with you and to check in, you know, regularly to help make sure we're keeping our eyes on that and focused on that when we have everything else going on around us.

[00:55:09] Jon Blair: Yeah, man. Hardest thing to do, but what a great joy. And I appreciate you more than you know on not just the work level, but on the personal level and on the spiritual level. So before we close up here, where can people find more information about RedStag?

[00:55:29] Tony Runyan: So I mean, going to redstagfulfillment.com is obviously a way to go. And honestly, reach out to me. You know, if you have questions specifically, you can just send an email to Tony@redstagfulfillment.com. And always happy to answer questions. I mean, we really like to be advisors, you know, and that may be us advising that we're not a good fit. That happens regularly and that's okay with us. I think ultimately like that we know that You don't want to force a fit, especially in a business like this, right? So we want it to be a place where it makes a lot of sense for both parties and we think it's going to be a long-term relationship where we both benefit.

[00:56:10] Jon Blair: Awesome, awesome. Definitely check them out. If you want more helpful tips on scaling a profit-focused D2C brand, consider following me, Jon Blair, on LinkedIn. If you're interested in learning more about how Free to Grow's DTC accountants and fractional CFOs can help your brand increase profit and cash flow as you scale, check us out at freetogrowcfo.com. Until next time, scale on.

The Common ERP Mistake Costing You Profit

Episode Summary

This week on the Free to Grow CFO Podcast, host Jon Blair, founder of Free to Grow CFO, welcomes Jared Ward, founder and CEO of Luminous. They dive into the complexities of inventory management, the importance of tracking COGS, and the pitfalls of traditional ERP systems. During their chat Jared shares his journey from launching e-commerce side hustles to leading a $20 million business, and now creating Luminous, a game-changing inventory management system (IMS) designed for modern DTC brands. Jared also shares his insights on the new wave of e-commerce brands, the limitations of traditional ERP systems, and how Luminous fills the gap for mid-market companies. This conversation covers practical advice for tracking landed COGS, integrating personal and professional life as a founder, and why effective inventory management is key to financial health and scalability.

Key Topics:

• Jared Ward's background and journey to founding Luminous

• Challenges of inventory management in scaling DTC brands

• Importance of precise inventory tracking and landed COGS

• Comparing traditional ERP systems and modern IMS solutions

• Integrating personal and professional life as an entrepreneur

Meet Jared Ward

Jared Ward started his first e-commerce company when he was 23. Back then, it was selling baby gates and barn door hardware across a couple Etsy shops and on Amazon. While continuing to grow his e-commerce business on the side he got a job as a sourcing manager at a distribution company to learn more about high level supply chain with major retailers (HSN, QVC, Walmart, etc.).

Years later, after helping countless DTC brand optimize their supply chain through running Made-in-China's sourcing division, Jared noticed major issues in the way e-commerce companies used software in operations. He built and sold an RFQ management system that helped DTC brands optimize their purchasing. Then, he moved on and became a CEO of a DTC brand at 28. His experience running Qualtry showed even more the gap in the market of software solutions in e-commerce that address the entire supply chain.

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

Jared Ward - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jared-luminous/

Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/

Luminous - https://www.joinluminous.com/

Transcript

~~~

00:00 Welcome and Introduction to Jared Ward

02:29 Jared's Background and Experience

03:34 Challenges in Inventory Management

08:46 The Role of Inventory Management Systems (IMS)

17:01 Modern E-commerce and Outsourced Operations

21:35 Traditional ERP Systems vs. Modern Needs

26:52 The Tech Gap in ERP Systems

27:08 Challenges with Big ERP Systems

30:01 Evaluating ERP Systems: A Personal Experience

36:43 The Importance of Landed COGS

47:33 Integrating Work and Personal Life

52:20 Final Thoughts

[00:00:00] Jon Blair: All right. Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast, where if you listen to us, you know, we're diving deep into conversations about scaling a DTC brand with a profit focused mindset. I'm your host, Jon Blair. Founder of Free to Grow CFO. And today I got my good buddy, Jared Ward, founder and CEO of Luminous on the show.

What's up, Jared? What's up, Jon? How's it going, man? Oh, not too bad. Not too bad. Just, uh, trying to beat this ridiculous heat in, uh, in Austin. Has it started out there in Salt Lake yet?

[00:00:33] Jared Ward: It's, it's in the nineties. We went from like, we didn't even have the spring. It went from like 60, seventies straight to the nineties.

[00:00:39] Jon Blair: Yeah. Yeah. My AC is getting a good workout, but, um, well, dude, I'm super stoked to have you on the show. Um, this has been a long time coming since I was on the ops unfiltered podcast for like, I mean, it was several months ago and, um, What I really want to dive into today is this concept of how do you manage inventory and cost of goods sold as you scale a brand.

We as fractional CFOs, right, we are working with two dozen plus scaling DTC brands who are always struggling with managing their profit and cash flow. And what are some of the biggest components of that? Inventory, right? Driving either good or bad cash conversion cycle and landed cost driving either good or bad gross margins.

And as, as everyone knows in the DTC world, when you're scaling a DTC brand, if you have low gross margins, that means you have less available for customer acquisition. If you've got high gross margins, you've got more available for customer acquisition. And the reality is the brands that we work with in the lower to middle market, five to 65, maybe 75 million a year in revenue.

A lot of them are running inventory on spreadsheets, right? Um, and I mean, I'll be honest with you. I've even worked with a few nine figure brands that are running inventory on spreadsheets. That's inventory planning. That's inventory costing. That's even tracking what's on hand. And the reality is as you start scaling your brand.

Tracking those numbers, getting them precise, and really understanding the drivers of said figures becomes more and more important to the financial health of your brand. So I couldn't think of a better person than you to be chatting with to kind of set the groundwork for where you come from and what you're doing and why, you know, in my opinion, you're an authority.

On this particular, uh, topic, why don't you run the audience through your background and your journey leading up to launching Luminous?

[00:02:38] Jared Ward: Yeah, for sure. Thanks, man. I agree. I mean, it's such an interesting problem. Um, inventory management is so underrated in e commerce operations. And in these people's minds, um, I, I have some theories as to why, but real fast, my background, my background is in supply chain and e commerce.

So I've been launching products or like doing e commerce side hustles ever since I dropped out of college. So that's everything from selling on Etsy, Amazon. Shopify store, um, launching products for, for other businesses or my own. Um, and where I was most acquainted with the problem was when I was CEO of a 20 million e commerce business, we were, we were multichannel, we did light manufacturing, thousands of SKUs, just a lot of complexity on the side of inventory and supply chain.

So that's where I really felt that problem. And yeah, it's what I would say about the inventory problem is so many people are, it's like they're imagine back in the day when you're trying to navigate, when Columbus was trying to navigate to the Americas and he was trying to navigate without a compass, that is, that is what it's like to be a brand, in my opinion, about like two or 3 million in revenue.

So like you've gotten product market fit. It's cool. Like if you haven't gotten product market fit, then the goal is to stay alive. 100%. Do your inventory on spreadsheets. I agree. But you get to a certain point where it's like, you are literally steering a boat without a compass. Your inventory management system is the data that literally tells you how much you have in stock, how much is incoming, how much is allocated.

And therefore that, that can give you real time decisions on, Oh, how much should I buy? Um, there are real stakes to not nailing down your inventory. And I think most operators aren't acquainted enough with those stakes and that that's the issue that you run into.

[00:04:49] Jon Blair: Yeah, that's really interesting. So you founded Luminous born out of a problem that you experienced firsthand as an operator, you realized as an operator, how high the stakes really are in nailing your inventory.

And in, in, in my opinion, Inventory from an accounting perspective, cost of goods sold is just the other side of the general ledger transaction, right? Inventory and COGS are one in the same. And in my opinion, they're just, they, they're recognized in two different, two different times, but nailing those things is critical.

When you were operating that brand as CEO, or even in some of your e com side hustles, like what were some of the things that you saw that just like, ingrained this deeply seated belief that like brands need to nail inventory operations.

[00:05:38] Jared Ward: Cause I was, I was, I was one of those operators that like we had product market fit and we were 15, 20 million in revenue.

What, what happens is at least in my experience, what I've seen across the market and what I've experienced myself is you find yourself operating an eight figure brand on ship station. And Google sheets and QuickBooks and so what was happening, particularly when, when Qualtree, we were, we were true omni channel.

So we had a wholesale arm of our business, we sold on Etsy, Amazon, Shopify, we had multiple brands on Shopify. So this idea of like data mapping and allocation of inventory, it's exponentially more complicated across seven channels. And then when you add whole stuff to the mix, it's done. Um, and it, you brought up COGS like, Oh my God.

Most, myself included, most operators, you're just, you're locking purchasers on Google sheet. Like, you don't even, I don't care what COGS are. Oh, that's just the thing that Jon Blair in my monthly meetings, he's like slapping my wrist on, like put the damn POs in the system. And I'm just like, but why? Uh, so yeah, no, I.

I think once, once operators have had enough, Oh, shit moment, like, okay. Two prop, there's two main problems that, that we're really trying to address at Luminous. Number one is the tech prop. Like there's a tech landscape problem. I have empathy for the operators because, um, they just, there's nothing. It doesn't feel like there's anything better than ship station and Google sheets and maybe like a basic IMS inventory management system out there.

It's like that or next week. That's what it feels like. Um, so I have, so that's number one, there's a tech problem. Like there's a gap, no, nobody's filling that mid market, like as the market leader, the go to. And then the second problem I would say is just operators are like cowboy businessmen and women.

Like they only, for example, they only learn. Landed costs and. The value of keeping track of COGS and the inventory management system. Once they have a really bad contribution margin report, looking back in retrospect, Whoa, I was unprofitable on Amazon. What, how did that happen? Oh, and then you start factoring, Oh, it's cause container costs were 12, 000 and I was doing this and I wasn't tracking my row.

Wow. Okay. I was unprofitable there. So once you have enough of those, Oh shit moments as an operator, then you'll, you'll, you'll naturally learn like you oversell for the first time or you undersell. It's like, wow, we could have sold an extra million dollars. Once you have enough of those, then, then, then you naturally see, okay, there is value in inventory management.

[00:08:46] Jon Blair: Yeah. It's funny, like managing your operations from an inventory and cog standpoint is a burden until it becomes the driver of a major problem. And then it's no longer a burden. It's like, no, no, we will do this right. We will be proactive on doing this right. And, and the reality is like, let's just like take a step back really quick.

Yeah. An e commerce brand is a consumer goods business. The consumer good is their inventory. They are an inventory business, right? Like, let's just like break it down from first principle standpoint, if you're a DTC brand or, or an omni channel, like brand that has a heavy econ presence, you are a product business, which means you are in the inventory business.

And so like. Yeah, you're also a brand, so you're a marketing business. You've got to be really great at marketing. But when you start seeing the, uh, this is what we see when brands are scaling, they start figuring marketing out and they start crushing it. And generally speaking, the founders that we work with, and I think you probably see this a lot because we're in the same space, the founders are product and or marketing like led people.

That's what they're passionate about. That's what got them into business in the first place. Exactly. It makes sense. the product, they figure out how to market it because they knew who they were talking to and who they were selling to. But when that starts working, what starts happening? Oh man, we better have the inventory.

Right. And, and you start realizing there is this very, very delicate and important connection between the two, because. They feed off of each other. You stock out, dude, all your, your Facebook ads lose momentum, your Amazon listings lose momentum, and you worked your butt off for months or years to be at the top of those rankings, and then overnight, it feels like you can just lose momentum.

And it's like, man, trying to get back to where you were once you're back in stock is really challenging. And so, like, there's a huge cost, right? But on the flip side, If you hold way too much inventory, you have no cash, right? All. And you may have profit on the PNL, which is everything, right? Like if you may have profit on the PNL, but no cash in the bank.

And you know, as I always say all over the place in my content, profit doesn't matter. Profit. And cashflow together matter. And so like, uh, man, you just talked about like five or six things that I just noted that we could dive into, but I want to, I want to circle back to a couple of things in particular.

One IMS. So like the DTC world is laden with what acronyms, ROAS, MER, IMS. Right. I, IMS is one that I bring up a lot MRP. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I get the list goes on. Um, and depending on who you talk to, they give you different definitions of those things. But I'll bring up IMS to prospects and to clients and they're like, what is an IMS?

So actually I want to go back to basics. What's an IMS? And not just what the definition is, but what's included in an IMS from a functionality standpoint.

[00:11:51] Jared Ward: Yeah. So an inventory management system, um, inventory management system is, um, You have your product repository, first of all, I'll, I'll say for e commerce companies, like the basics for an e commerce company, like Omnichannel.

So number one, you have a product repository. So this is, it's, it's really your single source of truth with products. And that repository is going to be pushing or pulling from all of your channels. So like I have this SKU that I'm selling and I'm selling it to Shopify on Amazon on Etsy. So my IMS is going to house that product.

And it's going to map it to all of those selling channels. Um, then what you're, you're going to have your incoming on hand, pending or allocated and available. And I would say one more thing on top of that is it tracks. Your cost of goods sold. So it lets you know, one, one, very, very

[00:12:56] Jon Blair: small, one, very small thing, right?

Oh, and it tracks your cost of goods sold. That was an accounting joke, by the way, of everyone. Yeah,

[00:13:07] Jared Ward: it's going to track your cost of goods sold. If it's really good, it's going to be able to track landed costs and it's going to be able to allocate, you know, the, the way you do purchasing overseas, it's going to be able to allocate those variable costs into the product.

But, um, Yeah, at the most basic level, how much is available for my channels? What does it cost? What is the cost of goods that I'm selling?

[00:13:33] Jon Blair: So here's the thing. This may sound basic, right? What Jared is walking through. And obviously, this is the blocking and tackling. This is the fundamentals of inventory management.

But then you layer in, like Jared is talking about, multiple sales channels. Even this light manufacturing, which we'll talk about in a second. So, um, and my definition of light manufacturing is like assembly, right? Like some, some assembly or kidding, some form of that, um, kind of where you, you're stocking certain skews.

At a component level or a sub assembly level, but you're selling them at an assembly level. So you're having to, you're having to assemble them. So this is the transformation of actual skew and quantity on hand by skew. So you have now, we're, we're talking like you're tracking what's on hand, what's on order, what's available, but now you have Shopify, Amazon.

Maybe you have some other marketplaces you sell through. Maybe you have some wholesale. And then you also have components on hand, but then also efficient finished goods. So when you start thinking about all those variables, it's all, it's exponentially more complicated, right? What are some of the traps or the issues that you see when there's a brand that's set up like that and trying to deal with that complexity and they don't have an IMS?

[00:14:52] Jared Ward: Well, I, I see brands, it's, it's actually an important question. What is an IMS? And I think so many brands don't conceptualize this. And here's, here's why we get this request all the time. Hey, Jared, once Luminous is fully implemented, can you, can you push COGS to Shopify or can you, uh, can we keep just writing purchase orders on Shopify?

Um, and the question I have there is like, why would you use, why do you want Luminous? Then, um, we are an inventory management system. If COGS aren't going to be tracked and pushed to your accounting system of record, I honestly don't understand why it's, it's an unnecessary step. Um, it doesn't make, but we get that all the time.

So I think people confuse inventory man, like they, they leave out parts. So specifically what, what touches inventory management? Well, purchasing. Like you'll, a good IMS will have good purchase order management. Um, and you'll be able to split off your shipments and calculate landed costs in there. Um, it all, it should be able to connect in my opinion, modern day e commerce companies, a good IMS should be willing to connect into your 3PL.

So you can have live visibility. Like that's my opinion. What a good IMS should do for e commerce companies. And you don't want to Jerry rig and like have some of it here and some of it in QuickBooks, but most of them Luminous. Like, no, your IMS is your system of record. And generally speaking, you're actually just kind of pushing journal entries.

QuickBooks or your accounting system of record.

[00:16:40] Jon Blair: Okay. So there's something I just thought of right now, which is, uh, and Jared and I, by the way, I've had many nerdy conversations offline about, um, about all of this stuff. In fact, I'm, I'm an advisor to the company because I believe so much in what they're doing.

Um, but something just dawned on me that we haven't talked about before. We talk about the IMS for the modern e commerce omni channel e commerce brand, something just a light bulb went off about one thing that you guys are doing over there at Luminous. And I think this is going to actually segue nicely into a conversation about ERP.

I have a lot of experience with traditional ERP systems because before my e comm days, I come from a manufacturing background. I ran finance and accounting at, um, pretty like, uh, companies that had pretty robust. Actually, very robust manufacturing operations and traditional E. R. P. Systems in in that kind of a context.

They're meant for managing on site operations, right? Um, on site. transformations of raw materials to sub assemblies and and finished goods assemblies on site, labor allocations on site fulfillment. The modern e commerce brand in a multi or in a, in a omni channel setting may have some onsite operations, but actually a lot of it is outsourced, right?

So contract manufacturing is outsourced, maybe Comet, like you maybe have a co packer where you're, uh, You have, you have a raw materials and components on site and they're doing the transformation to finish goods. You've got three PLS like you're talking about. You have marketplaces that you're selling on.

And so when you take a modern or sorry, an old school or traditional ERP system that, that was, was really designed to, uh, control inventory and inventory operations on site, and you try to apply that to this modern omni channel e com brand, where really you need to connect into all these disparate systems where these transactions are taking place.

Bring them in to Luminous as your single source of truth and even push some stuff back out to them. That's a different tech ecosystem, right? And this just dawned on me while we were chatting right now. Talk me through that a little bit and how you guys view, how you guys have seen that gap that's, that's not being handled by like traditional ERP systems.

[00:19:09] Jared Ward: I mean, dude, you nailed it. Traditional ERPs were built to take all this on site in house. So if I, for example, we see this quite a bit. If I want to use Dynamics 365 as my system of record and, um, but I have a co packer or a co manufacturer who's producing the goods, basically I'm like running Assembly orders.

And I'm doing all this stuff like on behalf of the, it's getting done in two systems. Dynamics 365 was not architected to be able to plug into this for the, and then plug in the ship station for your fulfillment and deplete from there. And then, um, It doesn't do that, um, with high levels of customization.

Maybe it can, um, after a lot of expense, very, very

[00:20:00] Jon Blair: expensive, high levels of customization that take a really long time to

[00:20:05] Jared Ward: exactly. So what Loomis is doing, we have a belief that. We're, we're, we have to be connected to our ecosystem. So we, we, we take a look at the brands that we're servicing. Um, and I'm actually curious your thought on this.

So many brands, because they use a 3PL or a co manufacturer, they, they don't think they need an inventory management system. We obviously disagree. I think the market is just right. For an inventory management system that can plug into all of these WMS is on the market. So I can plug into your three field.

If you have a West coast and the East coast three field, I would argue you need an inventory system more than most brands. Um, so Luminous goes the route of, we will, we see it as our duty to plug into any WMS on the market. So we are architected to plug in and pull sales order data, but also push pull inventory data.

And then we can also push it to all of your different channels. So like a really common use case is I have a West coast and the East coast 3PL. So Luminous sits on top. We connect to both of those. Um, it's very common that, um, we will have to push wholesale sales orders to those 3PLs. So Luminous comes front of line.

We're pulling a lot of stuff, but in some scenarios we are pushing wholesale, wholesale orders to, to those 3PLs.

[00:21:34] Jon Blair: Yeah, it. It's um, this actually segway is going to segue nicely into something else that you and I talk about a lot, which is this new wave of e commerce brands. Right. But backing up to what, what you were just mentioning, I think because the modern day e comm brand has so much stuff outsourced.

There is a physical and geographical, um, you know, separation between the operations of the business being manufacturing and fulfillment, like the site, the onsite activities of those things happening. There's a separation between most brands and that happening. Whereas like back in the day, again, when I was working in a manufacturing environment, I stepped through a door and I was in a machine shop or I stepped through the door and I was in a plating shop.

That stuff was happening on site, right? Um, using outsourced 3PL, outsourced manufacturing, even though those inventory, uh, transactions are happening somewhere else. Once you get to a certain scale and a certain level of complexity, you do still need a, like, like Jared is saying, a system of record that you own that, that actually, um, you know, records those transactions because you need to do things with that data that's really important.

to your financial and operational health. And now, um, I think that it's become somewhat of a lost art from my opinion to want to do that just by virtue of like most brands not ever having to have stepped foot into a warehouse and design how the fulfillment flow works or like, like what, what, like from my perspective, man, the reason why I have a very unique perspective on inventory control is because like I was sitting out there with warehouse guys.

10 years ago, just deciding how we put stuff away in certain locations, right? Like to increase efficiency or, well, dude, you're the unicorn stage.

[00:23:34] Jared Ward: Yeah. And you are the unicorn. You, you have operations and financial background and ERP experience and down marketable experience. It's like,

[00:23:42] Jon Blair: well, and so it's, but what's, what's interesting is what.

You actually coined this term for me is like the new wave of e commerce brands. We talked about this when I was on your podcast, which is that like the new wave of e com brands is this like scrappy, um, very overhead light brand, right? Like you get to product market fit. Super scrappy doing everything on spreadsheets.

The founder is doing a ton of stuff themselves, right? Like, and I even talked with my buddy, Will Holtz a couple of weeks ago and he on the show and he had a Shopify brand aggregator and what he found when he went to go roll up, like purchase a bunch of these Shopify brands several years ago, he found it was hard to remove the founder.

Why? Cause the founder was doing accounting stuff, marketing stuff, product stuff, you know, inventory planning, the new wave of Vcom brands, right? Like they're super, super overhead light, meaning what they outsource a lot of stuff. They outsource financing and accounting to firms like Free to Grow CFO. They, they outsource fulfillment to three PLS.

They outsource manufacturing to, you know, um, overseas. Co manufacturers, so they're removed from those transactions. So they don't internalize the importance of tracking them and understanding them and using them to their benefit. And so I, I, I 100 percent see the same thing. Um, and so there's like, there's kind of like a double edged sword to this whole, like running the lean and mean e comm brand of today.

It's, what, what's, what I find fascinating is the number of brands I find that get to 10 million in revenue. And, and profitable and just like no one on the team, it is impressive, but on the downside, there is a separation for a lot of them between like how their product gets made and how it gets fulfilled in reality versus what they think is happening, you know?

And so it is, I find it very interesting. I do want to like, Actually, like, turn our conversation back to the ERP thing a little bit more. I'm seeing more and more brands come off of the NetSuites of the world, the Acumatica's of the world

They started growing into eight figures, healthy eight figures in revenue, they were experiencing those pain points you were talking about when you're, when you're walking through your experience as an operator and they're like, I've got to get off the spreadsheet.

So they're bought in. QuickBooks, App Marketplace, the inventory plugins, like the legacy ones that are out there, Fishbowl, and there's SOS Inventory, and there's a couple other ones. I'm just gonna say it, I'm sorry, they all suck. They all suck. And um, it, but, so then you start feeling compelled. To look at NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365, uh, Acumatica, I'm seeing more and more brands who took that leap, got there, and they actually either never got the implementation fully off the ground, right?

Like, years later. Or they did and it's so overkill and every time they want to change something, they have to hire a consultant to come in and do it for hundreds of dollars an hour. And it still never quite does what they want it to do. And they end up retreating back to QuickBooks and spreadsheets. Are you seeing the same thing?

And what other insights do you have into that trend?

[00:26:57] Jared Ward: Absolutely. And that's, that's the number one thing that I talked about at the beginning, the tech gap. So I have empathy for founders who run into this. And yes, it happens all the time. And it's because think about it from this perspective, when you're ready to make the leap as an operator to an ERP or to just to an inventory system, you're looking around, it's like Fishbowl, SOS, maybe you try out SIN 7 and it doesn't work for you.

Um, when you, these are enterprise sales. So if I, if I hop on the phone with NetSuite, Acumatica, Dynamics 365. I'm not, I can't poke around on there. I'm just getting feature sold and technique. And that's the problem. If I hop on the phone with a NetSuite rep, technically they can do anything, literally anything.

And so you're sold on a, like any brand over nine figures, it's on NetSuite. Like this is the way to scale. Oh yeah. Literally that list of requirements. We can do all of it plus more and what they don't understand is, yeah, that's true, but when you get into the system, they, they underestimated how much is going to have to be customized because there's a fundamental difference between who NetSuite was built for.

And then this, what'd you said? Over overhead light or over light.

[00:28:30] Jon Blair: Yeah, no super overhead lights, scrappy new, you know, new age E comm brand. Right.

[00:28:36] Jared Ward: Yeah. And a great example is purchasing in that suite versus purchasing, like in QuickBooks, for example, so you you're going to a system that it's default is.

Like a hundred step process. I'm exaggerating, but like, let's, let's call it an eight step purchasing process. And so, yes, they can do everything, but now your purchaser, Oh, who by the way, is also like doing seven other things in your business, Is like lost in the interface of NetSuite and now apply that to every other role.

The e commerce company, it just feels too big. These big ERPs, they feel too big. Um, so the way Luminous sees the market is how we're building every single module, every single experiences. It's for that modern e commerce company who they have a purchaser. Who's. Doing a lot of things like they're doing the demand planning there.

They don't have a sourcing team. They don't have a team for contracts. They don't have a assistant buyer. Well, they might, but I mean, it's normally just one guy or girl doing everything. Same with your warehouse manager. Um, so we, we, we tailor those experiences for that, with that in mind.

[00:30:01] Jon Blair: Yeah, um, I've been through, uh, firsthand a NetSuite, um, well, we'll just call it a traditional ERP.

evaluation process. And, um, it was super overwhelming. It took me six months just to evaluate Dynamics 365, Acumatica, and NetSuite.

[00:30:24] Jared Ward: Six months? No way. Yeah, because I, well, because

[00:30:27] Jon Blair: I was taking so, I was, like you mentioned, All three of them. There's no such thing as a demo account or a free trial or anything like that.

Or, or if you want to see a demo, you have to like schedule a call with a sales engineer, it's usually like two weeks out. It's not like they can get on one tomorrow. And they, they try to ask you all these questions to make it fully customized and make it look like what you're like your company. And it's always misses the mark.

And, and then once you look at it, you can't go back in there and Mess around with anything. It's it's, they're always trying to push you to the next process of, of the sales cycle or like the next step. And like, I S I just, I spent a ton of time asking them just a ridiculous amount of questions, but mostly cause I had used Epicor ERP before.

And so I had a sense of what these things could do. And I was just like, I want to see what we're getting ourselves into. Cause these all have huge price tags, right? And the interesting thing is, there's this new tactic they're all using, which I get, like, one of the classic objections is, Hey, I heard that the implementation my buddy did, You guys told me it was going to cost 30k and it ended up costing 100k, right?

And they're like, oh, it's a fixed bid implementation, right? Where it's fixed bid, it's not hour and time, you know, time and materials, like. And the problem was, we ended up going with NetSuite, which we went with their, uh, They sell this new version quote of NetSuite that's supposed to be like this tailored down version and the reality was that, um, crazy enough like at six months later they got it implemented.

I actually left the company and started Free to Grow mid implementation. I caught up with Brian, the CEO last week at Guardian and they got off NetSuite and they're back on QuickBooks and Spreadsheets and they're trying to figure out, they're trying to figure out what they do next. And they manufacture, they have their own factory up in Indiana.

[00:32:27] Jared Ward: I think it's so important though. Why did you end up choosing NetSuite? Cause yeah, what I've seen, I'm curious to hear what you say is it's just because They're the big, like, they're the guys that they are. They're the established ERP brand. And I think what we're feeling, the repercussions of a big legacy ERP going down market, and then we're really feeling the gap in the market.

And now the mid market is hungry for, okay, well, that's not it. What else can we have?

[00:33:05] Jon Blair: Yeah. You know what, man, I learned a valuable lesson. Um, And, and it's funny cause I had ERP experience. So you would think that maybe I was not going to be susceptible to making that mistake. And we did. Right. And, uh, well, first off there wasn't, there was even less.

[00:33:22] Jared Ward: No,

[00:33:24] Jon Blair: I think, I think it's a logical conclusion. It was to me, it was a logical conclusion given the options we had five years ago. Right. Like, and, and, um, I mean, I wish a Luminous was around. That's why when we met, I was like, man. Cause I was like, this is, this is what I, I wish that I had gotten guardian bikes on several years ago.

Right. But like, The reason we went with it is because they did a really good job of selling us on the fact that like, they had created a simpler version of this legacy, super intense ERP system, and that it was gonna grow with us, right? Um, and so, And what I learned, though, most valuably from an operations standpoint was we were gearing up to become a light manufacturer.

Light manufacturing meaning assembly, right? And I learned that NetSuite, in my opinion, is overkill if you're just kidding, doing kidding and assembly. Um, Where the background I come from, uh, using Epicore ERP, which was absolutely a bad ass system for what we're doing is complex manufacturing. We had multiple operations in machine shops and plating shops, brass foundry, like crazy stuff, right?

And we had to manage work centers and the flow of goods that had been picked and were on the floor way different than just picking kidding or assembling something into a new skew. Right? And so I what I realize is, unless you're doing complex manufacturing, You've got to go with something simpler and more cost effective, um, than, than one of these legacy ERPs or else you're just going to end up pulling your hair out after you spend all the money that you're spending customizing it and it still doesn't do what you need it to do.

[00:35:19] Jared Ward: Wow. I think the market is hungry for the NetSuite. But I think, I think NetSuite had a false, how do I say it, like a false, they had like a false rise. Yeah. As far as like the go to and, you know, fast forward five years of them going down market, I think the market is now primed and ready for a solution like Luminous, um, and, It's, and it's, it's going to be, it's still going to be a long road.

I mean, Brendan and I say this all the time. What's the difference because we look at, we look at all the competitors in our space and it's, it's, uh, it's a graveyard or it's, or it's like people who've had really positive exits. But the number one thing is. You just have to keep building. Why, why isn't that sweet?

The go to well, they start out with a hundred million dollars and they've been building for 25 years. So Brendan, my co founder and I, we say this all the time. Like we're in this for the next 10, 20 years. We're not, I'm not going to get bought out. It's not going to happen. Like I'm, I'm building for the next 20 years.

[00:36:39] Jon Blair: I love that. I love that. Um, alright, I want to chat. Landed COGS now. Um, LA landed. Cost of goods sold. Uh, this is a topic that Jared and I really hit it off on when we first met when I was on his podcast. Sounds so dumb. I know.

[00:36:55] Jared Ward: We really hit it off. Talking about, yeah. Really hit off

[00:36:57] Jon Blair: talking about landed COGS.

Man. We knew we were gonna be friends for life. Um, it's funny that the nerdy conversations that happen in and around this business, it's, uh, it's what keeps me going, man. Um, but okay, Landed COGS, every brand we work with, an encounter in our, as we're prospecting and talking to, you know, potential new clients, almost, I mean, 99 percent of them on our first conversation, Let us know that they are pulling their hair out, trying to track their landed cost of goods sold.

Why is it so important? It's so important because it is one of the biggest costs that go into gross margin and ultimately contribution margin. It is a huge driver of not only just profitability in general, but how much do you have available to spend on what customer acquisition, which is incredibly important in an E com business model, right?

Landed COGS get super complicated. Because of a lot of different factors, but Jared, you being front and center in the market, that's helping solve the problem of tracking landed COGS. Like what are some of the big pain points or complexities or challenges that you see time and time again with the brands that you guys work with at Luminous?

[00:38:15] Jared Ward: Yeah. So first off, even legacy ERPs, and I've yet to meet a brand on a legacy ERP with all the functionality of the world that tracks landed costs within the system. They do it on spreadsheets and they're so with, with Luminous actually with a lot of advice from you and some other accountants, um, and then, and then merged with like my, my operation background, what we came up with is, uh, just barely launched by the way.

Um, you can, you write, basically you need a really flexible purchasing flow where you can split off shipments really easy and then add your variable costs to that cost layer and in a really easy to use way. So what we do is we just allow for very flexible purchasing. And then it's so common that this is why I think it's really hard to track land of cost.

It's because. If, if I'm, if I'm purchasing like a thousand of this skew for my manufacturer, what's very common in e commerce because they're normally just flying by the seat of their pants and they, like, we need some of those units here right now, they'll, the manufacturer, they'll get into a habit of partial shipments.

And so the manufacturer will reach out to me. Hey, Jared, we finished the first 300 units. Would you like me to ship those out? Oh, also on PO 26 and PO 62, we finished 200 units of this and a hundred units of this. Yeah. Bundle those together. Let's ship them over. In fact, the next hundred let's air those over so we can give them to Amazon.

Like. That shit starts happening. And it's so common. And there, a lot of times there's not a good flow for that. And this is where we've gotten some good advice from you. Um, we allow those actions really easy, easily and Luminous. And then our cost layers take into account like tariffs or duties, whatever those variable costs are, and they're, they're either allocated at a quantity basis.

Or they're allocated at a volume basis. So the reason why I think this matters, to do it in the system is we thought at Qual Tree, our margins on the skew were 60%. And they were like 15%. And it's because we weren't allocating the land to cost properly. So we. It's like the difference between, Oh yeah, man.

It's like a, it's like two 40 per SKU. So yeah, we're at like 60 percent margins. Then you actually add in, then you get the bill for, for your tariffs and your, and your shipping and you're like, It's my land. It costs is actually like 6 and 30 cents. We've been selling this thing at near a loss or break.

Yeah,

[00:41:17] Jon Blair: well, yeah. And then, I mean, then you look at your, uh, freight out and fulfillment costs, your credit card fees. If you're, if it's in a e comm, um, You know, sales channel. And then you look at your marketing spend and you're like, you probably were making, you probably had a loss from a contribution margin standpoint, but there's a couple of things you touched on there.

So like to back up and just kind of summarize for the audience, what Jared is talking about is that your, your landed cost is not just the manufacturer supplier invoice costs, right? It includes freight and duties. And if you allocate those incorrectly using the wrong methodology, or, or you Using the wrong methodology or the wrong timing, you may vastly underestimate your landed cost, meaning that you're going to overestimate your, your margin and you can run into some, some really big trouble.

When you talk about the difference between allocating, Uh, duties and freight based on quantity versus, uh, volume. That's a really important consideration because you have some products that are large and low value or small and high value, right? And if, and if, if the, the, the shipping method that you're using really is, is.

More driven on volume than it is on like the actual quantity. When you have it, we have a shipment of like, like kind product, similar size, similar weight, you can use quantity generally speaking. And you're, and you're okay because you're shipping a homogenous kind of like set of goods. But if there's big variation.

You've got to consider going like volume based or else you could end up under or over allocating cost to a skew. And based on the sales price value of that, whether it's high or low, you can have a huge distortion in your margin. Like, and I've, I've seen brands get into A lot of trouble there. Do you have any advice on like how to think about that kind of stuff?

[00:43:17] Jared Ward: Yeah. So I would say, I mean, first off, you, you need a system of record. Um, again, it goes back to this product repository. Um, even just making sure that you're tracking all of these transactions, even, even just in a Google sheet, like I always tell people to at least just start with a Google sheet. Um, I personally would recommend.

Allocating these variable costs, um, through volume, um, through dimensions. It's, it's more difficult, but it can be done. And if you don't have a system that can do it right now, then do it on, do on Excel. There's, there's so many, actually, there's a lot of free Google sheet templates out there that will show you how to do this, obviously with chat GPT nowadays.

Um, yeah, I would strongly recommend tracking all these things, even if you're tracking in retrospect, like. You will uncover something that you didn't know. Like I promise you it's, if you do this, it will flag a skew. Um, sometimes in the bad way, sometimes in the good way. Sometimes you're like, Oh, wow. Yeah.

We're really profitable on that actually. And that's moving most of our business. Um, it's also probably going to flag a couple of skews where you're like, wow, we are breaking even or unprofitable on this. Yeah. Um, so it will illuminate your eyes in some way if you do. If you

[00:44:45] Jon Blair: allocate based on volume, so, um, another thing you mentioned is the partial shipment thing.

It's like tracking partial shipments gets really messy. And even, even worse, or even harder is if it's partial shipments off multiple POs that are getting bundled into a single shipment, right? So you've got duties and freight. That effectively spans across multiple partial shipments of multiple POs. And so when you, at the very beginning, like Guardian, when we were just ordering a container of bikes and we were just getting a container at a time.

It was super easy to calculate landed costs at that time, right? We were ordering a few containers a year. Super easy to match duties, freight, back to a single PO. We were mostly getting full shipments from a single PO. But as you start scaling, and like, inventory starts flying off the shelves, and like Jared mentioned, like, you just, you, you need whatever inventory you can get, and you need it fast.

Things start kind of spiraling, and then again, going back to what Jared Was talking about at the very beginning of the conversation, which is like you've got multiple sales channels that you need to represent available inventory on at the exact same time. Right? And you can't represent something you don't have on a given sales channel.

It's actually getting decremented as it's getting sold. And then if you make matters even more complicated, you've got light manufacturing. Now, on the purchasing side, you've got these multiple layers of complexity on the sales channel side, you've got multiple layers of complexity, and then you've got light manufacturing.

So you're transforming SKUs from, you know, components into finished goods. If you have any level of, of any of those things, you have to consider an IMS. You have to consider an IMS so you can keep your inventory levels healthy. Because healthy inventory levels drives healthy cash flow and so that you actually know your cost of goods sold Because then you actually know your margins and you can actually make decisions as you scale that increase profitability so I just want to like make sure everyone understands that summary that an IMS is very important and where Luminous is doing a fantastic job is they're occupying this gap between QBO and spreadsheets and all out traditional, super expensive, way too robust ERP like NetSuite and Acumatica and Dynamics 365.

And so it's a solution that you should absolutely consider as you're scaling your brand into the healthy seven and eight figures of revenue. Um, So, gotta land the plane, unfortunately, Jared, pretty soon here. Um, like I said the last time that we chatted, I feel like, uh, we probably need to do this every few months to just keep talking about what we're seeing in the marketplace.

But before we do land the plane, I want to talk about something, um, I always like to ask a personal question, and it's because at Free to Grow CFO, the balance between personal life how And, and, and, and, you know, professional life. And I would say the integration and that you really can't separate the two super important to us and is near and dear to my heart as, as the founder of our business.

So I always like to talk, um, personal for a few minutes with everyone who, who comes on board. One thing that you've got going on in your life that I'm like super impressed with is being a single dad. You're a single dad and a founder CEO. Of a thriving startup. How have you been able to hold that down and what advice do you have for the audience and maybe someone out there?

Who may be in a similar position to you of how you've been able to manage that over the years?

[00:48:25] Jared Ward: Yeah, great question. Yeah having Having two kids full time while running a startup is extremely challenging. I would not recommend it. Um, that's the first thing I would have recommended. No. Um, honestly, I think I've, I've learned over the years.

People always say like separation of work and home and like your personal life is here and your work is here. And like, Totally separate, like a rigid wall, and you need to build that wall higher and set more boundaries. Like, to each his own. Like, personally, I disagree with that, and I found that to be highly ineffective.

For me, it's, it's, it's actually effectively integrating those two things. It's like, I am Luminous, like Luminous is a part of my personal life and that's okay. And like, I bring my kids to work all the time. And I think we have a lot of employees, like all of our employees, founders, the shareholders in the company.

Um, I think we all, that's the culture at Luminous is you integrate personal into your work life. Everybody brings their kids to the office.

It's totally fine to dip out for two hours. Hey guys, peace. I'm, I'm just, I'm going to go take a nap or like, I'm the kids are here for the, I'm going to go take a nap. And it's like 2 PM on a Tuesday. Like, so that stuff is okay. But also like we're all working at like 6 30 PM or bringing our kids to the office at four o'clock, or we're all helping each other on a Saturday so I can get some work, like, I don't know.

I've just, the concept of integrating your work and life together has been profound for me. Like I, I love it. I don't, I just, I love what I do. My kids are like a part of Luminous. My son like knows every single person and he likes to jump on and try to do cold calls. And so I would say lean into integrating them more instead of separating them and building like all these really firm boundaries.

[00:50:41] Jon Blair: Yeah, I really like that. We have a similar culture here at Free to Grow in terms of like, it's just so happened. You know, one of the reasons that I left guardian bikes when I did was because I started having a bunch of kids now have three, um, five, five and younger. And, um, You know, it just, you don't want to be in a place where you have to be ashamed of being a parent.

I think being a parent is like one of the most worthy causes in the world to be quite honest with you and like, but so is being a hard worker. And I think there's also something beautiful about inviting your kids into your work to show them what you do, right? Like, how do our kids learn? They learn by, by watching others, right?

And in large part by watching their parents. And, and, um, it's funny cause this is not a requirement to work at Free to Grow, but it's turned out that we are. Uh, we're building a company that's mostly parents of kids that are like five and younger. We all have little kids and, and, and, and we're starting as you kind of build more, uh, as we kind of build a team that has that in common, it starts attracting more and more people because like when someone's like, Hey, I was up all night last night because my kid was throwing up or my kid had a fever.

We're like, we all have so much grace for if they've got to miss a meeting or like you said, they need to take a nap or they need to take their kid to the doctor or whatever. It's like, yeah, dude, please do that and don't feel ashamed about it and don't hide it. I know you're going to crush your work as soon as you get back to it.

Right. And at the end of the day, too, like

[00:52:14] Jared Ward: integrating integration,

[00:52:17] Jon Blair: 100%, 100%. Um, all right. So before we shut down here. I'm going to be honest. Maybe I'm a little bit biased cause I'm a, uh, an advisor and Jared's one of my buddies, but he's, he and Luminous are putting out some great content, highly recomme

Where can people find out more about you and your content, Jared and find out more about Luminous.

[00:52:40] Jared Ward: Yeah. So, um, follow us on LinkedIn. Um, that's just my name, Jared Ward Luminous. You'll find us, um, or at join Luminous, go to join Luminous. com, join Luminous. com. Just as it sounds, you can find actually all of our content there.

Um, if you're a YouTube, if you're a YouTube fan, then just call me Jared underscore Ward, um, I post educational content and also my podcast, the opposite of the filter, it's very similar to this.

[00:53:05] Jon Blair: Um,

[00:53:06] Jared Ward: yeah,

[00:53:07] Jon Blair: definitely check out Office Unfiltered and the rest of Jared and Luminous uh, content. Um, and look, if you want to find more helpful tips on scaling a profit focused D2C brand, also consider following me, Jon Blair on LinkedIn.

And if you're interested in learning more about how Free to Grow's D2C accountants and fractional CFOs can help your, your brand increase profit and cashflow as you scale, check us out at freetogrowcfo.com. It's been a joy talking today, Jared. I appreciate you joining. And, uh, look forward to chatting again soon.

[00:53:38] Jared Ward: Thanks, man.

[00:53:39] Jon Blair: See ya.

The Power of Integrating Physical and Digital Retail Experiences

Episode Summary

This week on the Free to Grow CFO podcast, host Jon Blair is joined by Matt Ezyk, Director of eCommerce at Pet Supermarket. They delve into hybrid physical and digital retail strategies, focusing on AI integration to optimize profits for DTC brands. Matt shares insights from his extensive experience, including successful strategies like Buy Online Pick Up In-Store (BOPIS) and ship-from-store models. The conversation also explores valuable AI tools for smaller DTC brands, emphasizing the importance of personalization, ad optimization, and leveraging customer data. Tune in for an insightful conversation filled with practical tips and strategies to help you scale your DTC brand with a profit-focused mindset. Whether you’re just starting or looking to optimize your existing operations, this episode is packed with valuable takeaways.

Meet Matt Ezyk

Matt Ezyk has decades of experience building, scaling and leading digital commerce product, operations and strategy at some of the most innovative companies in the world. Prior to joining Pet Supermarket, he served as Director of Functional Architecture and Director of PMO at RafterOne (f/k/a PixelMedia) with operational oversight of teams working with iconic brands like Skechers and LL Bean. Matt also served in progressive leadership roles at Accenture, Merkle (f/k/a LiveArea) and several startups working with hundreds of global brands like Uniqlo, Disney, Revlon, Tapestry and many more. Matt brings to Pet Supermarket a deep expertise in developing and implementing diverse end-to-end commerce strategies.

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

Matt Ezyk - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mezyk/

Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/

Pet Supermarket - https://www.petsupermarket.com/

Transcript

~~~

00:00 Welcome to the Free to Grow CFO Podcast

00:28 Guest Introduction: Matt Ezyk’s Background and Role at Pet Supermarket

04:22 Strategies for Hybrid Physical and Digital Retail

05:06 Implementing BOPIS and Ship-from-Store Tactics

07:03 Challenges and Solutions in Inventory Management

16:51 Expanding Geographical Reach Through E-commerce

19:29 Leveraging AI for DTC Brands

26:33 Challenges in Implementing AI

30:13 Overcoming AI Implementation Hurdles

35:02 Generative AI: A Continuous Journey

42:04 Balancing Personal and Professional Life

47:12 Final Thoughts

[00:00:00] Jon Blair: All right. What's happening, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast, where we dive deep into conversations with brand founders and industry experts about scaling a DTC brand with a profit focused mindset, I'm your host, Jon Blair, founder of Free to Grow CFO. We're an outsourced finance firm that specializes in fractional CFO and bookkeeping services for growing DTC brands.

Okay, so what are we talking about today and why should you care? I've got my buddy Matt Ezyk on board with us today. He has some really interesting experience around the use of hybrid physical and digital retail strategies and leveraging AI. Here's the thing. The reason why we're talking about this today.

It's because some of the things that Matt does working for a larger retailer can feel like it's out of reach for a DTC brand in the lower to middle market, which is the size brands that free to grow is usually working with typically 5 million to 65 million a year in revenue. The thing is Matt Matt's experience, um, is actually applicable.

in many ways to what you're doing in the lower and middle market as a five to 65 million DTC brand. You probably just don't hear about these things a lot. They're not probably not talked about a lot in your ecosystem. And so, you know, from my perspective, bringing Matt out of kind of like more of an enterprise level environment into the world that we live in every day in Free to Grow CFO.

And I think you're going to find a lot of really helpful advice. You never realized before actually can be applied to your brand on a day to day basis. So Matt, thanks for joining us. I'm super stoked to have you on today. How you doing, man? I'm doing great. Happy to be here. So as director of e commerce at pet supermarket convention at the beginning of the episode, you've got a lot of really interesting experience at this kind of like marriage of enterprise Uh, level brick and mortar retail and e com, which is the, the, the, you know, division of the business that you run.

We're going to dive into dive into some of your experience deep today, but I want to start with a high level background of you personally and professionally and how you ended up at pet supermarket running their, their e commerce. Yeah. 

[00:02:14] Matt Ezyk: So, uh, so pet supermarkets, a little bit about the business where, uh, One of the largest small format pet retailers in the United States.

We operate over 200 stores and we're mostly located in the Southeast, mainly in Florida. We're headquartered in Florida. Um, I lead their digital business. So that's the e commerce business and then our marketplaces that we operate in. So like Instacart and DoorDash, for example. Uh, I've been here for a little over two years.

And my role has evolved here. I came in on the technology side, and I actually founded our our e commerce business here, then shifted my role to what it is today as a director of e commerce. Most of my background has been in the agency world, and I've worked with Salesforce Commerce cloud and marketing cloud most of my career.

So I've done strategy work. I've done, um, Project management, leading teams, uh, on the operation side and the technical side. And I've worked with brands like Uniqlo and Disney and tapestry, uh, over a hundred brands in my career. So I've always wanted to go to the brand or retail side to take what I've learned in the agency side and apply it and do a lot of tests and learn.

And it's been really fun being on the side. So I've been in the industry just about, uh, or just shy of 15 years. 

[00:03:32] Jon Blair: Awesome. Awesome. Uh, for those of you that don't know, I actually met. Matt, um, on the, uh, other side of the pond in Ireland at a, at an e commerce event about six months ago, we really hit it off chatting about different tactics and strategies that he's used at pet supermarket.

And candidly, a lot of these were things that I've never been exposed to, because again, I've been in the lower to middle market of, of digitally native or DTC brands for most of my career. And it was just kind of mind blowing some of the things that Matt has tried and actually things that didn't work, things that have worked, um, as he's built up the e commerce business at pet supermarket, again, with this, um, brick and mortar retail network at his disposal that most of us in the DTC world don't have.

And so what I want to get into to start is to chat about some of the, um, just strategies that you've deployed. And what I'm calling We're talking about before we hit record, a lot of people like to call it Omnichannel. I think that's a little bit too, uh, generic for this conversation. I'm calling it hybrid physical retail slash digital retail.

And meaning, how do you smash together digital advertising tactics? And a physical, uh, retail network, right. Um, to maximize profitable, uh, scale or new customer acquisition. Can you, can you walk through some of the strategies and tactics that you've used that have worked well, um, by kind of bringing those two worlds together?

[00:05:06] Matt Ezyk: Yeah, when I started here, um, we weren't using our best asset, which is our stores, you know, we have, uh, I think today we have 228 stores. Uh, if you've never been to one of our stores, they're, they're super cool. You go in, there's just a great vibe to them. Um, there's, you know, cats that you can adopt.

There's all sorts of animals you can buy. There's birds, there's lizards, uh, there's music playing. Um, So how do you replicate that digitally? And then also, how do you marry those two experiences together was really what I was targeting, right? Because the modern customer is in all different channels. We see them sometimes 3 or 4 different channels and it's fluid, right?

They go in between them. So. My goal was really to figure out what can we do with this great asset that we have to expand that experience for our customers. So immediately, the first thing was Bopus, buy online, pick up and store any retailer our size should have that. So I started with our design agency, and we all got in a room and said, What do we like as customers?

Let's put our customer hat on and say, you know, where did you shop recently? What was an experience you had? That was great. Uh, I'm a firm believer that you don't need to reinvent the wheel. Uh, you can get inspiration from all different places and then just apply it and test it and see if it works. So we did that and, you know, we talked about Best Buy and Home Depot and Target, uh, couple others.

Right. So. It came, what came out of that was a design and the functionality that we're happy with, and we built it. We went live with it a couple of years ago. Our customers immediately gravitated towards that because experience is great. So, uh, that's been really successful and our customers can buy online, pick up in store, they can return store, we're giving them more options to be fluid in between our channels.

Uh, so that was one, uh, strategy that really worked great. Another one was shipped from store. We had to really build out the technology piece to do that. So, uh, what that means is, uh, when a customer buy something on the web, the system in the background is using AI and it's, it's an automated process that decides what store has the inventory to do a ship complete and put everything in the same box.

And then it sends the order to that store. And it's usually the one that's closest to you, uh, that has the inventory. So. There's two mechanisms, right? There's the speed to delivery and then there's profitability. Uh, we need to know, like, we want to put everything in the same box. We don't have the shipping rates that an Amazon or a Walmart has.

So, uh, it's not as profitable obviously to send two different packages, but if the customer buys it and that's the only way we can do it, then that's how we do it. So, um, that really helped with inventory optimization too. Uh, same with bogus, right? There's things we sell in the store that we weren't selling online.

So now we have lots of different SKUs that we can add to the site to expose to the customer that they can buy. And this is really all seamless to them. So they go in the cart and they can say, I want this thing delivered because I don't need it right away. But, you know, this food that I need for my dog, I need it today.

I got to go pick it up. Um, we also added same day delivery to that mix too. So you go on our PDP and it shows you the three options. And then it's checking inventory real time to see which ones are available to you. And then you just pick which one it is and try to make it super easy and convenient. 

[00:08:33] Jon Blair: I love that.

I mean, there, there's a lot to unpack there. One is the profitability enhancement of the ship from store, right? And so you're almost kind of. In my mind of likening this back to the DTC world, you're looking at your 200 plus stores and that's like your 3PL fulfillment network, right? And so you're going and looking for the most optimal place where you can get a ship complete.

I love the ship complete because it's like, that's a customer experience thing, right? Like not, I mean, and, and a profitability thing. Yeah, you're, you're, you're making sure that everything's going in a box, but that, that order is getting fulfilled in full. Right. And, um, the other thing is like meeting your customer where their need is, right.

That like, sometimes they can wait for it to get shipped. Sometimes they can't and honestly, I'll even tell you like using a grocery store as an example, like covid forced a lot of people to start doing curbside pickup, right? Grocery stores, obviously, like, you know, really accelerated that for grocers.

When I go into a grocery store now, I actually hate it because I can't remember where everything is. I have a list and like, I end up buying a bunch of stuff that I don't need. And like, it's actually just being a dad of three little kids and having very little time. It's actually a lot easier to just put the order in on the app.

Know exactly what I'm getting, how much I'm spending, what time I'm going to go pick it up. Right. And so like, it is also too, it's not just about profitability. It's also just about streamlining the experience and meeting the customer where they're at. And that's one, like. There's been kind of this theme of several people that I've been talking to for the last few weeks.

One was actually Renee, who you and I both met in Ireland. And we, I've been talking with a few people about retail brick and mortar retail. Cause at some point a DTC brand depends on the product category that you're in. It depends on your goals. There's only so big, there's only so much addressable market, DTC only.

And it varies based on your product category. Some product categories, if you want to grow to a certain size and top line revenue, you do need to get into physical retail sooner rather than later. Others, maybe you can get up to 50, 60, 70 million, but there are very few nine figure DTC only brands, right?

And so, If you have big sales goals, like hear me out on this audience. Like if you have big sales goals, you need to be thinking about some of the things that Matt is talking about. Some of the things we talked about with Renee a couple of weeks ago and talked about with Adam Siskin the week before that, how can you integrate physical retail?

Into your channel mix at some point. What's interesting is Renee talked a couple of weeks ago about like, Hey, look, you don't necessarily have to get in with a retailer like target or Walmart or something like that. You can set up one of your own shops. You can do a pop up shop. You can, you can test out doing a few of your own single brand stores.

And then you've got, you can bring in some of the tactics that Matt is talking about here, right? If you've got yourself a network of single brand stores, you can think about how to seamlessly integrate the, the digital, um, you know, your Shopify store or whatever you use for your DTC, um, storefront with your actual physical, uh, retail storefront.

I, I've got a question for you that kind of came up as you were talking through some of those tactics. What have you found? That was surprising in terms of what products work better in converting digitally versus in store. Like, what are some of the trends that you saw there as you were, as you were testing out, giving people the ability to, like, get them shipped versus pick them up?

Uh, 

[00:12:13] Matt Ezyk: I think the interesting thing was how, how much the, uh, individual cans took, took off, right? Because this is probably typical in any retailer that sells cans and cases, like a You know, like sometimes like a vitamin shop or a GNC selling energy drinks, right? It's the same concept where in the warehouse you're selling the case skew and then in the store you're selling the each's 

[00:12:36] Jon Blair: And yeah, 

[00:12:36] Matt Ezyk: you know, we have that with dog food and cat food Uh, we started to expose the each's Inventory onto the site and that really took off because there's there is no way for a customer to go onto our site And by each is before, um, there's also products that we, at least at this point in 2024, we're not able to ship.

Uh, to a customer, but with DTC and for example, like frozen, um, uh, raw dog food that we sell, uh, goat's milk, like all these things that are fresh and frozen that we sell in our store, wildly popular with customers. But until we figure out how to have cold storage in the mid mile and then deliver last mile, we, we can't sell those.

Right. So we're exposing them, uh, onto the site from an inventory perspective and customers see that. And they want to buy it and they're just looking for ways to buy it. Obviously the grayed out pieces, the ship to home, but you can get it delivered same, same day. You can pick it up in store. So just exposing more of that inventory.

It's interesting to see the customers gravitate towards the different products we can now sell. And those are the two, I think that have been really successful for us that we couldn't sell before. 

[00:13:51] Jon Blair: You know, I'm sure. I don't, we, maybe we talked about this in Ireland or not, maybe I'm having deja vu and it's a real thing or maybe it's not, it's just coming to mind right now, but, um, cross channel bleed over and attribution issues, right?

Like I am certain, especially based on what you're saying, you were just saying you're advertising digitally. Not everyone buys through your. Your, your storefront, your digital storefront. Have you seen any sort of lift in store that you feel like is attributed to, um, what you guys are doing on the e commerce side?

Have you guys talked about that internally? What, what have those discussions look like? 

[00:14:35] Matt Ezyk: Absolutely. I think as an industry standard, you see typically 20 percent of customers that come in to pick up an order. Are buying something else, whether it's at the cash wrap, or they're going into the store and buying something.

So our results are typical to that, right? So I think it's probably the same across most retailers. So, yes, you're driving more traffic into the store, more awareness into the store. In the case of like an Instacart or a DoorDash, we purposely didn't market there because we wanted to see what, uh, what customers are we finding that are finding our brand organically and buying from us that didn't before.

So how many are we gaining without even talking to them from a marketing channel? And it's pretty staggering. Like, it's, it's a significant lift in the customer acquisition and revenue that we're generating from these channels because it's just another way where customers Like if you buy, let's say you're buying a Purina ProPlan bag of dog food, it's the same bag, the same flavor that you get for your dog.

For anyone listening that has a dog, you know changing food and flavor is difficult. Um, if your local store doesn't have it, or grocery, or wherever you get it, you can go on the Instacart app, or DoorDash, or whatever it is. And type in that, uh, you can type the SKU, you can type the name of the food, and if you find it, you're gonna buy it, right?

Like, if you need food for your dog, you need it. So, that's gonna expose you to our brand, where you may have not seen us before. Uh, probably not the case in Florida, because we're everywhere in Florida. We're like the Dunkin Donuts of the Northeast, if you're familiar, on every street corner. Totally, yeah.

We're like that in Florida. So, um, not the case in Florida, but maybe in a Texas or the Carolinas or Tennessee, you may not be familiar with our brand. And, uh, if you're an Instacart user, then you'll, you'll see it pop up. And then if you have a good experience, you'll come back. 

[00:16:33] Jon Blair: That's interesting. That makes me think like, what, what, did you find anything surprising in, you know, because before your physical brick and mortar retailer, right?

So like your TAM is, People that live in those geographic areas where the stores are. Was it surprising at all? Like what kind of geographical reach you guys were able to expand into once you really started humming on the e commerce side? 

[00:17:00] Matt Ezyk: Yes, uh, I think some of the interesting things that at least I found coming into the business was we have pockets of the country that are not only the most or some of the most orders that we get from digital, but they're also our most profitable products, which was which was super interesting.

I, I. Later found out that, uh, you know, we have, uh, uh, a sister company that's owned by our same private equity that, uh, once they bought both of us, they cease their operations in the U S and they only operate in Canada, but it's a pet value and their headquarters were in Pennsylvania. So of course, there's lots of people that are buying our private label food in Pennsylvania.

Uh, didn't make sense to me when I first came in and I was like, we have no stores there. Why is there so many people buying this? But. Um, so we had to figure out a solution to make those orders profitable, because it's really challenging for us. Like, we're an old business. We're like, 51 years old, and we have all of our D.

C. S. and South Florida, which, you know, back in the 70s, I'm sure that was great or the 80s whenever they built them. But in 2024, right? It's not. Not good. So if we're sending a lot of orders to a state like Pennsylvania from Florida, it's very hard to be profitable in those transactions. So now what's happening is our North Northern most stores in North Carolina are servicing those Pennsylvania orders.

So the system sees, okay, you know, Jon Smith is in Pittsburgh, PA, and he ordered this bag of food. This store in Wilmington, North Carolina has it. We'll send the order to them. They pick, pack, and ship it and send it out. 

[00:18:40] Jon Blair: Very cool. Very cool. So to summarize for the audience really quick here, what we're talking about is the seamless integration, right, of physical retail locations and an e commerce advertising and storefront strategy.

There's absolutely a place. for digitally native brands to get into physical retail and think about how to bring those experiences together. The question is, when is the right time? There's nuance to that specific to your brand and your goals and your capital needs and capital structure, but definitely some really cool tips to think about how to marry, marry up those two, um, sales channels.

And use them to drive new customer acquisition. That's also optimized from profitability standpoint. So what I want to now kind of switch our attention to. Talking about AI and although this might seem like kind of a 180 degree turn here, the reason why we're talking about this with Matt is because again, working for a bigger, um, kind of enterprise level retailer.

What I've found is that, uh, a lot of AI tools. AI is this hot topic, right? Um, especially in the marketing world, but a lot of brands in the lower to middle market that we work with are not leveraging AI and I've kind of had this ongoing question of like, why, why is that the case? I, I personally believe that one of the reasons is because, uh, it's really gaining traction with the larger enterprise level, uh, brands out there.

They have. Bigger budgets and they have just really kind of like, and I also think the AI tools are from a go to market perspective are focusing on those, that larger customer base first as well. Um, and, and so, like, I think there's a lot of interesting stuff happening in the AI world that the. The lower to middle market DTC brands are just not getting exposure to right now.

And I had some really interesting conversations with Matt when I was in, uh, Ireland about several different things that he has tried and is trying and that have worked and have not worked for him, um, at pet supermarket. And so, you know, Matt, what I want to ask you next is like, what are some of the specific AI tools or apps that DTC brands that are five to 65 million in revenue, maybe unaware of that you've come across.

[00:21:06] Matt Ezyk: Yeah, it's a good question. There's just so much noise and AI. So, um, I can speak generally about a couple areas where I think you might want to target. So, uh, the first one would be, I would think ad optimization, right? How do you optimize your digital advertising campaigns across multiple platforms like Google and meta?

Uh, I recently saw a tool called a dexed AI that does that. I think pretty well, uh, not something I've used personally, but. I do a lot of research on the, on the topic, obviously. So that was an interesting tool for ad optimization. Uh, my favorite use for AI is personalization and recommendation. And, you know, you see tools like dynamic yield and segment that personalize experiences across the web.

Um, you can use it in mobile, you can use it in email. in store kiosks, uh, which is great for retail fashion, for example. Uh, I really love the tool called Discoverist, which does, uh, AI generated bundles. It learns all sorts of information about you when you go on the site, your clickstream data, what you've ordered, and then it puts together bundles for recommendations on the Uh, on the site.

Super clever. That is really cool, man. 

[00:22:16] Jon Blair: What's it called? Discoverist? Discoverist. Yeah, that is rad. I have not heard of that. I'm gonna have to check that out. 

[00:22:21] Matt Ezyk: Yep. Um, email marketing automation, right? That's a great one. So you can personalize email content based on the user's behavior and preferences. So if, uh, if I know that a customer has bought cat products or is clicking on cat products, Uh, categories, we can reasonably assume that they have a cat and then we can really tailor the communications that we have to cat owners, uh, active campaign is a, I think for SMB is good for that type of thing.

Customer feedback and sentiment analysis is super great. When you're trying to grow or the scale of brand, um, you can really understand your customer feedback and analyze the reviews, the surveys, social media mentions. Um, in the S. M. B. Space, I've not used it, but I've heard that monkey learn is a good tool for that, too, that I've seen out there.

Um, and you know, there's a lot that I'm using with Salesforce that does that. But, uh, pricing optimization is great too for AI. Like you can use pricing optimization tools to set competitive and most importantly, profitable prices based on market data and customer behavior. Uh, so there's companies like black curve and quick lizard that do that.

And then I think lastly, I'd mentioned, uh, a CDP, so a customer data platform. So, something that consolidates and analyzes all of your customer data from all the various sources you have. Uh, there's a company out there called Treasure Data that is really interesting that 

[00:23:52] Jon Blair: does that. Yeah, that's really interesting.

The personalization one is something that I've been really keen on, on thinking about. And I, I think it's a, Personalization is something that I think a lot of D2C brands should pay more attention to. Yes. Because when you think about the dynamics of profitable, uh, customer acquisition, if you're scaling a D2C brand, you've got these two revenue streams, right?

You've got first order acquisition and the profitability on that first customer order, and then you have repeat purchase, and personalization. Has a place in both of those revenue streams in terms of enhancing conversion rate, because you're, you're hopefully more frequently speaking to a customer about you're meeting them where their needs are at that point in time, right?

And, um, yeah, I know back in the day before AI was like, as it was a hot topic, like at Guardian, one thing that we did is. We just did some kind of like manual personalization where we had I believe a post checkout survey Or it was a question in our welcome email Series once post purchase or when you signed up for our email list and it would ask you like Basically what it asks you is that is your kid has your kid ever ridden a bike before?

Have they had their first pedal bike or have they had their second pedal bike? And what those three questions told us was likely, would they be in the market for a balanced bike or a child that would normally maybe need training wheels? Would it be one of our, uh, our. 20 inch bikes or would it be one of our 24 inch bikes?

And the reason why that was important, you would think it's just because we're going to pitch them that specific product. It's not, it's because what tips do, uh, what tips do a parent, does a parent need if their kid has never ridden a pedal bike before tips on how to, how to ride a bike, how to get rid of the training wheels, right?

There's like a certain, there's a certain journey they're on at that point in time. Um, if it's their second pedal bike, it's stuff about. local trails to go ride on, great places to go on family bike rides. Like it's a, it's a different journey that that customer is on at that point in time, and when you are delivering personalized content and which ultimately lead to personalized CTAs.

You're just going to have a much better chance of converting that person at some point. And so, um, so in personalization is a huge one. I haven't personally used any of these AI tools. I can help with that, but I highly recommend brands consider doing some research out there. And like, here's the other thing too.

I want to talk a little bit about like, just, you know, brands getting stuck, blocked, trying to implement AI. We had an AI discussion, um, like a round table discussion when we were on that Ireland trip together. And like, one of the things that really stuck out to me was that you and several other people on that trip were just like, Hey, find your version of just test.

Test learn, right? What, what are some of your, what, what, what's like, where's some of the areas that you see people get stuck or blocked and what's like your advice for just getting started? 

[00:27:09] Matt Ezyk: Yeah, like a quick point on the, what you were just talking about with personalization. Uh, a lot of people shop businesses, especially fashion retail, and they don't know what they want.

And I think everyone listening has probably had an experience with a brand in their life where it's just really fun and cool to shop them, even online, right? You get this, like, excitement of buying something. Um, so, like, fashion's a great vertical for personalization, right? Because, like, let's say, for example, um, I'm Jon Blair and I'm going to a wedding.

And I want to look super cool and sharp, but I don't know what I want. And maybe I want a suit coat, I don't know. And you go on to a site and you look for that coat, and then it shows you a shirt and a pair of pants and a belt and shoes, and you're like, that's awesome, I didn't even know they sold this, I didn't know what goes with that, right, I don't, I don't know what I want, but it's showing me something that I want, and then I buy it, right, so that's really where AI comes into play, and specifically that Discover tool I mentioned is super cool because it does something like that, it's learning what categories you're clicking on, uh, what you've ordered in the past, what other people have ordered, And we've been able to do this in retail and e commerce for a long time with predictive AI, like over 10 years, and it's very powerful.

The generative piece is now it's learning and you're teaching it, and it's giving different results based on what it learns. So it's super cool. So I just wanted to make that point about the personalization. Um, That's pretty cool. And was so 

[00:28:36] Jon Blair: actually funny enough. So, you know, Mark Cuban was an investor in guardian bikes, the brand that I was on the founding team of, and he, um, was really bullish on Netflix when Netflix first, uh, launched and he actually had a sizable stake in Netflix.

If I'm not mistaken, I don't know if he still does, but I believe he did. And he used to talk a lot about why is Netflix going to crush it because people don't know what they want to watch and Netflix is telling people what they want to watch and I actually even think back. I know you'll, you'll kind of like laugh when I say this.

I think it back to when YouTube first started and like everyone our age, like when you're in like junior high, However old we all were when, when that launch I, but I just remember being in junior high and just getting like lost in the next video recommendation on YouTube. Right. Yeah. I mean like, going and talking about it with all your buddies at lunch hour or at recess and being like, dude, did you see that video?

And like, But, I mean, that all was that kind of, you know, predictive recommendation driven, you know, you know, or AI driven recommendations is like, and it just got you hooked, right? And like, you didn't have to search for the next video. You just kept watching the next one that came up, right? And so, like, just a super great example and something that Mark Cuban has always said.

has has always talked about that. Like, hey, man, there are certain some people know what they want, but a lot of people don't know what they want. And so to the extent that you can help them figure out what they want, you're going to convert a lot more sales. So, um, great 

[00:30:13] Matt Ezyk: example. Yeah. And that kind of leads into what the second question that you asked here about.

Like where do customer or uh brands get stuck or get blocked? I mean really the the main thing is like is this going to help your customer or is it going to help you? Be operationally more efficient or more profitable Then yes, then explore it. If not, then why why are you doing it? Right? There's There's so much, I feel like there's so much panic in desperation and AI right now that people are just rushing to do something.

And they lack like a clear strategy and clear goals. Uh, so really just how does this help the customer, right? It's very simple work. Start at the customer and work backwards and then figure out, you know, scale and profitability. Um, I think where people get stuck is the first and foremost, the lack of, Data in the, you know, the, the integration steps, right?

If you're, if your data is poorly, um, put together, the quality is not there. It's fragmented. Your results are going to be very, uh, sparing, right? It's very difficult to implement anything that relies on that if it's not set up correctly. And, you know, I, I've seen this with predictive AI, right? Like I mentioned, I've been using predictive AI for over a decade.

Um, I have that on my site right now. Today. It's it's worked really well where it recommends products and shows products that other people have purchased, right? The, you know, the FOMO factor is real. So customers see that and like, Oh, if someone else bought it, I should buy it. And it, it works really great.

So, um, that's a, that's a big piece of it. Uh, the technical resources in. Uh, expertise to implement it correctly with as little technical debt as possible is super important. Um, we talked about costs, ROI, that type of thing. Um, if you don't know why it's helping your customer, then you need to step back and figure that out.

Uh, change management, organizational buy in, right? Everyone that is in your organization that has a stake in the success of it. Everyone should understand what you're doing and why and when. Um, I think a lot of people, again, they, they see AI is a new shiny thing and they're like, oh, I need to do this.

This isn't this. And they're not taking a step back and figuring out why they're doing it. And then sharing that and getting feedback from the organization, uh, probably more, more of a, uh, uh, an issue for the mid market and enterprise because there's so many stakeholders, but still important for everybody.

I think, um, how does it integrate with existing systems? Um, yeah. Couple other things like, uh, who is understanding and interpreting the outputs of what's happening and how to tweak it. Um, and then you can get into all sorts of things like privacy and ethics and compliance and maintenance. And it's, it's a very complicated thing that I think people take a little bit too lightly.

[00:33:04] Jon Blair: Well, it's funny, you mentioned a couple of things. You actually mentioned several great points that I hadn't necessarily thought of that kind of a light bulb went off and I was like, Oh, I see very clearly why so many brands in the lower to middle market are not getting AI successfully implemented based on what you were just running through.

One of them is like the data storage, right? I mean, almost every brand that we work with has data storage issues. I mean, even to the point where like the transparently free to grow is trying to figure out how we, we can provide a service. To help these brands warehouse their data. And it's just because it's, it's because we need the data as well on the CFO front.

Right. And data that's not stored properly, um, or isn't clean or is fragmented or whatever, um, it makes it hard on several different fronts in terms of reporting and analytics, not just launching AI tools. And I think the other one that you mentioned is like. Having the right technical expertise to implement said tools, right?

And it's funny, I have a good buddy, Justin Mitchell, who's, uh, runs a, uh, a site called CodingForEntrepreneurs. com And, um, we've been talking about, he's been kind of asking me like, Dude, should we get something started where we actually go out there and like, and help brands get AI implemented? And And I, I think there's actually like a real need there.

Cause I think everyone wants to do it. But again, going back to like, they going using the personalization kind of, uh, um, you know, metaphor again, they don't know what AI they want or need. They, they like the concept of it and they, they generally understand how it can help the customer journey and how it can help their business, but they need to be served up right?

A package of like what AI tools are going to work for them as well as a plan for like how to get them implemented. And I think the other thing too, of course, like everyone's talking about chat GBT, I'm not going to talk about chat GBT for, for too long here and just be another person that's. Popping off about that.

But like, I think one thing that I have learned from you just in our conversations is like, You can't just give chatGBT, just get output from generative AI and just go like, okay, perfect. That's, that's the result. I'm going to take it. You have to know how to work with it and to continue to feed it with more and more data so that it gets better and better and better.

So it is not an end. It's a process. It's a journey. And so you almost have to be with generative AI from my perspective. It's like, you gotta be willing to go on the journey. Right. And like not worry about the end and more, more be worried about like, every time you're feeding it more, it's getting better.

You're never going to be there. Right? And quite frankly, that's the whole point of generative AI. You're never there, as long as you're feeding it more, right? And so, like, you almost need to just get, like, excited about being on board with the journey. I talk to a lot of people about content marketing, because that's, um, a big passion of mine at Free2Grow.

And people are always like, dude, content marketing, it just seems like a lot of freaking work. And, like, it doesn't really return that much in sales. And I'm like, it does. But it takes time and you have to be one. You have to get into content because of the journey, because you just want to be helpful because you just want to get information out there that is actually helpful and entertaining to people.

Understanding that sales and like positive economic impact will come, but that's not the reason you're doing it. You're doing it for the journey. Right. And I kind of feel somewhat conceptually the same way about generative AI is that like. Look, you start with like what Matt said, how can you help the customer, right?

And then how can you help your company's efficiency, but get into it with the mindset that it's going to be a journey, right? And not just expect everything to get blown up and. Changed overnight, but to be on the journey with like bringing generative AI into your business, what, what do you think about that?

[00:37:15] Matt Ezyk: Yeah. Just to comment on something you said that I think will put a lot of people listening at ease, especially if they're in the SMB world, I've worked with hundreds of brands and retailers in my career, uh, from the, from the beginning. Five million a year to billions a year that they all have one common problem is that their data is messy Uh, I haven't come across one that had that did not have issues with data some worse than others Um, so I think it's it's normal, but you also have to work to continuously make it better.

So, um That that's a pretty normal thing. So as far as uh talking about Like how to use generative tools and just AI in general. You're absolutely right. Like there's, there's two points that I think are really important. It gets you 80 or 90 percent of the way there. And you need to add a human element to it.

Um, and this is really coming from learning how to write good prompts, right? So if you're talking about, uh, chat GPT, not only learning what to ask it, but also ask it if it understands you. And that was a really great breakthrough for me is that when I was asking questions to chat GPT, and then I would tag it at the end and say, ask me any clarifying questions, if you don't understand.

I would get much better results because of that. And you can apply that to AI tools as well, but it's really, when you're talking about chat GPT, um, that's been, that's been really great. So, um, you can use this tool for all sorts of things. So, but it's important to have the human element so you can do.

Content you can do analysis, uh, with AI, but you need to use the human element for strategy and then for adding your own voice. So, uh, when you're writing, uh, content, you need the right brand voice. You need the right authenticity. You need to measure and iterate what you're doing. And I can see that in LinkedIn, man.

Like, I, I see, like, there was someone respond to me today that I didn't know. And I can tell if it's written by Gen AI. Oh, for sure. So. For sure. I use it for ideation all the time, right? Like, I'll be in a meeting and I'll have a question, but instead of using Google now, I'll type it into chat, GPT, and then have conversations with it.

It took a while to get comfortable with that. And that's another, I think, really great point when you're talking about SMB, DTC, uh, businesses or retail businesses, you need to understand that customers don't know they can use this yet. I mean, even, you know, folks like you and I, who are learning about this all the time, I wouldn't go to a brand and instinctively think that I could use, Something with like generative search or whatever it is, you need to show the customer that they can do it.

And a lot of the ISV companies out there, even the bigger companies like Salesforce, I think fall into that trap where they're like, okay, we did the, the thing with AI and it's awesome. And I look at it and I'm like, my customers are not going to know how to use this, like how to bridge that gap. So yeah, interesting topic.

[00:40:16] Jon Blair: Very cool. I mean, There are several things there, um, you know, that are super applicable to using AI in the lower to middle market. And again, like to recap the whole point of this conversation and why I think it's super useful for DTC brands that are between five and 65 million a year in revenue, which is primarily.

You know, the types of brands that Free to Grow CFO works with merging physical retail and digital advertising. So there's totally a place in this as you scale your brand from a profit focused mindset. AI, hot topic, right? There's lots of ways to leverage it to improve customer experience and ultimately the bottom line impact of the business getting improved as well.

But You don't have to dive in head first, right? It's so many things as is with so many things of scaling a DTC brand. Figure out where it fits into your strategy. Don't start any of these things without a strategy. Figure out where it fits in your strategy and then figure out something small. that you can test and learn with.

Right. And, um, you know, whether we're talking about whether I was talking with Adam Siskin a few weeks ago or Renee Hartman about expanding into retail, we kept talking about what's something small that you can test first, right? Get your feet wet. And, you know, if you get into this, this rhythm of test and learn, test and learn, test and learn in these, these two different areas we've been talking about today, you'll be surprised how, you know, a year from now, two years from now, five years from now.

How much progress you will make in these areas and hopefully what we've talked about here today gave you some tangible like jumping off points of like, Oh, I'm gonna go try that thing that Matt talked about. And it's just it's a place to get started. Right? Um, so before we land the plane on the conversation, I would like to talk about something personal because, um, the balance between personal and work life is a huge guiding principle of Free to Grow CFO.

It is, is that the core of who we are as a business? And so I don't ever want to have one of these episodes without talking, um, to our guests about something personal. I'm going to go a tiny bit off script here. Matt and I have something in common that I don't have in common with. Probably, I'd say most of our guests, we're both musicians and both have been touring musicians before and, um, you know, I still play music to this day.

I think Matt does as well. We don't necessarily do it professionally in the same way. But, you know, Matt being in entrepreneurial, uh, being entrepreneurial in the business world, but also being, I call it being in a band is Pretty damn entrepreneurial. It doesn't get any more entrepreneurial than that. I always say, you're a paid content business, right?

And, um, going on tour, you're not just selling a service, you're actually marketing your business and getting it out there. Hopefully you're selling apparel and paid content being your music, right? Being in the entrepreneur world of both music and business, Um, or retail, what, like, what has that experience meant to you?

And how have you been able to kind of sharpen yourself in those different domains by, um, being kind of a dual entrepreneur? 

[00:43:33] Matt Ezyk: Yeah, interesting question. Um, I mean, what I've learned from music is that there's so many similarities when you're, you're marketing something, right? In this case, it could be, um, whether it's a, you know, a bar band local that plays local, or you're touring, uh, original act and you need to produce content that's, that's creative, engaging, and you're consistent with it.

Uh, you need to have a good product and that's not just the recording that you're putting out. But if you're actually going out and playing live shows, like you need to have the right equipment, the right sound, consistent sound. I mean, I've, you've probably seen this. There's so many bands out there when you go out and you see, and they're, they're too loud or their sound isn't good.

That's the same thing is like any kind of business that you're marketing, you like, get your. Um, you're damaging your product that way. So there's so many correlations to that that are interesting. Uh, I think another point too, that is really interesting when it comes to the business world and when you look at music, especially my role as a, as a bass player, I played professionally and it's so important to, to listen.

To your, your bandmates and everything that's going around and being able to react to it, like whether it's a, a change you didn't expect or a mistake, uh, there's, there's been a lot of times. And for those of you who play music, you know, if, if, uh, if everyone in the band is playing something wrong and you're as a bass player is playing something right, you're perceived as playing it wrong because it's the bottom end of all the sound.

So there's been a lot of times where like, I've been right and everyone else is wrong. But I need to change to make sure everyone else sounds good, right? If it's like you're in a different key or something. So there's so many similarities that you can flip back and forth to the, to the business world. Uh, but I think it's really being, uh, dynamic with your, your marketing and your product and making sure that it's, it's consistent.

And then just real like soft skills with people and just listening and And having the, the, the best interest of everybody at 

[00:45:38] Jon Blair: heart. It's funny because like, you know, I would venture to say this is probably the case with, for you too, musicians. We get into trying to play professionally cause we just love it so much.

And then when you get there, you realize like. On the business side, the best bands are great marketers. They are in their own right. Like if you think about a band like Kiss, right. And like the showmanship in their shows, that is marketing 101 right there, right? Like Kiss is Kiss and a show with, even if you don't like the band, I know so many people are like, I don't like their records.

But I saw them live and it was incredible, right? And cause that's, that's part of their marketing. And like, um, that just kind of leave us all on this note, this is kind of off topic, but it's something I talk about a lot of my content and I talk about a lot with the brands that I serve as a fractional CFO, the most important thing in your business is marketing.

There, there's a ton of other things that are important, right? And, and, you know, you, you've got to have solid operations, you've got to have solid finance, but like marketing is the engine that drives the plane, if you think about a DTC brand as a plane. And so, you know, just don't ever let up. On just being laser focused on your marketing because when marketing works, yes, you need operations there to support it and you need finance there to support it.

But when marketing fails, those other two things, those other two functions in the business can't be funded. Right? And so just don't ever forget that, uh, whether you're a musician or running a DTC brand, you marketing is, is your top priority as a founder. So, um, Look, uh, Matt, before we, uh, land the plane here, where can people find more information on Pet Supermarket and on you personally?

[00:47:23] Matt Ezyk: Yeah, sure. So we're at PetSupermarket. com and you can find the products to buy online there and have a store locator to find all the great stores. I'm on LinkedIn. Uh, you can just search my name there. It's spelled easy YK. I'm also on Twitter, but not as much. LinkedIn is usually the good place for me.

[00:47:41] Jon Blair: Awesome. Definitely check out Matt's content. He's got a lot of really great stuff and you'll, you'll see me poking around engaging there with him, uh, frequently as well. Um, well look, if you want to find more helpful tips on scaling it, a profit focused DTC brand, consider following me, Jon Blair on LinkedIn.

And if you're interested in learning more about how free to grows e commerce accountants and CFOs can help. Your brand scale alongside healthy profit, cashflow, and confidence. Consider checking us out at freetogrowcfo.com. Thanks for listening this week and until next time, scale on.