Happy Monday from freezing cold Connecticut!

Whether you celebrated Easter or not, I hope you had an awesome weekend with your family and friends. It’s always nice to catch up with the in-laws and answer their questions about running an online business. I swear sometimes they look at me like I have two heads or am some Narcos type drug dealer selling volleyball nets on the internet.

I’m not going to waste your time with an April’s Fools Joke my wife already got me bad this morning by getting me out of bed to tell me there was a squirrel in our car…which I then got out of bed for no reason… only to find our car empty. Sweet way to start my day.

But if you have an idea for an April’s Fools Joke send one my way and I’ll try the best one on my lovely mother when I call her tonight.

So let’s get into this week’s version of the newsletter.

We Just Launched our First FB Ad of 2023

Believe it or not, we made it through the first 90 days of the year without spending a single dollar on Facebook. This was a sick challenge for a brand that’s addicted to spending at Zuckerberg’s casino, but the results were actually shocking.

• Amazon revenue grew by 2%

• Shopify revenue dropped by 60% (shocking but, we’re not talking about a lot of volume in the dead of winter)

• Businesses loss is down over 250% YOY (as a seasonal business we run at a loss in the winter, so its important to keep things as lean as possible)

Analysis:

Awesome to see Amazon stay strong and relevant without the help of FB ads. This makes me think either 1) FB ads aren’t too helpful to our sales on Amazon or 2) The brand is growing even stronger year over year and when we relaunch ads Amazon will grow massively

Downside:

We have seen a slower sell through for our products at some of our retailers over the last quarter. Our retailers don’t expect a ton from us in the winter, but 365 advertising support typically is table stakes with these massive stores. We will need to make a strong marketing push over the next 4 months to keep them happy.

Since we haven’t been spending tens of thousands on ads our top of funnel is also the weakest its ever been. Normally we would have a huge funnel of thousands of customers who are ready to convert come spring time and this year that funnel is dramatically shrunken. We will need to get our shit together quickly to build back this funnel and hopefully can do it much more profitable than past years.

There are different strategies we all need to take at different life cycles of our business, but for us the number one priority was to preserve cash and cut losses. So I’m chalking up this strategy as a victory and something we’ll do moving into next year.

Get on a Roll… A Revenue Roll

A few months ago the guys over at Revenue Roll sponsored the newsletter and they said it was the most impactful newsletter they’ve ever done, so I really appreciate that Crossed Commerce fam.

Since then, they’ve helped dozens of readers unlock tens of thousands of high-intent shoppers that they never would have captured on their own.

So what’s Revenue Roll? In simplest terms, Revenue Roll is the “Cyber Truck” of pixels. Revenue Roll helps brands of all different sizes increase their email list by identifying anonymous, high-intent customers in a totally compliant way that integrates easily into your existing email workflows.

They are currently doing a 3-month money back ROI guarantee for all new customers that come through CROSSED Commerce. Take a look for yourself here or introduce yourself to [email protected]. Especially if you see crazy summer volume like CROSSNET, there’s no better way to test this for free when we expect to add an extra 400% more emails into the funnel.

Bringing Financial Literacy to DTC

Listen, I went to school to become a film maker. I should probably be the last one preaching about financial literacy, getting into $200,000 of student loan debt for a career that’s starting pay was $11.50 per hour. The hard reality is life isn’t always fair and running from hard conversations and the numbers is one of the worst things you can do.

Life is hard. Math doesn’t lie. It’s objective.

I was on a panel last week and I was asked “What is the biggest trend in the DTC space that founders must pay attention to in 2024?” My answer was all founders having a firm financial grip on their business, understanding their twelve week cash flow, and slowing down.

Breaking it down more, we’re going as far as:

1. Daily contribution reports, understanding your monthly overhead and operating expenses, and how much exact money do you need to make daily to keep the lights on

2. Everything is getting more expensive. The costs you had when you built your business in 2018, might not work today in 2024. We’re paying more for storage, labor, freight, ads. It seems like we need to be evaluating our model every few months. 

3. Cutting agencies - learning to run the ads yourself

4. Doing less with more. Gone are the days of overinflated teams. Founders are waking up and realizing they need to be lean and to grind it out in the sake of profits. This means it’s okay to do less and be insanely focused.
   

While I was on the panel in front of 300 people getting grilled they hit me with two more questions that I thought were extremely timely.

What are a few tips you would give a new company that wants to introduce a new product to the market in 2024?

Don’t over order. There’s always going to be more inventory to purchase. Don’t fall for 20 cent price breaks. Order enough for what you think you’ll need for 60 days or so and then reassess once your go live. If you know your lead time is 45 days and you have 60 days of lead time then you can make a repurchasing decision a week or so into launch.

As a startup, I’d much rather explain a slight backorder to a customer than spending all of the businesses cash on a product you are hoping will take off.

What are the three things a founder MUST remember in 2024?

1. Don’t remove yourself from the finances. You should still have your eye on the bank account daily.

2. It’s okay not to grow 100% YOY

3. Try not to pay attention to the noise online. You don’t need all the new tools and software. What works for one brand, might not work for yours. Stay focused on whats working….

If nothing is working than you need to have a larger conversation. Is it pricing? Is it the product? Nobody wants to spend their life on a sinking ship and as I mentioned above with life being hard, having the courage to identify a sinking ship or losing product sooner than later and pivoting separates the winners from the losers.

Lets Hang on the Road?

The next thirty days are jammed with non stop travel and I’m certainly going to miss my Miami bed. I’m making it a mission to try to meet with a new entrepreneur every day in April. 30 days means the potential for 30 new friends. You should try it.

If you’re in town, send me a message and lets link up!

NYC: April 8-10th

Boston: April 10-12th

NYC: April 12-17th

Las Vegas: April 25-28th

This will also be my last newsletter for 2024, as I will be moving everything over to create content on Instagram. I’m hoping we can stay in touch over there as I work to make that my #1 channel this year. Follow me at @chrismeade

See you on Instagram!

Chris