it's shocking how many founders I have spoken to who only have a basic understanding of their personal finance. these are smart people who have successful businesses but they just simply haven't even thought about what comes after the EBITDA not only they barely understand the concept of free cash flow but they definitely don't know what objectives they have for their personal portfolio allocation nor have they defined their "fuck you" money amount. if this is you, please spend some time to develop a clear plan for yourself! you should know this well before you have "made it", don't wait until later

pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon

i love how we have to find out about new meta ads features through chinese whispers

me trying to get pass TikTok Shop verification is it just me or is it actually this difficult? it's almost as poorly designed as facebook ads manager

Are u a filthy casual @ supply chain? Here are 10 tips to make it seem like you are kind of literate: 1. KNOW YOUR SUPPLIER'S INVENTORY! You should know what the inputs are for your product, how much they cost your supplier, and the lead times for those inputs. You should be asking your supplier on a regular basis what their inventory is so you can work backwards and figure out how big a customer you are, what their lead times are going to be like, etc. This is SO easy to do and provides u with a massive leg up...so just do it. Speak to other manufacturers and ask them the same question. Then you can figure out how good your manufacturer is. You should also ask about things like their cost of labor. 2. Talk to 25 suppliers, not 3. The funnel is: 25 msgs → 15 non-room temp iq replies → 6 reasonable quotes → 4 survive diligence → 1-2 viable. 3. Value engineer everything. Your customer doesn't care what the product costs YOU. And they probably don't even care about the same stuff you think is cool about your product. Dissect every line item and make sure it's something people really care about. For example at one of our brands our manufacturer was arranging everything face up. Obviously it's being shipped around so much that by the time it gets to the customers it's all jumbled so it doesn't really matter if it's facing up. For us there was no value add and obviously there's no value add for our customers so it was just stupid extra cost. We also unbundle frequently and see what happens. Typically nobody actually cares about the extra stuff and there's no correlation to anything like repurchase, etc. 4. There is no such thing as a relationship with a giant corp. Carriers are enemy #1. They don't negotiate in good faith until spend is $0. Set up alternatives first, turn them off, then watch "special programs" magically appear. Rebid every 12-18 months. 5. Learn your supplier's cost structure. Nearly every country subsidizes exporter financing through an export bank. Your supplier's cost of capital is exponentially cheaper than yours which means them holding inventory or extending net terms is cheap for them and gold for you. 6. Contracts under 8 figures are unenforceable. You're not dragging a supplier into court over $150k of defects. Contracts exist to create fairness: define late delivery, defects, payment timing, and disputes BEFORE things go wrong. Frame penalties as "on-time bonuses"...it builds less resentment 7. Send suppliers a rolling demand forecast. Update monthly, email it out. You'll be the only customer doing this and they will treat you accordingly. 8. Show up in person, get on a plane. Who gets better pricing...the guy who visits every 6 months, or the guy berating their supplier on WeChat? I have never lost money visiting a supplier or walking a trade show floor. Cheap hotel, cheap flight, go. 9 and 10. sorry the bhogalstore is closed

practicing assumption hygiene also helps to discover your blindspots periodically re-exposing your foundational beliefs to the question "is this still a bet I would consciously make today, with what I now know?"

sample of ~100 brands doing at least $1M/mo, correlated and 75% are doing better May vs feb and may vs mar. aggregate NC revenue up 17%. total orders up 25%, traffic up 25%, spend up almost 25%. CVR flat, almost no change. small cohort (<10) fastest growing brands was 40% of growth. 65% of scalers did so on flat or better CPA. common factor among winners was flat or declining cpm (somewhat obvious).

if your inventory turnover target is a net 4 (90 days) across everything, it means that a significant amount of your inventory needs to turn >4 because you will always have some duds dragging your working capital your supply chain needs to actually optimize for a 4 for your evergreen SKUs to get to a net 4

had a few conversations with a few 8-fig brands the last few weeks and realized many STILL don't hire from overseas it was just normal for me right from the beginning maybe because AU has a tiny talent pool, this seems to be very much a US quirk from my observation. i have hired 5 people through Sean's recruitment agency Tidal and have like 3 active recruitments right now. for example, our recent video editor from Mexico city knew how to generate AI clips for b-rolls or incorporating AI elements into existing b-roll on day 1 which was great. Tidal has been fantastic and I recommend it to everyone who's looking to hire overseas. creatives in LATAM, ops in PH is my current preference. my entire ad team is overseas with 1 on-shore FT lead. not sponsored!

you should occasionally get super high or drunk (or both) and then think about your business. whether it's high level strategy, brand positioning, customer journey, content ideas or whatever else that is creative in nature (definitely not numerical though LOL) blindspots are real. it's almost always the case that the thing you need to grow is located in your blindspot if it isn't in your blindspot, you would have done it already or be in the process of doing it! since you know the most about your business out of anyone, whatever is in your blindspot, will surely be valuable to know another thing about blindspot is that it clusters around your deepest assumptions. it's not always your fault, if you don't eventually set your assumptions and plant the flag, you wouldn't have been able to start building towards a direction. but unfortunately, these are often foundational assumptions: - what's your category - who's the main avatar for your product - what does your product actually do for people - what should you price it at, etc find your blindspots, they are out there! p.s. also if it's not costly to change an assumption that you hold, it's okay to let go and just a/b test it. it's not costly to try anyway! you should hold as few assumptions as possible but of the ones you hold, hold them tightly.

this is a great list of old japanese cars ads i swear i will pay and subscribe to a feed that only shows old TV ads. i will accept anything pre-2010. unbelievable alpha for ad concepts. does this exist? an old TV ads library? if not can someone build it please ❤️

when my creative strategist presents me their ads, i only focus on 2 things - does it look like an ad? - have we tried this messaging/format before for this avatar? that's literally it. if you apply these 2 restraint, you will solve like 90% of your issues.

e-comm is so simple i dont know why you are all crying about it just make more money and try really hard to not waste money. that's it you ding dongs smh

you should think deeply about if your business is generating actual positive externalities in the little world that it exists in sure you hire a few people and provide for them and their families but what else? is your product adding to the over consumption of the world or is it something that's actually functional for something? does your product actually work? do you have any philanthropic programs and where do the dollars go precisely? ask yourself honestly, if your business disappears tomorrow, will the world be better off or worse off overall? the world, not you. don't make the world a worse place in order to make your money.

Consumer sentiment is all time low since COVID It's well documented that during periods of economic stress, health & wellness do really well as people shift away from aspirational or status driven purchases. "I can't control the economy but I can control my body and my health." The decline is 100% real. If you are a health & wellness brand and killing it right now, I implore you to look longer term and prepare for the eventual whiplash. It will happen.

Running a business is just realizing how dumb you were 6 months ago every 6 months

I just finished the greatest single month in the history of ridge. Revenue growth north of 50%. MER got better YOY. We can talk about bid strategy on meta if you want. Or we can talk about ai ads or hooks or whatever. But that isn’t where the alpha is. You can get 3-10% efficiency lifts there vs the whole market. But truly asymmetric bets happen outside of the ad account. We are in consumer, you need to make new stuff sometimes so your customers have something to buy.

product development can be surprisingly cheap for some categories you burn $10k on some stupid ads without batting an eye while you are probably not spending nearly enough on R&D what it does take is thoughtful attention. you have to think through the supply chain & finance. feel & touch through the user experience. if you aren't already doing it, just try to juggle a new one and let it slowly cook in the background. it's okay if it takes time, how else would you actually create something genuinely novel (but still have the TAM) in the market? it doesn't just fall out of the sky. product development is known to take a long time for a reason. when you are in this mode, you have to be tinkerer and not a capitalist trying to generate shareholder value it's also *really* fun