10 Things I Wish I Did Sooner

Happy Wednesday! 

I’m writing this on a lovely Spirit flight heading out to beautiful Denver for Outdoor Retailer, one of the nation’s largest trade shows filled with sporting goods buyers. If I’ve learned anything over the years is sometimes you need to splurge and I upgraded for the $50 comfy big seat, highly suggested, especially if it's on your company’s dime :) 

If you haven’t heard I’m a keynote speaker at DTCX4 this year and I could not be more excited. DTCX4 is a two-day event that is jam-packed with the best minds in eCommerce and the best part is it's 100% free. I’m speaking right after Shopify’s President, Harley Finkelstein…. so zero pressure. There are only a few days left to register for the event on June 22nd & 23rd!

REGISTER HERE NOW!

We’re officially about halfway in the year and it feels like a great time for some reflection. I won’t lie things have been tough this year. Projections falling short, all my friend’s saying they are overspending on ads, and then when the ads finally do work you don’t have enough inventory. It’s a scary, crazy, lonely world but on the bright side, we still have over half the year to improve and make 2022 the best one yet. I hope you enjoy this.

10 Things I Wish I Did Sooner 

1. Not paying myself! Early on everybody gets a paycheck but you. This is 100% how it should be, however, think about all of the times you pissed money away that could have gone to your pockets. T-shirts that collected dust, influencers that never posted, wasted ad spend on broken links. Just $500-1000 a month could have helped me sleep so much better at night. 

2. Not firing quick enough. Firing sucks. It’s going to hurt when you do it regardless if it's one month in or fourteen. Rip off the bandaid. You’re only holding yourself and your company back. 

3. Not networking because I thought it was corny. Some of my best friends have come from reaching out to a stranger online. It’s crazy the amount of things I’ve learned just from asking somebody for 30 minutes of their time or grabbing lunch when they are in town. This newsletter would not exist without the networking I did in the early days. It’s awkward in the beginning, I promise it gets better. 

4. Not understanding my break-even financials (thinking top line revenue minus the cost of goods & ad spend accounted for everything). 

How I Used to Think About $165 AOV:

• $32 Landed Cost of Goods (includes tariffs & shipping to your fulfillment center) 

• $72 Customer Acquistion Cost of Facebook

Profit = $61

What I Forgot About:

• $17 UPS Shipping

• $2.75 Packaging 

• $4 Company Employee Overhead 

• $4.5 Payment Processing Fee

• $2 Content Creation for the video you created for the ad

True Profit = $30.75

Still a very solid profit on each unit, but as you can see if you’re not factoring in the above you could believe you’re doing 2x better than what you’re actually doing, driving you to make some really shitty decisions. Most companies reading this aren’t netting $30 per unit & if you are please let me know and send me an investment opportunity. 

5. Risking money on things we couldn’t track but felt good in the moment. 

6. Creating terms with our manufacturer and not just accepting what they proposed. Big bad China feels so scary to deal with when you’re just starting your company, but accepting a shitty deal off the bat will take years for your company to dig out of. Your absolute goal should be:

A) Always pay as little as possible up front to get them to start working on producing inventory

B) Wait to pay the complete balance as long as possible Do anything & everything to increase your cash conversion cycle. 

7. Don’t underestimate your company and brand. Selling out of your product sucks and there’s nothing worse than not having enough inventory. One of our most popular SKUs just sold out last Tuesday and we won’t be back in stock until the 22nd. This will cost our company several hundred thousand dollars. 

8. Using the bank’s money for inventory rather than our own cash. We were so scared to take on debt or a line of credit. 

9. Don’t worry about knockoffs. They can rip your product, but they can never take your brand. Make their customers embarrassed they bought that shit. 

10. Spend more time creating organic, viral moments. Your ad spend will work better.

Did This Help?

Don’t be shy, I want to hear back from you. Drop me a quick response on 1 or 2 things you wish you would have known sooner when starting your company or working for your brand. I'll share the best responses next week!

MY BIGGEST LESSONS

Did you know each week I release a podcast on Tuesday called My Biggest Lessons? I sit down with some of the biggest names in e-commerce, people way cooler than me who take their time to share their biggest fuck ups & things they wish they could do over. You’ll hear from studs like the founder of Brumate, Truff, Bala, Tenzo, the list literally goes on and on. 20-minute episodes, fast, easy, and filled with knowledge. 

Take a listen here and let me know what you think. 

SPONSOR OF THE WEEK

Massive, massive shout out to the team at Gorgias for being some of the most incredible partners for the CROSSED COMMERCE newsletter. Several months ago they were the first company to ever sponsor me and have helped promote my story and give me a platform with DTCX and My Biggest Lessons. If you don’t know about Gorgias, they are quite literally the best customer service solution of all time. 

Every comment and every question is answered within the Gorgias' Shopify App across all platforms. From Facebook, to Instagram, to chat widget questions our customer service agents are working as quickly as possible to get resolution time below 3 minutes and turning potential customers with questions into paying ones. I could write a million newsletters on how Gorgias is one of the most important tools in our tech stack, but check it out here.

Hope you enjoyed and I’ll see you next week,

Chris