How We Grew to Over $10,000,000 in Revenue Completely Bootstrapped

This bootstrapping life isn't for everyone. Yesterday afternoon I spoke to close to 4000 marketers and entrepreneurs at Gorgias's DTCX3 conference about my biggest lessons while bootstrapping our brand to over $10,000,000 in revenue. I won't lie, its been hard. There's been nights I went to bed crying. Days where you just have this pit in your stomach and can't even eat because you think the business is going to fall apart. Looking back, I wouldn't trade it for the world.

We're still 100% in control of our business. We have no investors or majority share holders to report to. We're free to run our company the way we want to. We are nobody's timeline but our own. Complete freedom over our decisions, what more could I ask for? 

"When we just get to 10 sales a day, we will be rich" - a quote from my still not rich self to my fiancée in an Uber on our third date. 

              Manufacturing 101

I'll be honest this part sucks and it's boring but it all starts at the factory. If you accept a shitty product cost from the start or if you never negotiate you are set up for failure. When creating a product you should work backwards from your ideal retail price to your manufacturing and see if your idea is even a reality. Here is a nice made up example for you:

I want to sell a basketball hoop for $200. I know that my retail cost should be 4-5x what my landed cost should be and I want my wholesale cost to be between 2-2.5x what my landed cost is. In this dream situation we would see the following numbers and can scale things up to meet my needs. 

Landed Cost: $40

Wholesale Cost: $90

Retail Cost: $200

Helpful Tips:

• Don't fall for price breaks. Order small. You need money for advertising. They'll always be more product.

• Learn your lead time to your warehouse. Lets say its 90 days. How many units can you sell in those 90 units, plus/minus a comfortable buffer incase a massive deal comes through or things explode? That's how many you should order to start.

• Find a factory that is willing to work with the money you have. I would never start a business with a $100,000 purchase order without have proof that customers actually want this. Limit your risk and negotiate payment terms. Your goal should be to get them to start production with 10-20% down and pay for the remainder when it arrives at your warehouse. The longer you can go without paying for the goods, the better.

• Every time you place a new larger order revisit this negotiation and improve your terms.

Marketing 101

It's important to treat every dollar like it’s coming from your personal bank account... because well in fact it is. However, when things start to get good don't lose that humble perspective or you'll end up blowing money fast. I think Rick Ross has a song about this. 

Here's what you need to know:

1) Know your break even ROAS numbers when running paid advertising. You shouldn't be spending money if you don't fully comprehend the concept of "when we spend this, we make this in profit." Boil that down to a science, make a google sheet you track daily or if you're like us you end up becoming so reliant on affordable apps like Triple Whale. 

Spend the time to create dedicated landing pages for different products and customers. One of my biggest mistakes as an owner was not creating content dedicated to moms & dads sooner. I knew 90% of my customers were parents, so why did I not make landing pages that showed off families, bbqs, height adjustability sooner. 

We created this lander just last week and have already seen a 2x increase in conversion and 3x return on ad spend. We're making more and spending less, a marketers dream! It's been awesome waking up and seeing the sales numbers in Triple Whale and this is an early indication that I should be spending time making more landing pages for our different audiences, especially as CROSSNET SOCCER comes out in a few weeks. 

2) Do anything and everything in your power to capture your customer's data. You are spending so much damn money and effort to bring traffic to your site, you better be collecting every email and phone number possible. We use Privy at CROSSNET and have been using them since we launched in 2018.

Back when I was hustling on the side making Shopify stores as a "Shopify Consultant" to pay the rent, Privy was the #1 app I would download for every store. People were always so surprised when I told them that you could start using it for free and then upgrade to really affordable plans as you scale. They legit do everything from:

• Growing your email & sms list (pop ups, flyouts, onsite displays)

• Automating your email marketing (abandoned cart email, customer winback, welcome email, etc) and send on-brand newsletters

• Send broadcast and abandoned cart text messages.

Privy is extending a 15 day free trial to my entire newsletter. Just download here.

3) Constantly seek to improve your conversion rate. The difference between a 1% and 2% conversion rate is everything and could be dozens of new orders each day. Move theme formats around, create different landers, switch up your ad copy. Each day you should be making small tweaks to constantly improve. Never settle. 

Marketing Mix Breakdown

Team Building

Essential Needs: Early on every person you bring onto your team should directly be responsible for making atleast as much as they cost to keep on. $50k talent, better be bringing me in $50k of revenue or why am I paying for this person? You'll find my hot takes on essential team members below. Please keep in mind this is simply from my perspective. If one of your founders or current team members has one of these skills, use common sense that you probably don't need that hire.

• Creative Marketing Lead (Leads the vision of the business)

• Sales Person (Don't rely on Facebook for all your revenue, diversify your business)

• Finance

• Social Media Lead

• Logistics (Manufacturing & Import/Export)

Luxury Hires: These are nice to haves but 100% not a need until there's cash in the bank.

• In house performance marketing team

• In house email marketing team

• Graphic designer (video editor & image)

• Shopify developer

• Public relations

I hope you enjoyed this breakdown. I'd love to hear from you guys. What are you struggling with? What questions do you have for me? Drop a response back to this. I'll be responding all weekend. 

See you next week,

Chris