There's No Better Time to Save Some Money

Happy Monday!

If you’re new here, what’s up? I’m Chris, one of the founders of CROSSNET, one of the country’s most popular backyard games. If you’re a weekly reader I appreciate you more than you’ll ever know and helping make this newsletter what it is.

It’s been a busy end of the summer here at the LLC as we’ve been pushing end-of-summer sales, getting restocked on Amazon, and most importantly setting up the rest of 2023 to be as successful as possible.

For those asking, my eye is doing 100% better after almost blinding myself last week and I’m back to wearing contacts! If you’re in Toronto I’d love to kick it this week. I’m in town from Wednesday to Saturday and hosting a massive 60 person dinner on Thursday & a sauna/cold plunge session Friday morning!

So what are we writing about this week?

Well, I just received my third quarterly investor update earlier this week. The same narrative can be found across the majority of DTC brands I have stock in - Growth is a true double-edged sword. On one hand, it's a clear indication that your business is moving in the right direction, but on the other hand, it can easily spin out of control and lead to burnout, frustration, and, worst of all, failure.

So, how do you manage growth while not spiraling out of control? The key is 100% in the strategy, having patience, and optimizing for profitability.

Going on nearly ten years in the ecommerce world I’ve seen that the biggest mistakes when you’re moving too fast and trying to grow 500% year over year. If you’re trying to blast off and cash out quickly for an exit, that's when mistakes happen.

My Favorite Ways of Saving Some Money:

• Re-evaluate your team. We used to have a team of 23 members and now we’re down to 8. Revenue is up. Profit is up. Expenses are way down.

• Switch from full time employees to part time. In this work-from-home environment, we’re seeing focus and accountability be at an all time low. We’re getting much more bang for our buck by working with hourly employees. This also allows us to scale up or down based on busy season.

• Reduce agency spend. This isn’t 2020 anymore. Paying agencies a % of spend or tens of thousands every few months does not fly any more. Bring that business in house and save. Why pay an agency $5000/month for 1 hour of attention a day, when you can find an employee for the same price and get 40 hours of work?

• Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate everything.

• Be smarter with your finances, eliminate hidden transfer fees, and stop paying excessive foreign exchange rates.

Saving Big with Airwallex

The CROSSNET team is putting a massive emphasis on solving the last bullet point this month after realizing that we are legit spending thousands on transaction fees and currency exchanges. A good friend of mine who does massive business in Australia put me onto Airwallex and we’ve just started using them for every single international transaction.

Why?

We found that we were wasting nearly $50 in transaction fees close to 10 times a week for countless bills. Every time we sent money to our manufacturer. Paying for freight. Paying our Canadian & Australia 3PLs. Paying random vendors.

We now load up Airwallex once a month and then make all of our payments through their platform. We expect to save $2000+ a month in annoying fees, which will end up being an extra $24k in savings to the bottom line. Just by planning ahead and saving on transaction fees!

If you’re selling into international markets like us, I just found out that PayPal and Amazon have been auto-converting Canadian and Australian currency into USD and we’ve been getting burned daily. Now rather than our money flowing into our Bank of America account daily, our international sales flow into Airwallex and get converted into USD for free. A typical FX fee is 3%, so if we’re doing $2M annually in Canada and Australia, you save an extra $60,000 on your bottom line.

One simple switch to our business and applying the right fintech partner will save us over $84,000 this year. That's money directly to the bottom line and a nice little take home that goes in the founder’s pot.

Airwallex is going to be a game changer for both CROSSNET and Good Sport as we expand into more and more international markets. We just launched CROSSNET ads in Europe after five years and the results have been super impressive. Expanding our business internationally was one of the best decisions we ever made and something I wish we didn’t wait years to do as it's the perfect cure to seasonality.

Want to save money and have a banking partner that can grow with you? Get a demo of Airwallex here and get a $500 sign up bonus now.

Quick Reads

As I’m getting older, I’m finding financial literacy to be the most important thing I’m focusing on. Saving just a few dollars every day in a bunch of different areas is the best way to set yourself and your company out for the best financial future.

After checking out Airwallex here are three quick reads that I’ve loved:

1. Double Your Profits in Six Months or Less

2. The Psychology of Money

3. Die Getting All You Can With Your Money

Homies for Hire

Gearing up for Black Friday already? You’re not alone. We’re less than 90 days away. I swear as I get older the time just goes that much quicker.

I have a few good friends taking on new projects. So if you’re in the market for any of the below let me know:

• USA 3PL (Amazing communication, affordable prices, very boutique and excellent experience with retail & Amazon)

• Performance (FB, IG, Tik Tok) & email marketing

• Freight (Both importing and also LTL for trucking from the port)

• Graphic Design

• Getting on dozens of podcasts a month

As always shoot me an email back if you have any questions. If you’re in Toronto, I’d love to meet up and grab a coffee. I’d love to hear what's keeping you up at night these days and how I can help!

You’re amazing,

Chris

PS. Thanks Airwallex for sponsoring this week’s version of Crossed Commerce. They’ve been a massive help in saving us a ridiculous amount of money each and every week.