Lessons Learned

So from this brand and everything we did — here’s the real shit I learned:

1. Team & Culture

At the end of the day, none of this would’ve been possible without my team.

• My strategists, my image editors, the ops behind me — they’re the reason things moved as fast as they did.
• Aggressive hiring is necessary, but you also have to make sure you’re hiring the right people.
• If I had a couple more key hires (like a media buyer or someone running Google Ads), we could’ve scaled 10x harder.

2. Supplier Credit Terms & Forecasting

• Biggest operational regret: not securing credit terms early.
• When you scale, cash upfront kills you if you don’t have terms.
• Forecasting is everything — if you order stock with 30-day lead times, but you burn through it in 3 days, you’re fucked.
• Always push suppliers for better terms + faster lead times.

3. Subscriptions

• Do not use Shopify Subscriptions.
• They’ll steal all your data and you won’t be able to export or transfer anything.
• Use Seal or Loop, because you can always export your subs and move them to another store if shit goes sideways.

4. Backup Processors & Cash Flow

• Always have a backup high-risk processor ready, even if you’re not using it.
• Once you’re scaling, get private processing or headless checkout lined up.
• Cash flow is king. Losing money sucks, but losing cash flow is death.
• You can’t pay your team.
• You can’t fulfill orders.
• You can’t scale.
• Shopify Payments, PayPal — they don’t give a fuck about you. Some random support rep can click a button and you’re done.

5. Don’t Get Lost in the Highs

• When things are going well, don’t get cocky.
• Tough times will come. Prepare for them in advance.
• Get the boring shit off your to-do list before scaling chaos hits.
• If you’re looking to exit, investors want to see steady, positive performance — not rollercoasters.

6. Whitelisting & Pre-landers

• Secret sauce for scaling.
• One ad can turn into four winners when you push it across:
• Branded page
• Authority page
• Niche theme page
• Personal whitelisted page
• Pairing whitelisting with pre-landers let us scale insanely hard, while keeping margins locked in with the inflated bid cap strategy.