Abir | Ecom CFO

A brand paying 2K a month to a retention agency, on 10K of returning revenue means giving up a third of their gross profit for something that changed almost nothing An agency isn't free money and it should fit the stage you're at The real move is laddering up agencies as you scale, the right one for each stage

A founder asked me: at what point do you split countries into separate Meta campaigns? I almost always do. Especially the US. One blended campaign optimizes against an average that fits no single market. The economics aren't the same. Different behavior, different AOV, different margins. Shipping to Australia from China isn't shipping to the US. So set targets per market instead of forcing one budget to cover all of them. Split them, and let each country carry its own math.

You haven't cracked the product yet, but you're already running your own warehouse and fulfillment. It's five hard problems at once. Complexity is only worth carrying once the product works. Until then, you want one difficult thing at a time.

"Gym people need clothes, why not sell them clothes?" That's the trap. Launching an adjacent category isn't free: new funnel, new inventory, new ad spend, all competing with the business you already have. Selling merch to your existing audience is fine. Launching a whole second brand off "it kind of makes sense" is not. Ask yourself: same customer, same pain point? If not, you're running two businesses.

@AdamGillman Ya the operations side can be such a big unlock but there's far less conversation about it in DTC twitter

Here's how we’ve been using AI for our 9 figure ecom business in supplements. And it's probably not what you'd expect. Everyone talks about AI for content and ads. That's actually the smallest part of the opportunity. Here's where I'm finding the real leverage: Creative ideation: I can generate 30 hook variants in the time it used to take me to write 3. The volume of creative testing we can run has tripled. Briefing and strategy: I feed AI raw customer reviews, support tickets, and competitor product reviews. I get a strategy document back in 20 minutes that would have taken a human strategist a full week. Operations: Building dashboards. Cleaning up analytics. Drafting job descriptions. Structuring growth roadmaps. Every supporting task that used to take hours now takes minutes. Where I'm still careful: I don't let AI write final-form ad copy. And I don't trust it on anything requiring real customer insight without a human reviewing the output carefully. The bigger unlock isn't "AI does my job." It's that I can run 3x the experiments per week because the friction on every supporting task has completely collapsed. The brand that runs a 40-person operations team's worth of work on 8 people and AI tooling is going to have margin advantages that compound for years. Most operators are still treating AI as a creative gimmick. The ones treating it as an operational rewrite are going to be untouchable in 3 years. The creative use case gets all the attention. The operational use case builds the actual moat.

You need to treat shipping as a lever, not just a cost Takes two secs: your monthly shipping income minus fulfillment cost That's your shipping profit or loss, and almost no one tracks it

I can't mentally wrap my head around a person not wanting guidance when they're making a mistake Wanting to do the wrong thing so they can learn from their mistakes - like consciously

7 ecommerce mistakes quietly draining your brand 1. Blending profit across channels 2. Ignoring dead stock 3. Straight discounts instead of bundles 4. Taking debt with no cash forecast 5. Not calculating scaling targets 6. Chasing acquisition while ignoring LTV 7. Looking at your finance KPIs once a year

@patrickdichter Gotta love the 95% margins of infoproduct

@Abir_CFO Gotcha. Definitely some survivor bias - I felt the same when we had a lot of accounting clients in the coaching and course industries just printing cash for a while

There’s 3 people I know who acquired accounting firms after me in the last few years and they’ve already sold to do something else. It is not at all easy or passive.

A brand losing $100K a month, about seven months from running out of cash. Great product, patented tech, $600K in the bank, and scaling fast enough to go broke. One hour on the phone. Three changes: Pull back ad spend (profit +37% in month one) Swap the media buyers (profit +74% by month two) Invest in creative (revenue +75%, profit +102% by month three) Profitable in three months.

@patrickdichter Yes - but in fairness we only work with brands after they've hit a certain amount of success so there's a lot of survivor-bias-like framing of everyone making lots of money Even then tho - I'd love a business that has waaaay fewer humans

@Abir_CFO It’s hard but a lot to like. What do you prefer? E comm?

@digitaladguide the man!

Now that the algo is fixed, let me introduce myself so you can join along for the ride to the top of the advertising world. My name is Michael. I'm 33 from Miami, Florida, but now I am based in Denver, Colorado. I am an advertiser who specializes in Meta Ads and direct response copywriting. I believe this is one of the most powerful skill combos that exists at the moment. I'm married to my beautiful wife, have a 9-month old son, teach Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and play jazz guitar. I started off in corporate America in the software industry as a technical project manager at big companies like General Electric and Citrix. Made decent money but was super unfulfilled and uninspired. Kinda hated my life tbh. 2021 I got into affiliate marketing as a side hustle and hit multiple 7-figs within 2 years. Felt on top of the world. Nothing can stop me. Then I got laid off corporate and the affiliate program ended. Wtf do I do now? I basically told myself I am a failure if I go back to corporate. So I found a mentor that was doing freelance Meta ads and followed in his footsteps. Shoutout @DoulgeridisK. Went from spending like $600k/month of my own businesses money to managing $50/day campaigns for tiny Mom & Pop shops in New Jersey. Brutal. Took about 4 years of over-delivering for clients and proving myself to get to where I am today. Now I run ads for ~8-10 clients at a time. Some smaller 6-figure ones and some 8-figure whales as well. Got a solid waitlist. Doing quite well for myself again. I also run one of the largest Meta ads Skool communities. Me and my team are getting people insane results inside which I am super proud of. I am now on this journey where I am trying to make a big impact in the advertising world, help a lot of people, make a lot of money for my family in the process (and somehow stay sane). Balance is hard. That's what I am struggling with most. Feels like spinning 20 plates at once. Every day I ring out the towel completely. Completely exhausted by bed time. Any tips on finding balance as a entrepreneur, Dad, Husband, etc appreciated. Anyways, nice to meet you all again. I'm grateful to have found this corner of the internet. It's honestly changed my life in the best way. I've made a ton of mistakes but have also made some great decisions along the way that have gotten me to where I am now. So if I can help anyone along on the journey, DMs are open. Cheers -MD

Five things worth paying for before scaling breaks you: 1. A 13-week cash flow forecast (see the crunch coming) 2. A fractional CFO before 8 figures (fix mistakes while they're small) 3. Payment processor reserves (Stripe and Shopify hold cash back) 4. Insurance (don't eat a warehouse fire yourself) 5. Real inventory costing (freight and duties included) None of it's exciting. All of it's cheaper than the problem it prevents.

Just realized how most of my coaching calls aren't even about finance It's mostly ecom and growth strategy Just happens to be based more in their finance reality rather than theory

Your ROAS looks fine, MER looks stable but growth stalled anyway. Almost like the number everyone stares at isn't the one that matters. Join me on July 16, 11am PT, on @motionapp_ to find your real ceiling for ad spend. motionapp.com/events/how-to-… See ya there

@ToriiRowe Looks amazing - that’s an awesome accomplishment

TheLab is officially live externally. We use this for all internal reporting, ai insights, profit tracker, and currently working on an MTA which will be rolled out at the same price of $99 a month. We will continue to build tools into the platform and as we build them for our internal team we will test and roll out externally, with the mission to never raise the price. Our goal is to not use this as a revenue driver but to provide the ability for smaller D2C stores to have access to some of the same tools which bigger companies use and drive growth. Available in the Shopify App Store TheLab by DREAMLABS

@NotZainAgain Def a nice place - dont know enough ecom ppl there tho

@Abir_CFO San diego

What's the internet money default city to live in like Miami but for people with kids?

@thevslguy So idles at 500 rpm 🫡

@Abir_CFO Profit is not idle, it can be 600hp German

Profit is just dollars in your business that don't have a job Everyone treats being profitable as the goal. Usually it isn't Every dollar is either working or idle, and idle is a choice The real question is simple: what's the highest-ROI job you could give this dollar? Most dollars in most businesses are doing bullshit jobs. Go give them better work

@ChelalaPierre1 Haha gotta diversify that portfolio

@Abir_CFO usually put my portion of the profit into out of ecom investments but i run a bunch of brands so a lot stays in as well haha