DTC Direct 📦

PRIORITIES IN YOUR 20S: - Cheap thrills, fast money, exciting times - Cars, designer clothes, flexing, stunting - “I'm only young once, I'm just going to enjoy my life” - Accountable to no one PRIORITIES IN YOUR 30S: - Building a legacy to pass down to the next generation - Taking care of yourself and preserving your life - Providing for the people you care about - Getting married, having kids, and figuring out what the rest of your life looks like Your 20s feel like you're untouchable and your time on this earth is never coming to an end. Your 30s are when you realize your time is not just more valuable than you thought, but more fleeting than you thought.

I've watched THOUSANDS of digital creators sell $7B in digital products on SamCart. The ones doing $1M-$50M/year sell these 10 business digital products:

FanBasis conceptually started as a Shopify store. I built it to sell digital experiences for a friend who went viral on TikTok. - Virtual meet and greets - Instagram followbacks - Beauty routines It worked within 5 weeks. Before that, it was just an idea. After that, I knew the concept worked, so I built the real platform around it. That first sale is the hardest one to get, but everything after is just volume.

I hired several Amazon agencies before I built one. Here's exactly what I learned from FIRING all of them... Terrible agencies: - Quote months for listings, then go quiet for weeks - Copy-paste Helium10 into ChatGPT and call it optimization - Charge $500-$1K per listing for manual offshore labor - Send reports full of metrics disconnected from profits - React to suspensions after your listings are already down Great agencies: - Give a clear timeline and actually hit it - Pull from proprietary data ChatGPT doesn't have access to - Monitor your account 24/7 before problems become suspensions - Show exactly what changed and how it moved your business - Cost roughly half because the model was built for efficiency Every agency will tell you they're the second one. Their infrastructure will tell you the truth. That's exactly why I built Lumian.

Operators build separate businesses when they should be stacking them. The 7 levers that turn a portfolio into a compounding machine: 1. Capability - buy skill and talent, not just revenue 2. Leads - acquire audience and attention sources 3. Innovation - add defensible tech or training assets 4. Margin - pull suppliers and distributors inside 5. LCV - turn one-off transactions into subscriptions 6. AOV - offer cross-category upsells 7. Customers - expand into adjacent markets that share the same buyer If it doesn't pull at least two of these, skip it. That said...a small accounting firm on its own might fetch 4x EBITDA. Plug it into a larger platform with shared systems, cross-selling, and recurring client flow, and its multiple can double to 8 or 10x. Same thing in blue-collar. A single HVAC company trades for 3 or 4x. A consolidated regional network with unified branding and bulk-buying power can command 8x or more. That spread is what happens when you stop building separately and stack instead (also known as the Stackonomics premium) Buyers pay for predictability, scale, and simplicity. Every integration step reduces perceived risk. Reduced risk = higher multiple. Starting from zero every time is the most expensive habit in entrepreneurship.

Founders get excited when they see a candidate from a company like AG1. Big brand, clearly done well…must mean the person is exceptional. But usually, it means the opposite - at least for their context. Those types of companies go from a core team of a few dozen people to 200+ people in a short span. The new people are very capable - genuinely, but they're built for that next stage of growth: the resources, the scope, the infrastructure already in place. Throw them three steps back, and the context is completely different. More likely than not, it doesn't translate because they've never had to operate the way your company operates right now. What you actually want is someone from a brand 1-2 steps ahead of you - still growing fast but they've already been through some of the problems you’re experiencing. There are tools to find them. Ad spy tools for Meta, TikTok, and Amazon - you can see exactly which brands have scaled from your stage over the past 12 months. Those companies are producing the people you want. Someone who's figured out what works with your constraints, at your scale. But they've operated in the environment you're actually in. That's the only context that transfers.

places i've been + what i learned: > puerto rico - could never go back to normal after this > cheap countries - $1K/month living, $300K/month earning > las vegas - pharmacy school changed my trajectory > kansas - met my first mentor at age 9 > panama - where i record 25 videos in a day travel taught me more than any course ever did.

I used to think delegation was the only way to scale, but my sister proved me wrong. > 2 AM reviewing retention data with our agency partner > Seven years working together > $400M in client revenue generated > I'm watching the numbers > Then I look at Kristina > She's writing another email. Personally > I told her months ago to hand this off > She ignored me > Every campaign, every sequence, every reply > All her > I thought she was being stubborn, refusing to let go of busy work > Then I saw the data > We went from 3 emails a week to 5+ > I thought she'd burn the list > But unsubscribes stayed flat > Clicks went up 7x > Even revenue jumped > That's when I got it > She wasn't holding onto tasks > She was protecting the connection > Every email carried her care for the customer > That's why they didn't unsubscribe > They felt it > The care, the attention and the personal touch > That's what she was protecting all along $90M later, I finally got it.

call me super annoying but..I will keep repeating this… Claude + SEO is going to create a bunch of business “millionaires” this year. don’t bookmark this if it crosses your timeline. Just paste this entire thing into Claude. thank me later.

Niche products WIN. Go small. Hyper targeted audience for a very specific pain point. Once you establish that, you can branch out 💯

How are things looking for you in light of the changes to Ecom in 2025?

Look beyond vanity metrics.  Where are you seeing real conversations? Are people commenting on your newsletter? Reposting your podcast? DMing you after an IG Story? Pay attention to where your audience is talking back, not just scrolling past. If you’re showing up in a place that feels like yelling into the void, it might be time to reassess.  Great things happen when people are paying attention and responding.

@ecomchasedimond Count me in

Don't sleep on email... Personalized, value-driven emails can nurture your customer relationships and drive repeat purchases.

One of the key aspects of long-term success is this: Maintain a balance between acquisition and retention. While gaining new customers is important, retaining existing ones is often more cost-effective and can lead to higher lifetime value.