Hello all,

I took a break from this newsletter due to the fact that I was very deep into BFCM work. It has been quite the process to see the plans that started back in May to come to life.

Overall, I am super happy about our overall performance for not only our brands but our clients brands as well. We saw some major milestones hit, and I don’t think we left much meat on the bone based on completely surpassing our targets.

Breakdown:

Flewd BFCM - 910k in sales (target was 816k)

Brand 2 BFCM - 44k in sales (target was 31k)

Overall I am very happy about this. I will share a few highlights about what went well, what I believe made a difference, and then I want to talk about where we ended up for the month + the next stage of growth for our brand we launched this year (500k/mo by end of 2025)…

Lessons Learned

Evergreen creative worked really well for us. 

Some of our most successful creative ended up being UGC videos that resonated with customers at a very high level. Some of our winning ads that have carried more than 300k in total spend did a great job of carrying the top of funnel traffic, along with some new winners as well that quickly rose to the top of spend.

Sales creative provided a solid lift

We introduced some video memes (insert gasp!) to the arsenal, and those performed really well, displaying sales language. One thing that I felt worked well as making the language a bit vague that can be used for extended periods of time throughout the holiday season.

Instead of “Black Friday sale up to 40% off!!” I prefer to use “biggest sale of the year up to 30% off” knowing that we will actually be running a similar sale or higher throughout this period of time.

This not only helps us keep assets that have been winning early going for a longer period of time, it helps us not have to sunset assets after just a day or two of spend.

Limited edition drops can be a major lift

In the past we had free gift with purchase offers which have worked really well. But this year we decided to drop a limited edition product on Black Friday. I was incredibly surprised by the turnout of customers who purchased.

Black Friday was by far our biggest day as I know many others experienced Cyber Monday to be that for them. I actually don’t mind this. If most others are spending more on Cyber Monday, I’m ok with seeing less revenue that day and blowing Black Friday out of the water.

It’s never going to be perfect

There is always something that goes wrong, and you can never plan for everything. But we were the most prepared we ever were for this BFCM and it showed up in major ways. I think this is such an incredible strength that my team has that pours into our agency clients. We end up crushing it more for our clients because we are so well-prepared and know what needs to be done to hit major revenue milestones and can guide the brands to plan for this.

Plan early as possible

I know some brands start planning BFCM in August or September. We pushed our clients to finalize plans earlier and have the offers and everything ready to go. We also find that making improvements from the previous years but keeping a similar structure can reap a lot of benefits as well.

With all that being said, we had a product that was supposed to show up for Cyber Monday get delayed so we are having to roll it out in a January promotion. Bummer, but not the end of the world. It goes to show that even if you plan super early, shit happens and you adjust.

So how did November end up? - Portfolio Update

Flewd - 1.53M in revenue

Brand 2 - 121k in revenue

I won’t go into more detail than that for now, but I am proud of the work we did. I am excited to continue to scale both brands, and hitting the 100k mark for our ‘baby’ brand we essentially launched this year is really exciting. I know some scale faster, but it’s bootstrapped and moving in a solid direction.

Once we surpass 800k/mo in revenue I’ll share the brand with my loyal newsletter crew. Probably going to wait to reveal it to the public until we are bigger than that..1.5M/mo outside of peak months. Look at me, already dreaming up a 18M/year brand. I’ll hold my horses. Lots of work left to do.

My overall plan to scale our smaller brand to 500k/mo

My original plan with this newsletter was to show you and talk through building our brand we launched this year to get to 7 figures. That has not happened just yet. We will end up around 650k in revenue for the year. We will likely hit 1M in revenue in a rolling 12 month period within the next 3-5 months.

With that being said, as I have shared in a previous newsletter about the levels of scale here, I am essentially planning out scaling the brand from level 2 (30-150k) to Level 4 (300-750k). I believe we can achieve this by the end of 2025 for sure.

In fact, I am planning out our growth to get to level 5 by the end of next year. Now the question is, how?

Good question. It’s actually a roadmap that isn’t that complicated but many brands mess it up. Let’s go down the list of ideas that many people try for to scale to this level:

• Launch a ton of products to capture more demand 👎️ 

• Try to expand to new channels to find more new customers 👎️ 

• Spend more money on a fancy new website to upgrade the UX 👎️ 

• Hire more people or more expensive agencies to grow the biz 👎️ 

• Do the same thing over and over again and expect continual growth 👎️ 

There is some truth to every one of these items above. But the problem with these tactics is that they are simply tactics. They are also very difficult to make an incremental impact on the desired and needed growth to the next level of scale.

Here’s what I plan to do instead:

• One MAJOR launch of a new flagship SKU that we know customers will love based on post-purchase surveys and customer feedback 🤩 

• We will plan around this major launch and build a funnel around it with creative we have already tested that works well with the target audience 🎯 

• Continue to test new angles to unlock evergreen angles in the Meta account 😍 

• Test new offers to see if we can unlock more efficiency for new customer acquisition 🥳 

• Build out a strong subscription funnel to increase overall LTV and capture first-time subscription buyers 📈 

• Roll out an affiliate program and begin product seeding 🎁 

• Take care of our current customers with excellent customer service, finding ways to improve our current product, customer journey, and customer experience 🫶 

This is how we will win, and expand into the next stage of growth. We will not expand into new channels. We will not try to launch multiple products. We will not get distracted by the shiny objects.

I write this newsletter for a few reasons. One of those reasons is to be kept accountable for what I say I will do. Another is that many of you find this rambling valuable. So, I hope this helps you with the picture of what I believe makes sense for us as next levels of growth.

Our goal is to continue to incrementally scale spend on Meta + Google, while also knowing that we need to take things to the next level. It’s wild to see how much you can accomplish in just a year or two, but I have found myself impatient for SCALE SCALE SCALE.

The fact is, the basic items get you there. We won’t be rolling out many new apps, to be honest the big change we will likely make this year in our tech stack will be to add sms (we were having issues getting this setup this year 🤦 ).

I am super excited to see what 2025 holds. This will be my last newsletter until January so I can enjoy some time with my family and also wrap up our planning for 2025 as a whole.

Hoping that this year brought you lots of growth and profits, and I hope that this next year brings you even more growth, profits, and most of all a way to create the life you want.

Ways to work with me or support me:

Agency partnership: We have officially opened closed our doors for Q1 of 2025 for 2 brands in total to join us (both spots have already been filled). But we will open up spots for Q2 or late Q1 of 2025 for ideal partners. We prefer to work with health & wellness brands that are solving a real problem. If you’d like to learn more about our work and how we can support you (through creative strategy/production + media buying) you can do so here.

Consulting Call: If you want advice on scaling your agency or your brand, I am happy to help. I usually keep this to no more than 3 calls a month (already have 2 spots taken for December — if you’re interested, it would be better to try for early January due to me taking some time off with family). You can find a time to meet with me here for 25 minutes or here for an hour.

Feedback: Any feedback on how I could make this newsletter more interesting or helpful for you? I have learned a lot this last year, and I want to provide value. Let me know, and I am happy to see what I can do to bring more value to you.