Post by Davie Fogarty

How to build a $10M+ ecom brand (based on some of the most expensive lessons I’ve ever learned) PRODUCT & BRAND - Dropshipping isn't a business, it's a test - validate demand then move to white-label or you'll be racing to the bottom forever - Ugly products people SEE beat pretty products that blend in - The Oodie looks ridiculous, that's why it works - Your conversion rate sucks because customers can't answer 5 basic questions in 30 seconds - clarity, trust, outcomes, risk, pain points - Don't just invent a slightly better mousetrap - V2 with minor features won't move the needle, solve a real problem differently - Your product doesn't need to be unique, but something about it does - that's how you stop competing on price ADS & MARKETING - Stop running TOF/MOF/BOF - the old funnel is dead post-iOS, go broad and let creative do the targeting - Don't judge any creative until you've spent 2X your product price - anything less is statistical noise - The objection ad hack - study negative reviews, start your video addressing the exact complaint - Founder ads outperform polished production - get your iPhone and talk about why you built it - Consolidate into one scaling campaign with your winners, use a separate campaign just for testing new creatives OPERATIONS & SCALE - Start learning processes yourself, we’ve found that it gets you way better results - If you do choose to hire an agency - know the exact questions to ask each type or you might get stuck and never scale - Do every single hire yourself until $50M minimum - you're building pattern recognition you can't outsource - You don't need a CMO until $50M, maybe not even $100M - have heads of growth, retention, ecom report directly to you MONEY & FINANCE - 99% of ecom failures in the first 2 years are financial - not product, not marketing, they run out of cash - Most founders guess their margin from Alibaba invoices and get it completely wrong - hire a bookkeeper with 5+ years ecom experience - I lost millions using lawyers wrong - read contracts yourself first, get on calls to hear what they really think, use ChatGPT to explain clauses - Enterprise value is the endgame, not top-line revenue - you can't sell a dropshipping store for $60M This took me 8 years and $1B+ in sales to learn. It works whether you're at $0 or $10M.