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Most brands talk about hitting their Q4 goals — but few have a system to identify and close revenue gaps before they happen.

In this episode of The DTC Hotline, Tony, Luke, and Richard break down how to spot and fill revenue shortfalls during the holidays, using the same daily frameworks CTC applies across top DTC brands.

They’ll walk through:

-How to pinpoint whether your gap is in new or returning customers

-The daily cadence CTC uses to track and close gaps in real time

-When to deploy incrementality tests and channel expansion (like AppLovin) to recover missed revenue

-Why every forecast should translate into specific daily actions

-And how to think in “units of growth” — the building blocks of hitting your Q4 target

If you’ve ever wondered how to turn missed forecasts into closed gaps — this episode is your blueprint.

📞 Call or text us your question: 866-DTC-2263

Ask your burning e-com questions and we might answer them live on air.

-Ask your burning eComm questions and we might answer them live on air.

Show Notes:

-Whether you’re running paid ads on Meta, Google, or TikTok, FERMÀT can help you increase your conversion rates without touching your website.

 https://www.fermatcommerce.com/ctc

-Explore the Prophit System:

https://www.prophitsystem.com

The DTC Hotline mailbag is open — email us at podcast@commonthreadco.com to ask your eCom questions.

Watch on YouTube

[00:00:00] Tony Chopp: the question becomes, okay, well if we have these specific gaps at this point in time, then to use some more Luke language, what are the units of growth that we can apply to these specific gaps? And so for us, it's. There's lots of things you can do.

It kind of boils down into some pretty simple things, marketing calendar moments, creative. And the other thought that occurred to me when this caller's question was spoken is potentially looking at some channel expansion. So let me give you four example. Let's say we have a revenue gap in forecasted for the.

Mm. Black Friday, cyber Monday period. Okay. And we have a certain amount of creative that we've already commissioned to produce. Well, one of the things that we're doing for our clients right now, right now at this moment in time is we're exploring incrementality testing into, into app loving, into some channel expansion.

What do we get to do with that? Well, we get the measurement right, and then. For in the situations where we, we find this to be a channel that we believe can create the financial outcome that we need for a particular account. We don't need more new creative. We just get to deploy more media dollars against the creative that we already have.

So hypothetically, this made up brand, let's say there's a hundred thousand dollars gap in the Black Friday Cyber Monday period. We go and do some incrementality testing, we we get to a target for app oven. Now the unit of growth equals deploy 30, 40, $50,000 into App oven in a net new channel during this period, AKA gap close.

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[00:02:22] Richard Gaffin: All right. Welcome folks to the DC hotline. This is of course your direct connection to hot takes, to cold truths, and a really common advice from some of the best in the business. I'm your host, Richard, the Professor Gaff. Now I wanna say a couple words. If you're hearing this from.

E-commerce playbook, feed. We're putting our D two C hotline episode for this week on that feed, as well as a little bonus so you can all get listening because we think you all should be listening to this because some of the, again, hottest takes, coldest truth and realist e-com advice in the game is happening on this podcast right here, right now.

So, a couple words about how this works. First off. This is a real hotline you can call, you can text 8 6 6 DTC 2 2 6 3 to get your burning e-comm questions answered. So again, that's 8 6 6 3 8 2 2 2 6 3. You can leave us a voicemail, you can shoot us a text, ask whatever's on your mind, D two C wise. Our operators, like I always say, are standing by now, speaking of which, we got our two operators here right now.

We've got Tony the Chopper Chop. We got Luke, the weatherman, Austin, who are here to answer all of your questions. I'll start with you Tony. Tony, what's going on with you today, man?

[00:03:24] Tony Chopp: Oh, you know, just a massive global internet outage at AWS the, the infrastructure layer that underpins it all.

[00:03:33] Richard Gaffin: mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:03:34] Tony Chopp: It's been, it's been interesting. So we had we used several tools at CTC, one of them being Asana for all of our project management, various whatevers. And so we came in this morning to where is everything.

[00:03:47] Richard Gaffin: Yep.

[00:03:47] Tony Chopp: These sorts of things remind me of when I was a kid in Michigan. It's almost like a snow day. Not quite though.

[00:03:55] Richard Gaffin: Right, right. You almost get to take off 'cause nothing's working. Yeah. It's like, it's definitely, as we record this, the AWS outage is in full swing. Now this could be like maybe the last thing that gets recorded before all the entire internet falls down. So this or collapses rather. So this could be sort of a cultural artifact, I don't know.

[00:04:12] Tony Chopp: It's like the first video that was ever uploaded to YouTube. Maybe this will be the end,

[00:04:17] Richard Gaffin: The

[00:04:17] Tony Chopp: end of it all.

[00:04:19] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. What's his name? At the San Diego Zoo. And the last one is gonna be the three of us talking to eCom. So we'll see. I don't know, Luke, what's going on with you, dude?

[00:04:26] Luke Austin: It's so funny. Well, I'm, I'm, I'm in a very existential state now

[00:04:30] Richard Gaffin: Yeah,

[00:04:31] Luke Austin: on this, based on this discussion.

[00:04:32] Tony Chopp: I do this, I do this to Luke all the time. Like what does any of it mean?

[00:04:37] Luke Austin: what we, what we say to Tony about, it's a once a quarter. It's once a quarter, is the frequency, is Tony. come back down from the clouds. You've been, you, you spent a little too much time in the clouds.

It's time to come back down. Not, not all the way down. It's fine, but somewhere, somewhere in breathing altitude level.

[00:04:55] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. There you go. Well, hey, maybe the lesson of this AWS thing is we're all spending too much time in the cloud, right? Yeah. Luke saw where I was going with that. That's right. So

[00:05:05] Luke Austin: Saw that a

[00:05:06] Richard Gaffin: right.

[00:05:06] Luke Austin: away.

[00:05:07] Richard Gaffin: Alright, well, As long as the Internet's still working and you're still listening to this wherever you are we're gonna jump right into it. So we only really have one voicemail today that we wanna get into because it's a complex question that is crucially important as we go into the holiday season, which we're already in the full swing of November's almost here.

So I'm gonna play that right now. And then we'll kick it over to our, our operators here and see what they have to say. So here we go.

Hello. I have a quick question going into holiday for the operators. How would you identify and fill your Q4 revenue gaps? Thank you.

[00:05:38] Richard Gaffin: A short question with a, with a long potential answer

[00:05:41] Luke Austin: That is a pack.

[00:05:43] Richard Gaffin: and fill Q4 revenue gaps? So Luke, why don't we start with you.

[00:05:47] Luke Austin: so many layers, so many layers to this question. So I like how the question was framed,

[00:05:55] Tony Chopp: Me too.

[00:05:55] Luke Austin: you're, you're identifying a gap that exists, right? And then, and then the actions to, to fill it. But there's. Assertion that there's a definition of where we're at and where we're supposed to be, and the gap that exists between the two.

Right? Rather than, we wanna like, you know, could we get a little more outta this thing? Right. Sort of question. So

[00:06:18] Richard Gaffin: identifying the gap

[00:06:19] Luke Austin: Is, once you have clarity on that, I think that the actions will, will naturally follow. And so I think the identification of the gap needs to be done in the same, in the same way.

[00:06:28] Richard Gaffin: But

[00:06:28] Luke Austin: there's a lot of different frameworks that people do this in. One is they might start to look at a channel level, like look at Google Analytics, you know, contribution from each of their channel on a percentage basis to sort of see like, where's the chain, the channel level fall off based on last click going, or am I rocker box MTA. But where we, where we start in terms of understanding the gap that exists is by tying it to actions that we can actually go and take, right? So, so knowing that the paid social last click revenue is 12% this quarter versus the same quarter last year, it was 14% of the total. Like the, it's a, it's a much more challenging sort of, exercise in that regard.

So. The gap has been identified. And then what we're gonna do first is understand if the gap is coming from our new customer cohort or returning customer cohort. And then from there we're gonna decompose what actions need to be taken as a result of which they're gonna be really, really different. If the gap that we're seeing is coming from the expectation of our returning customer cohort, then that's likely going to lead to a set of actions in relation to our. To our owned and earned channels, email and, and ss specifically are the main levers that we can pull. So additional volume of campaigns that we're pushing, additional foot flows that we're gonna be building out to be able to execute in, in the coming. Time period.

a lot of conversations we're having right now around duplicating all of the core flows and updating the messaging and the universal banners to be BFCM oriented. So you have flows cloned for every single one of your automations that has BFCM or offer specific messaging over the course of November and December. So, that's gonna be a big lever as well as just adding additional. campaign sends to subsets of your audience or different segments to be able to, to be able to capitalize on that. And then another action. That may result from it is meta retention campaign. So understanding if you can push into your lapsing or your churn customer cohorts within meta.

And then and then the final one is sort of ensuring that your Google brand or your, you're capturing the demand on Google's got a bunch of returning customers that are searching. And if you have a more competitive environment in, in the search sphere then that's gonna be impactful there. New customers is gonna be a whole nother set of actions related to, okay. On the new customer revenue side of things, you're, the majority of your revenue is being driven by meta likely, and then you might have some app Love and TikTok or Google in there, and so it's understanding what is the additional creative. Output and volume that we need in meta to be able to get to the goal, additional spin volume. and then outside of that, are there additional channels we can expand into? We're not running AppLovin, so let's get app loving going ahead of Q4 to drive net new customer net new customer revenue. But that's all to say you identified a gap. Then the second step is identifying where that gap is coming from related to the customer cohort. Am I going after new or my returning customers in the specific time period that I'm after? And then from that what are the specific actions that are gonna lead to the impact on their new and returning customer cohort? And on and on down the line from there.

[00:09:28] Richard Gaffin-1: Okay, so part of I, I wanna jump back to the kind of the beginning of your answer, Luke, which is where, what you were pointing out is that the way that this becomes a little bit more complex, or rather a way that this question is phrased a little bit more with a little bit or a more nuance, is that what it's talking about is identifying. problem before you actually go and fix it. Like you were saying before, a lot of time people are just like, Hey, we need to just kind of like, we wanna do a little bit more in Q4. We want to outperform, whatever that, that might be. When in actuality what they need to do first is identify where there are meaning or like where the problems might be specifically and, and how they'll need to back film.

So,

[00:10:03] Luke Austin: yeah.

[00:10:04] Richard Gaffin-1: Tony, let's talk a, a little bit, I'll throw it over to you to kind of comment, I suppose, on kind of how that happens. I, I mean,

[00:10:10] Tony Chopp: Well.

[00:10:11] Richard Gaffin-1: spoke to it, but I, I wanted to hear your perspective.

[00:10:14] Tony Chopp: I'm just like having an emotional, like, visceral response to the language, like a little bit more or as best as possible. That, that inherent in those sort of statements, that lack of specificity is where all of the problems of the world exist as far as I can tell. So I think, I think the caller's framing of the question, like I, I found it to be like, when I, when I heard the question, I felt the thing, I was like, oh, that, that's a good starting point.

I think the, the thing that struck me in Luke's answers. He applied it to I think you applied it to the past, sort of analyzing the past, and I actually heard the caller's question in like the future, the Q4 future planning, but the same set of questions are relevant, whether you're trying to dig, diagnose, something that's gone off track from your plan in the past, you're trying to look forward into the future and it's.

Practically, for all intents and purposes, the exact same exercise. So if you were to work with CTC you would have two data models that would support what, what's likely going to happen with your business. Moving into Q4, you would have a, spend an A MER model, and then you would have a retention model.

The combination of those two things will lead to the combination of those two things, plus the planning process will lead to a likely financial outcome. Which then may represent a gap from whatever the organization is trying to do, whether it's from the board or whatever the organization is trying to do.

So, and then the question to, to Luke's point earlier, the question becomes, okay, well if we have these specific gaps at this point in time, then to use some more Luke language, what are the units of growth that we can apply to these specific gaps? And so for us, it's. There's lots of things you can do.

It kind of boils down into some pretty simple things, marketing calendar moments, creative. And the other thought that occurred to me when this caller's question was spoken is potentially looking at some channel expansion. So let me give you four example. Let's say we have a revenue gap in forecasted for the.

Mm. Black Friday, cyber Monday period. Okay. And we have a certain amount of creative that we've already commissioned to produce. Well, one of the things that we're doing for our clients right now, right now at this moment in time is we're exploring incrementality testing into, into app loving, into some channel expansion.

What do we get to do with that? Well, we get the measurement right, and then. For in the situations where we, we find this to be a channel that we believe can create the financial outcome that we need for a particular account. We don't need more new creative. We just get to deploy more media dollars against the creative that we already have.

So hypothetically, this made up brand, let's say there's a hundred thousand dollars gap in the Black Friday Cyber Monday period. We go and do some incrementality testing, we we get to a target for app oven. Now the unit of growth equals deploy 30, 40, $50,000 into App oven in a net new channel during this period, AKA gap close.

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[00:14:17] Richard Gaffin-1: Okay. All right. Well, so I mean, is it as simple as that identify and then and then execute? Or is there, like, what, what are I guess the things to watch out for with this?

[00:14:28] Tony Chopp: Well. There, there's having a plan, there's executing against a plan. So, so the devil's in the devil's in the details and the execution For sure. So we, it's very easy for us to go say, well, in this made up particular scenario. We have a plan to go deploy 50,000 incremental dollars into app oven, we think this is gonna be the return, and we think that that that's gonna create this financial outcome for us.

So we can go do all those things and we may still need to adjust or pivot as a result of it. So yeah, there's no, there's no guarantee,

[00:15:01] Richard Gaffin-1: okay. Well, so I, I think it would be interesting then, and I maybe you'd be good to answer this, but like getting specific about, obviously we don't know this caller specific situation, but specific about some of the ways that that execution happened. whether it's, hey, this is what happened when we deployed $40,000 in app oven, or I don't know, this is how we fill the hole in Google, non-branded, whatever the case may be. Yeah.

[00:15:26] Luke Austin: Yeah, so this is kinda where I was gonna go with it as well, which is. Identify and fill in the gap where it's sort of like we're, we're talking about this language of this point in time, that you identify the gap and then you look maybe historically you're looking at your future plan, and then you sort of dissect from there, okay, here's the actions we're gonna take. How we do this actually is you do that every single day and that's how you fill the gap. The way to identify and then fill the gap is every single day identify and fill the gap based on a, based on a specific, what we're, what we're talking about is a framework and structure for assessing that, right?

You start at the top, where's my contribution margin revenue ad spend, MER, and then new and returning customers, right? And then down to the channel level, right? Email, meta, Google. So total business metrics, new returning customers, and then channel up so that, that framework and that that, help us uncover where the gaps exist.

But the, the more from a, from an executional lens, how this actually comes to fruition is the way to identify and fill the gap is every single day identify and fill the gap that you're seeing in that point of time and it will change you. You create a plan today to go launch app loving and deploy $50,000 on it. Three days from now, the email campaign that you had planned is going to produce more or less revenue than you expected to, because that's how forecast works. So three days from now, when you go and identify to fill that gap, your returning customer revenue start to, is gonna start to be lagging behind.

And you are gonna think, have to think about an incremental campaign send or recent of that email, just something along those lines to be able to fill that gap. And so I think the devil's in the details Absolutely. The, the execution of these things using. Good media measurement framework to understand the true contribution of your channels.

There's things that we could talk about in each of these lenses, but I think if there would be anything, it would be have a clearly defined, agreed upon framework for assessing how the business is performing against expectation, right? Like we talked about how we, how we look at things. We set targets for each of these metrics, contribution margin down, a new returning down to the channel level, agreed upon framework for assessing the business impact.

And then what you do is identify where you're off against that plan every single day and go and fill that gap. you do that every single day and that's how you identify and fill the gap consistently have agreed upon framework, have persistence against executing against it every day, and the specific actions that are gonna be re the result of that sort of a processing cadence are going to change every day.

Also.

[00:17:52] Richard Gaffin-1: Interesting. So, so talk then. So how do you balance, say, let's say that you do want to, or you have identified that potentially upcoming, there is this gap that would be filled by say, putting 50 grand or something in app oven, obviously there's some sort of execution needed against that. Now obviously I, I understand talking about the kind of the day-to-day execution, but clearly there needs to be some sort of balance between actions that can be taken today in order for that apple oven thing to come to fruition in a couple of months.

So maybe pick apart a little bit more how that daily behavior. Is still allowing you to keep an eye out for what's happening in four to six weeks or whatever.

[00:18:28] Luke Austin: I don't think they're separate things. Because the what that, what that framework and daily behavior is going to highlight is where the gap actually exists for the business within that timeframe and. And the action of our new cust, our new customer revenue is behind. Let's say we believe we have a very high volume of creative output on meta and very high spin volume, and we're gonna continue to do that, but we actually think we need to expand into other channels.

So like all that, let's just say we take for granted, and because of that, we're going to deploy Apple Open Media be to affect our new customer revenue target. in the context of you're looking at the data every day. That's what surfaced. It may take. A week to get App Love Live, right? Get the creatives, get the account, set up the pixel rather than 24 hours to get it live.

But you wanna get App Love Live as soon as you can get App Love Live it. There's no reason to say, Hey, let's Slate app loving for, you know, 40 days from now and let's work towards a 40 day launch timeline on App Loving. Like what, what are we doing? You know, like you. Get app to live tomorrow if you can get App 11 live because you're trying to solve for the new customer revenue gap that exists now.

There's just gonna be a, a necessity based on the resourcing constraints and any other dynamics that might exist of why APP love can't get live an hour from now and does actually need five business days or whatever, whatever it might be. So those things are gonna come, but it shouldn't be. This is the gap we're seeing for a business. And then here's the things that we're slating purposely in the future to sort of cadence it. It's, here's the gap we see. Here's all the things we need to do. How fast can we get those things live? And, and, and then it's gonna, there's just gonna be a necessary timeline against those things. But what's gonna, what, what's gonna dictate the timeline is, is the resourcing necessary to complete those things rather than a strategic plan to launch it 30 days from now, right?

Rather than a week from now.

[00:20:26] Richard Gaffin-1: I see what you're saying. So it's like, if there's a sense in which because the plan's already built and the plans and, and that that plan is good or, you know, however you wanna define that, if you just behave. Relative to these daily signals, you will have eventually kind of executed the plan 30 to 60 months out. Even though, let's say on a day-to-day basis, you're really only thinking like one or two days in advance. At a certain point, if you're kinda like following what you need to follow and you're listening to these various signals, you're going to end up kind of doing what you said you were gonna do without actually having to think about planning something out to 60 days in advance or whatever.

Is that, does that sound right?

[00:21:02] Luke Austin: That that sounds, that sounds right. What, what I would just maybe add to clarify is if you've identified that this gap exists in your business against your forecast, and this is the action that needs to result from it, then go and do that action as soon as you can. Now, identifying the gap that exists, we, we use this daily language, which is like we have this rhythm of daily tracking against the outcome, but that doesn't mean that you're viewing the performance of your business in a 24 hour timeframe. Okay, so I wanna, I wanna draw a distinction between these things where when you're tracking every day against the business forecast, it doesn't mean you're looking at last seven days only, or even just yesterday's only data, right? Typically, what we have in mind is a monthly timeframe in terms of what we're executing against.

In some cases, we'd go even broader than that can go out quarterly, but we actually would say looking at yesterday's data only is not what you want to be looking at in assessing. You're in assessing the actions that you're taking. It can be used to inform it, but if you're, if the main objective is a monthly hitting a monthly target, then you should be looking at the bi pacing of the business against that broader time horizon, right, in which you're assessing it. But do that every day and make sure the gap doesn't continue to grow in these areas against that monthly, monthly target. So I think it's an important distinction just to say like, we're. Looking at it every day, taking the actions and then as quickly as possible, getting the actions into the workflow to be able to affect the problem.

Yes, it's critical assessing the business performance on a 24 hour time window blocks individually, not what we're advocating for.

[00:22:36] Richard Gaffin-1: Right. So I, I guess, yeah, one, one thing to then. Kind of clarify that distinction, is that the daily targets that you're talking about, that you're working from are targets that are built. Or ladder up rather, two monthly targets to

[00:22:49] Luke Austin: Yes.

[00:22:50] Richard Gaffin-1: whatever. So they are, they already, this is what I guess I'm trying to say is that they exist within the context of an entire 12 month forecast or a month to month forecast. because they're broken down into bite-sized chunks, so to speak, you have a bunch clearer sense of on a day-to-day basis, what needs to be done today in order to reach those monthly, those long term targets. So in that sense, the long term is broken into the short term, and then the short term allows you. The long term a little bit more clearly. Let's go Tony, what, what are your thoughts on this, on this conversation? I'm

[00:23:22] Tony Chopp: I'm trying to think of like a metaphor, like,

[00:23:24] Richard Gaffin-1: like

[00:23:25] Tony Chopp: the metaphor of like the big picture, sort of longer term planning cycle is like, I wanna lose weight or I want to become healthier. You know, it's like the equivalent of saying like, I want my business to grow.

[00:23:37] Richard Gaffin-1: Yeah,

[00:23:39] Tony Chopp: the, the way there is through the cumulative effect of.

[00:23:43] Richard Gaffin-1: daily actions.

[00:23:44] Tony Chopp: actions today, I go get some exercise and I go, go do that again tomorrow. Did you guys lose me? My phone's ringing.

[00:23:53] Richard Gaffin-1: No, I still got you. So yeah,

[00:23:57] Tony Chopp: yeah, I think, I think this, this idea like it's easy to get lost and like the lofty, like, oh, I have this big picture goal and what, what I think CTC

[00:24:06] Richard Gaffin-1: does.

[00:24:06] Tony Chopp: really well in our thinking is.

Put, put shape and metric to the big picture goal. It's not, I wanna lose weight, it's, I wanna lose 10 pounds in 10 months and then break that down into I need to do this every single day. Right. And maybe if I just extend the metaphor a little bit further, let's see if I can come up with something on the spot.

Well, okay, so let's say I have it's the holidays, right? And I know that I wanna lose 10 pounds by March of next year, but there's gonna be some gaps created during, christmas and maybe some other holidays, maybe I won't get to my exercise goal for that day or my calorie goal for that day.

Well, what we can do ahead of time is we can account for some of that and try to daily plan our way around having a lower calorie week before Thanksgiving. I think this is like an the inverse of. You know, add in apple oven at this point in time in the future, because we see, we foresee a revenue gap based on what our models are telling us and sort of strategically go into that space.

But, but back to Luke's point, like if you have a new customer gap, there's no reason to wait 30 or 45 days to go start trying to solve it by expanding your media into, into a new channel.

[00:25:35] Richard Gaffin-1: Makes sense. Yeah, no, I think the weight loss metaphor is a good one because it also like. Includes like you're saying, like, not predicting, what am I saying? Anticipating seasonal changes, right? And saying like, I expect that's what this never cut during the holidays. Right. You know what I mean?

Like, you're going to be eating big on Thanksgiving and on Christmas. Therefore you have to have some understanding what you're like daily caloric budget is going to be in the days leading up or whatever. And so this is what we're talking about is like,

[00:26:02] Tony Chopp: Well, you could, you could cut during the holidays, you could eat 10,000 calories on Thanksgiving Day and still lose weight. Now you'd have to, you'd have to be fasting,

[00:26:11] Richard Gaffin-1: yeah, yeah,

[00:26:12] Tony Chopp: so several days before and after.

But that's the, that's like the, the magic of breaking down like a big picture, like long-term strategy into, into day-to-day practical.

These are the things, this is the output that we need from today specifically.

[00:26:27] Richard Gaffin-1: yeah, that makes sense. All right. Well, do we do we feel like we answered this question? We've gone for about 20 something minutes on it. Anything else we wanna add? Luke, Tony.

[00:26:38] Tony Chopp: No, just, just like the, the caller's question like. Really, I think it got both of us going because it sort of started with the spirit of specificity. Which you're, you're, you're always gonna get like a lot of excitement out of Luke and I, if you talk in specific terms and over specific time horizons as well.

I.

[00:26:56] Richard Gaffin-1: That's right.

[00:26:59] Luke Austin: And the only thing I'd add is I really like where we landed in answering the question with the question. The way you identify and fill the gap is every day you identify and fill the gap.

[00:27:11] Richard Gaffin-1: That's right. Hold on. My dog's going off.

[00:27:16] Luke Austin: Got got the pop excited too. loves, loves a meta response.

[00:27:22] Richard Gaffin-1: All right. Well, I think what maybe what we can do here is take a quick slide in the hot take corner before we go out. So, Tony, Luke, what are your, what are your hot takes of the week here? I

[00:27:33] Tony Chopp: I miss I miss basements.

[00:27:35] Richard Gaffin-1: Interesting.

[00:27:35] Tony Chopp: grew up in the Midwest and one of our coworkers was posting about its basement remodel, and it's just not a thing they do in the, in the south and in the west coast. Like apparently you can't dig in the ground here for whatever reason. So basements are cool.

[00:27:48] Luke Austin: written down

[00:27:49] Richard Gaffin-1: Agreed. Luke.

[00:27:50] Luke Austin: people? Maybe like our yards are the same thing here. to think of what the parallel is. Garages are definitely part of it, but I, but I won't say that. 'cause the Midwest, my, my wife's side of the family in the Midwest, the, those are some garages if you've ever seen a garage, here what I've been thinking about is having, being able to flex being able to flex the resourcing and output of. of your team and the resources that they oversee to be able to accomplish your revenue goals, I think is, is something that not many organizations have built into their workflow. And what I mean by that is, we have a person on our team or an agency or vendor that can support us and they can do 25 emails for us per month. some months you need 29 to get to your revenue and some months you, you needed 23 and you can shift some things around. But because there's this fixed expectation, there isn't and margin inside of that. The same could be said for the creative output and what's necessary in that time period.

Same could be said for you, the media channels you have. Well, we don't, we don't really need app loving or TikTok 'cause we'd probably only run it a couple months outta the year or pretty small spin. So let's not so, so let's just focus in these other areas. Having those as options in the arsenal that can be flexed on to be able to achieve the business goal. Finding a way to be able to make that a reality for the business. I think it's is not as not, not as existing as it could be.

[00:29:21] Richard Gaffin-1: Okay, I like it. So we got we got there should be more basements and we've got, we've got Luke's take on an actual eCommerce hot take on, on basically figuring out staffing around these types of things. And then finally I'll say that if I had to eat one thing for the rest of my life, it would be Brazilian Steakhouse.

I don't know how hot of a cake that is actually, but that is a lot of meat to have for the rest of your life. But I do think it's good that, and the little cheese breads, so I think we'll leave it at that folks. Now real quick for those of you who's joined us from the eCommerce Playbook podcast, thanks for listening.

Of course, you can subscribe to the DDC hotline separately. It's a separate feed. Listen to the pod and you'll get more answers like

[00:29:54] Luke Austin: There.

[00:29:55] Richard Gaffin-1: Now, if you

[00:29:56] Luke Austin: Okay,

[00:29:56] Richard Gaffin-1: questions answered again, call and leave us a voicemail. 8 6 6 DDC 2 2 6 3. You can choose to text there. Uh uh, hit us up on x, hit us up on whatever LinkedIn.

[00:30:07] Luke Austin: You.

[00:30:07] Richard Gaffin-1: still exists, hit us up on that. We'll see. And but yeah, and then we might read our que your question rather on a subsequent episode. So until next time, for Tony, the Chopper Chop for Luke, the weatherman. Austin, I'm Richard, the Professor Gaffen signing off. Hopefully not for the last time.

Hopefully the AWS thing will resolve, but all right, we'll see y'all next time. Take care.