The $1M → $10M Ecom Growth Map

[00:00:00] Joy Sharma: This is the most interesting place to stop because a lot of people can do the first two and they're easier to do to a certain degree because like. Like you just need to find the most core angles in, in the first level from one to two. So people can just do that by researching their reviews and like marking calendars, you don't need to go deep.

[00:00:14] Joy Sharma: You just literally need to do what is famous. Like if I list them out, you will find 12. It's like Prime Mother's Day, like you will find them easily. The three to four is where actually a lot of businesses stagnate. And the thing that need to solve for that at that point is offer market. Like offer market fit, or like you just need to do offer testing.

[00:00:31] Joy Sharma: A lot of people don't do that because to, to a big degree, they don't understand what that is and also how to do it. And more importantly, this is where the DNA of the business, like that's what, why we have like the Growth EQ score. It just matters so much, 

[00:00:44] Richard Gaffin: Hey folks. Welcome to the Ecommerce Playbook Podcast. I'm your host, Richard Gaffin, Director of Digital Product Strategy here at Common Thread Collective, and we are joined this week by a very special guest, Joy Sharma, who heads up our Global Accelerator program. Here at Common Thread Collective. Now, for those of you who don't know, the Global Accelerator program is primarily focused around seven figure businesses because the sort of core growth strategies, geez, core growth strategies that you need at seven figures at the various sort of across the spectrum of seven figures and the growth strategies you need at eight figures look very different.

[00:01:17] Richard Gaffin: So Joy's joining us today to talk a little bit about that. But first off, joy, how are you doing today, man?

[00:01:23] Joy Sharma: Good,

[00:01:24] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Great. Well, let's, let's just drive straight into it. So basically like, why don't you give us the rundown of what the continuum from like 1 million to 10 million looks like. Because what you had presented to me a little bit earlier is this idea that there's sort of a different course strategy.

[00:01:44] Richard Gaffin: You need to double revenue starting at the beginning of seven figures all the way to eight. So. Talk a little bit about that spectrum and kind of how you've been thinking about it.

[00:01:54] Joy Sharma: so the way we were playing with this idea was I wanted to go and assign what is the one strategy that you can do at a certain revenue level, like between seven to eight figures that if you just did that one thing, you would be twice, like that's the one thing that would double your business at that standpoint.

[00:02:09] Joy Sharma: Like at that. Point in your business and we, we build different things and we walk through it through every single mill in the stage. But I think the most important lesson in this is when people start doing any playbook like this, where it's like, oh, this is the one thing I should do at this point, what we want to also make very explicitly clear is like, you do this one thing to this degree.

[00:02:29] Joy Sharma: A lot of people, for example, like when we started with creative, it's like. Oh, we need to make a lot of ads and we need to make a lot of creatives. And the, when you are a million dollars in revenue and like, that's basically where this initially starts, which is like, let's say you have product market fit from zero to 1 million.

[00:02:42] Joy Sharma: I'm considering that's what you have. You do that and then only you come to us. So I'm just gonna talk from my experience in our portfolio that once you do that, the first thing you should be doing when you're one to 2 million is you should be producing ads like that. Like it's creative. Everyone talks about it.

[00:02:55] Joy Sharma: It's the same thing, but the difference is you should be figuring out a way to produce about. A hundred ads a month, like add one to $2 million. Like that's what you should be doing. So when we say the most important thing, that's going to double, meaning you're a million dollars, it'll make you $2 million.

[00:03:08] Joy Sharma: Or if you are like 1.5, it'll make you three. Whatever you're in the range between, that is the one thing that will double your business. But when I say you need to do that and then move on to the next thing is like do so that you can make. A hundred a month and that's it. But that's the number, that number changes when you go, like, now if you notice like as we go through this journey at 4 million I think, or at some other level, it's also creatives.

[00:03:29] Joy Sharma: Again, when we, it's creatives again, what happens is like it's just a different approach to creative. Right now it's just like, can I make more volume? Because your hatred is going to be through the roof because you don't have anything in the account. A lot of people that go through this journey that come to us actually are like.

[00:03:42] Joy Sharma: Yeah, I just have five ads that work. We call them legacy ads because you, you just found your thing and it's very easy to find things in an empty ad account 'cause you kind of an, you have an offer market fit and then you'll make ads that work. And then what happens is because they're first to market those ads, they will just keep working for till the end of your business.

[00:03:59] Joy Sharma: Those ads will just work. It has no strategy into it. It has nothing. You just tested things and you found what it works. And after six months, my take on this is like an ad just works because of the sheer amount of data that's behind it. And we see this like if you have a legacy ad and you turn it off, you're done.

[00:04:13] Joy Sharma: Like if you turn it off, you reset it. That ad never picks up. And that's why the idea is like at one to two, just make enough creative. You find something that wanes and those five ads are alone enough to carry your account forward. And that's basically how it goes. That's the idea. Like at Continuum then, like when you're at four to five.

[00:04:29] Joy Sharma: You're doing very different things. At four to five, you're probably making hundred ads a week because you have probably found the easiest, lowest hanging fruit and now you need to do so much. And now you're hit rate regresses to the average. And now you're also playing with different people. When you're a million dollars, you're playing with like mom and pop shops, which you can just open your ads library up and you will see like they have stupid simple images.

[00:04:47] Joy Sharma: Like it's very easy to beat in that market. And when you're like four or 5 million then, then you're actually playing with someone decent in the auction. And that's why that was the idea.

[00:04:56] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. No, that makes sense. So at at the kind of initial stage of cracking into the seven figure range, what you have to focus on is basically ramping up your creative somehow, because there's easy wins to be found. You haven't really been doing anything significant in the ad account, probably up to that point.

[00:05:10] Richard Gaffin: But you know, you have a product that works, you have some sort of organic base of revenue. So it's all about cracking, creative, and then. So you mentioned then once you get up to 5 million, all of a sudden your focus has to go back to creative. But in, in the sort of space between, so from like two to four there's a couple ways that you, basically, what this kind of looks like to me is like ways that you're fine tuning creative, or building a broader creative strategy.

[00:05:34] Richard Gaffin: So talk a little bit about the two to three and three to 4 million range.

[00:05:38] Joy Sharma: Yeah. So now you start with work market fit. You find the ads that work. Once you have legacies, what happens is. You don't have a lot of resources at, at one to 2 million. So you will try to make your ads. And what's going to happen is because you're, you're actually trying to produce ads a cheap cost, you will not find really big ads.

[00:05:53] Joy Sharma: And what will happen is then how can I make each ad that I produce for the lowest cost, the most impactful? That's what the second thing is. So between two to 3 million, what everyone should be focusing on is a marketing calendar. What I mean by that is this is something they're not doing. That's why I have it at that stage.

[00:06:07] Joy Sharma: So if you're at 2 million, I truly believe you do this, this one thing, you will get the form. That's the idea, that one thing done for a year. Of course, don't do it that way, like just rather pro it and you'll understand what I mean. It's like if you want to double the business from two to four, you should do marking calendar again.

[00:06:20] Joy Sharma: What I mean by marking calendar here is like how many events do you have in a month? For business like that, they probably have like two in a year, like it's like Black Friday and whatever the second biggest thing is, that's all they're doing, and if you just. Move towards, can I do one a month? Can I have one marketing moment a month?

[00:06:37] Joy Sharma: And then can I just make creatives about that? Because my hit rate on that is probably going to be a hundred percent. I've never done it. There's no baseline and it's going to be better than Evergreen. Just go and do that and it, it's just operationalizing this ruthlessness. This is like more of like how I'm playing the game.

[00:06:51] Joy Sharma: It's like, these are the rules. This is what we are teaching, like. You just start playing the game and you do these things, and these sound simple, but if you actually experience it on the other side, which this is like what I do every day, I experience what clients' interactions are with, with Twitter to begin with.

[00:07:05] Joy Sharma: They would, like, every DDC owner goes on Twitter and he, he will read through everything and he will understand everything, but he will just not know what to use when. So what this does is like. Probably you read about people doing creative, you probably don't need it. You're at a different stage where the impact, the most impactful thing is going to be different.

[00:07:19] Joy Sharma: So that's what we're trying to do. So marketing calendar to the easiest level, which is, can I do one marketing moment a month, and can I do it related to a cultural moment that I stand with and I need to force myself into it? And then can I make images for that and like to make it even stupid simple for the lowest cost?

[00:07:35] Joy Sharma: Can it take. My best, add those five legacies and put a banner on top with the market in a moment. Even if it's prime. Take your best legacies, put the prime on it, you will win. That is it. And we are just trying to like double it on so small numbers. That's all we care about at that point.

[00:07:51] Richard Gaffin: yeah. That makes sense. So, so then just to recap a little bit, like one one to 2 million is about. Basically, like I was saying before, you have product market fit. You're just trying to find some sort of evergreen paid strategy that works. But once you get to that point, the nextran of growth comes from developing like actual sort of reasons to buy outside of just regular, the regular sort of evergreen cycle.

[00:08:13] Richard Gaffin: So that's building that basic marketing calendar. So then the next level up here, like the three to 4 million kind of roughly speaking range it's a further refinement. So talk a little bit about this.

[00:08:22] Joy Sharma: This is the most interesting place to stop because a lot of people can do the first two and they're easier to do to a certain degree because like. Like you just need to find the most core angles in, in the first level from one to two. So people can just do that by researching their reviews and like marking calendars, you don't need to go deep.

[00:08:37] Joy Sharma: You just literally need to do what is famous. Like if I list them out, you will find 12. It's like Prime Mother's Day, like you will find them easily. The three to four is where actually a lot of businesses stagnate. And the thing that need to solve for that at that point is offer market. Like offer market fit, or like you just need to do offer testing.

[00:08:54] Joy Sharma: A lot of people don't do that because to, to a big degree, they don't understand what that is and also how to do it. And more importantly, this is where the DNA of the business, like that's what, why we have like the Growth EQ score. It just matters so much, which is if you're in an industry where I can build subscription into it, you will get out of this tranche very easily because you just know what to do.

[00:09:14] Joy Sharma: It's like, okay, I gotta make a subscription, only offer some way, shape, or form. I need to make it good. And you will do testing on that. And like all your testing just comes from. What is the offer? What price? Like my economics. And it's easier to do and that's why a lot of businesses in that industry don't, don't get stuck here, but that's like 5% of the total industry.

[00:09:33] Joy Sharma: For everyone else, it's harder. It's harder because I was on a call with a grocery store just recently, and for them it is, it is more about consumable. Cookies. Like it's, it's, it's a hard market. Like yes, there is subscription aspect into it, but end of the day those products are like $10. Like there, there's only a limit to what I can charge on that product.

[00:09:51] Joy Sharma: So for them, the biggest game would be merchandising. So like I would say there's like levels to it. You can come up with a cool name to this, but like I would say your industry you're in will dictate what you need to solve for and that's why offer testing is the least standard thing that can happen.

[00:10:05] Joy Sharma: That is where you actually need expertise of people who just have a ton of data to look at. Because if your CPG, it's everyone, it's easy for that Cookies brand. It's, it's more about, it's actually really about economics, which is like. How much demand do I have? Like that business probably needs to merchandise every week.

[00:10:21] Joy Sharma: That's what they need to do. They have limited edition flavors. They have so many different things, like that's the game they would play. That's how they will win an offer winning, which will probably like a sample pack and then like, can I not sell individual products? Like I just don't wanna sell individual products.

[00:10:33] Joy Sharma: That's what they're going to do. Decrease everything that's low a V, like that's the game they will play. Then if you take another business, I was posting this on Twitter, which is. We, we, we have dealt with industries that are so wild, but like, if you're a, if you're a retail brand that's trying to make it in ho DDC, a lot of times their orders are bigger because of, I think there's a brand we sell like lights.

[00:10:54] Joy Sharma: It's a great example because on average a person would buy 10 of those. So we, we kept playing with this idea and again, like, I want this to be impactful enough that I'm at 3 million. This alone would get me to six. And for them it was like, if on average a person buys 10, is there a world in which I can do like the aura ring strategy, which is like, it, it is great.

[00:11:12] Joy Sharma: Like all of these strategies, the closest I can get similar to a SaaS model, like the subscription model, the more faster I will win. So in that industry, like can I get one light and give it like, can I emotionalize for one light so I can run on a very. Aggressive roas. Like if it's a hundred dollars product and it's a $10 product, it's easier to sell the $10 product.

[00:11:31] Joy Sharma: I would still sell it at the same CAC of $30. That's a 0.3 roas. I would just go and crush everyone in that market. I'll win. But the difference is like, then can I give people the option to actually come back and buy the full tank because that's what they need. That's what usually sells naturally for us.

[00:11:45] Joy Sharma: And then convert the value of the first product as a hundred percent credit. Towards that purchase can force LTV into industry where LTV doesn't exist inherently in the first 30 days there's a very unique and novel problem solver for that particular industry. So that's like another thing. And then similarly, like you would need to figure out these offers.

[00:12:04] Joy Sharma: This is where I would say it's like the biggest on law for most businesses. And it, it gets harder and harder the smaller the skews you are and like how further down you're in the industry. Like if you're in industry where LTV doesn't exist, I have no other product, then I would probably play with. Are there free gifts?

[00:12:18] Joy Sharma: Can I introduce, is there cash back? Like then it becomes a, it becomes like, can I do a backend upsell into other products? Can I have a fill list? Like it is just all of that that gets built at that stage. And this is like the one unknown, and that's why like if you look at our profile of business that work with us, most of 'em that gets stuck at that point before coming to us.

[00:12:37] Joy Sharma: Like that's where they're like, I haven't grown for a year. Because that's the one thing you need to solve for there, and the quality of solve at that pace will determine how fast you go from that to then.

[00:12:47] Richard Gaffin: Yeah.

[00:12:48] Joy Sharma: And that's like the important part.

[00:12:49] Richard Gaffin: So what's the you had, I wanna double back to like you had mentioned, the oral ring strategy. Can you explain like what that is just for everybody's context?

[00:12:56] Joy Sharma: so I think ordering on average right now costs like $300. That's probably the price range. And so the idea is if I went to Meta and I was like, Hey, this is a 300 product, please sell it. What? What do you think will happen? Like you will probably get the 90th percent outcome on meta. That's like a 1.5 XR.

[00:13:13] Joy Sharma: If you get a 1.5 XR us this. I'm just not doing public math, but find the 1.5 X for us of this. You're a cac. You're not going to probably make a lot of money. Because you're going and you're demanding an action that is just so much friction asking someone to pay $300. So what R does is they have a sizing kit, which like the, their buying journey naturally was like, you need to buy the ring and you will give you the sizing kit for free.

[00:13:35] Joy Sharma: They will ship the sizing kit. You will veer from the 10 sizes they send, and then the one that fits. Then you go and tell them, and then they make the actual ring in that size and they ship it to you. What they, the way they went to, into acquisition, this is what was primarily across Amazon, which was like.

[00:13:50] Joy Sharma: Now they'll actually sell the sizing kit that was initially free. They would sell it for $10. You can buy it, and then you will come back. And when you actually buy the full ring from us, that's when they're going to charge you the $300. So an obligation that initially $10 is free is just a sizing kit.

[00:14:05] Joy Sharma: And they'll give the whole $10 as a credit towards the purchase. And now they have something talk in email that will actually force people to buy it. But more importantly. It's like it's the auction, right? Going in an auction and saying, it's a $300 product. I'm willing to pay 200, get me a purchase. It is hard.

[00:14:20] Joy Sharma: It's very hard. Your volume is limited and you're probably not going to be as profitable. Whereas there's a $10 product and I will pay 50. For a person to buy it, you're just going to destroy people in that auction. It's like, I don't care what your creative is at this point. It's like, I'm going to go and pay a 0.2 ROAS to sell my product.

[00:14:38] Joy Sharma: Like you think I'm going to lose in that auction? No. And that's why they would just scale very fast. So like whenever you see really good, like businesses scale really fast, you just need to look at like they, they've probably done something in their offer that just, that just makes them stand out in that particular market versus their competition.

[00:14:54] Joy Sharma: Like it's the same thing with that light company. Like that light company would actually destroy a lot of different light companies in that industry just because they would just be so aggressive in, in something that other people don't sell. And then the real thing that everyone sells is just a backend to them.

[00:15:07] Joy Sharma: So it's all profit to them.

[00:15:08] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, and, and you had mentioned before like one of the advantages of, of working with the accelerator program is like you guys have insight into all of the different sort of innovative strategies around this that exist out there across different industries, different specific examples, like you mentioned, this light company where there's like a clear.

[00:15:29] Richard Gaffin: Like there's a unique solve that actually could be replicable in different, similar types of industries. So again, like instead of kind of throwing, you know, darts at the dartboard and kind of seeing what hits, it's like you can go to somebody who's actually has the unusual experience of having seen like dozens and dozens and dozens of these things.

[00:15:47] Richard Gaffin: So

[00:15:48] Joy Sharma: it's also taking from other industries like, like there, there's some industries that currently exist in DTC where their VSLs work. Great. Nobody does that like it. It's not supposed to be something you do, but they're actually some small set of these industries and DTC where if you run into a vehicles L and then you drive it to a purchase, it'll actually work really well.

[00:16:07] Joy Sharma: And then depending on how good the VSO is, like it's a, that's

[00:16:10] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, I mean it's, there's sort of like an infinite number of things that could work, which is why this is such like an interesting and difficult phase, I guess. So let's, let's keep rolling along here. So the next kind of level here would be the four to 5 million range.

[00:16:23] Richard Gaffin: Roughly speaking again, where you talk about leveling up your creative production to a hundred a week. We've talked a lot about creative operations. I don't think we need to necessarily stick on that one. But then let's jump to the next tranche, where in the five to 6 million range, you talk about product development as being the primary focus.

[00:16:39] Richard Gaffin: So expand on that a little bit.

[00:16:41] Joy Sharma: It is, it is a similar place. So all of these things keep building up. So like the reason we skip over four to five is basically like you, you just make more ads on the new offer and like you get to expand it more. Then what also happens is like the way I'm going to expand my offer is like if I'm going to drive towards as much returning revenue as I can get, and like this is the most important thing that people need to remember, which is like every business has LTV and the most profitable source for every business is also LTV.

[00:17:05] Joy Sharma: So I'm doing product development, which is like if I don't have it front end, like if I can't go and say. Here's the thing, buy it and then I'll bill you every month for it. Then I need to do the other way, which is the, which is the only way that exists is here's something new. Would you like to buy this?

[00:17:19] Joy Sharma: So product development comes in two ways, which is if I have a core product, you can either build in front of it or on the back of it, which is like, this is something. If, depending on the industry, again, this is again, proprietary knowledge that helps a lot here to talk to friends that are in industries adjacent to you and all that stuff.

[00:17:33] Joy Sharma: But basically if there's a core product, there's always, depending on the industry, something that's easier to sell. If I have a very high A OV product, it's probably easier to sell something at the front that the people can experience into, and then it will help improve your acquisition. And then the core part becomes the backend.

[00:17:48] Joy Sharma: Or you just build something on the backend, which like I remember we had like Aaron, when Aaron used to work here, roff.

[00:17:55] Richard Gaffin: Oh yeah.

[00:17:56] Joy Sharma: he had this really good idea of like, if you sell caps that, like if you sell like I, I don't know, like emergency caps that have lights in it, you can probably sell the battery off that on a subscription.

[00:18:06] Joy Sharma: Like how much of that works? I don't know, but like that is, that is exactly what it means. There's like, depending on the industry you're in, there's something that sells well on the backend. This applies to everyone. It also applies in adjacent industries, which is like. Like they're, they're friends of mine and like they're also clients here, which are like, you don't need to actually sell the same thing.

[00:18:25] Joy Sharma: If you're in shoes. You don't probably need to sell shoes and upsell. Like it depends on how you've like curated it. Like you could sell things that are trending in that industry depending on the target audience. Like if the target audience for a shoe companies like 21-year-old male, certain size, category, whatever it is, like those people don't necessarily need to buy shoes again from you.

[00:18:46] Joy Sharma: They can buy any other product. Alts. So coming up with that products on the backend, like that's what product development is. And the reason it's at that range is because again, the aim is your 4 million. What is the one thing that will get you to 8 million? With just one thing, and then it usually takes like six months of development to have a product and like understanding these things.

[00:19:03] Joy Sharma: Product development means a lot of things for a lot of different people. And again, it's a continuum. So what I mean is like product development can range from, I wanna launch a new product every week, which some businesses do. I think there's Portland Leather that does this, and there are people who will just change the color.

[00:19:15] Joy Sharma: So, I mean, a very specific thing which like you're, you're building that thing for a very specific aspect of it, which is like, everyone talks about product development, like, I mean product development. That so that you can make more money from every customer. Like that should the aim of that particular product development.

[00:19:30] Joy Sharma: Every different type of like changing colors, limited edition, like all of those have different reasons like, but that's not what we're doing right now. Yeah,

[00:19:37] Richard Gaffin: So it's not necessarily like a product launch in order to, so, so like oftentimes a product launch will take the form of like a marketing event basically, which is like what you're talking about, where a clothing company will do drops or whatever every week that becomes a marketing calendar event to

[00:19:51] Joy Sharma: But yeah. But what. Yeah, the reason they're doing is they're either doing it for more acquisition, like, can I run more traffic and get more like E, either that or I want to squeeze my existing file. When you're four to five, you don't have a file to squeeze to begin with, and you probably have an acquisition problem.

[00:20:06] Joy Sharma: And the way you're going to win that is how can I pay more so I can spend more so I can grow my business? And that is the one problem we're trying to solve at that point with that product development. So like the aim of that thing is very specific.

[00:20:17] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I see what you're, yeah. So, so yeah, the product drop thing then is, is kind of like about volume or whatever, and that's not what this is about. What this is about is basically like product development in order to grow margin, essentially, right? Like, can you develop a product that increases a OV increases?

[00:20:33] Richard Gaffin: LTV has some sort of subscription element to it, so you can. You can facilitate the LTV increase a little bit easier, but being sort of, again, like the offer testing piece of this, like being creative about the way that your product sort of exists in the customer's world so that you can develop something that gets you more, basically Yeah, more revenue per customers essentially.

[00:20:53] Joy Sharma: I, I think there are bonus points if you can do that in the cash flow cycle you have.

[00:20:58] Richard Gaffin: yeah. Yeah.

[00:20:59] Joy Sharma: doing it both sides like can I extend the cash and recycle hours while doing this product development and fit that additional purchase in that time period? Then it's bonus points.

[00:21:07] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, right. So cash conversion cycle and LTV. Just increasing your GQ score all across, all across the board. That's what you wanna shoot for. Okay, so that's difficult but straightforward in terms of sort of the explanation. So let's go to this next tranche here. We're gonna kind of the upper ranges of the seven figure range.

[00:21:26] Richard Gaffin: So six to 7 million. And actually you'll have to explain this to me. We can cut this, but Hedges thread, what does that mean?

[00:21:32] Joy Sharma: It, it is like, it's basically a Twitter thread that I have right

[00:21:35] Richard Gaffin: Okay.

[00:21:36] Joy Sharma: but so what? It is just like few tactics. It is like, so six to 7 million range is actually the range where you should probably hang out on Twitter. Like before this. You just don't do that. It's, it's detrimental to your business. It's probably not worth it.

[00:21:49] Joy Sharma: So what six to seven does is basically every trick that you see. Is is probably going to be somewhat impactful here. Like doing any of the tricks before. This is just not impactful. So like we talk about, let's change email, let's do some tactic on email. Your file is not big enough for the cost of that action.

[00:22:07] Joy Sharma: Everything has a cost, right? Like. When you're small, you need to be very ruthless about resource allocation, and when we look from that perspective, there probably no tactic is worth it Before $6 million and like I would say at $6 million, $7 million, again, I'm talking about what is the one thing you can do that will WI would say probably a cluster of things which goes around, like I had this thread post, which is like if you're in January, you're building a forecast for this year and you want to see how you can double it.

[00:22:32] Joy Sharma: Probably try doing the following things. I think the first thing was open international markets. If you are very seasonal, if you're very seasonal this summer, go and make Australia work. That's probably very big, like mix Singapore work, Australia work, middle East work. Like those places are very incremental to you.

[00:22:46] Joy Sharma: It's the vice versa. If you're Australian brand, make us work. So that's probably the first thing you should start looking at, at that phase. Before that don't like if you, if you're a US brand and saying like, I will start international before 6 million. Probably don't, not the best idea. Even at this point, I'm, I'm just making hedges of like, I'm making hedge against location.

[00:23:03] Joy Sharma: Seasonality. That's usually a big one. Depends on how big the impact would be. And these are easier things to do and that's why they're there. It's audiences like if I'm, if I'm fully bought by a particular gender, it'll be very impactful so that, that if 10% of my audience is that other gender, you'll probably win.

[00:23:21] Joy Sharma: The whole, like this whole messaging comes from there was this. Thing that, like this is years old from Taylor, that, that basically sat with me and like, all of these are just different ways. You say that same thing, which is, Taylor said this the, the way I want to win an auction, if we take this statement to be true, which like the person who pays the most, wins the most in an, in an auction, like that's how they fundamentally work, then what happens is you either pay more or you find traffic somewhere else.

[00:23:44] Joy Sharma: Now, if I want to pay the most, or I want to be the most efficient, the way I wanna do that is I don't want to take all the audience of a particular category because what will happen is that is one option. The way I will win is I will win in multiple auctions. I want the first set of customers, the lowest hanging fruit across a lot of auctions.

[00:24:01] Joy Sharma: That's what we're doing, like at some point. At this point, usually opening your cap up in the United States is going to be more expensive than paying the international CAC with the highest mar with a higher, sorry, worse margins, lower conversion rates. It's still going to be cheaper. It's the same for opening an audience, like if you're fully.

[00:24:20] Joy Sharma: Women probably opening at least 10% of male. Like I don't want full market penetration. Like I don't want to go there. That's going to be expensive. Probably 10% of that is going to be good. So it's like those things are basically the things we're talking about. Email is actually helpful. Like setting up post purchase, setting up a CS team to cause people to come back, like holding our email team to a revenue number.

[00:24:41] Joy Sharma: Like that's where it's actually helpful. 'cause they will produce a cost that's. Their previous revenue that's in excess of the cost they will charge, which most of the times is not worth at a smaller level. That's what I mean here. Like that's how you double it at this

[00:24:52] Richard Gaffin: I see what you're saying. So, so basically at this point. What we're talking about is small finding every sort of like incremental edge that you can find, basically, whether that's like, maybe there's some media buying tactic or whatever, or it like you're mentioning, like expanding audiences, expanding platforms, expanding countries.

[00:25:10] Richard Gaffin: But maybe a way to summarize this is like from one to six, it's not really about expansion outside of expanding your creative. Volume and then Yeah. Yeah,

[00:25:23] Joy Sharma: all you're doing in different shapes

[00:25:24] Richard Gaffin: all you're growing is, is LTV essentially a OV growing margin per customer at this point. Now you begin to, like you're mentioning, I like this idea of that like now you can dive into DDC Twitter and see what people are talking about, because everybody's always talking about these little sort of tactical tricks you can do that might help you at all the previous points.

[00:25:43] Richard Gaffin: Those are. Essentially useless at this point. Now, those little tactical edges actually could make an incremental difference that's meaningful to get you to the next level. So let's, in the, the seven, 8 million range, you, you mentioned media buying, so I think that's like, kind of feels like more of the same.

[00:25:58] Richard Gaffin: Like are there little tactical build tricks you could do?

[00:26:01] Joy Sharma: no, I think this is, this is like, it's, it's part of a. Evolution of an organization, like we go through this in agencies, like when you increase in size, the way you operate, something changes. So like the way you should be running an A account, I would say start to change it. The reason it would start to change is basically based on the thing that works.

[00:26:20] Joy Sharma: If white listing works well for you, your account structure should be very different. It like your account structure should start with a default and it should evolve to basically whatever is working. So if you notice like what I wrote in the seven to 8 million range was like just do more of what is needed.

[00:26:34] Joy Sharma: And then it's seasons of life to whatever has worked for you. Then the more you're doing your account structure, which is lifeblood of your organization, this is going to feed everything. It should actually specifically adapt to it. So general advice for your ad account is great till 7 million, like you should just take the general advice.

[00:26:50] Joy Sharma: And then again, my point is, what is the one thing you can do at seven that will get you to 14? I would actually just go and say it's purely media bank because your media bank would actually be so specific to you. And what I mean by specifically, it's not going outside of the bon bounds of like what is best practice.

[00:27:03] Joy Sharma: It's like the best practice might change if it's like, if vitalis is not a huge thing for you, articles are not a huge thing for you. Landing page testing is not a huge thing for you, then I would not have a separate campaign for it. So my account structure will basically adapt to the things that work for you.

[00:27:15] Joy Sharma: It's, it's still in the same bound. It's like this is the tricky one. It's the same bounds, but specifically for you. And that's like a hard thing to

[00:27:23] Richard Gaffin: tease out some more examples, maybe speci of, of that. So you have the white listing example, but what are some more examples of like the way that media buying

[00:27:30] Joy Sharma: Per launch, per if per launches work? Well, for me, I want 50% of my spend to be Evergreen campaigns. That will one campaign, and then I want everything that's like outside of that. That comes from culture per launch is number one. I want different campaigns. They will get turned off and I'll launch new campaigns.

[00:27:44] Joy Sharma: If sales work for me, this is, this is interesting to me, then I will have a sale campaign that's a lifetime budget campaign. And I will put ads into it. I will put prime days ads into it. Then the next, like there's another culture moment next month, I would turn off the prime. I will put the new ones in the same thing and extend the lifetime budget out and then play the same thing again.

[00:28:03] Joy Sharma: And it will have all the learnings of Prime that will get applied, like applied to the next one. Like it's, it is again the same, same logic, one CVO, all your sale creatives. But the way that that got set up is different because I now store learnings of my culture moment. So if you are a promotional heavy brand.

[00:28:18] Joy Sharma: Probably do that. And then the third one is like, if I'm subscription, it'll be different. Like then I would be playing it different. If white list work well for me, I will take white list out. If white list doesn't work well for me, then I'll have a campaign with different ad sets based on the angles, like then that would should be my ad account structure.

[00:28:34] Joy Sharma: If I'm scaling with launching new landing pages, then I'll probably have a different campaign for like landing pages. So it's basically like, it's the same bounds being specific to the thing that works for you. And that's why like the, like at that point you need to actually analyze everything. Like before this, it's like I don't actually really care what your data is.

[00:28:52] Joy Sharma: Like that is probably the thing you need. Like I, I'll sign check if I'm right, but most of the time those points are valid. At this point I'm like, okay, what is the one thing you actually missed? In the initial steps because you probably did one of them so good that you just skip past the step. Like there's a really good chance if you did offers really good, you would just jump from three to six.

[00:29:10] Joy Sharma: You would, you can easily skip the steps. And that's basically what I'm doing at this point is I'm, I'm analyzing what did I miss? And then I would change the data account structure. And I have fun with Taylor about, this is like media buying matters. In my world it does because it's just these, these like these small things and that's

[00:29:26] Richard Gaffin: yeah. No, no, totally. That, that's, that's a good call out too because I feel like at the higher, sort of like eight figure level, a lot of the time media buying is basically like if you have the best practices locked down and the campaign structure or whatever, you just

[00:29:37] Joy Sharma: spending so much, right, like, like there's no point of finding a small edge because like people forget spending 20 grand a day. If you convert that into impressions, it's like few million people a day. Like what are you going to change? You'll probably show it to everyone in the bond anyways, so.

[00:29:56] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. So there's no tactic that's really gonna make a difference, but at this point, it's like, now you're at the sweet spot where actually some of those media buying decisions, like finding those edges within the account actually will make a meaningful difference for you bet before this point.

[00:30:10] Richard Gaffin: That's just a distraction. After this point, you probably don't need to do it. But to get to that point, that sort of eight eight figure point, this is when kind of focusing on media buying makes sense. So explain a little bit more, again, like this is, we're talking about the gap between seven and 10 here, more what you mean by more of what is working.

[00:30:29] Joy Sharma: Yeah, so

[00:30:30] Richard Gaffin: of that.

[00:30:31] Joy Sharma: well example of that is here, it's the continuous, so like what is, what is the. I, you can actually summarize this into like you should do a ROIC calculation of every activity you've done in the business and then see what has the best roic. Like ROIC is like original investor capital, which is like if my hit rate on ads or like we, we call it hit rate, you can call it average spend per ad.

[00:30:50] Joy Sharma: Let's just say that if I'm business one and my average spend per ad is say a hundred dollars and my margin made from that, like it's a two XA my margin profile, I guess 20% of that, like I make $20 in profit from every ad I make and my cost to produce an ad for some reason, for me is like $50. Probably the thing I should not scale is creative.

[00:31:07] Joy Sharma: Like that's not where I have an edge in. Right. And then if there's someone else, like there, there are a lot of businesses like these where like my average spend per ad is two grand. And I make 20% net margin on every ad I produce, and my cost to production is like $50. Like you should probably keep making more of that because it will come down.

[00:31:25] Joy Sharma: All of these things come down. It's just like all of dtc. Twitter is actually built on some kind of arbitrage and we all need to understand that. And you need to find where it exists for your industry and for your brand. Like it's actually more about the industry and then about the brand, like the reason they're the, if you look at the fastest growing businesses right now, there's subscriptions.

[00:31:41] Joy Sharma: Because of the arbitrage that exist in the economics of subscription that people don't know. And there are a lot of compliances that lets, a lot of things happen. Like I, I can just keep rebuilding customers without them knowing it was a subscription to begin. Like there's so many things that exist. So you need to find what the arbitrage was you, it's usually a ROI analysis of creative.

[00:31:57] Joy Sharma: That's what I would start with. I would look at product development and product launches more necessary, which is. In, in, in short periods of time, what would happen is my, my average spend per hour will go through the roof. Like if I can do a cultural moment where I can just take a simple static and run it, and my average hit rate on, on Evergreen period was like, say 6% of the ads work in that period, 25% of the ads work, then I would be very ruthless was, I think me and Taylor had this last podcast, which is like, you should do four peaks a month.

[00:32:24] Joy Sharma: Like that. That's the idea I would strive towards during that time period. Then like, okay, that's the best return investment for my time, which is like, can I do a limited edition color? Can I talk about a culture moment, so and so forth. It also might be more offers, like if offers worked well for you, like this is what we are, we were doing with a.

[00:32:39] Joy Sharma: Brand. I think, I dunno if you talked about this publicly, we should, like, if there's a offer that's working really well for me and I want to see if there's, there's additional offers I can stack volume on. A lot of times the game in that is like, I don't want to beat the control. Like this is a very wrong thing people have about test and controls.

[00:32:55] Joy Sharma: It's like, I wanna make something that beat the last thing. I'm fine with it. Like I actually don't care. I just want to stock volume. Can I do another offer? On unlisted landing page that is about a different perk. Like we did this for a brand very recently, which was like the way you unlock different audiences, and you'll probably realize that this is a good ROIC for you when you do that exercise is like, can I make a unlisted landing page for a male audience because a hundred percent of my purchase are female and just merchandise that page purely for that.

[00:33:22] Joy Sharma: If that works, then great, I'm gonna go and open so many different landing pages. I remember the best thing we did was we started with, okay, if, if focus coffee works, then you should have a landing page for every single persona, and you should test personas that like, can I take the same landing page, make it unlisted and be like, focus coffee for moms.

[00:33:39] Joy Sharma: Focus coffee for digital creators, focus coffee for night. Gods like that is actually probably, if that works, you should keep expanding. You should keep taking it and then every angle that works to keep taking it further. Like that's why at that point it's the analyst and you should look at your whole business.

[00:33:52] Joy Sharma: And then see where I have the edge specific to my business, where is the highest ROIC on my business? And then I will go and do those things only to double my business at that point.

[00:34:02] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, that makes sense. Well, I think it's also like worth repeating that point that you made about like, it not mattering if the new sort of like unlisted landing page beats the original, because I, you and I both know, like a lot of the time, that just like doesn't, it's not gonna really happen. Like the likelihood

[00:34:16] Joy Sharma: but what's the cost, right? Like the cost of a landing page is what, like $200? Like. It's great. Like $200.

[00:34:25] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, if it's, if it's incremental to your business, then you should do it. And if it's the type of thing that works, then you should do more of it. Okay. So that brings us then to the threshold of eight figures. At this point. It, it sounds like, you know, in the, across the seven figure range, a lot of the time people you're working with are owner operators who are just scrapping and doing everything themselves.

[00:34:43] Richard Gaffin: They've probably made a few hires, but at this point now you're really, you're expanding the team, taking a step back from. A lot of this stuff. So talk a little bit about kind of what the transition point looks like.

[00:34:54] Joy Sharma: I think this, especially given how AI is working, and we keep talking about this, like they're going to be like one, one person companies, and I actually believe what it's going to be is you should make a. A, a player hire, probably by the time you reach 10 million. The biggest impact, again, we are doing the same exercise.

[00:35:14] Joy Sharma: What is the one thing I can do at 10 million that will make me 20? Is probably if you can have one hire, and it usually is inside the organization because the person working as agencies are like the same, like agencies are going like it, it's a, it's exponential increase increases like c, d, C with bad operators will grow your business 20% over year.

[00:35:31] Joy Sharma: C, d, C with impeccable operators will grow your business probably triple in a year.

[00:35:35] Richard Gaffin: Yeah.

[00:35:35] Joy Sharma: And that's what I mean, which is like the internal operators. Now with ai, because you don't need so many people, if you can just have one really good a player, he actually probably would be worth to you more than 10 people if you, if you don't focus on that.

[00:35:47] Joy Sharma: And that's why a lot of people also don't have the time, probably don't do recruiting well, and a lot of times it's like, can I just hire someone in the network? I just want to see if this thing works. But at 10 Mill it has worked. You should probably hire really good people and that's what's going to dictate the success of how fast now this grows.

[00:36:05] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. So, so let's then, then, sorry, keeping it back in the, in the seven figure range really quickly, 'cause we're getting close to time here. Let's talk about. And I think you already touched on this, but talk about like where, where is the point in this continuum that you see people getting stuck the most?

[00:36:21] Richard Gaffin: Maybe it's like where, where are most of the brands that you work with and like where do they end up plateauing?

[00:36:27] Joy Sharma: I think it depends. So people, when they come to us across like close to the 6 million range. We actually get, like if you ask me brands that grow the fastest with us is people in the 6 million range grow in the fastest. Like they go from six to 10, like super fast because they've done the previous steps.

[00:36:45] Joy Sharma: I would say speed of growth actually is related to the activity and the time that actually takes product development probably takes six months, like so to see the actual results, that it would take time. Most of the times I would say people are at 4 million mark. Without doing the steps that were supposed to be done at one to two because they did something else that was really good and they just are missing steps.

[00:37:04] Joy Sharma: So if there's a business that has done the steps at the, at the point, like we will keep growing them. Double, double, double, double. But if they haven't, then I would need to go back and see what they have not done recently. Well, I think this might change, but initially it was creative for, for the longest time it was creatives.

[00:37:19] Joy Sharma: And I remember there was this statement from this client that didn't grow for two years and they came to us and they're like. CDC just demands the most amount of creatives ever. My last agency or the agency before this never asked for these many creatives, and you also didn't grow for two years. So like probably there's, there's something there.

[00:37:36] Joy Sharma: So I think it's, it's related to that. It's them not knowing what is the one thing I should do or it's about, about the pain or the, it's a change in the ecosystem that happens when you become a CD client. Like that is like the one thing I would just never hide. Like this was when we were in the beta test, the client told me like.

[00:37:53] Joy Sharma: What CDC is, is like, is a change agent for me. Like I never actually thought DDC would decide. I just saw ads about DDC businesses that you just chill on the beach and you own a business. It prints money. Like that's why I started these businesses and then it was like, oh, this is, this is not that. So.

[00:38:09] Richard Gaffin: yeah. Totally. No, that's interesting. Yeah. So being like tending to get stuck at a point where. Yeah, I, I do feel like this happens a lot where for some, maybe not Fluke, but for some reason, like there's some trend or whatever that your, your product is writing. You've reached, you've grown too fast, so to speak, and now what you have to do is double back and say like, do I have an actual like, offer strategy here?

[00:38:31] Richard Gaffin: Do I have an actual marketing calendar where I'm specifically and intentionally laying out the ways I'm gonna develop revenue peaks across the year? Am do I have some sort of like creative operational system that can actually produce at the level I needed to produce? And that sounds like that's probably like the main thing a lot of people need to focus on.

[00:38:47] Richard Gaffin: So, but you, you said it best, like, what's the solution here is to come to CTC and actually let us, let us build this for you. So if you wanna check it out, if you want to if you're in the seven figure range and you wanna work with Joy and his team to break through to the next level to follow this continuum.

[00:39:03] Richard Gaffin: Common thread code.com. Hit that hire us button, let us know that you wanna work with us and we'd be happy to chat with you. So Joy, any last thoughts? Anything you wanna leave the folks with?

[00:39:14] Joy Sharma: Don't be on Twitter below a certain size, like just not product to use.

[00:39:19] Richard Gaffin: That's right. General, generally good advice. Just stay off Twitter. But all appreciate it, joy, and for everybody else out there, we'll talk to you next time. Take care.