The Growth System for Brands Under $1M

[00:00:00] Speaker: Hey folks, welcome to the E-Commerce Playbook Podcast. I'm your host, Richard Gaffen, director of Digital Product Strategy here at Common Thread Collective. And today we're doing something that we haven't really done before, which is that I'm solo potting, which if you can believe it here I am coming to you live from my incredibly back lit apartment here in Portland, Oregon.

[00:00:18] And they just let me have the mic and they're gonna let me run with it. And part of the reason here, or I should say the main reason is that. We have rolled out a version of the profit engine, which we've been talking about on this podcast for weeks and weeks Now, we've rolled out a version of the profit engine that I'm heading up called Profit Engine Light and Profit.

[00:00:37] Engine Light is for brands that are below seven figures in annual e-comm revenue. Now, if you've seen some of our messaging we've been saying, or recently we've been saying that it's between 500 K and 2 million. We're expanding that to all, essentially any revenue level. Below seven figures. If you're interested in working with CTC in building out one of our systems for you, now is your chance.

[00:01:01] All we ask basically is that you already have some established amount of revenue, right? So that you're not in the pre-revenue phase, you're not in the startup phase, you're already running, you're doing X amount a month you're trying things out on meta, whatever the case may be. We're interested in talking to you if you are below seven figures.

[00:01:19] Now, CTC has really never had an offering. A service offering for brands at this level before. So this is brand new and I anyway think that that's exciting. So if you're interested check it out, go to commenter co.com, hit the high risk button let us know You're interested in PE six and I will talk to you about it.

[00:01:35] I would love to jump on a call and, and kind of hash out whether or not this is a fit for your brand. But for the sake of this pod episode here, I'm gonna kind of walk you through it. A little bit about what it is, who it's for and why it might be a fit for you. So essentially the situation you find yourself in if you are in this phase.

[00:01:55] Is that you're constantly fighting fires and you have no time to do the only thing that would actually put those fire out, which is, which is build a plan. Right Now, this doesn't necessarily change, and, and if you've heard of discussions over the last several weeks here for brands that are in the seven figure bracket or the eight figure bracket.

[00:02:13] They're also fighting fires constantly. So this is not necessarily something that's going to change, but in your position, the difference is that it's life or death, right? If you're not available to put the, the fire out, the fires out yourself, the fires are gonna burn the whole thing down, right? And that's not necessarily the case when you grow.

[00:02:29] So all that to say, having a plan is what's important here. Having a plan is the thing that will put the fire out for you ultimately, but taking the time to build a plan and to build the right plan. Just to be clear, you don't have time to do that, right? And anybody who's listening, who's in that position, I think will resonate with that.

[00:02:51] So that's kind of the purpose of profit engine light here, to, to step into that space and to construct a plan for you. So there's kind of three steps to it, or. Parts. And the first is that we'll connect you to every, or we will connect every data source that your business relies on to our program stats.

[00:03:09] Now, we've talked about stats before, sort of our proprietary stuff. Software that pulls, aggregates all your data across all of your different kind of platforms, including things like your cogs, including things you collect, your marketing calendar. It pulls those in and allows us to see what's happening in the entire business.

[00:03:26] Um, and that includes. Both the kind of marketing data from various platforms. Your meta, your Google, whatever, it includes your store data. But then, like I was mentioning before, it also includes qualitative things like promo schedule if you have that built yet. It includes things like your cogs, your shipping costs, fixed expenses, bringing everything together to produce the one thing that you need right now, which is.

[00:03:50] Predictable profitability. Now, again, at this level, everything's volatile. You're kind of just running the ship yourself kind of maybe flying. It feels like without a radar, this is meant to provide you that radar. So that's the first thing. We'll bring every data source that you're using right now, we'll pull it into one place.

[00:04:07] So now you have a single source of truth that will work from then we'll develop a custom model for you. Now in the case of a much smaller brand, we may need to use sort of some templatization there, but the point is we're gonna create some sort of model of what the future might look like, right? So over the next 12 months this is what's likely to happen if things continue as usual Now.

[00:04:30] Of course, because there's not a lot of data upfront, this is maybe going to be a little bit of a dimmer picture than it normally would be for a slightly larger brand. That being said, the point of the model, of course, is not to predict the future accurately per se. It's to provide a roadmap to get to that future.

[00:04:46] Right? So. That's what we're gonna construct for you. And then from that point, we'll put together a complete p and l level forecast. So we'll have sort of the model of what we think is going to happen. Then we'll sit down and build something out for you based on your business's goals. What do we think you need to do to get there?

[00:05:03] So we'll plan that out for you. You'll have a clear sense of, and this is the way I've been framing it, that. If in December you want X to happen, here's what's going to need to happen right now. So it's Monday, March the 30th as I record this. When you listen to it, it'll probably be Tuesday, March the 31st.

[00:05:22] So April's right, right around the corner and what needs to happen, or, or rather, I should say, at the end of this year. April is going to need to look a certain way for the end of the year to look the way that you want it to. That's what we're planning to build for you. Okay? So once all that's kind of put into place, we'll sync you up with a profit engineer.

[00:05:41] And a profit engineer is going to be the person. Guiding you towards this plan. Now, in the other versions of the profit engine, your profit engineer is doing the work for you. This is not a service relationship in that same way. It's more of a consultation relationship. Your profit engineer will meet with you initially.

[00:06:00] It is gonna meet with you once a month. So every 30 days, they'll sit down with you, look at the forecast, say, in order to get where you need to go in 30 days, here are the X, Y, and Z things you're gonna need to do. In 30 days, they'll sit down with you, review the past 30 days and say, this is what happened.

[00:06:15] This is what you needed to execute on. In light of that, the following 30 days are going to need to look a certain way. And they're going to kind of hash that out for you as well. Now we also have there's a package too that we can talk about as well, if this is something you're interested in, where you talk to the profit engineer every single week so they can guide you through what you need to do.

[00:06:36] Um, but either way, the point is that this is sort of a guidance I was gonna say a guidance counselor, but that's essentially what it is, right? This is a growth guide, a growth counselor, and they're going to be sort of guiding you through the system, so you have a plan. You have a way to get there. You know exactly what you need to do and what budget you need to allocate to make it happen, and then you have somebody to guide you towards that.

[00:06:59] So that's what you get. Now, if this is something you're interested in right now we're saying this is gonna be 1499, so 1500 bucks basically for the onboarding piece, getting all your data into one place, building out your models, then it's 500 bucks thereafter every single month, and it's month to month as well.

[00:07:16] So if for some reason you feel like this isn't working for you can, you can just cut it, um, and no questions asked, that's totally fine. We want this to make sense for your specific situation.

[00:07:27] On a weekly basis, you'll get a cohort q and a with Joy. Sharma Joy's been on the podcast before. You know him. You love him. He's a really smart guy. He's the head of our Profit Engine seven accelerator program. He knows he has seen everything that there is to see when it comes to e-commerce, and we're going to be having a weekly conversation with him with a cohort.

[00:07:47] So you're also gonna be able to sync up with other people who are in similar positions to you. 'cause I think the one thing that I've learned. Over the course of working with brands at this phase is that the entrepreneurial journey can be a really lonely process, and part of having a cohort q and a is letting you know that there are other people that are on the journey with you.

[00:08:05] So that is also included. Anyway, that's a lot of stuff. If that's something that you're interested in. You know who to call, I always say it every week, but you know who to call. Common Thread co.com. Hit the high risk button, let us know that you're interested, that you're below the million dollar threshold that you want to talk to us, and you'll be able to book a call with me.

[00:08:23] I would love to talk to you a little bit more. Yeah, that's gonna do it for me. That's my solo pod. Quick quick nine-ish minutes here, or whatever this pans out to be. But hope you guys have a good week.

[00:08:33] I'm gonna talk to you a little bit later this week as well with Mr. Luke Austin to talk a little bit more about some larger brand stuff. But for the time being, this is the headline. If you're below the million dollar threshold you wanna work with CTC, now's the time. Come check us out. All right, take care y'all.