We've been drawing the same funnel on whiteboards for 30 years. Awareness, consideration, conversion. It was never that linear. It's time to stop pretending it is.
Everyone's obsessed with audience segmentation. But the best DTC brands figured out something the agencies haven't: if your creative is specific enough, it does the targeting for you.
You're looking at customer acquisition cost wrong. The number you're optimizing isn't the number that matters. Here's the reframe that changed how I think about DTC unit economics.
The marketing world loves a debate. Brand vs. performance is the current favorite. It's also a waste of time. The best operators I know don't choose — they sequence.
I've worked with brands that spent $50k on a single shoot and got beaten by a founder talking into their iPhone. Here's what 14 years in DTC taught me about the power of simple creative.
We've been drawing the same funnel on whiteboards for 30 years. Awareness, consideration, conversion. It was never that linear. It's time to stop pretending it is.
Everyone's obsessed with audience segmentation. But the best DTC brands figured out something the agencies haven't: if your creative is specific enough, it does the targeting for you.
You're looking at customer acquisition cost wrong. The number you're optimizing isn't the number that matters. Here's the reframe that changed how I think about DTC unit economics.
The marketing world loves a debate. Brand vs. performance is the current favorite. It's also a waste of time. The best operators I know don't choose — they sequence.
Every year someone declares email dead. Every year the data proves them wrong. After 12 years, I'll tell you exactly why email remains the highest-ROI channel in DTC — and what most brands get wrong about it.
The panic was real. The lesson was more valuable than the pain. iOS 14 didn't break DTC marketing — it exposed which brands had built on sand.
UGC was the great equalizer. Now everyone's doing it and it's becoming wallpaper. Here's what's actually working in 2026.
Everyone wants a single north star metric. Here's mine — and why I've used it across every brand I've worked with for the last decade.
I've built and scaled DTC brands from zero to eight figures. I've run media budgets from $10k/month to $5M/month. I've made every mistake in the book — and a few that aren't in any book yet.
This blog is where I write down what I'm actually thinking. No courses to sell. No agency to pitch. Just the real stuff.
Got a brand you're building? A problem you're stuck on? Book a 1-on-1 call and let's work through it together. 14 years of DTC experience, no fluff.
