Jai Dolwani

How iwi life educates its retail customers On your DTC site, you’re able to do as much storytelling and education about your product and brand as you’d like. This is not the case in retail. Here’s how iwi life uses Brij to combat this challenge. iwi life is an Omega-3 supplement brand made from sustainable algae farms in the deserts of New Mexico. This is very different from traditional Omega-3 supplements, which are derived from fish and krill oil. What most people don’t know is that fish and krill don’t manufacture Omega-3, they get it from algae! Much of iwi’s distribution is in retailers like Vitamin Shoppe, Whole Foods, HEB, Sprouts, Amazon, in addition to its Shopify store. In the retail setting, iwi life had limited real estate on its packaging to share its key differentiators:   - 1.7 more absorption than krill/fish oil   - 100% vegan   - Made with solar power   - Zero strain on ocean life   With Brij, iwi life found a way to breathe more life into its brand experience in retail and communicate its special sauce. Today, all iwi life packaging has a QR code that takes prospective buyers and customers to an engaging Brij experience. In that experience, consumers watch a segment from the award-winning series, Earth with John Holden. In the video, John Holden tours the iwi life algae farm. From there, one can access:   💪 Email list sign up   💪 FAQs   💪 Customer support   💪 Social media links “It was really important that we could customize ourselves and do it fast. Each new Brij experience takes 5 minutes to spin up,” says Carlos Baldominos Carrasco from iwi life. The icing on the cake is that Carlos is also using Brij for win-back campaigns. In a recent campaign, they added a QR code experience to direct mail and 6x ROI and that figure only included the 1st month of the subscription! 

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I have audited 5 multiple 8 & 9 figure DTC brands in the past month and this is the most common problem I’ve found hands down. Lack of understanding of the core KPIs that will actually drive their growth. There are still so many brands that blindly follow ROAS as a primary KPI and expect growth. The worst part is when I ask them how they set their target ROAS and they can’t even give me a straight answer. ROAS simply put is only the short term impact of your advertising dollars on consumers who are currently in-market to buy. If you want to focus on growth you need to identify valuable cohorts of customers with the highest raw 60 or 90 day total contribution margin. Depending on the purchasing frequency then you might need to look at a longer period of time. I would also recommend adding in a small buffer on this number to account for variance. If you don’t know what contribution margin is it’s just your LTV with all COGs and variable costs deducted. These are the customers that will produce the most profitable cash flow for your business. Why is this KPI so important? It allows you to look beyond ROAS and understand the true value of your customers so that you can make more strategic decisions in order to acquire & retain them. ROAS only tells you the value of a transaction and the impact of your ad dollars on immediate cash flow. This is a flawed way to look at your numbers if you’re trying to grow. Don’t be this type of brand.

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2 months ago my team spent $16k on ONE Reel from a creator. Yes $16,000 Was it worth it? Well here's what it generated: 3.3M Views 70k Likes 220 comments CPM's = $4.84 Now would I recommend everyone do this? No. This is for a large 9 figure brand. Size of your brand matters. But if your brand has ZERO brand awareness, it will be an investment to build that. #influencer #DTC #Growth #Marketing

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Everyone talks about hitting $10M in revenue. Nobody talks about how many brands crash and burn getting there. After working with dozens of scaling brands, here are the top 3 mistakes I see DTC brands make on the road from $1M to $10M in revenue: 1️⃣ Overbuying Inventory Many brands fear missing out on sales, but overcommitting to stock often backfires. Unless you have ample access to capital (which is rare in 2024), it’s smarter to risk the occasional stockout than to lock up cash that could keep your business agile. 2️⃣ Overspending on Agency Fees Marketing agencies can be valuable, but a $20K-$30K monthly retainer is unsustainable if your revenue is in the low millions. Look for an agency that works with brands your size and aligns its fees with your budget reality. 3️⃣ Skipping Monthly Financial Reviews If you’re not reviewing both your historical financials and forecast monthly, you’re flying blind. These check-ins reveal whether you’re staying on track—and if not, they give you the chance to pivot before the cost of delay becomes too high. What other costly mistakes do you see? -- Hi, I'm Jon Blair founder of the DTC Finance and Accounting firm Free to Grow CFO. Want more tips on growing a profit-focused DTC brand? Give me a follow. Want to learn more about how Free to Grow's Accountants and CFO's can help you increase profit and cash flow as you scale? Shoot me a DM. Until next time, scale on! 

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My *non sponsored* tech stack from taking DTC Influencer programs from 0 to 100 influencers seeded in just 90 Days. This is everything you need: - Sourcing Tool (we use Storyclash) - Centralized application process (Aspire) - Creative Capture (Archive) - Google Sheets (calculating CPM's) Big thing you need here is the right TEAM to - Sourcing (200 creators / week) - Reporting on content - Responding to emails (VA) - Someone to negotiate contracts - Building a strategy (Account Manager / Strategist) This can be done by a social media manager OR you can outsource it to a team like Aligned Growth *hint* DM me if you need any help! #Influencer #InfluencerMarketing #DTC #Growth

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What’s the secret to lasting 10 years in DTC? Hint: it’s not tricks or shortcuts. Ryan Beltran, co-founder of Original Grain, joins me on The DTC Insider podcast to share how they: 👉 Turned a $500k Kickstarter into a global watch brand. 👉 Sold 500k+ watches made from reclaimed materials. 👉 Partnered with Jack Daniels & the Yankees. 👉 Planted 700,000 trees along the way. 👉 Track numbers daily. 👉 And much more! If you’re building a lasting brand, this episode is a must-listen. Need more reasons to listen to this? You'd want to hear me pronounce "New York junkies" instead of "New York Yankees". 😂 Tune in 👇

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High Post Engagement = Lower CPM = Better ROAS How frequently do you monitor your post engagement rate? If you're not paying attention to it, now might be the time to start focusing on your Post Engagement to Impressions ratio. If this percentage exceeds 10%, it's a strong indicator that your ads are performing effectively. In fact, our recent audit of 10 ad accounts revealed that 7 out of 10 accounts with high engagement rates experienced lower CPMs and better ROAS. Want to improve your ad performance? Let's chat. #performancemarketing #D2C #Founder

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How do you increase your store revenue, AOV, and CR quickly? Find an offer that works. And don't stop testing new ones. Offer testing is an underrated DTC strategy. Most brands stuck with the same offer month after month, year after year. Same Black Friday deals, same Welcome offer, same Cart abandonment offer. Nor there's any logic to the process. Most copy their competition. Or reverse engineer their margin. With Q3 starting, you need to start testing offers for Q4. Without a tested offer, you are leaving a lot to chance. Here's how we offer testing - --> Create 4-5 unique offers - Percentage discounts: 10%, 20%, etc. - Dollar amount discounts: $5 off, $10 off - Tiered Offers: $10 Off $100, $15 Off 150, etc. - Value-added offers: Buy one, get one free; free gift with purchase - Shipping offers: Free shipping, discounted expedited shipping - Loyalty offers: Points, VIP early access to new products Create at least 4-5 offers to start with. --> Run email campaigns or on-site pop-ups to test offers You need quick data to test offers, so it's best to run it as a campaign or on-site pop-up. The goal is to collect data over 3-4 days for each offer. Run small targeted campaigns to test different offers. --> Monitor key metrics An offer will have an impact over - Direct metrics -  - Conversion rate - Average order value Indirect metrics -  - Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) - Store Revenue - Customer lifetime value Focus on direct metrics for testing the metrics. --> Dump non-performing one. For every good offer, you will have 2 bad offers. Keep on separating good from bad. Don't run bad offers again. Instead, try to find variations of good offers. The goal is to get 3-4 good offers, which you can rotate all through the year. Don't wait till Q4 to test your offer. #dtc #ecommerce

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Niching down means solving an entire problem for one group. When you don’t niche down you get sky high churn, snail paced growth, nonexistent product-market fit, and endless pivots. You could ship more features, get more sales talent, create more content on your product, and still wonder why isn’t anything sticking. Who experienced both sides of the coin? Plaid, the company that connects apps to users' bank accounts. When Plaid started in business they had 8 pivots because nothing stuck. They wanted to “Make Money Easier For Everyone.” They started getting traction when they focused on integrating with corporate American Express card users for expense management. This laser-focused approach solved 1 problem in its entirety. This built strong customer loyalty and set the stage for their massive growth. What single problem is most interesting that isn't solved today? Subscribe to my newsletter to learn more: https://lnkd.in/d7WGB8fi

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With more places, and strategies to advertise comes the difficult problem of prioritization. I put together this quick guide on the most profitable DTC campaigns that every brand should be running.

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DTC brand founders, your QuickBooks Chart of Accounts is leading you toward sub-optimal decisions. Your chart of accounts should... Provide visibility into 5 core expense categories: 1. Cost of goods sold (COGS) 2. Variable order costs (VOCs) 3. Sales & marketing costs 4. Fixed overhead - headcount 5. Fixed overhead - other Without visibility into these 5 buckets of expenses you can't measure: 👉 Contribution margin 👉 Break-even point And you can't manage what you can't measure. If you want to set up your chart of accounts so you can easily measure contribution margin and break-even point, then here's a bullet-pointed list of what accounts you should nest under each of the 5 parent accounts 👇 👇 1. Cost of goods sold a. Freight in b. Import taxes and duties c. Product cost 2. Variable order costs a. Any cost that occurs between order placement and arrival at the customer's destination - typical VOCs are as follows i. Fulfillment cost (3PL pick/pack fees + freight out), ii. Credit card processing fees iii. Per unit cost of returns iv. For Amazon Sellers - Amazon seller fees + Amazon FBA fees 3. Sales & marketing costs 4. Fixed overhead - headcount a. Fixed monthly overhead costs for i. Payroll, ii. Payroll taxes, iii. Employee-driven insurances (workers comp + health and dental) iv. Other employee benefits 5. Fixed overhead - other a. All other overhead costs that are not employee-driven -- Did you find this post helpful? If so, consider resharing it and giving me Jon Blair a follow.

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When you're scaling a DTC brand from $5m to $30m, don't try to optimize for lowest cost of capital when you raise debt financing... The lenders out there who can offer the lowest cost of capital usually can't offer the capital flexibility and deal terms that you need as you scale. Low cost of capital lenders don't love DTC. It scares them because there is little to no A/R and inventory is a riskier collateral base. As such, they'll either offer you way too little capital availability or their offer will come with hefty protective provisions that feel punitive. Non-bank lenders tend to be the best fit for a DTC-heavy brand that is scaling profitability beyond $5m in annual sales. Traditional bank lenders, which offer lower cost of capital, tend to become a better option after you hit $30m+ in annual sales. Obviously, there are always exceptions to this rule, but the advice I'm offering here turns out to be true most of the time in my experience. __ Want more tips like this? Consider reposting or giving me Jon Blair a follow.

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One thing I'm extremely proud of is being able to work with world class brands. We have partnered with Fiverr to help build out their business influencer marketing team. They are paid 💰 sponsorships and the team are looking for long-term partners. Like most campaigns, it'll be one or two posts initially to test your audience / performance before it is formalised into a longer agreement. We'll be scaling this partnership over the course of the year. That means we'll be looking for more and more business influencers. How it works: You'll just need to be registered with Flooencer (takes 1 minute to sign up) and register to the Fiverr Creator Programme - links below in comments From their your profile will be visible to Fiverr (amongst other brands so you might get other offers). If you have used Fiverr or just love the brand, feel free to throw your hat into the ring. **n.b. Not all applicants will be successful** This is just one of many exciting brands we work with.

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Healthy profitability isn’t what makes a DTC brand valuable. Healthy positive cash flow is... Just because your brand is profitable doesn’t mean it’s creating positive cash flow. Unless you know how to manage your balance sheet efficiently, your profitable DTC brand’s cash flow may be locked up - 1. On warehouse shelves (inefficient inventory management) 2. Your customers’ bank accounts (inefficient receivables management) 3. Your vendors bank accounts’ (inefficient payables management) Need help managing your balance sheet so you can improve cash flow and increase your brand’s valuation on the open market? Shoot me a DM. My team of Ecommerce CFOs can help. — If you found this post helpful, consider resharing and follow me Jon Blair for more content like this.

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Scaling a DTC brand to $10M+ in annual revenue isn’t as complicated as people make it out to be. You just need to do two things right: - Find a massive Total Addressable Market (TAM)  - Ride the right trend at the right time. Here’s what I mean: If you want to grow a high-revenue DTC brand, it’s a cheat code to be in a big market. Why? Because it’s easier to take a tiny slice of a huge pie than to bake a whole new one. Let’s break it down: The health and wellness supplement market is worth $200 billion. That’s a huge market, and even if you only capture 0.1% of that, you’re looking at $200 million in revenue. Now, imagine your TAM is only $1 billion. It’s still a billion-dollar market, but capturing 0.1% of that gets you only $1 million. Big difference. You’re working 10x harder for a fraction of the results. The point? Choose a market with room to grow. That’s what Dollar Shave Club did. They entered a multi-billion-dollar men’s grooming market and took a small but loyal share of the pie. They didn’t need to own the market. They just needed to make a dent, and that dent led to a $1 billion acquisition by Unilever. The second part of the equation is: you need to ride a trend that’s already growing. Why fight against the current when you can catch the wave? Let’s look at Stanley, the Tumbler brand. The cups everyone is holding. They didn’t invent a new category. They rode a trend and turned a niche product into a $750 million force. But here’s the thing: trends aren’t random. They’re driven by compound annual growth rates (CAGR). In simple terms, a market growing consistently will push you forward even when you’re not doing much. The health and wellness supplement market is growing at 6.5% annually. That’s why brands in that space see easier growth. There’s momentum going. And what does that mean for you? It means you need to pick a market that’s moving. If your industry isn’t growing, it’ll feel like you’re running uphill. But if you can ride a wave of growth like Stanley did, that 0.1% market share you were aiming for today could be worth 2x or 3x more in just a few years.

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Official Rules for $500 Giveaway 1. You must follow Leap Brands 2. Leap Brands will post a video tomorrow at 12pm.  You must like the video and repost/share and tag @ Leapbrands  3. You must comment on tomorrow's video with your guess of how much money was dropped The first person to Follow, Like, Repost/Share and Comment the correct answer will be the winner.  If no one guesses the exact amount the winner will be whoever guesses the closest.  If there is a "tie" in terms of how far off the guess is, then the winner will be the closest WHO DOES NOT GO OVER THE AMOUNT The winner will be announced on Tuesday so please pay attention to your DMs so you can get paid #giveaway #contest #money #recruitingisfun #superconnectors #leapbrands #mdw2024 #referral #recruiting

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Here's a prediction (that's already happening): Influencer marketing agencies with strong and long term creator relationships will disrupt ecomm I'm thrilled to say they are starting to white-label products to sell directly through their content creators' digital stores They truly have the potential to become the new powerhouses of retail Why? Because traditional brands are caught in a vice: TikTok Shop dominates social commerce, offering unparalleled reach and engagement Amazon reigns supreme in logistics and e-commerce infrastructure Brands can't outmuscle the partnership of the #1 + #4 U.S. marketplace titans on their own turf But here's the twist: Creators and their communities don't need to Unlike brands trying to force-fit into these platforms, communities ARE the platform They're the ones who make commerce happen It's not just a new sales channel; it's a reimagining of the entire consumer journey, powered by authentic connections and real-time responsiveness to trends The future of retail isn't just social - it's community-driven TikTok shop revolutionized e-commerce A free sample can now replace massive, risky upfront advertising or influencer marketing dollars To compete, you need: A network of creators who convert Plus a network of real-time, high-quality suppliers And a tech stack connecting every real-time trend to communities of shared interests One that can find the white space opportunities in an era of infinite content and products Fun fact: Revolve sells 74k products, but only the top 3 sell 1000+ units per month And they're basics Remember: viral trends ≠ consumer trends You need suppliers with no or low moqs across thousands of categories Creators need operators with deep supply chain experience and even greater empathy, not wide boys suddenly talking about community/superfans lol A new era of the creator economy is evolving: single moms are out there generating millions in GMV in just 30 days $4.8M in 30 days!!!!! But they're on rented land... It's time to serve these creators and empower them to build generational wealth This includes all the women who make up fashion's value chain, including the suppliers Judgement day is here The era of billion-dollar brands using suppliers as their personal banks is coming to an end We're entering a new age where fair partnerships, quick turnarounds, and mutual growth are the cornerstones of success In this new landscape, those who adapt quickly, prioritize authentic relationships, and deeply understand and organize around the power of community will thrive The revolution in retail isn't just about new sales channels—it's about redefining value creation and distribution across the entire industry And I'm here for it Since Tomorrow #thegreatfashionreset #creatortomanufacturer #communitycommerce #contentistheproduct #creatorsarethestore

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I’ve helped DTC brands make BFCM a retention powerhouse. It’s simple. Steal my 7-step playbook: (+ detailed process for double retention) BACKGROUND: Most DTC brands gear up for BFCM with one goal: sell more. But they’re missing a key opportunity: Retention. Common gaps: → High acquisition focus, low retention. → Minimal post-purchase strategy. → No gift recipient onboarding. Retention isn’t just for after the holidays. You have to build it into the holiday strategy. Here’s how to do it: PROCESS: 1. Add a Post-Purchase Form → Implement a question: “Is this purchase a gift?”. → Collect the recipient’s email address. → Now, you’re expanding your audience by one action. e.g. DTC brand’s typical BFCM purchase → new flow asks: “Is this a gift?” → recipient’s email collected. 2. Create Two Segments → Gift givers (repeat potential). → Gift recipients (new leads). Goals: → Engage both with tailored post-purchase flows. → Retain them for future seasons. 3. Stop Wasting Time on Generic Thank-Yous → Customize the follow-up: one for givers, one for recipients. → Thank-yous should add value. → Hint at upcoming exclusive perks for both. e.g. Personalized thank-you email → “Welcome! Here’s what to expect.” 4. Build New Onboarding for Recipients → Not just a welcome email. → Provide onboarding emails showcasing product use and benefits. e.g. Recipient receives a series: “Getting Started,” “Tips for Best Use,” “Surprise Offers.” 5. Ask Smart Questions → Engage gift givers with feedback: “How was your experience?”. → Collect insights to fine-tune your next campaign. e.g. “Would you gift this product again?” → lead into special re-gifting offers. 6. Automate Future Follow-Ups → Plan a “One Year Later” flow for gift givers: “Would you like to gift again this year?”. → Include exclusive early access or discounts. e.g. Automated outreach, prompting early gifting. 7. Optimize Based on Results → Track open rates, click-throughs, and purchases from both flows. → Use Hotjar and A/B testing for tweaks. e.g. Adding FAQs to emails to improve engagement. Summary: 1. Add a Post-Purchase Form. 2. Create Two Segments. 3. Stop Wasting Time on Generic Thank-Yous. 4. Build New Onboarding for Recipients. 5. Ask Smart Questions. 6. Automate Future Follow-Ups. 7. Optimize Based on Results. Retention during BFCM isn’t an afterthought. It’s how you secure growth beyond the holiday. Like this playbook? Share it and win at retention this BFCM!

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