Are your assets … liabilities?

We’re not talking about balance sheets. At least, not as they relate to your business.

Today’s newsletter is on the pitfalls of being a high performer.

And how your best personal assets can easily become your most destructive liabilities.

🏆 Mike Beckham reveals three unexpected keys to excellence — the last one is about getting good at quitting

🤑 Cody Plofker shows you how to “squeeze” more from your customer journey — in the very best sense possible

📈 5 biggest headlines in this week’s consumer news with executive summaries — plus, three free resources

Cody Plofker

Jones Road Beauty, CEO

Squeezing Value Throughout Your Customer Journey

As you move from 7 to 8 figures in annual sales — and especially at our scale — adding incremental revenue means squeezing all the value you can from every part of your transaction journey.

It starts as soon as someone lands in your store.

What do they see? Is it easy to find what they need? How clear is your offer and merchandising?

Once they show purchase intent and add something to their cart, what kind of experience do they get? How about during checkout?

To get the most out of those stages, we’ve used AfterSell for years at Jones Road — particularly since we don’t discount.

AI-powered recommendations
Progress bars to incentivize AOV
Additional ratings + social proof

Then, once a customer completes a purchase and gets redirected to your confirmation page … does it just reiterate their order, or does it offer:

Personalized thank you messages
One-click complementary add-ons
Exclusive offers from premium brands

This is what “every part of the transaction” means.

True Classic is another great example. Very different vertical than us. Very different audience. Very different approach to discounting. But the same tool.

There’s so much opportunity to generate more profits.

Still, it’s easy to get too close to your onsite funnel and miss these key opportunities. AfterSell can help.

Get a free store audit to see where you can improve your store.

Book Your Free Audit

Mike Beckham

Simple Modern, CEO

If you want to get good at something, you must start by simply doing it. You won’t be any good at first, but that’s the only way to put in the practice required to develop.

Counterintuitively, the first step to excellence is making your peace with an uncomfortable fact …

Excellence requires being willing to do things poorly at first.

But excellence requires a lot more than just a willingness to act. It has a few other necessary ingredients that should always be mentioned alongside bias to action.

1. Excellence requires monotony

Last summer, Mondo Duplantis won the gold medal in the pole vault — setting a new world record of 6.25 meters. It was an electric moment to watch.

Think about the training that preceded that glorious moment. How many pole vaults has Duplantis done in his life? 10,000? 100,000? Maybe more?

That one epic moment required countless hours of monotonous routine and practice. The same thing over and over and over and over again.

What separates the excellent from the rest is the willingness to hone their craft long after its novelty has worn off.

Can you commit? Can you grind? Are you willing to keep doing that one thing over and over again?

It’s easy when you see yourself getting 10% better each month. Can you do it when you only get 1% better?

Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea that 10,000 hours is what it takes to become an expert. While that number is debated, the concept is not.

Becoming great at something takes an inordinate amount of time. How much is 10,000 hours? That’s like devoting two solid hours a day to something … for 14 years.

2. Excellence requires judgment

Because excellence demands so much focused work, it is impossible to achieve in many areas of life.

The easiest way to avoid excellence is to devote a little bit of time to a bunch of disparate pursuits.

I like the analogy of light.

If you stand in the sun, you get warm. If you focus the sun with a magnifying glass, you can light something on fire. If you focus light enough to create a laser, you can cut through anything.

The same analogy applies to our time. Focusing our time on one pursuit … becomes a force multiplier.

But that leads to a critical question: What areas of your life are worthy of pursuing excellence?

I’ve learned through experience that I can easily get distracted and pour my time into the pursuit of excellence in areas that just won’t matter to me when I’m 70.

If I want to be an involved and committed father, then I’m not going to be great at video games or golf. My competitive fire can sometimes distract me and dilute my focus on things that won’t matter in the long run.

One of my favorite movies growing up was the original Jurassic Park. Jeff Goldblum plays the scientist Ian Malcolm. When he sees the dinosaurs created from DNA engineering, he observes:

“You were so concerned with whether or not you could that you never stopped to think if you should.”

I’m often guilty of the same mistake — particularly when I’m not being intentional.

We’re intentional about allocating money into different investments, but your time is even more precious than money.

Be exceedingly deliberate about where you choose to use it.

3. Excellence requires quitting

If you are reading this, you are likely a person who scores high in persistence — the tenacity to keep going when others quit.

You have the willingness to pay the price of loneliness that often comes with doing hard things.

I’m the same. I just don’t quit. I’ve always viewed persistence as one of my superpowers, an asset.

That was true right up until I founded a company that failed.

Reflecting on that period in 2012, I’m not ashamed of the business outcome. When you make asymmetric bets, often you are going to lose.

The self-criticism I took from the experience was that I kept trying to make the project work long after it was doomed.

I was like the doctor who keeps using the electric paddles on a patient who is clearly already dead.

I should have taken the “L.” Learned from it. And then, moved on.

But I was determined to make it work because … I do not quit. The result? I wasted another year of my life (and another couple of million dollars) because of my persistence.

Persistence is not always a virtue. It can also be toxic.

The person who keeps going deeper and deeper with a destructive addiction. The co-dependant personality in an abusive relationship who keeps trying to make it work. The gambler who keeps doubling down right into bankruptcy.

This isn’t just true of overtly negative situations.

The most dangerous business is the mediocre one. Good enough that you can’t quit. Lacking the potential to be truly successful.

Persistence is only helpful when we apply it in the right places.

How do you harness the positive power of your persistence without the toxic aspects?

You become good at quitting.

It’s completely counterintuitive but 100% true. Here’s how Seth Godin put it in a tremendous book called The Dip:

“Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt.”

“Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time. [...] Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations.”

When you become skilled at quitting, your persistence becomes a superpower.

Quit the stuff that doesn’t matter. Quit quickly. Quit without guilt.

If you aren’t afraid of quitting, it will make you much more willing to experiment and try new things.

Make the decision to quit everything except the most important things. Then, focus your time, attention, and energy on being the absolute best you can be in those areas.

And those areas alone.

THE FEED

Scientist to Entrepreneur with Evan Zhao

Blending Brand Identity with Performance Marketing at the Highest Level

The Resources

“DTC Is Dead … Or Is It?” Light vs Heat

Taylor Holiday might have sparked a fire with his Tecovas “This is growth marketing” post, but don’t miss the light for the heat. Last week, he also released a comprehensive and wildly tactical exploration of the DTC industry (YouTube).

“The Best DTC Business on the Planet”

Can’t wait for the launch of Drew Fallon and Mehtab Bhogal’s Finance Operators? Neither can we. Thankfully, one-half of the new podcast duo unleashed another deep dive — this time, on Yeti’s 2024 earnings. Check out Drew’s breakdown here.

15+ DTC Leaders on “Everything CRO”

Later this week, Mike Beckham and Connor MacDonald — plus friends of the podcasts Cherene Aubert and Shane Rostad — are presenting at a ridiculously stacked panel on ecommerce CRO. It goes down live on Thursday.

The Trends

Curated by the editor of CPG Wire, this week’s five biggest consumer-news headlines.

1. Celsius Holdings Acquires Alani Nu: CNBC

Celsius is acquiring fast-growing energy drink brand Alani Nu for a net purchase price of $1.65B. The deal consists mostly of cash and around $500M in stock.

The acquisition is a major coup for Celsius for a few reasons. Lately Celsius’ growth has largely slowed — FY 2024 sales only grew 3% year-over-year — and Alani Nu is one of the fastest-growing brands in the category. The deal will likely unlock better margins and greater bargaining power with retailers, too.

2. Hims & Hers Acquires At-Home Lab Testing Company: CNBC

Hims & Hers, the telehealth company worth more than $11B, has acquired New Jersey-based Trybe Labs for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition will enable Hims & Hers to offer at-home blood draws and comprehensive whole-body testing to its large subscriber base. Hims & Hers also acquired a peptide facility in California to shore up its domestic supply chain.

3. Hiyo Secures Fresh Funding: LinkedIn

Hiyo, a California-based purveyor of non-alcoholic beverages, secured an undisclosed amount of funding from Constellation Brands and Santatera Capital. The partnership with Constellation Brands — which manufactures Corona, Modelo, and Pacifico — will open up significant distribution opportunities for Hiyo. Santatera Capital is also an investor in Little Sesame, Mezcla, and Tia Lupita Foods.

4. Kontoor Brands Buys Helly Hansen: Business Wire

Kontoor Brands, the owner of Wrangler and Lee, has acquired iconic outerwear brand Helly Hansen for around $900M. The seller is Canadian Tire Corporation. Kontoor expects Helly Hansen to generate more than $680M in revenue and $80M of adjusted EBITDA in 2025.

5. Birkenstock Reports Strong Quarterly Results: Fast Company

Beloved footwear brand Birkenstock had a solid first quarter, with revenue hitting €362M — a year-over-year increase of 19%. The brand posted double-digit revenue growth in all key markets, including APAC, EMEA, and the Americas. Nonetheless, share price took a haircut due to declining gross margins.

Coming Up 👀

Next week, the Empress of Email (Karly Craig) — who literally wrote the book on email — is unleashing a +2k-word, example-heavy, uber-tactical guide on …

How to get personal with retention even when your marketing is mass-produced.

We also have the Master of Margins (Metab Bhogal) bringing five ways to make your business more profitable.

Plus, the Prince of Purses (MacCoy Merkley, Portland Leather Goods’ CMO) is on deck. Even better, his Dir. of Marketing (Matt Fey) went all out to prepare.

Let’s call him the Duke of Domains.