Should growing your DTC brand feel easy? Nothing worth doing is easy, but if your goal feels like pushing a big rock up a hill for eternity, it’s probably a sign you should do something else.
This content was originally published in the No Best Practices newsletter on 12.1.2025.
Interesting debate on X last week–should growing your DTC brand feel “easy”? My personal POV: it might not always be easy, but if you’re on the right path, a lot of the process should feel like play.
Generally, if you’re embarking on a goal and getting nothing but resistance from all sides, that’s a sign you should be doing something else. The size of your business has nothing to do with it. Brands plateau at every size, and for different reasons. But there are common mindsets that lead to plateaus.
I’m going to outline the difference between brands that get stuck vs brands that grow with minimal friction. If you recognize yourself in the “bad” list, this is your sign to adjust your POV.
Poor Brands Do This…
Disregard Positioning; Mock Strategy
I see tons of founders, marketers and operators publicly rag on strategy. It becomes a macho posturing game, where thinking is “weak” and doing is “strong”. Those same founders post about blowing up their personal relationships to pursue “the grind” because eCom is “not for the weak”.
The truth: some brands easily crush their rivals and cruise towards life-altering exits because the founders did some strategic positioning work before they sold their first widget. The even more uncomfortable truth–some brands stumble into this state of ease through dumb luck, or through innate strategic synthesis that feels like dumb luck.
Liquid Death, RX Bar, Victoria’s Secret, Nike…these brands (and many others that you’ve definitely heard of) got big because they picked the right market, with the right products, with the right price, at the right time. Not because of “hard work”.
View eCom As An Arbitrage Opportunity
In 2014 eCommerce was ripe with arbitrage opportunities. In 2024 the landscape is much more competitive and overexposed. Arbitrage still exists, but the alpha is lower, the lifecycle is shorter, and most opportunities are closer to a legal gray/black area.
The only real arbitrage opportunity is positioning and storytelling. Yet, I talk to a ton of founders who seem to be looking for “one weird trick” that’s going to “get them the edge”.
There isn’t a secret Meta ads buying hack that 8-figure brands know, but you don’t. There isn’t a SaaS vendor that is going to cut your CAC in half overnight.
If you’re spending your energy seeking out arbitrage opportunities (which have short lifespans, even if you find them), you will neglect the things that can actually help you develop a competitive advantage.
Low Trust Business Mentality
If you think everyone is out to screw you over–you’ll quickly prove yourself right. When you enter into business relationships with this mentality, you’re projecting the message that you are out to screw over others. This repels a lot of experienced, honest folks.
Sometimes this POV arises from a string of bad experiences. The classic example is the frustrated founder who fires off an X post: “All agencies are scammers!”.
That’s a skill issue–you didn’t know enough about the subject matter to screen out bad actors. You didn’t value the subject matter highly enough to speak with more qualified, higher cost providers (i.e. you were shopping based on price). And you probably fell for aggressive pitches promising amazing results overnight (“we’ll 5x your ROAS in 30 days, or your money back!”).
Low trust mentality will also sabotage your hiring process; the resulting entropy will eat your business alive. If your employee policies are stingy and inflexible…if you use dirty bait and switch negotiation tactics…if you take out your deep-rooted insecurities on your employees…talented people will not work with you for long.
Dopamine Driven; Unfocused
This might be a controversial opinion, but most meetings with more than four attendees aren’t real work. Answering Slacks and emails is not real work. And checking Ads Manager 40 times per day isn’t real work.
This stuff can feel productive because it spikes your dopamine–just like scrolling through Instagram or X. If you let your calendar be dictated by what feels good, instead of what gets stuff done, you’re simply running around in circles.
Basically, show me your calendar and I’ll show you your priorities. To move a brand forward, you need to prioritize ruthlessly. And the ability to set those priorities comes from a deep understanding of what actually moves the needle re:growth (hint: new customer acquisition).
Brands that lack that understanding let their competitors or the marketing agenda of the DTC-industrial complex dictate their priorities. If you’re constantly changing up your roadmap based on case studies, Tweets, or the actions of your “competitors”…you’re going to be running around in circles.
Side note: only nine-figure brands have true competitors–brands that you are directly battling for market share.
Rich Brands Do This…
Think About Positioning; Value Strategy
Rich brands ask themselves these questions before they produce a single unit of inventory:
- Is my product category trending up or down?
- Who are all my potential customers, and how big is my market?
- Who are my main competitors and alternatives?
- How am I better than those competitors/alternatives, or what is an underserved segment of the market?
- How does my product deliver on the answers to the previous questions?
Answering these questions will save you six figures in product development and ads testing. Marketing success is all about opportunity selection. Changing consumer behavior at scale is expensive.
View eCom As A Sales Channel
Rich brands develop a core brand proposition that is channel agnostic. Then, they build an initial product and GTM strategy that is Meta-friendly (if eCom is the GTM channel).
What this means: the brand is relevant to its target audience and differentiated from the other brands in its category. The brand speaks to an underserved audience, and it has something compelling to say.
The initial product(s) the brand decides to sell online are Meta-friendly. They have an AOV of $75+, are easy to ship, and lend themselves to the type of storytelling that performs well in Meta advertising.
The brand can stand on its own outside of Meta, but nothing about the approach to brand management sabotages Meta performance.
Rich brands do not view eCommerce as an arbitrage opportunity. Brand positioning and product innovation are the “alpha”, not some “secret” media buying strategy. Rich brands grow the pie through storytelling, not bolting on new digital tactics or in-market audiences.
High Trust Business Mentality
Rich brands do the work to cultivate an environment where they can treat others with trust and respect without getting taken advantage of.
First and foremost, this means cultivating a strong sense of discretion to sniff out and avoid bad actors. The only way to do this in eCommerce is to know enough about the subject matter to develop an informed opinion. In marketing, the true, unembellished resume of a scammer and a top 10% performer might be exactly the same.
Second, this means avoiding acting out of desperation. “Con artist” is slang for “confidence artist”–someone who compels you to ignore your instinct that something is too good to be true.
Third, this means valuing skillsets outside your own. You can assign relative value to different activities in your business, based on your own priorities. But don’t disrespect a task because it is “lower payoff” for your situation.
Pay what you can afford, but don’t try to undercut the market and justify it by saying “XYZ task is overvalued/a ripoff/for suckers”. That might mean hiring overseas, or using part time resources.
Basically, follow the golden rule. Treat others how you would like to be treated. And if you would ruthlessly rip yourself off in this hypothetical scenario, go get therapy.
Results Driven; Ruthlessly Focused
Rich brands fight the currents of mimetic desire and chart their own path. This requires three things:
1: Being honest about the financial outcome you’re seeking. Sooo many brands say they want to “grow 30% YoY”, but what they really want is a lifestyle business that throws off a certain, fixed amount of cash each year. They think that growth is the solution to uncertainty–it’s not.
2: Understanding the highest leverage KPIs for achieving that outcome. Some financial outcomes require rapid growth, and profitability matters less. Other financial outcomes require slower, more profitable growth. You need to build every aspect of the business around your desired financial outcome.
If you want some kind of exit, the acquirer is going to look at your financials expecting numbers and ratios that tell a specific story. The better you deliver on that expectation, the better your outcome.
3: Ruthless focus on the strategies and tactics that will move those KPIs. In the first five years of your brand’s life, you’ll often get more mileage out of improving what you do well vs attempting to try something completely new.
Don’t put too much energy into scaling outside of Meta until you’re consistently spending $20k+/day there. Don’t launch menswear if you’re a five year old womenswear brand. Explore as many new, trendy ideas as you want, but be incredibly thoughtful about what you invest the time to implement.