The Cheese #20 🧀

Back From Dallas: SubSummit Highlights, Butter Burgers & Big Wins

I got back from Dallas on Saturday. Long week (amazing week) and was ready to be home.

We (Amer, Jimmy, Bryan, and I) got in Monday night, ate some really good pizza and watched Idiocracy (none of us had ever seen it and I was recently talking to my neighbors about it).

Shot ASOM episodes all day Tuesday. BattlBox crew started to arrive late Tuesday. Cameron and Luke came over to the ASOM Airbnb, and Bryan made them his famous Wisconsin butter burgers. 

SubSummit started Wednesday and as always it was an amazing time. Seeing so many friends and peers, had an absolute blast. They had a musical guest, Mike Posner, with Brody Jenner as his DJ. They actually put on a decent show.

We stayed Friday with the five of us BattlBoxers heading to Fort Worth. We did a Rage Room, Escape Room, and then had the highest-ranked Pizza in Texas (7.9 Portnoy rating). After that, we came back to Dallas and hung out with the SubSummit crew to celebrate an amazing show.

The whole week is summarized here in 15 seconds.

I jumped into Veo 3 this week after seeing videos like this. Well, it’s not as easy as it looks. Unlike some other AI platforms out there, I have not figured out how to give feedback for tweaks short of reworking the prompt. The problem is the prompts are very very sensitive. One small tweak and the video is completely sideways and way different. Also, only 8-second clip creations at a time.

Live Shopping on Whatnot is still a MAJOR FOCUS. We did $25k in April, $94k in May. We are already over $30k in June, so the scale is real at this point. Hopefully will have some additional support both as hosts and backend later this month. I put together a nice recap of the first 12 shows below 👇. Austin is officially back post-baby and did a show this week hosting. Speaking of which, not mentioned above, but we did a small hour show LIVE from SubSummit, which was really cool. Paul Chambers talks about it in this post.

As you are reading this, I will be at Blade Show. The largest knife conference in the United States (luckily, it's in Atlanta every year). 

Keto/Diet, you ask? Well, as you imagined, I had lots of carbs in Dallas. Heck, I mentioned two pizza incidents so far in this update lol. I also may or may not have ordered $100 worth of Taco Bell at 2am one of the nights (I definately did). Surprisingly, I only gained 5 pounds the whole week (which is about half of my regular carb binge water weight gain). I am already back down to 144.1 so continuing to move in the right direction!

Let’s get into it.

How We Built a 7-Figure Whatnot Sales Channel: The First 12 Shows That Changed Everything

As promised, this one picks up right where we left off with a closer look at how we are scaling, optimizing, and fine-tuning the live shopping machine after those first few live shows. Here’s part two of our deep dive on building a 7-figure 8-figure channel on Whatnot. Check the full article here.

The subscription box for adventurers and survivalists - John Roman of BattlBox

The latest episode of TrepTalks just dropped with yours truly as a guest. Chopped it up with Sushant Misra about the BattlBox journey. We got into the ins and outs of the subscription model, content and influencer marketing, and what it really takes to build an ecomm brand in a crowded space. Fun convo. Catch the full episode right here!

How to Build a Real Brand Community (Without Faking It)

Want to build a real brand community that actually sticks without any of the fake hype or forced engagement? This article breaks down the no-BS approach to building a brand tribe that truly engages, supports, and grows with you. Let’s dive in. 

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Keep it cheesy and see you next time!

Cheddar Cheers,
Team Online Queso