The Cheese #42 🧀 - Texas, Polar Bears, and all of the carbs

I am out in Texas

Colleen, Johnny, and I got out here yesterday and staying through Sunday (visiting my Dad).

I was supposed to be back out here (Texas) next week as well to film a batch of ASOM, but we are going to finish the year off with virtual episodes like everyone else. Half of us are traveling A LOT currently, and Jimmy is in the midst of a move, so virtual just makes sense. We did however firm up our schedule for next year’s podcasts and we are all very excited. Taking all of our learnings from this year and applying them to the next 50 episodes!

Let’s touch on the usual updates…

Whatnot - We finished October with $269k; more than 25% month-over-month growth (with September being our previous record). November will be one of the first months in a minute where a new record is NOT super easy to obtain. While we will have more shows in November than October, we had 2 events in October (Miami show and a Warehouse show) and only 1 in November (a Warehouse show). That Miami show was over $30k alone. I also wrote a new part to the Whatnot series that I will link below.

Membership - The core business is still thriving. A couple of days ago we had to reduce our Meta advertising spend drastically so that we do not oversell. The thing about the monthly box is that we have to send the existing members the upcoming Mission drop (we call our boxes Missions). It’s a non-negotiable, so we ALWAYS have to over-order since under-ordering is an unacceptable move. We took our member level forecast up a couple of months ago; we might have to discuss raising it again. The only issue with raising it further is if we are wrong and we do not continue to grow. If we are wrong, since we have to put POs (purchase orders) in several months in advance, we can quickly amass millions of dollars of inventory with no short path of selling through. At the same time, this would eat up all of our cash. Slow and steady wins the race here, but it is always tempting to try and push it a little further faster.

BattlBox overall is still firing on all cylinders. October was our 4th-best month ever (September was our 3rd-best ever). We have never strung together 2 months like this before and I have no reason to believe we are stopping anytime soon. November will hopefully be better than September and October simply because of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

On the new car front, I was very close to pulling the trigger on a new X5 earlier this week but decided to wait a little bit longer (BMW was advertising 0.9% interest rate on new purchases, but it in fact was 2.9% for the car I wanted, regardless of credit score. Some of that extra juice is applied by the actual dealer so they can make more money. Felt a little bait and switched on it (prob not malicious), but it gave me pause. Might actually defect from BMW after 10 years and check out some other car brands in the coming weeks.

Diet - Whoops. I got back from the last trip and struggled to get back off my carb addiction. Finally started the no-carb life, and then temptation showed up. Three days back into my diet, I came upstairs and Faye was making a pizza for her and Johnny. Next thing I know, I am making pizza that evening and have been carb loading since. Sigh. The plan is to go back to being dietarily responsible once I get back from Texas. Surprisingly, I weighed in yesterday at 138.6, so still below 140, which is great.

Let’s get into the rest…

Whatnot deep dive

Officially dropped Part 6 of the ‘Building on Whatnot’ saga. This one takes us through October.

Polar Bears are rolling in their graves

In this week’s edition of people being triggered, we jump into the Coca-Cola drama over their new holiday advertising that they made with AI.

The Cheese is Served, and It’s Time to Share the Fun! 🧀

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Stay cheesy, and we’ll catch you next week with more!

Queso-Love,
Team Online Queso