The Cheese #68 🧀 - SubSummit, Joey Beats the Bull, and George Clooney

Kansas City Rolling Ten Deep

So I missed last week's newsletter. Whoops. I was in Kansas City for SubSummit, rolling 10 deep (8 BattlBoxers plus Colleen and Johnny), and there just wasn't a spare minute. SubSummit is one of my favorite conferences of the year, and this one did not disappoint. Tons of memories, so let me hit a few highlights.

First night we did Jack Stack Barbecue, and it was absolutely amazing. Later in the trip, we got into 1587 Prime, which is Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce's steakhouse, for a Recharge and Shopify dinner. They rented out the PDR, and we did a chef's tasting. Mind blown on how good it was. Both the service and the food were top-notch.

The cool part for us was the live selling. We ran 5 live shopping sessions on Whatnot straight from the SubSummit conference floor. We basically had our own booth, which is pretty unusual for a brand at a conference like this. We had a blast with it. We even had Paul Chambers' son Parker make an appearance and help Brandon sell a knife. The whole thing created a ton of buzz on the floor, which was exactly the point, so great to see it executed that well.

B.o.B was the musical guest, and the man is a performer. Great show, and way more hits than I remembered him having. We stayed through Saturday like we always do, broke off after the conference and took the team to lunch, did some indoor putt putt, then all went to dinner. After that, we linked up with the SubSummit crew now that they could finally let their hair down. Friday night, we ended up at a country bar with a mechanical bull. I did not know you could actually "beat the bull." I assumed everyone just gets thrown off. I was wrong. Joey beat the bull. I got curious and confirmed my suspicions later; this was NOT the first bull Joey had beaten.

Whatnot is still trending to beat March. Our forecasting tool has us ending at $345k, which would top the $337k record we set in March. The 3 new hosts have now been running for 3 weeks, and they're all at different levels of success. One has a lot of potential but hasn't shown much yet, so we're giving them through the end of the month to show improvement, or they come off the schedule in June.

BattlGames pitches are going well. We've completed 1 of the 3, and nothing else is scheduled until June. The first one went really well, and there is absolutely interest. The ball was actually in my court, so I emailed them back yesterday with my thoughts on their ideas. More to come as it develops.

Amazon is having the usual good month, nothing out of the ordinary. We're a little behind the ideal spot, but on pace to scratch and claw our way to 6 figures again. It's close, but it should get there. Membership is not where I'd like it. Not a horrible spot, just about 2% below where it needs to be. We had some weird issues this month, and I'm hopeful that's behind us. We badly need a new attractive first-time buyer offer, and we won't have PACKED ready until next month.

On the AI front, Brandon has jumped in BIG TIME. Yesterday, he showed me a team of agents he built to help with his content process, and it was pretty impressive. The PDP automation build, on the other hand, kept getting pushed all week. I'm hoping to actually sit down with it today.

Oh, and Johnny had an absolute blast in Kansas City. Mr. Popular at the show. Pretty sure he became best friends with Joey.

Let's get into the rest!

Ten people, five lives, one mechanical bull

I put together a recap of the whole SubSummit trip. The Whatnot sessions on the floor, the team stuff, all of it, in 30 seconds haha.

The IKEA Machine

Lhea wrote up the psychology behind why you walk into IKEA for one thing and walk out with a cart full of stuff you never planned to buy. Sharp breakdown of how the whole store is engineered to do exactly that. Good operator read.

How Clooney built a billion-dollar tequila brand AND is about to do it again

The story of how George Clooney and the Casamigos founders turned a hangout habit into a billion-dollar tequila exit. Equally important, they are about to do the same with Crazy Mountain.

Go check out the Retention Roadshow

Everyone says they care about retention, then you look under the hood and it's a scattered mess of flows, promos, and hope. The Commerce Roundtable crew is running the Retention Roadshow this June across New York, Miami, LA, and Austin. Hands-on, tactical, seats capped at 75 to 100 per city. If retention is your thing, go grab a seat before they're gone.

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That’s a Wrap on This Week’s Cheesy Scoop! 🧀

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Until next time, stay melty, stay merry, and keep it extra cheesy!

With warm queso vibes,
Team Online Queso