The Cheese #74 🧀 - A Historic June, a New Host, and Kenny Powers

Three for Three in 2026

June is in the books, and here's the wild part. Our top 3 best months in company history have all happened this year. March is our best month ever, June just came in as our second best, and February sits at third. Watching this team crank along like this never gets old.

Whatnot landed at $333k for June, exactly where the forecast said we'd finish. That makes it our 3rd best Whatnot month ever, just behind March at $337k. Here's the thing, though. Put June next to May, our $356k record month, and our hourly revenue in June was actually better. May just had more volume, 79 shows versus 65 in June. July has 76 shows on the calendar, so the volume is coming back.

Two more Whatnot notes. Our new host starts this weekend, and it's a female host, something we've needed for a while. Super excited to have her on board and very optimistic she's going to be successful. And on July 6th, we've got the warehouse show, where the goal is to beat our best show ever revenue mark of $41,032.80. Joey and Chuck are running it without Brandon, so the pressure is on lol.

The eBay Live saga finally got its call. We sat down with eBay's integrations and API team and found out the issue we've been fighting is an actual eBay limitation with no real fix in sight. Luckily, Amer from Praella was on the call and had already done his homework. He walked everyone through how we'd connect our Shopify to the eBay Live store and make it all work. The eBay guy thought for a second and said, "You know what, that actually should work." Really exciting call. And a special thank you to Amer, who is technically still out on leave with his new baby but made time for us anyway.

Amazon closed out June as our 4th best Amazon month ever, only behind November 2025, December 2025, and December 2024. If you know Amazon, you know November and December are MASSIVE months, so a June sneaking into that company says a lot.

Membership is moving in the right direction. Our membership month closes on the 3rd, so we've still got today to finish out strong. BattlGames didn't have any major movement this week, but we did meet with the head editor for Season 3. This is the first time we're not doing post-production fully in-house, so excited to see how this turns out. Hopefully well lol.

On the agent front, I did a deeper dive with some of the team this week on how I built Leo. It worked. Michael and Walter both launched their first bots onto the team right after. Michael went with Michael Jordan, who is reporting on social growth, and Walter had Kenny Powers show up to work on some Reddit testing we're looking at.

Diet update, since I know some of you are following along. A week and a half into no carbs, and man, I forgot how tough this is. I'm down about 10 pounds, mostly water weight of course, but it's pretty wild how much water weight you carry. The 4th might be a cheat day since our cul-de-sac puts on a big fireworks show for the neighborhood and there's going to be some really good food. I'll be right back on it the 5th, then I'm good until the 13th when we head to Disney World, and the diet pauses for obvious reasons. Oh, and the MRI on my back is next Friday. Unfortunately, that was the earliest they could get me in.

Let's get into the rest!

How Costco Built a Retail Empire by Flipping the Traditional Business Model

Lhea's latest. While everyone else marks products up and hopes you come back, Costco flipped the whole formula and made the membership the business. Good operator read.

A Scammer, a Test Coupon, and an eBay Storefront

This order was a fun catch. A scammer found a temporary testing coupon code we should have killed and used it, and it turns out this company literally just steals stuff and lists it on eBay. Tarte Cosmetics and a few other brands appear to be victims too.

Outlook Cannot Display the Folder? Here's the Real Fix (I Used AI to Find It)

Last issue, I mentioned letting Claude take control of my computer to diagnose an Outlook problem I couldn't crack. Here's the full write-up, including the actual fix in case you ever hit the same error.

Sophie Cunningham

I had to jump into this week's viral meme. No regrets.

Investors see ANOTHER return from Masterworks (!!!!)

That’s 6 sales in 7 months. 29 all time. And the performance?

16.5%, 17.6%, and 17.8%, net annualized returns on sold works held longer than one year (See all 29 at Masterworks.com)

It’s not from stocks, private equity, or real estate… it’s from contemporary and post war art. Crazy, right?

With Masterworks, you don’t need to be a BILLIONAIRE to invest in multi-million dollar art anymore.

Historically, the segment overall has had attractive appreciation and low correlation to stocks.*

Masterworks targets works featuring legends like Banksy, Basquiat, and Picasso, identifying what they believe to have significant long-term appreciation potential, not just at the artist level but at the level of individual artworks.

As one of the largest players in the art market, with $1.3 billion invested over 500 artworks, they pass critical advantages through to their 70,000+ members to add art to their portfolios strategically.

Looking to diversify your investments in 2026?

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^{*According to Masterworks data. Investing involves risk. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. See important Reg A disclosures at masterworks.com/cd.}

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