The Cheese #81 🧀 - Whatnot Exclusive, Chuck Removes Himself, and Five Years of Churn Data

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Big week. After a few weeks of back and forth, we signed an exclusive with Whatnot. Going forward, they are the only platform we will do live shopping on.

A couple of issues back, I laid out the decision we were sitting on. Build tech for eBay so we could scale there, or build for Whatnot and expand into an additional channel there. We picked our lane, and we are going all in.

The other half of it is a build-out with Praella onto our existing stack that will finally let us scale past a single channel. Pretty exciting, and it is quickly go time.

That also makes it go time for Cameron's team. He is in talks right now to bring on his third and fourth full-time roles. One is another full-time showrunner. The other is a brand new coordinator role for the channel that will also showrun.

Speaking of Whatnot, we are sitting at $262k for the month. The forecast came down slightly to $433k, which would still clear July's record of $402k. The record is very much still in play.

Quick plug while I have you. Commerce Roundtable is September 21-22 in San Diego at the Port Pavilion. People ask why I keep going back every year, and the answer is the room itself. 70% ecommerce brands, 60% founders, CEOs and owners, mostly mid-market doing $5M to $100M, with a deliberate 3 to 1 brand to agency ratio. Tickets are capped so that mix stays protected. 750 people, two days. commerceroundtable.com, use code JOHNR for $150 off.

On the sales side, Chuck's BDR engine hit a real milestone. I mentioned previously that he built an engine for sales activity that was dropping drafts in his inbox for him to review and send, while also logging everything in HubSpot. He got the copy to the point where those emails are ready to go the second he opens them, so he removed himself from the scenario entirely. It just sends them now.

He does not get involved until there is a response worth engaging with. He is obviously going to keep tweaking it to improve it, but that is a major unlock.

Membership renewal landed great. One of our best ever, actually.

Churn is running a little higher than we would like, though, which is what kicked off a deep dive this week. We went deeper than usual and analyzed the past five years to try and find some signal in the noise. Rough week on both acquisition and churn. Only a week, though.

I also put more work into the project we are pitching to a major network. Still cannot say much about that one. More when I can actually share it.

BattlGames is basically here. We start the week of September 14th. Everything is coming together, Shay and Seele are crushing it, and it all looks awesome.

Still in the calm stretch on travel, though that ends in about a week when Colleen leaves for a conference. That one kicks off the crazy six weeks I warned you about.

Let's get into the rest!

How We Let an AI Agent Earn Autonomy One Action at a Time

Part 3 in the series. The last one was about building an agent that asks permission before it acts. This one is about how that agent actually earns the right to stop asking. Timely given what Chuck just pulled off with the BDR engine.

Huda Beauty: How Huda Kattan Turned $6,000 Into a Billion-Dollar Beauty Brand

Lhea's latest. Huda Kattan took $6,000 and a set of false lashes and turned it into a billion-dollar beauty brand. Good operator read.

How Leverage Works in the Stock Market: The Real Math on Gains and Losses

The actual math on what leverage does to your gains and, more importantly, to your losses. Most people only run the first half of that equation and find out about the second half the hard way.

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

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Stay cheesy, and see you next week!

Warmest queso wishes,
Team Online Queso