The Cheese #82 🧀 - 170 Hours Solo, $366k on Whatnot, The No and Why Era

As you read this, I am on hour 1 of 170 of single parenting. Colleen left for her annual conference, Exotics365 (she is a veterinarian and Exotic animals are her specialty).

Johnny has also entered his No and Why era at 2.5 years old, so this should be an interesting week lol.

I spent a decent amount of time Friday, Saturday morning, and Monday digging further into our churn and retention data. The end result is a handful of small changes we are going to make in 2027 to make sure we are giving our customers the best possible experience. Genuinely excited about them.

Part of what kicked that deep dive off is that we missed the mark on the latest BattlBox Mission. Membership is not in the ideal spot for the month because of it. We are one great campaign away from making that ground up, though. We dropped several new landing pages and ads yesterday and today, so fingers crossed that gives us the momentum we need.

Whatnot is at $366k for the month. The forecast moved back up to $443k, though I still envision us coming up short of that. Regardless, the team put together an impressive month. All of it with Cameron out on vacation this entire week. Great to see the machine still running without him, even though we are absolutely ready for him to be back.

Amazon already landed in six-figure territory for the month, continuing its epic 2026. For reference, in 2025 we only had 5 months of six-figure revenue, and 3 of them were October, November, and December. We are 8 for 8 so far this year.

Chuck took his BDR engine another step forward this week. When he uncovers a brand that could be a good fit for BattlBox on the product side, the vendor info now drops automatically into one of our product channels. That is yet another funnel for new product and brand discovery, which is something the team is absolutely focused on for 2027.

BattlGames is almost game time. Shay, Seele, Richard, and I have a call every Thursday to just chat progress, and yesterday's had me genuinely excited. Shay and Seele walked us through one of the surprise moments of Season 3, and I could not hide a smile listening to it. It is GOOD.

On travel, Colleen gets back, we get a week of no travel, then it is BattlGames and Commerce Roundtable back to back. That will be a very long two weeks.

This week overall felt very productive. It just moved way too quickly. Let's get into the rest!

Amazon Prime Benefits: The $1,437 Bundle You Pay $139 For

I did a deep dive through every single thing a Prime membership actually includes and added it up. The number is $1,437 for something you pay $139 for.

Nerds Gummy Clusters: How One Product Took Nerds From $40 Million to $869 Million

One product moved a brand from $40 million to $869 million. The interesting part is not the growth; it is how deliberate the path there was.

How Whatnot Became Our Second Biggest Channel

I sat down with Matthew Holman and walked through the whole Whatnot build, how it became our second biggest channel, and what I would do differently if we started over today.

Commerce Roundtable, September 21-22 in San Diego

September is the last real window before Q4 hits. Black Friday is two months out, and what you fix in the next few weeks decides what November and December actually look like. You can walk into BFCM with the same gaps and the same guesswork you had last year, or you can spend two days with 750 of the best operators in DTC and close those gaps for good.

Tactical content, no panels. 18 speakers, one main stage. Real answers before Black Friday, not theory.

Sept 21-22 at the Port Pavilion. I'll be there. commerceroundtable.com, use code JOHNR for $150 off.

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