The Cheese #87 🧀 - Braintree Wrap-Up, Single Dad Life, and Procurement Agents

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Busy week. As I write this, I'm halfway through the single dad stretch, 70 hours in. My mom is over today helping out during the day so I can get work done.

Quick Braintree update. We got the money last week, and our account was put back in normal status, so the big part is done. We're still buttoning up one piece, which is the customer tokens that still sit with Braintree and whether they're going to process correctly. That matters a lot because we have a group of about 2,000 customers scheduled to renew in 2 weeks. Working through it this week and hoping to get an answer today.

On to September. Whatnot ended up at $340,526.50. That's a great month and our fourth-best ever, but it's definitely a step below the $400k+ months we had in July and August. BattlGames was the culprit. It took out a full week of shows from Brandon and Chuck and 2+ weeks from Joey.

We replaced some of those shows with other hosts, but the reality is we ran about 65 fewer hours than we normally would in a month, and that's the difference between being over $400k and not. That's a $60k revenue hit from BattlGames, which is fine as long as BattlGames is generating replacement revenue.

Amazon was on fire in September. It rallied at the end and finished as our best month of the year, which is pretty incredible considering how strong June was. We're heading into Q4, which is the biggest stretch of the year on Amazon, so I'm really excited to see where we end up for the year and what kind of increase it is over last year.

Membership was a challenge this month, but overall we still ended up in a good spot. September was our fifth-best month in company history, and the cool part is that all five of our best months ever happened in 2026. The membership challenges and Whatnot coming in light were the gap between this and our best month ever.

What kept us in the top five was a limited-edition mystery box we dropped on the site. We did about 400 of them and, as usual, they sold out in record time, roughly an hour. Six-figure windfall for the month.

Lots of little things this week too. I did a deeper dive on inventory, really understanding everything we have and its path to being used. It was a good exercise, because we've had so much success this year that our inventory levels are the highest they've ever been. Just making sure we're not getting ourselves into any precarious moments down the road.

Richard and I have also had some conversations about BattlGames as we plan for season 4. We've got to make sure we're building this in a sustainable way, which is obviously important.

I used Claude and some automation to build a report for Cam that shows everything inbound, all the stuff we've ordered that just hasn't arrived yet. That way, he understands the funnel for his Whatnot shows as he continues to scale and starts the game plan for the second channel.

On the agent front, Kent built his first agent this week, which was pretty cool. It reports in our Slack channel on our email and SMS campaigns and how they're performing. It forces us to always have a pulse on our campaigns.

The procurement team has done some major work with agents. Michael hunts products, audits past products, looks for margin and value, and sends them to the team for approval or keeps hunting. Jason audits their reorder reports, looks at profitability on every order, can adjust reorder points, and is now actively sending purchase orders, which has really helped the team out. Freddy is still in his trial period, auditing their procurement sheets for shipping windows and helping with product placements. Wednesday is their event coordinator. I'm loving the names and the themes on these lol.

Next week I'm in Birmingham, Alabama, Monday through Wednesday for the Silicon Y’all Technology Summit. Matt Stevens and I are heading out there together, so that should be a good time. Let's get into the rest!

The 5 Most Valuable Baseball Cards From the Early 1990s (From $400 to $600,000)

A video counting down the most valuable early 90s baseball cards came across my feed, so I went and checked the real numbers. Most junk wax era cards are not worth the cardboard they are printed on. A small handful are worth decent coin, and it all comes down to the PSA 10.

Bad Sales Email Alert

My latest bad sales email teardown. Funny thing, these used to be my most viral posts on LinkedIn, and now they don't get the eyeballs they used to. Still worth a view.

David Steward: How World Wide Technology Grew From a Small Startup to a $20 Billion Company

Lhea's latest. Steward put in about $250,000 to co-found WWT in St. Louis in 1990 as a small reseller of printers and computers. Today Forbes puts it at roughly $20 billion in annual sales, and it's still privately held.

How Bob Evans Turned a Small Ohio Sausage Business Into a National Food Brand

Bob Evans couldn't find sausage good enough for his 12-stool restaurant in Gallipolis, Ohio, so in 1948 he started making his own on his farm. One sourcing problem turned into a national food brand.

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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