The Cheese #89 🧀 - Braintree's 11th Hour, Super Agent, and Warehouse Hunting

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Braintree is finally, officially resolved.

Friday a week ago, we thought we were good to go, and it was about to turn back on. Monday rolled around, and it still wasn't on. I started digging in and was getting truly concerned, because our renewal was on the 15th.

Tuesday night we finally got information from the banking partner for the first time on why they hadn't reactivated our MID. They were concerned about the items we were sending to Canada. Out of the roughly 2,000 customers still processing through Braintree, only 16 of them are Canadian. They were letting $1,600 jeopardize a quarter of a million, which is just wild.

Once they actually explained it, we had it fixed within 10 minutes, and the ball was right back in their court. Wednesday we got an email saying we were good, with a classic CYA line from the banking partner that it "might take up to 24 hours." We were roughly 18 hours from our renewal, so that did not exactly calm my nerves lol.

Later that afternoon I got on with George, who has been amazing as our point of contact at PayPal Braintree through this entire thing. He said the 24 hours was purely CYA and we should be good, so we ran a test transaction with me on the line. It went through. Yesterday morning I woke up to our secondary renewal on Braintree going through flawlessly.

Super, super stressful situation, and I hated it. I worked on this for 3 weeks specifically to avoid it coming down to the 11th hour, and it still came down to the 11th hour. On the bright side, we never had to pay Shopify $16,000 to move those tokens.

Cameron was in town this week, and it was a great visit. Monday, we toured a bunch of spaces for what would be our first live shopping warehouse. We would have knocked them all out that day, but one owner with a group of the properties never got us the keys, which is crazy.

We tried to reschedule for Tuesday and still hadn't heard back by Tuesday morning. They finally responded around 9 am, after I had already switched my day back around, so Cam, Patrick, and Joey went out there without me or Richard. One of those properties is now in our top three.

I picked Cam up from Patrick's afterward, and we grabbed cheesesteaks and some frozen yogurt, then swung by the house so he could see Colleen and Johnny. Johnny loves some Uncle Cam. Now he's back up in Michigan. Next step is Cam and I working through the business plan for what this all looks like, figuring out what makes sense, and hopefully getting Cam down here come Q1.

Whatnot hit some slight headwinds this week. We're right at $200k for the month, and the forecast dipped to $424k. What's not in that forecast is two special shows we have coming up: a warehouse show and an exclusive knife release show. Beating August and setting a new all-time record is definitely still on the table. Cam thinks this could be our first $500k month. It'll be close. If it happens, I owe him a trip to Vegas lol.

Amazon is cranking along and on pace for a great month. It'll be interesting to see if it can beat September, which was our best month of the year. The coolest part is that Curtis is on a much-deserved vacation in Portugal with his wife right now, and everything he built is just running smoothly.

Membership is still choppy, unfortunately. It's not in a horrible spot, but it's not where I'd like it to be. Our renewal yesterday came in slightly below last month's. It was slight, but I never like seeing it go in the wrong direction. Walter dropped some pretty cool new landing pages that we started testing today.

No BattlGames updates on the planning side, but Chuck sent out the Season 4 deck, so we'll begin selling Season 4 sponsorships shortly. I also had a great call with Michael and Mike, our lead editor this year, and we got to see a draft of episode 1. I really like how it's coming together.

Lots happening on the agent front. After some back and forth the last couple of days, Chuck's agents are rocking and rolling and doing what they're supposed to do, which is pretty cool.

I'm working on a super agent that will run a secondary BattlBox site focused only on one-time products, completely automated. Knowing when to create product listings, creating them, the marketing, the AEO, the SEO, all of it. I'm building it so it needs zero resources from the team.

It's with certainty my biggest build yet, bigger than Leo, which was my previous big one. Still in the infancy stage, and I'm documenting the whole thing so I can share how I did it in case it helps somebody else. Truth be told, Walter thinks it might be a waste of time and won't accomplish what I want it to. That's just fuel to prove him wrong lol. TBD if it all does what it's supposed to do.

Next Friday we head to New York for the weekend, and then I'll be at the SubSummit Mastermind on Tuesday before heading back the next day. Colleen and Johnny are coming with me and will visit family in Jersey while I'm at the event. Let's get into the rest!

This Is Why Slack Gets Invited to the Company Christmas Party

Shay had a post go viral on LinkedIn this week, nearly 7,000 reactions, and Slack itself even showed up in the comments. It's hilarious; go give it a look.

Kroger Layoffs: Why the Three-Year Timeline Pushes Its Best People Out First

Kroger plans to cut roughly 3,000 corporate and support roles over three years. I get the cost-cutting logic, but dragging it out with no named positions means your best people, the ones with the most options, walk first.

Direct Mail for Ecommerce: Why It Never Worked for Us Until PostPilot

We tried direct mail five or six times with cold lists, and it flopped every time. What finally made it work was behavior-triggered mail through PostPilot, tied to things like site visits, cart abandonment, and lapsed customers.

The Best Ecommerce Conference for Growing Brands (From a Founder Who Goes Every Year)

My take on which conference is actually worth your time if you're a growing brand. Spoiler: it's Commerce Roundtable, plus where SubSummit, Shoptalk, and ChargeX fit and which ones I'd skip.

How Toto Wolff Built His Fortune Through Mercedes Formula 1

Lhea's latest. Toto went from wanting to race to investing, then bought into Mercedes in 2013 with a 30% stake. The team went on to win eight straight Constructors' Championships, and a 2025 deal reportedly valued it around $6 billion.

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Cheddar Cheers,
Team Online Queso