How do you grow a #D2C startup from idea to 8 figures? After working with 100+ brands, I have seen some raise millions and others go on Shark Tank. Here are the 22 things to do. See thread:

Update: Neat is going to be on Shark Tank. I've been sitting on this for a few months, but the official freakout can begin. 📺 Wednesday, November 4 ⏰ 10pm on ABC 📱 Also streaming on Hulu and Disney+ That’s all we’re allowed to say until it airs. Tune in, and I’ll see you on the other side of the NDA.

I built a creator army. And AI manages all of it. 20 creators so far. One of them already made the top-performing ad on our entire Neat account. Here’s how it works 👇 We don’t have a creator manager. Claude runs our Trybe account: ✅ Set up our commission-only affiliate program ✅ Wrote the guidance creators follow ✅ Curates who we approve and who we pass on ✅ Handles fulfillment, sending approved creators their shirts I only step in above a payout threshold or a weekly shirt cap. Otherwise it runs on its own, with a Monday digest in my inbox. My favorite part: watching that top creator make more content. More content means more money for him and more money for us. Commission-only means everyone wins together, or no one does. Still not perfect. Claude gets stuck on pop-up dialogs, so I click those myself. My takeaway so far: AI doesn’t replace your strategy. It replaces the follow-up. And the money is always in the follow-up. Want the full setup? Tell me and I’ll share the walkthrough.

"This shirt is f*ing magic." That's a real Neat review. I read it out loud in the video below. We get reviews like this every week now. "I forgot I was wearing it." "First shirt I've worn in a meeting without checking my armpits." "Bought one. Came back for six." And here's my confession as the guy who runs a growth agency: I don't fully know what to do with them. We put them on the site. We drop them in emails. We test them in ads. All of that works. None of it feels like enough. So I'm trying something dumb and simple. I'm going to read them out loud. On camera. And post them. No script. No production. Just a founder reading what customers said about a shirt that hides sweat. Maybe nobody watches. Maybe the best ad we ever make is a customer's own words in a founder's mouth. We'll find out. If you've built something people love: what do you actually do with the reviews? Beyond the website. I'm asking for real.

I don't think of GrowthHit as an agency. We're operators who happen to run one. Here's the difference. We own and operate a B2C business and a B2B business. Our own money. Our own payroll. Our own inventory problems. So I know what it feels like when: → Ads get more expensive and the bank balance doesn't care why → A "winning" campaign doesn't show up in revenue → You're paying four vendors and none of them talk to each other We took our own brand from $9K/month to $170K/month. Not by finding a magic channel. By lifting conversion rate from 0.6% to 3% and ROAS from 1x to 3x, then scaling. That's how we work with clients too. We don't own a channel. We look at the whole business and go after the constraint: ads, conversion, SEO, email, whichever one is blocking growth. It's how a law firm's cost per lead went from $350 to $77. It's how a consumer brand went from mid-seven figures to eight. If you've been burned by agencies before, I get it. I'd be skeptical too. Start small. 25-minute call. If it's a fit, we do a free growth audit and you keep it either way. growthhit.com/ (This is a picture of myself and my business partner on our way to try and buy a business. They did not accept our offer!)

Congrats. If you crossed $1,000,000 then you're in the top 5% of businesses. So why does it feel like you're drowning? Because nobody warns you about the next part. Somewhere around $3M-$5M, most companies stall. It looks like this: → The tactics that got you here stop working → Ads cost more and return less → You throw money at the problem and nothing sticks → You hire experts and nobody owns the result → You're the firefighter, every day You're working harder than ever. The business isn't growing faster. I've watched this happen at an ecommerce brand, a law firm, a SaaS startup, and a B2B services company. Different industries. Same wall. The founders who break through don't find a better tactic. They stop asking "how do I work harder?" They start asking "what is the ONE constraint holding everything else back?" Sometimes it's the offer. Sometimes it's the website. Sometimes it's cash conversion cycle. It's almost never "we need more ad spend." Or,“Just work harder.” You're not failing. You've outgrown your playbook. I walk through the growth phases and how to find your constraint here: youtu.be/9xG6yuwIF3c?t=281

We're the #1 ChatGPT ads agency in the world. DISCLAIMER: We've been doing it for 10 days. And we have ZERO case studies. So, we're taking on 10 companies for a pilot at super low rate — not to make money on it, just to get our sample size up faster. And we're not asking anyone to test something we won't test ourselves. We're running ChatGPT ads with our own money too — on GrowthHit, and on our own brand, Neat Apparel. Whatever we learn, we'll share it. Good, bad, or "still don't know." If you want in on the pilot: growthhit.com/services/chatg…

One of our clientswent from mid 7-figures to 8-figures. And the biggest unlock wasn't more customers. It was getting each customer to spend almost twice as much. When they came to us, the plan was the usual one: spend more on ads, get more buyers. But the math was tight. Every new customer cost more than the last. So we looked at a different lever: average order value. We defaulted to bundles. We sold a system, not a product. AOV nearly doubled. That changed everything downstream: 👉 Every ad dollar returned more 👉 They could afford to outbid competitors 👉 Scaling spend finally made sense I did the same thing at our own brand, Neat. We stopped selling single shirts and started selling packs. Sales tripled. Growth isn't always about more traffic. Sometimes the lever is sitting on your website. If you're stuck between seven and eight figures, I'm happy to look for yours. 25-minute call. If it's a fit, we'll do a free conversion audit of your site. Grab a time: growthhit.com/

Day 24 of Pie Hard. 45 pies thrown. $45,000 raised. This week's pie 🥧 was a special one. It starred one of our fellow osteo-warriors, Charlotte. And she pied her mom. Pie Hard is for kids who do hard things. Charlotte and Wren know a little something about doing hard things. Scans. Surgeries. Chemo. More hospital hallways than any kid should ever see. So if anyone has earned the right to smash a pie in someone's face? It's these two. But here's what's surprised me most over these 24 days: The silent donors. People I haven't talked to in years. People who've never liked a post. People who've just been quietly watching from the sidelines. Then one day: a donation. A thoughtful reply. A share to their network, no fanfare. In business, we obsess over the loud metrics. Likes. Comments. Sales. But a lot of the people moving the needle here never said a word publicly. It's a good reminder for any founder, parent, or anyone building something hard: You have more people in your corner than you know. Now for the finish line. 6 days left. $5,000 to hit $50,000. 100% goes to MIB Agents Osteosarcoma Alliance for research. Kids like Wren and Charlotte deserve better than treatments built decades ago. If you've been one of the quiet ones watching: thank you. Seriously. And if you've been meaning to jump in, this is the week. Link here: pie-hard.raiselysite.com/ (Thanks to our sponsors Spritz Health LLC, Village Fitness Seattle, Emplicit, Neat™ and GrowthHit)

The best review an agency can get isn't a testimonial. It's someone who only trusts you with their clients. Liz Long runs Maker U. She helps physical product entrepreneurs find factories and launch their products. When those brands are ready to grow, she sends them to us. Before she sent the first one, she tested us. In her words: "Whenever I'm working with a new partner, I always do a test project or two and get a sense of how effective they are for the client. The first time I worked with GrowthHit, it was one of those home run projects where I'm just like, yes, this is going to be a great one." Then she sent more. Here's what she says happens to the brands: "Their confidence grows. When they get a new website and it's optimized, they feel more real, more professional, more grown up as a brand. That allows them to go out and sell more in all capacities. They're proud." And on the work itself: "You need intentional design and conversion optimization to drive customer behavior. Once they implement the designs, customers start doing what they want them to do." The line that got me: "There has never been a bad project. There are just few services that are so worth the money." I'm sharing this because most founders come to us with agency PTSD. They've paid for reports that looked great while revenue stayed flat. A partner who has watched every brand she sent us come out the other side different? That's the proof I can't manufacture. Thank you, Liz. If your brand is stuck and you want to feel "more grown up" too, grab 25 minutes with us. We'll look at what's blocking growth, and if it's a fit, we'll do a free conversion audit of your site. buff.ly/UnUn0wM And if you need help creating you product, chat with Liz! She is the best.

Black Friday is not a day. At Neat we're treating it as a 10 week holiday. November 1 through Jan 1. Every week gets its own promotion, its own campaign, and its own VIP-first window. I attached screenshots of our content calendar. The 4 rules we're running on: 1. Stack, don't spike. One giant Black Friday discount trains customers to wait for it. Eight weekly reasons to buy trains them to check back. Different offer each week. Never the same lever twice in a row. 2. VIPs go first. Every week. Our best customers see every offer 24-48 hours before anyone else. Not as a gimmick. Because they're 30%+ of Q4 revenue and they've earned it. The VIP list is being built right now, in September, from every purchase and every sign-up. 3. Let inventory pick the offer. The promo goes on what we have a lot of. The bestsellers that sell with or without a discount? Those don't get one. They get featured, bundled, and used as the anchor. Discounting your best product in Q4 is paying customers to do what they were already going to do. 4. Nothing gets built in Q4. This is the whole game. Our Q4 will be 100% decided by what happens in the next 6 weeks. → Every email drafted now → Every creative shot now → Every bundle and price locked now → Inventory counted now, because you can't sell what's still on a boat → Every week's landing page built now By November 1, the only job is to hit send and read the numbers. Because when a promo underperforms on November 12, you don't want to be writing the November 19 email at 11pm. You want it already done so you can spend that night fixing what broke. The holiday is 10 weeks The work is the 10 weeks before it. More to come. 🎁

"Dad, can I play for money out front while you shop?" Yes. Yes you can. Backstory: my 9-year-old wants a $449 guitar. Steel strings. The real thing. I gave the standard Dad speech. "If you save your money, maybe." Ten seconds later she asked the question above. "Can I play outside the grocery store?" So that's how our Tuesday went. I'm inside buying organic berries, Pirate's Booty, and the usual weekly haul. My daughter is on the sidewalk outside, case open, playing for tips. Nine years old. Panhandling for a buck. Perfectly legal, I think. I've spent 10 years teaching founders about leverage and momentum and taking the first step before you feel ready. She just did it. I have never been prouder of a high-agency move in my life. Update: she has made 7 bucks. More to come. 🎸

A law firm came to us paying $350 for every lead. Today they pay $77. We didn't find a secret ad hack. We asked a question their last agency never asked: "What happens AFTER they click an ad?" Their ads were fine. The problem was everything the ads pointed to. 👉 No cohesive messaging 👉 Confused customers. Lots of jargon and acronyms. 👉 No point of differentiation on “why you” 👉 Their ask was too big, too soon. No simple next step This is the pattern I see in almost every business stuck at seven figures: The ads agency optimizes ads. The web team protects the website. Nobody owns the space between them. That gap is where the money leaks. We close it because we run ads, landing pages, and conversion together, and we look at one number: what it costs you to get a customer. $350 to $77 means the same budget now buys 4.5x the leads. If your cost per lead keeps climbing, I'll take a look. It's a 25-minute call. We dig into what's working, what isn't, and what's blocking growth. If it's a fit, my team does a free audit of your ads or your site. Book it here: growthhit.com/

I own an agency. And I think most founders are right to have agency PTSD. You've lived this: Month 1: Big kickoff. Fancy deck. Everyone is excited. Month 3: The reports look great. Revenue looks the same. Month 6: "We need more budget to hit the goal." Month 8: You fire them and start the search again. Here's the part nobody says out loud: It usually wasn't their fault. Your ads agency owned ads. Your SEO agency owned rankings. Your email agency owned open rates. Nobody owned growth. So when the ads drove traffic to a page that didn't convert, the ads agency asked for more budget. That's the only lever they had. Every vendor hit their metric. The business still didn't grow. I only understood this after we bought our own brand and had to make payroll off the results. When it's your money, you stop asking "how is the channel doing?" You start asking "what is the one thing blocking growth?" Most of the time it isn't the channel you're paying an agency to run. If you've fired more than 2 agencies, the problem probably isn't the agencies. It's your strategy and how you use agencies. I broke down the growth strategy to help you ensure you setup your next agency for success: buff.ly/BDEGxg2 (And Shout out to my 9 year-old intern for this 2 second photo shoot. Hey, it's hard to come up with new images all the time.)

Most companies try to fix a sales problem with an ad budget. I know because I did it. When we took over Neat Apparel (our sweat-proof shirt brand), it was doing $9K a month. The obvious move was more ads. But the site converted at 0.6%. That means for every 1,000 people we paid to send there, 994 left. More ad spend would have meant paying to fill a leaky bucket faster. So we fixed the bucket first: 👉 Surveyed customers to hear why they loved our product 👉 Designed a page to address objections a first-time buyer would have 👉 Created a bo-brainer offer 👉 Tested the page every 2 weeks, not set it and forget it Conversion rate went from 0.6% to 3%. Same traffic. 5x the customers. And ROAS went from 1x to 3x, because every ad dollar now landed on a page that worked. THEN we scaled spend. Neat now does $170K a month. This isn't an ecommerce lesson. It's the same math for a law firm's intake form or a SaaS demo page. If ads feel more expensive every quarter, check the page before you check the ad account. Your growth might already be sitting in traffic you've paid for. Full breakdown of how we did it: youtu.be/j_XYD2j8YIw?si=7yoV…