Sarah Carusona has spent 10 years in DTC growth behind brands you already know and love. She’s managed over $250M in media and pulled just about every lever in the consumer journey, from loyalty and returns to CRO, data, and inventory. Now she runs BA Commerce, where she embeds senior operators into DTC brands to drive profitable growth that goes way beyond button-pushing on Meta. And she does it all from Buenos Aires!

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> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn….

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley speaks with DTC eCommerce expert Sarah Carusona about transitioning brands from Amazon to Shopify. Sarah shares her journey from dance to digital marketing, and her experience managing nine-figure brands. She explains that successful transitions require a compelling brand story, repeat purchase potential, and a clear financial model based on LTV and CAC. Sarah also discusses her agency B.A. Commerce, which embeds growth operators directly into brands, and highlights the importance of authentic content, integrated team structures covering acquisition, retention, and conversion, and leveraging AI for smarter decision-making.

Here are three action items that Josh identified from this episode:

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Qualities of a Brand Ready for Shopify
Sarah outlines key traits for a successful Amazon-to-Shopify transition, including brand story, content potential, and repeat revenue opportunities.

00:00:48 Podcast Introduction
The official introduction to the E-comm Breakthrough Podcast, outlining its purpose for seven-figure business owners looking to scale.

00:01:01 Introducing Sarah Carusona
Host Josh Hadley introduces guest Sarah Carusona, detailing her extensive experience in DTC growth and managing large media budgets.

00:02:35 Sarah’s Background and BA Commerce
Sarah shares her journey from a dance degree to DTC expert and explains the unique “embedded operator” model of her company.

00:08:35 The Challenge of Moving from Amazon to Shopify
Josh and Sarah discuss the difficulties and different skill sets required for brands transitioning from the Amazon marketplace to DTC.

00:08:51 Who Should (and Shouldn’t) Move to Shopify
Sarah explains that brands with a strong story and content potential are ideal candidates, while commodity-like products face greater challenges.

00:12:35 The Playbook for a Shopify Launch
Sarah details her strategy, which is based on an LTV-to-CAC model and blending metrics across Amazon and Shopify.

00:16:32 Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) on Meta
A discussion on typical customer acquisition costs on Meta, differentiating between front-end profitable brands and subscription-based models.

00:18:25 Factoring in the Amazon Halo Effect
Sarah explains how to calculate a blended CAC across channels to account for the sales lift on Amazon from DTC advertising.

00:22:18 Driving Traffic to a New Shopify Store
Sarah discusses strategies for generating traffic, emphasizing the power of building an organic presence before scaling with paid ads.

00:24:56 What Content Goes Viral
The most authentic, unpolished, and founder-led content often performs best, along with genuine creator content from brand fans.

00:26:55 Finding and Working with Creators
Sarah advises on building a creator pool through direct, personal outreach rather than relying solely on platforms or agencies.

00:29:05 Structuring Your DTC Team for Growth
Sarah presents a framework for team building based on three core functions: acquisition, retention, and conversion, scaling as you grow.

00:33:45 The Role of AI in E-commerce Growth
Sarah explains how her team uses AI, focusing on data analysis and strategy first, rather than just mass content implementation.

00:36:36 Three Actionable Takeaways
Josh summarizes the episode’s key lessons: defining your money model, testing organic creative first, and structuring your core team.

00:40:24 Most Influential Book
Sarah recommends “Crucial Conversations” for its lessons on navigating tough conversations, a critical skill for any business owner.

00:41:21 Favorite AI Tool
Sarah shares that she uses Claude as her personal EA, emphasizing the importance of training it like a team member.

00:43:07 Brand Owner Shout-Out
Sarah gives a shout-out to Brandy from The Fidget Game, praising her passion and business acumen as a founder.

00:44:00 How to Connect with Sarah
Sarah shares the best ways to get in touch with her, including LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), and her company website.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Tools and Websites
“Shopify“: “00:00:00”
“Meta”: “00:00:00”
“Amazon“: “00:00:00”
“BA Commerce“: “00:02:49”
“TikTok Shop“: “00:08:51”
“Claude (AI Tool)“: “00:41:40″Books
“Crucial Conversations“: “00:41:37”
“100 Million Dollar Money Models” by Alex Hormozi: “00:20:25″Notable People
“Ezra Firestone“: “00:01:01”
“Kevin King“: “00:01:01”
“Michael E. Gerber“: “00:01:01”
“Brandi from The Fidget Game“: “00:43:07″Additional Resources
“Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast Website“: “00:44:19”

This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.

I started my business in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then email me at josh@ecommbreakthrough.com and in your subject line say “strategy audit” for the chance to win a $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit at no cost!

Transcript:

Sarah Carusona 00:00:00  It’s not easy for sure, but for this particular brand, the the things that got me really excited because and I’ll kind of answer the question of who I think should do this and who shouldn’t. The things that got me excited about this brand. And I was like, oh yeah, we can we can crush this on Shopify is it has a great brand story. It’s got, it’s got athletes and military that already use the product because the product works. And so it’s got content and it’s got content potential. It’s got a good brand. It’s got repeat revenue potential because it’s in the subscription, CPG space. It’s got additional product expansion on top of that. So those are the things that got me really excited where I was like, oh yeah, this we can do this on Shopify and we can make content on meta. And this has some this has some legs that we can scale.

MC 00:00:48  Welcome to the E-comm Breakthrough Podcast. Are you ready to unlock the full potential and growth in your business? You’ve already crossed seven figures in sales, but the challenge is knowing how to take your business to the next level.

Josh Hadley 00:01:01  Are you trying to make the transition from Amazon over to Shopify? Well, today’s guest knows the playbook to help brands really grow and explode their sales on DTC. Welcome to the Econ Breakthrough podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley. I scaled my own brand from 0 to 8 figures in sales, and now my mission is to take it to over nine figures on my journey to nine figures. I bring you the unfiltered conversations with the smartest minds in eCommerce. Past guests include Ezra Firestone, Kevin King, and Michael E Gerber, author of the email. Today, I am super excited to introduce you all to Sarah Carusona. She has spent ten years in the DTC growth behind brands that you already know and love. She’s managed over 250 million in media and pulled just about every lever in the the consumer journey from loyalty and returns to CRO data and inventory. She now runs B.A. Commerce, where she embeds senior operators into DTC brands to drive profitable growth. That goes way beyond button pushing on meta. And she does it all from Buenos Aires.

Josh Hadley 00:02:09  So welcome to the show, Sarah.

Sarah Carusona 00:02:12  Thank you so much for having me, Josh, and I’m excited to be here.

Josh Hadley 00:02:15  We’ve got an international event going on here so clap. Glad to have you tuning in and have you on the show. Global audience here.

Sarah Carusona 00:02:24  So there you go.

Sarah Carusona 00:02:26  And yes, the internet works here.

Josh Hadley 00:02:28  Good. It’s and you’ve got high speed internet.

Sarah Carusona 00:02:32  We do. We do. Yeah. It’s.

Josh Hadley 00:02:35  Well. Sarah, tell me a little bit more about. Kind of like ba commerce. Why are you, why are you kind of an authority in the DTC space and tell me kind of the some of the brands that you’ve worked with and how you cut your teeth in DTC?

Sarah Carusona 00:02:49  Yeah. So my background.

Sarah Carusona 00:02:51  Is quite interesting. I have a degree in dance. And then I somehow stumbled my way into what I do now. So I started, you know, advertising on meta and getting into organic, social and whatnot when I worked at a gym because I realized a little later than I needed to, that you don’t make a whole lot of money as a dancer.

Sarah Carusona 00:03:14  And I started working at gyms and fitness training and coaching, and when I was doing that, I started, like I said, trying to get people to come to the gym and I started doing different social media things, and I was like, oh, this is a whole new world.

Sarah Carusona 00:03:29  So it.

Sarah Carusona 00:03:30  I, I really just was a self learner and figured out how to work my way into an agency. And then I worked at a few different ones and more recently, or I guess in the last ten years I was at Common Thread Collective, and then I got poached and I went to Ola Kai, which is a nine figure brand, and I they also own Melon Work and Cannon, so they had four different brands, all between 7 to 9 figures. And basically within a pretty short period of time, I went from being an intern, writing copy on Instagram ads to running a nine figure PNL. It was kind of wild, and I learned a lot very, very quickly. But, what I what I learned throughout that process is coming from the agency world and then going to the brand world.

Sarah Carusona 00:04:19  And then after being in Alaska for a couple of years, I decided to leave to be able to pursue my own thing and also just really wanted to travel and learn Spanish. And so I started doing more fractional consulting and, you know, kind of fractional CMO, fractional head of growth, type of work. And throughout all of that, I kept seeing the same problem show up over and over again, especially with brand owners that are between this like 7 to 8 figure range. The other thing I learned when I was at OLC is I was like, I it was a great experience. I was like, I like smaller brands, I like startups. That’s where I thrive. That’s where I have more fun. And, and so I started talking with all of these different founders, and I started doing more fractional work with them. And I just saw the same problems happen. It just continued to. The same themes came over and over, which was that brand owners were trying to figure out how to grow their brand, and they the solutions that they had were different agencies or different solutions that were kind of spokes of the wheel, but they weren’t the central hub.

Sarah Carusona 00:05:17  And so they would find a meta agency and it would be like, hey, this is going to help you grow your brand. Well, meta is only one part of what’s going to help your brand. There’d be an Amazon agency and they’d be like, we’re gonna help grow your brand. But that’s only one part. and all of these agencies, you know, they have tight scopes of work where it’s like, we do this, we don’t do that. We only work these hours. We, you know, we only do so many meetings. Like, we hire somebody yesterday and put them on your brand and then spread them across like ten different accounts. And I just I hated that whole thing. My husband was at EY for a while, and I had this idea when I was in Buenos Aires of, why can’t I apply the consultancy model to e-commerce? Why do I have to do it? The same playbook that everybody else is doing. And so that was the impetus for BigCommerce, which is named partially because of where we founded it, but then also because it kind of sounds like badass, and I like that.

Sarah Carusona 00:06:06  And so what we do now is we hire and train what I call growth operators and embed them at brands at 20 to 30 hours a week. And so those growth operators are highly trained across acquisition, which is going to be your media, your creative flywheels, your offer structure retention. That’s going to be your LTV increases. Obviously email and SMS subscription loyalty programs and then conversion which is going to be your CRO roadmap, your landing pages, AOV upsells, all of that good stuff. And these growth operators get employed in those, get deployed in those brands. They have brand email addresses. They very much feel and operate as a member of that team. Part of our onboarding is we actually design an org chart and plop that growth operator in it. And and yeah, it’s been going really well. We’re a little over a year and a half old now and all of our brands have grown significantly and it’s been a lot of fun.

Josh Hadley 00:06:55  And yeah, I love that you’ve taken like, you flipped the kind of agency model on its head because I think, like, that is the biggest rub that I have with, any agency is great.

Josh Hadley 00:07:09  Yeah. We’ll take your money and then you don’t really know who’s actually pulling the levers behind it, and they’re not overly invested in your business. Like, obviously the agency owner wants you to win otherwise that you’re going to leave as a client. But even at that, like, they’re not trying to, that they’re not going to eke out the same level of margin and hustle that, you know, somebody actually embedded into the company. Well, so I’m interested to, you know, double down on a little bit more of how you’ve set things up. But I’m very interested. Like you’ve seen a nine figure brand operate from Amazon, meta, Shopify, etc. and you’ve seen a much bigger like, you know, ecosystem and flywheel of e-commerce. I know the the majority of the listeners here are all feeling like this margin squeeze on Amazon, and everybody’s kind of getting tired of the Amazon game. And the next thing is, hey, how do I go open up a Shopify store? And how do I find success on Shopify or on TikTok shop? And as we talked, like, I think it’s much easier said than done because the skill set to succeed on Amazon, I think, is a very different skill set from what it takes to succeed, to have amazing meta creative that then has, you know, really strong CRO optimization on a Shopify website to actually get them to convert.

Josh Hadley 00:08:35  Give me your take on that to all the brand owners that are on Amazon. Is it easy to make that transition? And who is kind of at a point where they should consider that transition? And maybe the people that should not consider that transition over to Shopify.

Sarah Carusona 00:08:51  Yeah, it’s an excellent question.

Sarah Carusona 00:08:53  We’re actually working with a brand right now to do this exact thing where they are, they have been selling on Amazon for a few years. They also have some wholesale. And we are right now launching their Shopify store and getting them set up to start running growth through Shopify. What I would.

Sarah Carusona 00:09:10  Say is that.

Sarah Carusona 00:09:12  It’s not easy.

Sarah Carusona 00:09:13  For.

Sarah Carusona 00:09:14  Sure, but for this particular brand, the the things that got me really excited because and I’ll kind of answer the question of who I think should do this and who shouldn’t. The things that got me excited about this brand. And I was like, oh yeah, we can we can crush this on Shopify is it has a great brand story. It’s got, it’s got athletes and, military that already use the product because the product works.

Sarah Carusona 00:09:37  And so it’s got content and it’s got content potential. It’s got a good brand, it’s got repeat revenue potential because it’s in the subscription, CPG space. It’s got additional product expansion on top of that. So those are the things that got me really excited, where I was like, oh yeah, this we can do this on Shopify and we can make content on meta. And this has some this has some legs that we can scale. I think where I would be nervous to take a brand from Amazon to Shopify is if it was like another like water bottle or something, you know, like this is a water bottle that doesn’t have a brand. Obviously there’s like simply modern. And, you know, I’m blanking on the Stanley’s and all of those those companies have spent so much money on marketing and building their brand. And if you if you want to do that, you just have to know that it is going to it’s going to take time and it’s going to take money and it’s going to take effort.

Sarah Carusona 00:10:31  I think the biggest advice I would have for somebody who’s who’s going from who’s thinking about going from Amazon to Shopify is do you have a brand or are you willing to build one, or do you sell a product that isn’t a commodity would be the other consideration there.

Josh Hadley 00:10:50  Yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head. In fact, you know, some of my most recent podcast episodes, I talk about how, you know, over the past decade we’ve been growing on Amazon. But what I learned is, although we had our brand name trademarked and I had A+ content in a brand store, and I had the.com site and I thought I was a brand, I actually wasn’t a brand. I was a arbitrage seller, a private label arbitrage seller on Amazon, because I would go find this white space over here, and then I would go look at this keyword and be like, oh, there’s a good opportunity over here, low competition. So then 1600 SKUs later, we have a whole bunch of different products, but nothing cohesively saved, like selling to one specific customer avatar that the brand serves.

Josh Hadley 00:11:41  And that’s what I think, like the missing link is like, if you were to go ask not, you know, a bunch of Amazon brand owners, 90% of them are going to say like, oh yeah, I have a brand. And then in reality, it’s maybe 10% of them have a true brand, as you referenced, with meaning, like people actually care about you. You have a specific customer avatar you’re going after, you have an actual customer journey that you’re trying to service. So I love that you hit the nail on the head there because I think like that’s what is required on Shopify to succeed. So Sarah, you’ve got this brand that you’re that has gotten started on Amazon. They do have kind of a raving fan base right now. They have a brand. Tell me what that playbook looks like to say. All right. You’re on Amazon. Here’s what it looks like to begin building on Shopify.

Sarah Carusona 00:12:35  Yeah. So it.

Sarah Carusona 00:12:38  Comes down to initially setting everything up.

Sarah Carusona 00:12:41  So.

Sarah Carusona 00:12:41  That they can actually sell on Shopify.

Sarah Carusona 00:12:44  I think though.

Sarah Carusona 00:12:45  The the playbook, which is actually the same playbook that we would run for any of our companies, is we bake, we bake everything. Oh my gosh. Let me say that again. We base everything in an LTV to cake model. So we want to understand how much money are you trying to make on that first purchase and then how much money are you making within that next 12 months? And for subscription brand like this one, we are playing the we are playing the playback method where we are going to make our money back, probably within like 90 days, because that allows you to scale at a much higher rate. Now, with something that’s more like apparel or a one time purchase, you obviously need to make money on that first purchase. And so the the first thing that we do is we want to understand what that model of LTV to CCaC, what that ideal model looks like for the brand and for the founder. And it depends very much on their risk tolerance. It also depends on obviously their cash flow and and you know, ability there.

Sarah Carusona 00:13:38  And so for this particular one they’re ready to scale and they have the cash and the infrastructure to be able to do that. So we set some specific targets within that, because we can know based on their estimated shipping cost and all of their cogs and whatnot, what that first purchase contribution is going to look like, which then allows us to back into what we think that overall CCaC needs to be. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to make that CCaC based on a blended one between Amazon and Shopify, because we know that there’s a halo effect. When we’re going to start advertising on meta, they are going to see more sales on Amazon. Without a doubt. It’s just not even a question. Now, blending a mac between two different platforms is a little bit of fuzzy math. Unless you have a lot of money that you can invest in some data infrastructure.

Sarah Carusona 00:14:25  But otherwise there’s.

Sarah Carusona 00:14:26  Going to be some assumptions that are made there. But regardless, once we have that and then we have an idea of what we want our LTV to be because we’ve got some LTV data from Amazon.

Sarah Carusona 00:14:36  But anything with Amazon is a little bit more fuzzy. We’re going to get more, stable data with Shopify. And so we’re going to have a really good idea of what we want that LTV, LTV to be, especially within the first three months, because we know that those first three months are when you can affect the consumer the most from a marketing perspective. And if the consumer does not come back within that first three months, you’re very unlikely to get them. So the playbook is basically we are hyper focused on what is our CAK need to be from a blended basis between Amazon and Shopify, which then we can break down into exactly what we want meta to be and exactly what we need Amazon to be, so that we’re operating those two in the context of the holistic goal. And then what do we need that LTV to be, especially in that first three months. And so then our strategy gets deployed against those targets. So it’s obviously going to be a huge content, strategy here, which is going to be we’re working with them on their influencers and their creators and affiliates that we can start to access.

Sarah Carusona 00:15:36  There’s going to be a level of testing here though, right? Because they haven’t advertised on media yet, so I can’t say what’s going to work. So part of what we’ll do is we’ll come up with different in the like with the brand. You know, this will be a collaborative process of what are different themes and kind of personas that we want to go after and create ads around those different personas, launch them and see which one starts to hit. And then on the retention end is we before we even launch, we’re getting set up with our welcome flows, their post-purchase flows, their win back flows, their subscription flows. Because that is also if we know we’re going to lose money on that first purchase, we better be pretty darn sure that they’re going to come back.

Josh Hadley 00:16:13  Yeah. No, I think that makes so much sense. Now, I know there’s a lot of nuances that we’re going to dive into. Let’s take two different paths here. Let’s take a reoccurring revenue brand, a subscription based brand, right, that you do want to kind of like make up your money over, you know, 12 months for this brand.

Josh Hadley 00:16:32  It’s three months that you’re targeting versus somebody who has to be front and profitable. Walk me through what that cat kind of looks like on a front end, profitable acquisition right now. What would you say the average customer acquisition cost is right now? Meta to Shopify that you’re seeing.

Sarah Carusona 00:16:52  Who I mean.

Sarah Carusona 00:16:54  It so depends on the price of the product.

Sarah Carusona 00:16:57  And so we.

Sarah Carusona 00:16:58  I.

Sarah Carusona 00:16:59  Use.

Sarah Carusona 00:16:59  CCaC because I think that’s a term that more people know. But internally we actually operate more off of Armour or Armour acquisition marketing efficiency ratio because we have to make everything an acronym and very confusing. Basically new customer Roas. So more so what I like to look at is for if my AOV is $100 in my CAK is $50, I’ve got a two armour now. So I guess I say that because our cats are very dependent. We’ve got AUVs that are closer to 4 to $500. We’ve got AUVs that are closer to like $60. What I’ll.

Sarah Carusona 00:17:33  Say.

Sarah Carusona 00:17:33  To answer your question is that typically what I’m seeing from a from a first purchase profitability they typically need around like a 1.8 to a 1.9.

Sarah Carusona 00:17:44  Amer. So meaning that their their cash is basically like half of whatever their AOV is. And then for subscription brands where their AOV tends to be around like $60, their Amr tends to be around like a one to a 1.2, and even sometimes as low as, like a 0.9, where they’re like really upside down. Again, it kind of depends on their LTV and how fast they’re making that money back and also how risk tolerant the brand is. And on top of that, if they have retail as well, some brands are really going like full negative on Shopify and TikTok shops because they make it on Amazon and Shopify. So it ranges a lot.

Josh Hadley 00:18:25  Yeah. No, I get it. So how do you factor in the halo effect to Amazon. So let’s let’s take the front end acquisition. Like let’s say it’s just a two Roas that you’re looking at to say, all right, we’re probably front end profitable. if that’s the case, how are you factoring in Amazon sales to that?

Sarah Carusona 00:18:45  Yeah.

Sarah Carusona 00:18:46  So what we do is let me back up. So the first thing we want to understand is what those unit economics need to be. And so if we need to be first purchase profitable, I want to know from a holistic perspective between Amazon, Shopify, TikTok shops, what do we need our CCaC to be. And so the way that you get to that is you take what is your AOV on Amazon, what’s your AOV on TikTok shops, what’s your AOV on Shopify? And then what’s your revenue split between those three. And you can do an average weighted real simple to come up with okay, here’s like what on average our AOV is for the total company. And then you can do that same math. From a CCaC perspective, how much are we spending to get a customer on TikTok and Amazon and Shopify and then average wait that out and you can get your pack and you can get your overall blended. Amer so the first thing I want to do is I want to understand from a blended perspective.

Sarah Carusona 00:19:36  Let’s say that my AOV is $200 and I need $100 in order to be breakeven or slightly profitable on that first purchase. I might have a KAC on Amazon that’s like $30, but on Shopify slash meta, it’s $200, and on TikTok it’s like $50. But and I’m not doing very good, like average weighted in my head, but you get the picture. So it just depends on, on your mix between those different channels. So if Amazon has a higher percentage of revenue and a really low KAC, you might have the ability to have an even higher KAC on on Shopify and Meta. If not, if you’re more 50/50, then there’s a little bit more pressure on the meta KAC. And so I’m now forgetting your question. But basically you take all of that math and that’s how you get to your you understand what that overall goal is. And then using what percentage of revenue is across those, you’re able to set the individual targets.

Josh Hadley 00:20:35  Yeah, no, but I love that you’re starting with the financial model because, you know, Alex Hormozi, the latest book, like 100, $100 million Money models.

Josh Hadley 00:20:46  At the end of the day, the vehicle you decide to enter into is going to be what allows you to, like, scale really quickly or, you know, go bankrupt at the end of the day because it’s all about the money model you choose to implement in your business. And the most exciting thing that I love about Shopify is like, you get to influence the money model in a massive way, whereas Amazon is kind of like you get the purchase and that’s about it, and TikTok shop, you get the purchase and that’s about it. But like on Shopify, you could have upsells, you have a customer journey. You’re going to walk people through where you are really, really focused on that LTV.

Sarah Carusona 00:21:28  Yeah. The way the way that I think about Shopify is like, it’s your home. It’s the. It’s the place that you’re most proud of. When people walk in the door, you want to treat them like amazing and or I don’t know. Yeah, I guess that’s probably. Or like it’s your flagship store I guess is another way to say it.

Sarah Carusona 00:21:44  And then Amazon TikTok shop or maybe more so like Amazon is going to be like, hey, some people are going to shop for you at Walmart because they’re walking into Walmart and they see it, but they remember walking into your home. And so that’s the way that I kind of differentiate it of at the end of the day, people are going to shop where they’re going to shop. You can’t force them to shop on Shopify, but you want their experience when they shop on Shopify to be freaking amazing. And and it’s also where you have once you get obviously their data and they’re on your site, you get their email and whatnot, you want to nurture that relationship as much as you can.

Josh Hadley 00:22:18  Yeah. So one of the biggest constraints I know for people just starting a Shopify store, you could have a great money model that sits behind it. However, just because you open your Shopify site doesn’t mean anybody’s coming. Obviously, one of the biggest things is driving traffic to your storefront. So you’ve got a new brand you’re working with.

Josh Hadley 00:22:39  What are your plans? And, like, what are the levers that you pull to get traffic to the site?

Sarah Carusona 00:22:45  Yeah, it’s it’s funny with the and I haven’t read the book on money model, but the questions like the questions that you’re asking me, it always to me goes back to what’s your goal and what is that goal from a financial perspective. And that’s just always where my head goes, where it’s any, any question. And that I answer has to be in the context of that. So for getting traffic to your Shopify store, the first question that I would ask the brand owner is what is your goal and and how how quickly are you trying to scale and how profitable are you trying to be? I would say if you’re just trying to go fast, meta is going to be the fastest way. Obviously, like start spending on meta. You’re going to get traffic tomorrow. however, if you have more time or you have the ability to invest or you create content yourself. If you can start with organic and you can start testing different organic content series and you can build an awareness there, it’s going to.

Sarah Carusona 00:23:40  It’s like having a it’s like starting a fire with just like a match and like a couple logs is like just going on meta versus if you build like all of this, like fluff and stuff, and then you light a match and all of a sudden it like blows up. Once you start on meta, that’s like the difference is like, if you can build that foundation of organic and of content and you start to learn what works there, and then you add meta to it and you start advertising on top of it, you’re going to have a longer you’re going to you’re going to be able to scale. I don’t want to say faster because it’s going to take you a while to build that up. But once you do build that up, then the sky’s the limit. it really so again, if you if you can do both meta and organic and you have the ability to go both ways, that’s not a bad play. But I would say like if it were my brand and I’m not in a rush to I don’t know.

Sarah Carusona 00:24:30  Start selling X amount of dollars tomorrow. I would just start by building my organic awareness as much as I possibly could, and then I would start putting spend behind the the organic ads that are working well. Or I guess they’re not as if they’re organic, but the organic content that’s working well. and then if or if I was like, hey, we got to go a little bit quicker here, I would still start with meta, but I would still put a really good focus to organic social.

Josh Hadley 00:24:56  So organic social. So you’re saying like a big portion of this is kind of founder lead content and like what type of messaging are they coming out with that you’re seeing resonating like what goes viral and why. And how do you know when you’ve got something that’s worth trying to actually like scale on Shopify and put ads, Ben, behind it.

Sarah Carusona 00:25:18  It’s funny because more recently, what’s been going viral and what’s been getting just tons of sales and views, both organically and through spend is the most organic content you could possibly see we have.

Sarah Carusona 00:25:31  We have one founder who she recorded a video because she got a phone call from one of her, like from a customer, and I can’t remember how they got her phone number or whatnot. It was kind of like an interesting thing, and inspo struck her and she just started recording. She’s like in bed. She’s got no makeup on. She’s like, hey, I just got this phone call from this customer. And they told me this and like, and they started using our product and X, Y and Z happened and I’m so excited. It is the top ad that it’s just like blown up. It’s wild. And so I think to answer your question, it’s hard to know what will go viral until you do it. So you do need to do a decent amount of experimentation. But I would also encourage people, if you are to not, I don’t know, not overthink it. Like just just start and you’re going to start to understand what is resonating with your customers and you’re going to be able to create more of that.

Sarah Carusona 00:26:22  And the other thing is that works really well is obviously like creator content and creator content of people who are actually invested in your brand and actually excited about it. So the quicker that you can start to build your own creator pool that is excited about your brand and you can incentivize them, maybe even give them equity if that’s a part of it. the more natural that content is and it’s a lot it’s a lot better than the, you know, 5000 videos that you see on TikTok where they just are like, hey, here’s a product I got for free. You want to buy it? Like, it’s just it’s just going to have a lot more genuine, ness to it.

Josh Hadley 00:26:55  Where do you go find those creators? because there has been a lot of talk on TikTok shop, etc. like, would you go to TikTok shop? Or how do you go find these creators? Because there are also a lot of them are charging a premium as well. You threw out equity as well that that sometimes can be a very bold bet.

Josh Hadley 00:27:15  especially if you’re starting Shopify brand new. So walk me through how you kind of like look at that then.

Sarah Carusona 00:27:21  Yeah. I mean, equity is definitely one that you would only do if it was like a big name. Like we had one of our brands had a X, Housewives, that was an investor, and she made content for us and we whitelisted and most of our ads then went to her content. So like that’s where maybe an equity play makes sense. You don’t want to go that route for everyone. But I would say it takes time. It really does. There’s not there’s not like one platform that I’m like, oh yeah, you can find the best creators on here. It’s the best creators and the best creator. Partnerships that I’ve seen have come from people inside the brand who have done 1 to 1, reaching out and finding these people based on their specific niche. So we’ve got one brand that’s in, like they sell, kids games, kids educational games. So they’re very connected with teachers, and they actually run TikTok shops completely internal.

Sarah Carusona 00:28:16  They don’t work with an agency or anything, and they have an employee there who basically half of her job is she is developing these relationships, and she’s approving anyone that we are ceding products to for TikTok shops. Literally looking at the videos, going to their profile and deciding who to go with. And it takes a lot more time. And unfortunately, it’s not something that AI can automate at this point. But they have been able to scale tick tock shops and their whole brand is like over 100% to their plan and 100% year over year. It’s like it’s crazy. and they so I guess like what I would say is that it’s, it’s one of those things that you really need to spend the time and effort in building that relationship with. and I would encourage either the founder, if they have the time to do it or to find somebody internal, they can do that.

Josh Hadley 00:29:05  Yeah. You touched on, you know, how important it is to have a team. So walk me through what is the right team structure look like maybe through different levels of growth? once you are on Shopify.

Josh Hadley 00:29:19  So let’s say, yeah, from day one, we’re going to move our brand from Amazon over to Shopify, or at least add it as an additional sales channel. Who do I need in place to actually pull that off? Like, am I needing like five people? Creative strategies, Creative out creator outreach and the, you know, advertising specialist, etc.. and then how does that scale up? Walk me through that.

Sarah Carusona 00:29:43  Yeah. So I had to do a lot of work with team building really when I was at, when I was at Akai. And that was also because we were, we were building across the different brands and there were a lot of discussions around like, who do we need next and whatnot. And I finally took a step back because I’m a pretty I’m a people pleaser. I like, you know, I one of my passions in life is developing jobs. And I took a step back and I was like, I need to think about this from the business perspective. First.

Sarah Carusona 00:30:10  I need to not think about it from positions and people. I need to think about the business. And so I developed this framework of which I think about it, that has worked really well now across 7 to 9 figure brands. And what it is, is for Shopify and really for any omnichannel growth. You have three main functions of growth and marketing, which is going to be acquisition again, like your media, organic content retention, email, SMS, loyalty program subscription and then conversion, your website, your offers, your landing pages, etc.. And so if you’re going to go on Shopify, you need to know that you need to support all three of those functions in some way, shape or form. So the first thing to decide is if I’m if I’m a founder and I’m really in the day to day, which of those am I going to own and which of those am I going to be very, very involved in. And then how am I going to support the other ones? And the ideal, especially if you’re small, is you can get a person who is able to flex amongst those and isn’t just one person and one agency here and one person, one agency over here.

Sarah Carusona 00:31:11  It’s actually somebody who can be like, hey, I’m going to media buy. But hey, I’m also going to build this landing page. And then I’m also going to make sure that this email flow is functioning properly. Those people are a little bit hard to find. It’s why Bay Commerce is here. But the, But it is a very it’s going to be more economical for you. And then as you grow, you start to have individual resources for each of those functions. And then as you grow more, you start to have strategic layers for each of those functions and execution layers for each of those functions. So it really just comes down to how how big your brand is and how much attention you need to all you need for all of those. And again, depending on the brand, you might be able to be like, hey, our website is what it is, it’s converting as it is. And we’re going to just we’re going to let that one keep going, and we’re just going to focus over here on retention and acquisition.

Sarah Carusona 00:32:00  And then once we get a little bit bigger, we’ll invest and bring somebody on for conversion. But that’s really kind of the framework of which I think about it.

Josh Hadley 00:32:07  Do you. Is it revenue based or profit based at all in terms of like when’s the right time to like scale up the team, or is it just like, well, as soon as they’re pushing back that they’ve got too much to do on their plate.

Sarah Carusona 00:32:21  I say it’s definitely not when they’re pushing back because there’s too much to do on their plate. I would say it’s, I think it’s it’s it is it is hard to say because there are brands I’ve worked with that have, I think, over invested in opex, possibly a little bit too early. However, it will have a longer term, payoff for them. And then there’s other brands that, you know, are more cash sensitive. I would say the the leaner you can make your team for the longer amount of time, the better. I think you can operate seven to like sorry, I would say you could operate basically zero to almost 20 million with a pretty damn lean team, like a one operator and a couple like executors or assistants.

Sarah Carusona 00:33:04  And now with AI, like you can do a lot. I don’t want to say AI is like, oh, you don’t need anybody because you still need somebody at the head of AI that’s telling you what to do and approving it. But you can get pretty far with just a couple people on your team. the other thing that I would say that it really depends on is it depends on the founder and how involved the founder is and how involved and educated they want to be. Because some teams, the founder is super involved. They’re creating content all the time. They’re managing organic, social. They’re you know, overseeing the product and whatnot. And they’re like, we just need, you know, somebody who’s overseeing and managing growth. And other founders are like, I’m not in it at all. And so then you’re going to need more people.

Josh Hadley 00:33:45  Yeah. How much are you using AI right now and how much are you having, like your team and these operators that come into these businesses using AI? And what use cases are you finding that works today?

Sarah Carusona 00:33:59  Yeah, I mean it’s it’s mandatory.

Sarah Carusona 00:34:02  I mean, it has to be because it’s just there are there are so many times where, things just have to be done quicker. And what I said even before AI got as, as advanced as it was, is that one of the things that I want for our team and our the way that we position ourselves is any of our growth operators, any of our team members produce ten times the amount as somebody else does. And now with AI, that should be even more. and so we think of AI, I think it’s kind of interesting because our business started in AI, started to get very advanced very quickly, and I never wanted to like, set out and be like our any company or whatnot or like we’re or start like developing a lot of like our own, I don’t know, proprietary like agents and whatnot. And I think there’s nothing wrong with that. But what I wanted to think about the use of AI and how we’re using it is there’s like three main again, taking a step back and not thinking about like AI, but thinking about what does the business need and for all of our clients and what they need in what we do is it starts from what’s the problem? That’s data driven.

Sarah Carusona 00:35:06  What like are we missing on new revenue? And if we’re missing on new revenue, where is that coming from? What is that meta. Is that Amazon. And if it is matter is Amazon is the click through rate to low. Is it coming from specific campaigns or specific products. There’s this whole section of work that we do. That is where is the problem or opportunity from a data driven perspective that now we can do with AI so much faster than we used to be able to do. So we’ve got MCP set up across the board, our, our, our reporting system that we have that I call a growth hub that breaks down top line to bottom line is all, implemented with AI now, so that we can use that to help analyze in a much quicker way. And then the second section is what do we do about it? So if I know that we need a better offer, how do I come up with a better offer. Well, that’s where then there’s, you know, let’s pull from all of these different inspo from different brands that we know and love, or our own learnings from all of the brands that we’ve worked with and what we’ve seen work and what what we’ve seen work or not work.

Sarah Carusona 00:36:07  And then the third part is implementation, which is like, oh, let me go build out a hundred ads and let me go, like build out this landing page and whatnot. And I feel like in this space and with AI, everybody’s gotten really excited about that third section of I can build all of these things as fast as possible. And what we’ve focused on is more of those first two sections, because I don’t care if you can give me a thousand landing pages if none of them are backed in data and strategy. So that’s really where we focus on. And we yeah, we’re, we’re we use Claude is basically where everything comes from.

Josh Hadley 00:36:36  Smart. I mean that’s it’s it’s constant constant testing and iteration. But it all stems from a really good strategy, at the beginning. So I love that. I think you articulated it well, Sarah, as we begin to wrap things up, I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from every episode. Let me know if you think I’m missing anything from here, and I’ll start with number one.

Josh Hadley 00:37:01  Number one, if you are looking to like, create your own DTC store, or you’re maybe migrating from an Amazon to a DTC store, the first thing that you need to be focused on is what is that customer journey going to look like and what is the money model look like? as Sarah talked about, like it’s the CCaC to the LTV ratio. So how much are you paying to acquire that customer? And then how much money do you make from that customer over the course of 12 months? And for us, we’re adamant about how much money do we get within the first 30 days out of that customer. Because the longer that time goes by, the the lesser the odds are that you’ll be collecting even more revenue if you’re struggling in that first 30 days. So it’s defining that money model and exactly what products and offers that you are going to be sending them, so that you can then reverse engineer, hey, here’s how much I can spend to acquire that customer. And if you have a TikTok shop, if you have an Amazon, those are added benefits.

Josh Hadley 00:38:04  And so you’re able to kind of blend your CCaC together to be able to say, hey, I know I’m going to have a halo effect over onto different marketplaces. and again, lots of times it’s they see it on TikTok, come to your website, then get retargeting on meta and then end up buying on Amazon. So you got to understand, like there’s a whole flywheel and ecosystem that happens here. But that’s part number one is like you need to make sure that you could I think like an average CCaC right now on meta is like 30, 40, $50 if you’re like trying to be front and profitable, like you’re easily within that range. And so that also means you’re not selling 9.99 products on Shopify. So you’ve got to get creative at the same token. So that’s action item number one. Action item number two is your first thing that you should be doing after you have a money model is then begin testing your creative. I love that you talked about like as the founder, it’s like you should be the one creating a lot of organic content and seeing what hooks, what angles tend to do better.

Josh Hadley 00:39:10  Where are you getting more visibility versus not obviously analyzing the comments and, feedback that you’re getting from the customers, but it’s only after you understand those angles that you can begin really putting, you know, some fuel on the fire in the form of meta advertising. and then last but not least, I love that you talked about, like, the three key roles that you really need to be focused on, especially when you’re just starting out on Shopify is going to be somebody to oversee the acquisition, media buying, things like that. Your creative strategy. Number two are your offers. So conversion rate optimization, a lot of copywriting, getting people to convert on your landing page. And then last but not least retention lifecycle marketing. So who is responsible for the emails and the onboarding success. And sending out additional offers to make sure we’re actually achieving the LTV that we set out to. So Sarah, those are my like three big takeaways. I think if I were to digest this all that would sum it up there.

Josh Hadley 00:40:14  But what else am I missing? What else did we not cover here?

Sarah Carusona 00:40:18  No, Josh, I think you said it very well articulated it very, very well. So I appreciate it.

Josh Hadley 00:40:24  Awesome. Been taking feverish notes as you’ve been. you’re talking. So, Sarah, now, I’ve got three final questions for you. Number one, what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read?

Sarah Carusona 00:40:37  And why are you told me I was going to get asked this question beforehand, and I was supposed to be thinking about it in the back of my head, and, oh, it’s so hard. I’ve got like three that I want to say, and they’re so very different. I’d probably say crucial conversations for, for this, this podcast, it is a book that doesn’t come up a whole lot, but and it’s not necessarily necessarily e-commerce focused, but it’s very focused on how to have tough conversations in stressful environments. And I think for what we do and for business owners and founders, that is a huge part of your job.

Sarah Carusona 00:41:13  And I would say that is a book that has influenced me, influenced me both from a personal and professional level.

Josh Hadley 00:41:21  Yeah, I think communication is like honestly one of the number one leadership skills that you can have and the ability to influence, persuade, teach, inspire. So yeah, great book recommendation there. question number two, what is your favorite AI tool and how have you been using it?

Sarah Carusona 00:41:40  Yeah, I mean, we went all in on Claude. I was definitely chat for a little while and then I. Yeah, switched to Claude and went all in there. I have more recently. It’s a, hopefully this is an okay example, but I had an EA for a little while, and, they were not doing wonderful. And I started to realize that I could probably automate a decent amount of what was needed to be done. And so just recently parted ways with them. And just using Claude as my own EA and just setting up different skills and routines and whatnot to get it going.

Sarah Carusona 00:42:16  There’s still like there’s still a lot more that I want to work through with that. But what I realized for myself is if I stopped thinking of Claude as this as a tool and more as a part of my team that I need to train and work with and give feedback to and spend time with that. It’s the same as having a employee. And and so that was a that was a big, recent change that I made.

Josh Hadley 00:42:42  Yeah, I love that mindset shift. And I think that’s happening more and more, as you realize, the onboarding process to get a new team member up to speed is about the same process to get an AI up to speed. So I love kind of like where where that goes in the future. All right. Third and final question. Who’s a brand owner or an operator that you’ve kind of admired that you want to shout out here.

Sarah Carusona 00:43:07  Ooh, I have so many. I will give. I’ll go. I’ll go with, Brandy from the fidget game. she is absolutely incredible.

Sarah Carusona 00:43:18  this is the kids game company that I was talking about before. We’ve been with her for almost a year now. She’s got just a really, really amazing story. She’s probably one of the like. She’s just. I think she’s a really good model for what a good founder is. She’s passionate about her industry. She’s passionate about her product. She’s passionate about her consumer. She’s passionate about growing her business profitably. She knows what she knows. She knows what she doesn’t know. But she’s learned enough to be able to ask the right questions. And she’s also just a really lovely person.

Josh Hadley 00:43:48  I love.

Sarah Carusona 00:43:48  It. She’s also in Texas. I think she’s in Austin.

Josh Hadley 00:43:51  Okay, good. All the good people are in Texas unless you’re in Buenos Aires.

Sarah Carusona 00:43:58  There you go.

Josh Hadley 00:44:00  Sarah, it’s been a pleasure having you on the show. If people want to reach out to you, Learn more about your agency. Where’s the best place to do so?

Sarah Carusona 00:44:07  yeah. I mean, you can find me on LinkedIn or X, just Sarah persona, or you can go to ecommerce.

Sarah Carusona 00:44:12  Com.

Josh Hadley 00:44:14  Awesome. Well, Sarah, thanks again for your time today.

Sarah Carusona 00:44:17  Thank you so much for having me. Josh.

MC 00:44:19  Thank you for listening. Visit Ecom breakthrough com for more information. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, the best way you can show your appreciation is by clicking the subscribe button and quickly leaving a review. See you again next time!