OP looks nice - might consider crown above the cabinets and open space above so it doesn't feel blocky. our WIP - what do you think?

“Pride goeth before destruction, And an haughty spirit before a fall. Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, Than to divide the spoil with the proud.” Proverbs 16:18-19 KJV

what scaling top of funnel EMQ looks like

reminder to unburdened yourself

Twenty-five years of this and I still wake up wanting to do it. That probably makes me unemployable anywhere else. I'm cutting my hours back this year because the pace I've been running isn't sustainable. That's the only complaint I've got, and it isn't much of one. People ask if I'd ever go back to working for someone. I wouldn't be any good at it and I stopped pretending otherwise a long time ago. The hours are survivable because I like the work. Same schedule without that would be miserable.

Your Meta CAC is lying to you. Here’s how to see what you’re actually paying for new customers: When Meta shows “cost per purchase,” it’s counting every order the same. First-time buyers, returning customers, and subscriptions all get lumped together. That means your ads might look profitable on paper, even if most of those “purchases” are people who were already on your list. If your dashboard says your CAC is $92, but your new customer CAC is $142, you’re not scaling at all…you’re just recycling. That’s why we add a “New Customer CPA” column (see photo) directly into Ads Manager for all our clients at Upstack. It separates new customer acquisition from repeat orders so you can finally see what your ad spend is actually doing. Reach out if you want us to set this up.

A down month is the best thing that can happen to a company that needs to ship. July was slow. The World Cup pulled attention and the weather was beautiful. Both of those get people off their phones and out of checkout. The company itself was busier than usual. We spent the entire month shipping. Slow months are good for building what you'll be selling in the fast ones.

Most of what I would have corrected in week one sorts itself out by week three. My instinct is to hand someone notes before they've had a chance to get moving. 20+ years of doing the work myself will do that. Now I let it warm up. People need room to take their own route through a problem. Whatever doesn't sort itself out is worth my time. The rest was me being uncomfortable watching somebody work differently than I would.

Twenty-five years of writing software and I still can't hand off product. We have an engineering team. Plenty of the work runs without me now. Support moved off my plate this year and product is slowly getting spread around. The core of it stays with me. Identifying devices and matching people across sessions carries enough judgment calls that I want to be in the room for them. Part of that's honest self-interest. I got into software because I like building software and I've been doing it my whole life. Giving away the part you actually enjoy feels like a strange thing to volunteer for.