I keep getting told some version of being patient: it compounds, give it long enough and you'll be fine, and I don't disagree with it fully, I just don't recognize it. Sitting still and waiting it out is not a thing I've ever gotten to do.

And I think if I described the last stretch that way to you, it would be a nicer story than the one that actually happened. 

Short version if you missed the other week: I put close to a million bucks of my own money into a business I’m a minority owner in. 

Last July I got an unexpected capital call, our CC went down, my hold co card was the only one not banned, so we popped off $400,000+ on Google..then another $300,000 to float payroll. 

And right after, my own cash flow got tight enough that I had to sell off my portfolio and take on MASSIVE paid promotional posts for SaaS companies just to keep things moving. I’m talking full blown whore’d out, because there was no salary from the agencies or BREZ, nothing but my own bankroll and a massive looming debt to be owed. Plus back taxes from 2021 I wasn’t structured properly for, that I was only done negotiating in the middle of last year. 

Not a growth flex, but that’s what it took.

And the thing about a stretch like that is it never once let me step out of the day-to-day to go handle it.  

We run hourly updates on all ad accounts. If I raise a budget at 7 am and nobody looks at it by noon, and nobody looks again by 3, I've ruined a profitable day. It's a muscle, it’s a routine of a habit of checking.

My head of performance will come to me with 3 numbers from yesterday 

First time customer AOV, $107

New customer CAC, $65

CAC to LTV, $230

And I go “okay, you could have spent $120 minimum there including product cost” (cause the payback was already hitting month zero, the month we acquired them).  

Cause I believe in the opportunity of where this whole industry is going, I love growth, being responsible for a business unit that everyone needs to perform, and actually believing in the brand.

That's the thing keeping me here and I'm not being cute about that. 

BUT it doesn't cancel out the calls I don't want to be on. The stress doesn't go away just because the belief is real. They sit right next to each other, all day, every day.

And I’m aware of the privilege of what I have before I say this out loud but I have a little bit of a disassociation to the zeros now, just because of how long I've been doing it.

That’s what the years gave me..a higher tolerance because nobody outside of it really sees any of this anyway. 

17 years with my wife and she'll still tell you she doesn't know what I do. Everybody in your life is like that. They see you open a computer, hear you yapping on the phone all day, and that's the whole picture.

There's supposed to be a point where you grow past needing to be the face of the thing you built. Where you're not the audience and the relationship anymore, the business just is. 

That’s the version where I’d FINALLY get to sit still but I don't know when that point is for me. Soon I hope, cause it's exhausting.

See you next week. 

- Shack