Corporate Suits, Customer Ghosting, Wasted Agency Work, and… Plumbers?

This week, we’re coming for the Patagonia-vested suits, the DTC founders ghosting their own customers, the brands wasting agency money, and why your local plumber is probably out-earning eCommerce bros.

Here’s this week’s rants:

🔥 Jimmy roasts the Corporate Suits
You know the ones—strutting around in their $200 vests, mastering the art of saying a lot while doing absolutely nothing. Jimmy is calling out the human versions of ChatGPT stuck on buzzword mode.

👀 John reminds DTC founders that customers aren’t an afterthought
You claim to care about your customers, yet you ship late, ignore support tickets, and act shocked when your retention numbers tank. John’s here to remind you that your customers are your business—start acting like it.

😬 Amer is done with brands hiring experts just to ignore them
You spend five figures on a rebrand only to let your in-house graphic designer tweak it into oblivion? Make it make sense. Amer is begging you—either trust the pros or stop wasting everyone’s time (and your budget).

🤌 Bryan explains why his plumber neighbor makes more money than eCom bros
DTC Twitter loves flexing revenue, but the guy next door fixing pipes is actually taking home more cash. No CPM stress, no algorithm battles—just real margins from real customers who need his services. Maybe it’s time to rethink the hustle?

This edition’s hotter than the corporate suits trying to justify their astronomical salaries. Read it, laugh, and if it stings—good.

The Dying Art of Sales in eCommerce, SaaS, and Beyond! - EP32

This episode dives deep into the shifting landscape of sales—why the old-school, hard-sell tactics just don’t work anymore and how consultative selling is taking over. It’s all about building real human connections, actually listening (instead of just pitching), and understanding what customers really need. Grab your headphones and check out the episode here.

Why My Plumber Neighbor Makes More Money Than 99% of DTC Ecom Bros

Every morning, I watch my neighbor load up his truck, sip his coffee, and drive off to his next job. He’s a plumber. He owns a small business, nothing fancy.. just him, a few employees, and a schedule booked out for months.

And every year, he pulls in more cash than 99% of eCommerce operators I know.

Let’s talk about why.

The Harsh Reality of DTC Ecom

DTC Twitter is flooded with screenshots of Shopify dashboards, flexing on 7-figure revenue. But here’s what they don’t show:

Ad Costs Eating Margins Alive – Facebook and Google are basically landlords, and you’re paying rent just to stay visible.

Shipping and Logistics Nightmares – A fulfillment error can tank a whole month’s profits.

Customer Acquisition Addiction – CACs keep rising, while LTV struggles to catch up.

No Real Assets – Selling trendy products isn’t the same as owning a tangible, appreciating business.

My neighbor, meanwhile?

Zero ad spend – His customers find him via Google, referrals, and repeat business.

High-ticket services – A single job can bring in thousands. No $20 impulse buys.

Insane LTV – When a pipe bursts, people don’t shop around for months. They call the guy they trust—again and again.

Owns his customer relationships – No battling algorithms or fighting for attention.

Ecom’s Dirty Secret: Revenue ≠ Profit

A lot of DTC brands love throwing around big revenue numbers, but let’s talk take-home pay.

My plumber neighbor? He’s clearing mid-six figures with a small team and a low-stress operation. Meanwhile, most DTC founders are lucky if they’re scraping 10% profit after ad costs, logistics, and endless reinvestment.

A $3M/year eCom brand at 10% net is making $300K in actual profit.

A $700K/year plumbing business at 40% net is taking home $280K.

Except one of them isn’t spending every day worrying about CPMs, abandoned carts, and ad platform bans.

The Takeaway? Build a Business, Not Just a Brand

Ecom isn’t dead—but blindly chasing scale and vanity metrics is. The guys quietly making money aren’t flexing on Twitter; they’re solving real problems for real customers with real margins.

So before you launch your next drop-shipped gadget, ask yourself:

Do I actually have pricing power, or am I in a race to the bottom?

Do my customers NEED this, or am I just hoping they want it?

Am I chasing revenue, or am I actually building wealth?

Because right now, my plumber neighbor is making more than you. And he’s not even running Facebook ads or selling on Tik Tok.

Hired an Agency or a Contractor Just to Ruin Their Work?

So you want a rebrand, replatform, refresh or any other thing that is preceded with a “re”?

Here is some free advice. Do not hire contractors or agencies if you are only going to run their work 60 days later. There is absolutely zero point.

You want a beautiful website? Perfect!

But, do not then have a print designer work on the UI or even worse on the UX of a website. Your one designer can’t be good at print design, email, UI, UX, etc. 

We have brands asking us to redesign their boxing experience. All the time. Do you know what we say? NO! 

So when you get a little voice to give your in house graphic designer tasks to update your website that was refreshed by a seasoned professional — tell that voice no.

If someone in the organization says…we do not have the budget…find a way. There is always a way. There are tons of agencies and contractors that are willing to find a way to help with right expectations.

It does not have to be some rock star proven agency or freelancer…it can be someone hungry but that it fits the mold.

Do not make a $50K…$75K…or $200K investment if you are not going to upkeep it.

I hope you would not allow a doctor that does family medicine to do a brain surgery…so do not let just any “designer” dictate your brand and user experience.

Corporate Suits or Professional _____

Let’s talk about everyone’s favorite professional (enter your favorite word here)_  – the Patagonia-vested man or woman roaming your corporate halls. 

You know exactly who I’m talking about. These folks can be easily spotted in their natural habitat: standing in glass-walled conference rooms, using words like ‘synergy’ and ‘leverage’ while contributing absolutely nothing to the conversation.

They’re the ones who’ve mastered the art of delegating their own job, wearing their $200 corporate vest like it’s some badge of honor. 

Sir, that vest isn’t fooling anyone – we all know you’ve never done anything more strenuous than hitting ‘reply all’ or “forward” on an email.

What really kills me is watching these suits dance through meetings, spewing buzzwords like a broken ChatGPT. ‘Let’s circle back to optimize our strategic bandwidth for maximum stakeholder value.’ 

Translation: ‘I have no idea what I’m talking about, but I need to justify my multi six-figure salary somehow.’

The best part? These are the same people who couldn’t find their way around an Excel spreadsheet if their bonus depended on it. But boy, can they coordinate a calendar invite for a meeting about planning the pre-meeting for next week’s actual meeting, wasting everyone’s time.

Here’s a wild concept: How about actually doing something instead of just talking about doing something? Your fancy MBA doesn’t impress anyone when you’re asking the intern to fix your PowerPoint formatting for the third time this week.

To all you corporate suits out there: Your Patagonia vest isn’t a personality trait, and neither is your ability to turn a 5-minute conversation into a 2-hour strategy session. 

Either roll up those perfectly pressed sleeves and do some real work, or admit you’re just expensive office decoration.

Your Customers are Not Your Problem… They are Your Entire Business.

Every DTC founder loves to talk about how much they care about their customers.

Until that customer actually asks a question.

Then suddenly, it’s radio silence.

• You ship late.

• You ignore support tickets.

• You treat your customers like an inconvenience instead of the only reason your business exists.

And you wonder why your retention sucks?

The brands that win long-term are the ones that treat customers like humans, not just transactions.

Look at Amazon. You think people shop there because it’s the cheapest? It’s not. Plenty of stuff on Amazon costs the same (or more) than other sites.

But Amazon removes friction at every step:
✅ Fast shipping (because they don’t hold inventory hostage for five days like half of you do).
✅ Seamless returns (not some convoluted process designed to make people give up).
✅ Zero bullshit (their default assumption is the customer is right).

Amazon isn’t winning because they have the best products. They’re winning because they make it stupidly easy to buy and trust them.

And while you can’t out-Amazon Amazon, you can do something they can’t which is build a real community.

Because people don’t just want to buy products. They want to buy into brands they connect with.

The best DTC brands make customers feel like they’re part of something bigger. They create loyalty that ads can’t buy. And when you nail that?

Customers don’t just stick around, and they bring others with them.

And that’s a wrap on this week’s unfiltered takes! If you’re hooked on our no-BS rants (or just love the chaos), be sure to hit that Subscribe button and let us keep your inbox spicy. 🌶️

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Have an ASOM day ✌️