The months it gets worse before it gets better

Why fixing things can look like breaking them

• You stop the spend that looked busy.

  Ads that brought in orders at a loss get cut. Revenue drops. Losses drop faster.

• You change the offer.

  A higher price or a bundle can mean fewer orders at first, each worth more.

• You test before you scale.

  Tests cost money before they return any. That is the point of a test.

• You rebuild something.

  New pages and new flows need time and traffic before the numbers settle.

Revenue is the loudest number. It’s rarely the most honest one.

How to tell a dip from a disaster

1. 1

   Is each customer worth more than they were?

   If average order and margin per order are rising, the foundation is moving the right way. Revenue alone won’t tell you.

2. 2

   Is the loss on each order shrinking?

   You can be losing money overall and still be closing the gap. Watch the gap, not just the total.

3. 3

   Did you decide what “working” means before you started?

   If the measure only gets chosen after a bad month, it will be the wrong one. It’s why we start with what the business has to earn.

It took Justin about seven months and $20,000 to go from losing money on every sale to a 2.61× return on his ads. We told him that before he started.

I would rather you hear it in week one than panic in month four. It’s also why we don’t take everyone on.

Want to see what the months actually looked like? Read Justin’s case study →

Decide what working looks like before you start. Then judge the fix by that, not by how the first month feels.