Ecommerce Playbook: Numbers, Struggles & Growth

In this episode, Richard and Luke unpack a pattern they couldn’t ignore after running 224 sales call transcripts through an LLM:
The #1 issue mid-market ecommerce brands face isn’t that performance is down… it’s that they don’t know why performance is happening.
And when you don’t trust the numbers, you can’t trust the decisions.
Luke walks through a painfully familiar weekly business review scenario—multiple agencies, multiple dashboards, multiple “versions of the truth”—where 80% of the meeting is spent trying to figure out what’s actually going on, and almost none of it translates into confident action.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
Why brands don’t hire help because results are bad—they hire because clarity is missing

The hidden cost of “dashboard chaos” (and why more stakeholders often makes it worse)

The 3-step framework to go from confusion → clarity → action:

Why incrementality (geo holdouts) is the gold standard when ROAS debates never end

How to sanity-check your “real-time” metrics against your closed P&L (and what variance is acceptable)

They also tease what they’ve been building to solve this problem end-to-end: a higher-capacity operator role designed to reduce complexity and speed up decisions—so your team spends less time arguing about numbers and more time changing outcomes.
If you’re leading growth at a brand in the $10M–$100M range and your team spends more time debating performance than improving it, this one will hit home.
Show Notes:
Axon is offering $5K ad credit when you spend $5K. Go to https://axon.ai/en/ctc to set up your first campaign.

Explore the PROPHIT System: http://prophitsystem.com

The Ecommerce Playbook mailbag is open — email us at [email protected] to ask us any questions you might have

Scaling a DTC brand from $1M → $10M isn’t about finding more “hacks,” it’s about focusing on the right growth lever at the right revenue stage.
In this episode, Richard and Joy, break down a practical “one move per stage” roadmap for scaling through seven figures into eight.
What you’ll learn in this video
$1M → $2M: Why creative volume is the unlock (and why the benchmark is ~100 ads/month)

$2M → $3M: Build a marketing calendar (one marketing moment per month) to create “reasons to buy” beyond evergreen

$3M → $4M: The stage where brands stagnate most: offer market fit + offer testing (and why it’s so industry-dependent)

$4M → $5M: Creative again—but at a different level (think 100 ads/week)

$5M → $6M: Product development for LTV (front-end vs back-end products, subscription angles, upsell paths)

$6M → $7M: When “tactics” finally matter—international expansion, audience expansion, email, CS, and other incremental edges

$7M → $8M: Why media buying becomes bespoke (your account structure should reflect what’s working: promos, whitelisting, LP testing, subscription, etc.)

$10M+: The real unlock becomes people—why one A-player operator can outperform 10 average hires

The big takeaway
Most brands don’t need more noise—they need ruthless prioritization. The fastest path to $10M is doing the right thing for your stage, deeply, before moving on.
Show Notes:
See how Attentive helps connect people and the brands they love.: https://bit.ly/4ag8oEJ

Explore the PROPHIT System: http://prophitsystem.com

The Ecommerce Playbook mailbag is open — email us at [email protected] to ask us any questions you might have

In this episode, Richard and Luke break down the system we use to help 8-figure ecommerce brands stop guessing and start making confident decisions about budget, creative, and channel investment.
They walk through the three core models that answer the questions every operator wrestles with:
How much should we actually spend right now?

How much creative do we need to support that spend?

Which channels should we test next — and why?

You’ll learn how to spot when additional ad spend becomes a bad trade, how to plan creative volume around real marketing moments (not vibes), and how to prioritize incrementality testing based on potential revenue impact — not opinion or politics.
If your team would answer these questions differently depending on who you ask, this episode is for you.
What we cover:
How to identify when ad spend stops being efficient

The Spending Power Model and how it sets real budget caps

How creative volume directly affects performance and efficiency

A practical framework for planning moment-based vs evergreen creative

How to prioritize channel tests using incrementality ranges

Why “waiting for perfect data” is often more dangerous than acting
If you’re running or advising an 8-figure ecommerce brand and want a clearer way to allocate budget, plan creative, and make smarter growth decisions — this episode lays out the playbook.

Show Notes:
Get Dataships' free A/B test: https://www.dataships.io/demo

Explore the PROPHIT System: http://prophitsystem.com

The Ecommerce Playbook mailbag is open — email us at [email protected] to ask us any questions you might have

AI promised clarity. Instead, it delivered information overload.
In this episode, we unpack what happens when AI gives ecommerce teams more data than they can reasonably act on, dashboards multiplying, forecasts diverging, tests contradicting each other, and decisions getting harder instead of easier.
Taylor and Andrew talk through:
Why AI surfaces problems faster than it solves them

How “more insight” can actually paralyze operators

The limits of forecasting, incrementality, and optimization at scale

Where human judgment still matters, and always will

What ecommerce leaders should focus on when the data stops agreeing

This isn’t an anti-AI conversation. It’s a reality check.
Because the competitive advantage isn’t knowing more, it’s knowing what to ignore, what to trust, and when to act.
Show Notes:
See how Attentive helps connect people and the brands they love.: https://bit.ly/4ag8oEJ

Explore the PROPHIT System: http://prophitsystem.com

The Ecommerce Playbook mailbag is open — email us at [email protected] to ask us any questions you might have

In this episode, Richard and Tony break down what agentic commerce actually is, why Shopify and Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol matters, and how AI-driven shopping is quietly replacing traditional websites, checkout flows, and even ads.
Instead of customers clicking through pages, filtering products, and checking out manually, AI agents are beginning to discover products, compare options, negotiate price, and complete purchases on behalf of users. That shift has massive implications for marketers, founders, and operators.
You’ll Learn:
What agentic commerce really means (beyond the buzzwords)

Why product data feeds are becoming the foundation of modern commerce

How Shopify’s agentic checkout connects AI directly to your catalog

What this means for SEO, paid media, and brand discovery

Why reviews, social proof, and product structure matter more than ever

How platforms like Meta are making everything shoppable

What marketers should be paying attention to right now to stay ahead

This episode isn’t about hype—it’s about understanding the infrastructure changes shaping the next era of e-commerce and how to prepare before it becomes the default.
Show Notes:
See how Attentive helps connect people and the brands they love.: https://bit.ly/4ag8oEJ

Explore the PROPHIT System: http://prophitsystem.com

The Ecommerce Playbook mailbag is open — email us at [email protected] to ask us any questions you might have