Hey. Hope you're having a great week. If you were at Beanstalk, hope you enjoyed it. That was a really fun event and one of the only ones I think is worth it. There's not a ton of programming, but there are an incredible number of people to meet and spend time with.

Wanted to give a little update on Winks and some things I've learned so far. Like I said, me being back in the saddle is gonna be good for you. I'm going to have a lot to learn and share.

The main thing I've learned so far is that nothing else matters besides product-market fit.

I haven't personally been part of a company in a while that didn't have it, and running a business before and after product-market fit is very different. There are a bunch of things that matter when you're building an 8- or 9-figure company. Systems, proper management, reporting, all the cadences of how you run the business.

Some of that is important, and some of it just seems important because you're used to doing it. But none of it is the priority until you have product-market fit.

Heck, right now retention isn't even the priority for us. I was super excited to learn subscription from the ground up and run a bunch of experiments across our subscription and retention journey. I still am. We'll get there, but I've completely deprioritized that work for now.

Before launching, I was nerding out about different post-purchase upsell strategies. And then you launch and realize there aren't enough people going through the thing to justify all the time you want to spend on it.

There is a caveat there. An upsell can help us afford a higher CAC, so it's worth getting an MVP in place. I'm just not going to spend the week perfecting it when the bigger issue is getting people to want the product in the first place.

Here's what I'm focused on instead.

We shipped a new version of the website today. New offer, new messaging, new design. A lot of it came from Listen Labs user research, feedback on X, and some early consumer insights data we got back.

It's definitely not perfect, but I think it's a pretty big step in the right direction. I'm excited to see how it performs. There are a bunch of things I would've liked to spend more time on, but I'm going to keep iterating on it live.

That's pretty much the whole plan with Winks right now. Put messages and offers out there, see what resonates, and keep changing things as we learn. I'd love to have all the answers before we ship, but we don't.

And that's the biggest reminder for me this week. All the stuff that can feel like running a business, the reporting and systems and meetings, can turn into playing business if you're spending your time there before you've figured out product-market fit. I know how to spend a lot of time on that stuff. Right now I need to spend it on the product, the offer, the messaging, and getting feedback.

A few other quick learnings:

1. Trybe has been really fun. We're starting to get a lot of content back and we're getting into our weekly calls and coaching. I love working with creators directly, teaching them and learning from them. This is probably the biggest focus right now, and it's been one of the most fun parts of getting back into this.

2. We've got our first whitelisting content coming back soon, along with our first few influencer posts. I'm excited to see what we get back and what works.

3. Our top ad right now is one of those AI slop animations. So we're gonna go pretty hard at building more of those. I didn't know that would be the thing working, but here we are.

4. I also signed up for Cut 30 myself. I'm going to set up a new Instagram and go on this content journey. I don't think I'm ever going to be an amazing yapper (we'll find out), but I want to learn by doing. I think making content myself will make me a better marketer and creative strategist, and help me work with our creators better.

Email hasn't been a huge priority, but we've still been able to keep things running there, partly thanks to Omnisend.

Partner of the week: Omnisend

Getting to choose the stack from the very beginning of a company is rare, and it's how we ended up on Omnisend.

It wasn't about price. I wanted to know whether I could run our whole retention program out of Claude and Codex instead of clicking around inside an editor, and Omnisend has an MCP, so it was the one place I could actually test that. Three weeks in we've got 27 flows built and 13 live, with an email design system underneath so they hold together as one brand.

I won't tell you it's better than whatever you're on. I'll say that about a week in I stopped thinking about the tool entirely, and that's probably the nicest thing I can say about software.

If you're shopping, I'd push back on the idea that the expensive option is the safe one. Go pull your own usage before you renew.

Not on Omnisend? Email and SMS for ecommerce, 150,000+ brands, averaging $79 back for every $1 spent. Migration is free, takes 5 days, and plans run up to 35% less than the main competitors.

Try it free here.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Cody