#17 Scaling from $15M to $50M+: How to Break Through

Before founding RetentionX, I spent over a decade building and operating eCommerce businesses including several 9-figure brands.

In every business I helped scale, I reached the same point: growth would flatten, playbooks would stop working, and everyone would scramble for the next fix.

The first time, I blamed the business model.The second time, I started thinking much harder about it and was able to notice something that changed how I thought about DTC business and growth. Simply by looking.

For example, two brands have the same products, same budget, and same cost structure, yet wildly different outcomes. Why?

The answer is not obvious when you are simply looking at revenue, only when the customer curve is overlaid it becomes crystal clear.

One of these business truly understood its customers and was playing a different game entirely.

Besides me, 99% of growth strategies and content you will come across are quite focused on just customer acquisition. Why is that? 

Easy. That’s where the money flows. Only shareholders make their money on profit. Other people make money on fees tied to revenue or media spend. So, they rarely ask, “What happened to that customer after we acquired them?”

In their world, it’s better if you pay for them again. Once you understand that, you can see its downstream effect in your numbers over time quite clearly.

That said, the acquisition frenzy can actually work well and is necessary, you just want to make sure that when the rug gets pulled, or a plateau kicks in, and you are prepared and not fragile. This is because at scale, CAC’s increase, costs go up, and at some point you can no longer finance customers' churn with new customer acquisition.

Okay coming back to the charts. Take a look at those same two business. This time, I overlaid revenue contribution by customer type.

As I mentioned, the difference is now obvious. Brand #1 reaches the point where customer acquisition only covers the losses due to churn, but no longer grows itself. Brand #2, on the other hand, is building a compounding base of return customers, and finances their acquisition efforts through their base.

My Takeaway: Retention isn’t a KPI — it’s the growth strategy.

If this is not a key focus already, don’t worry. You have not missed the boat because It’s never too late or too early to begin. That said, in the world of compounding, earlier is of course advantageous.

A few questions to get started for your business:

If you don’t know these answers, that’s your starting point. If you do, the next step is turning that insight into action. 

Now, I want to share my own guide and process that I used to get started when creating RetentionX and retention led strategies in my previous roles:

I don’t mean to over simplify, as the above is guide is quite straightforward. But, doing these basics will make a big difference in your business. Then, there are many other advanced tactics in RetentionX you can begin to explore to take things to the next level as you get there.

Below is a quick snapshot of a few features from RetentionX so you can imagine how this would look in your business.

Customer Intelligence:

RetentionX collects all your customer data for Shopify and all other systems to create comprehensive customer profiles. It then analyzes which factors have the greatest impact on LTV.

Product Analytics:

Gain new understandings of which products and categories lead to customer loyalty with powerful new KPIs:

Btw. This is available for all products too. Not just category!

AI Intelligence & Insight:

RetentionX's built-in AI constantly crunches your data for insights, compares to industry benchmarks and finds opportunities. It will calculate the opportunities' direct impact on revenue, and provide guidance on what to do next.

For years, DTC leaders chased growth through acquisition. Now, the conversation has shifted From “How fast can we grow?” to “How profitable can we be?”

At scale, retention becomes the growth engine. Data intelligence becomes the competitive moat and automation becomes the multiplier.

That’s why more than 1,500 brands from fast-scaling startups to household names are investing in RetentionX with an average 12-Month increase in LTV (+36%), Repeat Rates (21%), and an ROI of 300x.

That’s it for this edition!

We’ll walk through our merchandising suite that can be customized for any brand or industry.

Whether you need to adjust product placement based on performance, stock levels or prioritize new arrivals, it’s all at your fingertips.