The Importance of Contribution Margin in a Downturn Economy

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In this conversation, Abir from UpAccounting.com discuss the key financial metrics that e-commerce brands should focus on. He highlights the importance of contribution margin ( the money left over after deducting variable expenses from revenue) along with emphasizing the significance of operating cash flow as the ultimate measure of a business's financial health.

The conversation shift to the challenges of forecasting revenue for events like Black Friday and provides advice on managing cash flow and inventory during peak seasons. Abir also cautions against common financial pitfalls, such as over-investing in fixed expenses and not maintaining financial discipline during periods of success. Lastly, he highlights the significance of robust historical data and reliable revenue projections as a brand (or agency) prepare for an exit.

Key Takeaways:

• The 4 key financial metrics for e-commerce brands

• The importance of forecasting revenue for events like Black Friday

• How to avoid common financial pitfalls, such as over-investing in fixed expenses

• Why accurate historical data and strong retention numbers are crucial for businesses

• The importance of NOT relying solely on first-order profitability

• How different acquisition channels can impact customer retention

• Why you need to understand your numbers and build good relationships with banks

• What to consider with revolving lines of credit for scaling businesses

To learn more about Abir and the UpAccounting team head here: https://upcounting.com/

To learn more about the Foxwell Founders community or to join, head here: https://www.foxwelldigital.com/membership

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Full Transcript:

Tris Dyer (00:01.305)

I'm going to bring this over here so I'm not looking at side of my head, although that is my best angle. OK, right. Edwin, you all set? Ready as I'll ever be. OK, cool. Hi, guys. Welcome to Foxwell Founders podcast. I'm Triss. And we have here today Abir from Up Accounting, which is an e -commerce accounting firm. So Abir has previously run some e -commerce brands like ExoProtein, and now he runs an agency. So he was able bring us a really cross -functional perspective of how to do accountancy

Edwin @ Snappic (00:09.129)

Yeah, I'm good.

Edwin @ Snappic (00:15.751)

I'm Edwin.

Tris Dyer (00:30.817)

e -commerce brands and agencies and everyone alike and kind of what are the real numbers we need to be looking at. So, Edwin kick us

Edwin @ Snappic (00:38.495)

So, Tris said it, I wanna hear it. Tell me, what are the real numbers that we need to be focusing on when you're looking at an e -commerce company? What are the key metrics when they come to you, those are the first digits that you're

Abir (00:52.14)

That's a great question. obviously there are a lot of numbers that we work with. mean, we're accounts. That's what we like to look at. So we have our spreadsheets with tons of numbers, but I think the ones that are perhaps less commonly looked at by brand founders themselves, because like revenue is important. I'm going to look at revenue, but everybody does. So that's not really revolutionary. I'd say the big ones are one of the, well, one of the biggest ones is contribution margin. Now I'm glad that in the last year or so there's been a lot more discussion around that concept amongst agencies, brand

Edwin @ Snappic (01:00.149)

We'll do

Abir (01:22.066)

founders as well. It has kind of risen up the ranks in terms of the general lexicon amongst DTC folk. Sorry.

Edwin @ Snappic (01:27.337)

Give us a breakdown on contribution margin. How are you actually calculating

Tris Dyer (01:29.165)

Yeah.

Abir (01:35.264)

Yeah, absolutely. a lot of people have started to understand it, but the simplest way to think of it is that it's basically the money left over from all the revenue that you generate such that you're taking your revenue, deducting all of your variable expenses and what's left is your contribution margin. So variable expenses, there's a little bit of nuance to this, but the simplest way to think of it, it's those expenses that scale more or less directly with increases in revenue. So your inventory expenses, shipping expenses, advertising expenses, transaction fees, stuff like that. Those are the most

common ones. And the reason it's such a useful number, yeah, go ahead.

Edwin @ Snappic (02:09.386)

Employees are we taking out employee salaries as well or no?

Abir (02:13.292)

Typically, no. So anything that would be what we call fixed expenses, we don't include in that number because those are the ones that if this is the simplest way to think of it. If I were to double my revenue overnight, just, just like that, would that expense change? Employees typically don't. Now you may argue on a longer term basis that my customer service employee costs will go up and there is some element of truth to that. So in reality, nothing is, it's not binary. It's not perfectly fixed or perfectly variable. Things kind of exist on a spectrum, but for the purposes

most kind of brand founders kind of doing their math on a day -to -day basis, employees usually keep out of it because it doesn't really scale instantly.

Tris Dyer (02:49.005)

Yeah. So you're not bringing in the cost of toilet paper and stuff like that. You're just bringing in what will scale as you scale your scale, as you scale your sales. So you're talking ads, you're talking inventory shipping. Does that come into it as

Edwin @ Snappic (02:51.209)

Yeah.

Abir (02:57.984)

That's exactly it.

Abir (03:02.934)

Typically, yeah, so if you're shipping twice as many goods out, your shipping expenses usually will more or less correlate linearly with that. So you would include that.

Tris Dyer (03:09.971)

Mm. OK, OK. So I mean, years gone by, people were talking about A ROAS or like advertising ROAS, got MER. Now this is obviously the next one. You know, we're getting closer to that how much money I got left kind of number. Is there an evolution of this or is that kind of this is the number that people should be looking at really to kind of guide any decisions. Is it making me money or

Abir (03:36.096)

That's a great question. So what's nice is that because people have been in the last couple of years, focused a lot more on the financial side of the business, which I think is extremely important. I'm very excited about it. And people have kind of learned about the concept of contribution margin. The risk is that you may swing too hard in that direction. And then people think that it is truly the one number that matters. And it is absolutely a very important one. However, it is not the one number that matters. If I had to pick one, it would be operating cashflow. Cause at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how much contribution margin you have. doesn't matter how much net profit you have.

It really just comes down to do you have cash flow being generated from the business that you have or how much if you're you know, Have running off a lot of debt or venture capital funding then you can kind of run on a negative basis But at end of the day the cash flow is what allows your business to be alive the reason Yeah, the reason contribution margin in particular is so Specifically emphasized is because of the fact that it is one of those numbers That's extremely relevant on a day -to -day basis from a scaling perspective and it's also one that is a lot

Tris Dyer (04:20.685)

Makes sense. Makes a ton of sense.

Edwin @ Snappic (04:34.739)

Yeah.

Abir (04:35.838)

relevant to marketers and a lot of the people in these conversations are marketers so a lot of times that's the one that they can control so a marketer is not necessarily going to be the one pulling the levers on how much do you pay on rent how much you pay for your front office staff or your HR department stuff like that so this to an extent kind of isolates the things that are within the marketers control and that's why it's such a fun number to focus on and it is important but for a founder cash flows what matters

Tris Dyer (05:01.177)

Gotcha.

Edwin @ Snappic (05:01.307)

So, contribution margin, what is a healthy contribution margin based on different size companies have different healthy levels of contribution margin? So give us sort of like a general rule of thumb.

Abir (05:17.442)

That's a great question. I would say that a healthy contribution margin, there is complexity to this, but I'll try to simplify as much as possible. A healthy contribution margin generally is enough to sustain your business strategy. So if you are, for example, scaling very aggressively, you can run at say a $0 contribution margin. So you're not making any money from the scale. That means that the fixed expenses have to be paid out of pocket. So you're probably burning cash to cover your fixed expenses. Now, if you have venture capital funding, okay, you can

that that's a viable strategy. If you're bootstrapping, then your contribution margin should be high enough to generate enough cash flow to cover your fixed expenses, give you some sort of profit and also accumulate enough cash so that the next time you to place a big inventory order, you can afford to do it. So the right number does depend a little bit on strategy. The shortest rule of thumb I give you is that if you have reached a scale where your recurring customer revenue is enough to cover your fixed expenses, then you can basically spend as much

you want on new customer acquisition. So essentially you want to break even on the new customer acquisition so your new customer contribution margin can be a zero. It means you're not losing any money for acquiring those customers and your returning customer contribution margin is covering all your fixed expenses so your net profit is zero. So you're not losing money you're just roughly breaking even. That's the most aggressive you can get but it is a tricky dance to play because as we all know meta doesn't like work perfectly the way we want to all the time.

Tris Dyer (06:42.369)

Yeah. Talk to us. Talk to us in October when things start to get a bit shaky before Black Friday. Right.

Abir (06:47.305)

Exactly.

Edwin @ Snappic (06:48.786)

I wrote I like as a side note I was at the gym and I was talking with one of the other guys at the gym who was like on sled thing and dude was like dying and it turns out we were joking around and it turns out that he's like a meta engineer like he's he's like high up in and then and then I was we were joking and I was like how are you gonna feel in October and it's like probably worse than this

Abir (07:05.559)

Get out.

Abir (07:13.974)

Yeah

Tris Dyer (07:16.77)

Yeah, I'm sure with the brands though, you're working with, right? In October, like this is the thing, right? So that's obviously the most aggressive. Why? Because we say kind of, you know, when we're buying with meta ads, sometimes we kind of say in that instance, look, you got to accept a lower return at that point to get a better return in November. We're coming into Black Friday now. We're coming with we're all talking about Christmas. I mean, it's middle of the summer, but we're talking about Christmas. Why? What kind of

What kind of advice are you giving to brand owners specifically on how to manage that? Not just cash flow, but actually cash in the bank. How much do they need to have to survive that, we'll call it winter, but ahead of the summer?

Abir (07:53.856)

Yeah, it's a great question. It really does come down to a certain extent to the brand's strategy with respect to how aggressively they want to acquire customers during that time period. So while I think as a general rule of thumb, this is not often recommended as an approach because of the whole philosophy of like cheap customers don't really give you a great LTV. But let's say for the brands who think they can pull that strategy off. Oftentimes what they'll do is that they're happy to go a little bit maybe like cash flow negative, maybe be a little bit more aggressive on their acquisition during the Black Friday or BFCM season.

because they know that if they can retain those customers long term, it's worth it for them. So if that makes sense for them, that's fine. But I think that the broader sort of advice would be whatever that strategy you have that you want to deploy during that BFCM season, make sure that you have an adequate amount of cash to be able to kind of fund it. But more importantly, make sure that you're planning for the purchasing that's going to have to happen one, two, three months ahead of BFCM so that you don't run out of stock. That's the worst thing that if you're having a killer BFCM and you run out of inventory, you don't want to that situation.

Tris Dyer (08:51.809)

light me up.

Abir (08:54.229)

And on the flip side, you'd also want to overorder inventory and then have a horrible BFCM and then just kind of sit there on stock that you can't move. So that planning needs to happen well in advance, obviously, and even for that purchase to be placed, you need to make sure that you have enough cash. So be conscientious of the cash reserves you need to accumulate during May, June, July, so that if you have to place your orders in August and September to make sure that everything's there and ready for BFCM, you're ready. because of, and it depends on the manufacturing kind of

chain for any particular brand and how much lead time they have but that is why on the one hand when a marketer talks about planning for BFCM in April that might seem like okay I mean some people maybe get excited about that but some of them it's a little bit early like I can set up my campaigns you know closer to August September start filling up my funnel whatever but when it comes to the operational side and inventory and cash flow you do need to start planning quite quite a while in advance

Tris Dyer (09:46.585)

While advanced, yeah. And so with the, I suppose, with the focus on BFCM coming up and placing that order, with marketing agencies and people running media, we can do forecasts. We can say, look, this is what's selling, this is what's sold before, this is the CPMs that we're expecting, all this kind of stuff. We got a of media detail that will give us. What kind of financial stuff are you looking at from say, say I'm a shoe brand and I'm selling 50 SKUs.

What kind of stuff am I looking at from a financial standpoint to go? Where do I need to be at? Because I understand it from media and a lot of people will understand it from media standpoint, but financially there must be some sort of indicators that I need to hit to know we're going to have a good

Abir (10:27.978)

Yeah, absolutely. So I think that not to oversimplify, but I think this does hold true for a lot of brands. You can build a good financial model that's pretty thorough with really three major components. The first one is your sales because that decreases your inventory and brings in cash. The second one is your cash forecast, which is decreased when you make inventory purchases and increased by sales that come in. And the third one is your inventory, which is decreased when you make sales and you have to make sure you have enough for the sales to happen. And then obviously enough cash to make the purchases that

Tris Dyer (10:43.451)

Yeah.

Abir (10:57.984)

to me is what a brand if they have that and they can do a good job of it they can get a pretty robust forecast and good visibility into the future but obviously the hardest part of that is the revenue side that is the the most tricky thing to be able to forecast so ultimately if for example the agency or the marketing team CMO whatever if they're able to just for the sake of the argument come up with a very robust and very accurate theoretical projection for what sales would be the rest is just math

And it's reasonably easy to be able to figure out, based on that, how much cash will I generate? How much inventory do I need? How much cash do I need to place those orders, assuming my supply chain functions the way it's meant to? So it's kind of simple from there. Really the hardest thing is the revenue forecast.

Edwin @ Snappic (11:42.805)

So I'm sure that you've gotten this question before, but there people that they're trying to revenue forecast for Black Friday, right, for the holiday. And so have you found, of course, not 100 % accurate, but generally acceptable forecasting formula for that?

Tris Dyer (11:42.819)

Gotcha.

Abir (12:05.95)

It's I'm going to say it's nearly impossible to do a good job of this because of the unknowns. But what I will say is that it does. There are factors that help and factors that hurt. So, for example, if you are heavily reliant on just a single sales channel and a single marketing channel and that channel happens to be meta, then it can be a little bit more challenging to kind of predict that. For example, on the other hand, if you rely heavily on Google where search volumes are a little bit more easy to predict, there's a little bit more visibility, a little bit more seasonal stability or consistency.

then it might be a little bit easier. Something like Amazon as well generally can be a little bit easier, assuming of course you don't get your listing shut down or whatever. If you work on the wholesale front, then you can benefit from their purchasing expectations. So they'll set their revenue expectations. They'll tell you what they're going to buy and they're usually whether they're able to sell it is their problem, but at least they can set those expectations. So it'll vary a bit on that, but

In terms of methodologies, mean, because a lot of brands rely so heavily on meta, it is typically kind of difficult to predict that. So if you have historical data, you have a rough sense or a level of confidence with respect to like in theory or in most months, you're able to more or less predict with a reasonable amount of accuracy, like what your ROAS is going to be, what sort of spend levels you're going to be able to hit because you have a good machine in terms of like generating new creative. Best case scenario, you have a creative that pops off and revenue skyrockets. Worst case, maybe it slows down a little bit, but nothing too crazy.

be in a decent situation. And if you live in the world of the cost caps crowd where, for example, at the end of the day, I don't really care because I'll always be profitable because of cost caps, that's great. As long as you don't have very heavy fixed expenses, because fixed expenses mean that you need to generate a certain amount of volume. doesn't if you're a pure drop shipping play, let's just say for argument, you have no fixed expenses, then yeah, you can't not be profitable if you run cost caps in theory. So there are all these levers to consider in that. But when I try to work with a brand on the forecasting side, the simple approach

Tris Dyer (13:48.695)

That sense.

Abir (13:56.586)

we take historical data, we make some sort of assumptions about the future, and we go base case, low case, best case scenario. So if you have that kind of three scenario setup, you kind of get a rough range of where you might fall. And if you plan for the worst and the best at the same time, then hopefully you're able to do a decent job.

Tris Dyer (14:11.991)

Makes sense. So shifting gears a small bit. we're talking a lot about kind of people planning kind of best case scenario for Black Friday and what they should do. I'm a brand, say I'm a brand, I've launched and I've done very well. Things have started to take off and I'm like, holy shit, where's all this money coming from? Getting stacks of hundreds and I put it on my Instagram and people like this. Like, where am I going next? For example, know, like owners at that stage, mean, obviously that's not the common case, like owners, you know.

are looking for the right numbers. What kind of numbers do need to get together and have and make sure that I'm saving enough money for the IRS looking for their money, we're looking for anyone else. There's a lot of stuff that needs to start thinking about, but what are the things that you say to a starting business or somebody who's starting to see success, but there's pitfalls coming and they need to be careful?

Abir (15:03.808)

Yeah, it's a great question. So there's a few considerations there. Firstly, I'd say is what sort of kind of, I guess, goals you have for the brand in general. Are you trying to scale it to be able to hit an exit? Are you trying to run it as a lifestyle business? Are you in a situation where you've been bootstrapping and eating ramen for the past two years and you need to like live life a little bit or just kind of get back to a you know, living comfort level? So depending on those, you're going to determine, you know, how much you want to reinvest in the business versus kind of take out of it, if you will.

Regardless of that, the other major consideration is how reasonably you can expect the benefits that you've seen in the past to continue at a level into the future. So ultimately really does come down to forecasting. Maybe you pop off. I'll give you a simple example. Say a brand that goes on Shark Tank. They go on Shark Tank, they have a massive spike in revenue, their sales are crushing and everything's going great for the first couple of months. They'll get a couple of spikes in the future when Shark Tank reposts their video on a different social or whatever. So you're going to get spikes. But realistically, that three month period

after the episode goes live is not indicative of the next three months or the three months after that. So it really does come down to being able to forecast how things are going to look a little bit into the future and then say, okay, once this feast phase is over, are we going to be in a famine? Are we going to be in a position where we built enough cloud, enough traction that we can now obviously come down, but a bit more of a stable, healthy, sustainable level? What can we expect going forward? As a broad general rule though, I'm perhaps a little bit more conservative, maybe see accountant in me.

But I tell brands sit on a pile of cash so that if you have that worst case scenario in your forecast happen for say six months, you're not in a situation where you have to take really bad debt or investment that are not favorable terms.

Edwin @ Snappic (16:45.321)

How big is the alakash that they need to be sitting on? How big?

Tris Dyer (16:45.369)

Gotcha.

Abir (16:49.524)

It depends on the size of the business, right? So, I mean, kind of rough rule of thumb. Imagine you have shitty results for six months and you don't want to run out of cash.

Edwin @ Snappic (16:59.771)

So basically fixed costs six months. Is that it?

Abir (17:03.36)

Yeah, that's pretty reasonable, yeah.

Tris Dyer (17:03.927)

Yeah, sounds like it sounds like a lot, but also then makes sense. So your fixed costs at six months is like, forget the contribution margin, anything like this is what you need to, or is a runway, isn't it? Right. It's what your runway actually is. And, and, and where are you keeping that? Are you keeping that in a savings scheme? Are you keeping that like in a current account? Like, what are you doing? A checking account.

Abir (17:15.956)

Exactly.

Abir (17:24.032)

depends on what elements you have available, probably a little bit of a mix, so you want to keep some chunk of it obviously like fully liquid in your checking account, but if you have a high -yield savings account, you can put chunks there, and if you're feeling relatively good about it, you can put a chunk of it also into bonds or something. So really depends on what... not crypto! But yeah, it really comes down to what kind of financial instruments are available to the brand, depending on what geography they're in.

Tris Dyer (17:39.351)

crypto

Tris Dyer (17:47.107)

I hear you. Yeah, yeah. go.

Edwin @ Snappic (17:48.829)

and so tell me like you've been around the block, you've seen a lot of different brands, they go up, they go down, spill the tea. Tell us what are some of the things that you've seen brand owners do that you're like, do not, that is a trap. Tell us what is the trap, spill the

Abir (18:08.96)

That's a great question. I I've seen a lot of really poor decisions that make me wonder why I work with, why I'm a service business and I don't just do this myself.

Edwin @ Snappic (18:14.776)

Alright.

Abir (18:21.63)

I've seen a lot of different ones. I wouldn't say that there are some very common ones, but you'll have instances where, for example, I've worked with brands where they have had ads pop off, really, really good performance start to happen, and they've, for example, just had this sort of deeply ingrained thought about very rigid budgeting processes, oftentimes coming from someone they hired from a very large corporation who only knows how to run a business one particular way, and that doesn't really translate well into small brands, because I've seen that mistake often. And so then, for example,

just not really taking advantage of an opportunity when it's there. On the other hand, a very common one is that people just kind of get shiny object syndrome and then just run around and try all these different things, kind of hoping that they'll find the weird combination of magic words that will unlock a scale that nobody else has reached, but that often doesn't happen as well. But in broader terms, I'd say the more common error is that when they do have those feast phases where things go well, they maybe lose a little bit of the financial discipline and they over invest on the

Expense side. So for example, then they'll start making very expensive hires. They'll start, know, they'll get rent on a big office type of thing They'll you know, maybe start taking all these big software expenses with like 12 month contracts So basically put themselves in a position where they're less nimble They're less agile and ultimately you want to be in a situation where as many of your expenses are variable as possible so you are able to always add like move with the ebbs and flows in theory as you scale and if

is there, you can have a higher net operating profit and be more economical by shifting over to more fixed expenses because in essence you're you're paying for the flexibility of variable expenses with a higher cost essentially. So the example would be a simple example. It's a lot you can it can be a lot cheaper to have your own warehouse once you're at the scale to warrant having your own warehouse because you're paying for you're paying rent at a much lower rate. It's your own systems your own people and you're not paying the three

their margin. When you're at a smaller size and you're not sure if you're gonna be big enough to warrant a warehouse, it's just a foolish thing to lock yourself into. So I think that once brands start to see a little bit of success, they just kind of think like, wow, I made it, I'm the greatest, and they don't realize that it's probably gonna go down after some time and they kind of lock themselves into expenses that are probably gonna hurt them down the road.

Tris Dyer (20:39.545)

It's very similar with agency, right? So do I hire a marketer in -house or do I give it to an agency? And the agency is a variable cost because, know, especially if they start charging on percent of spend, it goes up and down. Whereas if you have a fixed cost of a couple hundred thousand dollars, you've got a white elephant sitting there for you and whatever color elephant it is, it's still expensive. It's something you got to watch out for. That's massively interesting.

Just going back to that then, I mean, if you're looking at those and again, you're not necessarily, your people going through Feast and everything else like that and Shopify is probably the worst for this, but you get the app and you hear it's ching, ching. If you got an Apple watch, tits to that, your wrist is falling off because it keeps vibrating. How often do you check in the actual numbers? How often should they be looking at it going, this makes a ton of sense to be looking at this on a weekly basis or?

Let's not look at this for a month because we just need to focus on the doing and then go and come back to it. When should we be looking at this?

Abir (21:36.704)

That's a good question. So I'll answer from two sides. The way that we work with brands, which then kind of reflects into what I would recommend to a brand founder to do as well. So for us, it'll depend obviously on the size and complexity of the brand, but oftentimes we'll try to build out dashboards for them so that they're able to check on some of those key metrics like revenue, cash flow, stuff like that on a daily basis. And then usually we'll do weekly check -ins for things like AR, AP. So if they do sell wholesale, just being able to check on their invoices, AP to have a sense of when they have to pay their

and also if we're running cash flow projections for them we check on those on a weekly basis. And then on monthly basis we kind of do that holistic business review look at the previous month, year over year, month over month performance and stuff like that and if we need to make tweaks to the model we do that at that phase as well.

what I recommend for founders is very similar. Generally, check your cash every day just because looking at your bank account, even though you're not really going to do much of that information, I think it does develop a very good intuitive sense of like what are the ins and outs of your bank account and just to be able to kind of develop intuition, for lack of better term, to know every day. Just look at your bank account to be knowing what's going in and out. It'll take two minutes and it'll also let you feel a little bit of that important stress to know how things are going. So really it's to

Tris Dyer (22:37.782)

every day.

Abir (22:50.308)

to just develop that intuition.

Edwin @ Snappic (22:52.659)

Imagine hitting that face ID every day when you're in a push. That will scare you.

Tris Dyer (22:58.807)

Yeah, yeah, I've been there. I've been there.

Abir (22:59.81)

Yeah, 100%. So check the cash every day. Obviously check your revenue every day as well, but I'm sure most people are doing that. ARNAP, try to check it weekly. So that way you have a sense of like, I know what bills I need to push next week, the week after. And if someone's not paying you, again, if you have wholesale customers, you know who to follow up with. Like don't let that drag because it also just develops a

habit with the customers thinking they can get away with it. So the ARAP on a weekly basis and it's good to go through your transactions as well. If you can go through your credit card statement and categorize in your accounting software or look at the data that your bookkeeper is providing you on a weekly basis to see where the expenses are going, that's also helpful. a lot of it in theory, if everything's running stably, you can also look at things once a year. But the more frequently that you look at things, the better an intuitive sense you start to develop of how things are ebbing and flowing. And so that's why I recommend the more frequent the

But at a minimum, just again, to be pragmatic, because not everybody has the time nor the patience to look at that kind of data. Do

Tris Dyer (23:59.961)

Yeah, yeah, makes sense.

Edwin @ Snappic (24:00.927)

And so, okay, so then going to that then, founders, they're inherently busy people. Sometimes like you need to calculate the contribution margin, but they got things everywhere. How do you just do sort of rough back to the napkin thing without having them pull up like an old P &L sheet basically?

Abir (24:22.966)

Yeah, it's a great question. there, what I recommend is that you develop these sort of like simple math equations, if you will, to be able to determine what your contribution margin will be for a given revenue and ad spend. So essentially it's just the math from your OAS. And so I have a whole spreadsheet that I built out for this. I've shared it in the past. Like people were quite fond of it. So can give it to you guys at all. If you want to put it in the notes to the, to the episode. Yeah. But, but the benefit or the approach that it keeps it simple is that essentially what you're going to do is

Tris Dyer (24:46.128)

We'll put it in the show notes,

Abir (24:54.891)

So for example, my inventory costs are 25 % of my revenue. My discounts are typically 5%. My refunds are 2%. My merchant account fees are 3%. My shipping expenses are 6%, whatever they are. And so assuming those percentages are relatively consistent, which again, if you take a good enough average and you're there's not a crazy amount of volatility in the business, it should be good for a napkin math. So if you keep those percentages, then it's really just a question of depending on all my

is and what my ROAS is, know what my contribution margin should be.

Tris Dyer (25:26.283)

sense, it makes a ton of sense because then you can literally just stick it in and you can work out okay this is what my AOV needs to be, this is what my LTV, so that really helps I suppose for somebody to get in and just kind of quickly go okay I need to know these numbers now. So tell me this when you're talking more LTV versus CAC because obviously that's been a big kind of evoke for quite a while people talking about how we acquire new customers, how do we make more money from them, that's the mantra.

Tris Dyer (25:54.585)

Are you kind of saying to people, Sorry, I'll rephrase that. Like how much are you saying to people, it's okay to not be first purchase profitable, but you know you're gonna get your money back in 30, 60 days time. Like how lenient can somebody be? What's the most outrageous way you've seen someone try to get back in a year's time? Where's the market at right

Abir (26:17.802)

I'd say most brands that I work with try to target first order break even. Some of more conservative ones try to make money on that first order, but ultimately it really does come down to a question of how much confidence you have in your retention data, and that really comes down to how much data you have to a certain extent. But also strategy as well. So some brands that I've worked with, for example, have tried to implement the subscription approach with their products, and obviously there's a varying amount of success. That's like the holy grail of e -commerce, but not everybody, not every product is meant for a subscription.

some brands that have actually been able to do a good job, like shift a significant amount of revenue, like go from 5 % to 50 % subscription revenue. And so if you're able to reach that, then good, you can invest a little bit more, but just make sure that you have a lot of data. So for example, one of these brands that I was working with, they did make a pretty big shift from that 5 % to 50%. But that doesn't, they haven't been doing that for long enough to know if those are high value subscriptions, because inevitably you have people who come in will subscribe because you're forcing them down that part.

Edwin @ Snappic (26:54.143)

Abir (27:17.588)

particular conversion pathway, they'll subscribe and then just cancel after the first order. They got their discount and you're not penalizing them for doing it. So you can do it. So just because you've got people to subscribe, then now you don't have a lot of data on it or the data that you have are like the real subscribers from when you were at 5 % like the people who are like legitimately motivated to be subscribers versus the people that you're forcing into the subscription pathway. So translating those cohort or that those retention numbers that these retention numbers might be a little bit misleading. So for me, when

Tris Dyer (27:23.193)

Yeah.

Abir (27:47.532)

comes to, especially if you don't have a significant amount of venture funding, you don't have a lot of cash flow and you are a little bit more in that kind of bootstrapping zone, if you will.

I like to just say, just go first order profitable. At least you'll be on the safe side. If you eventually kind of get that data to show like, no, no, our retention numbers are actually spectacular, then good. But don't make the mistake of assuming that historical retention numbers based on a particular type of individual, a type of purchaser, a particular cohort, a particular acquisition channel is going to be the same. Like if you're acquiring customers through your organic social media, because you happen to have a big following, that's not the same as when you start acquiring customers through Facebook ads. So just maybe be

is I guess what I'd recommend.

Edwin @ Snappic (28:28.117)

So let's talk outside of subscription products or skincare, things that are naturally recurring, you've seen a ton of companies. how many orders, how many recurring orders is normal within, let's say, a 12 month span, like a 12 month LTV? Is it like one, is it 1 .3, is it two? Because I'm always surprised when I see that digit. And so I'm interested to hear what that digit is from you.

Tris Dyer (28:28.13)

Makes tons of sense.

Abir (28:56.066)

It's a good question. don't know if I'd have the exact number off time ahead, but it's definitely below it too. I want to say it's like in the 1 .3, 1 .4 range. Unless you have subscription or skincare beauty where it's like naturally recurring, for most brands at best you're 20 % additional LTV out of the like a given acquisition cohort. Yeah.

Tris Dyer (29:18.977)

small amount to be typical. So then realistically at that recurring, especially after sending all the emails, doing all the stuff, where's the actual first purchase profitable? You mentioned there as conservative. Like if somebody's actually making money on it, that's really conservative. Realistically, where's the growth here? If the fastest growing brands you're working with are not necessarily first purchase profitable, they're the bank on second purchase.

Abir (29:45.376)

Well, the tricky thing is comparing basically these if you're into the fitness world, it's like comparing natural bodybuilders to the ones who use PEDs, right? If you have venture funding, like you just can't really compare those to the ones that are bootstrapped because they can acquire brands at a clip that or at a CAC that just can't it's not sustainable. So they have this long term vision for like, okay, we'll just kind of aggressively attract the market or attack the market rather acquire all this revenue and then we'll figure it out later. But for regular brands, you just can't do

Tris Dyer (29:58.541)

Right.

Abir (30:15.322)

which is why I don't like to recommend going first order profitable unless you have very strong retention data because ultimately the problem is that even the amount of recurring revenue that you can experience is a function of how much you're acquiring a month or two ago. So if your point of view is that, I'm just going to be always first order break even. So yeah, if your first order break even while having a million dollars a month of new customer revenue,

your recurring revenue is going be pretty high because you're just acquiring so many customers. So even if it's 20 % recur, that's 200 ,000. But the problem is that once that comes down to say 200K, all of a sudden you're returning customer revenue. I mean, it's a leaky bucket. Those people are just going to turn out and you're not refilling the bucket fast enough. So eventually it's going to be too low to cover your fixed expenses. So that strategy doesn't work anymore. So that's why you kind of being able to do a little bit more robust forecasting for new customer revenue and returning customer revenues separately and kind of project how that stuff is going to look down the road helps make

Edwin @ Snappic (30:52.489)

Yeah.

Abir (31:15.136)

decisions but that's why the the first order break even is a fairly aggressive strategy that I don't typically recommend.

Tris Dyer (31:24.31)

And so another thing is like, you know, around the channel of where you acquired it, you mentioned there social versus paid ads, organic social versus paid ads. One that we're seeing a lot of recently is actually stickiness for retention is Amazon. So when people go on subscribe and save, we find that significantly more like a higher retention rate than actually somebody who's getting billed from, you know, waterbottle .com. Like they're like, whenever I go away, they can cancel out my card or they're going to retract it.

Whereas if they see an Amazon charge, like whatever, like it's a couple of bucks. Do you find that to be the same? that kind something? Because if you look at that as an LTV, yes, you're acquiring customer for lot more, but you're actually going to make money in the long

Abir (31:55.296)

Basically.

Abir (32:07.102)

That's a great question. So I think it's hard to know for sure because I've worked with brands on this where, for example, they're running subscription. So they have their own program on Shopify and then they have an aggressive subscribe and save program as well. The data on the subscribe and save side is just not good enough to be able to give you like acquisition cohort data to know what the actual TV is. They just tell you, you have this many subscribe and savers. I'm like, all right, cool. But I don't know how, the net movement is there. So, or how many ins and outs. So it's a little bit harder to determine. However, that being said, I completely agree with you because at least from an intuitive

I don't really subscribe and save to anything on Amazon, but I just naturally buy so much stuff from Amazon. When I look at my credit card bill, I'm just like, hey, it's just Amazon. ignore it. So it doesn't really stick out to you.

Tris Dyer (32:44.865)

Yeah, it's just Amazon. Yeah. You put it put the card the bill away straight away. You don't even look at it. You're like, no.

Abir (32:49.416)

Exactly. So it's hard to even know what any particular charge is. You don't really care if everything's kind of running smoothly. You're good. So certainly from that perspective, it's just very stealthy. Let's call it. So it's able to just kind of stay on your credit card. It's a lot less problematic. And the thing about this is this is kind of maybe my own point of view on this, but I think that the problem with the customers that you acquire from Facebook is that almost by definition, they are customers who are susceptible to advertising. So if you acquire a customer through

Edwin @ Snappic (32:58.325)

Thank

Edwin @ Snappic (33:04.53)

Yeah.

Abir (33:19.5)

that person converted because they saw your ads and they were interested in buying your stuff except that now meta knows that they are a purchaser of your particular category of items and now every other competitors ads are going to go to them as well and so there's no reason not to believe that they won't be susceptible to their ads as well. It's like a person who's not very loyal at the end of the day and it's a little bit different I'd say with the Amazon buyer because I'd say to some extent they're just kind of they actively go there try to find a product that they want they purchase it and if they're willing to subscribe the amount of effort that goes

Tris Dyer (33:34.233)

their ads.

Abir (33:49.182)

into for them to go next time, not only identify that they have a subscription, decide that they don't like the product, then go there and start doing the research to find a better product. That's a very big hurdle for most people. So as long you don't disappoint them or go out of stock so that the subscribe and save shipment cancels, as long as you don't disappoint them, why would they cancel? But the ad susceptible people, people are going to constantly be trying to vie for their attention. So those are people that you are much more likely to lose unless you're really doing a spectacular job on the retention side.

Tris Dyer (34:02.979)

Yeah,

Tris Dyer (34:16.941)

Yeah. And then so then the other pitfall you have with Amazon is obviously your FBA. And if you're going to if you're putting all of your stock or three quarters of your stock in Amazon, you're going to sit there with like no stock and hopefully it sells maybe like it's a tough one. It's tough balance to fight, right?

Abir (34:31.572)

Yeah, exactly. Especially because Amazon keeps introducing new fees about like minimum stock level. So you have now low inventory fees and too much inventory fees. So it's just yeah, it gets it gets complicated to navigate that whole world. So don't get me wrong. I'm not a big fan of Amazon, but it certainly has its uses.

Tris Dyer (34:47.994)

definitely cash flow.

Edwin @ Snappic (34:48.095)

So, so walk, walk me through now we're, we're, started talking about it earlier on, but we're walking into the season where, cash reserves are, are going to start getting depleted, right? Because we're walking into holiday and we're making the inventory orders and we're making, might be hiring. How do you, sometimes they're fast growing brands that their top line revenue is going up and,

because they have to make these other acquisitions more inventory, more staff as they're going up, they don't feel the growth, right? Even though the contribution margin is there. How do you coach brands through that? Because they'll go to you and they'll be like, hey, why is my bank account at the end of the month not going up? You're telling me. How do you coach?

Tris Dyer (35:40.867)

Why am I eating ramen?

Abir (35:44.298)

Yeah, I know I've had that conversation very frequently where a brand, the simplest way is like, feel like I should be making more money, but I don't have that much money in the bank. So very common. So there's two aspects to that. I'd say the first and most important one is just understand the math behind it. So it's really just understanding your numbers because at the end of the day, it's not really a mystery. Everything is there. It's in the accounting data. It's in the bookkeeping like processes. So we can figure out where the cash went. Everything's

Edwin @ Snappic (35:52.605)

Yeah.

Abir (36:14.232)

recorded is just a question of actually doing kind of the categorization or the grunt work to record it and then consuming the data. So it's being financially reports or financial reports are created. They're presented. You read them. You understand them. So the data is there. You just need to actually put in the effort to understand it. And then from there also make decisions to say, OK, which of these expenses or which of these cash flows are things that are absolutely necessary versus things that I can change or or make adjustments to to kind of improve the situation that I have or to get the outcomes that I want.

So one part of it is that. The second part is that inevitably if you are planning a somewhat aggressive growth, if you are pursuing certain things, there's a lot of those expenses that even if they're not frivolous, they're just not really top of mind. So you're thinking, okay, well, I need to make sure I have enough inventory cash. got my revenue coming in. I got my three PL expenses and my ad expenses. There are a lot more expenses beyond that, but they're just not quite as top of mind for people. Like people don't think about the fact like, yeah, I got to pay my account in $10 ,000 for filing my taxes. Like it's you pay it once a year. So you don't

think about it. So there are those kind of aspects to keep in mind, which is why it's helpful that and like we mentioned, you can do your best forecasting. It'll never be perfect. So it's always good to also have these buffers, which is why there is opportunities to kind of work with all these lending partners that either give you revenue based financing or asset based lending. Or if you have a good relationship with your bank, you can get a like a revolving line of credit. So just having those opportunities to help them mitigate sort of fluctuations on the working capital side can also

But that's kind of a backup. And you can actively plan to use it if it makes sense. Like, you know you're going to do really well for Black Friday, so you're willing to go into debt to acquire the inventory, because if you don't, then there's a lot of potential profits you'll miss out on. So there are opportunities to use that strategically, but at the end of the day, a lot of it just really comes down to understanding your numbers, because it's not a mystery. It's there. Just most people don't look.

Tris Dyer (38:07.216)

Yeah, they choose not to look and then they get kicked in the face with it. It's like what happened?

Edwin @ Snappic (38:08.066)

But how do you put some emotionally through it, right? Because like, you can show them the numbers, but they're still pissed, right? There a lot of people that are still pissed.

Abir (38:20.17)

Yeah, no, no, that's a great question. So fortunately, at least as an accountant, people don't usually get mad at us. They don't shoot the messenger too often, but some people can be emotional. But so to me, it's really a function of, well, it's our job essentially to make sure that we package the data in a way that is easy for them to consume. One issue that I think a lot of accountants have is that they feel so comfortable with accounting data. They feel so comfortable with spreadsheets and tables that for them it's like, well, yeah, the data is here. Take it

Like it's so clear, it's right there. And they don't necessarily appreciate that for a lot of people. It's not as easy to consume information packaged in that particular way. And so they focus more about the actual accuracy of the numbers, which is important, rather than whether or not the information is consumable by the party that they're giving it to and also whether or not they're going to use that information to make good strategic decisions. So for me, again, having worked a lot on the other side, like the non -accounting side of the world and having worked a lot of founders,

Make it a point that a lot of the data that we provide to our clients is packaged in a way that that's a lot easier for them to consume and understand and ideally giving them advice that also takes into consideration the non accounting side of things because that's the issue a lot of founders Some founders don't read most founders don't get the accounting side and some founders don't really understand the marketing side either and they'll get advice from their accountant They'll get advice from their marketing agency and those two don't really they're complete polar opposites in terms of personalities the way they think about things the way they see the business and so then it's the founders

Responsibility to kind of synthesize strategy from like these opposing advices where that guy's like, yeah Maybe you should spend less on meta that seems like a very big expense and that guy's like we need to spend more on that and we're making such a great row as so it's hard for them to synthesize strategy from that and At best you do have a founder that at least understands the marketing side But oftentimes the finance is still a little bit of an arms -like the way just because again That's not why people get into fine founding brands So really the more we can make that information digestible and easy for them to consume the better they're able to achieve the outcomes because at end

I don't care about doing accounting for the sake of accounting.

Tris Dyer (40:21.481)

they are. The calmer they're gonna feel, the easier it's gonna go and the better decisions they make. It's clearer. This and Abir, that was amazing. There's so much stuff. There's so much information. Please do. I'm fucking, as long as Abir is good to stay, I'm good to go.

Edwin @ Snappic (40:30.95)

Can I ask one one more question?

Abir (40:35.808)

Yeah, I'm good.

Edwin @ Snappic (40:36.889)

So I have one substantive question and one more funnier question. I'm going ask the funnier one first. Hypothetically speaking, not to say I'm going to do it, but if I wanted to expense a Ferrari or a very fancy sports car, how would I do it in actual steps?

Abir (40:55.85)

So it's a good question. I'm probably not the best person to answer that because I'm a CFO guy. So I'm the type of CPA that focuses more on what goes on inside a company. So the tax side, that's my co -founders. They understand the tax side. I don't even do my own taxes. They do my taxes because that's everything post money. What I will allude to without actually saying what can be done is that they're very good at figuring out the available mechanisms that are there for you to take advantage of whatever tax rules exist and the leniency that

Edwin @ Snappic (41:05.822)

Yeah.

Edwin @ Snappic (41:11.305)

Okay.

Abir (41:25.857)

exist in the way tax auditors look at things. I'm not gonna snitch on myself anymore than that.

Tris Dyer (41:31.543)

Hahaha.

Edwin @ Snappic (41:32.979)

What is the wildest thing that you've ever seen expensed?

Abir (41:37.532)

wow. Okay, so I used to work with this one guy who is a fairly well known guru.

One of those like classic Instagram gurus who keeps talking about e -commerce automation and stuff like that, selling courses, pre -built stuff. Yeah, just like exactly dollar bills on it. Like almost to the cringy level of it where it's like just fancy cars, chains and everything. So we were working with him at a certain point. This is before I realized how sketchy he was. We were working with him and we started working on kind of like all just getting his books in order because it was kind of total chaos. And I think the worst one was where he took a whole

Tris Dyer (41:53.529)

Yeah, yeah.

Abir (42:17.326)

I'm not the tax guy. I'm just trying to get his books in order. So I'm like, okay, if you say so you're taking clients out. That's for your tax guy to decide whether or not he's comfortable with that. But

Tris Dyer (42:37.51)

damn.

Abir (42:47.356)

it eventually I dropped the client I was like yeah this is is way too shady so I can't yeah

Edwin @ Snappic (42:50.037)

Yeah, it's good. So now now on to to my more practical question. So revolving lines of credit. Right. So this is a tool that a lot of people that, you know, people hear about a lot of people, they don't use it. Right. And they might take a Shopify loan or they might take a Stripe loan. Those are smaller loans. Right. 50 K, 20 K, whatever. When someone actually needs a revolving line of credit.

Tris Dyer (42:50.531)

Yeah, that's shady as hell. That sounds horrendous.

Edwin @ Snappic (43:19.347)

Like, we're talking, you know, a quarter million and a couple million, right? Really a couple million. How, how, what is the best way you've seen people actually go about getting that

Abir (43:32.8)

A lot

it comes down to the relationship that you have with the bank. Being able to get those very large amounts is not that easy, especially if you have a relatively new and somewhat volatile business. And the thing is that oftentimes banks will kind of make somewhat subjective decisions with respect to these things based on how much data they have and how much familiarity they have with that industry. So if you're working with a local bank, for example, that mostly deals with, I don't know, plumbers and mechanics and, you know, some real estate purchases where there are maybe more

assets that can be there that they can feel comfortable until you have as collateral. It's a little bit difficult for them to understand like this is what is this business you're just like on the internet and you need a million dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's like what do even have like what if I can't get my money back where does it go. There's less for them to be able to take advantage of if you have a lot of inventory that can kind of help but generally e -commerce businesses are asset light by design and that's one of their strengths but that also makes it a little bit riskier from the perspective of the bank. So to a certain extent it comes down

Having a good relationship with the bank that you're working with being able to show a good history of actual like cash flows happening So if you're constantly have an empty bank account, that's not great So showing that you have that that cash constantly coming in can make them feel a little bit better and on top of that Being able to also I guess you set up a credit profile for the business that you have so work with Dun and Bradstreet or whatever to set up your credit profile so that when they want to be able to check on the business they can also see that you have these various

kind of credit lines and instruments that have been established for the business that give credibility to the business's ability to kind of pay it back. Also, in many cases, you might have to put up a personal guarantee. So don't neglect the importance of having a good credit score yourself as a person, because sometimes you do have to give that personal guarantee and it's not ideal, but sometimes that's what has to be done, especially for newer businesses. So if you have personally been financially responsible, you have a good credit score, then that can also help.

Edwin @ Snappic (45:27.861)

Okay, cool.

Tris Dyer (45:29.153)

sense. It's tough one because we see businesses all the time, they're selling, they're getting a good CAC and everything's working. LTV might not be as good as they were expecting and then they're trying to find this credit and it's just a nightmare situation for them because they're trying to float this business that's not really going to go anywhere because they keep...

guess they're making too many orders too big or the order is not big enough and they're not getting the benefit of the discounts so they're not selling for high enough.

Abir (46:00.182)

That's the key thing. You should try to get that line of credit when you look the sexiest. So when you're at your best and you look really good and you don't need it, that's when you ask for it because that's when you'll get it. And it's you don't have to, it won't cost you. Maybe you'll have some small administration fee to have it available, but you have it when you look your best. And so they'll feel that you're less risky. They'll give it to you then you can use it when you need to. But if you only try to get the line of credit when you absolutely need it and your business is not as healthy, it becomes a lot harder.

Tris Dyer (46:29.761)

Yeah, so one last question for me there I suppose is kind of you know We talked to a lot of founders as they grow they kind of go I want to exit you know I want to get out of here what do you you obviously? Do a lot of work in terms of helping founders prep for exits or even do you do work on the other side where you look at? Businesses and go hey, this is not This is is or a good or not a bad idea in terms of buying this business Do you actually do some due diligence on that side? Okay

Abir (46:54.059)

a little bit of

Tris Dyer (46:55.935)

And in terms of the key things as you're starting to scale, what are the pictures you want to start painting as a founder? Like what do need to be having in place? Cash in the bank is nice. Good contribution margin is lovely. What are the kind of key things that you say to a founder, hey, look, you should be thinking about these numbers as you're starting to scale?

Abir (47:15.426)

It's a great question. So I'd say that maybe two broad categories of things that are very important. Number one is very robust and accurate historical data. So anybody who's going to invest in you, they're going to be looking primarily at two things. How have you done and what do you think you're going to do in the future? Like those are the kind of two sides of things. And how you've done in the past is a function of what data you can actually show to them to prove how your historical performance has been. What isn't great is if they come in and they want to look at your historical data and it's a total mess. And oftentimes they speak with founders where

almost in a panicky situation like, I'm talking to this investor, my books are a mess, and I don't want them to see it. So we have to like quickly clean things up to get it to a state where it's presentable. So on the one hand, I mean, let's be clear, the value of having good historical data to understand how your business goes is important, independent of being able to show it to an investor, but it's very hard to convince an investor that you're sophisticated or actually as healthy as you are, or that things are going well if you don't have data to present to them or if they think it's just complete, a complete mess, because it just looks unprofessional at the end of the day. So

Tris Dyer (48:13.529)

Yeah.

Abir (48:15.3)

The historical side is the one big chunk so that you can show with confidence how you have been doing. And the second side is to be able to present forecasts that are somewhat reliable. Part of that comes from the developing the habit and the, I guess, the practice of forecasting over time. Like if you're good at it, you've been doing it for a while, you keep making tweaks and improving your ability to set out good projections, then you can be a little more confident when you present them and you can also back them up when they start inevitably trying to poke holes everywhere and asking questions about them.

And the second aspect is that they're going to be concerned about the longevity of the brand or the potential for it to grow. So the more that you're able to draw clear indications or clear links between certain activities and how that has led to growth and basically use that as an explanation for how you'll continue growing, the better it is. So if you happen to, you know, for example, go on Shark Tank, get that big spike and then come back down and you say like, yeah, my revenue is going to keep going in that particular direction. It's like, well, no, you're not going to go on Shark Tank every six months. So there's obviously something where how good is your meta strategy? Do you have a very strong

influencer strategy. Do you have some sort of approach that's working that is something we can be reasonably confident in when we're projecting out? But the big thing oftentimes for that is the revenue side again. Like the biggest thing they focus on is revenue just from the perspective of the fact that it is the most questionable aspect. Not to say that they're going to invest just because you have great revenue, but if you have a zero profit or your cogs are terrible, your margins are trash, they're still going to want to invest. Like ultimately cash flow matters to them, but the revenue is the

question to answer. Like I said, everything else is mostly math.

Tris Dyer (49:48.185)

Makes sense, makes sense. Man, this was awesome. Thank you so much. Like I'm saying, I'm staying quiet. Usually I'm talking a lot. I'm staying quiet because I'm just listening and absorbing everything you're saying. It's fantastic. So thank you for that. No, no, no. You and I could be good friends if you talk a lot and I'll just listen because I need somebody to listen to. So what we do is we normally do an outro. Edwin, do you want to explain what it is?

Abir (49:58.654)

I also talk a lot, so sorry.

Edwin @ Snappic (50:09.939)

Yeah, so we're just going to outro real quick. I'll do a little spiel. Just to give you a heads up, I drop off or I drop off really fast. So what it means is I'll do my little spiel and then basically out of nowhere, I'll be like, I'm Edwin. And then Tris will have to pick really fast and be like, I'm Tris. And then you'll be like, Veer. And then I'll be like, we'll see you next week. So just be aware. Like it'll come. Like you'll have

sick. I'm here like relatively quickly.

Tris Dyer (50:40.631)

Just say your name.

Abir (50:43.491)

So just to make sure I understood what's my cue. He'll say, I'm Tris and then I should go, I'm a beer. Okay.

Tris Dyer (50:47.233)

I'll say my name, then you say your name. Okay, go.

Edwin @ Snappic (50:49.513)

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so hold on, let me think. Yeah.

Tris Dyer (50:55.577)

We cut this bit out. Showbiz.

Edwin @ Snappic (51:02.997)

Okay, All right, yeah, we're good? Yeah. All right, guys, that's it for us this week. We had an amazing show. We learned about contribution margin, how to do back to the napkin math, the wildest things that we have seen expensed. I'm Edwin.

Tris Dyer (51:03.159)

You going? Okay, go, go.

Tris Dyer (51:18.905)

interest. See you next week. Bye.

Abir (51:19.84)

And I'm a beer.

Edwin @ Snappic (51:21.097)

We'll see you next time.