Matt Byrne, founder of Day One Advisory, works with ecommerce brands every day as their outsourced finance function, helping Shopify businesses understand their numbers, improve profitability, and make better decisions.

In today’s episode, Matt breaks down what actually matters behind the numbers. Not vanity metrics. Not revenue screenshots. But the core financial levers that determine whether a brand survives, scales, or quietly runs out of cash.

Today, we're discussing:

• Why revenue is a vanity metric (and what to track instead)
• The three numbers every ecommerce founder must know: gross profit, contribution margin, and breakeven
• What “good” margins actually look like in ecommerce
• How to know if your paid ads are really working, or just burning cash
• The biggest financial blind spot founders have when making decisions
• The right way to approach tax, cashflow, and avoiding the BAS shock
• Why you should be paying yourself from day one (and how it changes everything)
• The truth about growth vs lifestyle, and what most founders are actually chasing

Connect with Matt
Explore Day One

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Support the show

Want to level up your ecommerce game? Come hang out in the Add To Cart Community. We’re talking deep dives, smart events, and real-world inspo for operators who are in it for the long haul.

Connect with Nathan Bush
Contact Add To Cart
Join the Community

There’s a quiet pressure in ecommerce that’s hard to ignore. Every week there’s a new channel worth testing. A new platform gaining traction. A competitor showing up somewhere you’re not. And before long, “we should be there too” starts to feel less like a question and more like a requirement.

But what if that instinct is actually slowing you down?

That’s exactly what Jaimee Vilela, Managing Director of Cooki Haircare, pushed back against. After acquiring the brand as a lifestyle business, Jaimee and her partner scaled from $179K to over $3 million in revenue in just two years, using just two core channels: Meta and Klaviyo.

In this Playbook:

• How Cooki Haircare scaled from $179K to $3M using just two core marketing channels
• Why “channel addiction” is one of the most expensive mistakes in ecommerce
• How focusing on fewer channels can actually increase clarity and performance
• Why more channels often lead to worse attribution, not better data
• And how building depth in one channel creates a defensible competitive advantage

Visit StudioHawk to learn more.

Connect with Jaimee
Explore Cooki Haircare
Cooki Haircare’s episode
Krumbled Group’s episode
Pet Circle’s episode
Motto’s Fashion’s episode
Kakadu Plumb’s episode
King Kong’s episode

SMS us to request a guest!

Support the show

Want to level up your ecommerce game? Come hang out in the Add To Cart Community. We’re talking deep dives, smart events, and real-world inspo for operators who are in it for the long haul.

Connect with Nathan Bush
Contact Add To Cart
Join the Community

Sam Moore, founder of PYRA, has built one of Australia’s most exciting challenger brands by blending technical outdoor apparel with streetwear DNA. After early roles at General Pants and Culture Kings, and a first brand that didn’t quite go to plan, Sam launched PYRA with a clear vision: bridge the gap between performance gear and fashion. What followed was rapid growth inside Culture Kings, a complex buyback, and a full reset into a DTC-first global brand.

Today, we're discussing:

• Building PYRA inside Culture Kings and buying it back
• The shift from wholesale to a 90% DTC model
• Why niche positioning beats broad appeal in ecommerce
• Turning a brand into a UGC machine
• Using entry products (like hats) to drive LTV Scaling globally through Meta and Shopify
• Markets Product development in technical apparel
• Managing supply chain, 3PL, and global logistics

Connect with Sam
Explore PYRA

SMS us to request a guest!

Support the show

Want to level up your ecommerce game? Come hang out in the Add To Cart Community. We’re talking deep dives, smart events, and real-world inspo for operators who are in it for the long haul.

Connect with Nathan Bush
Contact Add To Cart
Join the Community