Without This Number, Your DTC Brand Is Running on Hope

How much can you spend on a customer when the first order loses money? Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern) walks Matt Bertulli (Founder, Pela Case & Lomi), Cody Plofker (Advisor & fmr. CEO, Jones Road Beauty) and Curtis Christopherson (Chief Growth Officer, Ammortal) through the profit model behind consumable brands, using Trevi’s retention data. He measures every customer three ways. 1. Lifetime Value: Profit per customer over 6 months 2. Net LTV: LTV minus what you paid to acquire them 3. Nominal LTV: Net LTV times customers acquired Winks just pushed its CAC under $100. Mike shows why few brands earn $100 back from a customer in six months. Then the hosts split on forcing subscriptions, and Mike warns that longer paybacks have bankrupted brands. Powered By Runneth https://9ops.co/motion-runneth Omnisend https://9ops.co/omnisend Richpanel https://9ops.co/richpanel Skio https://9ops.co/skio-9operators TBAR Partners https://9ops.co/tbarpartners Aftersell https://9ops.co/aftersell-operators Operators Portal https://portal.9operators.com/dashboard Operators Newsletter https://9operators.com/ Chapters 00:00:00 Durables Pay Upfront 00:05:38 Scaling Below 1 ROAS 00:14:52 Pick Your First Channel 00:22:56 Trusting Product to Win 00:27:47 Why Brands Force Subs 00:31:21 Trevi Retention Curves 00:38:14 Heartbeat Days & TikTok 00:44:25 Sub vs One Time Offer 00:51:11 No Sub Before Tasting 00:56:44 Agents vs Hard Cancels 01:02:03 3 Ways to Calculate LTV 01:11:49 Top 10% Pays the Bills