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🧔‍♂️ WHO IS FREE TO GROW CFO

Outsourced CFO and Bookkeeping services for profit-focused DTC brands.

Scaling a DTC brand is stressful.

With messy books and no CFO on your team you run the risk of…

-Hiring too quickly

-Buying too much inventory

-Scaling ad spend unprofitably

-Running out of cash

And that leads to stressful, sleepless nights. We don’t want that for you.

Free to Grow CFO has given hundreds of DTC brands a plan for scaling alongside healthy profit and cash flow. Our plan will work for you too.

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🎤 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

In this episode of The Free to Grow CFO Podcast, Jon Blair sits down with one of Free to Grow CFO’s in-house eCommerce CFOs, Kevin Jornlin, to break down how brands should think about measuring marketing performance when selling across both Shopify and Amazon. They discuss why traditional channel-level metrics often lead to incorrect conclusions, how paid media creates a halo effect across platforms, and why Shopify can appear unprofitable while Amazon looks artificially strong. The conversation dives into blended new customer ROAS, the importance of accurately understanding LTV across channels, and how cohort data can reveal meaningful differences in customer behavior between Shopify and Amazon. Jon and Kevin also share a practical framework for determining appropriate ad spend based on contribution margin and profitability, helping founders make better decisions without relying on perfect attribution.

Key Takeaways

-Channel-level ROAS is misleading and often causes brands to cut or misallocate ad spend.

-Incorrect LTV assumptions can lead to under-scaling or over-spending on acquisition.

-The goal isn’t perfect attribution—it’s understanding financial impact on contribution margin.

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

Kevin Jornlin- https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-jornlin-cfa-650a40b/

Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com

Transcript

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00:00 Introduction to the Free to Grow CFO Podcast

04:23 Understanding New vs. Returning Customer Profitability

11:07 The Complexity of Amazon and Shopify Integration

16:57 Insights from Cohort Models and Retention Rates

22:56 Final Thoughts and Practical Advice for Brands