Oct 2, 2026 · 20 min · 13 segments
Being wrong can be just as useful as being right, especially when you have a decade of predictions, opinions, and business lessons to look back on. In this episode, I revisit more than a decade of my…
So the first one, first thing I got wrong about over the last 10-ish years was wrong about paid traffic.
I spent years preaching kind of some, looking down my nose, hating paid traffic, thinking it was overly reliant upon this toll booth that you didn't have to pay, weakened your business, built my businesses completely around organic traffic, almost exclusively.
But increasingly, I think two big mistakes with that approach was short-sighted.
It was kind of naive in that had I used paid traffic to supplement that organic approach, man, I can't even think about how much more value to my businesses I would have been able to build up.
Value to myself, to others, especially, you know, years ago, it was so much cheaper and Paid traffic may not be...
But if you can put money into a machine, you put a dollar in and get $1.50 in profit out.
I think if you do it smartly from a contribution margin perspective and you think about LTV and you do it in a sophisticated manner as opposed to just a top-line manner... can be a really great primer to your overall business economics.
And I think today, circa 2026, I've mentioned this stat before, but our e-commerce trends report that got released earlier this year said that 97% of all stores are using paid traffic.
I still am trying to do a lot of organic, a lot of content creation, but very much have come to embrace amplifying content that does well organically with paid spend behind it.
And it makes me think too, it's good because it makes me think what other things in business have I been pooping on that I need to give a second look to.
So the first one, first thing I got wrong about over the last 10-ish years was wrong about paid traffic.
I spent years preaching kind of some, looking down my nose, hating paid traffic, thinking it was overly reliant upon this toll booth that you didn't have to pay, weakened your business, built my businesses completely around organic traffic, almost exclusively.
But increasingly, I think two big mistakes with that approach was short-sighted.
It was kind of naive in that had I used paid traffic to supplement that organic approach, man, I can't even think about how much more value to my businesses I would have been able to build up.
Value to myself, to others, especially, you know, years ago, it was so much cheaper and Paid traffic may not be...
But if you can put money into a machine, you put a dollar in and get $1.50 in profit out.
I think if you do it smartly from a contribution margin perspective and you think about LTV and you do it in a sophisticated manner as opposed to just a top-line manner... can be a really great primer to your overall business economics.
And I think today, circa 2026, I've mentioned this stat before, but our e-commerce trends report that got released earlier this year said that 97% of all stores are using paid traffic.
I still am trying to do a lot of organic, a lot of content creation, but very much have come to embrace amplifying content that does well organically with paid spend behind it.
And it makes me think too, it's good because it makes me think what other things in business have I been pooping on that I need to give a second look to.
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