How Nick Shackelford Picks Products After $200M on Meta Ads

Nick Shackelford has spent over $200M on Meta ads and runs paid for 7 DTC brands that all share one thing: a subscription engine underneath them. His agency, Structured, spends north of $15M a month. He flew to Hong Kong and sat down with us to break down how he actually picks products and runs brands in 2026. We’ve consolidated everything from this episode, into one playbook. Download it for free: https://www.elevatorgoods.com/talks/nick-shackelford In this episode you will learn: \- How to know if a product is worth backing before you spend a dollar, and the five traits that make scaling easy \- Why the best products sell themselves on repeat, and the simple math that tells you if your business will ever flow \- How to run ad tests that teach you something even when they fail, and why patience is what most founders run out of first \- Why anyone can copy your entire brand overnight now, and the only two things that still protect you \- How to decide what to keep and what to walk away from, using the framework Nick runs across 7 brands \- Why equity is usually the wrong trade early in your career, and what actually keeps great people around Follow Elevator: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elevatorgoods X: https://x.com/elevatorgoods Website: https://www.elevatorgoods.com Follow Monish Sabnani (Host): Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/msabnani93/ X: https://x.com/msabnani93 Follow Nick Shackelford: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamnickshackelford X: https://x.com/iamshackelford LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickshackelford Chapters: 00:00 Intro 01:00 From soccer coach to $100M on Facebook ads 04:00 Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and getting close to the manufacturer 08:30 The state of e-commerce in 2026 13:00 Smoke testing and the bath bomb that flipped overnight 23:00 The Easy-Win product filter 24:00 The seasons of subscription 30:00 The real moat in e-commerce 40:00 Reasons, seasons, lifetimes 44:00 Hire the young gun, Batman and Robin teams 52:00 Why equity is a trap 58:00 Telehealth, GLP-1, and the next wave 1:18:00 Recession-proof DTC #ecommerce #dtc #paidmedia #subscription #shackelford