Fanatical in working out and reading a book with chamomile tea and a scented candle.

My day usually starts with a run or a high-intensity workout, a cold shower and a 10-minute meditation session. After that, I dive into working at my agency D-DOUBLEU MEDIA.

We help 7-9 figure Ecommerce businesses scale through performance creatives and paid media.

Dennis W.

You're not a creative strategist.

You're someone who screenshots competitor ads and calls it "research."

Strategy is understanding why something works.

Copying what works is not strategy.

It's plagiarism with a marketing title.

If your entire creative process is "let's try what they're doing" — you're a copycat, not a strategist.

Build original angles or admit you're just remixing other people's homework.

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Slashing acquisition costs via performance creatives and paid media for 7-9 figure Ecommerce brands.

Unpopular opinion:

Most founders shouldn't be running their own ads.

Not because they can't learn.

Because the opportunity cost is insane.

Every hour you spend in Ads Manager is an hour you didn't spend on product, team, or strategy.

You're not saving money by doing it yourself.

You're spending your most valuable resource on your lowest-leverage activity.

Hire it out. Stay in your zone.

Dennis Willeboordse 👨🏼‍🦰

True story:

Brand came to us spending $2K/day. Stuck. Couldn't scale past it for 5 months.

Their diagnosis: "The market is saturated."

Our diagnosis: One winning ad carrying the entire account. No system to find more winners.

We didn't touch the budget.

We rebuilt their creative process from scratch. Research-driven angles. Structured testing. Iteration system.

90 days later: $8K/day. Same market. Same product.

The market wasn't saturated.

Their creative system was.

The 5 reasons people don't buy:

1. They don't know you exist
2. They don't understand what you sell
3. They don't believe it works
4. They don't believe it works for them
5. They don't believe it's worth the price

Your ads should solve ONE of these per awareness level.

Unaware? Solve #1.
Problem aware? Solve #2.
Solution aware? Solve #3.
Product aware? Solve #4.
Most aware? Solve #5.

One ad trying to solve all five converts no one.

Focused ads convert everyone they're meant for.

Every winning ad answers one of these:

1. Why should I care? (Hook)
2. Why should I believe you? (Proof)
3. Why should I buy now? (Offer)
4. Why should I buy from you? (Differentiation)

If your ad doesn't answer at least one clearly — it won't convert.

If it answers all four, it'll scale.

That's the whole game.

Hot take:

Most ecom brands shouldn't be running ads at all.

Weak product. No differentiation. Negative margins at scale.

Ads just expose the problem faster.

You're not one winning creative away from success.

You're one honest conversation away from realizing your business model doesn't work.

Paid ads are gasoline.

If your house is on fire, more gas won't help.

UGC is not a strategy.

It's a format.

Brands hiding behind "authentic content" because they're too lazy to do real research.

Most UGC is just pretty people holding products saying nothing.

That's not authenticity. That's aesthetic laziness with a trendy name.

The UGC that works? Built on customer research and real angles.

The rest is just technically acceptable garbage.

This will upset people.

Good.

I'm not here to validate bad business models.

Dropshipping can be a starting point. But if you're still running the same operation 2 years in with zero moat, you're not building, you're gambling.

The market rewards people who solve problems.

Not people who find products before others do.

Your creative team is brainstorming hooks.

Your competitors are studying the ad library.

The brands printing money are reading 3-star Amazon reviews.

Here's what nobody tells you about reviews:

5-star reviews are useless for ads. Written by fans who were already sold.

1-star reviews are useless for ads. Written by people who should never have bought.

3 and 4-star reviews? That's where your next winning angle lives.

These are written by skeptics who bought anyway. People who had real objections but something convinced them.

They'll tell you:
→ What almost stopped them from buying
→ What finally pushed them over the edge
→ What surprised them about the product
→ Who the product is actually for

That's not a review. That's a creative brief.

I wrote a full breakdown on how to extract angles from reviews and turn them into ads that convert.

Your competitors are studying the ad library. Your agency is "brainstorming" hooks. Meanwhile, the brands printing money are reading 3-star Amazon rev

The Gold Mine Everyone Ignores: Why 3-Star Reviews Are Worth More Than Your Entire Creative Team

A client asked me last week: "What's the one thing that matters most for scaling?"

I gave them a boring answer. But it's the truth.

Customer research.

Not the creative. Not the media buying. Not the offer.

The research that informs all of it.

Every winning ad I've ever seen started with an insight about the customer. Something specific. Something emotional. Something most competitors miss.

The brands that scale aren't more creative.

They're more curious.

They talk to customers. Read reviews obsessively. Mine Reddit threads. Study cancellation surveys.

Then they turn that into ads that feel like mind-reading.

That's not talent. It's process.

And almost nobody does it.

The "UGC creator" industry is a scam and nobody wants to say it.

Most UGC is just attractive people reading scripts they don't understand to audiences they've never researched.

That's not authenticity. That's acting with extra steps.

The UGC that works is built on customer research, real angles, and strategic briefs.

The rest is just technically acceptable content that makes brands feel like they're doing something.

Harsh? Maybe.

True? Absolutely.

Unpopular opinion:

Most media buyers are just expensive button pushers.

They optimize what's already there.
They don't create what should be there.

A great creative strategist will outperform a great media buyer 10 to 1.

But media buyers are easier to hire.

So brands keep buying the wrong solution to the wrong problem.

You're not an entrepreneur.

You're a Shopify store owner with a supplier in China and a prayer.

Entrepreneurship is solving real problems.

Dropshipping the same product as 400 other stores with slightly different branding is not a business.

It's a coin flip with extra steps.

If your entire competitive advantage is "better ads" you don't have a business.

You have a temporary arbitrage that's about to collapse.

Build something defensible or get out.

"We're testing."

No. You're guessing with a budget.

Testing has hypotheses.
Testing has structure.
Testing has learning built in.

What you're doing is throwing creatives at the wall and praying.

That's not testing.

That's gambling with a content calendar.

You're not a media buyer.

You're a dashboard watcher who occasionally changes a number.

Adjusting budgets and blaming CPMs is not a skill.

It's babysitting with extra tabs open.

You're not "building a brand."

You're running a Shopify store with a Canva logo and an inconsistent Instagram grid.

A brand has:
- A point of view
- A reason to exist beyond profit
- Customers who would miss it if it disappeared

If your customers would switch for 10% off elsewhere, you don't have a brand.

You have a transaction with aesthetic packaging.

"Our product is for everyone."

Then it's for no one.

You're not being ambitious. You're being lazy.

Picking a niche is scary because it means saying no.

But saying yes to everyone means your message is so diluted it resonates with nobody.

The riches are in the niches isn't a cliché.

It's math.

Narrow the target. Sharpen the message. Watch conversions climb.

"Everyone" is not a customer segment.

It's a cope.

Eugene Schwartz wrote about awareness levels in 1966.

Brands still don't get it.

They run one message to everyone. Then blame the algorithm.

Here's reality:

Someone ready to buy needs an offer.
Someone comparing needs proof.
Someone exploring needs positioning.
Someone hurting needs hope.
Someone asleep needs a wake-up call.

Five different people. Five different messages.

You're running one ad and wondering why it doesn't scale.

It's not the platform.
It's not the product.
It's not the market.

It's you. Talking to everyone. Resonating with no one.

Fix this and watch your "saturated market" open up.

The dirty secret about "scaling agencies":

Most of them scale your spend, not your profit.

Higher budgets = higher retainers.

Your ROAS drops but their invoice doesn't.

Then they show you "total revenue" screenshots while your net margin bleeds.

Revenue is vanity.
Profit is sanity.
Your agency reports are designed to hide the difference.

Ask for profit metrics. Watch them squirm.

Why your retargeting doesn't convert:

You're showing the same ad to people who already said no.

That's not retargeting. That's nagging.

Smart retargeting:

- Different angle than the first ad
- Addresses why they didn't buy
- New proof, new objection handling
- Feels like a conversation, not a repeat

If someone didn't buy after seeing your ad 3 times, showing it a 4th time won't help.

Change the message. Answer what's holding them back.

Entrepreneur

I’m Chris Lang, a storyteller, strategist, and builder focused on helping brands grow through the power of blended ROAS, where email, social, and paid work together to drive results.

Over the past decade, I’ve scaled brands like Fresh Chile and Organ Mountain Outfitters by combining storytelling with data. Whether it’s turning a Shopify store into a top 1% performer or giving back over 500,000 meals, I believe growth should always serve a purpose.

As co-founder of Move, I lead a team that helps businesses turn their brand into a loyal community. We build content strategies that blend channels, streamline your marketing, and drive efficient growth.

Social isn’t just about likes. Email isn’t just about opens. Paid isn’t just about clicks. When they work together, they create loyalty, momentum, and long-term revenue.

If you’re ready to grow smarter, let’s connect.

🏁 Builders Build | Tell Your Story | Move Forward

Chris Lang

Nano Banana Pro & GoMarble AI signal a shift where teams that pair AI with real performance data move faster than those still relying on manual creative workflows.

You can already see the split happening. Some teams are shipping more creative than they ever have. Others are stuck in the same cadence, working just as hard, wondering why performance feels harder to maintain.

It is not talent. It is not effort. It is speed and leverage.

AI is no longer something you experiment with on the side. It is quietly becoming the difference between teams that can keep up with demand and teams that cannot.

Nano Banana Pro & GoMarble are built for that shift.

Most brands are sitting on years of winning ads, but they still start from a blank page every cycle. Ideas get debated. Concepts get recycled. Creative becomes the slowest part of the system.

GoMarble looks at what has already worked inside your account and pulls real patterns and angles from those winners. Nano Banana Pro turns that signal into entirely new static creative using Google’s latest image generation.

Not reskins. Not random variations. New executions grounded in reality.

This is what staying current actually looks like now. Faster output without guessing. Creative that keeps pace with the business instead of holding it back.

The gap is not coming. It is already here.

Want early access?

Repost + comment “nano” and I’ll send the details (make sure we’re connected).

When your email list gets big enough, switching platforms stops feeling like an optimization and starts feeling like a liability.

Not because the current tool is great.
But because too much is attached to it.

Revenue. Deliverability. Years of flows that quietly work in the background. Segments no one has touched in months but still drive sales every day.

So you stay.

Most founders I know do. I did too.

The problem is not price or features. It is the fear of disruption. The fear that a single mistake cascades into missed sends, broken automations, or a few quiet days that show up later in the numbers.

That fear keeps people locked into systems that are harder to operate than they need to be.

At a certain scale, the real cost is not what you are paying the platform. It is the mental overhead of managing something fragile.

What finally changed it for me was realizing the risk I was guarding against was not the switch itself. It was unmanaged complexity.

I moved to Omnisend and nothing dramatic happened. Which was the point.

The core mechanics stayed the same. Flows. Automations. Campaigns. The difference was how cleanly everything ran and how little attention it required from me day to day.

They handled the migration. The business kept operating. Revenue kept coming in.

That is the shift most people miss. The decision is not about moving tools. It is about removing a source of friction you have normalized.

If email is already a meaningful part of your revenue, the question is not whether switching is scary.

It is whether staying put is quietly costing you more than you think.

*I partnered with Omnisend so if you decide to migrate, you save money while reducing the downside of the switch.

https://lnkd.in/gz9kXNW9

Reporting used to be busywork.

Copy numbers. Rebuild slides. Explain the same changes every week.

Gamma Remix kills that.

You drop in a CSV.
It rebuilds the entire deck.
Not just numbers. Actual context.

What changed.
Why it matters.
What to pay attention to next.

Every update takes seconds.
Every report reflects your latest data and the story behind it.

No manual slide edits.
No spreadsheet gymnastics.
No explaining the obvious.

If you live inside reports, this is leverage.

I’ve partnered with Gamma to make reporting faster, clearer, and actually useful for operators.

Comment REMIX and I’ll send it over.

https://lnkd.in/gb8aA744

You log into LinkedIn during lunch or late at night.
Not to scroll. To look for exits.

Better roles. Better companies. Remote. Flexible.
Something that feels like progress.

But even the good jobs look the same.
Different logo. Same calendar. Same dependency.

You are not burnt out from work.
You are burnt out from permission.

Permission to take time off.
Permission to earn more.
Permission to make a decision without a meeting.

Most people I talk to are sharp operators.
They ship real work. They carry teams.
They just do not own the outcome.

Every raise resets the clock.
Every promotion adds responsibility without leverage.
You move up, but you do not move free.

The part no one says out loud is this.
The job is not the trap.
The model is.

If your income only exists while you are present,
you are renting stability, not building it.

Shopify changes that equation quietly.
Not because it is passive or easy.
Because it lets effort stack.

You build a product once.
It sells again without asking for permission.
You improve something and the improvement stays.

You stop explaining your value in interviews.
Customers decide instead.

This does not mean quitting tomorrow.
It means starting something that does not disappear at 5pm.

Most people do not want to escape work.
They want to escape dependency.

The real question is not when you leave your job.
It is when you start building something that belongs to you.

If I hated my 9–5 and wanted Shopify as a side hustle, here’s exactly what I’d do:

• Stop romanticizing quitting and start building nights and weekends
• Pick one boring product people already buy online
• Validate demand before touching a logo or brand name
• Launch ugly and fast on Shopify
• Learn one traffic source instead of chasing all of them
• Reinvest every dollar instead of paying myself early
• Use content to earn attention before buying it
• Build an email list from day one
• Fix fulfillment before scaling ads
• Treat it like a business, not an escape

Shopify isn’t freedom.
Execution is.

Why is Fresh Chile the fastest-growing sauce in 🇺🇸

#1 Flavor 
#2 Community
#3 Hatch, New Mexico (Region)

The future is organic social and legacy brands are losing followers every day, unlike Fresh Chile, which invests in our community daily. 🌶️

The biggest lie a 9 to 5 teaches you is that you’re safe.

I’d assume the opposite.

Most jobs are fragile systems pretending to be stable, and AI is just exposing that faster.

So I’d stop optimizing my resume and start building leverage.

I’d pick a real skill that compounds.
Something tied directly to revenue.
Something the internet actually pays for.

That’s why I’d focus on e-commerce.

Not because it’s trendy, but because it forces you to learn how money really moves online.

Traffic.
Conversion.
Retention.

You learn how products sell.
How attention turns into dollars.
How systems scale.

I’d use organic social for distribution because it’s the cheapest leverage in the world right now.

I’d build at nights and on weekends.
I’d launch before I felt ready because ready never comes.

I’d follow operators, not influencers.
People building, not performing.

And I’d get around people actually in the ecosystem, not just talking about it.

Most importantly, I’d stop consuming and start acting.

Because action creates clarity.
And skills beat resumes every time.

E-commerce is leverage.
And leverage is freedom.

How to Build a Top 1% Shopify Store in 2026
(After 10+ Years of Doing It)

1. Start With a Real Product and Positioning

• Weak product positioning = low AOV, heavy discounting, no repeat buyers
• Strong positioning = pricing power, loyalty, organic word of mouth
• If you are blaming ads, creators, or algorithms, the product story is usually the problem
• Top stores do not sell products, they sell a belief customers want to belong to

2. Build One Core Conversion Path

• Homepage hero → collection or PDP → clear value proof → frictionless checkout
• Too many paths kill momentum
• Top stores obsess over one primary journey and remove everything else
• Every pixel should push the customer forward, not sideways

3. Know the Shopify Math Cold

• Contribution margin, blended CAC, AOV, repeat purchase rate, cash collected
• Revenue screenshots mean nothing if cash flow is broken
• If the math does not work at small spend, it will not work at scale
• Great operators know their numbers weekly, not monthly

4. Drive Traffic With Direct Response Creative

• Short form video wins in 2026
• 15 to 60 second videos that show the product in real life
• Clear hook, clear problem, clear reason to buy now
• The goal is not views, it is qualified traffic that converts

5. Turn Your PDP Into a Sales Page

• Your product page is your closer
• Show how it works, who it is for, why it is different
• Answer objections before they scroll
• Reviews, UGC, FAQs, and guarantees are non negotiable

6. Hammer the Customer With Trust Before Purchase

• Retarget site visitors aggressively with education and proof
• Founder videos, customer stories, behind the scenes, how it is made
• Most brands stop after the click, top brands sell after the click
• Trust is built through repetition, not clever copy

7. Build Retention Before You Chase More Traffic

• Email and SMS are not optional
• Welcome flows, post purchase flows, replenishment, loyalty
• The money is made on the second and third order
• Acquisition gets you attention, retention builds the business

8. Stay Ahead of Scale Constraints

• Inventory, fulfillment, CX, creative output
• Most Shopify brands stall because operations lag behind demand
• If you wait for problems to show up, you are already late
• Top operators build systems before they are forced to

If I were stuck scaling Shopify, I would attend The DTC Growth Summit before buying another course or watching another video.

• Get in a room with people actually building Shopify brands
• Learn what is working right now, not theory
• See real funnels, offers, and dashboards
• Ask questions you cannot ask on YouTube
• Understand how traffic, creative, and conversion connect
• Learn how operators think, not how influencers talk
• Build relationships that shortcut years of mistakes
• Leave with tactics I could implement immediately
• Raise my standards by proximity to real builders

I will be speaking at The DTC Growth Summit.
Grab your ticket in the comments and I will see you there.

Getting DMs asking where I’ll be in 2026

Feb 3 > The DTC Growth Summit | Miami

Mar 3–6 > Expo West | Anaheim

Mar 24–26 > Shoptalk | Vegas

Mar 31–Apr 1 > Smart Marketer | Nashville

Apr 20–21 > Commerce Roundtable | Austin

Sept 21–22 > Commerce Roundtable | San Diego

+ LA/NY on the regular

Where else should I be showing up?

Fresh Chile Last 365 (+30%) 🌶️
• ROAS: 3.98
• MER: 25.1%
• Web CR: 4.73%

YTD (-32%)
• ROAS: 4.04
• MER: 24.7%
• Web CR: 3.38%

Last 30 Days (-40%)
• ROAS: 4.23
• MER: 23.7%
• Web CR: 3.86%

Last 7 Days (-23%)
• ROAS: 3.98
• MER: 25.1%
• Web CR: 3.41%

Website & Community Growth
• Website SOT: 2,142,807
• Social Followers: 302K
• Facebook Group: 36.4K
• YouTube Subs: 3.9K
• Omnisend Email List: 1M
• SMS Subscribers: 57K
• Rivo Memberships: 583
• ReCharge Subscriptions: 1,989

Here’s the Reality
• We are deliberately spending less on ads to protect margin and cash flow
• Ad spend is down materially vs last year while ROAS and MER remain strong
• Demand is not the issue, fulfillment and scalability are the constraint
• Shipping is no longer the bottleneck as we transition to a 3PL
• Q1 is a transition quarter focused on ops, not aggressive top line scaling

What’s Working
• ROAS & MER holding strong despite significantly lower spend
• Blended performance improves when email, SMS, organic social, paid, and site work together
• Shipping stability achieved and fulfillment risk reduced
• Decision to move to 3PL improves speed, reliability, and customer experience
• New kettles and bottling line expand long term manufacturing capacity

What’s Not
• Sales down short term due to intentional reduction in ad spend
• Meta constrained by creative volume and limited scaling intent
• Internal fulfillment previously limited how hard we could push demand

What We Need to Implement This Week
• Continue 3PL onboarding and operational handoff
• Finalize workflows around new kettles and bottling line
• Lean further into AI driven SEO across PDPs, collections, and intent pages
• Scale creator and influencer sourced creative using Refunnel
• Align spend with new fulfillment capacity and inventory runway

Ace Up the Sleeve ♠️
• Fresh Chile Community Cookbooks built from 52 weeks of recipes
• Sourced directly from our 36K member Facebook group
• High margin product, retention driver, and brand asset

If you think e-commerce is only for founders, you’re missing the point.

E-commerce is an entire economy.
And it’s full of real jobs with leverage.

Customer experience.
Retention.
Community.
Email.
Operations.
Storytelling.

These are not replaceable roles.
They sit closest to customers.
And proximity to customers is power.

That’s why roles like customer experience matter more every year.

People don’t stay because of ads.
They stay because they feel understood.

That’s also why Kristin Keys, Director of Customer Experience at Baseball Lifestyle 101, is speaking at DTC Growth Summit.

She’s not talking theory.
She’s in the seat where trust is built or lost every day.

E-commerce creates operators, not just founders.
And the people closest to customers win long-term.

100 founders.
One room.
All operators.

If I were stuck in a 9 to 5 I hated and worried AI might replace me, here’s what I’d do:

• Stop telling myself I’m safe
• Accept my job is a fragile system
• Learn a real skill that compounds
• Focus on e-commerce
• Study how products actually sell online
• Learn traffic, conversion, and retention
• Use organic social for distribution
• Build something nights and weekends
• Launch before I feel ready
• Follow operators, not influencers
• Get around people in the ecosystem
• Take action instead of just consuming

E-commerce is leverage.
Skills beat resumes.

Fresh Chile Co. Last 365 (+30%)🌶️
• ROAS: 3.97
• MER: 25.2%
• Web CR: 4.74%

YTD (-44%)
• ROAS: 4.16
• MER: 24.1%
• Web CR: 3.3%

Last 30 Days (-42%)
• ROAS: 4.43
• MER: 22.6%
• Web CR: 4.22%

Last 7 Days (-52%)
• ROAS: 4.14
• MER: 24.2%
• Web CR: 3.38%

Website & Community Growth
• Website SOT: 2,143,407
• Social Followers: 300.8K
• Facebook Group: 36.3K
• YouTube Subs: 3.9K
• Omnisend Email List: 1M
• SMS Subscribers: 57k
• Rivo Memberships: 581
• ReCharge Subscriptions: 1,969

Here’s the Reality
• We are intentionally spending less on ads to protect profit and inventory
• Ad spend is down materially vs last year while ROAS and MER remain healthy
• Inventory is the real constraint, not demand
• We will sell out before next harvest if we push too hard
• The focus right now is efficiency, margin, and operational stability

What’s Working
• ROAS and MER remain strong despite reduced spend
• Email, SMS, paid, organic social, and site are working together when live
• Shipping is caught up and operations are stabilized
• Community driven demand remains strong with 36K+ members

What’s Not
• Sales down in last 7 and 30 days by design due to reduced spend
• Meta performance constrained by creative volume
• Inventory limits how aggressively we can scale
• New bottling line and kettles still need refinement

What We Need to Implement This Week
• Lean further into AI SEO across PDPs, collections, and intent pages
• Scale influencer sourced creative through Refunnel to feed Meta
• Prepare Q1 pre orders for fresh peppers
• Align spend with inventory runway through January and February

Ace Up the Sleeve ♠️
• Fresh Chile Community Cookbook built from 52 weeks of recipes inside our Facebook group

Two people will outpace you if you let them.

The first moves before they feel ready.
They do not overthink.
They act, learn, adjust, repeat.

The second asks plainly.
For the job.
For the opportunity.
For the sale.
No apology. No hesitation.

You can be more talented than both.
It will not matter.

If you do not build a habit of action and asking, you lose by default.

Do not let that be your story.

taplio

The Battle

Dennis W.

Chris Lang

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The Battle

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Chris Lang

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Dennis W.'s LinkedIn Performance

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