Ryan is the Co-Founder of Tru Earth

Purpose driven direct to  consumer brand builder.

Ryan has:

✅ Helped Grow Tru Earth to more than 160,000 active subscribing customers
✅ Together with Tru Earth's Changemakers, eliminated more than 165,000,000 plastic-containers from landfills..
✅ Donated more than 33,887,227 loads of laundry detergent to those in need.
✅ Grown multiple premium subscription boxes to multi-million dollar businesses.
✅ Written content has been read by more than 100,000,000 readers.

Connect: 
Facebook https://m.facebook.com/theryemckenzie/
Twitter: @RyeMcKenzie

About Tru Earth
Tru Earth® based in Vancouver, Canada is a leading eco-friendly household product company committed to eliminating plastic from landfills and oceans. At its core, you’ll discover that Tru Earth, is actually a movement (#TruEarthMovement™). The Tru Earth team joins more than a quarter million equally committed people in more than 50 countries to combat the 645 billion plastic household product containers dumped in landfills and oceans globally each year. 

Our customers are #TruChangeMakers™, disrupting the multi-billion-dollar household product industry, reducing carbon emissions by up to 94% and caring for the health of the planet and their families. 

Tru Earth’s suite of products and planned launches come with our pledge to provide #TruChangeMakers with laundry, bathroom and kitchen products they need to make a substantial impact on the health of our world. To do ourpart, we promise to match all first-time subscriptions by donating to families in need across the globe. Because at Tru Earth, we know many small hinges can swing very, very big doors.

Ryan Mckenzie

Every founder on this app is losing their minds over AI tools right now. ClaudeBot this. Moltbook that.

Half of it is slop. The other half you’ll never really use.

But every new drop makes you feel like you’re falling behind. The pace of AI right now is a shiny object machine. And it’s pulling operators away from the stuff that’s been working all along.

I run an eight-figure business. This is my entire AI stack: 

>Open ChatGPT in dictate mode
>Talk through 50 half-baked ideas
>Tell it to organize my brain
>Grab competitor copy, dump it in
>Ask what persona they’re targeting
>Hop on a call
>Let Granola take notes
>Pull action items 

That’s it. 

Free plan. No autonomous agents. No tools I don’t trust accessing all my stuff. 

Don’t let the timeline make you feel behind.

Everyone wants the sophisticated play. 

The sophisticated play is getting good at boring.

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Co-Founder Tru Earth | Saving the planet, one strip at a time.

Before Tru Earth I was running this outdoor adventure brand, and with it came a revenue glass ceiling I didn’t even realize was there.

I thought anything over a million dollars a year was incredible. Like, why would you need more than that?

Then I met Matthew Bertulli at a mastermind. Told him my goals. That it was gonna be a slide of the desk business. Just a nice little thing.

All he said: “Think bigger.”

Two words. And something clicked.

Most of what holds you back is your own self limiting beliefs about what’s reasonable. And you don’t even want to shed those beliefs sometimes.

Because your life is comfortable and you’re afraid that if you change those beliefs, something you really like about your life might change too.

Seven years later and I still think about that conversation.

CEO @ Lomi & Pela Case - Follow me as I talk about building my brands.

Everyone's calling Ads in Chat GPT the next Facebook Ads.

It's not.

The people using ChatGPT today are the same people who used to search on Google. Same audience. Different platform. 

The pie didn't get bigger. The searches migrated.

So if your Google Ads performance has been declining for 2 years and you can't figure out why: your audience is still out there, they just moved. And now there’s a way to follow them.

The data angle is real. Facebook had behavioral tracking. Google had intent. ChatGPT has both. 

People literally tell it their problems in plain English. Every conversation is a targeting signal.

If OpenAI builds their ad product even halfway well, the targeting should be strong. Early conversion data already looks solid.

Everyone is talking about this like a gold rush, but it’s a recovery play.

Most of what you’re seeing is demand that already left Google. Now there’s a channel to go get it back. 

If you're spending on paid search and watching returns erode, pay attention. This doesn’t “change everything.” But it does explain what already changed.

6 behaviors I see in founders who stay healthy while scaling:

1. They focus on fewer things 
Running 30 initiatives = zero progress 
Focus is doing less, better

2. They chase asymmetric opportunities 
One big swing beats 20 small tweaks
Incremental wins rarely change a business

3. They optimize for signal, not activity 
Busy feels productive 
Outcomes are what matter

4. They update their thinking at each stage 
What works at $1M breaks at $10M 
Every revenue stage needs new mental models

5. They hold contradictory ideas at once 
Scaling is complex 
Black-and-white thinking doesn’t survive it

6. They build teams that make decisions 
Approval loops kill momentum 
Great teams have agency

The pattern: healthy founders remove complexity

My ADHD brain has 40 tabs open at all times.

Here’s what I do to manage:

- One task at a time. Not “mostly one.” Literally one.
- Physical Pomodoro timer on the desk. Something I can see counting down.
- Dedicated workspace. If you work where you relax, your brain fights you all day.
- Clear the desk every morning. A cluttered desk is a chaotic brain.
- Every notification off. Shopify, Stripe, email, Slack. All of it.
- Phone on permanent sleep mode. Five people can reach me. Everyone else goes to voicemail.
- No email or Slack during a focused block. They can wait.
- No open tabs. I used to have dozens running at all times. MinBrowser fixed that.
- Facebook ads? Go straight to Ads Manager URL. Never through the feed. I've lost hundreds of hours to that scroll.
- Freedom app to block sites during Pomodoro sessions. Even when you get tempted, you can't access them.
- Physical notebook for random ideas. Write them down, close the loop, come back later. Otherwise your brain opens a hundred tabs internally and none of them close.
- Take breaks. Parkinson’s Law is real: work fills the time you give it. If you sit at your desk for 8 hours straight, the last 4 are garbage.

Your brain isn’t broken. 

It just needs a system that works with it instead of against it.

This is first world advice.

If you can’t pay your bills, “build a machine that produces value” won’t help you eat.

You need revenue. Fast.

Maslow’s hierarchy applies to business too.

At the bottom: survive. Solve a problem someone will pay for right now.

Once you’re stable: yes. Build the machine. Think in systems.

Applying $10M thinking to a $10K problem gets you neither.

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Building a durable company means stacking real pillars underneath it: DTC, third-party marketplaces, retail, international. 

Four years is enough time to get somewhere. Rarely enough time to build something.

When you’re growing that fast, you’re holding on by the skin of your teeth. The train goes wherever it wants. You’re just hoping not to fly off the caboose.

Every region needs localized packaging, localized payment gateways, localized language.

You can build fast. Just know the difference between building something fast and building something that lasts.

Two things changed the trajectory of my career.

1. Hitting rock bottom.

- Built a ringtone subscription business. It collapsed.
- Had just bought a house, a condo, and signed an expensive lease.
- Owed the government a pile in taxes.
- Put the tax money into a “regulated” forex opportunity.
- Forex collapsed too.
- Bailiff showed up to seize my SUV.
- I was driving around screaming from stress.

2. Choosing commitment.

- Standing in the shower one morning. Full messaging framework for Tru Earth just clicked.
- The product seemed too cheap to scale. But at that moment, the entire positioning downloaded.
- Voice-noted the whole thing before I dried off.
- That messaging carried Tru Earth for years.

If you can, choose #2.

But if you’ve already hit #1, the clarity that comes from survival mode is real.

The bottleneck isn’t taste, intelligence or creative systems.

Most people online are so vanilla. They don’t expose their interests or say anything controversial. 

They just share business stuff.

Look at Hormozi. Grows his hair, grows his beard, always wears a tank top, works out like a motherf*cker. Says a lot of controversial stuff. I bet you half of it he doesn’t even mean. But people align with it.

Because when everything starts looking the same, nobody’s attracted to you because they don’t feel like they have anything in common with you outside of “I'm this hard working, grinding” guy.

My kids already say everything’s AI this, AI that.

We're heading back to a place where people follow and listen to people who are clearly real. You’ll get verified by being authentic.

Founders sand off every edge that would make someone actually give a sh*t about them.

You've got maybe 1000 days before AI levels this whole playing field.

A friend of mine runs a supplement brand doing solid numbers in the US.

About six months ago he started noticing something unusual in his analytics. Consistent traffic from Canada. Not paid. Organic. People were finding him through social media and word of mouth across the border.

He was excited for about ten minutes.

Then reality set in. His US-based 3PL wouldn't ship north without brutal surcharges. The few orders he managed to fulfill took two to three weeks and arrived with surprise customs fees that destroyed the customer experience on delivery.

So he watched the traffic. Every week. Canadian visitors showing up, bouncing at checkout, leaving.

He described it as watching revenue walk out the door through a window he couldn't open.
We connected him with Breakthrough Fulfillment. 

They had him fully operational in Canada within two weeks. Freight forwarding to local warehouses, next-day delivery to Toronto, Vancouver, and other major cities. No surprise duty at the customer's door.

Within 90 days he had added a revenue stream he had been accidentally ignoring for over a year.

The part that stands out is how common this pattern is. Brands generating organic Canadian demand without realizing it, then losing those customers to a logistics problem they assume is too complicated to solve.

If you are doing real volume in the US, check your geographic analytics. If Canadian traffic is showing up and not converting, the demand already exists. The infrastructure is the only thing missing.

https://lnkd.in/eGUqzqCe+M+LinkedIn&utm_campaign=3pl+feb+wk2

If this sounds familiar, comment below or send me a DM. I will connect you with the team.

www.breakthrough.studio

Breakthrough Studio - Premier 3PL Services | Streamlined Logistics Solutions

Every upgrade feels like a flex for about two weeks.

The office, the car, the lease on a bigger warehouse.

Then it just becomes another bill. Another thing you have to feed every month whether the business is up or down.

The best thing I ever did was start asking "does this make my life easier or does this just make me look like I'm winning?"

Most of the time it was the second one.

Social proof is NOT dead. Stop listening to your timeline.

That’s just bad advice from brands who don’t understand the difference between a 1.5 and a 4x ROAS.

I spend $50K+/month on static ads. And it comes down to one thing: 

Matching the right trust signal to the right stage of awareness.

This changes everything about how you allocate ad spend. 

The same testimonial converts at 4x in one ad and barely breaks even in another. Because nobody asked: does this buyer even need convincing yet?

I broke down exactly which signals belong where here:

Social Proof Isnt Dead Youre Just Using It Wrong 

Landing pages are basically first dates.

You can say all the right things, look great, check every box.

Then you make one claim that's slightly too big and the whole thing falls apart.

Believability is more important than impressiveness. Always has been.

Entrepreneurs don’t like to admit this:

The janitor probably has a better life than you do.

For a few months after I stepped away from the day to day at Tru Earth, I'd be at the gym in the morning and my brain would start screaming at me:

You gotta get to your desk. You gotta get to your desk. You gotta get to your desk.

And I'd be standing there mid-set going... What desk? I don't have a desk to get to anymore.

That voice wasn't rational. 
It was just years of training. 
Years of being always on. 
Years of every morning being about the next fire, the next hire problem, the next thing that needed me specifically to figure it out.

You don't realize how much that costs you psychologically until you stop paying it.

When you're in the middle of it, you think everybody operates like this. You think this is just what it takes. 

- Managing people who won't be in the same room anymore because they don't like each other.
- Solving problems with no clean answer.
- Carrying decisions home every single night and pretending you're present with your family when your head is still at the office.

And then there's the janitor.

The janitor:
- Shows up
- Checks every box on the list
- Walks out at 5 o'clock
- Doesn't think about it again until tomorrow

No mental load. 
No 2am problem solving. 
No Slack notifications at dinner.

A lot of entrepreneurs look down on that. 

I think that's wrong.

Not everybody should be an entrepreneur. Not everybody values the same things. And the person who doesn't take work home with them? They're arguably wealthier in the one thing every founder eventually realizes matters most...

Time. 

And the ability to actually be present inside of it.

If you’re building something right now and you feel this weight every single day, I’m not telling you to quit. I’m telling you to notice this.

Because the cost is real.

My kids are only young once. It's been really nice to just be there. Not thinking about tomorrow's fire. Just hanging out with them and soaking it in.

This is what life is all about.

Nobody tells you the weird part about stepping back from the business you built.

You go from "I'm the CMO of [brand]" to "I'm... working on some stuff."

Your identity was the company. Now you have to figure out who you are without it.

It's a better problem to have than most. But it's still a problem.

I’ve built businesses that did $100K months and ones that did $0 months.

The operator who walks out of the $0 month is someone you couldn’t have built on purpose. 

That only comes from surviving it.

Most operators are optimizing against themselves.

Your open rate went from 18% to 23%. You called it a win.

But 23% against brands your size, in your category, on your platform could be bottom quartile.

You don’t know. And that’s the real problem.

Omnisend’s Benchmark Calculator pulls real data from 150,000+ ecommerce brands and shows you where your email and SMS actually stands, not just whether the numbers are trending in the right direction.

Open rates. Click rates. Revenue per email. Benchmarked against brands running similar send volume and similar categories.

This is the difference between “our emails are improving” and “our emails are beating the top 20% of brands in our space.”

Q1 just ended. Before you commit to a Q2 plan, you should know where you actually stand.

If your benchmarks are coming up short, sending more isn’t usually the fix. Getting on a platform with the flows, segmentation, and automation infrastructure to actually convert is.

Omnisend’s US merchants average $79 in revenue for every $1 spent. The Benchmark Calculator is free.

If your current ESP can’t even show you how you stack up, that’s already your answer.

Run your numbers here: https://lnkd.in/dddMBgx8

Use code RYAN30 for 30% off your first 3 months.

Already on a paid plan elsewhere? Omnisend handles the migration for free. Automations, templates and flows. All done in 5 days.

And yes, I’m a proud Omnisend partner.

Open article: Recommended by Ryan McKenzie by omnisend.com

A friend of mine owns this little café I like to visit from time to time. 

And man, this guy’s got it figured out...

A couple real estate investments. His future is set. He runs the café because he wants to, not because he needs it to work perfectly.

And something clicked for me sitting there.

That’s the actual goal.

Not the flashy milestones. Not scaling to 9 figures for the sake of saying it. Not even the massive paydays.

The goal is having enough resources working for you that you can take risks and fail without everything coming apart.

I think most founders get into this game thinking about success. But they forget that things change.

Products lose steam. Business models stop working. Algorithms evolve.

It’s easy to feel untouchable when things are good. But what happens when it all stops?

That’s when you need to be okay starting over.

The café owner had it right. He built enough outside the business that he could operate without any desperation. No panic. No survival mode.

And it made me realize: I need enough resources outside of my main thing to keep going on my terms. Because everything ends eventually.

But if you’re prepared for that?

That’s freedom.

Founder & CEO surge.agency l Founder Nord Media | Growth Marketing for 6-9 figure eCommerce brands. Sharing things I learn along the way.

A little more about me for all of my current & soon to be followers 🤝

This is where I impress you right!? First off - thank you for visiting my profile, following me and joining me through this wild experience while I try to figure shit out.

It’s absolutely crazy to me how many different people have followed me over the last year and have engaged with my content + reached out to build friendships. I love connecting with new people and learning their stories.

You may not know me officially yet but – maybe you’ve seen me around or you heard about me.
So now… a little more about me 🤷‍♂️

👋 I’m Kody - a barely “C” student who struggled throughout high-school and college but managed to scrape by after 6 long years in college. I could never figure out what I wanted to do or what I wanted to be when I grew up (still haven’t lol).

I stumbled into the realm of marketing around 8 or 9 years ago and have been figuring out what I like and what I’m good at. I’ve worked as a marketing specialist, retention manager, growth marketer, growth manager, head of growth and now agency / brand owner.

During my “free” time I enjoy going to the movies, playing video games or hanging with my wife (Ali) & dog (Goose).

A little about my career and my accomplishments 👇

Years 1 & 2: Marketing specialist (Very basic stuff)

Years 3 & 4: Retention Manager - Generated over $400M in email revenue and ran a team of 30 🤯

Years 4 & 5: Growth Marketer / Growth Manager (Directly Managed $15M in ad-spend and grew 2 brands roughly 400% year over year)

Year 6 → Now: Head of Growth → Agency Owner → Brand Owner (Have in total directly managed over $200M in ad-spend, generated $650M+ in email revenue and have grown 7 brands into 9 figures, 17 into 8 figures)

+ many more into 6/7 figures annually. Was all of this where I thought I would be? Absolutely not… not even close lol… I always say I was able to combine a lot of luck with a lot of hard work and work ethic to achieve the results you see today.

So why am I sharing so much now? I’ve come to enjoy sharing my learnings and helping others who want to grow their business, start a brand, agency or improve their career.

Back in October 2023 I decided to start focusing on building a personal brand on Twitter / LinkedIn / Instagram and in January 2024 this all compounded and built Nord Media.

Subscribe here 👉  http://nordmedia.com/newsletter

Kody N.

Brands will spend $50 to get a customer to checkout and then show them a blank thank-you page.

Make it make sense.

That page has a near 100% view rate. Higher than:

👉Your homepage
👉Your landing pages
👉Every ad you've ever run

It's also the highest-intent moment in your entire funnel. Payment's committed, trust is at its peak, and decision fatigue is gone.

And you're wasting it on a receipt.

That's exactly why I've been using Aftersell by Rokt

One-click upsells at this moment convert at dramatically higher rates because there's ZERO friction.

No pop-ups or aggressive tactics… just the right offer at the right time.

These are a few brands already running this and their results: 

👉Jones Road Beauty hit 11,803% monthly ROI from Rokt Thanks monetization alone
👉True Classic averages +$35 per upsell
👉40,000+ Shopify brands are already running this including HexClad, Kitsch, Ridge, Cozy Earth just to name a few.

They're getting ahead because they extract more value from every customer they already paid to acquire.

That’s why I'm a #proudpartner with Aftersell by Rokt because this is one of the easiest revenue wins I've seen in ecom.

Their team is offering a free audit to directly break your funnel and identify the best upsell opportunities and will provide projected revenue based on your site specifically. Book a call today https://bit.ly/4rkMNCk

Kody Nordquist

Founder of Nord Media | Performance Marketing Agency for 7 & 8-figure eCom brands

Growing up, I watched my parents stress out over affording groceries, skipping car repairs, and never taking vacations. It was just out of the question.

Now that I am where I am and I have disposable income, the best part isn't the fancy stuff.

It's knowing I can:
- Eat healthy food without checking prices 
- Fix my car when it breaks 
- Cover emergencies without panicking 
- Travel without worrying about paying the rent too

I don't need Lambos, Rolexes, and designer everything.

I just want to be comfortable without worrying about the small things.

No flash, all stability and security. That’s real success to me.

Social Media Marketing Certification Course

Content Marketing

Email Marketing

Inbound Marketing

Digital Marketing 

HubSpot Marketing Software

Growth Marketing Agency for 7 & 8-figure eCom brands. Focused on driving profitable growth at scale with proven systems and strategies. Currently managing $5M+ in monthly ad-spend for brands.

Nord Media is a growth agency that helps 7-9 figure eCom brands scale.

Founder & Head of Growth

Fuel Your Brand with Ready-to-Launch Creative Templates.

Partner (Acquired)

Surge Marketing is a full-service Growth Marketing Agency.

Founder (Acquired)

Key Responsibilities:

Campaign Strategy and Execution: Develop and execute paid media strategies to drive brand awareness, customer acquisition, and retention. Utilize data-driven insights to optimize campaigns and maximize ROI.

Channel Management: Oversee advertising campaigns across platforms such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and other relevant channels. Monitor performance and adjust strategies to meet objectives.

Budget Management: Manage advertising budgets effectively to achieve desired outcomes while maintaining cost-efficiency. Track and report on campaign performance, providing insights for continuous improvement.

Audience Targeting: Utilize advanced targeting capabilities to reach relevant audiences and drive engagement. Implement A/B testing strategies to optimize ad creative, messaging, and targeting parameters.

Partnership Collaboration: Collaborate with internal teams and external partners to align paid media efforts with overall marketing initiatives. Coordinate with creative teams to develop compelling ad content that resonates with our target audience.

Performance Analysis and Reporting: Analyze campaign performance metrics, including CTR, CPA, ROAS, and conversion rates. Generate regular reports to communicate insights and make data-driven recommendations for future campaigns.

Achievements:

Increased year over year subscription growth by 400%.
Improved campaign efficiency through rigorous A/B testing and optimization strategies, leading to a 65% reduction in cost per acquisition.
Implemented geo-targeting tactics that resulted in business developmental learnings that drove incremental lift in key states for growth and new business avenues.

Paid Media Manager

Effectively manage ($5M+ Annual) Digital Advertising budget across multiple paid media and SEM channels
Drive an effective ROAS and MER to enable rapid business growth while maintaining profitability
Grow business revenue by 120% YoY while also increasing profitability
Developed daily/quarterly metric growth reporting standards, rolling up directly to CEO 
Created brand strategy advertising tactics and deployment 
Develop and implement Digital Advertising campaigns to increase brand awareness, website traffic and drive sales
Lead content team to develop, test and improve content structure and funnels to guide customers from acquisition to conversion
Implement Lean Management and standards of work for self and teams to improve efficiency
Develop Email and SMS marketing efforts and scaled program 3000-->50,000 active subscribers in first 3 months
Improve Email & SMS marketing strategy and create unique subscriber growth and experiences
Develop a customer data-driven marketing funnel across all digital marketing avenues
Develop story-driven marketing campaigns to convey the brand and values effectively
Track and measure the performance of all digital marketing channels and propose optimization initiatives to maximize marketing ROAS
Create new marketing channels to test creative and adaptive marketing techniques

Director of Growth

Grew Enthusiast Enterprises Communications division from 3 people with $12.8M in annual revenue to 19 people and nearly $120M in annual revenue.
Oversaw the Email Strategy, SMS Marketing, Social Media, Marketing Automation & Copywriting teams with a growth expectation of 50% Y/Y.
Developed a calendar of content for all channels focused on product development and growth.
Oversaw the creation and distribution of campaign strategy aimed at promoting various sales and branding initiatives for the organization.
Created a strong insight customer use and feedback of products via NPS surveys and post-purchase follow-up.
Developed strategic planning between Social Media, Digital Advertising, Graphic Design and Communications to unify our brand messaging and improve customer perception of our brand & products.
Integrated product marketing strategies and created optimized marketing initiatives with integrated A/B testing and relevant KPI tracking.  
Improved the customer life cycle and retention by providing value to the customer through unique content and closing all gaps where a customer may become lost during their purchase process.
Created and managed revenue targets and budget expenses to ensure profitability growth.

Growth Marketing Manager

Developed digital marketing strategy by studying economic indicators, tracking changes in supply and demand, identifying customers and their current and future needs, and monitoring the competition.
Planned and executed on all web, SEO/SEM, database marketing, email, SMS, social media, and display advertising campaigns.
Developed and maintained a social media presence in Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. 
Identified short-term and long-range issues that must be addressed and developed a plan of action around these.
Measured and report performance of all digital marketing campaigns and assesses against goals (ROI and KPIs).
Optimized performance of campaigns and initiatives by utilizing analytical toolkits to identify underperforming areas.
Developed A/B test structure to optimize flow and conversion of the customer journey.
Collaborates with internal teams & external to enhance LTV of customers and identify gaps on a customer's lifecycle
Utilizes strong analytical ability to evaluate end-to-end customer experience across multiple channels and customer touch points.
Identified critical conversion points and drop off points and optimizes user funnels.

Your ad account looks fine:
- ROAS is holding 
- CPMs are manageable 
- Conversions are flowing

But your spreadsheet is screaming.

As of February 2026, the average US tariff rate sits at 17% on all imports.

For DTC brands sourcing from China (which is 50% of you), tariffs hit 54% before the November 2025 truce brought partial relief. 

Most products are still getting hit with 55%+ when you stack Section 301 and Section 232 tariffs.

Here's what that actually means: 

49% of DTC brands report tariffs significantly increased their landed product costs. 

An $80 product from China now carries $35+ in tariffs. 

Your COGS just jumped 20-30%, but your ROAS target didn't move.

That's the problem.

Triple Whale tracked the impact in real time: median ROAS fell from 1.84 to 1.22 between March 31 and April 17, 2025, a 33.7% drop that directly corresponded with the April 2 tariff announcement.

Median AOV dropped from $57.94 to $48.62 as consumers got price-conscious. 

CPA crept up from $21.89 to $21.95.

Most operators missed what actually broke: ROAS measures revenue, not profit.

If your product had 50% margins, you needed 2:1 ROAS to break even. Tariffs compress those margins to 35%? Your break-even ROAS just jumped to 2.86:1. 

TLDR: You've been scaling into losses while staring at green metrics in Ads Manager. Here’s the math you actually need to be running:

Break-Even ROAS = 1 / Net Margin (after COGS, shipping, fulfillment, processing, and tariffs).

Example: $30 product cost, $80 sale price, $10 shipping, $5 processing = $35 margin (43.75%). 

Break-even ROAS = 2.29. Add a 25% tariff ($7.50): margin drops to $27.50 (34.4%). New break-even ROAS = 2.91.

That's a 27% increase in the ROAS you need just to not lose money.

So what does all of this mean day to day? Don't just raise prices. 87% of merchants already did that, which compressed conversion rates across the board.

Instead:

- A/B test price points per SKU to find elasticity ceilings
- Bundle higher-margin products with tariff-exposed ones
- Revisit supplier pricing. Stronger USD creates leverage
- Test alternative sourcing (India, Mexico, Bangladesh) through short sprints

Most of all, shift your budget towards retention. Loyal customers convert at 60-70%, vs 5-20% for new prospects.

The spreadsheet broke before your ad account did, so you need to fix your unit economics before you touch your media plan.

That's how you’ll survive Q2.

3 reels a week and 10 variations of the same concept is not a creative strategy that will save you from rising CPMs. 

Andromeda processes 10,000x more ad variants in parallel than Meta's old system. 

It has more creative combinations to test than ever before, which means it rewards variety above everything else. 

When all your ads feel like cousins of the same concept, Andromeda picks one and quietly ignores the rest, which leads to high CPMs and low reach. 

On the dashboard, it looks like a performance dip, but the algorithm is simply exhausted because of a lack of creative diversity.

Reels is where this hits hardest, because:

- Users spend over 50% of their Instagram time watching reels

- GEM is prioritizing it as the primary top-of-funnel channel

- Meta is surfacing 25% more same-day Reels content than Q3 2025

- Andromeda is allocating its delivery, which means it's where creative diversity either compounds your reach or kills it.

And inside Reels, the first three seconds decide everything. 

Target 60%+ hold rate, lead with a face, pair a visual interrupt with audio, and caption everything because most people scroll without sound. 

If you can't stop the scroll in three seconds, the rest of the creative is irrelevant because Andromeda won't show it long enough to matter.

From there, build three lanes in your creative library:

- Raw UGC hooks for cold traffic. 

- Polished demos for the audience in the consideration stage. 

- Social proof stacks for conversion.

Rotate monthly winners into Flexible Ads and let Andromeda match the right format to the right user at the right stage.

The metric that tells you if your creative diversity is actually working is CPMr which is cost per 1,000 unique people reached. 

Keep it under $20. When it climbs, instead of adjusting bids, introduce new concepts.

Feed Andromeda a variety of creative concepts, and it’ll reward you with reach.

If your value lives in media buying mechanics, Meta is already building your replacement.

Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed that Meta is testing a system where a brand will enter a product URL and a budget, and the platform will build an entire campaign out of it. 

It’ll generate the creative, select the audience, allocate spend, and optimize delivery all on its own. 

That tells you where this is going:

- 4M advertisers are already using Meta’s AI creative tools.

- Advantage+ is driving around $60B in annualized revenue.

- Legacy controls are being phased out.

- And Flexible Ads are live right now.

You can upload 10 creatives into one container, and the system decides what each user sees.

Now layer reality on top of it: 

- Chinese import tariffs are sitting as high as 54% in the current cycle. 

- Ecom brands are raising prices to protect margins. 

- COGS are climbing. 

- Cash flow pressure is increasing. 

- Scaling decisions now carry more financial weight than they did 2 years ago.

As execution is becoming automated and margins are tightening, your value is shifting upward.

If your contribution is ONLY building campaigns and adjusting bids, you’ve become replaceable.

But if your contribution is protecting margin and guiding risk, you’ve become even more essential for a brand's growth.

You’re the layer of judgment automation can’t replicate.

The operators who’ll stay valuable in the upcoming years are the ones who own:

- Break-even ROAS and contribution margin

- Offer structure and pricing strategy

- Signal quality and data integrity

- Creative direction and concept differentiation

- Budget decisions under financial pressure

The platform is absorbing the mechanics. Your leverage now lives in judgment, economics, and strategic control.

The thing that got you to $1M won't get you to $10M. What got you to $10M won't get you to $50M.

Brands hit a ceiling when they stop testing. They find a winner and protect it instead of building the next one.

But the brands that break through are the ones willing to test new offers, launch new products, and push into new markets before they feel like they have to.

The formula that built your business might eventually become its only ceiling.

If you're worried that media buyer role is dead you're likely not doing good media buying work.

Do I think the role will evolve over the next 12 months? Yeah absolutely.

Do I think it's a dead role? Not the slightest.

There's been way to many instances where the role has "died" and certain people have been removed from the role but those people failed to adapt.

Our industry isn't stagnant - you need to be constantly evolving and changing and learning or you're going to be replaced.

So if you're that worried about your "role" being dead. Maybe you've been doing it wrong all along.

Ecom operators poured all their attention into Meta in 2025, but Google just completely rewired Performance Max. Here’s what you need to know.

First of all, nobody’s saying you should abandon Meta.

But if you're still treating Google as "set it and forget it" while running $50K+/month in ad spend, you're leaving money on the table. 

That PMax black box everyone complained about? 

It doesn't exist anymore.

Here's what landed in the last 90 days:

→ Full channel-level reporting (you can see EXACTLY how PMax delivers across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, Maps)

→ Complete negative keyword support with shared lists

→ PMax experiments (50/50 split tests against Shopping/Search/Display)

→ Brand exclusions applied to Search text ads only while keeping Shopping active

→ High-value new customer acquisition mode rolled out to ALL advertisers

→ Device and demographic targeting betas

On top of that, Google's "Power Pack" strategy is replacing the old "Power Pair”, and your product catalog can now surface inside AI Overviews and AI Mode, meaning:

→ Commercial queries triggering AI Overviews jumped from 8% to 19% in 12 months

→ Organic CTR dropped 61% on those queries

→ Paid CTR dropped 68%

Search Engine Land's SMX Next deep dive also confirmed PMax is "fundamentally different and far more manageable" than it was 12 months ago.

You can finally see what's working, what's not, and control it. The transparency is there now. The controls exist. The data is clean.

2026 isn't the year to keep ignoring platform updates.

Meta gets all the attention because everyone's obsessed with creative testing. But Google quietly became manageable, transparent, and worth reassessing for Q1.

The operators crushing it right now are running both platforms like actual businesses.

Googles Performance Max Rewired 

Your ROAS looks fine, but your margins are bleeding.

Why? Because tariffs jumped COGS 20-30% while your break-even ROAS stayed the same. 

You’re still trusting a dashboard number that’s been outdated for months.

Recalculate your break-even, and thank me later.

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