Happy Thursday!

Cody Plofker is one of the people I talk to almost every day. He took Jones Road Beauty from basically nothing to multi-hundred million a year, stepped down as CEO a few months ago, and is now launching a sleep supplement brand from scratch.

I got him on the Q4 Summit stage and asked him to empty both pockets: what he'd do with a nine-figure team behind him, and what he's doing now as a one-man shop chasing his first $500 a day in spend.

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Is the math mathing?

Let’s say you spend $50K a month on Meta. But then your stock gets stuck in transit, so you pause your ads.

For six weeks.

That’s $75K you’ve already spent on ads that’s not driving sales. Plus the momentum you spent months building comes to a screeching halt. When the stock finally lands, you have to get all that momentum back.

There’s a way to set up your supply chain so that pause never happens. We’re breaking it down today.

Want to come?

Spend Into the Ugly Weeks

Cody's starting point: almost nobody buying from you over Black Friday is seeing you for the first time. The sale cashes in demand you built all year, so the work that decides your November happened back in May.

Early in Q4, efficiency looks terrible and every instinct says pull back. Cody's rule: if add-to-carts are climbing and time on site looks healthy, people are building baskets, and you keep spending into it. The return shows up at peak.

Listen here: YouTube | Spotify | Apple

What I pulled from this one:

1. Run Q4 as a season. An anniversary kit kicks off October, holiday collections land late October, and gifting carries you through December. Save your best offer for November, and watch for the little spike after Christmas when people buy what they didn't get.

2. You're ready for TV sooner than you think. Jones Road launched TV around a $100M run rate with a roughly $50K shoot and $150K in month one, and Cody's regret is waiting that long. TV runs at about 10% of spend year-round and climbs to 20 to 25% heading into Q4 as the top of funnel that feeds every other channel.

3. Budget 15% of spend for creative. That target used to be 5%, then 10%. Strategy stays in-house with creative strategists who own research and briefs, while production scales out through partnership ads (about 40% of the Jones Road account), TikTok Shop creators, and percentage-of-spend creator deals.

4. Wellness brands, Q1 is your Q4. CPMs drop after the holidays while intent stays high, and for subscription brands January is the most important acquisition window of the year. If your demand isn't there in November, hold your fire and come out swinging with new year, new me.

That's all for today

Open your Q4 forecast and find the week you expect efficiency to look ugly. Write down, right now, the add-to-cart rate that means you keep spending. You'll make a much calmer call in November if you made it in October.

It's Thursday, and it's all downhill from here. Go for a walk, drink some water, and I'll see you Sunday.

Nik