The end of an era... 🥲

Last week, my twins finished kindergarten.

I’m incredibly proud of them and wanted to share this moment with all of you.

Okay okay...enough crying, Brian. 

Now, let's dive in.

Topics we'll cover today:
💠 3 Strategic Shifts Founders Need to Make ASAP
💠 Shopify Winter Edition: RenAIssance
💠 2025 Top-Listened Podcast Episode
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

Most 7-figure brands don’t miss Q1 because they lack effort. They miss it because they plan the wrong things.

The mistake usually looks like this:

Set a revenue target.
Back into ad spend.
Push channels harder.
And hope efficiency catches up. 

If that approach worked, growth wouldn’t feel harder every year.

Before you touch budgets, forecasts, or campaigns, there are 3 strategic shifts you need to make.

Revenue, ROAS, and MER are not levers.
They are lagging indicators. 

They tell you what already happened, not what will happen. 

What actually creates growth are inputs:

If Q1 planning starts with “What do we want to hit?”, you are already late.

It needs to start with “What must change in the system for that outcome to become inevitable?”

Founders who scale predictably obsess over what gets installed, not what gets hoped for.

When growth stalls, most teams ask what’s wrong with Meta, whether they should try another channel, or if they need a new agency. That’s misdiagnosis.

Channels don’t create growth. They amplify whatever system they’re plugged into.

If retention is weak, offers are undifferentiated, creative learning is slow, or the customer journey leaks value, no channel will save you.

High-performing brands don’t “run ads”. They operate an acquisition system, a monetization system, a retention system, and a measurement system.

Q1 growth doesn’t come from better channel execution. It comes from fixing the systems channels depend on.

Growth doesn’t happen inside an ad account. It happens through the marketing calendar.

The calendar reveals the truth: what actually ships, what gets tested, what gets repeated, and what never happens.

Most calendars are reactive. Promos, fire drills, and “we should test this” ideas that never ship.

Real growth requires intentional sequencing, system installation over time, and compounding initiatives instead of isolated tactics.

If your Q1 calendar isn’t deliberately designed to improve inputs, strengthen systems, and reduce dependency on paid acquisition, then Q1 will look a lot like Q4, just more expensive.

Why this matters now:

Q1 is not when you fix efficiency problems. Q1 exposes them.

If you enter the year with weak retention, fragile unit economics, channel-dependent growth, and no system-level plan, you won’t optimize your way out. You’ll just push harder on a system that can’t support the load.

What I’m opening next:

Over the next few days, I’ll be opening 3 additional slots for the Revenue Efficiency Review program.

It’s a 30-day engagement designed to identify the biggest revenue and profit leaks across your customer journey, diagnose which systems are constraining growth, and deliver a clear, prioritized roadmap for Q1 and beyond.

No execution. No channel management. Pure strategic clarity.

If you want to be notified when those slots open, you can join the waitlist here.

If Q1 matters, the work starts before you plan it.

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The DTC Insider (newsletter + podcast) reaches a highly qualified audience of DTC founders, directors, and marketers. Learn more about the sponsorship opportunities we offer for your business.

Last week, Shopify announced its Winter Edition: RenAIssance.

There are 150+ product updates in total, and I went through them so you don’t have to.

Here are the ones that actually matter for brands.

This is the big one.

Sidekick is no longer just a “helpful assistant”.

It’s turning into an operator.

Four updates stand out.

1) Pulse

A new section inside the Shopify admin that delivers personalized recommendations and next steps for your business, based on market trends and your store’s data.

See an insight.
Click once.
Let Shopify execute it.

This is Shopify moving from reporting to decision support.

2) Apps

You can now ask Sidekick to build custom apps tailored to your exact needs.

Example prompt:

“Create an app that checks returns and cancellation eligibility for orders”.

No dev tickets.

No app store rabbit hole.

Just logic → execution.

3) Workflows

Describe the workflow you want, and Sidekick builds it directly inside Shopify Flow.

Example:

“Email me when inventory for any variant drops below 5 for the first time”.

This lowers the barrier to automation in a meaningful way.

4) Shortcuts for Prompts

Turn your Sidekick prompts into reusable “Skills,” then share or reuse them anytime.

Examples:

This is subtle, but powerful.

Your best thinking becomes repeatable infrastructure.

If you’re not using Sidekick already, you’re leaving leverage on the table.

At BSR, we spend far less time clicking through reports.

We ask Sidekick questions instead.

And it gives us exactly what we’re looking for, including metrics that are usually buried or hard to pull. 

Shopify is officially betting on AI-native commerce.

You can now syndicate your products directly into AI platforms, enabling customers to discover and buy inside AI chats.

This isn’t about replacing your storefront.

It’s about being present where buying decisions increasingly start.

Search → browsing → checkout is no longer a straight line.

Two updates worth paying attention to.

Rollouts

Built-in A/B testing and launch scheduling inside Shopify admin.

Fewer third-party tools.

More controlled experiments.

Cleaner decision-making.

SimGym

An AI-powered simulation tool that models shopper behavior using data from billions of purchases.

You can test changes before going live and get recommendations upfront, not after revenue takes a hit.

This is Shopify trying to reduce learning through pain.

Tinker (rolling out soon)

A mobile-first AI creative suite for design, visuals, and rapid content production.

Retail: Shopify POS Hub

A centralized command center for in-store operations, inventory, and staff, bringing offline performance closer to the same level of visibility as online.

Product Network

A new way to connect products, partners, and distribution more seamlessly across Shopify’s ecosystem, reducing fragmentation as catalogs and channels grow.

What’s clear with this release:

Shopify isn’t just adding features.
It’s redefining how merchants operate. 

Instead of using Shopify and ChatGPT (or similar) as two separate tools, Shopify is embedding AI into almost every action you take inside the platform, in a way that’s fully contextual to your store: your data, and your day-to-day decisions. 

This isn’t generic AI.

It’s purpose-built, commerce-native, and designed to solve real problems brands face, without needing to duct-tape external tools together.

Fewer tools.
Less manual work.
More decisions happening closer to the source of truth. 

The brands that win won’t be the ones using every new feature.

They’ll be the ones redesigning their workflows around them.

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Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

As we wrap up 2025, I wanted to see which episode people liked the most.

Even though I’ve enjoyed every conversation I had with brands on the podcast this year, there’s one episode in particular that stood out. It was full of lessons and genuinely changed the way I approach things.

Which one was it?

It was the episode with Curtis Matsko, founder of Portland Leather Goods.

If you haven’t listened to it yet, I strongly recommend that you do.

In the meantime, you can also enjoy some amazing conversations I’ve had with incredibly successful brands: 

🎧 Tune in

We'll be back with Season 6 of The DTC Insider in January, stay tuned!

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

📰 TikTok Shop Raises Seller Fee [read more]
📰 Google AI Overviews surged in 2025, then pulled back: Data [read more]
📰 US TikTok Deal Remains in Limbo as Deadline Nears Once Again [read more]

Brian Roisentul is the founder & CEO of BSR Digital, a growth marketing agency he started in 2013 to help e-commerce brands unlock hidden revenue by identifying misalignments between their marketing and customer behavior. He is also the host of The DTC Insider podcast, where he interviews thought leaders, founders, and directors in the e-commerce space.

Want to talk shop?
If your brand is doing at least 7 figures, apply here to get featured (for free) on The DTC Insider podcast and my team will get in touch.

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Book a call with me and let’s explore how my team and I at BSR can help you.

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