Five weeks to Q4.
Everyone I talk to is mostly ready, except for one thing. There's always one thing.
What's yours? One click, and I'll publish what everyone says in two weeks.
Five weeks to Q4. What's the one thing you know isn't ready?
What do you do when you want to grow and the budget says no?
I put that question to Mary McMahan at withSimplicity on this week's episode.
When she joined, the team was small and the marketing budget was tight. Spending their way into growth was never on the table.
So they did other things instead. Three of them stuck with me.
They solved a problem instead of buying their way around it
During COVID, customers couldn't test makeup in store. For a beauty brand, that is not a small problem.
Their fix: they worked with students at a local university to build Instagram AR filters, so people could try on lipstick and eyeshadow virtually.
It helped shoppers in store. It also gave online customers across the country a better way to experience the products.
Media spend: zero.
They recruit affiliates by hand
No stack, no platform. Mary goes on Instagram, looks at who her existing affiliates follow and spend time with, and reaches out. Sometimes it's just a DM.
One of their best affiliate relationships started because she noticed someone was already sending traffic to the site. She reached out. They're launching a product together now.
She packs orders
Small team, so Mary still ends up in the warehouse some days. That's where she notices which products get bought together, what's actually moving, where the unboxing feels off.
A dashboard tells you some of that. Standing closer to the work tells you the rest.
Here's what I took from the conversation.
A tight budget forces a better question. Not "where can we spend more?" but "what do we already have that we're underusing?"
Your team. Your customers. Your affiliates. Your data. Your owned channels.
Usually the next growth lever is already in the building.
Want me to take a look at yours?
Here's something I've never offered in this newsletter before.
Hit reply with your store URL.
I'll pull up your live Meta ads, the one part of your setup anyone can see from the outside, and record you a short video: what you're running, where the creative is repeating itself, and the two or three angles I'd test next.
It's usually the fastest way to tell whether the thing underneath it is working.
No call. No calendar link. No deck. Just a video in your inbox.
I can only do a few of these a week, so it's first come, first served. But if you've been reading this for a while and we've never actually spoken, this is the easiest possible way to start.
Just reply with your URL and I'll get to work.
See you next Wednesday,
Brian