8 Practical Money-Making Tips for 2026 (Part 2)

Let’s get straight into practical moves brands can use to make more money right now. That’s the promise for 2026: real tips you can act on today, and we’ve got a full crew back from break to deliver.

Feels great to be back in L.A. and cranking. No Super Bowl for us this year; it’s pricey and the math’s better when Fox carries it again, while Amazon is the most likely streamer to land it first.

I’m amped. It’s never been easier to build at scale, even if the year feels uncertain. Change creates lanes for entrepreneurs who move fast.

My hot take: this year might be a calm reset for e‑commerce. The pandemic whiplash and rate shocks are baked in, rates are easing, and variables look clearer than they’ve been since 2019.

I see it the other way: volatility is our edge. When the ground shifts weekly, high‑agency operators spot openings and pounce.

Call it randomness or complexity—either way you win by reacting better than the crowd with good judgment and speed.

New tools let us see patterns inside messy systems. Skip the simplistic narratives and use superhuman analysis to get ahead of moves before others notice.

We may disagree on tempo, but we’re aligned this can be a great year. First money tip: apply to curated corporate‑gifting and marketplace programs that favor sub‑$50 and sub‑$100 items, ship direct, and behave like wholesale. Lead with secondary SKUs that fit their price bands and get in early.

If you already do wholesale, it slots right in. Pure DTC brands need to weigh the 30 to 50 percent margin trade‑off against their current MER before jumping.

Think of a retailer as a locked‑in affiliate. If they bring incremental demand at solid unit economics without cannibalizing other channels, take all you can—often steadier than feeding social ads.

Precision here needs a clean data stack. And for many brands running around two times MER, that fifty percent you give a wholesaler is what you’d hand Meta anyway.

Quick mindset win: stop dodging the hard thing you’ve been avoiding. Make the call, end the project, change the seat—lean into discomfort and you’ll unlock money and momentum.

Reset your media mix and add offline impressions earlier. Booths, airports, and retail touchpoints hit audiences who aren’t living online, and we’ve seen this matter even more in new geographies.

Diversify before you max out Meta. You’ll struggle on new channels no matter when you start, so learn sooner and keep CACs from drifting up while you wait.

Also track how many customers you’ve already acquired in your category. You can reach Meta’s local maximum long before your revenue looks huge, and offline reaches people who aren’t in their feeds.

Push spend up the funnel. Bottom‑of‑funnel systems lean hard into retargeting; the alpha now lives in illiquid, relationship‑driven buys like stadiums where others can’t copy you with a click.

Don’t fight a platform’s natural CAC—align your offer or use it for what it’s built to do. Relationships and early bets create outsized wins, like getting on a show before it blows up.

Build a stage thesis for every ad. Tag creative by awareness level and judge it on the right goals so proven top‑of‑funnel pieces can scale into offline placements.

Easy win: send more plain‑text emails from a real person. They hit the primary inbox, get read, and feel human—A/B it and watch the lift.

The tools aren’t the bottleneck—we are. Carve out time to play with AI, challenge old constraints, and rebuild workflows. A simple agent that ingests competitor emails and posts daily summaries to Slack takes under an hour and gives you near‑perfect visibility.

Voice to AI can now draft full decks from a prompt. I spoke my goals and got a clean, structured presentation without touching a keyboard.

Same on the go with voice. I dictated a memo in the car, answered a few follow‑ups, and shipped a clear plan across the team in minutes.

Operational tip: place inventory in the right distribution centers and avoid split shipments. With better planning and systems, we saved millions by reducing extra touches and transfers.

Multi‑node only works if you keep split shipments and inter‑warehouse moves near zero. Data‑driven placement prevents burning cash and preserves the speed benefit.

International pricing is a profit lever. Price for local wallets and norms, even if margin percent drops; we cut prices steeply in some markets and made more total dollars.

Price is contextual. Shelves, channels, and markets change what’s acceptable, so tune both price and product mix to where the customer encounters you.

Think about price framing like car badges. On your own site you control context and can tell the premium story; on marketplaces you’re side by side with cheaper options, so play that turf differently. Great session—now go make the money.