THE CURRICULUM / Introduction

0.2Who Is Talking to You

Max, Will, and why the two of us came up at opposite ends of the same skill.

6 min read

It is past midnight in a car park. Max is parked up and a bloke he has never met walks over, because he liked the car. That bloke is Will. They get talking, and it turns out they are both deep in ecommerce — Max on products and AI, Will on stores and ads. They started testing together and everything got faster.

ALWAYS KNOW WHOSE ADVICE YOU ARE TAKING.

there are two of us, and we came in from opposite ends

MAX — THE BORING END

  • Started on Amazon. Not with anything sexy: textbooks, and kids' books.
  • They worked because the demand under them was real. Students need textbooks every semester. Parents buy kids’ books every week.
Two paths to a sale, each answered against the same four questions. Selling into demand that already exists: the buyer arrives already wanting something like it, you are paying to be found and to be picked, the buyer only has to choose because they are already looking, and you are up against everyone selling the same thing. Trying to invent demand: the buyer is not looking for it or for you, you are paying for the explaining because every view has to teach, the buyer must first agree the problem is theirs, and you are up against everything else on the screen. One path asks the buyer to choose, the other asks them to change. Neither path is costed here.
Two paths to a sale. One asks the buyer to choose, the other asks them to change their mind first.
  • Nobody makes viral videos about a chemistry textbook. The data said what sold, at what price, how often.
  • The day job now is building AI for online stores, and he runs Shopify stores himself.

THE MONEY IS IN THE DEMAND.

exciting is a property of the feed, not of the market

WILL — THE LOUD END

  • Nineteen. One of the sharpest Shopify and Meta ads people either of us has met.
  • Came up selling Korean skincare into the States: trend-driven, brand-heavy, creative-led.
  • He rode a wave that was already moving. Real skill, and not the same skill as reading a spreadsheet.
  • He builds the stores and buys the traffic, so the ads module later is his.
  • Nineteen is not a credential. It is stated because somebody who started recently remembers which parts were confusing.
Two demand shapes across one year, stacked. The evergreen line holds roughly level from January to December. The seasonal line sits flat and then spikes once before falling back. The vertical axis has no scale and no units.
Two demand shapes across one year. Neither line is a size.

TWO ENDS OF THE SAME SPECTRUM

BORING DEMAND

  • The demand is relentless and dated. Every semester, every week, every season.
  • The standing risk is boredom. People talk themselves out of these.

HYPE DEMAND

  • The demand is a wave. Real underneath, loud on top, and moving.
  • The standing risk is timing. People arrive late and blame the product.

So between us you get both ends. The selection process is the same at both. The wrapping changes; the signal does not.

Demand sits above supply. You sit between them: you take the price the demand side pays, you pay the cost the supply side charges, and you keep the difference. No amounts are shown.
Both stories are the same shape underneath: demand here, supply there, you keeping the difference.

SIGNAL AND NOISE

THE TERMINOLOGY YOU WILL HEAR FROM US CONSTANTLY

What you are looking atNoiseSignal
Where you found itAll over your feed, and a guru posted it.You went looking for evidence of demand and found some.
PriceThree dollars on a marketplace, so it looks like margin.People are already spending money on this problem.
AdsA lot of new ads appeared at once.Ads running six weeks straight. Nobody runs unprofitable ads that long.

Max's textbooks were pure signal. Will's skincare was signal wrapped in noise. Amateurs pick with their eyes; we pick with data.

Three bands of ad duration and what each is worth as a signal. An ad running for days tells you nothing. One running for weeks has survived a cull and is worth a second look. One running for months is a profit confession, because someone is paying for it every day. Duration says nothing about how much.
Duration says nothing about how much. It says somebody is still paying.
Three tiers of number ranked by how much you can trust them. Measured: money that landed in the bank, orders in your admin, invoices you paid. Modelled: platform-attributed conversions, anything with a lookback window, blended estimates. Unknown: what you assumed, what you were told, what you hope. This is a rank, not a score.
Three tiers of number, ranked by how far you can trust them.
Statement poster: "We do not lose money. We purchase information."

WHY THE ROOM MATTERS MORE THAN THE PAGE

Both of us have taken ecommerce stores into eight figures in revenue. Revenue is not profit, and none of this is a promise that you will do the same. It is only the reason we are the ones talking.

NOBODY DOES THIS ALONE.

not a slogan, just how the industry runs

  • Somebody has already hit the wall you are about to hit, and knows what was behind it.
  • People team up in there. One is good at ads with no budget; another has budget and no idea about ads.
  • The people who talk are the ones who make it. Lurkers watch.
The four skills an ecommerce operator ends up owning, drawn as a stack that is read from the bottom up. Choosing what to sell is the base, with nothing under it: without it every skill above is wasted. Making the creative rests on that: without it you buy attention for nothing. Buying the media rests on that: without it nobody is ever shown any of it. Managing the cash sits on top: without it the business can grow and still run out. They are acquired in that order, each one rests on the one below, and none of the four is optional. No hours, difficulty or cost is claimed.
The four skills an operator ends up owning. Each of us started at a different layer.

TAKEAWAYS

  • Max came up on Amazon selling textbooks: boring products with real demand under them.
  • Will came up on Meta ads selling Korean skincare. Same skill, opposite conditions.
  • Signal is money already changing hands. Noise merely looks like an opportunity.
  • The research tool is not the edge. The judgement you point at it is.

CHECK YOURSELF

Max sold textbooks and kids' books. What is the lesson the course is built on?

What is the right first move in the community?

DO THIS BEFORE THE NEXT MODULE

  1. 01Post your why in the community.
  2. 02Sort three products you have seen recently into signal or noise, with the reason for each.
  3. 03Write down which end you lean towards, boring demand or hype demand. That is the one you will over-trust.
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