In partnership with

4x your communication output. Same quality. No burnout.

The bottleneck isn't what you want to say — it's how long it takes to type it. Wispr Flow removes the bottleneck.

Speak naturally and get polished, send-ready text for executive summaries, client updates, board recaps, investor notes, or just the 30 Slack messages you're behind on. Flow strips filler, formats numbers and lists, and preserves your tone.

Used by teams at OpenAI, Vercel, and Clay. 89% of messages sent with zero edits. Works in every app on Mac, Windows, and iPhone.

Start flowing free

Welcome back friend!
And a big welcome to the +793 😮 😮 😮 new readers this week!

Know an Amazon Seller who’d love 💕 this newsletter? Share it in one click.
(it really helps us)

Why is this so dumb?

Ever get annoyed? Sure you do. You’re human. So do I. And that annoyance we all feel a dozen times a day? I’ve started paying attention to it.

That's friction. It happens when a task or situation I’m in isn’t smooth. It’s clunky, irritating, and makes me grit my teeth a little bit.

Friction is information.

When something feels harder than it should be, it’s not random. It means something's broken. A missing system. A step that exists for no reason except that it's always existed. Something someone thought would be a good idea... but isn't.

• Friction is opening the listing edit window in Amazon and waiting 5-10 seconds for it to load. Every time. But I've been doing it for years.

• Friction is my mechanic taking 2 weeks to return my car when he promised 3 business days.

• Friction is when I can't find a company's support email.

Whatever. Move on with your day, right?

That's the human reflex. Friction shows up, we feel it for a second, we shove it down, we keep going. Annoyed people don't pay attention... they just want the feeling to go away.

But this is where some of my best ideas come from.

The Amazon load time is a pain point shared by every seller on the platform. The mechanic is a customer experience gap big enough to drive a competitor through. The missing support email is a business someone could build a better version of tomorrow.

I almost didn't notice any of them. Because I was annoyed. So now I pay attention.

I don't try to fix the thing in the moment. I don't try to solve it. I just write it down. One line in a note on my phone. Ten seconds. Move on. The point isn't to remove friction. I'll never be able to do that.

The point is to take notes. Be present. Find the rough edges everyone else is busy trying to avoid.

That's where the good ideas live.

The IVS

Rob decided to jump in and supply this week’s IVS! Thanks, Rob! When he’s not elbow deep in tax preparation, you can find him building LEGO & playing games with his boys.

How I Tracked Tiger's $56K Mugshot Bump in Sales on Sun Day Red

You can see how much almost any DTC brand is actually selling. Their revenue, their bestsellers, what's running out of stock. Most brands have no idea this is possible, and the way the tools work is weirdly simple apparently.

Nearly every Shopify store exposes its inventory on public URLs. Tools like Particl, Charm.io, and Drop poll those endpoints every few hours. When a product goes from 100 units to 87 overnight, that's 13 sold. Multiply by the price. Do that for every SKU across 500,000+ stores, stack years of history on top, and you can see revenue, bestsellers, pricing, and stockouts for almost any brand online.

Here's what it looks like:

You can also see weirder stuff. Remember the blue polo Tiger was wearing in his DUI mugshot last month? Sun Day Red's Review Polo in Cosmic Blue. Inventory went from 805 units before the arrest to 37 today. 453 polos sold in 4 weeks. Tiger accidentally ran a $56K ad campaign for his own brand. Cost: one mugshot.

Why it matters: 

Scouting competitors? You can get their pretty real revenue, their bestsellers, and what keeps selling out.

Eyeing a new DTC category? You can find the winners and reverse-engineer what's working instead of guessing.

Already selling? Benchmark yourself against the leaders instead of your gut.

We use Particl (app.particl.com). It isn't cheap! But if you're about to spend real money on product development or a new market, one good decision pays for it.  And yes you can connect to their API!  If you don’t see a competitor you can also request and they will let you know in a few hours of they can add them or not…which I guess they scan the site and see if they can pull the data.

Did an extremely good-looking friend forward you this newsletter?

Get the next one, here!

Chess Tournaments, Hotel Lounges and One Piece Rips

Tax season finally wrapped up, and with Friday being a holiday here in Costa Rica, we took the opportunity to get out of our usual routine and head into the city for a mix of chess, shopping, and family time.

We stayed at the Sheraton San Jose Hotel, and I’ll say this… I’ve been sleeping on hotel clubs. If you’ve got Marriott Bonvoy Platinum Elite status, you get access, and depending on the club they have different benefits. This one, breakfast is covered for all of us, there are solid snacks in the evening, and from 6 to 8 there’s a proper free happy hour. When you’re traveling with kids, that setup just makes everything easier and cheaper. I’m now actively looking for hotels that include this kind of lounge access because it’s a no-brainer.

The other thing we don’t get much of where we live is convenience, so the kids fully leaned into Uber Eats to the hotel or the chess tournament. Not exactly fine dining, but when you live a bit removed from that kind of access it is a total treat.

We also jumped into something new as a family… the One Piece Card Game. Picked up a couple starter decks just to learn the basics, and they included a booster pack. Ended up pulling a card worth about $250. That was enough to immediately understand the whole “pack ripping” addiction you see with Pokémon and sports cards. There’s a real dopamine hit there. The upside is if you actually want to play the game properly, most of the good cards are affordable on TCGplayer, so we’ll probably go that route instead of chasing packs.

And one thing that always throws me off about San José… the weather. Late morning feels like typical Costa Rica heat, but by 6pm it flipped completely and we had the car heater on. Not something you expect down here, but it happens.

Overall, a simple weekend, but one of those resets you actually need after a busy stretch. It also helped that Jackson finished 2^nd out of 74 and moves up to the next division!

I’ll Take Storage Costs for 200, Alex

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Where you store your stuff matters. Same pallet of product. Four very different monthly bills.

Storage costs vary wildly for Amazon sellers. Here’s the average latest numbers for pallet storage PER MONTH.

GWD: ~$8
3PL: ~$20
AWD ~$35
FBA: ~$80

(TIP: If your supplier is willing to work out an arrangement with you, you might be able to store it there for free)

Think about where you're storing your stuff before shipping it!

You’re Not The Only One With a Key

This one might seem a bit silly. For the safety conscious. Stick with me.

Buy a rubber door wedge. The same kind you'd use to prop open a door at home. You slide it under the inside of your hotel room door before bed and that's it. Anyone with a master keycard, a slipped lock, or just the wrong room number is not getting in quietly.

Mostly useful for solo travelers in unfamiliar cities. Ground floor rooms. Hostels. Anywhere the lock situation feels a little... no bueno.

Costs about $15 on Amazon. Fits in any toiletry bag. Weighs nothing. Peace of mind while traveling.

To your success,

Rob & Max