July 14, 2025

How to Survive a Million-Dollar Loss

This year I’ve sprinkled occasional “Ecommerce Conversations” episodes with real-life master classes from Beardbrand, my company. To date I’ve addressed hiring, branding, profit-building, priority-setting, and exiting.

For this installment, I’ll share Beardbrand’s experience of losing nearly $1 million across 2023 and 2024. I’ll recap how we managed to survive our worst years in business while remaining 100% bootstrapped.

It got bad. Our cash levels dropped to where they were in year one, 2014. We were hemorrhaging money.

But we’re still here — still building and still learning. We made it through without outside funding.

Here’s what the future holds for Beardbrand. My entire audio dialog is embedded below. The transcript is condensed and edited for clarity.

Ghosted

A big portion of our loss came from Target. The company had been a seven-figure account for us for years, and we thought the relationship was solid. Every year, we pitched Target our plans. Historically, the staff there provided us with clear feedback — what worked, what didn’t, and where there was room for growth.

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