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🪩 Volume 143 | July 8, 2026

 

Something NEW is happening around here!!!! 

 

Sarah (my right hand gal at Brand Good Time) and I have been talking for mooooooonths about how much gets left on the cutting room floor every week. I write this newsletter, but there's always a whole SECOND conversation (er, Slack thread lol) happening behind it.

 

And, it’s usually banter about the stuff we're actually seeing work (and flop) with real clients, on the exact thing I'm breaking down that week. If you’ve been in the same virtual room as Sarah and me, you know we have a lot to say about a lot of things lol.

 

So we're fixing that. Every Funnel Cake will now come with an audio companion: a 30-minute conversation where Sarah and I go deeper on the week's theme, with the client-side version of the story.

 

 

The newsletter stays FREE, always. The audio lives on Substack for paid subscribers ($8/mo or $80/year). 

 

If you want the extended cut, come find us over there 👉 Subscribe on Substack

 

Now: let's talk about why the easiest brands to buy from are usually the most profitable ones.

 

 

Last week we talked about trust, and how it is the thing that ACTUALLY moves people to buy. (If you missed it, it's here; it got passed around more than I expected, which, thank you!!)

 

This week, I want to zoom in on the move that comes RIGHT after you've earned the trust: making the decision easy. You can be the most trusted brand in the room and still lose the sale if buying from you feels complicated.

 

So let's talk about a brand that very much understood the assignment.

 

 

Setting the stage: Two moms + one sneaker → a decision-fatigue problem → a curated kids' brand that grew through a pandemic and landed on the 2025 Inc. Female Founders 500. (claps!!)

 

Ten Little is not really in the shoe business. They're in the “make this ONE parenting decision stop being a nightmare” business.

 

Founders Fatma Collins and Julie Rogers were former Jet.com colleagues and new moms, and the origin story is almost too on-the-nose. Collins has said she ordered SEVEN different shoes when her daughter started walking just to find one that fit: the classic order-multiple, return-the-rest spiral every parent knows. (Forbes has the full backstory.) The problem wasn't that good kids' shoes didn't exist. The problem was that BUYING them was a guessing game that reset every few months.

 

When they launched, on February 20, 2020, roughly two weeks before the entire world shut down (impeccable timing lol). They didn't come out of the gate with a catalog. They launched with ONE product: the Everyday Original low-top sneaker, in a handful of colors. That's it. (For added color, I literally have like 12 pairs in various sizes in our home right now. OBSESSED).

 

This is ONE shoe style, doctor-designed (wide toe box, flat flexible soles, the whole thing eventually earned the APMA Seal of Acceptance). The actual product,  the thing they built the brand around,  was the DECISION. They created a ”Fit Finder” so you didn't have to guess your kid's size, and a predictive system that literally texts you when it's time to size up.

 

Sit with that.

 

Their competitors were selling shoes.

 

Ten Little was selling “you never have to think about this again.” They took the single most annoying, repetitive, easy-to-get-wrong decision in early parenting and they REMOVED it. The shoe is just the delivery mechanism.

 

They've expanded since: a few more styles, a whole site organized by your kid's age and stage so you're never staring at a wall of options wondering what's for you. But notice HOW they expanded. Not by dumping choices on you, but by pre-sorting them. The site does the deciding.

 

For your business: What's the ONE decision your customer (or client) has to make before they can buy from you, and are you making them do that math, or are you doing it FOR them? Ten Little's whole GENIUS PLAY is that they answer “what size, is it time yet, and will it fit” so you don't have to. What's the “what size” question in YOUR funnel that you're making people solve alone?

Every option you DON'T force a customer to weigh is one less reason for them to close the tab and “think about it” (which, we both know, means never). More choices FEELS generous, but to your end consumer it usually just feels like work.

BTW, it’s not too late to go back and simplify. 

 

 

 

Okay. Onto dessert. 🍰

 

 

1. The creatine craze finally got a face — and she's a NATURAL. Create Wellness (the creatine gummy people) tapped former Peloton instructor Kendall Toole to front a campaign across social, TV, and out-of-home, and I only caught it because the founders were posting about it on LinkedIn (founders as their own best media channel, love to see it). The coloring is gorgeous, but the real win is Kendall herself: she's got a loyal fanbase from her Peloton days and reads like someone who'd actually take this. Bonus points that they built the whole brand around ONE ingredient on purpose. One hero product, one believable face. That's how you make a "yes" easy.

 

2. I'll be honest, I BOUGHT — Poncho got me with their Father's Day campaign this year and I have zero regrets (I've wanted to collab with them for a client for ages for one of our clients, fingers crossed that might be in the cards). Their whole pitch is almost aggressively simple: “your dad's next favorite shirt, guaranteed.” RIGHT after that huge acquisition wave, they put a brand-new product in front of all those fresh customers (the Field Polo). Strike while the CRM is HOT HOT HOT. 

 

 

Sarah and I recorded a full audio companion to this issue; the deeper, how-this-applies-to-you-side version of everything above. Get it at the bottom of the Substack version of Funnel Cake, here.