How John Roman Used Content + Community to Lower CAC

John [00:00:00] So this year, live shopping will be our second largest channel behind our website, which is absolutely astonishing. We didn’t know what we were doing 10 months ago when we launched it, and here we are with it being a big channel. So just kind of diversifying sales channels and riding this one out to the next exit.

Hector Hello and welcome to another episode of the How to Scale of Business podcast. My name is Hector Santhe Esteban, and I am your host for today. Our special guest is Mr. John Roman, and he is the CEO of battle box. They are a direct to consumer e-commerce, like awesome, rugged, outdoor, like cool shit brand.

Hector And so, we're gonna talk about all the things that came along with building that and some cool things with regards to live selling. So John, thanks for hanging out with us today.

John Hey, thanks for having me. I love that description.

Hector I was trying to bucket it or put an umbrella and I was like, as I was through the website, I was like, oh, this is just a bunch of cool shit.

John Yeah, that's accurate. We're gonna trademark Cool Shit.

Hector [00:01:00] Yeah, it's yours. Send me a box of royalties. And that's it. John, tell us the story of the brand. 'Cause you guys have had, I'm sure, a number of downs too, but it seems like some really cool things where you, you know, a lot of maneuvers and a lot of acquiring and reacquiring. Catch the listeners up on the highlights of that journey.

Hector And then a little bit about where you guys are at now.

John Sure. So yeah, it goes back to 2015, which was a completely different time in e-comm, e-commerce back then. Arguably it was a little bit easier. It's changed and it's become quite competitive in the last decade. So 2015 was also this period of time where subscription boxes were like the coolest thing ever.

John And everyone had one. Some people had multiple. And that's Battle Box's origin story. My ex-business partner, my co-founder, wanted an outdoor gear subscription box because his fiance at the time was getting Birchbox, which was this golden child, billion dollar valuation back then.

John [00:02:00] And it was women's health and beauty products. And he'd see her do this unboxing each month when she got it. And he was like, man, I want that feeling. Went online, couldn't find it. Turned out he wasn't alone in the want and desire for an outdoor gear subscription.

John And I came in initially just as an investor and invested, and wrote a check about two weeks, two and a half weeks after launch. And it was the right timing combo with subscription box, something that didn't exist in the marketplace, and the ability to acquire customers back then on Facebook for less than $5 a piece.

John So it quickly became a tangible business. 2015, I think we did a tad over 4 million in our first year. So it was like pretty quickly we were onto something. I came on full-time in 2016 and off to the races.

John [00:03:00] So, a little bit different than your traditional D2C brand, we have such a focus on content and community building.

John So really that serves as more of our top of funnel, while traditional Meta ads and traditional ads at this point are more of our, there's some top of funnel, but for the most part it's mid funnel. Getting people who are already thinking about making the purchase and kind of knocking them over the edge.

John Other highlights: 2020, we got our Netflix original TV show Southern Survival, which is literally just a commercial for BattleBox every episode. Not sure how it got the green light to be what it was. It's a great show, but it is literally BattleBox front and center. The premise of the show is we're testing gear to determine if it goes in the box.

John [00:04:00] So it's an amazing commercial for us of what we actually do.

John That helped, plus it was pandemic time. People were already stuck in their house and buying, so e-comm was already going up and to the right. Then we drop a Netflix original show.

John I think six or seven months after Tiger King, to kind of give you that timeframe of everyone was just in their house watching Netflix.

John Combination of pandemic and Netflix show, we saw super growth when we were already growing.

John At that point it was time for the exit. One of our partners, the guy that came up with the idea, didn't really want to do anything anymore, didn't want to work.

John [00:05:00] It didn't make sense to buy him out because we didn't know how much further growth we were going to see, and getting a loan as just an individual, paying a 6x EBITDA, doesn't make too much sense when we don't see some kind of magic unlock that was going to quadruple the business for a better payback.

John So we found a partner that made sense. It was a SPAC.

John So we sold. My old partner was able to leave day one. He wasn't needed.

John And we moved forward as a publicly traded company, which comes with its own challenges.

John At no fault to the SPAC, but 2021 timeframe, SPACs are beginning to have a little bit of trouble in the markets, and that's what happened. Financials not really changing, but their market cap went from, I don't know, it was like 160 million to, I think it might have gone down below 10.

John [00:06:00] It might be below 10 now. And all of that allowed the opportunity for us to buy the business back. And it was a mutually beneficial arrangement. They got a cash injection and we got our baby back.

John And now we're building it again. We're seeing great growth again.

John Last year, we're mature, so it might not be as exciting as some to hear, 10% year over year growth. But for us, a decently sized eight figure company, that's significant revenue.

John We're on base to do 10% again this year.

John The membership, the original part of the business, is subscription box, which we don't even call it subscription box, we just call it membership, is still growing.

John It's not growing as fast, as it's very matured, but we're getting the exponential growth on all these additional sales channels. Our Amazon business is getting great growth.

John [00:07:00] It's significantly growing. We launched Whatnot in April of last year, and it's already surpassed all of our other channels.

John So this year, live shopping will be our second largest channel behind our website, which is absolutely astonishing. We didn't know what we were doing 10 months ago when we launched it, and here we are with it being a big channel. So just kind of diversifying sales channels and riding this one out to the next exit.

Hector I downloaded it and I found myself very overwhelmed with how out of place I felt for a lot of reasons. So I'm very excited to hear about that.

John Did you download it because of the Super Bowl and Mr. Beast and all that, or...

Hector No, I downloaded it, I think it was actually Gary Vaynerchuk.

Hector I saw one of his posts, and he Alzheimers about something and so I hadn't heard about it though, so I was like, I'm gonna at least see what the fuss is about.

Hector So I want to come back to that, but I'm curious, before we sort of get off of the story of BattleBox, it seems like you guys just, I mean, like, I'm saying from the outside and from the story right so far is like, oh, you just went up to the plate. Oh, home run.

John Yeah, so there has been a lot of hits, a lot of home runs or triples or doubles. But yeah, there's definitely challenges along the way.

John [00:08:00] We didn't have a strong financial leader in the organization for the first several years.

John We had a CPA that was doing our taxes and super talented, but my ex-business partner, not in a malicious way, would give them the exports of the files but not the full understanding of the business.

John So if they're making a decision as an accounting expert but they're not given all the variables of data, you can't expect their advice to be sound.

John So we made some, in hindsight, extremely idiotic decisions when it came to building a property, getting company cars.

John Because the CPA's like, oh, you want to get your expenses down? Get your expenses up and your profit down. Do this, do that.

John And businesses aren't necessarily that black and white, ones and zeros.

John So we made some questionable decisions that caused ridiculous cash flow issues.

John This whole membership, the subscription box, which is still, 70, it'll be 75% of our revenue this year, it's a large part of the business.

John [00:09:00] We forecast revenue six months out and go to production manufactured runs, which cost capital.

John We're having to put cash in when we're not even going to do that renewal for another four or five months.

John So 160 day floats, seven products in each box on average. It's a very cash intensive business, and we didn't do ourselves any favors.

John We had a couple times where cash was super tight. We didn't have to do layoffs, but there was definitely a time where we weren't making payments on stuff on time.

John We got lucky. We found a great hire. He came on as an employee into the CFO role and whipped it into shape pretty quickly.

John That was such an important hire that if we didn't find that hire, I don't think we would've made it.

Hector [00:10:00] Yeah. I think a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of founders, they have certain personalities and certain talents, and it seems like a lot of times that person ends up being distinct from the person who's innovative and problem solving, or building product.

John Yeah, and that's what it was. My old partner was very idea guy, innovative guy.

John I'm not ever gonna ask him to balance my checkbook, right? Not that side of the brain.

John It's not a bad thing, but typically it is that. The extremely creative idea geniuses, they're really good at that, but there's gonna be an area where they need help.

John And with certainty, that's where we needed help.

Hector Well, for sure. And it's good, it's great to hear that you guys are finding the right people and sort of moving them up and into higher positions in the company.

Hector When we get back from break, I'm curious. We talked about Whatnot and live selling. I would imagine that over that time you guys have had to make a number of pivots and adjustments with regards to technology and marketing.

Hector [00:11:00] So we're gonna get into that a little bit more right after this quick break.

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Hector You can also check the show notes for the link.

Hector And with that, let's go back to John.

Hector [00:12:00] John, I'm curious, before we get into some of the tactics, as an organization you guys seem to be utilizing different methods of getting the word out and spreading awareness.

Hector You talked about Meta ads and Netflix and Whatnot.

Hector What's the driving philosophy behind all of that? Because it's not like you guys are Netflix people or Meta people or Whatnot people. You seem to sort of evolve as things do.

Hector What sort of things are you guys talking about internally that allows you guys to make those pivots and adjustments?

John Sure. Any decision we're making for the business, there's two pillars that matter most, and we take them always into consideration: content and community.

John We're very unusual in the sense that we're a small team, a small company, but we have four full-time video editors.

John A content coordinator that manages the team.

John We have two full-time creators that are part of the team.

John If you just take the four video editors, content coordinator, and the two creators, having seven full-time that are focused purely on content is very unusual.

John The community aspect is obviously very important, but at the end of the day, if you're trying to break it down into a metric, we're trying to lower our blended CAC.

John We want our blended customer acquisition cost to be as low as possible.

John Do we have to advertise still? Absolutely. We probably always have to advertise.

John But we want that blended CAC to be as low as possible because that allows scale and allows us to get in front of as many eyeballs as possible.

John So everything is content-driven, even Whatnot.

John We treat it like content. We run 65 shows a month there currently. We're hoping to double that soon with another channel.

John [00:13:00] We're taking the same approach of making it fun.

John If you look at our content, a lot of it's educational. Most of it's educational. A little bit of funniness in there, but we're not really ever hard selling.

John We're just talking the talk, walking the walk of being avid outdoors people and preparing for the worst case scenarios.

John By educating and talking through that, the rest kind of falls together.

Hector What have you guys learned about this whole live selling? I've been loosely following it. When they're doing it in Asia, I'm like, okay, this is probably coming at a certain point, and it seems like it's already taken hold over there.

Hector What have you guys learned since you started?

John Yeah. To your point, you hear and see and read about China and live shopping and it's been that way for 10 years.

John I would argue that where we are today is where they probably were about 10 years ago.

John For the last half decade or longer, everyone's talking live shopping is happening this year, and it came and it never came.

John This is the first time that I genuinely believe, and I started feeling this way in the beginning of 2025, that it's actually here now.

John We're going to see this ramp up of live shopping.

John Will it ever be the huge channel that it is in China? Possibly not. Consumer behavior is a little bit different in North America.

John But I do believe that it's going to start growing and it's going to grow exponentially.

John Using Whatnot as the example, there are other platforms. TikTok has even taken a couple shots at it.

John Whatnot raised money twice in 2025.

John In the beginning of the year, they raised a couple hundred million at a $5.5 billion valuation.

John In October or November of 2025, they raised again at an $11 billion valuation.

John So when there's that much money being thrown around, there's some strategy. Someone sees something.

Hector I would imagine that most businesses look at that and go, okay, that's not for me.

Hector For the ones that do, what do you think is important for them to understand about the landscape of the platforms?

John A couple ways I look at this. One of the big things is intent.

John [00:17:00] You're on TikTok and you're swiping, ingesting content for entertainment purposes.

John You're not necessarily in the mindset that I'm ready to buy. I'm watching someone dance or a prank. I'm not thinking I really want to spend money right now.

John Then TikTok goes, oh wait, here's this $20 tchotchke. Do you want to buy it?

John I'm sure the algorithm is trying to find the right times to show it.

John But then you go to Whatnot.

John Whatnot is shopping and entertainment.

John If you've downloaded the app and you've opened the app today, you are already so much further along in the buying cycle than a random TikTok user.

John Arguably, if you open Whatnot, you're looking to buy something and be entertained. It's the flip flop.

John If Amazon can ever figure out live shopping, they've done half a dozen iterations and keep missing the mark.

John But if they can figure it out, they have the same thing. You don't open up Amazon to be entertained. You open Amazon to spend money.

John Maybe they acquire Whatnot.

John Not many can acquire an $11 billion company, but Amazon is one of them.

John It skipped our generation, this QVC home shopping network.

John But our parents' generation was a part of it. They'd watch TV, pick up the phone and call and order something.

John It was these eight to 12 minute segments.

John Our generation was like, I don't know about that.

John This is the new generation's QVC.

John It's solved the problem because we've seen with TikTok, it's swiping, ingesting, very short attention spans.

John QVC 12 minute pitch doesn't work anymore.

John Whatnot has incorporated swiping like YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and TikTok into shopping.

John Credit card on file.

John You swipe like you would on a dating app or social media to make a purchase.

John It's auction-based for the most part.

John So it's competitive. It's gamification with high intent buyers.

John That's it. And that's not unique to what's working in China. It's the same thing. They just have more apps and it's already further along.

Hector Yeah. It's so cool that you guys have really dove into this in a smart way.

Hector I think you're one of the few I've heard talk about blended CAC, but I'm like, oh yeah, that makes sense.

Hector 'Cause we're in the podcast world.

Hector For us, the hardest thing was attribution.

Hector They're like, we know it's working, but we can't attribute it.

Hector So that idea of putting it all together, having a holistic view of how content comes together, I think is really brilliant.

Hector [00:20:00] I've got two questions left.

Hector The first is if people want to find out about you, find out about BattleBox, where's the best place for people to go?

John You can just Google BattleBox. Spell it however you want. It is B-A-T-T-L-B-O-X. No E.

John If you Google it, you're gonna find it.

John You go to any social media platform, you're gonna find us too.

John We have over a million followers on TikTok. Close to a million on YouTube. Close to a million on Facebook.

John We're on Instagram. We're on X. I think we're even on Pinterest.

John Find us there.

John Me, LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me.

John I post content pretty regularly.

John And then online, queso.com is my blog.

John It's probably 70% written by me, 30% by guest articles.

John It's about best practices, e-commerce, entrepreneurship.

John We have this almost toxic world where people just post the wins.

John Reality is, yeah, I might get a home run, but I struck out nine times prior, and there were learnings in those strikeouts.

John I think overall people don't do a great job talking about the losses, because that's where the gold is.

John If you can harness those learnings and find out what you did wrong and apply it, that's where the win comes.

John People love to share the home runs, but the recipe isn't there. The recipe was left back with those nine strikeouts.

John I'm very intentional with content showcasing what went wrong and how we corrected.

John There's a seven or eight part series now where I was literally writing an article on every step of our Whatnot journey.

John From the first month where we didn't know what we were doing to having a gentleman named Cameron that runs Whatnot for us.

John And he has a full-time team that supports him.

John It's the whole journey. We made a lot of mistakes along the way.

Hector We'll link that up for listeners as well.

Hector You may have answered it, and I appreciate that answer so much, but I'm going to at least give you the opportunity to change or adjust it.

Hector In your opinion, what is the secret to scaling a...

John [00:23:00] Going, just doing it.

John I don't want it to sound like a cop out, but so many times there's paralysis by analysis.

John People want to make sure that they get everything right.

John Every I is dotted, every T is crossed.

John You just gotta go and understand you're going to make mistakes.

John Learn from those mistakes, pivot.

John You're not going to get everything right the first time or the second time.

John Scaling a business is very cyclical.

John We care about scaling something profitably for several years, and then we don't.

John And then we do again.

John Right now we're in the chapter of scale profitably.

John But in 2029 we might say, just scale. Who cares about profits?

John So right now it's scale profitably.

John I think looking at blended acquisition costs is key to scale effectively and profitably.

John You can't look at just one platform or one source. You have to look at it holistically.

John Attribution is tricky.