Work Selected systems

Shipped. And still running.

Ten systems, each with the number it put on the board and the receipt for how that number was measured. Clients stay anonymous here by default—the numbers hold up fine without the names—and I'll happily put names to any of them on a call.

01 The board

$2m

One Black Friday for one brand, with $1m of it pure profit—planned like an engineering project, read against target every morning.

21×

A coffee brand's year: $1,775 off 28 orders in May 2025 to $37,952 off 470 orders in May 2026.

9,300

New customers from two sale events—then $500k of post-sale revenue from those same cohorts.

185%

Of day-one revenue target on an EOFY sale—70+ creatives riding a pre-set budget curve.

4,134

Product descriptions written, checked and shipped for one catalogue; organic product pages up 37.5%.

8×10

Signals read per brand, every morning, across the whole portfolio. That system is entry W10.

Start here

Want a read like this on your own store?

Send me the store and I'll come back with the first thing I'd fix or build—specific, priced, and free. In your inbox within a day.

Goes straight to me, Michael. No newsletter, no sales sequence, no call required. Prefer to skip the form? michael@strivefortone.com goes straight to me.

Prefer to talk? Book a 20-minute call ›

02 Growth, run end to end

The revenue work.

W1

A $2m Black Friday, with $1m of it profit

One sale event for a specialty coffee brand, run end to end. The offer architecture, the budget curves and a revenue target for every single day were locked before it opened—then I operated the sale like a live system: actuals against target every morning, budget moved between offers and audiences while there was still sale left to matter, weak creative cut the day it flagged. Most sales get launched and then watched. This one was driven. It cleared $2m in sales and $1m of it was profit—and the mid-year sale for the same brand runs seven figures too, its strongest stretch averaging $126k a day for twenty straight days.

specialty coffee · black friday 2025 · ran the sale end to end · measured in shopify sales reports

W2

$1.8k months to $38k months, inside a year

A roaster mid-rebuild. May 2025 closed at $1,775 in online revenue off 28 orders. May 2026 closed at $37,952 off 470 orders—a 21× year-on-year multiple with Meta, Google and Klaviyo run as one system. No single lucky sale carrying it: evergreen creative, signal-led budget moves, and the same daily read as every other brand on this page.

“We leave him alone and he just gets results.”

specialty coffee · may 2025 vs may 2026 · full growth stack · verified in shopify order data, same month year-on-year · quote: the brand's ceo

W3

9,300 new customers from two sale events

Same brand, different job: I treated the June sale and Black Friday as acquisition events rather than discount events—the offer, the creative and the budget all built around who we'd own after the sale, not just what we'd bank during it. Together they brought in 9,300 new customers, $500k of post-sale revenue from those cohorts, and a 10.6% conversion into coffee subscriptions from the June intake.

specialty coffee · two sale events, 2025 · acquisition strategy + retention build · counted from shopify customer records

W4

185% of the day-one target, on a pre-set curve

An EOFY sale for a 4WD gear brand, built as full-funnel architecture: offer structure across 70-plus creatives, budgets ramping on a curve set before launch, and a revenue target for every day of the sale. By lunchtime on day one the read said it was running hot—and because every offer and budget step was already sequenced, pushing harder meant feeding a sale that was already winning, with the extra spend landing on creative that had earned it. Day one closed at 185% of its revenue target.

4wd gear · eofy 2026 · campaign architecture · day-one read against a pre-set revenue target

W5

$40k banked in the week after the sale ended

The quiet week after Black Friday is where most brands quietly hand back their gains. A gourmet pantry brand banked $40k in the eight days after the sale ended—because the retention layer was built before the sale even started, so every discount buyer landed in a flow designed to bring them back at full price.

gourmet pantry · the week after black friday 2025 · retention architecture · measured in shopify, eight days post-sale

03 AI in production

The systems that don't clock off.

W6

4,134 product descriptions for one catalogue

I tuned a content engine to the brand's own voice and had it rewrite the entire catalogue—titles, descriptions and metadata—with every page checked by a human before it shipped. 4,134 descriptions in one pass; work a copywriter would price in months, shipped in days. A comparable deployment correlated with a 37.5% revenue uplift on organic product pages.

automotive lighting · 2026 · built and QA'd the content engine · uplift measured against pre-deployment organic baselines

W7

A parts finder that can't invent a part number

A 600-plus SKU automotive catalogue where buying the wrong part means a return. I put an LLM intent layer over verified fitment data—the model parses what the customer's asking, but the part itself only ever comes from the verified data, so it answers like a counter salesman with twenty years behind him and it can't hallucinate a part number. Search turned into the highest-converting entry point on the whole site.

automotive accessories · 2026 · designed and built the agent · conversion read from on-site search entry points

W8

Greenlight, the portfolio operating system

The in-house build that reads eight signals per brand every morning—spend, revenue, creative, email, tracking health—and hands down a verdict before 6am. It has run every brand on this page, every day, for the life of the engagement. It's also the reason one operator can carry 14+ brands without dropping any of them. I've documented the whole thing on its own page.

whole portfolio · every morning · designed and built · its output is the 06:00 briefing this site describes

04 The plumbing that makes it count

Unglamorous. Load-bearing.

W9

Server-side tracking and offline conversion sync

Elevar server-side installs across multiple ecommerce brands—including Hydrogen storefronts, where half the usual tracking assumptions break—plus a HubSpot-to-ads offline conversion sync for a lead-gen business. The upshot in every case: the ad platforms finally optimise toward sales that actually happened, instead of the fraction the browser managed to report.

multiple brands · ongoing · implementation and verification · events checked one-for-one against platform diagnostics

W10

Persona system for a four-brand portfolio

I mined reviews, community groups and DMs into persona and messaging frameworks for a four-brand automotive portfolio, then validated every persona against 90 days of real order data—so they describe buyers who verifiably exist, with the receipts attached. That corpus now writes the creative briefs and powers an on-site answer layer too.

4wd + automotive portfolio · 2026 · research, build and validation · personas checked against 90 days of order data

I've worked closely with Michael and can say without hesitation he's one of the sharpest people in the ecommerce growth space. His knowledge runs deep, and more importantly, he knows how to apply it. Paid media, email, analytics, creative strategy, and now AI systems that actually move the needle. He understands how it all connects.

What I respect most is how he works. He's thorough, detailed, and refreshingly honest. He takes the time to get things right, stays engaged, and genuinely cares about the outcome. If you're serious about growing your brand and want someone who will give you a straight answer and do the work, Michael is exactly that person.

— Alex Wilson, Founder & CEO, FutureCPG

References

Want the detail with names attached?

Book a call and I'll walk you through any of these with the client's name on it and the dashboard open. Or skip ahead—send me your store and your read starts today.

Free, written by me, in your inbox within a day. No newsletter, no sequence, no call required. Prefer to skip the form? michael@strivefortone.com goes straight to me.

Book a 20-minute call ›