Sat next to a 34-year-old at a tapas bar in Barcelona last month.
Catalan. Soft accent. Wearing a navy linen shirt. Asked what I do.
He laughed and showed me his Shopify dashboard: €1.4M last 30 days.
Single brand. Premium anti-aging skincare for women 40+. Sells exclusively in Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Colombia, and the US Hispanic market. One product. Spanish-language ads only.
Started 4 years ago with €25K from his savings. Bootstrapped. No outside investors.
CAC €42 blended across the 5 markets. AOV €74. Subscription mix 34%. Refund rate 3.8%.
His team: 6 people. A creative lead in Barcelona, an ops manager in Madrid, three customer service VAs in Mexico City (handles Spain + LATAM timezones), and his sister doing email retention from Valencia.
He told me his real insight wasn't the product. It was that Spanish-language creative tested in Spain works across the entire 600M Spanish-speaking world with minor regional copy adjustments. Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, plus the 60M+ US Hispanic market all consume the same hooks and benefit framings.
"American founders test in English first then translate to Spanish as an afterthought. I test in Spanish first. My addressable market is 20x theirs the moment I press launch."
Take-home roughly €170K/month after taxes. Works from a 2-bedroom apartment in Eixample. Sleeps 8 hours. Never been on a podcast.
The serious ecom entrepreneurs in 2026 aren't building English-first brands.
They're building Spanish-first brands and quietly out-earning everyone you know in US ecom.
TL;DR
If you're starting out, give yourself a month.
Don't chase a big audience. Go find the right one.
Pick one person worth reaching, and talk straight to them.
Follow me @ShaneHummus for more insights!
Here is a list of shady things Amazon has implemented into PPC and I am not even counting this BS where we can no longer pay with CC (which is still BS!).
1. Removing Hard budgets: Amazon used to have hard budget caps. They then rolled out a setting that opted you in...
@codyplof Thanks. Honestly when we finally started breaking through was when we stopped being stingy about seeding. Got enough people making content that the odds of going viral were much higher. And then put ad spend behind it all. You're so F'ing smart you will get there fast!
INSTEAD OF WATCHING AN HOUR OF NETFLIX TONIGHT.
This 1 hour Stanford lecture by Joel Peterson will teach you more about negotiation and getting what you want than most people learn in years.
Bookmark it and give it an hour, no matter what.
Prepare your site for AI agent interaction with Lighthouse → https://t.co/5myVWdLZd9
If you want AI agents to actually navigate your site properly, the new experimental audit in Lighthouse lets you see:
☀️ Discoverability for AI agents
⚡ WebMCP integration
👀 AI accessibility
#GoogleIO
5% cash back on ads is…insane
There's no way they can keep this up forever so I would take advantage of it while you can
Most people don't realize it but a lot of brands run on a 10-15% margin at scale
So having an extra 5% cash back on your ad spend is pretty crazy
Our sales on https://t.co/qFf7MjbJTr have officially surpassed Target+. We have been on Target for years. Launched on Walmart (online only for both) just a few months ago. I have a great contact for new sellers on Walmart if anyone wants a connect. Nothing in it for me.
🎈 Over 600,000 recyclable balloons feature in new immersive art exhibition in Barcelona
Balloon Story opens at Espai Inmersa after international run in cities including New York, Sydney and Melbourne
https://t.co/gXmbA7MMpo
@busybusneiss MDS - I am not promoting it, I don't get a cut. Do 7 figures + in sales, don't be a moron, pay the annual fee. Sometimes I am a moron so I guess that part isn't too strict. lol.
🍚 So I switched away from Optimum Nutrition's creatine because they oddly stopped using Creapure creatine and on Amazon they say they are kinda trying to hide that they stopped using Creapure and everyone's asking "why???" (probably it was too expensive)
But creatine should be expensive for your safety:
Creapure is the premium, highly pure and highly tested (!) brand of creatine monohydrate produced in Germany by AlzChem Trostberg GmbH, it's a supplier so you can't buy directly from them, but you can search Creapure creatine and if a product has their logo, it's good (they come down at anyone trying to use their logo falsely of course)
A lot of creatine supplements these days have contaminants as they're from China and may contain trace heavy metals (mercury especially), residual amine byproducts/thiourea derivatives, or dimethyl sulphate residue which all cause neurological issues, I was getting headaches recently and I never have headaches so I switched to Creapure just to be safe
Being from China is fine btw, it's just that then you don't know if it's tested, Creapure's entire thing is they test rigorously and professional athletes use it because they have to pass doping tests so they can't risk getting contaminated supplements!
This one is called "Dymatize Creatine Monohydrate Unflavoured Powder"
Unaffiliated, I just like the creatine!
What's on this weekend 🤩
🏛️ Museums open day ➡️ Free entry Sunday
🎵 Record Fair ➡️ Thousands of records to dig through
💃 Feria de Abril ➡️ A taste of Andalusian culture
🥐 Croiss& Fest ➡️ Crowning the best croissant in Barcelona
🍷 Falset Wine Fair ➡️ The best of the Priorat region
👕 Port Flea ➡️ Bargains, music, and great vibes at Port Olímpic
🍓 Strawberry season in Maresme ➡️ Fruit fairs
Read more 🔗 https://t.co/aj4zZpxcoZ
Just spent the day at the TikTok Shop Summit. If you're a seller ignoring this channel in 2026, you're leaving money on the table.
The numbers tell the story:
→ TikTok Shop grew 80% YoY in 2025
→ Creators earning commissions via TikTok Shop up 146%
→ Partner-enabled seller sales up 197%
→ LIVE sales via partners up 500%
→ Brands on TikTok are seeing up to 50% lower CAC vs Meta and Google Ads
→ TikTok campaigns are driving 34% lifts in Amazon sales and 57% lifts in retail sales
The most important signal wasn't a stat, though. It was the structural shift: TikTok is merging Creator Agency Partners, TikTok Affiliate Partners, and Seller Service Partners into a unified TSP ecosystem. Translation — the platform is betting that creator partnerships, not ads, are the lever for the next phase of growth.
They also flagged 7,000+ un-onboarded Strategic Key Merchants ($10M+ DTC brands) as the core 2026 acquisition target.
This is exactly where JoinBrands sits. We've built the infrastructure 100K+ TikTok Shop affiliates run through — the Bloom Nutrition case (700 videos / 20M impressions in 10 days) is what this playbook looks like operationalized.
The halo effect is real. The creator economy is the distribution layer. The brands that treat it as infrastructure — not a campaign — will own 2026.
Who's in?
10 tools every digital nomad needs:
🇵🇾 - Wise (send/receive globally, no drama)
💻 - Stripe (get paid as a contractor anywhere)
📄 - BreezeDoc (ditch paper, go full digital)
🏦 - Mercury (US bank account, no US residency needed)
📊 - Notion (track your residency docs, tasks, life)
📞 - Google Meet/Zoom (still unbeaten for client calls)
🌐 - CyberGhost VPN (access everything, everywhere)
📬 - ConvertKit (build your list BEFORE you need it)
🤖 - Claude (your 24/7 freelance assistant)
✈️ - Skyscanner (never miss a connection again)
Which one would you add?
Divorce lawyers pay $350-500 per click on Google Ads and DUI attorneys pay $200-400 per click and you could send them qualified leads for a fraction of that using AI content funnels on TikTok that cost you almost nothing to operate…
I don't think most people in the content space realise how much money local service businesses are burning on Google Ads every single month
A personal injury attorney in a mid-size city spends $30-80K per month on Google PPC. Their cost per lead is $400-800. Their cost per signed case is $2,000-5,000. And they pay it happily because one settled case is worth $50-500K to them
A plastic surgeon in Miami or LA spends $20-50K per month. Cost per consultation booking: $500-2,000. But a single rhinoplasty is $10-15K revenue so the math works for them
A divorce attorney in a major metro: $15-30K monthly on Google. Every lead costs them $300-600
These numbers are public. You can literally look them up on any keyword research tool. "DUI attorney near me" costs $200-400 per click. Not per lead. Per CLICK. Most clicks don't even convert
Now think about what happens if you create an AI character page in one of these spaces
A legal tips character. A wellness/beauty character for the plastic surgery vertical. A financial wellness character for the divorce attorney space
The character posts free educational content. "3 things to do immediately if you get pulled over." "What your surgeon isn't telling you about recovery." "How to protect your assets before filing for divorce"
This content gets hundreds of thousands of views organically on TikTok and Instagram. Costs you nothing in ad spend. The audience watching these videos is EXACTLY the demographic that would pay for these services
You set up automated DMs. Someone comments "help" or "advice" and they get a message: "Where are you located? I can connect you with a specialist in your area who offers free consultations"
You just generated a lead
That lead is worth $300-2,000 to the local practitioner depending on the industry
You sell the lead to the attorney or surgeon for 50-70% of what they'd pay Google. They're saving money. You're printing money. Everyone wins
Content creators don't think about local service businesses because the content world is obsessed with DTC brands and affiliate commissions
Local service businesses don't think about TikTok because they're 45-60 year old professionals who think social media is for teenagers
These two worlds have never met. The gap between them is where the money is
And it's a disgusting amount of money
The average mid-tier law firm would pay $3-8K per month for a consistent flow of 15-30 qualified leads. If you specialize in one vertical (let's say DUI attorneys) and you service 5 firms in different cities (they don't compete with each other geographically), that's $15-40K per month from one content vertical
Add a second vertical. Plastic surgeons. Same playbook. Different AI character. Different content. Another $15-40K per month
Two AI characters. Two niches. 10 local business clients total. $30-80K per month in lead generation revenue. Zero ad spend. Zero inventory. Just content and a phone
The kicker is that these businesses sign 6-12 month contracts because lead flow is existential for them. A law firm without leads is dead. They're not cancelling your retainer if you're delivering qualified leads at half their Google cost. The retention on this model would be insane
Not 100% sure this exact funnel will work in every legal vertical. Some states have advertising regulations for attorneys that might complicate the lead selling structure. You'd need to figure that out per market. But the core economics are undeniable: these businesses are hemorrhaging money on Google, organic content can reach the same audience for free, and no one is connecting the two
(btw this same model works for literally any high-CPC local service: roofing companies, HVAC, dental implants, addiction treatment centers, immigration attorneys, real estate agents. Any business where a single customer is worth $5-50K and they're currently paying Google $200-500 per click to find them. The list is enormous)
Someone test this properly and run it up
BREAKING: Gemini can now write and design an entire book in 24 hours.
Here are 5 insane prompts to become a published author this month: (Save for later):
I ranked a brand as the #1 recommendation in ChatGPT for "best toothpaste for receding gums."
It took less than 30 days.
And it had nothing to do with Google rankings.
Here's the AI SEO playbook I used to do it:
1) I entered the prompt "best toothpaste for receding gums" into ChaptGPT and analyzed the sources used to pull recommended products.
They were predominantly "best" listicles showcasing the top 5-7 toothpastes for receding gums.
And they were specifically published on dental blogs.
2) I wrote my own listicle for the "best toothpaste for receding gums."
I modeled the structure and word count of the listicles ChatGPT was citing, but placed the brand as the #1 recommendation.
The remaining recommended brands were pulled from the listicles ChatGPT was citing.
3) I published that listicle onto the brand's blog.
4) I used Claude to create 10 different variations of the listicle I wrote.
I specifically told Claude to keep them around the same word count of the original listicle, and not to remove the phrase "best toothpaste for receding gums" from the content.
5). I found 10 dental blogs with a DR of 30+ and real organic traffic from non-branded keywords.
And I paid them $100-200 to publish one of my listicle variations on their blog.
6) I waited around three weeks for the listicles to get indexed in Google.
Once they were, ChatGPT started citing them for the prompt "best toothpaste for receding gums."
And the brand I recommended #1 started being recommended #1 by ChatGPT as well.
The best part is that ChatGPT specifically says their recommendations are from dentists and are "not just marketing."
It just goes to show how easy AI is to manipulate.
That's both awesome and very concerning at the same time.
🚨BREAKING: Google's NotebookLM can now reverse-engineer any successful YouTube channel and build your content factory in minutes.
7 prompts to go from zero ideas to a fully automated video system:
(Save this before it goes viral!)👇