Eli Kamionski

Dad of 4. E-Com CFO. Distilling Spirits. Glass Blowing until I RIP. MTB and Snowboard Junky. + You can ask me about our $99buck QBO audit report.

[Sean Frank @Seanfrank]

2024 tip of the day, day 5:
Most people in Ecom are broke.

And that’s okay. Lack of money isn’t a moral failure. It’s just the reality of a growing, physical product company.

But don’t think it is reasonable or expected to fly private off a 5 million dollar a year store.

Revenue is not income.

A good rule of thumb is a well run, profitable, mature brand can payout 5% of revenue in post tax distributions.

This means you pay your team, your pay for inventory, you pay your taxes, and you can do a dividend/distribution of about 5%

So your “8 figure brand” doing 10m a year… has about 500k in post tax money that can be taken out.

Ecom drop shippers and course sellers are mad when I say this. But it’s true.

We need to remove this weird, perverted obsession with personal wealth in this community.

Just build a great business.
Make sure it’s profitable.

And you will do fine.

Just don’t bankrupt yourself with lifestyle creep trying to keep up with someone who is probably committing tax fraud

[Mike Salguero @mikesalguero]

This is the year where the religion of profitability becomes mainstream. Just starting out and don’t know where to start? Here’s a target.
1) 30% fully landed Gross margin (including everything like credit card processing, shipping etc)
2) lean salaries/ ops. Sub 10% of revenues
3) the rest is for marketing and profit.

This means you only have less than 20% to market. So be frugal with your testing and double down on what works. Don’t explore every distribution method until you have one that is paying you back. Over time, the playbook is to pull back on marketing and bank the profit. (This is after years of building a brand).

If you haven’t done #1, raise prices or cut expenses. If you are a little above on #2, make sure those expenses are more important than marketing. If you aren’t disciplined with #3, top line growth can kill your company.
Amen

[Eli Kamionski @eli_s_kami]

@eytanelbaz My grandfather survived the holocaust and 15 years ago he started to say that America was turning into the Germany he grew up in before the war….unfortunately it will only get worse

[Eli Kamionski @eli_s_kami]

@Harvard Please don’t backtrack your antisemitism

[Eli Kamionski @eli_s_kami]

@msuster Her donors called her out. That’s the only reason she apologized. You can’t expect the head of PENN! to be so dumb when asked a simple yes or no question

[Eli Kamionski @eli_s_kami]

@sfmcguire79 @Penn I guess her Donors called her out. What a loser

[Mark Suster @msuster]

The test of character is showing empathy for citizens traumatized 2 weeks ago by the barbaric murder of its civilians by terrorist & holding 200 innocent people hostage.

All while allowing a week for civilians on other side to flee the conflict zone.

[Eli Kamionski @eli_s_kami]

How can someone be so cruel???

How can people not stop and hear how horrible these crimes actually are😢

[Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 @MarinaMedvin]

What the Palestinian terrorists did to the Israeli families before they executed them in their own homes.

[Mark Suster @msuster]

Put me in the camp of somebody who always WANTED to believe the NYT was an independent arbitrer of news.

But you can’t rush out war conclusions to millions without evidence hidden behind a fig leaf of “sources claim”

I don’t have answers for yesterday because I’m reading every source I can. But I can say with certainty the NYT got its media responsibilities wrong.

[Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig]

For a full week people debated if Hamas beheaded Israeli babies or just peacefully burned them alive.

Yet, it took you exactly 1 minute to spread the lie that Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza, when all the evidence show they didn’t.

[Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו @netanyahu]

The entire world should know: It was barbaric terrorists in Gaza that attacked the hospital in Gaza, and not the IDF.

Those who brutally murdered our children also murder their own children.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Kidnapping children is despicable and wholly unjustifiable. For obvious reasons, this picture has hit home with me. May Noya and all hostages taken by Hamas be returned soon, safely, to their families.

[Yael Bar tur @yaelbt]

Hamas - you have no idea what unity you’ve unleashed.

Just 2 weeks ago secular and Orthodox Jews in Israel were fighting, partially over the fact that many orthodox don’t service in the IDF. But Hamas has made us stronger than ever before.

This is the HQ of “Iron Sisters” a group of 150 orthodox women who got together and are coordinating with over 1,000 volunteers nationwide to supply food, housing, childcare and whatever is needed for the people during war. And all this from the back of a wig store.
ישר כח!!

[Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian @manniefabian]

Oh fuck you Hamas I'm trying to eat dinner

[Eli Kamionski @eli_s_kami]

I haven’t felt these many emotions in my life. People singing and welcoming home soldiers who were abroad and got back on a plane to fight!

[Yonah Rossman @YonahRossman]

This is what Ben Gurioun Airport looks like at 2.15 AM - welcoming back those coming to join their units and fight for our county and all that is good in this world.

[Eli Kamionski @eli_s_kami]

@cyginsberg @DansDeals @DansDeals is doing amazing things to support the efforts here in Israel. I was simply saying they should not use the war in Israel in the same sentence as an Amazon shopping spree 🤦🏻‍♂️

[Nuseir Yassin @nasdaily]

Personal Thoughts:
(not for everyone, feel free to skip)

For the longest time, I struggled with my identity.

A Palestinian kid born inside Israel. Like…wtf.

Many of my friends refuse to this day to say the word “Israel” and call themselves “Palestinian” only.

But since I was 12, that did not make sense to me.

So I decided to mix the two and become a “Palestinian-Israeli”

I thought this term reflected who I was.
Palestinian first. Israeli second.

But after recent events, I started to think.
And think.
And think.
And then my thoughts turned to anger.

I realized that if Israel were to be “invaded” like that again, we would not be safe. To a terrorist invading Israel, all citizens are targets.

900 Israelis died so far. More than 40 of them are Arabs. Killed by other Arabs. And even 2 Thai people died too.

And I do not want to live under a Palestinian government.

Which means I only have one home, even if I’m not Jewish:

Israel.

That’s where all my family lives. That’s where I grew up. That’s the country I want to see continue to exist so I can exist.

Palestine should exist too as an independent state. And I hope to see the country thrive and become less extreme and more prosperous. I love Palestine and have invested in Palestine.

But it’s not my home.

So from today forward,
I view myself as an “Israeli-Palestinian”.

Israeli first.
Palestinian second.

Sometimes it takes a shock like this to see so clearly.

[Eli Kamionski @eli_s_kami]

@msuster Thanks @msuster

[Eli Kamionski @eli_s_kami]

@manniefabian Believe it when I see it