John Roman

CEO @battlbox

[John Roman @JohnMRoman]

@jimmykim @battlbox @DICKS lol Amazon does this sometimes too

[John Roman @JohnMRoman]

I am not a shipping expert. Luckily, Patrick (@battlbox COO) is.

What I do know is this cannot be good. This is my second order from @DICKS for Sports cards. Both came the same way.

Look at all this dead space.
No peanuts, or bubbles, or even paper to protect.

This cannot be good for efficiency from their end.
A bigger box costs more.
A bigger box means shipping likely costs more.

Sending a customer this is far from a good experience.

I bought collectible trading cards, where the most valuable ones get sent off to a grading service. Not a good start for the potential of a card grading well when it was thrown around in an empty box for a couple of days during it's trip from the warehouse to you.

[John Roman @JohnMRoman]

We were quietly losing money on products we were sure were profitable.

🤖 Actually Useful AI Tips #5566 🤖

Costs creep, prices don't follow. An agent checks our whole catalog every week and flags every item whose margin slipped underwater.

[John Roman @JohnMRoman]

@caitlinkhutch He's a cutey!

[John Roman @JohnMRoman]

I've sat through enough bad conferences to know the formula. Stuffy ballroom, dead-end panels, rubber chicken, a "speaker" running a sales pitch.

@CommerceRound is the opposite. One stage, no panels, 750 operators who actually run brands.

Sept 21-22, San Diego.
https://t.co/4sL8fQN1YR
Code JOHNR for $150 off

[Commerce Roundtable @CommerceRound]

This is going to be a big one 🌊

The best in DTC are taking over Port Pavilion on Broadway Pier September 21-22, right on the San Diego water, for two days that go way beyond the sessions.

Here's what's waiting for you:
🎤 A stacked lineup with 20+ keynote speakers
🎁 $200K+ in surprise giveaways over two days
🏖️ A waterfront venue with the best food and drinks
🤝 Brand activations worth your time
🎉 Sponsor afterparties you won't want to miss
👥 750 founders and operators, all in one room

We cap it at 750 for a reason, and spots are going fast. Once we're full, that's it until next year!

Use code 100OFF for $100 off tickets: https://t.co/BuWtg59Z5F

[John Roman @JohnMRoman]

🤖 Actually Useful AI Tips #3492 🤖

Our support agent's best feature is knowing when to quit.

Boring tickets: handled. Angry customer: straight to a human, faster than before, because the team is not buried anymore.

Deflection is not the metric. Speed to a human is.

[John Roman @JohnMRoman]

🚨 BAD SALES EMAIL ALERT 🚨
Happy Monday Folks! I am back baby!
Enough pleasantries, let's get into the violence (and the fixes).

This whole email had exactly two personal touches. Both were our brand name, and both came out blank.

🏷️ A subject line that makes no sense
It reads "Did waste this content?" A word clearly fell out of that sentence, and it was the brand name. What's left is broken English at the top of my inbox. A subject that doesn't parse is the entire first impression, and for most people it's the last one before they hit delete.

🔁 The sign-off breaks the same way
The final line, the actual ask, is "Worth exploring for ?" Same missing brand name, same blank. Those were the two spots they chose to personalize, and both failed to load. Nobody read this before it went out.

🧵 A LinkedIn post wearing an email costume
The open is a scroll-stopper hook: "Most ecommerce brands think they have a content problem. Usually they have a distribution problem." That's a LinkedIn one-liner dropped into a cold email. It reads like a post got copied into my inbox and blasted to a list. Different rooms, different rules.

📉 No proof anywhere
For a pitch about growth, there's not one result, client, or number in it. No brand they've done this for, no before and after. They want a meeting on assertions alone.

📣 The big one: teaching content to a content brand
The whole pitch is a beginner lesson: "one customer review can become 5 TikToks, 5 Reels, 5 Shorts." BattlBox is a content engine. It's a big reason brands in our space come to us in the first place, and we've built a large following on every channel doing exactly this. Sending us Content 101 is like selling swim lessons to a lifeguard. Ten seconds on any of our profiles ends this email before it starts.

Here's how to clean it up:
✅ Test every merge field, the subject and the sign-off especially
✅ Write it like an email, that's the room you're in
✅ Bring one piece of proof: a client, a result, a real number
✅ Know what the brand is already great at before you pitch

[John Roman @JohnMRoman]

@DTCbromozi @paulchambers @AmerGrozdanic I was not compensated (neither was Santa) for this photo.

[John Roman @JohnMRoman]

@RomanEcom wow, that is some major FBA volume. On, .com, the repeat order problem is what would scare me here, paying for every single sale forever is a rough way to build, no?

[John Roman @JohnMRoman]

@jasonlk Ecommerce brands started leaving them years ago and I never saw a real effort to win them back (or more importantly, keep them).

[John Roman @JohnMRoman]

A mistake on our website was costing us money for months. I'd personally walked past it 100 times.

🤖 Actually Useful AI Tips #258 🤖

You can't proofread your own site. I put an AI on it as a cold reader. A full day of audit, done in minutes.

[John Roman @JohnMRoman]

@JoeyBryja12940 @Seanfrank I think it's actually pretty solid advice. I was married for 9 years before we had our son. We went heavy on traveling and experiences and created some amazing memories.

[John Roman @JohnMRoman]

@lalasretention I'll be chilling on these hills with you lol

[John Roman @JohnMRoman]

@drewfallon12 Haha I can feel the rage through the screen and I love it!

[John Roman @JohnMRoman]

🤖 Actually Useful AI Tips #883 🤖

"What do you think?" gets you compliments.

"Attack this and tell me why it fails" gets you the truth.

AI is only as honest as the question. Make it the skeptic before you ship.

[John Roman @JohnMRoman]

@eliweisss <pats myself on back>

[John Roman @JohnMRoman]

@SteveLeq30 Back to back like your Jordan 96-97?

[John Roman @JohnMRoman]

@MShteyn5470 @CommerceRound Just keynotes instead of panels where there are zero takeaways.

[John Roman @JohnMRoman]

Two days in September are already blocked on my calendar 🌊

@CommerceRound is back in San Diego, Sept 21-22. Year 4, still the one DTC event I clear my schedule for.

No panels. Best conference food in the game. A brand-heavy room of real operators.

https://t.co/4sL8fQMu9j
Code JOHNR for $150 off