Let’s start off with my single biggest observation as a new parent…

Trusted Home Goods Update

It’s officially been 1 year since I made the decision to change the direction of my business and thank God I did. If you remember, I switched it from a general home goods store to a cigar humidor store. There have been some really positive things that have happened for THG since Oct 2024.

• I paid off all of the outstanding business debt that has been accumulated since 2021

• I found a profitable niche

• I have become a top retailer partner for the brands I sell

• I am re-investing profits into organic growth channels like SEO, email marketing, affiliates, and referral marketing

• Our customer list is extremely high profile: CEO’s, Influencers, Netflix, and many cigar related lounges/restaurants/country clubs

• I’ve built an organic post purchase referral system where I send hand written notes and cigar related gifts to my customers for reviews and referrals

• I’ve bought THG branded packaging for our post purchase touch points

• I have been able to buy and store cigar lockers to ensure I’m able to meet fulfillment demand and not run into stock issues

• I’m working with dozens of online sources to get featured in their blogs, articles, and “best of” features

• I’ve hit new highs in monthly revenue and profits as well ans annual revenue and profits.

• My site traffic, customer conversion rate, average order value, and profit margin are all up considerably.

All that to say, there is still soooo much room to grow based on my what I see my competitors doing and that’s exciting because I’ll get there. The route I decided to take is slower to grow but in the long run it will be more sustainable, predictable, and sellable because I chose to build a brand, not just another online store. I am in the midst of building a fully integrated brand machine from all organic sources available. This includes: SEO, email marketing (to my customers and cold email to new target businesses), creating an affiliate network, leveraging cigar niche communities like facebook groups, Reddit threads, forums, using my customers to build a referral system, and getting better at leveraging social media platforms.

The future of e-commerce is scary because now you can buy things on Chat GPT. It’s being forecasted that over the next 10 years most of your “google searches” will turn into Chat GPT or other AI search queries. This hurts businesses like mine. So I have to position my business to have enough credibility that AI platforms like Gemini, Chat GPT, Perplexity, and others see my business as THE authority in cigar humidors and chose to feature my business and products for relevant search queries.

My business has so much room to grow because of a few reasons:

• My audience and clients are old school and I bring the “brick and mortar” experience to them online through access and transparency.

• My audience is a lot of businesses, and they want to do business with other businesses who know, understand, and can solve their problems

• I’m not even ranking on the first page of google for my search terms yet, just wait until I do and this business will explode.

• I am in the infancy stages of my brand building and in my first focused year in cigar humidors I will hit $500,000 in revenue at nearly 18% profit margin and getting better every month.

As I write this newsletter I am traveling to Las Vegas for a 2 day business scaling workshop hosted by Alex and Leila Hormozi and their business; Acquisition.com. It is an intimate business scaling workshop with about 50 business owners from across the world. The workshop will help us solve pain point and also heavily focus on how to scale our business models. I’m basically heading into a boot camp for my business. I am hoping to learn a few new tricks of the trade that will elevate my ability and my business potential.

Real Estate Expansion!

In other news, this past September we closed on a 15-unit apartment complex on University of Louisville’s campus with a small investor group. We (The Barbetto’s) are 15% owners of the building. In addition to our condo we rent, I’m super excited to expand our real estate endeavors and hope to diversify into a few more deals over the next few years.

It’s Not All Sunshine’s and Rainbows

My close friend and I spent 4 weeks trying to re-launch his old pressure washing business. The attempt failed BUT it was a valuable lesson to move fast and with conviction on your decisions. He had a 10 year pressure washing business based in Northern Indiana (but doesn’t live there anymore) and we thought it would do well in Louisville. With the plan we created, we would test this theory by changing the business to Louisville, run ads, and hire contractors to fulfill jobs. We agreed if we didn’t hit certain metrics on ads and profit margin then we would not pursue the opportunity further. Long story short, It did not and we moved on really quickly so we didn’t waste our time. While I’m the type of person that will tell you not to quit, it’s really valuable learning what opportunities to pursue and not to pursue.

Stay Tuned…

I have some other exciting news that I am waiting to share, which will likely be at the beginning of next year…so stayed tuned! Another business endeavor?! Perhaps

Sweet Sunny

This is my first time leaving Kara and Sunny since Sunny was born. I knew it would be hard, but it’s much harder than I thought. It breaks my heart not be home for bedtime. So since I’m already scrolling through my camera roll looking at pictures here is your quarterly dose of Sunny Bunny!

/