One Decision Can Change Everything

What if 90% of what you're doing right now doesn't matter?

While you're juggling twenty initiatives, hiring for five positions, and chasing three partnership opportunities, the uncomfortable truth is this: Most of your future likely hinges on just ONE or TWO decisions you haven't made yet.

"Most companies die from indigestion (too many opportunities), not starvation." -David Packard

Warren Buffett revealed something shocking in his 2023 shareholder letter. After 58 years building one of the world's most successful companies, he admitted:

"Most of my capital allocation decisions have been no better than so-so. Our satisfactory results have been the product of about a dozen truly good decisions—that would be about one every five years."

Think about that. A dozen decisions across nearly six decades created a $1 Trillion empire.

First-time founders often scatter their focus: "We'll launch this product, then expand to this market, which lets us pursue these three new verticals..."

Meanwhile, veteran founders hunt for the ONE leverage point that creates exponential results.

This week, I'm breaking down seven bootstrapped consumer brands that scaled to $100M+ by making 1-2 pivotal decisions that changed everything.

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The Brands That Made The One Right Move

🧼 DR. SQUATCH

• Scale Achieved: $400M+ revenue
• The Decision That Changed Everything: After building to $5M/year, growth stalled. Then, they made the choice to invest in wildly creative YouTube ads that completely transformed their trajectory. The result? $5M -> $100M in just two years.

Dr. Squatch was growing steadily but unspectacularly until founder Jack Haldrup made the pivotal decision to partner with Raindrop Agency. Their first breakthrough video didn't just sell soap – it created entertainment that men actively wanted to watch and share.

What made this move so powerful was the complete shift in mindset: instead of competing on ingredients or benefits (like every other soap company), they created an identity. The soap became secondary to the story they were telling.

👓 HAWKERS

• Scale Achieved: $100M+ revenue
• The Decision That Changed Everything: Targeting markets where customer acquisition costs were a fraction of the U.S. market.

The genius of Hawkers was geographical arbitrage. Founder Alex Moreno recognized that while Blenders and Knockaround sunglasses were battling in the ultra-competitive U.S. market, acquiring customers in Spain, Australia, and Europe cost as little as 1/5th the price.

It started when Moreno purchased wholesale Knockaround sunglasses and sold them online in Spain. Seeing the unit economics, he then created his own nearly identical brand and scaled aggressively in these lower-CAC markets.

🪒 MANSCAPED

• Scale Achieved: $300M+ revenue
• The Decision That Changed Everything: Taking a boring product category (men's trimmers) and explicitly rebranding it around a taboo subject... below-the-waist grooming.

Manscaped founders Josh King and Paul Tran recognized that men were already using trimmers for "manscaping," but no brand was willing to talk about it. By breaking this taboo with humor and creating specific products for this use case, they immediately stood out in a sea of sameness.

The second part of their formula was identifying the perfect channel strategy – male-focused podcasts, YouTube channels, and sports content where they could speak directly to their audience with humor that would have been impossible in traditional retail.

🩹 HERO COSMETICS

• Scale Achieved: $100M+ revenue, from $0 to acquired for $630M in 5 years
• The Decision That Changed Everything: Identifying a single product – the hydrocolloid acne patch – that was wildly popular in Korean beauty markets but virtually unknown in the U.S.

Rather than launching a full skincare line (like most beauty startups), founder Ju Rhyu went all-in on perfecting and marketing just one solution: the Mighty Patch. This laser focus allowed them to own a specific niche before expanding.

The company leveraged Rhyu's deep understanding of both Korean beauty innovations and American consumer preferences to bridge the gap between markets, essentially importing a proven solution to a new audience.

👗 FASHION NOVA

• Scale Achieved: $1B+ revenue
• The Decision That Changed Everything: Developing what I call the "Marvel Contract" influencer strategy – identifying fast-growing but still small influencers and locking them into long-term contracts.

Founder Rich Saghian designed an ingenious influencer strategy that works like "option contracts” on human attention. He'd identify rising social stars with around 50K followers and offer them guaranteed monthly payments—often enough to cover their rent—in exchange for consistent, contractually-obligated posts for 24+ months. When these influencers' followings exploded to 400K, 800K, or even 1M+ followers, Fashion Nova was still paying the original rates while competitors scrambled to afford single posts from these now-established creators.

Coupled with this strategy was an operational system that could identify trending styles on social media and bring them to market online in as little as 24 hours – far faster than traditional "fast fashion."

🏃‍➡️ NATIVE DEODORANT

• Scale Achieved: Acquired by P&G for $100M in just 2.5 years
• The Decision That Changed Everything: Focusing exclusively on DTC Facebook ads while competitors chased retail distribution.

When Moiz Ali launched Native in 2015, natural deodorants existed but were largely confined to health food stores and seen as inferior alternatives to mainstream options.

His game-changing insight came when he discovered he could acquire customers profitably through Facebook ads at a time when most CPG brands relied on expensive retail distribution and traditional marketing. While competitors fought for limited shelf space and brand visibility, Ali identified exact audience segments on Facebook where he could acquire customers at a predictable CAC with strong lifetime value.

This laser focus on a single, scalable acquisition channel allowed him to grow exponentially while maintaining control over unit economics. By keeping the operation lean (just himself for the first year) and focusing on subscription revenue rather than chasing retail distribution, every dollar of profit could be reinvested into more customer acquisition.

The result? A stunningly efficient growth machine that scaled to a nine-figure exit in just 30 months—without the infrastructure, team, or retail relationships most CPG brands consider essential.

💧 LIQUID I.V.

• Scale Achieved: $100M+ revenue, acquired by Unilever for 9-figures
• The Decision That Changed Everything: Pivoting from a ready-to-drink hangover recovery beverage to powdered hydration stick packs.

When Liquid I.V. launched in 2012, founder Brandin Cohen positioned it as a bottled hangover recovery drink, but quickly identified several key limitations: the hangover use-case offered infrequent usage occasions, beverages are heavy and expensive to ship, and retail shelf space for drinks is fiercely competitive.

The pivotal move came when they reimagined both their format (liquid to powder) and positioning (hangover to hydration). This single decision solved multiple problems simultaneously:

• Expanded use cases by 10x (workouts, travel, daily use vs. just hangovers)
• Dramatically reduced shipping costs for their DTC business
• Solved the retail shelf space challenge with a small display footprint
• Improved margin with stick packs vs. bottled drinks
• Broadened market appeal beyond just party-goers

By focusing on "hydration" rather than recovery, they transformed an occasional product into a daily essential, creating a dramatically larger opportunity while solving their most pressing challenges.

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The Anatomy of a Game-Changing Decision

What makes a decision truly game-changing? Across these breakout brands, three elements consistently appear:

1. ASYMMETRIC UPSIDE

• Dr. Squatch: One video could reach millions, far exceeding the production cost
• Hawkers: CAC arbitrage created immediate profit advantage over competitors
• Fashion Nova: Early influencer contracts delivered exponential value as audiences grew
• Native: Subscription model created predictable, high-margin revenue without retail costs

2. SYSTEMATIC LEVERAGE

• Hero Cosmetics: One perfect product created a halo effect for future releases
• Manscaped: Humor-based marketing could be templated and scaled across channels
• Fashion Nova: Trend monitoring system allowed for repeatable "fast follow" wins
• Native: Customer acquisition focused exclusively on channels with measurable CAC

3. COMPETITOR BLIND SPOTS

• Dr. Squatch: Competitors focused on ingredients while they focused on entertainment
• Hawkers: Rivals fought over U.S. market while they dominated secondary markets
• Hero Cosmetics: Beauty giants missed the opportunity to import K-beauty innovations
• Native: Traditional brands clung to retail distribution while Native owned the customer relationship

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Decision Frameworks

Good news! You can use specific frameworks to identify high-leverage opportunities:

1. The Asymmetric Opportunity Framework A simple decision matrix that helps identify moves with unlimited upside but limited downside:

• Question 1: If this works, is there a ceiling to how well it could work?
• Question 2: If this fails, how much will it cost us in time and resources?
• Question 3: If this works, can we systematize and scale it?

The ideal opportunity has no ceiling, limited downside, and can be systematized.

2. The Market Map Method A visualization technique used by Hawkers to identify underserved markets:

• Map competitors across different geographic markets
• Identify "competitive density" in each market
• Calculate relative CAC in each region
• Target the highest opportunity/lowest competition areas

3. The Minimum Viable Test Dr. Squatch's approach to validating their creative strategy before going all-in:

• Create a simplified version of your potential move
• Set clear success metrics that would indicate asymmetric potential
• Establish a specific timeline and budget
• Define the "go/no-go" decision criteria in advance

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The One Decision Mindset

If you remember nothing else from today's newsletter, here's the mental model that separates exceptional founders from the rest:

The Pareto Squared Principle

You probably know the Standard Pareto Principle: 80% of results come from 20% of efforts.

Pareto Squared is 80% of that 80% (64% of total results) comes from 20% of that 20% (4% of total efforts).

In other words, just 1-2 decisions often drive the vast majority of business success.

This mindset shift changes everything:

• Instead of trying to do many things well, find the ONE thing you can do exceptionally
• Rather than spreading resources evenly, allocate disproportionately to your leverage point
• Focus on making a small number of high-quality decisions rather than many adequate ones

Liquid I.V.'s story perfectly illustrates this principle. By changing both their format (liquid to powder) and positioning (hangover to hydration), they solved multiple critical business challenges with a single decision. What looked like a small change completely transformed their trajectory.

As Warren Buffett would say, you only need a handful of truly good decisions to create exceptional results – about one every five years.

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This Week's Challenge

This week, conduct your own "One Decision Audit":

1. List every initiative, channel, and strategy you're currently pursuing
2. For each, calculate the actual ROI based on time and resources invested
3. Identify where 80% of your results are coming from
4. Develop three potential "one decision" pivots that could create asymmetric results
5. Design a minimal test for each to run in the next 30 days