Well, That Was Fast

It’s April 2026, and apparently I haven’t written anything in three months.

That wasn’t intentional, but I’m sure most of you can relate. Things get busy, conversations pick up, deals start happening, kids have far more practices than you anticipated and before you know it, time is nowhere to be found.

WELCOME TO Q2

One thing I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is how quickly time compounds. One day turns into two, two into a week, a week into a month — and before you realize it, three months are gone. The reality is, business doesn’t pause while that happens and if you take advantage of that time that is already passing - you’re able to take chunks out of your to do list.

I’m already talking about Q4, working on profitability, and building purchasing plans for 2027. That’s how fast things move.

So consider this a quick welcome back — both for me writing and for anyone who needed the reminder:

Progress needs to be constant. Not perfect, not giant moves — but constant. Because time is going to move whether you’re pushing forward or not.

Don’t feel like reading all this?

What This Post Is About

This post is a quick Q2 reset. It’s about how fast time moves, what I’m focused on right now, and what sellers should be paying attention to before the year gets away from them.

Big ideas:

• Time compounds fast, and business doesn’t pause while you get busy.
• Clarity and profitability are the biggest themes right now.
• Amazon inventory and ad data are messy, so visibility matters more than ever.
• TACOS 🌮 is still one of the best high-level metrics to watch.
• Don’t wait to expand — open the channels now and improve them over time.

If you remember one thing: get going.

What I’m Focused On Right Now

Clarity & Profitability

On the inventory side, I’ve been deep in forecasting, restocks, manufacturing timelines, and overall optimization — and if you’ve worked in Amazon long enough, you already know how messy this gets.

One page says you have 100 units. Another says you should have 400. Then you go digging and find some are in transfer, some are being researched, some are inbound — and some just don’t exist. Every report tells a slightly different story, and it makes decision-making harder than it should be.

That’s where clarity becomes everything.

What I’ve been focused on — especially through Rift — is bringing all of that into one place so you can actually see what’s happening across every inventory state. Because if you can’t see clearly, you can’t plan correctly — and if you can’t plan correctly, profitability becomes guesswork.

And right now, profitability matters more than ever.

Across the board, clients want to understand where their money is going, what’s actually working, and whether their business is truly healthy — and they should. Financial pressure is real. Consumers are tighter, spending behavior is shifting, and competition hasn’t slowed down.

It’s not enough to just stand out —
you also have to convert, with the right pricing, margins, and positioning.

Advertising Is Changing

On the advertising side, Amazon is evolving quickly — and not just in small ways.

We’re seeing expanded video placements, chat bot prompts, more aggressive and dynamic bidding, deeper targeting, and a clear shift toward full-funnel advertising instead of just bottom-of-search conversions. At the same time, Amazon is leaning heavily into AI for campaign optimization, creative generation, and decision-making.

But one of the biggest changes — and one most people aren’t paying enough attention to — is how data is being handled.

Attribution is shifting, reporting is changing, and access to historical data is becoming more limited and harder to work with over time. That makes it easier than ever to misread performance or lose visibility into what’s actually happening.

That’s exactly the problem we’ve been solving with Rift.

Instead of relying on fragmented dashboards and short data windows, we’re pulling everything into one place — giving you a clearer, more complete view of your performance over time, across your entire account. Not just what Amazon chooses to show you, but what’s actually happening underneath it.

Because while there’s more capability than ever —
there’s also less room for guessing.

Amazon is one of the fastest-growing advertising platforms in e-commerce. You have to understand what’s working, why it’s working, and how it impacts your entire business.

One Thing I’d Tell You to Focus On Right Now

If I had to give you one thing to focus on as we move through Q2, it would be this:

TACOS 🌮

Total Advertising Cost of Sales.

ACOS is useful, but it only tells part of the story. TACOS shows your ad spend relative to your total account sales, which gives you a much clearer picture of overall performance (at a glance) — especially when you consider the halo effect that advertising has across your catalog and brand.

If someone tells me they did $5,000 in sales yesterday at a 4% TACOS, I already know things are in a healthy place. Of course, you still need to go deeper — checking attribution, comparing dates, accounting for anomalies — but TACOS gives you a fast, reliable read on whether your advertising is supporting your business or working against it.

It’s one of the most important metrics I use across every client, regardless of size.

Take a look below in one of our Rift charts to see how quickly you can understand what happened over the last week just by using one metric.

One More Thing

I’ve said this before, and I’ll keep saying it:

Expand your channels.

Don’t wait. Don’t overthink it. Don’t tell yourself you’re too busy — just get it done.

Open your Walmart account. Open your Target account. Get on eBay. Use Etsy if it makes sense. Build your Shopify site. Get the channels open.

They don’t need to be perfect. They don’t need to be generating meaningful revenue immediately. They just need to exist.

Because the hardest part is starting.

Once that hurdle is gone, you can build from there — 30 minutes a day, small improvements, steady progress. But if you wait, June comes around and you’re out of time. At that point, you’re already deep into Q4 planning, inventory decisions, and ad strategy, and you won’t have the bandwidth to build new channels correctly.

So do it now.

Final Thought

Time moves faster than you think. And before you know it, you’re back in Q4 wondering… how?

So take this as a reminder. Get your head clear and get going.

Also - thank you for reading. I genuinely appreciate all the outreach, feedback, and conversations — it doesn’t go unnoticed. If you ever need anything, I’m always one email away.