Resources and insights
Conversations on what helps ecommerce brands grow without losing control of their numbers. Hosted by Stephen Brown, COO of LedgerGurus and co-owner of Sole Toscana
A $60,000 invoice arrived with the right company name, the right address, the right EIN. Only the pay-to name and email had changed. Rachel Wright caught it. Ecommerce makes this worse than most, because the biggest payments go overseas for inventory and there is no recourse once a wire clears. She and Stephen Brown walk through the attempts they have seen and the controls that stop them.
Parker was weeks from a $90 million acquisition when it filed for Chapter 7, leaving customers like Stephen Brown unable to work out what they owed or to whom. He and Stacy Walker use that failure to frame four risks worth checking before you route money through any fintech: vendor, financial, operational, and strategic. They also cover why most fintechs sit on top of the same handful of partner banks, and why that concentration is worth worrying about.
A non-developer can spin up a working internal tool in an afternoon, which has operators asking why they pay for software that does 80% of what they need. Stephen Brown spent twenty years in enterprise software, and he walks Stacy Walker through what that question misses: ongoing maintenance, the builder who might leave, security and compliance exposure, and the real cost once tokens are counted. He closes with a decision framework and argues the better question is what you buy next.
AI companies run on venture capital, which means the price you pay is not the cost of the product. Stephen Brown walks Stacy Walker through what happens when that equalizes: base subscriptions plus token consumption, already visible in Claude's limits, GitHub Copilot's June shift, and Gorgias. He covers what tokens are, why GPU compute changed the economics, and why matching cheaper models to simpler work is about to matter. He finishes with how to spot the creep before it compounds.
Guest: Samir Shergill, CEO and co-founder of Highbeam. A software engineer by trade, he spent years at Microsoft and then at ad tech startup AppNexus before acting as an informal CFO for friends' consumer brands. That work led him to build Highbeam, a banking and cash management platform built specifically for ecommerce.
The big beautiful bill changed what ecommerce sellers can write off and when. Lauren Maillard walks Stephen Brown through bonus depreciation and why it helps with a forklift but not a warehouse, full expensing for research and development, the 20% qualified business income deduction, and the new deductions on overtime and car loan interest. She also explains why your books and your tax return can legitimately disagree, and why social media tax advice fails IRS scrutiny.
Guest: Bret Mitchell, EOS Implementer at EOS Worldwide. He started his career consulting Fortune 500 companies in New York, later sat on the leadership team at Purple and held the chief merchandising officer seat at Overstock.com, and now helps leadership teams across industries implement EOS.
The Supreme Court ruled the IEEPA tariff authority unconstitutional, and Customs and Border Protection has built a system called CAPE to process refunds. Stephen Brown walks Stacy Walker through what it takes: an ACE portal account, bank details, eligible entry numbers, and a CSV upload. Phase one went live April 20 and payment runs 60 to 90 days. He also covers how to book the money once it lands, and why the refund trolls from the PPP era will show up again.
Stephen Brown and Preston Alder have spent three years learning debt the hard way at Solé Toscana, including personal loans that took three years to repay. They cover why merchant cash advance pricing hides the real APR, why the paperwork-heavy loans are usually the good ones, and why they will take debt for inventory but not for unproven marketing. They finish with the cash flow levers most sellers overlook, from card float to renegotiated supplier terms.
LedgerGurus benchmarked its own monthly accounting clients and sorted them into four quadrants by growth and profitability. Stephen Brown and Stacy Walker walk through what separated the 44% that were growing and profitable: 66% gross margins, 7.5% of revenue on ads, and a wholesale channel in every top quartile brand. They also cover why the low ad spend surprised them, why cash balances track profit rather than growth, and the three levers that actually move profit.
Matthew Kidman came out of the 2000s Florida real estate market with tens of thousands in credit card debt and two years of splitting entrees to pay it off. House of Joppa has never taken any. He tells Stephen Brown how that works across 400 to 500 SKUs and 50 suppliers: deliberately lean inventory, staged supplier payments, stockouts treated as acceptable, and cash held as a constraint rather than a problem to be solved.
Mark Lupton returns to argue that business value isn't something you find out at a sale. He and Stephen Brown work through judging your own business the way an acquirer would: opportunity on one side, risk on the other, with proof and protection as the evidence that bridges them. They also apply Porter's Five Forces to channel concentration, explain why growth that outruns your own cash flow costs you at valuation, and separate intrinsic value from market value.
Geoff Gualano returns to walk the accounting maturity model again with Stephen Brown, this time asking what you should actually measure at each level. Tax compliance, then understanding the business, then forecasting, then investor ready financials. They cover why most sellers record revenue wrong from day one, the income ratios worth benchmarking, the cash conversion cycle, and why accurate level two data is what makes level three possible at all.
Nate Littlewood built an indoor gardening brand to seven figures before becoming a fractional CFO, and he says the problem isn't a shortage of data. It's what he calls the context vacuum: founders who will compare CPCs with a peer but have no idea whether a 40% gross margin is healthy. He and Stephen Brown cover three founder archetypes and how each gets stuck, the four phases of a founder's relationship with finance, and the filters that turn thirty ideas into three.
Stacy Walker talks to eight to fifteen brands a week, and reckons only about one in five knows its true bottom line. On gross margin she puts it nearer one in ten. She and Stephen Brown walk through all four margins: what each one measures, why cost of goods sold gets stuffed with things that belong in cost of sales, and why pushing interest and tax below the line shows the real efficiency of the business. They close on which margin to fix first.
Stephen Brown and Preston Alder run through ten predictions for 2026, arguing we've hit peak tariffs, that rate cuts won't reach ecommerce lenders, and that AI commerce is the thing to be most bullish about. They debate whether AI shopping creates new demand or just moves it, why both legs of a K-shaped economy now want value, and where small brands can still win. They close with a bonus call that the real bubble is private equity rather than AI.
A year on from the first episode, Stephen Brown grades his own 2025 predictions with Kelley Birrell holding him to it. Ecommerce retail share hit 16.3%, matching the 2020 peak, which he scores an A. Tariffs get a C, because he saw them coming but nothing like the scale. AI gets an A, but for reasons he didn't anticipate. He also covers the de minimis wind-down, why specialist lenders never passed on rate cuts, and what still hasn't dented Meta and Amazon.
Sell one unit into the UK and you owe VAT from that first sale, with no threshold to hide behind. Oliver Blackmore of Elver Ecommerce Accountants walks Stephen Brown through UK registration and why it now takes months, the EORI number that keeps your goods out of customs limbo, how Amazon's marketplace rules change who pays, and how postponing import VAT protects your cash. He closes with the EU, GST, and the end of drop shipping.
Between three and four and a half percent of ad spend goes to bot traffic, click farms, and clicks from outside your targeting geography, according to Dash.fi's data across a hundred clients. Kurt Bell tells Stephen Brown why Meta and Google have little incentive to fix it, why chasing refunds works less well than excluding bad IPs upfront, and how brands are diversifying away from the two big platforms. He also makes the case for card terms as an underused cash flow lever.
Most founders can tell you what they want for the business. Mark Lupton of Greenhouse Business Advisors asks what they want from it, and says the gap between those two answers is where strategy falls apart. He and Stephen Brown work backward from a ten year picture to three year enterprise value drivers, then to the annual budget and what sits below the P&L. He closes on why a merchant cash advance works as a bridge rather than growth capital.
Chris Hondl co-founded Finale Inventory in 2014, bootstrapped it without outside capital, and sold it to Descartes in 2025. He and Stephen Brown cover what a decade of watching sellers taught him: why standard operating procedures matter more than software, why an ERP rarely fixes a discipline problem, and where the line actually sits, closer to $50 million than $5 million. He also lays out the venture capital math that made bootstrapping the better bet.
Katana's customer base saw cost of goods sold jump 103% in a single quarter as businesses front-ran tariffs. Co-CEO Ben Hussey walks Stephen Brown through what the data shows: automotive buying a year of inventory at once, food and beverage ordering 46% above the prior quarter, raw material costs up nearly 50% in three months. They also cover why almost nobody is actually relocating manufacturing, and why the arbitrage era of ecommerce is finished.
Thread did what the first Trump administration seemed to want. They moved a third of production to Vietnam and a third to Cambodia, then watched Liberation Day hit those countries at 46% and 49%. Ryan King, their CFO, tells Stephen Brown what happened next: eating the cost since April, why wholesale commitments make price changes slow, and why US manufacturers said they couldn't do the work even if they wanted to. He also explains what it actually takes to stand up a new factory.
Banks won't lend to ecommerce brands, and merchant cash advances charge 40 to 60%. Alec Koenig built Settle in that gap. He tells Stephen Brown why business credit reports are useless for underwriting, how plugging into QuickBooks and inventory data fills the hole, and what makes a brand lendable: ratios above one, clean accrual books, and contribution margin over 15%. They also dig into why cash flow rather than profit is the real constraint on a growing product business.
Stephen Brown and Preston Alder spent their first nine months at Solé Toscana throwing money at growth, and it did not work. Then they read Profit First. They walk through the five accounts, the two they added for inventory and sales tax, and what changed when Preston took ads in house under a fixed spending limit. They also cover where the model breaks down for an inventory business, and how forecasting and smart debt fill the gap.
Banks won't lend to ecommerce brands and merchant cash advances charge 27% or more. Joe May walks Stephen Brown through a vehicle most sellers have never considered: equity crowdfunding under Reg CF, which lets you raise up to $5 million from the customers who already buy your product. He covers the Form C disclosures, when audited financials kick in, how an SPV protects your cap table, and why he pairs every raise with a 506C for accredited investors.
Six months on from the ten predictions in episode one, Stephen Brown and Lauren Maillard check the scoreboard. Tariffs landed harder than anyone expected, the de minimis rule is gone with a global phase-out by 2027, and the dollar is weakening on top of it all. The surprise nobody predicted is that AI stopped being a cost-saving tool and became a sales channel. Stephen also explains the four month gap between episodes.
The Amazon roll-up era is over, and 2023 and 2024 were the slowest M&A years in fifteen. Josh Robbins of Premara Group tells Stephen Brown what's changing: private equity sitting on capital it has to deploy, and buyers who now want profit rather than growth at any cost. He covers the numbers that make a brand attractive, roughly 20% growth and 15 to 20% EBITDA, and the risks that sink deals. Amazon-only sellers cap out around three times EBITDA.
Scott Scharf tracks around 60 inventory management systems on a 300-field comparison matrix, and his first piece of advice is to stop. Write down your requirements before you watch a single demo, or you'll just remember the last one you saw. He and Stephen Brown cover implementation budgets, realistic timelines, why you need an operations manager before you need the software, and when an ERP like NetSuite or Odoo is overkill.
Inventory accounting is hard because inventory operations are hard, and every step between the two has a failure point. Brittany Brown explains why expensing a purchase in the month you make it wrecks every month that follows, how inventory moves from the balance sheet to COGS as it sells, and what landed cost actually includes. Stephen Brown shows the same three months modelled on cash and accrual, then reads gross margin across Nike, Warby Parker, and Solo Brands to show what good looks like.
A tariff lands on your customs value, which is most of your cost of goods sold. Stephen Brown works the arithmetic with Kelley Birrell: a 10% tariff costs two points of margin on a 20% COGS business and six points on a 60% one. The harder question is whether to absorb it, pass it on, or split it. Passing it on runs into price elasticity, and he walks the tariff impact calculator through three scenarios to show why raising prices can land you barely ahead of absorbing the cost.
Tariff policy moved so fast during this recording week that Kelley Birrell opens with a note on what has already changed since. Then Stephen Brown and Bryce Judy of Tarifflo cover the mechanics that don't move: how HTS classification works, why only about 70% of goods enter under the correct code, the difference between formal, informal, and type 86 entries, and duty drawback. They also cover the de minimis change ending duty free treatment for low value shipments from China.
Fees used to take 25 to 30% of an Amazon sale. Liz Adamson now sees 45 to 60% going back to Amazon once advertising, FBA, and referral fees are counted. She and Stephen Brown work through each category: rising cost per click, the reimbursement change that pays cost of goods instead of retail, inbound placement fees, and the referral cuts Amazon made to compete with Temu. They finish on what it now takes to launch, and why Chinese sellers passing 50% changes the strategy.
The legacy integration between Shopify Plus and Avalara shuts off on April 30, 2025, leaving roughly 6,300 businesses with a decision to make. Mac Wright explains what changed and what the migration involves. Then he and Stephen Brown pull apart what a tax engine actually does on every order: where, who, and what. One street in Aurora, Colorado is taxed at 4% on one side and 7.5% on the other.
Recorded on inauguration day, with TikTok back online but still off the app store. Stephen Brown and Michelle Barnum Smith set the ban aside and look at what TikTok Shop actually changed. Michelle timed discovery to checkout at 15 seconds against 90 on Instagram. She covers what makes a product sell there, the fee structure against Amazon's, and the affiliate model that pays creators on results instead of follower count.
Most brands treat accounting as a tax chore and stop there. Stephen Brown and Geoff Gualano of A2X map four phases of maturity: accounting as necessary, accounting as visibility into what's actually profitable, accounting as strategic forecasting, and finally accounting clean enough for a lender or a buyer. Between them they cover a business six months from running out of cash, an audit that changed a $30 million seller's mind, and an inventory adjustment that cost millions in valuation.
Stephen Brown and Preston Alder co-own Solé Toscana, bought in 2022 at what Stephen calls the worst possible time to buy an ecommerce business. They burned cash for a year, got profit religion, and built three things: an annual budget, a 12 month cash flow with an inventory purchase plan, and a 13 week tactical forecast. The result was roughly 40% growth in 2024 alongside higher profitability. They cover what each does, who builds which part, and when.
Stephen Brown opens the Ecommerce Finance Podcast with ten trends heading into 2025 and what each one does to your numbers. Ecommerce is back above its COVID peak as a share of retail, which supports a bullish forecast. Marketing efficiency is still broken four years after iOS 14.5. Tariffs, the de minimis rule, a possible TikTok ban, and a paused port strike all carry real cost implications. Kelley Birrell joins for the conversation.
Stephen Brown has listened to podcasts for two decades and kept running into the same gap: plenty of ecommerce shows, very little financial depth. This trailer explains what he plans to do about it. He introduces himself, LedgerGurus, and Solé Toscana, and sets the premise that everything in a business carries a financial impact, which puts every topic on the table.
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