Why the Best Investment You Can Make Isn't Ads — It's Learning

Bergen Anderson had already done a lot of things right. Fourteen years in business. A multi-six-figure revenue. A loyal customer base that kept coming back. A storefront in Chicago that had become a genuine community hub. And yet, like so many store owners we talk to, she felt like she was spinning her wheels — spending money to get sales, but not actually getting ahead.

We see stories like hers constantly: store owners skipping the fundamentals and jumping straight to paid ads, hoping to shortcut their way to growth. It rarely works the way they hope. And Bergen's experience shows exactly why — and what happens when you take a different path.

The Expensive Shortcut

When Bergen decided she wanted to grow her online sales, her instinct was to hire an ad agency. It's a common move. You're busy, you don't have time to figure it all out, and the agency promises results. So you hand over your credit card and hope for the best.

At first, it seemed to be working. Her online sales doubled, then quadrupled. Her phone was dinging with orders.

But underneath the excitement, things weren't adding up. She didn't understand what was happening in her ad account. When a metric dropped, she didn't know how to fix it. Her inventory — small-batch, handmade pieces that take real time to produce — couldn't keep up with sudden demand spikes. And the costs kept climbing.

After four or five months, she added it up: roughly $34,000 spent between the agency fee, Meta ads, and Pinterest. And she ended the year with a net loss.

"My credit card bill was less after I stopped," she says. "That told me everything."

This is the hidden cost of jumping to paid ads before your business is ready for them. You can get sales — but you can also get a false sense of momentum that masks the fact that you're not actually profitable, and that you don't have the foundational systems to sustain the growth even if the ads keep working.

What She Did Instead

After stepping away from the agency, Bergen found Traffic Bootcamp, then joined the Inner Circle. And instead of looking for another shortcut, she did something different: she followed the training.

Her first coaching call with coach Morgan had one clear directive — switch from Mailchimp to Klaviyo and build out the basics: a popup, a welcome flow, an abandoned cart sequence. Simple things. Foundational things. Things that work whether or not you're spending a dollar on ads.

The results were immediate. Her email revenue went from under 10% of total sales to around 30%. Not because of some clever hack, but because she finally had the infrastructure in place to capture and nurture the people who were already showing up.

"Just having that tool and knowing I have support to make sure things are done right — that makes me feel secure," she says. "Before, I didn't know what I was doing. Now I have a framework."

The Black Friday Proof

The clearest demonstration of what this approach can do came at Black Friday.

The year before joining the Inner Circle, Bergen's online Black Friday sales totaled $700. After following the proven event framework — combined with months of consistent email and content work — her online sales hit $7,000. A 10x increase, with no ad agency, no massive ad spend, just a plan she understood and could execute herself.

"I just followed the plan," she says.

That's the point. When you understand what you're doing and why, you don't need to hand control over to someone else. You can run your own events, write your own emails, and see exactly where your sales are coming from.

A Few Coaching Calls Beat Thousands in Ad Spend

One of the most striking parts of Bergen's story is what happened when she booked a one-on-one session with coach Kate heading into December — a notoriously difficult month with a hard shipping deadline.

Kate helped her build a specific email plan for the month: which emails to send, when to send them, and what emotional response each one should trigger. Bergen had her notes. She worked the plan.

Her December online sales went from $2,300 the previous year to $5,600. From a single coaching call. Compare that to the $34,000 she spent with an agency and the math becomes pretty hard to argue with.

"She had my back," Bergen says. "And that was the first time I'd ever met with her."

This is something we see consistently in the Inner Circle: members who regularly book coaching calls grow faster than those who don't. Not because the coaches have some secret knowledge, but because a focused conversation with someone who understands your business and your goals cuts through the noise and gets you moving in the right direction quickly. That's an extraordinarily high return on a coaching call.

The Lesson

Bergen's story isn't really about ads vs. email, or agencies vs. coaching. It's about order of operations.

High-cost paid advertising can absolutely play a role in growing your store — but only after you've built the foundation. 

That means having your email flows set up and working. It means knowing your numbers. It means understanding what's actually driving your sales and being able to replicate it. When you have all of that in place, paid ads can amplify what's already working. When you don't, they just amplify the chaos.

Most store owners have barely scratched the surface of what email marketing can do for them before they start looking for the next big thing. Bergen's email list of 3,000 people is now generating 30% of her revenue — and she believes she can get that to 50%. That's not a small opportunity. That's the foundation of a business that can grow sustainably, profitably, and without handing control over to an algorithm or an agency you don't fully understand.

The time you spend learning to market your own business well is never wasted. It compounds. Every email you send, every flow you build, every customer relationship you nurture — that's an asset you own, one that keeps paying you back.

Bergen is heading into the rest of this year with more clarity, more control, and a much lower cost of customer acquisition than she had twelve months ago. She's not chasing growth anymore. She's building it.

"I wish I'd found [this] community earlier," she says. "We can do this alone. But it's not going to be fun. And shouldn't it be fun?"

And that makes all the difference.

RELATED LINKS

Bergen Anderson is the founder of Lila Barn Clothing — bold, colorful clothing for kids and adults who love adventure. Find her at lilabarn.com and on Instagram at @lilabarnclothing.

The habits I see that lead to success https://www.thesocialsalesgirls.com/blog/the-habits-i-see-that-lead-to-success-episode-311

The real reason your sales are unpredictable https://www.thesocialsalesgirls.com/blog/the-real-reason-your-sales-are-unpredictable-episode-310

Louise is getting sales. How does she build a profitable business? https://www.thesocialsalesgirls.com/blog/louise-is-getting-sales-how-does-she-build-a-profitable-business-episode-297

Here’s When You’re Ready To Run Purchase Ads https://www.thesocialsalesgirls.com/blog/heres-when-youre-ready-to-run-purchase-ads-episode-290