Why the businesses that can't follow conventional DTC wisdom often build something better

Hey everyone,

Welcome back for another bite to chew on.

Most DTC playbooks assume you have a marketing budget, predictable supply chains, and products you can manufacture on demand. 

Kyle Lee had none of that.

Yet Alaskan Salmon Company works.

Kyle built a profitable business by doing the opposite of conventional wisdom: meeting existing demand instead of fighting for attention, creating custom metrics instead of chasing benchmarks, and educating critics instead of arguing with them.

Today we're breaking down Kyle's unconventional approach and why his "impossible" business model actually offers lessons every DTC founder can use.

On the Menu: 

🎣 How To Win At Organic Search When You Can’t Win With Paid

🎯 Stop Chasing Other People's Success Metrics

📰 The Art of Educating Instead of Arguing

You can watch the whole conversation with Kyle here:

Listen on Spotify 🎧 and Apple 🍎 as well.

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Zero marketing budget doesn't have to mean zero growth. Sometimes it means better strategy.

While most DTC brands burn cash trying to interrupt people with ads, there's another approach: meet existing demand where it lives. 

People are already searching for information about your product category. The question is whether you're there when they look.

When Kyle started Alaskan Salmon Company, he couldn't even afford a proper ecommerce site. He had a choice: give up or get creative.

He chose to get creative. 

People were already searching for salmon information online. They wanted to know the difference between wild and farm-raised fish. They were googling "how to buy quality salmon" and "what makes salmon actually wild."

So, instead of trying to create demand from scratch, Kyle built a simple landing page with email capture and started writing blog posts. Not sales pages disguised as content, actual educational content. 

Kyle explained different Alaska fisheries, broke down fishing methods, and taught people how to evaluate salmon quality regardless of where they bought it.

Content wasn't Kyle's strength, but the strategy was working. People found his posts when they searched for salmon information, learned something valuable, and signed up for his email list.

Four years later, Kyle still hasn't spent heavily on Meta ads. Those early blog posts from 2021 are still driving his best organic traffic today.

The principle: when you can't afford to interrupt people, earn their attention by being helpful exactly when they need it.

Most DTC founders rely on benchmarks to guide decisions. Average retention rates, standard CAC targets, typical conversion percentages. 

But what happens when your business doesn't fit the mold? When there are no studies for your category, no playbooks for your model?

For Kyle, the seafood DTC space had no benchmarks. No retention rate studies, no CAC standards, no playbooks for seasonal businesses that sell out every October and start fresh each year. 

Without benchmarks to chase, the focus shifted to what actually drove success for this specific business. 

Instead of trying to hit someone else's retention numbers, optimize for selling out each season. Instead of chasing industry-standard CAC, focus on education that brings in customers who understand the value.

This approach worked because it stopped trying to fit a unique business into generic frameworks. 

As Kyle put it: "There's so much great advice out there, but you as operators have to do it for yourself and figure out what works for you. You have two seafood companies and you could do the same thing and one's going to crush it and one's not."

When your business doesn't fit the mold, don't break it trying to conform. 

Create your own metrics based on what actually drives your success. Sometimes the lack of a roadmap is exactly what forces you to build something better.

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Criticism usually signals a lack of information, not malice. Handle it right, and critics become your best advocates.

Three months into building his business, Kyle received a harsh email from a New York Times food editor.

The editor had read one of his blog posts about salmon pricing and she was furious. Kyle was selling salmon for $100 per pound, and she thought he was misleading customers. Her email "ripped him a new one" about his pricing and product claims.

Most founders would panic, delete the email, or fire back with justifications. Kyle saw an opportunity to teach.

He wrote back with a detailed explanation of Alaska's different fisheries, why his specific operation was unique, and what justified his pricing. No sales pitch, no defensiveness. Just facts that helped her understand the industry better.

Two weeks later, she featured him in the New York Times.

That single mention generated 4,000 email subscribers overnight and gave Kyle the credibility boost that transformed his business.

The press coverage was nice, but the real insight was deeper. Criticism usually comes from incomplete context, not bad intentions. The editor wasn't trying to hurt the business, she was doing her job with limited information.

Instead of seeing the editor as an enemy, he saw her as someone who needed more information to make a fair judgment.

This became Kyle's entire content philosophy. 

He focuses on "pure education" rather than persuasion. He openly acknowledges that his product isn't for everyone, that grocery store salmon serves a purpose, and that taste is subjective.

The honesty builds trust faster than any sales copy could. When Kyle moved from wholesale to DTC, he had to educate an entire market about what they were buying. Instead of trying to convince customers, give them the tools to make informed decisions.

Skeptics become customers when they feel educated, not sold to.