Dopesick: A PSA (Public Service Announcement) from the V Spot Nearly News. This could be an ad for Pepto Bismol, but its not, though, I need to talk to you about bloating.
Not the kind that follows a long weekend. (for me caused through excessive red wine). It is The kind that shows up on your P&L.
App bloat.
Agency bloat.
Headcount bloat.
It builds slowly. Quietly. One completely reasonable decision at a time.
And then one Tuesday morning, someone in a glass-walled room says the word efficiency and the scissors come out.
The popular opinion and it is very popular right now:
Cut fast. Blame the macro. (meta thoughts for your own consumption here, I am not getting cancelled). Most people post something warm about AI unlocking new ways of working.
Call it transformation.
Move on.
The unpopular opinion. The one nobody puts in the press release.
Your bloat happened for a reason. The apps were solving real problems. Badly, expensively, and in triplicate but real problems. The agency roster grew because someone internally didn’t have the skill, the time, or the brief to do it themselves. The headcount expanded because you were building for a version of the business that didn’t show up. That is a planning problem. Not a people problem. Cutting without understanding is a painkiller.
Six months later, the same symptoms return. Different packaging. Same bill.
One of the most expensive things in ecommerce isn’t bloat.
It’s fixing the same problem twice. This has been a public service announcement on behalf of operators everywhere who have been handed a set of problems and told to sort it out by Friday.
If that’s you talk to Sumoblue before you reach for the scissors.
We diagnose before we prescribe. Helpful when you been asked to get the snip.
The V Spot Nearly News. Seen through the eyes of a madman. Sponsored, this week, by common sense and SUmo Blue.
HOT OR NOT — WEEKEND POLL
Agency bloat. What’s your move?
🔥 HOT: Cut fast, explain later
❄️ NOT: Diagnose first, cut with precision
😐 Pretend it’s not happening until Q3
🙋 I am the bloat