Cam McNeill spent ten years at Dollar Shave Club — from managing a member
services team in Sydney to running the entire business outside the US. He bought
the brand's first Facebook ads in Australia at a $14 CPA, launched Ruggable into
the Australian market, and is now Head of Growth at Beforeyouspeak Coffee,
taking a nine-year-old Aussie DTC brand into the States.
He was living in a van touring America in 2012 when Dollar Shave Club's $3,500
launch video went viral. He rang a mate and said: I wonder how long it'll take to
get to Australia.
In this episode Cam joins Ryan Martin for a genuinely practical conversation
about cross-border ecommerce — how you know you're ready for a new market, what
the first six months should actually look like, and why Beforeyouspeak chose
the US largely because of one channel that isn't live here yet.
WHAT WE COVER
• The signals that tell you a market is ready for you — hiding in your DMs, your
customer service inbox and your creator requests (and why it's a two-way
street: ask them back)
• Why market expansion deserves the same rigour as a product launch, and how to
build a forecast you feel 80/20 about
• The lowest-cost MVP: finding a beachhead, building a waitlist, and contacting
the people who already contacted you
• Why Beforeyouspeak shipped from Australia at painful margins — and got to
conviction fast because those US subscribers are still with them years later
• Setting a six-month horizon with real exit criteria, without making it binary
• Whether you have to "conquer" Australia first (and Cam's response to that
framing)
• New Zealand as the soft-launch market most Aussie brands overlook
• Why the US comes down to TikTok Shop — and the real difference between an
influencer and a creator who only gets paid on GMV delivered
• Subscription in 2026: the Amazon Prime promise, subscription fatigue, and why
your owned experience has to be equal to or better
• Rising Meta costs, AI-driven attribution, and building creative diversity
across well-defined personas
• Using AI to shorten the distance to a decision, not to generate more noise
• Tech stack: Shopify for multi-market, Recharge, Klaviyo, and the new players
innovating inside the inbox
• Ryan on Microsoft Clarity and internal site search — the highest-intent,
least-watched data on your site
• How much AI traffic actually matters yet, zero-click search, and why commercial
keywords are still safe
• Why AI slop might make great designers more valuable, not less
