
From Dollar Shave Club to Beforeyouspeak: Taking an Aussie DTC Brand into the US | Cam McNeill
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


















