---
title: Funnel economics "dirty math" — day-zero gross profit and the four levers
slug: funnel-economics-dirty-math
summary: Stefan Georgi's back-of-napkin funnel math for DTC, info and high-ticket offers (CPA, day-zero AOV, COGS, gross profit), the four levers (lower CPA, lower COGS, raise AOV, raise LTV), and his peptide-funnel case that went from −$146 to +$56 per customer with three changes.
domain: marketing
tags: [unit-economics, cpa, aov, cogs, ltv, cro, abandoned-cart, dtc, supplements]
related: [paying-above-first-order-cac, price-testing-dtc-offers, aov-and-upsells-on-meta-cac, cac-payback-and-30-day-cash, gross-margin-targets, sales-funnel-rules-of-thumb, low-ticket-ltv-ascension-and-community]
sources: [yt:9CR76lix638]
updated: 2026-10-24
---

# Funnel economics "dirty math"

## TL;DR
- **Pick the goal first:** max net profit, max revenue (for a sale or exit), max new customers/leads, or a low-headache lifestyle business. The goal decides which levers you pull.
- **Know four numbers:** CPA (cost per acquisition), day-zero AOV, COGS (product, fulfilment, processing fees) and the gross profit left when a customer is acquired.
- **Four levers:** lower CPA (better ads, higher conversion rate, cheaper traffic, cart recovery), lower COGS, raise AOV, raise LTV.
- **Conversion rate matters only because it lowers CPA.** A stable, lower CPA is what lets you scale and recruit affiliates at that CPA.
- **Find benchmarks from peers, then fix the biggest leak.** In Stefan's peptide funnel, a simpler intake flow, a better landing page and call-centre/SMS cart recovery took CPA from ~$300 to ~$98.

## Details
**The four numbers, with Stefan Georgi's examples.**[^1][^2]

| Offer | CPA | Day-zero AOV | COGS | Gross profit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Supplement A | $150 | $220 | ~$50 (22.7%) | +$20 |
| Supplement B | $300 | $150 | ~$50 | −$200 |
| Low-ticket info | $40 | $60 | ~$0 | +$20 |
| High-ticket (calls) | $1,000 | $3,000 | $1,000 (closer, coach) | +$1,000 |

At 100 sales a day, Supplement A is a healthy lifestyle business. Supplement B is a common launch reality, and someone with $5K saved can't buy enough data to optimise their way out of it.[^3][^4] He says low-ticket info looks alluring but is harder to scale than physical products.[^5]

**Lever 1: lower CPA.**
- *Better ads* (higher CTR, lower CPM). At $3K/day and a 2% conversion rate, going from 1,000 to 2,000 visitors cuts CPA from $150 to $75.[^6][^7] Better creative on bought email drops works the same way.[^8]
- *Higher conversion*: sales-letter rewrites, A/B tests and journey fixes, such as a quiz that's leaking people.[^8]
- *Cheaper traffic*: a new agency or media buyer, YouTube instead of Facebook, or affiliates who accept a lower CPA.[^9]
- *Branded search ads.* Bid on your own brand name, where buyers are checking you're legit. Stefan expects ~$20 a sale against $80–150 elsewhere.[^9] SEO, Amazon and a solid web presence lower blended CPA too.[^10]

**Lever 2: lower COGS.** Cutting $5 to $3 per bottle on 5-bottle orders at 1,000 sales a day is ~$300K a month. Halving merchant fees from 5% to 2.5% at that volume is ~$80–90K a month.[^10][^11]

**Lever 3: raise AOV.** Options are "AOV close" copy pushing the biggest package, adding a 6-bottle option to a 1/3-bottle grid, a checkout order bump (a $20 supplement costing $3, or a $27 info add-on), and better upsells (a 20% → 40% take rate adds $15–25+ per buyer). Test each, because a bump can hurt upsell take-up.[^12][^13] He later argued AOV tactics backfire on Meta; see [[aov-and-upsells-on-meta-cac]].

**Lever 4: raise LTV.** Use subscriptions, keep people subscribed longer, monetise the email list (affiliate deals, warm-traffic bundles) and use a phone sales team.[^14][^15] See [[paying-above-first-order-cac]] for how rebills change what you can pay.

**Case: Stefan's telehealth peptide (GLP-1) funnel, 2024.** CPA ~$300 (swinging $113–300+), first month $299 then $399, COGS $145, so −$146 per customer. 964 Facebook visitors gave 10 sales (1.04%).[^15][^16] He asked top media buyers for benchmarks and learned CPA should be ~$100.[^16][^17] Google Analytics, VWO and Hotjar showed the drop-off in the medical-intake questionnaire, and competitors' flows had less friction.[^17][^18] His modelled path:
1. Simplify the intake flow to double conversions → CPA $150.[^19]
2. Test landing-page variants to 2.5% conversion → CPA $125.[^20]
3. Recover abandoned carts. Of ~300 a day, a call centre (paid $125 a sale) typically converts ~20% (he models 10%), and SMS + email recover another ~5%. That's 69 sales a day, a blended CPA of $97.82 and +$56.18 per customer.[^21][^22]

New ads, affiliates, upsells such as anti-nausea add-ons, and price tests were still untouched.[^23]

## Disagreements / caveats
- The peptide numbers are partly "hypothetical but not far off" projections made before the tests ran. They're not results.[^16]
- Day-zero gross profit leaves out payroll, overhead and refunds. Compare with Hormozi's 80% gross-margin bar for services in [[gross-margin-targets]].
- Branded-search and call-centre economics depend on brand demand and the category. A call centre fits high-ticket or medical offers better than a $30 product.

## See also
- [[cac-payback-and-30-day-cash]] — Hormozi's cash-timing view of the same numbers
- [[price-testing-dtc-offers]] — the pricing lever in detail
- [[sales-funnel-rules-of-thumb]]

[^1]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 03:05 — Stefan Georgi
[^2]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 04:36 — Stefan Georgi
[^3]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 06:09 — Stefan Georgi
[^4]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 07:40 — Stefan Georgi
[^5]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 09:13 — Stefan Georgi
[^6]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 13:50 — Stefan Georgi
[^7]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 17:02 — Stefan Georgi
[^8]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 18:35 — Stefan Georgi
[^9]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 20:12 — Stefan Georgi
[^10]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 21:42 — Stefan Georgi
[^11]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 23:15 — Stefan Georgi
[^12]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 24:50 — Stefan Georgi
[^13]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 26:22 — Stefan Georgi
[^14]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 27:57 — Stefan Georgi
[^15]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 29:28 — Stefan Georgi
[^16]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 31:02 — Stefan Georgi
[^17]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 32:32 — Stefan Georgi
[^18]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 34:03 — Stefan Georgi
[^19]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 35:36 — Stefan Georgi
[^20]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 37:07 — Stefan Georgi
[^21]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 38:44 — Stefan Georgi
[^22]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 40:19 — Stefan Georgi
[^23]: yt:9CR76lix638 @ 41:54 — Stefan Georgi