3 founders debate the honest realities of building brands in 2026 | The Midnight Pod Episode 80

Right, we're back with, I think, episode— I don't even know. The Midnight Pod. It's been a while. It's been a very long while, in fact. Normally I just say, "I'm on the YouTube." I haven't said "The Midnight Pod" for a very, very long time.

It's weird hearing you say it in real life. I was trying to think what I used to say. Normally you say it through a screen.

It's like, "Welcome back to The Midnight Pod." This is like a vintage episode. The one thing that's missing is red wine, but it's 2 PM and it's about 40 degrees outside.

It's a rabbit read.

Yeah, exactly. He would have been sat here in Bali.

Yeah.

It's been a while. I decided it's been long overdue to bring the pod back. A lot of people request it all the time. Whether this is one episode followed by nothing for another year or if it's the start of an incredible vintage run of the pod.

When was the last one you did?

Wow, um, the last official pod I want to think was November 2023. Who was it? Oh shit, was it that long?

Who was that though?

Not Seamus, Connor Martin, and Ollie Hudson in my flat in London. I think actually was that long ago. It's hard to beat that. Yeah, and then I just saw more and more waffle from people starting pods. I mean, the pod's always been a side thing for me, but I honestly think that 2022 period on an iPhone, the one I did of your brother Jimmy, which people might have seen, the lighting was so pink. This is what I was trying to go for. We're in a professional studio this time.

Well, you did one in the kitchen as well.

Oh, fucking hell, it was so rogue. I just think it was vintage.

You've actually—

I've had the worst experience.

We did a hidden camera episode of Holden. The production was so bad, but the content was so good. Dirty. Yeah, exactly. So I thought we'd get a group session together. We were meant to have one other guy, um, who's not here, couldn't make it, couldn't fly from Leeds just for this session, 7-hour flight. I thought it'd be interesting because we've got— you might not like this— but a brand guy. I'm known for being that, probably the most honest founder on the internet. An agency guy who probably now identifies as a brand guy as well, which we can get onto. And a brand guy who sort of does agency now, but by that face, I'm looking like you.

I thought we're in the debate stage already.

Well, we can get there. I guess as an intro, Jordan Hill, founder of That Works. In fact, give yourself an intro.

Yeah, so, um, Jordan Hill, founder. It's like a CRO shopify agency, been doing it for 8 years. Um, yeah, pretty much it. And then I do some e-com stuff on the side. I launched a brand like 3 months ago. Um, pretty happy with it. It's not massive, but earning my stripes.

Any recent moves to Dubai as well, right? Lives on a golf course, plays like 4 times a day. Yeah, I'm chasing him.

He undersold himself. He's the go-to web dev for the entire UK.

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, very embedded into culture.

Jack? Uh, I'm founder of Kanzuri, so height boosting shoes, interviews in the street, showing before and afters of guys getting taller. That's me. So I've been doing that 6 years. Agency— I wouldn't say I've got an agency, I've got a studio.

What's the difference? Define that for me.

It's a better— yeah, yeah, better position. So I, number one, I've only had what, 2 clients, you being one of them, and it was because my design team in-house is so fucking cracked. I was like, I may as well create a studio. And then Exhibit A, redid the whole— did we do this or not?

Maybe you would have done a render for it. Oh yeah, you know, you did the original renders when it was going to be a 330 stubby, but now it's a 250 skinny, which I'm still pissed off about.

Yeah, yeah. So like, redid the website because I love, I love everything. Like, I like 3D renders, animation, design. So I was like, why not? I'll do it. But to be honest, it's like this— nothing matters more than just doing the thing that moves the needle. And it was, it was in hindsight a bit of a distraction. Like, I am a brand guy. So yeah, I think I'm sacking the studio. But if anyone—

really?

Yeah.

Why so soon? Just more work than you think. It comes like me and Slack telling you what to do.

I'm not— my ego is too big. Like, when I've got people saying this is, you know, because I'm that I'm like, you know, where's this, where's that? And then I'm in brand mode. When people tell me that, I'm just like, mate, this isn't my thing. So I didn't like that aspect. So hats off to the agency guys who deal with people like me and Matt all day. I'd say you're probably the worst client to have.

I've got experience in that.

Yeah, you're a professional skater, but—

Yeah, by the way, anyone that doesn't know, skater is probably not an official word, but might be added to the dictionary. It's basically like a Direct but professionally rude Slack message that whips people into shape when something's not been done correctly.

I might think of a better definition, but I mean, and it's out of nowhere as well. Yeah, they weren't expecting it.

300 words or more, usually in the form of an email, can cross-transfer to Slack after 5 PM.

Yeah, yeah, after 9 PM probably.

Yeah, um, but yeah, I know I, I did it because it felt stupid not to, and then It's there, like, if anyone's like, I need a rebrand, fine, but I'm just, I'm not doing a small project. It's not worth my time because I'll give it to my design team, but if it's like, oh, can you do 10 statics a month, it's like, it's not even worth giving that to someone else. Long story short, I'm born and bred e-com. That's where I'll stay.

So what's next? Well, that implies you're not doing Kazuri, but I know you've seen— No, yeah, I've had 5 years of Kazuri, right, or 6?

6. Yeah, no, I'm still doing that. I've had like— it's funny because I listened to the podcast we did in Bali and we were going around 3 years ago. Yeah, we were saying, uh, where do you think the next best opportunity is? And I think I said something like AI agency for businesses, which is ultimately what a lot of people are doing. I think that has grown so much in the last few years, particularly the last year. We've clogged code, etc. And it is also annoying hearing people talk about AI because everyone, everyone talks like they've cracked it. Like, you'll just hear Twitter, like Twitter is just plagued with people saying, oh, I've done this, got to do this. Then you'll try it yourself. It's either not what they say it is, it's shit, not practical, or engagement farming. Like, there's so much slop.

Yeah, you see people like literally posting stuff that other actual studios have made. Like website studios, and I'll be like, a parallax scrolling website, it's like, oh, I made this in one prompt. And then underneath it'll get thousands of likes, and underneath they'll be like, well, I actually made this and I didn't use Claude.

Yeah, no, exactly. And I've been, I've been the one to— I'm one of those guys who's like, I have to find out myself to know the answer, even if someone's literally saying this is, this is it. I have to fail myself and then really know. So I, I, I still strongly believe I've got to point, like, AI has been transformative from an operational standpoint. And I think the number one thing now, which I've spent the last 6 months doing, is building an AI operating system, which is a buzzword I've heard of, like, talked about not that much, but that is the future where you've got all of your softwares unified into one hub that basically plugs in everything.. And then you're not like— you can feed your model or agent with everything from every angle, and then that allows you to do more things. And it's just not efficient anymore to have different softwares doing different things that aren't talking to each other. So I basically unified it. I pretty much finished like yesterday. I've done like 200,000 lines of code, which I think is quite a lot.

What's the actual output of this operating system?

So It's anything you can think of from finance to email planning, daily tasks for the team, creatives, scripts for ads, funnel strategy, product— not product research, ad research, quick tools. Like, for example, one I found myself, like, I'm really hot on numbers personally. So I don't really have someone like a CFO or a fractional CFO. I used to, and it's a good person to have, but I like looking at the exports myself and seeing where's the money actually going. I spent 3 quid here, I'll know about it. And there was a period where I didn't look at that. And I hated it. I felt like I wasn't on top of my shit. So there's just various tools you can make.

Did you get rid of the finance person because this is as good slash better?

No, no, no, no, no. It's definitely a hybrid for sure. But there's some things that, like, for context, I tried to recreate an entire overheads, like, Google Sheets dupe. It was insane. Did bank scan APIs, like, basically replicated Google Sheets. And I thought that was the shit. And then I put it into practice and you have to be really real with yourself and it is shit. It's not practical, it's not scalable. And the irony is you end up thinking that AI automates 100% of stuff and then you full circle back to, hold on, this isn't scalable. So the perfect mix is, is definitely human-AI, but never trying to automate 100% of a workflow, like do part of it.

Yeah, I think, I think as well, like, you have to have the ability like if you are automating stuff, especially the way that AI is right now, you have to have the ability to be able to check whether that output is correct. So it automates and speeds up the admin of doing something like creating a report, but then if you're taking advice off the back of the report, I would see that as dangerous. And that's where you would want an actual person, yeah, to review it. Um, yeah, because that's where I essentially worried because like with finance, it's something that I purposely not tried to automate in terms of like getting advice and things like that, because I know that I don't have the ability to look at that result and tell whether Claude or whatever model is giving the right recommendation. Because I think of it from the perspective of CRO where I would say that I am the expert.

And when I want to ask you about that as well.

Yeah, but like, you know, and we've got a lot of AI tools for stuff like this, but With the CRO recommendations that come through, like a lot of the stuff I have to say, no, that's incorrect. No, that's not right. Yeah, like we have stuff where we've connected Claude into GA4 and Claude will be recommending things based on what it's seeing within GA4. But GA4, notoriously, a lot of brands don't have it set up right.

No, we don't.

Yeah. So, you know, I can tell when it's suggesting something just from my context on the brand. That that idea that it's put forward is like fundamentally has a flaw. And if you think about it with your finance operations, if you've got something wrong set up in your Xero or something wrong set up with your bank feed and you've then looking at the output from AI, especially when it's looking at recommendations, then that's what would scare me. So that's why we've like, we are looking at like automating certain processes within finance but not replacing like what a CFO would essentially do.

100%. Yeah, yeah, you hit the nail on the head because like that's exactly— we have a guy that does all the source data. AI, I should have said this earlier, AI is for interpretation only. It's like Google Sheets can't make really good graphs that you can interpret as a founder, and that's why you use Claude Code to create these graphs, understand it in a way you like, but the source data never changes. That is We have a data analyst who's in Google Sheets putting in numbers. We've got Supermetrics for ad spend daily. That's probably the only old-school automation into Google Sheets itself. But the numbers don't change. They are factual. That's a person doing it. And I would say the most important thing is the source data. If that's fucked up, then it fucks everything up downstream.

The thing as well is like AI can hallucinate. So this is something I've actually learned. So I didn't— I just to caveat this, I'm not an AI builder in terms of—

You're not an AI or—

Like building operational systems. So we've got people in the company that are doing it. So I've been learning from them and they dedicate all their time to it. And when working on business-critical AI stuff where we're looking at like finance numbers, any like AI hallucination in any of that process can have an issue. So I learned something which is called like an agent council. So you basically have like the same prompt or the same process would be run by Gemini, Claude, KIMI, or whatever model you wanted to use.

I do KIMI.

And then you'd have a separate one which would then look at the same response and look for discrepancies in what it says. So if something's basically, you know, it could be something as simple as like reporting on what your EBITDA is and doing like a financial report, you'd run it 3 times with different models and then it goes through almost like a verification process to spot any like hallucinations.

Interesting. Wait, is that— what's that tool called? Have you made that yourself?

No, no, I don't know how to build it, but it's called an agency council. Agent council.

Yeah. Yeah.

I spent ages playing with Manus when it first came out and I overhyped it in my head and I spent like a week trying to automate a lot of reporting I was doing. And I realised it was just always wrong. Yeah, I was like, fuck this then. Yeah.

How much did you spend on credits? Were you doing like API stuff?

Maybe don't spin the mic around. Quite a lot. Yeah, I swear it's got cheaper. I just use Claude now, to be honest. I mean, I also got sent a report today from someone and it was obvious they'd just done it with Claude and half of it was completely wrong.

I was like, you actually need an artist. I was a bit like, it's like the buttons.

Hey, do you not actually know what these numbers are? A, rather than just Claude getting it wrong and then thinking it must be right. And B, would you not check it?

That's the danger, yeah.

And it was an important report. I mean, I don't know if they'll watch this. And then separately, I was doing ad reads the other day. And someone internally had given me a bunch of scripts. And this is like the 4th time it happened. Half of them didn't even make sense. I was like, we don't have that ingredient in the product. And they clearly just Claude'd it.

That's the danger.

It's like, well, yeah, you should use it to speed up, but you shouldn't use it to replace you.

Yeah, yeah.

And you can just tell when people are just— Being lazy as fuck.

Do you know this whole like, and I think this applies to you, 'cause this is why I built it, where you start to see drift across the team if not everyone's dialed and they're not doing the right thing.

Most people aren't dialed.

Yeah, exactly. So it's like, I think the best thing as a founder you can do is any question you would want to know the answer to straight away, like the point of this hub is so that I could see for myself the truth, and it exists in the source data, which never changes. That's objective. And the interpretation, like, we, we— you can turn it into a mobile app. So like, we would use Airtable for ops, Slack for comms, and those were probably the two main ones. But then when you unify both of them into your own— so like, Slack is obviously— you can't replace Slack, but Airtable can go into this same hub, and you've got everything feeding into it. You can put it on your phone, but you don't need to make a mobile app in the way you think. You can add it to your home screen through Safari and it acts as a mobile app.

And you just— you've done this through Cloak Code or like open Cloak?

Cloak Code.

Didn't you buy like two external Mac Minis and shit?

No, I did. Yeah, but everyone went through that.

It's just not as good.

Yeah, it's just like you don't have—

you don't need to go—

like it breaks, you got to plug the fucking HDMI back in, and then fix it, take it out.

I never did that. Or whatever, I just couldn't get my head around it.

It's not a good thing. Spent a K, but I don't really care. It's like, it gave me a good slot radar. Um, I learned like what I needed to learn, then it platformed me.

And I just have Claude connected to Slack, Granola, Google Drive, Gmail, and then like a bunch of analytics tools. I just basically— it's basically all I use, to be honest. And then like the odd creative tool, like Love Art. Yeah, Higgsville, I actually think is overrated.

Is that a bell curve? It's like you're going to get the people who are super users, but in a way that's just like, oh, man, I was like, except whatever.

And then I just think it speeds up admin. That's probably the biggest use I get from it, if I'm honest right now.

Yeah, I do think people spend too much time themselves on it though. Yeah, because like, if you—

I spend too much time. I literally, I ask Claude for advice, my girlfriend.

Yeah, well, when we're using—

I can't think of myself.

When we're using Maldives, that's when you like dedicate a week, wasn't it, to Do it yourself.

Let's ask you some questions.

But that's, that's because you wanted it in Space Goods, right? But then realistically, are you not just better getting somebody to do it? Because I think like for me now, I've never been so busy, like personally at work.

I would not go 3 times a day, but like that, power hours.

Yeah, like realistically, for the actual highest leverage thing for me to run the business is not sitting there and building out the operations and AI stuff. And I think that so many founders—

Oh yeah, no, I wasn't doing that, to be clear. I was just learning about it. I just, I enjoy the dopamine hit of fucking a new AI tool.

Yeah, we're very similar from the creative point.

I think we're being severely autistic and needing to satisfy that dopamine craving, which wears off very quickly with any new tool or business.

You know, I think the biggest thing for creative-first people like me and you We— it's, it's code and like the technical side has just been— it's not, it's no longer a, a bridge that cannot be crossed. It's gone. So it's like if you can think it in your head, i.e., this operating system is like a reflection of everything in my, my mind that I always would have wanted to have in a software. So it's like you can think it, you can do it kind of thing. So it's very— it's loads of dopamine because it's you're literally saying what you want in your head, especially when you use voice to text, right?

Which I assume you all use. Yeah, I never type anything. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I've only started using that.

I've done like a million words now.

Have you?

You've been telling me to use it for ages.

I mean, there's a bunch of them, but OG, to be fair, it breaks quite a lot. Uh, is also—

yeah, I'm gonna write in this right now.

Really?

Yeah, just trying to get any notes. But, um, yeah, because like the ability to speak an idea and like, that's what feels quite magical. You can speak to I built something on that Base44 the other day. I didn't actually use that before.

Is it good? They sold for a fuck tonne.

I mean, I built like this app dashboard in like 20 seconds off a voice prompt. It's quite good.

The thing with those like self-serve, obviously they appeal to really mass market because it's like—

and then people stop using them.

Yeah, type in your idea and it makes it in fucking 10 seconds. Like, who's doing that? And what's the practicality of whatever's being built from that? It's gonna— I don't even know a use case. It's just cool, but they sold for a lot, so obviously there's a market.

I don't know. So bringing it back from AI, yeah, you're an agency, Chad. Do you think that's the ultimate business model, or you're more intrigued by building brands? Because you obviously mentioned you have launched a brand, whether you want to announce that on here or not, and the details what that is, or keep it stealth. But it's obviously relatively small now, but it's only new. Are you more drawn to that, or do you think agency still the ultimate, like, cash flow model, and you'll do both?

It's obviously good, um, but I've been doing it for that long now. I literally— before I launched my own agency, I was working in an agency for 3 years. So I've literally done nothing but agency for 12 years. It's like, yeah, um, that is mad.

I know, 12 years, bro.

I honestly think agency is a better model for most people. It's a better business model because there's no cash risk.

It's probably uniquely better for certain people. Like, I think you'd probably really struggle doing an agency just because of the people element.

Scared is my friend.

Yeah, yeah, like you've got to enjoy dealing with people because ultimately after you get to a certain point and you start removing yourself from like delivery of service, your only role really is just delivering people. Because as an agency, your product is the people and you can package it up in whatever way, but you're delivering a service and people are it. So like, it's very much just ultimately how well can you deal and manage with people, and that's all it is. Whereas like a brand, yes, it has that element to it, but you'll have a lot less headcount per, you know, like revenue per like employee. Um, but your time is spent thinking about like Facebook ads and fucking what products you're gonna release and all this kind of stuff. It's just a very different role running an agency versus a brand. I think I'm not necessarily drawn to agency. Obviously it was brilliant and it served me really well. I don't think, you know, I'm not stopping growing it.

I'm still enjoying it. Is it just a good cash cow?

Uh, I enjoy it now. So I think the— I was very lucky that I've got past the what I would consider like the bullshit phase of like you're ultimately tied to absolutely everything going on in the business. Like especially over the past year we've got like senior people across pretty much every function of the business. So we've even got like Adam, who is now the MD.

Called you head of sales the other day.

Yeah, that's essentially what I am.

Oh yeah, fucking jokes. I mean, isn't that the irony of like where you want to be, where you're just not as involved?

Yeah, no, that's the point.

You're called head of sales.

Well, that's it.

Found out.

That's crazy.

The thing that I do enjoy is the head of sales, right? So that's what I put myself into is sales, cuz like I felt like these, these like shackles have been removed from me. So we're starting to do marketing, um, I just focus on sales, which I enjoy. So just talking—

sorry, for the— doing marketing what, for the brand or for other brand, for your brand?

Yeah, for all that work.

I think having an agency is a massive advantage to starting a brand.

Yeah, I'll come on to that.

We get on some of the Q&A questions. But I actually have—

I'm enjoying it now. Oh shit, I'm enjoying it now because of like the role I've created for myself. But like, people don't have the luxury of doing that whilst you're trying to grow an agency, of like creating your own role, because you've got to get past certain phases where you can hand things off.

Same with anything, you go for the ultra Chad Goblin mode.

Yeah, you've been in the game for 12 years.

Not that works for 12 years, that works for 8 years.

I am enjoying it now a lot more than I was. Like, you know, if you asked me that question 2 years ago, probably be a different answer. But I think in terms of like, you know, is it net beneficial to do e-com after agency. I think e-com is obviously what I've gone into. I think I'm in a very privileged position starting e-com than somebody who hasn't got experience in e-com. Like, I think that is all the— if, if not the best launch pad you could possibly have. Like, for the past 8 years, all I've done was deal with brand owners, like, learn, obviously seen brands grow really well, which ones haven't and like become friends and ask questions and like being, you know, very inquisitive into like what's made things successful.

To get paid to be taught by your clients.

Yeah, pretty much. And just pick stuff up along the way.

Like, you know, my observation of why it's clicked for you is that what you said for sure, but also everyone builds towards a competitive edge and it's like you can flip out a website That is sick, like it looks great. So the branding side is pretty much sorted from day one. Like, you know who to give it to, it's cost, price, whatever, like it's all in-house, that's great.

And you know, like, it's somebody starting fresh from e-com, they just come up with an idea, but they don't know, like, ultimately if that idea is a good idea or not. Obviously can ask people, but they don't know if that's going to be something that will be able to scale on Facebook. Coming into this brand, like, we almost worked backwards and thought like, well, what is our offer ultimately going to be? What's the thing that we can offer? And is it going to be scalable? We'll be able to afford to use Meta, um, to acquire customers. And that is the way that it was ultimately approached versus like what, you know, somebody coming into e-com without this kind of experience would do is think, I want to create a brand for this. And, you know, they go and develop a product and everything, but they don't know if the economics of it is something that would ultimately work.

All right, so on that, because I had this question from someone, it's topical. How do you think you define whether a brand concept is actually genuinely good or just like seems exciting? And obviously when you're a fucking beginner, you get someone that they want to launch a brand that's got a £2 AOV and they think the CAC is going to be 13 pence. Yeah, because they're just retarded, for lack of a better term, and inexperienced. If you're picking it, when you like with your brand, I mean, that one sounds like it's a bit of like a passion project in terms of the category as well, which is probably the same as Space Juice now. But like, yeah, what's both of you on that? Like, if you're picking something new, what would you— how do you think about it? Is it just something you like? Because there's different ways to go, right? Depends what you're optimizing for. I've got a lot of thoughts on this, but we've spoken about this. What's your view on that?

Give me a one-minute I think you're probably going to stay in it longer if it's something that you do like, um, and not just fuck it off. Like, I see people that will start a brand, they'll fuck it off, do the next one, do the next one, do the next one.

And like, if you do enjoy it, you know, when you say enjoy it, you mean enjoy the product and category?

Yeah.

And like, think it's something that you are genuinely interested in. Because like, I've seen brands that will go for 4 years, right, and they're just stuck and plateaued, and then they, you know, it'll blow up and it's the same product, it's just they've learned something and the business has changed and they've got the right people in. And I see that a lot. And somebody who doesn't necessarily like it, what the category they're going into, or the product or whatever, and they're just doing something for what they think will perform the best and they don't have any like reason why they would particularly like that brand, they'd probably go for a year and then fuck it off, start something else, start something else, start something else. Like there's you know, you've got to be able to stay within something long enough for it to work. And, you know, I do like— even myself with the agency, like, fuck me, for the first 4 years made absolutely no money whatsoever. But I did actually enjoy using Shopify and building e-com stuff and working with e-com brands. And then I've only really started doing well the past 3 years.

So, you know, that's interesting. Ever since he came on the Midnight Podcast, it's blown up. Ultimate referral. What's your take on that?

I think the best position you can be in e-com is to love, not be swayed by like things you like in terms of a product or niche and loving the game. 'Cause like you want to be able to, the thing that matters is being able to do 14, 15, 16-hour days working on the weekend, but loving it so it's fine. And it's like, I would rather like, I mean, that's the position, position I'm in. I just love working on something. And if I loved the product, then I would be emotionally drawn to things that might not necessarily be the best one. So if I was to reverse engineer, even having done shoes, which are a fucking nightmare, they're heavy, 1.2 kilograms per shipment. The returns, the sizes, it's like reasonably higher AOV, but means it's obviously not mass market as well, because you can't really sell on TikTok Shop in the way a £50, $50 AOV could. So I would do that. I would make sure it's lightweight, it's subscription. LTV, super important. People aren't buying 5 shoes.

Why, why would you make sure those things? Because as it was optimized for, right?

Yeah, yeah. I think, um, I think everyone has a dream that their first brand is always going to be the thing that does 9-figure exit. That's the romanticized, like, move, right? But you look at every, every case of Yeah, there's some edge cases, but what you ultimately— like, Kanzuri is my first brand, we did really well, but it's like you get 5, 6 years in, you think you want to go bigger, and sometimes it's the, the vehicle that doesn't allow you to get to like monumental scale, and that's fine. And it's like, then you, then you start thinking, what vehicle makes sense? Uh, is the market big enough, etc.? But there's still a lot more we can push out of out of Canzuri. Like, we've got loads of shit planned, I'm super excited by it, but there's other stuff as well that you just can't ignore when you have enough common sense about what works. And it's TAM, it's the subscription. I mean, you know more about LTV to CAC. There's a lot of important metrics that matter in that space, and maybe it leads on to what your thoughts are.

Yeah, I think the first question, which only comes with experience, what are you trying to optimize for? Because like Firstly, like, 0.001% of people are going to get a 9-figure exit ever. And there's a massive amount of naivety around the reality of that on like Twitter and socials, because even guys that Chad scale, to be fair— and some of them I know don't even need an exit because they probably make that in profits from their grey hat, black hat MRL scam— but there's that category. Um, I think it depends what you're optimising for. So like, you don't have to have a 9-figure exit to like be happy and have a nice life. You don't have to have an exit, full stop. Most people go in thinking that Yeah, and that comes from like the whole bullshit like e-com flex culture and just like general social media. Um, yeah, I think probably if I was giving someone advice, it's like, well, what do you actually want to achieve? Because like, yeah, it has to like work financially to a degree, right? That's a given. But you could start something that you love and get it to a million quid a year, and that's amazing. Or you could be like, I want to fucking go for it and I want to build the single biggest thing possible. How can I make 100 million quid? Or, you know, how can I make a billion quid? Like, just thinking out loud, and then you reverse engineer. And then, yeah, I think it comes down to category and timing way more than anything else, assuming the hygiene factors are checked off, which by the way, for 90% of brands, they're not in terms of executional ability. You probably see this all the time, like, you know, new potential clients coming in, they literally don't know anything. We all assume that everyone's a fucking 9 out of 10 e-com operator just because other people we know— I'm probably not 9 out of 10, but maybe a 7, but you get my point. I've got a question. Assuming the hygiene factors are good, I think beyond that, the biggest factor is category and timing and market. Yeah, without fail. And I know a lot of people are great examples of that. Yeah, if you could argue lucky, but that's the negative way to look at it. But it's just like they got in the right thing at the right time and that gave them the headwinds.

Yeah, so I mean, this is, it's literally, it's just like, it's basic shit. It's like when you have a job.

I never thought about that 4 years ago.

No, I know, it's in there. It's like when a general store—

I'm in a good category, but like there's probably better ones, and I've seen better ones in terms of like at least scale people I know have got to so quickly. Yeah. But I just started it because I was like, ah, it's quite cool. I definitely was like creative first, like almost business second, even though I still built some decent stuff. But like Neon Beach was like pure creative first. I just love like pink lights and shit.

It's one of those— it's like what gets you there.

And now I'm older, I'm like more just about the economics.

What brand?

Because you realize that is the restricting factor. Like it's one of like— it's almost like sad because it's like you lose the romantic creative side, but What brand do you—

what brand do you— have you seen that you think, fuck, I wish I did that? Because that's like—

there's two that come to mind, actually.

What?

No, the perfect brand I think is David Protein.

All right.

And I'm not just saying that because it's got mega numbers. I saw that originally before I had any clue who the founder was or whatever. I sound like I'm licking his ass, but I did watch that podcast the other day. The guy's obviously fucking like top tier. I just think so, like, for me, that ticks all the like category, timing, differentiation uniquely credible and differentiated, like, boxes. All the boxes that I would reflect on now and think we've done some of them right, but like—

but that's funny though, because that's it.

If I was doing the next thing, or like what I'm trying to do now, but any future thing, I would think about those things.

But do you think that after it was successful, or literally—

no, so I remember sending that on like day one it was announced on Twitter to, I think, our group chat saying, wow, this brand looks sick. Yeah, that's— what's another one? I was going to say another one, but I don't want to give the founder credit for some other reason.

So how old is— how old is that guy, by the way, the David Protein guy?

39, 40.

Yeah, he sold our ex-partner.

I think he might be 38. He's not like young, young. Yeah, he's mega experienced. 600 mil exit, but I think he got about 200.

And yeah, so it's like you had a competitive edge to build the next thing.

Yeah, and all the distribution and the connections and credibility. But obviously like experience and ability as well. If you listen to that podcast, he's fucking sharp. He's not talking about— thing is as well, the reason I like that so much, he doesn't talk about Facebook ads once. He literally like, I think someone asked him that in the podcast, I'm not talking about that. Let's talk about the brand and product. Yeah, obviously that stuff will be killer anyway, but that's like, again, a hygiene factor. He's going a level above.

He said a really cool thing that I've remembered about— oh, see, I've remembered.

I'll try. I mean, they also raised like $100 million in the first year, so like the business is extremely well capitalized.

Did you hear when he was like he doesn't do April Fools?

He thinks— yeah, I thought that was smart. Yeah, I thought his point around, um, it needs to be— make sense but be non-obvious or something. That's how you do a brand virality. I was like, wow, that's actually quite a good way to put it. Nobody thought about that.

I granola'd that whole podcast. That's how statistic.

And I put it into Claude and asked it to analyze opportunities in the context of my business.

Bro, you can just put it into Gemini, does it for you.

Yeah, as well. What do you mean? As in like just send the link? Oh, okay, well, same shit.

Um, but yeah, he like the COD thing, like that non-obvious.

I'm still not clear, was that an actual product?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Oh, so that was what he means, that it looks like an April Fools, but it actually wasn't. But it was making the point that their product is the only thing as close to that.

People talk about it. Yeah, yeah.

Do you still sell it?

The coat?

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, no, no, they do actually.

Yeah, they do have that. That sounds cool.

And they just released ice cream.

Yeah. What would you say to that? What? To the question you asked me. He's got ADHD.

What, like the perfect— what the perfect brand would be?

Yeah, like, no, it was in like what specific brand that exists have you looked at and gone, oh yeah, I wish I started that. Fuck, I don't know, apart from Space Kids or Kanzuri.

Probably ones I won't mention publicly. Yeah, yeah, because you just think, oh, fucking hell, like, it's like, how has that been successful? Do you know what I mean? Like, you sometimes you see a brand and it's like, fucking hell, there's— you'd see it in a category that you think, you know, you wouldn't launch something there because it's been done, and then, yeah, somebody will launch something Almost, you know, maybe out of naivety of like, 'cause I probably have a thing of like, when I'm looking at brands, probably getting too nervous and like overanalyzing what category to go into. I think it's been done, but then some people just—

Everything's been done.

Yeah, and some people just fucking launch it and it just does well.

And it's always an outlier, innit?

Yeah. Fuck, I wish I did that.

Yeah. But it's like thinking of a new color, you can't in your head. And that's the same for some brands. Someone does it, it's the Gruntz, they do like a new format. They talked about it, I think, I didn't actually know what the difference was with Gruntz, apparently it was like—

It's just gummy instead of powder.

But it was like 8 gummies in a packet or something? Is that the difference?

Yeah, I've tried it. Well, I mean, it's just a gummy form of Athletic Greens, basically.

No, but I mean like the format difference was the fact it was 8 gummies in one.

Well, the format difference was the fact it's a gummy though, full stop, rather than a powder.

Oh really?

And it just has to be 8 gummies, which is kind of like, you could argue it's bad, but because it tastes nice, it's like, like a nice experience. But that was the thing, all these greens powders. Yeah, because it's a greens powder and a gummy, like that's basically all it was.

All right, these gummies aren't new though, like—

No, but— And if— Yeah, apparently a greens gummy was a greens gummy that worked.

Yeah, so people probably look at that and think like, especially grunts, even, you know, I don't know how— when they launched, but like years ago, 3 years ago. Yeah, people would look at that and think, fucking hell, I'm not launching a gummy. Gummy's been done.

Exactly. But that guy was smart because he'd been like an ex-VC and all seen it all. Yeah. Um, also something I put in the group chat earlier, we're going down the rabbit hole here, but I feel like there's often— there are exceptions, but I think you often get the brands that are really cool that everyone follows or whatever, naming their names, one example I shared earlier. But then when you actually hear about the numbers, oh wow, it's actually quite small. And then you get another one, I'm not gonna name, there's a specific one or two that like you probably never even heard of them because like the founder's complete ghost. They're not even running Instagram ads, maybe they're like full tabula spec or whatever. And they're doing 20 times the revenue of the other brand. But you would look at both and think, oh, the cool one's the biggest.

Yeah.

There's obviously exceptions, like David's probably an exception, where it's cool and massive.

What brand do you want? Like, you can— it's very hard to be cool and profitable. There's very few brands that are, and that's why you know about them.

Yeah, there's very few, but the ones that are probably the best, right?

Yeah, like, because ultimately you get two— there's two wins. It's a win-win because you get like the, the social benefits.

Again, it's kind of like what you're trying to build, right? Yeah, like obviously they're not entirely mutually exclusive, but if you have to decide, would you rather have a smaller brand that you really thought was sick, like, yeah, I don't know, girls think it's cool, you flex to everyone that this is your brand in your bio, like, or would you rather be the underground guy that, I don't know, sells fucking like collagen to height-boosting shoes? Yeah, or collagen to 90-year-olds.

Yeah, but yeah, yeah, and if you can do both, it's ideal.

I mean, that's what I'm saying. Often not the same. There's obviously nuance and different levels to it, but like, if you look at two ends of the spectrum—

Probably because people are optimizing to being cool versus being optimizing for making money.

Exactly. Yeah, I mean, I wasn't optimizing to be cool, I'll tell you that. Like, no one's thinking, I'll start a hype boot shoe brand. But yeah, I was just dropshipping, started with insoles, then you transition. Like, I think category expansion is a good topic 'Cause it can change your business as well. Like we went from insoles to shoes.

Well, this isn't category expansion, it's format expansion, but we'll come back to that.

Yeah, I mean, macro, the same.

I made every mistake with products in the last year. Huh? I made every mistake with that going too broad.

All right, what's your 3 biggest mistakes that we can bleep out if you don't, from a product perspective.

Well, I'll ask you that back as well so that we can get some more inspiration. That's quite a good flow. From a product perspective, Yeah, the problem is, the irony is, I said this on YouTube all the time, like, I suffer the financial and mental pain of making these mistakes and I share them on YouTube for free and a competitor learns from it.

Oh no.

Yeah, um, naming their names, there's one or two specific examples that I've used living in my head rent-free. Um, what, biggest product mistakes? Yeah, over like the whole brand.

I mean, maybe just 3 top ones because products—

yeah, I think Well, in my category, flavour is more important than anything else. More important than the ingredients, literally. That's mad. And like, that's so valuable. I should gatekeep that. I should put the answers behind a paywall. The other one is just, you just can't go too broad. You should go deep, not wide. What I mean by that is new formats, new flavours, new versions instead of new products. Like, you know, yeah, whatever. We did a lot of things last year that I thought were just so dumb in hindsight. Fuck me. Uh, the other one's probably— what, probably just the biggest lesson, that acquisition's the easy part, retention's actually all that matters though, past a certain scale. And that's literally the difference in brands that make it and get acquired and don't. Honestly, I think you could have a brand doing $100 million revenue profitable, if it's retention shit, it's never getting bought because it's a leaky bucket.

What is good— what is good retention?

I mean, it's so nuanced. I don't like retention isolation because if you look at a dog food brand, you might say they've got 50% month-to-month retention, right? But then they've got shit margins, so it's not like for like. A better measure is LTV to CAC. Obviously retention's directionally important, but a supplement brand is always going to be significantly worse than a pet food brand. But supplements have probably 80% gross margins compared to dog food at maybe 30%. So it's not a like for like. But dog food is one of the most, apart from telehealth and shit, which is a different thing altogether, pretty insane retention.

Do you have any advice for category expansion on how to do it right? Because something that I see is brands will launch a new product, but then they kind of forget what's made the original product successful in the way that you basically optimize business. I say you're a one-ski business, you go in, you go into a new category, as you should still be probably, but you go into a new category, but you just think that, you know, you set the product live, it's just going to sell. But in reality, you built a whole ecosystem and a whole, like, audience around this one product. You've launched something completely new and you're basically starting the business again. With a new product.

Well, I think that's the wrong way to do it. Yeah, that's why I think you do versions and formats and flavors, not new products, basically. I'm talking like supplements, probably a bit different in fashion and so on, but in consumables, like, we probably should have done a collagen rainbow dust, not a fucking collagen fruity vitamin blend that we did last year.

Yeah, because I see people launch it but they don't treat it like— if you're a one SKU business and you're now going to two and you've got the same hopes for that, like, you're basically doubling the amount.

Yeah, and almost that. And I've seen this with other brands as well, and like other founders that are way smarter than me, but like, you almost always, you almost never, it's like when a, I don't know, a big artist releases like their first or second album, like you almost never get the same magic again. I mean, maybe Drake's like the one exception, but there's a lot of bands and stuff where they had like one album, right? It's kind of similar. Obviously not, I'm not saying this is always the case, but I've heard it from many people and I've seen it. Like, you know, we've probably had one other product that was semi-decent, which is our sleep product. All the rest in comparison, it's never really cracked. I mean, it was also a focus thing. Like you could crack them, But that's kind of the problem. If it's an entirely new product, it's basically new business, your point. Yeah. Whereas a new flavour, I actually think is going to have way more impact than a new product if it's a good product, because it's already established. All this stuff's so obvious in hindsight.

Yeah. But you're doubling the amount of creative you're doing if you want to do the same volume. You're doubling the amount of creative. But people launch it without thinking about the offer. So, you know, take your brand for example, like Spacegud's obviously got a brilliant offer with a starter kit. Like you built—

it's stale now, to be fair, because everyone's doing the same shit.

But you built it over, over years, do you know what I mean? And like optimized over years. And then to launch and then expect, you know, a new SKU to perform just as well without a stack or without having the optimization that's had over years, you've got to give it time.

Yeah.

Because you're building a completely new audience, completely different, you know, customer base essentially.

Also, I think that fucks the brand up a bit. Yeah. And I'm a great example of that, but we don't need to spend too much time on Space Shoes because I'll get PTSD and just Yeah, I spoke about this on my own pod many times, but like, you do need to decide what the consistent— what's the consistent theme in the brand? Because for us it was like, well, okay, not talking about my brand, but like, I don't know, say take Cadence for example. Didn't want to talk about them, but good brand. Um, they've been— they've launched a lot of new products, but they're all still strictly like— it's like, I don't know, luxury endurance fuel, right? That's probably how— that's probably their positioning. It's probably how I'd interpret— same customer. Whereas for us, you go from launching like a basically like a focus coffee, to then doing hydration, it's actually an entirely different customer. There might be some overlap, and then your brand gets foggy. So hold on, are you a gym brand now? Or— that's like literally what people said to us. It's so obvious in hindsight again.

But Ridge is obviously doing the same thing, isn't he? He's just launching new products. But I think he's—

Jimmy said that to me as well at the time. He's like, why are you doing that? And I was like, oh yeah, that seems the right move. Yeah, it's naive. It can work though.

But he launched luggage, so he's got people who are buying the Ridge wallets and you know, the metal, the look good. Yeah. There's the same type of customer who'd ultimately buy a metal suitcase.

Yeah, he said his customer was like, I think it had a name, but it was like kind of average football dad or whatever in the US.

He's so big though that you have to find new unlocks at that stage, 'cause it gets exponentially—

Yeah, 'cause the TAM doesn't exist.

Yeah, it's exponentially harder to grow year on year at that scale. And I think I heard a podcast and he was saying like 2% or like a literal, a fraction of the actual customers bought into their new category. So ultimately if like, if your customers aren't going to buy it, you've got to make a new business within the business, and that's the bet you take. I, I think from a fashion or supplements is different, but for me, yeah, I, it, it, the product can make all the difference, and you should try new categories that are affiliated as like a priority and then loosely affiliated to try and find new unlocks. Yeah.

So yeah, if you sell, if you sell them a slightly different product to the same customer, still ceiling. If you're struggling with your time and that's the reason why you're trying to like ultimately release new categories and make it bigger, then you're still kind of keeping yourself in that ceiling.

So it's probably a balance of like, yeah, I need to make something new for a new customer but still needs to be relevant enough to not completely skew the brand.

Yeah, I've got an example. Basically, so for Kintsuri, we did Pheromone Cologne and we sell—

yeah, I remember that—

Hype Boost shoes, and it scaled like really quick for about 3 months, and then all of the ads got banned. And I've tried to revive it like 4 times, we've just stopped doing it. It's really weird. I've, I don't know the answer. Maybe because Conor Martin did Liquid London after that and took the market, who knows.

Was that in the UK though?

Uh, yeah, I mean, I actually don't know what the split was when we were selling it, but it was, it was just, it did well. It was doing better like in platform whereas than our actual other stuff. So I think the proof's in the pudding there. You've got to test new categories. You can, you can re-engineer your unit economics if you get a, like, a, a blend between different categories that might have— like, some might— some categories might be better unit economics than others, and then you get a blend and it's better, right?

I want to move on slowly. You mentioned something, and this was a question You mentioned about working like 15-hour days. Do you think you need to do that? I— what's your take on like hard work versus smart work, basically? Because it's all like the whole like hustle fucking porn stuff. And yeah, it's kind of slightly developed over time.

I don't work to work, like I just, I love doing it. I don't think I could. Yeah, it's so enjoyable. I just don't— I can't— when I'm not doing it, I'm irritable. So it's not like, oh, I'm so fucking behind.

Like, I can make that because you're withdrawing from snus.

No, that's another topic. No, I actually, I thought, um, funny story, I quit snus last year and I thought it was such a big part of my personality that I, when I—

yeah, you were looking a bit ill at one point. Yeah, yeah, like pasty white face. Hold on, this guy's a drug addict.

Yeah, and then I, and then I stopped and I felt like a soul, like my soul had died, and I didn't feel like the same person. It was weird.

This is recently, wasn't it?

This is the first time. Oh, okay. And I relapsed on holiday when we were in Paris. Wow. And then, uh, yeah, I got back on it. I was doing maybe 12 to 15 pouches a day.

Well, I have my nicotine gum addiction, and I bought a pack of 100 recently, and I've not touched it. I'm scared to re-enter the realm of addiction.

I feel so good.

And that's gum, not snuff.

It's less—

you forget what's less strong.

Forget what it's like to be a natural, normal human.

Even Diet Coke, right? I've been off this. I will— quick caveat— the only reason I'm not drinking this is because A, I've only got 4, I need to shoot with them next week, and it's not cold. I would be drinking the Rainbow Dust cans.

I wanted to try them out, bud.

Well, yeah, you can, you can try that now.

What difference did you feel when you quit snuff? Huh? What difference did you feel when you quit snuff?

I can tell you, it was only last week, so I went cold turkey. So I worked out that I was doing the equivalent of 40 cigarettes in nicotine a day. A day? Yeah. I was like—

Wow, that's a lot.

Yeah, the thing with me is I have an addictive personality, so I used to be addicted to the gym. That was like my— I would fucking sniff brownies to get it as a form of calories, like half joking. But then it was work, that hasn't died off, so that's just take it to the max work because I want to do it, etc. Then it— then yeah, the snooze, I was just having so much of it. Uh, I think the, the mad— the, the bad thing about snooze is that you can do it indoors at any time of the day, so I could work and have it and you're like motivated to stay up longer because you have something to do. And it almost just— it's oral fixation. Like, you're not getting bored because you always pick up this pouch. This is what an ex-addict sounds like, by the way.

What strength was he on?

10. I got down to 10 milligrams, so I was smashing them. 14. You're on 14? Yeah. Were you doing 12 to 15 a day?

Uh, yeah, I'm up there. Like, I'll go through a box in a day on a bad day.

Yeah, so then I cold turkey, so I went from that to nothing and I felt like—

Taste test. All right, sorry I've cut you off there, but there's a whole other section we want to go into. It's not cold though at all. That's been like in a box for a week in my car.

It does. I heard you say it tastes like Starbucks. It does.

Yeah, why don't you just both try that? Because that's the best one. And I actually need to keep like, literally, we don't have any stock right now because it's all shipping over from the UK. Don't squeeze that can either. I keep that. That rationed right now.

Let me try.

It's like Oat milk.

Yeah, it's oat milk. Yeah, it's an oat mushroom latte.

I was going to say, I don't want to say oat in case it wasn't, but that's good. I like, I like that.

So that coffee plus focus energy calm, think of it as Starbucks coffee or Jimmy's but without the crap and with shit to lock you in with lion's mane, not ashwagandha. Oh sorry, it does have ashwagandha. I should know this, but we're getting rid of that for some other reason. It's basically got what's in Rainbow Dust powder. We got rid of the rainbow names, it's very confusing and the retailers don't like it. They don't even like the fact it says mushroom on it. That's going into a big retailer soon. Remember to change the packaging.

Don't taste like shit.

So the idea is it just tastes like a Starbucks coffee can but with stuff that will help you get locked in. Sold. Yeah, you know, simple really. Coffee Plus.

Nice.

Anyway, right, I want to move on because we've got a lot of stuff we could go through unless you want to give your take on 15-hour days first. Um, because that got slightly sidetracked by the fact that Jack was an addict and then we also wanted to taste this drink at the halfway point.

Thanks, addict.

I don't know, like, I think I literally—

you play golf 3 times a day?

Yeah, since I start. So Jack actually said it to me the other day. He was like, High Ticket Jack. Yeah. Um, he was like, I'm quite jealous of you. I was like, why? He was like, because you treat your business like a job. It was like, I do. I literally like start at 9 AM and finish at 5.

And it's like, you fully finish at 5? You don't go back online?

No.

If there's like a Slack message, I'll have to reply to High Ticket Jack.

Yeah, I don't know who that is. You say his name, he's always in.

Amazon.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, but that's just like the work-life balance for me. I think, you know, I don't— the position I'm in now, I don't necessarily have to work like more than 8 hours. I think like I feel— start feeling shit after 8 hours if I'm doing too much. And like, yeah, you know, but it does force you to have that skill. Like, if you can't spend— because 8 hours I'm really productive. If anything over that, it's like I'm just, you know, people say the grind on like an evening, they don't— they're probably scrolling Twitter and just fucking not actually getting through shit. And I think like, just do 8 hours really good solid work, but then it does— if you do have too much on, then it does just force you to think like a builder and think like, what can I hire to give this to somebody else? And like, you know, progress that way, as opposed to just thinking like, I have to do everything, and you know, just forcing yourself to deliver on everything and putting loads of pressure on yourself.

Yeah, I actually agree. I've had like a My view on this has changed. Well, I think firstly, when you're obviously starting, you have to do everything, don't you? And then like by default you're in it. Yeah, I think the thing that's happened to me is like we built quite a big team to the point where like I don't have to like really do that much in theory, but obviously I want to do stuff. There's, there's always work to do. But then I have this real toxic thing which you've probably like solved, where I literally feel like if I'm not working, I'm a fucking idiot. Which is so toxic and not healthy at all. Like, to the point where I just sit on emails at 11 PM in bed and then I can't sleep.

I think—

and then I've got like my resting heart rate's all fucked because I'm like anxious and shit.

I think some people struggle to delegate stuff because what they'll do is they'll say, can you do this? And they expect somebody to do something when they're delegating it to the same quality that they've done it and the, you know, in the same speed that they've done it and something exactly the same way.

It's perfectionism in it.

But it's not to say somebody can't do it and if not, do it better, because if somebody has more time to dedicate to it. But as soon as you delegate it, like, you know, you know, I know, for example, from like chatting to you and stuff, like, I know that you do have this within you. It's like, oh, fuck, I'll just do it myself. Like, because you put the pressure on somebody doing something to the same speed. But if you are just patient with it and you coach people and you help them, they might do something differently. Give them a chance to fail. Don't say, you know, if somebody does something and it doesn't work that you've delegated to them, give them a chance to fail. Teach them why something, you know, why you shouldn't do it that way. And then it's a longer process than you think, than just thinking, looking at my task list and think somebody else can do something like this.

Like you do like culture Google Meets, don't you? Yeah. Like where you like everyone has to dance or something.

Not really.

Do you know what I mean?

Agency ritual.

The favorite one I've ever done was like a fucking— we were doing like a big pivot in the company and I basically created a riddle and I was releasing like hints along the way every day in the lead up to the big Friday presentation that I was running. And it was like the final riddle was like, smart soldiers get paid, right? So basically people used to— if you had an idea of what the riddle meant, you'd message me and I could tell you if you were right or not. And anyway, the thing was that you had to turn up dressed in like a full suit to the meeting because it was like you get dressed up smart. It's like I wanted everyone's buy-in and like to be really smart.

Smart soldiers.

Smart soldiers. What does that actually mean? Because then everybody who turned up in a suit got a bonus.

Who? How many people? How many people?

Mate, like 25 people turned up in full suit.

Everybody like, but were they allowed to speak to each other about what it meant?

Well, yeah, people were guessing and stuff like that. And like, I couldn't even create a buzz around the company, but like, yeah. Obviously there's the soldier thing and the whole, the whole thing was themed around D-Day and like we called it Operation Fuck. I can't remember what the operation was like, the real name for D-Day because it was like we all need to pull in together and like, you know, change all these things about the business. So and then I even went as far as like me and Adam, I ordered fucking army helmets to like our houses. So like we turned up on the call with like fucking—

Did anyone not turn up? They surely—

Maybe like 2.

They feel like, what do you have to do with them? Because then that's a culture separation right there.

No, no, I think everybody like gave it a go, like in terms of like they did something that they thought was right.

I couldn't fathom doing any of that.

Before we get into this debate session, what's your— I mean, I just, I've found the people side of scaling, scaling stuff honestly the most, the hardest shit ever.

It's patience. Like, it's literally just patience. Like, you've got to— you can't hire somebody, number one, especially when you're delegating. If you hire for it, you can't hire somebody and expect them to do a really good job straight away. They've got to learn the business. They're going to be really overwhelmed. And it takes time for people to actually improve. And like, I've very recently realized that it's much better to promote somebody internally to do a great job from the get-go and hire somebody else to replace their role You know, as long as it's not something like super critical.

To be a devil's advocate though, would you— what's better in your opinion, hiring someone that's done the thing that you want them to do so there's no prior training and you don't have to go through that hand-holding phase? I don't know, have an A— like an A-player, it's so hard to find one.

Yeah, something like customer service, let's say, like if it's not low-skilled but, you know, it's very replaceable from one job to another. Like something like that. Yeah. For more senior roles, I think actually promoting people internally, whether they, you know, it would be a natural progression for them or whether they're the kind of person in your company that you could see doing that role. You know, it could be completely different.

It takes longer, isn't it? You got to nurture them.

But I think they're, you know, taking somebody from a completely separate part of the business and putting them into a different role, you know, is probably also a good option because they understand the business. They know all the nuances. They're not going to message you everything every time they need a fucking fucking question answered. And that's, that's what frustrates you when people say like they struggle to delegate, or, you know, like they're making the wrong hire. It's a lot of the time it's like these people just need the tools around them to be able to do the job properly, and then time as well, and patience to allow them to run things in their own way and prove that they can do something. Um, because yeah, like, you, you people do think like, you know, you just hire somebody and they're going to come in and they're just going to do a fucking A-star job and they don't need that support. But realistically, people do actually need support, and they like a lot of quality onboarding and training so that—

The thing I found the hardest though, and this is probably going to one of my debate sections here, basically this conversation, is, and I think, I do know where a lot of it comes from, Prof, to be careful what I say, but how do you get the balance right between like a positive culture and actually just a high performance team as well? Because I've found that to be hard, where like in certain cases, to be specific, with probably people that aren't necessarily in the business anymore, is I've once— or by someone that's no longer in the business, fortunately, CI2I— was called like toxic multiple times for just like raising things that should be done better. And they're like very reasonable things. And that becomes a problem because, hold on, so now we— are we a culture now where we can't demand excellence from anyone because it's going to offend someone? And I think that is— I think that's a bit of a modern thing, like in this kind of I think it's especially a UK thing, if I'm completely honest. There's more of that in the UK than there is overseas. Again, not everyone, not all the people in my team, one guy, but it was a thing and it was a consistent problem. And it was like, hold on, I feel like I'm walking eggshells in my own business now. Yeah, because this guy's saying I'm toxic or words to that effect because I'm simply saying like, can we get on with this? Like, what do I mean? Like, I think especially a startup, like a sports team Yeah, it should be positive. We want to do better together. Yeah, but there's always an angle to make something like that negative. Yeah, how do you get that? How do you like figure that one out? Because I think that's the hardest thing.

I think some people are always going to be the wrong person in the role, definitely, and they're going to be outliers. But like, the tone in the company is almost set by the managers. Like, and because, you know, with the staff that we have, like, I don't have a clue what a lot of people are doing day to day, but as long as I know that their manager is somebody that I trust who operates to the same speed that I would, they're going to be the people that would spot that somebody's shit, not performing, try and help them. And it never even comes to you to think, come on, let's speed this up, why the fuck aren't we doing this? Like, also, just if you are demanding something and wanting something, like, find the root cause of the issue, you know, whether that is the actual person himself or whether they don't have enough time or whatever it is. And it's just like patience and being stoic really about it. Um, and trying to—

how do you decide when to be patient and when someone's just not good enough? Uh, how'd you draw that line? Because again, they're all like subjective things to some degree.

Hmm. Well, I think if you just rule out everything, so like if, you know, they have got the time to deliver something, if they have got the training and they've got the ability to do something, if they've shown that they can do something in somewhere else and like they've just can't be asked or like have the wrong attitude about something, and that's the reason why issues keep happening, then yeah, they're probably not the right person. But also, I think pulling stuff up instantly is something that is a really important thing. So I think what a lot of managers will do, even I've seen it in the companies, like I'll say let's do something and then they'll go, or like, speak to this person about X, and they'll book that call in for the next one-to-one, which will be in like 2 weeks. I'm like, no, this person needs to tell me about it now. And as soon as it becomes an issue, you ring them. Obviously don't have a go at people, but like correct people. Like as soon as something or an issue happens, that's, you know, something isn't going well, just don't wait to actually tell people and just have that like speed and urgency about like, you know, I think just directness.

I think directness is becoming less and less common these days. Everyone's kind of like, you know, scared to have an opinion on anything.

Yeah.

I just think it's the only way you can operate. Yeah, it's being honest and direct.

Yeah, well, we just fucking— we're bad for it. And that's not bad, but in the company, like, we— because obviously we're fully remote, it's just everybody's constantly huddling. Yeah, it's like you don't wait. Well, you have to communicate well.

Perfect, you just mentioned that, Holden, because that's part of— this isn't the name of the pod, this is a little space because things still in that pod. My first question Are they blank? Yeah, they are blank. Um, it's almost a joke at this point, but Office versus Write.

Well, I was gonna ask you that.

Give me your take, because I honestly, even now, I'm still going back and forth, and I actually have finally come to a conclusion I think is correct. Okay, you want me to answer first?

Yeah, yeah, cool.

Well, I think fundamentally, right, it comes down to, again, what you want. I've done both. I've been more remote generally, as all of us probably have on this table. So maybe slightly skewed.

Wait, should we add context that this is a debate that's happened about 30 times in the group? Yeah, there's like a meme.

I think it's a debate that happens.

You've actually—

you've got a conclusion in culture? Well, I've got a conclusion for me. I think the conclusion for me is actually I don't want to be fully remote, and I think hybrid with the right office setup. Hybrid, definitely. The key distinction though, it has to be the right office in the right place with the right people with the right culture and vibe. If it's not that and you feel out of place in an office, which I have done in the past for reasons I'm not going to get into, which I think I've solved now.

So do you think the office being in London is the— it needs to be the case for a UK brand and vice versa if it's like a US brand?

No, honestly, like, this might sound contrarian, but it's really not. I think the office and culture should be absolutely a dictatorship set by the founder. And I'm saying that slightly flippantly, a dictatorship, but like James Watt from BrewDog— but I spoke to him about this when I went to his— he's a controversial character, but like What I mean by that practically is it has to be set by the founder, cannot be set by anyone else. And that hasn't been the case for me historically, something else which is, yeah, being debated currently. But if it's not set by the founder, who's going to set that? You have to, like— and if someone doesn't like that, fine, they should go somewhere else. Yeah, or founder or founders, because like, who else can make this, make that decision, right? It's like giving birth to a kid, and the whole tone should be set by the parenting. Yeah, exactly. So like Problem for me was the business was remote, and then like there's a bit of ambiguity, and then like someone else that came in decided it wasn't remote and then kind of set their own setup. And I was like, hold on, I didn't really want to do that, and now it's like been set up. And then if you don't set the tone, decide, it risks ambiguity. And also it's like— and that's someone that's not in the business anymore— but, um, I honestly believe, and there are different views on this, but— and even that aside remote work is objectively more efficient for getting stuff done, but I do think you need the in-person time. Partly it's more enjoyable sometimes, but you have to accept that it's not that productive. Like, I was in the office for 4 weeks in London like the other month. Honestly, honestly, fuck all work gets done.

I'm—

I don't care who watches this, that's true. It's not a work environment, it's a social environment, which you could argue is work to a degree, like interviewing people, meeting people, whatever, like But it depends what sort of business it is, and depends who's there. If it's just people coming into an office to put earphones in for 8 hours and go home, then they've just wasted, I don't know, an hour, maybe 2 hours in some cases, commuting there and back. They've bought a shit meal deal, so they're spending loads of money they don't need to. Yeah, anyway, I, I think the tone has to be set from the founder, and hybrid is basically the answer. But hybrid doesn't necessarily mean 3 days a week in the office. It could mean fully remote and you spend 3 days every 3 months together in a place. Which is probably like not even hybrid, it's probably more like remote with in-person like breakouts, whatever. But I also think it depends on the business model. I think agencies and stuff will lend themselves more to remote. Product businesses, it's a bit harder because like we don't have that many SKUs. But even like sampling, right, that's the one thing it would be easier to be in an office for.

I think the biggest issue that we've seen—

so basically actually I haven't decided is probably the more honest answer.

I think the biggest issue that you get when you are remote versus everyone working in an office is just down to communication. Yeah, it's a stretch. Your ability to manage communication across the company.

Yeah.

As a remote team is probably the most influential factor on, you know, ultimately making being remote a success because every single conversation happens by default in a vacuum, whether it's like two people on a Google Meet or, you know, everything like this, you have to communicate everything through text or by getting people together. And like, you know, whether it's like company updates, for example, like making sure that they're communicated to everybody personally, things are brought up, um, because that's where the cracks start to show, is ultimately just down to communication.

Yeah, I do agree.

Literally, people don't like doing it, but you know, across the entire business now, every single team every morning at 9 AM has a huddle. Like, you have to come on at 9 AM and that's where you discuss what's happening for the day. And like, you know, that's the area where communication can happen, whereas, you know, in an office it's very easy to go, all right, everyone get together, or like shout across a table and all this kind of shit, and communication happens more freely. And versus, you know, ultimately just forcing everything through Slack and like meetings and stuff. But the thing that you do miss out on obviously is people time, and I think people time is the value that we've seen from it isn't about like getting more out of people or anything like that. It's you— like, there's been team members that have made comments where they've met— because we do a holiday for every single member of staff every year.

So like, well, so my retainer's been going all the time.

So, uh, you know, when, when people go on these trips, the main thing they'll hear is like, oh, this person was actually really nice in real life. And it's like, what, you thought he was a prick on Slack? It's like, yeah, pretty much. Like, because he is so direct on Slack, right? So people learn more about the characters they're dealing with.

Yeah.

Like how to deal with people. And that has a positive effect. And like, you know, you see friendships forming within the company that wouldn't have formed with, you know, just working online because They went out every night when we was on the team trip getting pissed, and they were the two people that would stay out the latest.

I like that part when you see like your team members becoming friends.

But that's still a remote business. It's just remote managed the right way with like infrequent real in-depth things. I think the one benefit that's massively often like forgotten in these debates is just the talent pool. When you're remote, you can hire fucking anyone, which has cost benefits because you can hire a killer in, say, Eastern Europe, of which there are many in my opinion, especially for e-com stuff. Or you can just hire like someone in America.

You've done both, right? Obviously the dropshipping days, like, was that— what did that look like in terms of the geo split?

Yeah, good question. I mean, it was definitely more just Filipino. I mean, even now it's like 50% London, 50% not. So it's not like we're fully London business.

Um, all right.

But yeah, like, because realistically you can only hire someone that lives within about an hour if it's an office, and even then that's pushing it. Yeah, um, I think people often forget like the actual reality of that. The honest answer is there's pros and cons, right? Yeah, but I still fully believe that remote with the deep in-person stuff, even if it's every month, is more valuable overall. I would like some nuance.

I would like to know like if there was a survey done of what people would actually take a remote job, because like we've lost out hiring really good people in the past because they had an office.

They wanted an office.

Yeah, they wanted like literally a guy, we offered him more money. He was, he was a sick guy, offered him more money than what he wanted, um, and he took a lower paid job because he said their office was nice.

I was like, yeah, there is that part, categorically worse as well.

I was like, but what you wanted to do, it's a weird job, everything. You just wanted to go into the office.

Like, yeah, I've done a survey of our team though, and 80% of them said they'd rather be fully remote. My, my, I mean, my parents, half the people, they're like being forced to go into an office. Yeah. Yeah, that's been not forced, but you know, that's the experience.

How old are they?

Like, oh, he was the one on the older side. He was probably like 37 or something.

Okay. Yeah, you feel like young getting out of the house, probably because he probably has a kid or something. But, um, it is an interesting one. I want to move on to another debate, um, because there's a few and it's kind of a similar topic, and it's— you'll have a view on this definitely, like in-house versus agency. As in, well, I guess you are an agency, but like as a brand owner, I've done both. You're gonna roughly done both, maybe slightly less. But what's your perspective from the agent side? And I guess what I'm saying is like, if I've got a brand, should I hire, you know, an e-com person, or how that works in your case, assuming they're similar costs, which often they are, to be fair.

Yeah, I think it's very much dependent on the specific thing that you are thinking of basically outsourcing. Like if you just fucking work with a random design agency, it's like that's very easily replaced with just hiring a designer ultimately. And you know, there's ultimately cheaper bringing that in-house. I think looking at people who I know have brought CRO in-house, I think you are putting a lot of pressure on Well, firstly, the reason why you're hiring a CRO person is because you need that expertise within the business. You don't already have it, but you don't have the ability to validate whether that person that you're hiring is actually good at CRO. You don't know if they are, you know, going to be somebody who can operate the same level as an agency. Uh, you're tied in then with ultimately HR. You can't just like get rid of—

don't get me started on HR. UK laws are a joke, bro.

Yeah. And like, you know, the quality that we have seen for people that have CRO in-house, like they are just generally shit. And with something like what we do, there's obviously a lot of elements within it. And like when we're looking at strategy, there's actually 4 people contributing to it. Like when we're looking at the what plan we put out for the next 8 weeks or whatever for a customer, it's like not just one person looking at and giving their opinion on you know, what, what tests should be run, for example. Like, there's ultimately a massive benefit to that. And I know people do the same with media buying. It's like, you know, people don't like to hire an in-house media buyer because meta changes so fast. Yeah, you know, like, that's a perfect example. I think personally CRO is the exact same scenario ultimately, um, because you just Yeah, you are paying ultimately more in this, in this case. You're leveraging a lot more expertise though at the same time. An agency exists because as a founder it's like, well, it's just a very easy thing to plug in and plug out. It's like, that's why the appeal of agency is there, and I don't think it's actually going to disappear ever, even within CRO with AI and everything like this, because, you know, it's just so convenient and you— there's kind of a level of guaranteed quality there, obviously with a good agency. Whereas like choosing the right person to handle this in-house, there's just so many risks and pitfalls that can come with that.

What do you think?

Well, we've been through it. I'd say like every e-com guy has worked with a fuck ton of agencies. You've burned them, been shit, you thought they're going to be better than they were. Start from the top. I think media buying is a pretty obvious one to hire an agency for.

Yeah, agreed.

It's like I've had on the whole good experiences with— it's like that you feel the most time saved on giving that to someone else, and the agency is the right route. CRO, I hate the idea of— I don't like the pricing model of CRO. Every, every person I've ever got a quote off is like, these guys— I've never tried you boys. Oh really? But yeah, for CRO, but like the pitch in every other— because I've gone to different people in the past and talked about CRO. It's like, yeah, we'll do like a percentage of the uplift or whatever the fuck, and it ends up, ends up being $7K a month, and you can't prove it because it's incremental revenue. And so I hate CRO. I just, I don't know about hire for that. Then you can also, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to put the CRO business in a bad light. I know you do it, but I haven't had good experiences, uh, Then creative is an interesting one because I do see the value of hiring a creative agency. I've done both, but I also have had a shit experience and I'm a creative first person, so I think I can do a better job in my opinion in-house. So it's like I would rather crack the system. We're moving into a world where creative is king. If you get product and creative right, then you literally can't lose. I genuinely believe that. Like you can make, even if it's a shit product, you can make it, you can run it up to 10 mil a year. That's just a fact because the marketing is a big part of it up until 10 mil. And then after that, you need a product that actually survives past it. And that's where the brand is created. So you can LARP it and fake it and whatever the fuck. Like that's just in terms of like the objective, what's important. Obviously you want both product and creative. I think if you can crack it, have it in-house, that's another competitive edge. So like for us, My competitive edges that I want, and I know we have, is do we have the most efficient ops in-house to essentially allow me to keep my overheads low? And the lower your overheads, the lower your overheads, like it's a smaller percentage of revenue. So it gets to a point when you don't even feel it as a cost. And that's, that's the position you want to be in. So if you can keep your overheads low, you have a system that allows you to not hire more people and stay lean. Like, there's loads of ways to do it. It's just, just the way I do it. And then creative being the next thing you have, um, you just need to understand all the data points, like which creatives are working, what does the funnel look like, which products are doing better than others, are you trying enough new products, have you got an offer that works. Like, when you say it aloud, there's, there's too many things to to even talk about is, is it's a reflection of years in the game, which is why you just naturally build a competitive edge over time. I forgot what the question was.

Just to come back on your slate, just come back and slate in the CRO agencies. Oh yeah, there's a lot of sharky agencies out there. Yeah, and you name any, I don't know, but like a lot of it at the time is sold as like a number of tests and we used to do that. Yeah, but we've completely shifted our entire business model.

What do you do now? Just retain it?

Yeah, but it's, yeah, we basically moved to a time-based model because the thing with CRO is a lot of the time some of the tests that you do, it's a visual change, right? We're just changing a headline, let's say, or we're going on and like reordering things. Like these are obviously very basic tests for this example, But let's say that takes 30 minutes and you're paying, let's say it's $4K a month for 4 tests or something like this. If that takes 30 minutes, then yes, it has an opportunity to perform really well and you'll definitely get your money's worth. However, as a brand, that experience is never going to last a long time because over time you just think, fucking hell, like, the amount of money, this profit this company's making from this, you know, I'd rather bring it in-house and get more done for my money. So we've changed our model. So with the service, it's basically just one service and you pay for time, because AI is the other important thing with this. Like, if development's getting much faster, if, you know, uh, the time it takes us to deliver a split test ticket is much faster, even the research and everything like that, then you had a good model.

It was good.

It's like compared to We just changed it now where like we used to sell CROs as test slots and then we used to have like our dev retainers and stuff which, you know, would be time-based. Everything is now time-based because the faster we get from using AI, the actual more value a brand gets. So you're never going to be in that position where, you know, if you're selling a set number of test slots, you just get animosity. And I'd never gone anywhere near the pricing based on like uplift stuff, because all I've ever heard is— and you get it in especially the agency space— people go, oh, to be the next fucking thing, you've got to be like a growth partner and all this shit and take a percentage. It's like, yes, because— but if you do well, these brands, they get the invoice, you know, you've smashed it, you get this invoice through, it's like 20K. People like, fuck that, I'm not paying that. They don't want to pay it and you churn, right? So you get— you suffer from doing a good job you're better off just charging what you're happy with.

Never understood the percentage of spend agencies on ads.

I've done some dumbass, uh, fine models for media buying side, but live and learn, right?

We've got like 15 minutes left probably. Personal brand, worth it or not? I've seen a lot of people, even you're the best, hitting sharply on this, much to their hypocrisy in retrospect. Yeah, Fred.

Thank you.

Something that I do, like, it definitely has a, has a benefit.

Um, how would you define it though? Because I feel like you get a ghostwriter that posts waffle on LinkedIn, or something more than that. Uh, that's all the agency—

B2B personal brand is very different.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think so. There's a, there's a direct— we're literally building this right now, a dashboard, um, which shows the correlation between leads and impressions. So it's pulling all of our impressions from social and then overlaying it on top of the leads in and booked calls that we get. And I think, um, like this last literal 2 weeks has been the busiest I've ever been because we've just had so many sales calls, so many leads come in. And a huge portion of that I think is we've started posting a lot more and like we're getting a lot of impressions and we had a lot of posts that blew up.

So can you just ask them on the call like, where'd you find out about me?

Yeah, everybody always puts like friend or something, and a lot of time people don't fucking know. Like, somebody filled it out the other day and put whatever, and the fan's on Claude.

They put the Midnight Claude and it changes the attribution.

We actually have that as an attribution thing.

How many of those?

I don't know, not many.

Well, what do you think? Um, would you say you have one?

Nah, I, I dip in and out. I'm, I'm— the thing is, like, I used to do English at university. I was like a weird fact about me, but it means that I'm a bit of a perfectionist when I write. So I don't—

I'm—

I can't— I haven't cracked it yet where I can just tweet off the dome.

Oh, I have.

Yeah, you have.

I think especially when I'm having a fucking dark day.

Yeah, to crack Twitter, I think you have to have a very rolling commentary style thing. Like, I definitely have enough to talk about. I just find myself getting It's not what I don't think, oh, let me tweet, like, if I have a good thought. It's just I haven't wired my brain to do that yet. I do think there's value in having a personal brand, etc.

Uh, I, I've almost observed you as a, uh, I've never fully done it though.

Nah, you have.

I'm just the most authentic personal brand on the planet. I honestly believe that, which is bad commercially. Yeah, but you've got like, um, makes kids cry on the streets when they come up to you and ask for advice. Hold on, why are you asking me?

You can't say you don't have a personal brand.

Yeah, I do, but like, mine's not manufactured at all, unlike everyone else.

It's very cultural.

Far too honest.

You're culturally significant in e-com because of this.

Yeah, in our little bubble, especially in the UK.

But like, then the flip— the question on that is, do you think it's worth it given the rips? Like, I, I've observed how yours have gone and I'm like, I have— I want to, I want to build House of Brands long term. That's, that's my— what I love.

I think it's worth it.

Yeah, I mean, that's the—

it's all—

how long you call the group that? House of Brands.

Call it what?

House of Brands, the holding group.

Um, do I think it's worth it?

Yeah, I don't want to give the—

I think it was more useful at the start, and I probably haven't used it enough in recent years. I think actually where it's most useful is like just connecting with people, whether that's, I don't know, an investor, an advisor, a supplier. A potential hire. Honestly, some people I still say are the best members of the team came from Twitter slash YouTube.

That's the thing.

Yeah, I say the best.

If you had to answer in 3 seconds, worth it or not? 3, 2, 1.

Yes, if you're honest. Yeah, I think if it's a facade, you're just like every other cunt doing the same shit, like buy my course. I really should have done that. I could have probably made 7 figures doing courses. I just didn't. I chose—

I think you did a form— the format was kind of new, day 1, day 2. That wasn't that common.

No, I was the first one to do like Doc the Journey, and then everyone started ripping it. And yeah, I'm still going with it. I've been very inconsistent. I don't care if people ripped it, like, can't fucking trademark videoing yourself. But, um, but yeah, it definitely has attracted competitors. That's the painful one. However, in reality, they would have done it anyway, right? But they might not have ripped you, they might have done something else. Like, smart founders are going to fucking scale anyway. Yeah, they watch my video and that's the only reason they scaled. However, it might have inspired them.

And every competitor will be watching this.

If you do have like some Wait, was that a question?

Yeah, they're going to be watching this, so do you have anything to say to them?

Uh, I mean, they've learned everything from my YouTube, so just give me some equity if I can. There's two I'm thinking of exactly that it's actually quite painful. Um, what was I saying? I do think though, yeah, like, I think it has value beyond Space Goods for sure. Yeah, like, say I do the next thing eventually, which I will, right? I think it gives me a head start from day one in terms of not like my personal brand's massive. I think it's a very high quality audience. Yeah. Um, unlike a lot of other people, ultimately. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I think I could connect with opportunities easier. I don't use it enough. I've never like formally done it. Like, I'm the ultimate idiot.

You need, you need a story though of like having done something that's aspirational. Yeah.

And I did have that story originally, and then like the story's been built and I've like said I'll do something and I have, to like a certain degree. I guess it does almost feel like shit. It's going to put a lot more pressure on it if like something goes wrong. Which already, you know, to some degree stuff has gone wrong along the way and I've been like, oh, should I talk about this? The problem with it though now is especially when it's authentic or honest, it's like, fuck, like, A, the most interesting stuff, and B, the most like honest and authentic stuff is the stuff you then start to feel you just can't talk about on the internet because either it's like unprofessional to, I don't know, talk about a team dynamic that would have been interesting.

There's a lot of sharks on Twitter especially, I feel.

And then you're like, well, what am I posting then? Because my whole thing's like honest, but then if I'm just coming on saying everything's perfect when it's not because I don't feel like I can share the true stuff now because of XYZ reason, then it's not that useful. So then I just don't post it.

Then you'd be surprised though.

I can't now pivot to like top 10 Shopify tips, you know, the more generic stuff. I've just never done that.

Yeah, I think it's the most, uh, eye-opening when you do like a Q&A on Instagram and then you see the questions that come in, and then you get privately messaged like, thanks so much, like, that really helps.

I get that all the time.

But that's what I mean, there is, there's always going to be a market of people who you— it's, it's far away for us, but it's very like in the now for other people. Yeah, it's, I, it's quite, it is fulfilling when you've given some lore.

Yeah, the weird thing for me is I feel like I've done like the odd call with people that have asked, and I feel like I give way better advice than I actually execute in my own life.

Third-party advice always seems better.

I come off like a cool with someone if they're just asking for advice or they've paid me or whatever, which I don't do that much of. But like, I'm like, wow, I just dropped some serious game. Why am I not doing that? Yeah, like, but yeah, there's like a whole thing behind that, isn't it? Like a psychological reason. I don't know. Um, yeah, Dubai versus UK for founders. I feel like it's quite Almost controversial, strangely, but like there has been a legitimate exodus. I don't even say that like politically, it's just like a lot of people that— almost everyone I used to know that lives in London now lives here. Yeah, not literally everyone, but I would say genuinely 80% of my core group.

Dubai was getting loads of people came out of the woodwork and started like slating Dubai.

Yeah, I mean, like massively.

Yeah, I think anywhere is a good place to live as long as you have what makes you happy there. Like, I ultimately lived in fucking, like, scum.

Yeah, to be fair, your, um, contrast is probably the biggest out of anyone.

Yeah, but like, what I—

High Street in Brig to Golf Course in Dubai.

You made it out from the slums, boss.

Yeah, and it's cheaper rent as well.

Yeah, but my setup there was sick, and I have my family there, I have my friends there. Like, pretty much everything that I had, you know, made me happy. Like, I wasn't necessarily unhappy. The main reason I moved was for tax.

Um, so like golf, come on.

Yeah, and golf. I obviously love golf. I could play golf there. But like, you know, that, that categorically people would go, I'd never live in Dubai. It's like, yeah, but I was happy in Brig. I mean, and Dubai is a much better place than Brig, like overall.

Um, do you have a lot of friends in— so you had a lot of friends in Scunthorpe?

Yeah, my family mainly. Like, you know, I could just get in the car and go see my mum and dad and stuff. And like, that was for me the best thing. And obviously if I moved here and had no mates and I'm just judging Dubai based on like the life it can give you, then I'd probably not be as happy as I am here.

Like, I wouldn't— yeah, I wouldn't move here if I didn't know anyone here.

Yeah, agreed.

It makes it— it— there is no soul. It's not the Dubai soul, it's the fact like you can make anywhere have a soul if you're with the right people. Yeah, I mean, we're quite— even if it's just a holiday a year, with the right people they're the best times. So if you live in London, we're sick because we're all there. And now everyone's here, so we just follow the flock.

Yeah.

Do you miss London?

I miss the idea of it.

Yeah, I get so nostalgic and romanticized, but I was back there and like, I miss it in the sun on a summer evening. Like, yeah, but I was back there in April and it was sunny. I was walking over like the bridge near 180 House and I was like, oh, I know it's not the same.

We had a house, it's not the same. We had the best, the, the places we were living in was sick. And then now when I go back to London, I have to get an Airbnb and it's like £400 a fucking night, and then no one's there, so it's just not the same. And I don't want to try and rewrite the memories of it because it was so perfect, you know? Yeah. And we had it, it had its run, and it's a shame. It's like, it's over.

What are you going to say? Nothing. I cut you off though.

No, no.

All right. Do you think you'll stay?

Uh, not for the rest of my life, no.

Where do you think you'd end up?

I like Spain.

There's always something special about Spain.

It's got a bit of everything.

Got Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza, Marbella, Barcelona. Not that I speak a word of Spanish, but every time I go it's nice.

I think Marbella is good in the summer for the gym, the food, the weather, and the beaches aren't even that good, to be honest, in Marbella. It's quite shit.

What do you think? Back in Brig eventually?

No, I want to like retire in Mallorca.

Yeah, something's like cozy about a Spanish island.

Yeah, and it's not far from the UK. You don't want to be too far from your family realistically, like long term. So I think this works for now, but then you'd want to be in Europe somewhere to like— 2 hours, shit's on this 7-hour trip. It's actually a long— I don't care, I love long—

It's not that deep though, right? Because it's getting on a plane either way.

I love Dubai won't be a thing though, like 20, 30 years ago. Like, I think by the time that we're like thinking, fucking hell, I'm not working anymore, I'm gonna retire, there's probably a new place in the world.

Yeah, yeah, probably. But then it's grown, other places will be more developed.

And yeah, yeah, well, yeah, okay, might have had a comeback.

Well, we can get into that another time. I've got a final question. I just remembered I used to ask it on every Midnight Pod episode. Go both of you. What's one bit of advice to your 15-year-old self? If you could speak to that person, one piece. I'm sure there's multiple, but what's the most poignant and important?

Don't start smoking weed.

All right, fair enough. Anything else?

No, that's pretty much it.

Like, uh, why?

I think—

did you do that?

Yeah, yeah, really bad.

I never smoked weed. Maybe once in my life.

For years and years and years, and I got in a real bad way. And it was literally like as soon as I quit weed, I started my business. It was like holding me back at that point. But like, yeah, it made me feel horrendous. And I think, I think like I, I don't know if this is just me getting older or what, but I used to have like the most— not photographic memory, but I could— somebody could tell me the phone number and I could like recite it back to them. Or like I'd fucking go to my mate's house and have a Wi-Fi password and I'd remember it like 6 months later. They told me it once and I used to like pride myself on having a mental memory. And I think that's disappeared completely out of me. I've got the worst memory ever now. I forget absolutely everything.

You think that's because of that?

I think it's from weed. Yeah, but I think it definitely fucked me up a bit.

So your monetization gone?

I don't monetize anyway. Probably though.

What's yours? Well, the 15-year-old self is not like relatable to the audience, is it? Is this like advice to myself essentially?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's to your, well, 18-year-old, whatever. Just going back before you started any of this shit, like what would be the one bit advice, you know, if you give that person on reflection?

I'd say I think I did it completely right in hindsight, I'm not gonna lie. Like that, in terms of— I was going to say focus on one thing, get so good at it, and don't take your eye off that one thing because that, that always pays dividends. Buy Bitcoin as well. The advice though, yeah, one in the hand is better than two in the bush. Oh yeah, that would be like everyone— you have to go through it to understand, but there will be a time in your life where you think you have it all and then you your ego gets in the way and you should have done some things in hindsight that you didn't.

Everyone's been through that.

I should have raised my hand.

I see that a lot.

That's my like kick in there.

I thought I was— Wanna do it now? That's a topic we didn't even go into.

We're gonna see a few more of these. Yeah, the train has gone like—

Why?

Because with wisdom, you understand that a lot of this exit game is narrative, year-on-year growth.

I did say that to you 2 years ago, 2, 3 years ago, whatever it was.

You don't know when it's your first brand. So I scaled, so quick. Like, you have to realize that if you scale quick, you have to scale each year exponentially.

Yeah, well, and again, I'm in that trap now.

Yeah, it gets exponentially harder. So like, we need— I should have raised money to allow that scale. I didn't want to take it on because I thought I want this all to myself.

Yeah.

And so I could have done more at the right time. So yeah, one hand, it's in the bush.

Yeah, it's a good phrase. Yeah, you can ask me.

Go on, go on.

Any advice to your 15-year-old self?

I'd say move obsessively fast on everything. I really mean that. I don't mean like in the micro, but I just mean like you haven't got time. Yeah, I don't mean that. You do, but you also actually don't.

I feel like you did.

Nah, but honestly, like, even— and I guess the other part that's probably like, don't care what anyone thinks.

Like, what do you wish you did faster though?

Everything. I think you spend too many, too many years like thinking to do the next thing. Like even the podcast, right? Like I really enjoyed doing that. And then I think someone was like, I think you might even mean Fred, honestly. It was like, oh, that's a distraction from the brand. Or someone said something like that and I was like, oh yeah, probably is. I didn't do it for 2 years and I'm like, fuck, that would have been like, that probably could have been massive. The pod. Yeah, I'd actually just done it properly, which I never did.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, you know, trying to have regrets in life, but I just think like now I'm like back on training for a new marathon, right? I've decided I need to beat the previous one because I don't want to do it, but I know that I have to. And I'm like, fuck, that other one was nearly 4 years ago now. That's really— time has gone quick. But you always tell yourself, ah, do it next year. Not everything, right? But like I don't know, like even like a side project or a trip you want to do. I mean, trying to get too deep, but you just don't have the time. Yeah, I deep it so much. You do have the time, but not if you just always— I think like, yeah, I've done a lot of shit in my life, to be fair, but there's always more. Like, yeah, trying to go too deep into some specifics before I expose myself, but like, I just think Think how much you can do. I think you can do so much in a year if you just do the thing. Yeah, like there's been certain things I've— I look back and like, I was speaking about that 2 years ago, I still not done it. More like fitness stuff, like I said I'd do an ultra marathon, still haven't done it. Okay, I did Enduro24, but like I was going to do 100 mile or whatever, just never did it. It's always like, ah, you know, I'll start that next week.

Is there—

even this year, it's June, right?

Jonathan, there's diminishing returns on like, um, let's say an ultra marathon, like We'll use Tyler as an example, he just did the, what is it, the Le Merat, what is it?

I didn't actually see that, we've got like 4 minutes by the way, but we can wrap up with this.

Right, yeah, no, it's just like, the amount of time it takes to train, it does take your eye off the ball. Like you're wasting what, 3 hours?

I'm not sure I agree.

It depends on the objective, yes, if you want to complete this ultra marathon, that's great.

I have not done a proper one like that, but. He did Marathon des Sables, right?

Last year.

Yeah, which is huge. He's doing another one this year?

He's doing an Ironman, but it is insane, hats off to him for sure, like I couldn't do it.

Most people doing endurance stuff are battling demons.

I could do it, but I mean, including me to some degree.

I haven't done Ironman, my brother has.

But would you say that would be worth the trade-off time?

I think the discipline and pain required to do that well is just a valuable asset, yeah. Although it is also true, even just from when I did the 250, 259 marathon, quicksand, even when I did that, like, it does tire you out, the training, which probably does have some effect. But like, yeah, you have got time. You actually have, if you just prioritize and fucking don't watch TV. I mean, not many of us probably do, apart from you, but you just need a routine that you can carry on.

You can do the same thing every day for 10 years. And like, if there's—

yeah, there could be phases though, right?

There can be phases.

Like, I'm entering my golf arc now. I genuinely like— I went to the range with Jimmy actually last weekend. Um, I was meant to be working. He said, you want to come? Go on then. And he got me on the 3-woods off the, off the grass. And honestly, I'm not joking, I couldn't— I was topping it so bad. Yeah, even he was impressed by the end, particularly that club. I was hitting like 220 yards straight line bombs. It was actually like impressive.

Mine goes 200.

I guess it didn't have a Trackman on it, but it looked about that. Yeah. And it was actually— I was like, wow, I'm getting the itch here. Anyway, I need to play it.

So what are you doing, an ultra marathon? Are you going to be scratch golfer?

Scratch golfer and ultra marathon. The road to the PGA. I do just have this like intrusive thought of like just quitting e-com and just going all in on like sports for like 2 years. Yeah, it'd just be so fun. I sometimes really do crave just not looking at a screen ever again. I honestly do.

I fucking hate golf.

Not quite there. You hate golf?

Yeah, I've got worse.

Oh really?

I've got a question. For the e-com?

In the last minute?

Yeah, yeah. So if your e-com brand did more revenue—

My last question had like 5 questions after it gone.

Yeah, yeah. More rev than the agency? Yeah. Would you stop the agency?

No.

No. Okay.

Uh, if my— if the e-com brand was doing the same rev as the agency, you'd be making far less profit for a start. Yeah, the agency would be making loads more money.

All right, let's just— let's say profit then.

Profit.

More profit.

But even then, probably not, right? Because you've got the whole system.

Yeah, at this point, like, it's— I just spend a couple of hours a day on it. Like, you know, you can just hire people to—

I mean, I meant kind of philosophically, you know. Um, are you— basically, I'm— what I'm trying to grasp is, do you— now you're doing e-com and you have a comparison, do you think that was more carved out for you than the agency life, or do you think the agency life was the right thing for you and always will be?

No, I think that the agency life was the right thing for me then. Yeah. Um, I think that I wouldn't— e-com would have been the wrong thing for me to do before the agency, just based on like I've been able to learn, so I've got a bit of a head start in that respect.

Yeah.

Um, but there's things about e-com that just fuck me off already, like stock management, cash management, it's very different.

Yeah. What about you?

We do need to wrap up in a second. What's the question?

Um, actually, yeah, you've never done an agency, so it's like, do you think e-com is that perfect fit for you, basically?

No, probably not. I probably should have been a horror film director. Yeah, I don't dislike e-com, but like, I think the bullshit— I was never like, I wasn't a natural Chad. I was a creative guy that wanted to figure out how to make money doing something that's creative.

I think the bullshit of going from 0 to 100K a month in e-com is significantly less than the bullshit of going from 0 to 100K a month in an agency.

Yeah, because they're not like completely different.

Like, yeah, yeah, I think e-com, I think e-com is probably would be more enjoyable from a fulfillment perspective where you look at that and think, fuck yeah, that's sick. And you can hold a product and you can think, you know, this is mine that has been created. Whereas an agency, there's no— you don't have anything you can physically hold, especially We don't even have an office. Like, yeah, my favorite things are when we actually do the team trips because I sit there and think, oh, this is the business, you know what I mean? Like, that's the only thing you can see.

Whereas, yeah, yeah, right. We could probably go down a 3.5-hour rabbit hole if we got some red wine in here for the next time. Don't know if you're allowed to do that here, but, um, it's been interesting. Pleasure having you guys on. I might link you down below. Probably not because I've not been paid to refer. I'll link you down.

Thatworks.agency.

Yeah.

Right, the Midnight Pods officially back, even though this says Productivity Pod. Um, might be coming back weekly. Let's see how we go. When are these— anyone new here, subscribe. When are these launching? Um, I believe next week in Sainsbury's, Holland Barrett, and Tesco. Maybe not Tesco yet, that might be pending.

But, um, in the meal deal?

Not yet, but eventually. I mean, meal deal is just like how to lose money at scale, but looks cool. Looks cool. Yeah, well, on that bumshell, thanks for watching. Subscribe to the pod. We'll catch you soon. Cheers. Cheers.