Matthew Kelly shares business updates from his car: he exited an office lease to go fully remote with occasional in-person days, made staffing changes including a new social media manager, and hit record revenue in March despite rising customer acquisition costs. Q2 looks tougher, so he's focused on hiring right, cutting marketing spend, and shipping product faster.
Yo, back with the car videos. Don't actually know if this is recording properly or not. Guess I'll find out. Episode 60 Something It's 4pm driving back from a rare in person afternoon set of meetings which I think are good, but I also think meetings in person and traveling to and from a place in an office, etc, etc is just a massive distraction from the main thing which is doing the work. But then it comes down to like, is it all about doing the work or do you have to enjoy the process as well a little bit sometimes? Yeah. There's been a few updates I haven't filmed in like two weeks which is typical because like I've alluded to before, I've gone down this route of kind of. I feel like there's only, there's only a point in making this content if I'm very honest with it. But then sometimes to be honest, I have to share things that sometimes feel inappropriate to share before they've been shared internally or whatever. That might make sense in hindsight. Yeah. So I moved into an office four weeks ago. I tweeted about it. I then went in and just realized it's just not the right decision right now. I think it's the wrong place. I think it was too soon. I think it was rushed. I think it was an office for the sake of an office rather than an office to move the business forward. And yeah, I feel like a lot of things there is a balance between enjoyment and effectiveness. But I actually felt like the office is at this time in this place presently. The current situation was the lose lose. I felt like it would actually be less productive for me and the team, at least right now, but particularly me and more expensive and less enjoyable. So basically I've done a U turn on the office because I can got out of the lease. I'm trying to sell some furniture. So if you want some furniture that you can connect in the next collect in the next three days, give me a shout. I wasted a few grand on furniture, which is not good. I hate wasting money on shit, especially when it's like a pure waste. Yeah, I just think being a remote team, a lean remote team, meeting up every week or other week co work spaces, dinners, when it's like enjoyable quality time over quantity of time. I actually think that's net beneficial given the current state of the business. And that's what I'll be doing for the foreseeable. I think sometimes it's tempting to try and look big rather than be big. I saw something on Twitter from another Founder, I'm not going to say who but I actually rated it a lot and they said think big, act small and I think it's so fucking important. I'd rather build a growing profitable business that's remote limits overheads, doesn't give a fuck what we look like. We don't have an office now A lot of people think having an office you look like a proper business or whatever but I don't care if people think I'm a complete dosser wearing shorts working from home because at the end of the day if the the numbers are good that's the most important thing. Lighting on this is kind of fresh. I need a shave but yes, I've done a full 180 on that. May as well put that out there because I made a video in the office. I think probably a lot of people who know me quite well and have watched my shit probably predicted that from a distance. That's been a change. We've had a few well we've had one hire leave the business recently. I'm not going to dive into that but just wasn't the right fit for either of us. We are going to hire a replacement for that person. We've also hired a new social media manager this week so I feel like I con our organic marketing in general content collaboration influencer is non existent right now so they're going to be doing a lot on that. I think that'd be really good. What else? I'm also bringing on a product person in a fractional capacity potentially someone from Huell which is pretty cool because that's the the exact sort of business that I want to try and emulate in my own way over the next few years obviously and then yeah, what else is going on? March was a record month top and bottom line but our new customer acquisition cost was the highest it's ever been so. So that's kind of weird being propped up by retail subscription revenue et cetera which is obviously a good thing that that's there but it's not a great thing that our CAC was way too high. It is coming down this month so we've made some changes there. Pretty confident it's going to be better this month. I feel like Q2 isn't historically a great month for wellness brands. I mean it was actually a pretty great month, great quarter, it was pretty good last year so I don't want to make excuses but Q1 and Q4 probably most brands but particularly for wellness brands, definitely the bumper quarters obviously. I also then tomorrow actually have my first ever investor board meeting, which is a change. I've had to prepare a bit for that. But I think it's valuable getting other, other people's opinion on stuff and I guess learning how to run a more formal business, which again, does have pros and cons, I think, but in this sense, at this stage, I think it has net positives. So, yeah, I mean, we smashed our budget for Q1, so I think that'll be a fairly good meeting. I feel like there's more pressure and more potential to go wrong or be off budget in Q2, if I'm completely honest, because Q2 is more aggressive. I think we've been delayed on certain stuff, like certain hires, getting them right, product launching stuff on time, et cetera. Yeah, I mean, I'm rambling. This is kind of a general catch up episode because I'm in the car and I feel like that's the theme. It's where I speak most freely now. And I haven't made a video in two weeks. Weeks. But yeah, Q1, the theme was Philip, we put a lot of foundations in. Our gross margin increased dramatically from a number that wasn't too good to a number that's very, very good. And I think probably best in class in terms of the industry. So fix a lot of operational things. But then our marketing went to shit, which is pretty typical because there's always something wrong. And yeah, this month, well, the next three months are about bringing a few right hires in, streamlining our marketing stuff so we can make sure that's as efficient as it can be. And also new products. We've got quite new, quite a few new things coming. Some stuff I think we've slept on massively because it's been a small team. It's been largely reliant on me on the product side and so focused on marketing. But yeah, ultimately, as we scale to the next stage, it's not just a marketing machine. It needs to be a product improvement and product launch machine as well as operationally efficient machine. So yeah, they're kind of the three key things I'm focusing on right now. I have been focusing on. But yeah, no real topic for this, just a general catch up. It's nice that it's turning into spring in the UK after a long arduous winter. But yeah, it's Tuesday 9th April, 4pm and on that note, that was a quick update. Maybe I'll make some high quality content in future because I've seen a lot of people pop into the space doing similar stuff with way better edits than me some guys on Twitter, so maybe I should try and keep up. But I'm about to drive in so subscribe to the pod. Cheers for watching. Appreciate you all as always and see you next time. Sa.
