Sam (host of Doc the Journey Ep 69) gives an informal, candid update on the business ~26 months after launch (mid-June). Key points: recent launch of a Coffee Flavor SKU has materially reduced CAC and enabled faster scaling; Rainbow Dust remains the flagship SKU and the team is simplifying the brand to focus on a category-defining functional morning beverage (coffee-plus angle). Business metrics: month-on-month growth for the past 12 months, June expected to be a record month (~20%+ above May), Europe spend ramping (~£/€90k this month) with Germany a priority; plan is to dominate UK/Europe before entering the US. Operations: hiring challenges, plans to hire a COO/MD in 6–9 months, new product hire from Huell joining. Emphasis throughout on simplifying, doubling down on winners, improving performance marketing and executing clearly.
Chapters
Yo, back with episode 69 of Doc the Journey. And I haven't recorded in this setup for quite a while. Feels very alien, actually. I don't know where to look or what to say. And as always, actually to keep this short because I'm traveling in like 10 minutes. Yeah, it's been. It's been six months since the start of the year, which is fucking crazy. And it's been two years and two months since I launched the brand, almost to the day. So 26 months. A lot has happened. I always joke and say that I look like I've fucking weathered since the early episodes of this when I looked. But look back at like Summer 22, I looked leaner cause I was running and just like happier and less stressed because it was the honeymoon phase of starting a brand. And now I've got this brand that has taken over my life. I try and have. I tried to work less actually recently and be more effective and have thinking time and shit. But there's always more to do. And I'm probably still in that kind of toxic work entrepreneur founder type thing where I feel genuinely disgustingly guilty for taking a day off or even on like a Sunday or like half of Saturday and shit, which probably isn't the most productive. So yeah, I'm trying to figure out where the leverage points are to go to the next level. A big one is people hired a few new people into the business recently. I find it really hard to hire people because I find it hard to manage people because I'm either way too friendly or I just instantly don't gel with them and then I kind of resent them from the start. And that's not referring to anyone on the team currently, but it has been people in the past like that. So yeah, I feel like I either need to get better at managing people or hire someone to manage people and run the day to day, which is probably on my roadmap in the next six to nine months at some point. Like a COO, MD, potential type again, which I did have in the business previously, which is premature. But yeah, coffee. We launched Coffee Flavor like a month ago. I don't know where I'm going with this video. Just quick general update. Chit chat. We launched Coffee Flavor should have done that two years ago given our angle now is like Coffee plus. That has massively reduced our cac. Increased scale pretty much overnight or ability to scale because our cacs come down. So. So this month will be a record month by far. Probably more than 20% up on last month and In June. That's not bad. Last year we were pretty flat during summer and we really doubled or even nearly tripled the business in Q4. I still think we can double or triple in Q4 this year, but summer has been better. We've grown every single month for the last 12 months, month on month, including Black Friday, which is pretty good, to be fair. I mean, I think last summer we had like one month in July, which is smaller than the previous month. But ever since then it's been up. So, like. Yeah, the past 12 months has been up every month. Yeah. I feel like I'm working on scaling the back end of the business as much as, like, just marketing. Like, we've hired, I think I mentioned, brought on a product person from Huell who was at Huell for like four years and she was at tails. She come on fractionally, but she'll probably come on full time soon. So, like, that's massively opened up a world of product improvement, product potential. Stuff I didn't even think about. And then, yeah, just getting clear on brand positioning. My general view, and this is sort of stuff maybe I shouldn't share, my general view is that everything other than Rainbow Dust has probably been a waste of time and a distraction because we haven't gone deep enough with it, we haven't prepared the business enough to scale in those verticals, whereas Rainbow Dust, we've doubled down, we've built momentum. People know the brand for that. I would say semi iconic pink, purple packaging, we've become known for that. And I think it's a much stronger proposition to own like the morning ritual, which is what I'm leaning into now at the function of morning beverage, rather than being a mushroom brand which just sells a bunch of mushroom products, some of which are quite fluffy, like a gummy. I think the gummy product is good, it tastes nice, but I just think it dilutes the brand messaging and where we're trying to go. So, yeah, I'm getting a bit clearer on that big theme of simplification in the business in the past month or so. And I did a video two or three weeks ago in Bali saying, simplify everything. Since I've done that, everything is going better and everything feels easier and clearer and it's easier to communicate. So basically the big theme and it's so simple in hindsight, is simplify everything, go deeper on everything rather than wide, and just get very, very clear on what the fuck we're actually trying to do. And for me now it's like I want to Build a category defining functional morning. Functional morning beverage brand and kind of coffee plus is the biggest part of that right now. That's not to say everyone that's running copycat brands needs to pivot as well. But that's the kind of angle we're pushing now. That's working a lot better. Makes a lot more sense. Like you know, anyone that drinks coffee is potential customer basically. So yeah, that's kind of where we're at in the business. I feel like I'm. Well, I'm trying to lead the team and the business to put in a lot of groundwork so we can go like nuclear sort of September onwards. I think June's been really good so far. If we can maintain this into July and August and that'd be pretty crazy given it's summer and it is particularly slow. Well typically slower for E commerce and especially like a hot functional drink. Yeah. More new products come in. We're doing a decaf version which has been highly requested. A few other things which I'll wait until they happen to to announce what else really just doubling down on creative. I think we've been quite good at performance marketing. I don't think we've been world class of performance marketing. So I'm trying to really become world class as a business at performance marketing. Obviously creative being a massive driver of that. You know, one winning ad can bring down CAC like 30% overnight if it starts to scale, which I've seen a few times now. Europe is looking pretty good. We're spending. We'll spend 100 grand on ads this month in Europe alone. Maybe a bit more. Actually no, about 90 probably based on current pace like 3k a day in Europe and then within Europe, particularly Germany and Netherlands looking pretty good. We've got a fully functioning German website now. We've started doing German ads. Does start to get complicated. You think like where's the line between just run English for now versus fully localized. I think for one country being Germany, that's worth it at this point in terms of the revenue coming from that country. And yeah, this year something would be like 80% ish UK but actually maybe 75 and then 25% Europe which is a pretty big chunk. And then within that Germany is the biggest really my vision. A lot of people say why not do America? America can wait until next year or the year after I think. I think there's a lot more benefit in dominating a smaller market first rather than being a much smaller fish in a bigger market. So yeah, dominate the uk, dominate Europe Is the plan for the next year or so anyway, and then we'll see. But yeah, that's like a general update. Nothing particularly terrible happening, more just. I mean, I'm always a bit suspicious when things feel like they starting to go pretty well. Not the going better and like less things to worry about because I'm always worrying about something. It's probably the standard, standard mindset of a founder, but particularly me. So, yeah, always a bit paranoid that things could stop going as well as I have been this month. Want to keep the momentum, obviously, like when stuff goes well, that becomes the new normal and then you want to do better. So yeah, just trying to go deeper on what's working. Double down, double down, optimize the team, get everyone laser focused on what we're actually trying to achieve. Something. It's quite easy for a team to not really know what the business is trying to achieve. It's just like day to day and then you step back and think, oh, does anyone actually know what we're doing here, why we're here? So I've been trying to get a bit clearer on that high level but then obviously focus on execution because at the end of the day none of that strategy shit matters unless you execute it well. So, yeah, that's kind of where we're at. I can't believe it's the middle of June. It feels like summer hasn't really arrived in the uk. Back from Bali the past two weeks, that was a bit depressing. A few trips coming up. But yeah, basically just head down scaling and we are continuing to scale. We're ahead of budget, ahead of plan this year so far. So all in all it's decent but it could always be better. I feel like I need to get a lot better at a lot of things and I'll keep documenting the process in doing that and trying to get to the next level and hopefully in two years time I'll look back at this and think, fuck me, we were small back then. As I do now, looking back two years ago. So cool. On that bombshell, subscribe to the pod. I keep these coming if anyone's not seen the yacht event I'm hosting in like three months or three and a half months time, end of September, we've got like some literal fucking 50 million quid super yacht that I'm hosting an event on for three days if you want to come to that. I think there's like two tickets left. Check that in the link in, in the bio and I'll see you next episode. Cheers for watching Pe. Sam.
