Back in Marbella with Best Mates, Scaling, Tanning & Thinking - Documenting the journey - Episode 16

Yo. So this appears to be an episode of Documenting the journey. I forgot my tripod. I forgot my tripod. Sunny as fuck. I guess this will be a quicker episode than usual because the setup's too fucking hot. Forgot my tripod. Forgot my usual mics. Using these. What's going on? It's Friday. The. There's no date on this watch. It's Friday 27th August and fuck me, it feels like summer has flown by very quick. And we booked this on Thursday. No Wednesday to come out or Tuesday. Like day before we came. Me and a bunch of the other guys that were in Marbella before we come back to Marbella, come to a golf resort for a few days. And yeah, I was feeling uninspired the other week. So another excuse to run away to a hot country. I should probably not be doing this episode out here when I'm about to go out because I'm absolutely melting. It's a bit of a weird angle but we'll fucking sit and go with it. I don't know if you can actually hear me with these mics. Should probably not be doing an episode in this sun because I'm going to be melting my ass off. And I've got no tripods at the angle's terrible. I also dyed my hair blonde last week. But it's not gone properly blonde. What's going on? I feel like a little bit again kind of stress free scale the past week or so. Like when I was in Marbella the first time, what was it a few. Few months ago? Like two and a half months ago. That trip, that legendary trip in. In that villa. And I was kind of surprised how not ecom stressed I felt. And I kind of feel the same in an operations way now. But my stress or worry fucking huh. This angle's so. I feel like comes from different things. I feel like now it comes from dawning on me maybe how long the process is to actually get to where I want to be. But then also that weird balance of trying to, as I say a million times, trying to enjoy the process and be present in the things I'm very fortunate to do along the way. Like come to Marbella, you know, with a day's notice and stay in a beautiful place and still be able to work and generate income. Still feels a bit of me like there's a missing piece. I don't know if it's because when I. I don't know if it's because I'm running away from a setup at home which isn't. Doesn't feel like long term and fulfilling in that respect because I don't have an office, I don't have a team of people that I physically see every day. And maybe that's why a part of me wants to always like travel and go away with the boys and shit. Because funnily enough, when I'm away, you know, we're working in the same sort of capacity and doing the same sort of shit. So that's what I'm thinking about a lot. I'm also always debating, you know, should I just. Is this efficient? Am I really getting much work done? Probably not sweating my ass off. By the way, I've just got changed to go out after a shower. So not a great time to be sweating, to be sat in the sun. Or should I just fucking have no life the next three to five years and get really, really, really, really, really rich? You know, try to and then enjoy life. But as I've said before, I don't think that's viable because you could get hit by a bus tomorrow. So there is a fine line of course, and I'm trying to find that balance and that's what I am doing in terms of business stuff quickly I guess, update wise. New creatives, some I focused on heavily, had a bit of a panic in August because it's kind of hit a wall with ads and couldn't really find the next level of scale. So kind of took two sets back, three steps forward with creative, got rid of a lot of shit that wasn't working, built out a better system and literally started dripping. So that's definitely helped with ads. Moving the needle to the next level of scale because we have a shitload of stock. So really right now I just need to sell more and then conversion rate agency stuff, working on the website. So that should make a huge difference. Building the foundations there before just spending more. Also landing pages like building out like athletic green style stuff. But long form offers, you know, long form product pages and offers rather than just a product that you can subscribe to because you really want to push subscription way more. Like a lot of people telling me subscribers should be like the key North Star metric for the business long term. Not even just revenue but like subscribers and obviously subscription revenue. And I actually kind of agree. Dream Dust is on the way, it's in production, we're shooting an 80s movie again in like a month and that's one of the things that a lot of people say is kind of a waste of time. But I don't agree because I think long term it differentiates the brand. It's really fucking fun to do. Maybe I'm just indulging my romantic 80s synthwave utopian aesthetic obsession and my desire to be an movie director and I probably am a little bit, but I also think it works for the brand. Obviously it doesn't move the needle on ads as much, but I think it's still important to have for me I'm dripping but yeah, that's kind of what's going on business wise. August, from my own past experience and others experience is typically kind of a slow month. We've still grown on the previous month if I'm honest. Haven't grown as much as I would have liked but I kind of forgotten. The August is pretty slow but yeah, setting foundations, doing shit that you know, it's not always going to be linear. Up, up, up, better, better, better all the time. Like we haven't had any major problems like with Instagram anything like we did in the first two months. It's more being like planning and things are definitely going the right way. I think the biggest variable is I've got to keep my fucking head in the game because not that I'm getting distracted, but the things I've mentioned in previous episodes, at the start of this episode I feel, I still feel like I don't enjoy a lot of the process and I think that's just fucking normal. But when you lose that, you know, you get past the honeymoon phase like with anything of starting new brands and suddenly it's like ah, we're in the trenches again, we've got a lot of work to do and I obviously do, as does anyone. But at the same time it's like well built a business now that was literally an idea and the whole nothing exists until you created thing which is obviously very like cringe or whatever and like, like a movie. But it's true. Cuz this product wasn't a thing, this brand wasn't a thing, you know, five months ago, like it was an idea like seven months ago. And now we have nearly 10,000 customers coming up to like 1500 subscribers closing in on half a million in revenue, in revenue in like 400 months. So yeah, like it's kind of mad like that is the entrepreneurial alchemy I think that I've always loved. And as hard as a lot of it is, it's good to look back and reflect on like, you know, I'm not gonna say it's impressive because I've always done this sort of. I don't feel like it is impressive, but it's cool, especially in a new space, to be able to do that. And I think there is value in, you know, looking at the bigger picture and, like, respecting how far you've come because always it feels like you're never doing enough. You're always living in the future. But I think stopping and being like, okay, I've actually. What we've done. What I've done, what we've done is pretty cool so far. But yeah, on that note, this is probably a shit episode, but I want to be consistent and put an episode out. I'm literally dripping with sweat. I'm meant to be going upstairs to have some fucking red wine and. Yeah, see you in the next episode. Cheers for watching. Apologies for no tripod, but this is way too hot to be recording. Space gets to the moon. Let's fucking go.