Back to Bali Lock-In: BTS My Founder Productivity System (KPI Dashboard + Ai Tools) - Doc Ep 96

The double whammy.

Remoa. Don't know how the. I'm gonna push all.

4:00Am Job from Dubai to Bali, retain it in flight delays. Not taken off yet. Red light by a hacking job. I'll be doing red light, glasses, melatonin and face masks shortly. So, yeah, I just need to sleep for like, nine hours and try and be quiet, so. Probably sound weird.

Back in Bali, it's 9am Done pretty.

Well to defeat the jet lag.

Flight actually felt very, very long. It was a very nice flight, but.

Always a bit bumpy. Always struggle to sleep.

Seven hours ahead of the uk. I thought it was eight for some reason. This is officially my eighth trip to Bali, which is kind of mad. First one being back in 2018. I thought it was 2017, but it's 2018, so seven years ago. Seven and a half years ago, in fact. Yeah, jet lag's a bit when I come here normally, but managed to get up at like 8am today, which is good. So typical Bali routine. Got a bike last night. Didn't get scoopy this time. Got a proper bike in this villa for a week and then we're going to a villa for two to four weeks pending with a group from next week. So I was meant to come on the 24th, came on the 17th because I moved out my London place. So this is like a temporary one. But it's actually a very, very sick location for anyone that knows the area. It's kind of between Changu and Perennan. Back in the goo. Feels like Bali changes every time I come back. Seems to get more and more westernized, slightly busier, although yesterday actually felt pretty good. So gonna do the usual routine now, which is gonna find a gym. There's two new ones that have opened Omni something and like Bali Social Club. If not, I'll just default to wrong gym, which is chaotically busy almost all the time. But when you know a place, just does the job. Because I've missed like three days of training this week through travel, which is not ideal. Always feel a bit delirious when I arrive somewhere far away in a different time zone. But, yeah, obviously the benefit of barley is I've been here so many times, I know pretty well everything's just on your doorstep. The one thing I need to make sure of this time is I avoid the dreaded barley belly, which I'm not going to get on this trip, I promise myself. And I avoid dengue because I got really bad dengue last year. I actually paid like 600 quid. For a bunch of vaccines this year, which I've never done in my life before, not in any of the previous seven trips. But this time, because I had it so badly last year and I was hospitalized for one night last year in London when I got back, was lucky to only get it when I actually got back. They said if I get it again, I could die. So I got all the vaccines, although I only actually got the first one. I got Q D, anger or something, which made me ill as fuck, to.

Be fair, last week or two weeks ago.

But they said I'm like 90% covered. So, yeah, I'm gonna, like, spray actual insect spray. Doing all the stuff I should have done when I was younger, but I never did. And now I'm older and wiser, actually got very ill, I'm gonna do it. So, yeah, priority number one is don't get sick. Number two is need to get a tan, get back in shape, eat super clean, which is actually very easy to do in Bali. No seed oils, no processed shit, Massage, like every few days. Got a lot of work to do as well. This isn't a holiday. It's never a holiday. Just work in a different place. Right. But I find Bali is quite good because being seven hours ahead, I get the whole morning to, like, do all my training and stuff, which I never do back in the uk. And it's nice. It's a nice bonus to be able to do that. And then a few hours of uninterrupted work and then in the second half the afternoon slash evening, I'm on UK time, and then like late evening, sometimes work until, like, midnight. But it can get a bit unsustainable if I'm up at like, 7 7am so, yeah, probably have like, four or five hours on UK time and the rest just my own time to work on everything I want to work on. But the sort of stuff I need to work on now is less involved with, like, the team all the time and more stuff I need to just lock in and do myself, like, you know, brand refresh stuff. Planning for next year. Sounds fluffy, but more like the visiony stuff. So it's actually kind of good not being in the same time zone because it gives me more time to actually do that myself. So. Yeah. Anyway, lots of people in Bali that I know or follow me or whatever, so if anyone's around, drop me a dm. Maybe we can go for a gym session or something. I feel like I often say that and never actually follow up and do.

Anything, but, yeah, be cool to meet.

Some people while I'm out here. And the initial plan is four weeks. That's what I did last year in May. Haven't actually been in July before for a long time. Don't know if it's the optimum time. Feels a bit more touristy time of year compared to like April, May, which when I would typically come in the past. But yeah, that's all for now.

Obviously.

Documenting more like I said I was. Don't know if people actually enjoy like the sort of vlog style stuff. It's a bit more admin to like film.

It's actually really hard to vlog because.

You have to film shit and then you do interesting stuff or more. More interesting stuff and you realize you didn't film and then whatever. That's kind of why I like the just talking head at a camera, talking head at a desk, sorry, style stuff. But yeah, trying out a few different formats. Might get a few podies done in the infamous. I think it's Lighthouse Studio, which is where I filmed a few in the past while I'm here. Gonna do a group one next week when my mates are here. A few big names coming out. It's gonna be a stacked villa. But yeah, if anyone wants to do a pod or anything while I'm here, let me know. I'll probably put a tweet out as well. So, yeah, boom. Gonna go to the gym and catch.

Up in a bit. I just realized I never actually show any of the shit I do. I'm not gonna show that many details. I might blur it. But I have this sheet which I call like the OCD founder scale sheet. And I've literally. Even though we've got a team of people and I probably still do it for eventually if I can sell the business or maybe not, but if I took two weeks off, I reckon I'd still struggle not to do this sheet. And it has like all the. I reckon I know the numbers better than anyone in the business, including the people that should know the numbers better than me probably. Which might sound savage, but I reckon it's true because I have this sheet and literally I should probably blur this and I probably will, but I have essentially it goes back like every month ever. I mean, it's pretty standard, but it's evolved over time. And like July, you know, got like orders, uk, Germany total orders, UK sales, Germany sales, total sales, both combined, plus Amazon returning percentage, new percentage, returning number, new number returns net sales, blended VAT rate, net total sales gross minus returns or minus vat, Amazon Orders Amazon Union sold Amazon sales Total website sales Retail sales month to date minus days Product costs Total filming costs on average these are generally but they're pretty accurate Transaction cost gross margin pound and percentage Amazon ad costs Facebook ad costs UK Germany Google Ads UK Germany TikTok UK Germany influencer affiliate total UK spend total Germany spend Ad spend MER contribution margin Pounds and percentage OPEX people Brand overheads Total OPEX net margin per day Then it goes into like I don't need this much detail but I just like to know cost per click on average Website Traffic New UK orders UK NCPAs and new new new customer CAC which is the most important thing in my opinion New customers Germany Total new customers Germany CAC Blended website CAC Blended Net ROAS all channels Website Blended AOV Website conversion rate Website RPV revenue per visitor I don't really look at these to be honest but they're in there. Website New revenue per visitor New UK subscribers net new subscribers Total active subscribers then the same for Germany Total blended active subscribers then CAC per new subscriber so yeah that is basically my OCD founder sheet. We do have actual like live management accounts and that sort of stuff as well. Yeah more like technical ones that are automated. This doesn't actually rely on me, I just still do it because I did it from day one and for some reason I like doing it. I think it's a way to check in like and I do it manually as well I've intentionally not automated it, haven't outsourced it. I think it's quite important to be ocd like autistic founder locked in spec on this stuff and just know the numbers they're probably out by like 1 or 2% because then you factor in like compared to like management accounts I mean which are like the actual financials which obviously we have like a live version of that, that obviously a monthly pack etc but yeah these are like high level 99, 98, 99 accurate and I do it every day, like literally every day although I've just had three days off so I was traveling. So now I'm doing catching up with three days although I do think it takes quite a lot of time. It'll probably take me like 20 minutes, maybe even half an hour to fully go through everything because it's three days normally it's like five to 10 minutes a day, probably five. I also then have a separate tab for like tracking our cash and balance sheet position all this again we obviously have this with a finance guy and like zero and But I still like to do it myself. I just like to feel like I'm on top of stuff. Maybe that's not effective at all. But in a way I think it's quite a good habit. So that's something I do. But I need to lock in now and yeah, back to work. Still jet lagged Saturday night. Loads of shit to do obviously. Two days of traveling pretty much by the time you've factored in airport to airport, etc. Trying to lock in for a few hours in the temporary Bali setup, which is a laptop on a little table and a shitty wooden chair, which isn't optimum, but I'm not bothering getting a standing desk and all that until we go to the villa next week. This one's the first week, then we'll be in the other place for longer. So that'll be more. Well, not permanent, but more of a solid setup. But I do think bringing a keyboard and a trackpad significantly improves productivity. It almost feels like you're on a big computer or like a mono. So locking in decent WI fi, no excuses really. I think if you can work in any environment, that's definitely a life skill. Obviously it's nice to have a Herman chair and a big Apple screen, but didn't used to have that. Don't need that. So yeah, I feel like it takes me about half an hour to actually warm up to a work session. I'm pretty guilty like everyone of just fucking scrolling and you know, putting things off that need to be done putting the hard things off. But I made a list and I'm worth the list tonight and get caught up. So this is the first day back in the goo and I'll catch you in a bit. Yo. So I it's Sunday. Catching up on things. I've gone full autistic Chad scalar mode the past six hours. Locked my phone away because I've been doom scrolling too much recently. I'm also doing a 24 hour fast so I feel pretty fucking dialed in. Jet lag's been killing me so I'm probably gonna be up to like 2am minimum working and I've got the crazy, crazy fucking focus music and I've been going super, super deep on training and optimizing ChatGPT because I use it a crazy amount. Might be like a cope but for me the way my brain works, probably being on the spectrum, probably being ADHD or whatever, it helps me really split my focuses and actually just get really objective because I can train it to think and act and I guess Advise a certain way.

And I've literally now spent the last.

Like three hours training it with financial data, data on my own personal finances.

Basically everything to do with like, my business, my fitness, my finances, my goals. And yeah, it's definitely getting far more useful for me.

And it just helps me as basically like a decision filter in many ways and an objective one because it's not human.

Right.

So, yeah, but doing that. Let me show you some of the shit. Don't know if you can see this at all. I might regret showing this, so maybe I'll like blur this out. But I basically made this mental thread that I started earlier today. We started talking about custom GPT and then blah, blah, blah. I get I probably shouldn't show half of this because I'll be embarrassed, but what did I say? I basically prompted it. Where did this deep conversation start?

I basically said, what do you know.

About me and what else do you need to know about me? Then I went down this crazy thread of telling it loads of crazy stuff and prompting it, well, to like, what do you think you don't know about me? And then I answer super in depth. And honestly, this is probably a fucking therapy session in many ways. But yeah, now it just fucking knows loads of stuff about me. And to be honest, even just doing this process helps me really understand myself better because I think most therapy is actually bullshit because they're not objective and the therapist probably hasn't achieved what you want to achieve. But when you're speaking with a fucking AI, it's a bit weird. It's like something from Black Mirror. But yeah, I probably won't show all this because it's probably highly personal. Might make me look like an absolute twat. But I'd recommend doing it just training.

Your.

Almost like your fucking pet AI, but your ChatGPT account or whatever you use on that stuff. And then, yeah, on the side, I've split it into like four key versions now. I've called it MK 2.0 because basically I'm trying to get back on track with a bunch of stuff that I've slipped on the past few months. And the fact that I'm away in Bali right now is a great mental reset for me and actually is why I came because it allows me to draw a line in the sand on things and I'll make a few more videos speaking specifically about that. But anyway, the point here is, yeah, I'm just using Chat GPT load and it's actually very useful. I'm not even just saying that it's like some weird cope for me. It's actually helping me stay objective, make decisions etc. So yeah, this is probably the most productive I felt in a long time. And sometimes when you've gone through an unproductive phase, like I have like the past week, but definitely past few days.

Like traveling and stuff.

Like a hard. Almost like a fucking mini doping reset zone was on my phone way too much. I've literally just locked that, put it on grayscale mode, put Opal on super hard mode. So I can't even physically go on it unless I even if I want to fasting for 24 hours so I don't get any brain fog from eating, which is hard. But I'm also doing that I'm gonna do it once a week. And then I mean obviously basic stuff like made a fucking list of things.

I need to catch up on.

I'm actually managing to work through them. And then the other thing is just pumping these sorts of tunes. Basically anything that I function best, I work best with either like classical music, which is not right now, it's not my mood or like deep house stuff that has no words or lyrics. That's the key thing. The second there's words or lyrics, it's.

More just listening to music for enjoyment.

Which I will do every now and maybe every hour I put something on just to listen to and be less deep work. But yeah, if I want to go deep work, I personally need to remove all distractions and I've been getting far too distracted by the fucking brain rot stuff recently. So I'm gonna get back on. Yeah, like reading before bed Instead of scrolling YouTube looking at weird videos about cats or something or anything else that comes up. Try and split my time way better. I'm super guilty of doing trying to do too many things at once like.

Literally in like a few hour period.

Like, you know, you can do five things in an hour, for example, but you can't do five things at once within that hour. So yeah, even just using this fucking mosquito, using this browser called arc which I tweeted about has been a big help for me.

So maybe I'll do a video specific.

I always say maybe I'll do a video on and then the video itself ends up being talking about random shit and then me talking about what I'm gonna do a video on next.

So maybe I'll actually.

Or actually one of the things on my list is actually make a content plan so I'm not just spouting random shite all the time. And it's useful and insightful and maybe what I want to make.

So, yeah, anyway, on that note, it's.

10Pm, gonna lock in for at least another two hours. Girlfriend's gone to bed, but someone's got a fucking scale and it's probably not gonna be her right now. So she is actually scaling a TikTok account. So I'm not being derogatory or whatever by saying that I'm taking the piss. But yeah, someone's gotta scale this business. At least I'm gonna dive in for a few more hours. I can already feel the mental benefit of not being in London right now in that shitty Airbnb where I made my last video or my however many videos ago that was my recent video in that horrible flat. I'm not doing that again. Environment's so important to me and if I feel like the environment's wrong, it just completely deadened my creativity, productivity, output, everything. So I feel like I'm starting to gradually get that back. I mean, Bali is not the fucking solution forever, but a few weeks here every year like I do is a very good hard reset, along with other places that are and have been for me. But this one in particular I tend to come back to. So, yeah, locking in, pumping the tunes, not eating, about to have an Astrodus chai because I'm jet lagged and that shit definitely does help me sleep. And I'm gonna bump these tunes and keep scaling Bo.

Sam.