Back to Bali with the Boys, Getting a Tattoo & New Year Business Focus - Doc the Journey Ep 30

Yo, feel like I'm trying to be very dramatic with this angle. I am in Dubai on an 18 hour layover and I don't know why the fuck I just walked towards the camera before starting use this little mic. So I hope it sounds alright. I guess this is what episode? Episode. Let me check my fucking YouTube. Episode 30A. Document the journey. Something like that. Always feels weird not doing it with my mic, my big boom arm mic there. And yes, this is a fake tattoo, which I'll get to in a minute. It looks like shit. It came out very wrong. Yeah, me and Adam, we're going Bali. Well, me and a bunch of guys for New Year haven't been Bali in over three years. It's probably my favorite place on earth. Probably the place that I have the most crooked memories in. Where have they gone? I've just been. Yeah, so Fred and everyone else has gone out early. They got a different flight and then me and Adam got another flight which has a fucking 18 hour layover. Anyway, I'm watching these cunts, yeah, going out to Bali, 18 hour layover because yeah, I refuse to fly economy class anymore, which sounds like ridiculous, but I had points and we're going business in first class on the second leg and it's always nice, isn't it? Especially not been away for ages. I mean like refuse to fly economy long haul. I don't refuse, but if you can, it's nice not to. So, yeah, me and Adam Cross crying and poor the pod God on Twitter. Yeah, we had a 18 hour layover. So what have I done? I slept a bit, went to get a massage. Actually managed to get a very solid training session in because obviously back on marathon hype to some extent. Haven't really announced that yet. Done a bit of work, but it's just cabin fever and it's not ideal because I've just been sent selfies of all the other lads that have got there like 24 hours earlier and we're gonna land on New year's Eve at 4pm tomorrow local time's the plan. But I'm hoping there's no delays because that could be problematic. But yeah, Bali for two weeks. Kind of following on from my previous document, the Journey episode. I guess I felt like I needed to get away for a while and mix it up a little bit more and then I'm obviously only going to Bali for two weeks is the plan. But I think it's been long, long overdue. I spent like the last four months very much in the trenches, probably more than I Needed to be. Maybe it was like self inflicted solitary confinement, my fucking desk in a way. But yeah, I've always found kind of creative inspiration and enjoying things more when I like go away and just shake things up. And that's originally why I got started with E commerce. I had freedom and Asia has always been a symbol of freedom to me because where I first went, when I first started making a bit of money online like in September 2019. Sorry, 2019. September 2017 was my first trip to Asia. I went to some conference but prior to that I went to Thailand by myself, got my drink spiked, long story, go watch my old YouTube channel for context around that. So I just associate it with being free, which is always what I've wanted to do. And granted a million great places in the world I've been to in the past few years like Brazil, Europe, etc. America that aren't Asia. But Asia was like the first place I went like by myself and just live that nomady lifestyle I suppose. And yeah, Bali particularly is that my favorite spot there. So nice to be going back. I can't believe it's been over three years. September 2019, I was last here. A lot has happened since then, a huge amount covered. Two brands, one, you know, one going very wrong, started a new one since then, started the pod, lots of other things, relationships, relationships ending, got a dog, loads of got fat, got lean. A lot has happened in that time and it kind of scares me how quick I'm getting old. But yeah, I'm in a hotel room and this is what I'm thinking about. And I suppose business wise, give a bit more of rundown on that. Still going through this fundraising process. I'll probably do more of a summary video on that when that's finished because I don't feel like I don't want to jinx it or breach any rules about speaking too specifically about that, but there's a lot of progress on that. Yeah, starting to see the benefit of like recurring subscriptions like the last week of this month, end of December, like obviously a lot of, a lot of repeat orders from Black Friday offers subscriptions that we were stacking at the end of last month. It's very, very profitable when they come through, which is nice. And like blended ROAS is almost about 70% up on last month. So that's testament to the fact that LTVs coming in repeat subscribers, repeat orders, etc next month I think will be probably our best month ever, I'm hoping because obviously big January push, Dream Dust is coming and Yeah, I think it's probably been too long without a new product. So that's something I'm really in fact to try and keep it concise. Like the four things I'm focusing on for the next few months is. And it's been a kind of a slight pivot which maybe I'll do an episode about after this week when I'm thinking more straight and not in a hotel room but like where's this fucking thing? I wrote a note of what I was actually talking about. Where's it gone? There we go. Yeah, so like I kind of, I just wrote this down last night at like 2 in the morning and it's basically what I'm focusing on right now. In a overall sense it's scaling, but focus on more profitable scaling. So just generally a higher blended ROAS on ads because I think we've been pretty inefficient in certain areas. And maybe I'll do a video on kind of a review of the first calendar year, the first eight months and where I've gone wrong, where I've gone right. I'll probably do that early, Jan, maybe next week's episode. That's one thing I'm really trying to do. Focus on higher rise and just be more efficient. Scaling horizontally is the next thing I'm trying to do. And what I mean by that is I think it's a lot easier to get 10 countries doing 3 million a year and therefore have a 30 million pound revenue business than to do one doing 30 mil or three doing 10 mil, you know, on paper. So Germany, Netherlands I think can be massive. They're our second best countries and we don't even run ads there right now. So I mean I haven't localized fulfillment. So localizing fulfillment into Europe, which is happening next month anyway, will help massively with that. We can start to run ads there. The next step after that would be obviously localizing the website, whether that's translating stuff, different payment methods, et cetera, et cetera. So I think scaling horizontally in general is how I'm going to be able to scale but profitably without just cats going through the roof. Which again is something I've noticed and something I'll probably do is like a year end review. One of many points. The other thing is expanding Amazon. Similar sort of logic, I guess instead of territories we're expanding the sales channels. But we're already on Amazon UK. The net margin Amazon is like 40% so. And that's with PPC running and so on. Granted we're only doing Like a thousand pounds a day revenue right now on Amazon, bit less actually on average. But again, the logic there is if I can scale that into Germany, Netherlands, America, I just think that could be a much more efficient, effective business model rather than just purely focused on dtc. The other thing is retail and wholesale in general. I've mentioned a few times at Holland and Barrett, a few others I spoke to, I'm trying to progress that, I am progressing that and I would like that to be a big part of revenue in 2023. And then the other thing is expanding the product offering and have more room to test new flavors, new versions, new SKUs on a smaller scale. Because the problem up to now has been minimum 5,000 units, pretty much minimum order quantity on anything. And if you want to test different flavors, you know, gummies, different products, whatever, that's very risky cash wise and doesn't make sense. So I'm looking at options to basically potentially find other suppliers to do small trial run stuff with and figure that out because I do think, for example, I'm hoping Dream Dust illustrates the point. But right now having one product is great because it's simple, but also means that anyone that doesn't like chocolate wants a caffeine free version, wants something else because they like the aesthetic of the brand but they don't necessarily want this ingredient profile they're obviously not going to buy. So it's getting that balance right. I want to have a small offering sku wise but definitely have have options to test new shit. So they're basically the five things I'm focusing on the next few months. And again I'll probably do a more in depth review of the year. Kind of did that in the latest POD episode which will be coming out in two days time. But I'll do probably one myself because I don't feel like I'm fucking making sense right now. Very tired and like fucking semi jet lagged and whatever. So yeah, that's pretty much what's going on. What else have I done? I've put a psilocybin chemical symbol temporary ink box tattoo on my arm. It's come out looking like absolute shit because it's like blurred and I don't think I applied it right and it looks too thick. And then I've also got this very cringe one. This was meant. These were meant to be the Dream Dust tattoos, by the way, the Dream Dust movie tattoos. They didn't arrive in time which is why they're very cringe. They didn't arrive in time. So I bought some ones off Amazon prime which were just like random designs instead. You may have noticed that because I was gonna. I wanted to have psilocybin in the actual Dream Dust movie. I think it was the dopamine chemical symbol which looks similar, but it's not quite the same. This says nothing exists until you create it. Again, very cringe. I thought it'd be a good idea to use it on my Bali trip instead of in the movie to arrive in time. And then the one on my shoulders. Fucking embarrassing. I was meant to get a logo and I just didn't. It doesn't come out right. So that's there for two weeks looking like that, which is not good. But yeah, they were meant to be in the Dream Dust movie. They're not dream just coming in two weeks, like I said, is the plan. And yeah, the next few weeks in Bali, I'll be making a few videos there. I'm doing a few pods there as well. Very much still working, but it would just be nice to be in a different location. I think there's like eight of us out there now. It's only originally gonna be four of us. We got a few more of the boys come through. So I might try and do like a crooked group podcast episode. We'll see about that. But yeah, other than that being consistent with these episodes, they're not always going to be that groundbreaking as this one probably hasn't been. Yeah, I think episode 30 is it. Yeah, episode 30 which is mad that's flown by by episode 300. Hopefully we'll have have some interesting to talk about. But yeah, as always, cheers for watching the pod. Cheers for watching this. Please do subscribe Recommend it to a friend. One of my big goals of 2023 and I might do a video again talking about goals and shit, but one of them is just to be more consistent with the pod. And I think it's very useful platform. I think it's something I'll never regret doing. I wish I'd documented more in the past of traveling and just general life building the previous brands and I just didn't. And it's kind of a shame because I'm never getting that those memories back, at least visually. They're just up here and by having a video diary of everything, which this obviously is alongside the main pod is really for me, like I've said from the start and if people want to watch it, that's great, but I'm going to keep making it and I appreciate you all watching, but wouldn't recommend getting these tattoos. That's not a good look. Cheers for watching. Catch you next episode. Peace.