Broke Uni Grads to 7 Figure Agency with 23 Employees - Soar With Us | Midnight Podcast Episode 22
This is a conversational podcast (host Matthew Kelly with guests Ollie and Joe Marson) describing the founders' path from school friends to building a fast-growing e‑commerce/marketing agency. They recount early attempts (dropshipping and private‑label brands around 2016–2019), launched an agency in summer 2019 to earn cash, scaled through 2020–2021 (reaching tens of thousands monthly and expanding headcount), and discuss team culture, hiring, and the founder’s later decision to raise outside funding for a new mental‑wellness brand (Space Goods). The tone is candid, tactical and reflective, with practical advice on mindset, outreach, and scaling a service business.
Chapters
Right, fellas, back with episode 23 of the Midnight Pod. We've stepped up the fucking production quality. We've got two ring lights and another iPhone 13 mini. And for the first time ever, we're sponsored by Space Goods, which is obviously the new brand that I'm launching and have been working on in the background for the past, I guess, like kind of three, four months properly. And these guys are actually recent investors in, very proud to say we'll get into their story in a minute. But yeah, Space Goods is the fucking next generation mental wellness brand. I mean, long story short, it's going to change the fucking world. If you want to know when we're launching spacegoods co workinghammad.com click the link in the bio, put your email in there and a lot of good shit coming. You'll probably hear and see a lot more about this if you follow my Instagram. You've probably seen it a lot already. I've just got some merch to fucking celebrate it. But yeah, if you're interested, put your email in there and we'll dive into the pod. Episode 23 with the guys, Ollie and Joe from Saw with us. As I said, recent investors in Space Goods terms undisclosed. I've known you like fucking six years.
I think seven years.
Used to be called Oak when we were rowing. Won't go into why. To get cancelled. You guys run a successful agency, which I feel like. I mean, agency and Ecom Massive. I feel like they have pros and cons. We've discussed like different angles on the pod many times.
Yeah.
And yeah, I just want to dive into like loads of different things. But I guess as usual, the kind of first question, there's probably two sides because this is the second three man pod I've ever done, apart from the first one when Billy fucked off after 15 minutes. Rude cunt. But yeah, like, I guess probably firstly, how did you start the agency? Kind of rough background, maybe. Just like a rough background of both of you then how you came together and started the agency.
Yeah.
And went from there. Because it's been like what, three years?
Two.
Two years and a bit.
Two and a bit.
Yeah.
It's just over two years.
Yeah, Two years in October.
So, yeah. And now you're getting flown out by fucking Triple World to Dubai and shit.
Yeah, yeah.
Free trip Comp.
Dubai trip. Not bad.
Yeah.
20, 20 people in two years. It's been. Been fun, but challenging. But yeah, I let Joe go through first and I'll go second.
Yeah. So me and Ollie have known each Other for. Since year seven. I'd say longer than you. Year seven, Year eight.
How the I know that.
Yeah, yeah.
All.
All the stuff's coming out on the podcast all the way through school. I guess we both kind of had that entrepreneurial spark early on. We'd chat about stuff at school and everything. Then went off separate ways to uni. Obviously that's where you two met each other. Had a little thing that did pretty well. I had numerous failed attempts.
Yeah, we're getting to that.
Did a. Tried one of those free watch, just pay shipping, drop shipping stores. I didn't go very well.
I know a guy that apparently sold his brand his brand for a million quid. Doing that. Yeah.
If you first moved it, you were all a cashing in. But then everybody just knew it was a con. After. After a few years I had no.
Money within my overdraft trying to fund that. So didn't work. Few other things failed and then went off to do a year in industry of what I was doing after my degree and just learned the only thing I got from that experience was that I didn't want to do what I was studying to do. And that's when me and Ollie started chatting again. You know, every time we'd go back home for Christmas and stuff, we'd have, you know, a few pints, chat about stuff.
Yeah.
And then we tried to launch a few drop shipping ecom brands. Didn't work again because we had no money. So we were thinking, how do we start a business with no money? And that's where we thought obviously he had had experience from working with you. I've been in a few sort of sales, client acquisition, client facing roles. So we just basically combined. I'll speak to businesses, you do the other part. It's kind of how it started.
Just pull that mic down a bit, it's gonna fucking hurt your face.
Yeah, I think like full like fully transparent reason we did agencies because we had no cash. And obviously if you're doing an agency, I knew some. You taught me a fair bit about ecom ecosystem and stuff and you can learn a lot about that from YouTube. So with an agency you can just trade time for money if you've got nothing to start with. Like we had a bit of cash but we didn't have enough to. I feel like when we were starting it wasn't as easy to throw a drop shipping store up and just cash it instantly. It's probably like that again now with TikTok you could do that to a degree. But yeah, like when we started, we needed at least a couple of grand and we didn't have that. So we were just like, right, let's just put loads of work in, call people, email people, like, find someone who'll basically give us a chance of running their ads, pay us for that, and then we can take the money and build from there. And it's just gone from there to.
Do you know about the bikini brand?
No, I don't.
Yeah, we tried a few.
That was the first attempt, wasn't it?
We tried to fix something that was easy to market.
So when was this? Because I like to try and run these fairly chronological. My head. Because obviously we'll go into. Yeah, collaboration.
Yeah, that's like. It was. It was. This was 2019 when we. Summer of 2019, about August, just as I was finishing uni, Joe was finishing his place. About place.
My final year.
I guess he did a similar. Similar thing to you. You did a year in industry and hated it, didn't you?
No, I didn't.
Do you know it wasn't me. Oh, God, sorry.
No, no, sorry. No, I guess I did, yeah. Because I dropped out of uni originally in like 20, late 14 when I first started.
Oh, you loved it, didn't you?
You loved it.
You're the other way, did you not?
Well, no, because I have to create you here. I did entrepreneurial business managing, ironically, for six weeks in Northumbria. Newcastle. When you went to Newcastle. Because I fucked my edibles and then dropped out and got a placement in Mayfair, which I spoke about in episode 15, I think it was, which I liked. Yeah. Right, okay. Similar, similar. Yeah.
But Joe didn't enjoy it. And then we. We were just like talking about trying to find something to do. We were just trying to find something to start. Knew we wanted to do our own thing. You probably set me on the path of doing my own thing. To be honest. If you hadn't walked into my life and pointed me in that direction, then I probably wouldn't have done it, but got the bug from that. And then we were just like, right, we'll find something. And then the agency space was the one that we settled on.
Yeah, went for it.
Rakini one didn't work out. Yeah, we spent like a few hundred quid on bikinis and paying influences.
I might have heard about this a little bit.
Call it Swimplicity.
Good.
Nah, I definitely heard of that.
Yeah, it's a good name.
I think it's still Instagram.
If you search it, it's a good name.
If anyone fancies that.
Yeah, go for it. We'll sell the Instagram.
Yeah. So go back to how we met and. Because there's quite a lot of ecom stuff there.
Yeah.
Which I don't want to skim over and I feel like it's chronological. Go into that briefly from your perspective and. Yeah. Because looking back at that, I was thinking about it. I think about that a few times. I think, jesus Christ, that was pretty impressive for the age we were at. It was the setup we had.
I'd say it was heavily. You led. Not gonna lie. We're looking back like. Yeah, when I.
When.
When we met, I always referred to myself as a bit of a melt back then. Yeah. But like, yeah, you. I met you in 2016, probably at uni rowing, which you were.
Yeah, everyone fucking hated the rowing episodes. But. But, yeah, the point with rowing, I think rowing and sport in general teaches you to be a fucking mad cunt and, like, just do shit. Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
That work ethic, which is why I wanted to put those episodes on which everyone, I think, saw past that and just didn't like it because it won Ecom. But they're missing the point. Yeah.
Like, it's like constantly working on something.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's the same principle time, I guess.
Which is what?
Businesses, I guess, like, doing boring, kind of sometimes taxing stuff at a high level for this. Like, what's the term?
That was in 2016, wasn't it? Summer 2016.
Yeah.
You coxed our boat in the uni championships.
Went through six foot one in the front, bowed down.
Yeah, those. That was like the final year where sport, like, rowing was like my life compared to, like, entrepreneurship.
Yeah.
And then. So I kind of dabbled before, but was never serious. Was still at uni just before I dropped out.
So we. I remember having loads of conversations with you, half of them in the back of a Mini on the way there, on the way to training and back, about you working on, like, leggings brands.
Yes, I have Wavy leggings.
I remember you. The Wavy leggings was the one you told me about first. And I was like, fuck, man, that can be. Tell me more, Tell me more. We've got. Obviously you explained the situation there and I was like, I want. I want to get involved. So I was like, I'll just help you for free, basically. And then we went from there to working together more collaboratively on the next project, which was Loose Garms is what we called it, wasn't it? I don't know. Did you cover this in your first.
No, I didn't. This is the thing. I want to do an episode. I want someone to interview me for like the pre Neon beach scandal. Because that's where this podcast history started. But there was years before that.
You probably need a hybrid. Maybe me and someone else from. Yeah, London or whatever. Someone from.
Yeah, everyone loves speaking about themselves. So yeah, I'd love to do it the other way around, but.
You did. We did Loose Garnes, which was proper dropship spec. Just it was like right in that kind of Geordie Shaw era with like hero. London had just become like massive. Like they've probably. They're not just become massive, but they were like huge at that point. There was loads of brands about springing up. Certainly those like spray on ripped jeans, like spray on T shirts, sick silks, etc.
Yeah, all that.
And we started doing like ripped jeans and then these. The one that really booted off was the Sherpa jackets. Like these fleece Sherpa jackets.
Did I. Did I start the store? Yeah, yeah. This is when I just discovered Facebook ads in late 2016, which is probably like TikTok ads now.
Yeah, you gave me that, that course.
By that Ben Summit, which I did.
High level. High level course. One of the best course I've ever done.
It's the only course I've ever done.
Don't exist anymore. I got off the Internet.
Yeah.
Tried to get in it about three or four months ago just to see what it was saying and it's just vanished.
Yo fellas, quick one. First bit of promo for the pod. You may or may not have heard, I released a fucking E comm course a few months ago. Basically spent like six months making it. Cause I was in between businesses, as you probably know. If you follow my shit, I must say, 12 hours long. It's fucking quality content. I was gonna drop it at like 1500 quid with some bullshit guru y webinar and all that rubbish. But as you know, it's not my main thing. I'm working on a new brand right now. Very, very fucking much in the trenches. Which is why I think it's actually a better course than everything else out there. Cause it's built on real experience of my brands in the past and my current one. I think it's super, super valuable. If you're interested in E comm, you're already in E comm and you wanted to get into E. Starting a brand from scratch, then definitely worth investing in. Link is in the bio of this video or podcast. Spotify, Apple Music, wherever the you're listening or watching and enjoy the rest of the pod.
But we did that.
Yeah.
You, you, you started it. And then we, we did loose garms. We scaled it pretty hard until Chinese.
New Year and then I was basically rip drop shipping. Drop shipping. Ripped jeans. That's what it was.
Yeah.
Back when cpm, like cost of purchase was like two quid. Yeah.
And then we scaled it too hard into Chinese New Year. Didn't know Chinese New Year existed.
Yeah.
Then I spent about 10 hours a day replying to emails of people who just hated me.
PayPal, holes, all that.
Like a low key version.
I think we got it to what it's about 50 grand a month in revenue while we were in uni, which is fucking impressive.
Yeah.
Looking back now, I was like 19.
I think you were what?
I've been 20, maybe turning 21. Yeah. And then we had that office, which was a regis office.
Yeah.
Which we didn't need. But it just felt I'd stopped going to uni. I don't, I don't think you. Are you a bit more in? Yeah, I was more emotionally out of it. And then. Yes. Started running ads like. Like I said, doing like 30, 50 grand a month in revenue. Then we went private label, didn't we? Yeah. Basically made it Office, which is literally.
Four white walls and windows.
Yeah.
There's pictures of that. Yeah. You'd sit on my Instagram, scroll back.
Five years and tuna mayo out of a box three times a day, just hustling away.
That was trench.
And then there was like two or three call centers of all these corporate people around us.
That's actually legendary shit.
Yeah. Then we went own label. Well, no, then we got a bigger office and we thought we were born.
That was actually. So that was like Silicon Valley spec.
That was lit.
I know. It was Newcastle. REM was like a grander. It is.
It's a nice little spot in Ouseburn. And it was just us two in this like big old massive.
It was like 1500 square foot office, which doesn't sound massive, but it was massive for two dogs.
It was like two. It was like us two with desks and then like four meters of open space and then just a table.
Anyone watching go back on our Instagrams. I know. I've definitely got pictures of it from like 20, early 2017, which is hell, five years ago now.
Yeah.
But yeah, that was legendary. It was called Dusk. Let me change the name to Dust.
Then we changed it to Dusk and then we tried to private label it.
We had like three PL warehouse everything. It was like proper setup.
I remember just going through WhatsApp. I don't know why. I saw an image that you'd sent me about that time of like. Do you have like suede hats? Yeah, at one point.
Yeah. It was actually pretty lit.
Yeah, it was nice. She showed me all the sample stuff.
We were just. We were too immature.
Yeah.
It was actually a good business, like, at the right time as well. There wasn't that many bedroom clothing brands. No, there wasn't.
It was pretty high quality as well. We just got absolutely shagged by shipping costs from China. We had to fly it all in.
Yeah.
I remember there being an unexpected shipping bill or something and we basically had no money. Yeah. And then we just kind of agreed to part ways and then we got sued, didn't we?
Yeah, someone sued us for the name. Which is someone. Yeah, because it was like. Yeah. We didn't do the trademark research. We just called it Dusk.
Yeah.
Having a back and forth. I'm sure you wanted to call it Space or something, like something very similar. You're very. It's like that midnight vibe. I guess all your brands have had that kind of.
This is actually very nostalgic. I haven't thought about this in a while and.
Yeah, I think one of the problems was we weren't aligned in terms of position in life. I think you were very, like, out of uni. In hindsight, I could go back, but, like, hindsight's a beautiful thing. I didn't do it, so. Can't really regret it too much, but I probably should have took the plunge as well.
Would have been the next gym shark. Yeah.
Yeah, you'd have been. You'd have been. Well, yeah, that's the thing. Don't regret it at all. It's a learning experience.
Yeah.
But we were. We weren't aligned on. I think motivation level from you is probably higher than myself. You were probably more mature in a sense. Definitely more mature and kind of knew what your. You wanted to do, whereas I didn't.
I'd emotionally left uni already. I didn't give a. About any of the mates I had there, like.
Yeah.
There's a weird time looking back, like.
I didn't want to leave because my parents might. Well, my grandparents parted, so.
Yeah. Yeah, I remember that. And then it got complicated. I think I remember. Probably weren't going to do it too much because one of your mates put some money into it.
Yeah, yeah. He might watch this, but. Yeah, he did.
He did. In hindsight, we didn't know what the we were doing.
No. It's naive decisions. But again, a lot of learning. If I hadn't done that, we probably wouldn't have got to where we are in the agency, I don't think.
Yeah, because.
Because like the E comm skills, didn't you then? Yeah, like the E Com knowledge that I gained then and just the. Not. Not even like the direct knowledge then, but knowledge of the E Comm space. To know what to research and to know what went into running a successful e comm business is giving me that ammo to like advise people at a much higher level when we're. When we're working with them as clients now compared to if I was just running.
The mad thing with that looking back is that was like building a brand way before I get into like drop shipping scale.
Yeah, yeah, it was brand. It's a pretty decent brand as well.
Everyone now is like, oh, I'll just drop ship on TikTok, whatever to make bread to fucking start a brand. But that was a brand new. Hemmings bought our shit. Remember that? From 5 Seconds of Summer.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's got like 10 million followers. He didn't tag us, but he posted it. I was like, fucking hell. What's going on here?
This is a legit thing for jackets. One we ripped off Fear of God.
Yeah. Didn't we? Jerry Lorenzo's Fear of God, which is like a thousand pound jacket. They were ahead of the time. I've never seen it wild.
They went wild.
It was actually like some innovation.
Still got the dust.
Yeah. That was actually quite a creative brand.
Yeah.
You were always very on. You've always been good. You've always been pushing and being good at going for the branding. Like you never wanted to stick in the drop shipping space for too long when we were doing that anyway. I don't know about future ventures.
Do an episode on that beer, I guess then ultimately to conclude that section. Yeah. Like we what we fetch. You just.
I didn't speak to you for like two years.
Yeah, we basically just cloak. We amicably agreed to close down the business, didn't we? We just sold off the stock. Whatever. Whatever money was left. And I don't remember. I literally remember. I think we got a few grand out of it. Yeah. And then we just moved on.
Yeah. You.
Yeah.
We didn't speak to you for like what, two.
Yeah, because that's when I went traveling, started the whole drop shipping. Living lives for two years.
I did a dissertation and Yeah, I.
Thought, who is this civilian? That's what I thought. Honestly, I thought.
Yeah. Did a year, did two years, got out the other side of uni. Then once we got going in the agency, I got back in touch with you, I think.
Yeah, that was a bit later on, I think.
Yeah.
That have been start 2020. Yeah.
Full circle.
Yeah. So that was our background. What happened? So you finished uni and when. When did you finish uni? Both.
You finished 2019.
I finished 2020, yeah.
Even just a year after you were younger you? I did a gap year, yeah.
Did all the traveling stuff and then a placement year as well.
Yeah.
So you had next year at uni, didn't you?
Yeah, switched courses at uni. So I did four years. That's how I met you.
Yeah.
And then. Yeah, so I finished a year later than everybody would have in my ear. And then Joe finished a year later than me.
Yeah. And then whilst I was doing my placement, we started doing about talking about business ideas. When I'd go see my girlfriend in Newcastle because she was at uni there, I'd meet up with him because he was still there.
Where did you go?
Loughborough.
Fuck me. Why'd you go there?
It was the only.
I just assumed you went to Newcastle. I don't really know your background.
It was the only uni that offered a BSc in economics as opposed to BA, where I didn't need a maths A level.
Isn't it where you go if you want to do sport? Everyone's saying other than that it's shite.
It's good. Top four uni.
Is it? Is it Russell Group?
Yeah, it's pretty good uni.
It went from like 50 when I started.
Nowhere or something like.
It's pretty rural. Yeah, no, it's good. A lot of people do sport there. You get all the Olympians there. It's got the biggest gym in Europe there or something by floor space and. But yeah, basically we started linking up when I'd go see my girlfriend in. In Newcastle and then meet this little coffee shop and talk about stuff.
Yeah.
And then he was in an internship. It was like a SaaS sales.
Yeah, a SaaS company. Pretty good SAS company. And that taught me a lot about like, just. Yeah, again, the. More about like systems and processes. They were so like well organized as a company, which was interesting, but yeah, they were making ridiculous amounts of money.
You got a Shopify chain? You scarf?
No, no, that might be one of our client stores. I was doing. I was checking some on the way off here.
Someone tweeted the other day, you know when you turn the off, shit's getting real. And I was like, that was us in 2016. Like, we're well ahead of this Twitter sphere. I've been in the game a while.
It's like crack.
I honestly, I like, I punch anyone that has that on.
I didn't mean.
Yeah, you shouldn't be in the same room.
It's even worse that that one. Even mine. It's clients Shopify, claim it.
So I completely change the subject.
But it's all good.
What are you saying?
And then, yeah, whilst you were doing your junior internship. Yeah, I was on my summer break. I was going back to uni October. So we just hustled hard for like six, seven weeks.
It's pretty funny.
In his bedroom doing like.
Hustled on what? On the agency at this point.
Yeah, we just did learn off YouTube, you know, like how to get clients. He already knew the Facebook stuff.
So had you finished uni or you're about to finish uni?
No, I was in the summer break from my third to fourth year.
And you finished?
Yeah, yeah, I finished. But I was doing an internship. It's funny because you were. You were at J.P. morgan for the Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley, sorry, at the end of that and I was at an internship and we were both just like, he. What did you say to your guy who was working.
It was a 12 months internship and six months in. We had like a six month review and my manager was like, how are we finding it? I said, I'll be like straight up with you. I hate this. I'm not putting any extra effort in. Then I need to. And then like all my project stuff got like passed, passed off. I was maybe working like a dissertation for uni and I just bullshitted and said, oh, I need like five hours a week to be able to do this. And all I'd do is go into like this private room and collect leads to contact for the agency and then call them.
Like whilst at work, I'd do the same company. I'd have two screens. My boss is to my left, so I'd use the left screen. I'd have a spreadsheet, right screen would be doing work and I'd just be slamming leads in, slamming emails out. Just like. Yeah, so on our own thing going.
Because I think a lot of people watching them find that relatable. Like going back a bit before. Did you know before you finished uni that you weren't going to go the traditional route and get a grad job and all this. How soon did that start to tickle in your mind?
I think my plan, because I was unaware of how fucking easy it was within reason to start an online business. So I thought you needed loads of money first. And my plan had always been go to investment banking because you get paid shitloads, hustle for like 10 years, save those money, start a business that. But then I hate it so much. And then I was on, yeah, I was on YouTube and there's people making E Com drop shipping stores, like millions people starting agencies. So I was like, I'll just do it now and then quick, very quickly.
I.
When I went back to uni for my fourth year, no effort whatsoever. Revised like two hours for exams.
Yeah, I think that's the thing though. People see people doing very well and think they're very different to them. Like they think that they've done something like crazy. But usually they've got the exact very similar skill set. They might. Some people are obviously more intelligent, like have better skills, like in terms of intelligence. But most of the time it's just someone who's put more work in over, over a longer period, done the same stuff day in, day out, worked on something consistently for a long period of time. You can get there. To answer your question about the when did I. I wouldn't have done anything if I hadn't met you. I don't reckon. Like I, I was so like, yeah, just saying that when I'm on this, like, I think I was very like focused on doing like a degree. I was doing economics and going and trying to fight, just trying to find a job that I enjoyed in some high paying industry and just going to work and then I met you. And the thing that you told me that I honestly think changed my life was the Andy Fisella podcast.
Like you put me on MF CEO.
Like I've listened to every episode, episode one until now.
That was me like 2017, 2018.
I listen to it when I'm doing like workouts and all. If I'm ever feeling like unmotivated or demotivated, I put a few episodes, I've got like five to 10 episodes of that that just slam on and it's just like instant mindset switch and that, that like re from listening to that from like episode one to like 150. Literally reprogram my mind from start to finish. Yeah, it was, it was nuts. So yeah, I think that was big, big in terms of just being able to believe that you can do what you want. Like if you want to do something, you just go do it. That you don't have to go the traditional route, that the barrier to entry to starting a business online isn't that high if you do it.
I literally searched on YouTube how to make money online and then just picked something dropshipping didn't work. And then picked agency.
Yeah. Because ultimately everyone has. It's always interesting looking back because people say, how do you start? And stuff. It's always very scrappy by definition. Like it starts with just an interest in don't want to do what XYZ is doing. Like uni grad job. You know, you start YouTubing. It's literally that. Yeah, like the Internet fucking changed everything in terms of access.
Yeah.
But it has to come from an initial place of intrigue, which 99% of people don't have.
Gotta come from mindset. I feel like mindset has to be in tune before you start anything else. If you don't have the mindset aligned, which is what that podcast gave me is mindset. Yeah. You have the mindset to do something, you'll do it, you'll make it happen. You just have to be like relentless in the pursuit of whatever.
Yeah. That's something I overlooked when we. Because we've like coached a few people as well to do their own agency and stuff. And like one thing that we kind of overlooked in terms of teaching people was the mindset section. But like, because I'd read like loads of books, personal development books, before we'd even started a business. So you'd obviously listen to podcasts and done the thing with you. So that was already like there for us. Feel like a lot of people feel like they skip that step, but that plays a big role. We didn't really realize that until we kind of got going.
Yeah.
I think you can even feel it in like short term cycles. Like you can go through periods when you're super dialed in and your mindset's really right and then something might rock you off course and you feel like you're not getting as much done. And like, I feel like from the people we've, we've worked, we don't, we don't really do like full coaching right now, but we do like what we did like one to one with quiet with like 10 to 15 people.
Yeah.
Six or seven of them are doing like 40 to 50k a month. Really, really successful. And then the other side is like some people just couldn't make it, couldn't make it work. And I think it's A the trend is like, it's usually just need to get the mindset right and get that like foundational skill set and foundational motivation and the ability to just do, do the right. Like work on, work consistently, work hard over a long period. Right. And prioritize and things like that. Which people do overlook.
Yeah, because you mentioned that I like knowing me, whatever. And I don't know. I don't know where my initial motivation came from, but a lot of people have asked me this and have assumed in comments on DMs or whatever, they said like, oh, how have you got such a good network? Blah, blah, blah. Like literally about this podcast, my answer was, well, I didn't know a single fucking person in uni that was interested in entrepreneurship, let alone Ecom initially. Apart from Adam Reed, who was on episode seven, but I met him through a Facebook group. We were at the same uni, the same city is in Newcastle. I was in Northumbia, but we didn't go to uni together. So the answer is I didn't know anyone at uni or in my circle at all up to age 21, thereabouts. And then it would have been Adam Reed that spoke to you a little bit and then like forced you to fucking come and hang out with me because you're the only person that showed any interest whatsoever. So, like the answer to that is you don't fucking know anyone until you like try and know people. But putting yourself out there in like Facebook groups and shit, like, you have to start with like small, basic, like cringe shit. Yeah.
You have to make steps to gone.
To like want to wake up with fucking. Every. Every mate is Elon Musk. Yeah. It doesn't happen.
I think it's worse in the UK though. Yeah. In the us, entrepreneurial culture in the us, like Silicon Valley spec.
Yeah.
Loads more events. Loads more even.
Just the way that society and the government treat.
Yeah, way more.
Almost like encouraged.
Almost here it's like the American dream. It's like risky. Yeah, it probably is that actually, like when you distill it down, like, I feel like UK is probably very. We're known in the US for being like risk averse and very pessimistic and harder to sell. For example, UK and Americans just like.
Take my money literally the other day on a call.
Whereas the uk, it's like convincing them, showing them every, like, get out every guarantee possible. Whereas the US are just like, let's try it. I feel that's something you can't really change within the Culture of a short term, but definitely something.
I've noticed one thing as well, before I come back to how the agency started. It's like a phrase I heard and it's so fucking true. It sounds like cliche, but most cliches are true. It's like experience breeds confidence and there's kind of a few ways to interpret that. But, like, firstly, like, if you don't fucking know anyone or even speak to anyone online that, I don't know has started an agency or start an econ brand in my case, like, initially, when I. Before we started Dusk, I was in this Facebook group with a guy called Murray Edwards. Is that like. I don't know, one of the OG like, fucking gurus in that space. Some Australian don. And that's the only place I knew people. That's how I met Adam Reed. I just joined a Facebook group and then you see people making money online, which, because you need the most basic proof of concept, they are making money online. Oh, fuck me, that's amazing. Because I was working the burger bar when I joined this group. Like, it sounds like exaggerated, but literally. And that was the last job I ever had other than that Ecom. So, yeah, everyone needs, like, those levels of experience. Yeah. Reference points. Like, it seems ridiculous until you meet someone that's done that. And then obviously it levels up over time.
Yeah, that's what happened to us.
We.
We kind of.
Yeah.
So we watch all these gurus on YouTube and you know how it is when you've not. You just think everything's. You think there are scammers too good to be true. They're making money off the course and everything, so. But we just kind of put our faith in one and bought one.
Yeah.
Got a PayPal loan for a thousand pound, no interest, to pay back over six months to get this course. Because we'd been using free YouTube stuff and hustling again, no results from end of June to, like, September. So we're doing like 50 to 100 outreach, cold calls, DMS, emails every day for like, three months.
Yeah.
With zero results.
Yeah.
So that's when we decided to buy the course. And it did help with the structure and stuff. But that's one thing I think a lot of people miss out. It's just you gotta be willing to do like three or four months of nothing before it starts getting traction in some scenarios.
When. When was this? Sorry, just like 2000 to paint the picture. You were still in uni?
I was in my summer break from uni. I finished my place.
Did you Ever think about getting a grad job? No.
My parents slated me for so long, they were just like on me all the time about when you're gonna get a real job.
So had you decided to start a business of any kind, which ended up being the agency before?
Like, before. Basically just before I finished my dissertation. Yeah.
Yeah. I somehow got offered a job to come back to the placement after uni. Even though I'd given up six months.
I turned it down.
The past, like the last, desperate. It was so draining, man. It was just spreadsheet work. But, yeah, for the past, the last two months of that placement, we were doing that. I was getting Lee's cold calling stuff. Actually managed to book a meeting while still working there. And the people in the office, it sounds like, were like, oh, you know, it's not going to work, it's not going to do anything. But there's one of these. One of the guys who opposite me was just like, so cynical. You could just tell he hated his, like, job and he would, like, be like, joe, give up, man. Like, you're not gonna make it.
Like, it sounds like cliche, like an American film.
He was a bit. Yeah, it was like. It was a bit of banner as well. He was a sound guy. But also like, I was just there, like, nah, trust me, in a year I'm gonna have like a millionaire. You know, all this stuff.
Yeah.
And, yeah, literally side that point, we're going to start a business over summer.
And I said if.
I said if I drop out of uni, if I was earning more in October than I was at my placement and I was like a few hundred quid a month off, so I didn't drop out. Yeah, I wish I had to be honest.
Right, yeah. So we've gone through the fucking historic. Historic background. Let's go on to the agency shit. Because I feel like everyone watching right now is thinking, shut the fuck up. Talk about agency. When did that start to work? You said three months of outreach. And by the way, at this point, are you. Three months having left uni and it hasn't worked? And you told your parents you're starting a business.
Two months, I reckon two months of that. It wasn't not working. Like, we'd acquired a couple of clients, but it wasn't like. It wasn't like I could fend. I could fund my life.
No, not from. Got our first client in August.
Yeah.
And we started in June.
Yeah.
The client paid us 200 pound. Like absolutely nothing between two of us. And we had 200 pound.
Out you were still in unique.
Go back to uni in October.
Yeah. And did you do that?
Yeah, but I just literally put it, put it on the back.
By the time we came, by the time we came out of uni, we were doing like good enough numbers to justify not getting a job.
20K a month or something. Yeah.
So decent numbers.
Yeah.
Just started working. It started working fairly quickly. Like for us. Like all we saw in those first few months is proof of concepts. Like if we can acquire a business or a couple of businesses then it proves that people are open to this. Like I think people get caught up very much in like the, the online world and think that everybody knows how to market. But like there's a lot of businesses out there who have no idea how to sell to people.
Yeah.
And there's a big skill gap, a big knowledge gap and there always will be in some way. You just have to find a way of plugging that to have a successful service business. Like. Yeah, all it is is bridging the gap between like someone who needs something and someone who can't do it. Like you just kind of come in there and provide that. Regardless.
How conscious was the decision to start an agency? Like, like did it start as I don't want to get a grad job, I want to start a business, therefore I can do XYZ, one of which is agency. Was it just like YouTube, Google spec? Yeah, yeah.
It started with the we want to start a business, we've got no money.
Yeah.
And like don't want to go to traditional route. Let's start an online business.
Yeah.
Can't afford drop shipping.
Don't really want to do something long tail like affiliate marketing or search, SEO or something where we have to put seven months of working because we didn't.
Have that anti new Facebook ads.
And yeah, obviously I had the experience from you so it was a good link up.
So did you never think drop shipping or econ brand?
Yeah, we just couldn't afford it.
We had to take a PayPal loan for the course. Like we didn't.
Whose course was that?
Jordan Plotton.
Jordan Platinum.
You need to put a affiliate link.
On this shout out.
Yeah, it was a good course.
Yeah, I've heard of him. Of course someone said I should get him in the pod.
But like the thing is with agency courses, like to be honest, they're all the same. Like the way to acquire clients is you could is like it's a simple formula. There's nuances within it in terms of like, all right, we're going to try a different subject line. We're going to try a different outreach approach, like sending video DMS versus sending normal dms. We're going to, we're going to lead with more value versus just sending loads of like simple messages. The principle is the same. The course is going to teach you the same stuff regardless of who you usually take. I just try and find some ones that you align with most. It's like, so why did you choose his?
I think when you searched. I think I literally searched SMMA uk.
And this is after you'd already started and you thought, we need help.
He's like, well, let's waste those money on bikinis.
Yeah.
Something that costs no money. And he was the only person at that moment ranking on YouTube. He was British and SMA, everyone else American. And some of the slight differences I didn't quite like, to be fair, he was quite. Starting off, he was quite beginner then. His whole thing was called something different. He wasn't like massive, but it was cheaper, pretty cheap.
Yeah.
But like that course basically just structured everything that you can get on YouTube for free, which is why it was helpful.
Yeah.
But I honestly think the, the main differentiator was everything we had before that course, like the mindset stuff we spoke about. Because although a lot of people do well with the course, it's more so. Yeah, yeah. Because they give up. Because the course gives you everything you need but then you can't change the person that's learning the shit kind of thing. A lot of people just don't put the effort in. So.
And you were still in uni. You weren't in uni. Yeah. How does that work as co founders of a business? Because I would be. It's kind of how I felt with you. We were doing this loading thing. I was like, well, if you're not fully in this, why are you still. I'd be thinking, why are you still in uni if you're done?
Yeah. I remember we, we had a bit of a conversation. I remember saying like, oh, I'll pay whenever we start properly earning, I'll. I'll pay you more to make up for it because I just couldn't put more hours. But he's just pretty chilled about it.
He wasn't too bothered. Like we split the business. Right now I handle the whole team. So I, I manage all of the fulfillment, all of the, all of the ads, all of the client communications. Like all of that side of the business. Joe does all the sales side.
Yeah.
And it was about a Light. Obviously he had a client facing role within Morgan Stan. Morgan Stanley. I always get that wrong.
And he's got blonde hair. Yeah. So it sells.
As I said earlier, like he had that role. I'd never done any phone conversations. I can sell now from doing it for experience. Yeah. I don't sell from there. Like he's very good at sales. So it was like I knew that I like as much as I could do the Facebook if I didn't have anyone to do it for. It was pointless.
Yeah.
I wasn't too bothered. Like as he said, like when we started earning money, obviously I didn't have a job so I wasn't at uni, didn't have a student loan. So I took more of that to fund my life. But I also wanted it to do it with someone. I think doing things with a business partner. This is something we all also notice with coaching. A lot of people who do it on their own find it quite hard to get past a certain level.
Yeah.
Because they get. They had to think about too many things. Whereas like for us to it that that distinction of like I focus on everything from the onboarding experience onwards.
Yeah.
Has given us quite clear direction. I think it's allowed us to grow pretty fast because.
You need, you need two very different skills in agency space. You need the sales side and the technical side. It's really hard to find one person that has both skills at scale.
Yeah. Yeah.
You do find them. We've got some single agency owners that do really well but they'll very quickly outsource what they don't like. Sales or the ad side.
Yeah.
We very luckily had, you know, we both specialize in different areas. So.
Yeah, I've, I've often debated this with people. Yeah. Like obviously there's cases where co founders and, and solo founders work. I think there's more technically there's more successful businesses with co founders if you look at the stats.
Has to be complementary though.
Yeah. Because I've never done the co founder.
You were really anti co founder until recently and now you're pretty co founder orientated like I am because of experience.
Because I've learned the hard way how lonely and horrible it can be when things go wrong as a solo founder.
I think, I think what we are saying, like you've got someone to lean on. Like if you don't feel motivated, it's like, oh, you're not even motivated if you, if you're having like a.
Everyone has off days.
Yeah. Off day. It's like easy to bounce off Each other. It's easy to pick each other up. You've always got someone who's probably. It's very rare that you're probably both gonna have an off day. Someone's going to be driving forward somewhere. It's about finding people who complement your skills, I think, and you. You enjoy working with more than anything. I think.
It.
Yeah, it's easier to focus on certain elements. If you've got two people, you can split things out quite nicely.
Yeah.
Gives you different perspectives. There's benefits, but there's also the negative. But the negative for me is probably the only. The only negative to not having someone else in the business is. To having someone else in the business is probably monetary and maybe. And maybe a bit of like decision making if you don't align. But we don't really not align things.
Yeah. Yeah. I definitely think agency has a clearer distinction between two parts and something like E commerce.
When I've tried to persuade people who wanted to start off by themselves and I've said, you will be more successful.
Yo, fellas, quick one. You may or may not have noticed there's been a bit of merch, so to speak, in recent episodes. We've got two different things. We've got some of the retro style OG neon beach posters that designed like four years ago. You may have seen that on my Instagram. And then we've got some of the best selling OG viral style neon signs that basically did start that entire craze about two years ago now. So, yeah, if you want to add something to your home office, your living room, just anywhere sick, basically that you want to add that extra thing to and support the channel, then you can check that out. Link is in the bio Midnight Co shop. And yeah, just an aesthetic item to complement the process, I suppose. Cheers for watching and enjoy the rest of the pod.
You will likely most us with a partner. They've been like, oh, but I got a split. 50, 50. But it's like, would you rather have 50, 50 of something or 100 nothing?
It's Alex or Mosey always says, would you rather have a whole grape or a slice of a watermelon? And that's like, I know.
It's a really good night. You said that.
That's a really good saying. Like you'd rather have a slice of this massive piece than like grind away.
That is the approach I've taken with going down the fundraising route, which we can definitely go on to later on. I think that's.
I'll ask you some questions.
Yeah.
A bit of Flip. Flip round.
Yeah. No. Yeah. So what does it look like then in terms of like living situation for you? Like it's your three month left uni. You start the agency, you've been emotionally committed, you've gone balls deep with a thousand pound PayPal loan, which is fucking hefty.
You must have been broke edge.
Sleep well. I know to be fair, I'll say that. I remember crying when I got a two grand uni grant because I was like, fuck, I got money. I'm bit serious. I don't come from poverty but my parents didn't give me money.
Yeah.
So I had no money.
I remember.
I remember people like making sure people pay me for a quid if I'd like bought some like a sausage roll for him.
Yeah.
I was like, I need that quid.
We went to uni in the north. This is trenches. All these cunts watching it live down in like Watford and you don't know.
It went crazy fast.
Yeah.
You.
I was my parent, I was working out my parents. Converted garage. Proper box, like.
Yeah.
Four, four yards wide, four yards long, like Proper, proper square room. It's pretty unhealthy. Like I'd wake up, move three yards to a desk, sit there for six hours, get off, walk back in your bedroom, go to bed.
Yeah, yeah.
So bad.
That's trenches though.
Six yards is pretty.
Yeah.
I don't think it was six yards.
Six centimeters.
Yeah. Two steps, two and a half yards.
And I did that for like four months. Just obviously when we started I just slammed outreach because we didn't have any clients.
Yeah.
I wasn't four months.
It was longer than four months, wasn't it?
Yeah, probably. I was, I was in that for longer than four months. But before we got traction it was probably two months traction. So it felt good. Yeah, Just. Just in that room.
Yeah.
Dropped off at his. Brought a chair around. Yeah.
And roll up.
Were you still committed to uni at this point?
That was in the summer I did that. I'd go down to his every.
Every day because it was summer.
19 most days. Yeah. Somewhere 2019.
But then.
So then back went back to uni.
Yeah.
Living with like four mates in like a big house. Proper shooting house. Proper all.
Yeah.
Proper student life as well. But I'd just be like not going out on weekends, like they say to me. All right, I could tell, you know, you could do something because you just like never go out towards the last few years.
Yeah, I started doing that.
Just, just wasn't interested.
I remember when you started doing that.
Stopped giving a about trying to show I'm in a Facebook group learning about Facebook ads. I lived in a house with of nine people with five girls and four boys. Imagine the sexual tension. And it had a hot tub in the house.
Oh, God.
In jasmine in Newcastle 48 and George's Terrace.
That's jokes.
If anyone's watching from there, that's where we can.
But yeah, we basically, we had that conversation, like I said, of like, oh, yeah, you by default have more time to commit.
Yeah.
But then very quickly. So we started getting traction just as I was going back to uni. So our first client was like a local. She knew my mum, paid us 200 quid. Showed on them. Them, you know, them hats that people wear at the races?
Yeah.
Like, fascinating.
Yeah, that's what they called. Yeah.
One of them a local store.
Fucking weird. Posh. Yeah.
It was really, really out there. It was just really hard to get results for. With 200 pound, I'd spend like.
For.
A month as well. I was like, not gonna happen. But then off the back of that, we then got a fireplace and stove shop in. In, out in my town.
It was honestly, take what you could get. Yeah. And then you got results for them, to be fair. And we got results for both.
Was this honestly, social media ads?
Yeah.
Facebook, Instagram.
Facebook ads. Yeah. I went in, just Facebook. I rang him up and was like, local work with these. You know, kind of come in, went in and met him. Pretty cool guy. Sold it. 1,500 pound a month. I was so gassed. Oh, my God. This is like proof of concert. Like I said earlier, like, if I can sell this guy on that, you know, what else can we do? 750 pound ad spend. Absolutely smashed it for him, to be fair. But he didn't have the sales process to follow up on the leads.
Yeah.
But then after that you DM'd some.
I started lighting up Instagram DMS for clothing in the UK.
I think I'd have been on the ecom.
Yeah. I just started getting.
You didn't start thinking econ. We just started in 2019.
We started just being like, how do we make money? Like, what's the lowest?
Who the fuck will pay us?
So it's like personal network, obviously, like local.
We weren't just like, who would pay us? Like, we wanted to get people results and we got results for everybody we worked with in those early stages. It wasn't just like, take people's cash and not do anything for them. Like, it was obviously they had to have something that would be able to sell.
Yeah.
But I was just. From there I decided slamming Instagram dms, but I think we got on it quite early and I was just getting replies from. I still believe there's an element of luck to outreach. It's hitting someone at the right time when they need the service, when they may be switching agents.
How was our first client was look and like literally said we had a chat this morning and you DM'd us.
Yeah, it's like. Yeah. We signed a couple of clothing brands for like 1 to 2k a month retainers each and from there we just started. Started acquiring.
We had a meeting in London with this. This vintage football kit.
We had no money, zero money.
We. We couldn't afford the train down really.
So I drove down in my C1 Citroen.
Yeah.
Passed in Watford and then got the 10 pound train into London and met him in this bar. Got a bit loose, spoke about football for two hours. Ended up getting them on a free trial for the first month and if we did well, they'd pay us a grand a month after that. And then kept him for two years.
Do you not think like 40. Quick side note, like looking back in, like at the like broke hustle times, they always. They're the most beautiful in hindsight.
I wish I documented more. No, everybody gets to a point where.
They say sounds cliche again. It's cliche. It is cliche. But it's true.
Yeah.
There's so many examples. I'm sure we all have. But yeah, they're. They're the most special times. But they're the. You'll write about in 20 years when you've got a hundred foot yacht and 17 Latinas or a family in a nice house in the north, whatever it is.
But one of the two.
That's the magic of the trenches. Yeah.
I've got some videos and like you.
Never lose that mindset. You can be in the trenches in a nice flat in London like I'm right now. But again, like the real trenches.
Yeah, I've referenced that.
That's why characters are built once.
But that Alex Mosey said he did a video the other week. It was like hard work is the goal. Like. Like most people think that the outcome. But you'll never be fulfilled by the outcome. You might be for like a very short. I feel like you've been through this so maybe you'd be quite good to reflect on it. She felt that you've. You've said that like there's many things in life you can Buy. But none of them really give you fulfillment for an extended period of time. Whereas I feel like working on something that you enjoy, that you're happy to sit and work on for 12 hours a day provides you with, like, way more fulfillment than anything materialistic ever will. So that's why I think that saying is like, that hard work is the goal. Find something you're willing to work hard on consistently for a long period of time and detach yourself from the outcome. And you'll by default be successful.
Yeah.
Because you're working harder than everybody else. And that's what you've probably found with the brand now because you'll. You'll probably find that you enjoy working on that. Obviously, Neon was kind of. That, to be fair, that was a passion in terms of Granddad. Yeah. Like, you. You probably. If you'd done things differently there, that probably could have been that passion project that become ridiculously big. But I feel like you found that again with space, which a lot of people probably won't be able to find two of them in even a lifetime. So it's like, well, three big ones, both biggish.
Gotta do it a third time.
So I think that's quite like a thing that not enough people try to pursue. Like, a lot of people pursue. Money, Car.
It's social media in it. Like, people have become obsessed with the idea. Said it in, like, episode 18 or whatever. Fucking. I feel even more now like young entrepreneurs, particularly guys. Because most of my guys. That's just the fact. Yeah. Like, they're just looking for a way to. How can I never have to work again asap? I. E. How do I make enough money for that to work?
Yeah.
Whereas what they should be doing is what can I work on 15 hours a day? That doesn't feel like work. And that's how I'll get rich enough so I don't have to work, but I still work. So on to. Yeah. That's what the most successful people do.
Yeah. Like, people who actually are trying to.
Do some rug pull. Yeah. Because they don't want to work again.
Yeah.
It's not work.
I think people as well get a bit mixed up with what passion actually means. Like, I wasn't. Like, I'd wake up and be like, oh, my God, I can't wait to, like, cold call 50 people. It's not like. It's not like passion like that. It's just. It's just being able to cope with doing something so much like you said. So it doesn't feel like work.
Yeah.
It's not like you need to love absolutely every minute because one thing I struggled with when I started was I'm not passionate about anything. I don't actually love doing anything. But you don't have to be like that passionate. You just have to be able to do it to a level that you can actually be consistent with because otherwise you give up.
Yeah.
But you don't have to spend hours trying to think, oh, you know, I really like this, really that, and then try and do something because it's sometimes impossible to find that thing that, you know, makes you feel like, amazing all the time and make a business out of it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree, I agree, I agree. I also think there's something to be said about a lot of people in the entrepreneurial space not actually optimizing around what they want to do. Like, we've got, obviously we've got a big team, we've got about 20 people and we've been having a lot of conversations recently about, like, what, where do we want to take the business? And I feel like a lot of people think they want to chase like 10 million pound months, but not enough, not enough people could take time to reflect on what that would mean for the lifestyle and whether that's actually what they want to optimize around. Like, we were like, do we want to have an agency with a hundred people? Does that align with like how we want to live our personal life? And it's like the answer right now is definitely no.
Yeah.
And I feel like taking time to step back and be like, Right. Because that's what like the business is like a vehicle to a lifestyle. That's why most people start them anyway. Yeah. And, but, but then once people get into the trenches, they don't step back and be like, does this align with the lifestyle I'm pursuing? Is this actually providing the vehicle to get there? Or is it just like a, an endless train to like, some outcome that I don't actually want and loads of stress and like, bigger isn't always better. So I think that, yeah, there's a lot of that around. Ties to passion in a way. Like, you need to find the outcome that you want and then like.
Yeah, you also have to get in the trenches to find your passion. Yeah, exactly. Because you've got no experience in said niche. You just have to start like, it's like, yeah, you don't know if you're passionate about brand building, if you've never done like even opened a Shopify store. You know what I mean? Yeah.
It's like, it's like people are passionate about stuff. They don't kind of realize that I wasn't passionate about sales or like, yeah, selling, marketing. I was. I just enjoy talking to people.
Yeah.
And like learning people's stories and networking with people. I don't, you know, go to careers fairs at uni. I just like talking to people and hearing about the story. You're like, just very interested in like E Com.
Yeah.
And like, so I'm working out things.
So I'm not passionate about Facebook ads, but I'm very passionate about like consulting with business owners about the bigger picture. But, but, but I wouldn't have known that if I didn't have an agency which allows me not to spend all my time on E. On Facebook ads. It allows me to spend my time on calls with business owners. Been like, right, well, we don't need to spend more on Facebook. We need to redirect our spend over here. Because you're blended. Like you blended roas or your, your margins make your opportunity here is bigger than here and, and so forth. Like, yeah, I feel like you can find your passion by just like working in a certain area and you'll come across it.
Just start doing something, man. That's it. Just start doing something. Yeah, people just delay stuff so long it never happens.
Yeah. It's like this podcast with it. Like, easy example. Like I'd say I fucking. I'm quite passionate about doing this podcast now. But it's not like I never really planned to start a pod. I'd always play around with content of some sort. Then I just wanted to fucking talk about the shit I went through. It was therapeutic. And then I was off. People relate to it. Little dopamine, boost approval. And then it was like, oh, fuck. I like drinking red wine and talking to like minded cunts. And then it became an excuse to get intelligent people to come into my flat. Yeah.
Like basically.
And then it was like, oh, people actually like listening to this. And because there's some actual background and context there, I feel like I'm reasonably qualified to do it.
Yeah.
Rather than doing it when I was 18, which I did have a YouTube channel when I was 17. 18. It wasn't a podcast, but like, what the was I talking about? I had nothing to talk about. Yeah. There was no passion there. Blank slate.
Get hung up on trying to find the passion. Whereas like, if you start doing something, the passion like creates itself.
Yeah.
Yeah. I'm not saying that. There's also a line. I feel like you can't it's like it's okay sitting follow your passions, but you need to like be able to like, like not facilitate but like survive first.
You don't want to be the starving artist.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly that. Exactly. That's a perfect way to it put. Put it.
Yeah.
You have to. You pursue your passions to a degree or you side hustle your passion. Passion. Until it becomes like. We obviously took the jump from uni, but if you've got a job then you have to kind of find that medium between the two.
There's some Japanese thing called ikigai which I talked about in my econ course, by the way. It's in the fucking bio and it's so true. And it's like the perfect thing for anyone to work on is the intersection of icky guys. The concept of like, I think it's like. Yeah. It's like something you love, something that has a market and something that can be monetized basically. So anyone can probably find that.
Yeah.
You meant to draw three circles, aren't you? Like money, passion and like.
Yeah. Skills.
So it's like find the thing that's in the middle. Ideally.
Example, like if some don's watching this. I don't know, I love Xbox but my mum says I can't get a job in that. Oh, I don't know. So for example, you love Xbox. There's a demand for, I don't know, gaming retailers to fucking do Google Ads.
Yeah.
And that can be monetized and actually like Google Ads because it's kind of a lot of the same skill set as gaming. So on a computer and shit. That's one example off the top of my head. That's probably a billion others. But just Google it, icky guy. And it will make a lot of sense for a lot of people.
Yeah.
That's a good framework to use for that because. Yeah. There's no point being passionate about blue pandas. I don't know. And like you can't monetize it. So you work in KFC and hate life. Yeah.
That's why we were very much money focused to begin with.
Yeah. I feel like it's the better way to be like make the money, then find your passion. I don't feel like there's any shame.
Yeah.
Either. Because I'd rather make my money for myself than go and work for someone else and not enjoy it and not be able to put the time into yourself and develop something that's yours.
Yeah.
Once you. You don't need to make that Much money to be self sustaining. Like people think it's like some ridiculous number.
Just like living costs, there's loads of.
Way, yeah, you should reduce your living costs if you need to and then make enough money to cover that. People like to have super high living costs for superficial reasons and then feel like they need to make that up with their side projects. Whereas if they just like did the other, did the other way around and then went on to pursue the passion, then there'd be. They'd find it easy to, to like sustain themselves and then move on to that passion pursuit.
That's what I got into drop shipping because when we started off the business I was like, well I ain't got enough money to build the next brand really. Like because I wanted to go full into like not drop shipping it. So I was like it, I'll go drop shipping, started traveling, etc. Etc. Etc. And then you know, very intentional. It's just like I need some more money, need to meet more people. Did both of those things and then it leads to a bunch of other things like network experience, learning ups and downs financially like any business.
Yeah, jerking traveling had a big impact on entrepreneurial life for you.
Yeah, honestly like you've both traveled.
Actually, I've never tried.
Yeah, I did like two and a half years like full time traveling. And in summary for anyone that asked me this, because so many people do ask me this on our dms, like younger guys particularly like my advice for any entrepreneur wannabe entrepreneur glugging the mic.
Sorry.
And I say this to anyone because it's what I did, I think like, and by the way, money's not an excuse because anyone can get 500 quid together for flight to Asia.
He lived off toast.
You just can't, you just can.
If you can't 7 11, you can't.
You just, you're just not. Yeah, you don't want it enough. I worked in Waitrose and got a burger bar and I'd like two grand to my name and then literally went to some event in Singapore in 20. September 2017 I think it was. It flew to Singapore by myself from a Facebook group. Didn't know anyone that must have been.
In a life change.
Swear to God. That was like butterfly flight effect. I met people there. I'm still like really good mates with now, but it had a knock on effect. And then I went traveling in Australia and look at my old YouTube channel by the way, which is also linked in this case to vlog.
A lot of this good shit.
And then I Went, yeah, whatever. I got. Went to Bali and that was like life changing because if you're. You want to get into E Comm agency, go to fucking Bali. If you're like, you don't know people, go to Bali. It's got more expensive, it's quite cheap to live in. Everyone there is an entrepreneur of some kind, a nomad, whatever you want to call it, they're just not civilians. If you want to escape XYZ 9 to 5, go there.
I've seen that so much like move abroad.
That's where I went.
Completely replace your network and deal with.
And you have to feel nervous. If you don't feel nervous in your early 20s, in my opinion, you do something wrong.
Yeah, you've got nothing to lose. Yeah. I feel like we're always instilled from parents probably that you should be risk averse in your 20s, but your 20s are when you should take.
I think ignore your parents is another massive bit of advice. In most cases, once you get to.
30, you have responsibilities. You have like a family, for example. Obviously you need to be risk averse but like, yeah, if you're 20 to 27, 8, 9, even 30, like depending on your situation, like, yeah, take huge risk. Like what's the biggest downside?
Biggest risk is taking on again. It's never cliche but it's true.
20 year olds have less than like what, 10, 20 grand to their name.
Yeah.
If you.
I didn't have ten grand.
Yeah, I didn't. I had negative money. If you lose all that, well, it doesn't matter. You just get it again in a few months.
I think I remember having this chat with you. It was like we kind of rationalized it and of it's kind like what actually happens if we don't make this agency work in a year. Like we've got to start work a year later than everybody else. It's like. And you've learned a. Yeah, learned loads of skills like sales calling people more confidence, like soft skills like that, which a lot of people don't have.
Yeah.
Was that Singapore? I feel like that Singapore event was probably one of the transformational event times.
I look, do you ever just lie in bed at night and think, I'll do this and like just like flashback the past few years of your life and like get all deep sometimes if you do it with like Drake playing, it's all over. I'll start missing girls that I've never met. I think nostalgia is actually like one of the most beautiful feelings. It's like it's like a.
It's a beautiful sadness as well. A lot of things market off nostalgia. Loads of companies market psychology. So it's what I think is one of the most powerful things is nostalgia.
How do you define nostalgia? I define it as a beautiful sadness of time gone by. Pretty solid that this feels right. I know because I was in this fucking restaurant the other night, last night with Tyler and Fred and some kid was playing guitar like some busker in the place. Started playing like Oasis and I felt like nostalgic for a time I didn't even live in. I was like, hell, it's powerful.
I just have happy memories to simplify it.
Yeah. Bring it back to the agents then before we get too deep so we're not halfway through. So summarize up to the end of 2019 then. So you. So you started in summer 19. Bring me forward six months to the end of 2019, which is near about where we got in touch again. What is. What do the numbers look like? So what's the business alone? So start 2020. We got two, six months in, we had three.
End of 2019, we were doing about. We had about six clients. We probably did about 10K.
We're doing like 6, 6, 6K.
Never remember so long ago, maybe a bit less.
Cuz when we had that coaching with.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that was in February of 2020.
4, 5K a month, end of 4.
5, 6K a month.
End of Jan. And Jan 2020.
Because it's service based. It's just you two.
Yeah.
You're making as much as you would in a grad job at this point. Yeah.
Split between from nothing. Three, four months of hustle for nothing. And then three months later earning more than I was earning in my. My place in here. It was nuts.
Yeah.
And then we went from there. From there. It was pretty like rapid growth in 2020. We. We like hit it pretty hard. We went from. Because Covert hit like there's no doubt. Covert had a massive positive impact on us. Yeah, it had a massive positive impact on everything in ecom.
April, everything.
January 3rd, March, April, May. Time was like bigger than Black Friday for a lot of brands in the first lockdown.
Yeah, I remember April. April to July 2020 were the best month to make on.
When we were running Midnight, we were. You're cleaning some serious profit.
Yeah, like a million a month combined. Like. Yeah, the two brands, more than a million a month for like five months.
So we scaled pretty hard. Then we were doing like 50. I don't really mind Sharing numbers. If you don't. I don't really don't think it really matters. We were doing like 50, 60K a month. Pretty consistently mid, mid, mid 20, 20. 2020, I think.
So you went from 6 grand a.
Month to 60 grand a month in like 5 months.
5 months.
When we started coaching people, I remember that was like April, we were doing about 20k a month.
Then from there we went from. By like end of summer, we were doing like 50, 60K a month.
Yeah. Because you came on to manage both my brands in. I think it was April 2020. Yeah.
We had some big numbers.
I was like, oh, fuck, you're not civilian. That was the perfect time as well because, yeah, midnight was getting like a 4x roas. Yeah.
Especially on jewelry. That was absolutely outrageous.
Yeah. Because the margin's so big. And that's when Neon just started to properly fucking take off, like pre problems.
You were our biggest client by a.
Mile other than one of the.
We were like, yeah, we need another Neon.
Yeah, this is nuts. Yeah, some faction.
In hindsight, I should have given you more advice on the whole, on the whole set of the business, but I didn't feel qualified at that point. If you came along now, then I'd be more like involved. But at that point, like, yeah, we're just getting stuck into more of like, we knew Facebook ads, but we've. We now. We now try and be like outsourced CMOs. So we try to give advice on everything. Not just one thing, like we'll guide on creative, email all the ads. Like, we'll try and be very much. That's how we try and train all our staff as well. Like someone who can make a decision for the whole business, not just Facebook. But at that point we were very, very one, one channel orientated.
Yeah.
So through that time it was just me and Joe. At about the. About September, October, we brought on.
Wait, it was just you and Joe? It was just summer 2020.
No, we had Matt who used to work for you.
Yeah.
Who's our CMO now?
There's two of us for about 10 months.
Yeah.
We brought Matt on as a contractor.
Yeah. But you got to 60 round a month. Just two of you.
No, not 60. Probably about 30.
Yeah, probably about 30.
So fat.
It was good.
It was good.
Yeah.
Long days.
I was too nice in 12, 13 hours a day. It was pretty heavy, but it was good.
Yeah, it was heavy.
Yeah.
Then we brought Matt on as a contractor who obviously did a lot of influencer stuff for you. Who knows his. He's run a couple of drop shipping stores. Knows his stuff.
Yeah.
Just like he's our CMO now. Incredibly switched on bloke. Like.
Massive shout out to Martin.
Yeah.
So good at what he does. Couldn't be as big as we are now without him. Definitely not. We brought him on.
But he's asking for a raise. Eh.
Giving him a good raise.
We ran through till we ran with just him as a contractor because he was working at an investment bank and he didn't want to. We offered him a job.
Yes.
I remember that. Because he quit working for me because he sold his soul to like. What was it? PwC or some bollocks.
He left. It was pretty nice.
One of the Big four minders saying this. Just.
I don't think the elusive big four.
He left a.
They take the souls of many a graduate.
It was a decent salary. He left a decent salary to come and work with two random blokes.
That's what he didn't.
It was.
Yeah. He didn't want to work. He said no the first time and then he went and didn't enjoy it. So he came work for us after.
It's like four weeks after he started his job. He's like I want to come.
Yeah.
He's killing it. So we went with just him until January of 2021, at which point we hired another one of our mates.
So it was just 3 of the.
End of January until January 1st in house hire. Literally had his 12 month anniversary about 3 days ago.
Yeah. Yeah. So just to keep up schedule. So you get to the end of 2020.
Yep.
What sort of numbers are you doing and how many clients you got?
20, 20, 60 kish.
We were stuck. We were under like 6k for a while. It was a bit. Struggled for a bit.
And there was just two of you there?
Two of us under contract.
Yeah.
Each client we bring on would be like a thousand, two thousand a month max at that point.
So didn't have many whales.
Exactly.
So it took a while to keep leveling up in height.
Yeah.
Like so.
Well.
Yeah. We had 50, 60K. There was two contractors in US too. I was managing loads of ads accounts.
Like 30 or something.
So. All right. Just.
No, not that many.
So to simplify things then. So 25, end of 2020. So you're doing quality 60k a month. There's three people in the business. What does a day look like split between you? Are you literally outreaching 12 hours a day on calls, accounts?
He was doing some ads.
Some.
So he knows odds. Like he Knows how to. I feel like if you. To be better at sales, you need to know ads.
Like.
Yeah, I spent the first time doing ads as well as sales. He was still doing some sales at that point. It was very undefined, very all over the place. He. We were then slowly starting to transition into, like, right, you do ads, I do sales. But yeah, I mean, typical day would be pretty, like, to the Wire, it'd be like, we need to do this.
And you just finished junior then.
Yeah, I finished uni in June 2020.
Put that piece of paper on the shelf. Yeah.
Dusty now. Yeah.
You should go a bit deep on the podcast. I got, like, pretty. I got quite bad anxiety when I was at uni, like, pretty bad in, like, my January exams because I was so much going on trying to juggle uni and business and then decided to park uni because it was too much stress that I didn't need. And it should be like stressing that I didn't do anything for the exam and then be like, but I don't even care about this exam. Why am I stressing?
So you didn't finish it or you just didn't?
I did.
I finished.
Got two. Two. I was meant to get first. I went from a first to two. Two in the space of like a month, six months or whatever. Just because the agency is way more.
Just to jump in there. But that's like, that's probably. If you. If anyone finds himself in that situation, it's probably. It's probably a sign that you should drop out.
Yeah.
If you were to reflect, like, you didn't do it for reasons and like, it's hindsight. It's a learning, like, you can't go back and you. You don't regret it. But, like, that's probably an example of why if you. If you could go back into those shoes without. With what, you know now you're probably 100 drop out.
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I had like anxiety attack in my exam.
Yeah, exactly.
It's horrible.
It's like if you've got something that's.
If I was dying.
Yeah. Mad.
It was not good. Yeah. So then I switched focus. But yeah, full time as of like June 2020, me and him. And that's when it was.
We were about.
We were stuck about 20k until that point and then it was like, boom. I was scaled every month consistently. We have done ever since.
Really. What was. What was the difference?
More time.
He could put more focus in and I could focus on more. Like, because beyond a certain point, like, you have to start bringing people into the business and then the only thing that matters then is like putting the right people in the right seats with the right systems and processes. If you've got the right processes and systems, training and operations and you put the right people into those, you'll get the good outcomes and that is everything. But I did until then.
I did.
I could only we didn't have enough time or I didn't have enough time to build those out. As soon as Joe came full time, I could spend time like working on communication systems, on boarding systems, everything from front to back. Training, processes, commute.
Yeah, everything.
It just changed the game. And from there we were like. We've been on. I'd say since then we've been on pretty like ridiculous growth path.
We did since 280 year on year growth from 20, from our first second year.
Yeah.
In sales.
We didn't hire our first person until the start of 2021, who was actually a mate of ours who worked at another agency. And then we've just hired our 20th person. We've got a while.
So 2021 was when highly within a.
Year went from one employee to 21 now. 20. Yeah, 21.
Well, 22 when with the person who I've lined up next.
Yeah.
And we went from like one service to now having multiple services, different departments, heads of departments.
Yeah.
I think we did wild.
Yeah.
We did about 30, 35K at the start of 2021. We did 198K at the end of 2021 in December.
Yeah. Fat.
I don't know. I don't know if anyone's that transparent, but I don't really care. I think it's good to give people like numbers and I'm not transparency. Like everybody can eat. There's plenty of business out there in the E comm space. Especially I've got that saying off a guy called Nick Shackelford, like he hammers that everyone can eat. And like that is so true about agency and E comm. There's so much. It's so early. It feels late, but it's so early.
Yeah, yeah. So agency versus E comms. I feel like that's an interesting. Well, not debate. It's an interesting conversation. Do you have you ever thought, having now obviously worked with a fuckload of E comm brands. Yeah. Have you ever thought the grass is greener on the brand side?
We've had a lot of thoughts because.
I've often thought that about the agency side. I've said it before, I don't Think.
The grass is greener on either side. I think it's dependent on so many factors. There's a lot of very bad econ brands.
Yeah.
There's a lot of brands that have terrible profit margin, terrible operations, terrible customer experience. All of them unintentional.
Unintentional.
But there's also a lot of agencies who can't scale because they're missing the. Missing certain pieces or they're not very profitable or they're churning too many clients. I think the same can be applied to agencies like a lot of agencies have done.
Failed.
Yeah, there's a lot of. There's a lot of agencies who have terrible products. They're not prioritizing client experience, terrible customer service because they're not prioritizing the right things and they can't sell. So they've got like. I feel like.
Yeah, keep speaking. I'm topping it.
I feel, I feel like. I honestly see it as 50, 50. Like I, I would love to. I want to do an ecom brand from a passion perspective. I want to find something I really enjoy and want to do it, which is. Yeah, yeah, obviously. Yeah.
Cheers.
Yeah. It's difficult.
I've seen that a few times.
I think both have pros, both have cons. But if you do an ecom business right, it's obviously. I feel like right now it's a gold rush. Like it's. There's so much vent. Venture capital flowing around in it. There's so much scale, there's so much opportunity. Tick Tock's just a. Another thing that's just a bit of a gold mine right now. Yeah, there's a lot of. But at the same time, like the agency space is never going to change that. There's always going to be skill gaps between companies and agencies. There's always going to be opportunity there. There's plenty of agencies that have sold for the same amount of ecot as econ companies. You just don't hear about as much. Yeah. Sexy.
Yeah.
I feel like, I don't know, the thing I got the agency space is obviously it's like high ticket eco. It's like a high ticket subscription econ business.
Yeah.
Because we get people that agree to pay like you know, five figure fees for 12 months and they're like contractually obliged to that. Like if imagine you had a product, an econ business like that, that's, that's.
Yeah, it's very different in it.
Like econ's just more sexy. 100.
You know, the reason that I've never done an agency. Even though, like him, I think it's way more cash flow, like, as a gen. If you compare average to average, I'd say agency is more profitable. Yeah, we have no costs. You compare the average agency to the average econ brand. Yeah, because, like, people seem to forget running an E comm brand. I actually had a call with some guy, it's hard that messaged me on dm. I just got on call with him because he DM me loads of times and he was, he was doing sick numbers, drop shipping. He was talking about these massive margins he's doing. Anyway, we got into like and I just said, mate, like, brands make 10 net profit. That's it, like tops. But that's the benchmark. Like, even in terms of scale. Yeah, business like gymshark, which everyone creams over if you go on their company's house. You see their margins. It's like 8%, but they make 8%, which by the way is mad on 500 mil. But yeah, whereas agencies, what, 50, 60% net profit.
40, 50 year.
Yeah, thereabouts.
60.
You could put. You probably could get it bigger. It's where we prioritize a lot about, like team experience. Like, we try and prioritize like our employees. Happiness is a big thing. So, yeah, there's pro Ecom is more sexy as a business. Like, it is, you know, it is.
For me and like. Yeah, I just feel like I couldn't run. Oh, it's me personally, not everyone. I couldn't run an agency because I'd be so annoyed. It's not my brand.
Yeah, even.
Because I've always been like in my head, a brand guy, even. Which is probably why I've had so many brands but never stuck with one. I'm sticking with this one, by the way. But yeah, I don't know.
Yeah, but you could. Do you not think you could run a branding agency? I think you could probably. Like, if you have people who.
I think I'm fucking good at branding. Like. Yeah, that's where I get excited by. I've always been a front end person. I started designing logos. That's how it started any of this. Then I was like, oh, how do I make money? Sell T shirts and put a logo on them and then you gradually figure it out. But yeah, I don't know, maybe.
Could you. Do, you know, could you not envision yourself charging 5k to some random company to brand them?
Nah, I don't know what it is. I just have this vision that I'm gonna build this disgraceful brand which is this one.
Yeah, it's gonna be.
That has to be this one. So many things point to this next one being like the one.
Yeah, I actually feel that I do as well. I think it's. I think you've got.
It's been a long fucking journey by the way.
You've got a. You've got the perfect intersection of knowledge, timing in terms of the market. You're probably early.
And also pain from everything going so.
Wrong before which like so much experience.
I think I tweeted the other day, fucking had a glass of wine now, so we're starting to get a bit gas. Honestly, feel this. Like, what did I say? I said something along the lines of like, when you make a load of money and then lose a load of money and you still as passionate about it as you were before, that's pretty dangerous. Yeah.
Like honestly, you found. And you've got the goal.
Yeah, I feel passionate about that though because it's like I would. I would genuinely say this and I mean it. And you'll probably say the same thing about the stuff you do. Like, I would rather die than live a life not pursuing my potential. And the I'm passionate about. I actually mean that from the core of my being. And a lot of people will say that's like cringe, whatever. I think most people watching probably can probably relate to that. And I think if you don't feel that way, you should. Probably shouldn't pursue something. You should pursue something else.
Yeah.
100 man. I. I think I was like secretly depressed at my job in my placement. I just didn't know.
Yeah.
I was sleeping like four hours a night just because I remember reading up on it. It was like, why. I just like wouldn't want to go to sleep because I didn't want to wake up to go to work. And I remember reading about it was called like something procrastination where And I was operating on like four hours sleep for like six months, which is obviously so bad for you. And it was literally because I didn't want to work. And like imagine how many millions of people operate like that.
Yeah.
Steep. But like. Yeah, I feel the same. Like I look at people now. I think, oh, I imagine I was doing that now for that another three years since I left. At least she would rather be dead than do you know, than doing what I was doing then. Sorry.
It come. I think comes down to people not having. Not having that experience breeds confidence thing like. Or reference point because like even though I fucked the last business, so much confidence Everyone I know is crushing it in their own thing. And I've done it before twice. So it's like of course I'll do it again. It's not so I never even a shred of doubt.
Proof of concept as well.
It just takes time to physically do it. Yeah.
I think not having a reference point, I also think like not enough people, like people think they need to be, they're going to be an expert in something in a very short time period. Whereas I feel like you need to put a lot of like I don't think I'm even mildly an expert in agency ecom. We've worked with probably 250 Ecom businesses at this point. I still don't think I'm an expert in anything to do with ecom growth.
Oh yeah?
Yeah. Like experience, booth confidence.
You are.
But I don't think I am. Well, yeah I am to a point. But I feel like yeah, compared to most people probably. But I think you need to. You've been brand building ecom for five years. Like five, five years is a good event horizon for, for like expertise in something in my opinion. Think about how long. Think about if you refer to a doctor, a doctor's a good extra, like to like pull it back to someone who's more, a bit more traditional. But they have to train for like what, five, six years before they become an expert. And even like, and even then they don't get to be like fully qualified. They have to go for another process of shadowing and stuff. Yeah, it's like why do you think? I feel like if people treated like online entrepreneurship is that kind of event horizon, like focus on making some cash so they can, can be self sustaining, which isn't that hard. But then if you were seeking like real like long term output in terms of like big exits, it's like five year event horizon.
Yeah, minimum.
I still feel like I don't have reference points. Your reference point always shifts as well. I listen to some podcasts and there's some SaaS founders getting like 10x multiples on a 10mil business like this, the SAS game. If you're in the ecosystem 22. I honestly think if you're in the ecom space like a, like if you're in the E Comm space, you should listen to more things from the tech space. Because the tech space we do, we work with a couple of crypto companies who are doing like have done Series A. They've got like funding to like 50 million. 50 million funding?
Yeah.
And like whenever I Work with them. It's like they're operating at such a higher level than Ecom. Even Ecom. Like they're. Everything about them is like hyper optimized. Like there's so much more advanced and that's where. That's where I take a lot of inspiration for the money's nuts in it. Yeah. Like there's so much money in tech.
Tech and SaaS went from 5k per month I'd spend to a million a month I'd spend in a month.
You're running that now about here for 1:1 crypto. I hope their card didn't decline.
Our problem is finding money. Finding places to spend that money for crypto right now is a nightmare because everything's regulated. So yeah, the venture capitalist money that's flowing in crypto and SaaS is just next level compared to E Comm. It's a level above. So it's a good reference point of like, alright, so you've got some success in this space now. There's levels to everything and they're at the next level up. It's nuts. So we're discussing vc. So I wanted to flip the script on this podcast and ask you a bit of a question about why you went down the funding route with space to start with and then that could segue nicely into that. Yeah. Little venture.
Yeah.
So yeah. What led you to that? I guess you've obviously been a solo entrepreneur since like 2019. Where did that. What. What pushed you?
That was actually more strategic and intentional than maybe people assumed. I guess it was fundamentally for two reasons. Firstly, I mean, I could have funded it myself. I wouldn't have put probably as much money into it. Yeah. But I think the main reason I want to do that was because I think by the time. Well, by the time we're recording this. Well, by the time this comes out, episode 22, which is very relevant to this would have come out, which is with Alex from Content Cow, who's now an investor in Space Goods after that session.
He's one of those next level SAS guys as well.
Yeah, exactly. So go watch that episode if you've not watched it. But how would I describe it? Yeah, I mean I've done a bunch of things. I've done a load of brands over the past few years, like nearly seven years. You include like the first ever. And that's just. I guess that's been. I feel like that's the end of my very good in depth, like better than any mba like in. In E Comm and brand building. But Then I was like, well, I guess I'll go back to the thinking with it. I knew I was leaving the other businesses, sold my shares in those, had the option to go work with the guys that bought those brands after everything went wrong and whatever, have a big fat salary and a bit of equity and a big group. I never wanted to do that because I wanted to be the founder and do something more creative. And then I guess I'm giving the full fucking story now, but I'd always thought about the next business because the second neon started going wrong, you know, I started saying, well, there'd be something next. And then I was like, well, it kind of come back to that icy guy. It has to be something that I'm interested in. Something that potentially could be a billion pound brand, like genuinely. Yeah. And something that there is a growing market for. And then I was like, well, fuck, I mean, I've kind of touched on this briefly, but then I was interested in psychedelics, dabbled in them, blah blah, blah, xyz. And then I was like, well, okay, psychedelics are illegal, but I don't think there will be forever. A bit like CBD and cannabis has kind of been more commercialized.
I think you've always been into that mental well being space as well. Yeah, you've always been one of those.
People whose voice has been fucked.
You've always been very transparent about it though. Like you're not someone who would bottle it up. Like even knowing you at uni, you'd be very like you'd always like if.
You were to, to be Europe's most transparent man.
Yeah, you are, you are. Yeah. Even like you're obviously transparent on this podcast, but it comes through even you, if your private life that you'd message me or someone else about, like how you were finding it rough in a flat on your own, like. Yeah, you've been very transparent about your mental health. So like I feel like you're, you're very like in tune with your own emotions.
Oh, definitely. Yeah. So I guess to not ramble on like the actual product and niche itself, Dogs drinking is. Yeah, I feel like it's in some way it's the perfect combination of market founder, like creative element, etc, etc at the right time. But to come back to the. The funding logic is I've always been fascinated. I've mentioned before, like the difference between bedroom brands, you know, brands that whatever, do a few million in revenue, which there are lots of.
Yeah.
And I've built two of them in the past and all my mates have built big ones. Etc, etc. You know, these brands sell for, generally speaking, a multiple of EBITDA, maybe a 3x multiple, maybe a 5x multiple. And then you get these brands and stuff. Not, not just brands like tech companies like the, you know, the IPO, 50x revenue valuation, blah, blah, blah. And I always just thought like that.
Shit is badass sent you on recently where figs. If you ever want to check figs.
Yeah, I mean I feel like if.
Anything wants to check it. No, it won't, it won't wear figs. Hospital gowns, hospital uniforms. Selling it to the American market. 100 million revenue sold for 2 billion. That's an example of like a perfectly executed brand, like low SKUs, high profit margin, Lean E Com brands.
The reason there, so yes, why am I going on fundraising route is because the strategic narrative, which is a term of Alex actually mentioned episode 22 and it's so true and it's a, I guess it's a more mature way of looking at a business because like, firstly I genuinely see this business as something I could work on for 10 plus years and I didn't, didn't ever think that before. You know, if someone wants to buy it for a billion quid in four years, six years, fucking on a yacht in somewhere else. But so I could see that. So that's the first thing. So it was the market that like made sense and feels like, oh fuck. Everything I've done before leads up to, to this. Yeah. But then beyond that. Yeah, the funding is like I'm trying to position. It is like I listen to a podcast and it's my first million and like it's kind of an obvious concept but like start at the fucking end. And I was like, it's a good podcast.
Yeah, really good podcast.
How can this like legitimately, not just saying on a fucking podcast. Everyone says it when they've had a fucking pint. How can this be a hundred million pound brand value wise in three to five years? Okay, well for that it's gonna have to be bought for a multiple of revenue. So it's gonna have to be one of these brands that's seen as the next big thing rather than just a bedroom brand. It's gonna be bought by a big fuck off private equity fund or someone like PNG or I don't know, whatever, like the Hook Group maybe would buy it. Yeah, someone like that who sees it as a threat not to buy because it's ultimately what I believe is to be the biggest, the biggest innovation in consumer supplements ultimately like psychedelics, which is starting with non psychedelic products by the way, which I'll get onto. And yeah, so then I thought, well, if you want to position it as like a tech company, basically, then it needs to probably raise money. And also raising money means it brings in fucking smart people because you're an investor. Fred's an investor from Sanuchi, Adam's an investor. By the way, I'm very transparent about this. I mean they might be saying Jack, who's the founder of Wayflyer, which is now a fucking unicorn company, absolutely mental, is the largest investor. And again, I don't think you mind me saying that. Well, let me put him in the pitch deck.
So.
And then Alex, who came on last week, is also an investor. So particularly from those guys, from an experience standpoint, add massively to that. Like even in just the past week I've spoken to Alex a lot and.
Like, I think just jumping in there, like it's what we said earlier, like you have to find business partners who complement you and that's what you're doing. You're seeking out.
Yeah. So it's kind of a win win for me. I have more equity, they give me money, they pay me to.
They're all high level operators.
It's a win win.
They're all high level operators.
Yeah.
That are gonna add. They're all, they're all within the same space, but they all have unique perspectives. Yeah, they all tried tactics, they've all failed with tactics. Tactics that failure is more important than what's worked for them. Like, it's like if you took an idea to that board of people and was like, I'm gonna try this, at least one of them, if it, if it didn't work for them would be like, don't do that because it's a waste of money.
Yeah.
So you've got like this guiding light of like five to six people who can part their expertise on you and it saves you making expensive.
But also now it's, I mean, firstly, like side note, I wouldn't have been able to raise any money for a pre revenue business at a pretty hefty valuation like I did if I didn't have the credibility and track record. Which is a. Because a lot of people say, well, oh, I'm going to go and do that. You can't do that if you're 18.
You know, you've raised it off track record, nothing else.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
No, you don't have a business right now, so you've raised funding.
That is how fundraising works. And this is what Alex said as well in episode 22. It's brain, brain, the heart and the brain of the business. So the heart is the founder, which investors, including you buy into because you believe in the. That's leading the thing. But then obviously brain is like, is there actually a market there? And I believe massively there is.
Yeah.
And do the financials add up over time? Which will be yet to be seen, but I'm sure they will. And yeah. So getting those guys on board was also. Because I knew what I'm not good at, which is I'm not particularly well, that well organized. I'm. I've always been a front end guy. Like that's been my. What I enjoy most and what I think I'm probably like very, very good at now.
Yeah, you are really good at branding. Really good at branding. You're not great at hiring in delegates.
No, I'm shitting.
But a strength is identifying your weaknesses is a strength.
Like I like getting highly caffeinated, put in a highly rainbow dusted which I will get onto. I like getting highly stimulated with illegal substances, put in very, very fucking loud music. I've got to point where my AirPods aren't loud enough unless I break them with a fucking external software which makes them louder. Put that on to the point where my ears have problems probably. And I like staring at a fucking screen between 8am and 2pm like my six hour deep work block and getting like passionately involved in building the vision of this fucker. That's what I'm best at you put me to. Put me in a fucking prison cell with a laptop and I'll come up with a brand concept. Yeah, I've always been good at that and I've got better at it and more logical at it and I genuinely.
Believe space, space goods, the final, final.
Me, like if this don't work then I'm giving up, mate. Like it's just everything, everything my experience culminates with this brand. So go and fucking put your email in that website.
Yeah, slap it in.
But. And then. Yeah, so that was kind of the reason for the fundraising and also like just all like the final point is I wanted to just get other people involved because it's more fucking fun. And also I guess on top of that I think there's a bit, there's a good sense of pressure when you take money off people. Yeah. Because I ultimately I want to deliver. Like obviously I want to fucking deliver because I own, I think the vast majority of the business. But like it's good. I don't know. Yeah. Like, I think touching on what you said, when other people are involved, it's like, it's almost like when you have a personal trainer, which I never had by the way, but people say they have a personal trainer. You go to the gym, you're not gonna miss a session. Yeah.
You feel, you feel obliged to go.
But you have to make.
Bound to make it.
You said all this shit.
Imagine the podcast with all of us on. That'd be good.
Yeah.
Roundtable on space. I think so.
It was basically stemmed from not wanting to do it alone again because fucking up at scale. I do think neon alone is terrible.
I think that's what we found with like building a team. Like I do, I honestly do think like people, a lot of people want to do things on their own, but people like working with other people who you actually like and who are very passionate and who are really like really good at the job. Like enjoy what they do, add loads of value to the people they work with. Like, it's like quite a nice thing. Like life is very lonely if you do it all on your own. Like I feel like if you have a good team behind you, like, I really enjoy working with it. Like our team is sick. Like our business is nothing without our team. Because we sell people.
Yeah. I'm envious of that, to be honest. Right. That's what I mean.
It's like lots of people want to build this. Like lots of people. Again, it comes back to what you want to optimize around. But like a lot of people want to build this agency where it's like, oh, it's just me and a load of contractors. But do you have any emotional attachment to them? Like we very much have one of our personal, one of our business values is like personal happiness. Like we only want people to work for us.
Yeah.
Enjoying it. And I feel like if you have people who are working for you who enjoy what they're doing, they ultimately perform at a high level because they want to. To be there and that makes it very easy to manage those people.
Yeah.
And like the agency. Agency life is inherently a person led business because you're selling.
Yeah.
Certain skills to other people.
But like can't hide behind a website.
Like you can't. Like a lot of brands will have a really nice website and a shite products experience.
Yeah.
But like we can't do that. We have to have a nice website, a nice front end and then a really good experience and like we're not gonna get it Right every time. We're not gonna get right every time because there's many factors that dictate success for an E comm brand. But like our team is everything, like we have to have. And we do have a high, highly skilled team of people that we love working with and we put like so much money into training them. Because my, in my opinion, our competitive advantage is not retaining clients, it's retaining team members. Especially, like the marketing space is getting more and more competitive.
Very.
So, like finding people who are good at marketing for ecom businesses is hard, really hard. So like building your business around retaining staff that you've put loads of time into is a massive competitive advantage.
I think the best example was over Black Friday. I was in busy, busy in the ecommerce space. When I had the client, when I had the employee sort of catch up with everyone, they all mentioned, oh, you know, a lot of work, you know, a lot of demands from clients and stuff. But everyone was more than happy to do overtime. Yeah, we never had anybody like leaving because it was 5 o' clock or saying, I've worked extra two hours, like, you know, where's my extra pay? People are so bought into the vision and so bought into what we do because we try and really focus on employee happiness. They're like, they're like die hard fans of the company and people will, they'll, they'll go like the extra mile to make, to make things work. And we don't have to ask them, we don't have to say like, oh, can somebody like do some overtime and it will pay you double if you work this weekend. Like, people just do it.
I'll see a staff member lighting up my slack messages at 9pm I'm just like, I didn't ask for that, but it's just like that's the kind of company you want to build where everyone's.
Going to curate that then because I'm shit, fucking shit at hiring, like, so you can probably help me.
Yeah, in house definitely helps. I don't want to dominate that connection.
Like meeting in person, like in house, really. I felt a bit disconnected from a lot of the staff because a lot like 90 of the staff are fulfillment and I don't have any touch point on that. So I decided to set up meetings with everyone, just. And the meeting is literally a chat, you know, it's asking like, what did you do this weekend? What is this week? You know, what are your goals outside of business? It's basically just trying to get, you know, friendly and, and getting sort of, like, mate status with your employees, within reason. But if people like you, they'll work for you.
And how many of the team members are older than you?
Yeah, one.
Oh. Because I was gonna say, I've got.
I've got quite a lot to say on the whole team management session because.
I used to get my imposter syndrome.
Yeah. I do a lottery.
Anyone that was not massively younger than.
Me, I do a lot more than Joe on the team management side, I think. So I don't want to dominate the conversation, but, like, I've got, like, I feel like I've got. So, like, managing a team starts with knowing what your culture is. Like, if you don't know your culture, how can you manage a team? Because you don't know what you're, like, optimizing around. So we have four very clear culture pillars, like, when. So what we on. But we have a very structured, like, onboarding process. We know exactly what we want from the people that we work with. So even the interviews are guided by, like, Right, these are the kind of people you want to work with. You can teach skills, but you can't teach mindset. Like we said, very true interviews.
Because they were like. Yeah, they were too skilled, but they didn't match the culture.
Yeah. We've had plenty of people who were a great media buyer, but they're not bought into what we want to do.
Yeah.
So it's like.
And how do you define what you want to do and what a culture fit is?
So we've got, like, four really distinct culture pillars and we.
We.
I can. I can explain them, if that's worth it. Yeah. So we have four culture pillars. One's extreme ownership, which is Jocko willing.
Yeah.
So it's like the idea that every. Ultimately, everything is your fault. Like, it's not your responsibility to know everything, but it's your, like, say, if you don't know something, it's your responsibility to find out the. To ask someone a question, to ask for help. Like, it's all. Everything boils down to being your fault.
Yeah.
To take it to the extreme, we're.
Doing that in space goods. Yeah, let's go.
Yeah, I agree with that quality. How we do one thing is how we do everything. So regardless of who you're working with, everything has to be done to the highest standard. So if we work for you, if we work for another business, everything is done to the highest quality. Third is profit, which sounds stupid, but in the D2C agency space, like, you'd be surprised. Like, we Said we hire a lot of people out of uni, etc. But it's like no matter how good a relationship you have with the business, ultimately they're only working with you to make money. So like you can have a great relationship.
Yeah.
If you're not making profit for them, it doesn't matter. They're gonna suck you off. They're gonna go work with someone else. So we have to remind a lot of us, like a lot of the people who start working with us about the profit motive. It's super important to do that so.
Because sometimes it's hard, it's hard to get distracted by the client loves me. But actually the ads might not be working. And then, and then they go, it doesn't matter how much you like you if it's not working.
It's not like you can go for.
Six months with profitability.
Yeah.
You can go for six months of great results. Then you go for two months of like downtime. Like you have a couple of bad months for some sort of reason that's.
Yeah.
Specific to a business or specific to a market. And because you're not making money, it doesn't work anymore.
So believe how much they like you.
And then the final thing is personal happiness, which is 100% our guiding thing. Like we only want people to work for us if they're, if they want to work for us. And I think that's the core to every business. If you want success, you need people there who want to be there.
Yeah.
And if you get to a point and we, we have like 30, we do 30 day reviews every, every single month with every single employee. And during those reviews we have to feed, we give them feedback and then we also ask for feedback on us. Not enough companies ask for feedback up the chain. They don't ask like, what could we be doing better? What could, what do you not enjoy about working for us? What do you not enjoy about your job? We also do like anonymous employee reviews. So we do like a 14. No. 19 stage type form questionnaire that asks them about work life balance, that asked them. Well, we're about to put this in place at the end of January, to be honest, fully transparent place yet end of January, 1919 step employee review. Like I honestly think if you can run a business around like culture internally you get people who are more bought in and will be willing to go the extra mile. But you also, if you can document that a bit and you can market that more people want to work for you as well because they see this and What? The final thing I want to put in place is like a development scheme. So we want to pay, we want to give people like a 300 pound a year budget.
Yeah.
To go and spend on things that work on themselves. So maybe that's like golf lessons, bottle.
In a Mayfair club. Yeah, yeah.
They've got to submit the receipt of a bottle, they've got to submit the receipt to us to, to get it. But like, maybe it's, maybe it's golf lessons, maybe it's like a gym membership, maybe it's like an educational course. Because if you're not developing your staff then your services for us, then our product isn't developing.
Yeah.
So it's like, it's a bit like product innovation, like for product innovation for us is staff development. Like you have to be putting money into people who work for you.
Very true.
And a lot of people stand still on that. A lot of people are going to, oh, we're going to innovate, we're going to give them more Facebook ad training. But that's not them as a person that's not developing other skills, soft skills, hard skills, whether, whatever that may be.
We've got people that have got business ideas and stuff.
And.
I'm having these two weekly check ins with people and it's just been really transparent and been like, I literally asked one of them, do you see this as a stepping stone job? Because I knew he was a bit entrepreneurial and he was like, yeah, in all honesty, I want to be a business owner at some point. So rather than just being like, oh, we don't encourage that, you know, we're not looking to hire people or we're, you know, you need to focus on your role. We've said, you know, we'll support that. You know, if you need funding, if you need to spend time away from your role to develop your idea, you know, we can help support that. Like, this guy's a fucking killer when it comes to ads and stuff. So if we can make him happy and let's say that he's able to do what he really wants to do passionately out of work whilst working for us, that's invaluable. Sometimes you can't find people like that. So we, we try and kind of sometimes take a step back from the work and just have a conversation about them, you know, what do you want to do? How can we tie that into your work life? I feel like people then get a lot more bought into the vision.
Yeah, that's what you're trying to do with space. So get people bought into the vision that we're bought in. Everybody's the best. It's the same with us, but like a less. Less extreme level, like just being bought into the mission, which is a lot of people don't do. They don't get people bought into the mission of the business.
Yeah, very true.
You can't get people bought into a mission of a dropshipping store. It's very hard. If you're selling phone cases.
I think it's a good sign. It's like me and him could be ill for a week and it was still tick along fucking very well. Yeah, it would work very well. We could be off for a few weeks and it would still be going along very well. Yeah, it's a nice. It's a nice. It's taken a while for us to get there, but we built a solid team so that.
Yeah, even the other year, last year, I guess it was more than a year ago, you used to take the piss saying, like, you're doing a million quid a month in your.
What are you doing?
Yeah, yeah.
That's delegation.
I used to laugh about that and think, like, me and Fred hustling from that kitchen. It's probably more revenue per like square meter. Square meter of body space than like any other business ever in history. It's probably doing like 40 million a year combined run rate at one point with two dons in a kitchen.
But it's nice kitchen, though.
It was a nice kitchen. Nice little view just over there. Yeah. Christ.
Space goods.
Yeah, I was gonna ask you another question.
Keep speaking.
Yeah, I've got even. I haven't got any white wine left. I'll have a little bit. I'll have a little bit of red. Yeah, yeah, I'll have a little bit more red there.
Time flies. You're having fun.
I was gonna. Yeah, give us a bit that.
Don't point at that angle. No, it's all over, babe. Keep speaking.
I was gonna ask you if you were like, 18.
Wait till I'm on the mic so I can reply. Maybe.
Maybe even 16, 16, 70, 18. I feel like a lot of your viewers will be 16, 17, 18, maybe a bit older, but, like, if you're going to take any route into business. Right. I think this is quite hard. It's quite hard to reflect on because we've all got, like contextual knowledge. But if you're going to take any route into business right now, any route into doing your something for yourself. I've got a good. I've got an answer to this, so I want to reflect.
I've never had this question.
What, what route?
What now in 2022.
Yeah, if you really want knowing everything you know now, like, I've got an answer. I'm sure Joe does. So I'll go around.
What, starting from zero knowledge.
From zero knowledge. From, from zero money and zero knowledge. What, what, what route would you pursue? Like, if you just stumbled into the. On online entrepreneurial space. I don't know if zero knowledge is a good thing.
Like, well, I mean, everyone starts there. It's hard to answer with zero knowledge when you don't have zero knowledge.
That's what I mean. I feel like maybe with the knowledge, you know now, where would you advise people to go? Because that may be more relevant. Maybe there's people watching who have. Like they're in the space but don't really know what, what angle to pursue.
Because otherwise I still feel like I know nothing.
But I feel, I feel the same. Like we both feel the same.
I would do three things because three is a good number. I would firstly.
Yeah, you've always been obsessed with.
Yeah, for my own sake and potential future sake, document a huge amount I'm doing. Even if that just means once a week you do a half an hour vlog to a camera. You don't post it anywhere, or you post it to a private YouTube channel, or if you've got balls, you post it to a YouTube channel.
You never meet anyone who says they wish they documented the process less.
Yeah, exactly. So I would do that for a start, which sounds silly, so. Because everyone takes the piss, including my own parents stories. I used to do vlogs and then I deleted a lot of them. I had a music channel on YouTube which was kind of like the equivalent of. That was my equivalent at the time of podcast. That was my content platform. And then I had a vlog channel which is still online, which you should go and watch the 150 vlogs from me traveling like three years ago, which I link to in the bio.
This link it. I've got a question on the back. It kind of segues. We'll go back.
But like, come back to it. I'll back come, come back to it. Secondly, I would get on every social media platform as an observer, which sounds poisonous because a lot of social media is poisonous. But I would, you know, Twitter, which for example, I didn't discover until less than a year ago, I'd get on that you don't need to post, just fucking makes an anonymous account I'm slamming that, you know, at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Don't know what I'm doing.
Econ, don't.
Yeah, exactly. Probably wouldn't get on LinkedIn. Bunch of middle aged women.
Yeah.
I would just get. You realize that the people around you and the scenarios around you is like a first dimension and then in now like a 5D world, which is a fucking good. That's good. I've never said that you're one layer.
D, you one layer deep on the five.
I'm not defining what the other four are, but like, you know, in 1750 the people around you and the resources around you were everything then. Maybe it's a four dimensional word, maybe it's five dimensional word. But like. Yeah, so that's what I do. I'd get on, I'd start observing everything and just literally fucking googling and youtubing anything that you have a remote interest in. Even if your parents or other people are telling you it's bullshit. Like, I don't know, you're fucking interested in horse riding or like cows or big houses in la, just start fucking searching them. And then you come across some shit. Just do that obsessively. And I would like watch content to your heart's desire. Probably not Love island, but you know, anything that you probably won't be watching this podcast if that's what you want to watch, but I'll do that. And then third, I probably just fucking don't know. The third point's harder. I was gonna say start just building. Yeah, actually, yeah, that's it. Start creating something over consuming.
For me it'd be content. I really think at the moment the biggest gap. No, like obviously we've got like a 30.
Yeah.
Like whether it's a brand, whether it's cot, but like I think from my.
Brand is ultimately everything in terms of like long term wealth and prosperity business. I think just start creating something. Like whether that's a, I don't know, YouTube channel where you post the shit you recording anyway, or whether it's.
Like.
Freestyle rap, which by the way I'm world class at and I need to start doing that myself. I swear to God, I'll put a track on the end, we'll do it after this like off grid and I'll add it in. Just start creating something. Because think about it like the whole 99 to 1% split, which is the crude stereotype. So it's the crude way of saying, you know, those that make it and those that don't. Most people don't make it. Yeah, it's probably more like 99.9 and 0.1%, but the 99% are consuming everything. Whether it's the news, content, products, blah, blah. Name a successful person that hasn't created something, they don't exist. Whether it's a business, a brand, music.
I follow the trap of consuming so much that I get overwhelmed with controversy.
So create, over consume. Tashi, that shit on your fucking arm.
Yeah, I get. I just consume so much. I'll go through waves. I've got out of it now, but I used to go through waves of consuming so much content. I wouldn't apply any of it. Yeah, Waste of time. Like, you need to consume 80% less and just apply the 20% you consume.
I think to summarize, they're the three things, but I think the summary point is. And Steve Jobs, I think originally said it, it's fucking good shit. You have to remember that everything ever was created or invented by someone or a group of people. Everything ever beyond the biological being of a human, which arguably is created by God, if you're into that shit, which I don't know. Everything ever remote. Like, everything. It's kind of a psychedelic concept. But that light that's on us right now, some cunt design that made it. Make it make the first one. But like, someone came up with Edison, the light bulb.
Yeah.
Like everything ever wonderful. Imagine beyond natural resource was created or thought by neon ring light. Even, like the. Even 24 hours. I mean, I could be wrong in this, but even the time in a day is a human concept. I think an element of. It's like how the world spins and. But like, I guess it could be 12 hours instead of 24 if you slice it that way. Like, everything ever.
Human concept. Yeah.
So, like, that's a key mindset thing. And that's probably what I'd say. I don't know if that's wise or not, but. Yeah. Yeah.
I think I'd go down a similar route. I think.
Yeah.
My only difference would be, like, if I was gonna. Practical advice in terms of, like, if I was gonna go into a lane, it'd be content. Like, you just start putting out content. The world is a content machine.
Yeah. I was late on this podcast.
Content machine. Like, you've just got into content. We were just about to get into content. Like, Gary Vee's been slamming it for years. He's right and he's not wrong. Like, the world is only gonna get more.
The thing that we don't have though.
It's not the problem.
People don't have have the experience. Experience or context to make good content.
Confidence.
You don't even need that anymore. Like tick tock.
And experience, like we said, breeds confidence. Right.
Right now again is a beast. Tick tock is a beast.
I fell out of the loop on that.
I spoke to some guy the other day on a call. He's getting paid 15 grand a month to create content for three brands. 5k a month per brand. UGC content.
That's the Tik Tok.
Feed me Charlie.
Charlie D' Amelio did 17 mil last.
Year on the porch.
17 years old.
Yeah. She's not 17 anymore, is she? 19.
19.
She's 17 mil.
17 Instagram videos like the world is a content machine if you can learn how to produce. Our biggest bottleneck as an agency right now is clients who can't produce enough content.
Yeah.
So if you, if people are debating like what do they want to do? It's never been easier to produce content. The best content for ecom brands right now is ugc. Face to camera review style videos.
Just do stuff.
If you've got an iPhone, you can produce that. All you need to do is go and pitch yourself. You can easily earn 10k a month selling UGC content to econ brands. Easily, Easily. That's not. It's been. It's easier than it's ever been doing that.
Ever. So not doing it.
I'd never do it. But if you're a confident person and you need to earn some money to get to. To get started, like that's the easiest.
Way to do it.
Yeah, but that's a good question, actually, I do. What would you do? What? How would you start everything?
I knew now only fans.
Yeah, fair.
You change your sex, you just smash.
I just get the rig out.
What rig?
Just.
Just get the rig out. Only fans.
Yeah.
No, I wouldn't. I do. I do not. I'd find someone who had the technical skills, I. E. Replacement of you.
Yeah.
Because all like, all I can do is talk to people and sell to people.
So I just ice to an Inuit mate.
Yeah, exactly.
Sit and think, okay, what do people need? Let's find this one who can fulfill our need. And I will be the person that sells it.
Yeah.
That's how I'd go about it.
Sales is it. Sales is a transferable skill. Very, very, very. You never get that. Is never gonna loot you. No matter what happens in the world, you're always gonna have some of the best earners.
In the industry, sales people.
Yeah. 100.
A lot of the time it's, it's hard. It's inherent within people's personality to be able to sell. But yeah, one thing I, I've understood is that to be a good salesman, it's not the sales spiel and psychology, everything. It's a good salesman is someone who connects with people. So one of the people we hired was a friend, but I've known him for a while and he just. Whenever I've been out with him, whenever I've met people with him, he's just like, so. He's just so easily able to spark a relationship with people. That's all sales is. If people like you, they'll buy from you. Yeah. You don't have to learn like, oh, you know, you offer this and then you downsell and you offer a 50 off for one day only. Like that's, that's secondary. The first part of it is just getting people to like you. So mine's probably different from, from your two.
Yeah. You're in a different lane though. Yeah. That's valuable. They're valuable for people watching. 100.
Right.
I've got another question for you.
I like this flipping script.
I've got another question. Who, like for both of you.
For both you.
Who. Who would you say is your like? So I'll answer as well because I've got an answer to the question but like who are your three biggest inspirations? So for me it's always like finding. I don't have one or two big inspirations. I always try and find an expert in certain lanes because I feel like each business owner is good at something.
But not everything changes on a daily.
So like I've got Andy Fisella for Mindset, Sam Oven's proposal processes and then Alex Mosey.
You're way more agency esque than me on this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it doesn't matter like who are your inspirations?
I don't know if I think about this enough.
It could be. It could be wide ranging. Like it could be personal, it could be business, it could be anything.
Who really is literally thinking about this on the spot? Yeah. Right. Now reading a lot about David Goggins. I think some.
He's a freak in age.
I've never mentioned him in the pod before. I have always had an affinity to.
He's a God. He's a God.
Ridiculous physical tasks. Because I think that's where I got the entrepreneur aerialism from is like savageness in the fucking running boat. Oh dear. So like David Gongan's fucking. I think, like, a lot of creative excellence starts with the ability to fuck yourself up physically.
He run Iron man with two broken shins.
A bit of me always. I always have this. And episode 13, which no one liked, by the way, which was insane, because these cunts are mad. They rode the Atlantic. My mate rode the Atlantic in a boat the size of a car for seven weeks. Who the does that? I think that's more badass than David Goggins.
That's more badass.
I'm saving David Goggins, but maybe David Bruce.
There'll be.
There'll be.
Who was on the podcast is one of my biggest inspirations.
I honestly think, like, there'll be. There'll be more people who have earned 100 million in the world than could do that.
Like, I honestly. He invited me to do it. And go on a bit of tangent. I'll come back to the other two people, but name me a harder thing. You rode the fucking Atlantic in the Atlantic Ocean in a boat the size of a car. So please go and watch episode 13. I think it was 13. I think it was 13.
I think that's harder than earlier.
No one watched it because they were like, oh, it's not entrepreneurial. That is the most badass shit in the fucking world, man.
That's what I was saying about earlier about foundational principles.
That is a. Foundational.
Foundational.
I will do this. Yeah, exactly. That is why I brought those guys on. And no, a lot of people, I feel like, just saw past it and didn't give a fuck. But, yeah, I guess I said David Goggins. But people that do that sort of shit because, like, I don't think anything entrepreneurial even comes close to, like, the basic physical, biological function of. I'm gonna do.
I couldn't do that physical task. I don't have that.
And no one else does it. I don't like marker, so that's perspective, isn't it? Me too much. Jesus Christ.
Whilst you think touching on that, there's a guy who went on the Rogan podcast. I can't remember his name. He sold something cowboy and he did, like, either. 100.
Yeah.
Nice. 100 Iron Mans.
100 days. Like, that is disgrace. That is.
That's more than the red landing.
100 iron mans in 100 days.
My brother's in an Iron Man.
That's one.
And he's diabetic.
But, like, he's not still badass. But I couldn't do an Iron man. But, like, a hundred Ironmans in a hundred days I want to do something. I think doing that is harder.
If you can do that, what can't you do?
That is harder.
Question with the guy who did like all the peaks.
Yeah.
Thirteen peaks.
Yeah, yeah. No, I watched that. That's.
That's. That's hard. But the 100 iron mans in 100 days for me is harder than earning a billion pounds, in my opinion.
I would actually agree.
I would say that is a harder challenge.
I had to choose one or get killed.
I would rather try and earn a billion pounds in like 50 years and try and do 100.
Yeah.
Facts, that is.
What is that? What's that? 50 miles?
It's a marathon. Running, I think. And then like a marathon.
It's a marathon, a Tour de France and like a up swim.
I can't.
It's like all three major things.
How can you include a Tour de France as like a section?
It's a section. Yeah. Tour de France. A section you run at the end as well. So we've done the swim and the Tour de France. You do a marathon.
What is an Ironman?
I have to answer your other bits of the question. The two other people. Fuck me. I don't know, to be honest.
I was just gonna say David Goggins podcast on Monday.
An Ironman is a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bicycle ride and a 22, 26.2 mile run.
Miles, not kilometers as well.
That is. A hundred of them in 100 days is fucked.
Ask me that. The other question you mentioned.
I can't think of too many people you've gave. Doggin. Doggins, Goggins.
I can't think of too much people.
Oh well, that was my question. Like, who are the two. The three people you've inspired most?
Like, they've inspired me most.
Yeah, I was gonna say Goggins, but the reason was I think of three together, right. If you, if you ever wake up or you sit there and you think Kabba asked, you know, just think there's a bloke out there that ran whatever, 50 miles with two broken shins. Yeah, you shut up, mate. Do. Do the work legit like he did. He. He tried and failed three or two or three times through the most pull ups in the world. And then he did 2, 000 pull ups in a single session. If you're complaining, you need to grow up.
Yeah, true.
And I'm, I'm massively. I'm not saying, oh, I'm always doing like mad. But a lot of the time that perspective.
Yeah, yeah.
People a lot of the time I'm like massively weak compared to Go. But I think of that and I'm.
Like, I like his mind mindset. Just like stay hard.
Yeah.
Stay hard is I just like. Yeah, it's just like I know it's him, but it's a mindset. Yeah. I suppose in perspective. To answer that question. Christ. Like recently. God, I don't want to lick any. I hate licking people's asses. But I think Jack from Wayfly is big inspiration to me. Yeah.
If you're watching, he's killing it.
Shout out. Because I had a few drinks him a few months ago when we got to know each other and I said to him, how the do you get to like a unicorn fintech company? And like it was literally like 18 months, I think officially. And he just told me the story and. And like you correct me if I'm wrong, like words to the effective. I was basically broke at like 29 and I'm 31. Like I don't know, very wealthy. So yeah, I think I. That's more relatable to me because it's not something. He's a cool don. Like, he's not some fucking like Mark Zuckerberg lizard. No, for real though. Like goes out, loves the fucking send. I had a bloody big send at my flat over there actually a few months ago trying to get him on the fucking podcast. But he won't reply to my WhatsApp. But. And he's also an investor in space. The biggest single investor in space. So I appreciated email list. So I think that's super inspirational because it's like, it's like local in the sense that I actually know it and it's built somewhat ridiculous.
Yeah.
And I don't see anything in him that isn't in a lot of other people if they just turned it on a little bit.
Yeah.
So like, because like people like Elon Musk, you think, oh fuck me, they're like biologically freaks. Yeah. And I think think he is like Jack from Rayflow. I don't think is so I think that. Who's the third person?
Mine's always, Mine's always. Mine's always been like, find the people in. In your industry. Not even industry, but find people who are experts in each field. So as I said, like mines, like for me it's always been like some ovens, which is. He's very like, he's very like online business. But like he is high level thinking. Like most people who you think are gurus so you think like they've learned from him.
Like Becca, like you.
Yeah, like I'm watching you learn from Becca.
Becca learned from.
Yeah, like I watch, I watch Sam's courses. We always joined his mastermind the day.
We turned it down.
But like we watch his. We watch his course.
A guy I know called James beat you into that. And I was in la.
I know that guy, the ecom drop shipping guy.
Yeah, he went to his quantum mastermind.
Most of the people who are watching this, like when you watch his, when you watch his course, you look to the left, there's Iman Gadzi there. You watch, you look to the right, there's Alex Becker there. Yeah, it's like all of them learned off him. So it's like he is a high level operator for sure. But. So he's one for systems processing, high level thinking. The other One is Alex Soi. Alexi. Alex Amosi's 32, just sold his business.
46.
46.9 million. 32.
That was gym Launch.
Yeah, Gym Launch owns another company called acquisition.com.
Nice demand.
85 million a year, everything.
He.
His whole motto is like, I have nothing to say, sell you. He just gives away disgusting amounts of value. So those two for business. And then Andy Fisella, Andy Fisella's mindset, foundational. If you don't have the foundation, you can't add the business. So every, like I listen to Andy for Sellers podcast. Every single podcast that comes out.
And then whenever I'm listening, I haven't listened to anyone. Real, real afraid.
I've listened to every podcast. Like he's, he's sick. If anyone's struggling with like motivated, like mindset, anything mindset. Like if you, if you. I honestly think you should listen from episode one to a hundred at least.
Yeah.
And if you listen to them, it'll change your life. Honestly, change your life. So those are my three. Those are my three.
All right, cool. You have one more question you mentioned earlier.
What was my question?
You tell me.
I asked you your two biggest inspirations.
No, no, you're number one mentioned off camera. You said you wanted to ask.
Forgotten.
So as a good host, I'm asking you what you wanted to ask. It's something to do with what would I want to do when I was 60 or something.
Oh, yeah, yeah. So if you could accelerate. Yeah. It's kind of like theoretical because I don't think.
Yeah.
Right now. But if you were like, say we accelerate to like, I'm Matt Kelly at 60 and I'm just I'm just chilling. I'm just chilling. What do you want to have accomplished by that point? And same with you. Same with you. If I'm Joe Marson, maybe six is a bit early. Seven. Let's, let's go 70.
It's not a legacy, man. Let's go to 70.
Like. Yeah. What do you want? What do you want to like? You say you're 70, right? You're chilling. Maybe it's, maybe it's, it's. I'm not going to give it any label. So how hard you chilling?
150 foot yacht in the Bahamas, that's how hard.
Maybe you're chilling, maybe you're just chilling.
Maybe if I'm not on 170 foot yacht by 70 I up, mate.
Maybe it's. I'd like a yacht. It's a canal boat.
Still 170 foot can.
Yeah. What do you want to do?
I want a legacy. I really want a legacy. But not for like eager to see. I don't want like, I don't want a statue and like a legacy.
You want to be one of the early investors in space goods when the market cap.
He wore the cap before I even started.
For real though.
No, I just want to, I want people to. Not for like egotistical reasons. I want to have just made a difference.
Yeah.
I want to get to the point. I don't know if you guys know like about like Ray Dalio.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like hedge fund. Most successful hedge fund for the past 20 years. He splits his life up into like four segments. The second segment was like, make as much money as possible. Get mad successful third segment which is in now is like Alex Hormozi. Release all your value. No holds barred. Release all your value. Once you've done that, chill out and then die. That's his, that's his, his life cycle and die. I want to get to a point where it's just like.
And then transcend consciousness.
Yeah, just like into the heavens. Just. But I want to get to a point where it's like, yeah, people. I'm not. I don't have any gain. I've got nothing to gain from it or give. But just people are like, see, that's.
The thing with him.
He's. He's given a lot. He's done a lot, but he's given a lot. And that's why I appreciate him.
Yeah. Yeah.
Ray Dalio is like even more than hero because her Moses, Hermosi's all, I've got nothing to sell you.
He has an acquisition company but also like.
A little bit here just it's just down here on the left. I've got a little bit to tell you. I actually do have a tiny bit of something to sell you. I don't have anything I was gonna say so like he has an acquisitions company so it's like he has nothing to sell you but low key has something to sell you. Whereas Ray Dalio literally has an often.
Seller she's just not even accepting.
What about you? Like what do you want to be at 70 legacy like long term vision, space goods. Well maybe you're just absolutely genuinely streamed out of your mind.
I've always, I've always wanted to build something and the company is the vehicle for that that I can make you money from doing but doing something that, doing something that A, I love doing B has a genuinely net positive impact on the world. Yeah And I guess C inspires the next generation to some extent. Which maybe this podcast will be. I don't know but like it's honestly hand on heart I've always thought there's something a bit more than just make 10 million then off to the casino because I know, I know people that have made that sort of money and don't really do much now and like 100%. I don't know where it comes from. I don't think I'm not, not an Elon Musk character. I don't think I'm gonna fucking save the world. I'm not autistic enough. I am autistic to an extent but not autistic enough. Yeah I guess an idea life by 70 would be I mean you know, very hypothetically but I think realistically I made 500 million quid for maybe hypothetically building a brand that I made a hundred from. Started a fundamental positioned in the mental wellness e commerce space I was passionate about called rainbow.com. i saw that domain by the way for sale for 4 million quid the other day. So I like rainbow.com as a group. As a group name.
You saw it or you sold it?
No, I saw it online. Godaddy. I like that as a group name. See like rainbow.com is like my version of the hut group. Right. And then Rainbow goes public at a 7 billion dollar valuation. I still have a little 5% cut.
Something like that on a yacht in.
The Bahamas and then I don't know I built a disgusting family with like 17 kids on this. But that's very long term. My the things I think about probably pre 30. Yeah being recently 26 which I feel old but like I genuinely believe everyone floats their own horn like whatever. But I do. I would be disappointed if I hadn't built a company worth 50 to 100 mil by 30. Yeah. Based on the. The things I've. Based on the things I've done, the people I know and the trajectory that I believe I'm on now.
Neon beach would have been like if you. If you've done it in a better way. 100 Neon beach had.
Yeah.
You could have dominated that market because everyone got into.
I created that market. Yeah you did.
You invented the market. If you, if you'd done it better everybody else would have come six months late to the party. You'd absolutely destroyed margins.
We got space.
Cuz it's hard but like it don't matter. Yeah.
I do genuinely believe that this like it's the reason I like this as well. The whole aesthetic takes bits from my past brand. It's almost like a rebirth.
Yeah.
It's like reincarnation.
No it actually is though. Like that's what it feels like. So like when it goes live which by the way sign up on the website. I'm dead serious announced to give you the aesthetic is similar takes from Neon takes from the other shit I've done and yeah I've done the whole brand and shit. These guys will be running the marketing.
Yeah. Big up.
Which yeah partly because you've done my shit in the past and we'll put a link to fucking sort with us in. In the bio. Hopefully there's some juicy referrals but. And also. Yeah because I think that that was quite an interesting concept because obviously you put money into a. A brand and then I want you to run the media buying for. Because I think having skin in the game is an interesting idea. Definitely because most agencies and brands don't do that.
We've wanted a. Wanted an E Comm.
Yeah. And it also gives you more clout and an actual ownership stake in a brand which I genuinely think will be a nine figure brand. Yeah for sure.
Obviously if you're not start.
I wouldn't start.
There's a couple of. There's a. There's one E Comm age agency I can think who owns two brands and it's obviously if you can go to a brand owner and be like oh this is my brand. Yeah, obviously they're going to trust you so much more.
Right. So much discussed. We're onto some yellow wine which Max Van der Linden by the way. I've said his name now. Well Max sent me A case of like 12 wines from his family vineyard in Italy. Going through the yellow, which isn't as good as the red and white, but it's good. I don't know.
I kind of like it.
I kind of like it.
It's pretty big up.
Max. A final question I ask to every guest, and I feel a bit decent answer on this, is if you could give advice to yourself when you started doing what you are doing, which I guess for you is like three years ago less, what. What would it be? Because a lot of people watching agency is a massive thing.
Yeah.
Like, specific to that. What advice would you give? And actually well specific to that, but also in life as well. It may be like three key points.
I think one guiding principle that we've had is perfectionism kills progress. So don't dwell on trying to find the perfect business, the perfect idea. You'll spend months and months and months sitting there doing nothing. If you try and do that, just take action, you know, like we. We started off doing stuff without any idea of what would work. But, you know, the. A massive part of entrepreneurship is getting confidence. You don't get confidence until you start trying to do stuff. So for me, it would just be find something that you remotely enjoy and just start doing it. And then you'll find the passion, you'll find the enjoyment as you get going. Don't spend too much time dwelling on if it's perfect, because you can never truly perfect something until you've actually done it, is what I'd say.
Yeah. So what would you say?
Is this for agency space specific or anyone in the business? I guess.
Yeah, I guess it's agency first and then more broadly, maybe as well.
Mine would be consume less, apply more. I feel like a lot of people, when the first getting going, consume too much and don't do enough. Yeah, like apply, apply, apply, like relentlessly. Take action. Get attached to doing boring stuff over and over again at the highest standard. Because that is, for me, what business is like. A lot of people glamorize it, but, like, it honestly is like doing the boring shit over and over again to the highest standard. That gets you somewhere, whether that's building a brand, whether that's building an agency. It's not that sexy. Everyone thinks that it's like beautiful. It's like this. This like crazy, crazy experience. But it's like attaching yourself and being willing to do the same tasks to the highest standard over and over again. I think that is one element that I think it's. It's the Other thing for me is just getting your mindset right, finding the right source of information. Information to train your mind. And for me it's listening to Andy Fisella. Like I was thinking, that is. I'm gonna plug him.
You.
You'd plug him as well, surely, like, you sure?
That was the I listened to first.
It'll change your life. Like draw some people who might be listening is like Joe. Like George Heaton from Represent.
Yeah.
All the only podcast he ever, ever reposts.
Yeah. Ever.
And he's like. He's not the only. He's not. He's a bit like David Goggins. He's not the only person who thinks like that. But it's just a great source of high level content. He's a billionaire. He's got 2 million followers. He's. He's a. He's a. He's also a regular guy.
Yeah.
He got stabbed in the face at 21. He was a nobody. He got stabbed in the face. He thought he was gonna die and now he's a billionaire. It's like if he can do it, anyone can do it. It's amazing. It's a relatable thing.
Yeah. Yes.
Hope everyone's enjoyed the. Enjoyed the episode.
Yeah. Look, I thought we've probably gone forever. This is a fucking long episode. Fair. We could always go on forever.
Do a part two. Hopefully a part two.
I want to interview you. Well, yeah, well I think that would probably be good because there's a lot of stuff that we opened up like nostalgia wise. I was like, I thought we haven't actually spoke about this on this pod.
It'd be great to interview. I think, I think we need me maybe from your uni days and maybe one of your London mates from your current days. And it'd be great to give all the people who are watching a bit of a full journey on you.
Yeah. It wasn't just fucking Neon beach. It was years and years and years before that. So.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Which bits of which we touch on now. But yeah, in summary, hope you enjoyed the fucking episode. Go and put your email into Space Goods. If you don't, I'll be pissed off. It's in the bio. Subscribe to the channel, obviously. Share it. Etc. Etc. We're actually growing Fairly quick. Like 3k subs and 4 months roughly.
Pretty big.
We're getting to 50k in a year. I've said that. So if you don't do that, what's going on? Yeah, Episodes coming. What's that?
Do a spacecuz. Giveaway. Tune into the next episode and you'll get a space goods giveaway.
Yeah. Should we do that on the next episode?
Yeah, just pull the height.
Just put your email in. There's some good shit coming. Takes you two seconds. The link's in the bio. Spacegoods co. Trust me. Yeah, this brand's gonna be filth. Like, it's gonna be next level. That is the D2C brand to be following right now. So I'm just saying, can we shamelessly plug? Yeah, shameless plug. And then, yeah, subscribe like this. Stick around for the next one. Plenty more coming for the midnight pod. Hope you enjoyed and thanks for watching.
Sa.
