Building a £ Multi-Million Agency & Education Empire - Jordan Platten | The Midnight Pod Episode 73

Foreign. Fellas, Another sponsor for the POD is probably something you're very familiar with if you're in the ecommerce space. It's certainly something I am. It's Wayflyr. Cash flow is the biggest killer of any fast growing E comm brand, as I probably more than most know very well. Go and watch episode one if you have not already. Wayfly is an E commerce funding partner. Essentially they confront you the cash for a month or so worth of sales. You need a minimum of six months. Sales minimum 20 grand a month, I believe right now. Or if you've got a brand that you're super, super passionate about, you want to scale it quick. But cash is a problem to invest in inventory mainly. Marketing, overheads, team costs, whatever it is, you can get funded in as little as two to three days. It's literally that quick. No bullshit bank loans, no personal guarantees. I've worked with them personally in the past, took a six figure sum off them. Plenty of guys I know in my network and people have been on the POD and run massively successful brands have also used them as a funding partner. Because everyone knows at scale, cash flow is the biggest killer. Even if you are profitable. If you think this could be a fit, potentially you could be a fit for them, then go click the link below, speak to the guys at waveflyer. It's a referral link. So we get a little fee, you save a little bit as well. Support the pod, support your business. Cash is king, especially in this market. Let's fucking go. Right, we're back with episode 72 of the Midnight Pod. It seems to be a rather tiresome episode. We've got notes. I feel like I'm still fucking seven hours behind in jet lagged. And we have Jordan Platinum on the pod. He's just revealed he doesn't live in London because he likes kayaking at 5am.

And in the river.

I'm keen to hear more because I tweeted the other day, last night in fact, which seems to have sparked a rather, rather a large debate on Twitter about the fact that I suddenly realized I'm not sure I like living in London, having come back from a three and a half week trip to Dubai and Bali and maybe I'm just in a flustered state of wanderlust overseas romance, but I've come back and I feel that way. So.

It's called Holiday Blues, mate.

I don't know if it is. I just feel like my entire life's either like a holiday or it's in the fucking trenches. In London and maybe I'm just got to the point where I want to be in the trenches somewhere else.

Need some greenery around you.

Where do you live?

I live in a place called Norwich in, in Norfolk. It's like properly in the sticks. It's like that sticky out there on the right hand side of the uk, you know, East Anglia. So. And it's, it's like proper rural. Like there's, there's like. I live like 20 minutes out of a city but I like it like that. You know you don't have a lot of entrepreneurship culture but it's, it's green and I always say trees over tax which is why I never went to Dubai.

So fuck, that's quite a good sign.

It's a good saying.

I've had a few mates that moved to Dubai recently and they're trying to tickle me with its fancy. But I have come back to that point as well. I like greenery, although I do choose to live in a fucking concrete tower in the middle of London for ridiculous rent.

Ollie did sell me a view of the, of the river on the way here, but I was disappointed to see buildings.

To see your old flat was. Your old flat was river wasn't was.

It was. I guess we do have a river view from here slightly. It's not quite the old flat but it's getting there. Where are you from then originally? Is that where you're from?

Yeah, I'm actually, I'm from that area. I never ventured away apart from. I like to travel a lot but I live in the same area, same friends. It's creature of comfort somewhat.

I always felt like everyone would eventually end up in London if they're in the UK or they fuck off to Dubai. Or is that just this bubble that I've led myself to believe is it.

Used to be my dream to live in London. I remember I used to like, I used to do like day trips down to London with my mum and I used to see the guys walking into the gherkin and be like one day that's going to be me. And then I went to uni. No, not even after uni. I just had like some door to door sales job and dotted around different cities. I was like, not all these cities are cut out. It's not what I thought it was going to be like staying in these places. Now I'm going to stay in the countryside.

Yeah. And you, you nearly stayed away from London until.

Yeah, I went Newcastle, Leeds, London, more and more south.

Do you think you'll stay here for a bit.

I wouldn't stay here for long, so I couldn't live here because past a certain age, it does get a bit jarring.

Why do you think that is? Sorry, we're going off. We're going off on a weird, deep tangent before we even introduce what the fuck our guest does. But I'm actually just quite intrigued. We've gone down this little rabbit hole so soon.

It is a bit like. I do like getting out the city a lot, so it's intense, like just a million miles an hour in it. But then, I don't know, I feel like it's good for when you're young. I quite enjoy at this age, but I know past a certain age I won't like. There's gonna be a point when I'm a bit like this. I do also like greenery, but then there's just way more stuff to do. There's way more people to meet here, depending on what you wanted to do, I guess.

I think it's so easy to dip into the city if you're from the country, but it's not as easy if you're from the city to dip into. I like city friends who, like, come to the countryside and it's like they're in some alien world and just don't know how to act. But I can easily come into the city.

Do you live in, like, a village or some shit?

I used to live in villages. Like, there's like, no shop, like, anywhere for, like, you bike like, half an hour to go to your nearest shop and shit. But, yeah, not now. Like, now I obviously drive, so it's like. It's a shop in the village.

Yeah. I'll take it away from trees for a second. We can come back to that. Affluent co. Tell me more. How did you get into that? What's the backstory prior to that? Is there agency history before that? I imagine before.

Just to jump in before we go into that. This is the course that we bought to start our agency, Affluent.

Oh, shit. I knew there was some previous connection.

We took a PayPal loan and bought.

This is when you spoke about on the pod.

Yeah. And then.

Could that be the highest ROI student you've ever had? Potentially, yeah.

Actually, yeah.

I think.

I think Ollie and Joe are number one. Yeah.

It's a pretty good testimonial.

It's a decent claim, isn't it? Yeah, we took that maybe like, end of 2019, I think sometime around that, PayPal loaned it, bought it, bit of credit there, paid it back over time and the rest is history.

Nice, man. Hell yeah. You guys are up there for sure. Yeah, we. So that's. That's like we have two businesses. That's the education side. But Affluent Co originally is just a agency. So I started an agency like five years ago. I was in corporate sales, telesales, phone sales and so on. I sold advertising packages to companies in the Middle east, but it was like online magazines. So it's like a completely different industry to selling media buying. So yeah, they were like business mags. It's like a business review and it was like a business. But the whole industry is a bit of a fast, to be honest. Yeah, it's fabricated viewership numbers and.

Yeah, dog. Yeah, don't track any of it. Just tell them it's doing some and.

Exactly. I'm pretty sure they Photoshop like Google Analytics data and things like that. So it was a pretty boiler room environment. But I then jumped into starting an agency like many people just was like, I'm just tired of this job now. So I just wanted. I had sales and I thought I'll start an agency. So Affluent Co was the Facebook ad agency, then started local, then joined kind of E Commerce World, still run that agency today. But then in the birth of that ended up teaching and mentoring a bunch of other agency owners and helping them scale up as well.

Going back before that, did you go to uni? What's the story? Like, how far?

Yeah, so I went to uni. I went to uni. So I'm 28 now. I went to uni at the usual age and then I was in uni for two years. I got kicked out of uni because I was. I had like a PR company on the side. So started off by selling, getting people into clubs and then I ended up getting the contract for four venues and then I stopped attending lectures and then got kicked out of uni and then jumped into sales from there because I was in debt. I had a bit of an ego problem back then. I was just spending money like that. I couldn't. Didn't have. Yeah. Got myself on a bunch of debt and was like, shit, I need to get out of that and jumped into sales and that was the most logical step to do that. Yeah.

But you didn't have a degree.

No degree.

I got kicked out of uni as well. Technically it's more because I stopped going.

Yeah, it was pretty much the same thing.

Yeah. Where was that?

Norwich University of the Arts.

It's not Russell Groove then. Joking. I went to Northumbria as well. Fuck my edibles.

But you did as well.

That's how we met.

I think that's technically a certificate of higher education. Yeah. Like here we go. Batty degree.

So who did you look up to them when starting an agency? Because this is obviously pretty imangazi and other people and starting an agency now. I would say even you were pre that starting an agency now. It's almost like a fucking meme I think. But you were pretty hit.

I think Covid was. Yeah, you were. You were like really early on to info product agency. I think you and Imam probably started similar.

We started agencies at like the same time and then. But it was, it was Tai Lopez.

Yeah, he was.

Yeah.

But I didn't look up to it. It was just like, who the fuck's this guy?

Some of them as well, probably, but a little bit higher level, bit more generalized. But then obviously like it was a.

Service business, that's all. Yeah.

And then it's kind of, I guess Facebook ads is probably the vehicle rather than the industry.

It was like because SMMA as a term like burst out of like the Tai Lopez thing. But I think I just caught Tai Lopez when it's people started to like be like. Doesn't seem that legit. But then I kind of looked into kind of a few people. There was a couple people before me, but no one really in the make money online space. And yeah, I just started calling businesses and doing what I was doing in my job really it was basically an extension of what I was doing in my job, but selling a different service really.

Do you see Tai Lopez went bust. Just tangent.

I never know how true these things are.

He did go bust his company when he bought loads. He bought all of these like RadioShack and all these like really traditional American businesses we've just, we've just hired. So I interviewed a girl who used to work for a designer there and she went three months unpaid because he couldn't pay her payroll anymore. But he bought all these like really old school businesses, tried to make them into like a DTC online brand and just failed. Just basically. It was basically like a massive fabricated role.

You're still gonna have a lot of capital.

He personally would have gone back. That portfolio of companies will have gone bankrupt and he would have sat on a tangent. But yeah, you were, you were like, you made it a little bit less American, I feel. Not America, but like in his garage selling knowledge. Like this is my bookshelf, this is my lambo. Yeah, a bit more like.

Yeah, it was real cheesy it was a very cheesy landscape. Yeah. My style has always been a lot more to the point, direct and actionable. Yeah, just kind of translating the hype and putting it into something you can actually.

So how long did you spend from the idea to launch an agency to an agency becoming a real business? I like where did that inspiration even come from? Because like you said, there wasn't that many people doing it. It was Tai Lopez. Was it literally watching a video, I.

Watched a YouTube video, how to start a social media marketing agency and I just got the gist of I didn't even know to run Facebook ads when I signed up my first client. I wouldn't recommend other people doing that obviously, but two weeks from deciding I was going to start an agency, I signed my. I signed two clients, replace my outgoings and quit my job. And then three months after that I had my first 10k month. So it was pretty quick. But I had an unfair advantage being in sales.

Is that this cold calling local businesses.

Cold calling local businesses. I used to cold call 100 companies a day. When I started my agency I just started cold calling like 25 companies a day so it was a lot easier. And back then you're selling new opportunity. Like now you approach local business and they've had a thousand agencies talk about Facebook ads. So the it's more sophisticated. But then it was brand new opportunity. No one knew what Facebook ads was. You could literally show, I think you probably saw the old meeting strategy literally showing people the back end of the Facebook business manager and the estimated results that it says that you're going to get from a five pound spend and that was enough to blow a local restaurant's mind. And they're like yeah, take my money.

So back in the day it wasn't far after we did the first couple of drop shippings and then Facebook ads were pretty ridiculous compared to now. It's like actually mad you didn't appreciate.

You never appreciate anything.

So it's gone ridiculously powerful. Like in times we'll probably think the.

Same in five years time.

But now like a sniper versus a shotgun, you could be so precise. And like we, yeah we ran that strategy a few times on early clients just showing my estimated reach how we're gonna run the targeting, what, what the estimated returns were. And then just like they were like well take my money, let's do it.

Back then you used to be able to do the giveaway where you'd running, you'd do a like this post and share it and then Run engagement ads to it and it would just blow up. Then you manychat everybody that comments underneath.

It was great PP campaign.

Clean it up with your ice cube genie.

Yeah. Christ. Going back to the original scale days. So funny thinking about that. I did the podcast with Jordan Smythe the other week, and we were just laughing about all the fucking general store drop shipping days. It's like, I'm so amazed there's not been advice documentary yet on, like, early dropshipping or even just like, early SMMA stuff, because it's such a weird entrepreneurial subculture, particularly like general store dropshipping. Even now it's like this weird underground world of people that think they're the next Elon Musk, but actually they live in their mother's basement and don't pay tax.

Vice have just gone bust as well.

Yeah, fuck. The whole world's getting swooped up.

But yeah, you were early, definitely. And then it was pretty.

We.

We found you, like, about a year before COVID I think maybe dead on. A year before COVID How did that. Was that a big.

Covid was. Covid was actually positive for all the business, really. It was incredibly positive for the education business because everyone's stuck at home and they're like, I want to. I want to shoot. I saw an insane statistic like that. I'll butcher this. And first of all, 99% statistics are made up on the spot. But there was like 75% more people quitting their jobs after Covid in the US than pre Covid, which is wild. So, like, so all those people are like, shit, I'm not going back to work. And so we had so much extra opportunity coming to us.

I feel like even when I look at people I know personally, like, there was a lot of people who literally did nothing for that whole period, but there's also a lot of people who did a lot of crap, productive stuff over. Over Covid, like, quit jobs, learn.

I scaled too hard.

Yeah.

I was jealous of the people that actually profited from COVID because I did. And then it all up.

Yeah, I saw that, like, the labor market was mad. Like, there's so many job vacancies up for the last six months coming out. But yeah, you were definitely early in the. In the market.

How soon after getting into the agency space did you think we'll move into the education space alongside that?

It was not that long. It was. It was. It was not far. I would say probably three months in when we had that first, like 10k month. Because I documented everything on YouTube very early. So like it was only pretty much when I quit my job, I decided I was gonna make my first YouTube video. And it started off as like accountability. So I was like, if I make these videos, if my friends see this, my family see this, I'm look like an idiot by fail. So I started documenting that and then I was like, what am I going to make videos about? And it only really made logical sense to make videos about the agency. But then they ended up being info based videos and I was like, oh, well now those people message me asking me for coaching calls. And so I was charging like 25 quid now until I didn't have enough time. It was like 100 quid. It was like 300 quid or whatever. And then I was like, okay, and now I could create like a course. So it was a very natural progression. But I would say it was probably like three months. And I actually then decided, okay, I'm going to create some kind of a product out of this. But it was like a necessity because I just didn't have the time to handle all like that because there weren't many people. It was like myself and Ian and Tai Lopez stopped making content.

Yeah, we found you off an organic video. Yeah, you, your organic SEO strategy on YouTube is still really good.

Yeah, we get a lot of traffic from. I think we still ranked number one for Facebook ad.

Yeah, that's just gonna pay. That must pay a fair whack.

Yeah, yeah.

Just to have that spot.

Yeah, we for a long time for the agency, we got a lot of leads. Now obviously as we're going for larger brands, the lead quality isn't obviously anywhere near as good and we, we don't really have anything that we downsell them on. But with having. We were number one for Facebook ads, number one for Google Ads, number one for TikTok ads. I think we still rank pretty high for TikTok ads. Number one for YouTube ads as well, which was great for lead flow.

And are you splitting your time between the agency and. And teaching how to start an agency? They're both called affluent under the same brand.

Yeah. So this is where it gets a bit confusing. It was the affluent agency and then the affluent academy.

Yeah.

And so the idea was the academy is obviously the teaching element of the agency, but I think we'll probably move that away because we get confusion about. Well, I would say two years into the agency I bought out one of my successful students, his name's Joe, who now is a partner in the agency. So.

Oh, I met Him?

Yeah, you probably know him.

Hydes. Joe Hydes. That's it, Yeah. I didn't know there was any association when I first met him. When did I meet him? You were there.

We met in Barcelona at Geek Up.

Oh, originally Ben. And then it was.

You met him at the dinner.

Oh, of course, yeah, yeah.

So Joe did really well for the program and then I was like, well, my time was being split and I still enjoyed the agency but I also recognized there was a lot more cash flow coming through the education business and a lot quicker scale and more kind of short term gain. So I brought Joe into the agency and then he managed the operations and the team and I kind of still to this day have more of a kind of an oversee strategy and direction and vision.

Why have you never gone into education?

It's not for me. Just don't want like. I'm just deep into the DC ecom stuff. I enjoy it. I think that's a question.

Got a face for radio, I guess.

Yeah, that's it. I was going to ask you about fulfillment as a question next. To be fair, I was thinking about that.

Geez, we're 17 minutes in. We're going there.

Well, like it does two businesses. It's interesting to dig into, innit? I just never got. We just never really. We've done a bit of like ad hoc coaching.

It's heavy this, innit. After a while he's just leaning on me now we've got heavy mics for context for those not watching.

Big clip and lapel bit like you said. Just whack slightly.

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I think I, I don't know.

I've done.

I do, I do a bit of ad hoc consultancy for agency owners now but like more at like a. Probably like most of them do 50k a month plus in revenue pounds because that's the point at which I can add the most value to them based on like where I am in our business. Like I don't really know much about taking an agency from 0 to 20k a month now compared like I did when we did it. But we're so far from that. It's like the landscape we were talking about this on the way. The landscape is fundamentally so different. I enjoy what, like coaching, but I enjoy it more on a one to one basis. I just like don't know. Our agency's grown like fairly consistently throughout the process and just been like focusing on that. But there's loads of competitors in the market. It's not as easy just to start a business and go into it. You got into a really good time. I think if you're trying to enter that market now, you need a new angle. I think one new angle that some people have leveraged is like oh, AI coaching agency owners on how to use AI. That's probably an easy way to enter a market now and educate. But it's not as easy to make an educational product and just scale it the same as like why didn't you make a drop shipping course when you were printing money through drop shipping?

So stupid. I should have done. Because all the people that made most money in the DTC space are gurus that never made any money for a brand. Newsflash. Yeah, true, I eat all the YouTubers.

But Gabriel St. Germain, that was the. He was the peak of dropshipping.

One of the OGs. Yeah. Do you think running education is easy? So I think a lot of people, probably myself included, look at certain guru types, whatever and I have a few examples in my head and think they're doing it because they can't make money from the real thing. I don't think that's the case in agency. Certainly with D2C and E commerce a bit more probably. I don't know the agencies as well.

Well, I genuinely believe that I am the only person in the agency education space. That actually has a successful agency and still runs one. Everyone else conveniently folded it, but then would have sold it if it was any kind of value. Then everybody said that same story, oh, I sold a couple of clients. We don't just sell a couple of clients off to another agency. Your agency was never successful in the first place. You would have sold the business, got an exit. So, like. Yeah, I think. I don't even know what your question was.

The education part, easy.

No, the education. The education part is actually really hard because it's constantly moving and people always putting their issues onto you and offloading and holding you accountable for the reason why they're not actually fucking doing the work. It's incredibly hard just to get people to do the first step. I think it's a lot easier in the B2B space. The B2C space is incredibly difficult because you have to spend so much time helping people go through these mental barriers and these, these, these, these like they're finding their own fucking motivation that gets them past like one or two weeks, you know, because, like, it's so hard to do that. And so you're constantly going through that cycle with people. So B2B space, the B2C space is pretty difficult. B2B is a little bit easier, but you're still constantly adapting and then being held accountable for if something doesn't work because maybe someone didn't do something exactly the way it was meant to be done. You know, there's so many moving parts.

That's why I think you're in. And you're in the zero to one space for education, which is a really fucking hard place to be because you're training people how to think, not what to. Not just what to do. Yeah, like you can take a horse of water, but you can't make a drink. Like that's like what. Effectively what you're doing. You can give people all of this information, but you can't make them do what you need them.

How high, how many products you have and how high ticket?

Well, our lowest. We have. We have two, technically two products soon to be free. We have a. We have, we have high ticket and we have low ticket. So we have high ticket at around 20k and then we have low ticket at around 4k. Now we were.

Is that considered low ticket these days? It is in anything over 2k. Was a high payment plan in it.

High ticket, yeah, we do payment plans. Generally 75% of people straight on.

Yeah, nice.

We used to be at a grand, but then the quality of Customer was is so low and the bar 23 is so low at a thousand. People are expecting life changing results but they don't have any commitment to that financial. There's not no life changing, life changing amount of money to be spending. A 21 year old guy spending four grand. There's a lot of money to it, to them and they think it's I need to make this work. But a grand throw away money for some people. For a lot of people actually. So it's a lot harder to get and get them the result.

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting that I think.

Yeah, it's just a really compliment. No, no business. I really don't like when people say any business is easy because it's just not easy. Surface level, it looks easy. Then when you start peeling past even like any degree of like sophistication in that industry is hard.

Is that, is that like a sales call funnel then? As in like the reason I'm asking. So I've got my fucking E Comm course, which I never promote by the way, but I started working with someone recently because they were like, you're a retard, you have a great personal brand. This should be printing. And I was like, all right. And they're basically building a funnel and changing the entire structure for me and they want to make it higher ticket and do sales calls. And I was like, I'm not sure.

Yeah, it is a sale call funnel. It never used to be sales. I would say to people, anything above 1500 needs to be a sales call funnel. If it's above that, then sure. If not, then no. I sold millions of pounds in like under a thousand dollars with no call. We only introduced a call and we increased the price up to that 4k.

So do you think it's better to sell less with the sales call at 4k than 4 times as much, say at 1k without a sales call, because.

You think there's less headaches, there's better quality customer and you've got more buy in and you're vetting people. Like we actually turn people way. Like if we, if we don't think someone's going to be successful, we genuinely won't accept them. Like for example, if I get somebody who's from a, from a developing country, certain developing countries, who's got the money, who wants to invest. I still think very hard as to whether or not we'll actually accept that person because they're going to want to reach out to the UK and US and try and get those clients got Absolutely no chance getting those clients initially. They also then don't want to start local because the, the currency is not worth much. So, so we, we turn people away as well. Which I think is quite unique about what we do.

I would always push for like higher ticket, lower volume. Definitely. In any education business. It surely just, even in a client facing business, I'd rather have 10 clients paying you 10k a month than 50 paying you 2 kids. Just when you think because you've still got a, there's an element of like if someone's paying money for an educational product you're, they're passing like obviously some onus is on you but they're still, they're still going to hold you accountable for their success to a degree. And like I feel like your name, when your name's over everything. So it's like there's an element of.

Like you have to be so brand protective.

Yeah. The element of needing a high success rate or at least as high a success rate as you possibly can get.

How about the 20k product then? What is that?

That's a mastermind.

So that's the other one you went, we went to.

Yeah, Mexico.

We hired like a villa. That was like a 65k villa. Pounds for a week all in plus expenses, like an 80k trim. It was amazing.

Yeah, it was absolutely incredible trip.

Did you pay 20k? Were you a case study?

You got grandfathered? He did pay, we did pay.

We shared a lot, we paid. We still, we're gonna go, we go to the next one. There's one in August in London.

I want a good dirty mastermind. Just get a bunch of girls and a big billion.

This one's agency specific but like mostly again for like people doing more of like a, like a B2B offer, like you said, like higher revenue where they, where they can add and take. I think that's the key for a mastermind is like you need a good mix of like if someone's coming they need to be an expert in at least something that they can share, I guess you see.

And he started barking at the same time. There's something going on, something in the air.

Yeah. What's the vision for the Mastermind?

Go on.

You might as well.

I think like for the mastermind, for me initially it was a bit of a, like a selfish move that one. Excuse me, I'm dying on it. I wanted to, I wanted to have to have somewhere number one to start offloading and then we have a drink.

Got a dog stuck in his throat. I was like kind of started barking.

Yeah, it's ruin your part. I wanted to have a place to offload the information from like a higher level. Because being so in, as you say, like zero to one and helping beginners so much, there's an element, we have a team of coaches now to keep my mentality in that space. But we are so from an operational standpoint in our agency, we're so far away from that. We're operating at such a different level from the people that we're actually teaching in our program. So the Mastermind was a great opportunity to re. Surround myself with all the people that are doing really well in our ecosystem but then also have a place to offload that information as well and just create a culture. And it's just a really good community culture behind that. And I want to keep it very intimate. 30 people maximum. All high quality agencies, raise the standard of the room every single year. Do very big lifestyle based events once a year. I would like to do a big villa event in Q1 every year. I think that's something quite unique that not many masterminds do. Most masterminds are so. I mean I was part of Sam Oven's Mastermind and, and it was all just info. You kind of just go to the office and there's not really anything skimped out and you get some sandwiches maybe.

At lunch because they're all fucking incel virgins. Welcome to world of info. They all need some sunlight.

He's the most optimized mountain.

Yeah. So optimized. His rigs like a white bag of sand.

But yeah, we want to, we want to introduce that lifestyle element as well and just have a great time doing it too. So yeah, it's a cool, it's a very cool business model. It's a really exciting business model. The event space.

Yeah, it was good fun.

Yeah. My mate Tyler did one in Dubai recently. Looks. Yeah, that looks great.

There's not much of a culture. There's quite a lot in America to be fair. There's quite a few masters. I don't know what, I don't know like what the setup is, but there's agency master.

Definitely more in America.

Yeah, there's no, there's no culture like that in England and or UK and it was quite overwhelming. It was quite a UK heavy audience, wasn't it?

Oh, we're banning Americans from the Mastermind. We would just want to accept any. Well, there's just a different. And this doesn't speak for everyone, but it's just a different culture. When it comes to sharing information I always find, and it's ironic me being in the info industry, but I do believe that the majority of info should be free. Unless it's like something which is like a very strict USP that you gave it to the world, it just would lose its meaning anyway. But when to us masterminds are being to you speak to someone and it could be you and I and because they're in the info industry there's like this barrier of okay, I'm going to give you as much a little bit, but then if you want the good shit you have to pay me for it, which I don't understand. If I'm sat in front of you right now, then we should be having that open, transparent conversation. So one thing that we really encourage the UK culture and I think you get out of UK and European culture and Australia, New Zealand and so on really Commonwealth in general. There's so much more than oversharing. Like you guys shared an obscene amount.

Yeah, I always, sometimes I think I overshare.

Yeah, I've been doing that on this pod for the past 18 months.

It's a limit. There's a, there's. I think you get to a point of confidence within a business eventually in a service based business where you don't mind sharing because you're confident in your own service and your own business and it's about the application of how you use this thing you share.

I think you're not intimidated by sharing to another 20 or 30 people. It's if you're sharing on this like kind of mass scale on YouTube that's completely different.

Especially if everyone else is sharing something. It's very rare that most people in that room were better than the way they did it where everyone shared something specific that they thought they were an expert in was really good because no one's an expert in everything.

No.

And the people that are really just like there's with people and they're just kind of stuck in their one thing for months on end. And like a guy called Nicholas who owns an agency called Larson Digital and he's so stuck on kind of automations and so on. He came out of that and I think you guys had a massive impact on him and also sales and he doubled his revenue in the first two months after that event. And so that one different kind of mindset shift from spending time with a group of people but not just in one day in a seminar setting, but over the course of seven days and getting drunk with these guys and hanging out at 2 in the morning and having those chats that just like that actually at the time mean the world. But that's. But people have gone home. Like there's. We had a guy in New Zealand and it was a 4am chat had about a personal branding launch video and with Lucas actually and Lucas now being flown to New Zealand on this 10 day trip with that 4am chat actually materialized into this huge promotional video and contract which has come. Which is great but. And you don't get that at other businesses.

When the drugs wore off he finally.

Realized he's been scammed for once.

Let me just stick to what I said.

Yeah, it was good. I think everyone like regardless of revenue level, everyone's deep can go deep on one topic and it was good. And then like you say even the. Even not. Not in the actual sharing sessions you only need one or two big nuggets of info for stuff like that that can completely. There's like 1 5% improvements in certain areas, little mindset shifts like operation changes, stuff like that. I'm surprised it's not like I guess you're kind of. We're trying to do this with this for like a dinner's perspective. I'm surprised there's not more for D2C like there's not even a D to.

I. I'm I which is why I'm doing one.

I've been to a few breakfasts in. In London with like four or five DC owners.

Yeah, they're still all a bit.

But they're not like the.

Not the people.

Just like the one I went to was good because it was like quite like everyone was there to like share, learn. But like D2C E comm at a certain scale. Not like drop shipping because you've got no moat in a business. You just got a product and a channel. But when you've actually got a brand there is no. There's very little net negative to sharing with other people who also have a brand. Like what's someone going to take from space goods that's going to impact your.

Marriage other than the whole just rip the entire products and everything else.

Yeah, yeah.

But like you're watching. I know you are. Lock your doors.

I got retargeted with one of your copycat brands actually on the way here.

Is it get neutral?

No, it was whichever one.

I tagged you in one yesterday.

No, it's like an Infinity isn't like an infinite.

Was it limitless blend?

Yeah, it was.

Looks like a GCC project.

Yeah, well that's the Thing like all.

These autistic founders, you get at least make it look nice.

You're gonna get copycats. But, like, the people who you want to be in a room with at one of those events want to be doing similar.

I guess the one pro of documenting stuff online is I've got evidence of me doing it first.

Yeah, yeah.

Look at the timestamp of that video.

I think, like, you'd always be a copycat to have to have a very clear threshold. Like, we set a very clear revenue threshold. If you're not over this amount, you're not getting accepted. And we're increasing that with every cohort and that's going to continue to get increased. So if you did, like a D2C mastermind, you're vetting the quality of people so you're not just getting someone who just had a fluke month.

Yeah, yeah. You're not a dropshipper and you do end this. Yeah, my filters out 99%.

Have you seen that Hampstead? I really want to join it. It's run by the guy. Yeah, it's like a private community group run by the guy who hosts my first million something.

You'd get in.

I wouldn't.

I got rejected straight away. It's for, like, people doing numbers.

Although something about that. That American ness to it, which just.

Makes me think, oh, it's like, so cringe it sounds.

Unless I just don't like Americans.

This sounds good. And I know a few people who are in it and they say it's valuable.

I've never seen Connor Martin in it.

No, he's not.

Did he get rejected?

Zach from Triple Whale, who came on the pod, he's in it. He said it was really good. Again, like, a lot of their events are in person in America. So, like, the leverage that you're going to get from it here is minimal. But, yeah, setting a threshold for D2C, like, you just go in there finding somebody.

I'll set thresholds that I'm not even close to. I wouldn't get into my own event. I'm only there because I'm organizing it.

It's finding somebody who's like ripping organic at scale. And like, all right, this is how I'm doing that. This is how I'm affiliate market employee. That's driving 40% of our revenue. Yeah, that sort of shit that you can just say, how are you doing that?

Because when you give people, and that's one thing that we found that was amazing, is when you actually give people and you say, okay, you have to share something. If you give someone one thing that they can share, it's going to be their best because they want to impress the group. So if only, if every single person in that room says one thing, then you're going to have an extremely valuable room.

So I'm definitely going to do some sort of filthy mastermind. Bring in all the big hits. Do it in a massive Marbella 20,000 square foot mansion with 15 girls per person.

It's a good idea though, I think. I do think that again, UK specific. It's. It's just there's not like culture here yet but like getting ahead of it in terms of bringing people together in an industry that's relatively.

I mean I was amazed just even at the dinner on Friday there was like 10 people that flew in. I was like almost embarrassed. I was like, you do realize it's just a dinner. We haven't even got like talks.

That was really good to be fair. Really enjoyed that.

But somebody messaged me being like, it's the first time I've ever met anyone. I'm like, wow.

Yeah.

Like duty to do another one.

They are good. Like. Yeah. It's just not that culture in Europe. I don't think even.

I think people are hungry for it.

I think people are.

I think they're very hungry for. I think the market is there for it. But by people. Yeah, they've got the authority to actually know what they're talking about.

You have to have the authority to bring people together. It's hard to.

For someone to.

It's hard for someone to get that and also hard for someone to get that and be willing to put the time into. To do that.

Yeah. That doesn't happen.

It's very rare. Like even I can't be fucked.

The event planning. There's so many logistics that go into that, like event planning.

Fucking doing a dinner was a nightmare.

Yeah.

And I didn't even organize it and.

It was fucked more. So you spend a lot of money but like 400 dinner is like a bit of an off the cuff dinner but like 20 grand. It's like, well, this is a bit of pressure. It's going to be all right. It was good.

Do you. I was thinking about the logistics of a mastermind. Do you like pre book the venue then sell tickets or would you pre sell tickets months ahead?

So we. It's like a yearly subscription anyway. So like people, it's not just the one event they get access to, it's like multiple events. So. So they were pre sold anyway. It Was Pre sold with the promise of we're doing this event in Q1, it's gonna be in Mexico to them. But we hadn't booked the venue then, so. Yeah, but you could do it that way. You. You could, you could sell. But like, yeah, like we're doing an event in August, but we're obviously fronting all of the costs on the basis of bringing some new people in and getting. Yeah.

Is that the only one you've been to, like Mastermind in general? Have you been to other ones? Like, how much resources have you paid for Pre after the course which changed our fucking life.

Oh, we've invested a lot in educational courses, but different courses at different points, such as. A massive advocate of that. Like, it's just like, why wouldn't you constantly do that? So now what we do alongside this and this is a really good idea, people can steal this. Right? So even, even in like internally in the business, like for the people who are at the top of our company, like Matt, our coo, Jamie, our head of performance, Sam, head of ops, it's like I can't teach them anything else about their job. They are fundamentally better at what they do than I am. So now we give them a subscription to Mentor Pass where you can go and just book calls with like the COO of athletic screens and Matt will have a call with him instead. It's like that stuff like that platform's nuts. That's a great platform and that's like a really effective way that we train team but like we invest in like multiple courses every year. Whether it's personally. I'm actually personally bought a course for a while because I feel like I learn a bit by like osmosis of being like in this business with all these people who are doing stuff and talking to them and having like cross section and being able to share it with like clients, then our own brands. But like we buy courses for like every different person and then get one to one mentorship as well for the.

Right.

I like Venus Pass because it's an hour and you can have like. All right, I want to get this from this person and you come back with it. But we did your course, so we've done a few.

Yeah, I should probably do that more to be fair.

It's great for training team. It's great because it's just like it's really hard to. To. I can't part any more knowledge on them about what they're specialized in. But we've done a few courses between yours and where we Got to nothing. Like I'd say that was really transformational in terms of like how much it impacted growth of our business. We've then done. We've got a consultant that we work with like an ongoing basis who sold an agency. We've worked with him for quite a while. Then we've done a Mastermind. But other than that we've not really done anything within that.

I think it's like one of. I would actually say it's one of the more idiotic things I've ever done in my business career is not investing in my own education a lot sooner. I actually, I don't know whether it was because I was involved on the other side of it and actually educating other people.

People.

But I neglected seeking education myself. So when I built my education business, I did it based on like gut feel. I was like, okay, let me do this funnel. I saw this guy do that. Let me try this and so on. And then, then I started like investing in Mastermind products myself and the upturn was just insane. And then I was like, why the haven't I. And I only started doing that like a year and a half ago. And I was like, why the hell didn't I do this sooner?

What's the best one you've done?

It would have been Sam Oven's Mastermind. It was, it was, it was, it was. It was an exceptional event. Quantum. And he was in there.

He's gone like full rogue on school now.

Yeah, he had the best YouTube video.

Ever made that he.

Then he pulled it.

Which one was it? What was it?

It was called how to grow your business brackets by doing less. It was just like.

I think I've seen that.

It was unbelievable.

Was that back in his like long hair? Yeah, yeah.

He's a bit of a white boss. Sipping his Lacroix.

Yes, Lacroix. Ye.

His office was full of Lacroix.

Must be sponsored.

It was like a foundation of the brand.

Yeah, he's just like. Yeah, him and Alex Becker, like Alex Becker is actually the only other course we bought it was high ticket and is sick.

Which one? He had loads of courses.

He had like a really high ticket. I can't remember. Iron.

Iron.

Iron.

Oh yeah, you sent me that. I remember.

He's him. Him Hermosi and some other. If you go on the YouTube video, YouTube channel and sort by oldest and start there and say the new and watch it. It's so high level and so good. But yeah, the masterminds are good. I think. I think masterminds are better. It's more like here and now. Whereas a course has that dated element to it, I feel. And the industry that we're in moves so fast.

The only course I've ever done was Ben Malol's Facebook advert 2016.

He's disappeared.

Probably did a rug with the course and fucking bounced.

That was a great course as well. I forgot about that.

That definitely did help me at the time. Yeah.

Investing in education, I think, is key at all levels.

It's just like having that hindsight and sometimes even just invalidate validation on the ideas that you've already got, but through the perspective of someone else and say, oh, how have you thought about doing it? Like this. Perfect.

Saw a funny tweet the other day that was like. It was by some investors. Like, if I could. One stock I wish I could short.

Any of that mic. Huh.

Just something's a little like, knob.

This is the most niche mic set up in the history of podcasting.

I kind of some investor and he was like, ah, one stock I wish I could short is any business owners that don't read. Like, I wish you could short a group of that fuck. Which I think is a bit niche. I think it should be like, any business owner that doesn't, like, educate themselves consistently.

Don't think this is gonna sound good.

I read now and then, but I can't get into it.

I went through, like, monk mode phase for like, six months. Well, three months last year, and I was reading every night. Not going on my phone. I found myself scrolling Fitbirds and Instagram.

I. I struggle with.

I do.

Getting into a fly.

Yeah.

But I'd say. What. I read a really good book recently. Have you read the Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes?

I've heard of it.

It's a really good book. It's one of those books, you know, just like. Even though, like, reading is a bit monotonous, you just read. You read it and you're like, this is actually really good.

Yeah.

It's the hiring process and John, it's very good.

Yeah. Yeah.

I just can't get into flow reading. I'm a podcast and YouTube video person. But I think that's the key to that is, like, don't do a podcast. Don't listen to podcasts, then do work at the same time. She might as well not be doing it. So you have to listen to actually take it in. But, yeah, I think you just got to educate, you know, to come join his mastermind. If anyone's.

Anyone's watching. Affiliate link. I've Got something? I was going to say but if.

You'Ve got a list of notes, you go first.

I was going to say if you had to pick one of the businesses in the past and then now, I. E. Agency or education, which would you pick? And wine. And has that. Has that changed as both of them have developed and the market's developed?

Well, if I had to pick one or the other and obviously we're running both anyway. But if I had to pick one or the other, it would depend on what the goals were because an agency is a really. I see an agency as a very good gateway business. I think an agency is a really good foundational business that kind of gets you into kind of making some cash to then invest into something else or maybe do software or start brands and so on. So it wouldn't be the agency. If I had absolutely no resources whatsoever, then sure it'd be an agency because it's low barrier to entry and I can, I can do that. But if I had to pick an agency business just to be running it would be the education company number one, because I get more satisfaction out of it and genuinely like getting to work with a variety of people, helping them be successful is very satisfying. And two, there's just an awful lot more upside. There's just so much more upside in that business model than there is in the agency. The profit margins are so much stronger. It's productized how to sell.

You're not going to sell it though. Can you sell it? How do you sell it?

No. So. But there's something we're working on.

So you can't sell an education business.

It's so attached to your personal brand.

Yeah.

You can't.

I would say from outside perspective it's more sellable than an agency now.

No.

Because he built a product.

Yeah. But even like this is. Agencies find it hard to drive high multiple if they're too tied to the founder. Think about a personal brand that's got the whole info product as one person. You can't.

If you extract that you're only from saw to everyone. I know.

Yeah, but like that's a decent.

I guess they know you.

That's a portion of our deal flow. But it's like there's other areas. But I get what you mean like in terms of like month to month cash flow. Year to year cash flow.

But I guess it's called affluent. It's not called Jordan Platonic.

Yeah. But every video that you watch is me that you.

I was.

I think that. And it's so Dependent on like we did 90 of our traffic comes from my personal brand on YouTube. Like 90.

Organic. 90.

We're organic. We spend like 10, not even 10k a month on ads.

Really.

It's like not pumping YouTube out. No, we don't need to. It's organic. When we do you. We do run YouTube ads. That's like retargeting when we do cold. Like it just obliterates profit margin. And then I'm competing with everybody else doing that. That's my unfair advantage in that niche. It's like.

It's just how many views you pump in per month then organically.

So no, we've got like well over 20 million views. I don't know how many we're getting. I don't know. Millions. Yeah, it's a lot.

And CPMs on those ads.

It's a lot. Yeah, the CPMs are great. YouTube. It's a nice little bit of pocket money from them as well. Sponsorship side of things is great.

We're.

We probably do over 500k a year just with sponsorships on YouTube.

Hell yeah.

Yeah.

How many subs you got?

200K.

Oh shit.

230.

This is Matt doing no research.

All the time on Instagram. Yeah.

So they're probably. But it's all organic traffic. Yeah. So to sell that I would be a slave to that business for long. But that's why in future products we're building it out in a way where we're getting other collaborators, people. Other people that have done successful for the programs, do other training videos. So then. Doesn't heavily depend on me. So in an ideal world, you subtract more because you don't want to just become a slave to that, which you kind of would in the long run if you were the only person doing it.

But then an agency is not very sellable. So you're doing decent amount of money anyway.

Yeah. And just pump that cash into investments into brands and so on. Because obviously there's. There is.

Yeah. I guess you don't need to sell it. You can just print from it.

No, it's a cash flow business to put into other things. Yeah. Same with agency.

You don't want to sell.

So do you think your personal brand can get as big as someone like Iman then?

I don't think I have the.

Because obviously he's blown the up in the past year. He's gone from about 200k.

He has. But it's a completely different audience demographic. And YouTube. Majority of YouTube is. Is 16 to.

Yeah.

To 19 if you looked at my audience demographic, I have like 2%, 16 to 19. And the majority of people are 21 to 35.

He's done the same, so it's not my market. He's done the same as. He's done like tape, but he's also done. I think if you look at any person who's trying to sell a product.

Ultimately he's a competitor, right?

Not anymore.

No.

It's completely different audience.

Is how to start an agency essentially, right?

Yes. But it's a completely different audience of buying it. So, like my product aren't attracted to his brand because it's. It's, It's. Yeah, it's. It's lower ticket. It's. It's. It's. I don't know what the product's like now. I know they've got a great team, but it's targeting completely different audience. And I'm not even sure if that's his North Star anymore. I think. Yeah, I don't know. I haven't seen him from over a long time. He's made an awful lot of money off various other things. So I'm not sure.

But we don't.

We very, very, very rarely get mentioned on a sales call. His program. We don't get played off each other. We used to a lot, but not anymore.

Interesting.

I'd say he's done like, what, Beyond a certain point, you have to generalize your message more and more and more and take out complexity to get to that sort of size that he's massive.

He's tapped into like a global thing extremely well. He's got global fear and then he's got that local fear. And he's tapped into that incredibly well. And I think he's got. He's got a spectacular team behind him on that as well. The content they're putting out is very high quality, so fair play to the guy.

It's better than my little fucking podcast edits, I'll say that.

I just wouldn't want to be that big, though. God.

But you know, I have no desire to be that big as a person.

You're so jarring. If you. I think if you ever get. I just would never want to get to the point where you have to have security with you. That's for me.

Awful. I needed security on Friday night, bro. Where's my cpo?

I'd rather just. I'd rather be rich and not famous than rich over famous.

Would you rather be broken anonymous or rich and famous?

Broken. Anonymous.

Broken. Anonymous. Really?

You can change that. You can't change that.

But if it was that was that. That is obviously broken. Anonymous is better. But if the choice was broken. Sorry, Broken anonymous or rich and famous Shine broke.

I don't know. That's a really fun.

Normal and anonymous like the average bloke.

No, I would rather be rich and famous and famous. But I put personal brands into two categories. People follow you like almost purely because of you and your personality, which is someone like Iman. And you have other brands where people follow you for the value that you provide, which is pretty much me. I'm quite content with the fact that the majority of people follow me aren't following me because I Kayak or 5am in the morning or follow me because I get chicks or follow me because of like my car and my house. Like I'm very content with that. So that's not the brand I want to build. If I lend into that more then sure, you could hit the 1 million subs plus but I really have the desire to do that. I think it's a. It's just a. I think like life gets a little bit more complicated. Your ego gets involved and I think that it's just not really a route I necessarily want to go down. I'd rather keep people interested because I'm serving an actual genuine fucking purpose for them rather than okay, this guy's quite cool. Let me follow him and I become an idol.

Lower headaches. Yeah. In some ways I could see you being famous.

3 million subscribers. Really? The world's tallest cox. Do you know what that means? He steered. He steered our rowing boats in a university championship race when he was 6 foot 2.

What a weird decision that was.

Like you're meant to be the average cox. The person that drives, steers a boat is about 5 foot 3, 50 kilograms.

It was the last minute. I got drafted in the last minute.

It's the funniest thing ever. That was his past we were discussing all the way here.

Obviously you said you would never go down that route. You've got the education business, you've got the agency. Where do you want to go with those two vehicles? Longer term and then what? Is there anything else you wanted to branch off into?

Yeah. So I think I mentioned to you on the way here that we've got another company now as I invest in company. So we've made various investments into school, into triple Whale, into now internal brands that we're trying to build as well and maybe a property portfolio. So that's like the short term kind of like cash build. I Think that we want to continue building the agency? Absolutely. Would we like to get an exit out of the agency? Yes, I definitely would like to get an exit out of the agency.

What's that face for?

So it's me.

And in the education business, I very much think and I'm very much enjoying that business at the moment and I have done for a very long time and I can't see myself losing love out of that for a while. So I will continue riding that wave. Helping people win the space in the agency space. Will that migrate into something more? I think that the agency, agency space, it's got a little bit of a lifespan. I think it's very saturated at the moment and it's over popularized that. But so I want to move more into the B2B space and help people who are existing agency owners rather than necessarily help new people start agencies where that takes me. I don't know.

The world does not need another agency.

I actually would like to eventually get into the. To the nootropic psilocybin space. I genuinely think that would be a really awesome space to play ball in.

So don't try and compete with me, just invest in me because otherwise you'll lose.

I'm actually that. That company.

Yeah, you probably are.

Infinity Labs or whatever. That's not an Infinity Labs, it's a software.

Yeah. Have you got something cooking?

No, I've got in the back of my mind than I would like to do.

Most interesting.

Absolutely not competing. My brand idea is not like a competing real brand for it's much more scientific and nootropic based then Space goods which by the way is a fucking awesome brand. I actually used spacegoods for its true purpose. In November last year I actually microdosed twice on psilocybin.

I'll microdose every day with space goods.

Put some in the cupboard by twice. I mean over a month period. You constant on a constant microdose?

Not every day, but yeah. I blend it with.

Yeah.

With rainbow dust.

I did like a really good bulletproof coffee with space goods and psilocybin. Awesome whack.

Yeah, it's good. I think rainbow dust is a perennial.

Yeah.

I think it's in my humble opinion the greatest new supplement product I've ever seen. I do like it ticks a lot of the boxes.

I drink less caffeine at the moment though. I'm on Matcha like a softie.

Yeah. I mean I'm addicted to my own product to be fair. But yeah, addicts is hard.

It is yeah, it's really hard. Really hard.

I think it's the hardest business model in the world.

I do like the idea of getting like.

Like, even the people, even brands that you look up to, like, I know for a fact they're struggling, a lot of them. It's crazy.

I think from my perspective, industry, which I have pretty decent perspective, basically.

Anyone other than Connor Martin is having.

A hard time right now. Especially, I think someone was asking me about, like, I got a call with a guy who actually works for one of our agencies.

He was.

He was, like, running this brand that he was looking to buy past me. And it was like, like, how would you make a decision here? And there's a lot of things that people need. Gross margins, aov. Ltv. Like, so many different things you need to take into account when investing in a DC brand. Like a prime example is all birds that were floated for 3 billion and now worth 400 million again.

And now they. Yeah, they get sued because they're correct. Like fraud claims and shit.

Yeah, like, it's a very, very. Yeah, I think it is a really hard industry. I think it's. I think it's a victim of its own success for a couple of years where it blew up and then it's kind of returned to its normal trend line and it's become a lot harder.

I think people who have come from that agency foundation are very well equipped to start a D2C brand, definitely. Because I think an agency is a very difficult business. It's a very gritty business. And I think that paves the foundation to be a good D2C owner. A lot of people that jump into D2C, not. I can't say this a lot of people, but I know personally, a few people that just aren't fundamentally good business people that have still built relatively successful brands. And then that builds an arrogance to believe that you actually are. And then you stumble over those very basic foundational blocks like tax and accounts and team and hiring.

Who are you alluding to?

I know a lot of people. I know some people.

There's a lot.

There's a big subset of D2C founders who got either not lucky, they've built good brands, but they hit DTC in 2019, 2020. And if they started a brand now, or even some of the brands that they're running now are nowhere near, or they haven't been able to sustain momentum, that they.

Well, I'm a prime example. I mean, yeah, it's way harder. I launched this brand a year ago in 2022. With money and experience. It's still fucking hard. Definitely harder than it was. I think if I'd launched it in 2019, we'd be at 2 million a month right now, probably. Yeah.

Because. Yeah. You think, oh, we just got to acquire some customers through Facebook ads. But then you got to keep them.

Yeah. And then you spend more on your CAC triples. Welcome to D2C.

You've got to find enough angles to acquire enough people. Yeah. It's complex. But then there are still businesses that absolutely pop off. Like Hexclad and things like that. They popped off in the last 12 months.

What's that?

Hexclad. Golden Ramsey Pan brand.

Yeah. Oh, shit. Keep getting their ads.

300 million.

I nearly copped. I'm not even a cook. That ad was so good.

Sick brands.

Gordon, is it his friend?

No. I don't actually know the setup with him, but he's a. He'll definitely be a shareholder in it, but it's a guy. I think they're targeting 300 mil a share.

But there's also.

Is a brand new brand. No.

Been going for six, seven years. Five, six, seven years. People also underestimate how long it takes to get really big in dc. Like a lot like athletic screens. Was around for like five years before you heard of him.

No, way more. 15 years. They've been going like 20 years.

I do think it's complex industry. I think it's. It's definitely. I think if you put up a good D2C marketer against any market from any other industry, period, like sas, anything, they'd be better. A good one. They'll be better than every. They'll be the best in. Well, one of the best in that industry is by miles. Even though the skill sets are quite different. You have to know so much.

Yeah. It's so difficult.

I do think you're right. Like agency owners are well equipped to start them depending on the agency they run.

Yeah. Good successful agency. I know. At least.

But we were discussing, like you, I would never advise someone start a DCA agency right now. It's so. It's. You'd find it really hard to do that.

Yeah. I never advise someone who'd start an E Commerce DTC or just ECOM agency. Just period.

What agency do you advise them to start?

Local lead generation. You end in then being local lead generation is just so much easier. It's copy and paste with strategies really. Once you get something good, you can build very good offers around it as well and do appointment setting on the back end. So it's a pretty flawless service. But obviously just like D2C brand owners just don't want to work with new agency owners. The market is saturated on.

I reckon. I literally get 10 cold emails a day.

Yeah.

Report them all as spam to stop doing it because your deliverability is going through the floor.

It works though.

It must work.

Cold emails still works.

It does work. It's like the difference between being a good DTC agency and a great DTC agency is like nuanced but takes a lot of time.

It's experience, innit, is what it comes down to ultimately with literally everything.

Yeah.

And being close to more businesses.

It's really. It's getting increasingly more just about relationships, really.

Yeah.

There's like the subsection of the top, like 1 to 3% of DTC agencies just have hold over the majority relationships with. With good brands. And that's something that new star agency owners really can't compete with. And so they will then sign up startup DC brands, which can be the worst clients I work with and they're just the worst clients.

An entire world a nightmare.

Yeah. Who's your best client?

What? Define best.

Who do you enjoy working with the most? How many clients you got?

6. 60 for so about 60, 60 ish. And then about like 23 for four years. Who's my favorite client? I don't know. It's me, isn't it? Yeah.

Yeah.

You're the. I don't work closely to that many clients. I work closely with any client that I like or fairly close to the clients I bring into the business for a period of time until I'm like 100% certain that they're flying because it's just a bit awkward, innit? You bring someone you know and then you just like, I'll see you later. And like you don't speak to them. You want to make sure, like I don't need to be involved. I trust my team, but still want to make sure they have a good experience. Don't really have a. Well, obviously I work closely with your team. I don't work closely with you anyway. You never show up to the bloody calls. Your team. Yeah, we worked with some good businesses. Some good businesses.

Who's the biggest?

I can't.

Probably. Probably. Who's. Who's your favorite student?

Oh, is Lucas also a student?

Yeah, Lucas started from zero with us as well.

Quite a few people from. Quite a few people from dc. Twitter or Money? Twitter. Twitter. Broadly from.

Are you on Twitter? What do you think of the Whole money Twitter thing. Because I think it's become literally like Lord Cappington of the caps. It's just all bollocks.

I actually.

Almost everyone on there is lying.

I just.

Yeah, you don't really.

I'm not. It's just another thing to add on to everything. But it's. Yeah, it's. It's interesting to. To see the space, but you just never know who's actually legitimate and who's not.

That I just think there's this, like, shockingly large epidemic of actual just straight lying on the Internet now. Tv, money, Twitter. Do people not realize if someone goes around talking about how much money they have, they literally don't have any. It's a basic law of humanity.

I also find it funny how easy people float around like, oh, I'm just gonna do X, Y and Z. Then we're on the path to nine figures. I'm like, do you understand how hard it is?

Someone tweeted that today and you probably saw. I'm not gonna say that.

Holy quid. Cash.

Yeah, People. People will not have made six figures and they'll tweet about becoming a billionaire next year. It's like, bro, you literally, you. You left your mum's house six months ago with a Tick tock drop shipping store.

So it's so hard to get that much amount. That amount of money even to get, like. I even think about a million. Cash is a hard exercise, like liquid capital, and you probably don't want that. But, like, it's not that easy. Yeah, it's just full of shit. I also think Twitter's like a complete. You. You do a lot of video which is tailored to different platforms. I feel like it's not very tailored to Twitter. If they brought out a video feed, maybe they're.

No, I mean for me to actually have the time to do Twitter, I'm gonna get a ghostwriter and it just isn't me anyway. Actually, most people ghost written on it.

You've got a ghostwriter on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn, yeah.

Tweeting platitudes all day.

LinkedIn's great. You should rip LinkedIn.

Yeah, I used to use LinkedIn an awful lot.

You should rent it for. I think it do well for the info products.

It wouldn't be to me for sure.

Yeah, I should probably rip it more.

So. So it's like I should put the product reach on there.

If you put out the reach is crazy.

Yeah, it's really, really good. It's like what Twitter was 12 to 18. Like, I got on Twitter, like probably started doing those resource giveaways and they blew up for like 12 months. But now it's mad saturated. But LinkedIn's really, really good.

Yeah, I know. Joe got a lot of lead flow flights on Twitter.

He was doing the same.

It was great. But then it just again, just slowed up very, very quickly. And then we tried DM outreach on. On Twitter.

Yeah, that's meant to be decent.

It was. And then now it's just again, this is a saturated agency.

It's like you have to, like, you always have to hack your way to like, new leads. But then building brand around an agency is like the best way.

Saw an ad with Joe in your lead's office the other day, like doing that Lucas style.

I was like, wait, yeah, yeah, Lucas is fucking great ads.

Yeah.

Lucas is sick at creative in general. Like, he's just a creative bloke. It's naturally creative. We're running a bit of podcast clip as an ad at the moment where you talked about what we've done for Space Grid. So I was like, that can be an ad. Let's clip that off.

I'll take 20% of all new leads Archive sent this cunt half his fucking agency from this podcast.

He was saying, actually, yeah, it's great.

Yeah, still waiting for my fucking rose gold Patek for Christmas.

What was gonna say? You said you're launching brands, you're launching them through the 80s internally. Are you launching.

That's the plan. We're going to do internal brands for the, for the agency initially and then we will do it for a separate, for a separate vehicle. But initially we're going to see how it goes. By creating like a, like a share pool for the agency team as well. Yeah, exactly. So we can incentivize the team to actually to work on it as well and create a bit of like a launch pad for some brands. So we're going to try that out and see how that goes. We've got a couple of brands in mind and ones near to being launched, but I think it'd just be a fun project if nothing else.

We've tied to that idea. We toyed with it really heavily last year, but we've got into like growth phase again.

So you know what, it's been quite nice to get the team, like we have like a weekly call with the whole team and the whole agency team on there. It's just nice to get their like creative juices floating on the door as well. And they're just thinking outside of the box and waiting yeah, it's really important.

It's also practice what you preach, which is. Yeah. Massive.

Yeah. Like as an agency, if you can. Yeah, that's that. That was the initial motivator is that we have a really successful DTC brand.

Yeah.

On sales calls. That's just a no brainer for clients.

Common thread do that really well. Bamboo Earth in America they do that. They've got like two internal brands that are big, I think. Big. Pretty big.

All American brands are big, aren't they?

Yeah.

So you could like put shit in a box and it'll be 100 mil rev. Just the market's mountain.

Not that easy though. Yeah, that's a great idea I think. Just takes time. We just didn't do it because of focus and just getting into a different phase of growth.

It's just.

Even agencies don't become that profitable beyond a certain point. Well, you go through massive peaks and troughs.

Yeah, we, we went for a very long period. We went through a period of time like, oh, let's get an agency to a million a month. And then you work out the logistics of that and then you start doing it and you're like, this is just ridiculous. This is not a pleasurable business. So we just, in fairness, really we just maintain the agency in a very comfortable position and then the vehicle for motivation for the entire team is in the brand as a North Star of something else. But an agency beyond a certain point is not a fun business to be.

I bet you think you want to take the agency. Do you think you'll be doing it in five years time?

Time frame? Don't know. I'd want to do it until I got boring, I think, which I don't think it'll get boring. So I like the industry that we're in right now. And the industry's also still maturing. Like it's not like you look like.

You were born to run agencies. It's got an agency face.

I wanna, I wanna run it for a fair while longer. I don't want to get to like 100 people though. We want to do another phase like consolidation, increase client size over time in terms of ticket size, revenue. It's hard to do that until you have the brand to command that position in the market though. So it's a bit like when do you do that? I don't think we could get above 50 people. We're at 40ish now. Beyond that it's just like you get, you're gonna get more and more non revenue generating staff members that harms your profit margins, you get more hr. A lot of these things that you don't think about when you actually like. You've got 50 people's families who depend on your.

Oh, just on that note, some girl we interviewed last week, her boyfriend works for you, but she wouldn't say who. I should probably not put that on camera, but. What was she called? Nicola.

Oh, I do know who. I do know who she is. Yeah.

I've got another interview with her next week.

Her boyfriend's really good at his job.

She didn't say who he was.

Well, he's really. He's really sick actually. So. Yeah, small one.

Yeah, she's nice, actually.

I've met her, I think. Hi. What are you interviewing for?

Community exec.

I can see her being good at that. Yeah, she's into dc, she knows it. So I don't know, maybe this isn't a conversation. How many people you got? You just had your first team. But not to distract too much away.

From the guest then I've got seven full time, a few agencies. Nice, lean and mean.

How far away from launching those do you reckon you are?

Do you know launching the brand?

Yeah, one of. Joe showed me, actually.

Yeah, one of them is relatively seasonal.

Wait, is this the psilocybin Brit brand?

No, no, that's not that one.

So that's the passion project.

I was just. I was just. I was waiting to extract as much as I could.

Intel.

Yeah, Give me your tax first, take.

Some IP and then I was waiting to launch that. No, the one of them is relatively seasonal, but we're kind of just. It's at this point we're just gonna have to send it, so.

Yeah, I've seen that one, I think. Yeah, it's good, it's good products, good idea. And the way Joe explained that was good. Not gonna say what it is because some. Some guy. Rip it in two days and you'll be gone.

Yeah, ideas are worthless. They are just fucking execute really hard.

That's again, back to why doing B2C education products is hard. Because you can give everyone ideas, but actually doing it, doing the execution is hard.

But come back to philosophy, then you're very happy living in a little village. Are you motivated by money or not?

Yeah, I'm motivated by money, but so mid-20s, incredibly materialistic. Spend a lot of money on cars.

I did the exact same thing.

Watches, house, all of that. And kind of depleted that battery somewhat. I've got everything I've ever really wanted and I don't really need for a Lot more. So it's really just that strive to be better and do better and achieve more and have bigger impact on. I really love the impact that we have on the team and seeing them grow and nurture them as well.

Yeah.

And I would also, at long term, I would like to get into some kind of philanthropy and I think that motivates me quite a lot too, in later life. But for now I just want to stack some investments. Yeah, village life is nice. I actually think that there is merit in being a shark in a fish tank. I think that life is much happier being a shark in a fish tank. I have no desire to hang out with a bunch of crypto bros in Dubai.

Oh, neither do I. Not crypto bros. Well, yeah, I mean.

I'm sure there's a subsection of the D2C that would. That would fall into that.

Yeah.

But I don't. I don't enjoy spending company with people that are only motivated by money because I just don't. I find it quite meaningless. And I also have. I've got a lot of very successful business friends, but my closest friendship group are the friends I had in school who don't give a. About my business. Oh, how many millions made this year, Jordan? They don't give a. They just. We just go out and we go to raves and we hang out and we do normal people. And I think there's some beauty in that, in life. Not having to having that security, having like a solid foundation, being successful, being proud of yourself and not being a slave to the money, which I think so many people fall into this very. I've seen, met so many young, successful people, people that fall into this trap of, like, no purpose whatsoever because nothing exists outside of money to them. Yeah. So that's another reason why I quite like the ecosystem I live in.

I'm similar in some ways. Obviously. I live in London. I find a lot of people. I think I see, like Those people.

On Money 12 Spiritual Awakening and Move to the fucking Cotswolds.

I'm not going to name names, but.

It'S like the people.

There's people on Twitter who push a narrative and then it's like. Then when they get to like 35 and they get married and they turn around, there's about four people at the wedding because no one fucking likes them. Because they're actually fundamentally a bit of a cunt.

It's like, there's a lot of those people.

There's a lot of those people. And there's a lot of people who think that that's not gonna happen. But there's like, there's a lot of. There's a lot of people that you'll get through your 20s and then everybody will disappear because they realize that a lot of the things you really care about actually don't matter. And like this has to be some other like worth, self worth or like I think, I think some other thing that you, you have like some foundation of like.

Yeah, I think it's like all of that like if you, if you can find pleasure, like if you, if you only find pleasure in the business and you only find pleasure in. In. In material. Which I think that a lot of people do because they're just blindly. Because I think, I think, I think like with many of us own businesses that is a bit of a crux. That kind of. It's one of those things that we just put all of our time into because like what else are we going to do, you know, like. But then so much so with some people that that's. It's their entire existence. But if, But I think that, I mean I spend a lot of time away from the business. I spend a lot of time like going out and traveling and spending time with my girlfriend and my family and my friends and just doing normal people shit.

How long you been with your girlfriend?

Two years. So we got to get one else in the business. Three years actually. Three years and she lives.

You're about your ex, are you?

No, I'm not.

Who you ing Portugal with?

Ah, I was in Portugal.

Lisbon.

Oh, someone else.

Sorry, some conspiracy I've heard Someone else. A new girlfriend?

Yeah.

A new one? Yeah, like a new one that I haven't heard about before. Yeah. Because I don't understand how do people do it? I fall in love once a year and then I go on a bunch of dates that are fucking waste of time. And I'd rather literally like stare at computer screen than speak to them.

It's difficult. Relationships and business are really difficult.

Depends. I find it impossible because I find it a full time job. When you start to fancy someone, it does.

So it becomes.

I had like a whole year old consumer. I'm almost scared to like someone ever again.

So I did that. I basically retired for like a whole year when I met Beck. So I can't. My partner like I took like pretty much a whole year off.

You know they're getting serious when you refer to them as partner instead of girlfriend.

What else do you say?

She's two weeks out from proposal girlfriend.

Sounds like that sounds like I'm like 18 or something. My girlfriend. No, no, actually, no girlfriend.

She needs a bit selfish.

It's been a long day.

If you said partner before I'd heard girlfriend, I would think you were gay. I'd be like, well, he's not saying boyfriend, but he's not said girlfriend.

Girlfriend sounds like. People say girlfriend. All right, my girlfriend.

Yeah, my girlfriend. Technicality. Anyway, the mature semi.

So, yeah, but then I just like. And then I fucked up hard because then, like, all my competitors were like, still grafting in that year. And I looked back and I was.

Like, so why did you stop grafting? Because you were just settled.

Comfy, you've got cash in the bank, you live in a sick house, you drive a supercar. What the fuck more do you want? You got a fit girlfriend, partner, girlfriend. And like, what the fuck else do you want to do? Like, you kind of. Because when you're single, you're just like, smashing business, smashing business. And all of a sudden, this girl comes in your life, wow, this is amazing. And then you've got the money, you got everything you got, you feel satisfied, you're proud of yourself, you look good, you feel good, and just like, let me just enjoy this. And then you deplete that battery because you kind of come out of honeymoon and you're like, oh, now I kind of need a purpose again. And then you fall back into business, but then realized in hindsight that you've just neglected it for a long time. I've seen a lot of people do that. Very fortunately for me, I hadn't. I. The business was still doing well and I had a lot of capital and I. And I had the graft, then just basically hibernate for another six months to smash it out. But not many people recover from that position.

You are. You don't do things by ARFs, Chief. That's why. I don't know, full whack.

I'm the most obsessive, completely lunatic person in the world.

Self regulation, very well. But for better or worse, Better or worse, that's not negative in any way. It's just.

That's the only time I ever envy single men is when I think about how much more time and resources you would be able to invest. I said this to you, but then.

That'S also not true, because I get distracted by the fact I'm single and the fact that biological desire to fucking be with a beautiful woman.

I'd love to see, like, for people, like, I agree with that narrative to a point, but I also think, like, like you can do enough in under nine to five time frame. Not saying nine to five job.

Yeah.

I also think if you split test spending six hours versus 12 hours doing work, your output.

Do you know what's really funny? I don't know. I don't know if this has hit you as you've matured, but I feel like in the past year, I don't know if it's my cerebral cortex fully forming, which apparently happens when you're 25 and 27. So the past two years, but the past year particularly, I've realized that I used to think that, I think everyone does, but I used to think that you have to stare at a screen all day, otherwise I was a loser. And then I realized that the billionaires don't do that. So that's an extreme example. But the success people I look up to most have way more balance than I've ever had, but they're just doing smarter things.

But don't you think of that as something that comes as like a privilege of once you're actually done? Well, because like it's anxiety. I grafted 12 hour days until I was successful and then I have the privilege to actually be able to take my filthy.

Yeah, but it's also that. But just more experience and more leverage as you get older because more capital leverage, more human leverage because of the better team.

Yes, I was saying, I was saying this one.

It's basically just you have more leverage because you put yourself in a position to have more leverage through knowledge, experience and people.

You're making fewer decisions that have higher inputs. Yeah, but I also think that again, if you actually rewound those 12 hour days, I reckon you would have got more done if you'd done eight and spent the other four hours outside.

That is probably true. There's also, it's just your anxiety.

You're in like an anxiety mindset. But I need to be in front of my computer for 12 hours. It's an impossible solution.

I'm trying to move away from that. I still even get that idea.

I never have creative ideas.

I feel guilty. I almost feel guilty for enjoying myself almost ever.

Yeah.

I almost never. I also feel it's like burnout is definitely a thing from sitting in front of a computer for too long. Like you just can't think productively about a problem. Then you step away for a few days, you come back and you're like, I've got like 15 years.

Yeah. You go on a holiday and every, every problem that you've had, you have a Solution for.

Yeah, it's just like. It's like an odd. I think, like, it's something like cognitive experience. I don't know, like more you're doing different shit, whereas you're just not just. I'm just thinking about this one thing over and over again.

Yeah.

Like, maybe. I think that. I think that's definitely true. You see Zuckerberg learning BJJ on his whiteboard with his American fry.

The chief lizards have told the other lizards to blend in a bit more. Yeah, they've programmed him to do that.

Yeah.

But not say that, man, I can't get disabled gone.

So you stayed in, obviously. We talked about brand your plans to kind of stay where you are for the next few years in terms of location, back to the start of the forecast conversation.

Well, I want to. I want to. I was toying with the whole, like, I've had it on, like, the tip, like, off, like, my brain. The tip of my brain. I had it, like, in the back of my mind for a long time about, like, taxation and the whole Dubai situation. And I'm not a huge lover of Dubai, to be honest. I like them for a holiday, but I can't really see myself living there too much. But if I had to do it for 90 days to reform the company, then. Then I would be interested, intrigued to do that. I. So I'm thinking of doing that and doing, like, the three months and setting up, but also on the same light. I spent three months in Cape Town last year with this year. Absolutely loved it. January through to March. I'm going to do that again January through to March next year. And then I'm thinking Madeira and Portugal. So I want to actually, whilst I live in the village, I spend a lot of time away. Like, I went on, like, 13, 14 holidays last year.

When you're paying 19 grand for a flat in central London. Yeah, It's a good look.

Yeah.

Portugal's sick, to be fair.

19 grand, would you mean.

I'm joking, like satirical.

Oh, a month. Yeah.

Compared to. Yeah. Portugal is a sick place.

Yeah.

I really want to do South Africa as well.

I like the idea of just holding three months and free. Like three months. Three months. Three months. Like three months in the UK waters. Yeah. Yeah. Quarters. It's nice. I always had the fear that you wouldn't be able to. I wouldn't be able to be as efficient being away, but I was a lot more efficient in Cape Town than I am in the uk.

You definitely can be if you have the setup and you have the Routine.

I think if you get. Yeah, you need to be there long enough to do it, to get into routine, get into a lifestyle, actually live there, not just be there.

Yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah.

I've always wanted to do code I want to do. My ideal setup would be northern southern hemisphere, six month rotation, I think.

What's it always in the summer, Summer.

Here, summer and then summer in somewhere else and just do that, just run that for six months.

I'm not doing a London winter again.

I'm not.

I'm sorry. I've been saying this for five years and last year was just the final. Yeah, the final nail in the coffin. I was like why the am I here? Can be anywhere.

I've only been here for like it's miserable but it's a vehicle for me. Like it's good for network, good for business short term.

But I'm glad someone said something against the Dubai narrative, which every larper on Money Twitter disagrees with because they consume everything that certain YouTubers say as if it's the biblical gospel itself.

I can see it.

Nice to hear an opinion that doesn't just nod and smile to what everyone else is doing.

I've seen. I've seen a lot of people pushing Saudi Arabia as the next version of that as well. I don't know.

Not now.

I think Dubai, like Dubai makes sense for attacks. Like I can see why you'd go three months a year. Three months.

Three months of the year.

Pretty sure it's 183 days, 6 months.

I think it knows.

Completely legitimate.

I think it's. Maybe you have to do. I don't know. I've never.

I'm just into it crying what people have moved there, have said, I don't know.

Yeah, don't know.

We'll all be there riding camels at some point, won't we? Clip this in a year's time. That was me a month ago.

How many of the original group that you moved to London are still. Still here? Not many surely. Most have gone, haven't they?

How many Fred's gone to Dubai.

I thought there was others that have moved. Oh, oh Goose.

I don't know where he is. He's probably on like Mars or something. Goose. Conor Karun, he's the OG flatmate and said the other guy lives in la, so.

Right. I thought there someone else thought there was four marvels and gone. Never mind.

Final question. If you could give three bits of advice to your 18 year old self in hindsight, what would they be? You've got a nice 10 years to learn.

Number one, stop trying, stop thinking. You have to invent the next big thing. I think starting an agency opened my eyes up to the fact that I don't even know why I didn't recognize that as restaurants opened up on your street every single week or every single month, you don't have to create the next big idea. And so I was always waiting for that, and I didn't need to. Number two, resilience is the single most important trait of any entrepreneur, in my opinion. I think if you're not resilient, then you just will not stand the test of time. The first failure that you have, you give up. And third to that, get in sales earlier. I think sales is one of the best, if not the best skill that foundational skills that any entrepreneur can learn. And especially actually something as severe, as diverse as cold calling or Facebook for severe confidence in it. Yeah, cold calling is just. It's gritty and it's fucking difficult. Yeah, it's extremely difficult. And you get no after, no after, no after, no after, no. And you're backed in a corner and you have to just stick and persevere through it. And I think that in a way resembles and symbolizes business in so many senses. We just kind of failure after failure. We have day after day after day after day. We feel like we're not moving, we're not moving, not moving until one day actually fucking clicks and something works. And I think that that's a very foundational skill that would have given myself a lot earlier.

I think those are really good ones. I think. I think the reinvent the wheel one was really good. A lot of people think they need to find the next Uber to make, especially when you're young.

We can't all create rainbow dust from scratch. Some of us just got his settled.

I'm working on it, mate.

I'm working on it.

I've only asked this question once because I keep. I always forget.

You're adding another final question.

My final question.

Yeah.

If you had to meet one person.

We'Re not stereotypical here.

And you have to ask them one question. Who would you meet and what would you ask him?

I'd meet Gordon Ramsay and I'd say, what you making for dinner, mate? True answer.

There you go.

I wouldn't mind cooking my steak in one of his fucking hex clad pans.

I'm not owning that business.

On that bombshell, it's been a pleasure. Is this like the fifth episode you've actually shown up to?

You just keep jetting off all. What we're gonna do is gonna be zoom calls when you're off.

Might have to. Yeah.

Or you can just Photoshop me in. Just in the corner.

But, yeah, as always, subscribe to the pod. It's been Jordan Platin. We'll put his links down below. You can all go start a agency, because that's the best place to do it, evidently.

And.

Cheers for watching. See you in the next one. Cheers. Goodbye.