Building an Ecommerce Brand & Fulfilment Empire at 26 - Connor Martin | Midnight Podcast Episode 31

Right then back with episode 29 of the Midnight Pod Fucking hell we've reached that pretty quick we have Connor Martin, Northern Irish fella who can introduce himself in a second Put in touch with me by the guys at Saw ollie and Joe three different econ brands and a3PO and you're 26?

26, yes yeah so don't look 26.

Now but do you think you look older or younger? Older yeah I think you probably did look old it's probably all the fucking stress I imagine but yeah I guess there's a load of shit we can dive into I was just saying beforehand before we start recording I've never met someone that set up a 3 PL certainly not someone that's in their 20s it's not something that would appeal to me obviously it's like a super important part of E comm brands and shit that nobody talks about because they just want to talk about spending money on ads and revenue etc etc But I'm sure there's a fucking interesting story in Leicestership we can go with too I guess the first question as usual is just who are you? What's your background? I generally run things pretty chronologically so maybe kind of go back to where all this started and go right back.

To school Right back to school? Yeah I think so Standard, standard E comm school suites I think if you didn't sell sweets in school you were irrelevant yeah sort of thing so selling sweets in school started very young secondary school, same sort of thing Me and my friend group weren't really successful on paper sort of just doing the bare minimum to get by Always had it in my head from back then that I wanted to be a millionaire Obviously that's the bog standard so what you want to do when you're going, going through secondary school and yeah sort of just sprung from there when I went to university in Liverpool with my girlfriend at the time doing criminal justice which was completely irrelevant and I think I went, went for a second year broke up with a girlf and then and sort of run into spiral went into full time work worked for a phone company one of the better known ones sort of getting into selling I think so I went everything I'd done I wanted to be the best at so whether it be selling but just before, sort of going back just before worked in the phone shop I worked for Domino's Pizza and I sort of really found there what hard work really was and we were, I was sitting, I was that guy that took the pizzas out of the oven oven's 230 degrees.

Yeah.

So he used to go with sweat patches after a 14 hour shift. It was hell.

After uni before or during?

During. During, yeah. Started off as a delivery driver and crashed twice on the job. Realized that wasn't for me, then went inside. Done that for two years throughout uni and yeah. Then went to the phone company. Went full time in the Christmas during my last year and yeah, just sort of, you know, off. I still managed to get a pass. I think I handed in a 2000 word dissertation and managed to get a pass. You know, never used it at all.

Yeah.

Then met my now wife during that time.

Your wife?

Yeah, wife. Married as well, 26. Met her and got into crippling debt really bad. So I had like 30,000 worth of debt or just off. Stupid. Just living about. Not nothing to show for it. Living above your minds. New iPhone every year. Working at a phone shop. That's where I came. I support you how to get. But you still paid for it. And that was a sort of hidden, hidden one then because we were. But we were both sort of. We're both in so much debt. We moved. So we moved back home, live with my parents for a bit.

What job are you doing? Sorry? After union did you get.

I was still. I was. No, no, I was still in the phone company. So I went full time phone company in the January, I don't know what year. 2017 say. And then six months. Six months. I went from 25 hour temp to assistant manager. Moved back home. Quite an assistant manager job. Then moved to manager within two months and then another further two months. I was helping with the whole commercial side of the business. And in Northern Ireland, obviously when you're what? That was when I was 22. When you're 22 doing that, you're not getting paid for it, you're doing it for a bit of clout sort of thing. Yeah. And then during that time I was doing like 60 hour weeks. I was working in what would be the equivalent to say Birmingham from here.

Yeah.

So the travel time is fucking huge. It was a full time job itself. And then during the travel was when I sort of burst the first Ecom brand which was the Essence Vault designer perfume inspiration company shall we call it Done that spare time. First two years of. It wasn't really. It was. It was just no. No econ whatsoever. I didn't even know what Ecom was, didn't know what Shopify was. It was just all selling at shitty markets. I say shitty markets. They fucking made the Brand, so they're not shitty. Yeah, it was really in an e commerce space. It would be called product development. I knew what worked, knew it didn't. If I showed you the branding back then, it was so bad. But yeah, and then things sort of turned sour. The phone company police were involved and stuff. Basically got shoved out of the position. And I was about to go full time with the Essence Fault. Sort of had the fluttering moment where he thought, oh, shit, this could fall on its face. I took a job@yale.com. i'm sure you've been pissed through them if you signed up. Yeah, I was one of them guys calling builders during their job that didn't want to speak to me. Getting told off six, seven times a day. Done that for three months. I'd. Honestly, I was there three months and that was. That was. Been my best employment. They. I was at there. I was there three months. Not even. I think it was there two months. The third month. My mom was quite sick at the time. Spoke to my manager and I said, look, my mom's quite sick. I'm gonna have to. Gonna have to pack it in. Essence Fault was just about doing my monthly wage. So I just said, look, I need a. I need to spend some time with her sort of thing. And my manager just said it was literally, it was a call center. Basically, that's all it was, was a call center manager pulled me into this room and just said, connor, walk out the door and just don't go back to your desk. Walk out the door and we'll forget this happened. And they still paid me for like two months after. So that really fucking set me up. They paid me two months. I was gone, didn't do a inch of work. And they paid me full, full monthly wage for two months. And that made. That made the Essence Fault, to be honest, because I didn't have to worry about money and I was just able to test things. Yeah. And then ever since then, that was. That was the six months before COVID hit in the March. This was the June previous. So that's. That's only how long I've been in the space.

Yeah, not that long.

Ever since then, sort of 60 up, 70% up. Sort of thing. Went fully calm in the September. Yeah. And just drove from there, really.

So how long were you working on the Essence Vault before going full time?

Before going full time? I would say just under two years. Call it 18 months. I wouldn't say working on the Essence Vault was the project, but it was never. It was just. I had it in my head, I'm not going to do this forever. I just want to learn Ecom. I want to learn dtc. I didn't know what DTC was back then. Lucky enough, fell onto Shopify through a YouTube video, toyed with the theme and built the first version. First version, which was terrible. I think I got one sale in about six months. Yeah, that was so.

Yeah.

I mean, I wouldn't say. Working on the Essence Vault. Working on the Essence Vault. So to say. I would say three months before I went full time. It was that quick. It was the April. The April time. Sorry, we. I seen it. I think I seen a few influencer ads and I thought it. What if I send them free product? What's the worst that can happen? And it was so funny. I still remember the girl's name. It was a girl. It was a Mrs. Hinch wannabe called Sophie. I sent her. No, sorry, called Charlotte. I sent her a 30 mil bottle. The cost and Frost was fucking fiverr. And we made 250 quid off it. I remember I was in bed with my missus, half 11 at night and my phone started. I still had the Shotify. The. The Shotify notification on classic. And I was like, what the happened? Something's. This is a scam. Like, it was just cl. Cl. And she posted like 10. And I was. I. I still. I didn't. It was that bad. I didn't even remember. I sent it to her and it just popped off and it was from then. I just. I literally. I remember lying in bed and I was like, this is it. This is what I'm gonna do. And I sort of just grew from there.

So. So what was like the logic prior to that? Like, it's kind of. It's quite niche and sounds quite complicated, at least from my perspective, to start a perfume.

Yeah.

Brand as your first ever econ venture.

Joe. What's funny?

Especially when you had no intention of.

Yeah, it's funny when people ask you that because you sort of make up your story. I think you know, you know yourself doing the neon signs and stuff, you tend well, I know for me, I find myself make up. Making up a story what that story was. I was at uni and one of my. One of my flatmates was a chemistry student and that he was really in the perfumes and stuff and I learned off him. That's. Yeah, I. I literally halfway through, I kind of thought, do you know what? I. I've always loved perfume. I actually now thinking back, I remember mixing perfume. Mixing my dad's shitty dupe and that start stuff. And I was mixing it together and creating a new perfume and spreading it myself. So I've just, I've always loved perfume and I never understood why then big companies can get away with spending or making it cost 2,300 pound. I find that insane.

Yeah. Still pay for it.

Yeah, still pay for it. And plenty of people still do. Yeah. So that's, that's sort of it.

How do you even start that? Like particularly with little money that you're saying that you work in the job, obviously you got the two months paid which helped start it was that just like you put a few grand into stock on a whim or what? Like, what was the logic?

So before I left, obviously I was on the Morrison stuff trying to get, trying to get the sort of product right. And I tried so many things. Literally, if you, if you look up on YouTube how to make perfume, every single one of them videos is wrong. And I now I think I'm back. It's purposely wrong.

Yo, fellas, quick one. First bit of promo for the pod. You may or may not have heard, I released a fucking E comm course a few months ago. Basically spent like six months making it because I was in between businesses, as you probably know. If you follow my shit, I must say, 12 hours long. It's fucking quality content. I was gonna drop it at like 1500 quid with some bullshit guru y webinar and all that rubbish, but as you know, it's not my main thing. I'm working on a new brand right now. Very, very fucking much in the trenches. Which is why I think it's actually a better course than everything else out there. Cause it's built on real experience of my brands in the past and my current one. I think it's super, super valuable. If you're interested in E comm, you're already in E comm and you wanted to get into E. Starting a brand from scratch, then definitely worth investing in. Link is in the bio of this video or podcast. Spotify, Apple Music, wherever the you're listening or watching and enjoy the rest of the pod.

And they tell you to mix it with the wrong stuff, wrong, wrong quantities. And perfume is dangerous. Perfume can like be unsafe to use. And I literally, I found a blog, all like 2008 blog from America and it showed you this sort of vague description and I bought stuff based off that and got it and I just went, holy, this is quite good.

So you made it yourself?

We made it. We made it from scratch ourselves. Yeah.

What, in a kitchen?

I'll show you a video, a picture. I had a flat kitchen, smaller than yours in here, probably cleaner and actually wasn't. And I made the first batch there. Back then it was more of a focus on wax melts and candles, which is a bit more kitchen esque. Shall we call it We Dumb Perfumes? We didn't really do that many perfumes. Cause everyone, everyone and their mum had a candle business. Yeah, it's definitely on Instagram, that Instagram prime time. So we wanted to focus on that. And then it was the markets that sort of. I was at the markets and people. I had this big bit of wax melts and candles and perfumes on the side and people were interested.

You started selling in physical.

Like physical market stalls?

Yeah. Like old school.

Yeah, very old school.

So when was this? Like 2018.

This would have been going back. Which 2019 would be covered. 2018 market stalls. Yeah.

And then when did you entirely switch to online?

Would have been the.

Is that when you went full time?

Yeah, would have been the September before COVID What?

And when was there a point where you suddenly thought this is like a. Can be a serious business?

Would have been in the next month. October.

Yeah. Is that organically or.3 paid ads. How do you scale it? And were you still making it? I'm surprised you're still making it from your kitchen at this point.

No, no, no. So September, the markets were getting that big. We. I literally. We've moved premises seven times. We've moved from my spare bedroom, the kitchen to the spare bedroom to one of my dad's spare bedrooms, which was slightly bigger. Then we rented a few office blocks off. Three office rooms, one office room and two. Then three. Moved into a bigger building. Then the landlord there, there gave us one of the back rooms and it was filled with shit, like filled with rubbish. And you know, we sort of said, look, if we help you clear out, can we have the space? He said yes. And then we moved into where our premises is now, which so happened to be one of my, my father's old businesses, which was an indoor artificial grass filter pitch. So he sold that up because of COVID and I moved into that building and that's. We sort of grew it from there.

And where's everything made now?

It's still on the same in that warehouse.

Oh, shit. So you're not making it in China? No, no, no. I just assume you got some supply off Alibaba.

No. So if you make any cosmetics in China, it can't be vegan friendly. Has to be tested on. Sorry, it can't be cruelty free. Has to be tested on animals.

Right.

If you make any. Any. I could be wrong here, so correct me if I'm wrong, but any cosmetics that are made, manufactured in China are tested animals. That's one of their sort of cosmetic rules, so to speak. So at the time, coming from a background of. All of our influences were based on Mrs. Hinch. Cruelty free was the. The big thing. It was the. Had to be cruelty free. Yeah, yeah. So that's why we never. That's why China was never an option for us.

What does that business look like now in terms of, like, amount of people scale?

Yeah. So we've got how it's been run. 75 staff on payroll, full timers between 40 and 50.

Oh, for the Essence Vault. Yeah. Come on to the 3PL.

So the 3PL, I'll talk about a shared stuff. The Dispatch. The dispatch part of the Essence Vault feeds the dispatch part of that.

Okay.

Which was the Essence Vault is now the 3PL, right?

Yeah. There's a lot of different things here because. Yeah, I guess we'll come up to three pair in a minute then. But. So 75 staff, making everything in house, making everything nicer. How many skus, like, on the website? Seems like a pretty fucking complicated.

We sell about 200 different fragrances in three different sizes.

So 600 SKUs?

Yeah, 600 skews at least. Probably say closer to 1000.

It's all made in house.

All made in house, yeah.

And is it, like, made to order or what?

Not so much made order. So, say, for example, this Friday, every quarter, we do a buy one, get one free, which. And goes crazy. It's like, renowned amongst the community. Then it will sort of be made to order, because we're shipping out stock that fast. But we do tend to keep. We try and keep about 100, 200 balls of each SKU. Obviously, with that amount of screws, it's hard.

Yeah. That's like, what, sixty hundred thousand units at a time? And then like customer acquisition. I assume that's paid strategy.

Is it, like, all paid worked best? Yeah. What's worked best? I'm thinking back to at the start, when we use Kit. Remember Kit?

Yeah.

Oh, my God. That was 20 rows for us every time.

Really?

Yeah. Right. From 20 pound to 200 at that time. 200 pound a day.

Well, in 2020, when Facebook ads were just a joke.

Yeah. Insane. And then we switched to magics. Remember? Have you heard of magic?

Yeah.

And we've done that. And that Was insane for us. That's when we started the fucking scale.

That's what like an AI scaling platform? Basically it's magic with an X. Right?

Yeah. I think they do everything though, like audience builder bidding strategies and stuff. But for what we done, we literally just picked a few AI audiences. I don't know, is it AI or is it just their. Their fancy terminology for it make it sound very simple. But fucking whatever it is at the time it worked for us. It was massive for us. We started to scale spend magic's at that time. At that time of the business at scale this single handed, like you weren't even.

Wait, so you weren't running any of it by like manually or with an agency?

No.

Purely just software.

No. At that time. No.

How much are we spending just with that?

I can. I would say maybe £400 a day, 500 a day, if that. If that. Probably even less actually. 200 pound a day. But we were getting quite good R Us.

Yeah, yeah. So how is that scaled now? Like how many orders you doing now?

We're doing per day. We're doing about 700 orders. But buy one, get one free. Could. It could go from the A.V.

Is what, 35 quid?

35 quid? Yeah.

600 grand a month, give or take. Yeah. It's a big boost.

Yeah.

I just clocked. I think you're the first person that's actually disclosed numbers on this podcast.

He checked out.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, you know why I'm okay to give them numbers is because everyone's happy to share Shotify screenshots on Twitter and no one says. The reason why I've never done it is because them numbers mean Jack. I could do. I'll talk about this in a bit, but I could do a million month. A million pound a month and be broke and do 600 pound or 600,000 and be mega profitable.

100. Tell me about it. Neon Beach. Yeah, well, yeah, that's like 1.5 mil a month. And then it broke.

Yeah.

And I would have been better off doing a quarter of that.

Yeah. It's not many people think that. I think it's starting to be more relatively known amongst that sort of Twitter. Twitter DTC app.

Yeah. The whole DTC world is as it's been proven. It's just such a small world. Like the whole E. Comm. Entrepreneur sphere, whether it's Twitter. Well, I guess mainly Twitter, but like Twitter, YouTube events, all this shit. Everyone knows everyone.

Yeah, yeah, literally.

Because there's about like 0.01% of the world doing it in some bullshit and they all know the first world, like.

Yeah, but on that, like we were, we were scaling very heavily and we were with an age, a very well known agency. They know who they are and they do. You know what? See, thinking back, they were brilliant. If we had things like triple wheel back then, they'd still be managing us because they were, they were great. I don't think you'd want me to mention, so I'm not going to, but we were, we were nearly bankrupt. I haven't really spoken about this to anyone, but we were. This was Black Friday, the year we moved into the big warehouse. So we had to pay for the warehouse in 2020. Yeah, we were a new brand. So you're not getting any Finance 1st year DTC, not massive finance anyway. So we had not like, I mean, when I say finance, I mean old fashioned finance like banks, mortgages, things like that. You're not getting any sort of finance.

Yeah. Danny, Daniel. I go to Wayfarer.

Sorry, to waiflower.

Yeah.

Ross, if you're listening, you know, so we were nearly bankrupt and we were, we were maybe 50,000 pound away from bankruptcy. Yeah, it was a tough time and we were scaling heavy.

So why was that? Cash flow issues or not being profitable?

Not being profitable.

Because this is sort of. No one speaks about.

Yes, it isn't.

And like the whole Twitter sphere, like you're saying. So it's just screenshot, screenshot, screenshot.

What people don't understand is, right, so you've got oh my brands and this is even in the, in the venture capitalist sort of.

Yeah.

Point of view as well. Oh, you're not growing 50% month, month over month. Why, why aren't you? Yeah, you know, we're in this sort of age. If you're going 50% month on month, you have to buy your stock at about a 250% rate based on their. Your last order to. You have to buy. So you've got the 100% that you've used, the 50% that you've got to cover you.

Yeah.

And now your next purchase you're not going to get from maybe eight weeks. So that's another 100 growth on top of what you're already doing. So that's massive money. That's massive money.

Yeah. To be fair, like that is a whole interesting debate in itself. Like the whole revenue and growth and valuation and VC funding, blah, blah, versus profit, profit, that good old thing. Which. Yeah, maybe we can come on to that in more detail later. But yeah, I Think it's super interesting debate because. Yeah, you are right. Like there's. I think there's definitely a bit of a bubble in like venture capital and funded B2C brands. Like look at shit like Casper Mattresses.

Yeah.

That. I think they raised more than they've ever done in revenue or something. And now they're like. Yeah, they went from other nice. I don't know the numbers layman. Sounds like they went from being a $3 billion company to now being worth like 50 million.

Yeah.

On paper.

Yeah. But they got.

And they've never made any money.

Yeah.

Yeah. But they're banked by like Softbank and shit.

Yeah. It's definitely. It's like the unspoken sort of commandments of DCC is scale. Everyone is such a sexy word.

Yeah.

On paper that definitely near brokers. We dropped that agency in the January. We had our worst month in about six, seven months in the February. But it was our most profitable. It was more profitable than the design.

So you're just overspending.

Previously, not so much overspending. Like we. Our LV was 20, 23 pound 24. So we. And we offered free shipping back then. And I literally said to myself, look, I don't. I'm not making money on people buying a sample as part of the customer journey. I get it. But we're not making money on you ltv. I was too naive to know what LTV even meant. So we. We put our. I'm trying to think of it. It was. I know. I think it was on an agency call and they talked about your aov, blah blah. And I thought, I'm just gonna raise my free shipping threshold 40 quid. And it. I'm gonna. Really?

Yeah.

And destroyed us. Our conversion dropped from 4% to like 1.9. And I thought. And it's hard because initially you think straight away, I've got. At that time, I think we had 30 staff. He goes, I'm gonna have to let 20 people go because our sales are falling or dropping like fucking shit. Yeah. So it was definitely a hard time. But we ran. We rode that them three months. We actually started working with. At that time the February, we started working with Savannah Sanchez on Tik Tok. We work with her for. We still get creatives from her and they're brilliant. But she ran our paid spend for two months.

Across everything.

No, just across Tik Tok. Across Tik Tok. And we scaled pretty heavy. We spent more. She kind of asked me, can she take them back over? We spent more that month than we haven't, we've spent even today. Skill wise, she did very well for us. But that sort of, that was the moving tide because then the existing customer base now realized, okay, the 40, the 40 pound threshold is now staying. So they, they initially they held back and it's not something I thought of, but they held back on ordering. On ordering because they, they thought it was only something that I was testing. And eventually once, because the tick tock sort of took the, the bad parts away. AOV rose to what it is now. 35, 36.

Yeah.

And that saved the business. Definitely saved the business massively.

And when was that? Start 2021.

Start 2021. Yeah. February 2021. January we changed, we changed it in January. End of January we changed it and then middle of Feb, Facebook started picking up again. Savannah spent. Savannah spend sort of covered. I still think her spend on TikTok replicate it what the results on Facebook and it made the Facebook results better because you're all that bullshit about the algorithm. More, more buyers were coming to the site. Facebook had more. Like we went because of how cheap the TikTok traffic was. We were going from like, I don't know, the numbers say 5,000 visitors a day to 15,000 visitors a day. Conversion rate dropped. But there was a shit ton of visitors sort of thing. Yeah. And then ever since then it's been a lot more stable, so to speak.

Yes.

Massive learning curve. Massive learning curve. Because initially you look at all of the DTC gurus, they're like, oh, scale skill, scale this, use this hack to get 200. That nearly crippled us because I was doing every single hack, I find.

Yeah, spend more, grow. Yeah, right. So you mentioned before, obviously building a fucking massive perfume brand aside for a second. There's loads of the shit you do, which is mad. You said there's two other ecom brands.

Two other ecom brands have or are involved with.

What's the story with those?

Believe it or not, it was your tweet, your Twitter thread, the first one you've done on Neon beach, that fucking opened my eyes massively because. And I actually, it was only in the fucking flight over here that I realized that's actually what it was. You tweeted about obviously your sort of shit. And I thought I need to diversify and you can't focus everything on one brand. That's not healthy.

Well, you drew that from my tweet. I would have said the main thing was I wasn't focused.

Seriously, I, I would have thought, I would have thought more on diversification because you were very unlucky not to take one of the brands with you through it.

Yeah. Although, I mean, my heart wasn't really in either at the end. But yeah. Yeah. It's interesting that.

Yeah. So I, I went from one. One sole focused brand, the Essence Vault. Now we're in supplements and skincare. Both brands aren't doing great, to be honest. They're not pulling numbers. But again, that's more down to focus. But they will. I'm very confident in the brands so I know they will do well eventually. But I just. It was a big realization point that we, we needed to diversify and we can't focus all our eggs in one basket because like. Sorry. Another thing that came about that was because in August last. Not the year, last year, the year before, we got hacked and they spent like 22,000 on our MX and they still.

Who hacked you?

Just some fucking can't hike me.

Paid for what?

Just they paid. They ran like 22 grand and like Chinese of ad spend. Yeah, ad spend. I spend. And it took me what, to their website, to their own page? Yeah.

From your ad account?

From my adequate. From my adequate. So through my ad account, obviously I'm actually spending it. And. Yeah, and that was literally. So they hacked me on the Monday. I was mad the way they've done it. So they covered. They hacked for my personal account. They put ISIS on my profile, which that then meant Facebook wouldn't talk to me to get back into it.

Fucking.

And show you the next Shackleford. He was the one that got me back in the account at the time. He reached out to his agency rep and then started the ball rolling. I got the account back on the Friday. Like that's only five days. But fuck me, that destroyed me because I thought, oh my God, at that time we were like 90% spend on Facebook, which I. That was 2020. We were 90% spent on Facebook. Our orders went from like at the time, 400 a day, 400 a day, like 50 a day. And this isn't just like. It's not like your 3 PL where you can. They just get less orders. I had staff having to be sent home. Like I was still paying their wages and I'm sending them home at like 10, 10am because they're fucking done. They have no orders to pack. Do you know what I mean? So that was. I. I was shitting myself again. I didn't really show up much, but I was myself because I just realized some from. He was Chinese because I, I eventually he friended me an hour before he hugged me. So he bought my password.

Two factor authentication on.

Wish I did now. No, I turned it on stream.

Anyone listening 2fa text.

I think Facebook's made it mandatory now.

Yeah, I mean anyone that spend any money, put two factor authentication on. And I've got a quick story actually similar to that and add another admin which I told you to do because four years ago, right when I was back in the drop shipping days, I was spending like would have been at least ten grand a day on ads at one point. And I got locked out of my Facebook account I think because I went to Barcelona and like some IP whatever.

Yes. Yeah.

I didn't have a backup admin and like I couldn't get back into the account for like two weeks. I couldn't stop the spend and the only way. And I knew it wasn't profitable because I could say on the back end, the only way to stop the spend. I had to call Amex at the time and say cancel the entire Amex account because they said they can't, they can't block Facebook or some bullshit. And I was like, all right, cancel my. That was the only way around it. And then ever since then I have like anyone listening to factor authentication plus have like multiple backup admins on your bn.

I think I, I got a Facebook.

Notification a lot of people don't have.

Surprisingly I got a Facebook notification last week and it said if you don't do this list, we're shutting, we're temporarily pausing your coin.

Yeah.

So we're lucky enough. Obviously we already had it all on.

I have like mad two factor authentication just even on my personal Instagram account now after all, like I think I went through like last year.

That's how they first of all got in was through Instagram, Facebook. Obviously I was just. Stupid fucker. I had the same password for everything.

Yeah, I do to be fair.

But no. So that between that and, and that took the. Your famous tweet. It sort of gave me the realization, okay, I need to get, I need to get a few different brands on the go. It's not so much. I haven't just set these brands up willy nilly. Like they are brands that mean a lot to me and when I say a lot to me, they've helped me in my daily life, which I think is the main focus of a brand. If it like you've got that obviously going with space goods.

Yeah.

Like if they, if they help you, you know they're going to help others.

Very true.

Which is massive. But then obviously some came to me that okay, I've got three ecom brands. What happens if the econ bubble bursts or you know, Web Web 3 takes over and Ecom go. So I was like, right, okay, so 3PL. And the main realization in the 3PL is which a lot of other ecom brands you need to have a look at your numbers and really think what is a 90% of your business is the distribution side. Like that is all of ecom.

If.

If you don't. If you're not in control of your. If you don't have a good 3 PL or you're not in control of your distribution, your brand will fail.

Yeah. Just so much want to go into on the 3 PL because it's really interesting thing that you've just alluded to as well. But it's just right few things. It's interesting that you picked up from my Twitter thread which by the way it's always funny when you put stuff online, you never think about people actually like real people actually seeing it. I mean it's always just numbers. Same with like e commerce. But you're saying like you should diversify, which I can see from what I put out. And yeah, it's just funny because I thought the biggest problem and what I'm trying to not do now and what I'm not doing now is I'm not diverse. Fine. Because I want to focus on something.

It's a double edged sword.

But I guess within that focus I can diversify in terms of like having different channels.

Yeah.

So I guess there's two ways of looking at it. But then also what you just said about like econ potentially dying. Like come on. I like I don't know because I'm a pessimist. I get that. Yeah. Well, I can never die. It sounds like your methodology to business is like. And correct me if I'm wrong but like you'd rather definitely make 5 million than risk trying to make a hundred.

Is it sword's law? Everything that can go wrong will go wrong is yes. Someone's law.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean you listen to so many stories. Your name, your story. Can you say no? Beach? Is that you're loud.

Yeah, yeah. I talk about all the time. It's load.

I know you do that there like that was something that you never thought before that happened that was going to happen. But my like with my business something could happen that I never thought was gonna happen. And that's the same with every business like you could have. I know for a Jewelry business. I know some really high influencer. Absolutely dishes your brand, your trust back is destroyed, your Facebook page score gets destroyed, your business is gone. That can happen and it has happened.

Yeah.

To plenty of people. So diversification is a massive thing now. Yes. The, the main double edged sword to that is. Okay, so Now I've got 90 of my revenue coming from my baby which is the essence fault. Am I not given 100? It's the 80 20s thing. I'm missing out on double on that or triple on that.

Yeah.

But as you said, I can definitely make a. Rather than pushing to be. And it's not so much not. I'm not pushing to be. I want to get to that stage, that massive stage. But I'd rather do it across three or four different things. You know, say for example, I sell brand number three. Brilliant. That can help me push brand one and brand two again.

Yeah.

Yeah. You could speak about it all night really. Because it is.

I do find that difference in action interesting though. I think it was episode 24 with Matt Burgess from NBC Customs or whatever. Well, MB Customs. And we had a little debate about this kind of near the end of the episode and he was like, do you invest in profit? And I was like, no, I've never thought about anything other than getting filthy rich building an E Commerce like literally. And it's still true.

Yeah, it's.

And yeah, I guess he's probably definitely more sensible. But like where do you think that like pessimism comes from? Because obviously you're obviously not. I mean I always say that I'm a cynical optimist, but you're obviously not a pessimist because you're a entrepreneur and you build stuff.

Yeah.

So like a real pessimist is like that and start. I mean.

Yeah.

So is it because you've had a little flavor of doing your own thing, having had like jobs in the past and now you're like, I don't want to have to go back to that or what. Where does it stem from?

So it's them.

I'm like a therapist.

Big one that said, I know. Hell, I'm covering my father, he serial entrepreneur, Eddie H.D. like myself, he. He started as. He started his company in 2003 which was safety Nets. So do you know like they're building a building. Um, so the hell there's a business for everything. The riffers don't fall in when they're putting the roof on. Peed on Safety Nets on them at the time huge recession hit. So just before that he got he got offered massive money, millions for his, for the. Him and his brother's business. He didn't take it. Recession hit and it wiped him out. Not wiped him out, he still survived and he never really talked about his struggles but he was in the red for years. And I think that's where the pessimism comes from, that sort of founding story that it can't just change like that. So yeah, I think that's where the pessimism comes from, where it can like anything can. Just like no one thought a recession was going.

Yeah.

But it stopped construct, it stopped the construction. Straight construction trade.

Yeah.

From 100 to 10. So. And he, it took him years and years to rebuild. So I think that's what my. Why I'm thinking to myself, okay, I need to really diversify. When I say 80 20, when you say mention properties and stuff. My 8020 is Ecom. I'm good at ecom. Why did I bought. Why would I bother in property when I can focus my top 20 in Ecom? Yeah, yeah, because that's what. Not so much what I'm good at but it's what I've done before sort of thing. And I, to be honest, I bought a flat last year and it's been the biggest headache ever. I bought one flat and it cost me, it's cost me thousands.

Today then. Or is it?

No. So it was during the Grenfell Towers. Yeah, that's why I bought one of them flats in Manchester that had the cladding. Cladding issue.

I nearly bought a flat a year and a bit ago just over there and I actually put a non refundable deposit down and lost it because I pulled out of it. When I turned out, it turned out I had some cladding issues and they weren't the mortgage that was approved that took fucking months to get. So obviously self employed. And it was a ridiculously expensive flat anyway by the way, just before shit went fucked up at Neon Beach. But yeah, it turned out that had like cladding issue and then actually 95% of the people that would have lent on it now wouldn't until it got something fixed and it was your loser.

Is it NSW or something?

Yeah, yeah.

You can't get a mortgage.

Yeah.

If, yeah. If it hasn't got this certificate that only.

So I'm so glad I didn't do that anyway now.

But I mean, yeah, that same sort of thing. So I bought it at auction thinking, okay, I'll buy out. You have to buy outright if it's auction so you can get a Mortgage. So I thought, oh, I'll just buy outright and then I'll mortgage it straight away and get the money back. Spoke to a mortgage advisor a day after buying it. It's like Connor sent me a news article. I was like, was this not disclosed on anything that this has got the gladness? I was like, no. Look through the paperwork. Of course it was there. I never seen it. Yeah, sent me like a 30 page document and it was hidden on like page like 28. Yeah. But yeah, so that's, that's my 8020 is focused on Acom. I know the, I know the drawbacks, I know the negatives that can happen. Diversification is my way of. Of trying to stop them happening. And as I said about with scale and difficulties in the perfume world, I won't have that with skincare, I won't have it with supplements. So it's opening new avenues as well.

Yeah, I definitely see that. So the 3 PL then, because that was 10 minutes before we started recording. That was the only business I thought you were involved in. Which it just goes to show that I don't do any research.

Suppose that's the best way for a podcast.

Yeah, it's just live and direct. So talk to me about that. Like how did that start? Because that seems very random to me. You were running econ brands like a lot of us in this space and then you thought I'll start 3po.

Like yeah. So me main thing was because I did look, first of all I looked at my staff and thought and looked at it and goes okay, 60, 70% of the staff is based on. Is based on dispatch. And I thought to myself, right, okay, so if we have a bad day, I'm learning. If we have a bad two months, three months, I'm letting 70% of my staff go. That can't happen. I don't just do it to make money. I do it because I'm helping other people on there, helping me. It's two way street. But I don't want to let them go if shit's a fan. So how can I. One, how can I help them? Two, how can they help me? And three, what. What at the end of the day is the bulk of the business and it was distribution. And we did, we went to a few different 3pls and first 3pl was is the biggest we went to them. Guy in a suit introduced us at the door, spoke to a girl in the suit, spoke to the director who was also in a suit. And there was no like you are representing dtc. Brands. Not one of you fuckers, not one of us fuckers wear suits. You know, you've got sweats on, I've got a T shirt on. This is like, that's not the environment we should be in. And then go onto the pricing structure. They're like, okay, yes, Connor, we can give you three pound an order, but that's only if you sell your products out in one day. Or that's using Hermes, which just complicated.

Right?

Yeah. And then the storage cost and then you've got weight costs, import costs, returns costs, air cost. Yeah, air cost.

You've got cost to breathe in the.

Facility, pallet cost, how many parts you can bring in if you bring in more than 10 parts or if your products sit there for more than a week cost. So yeah, so we really looked at it and we thought, right, if, what would I want? If I was. What, what did I want? Investing in the 3PL was especially having like 800 SKUs. I know that 20% of them screws aren't going to really sell.

Yeah.

But I don't want to, I don't want to have, I don't want the 20 of my lower SKUs costing me the profit on the top 20 sort of thing. So I thought, right, so how can we change this? So we, we thought, okay, so a fixed fee. The land cost in Northern Ireland is so much cheaper than in the uk, so that wiped out the storage cost. Pardon me. So we didn't have to worry about charging storage costs whatsoever. Because the way I think of it is if a customer is giving us all this stock, that's helping pay for the mortgage on that build. So, and then the end goal is we've got 200,000 pound warehouse paid off because client A has his stock in it. Perfect, we've got that, that's. That building's now ours. So technically, is it really something that we should be charging for? No, because they're paying a mortgage on that. Do you know what I mean? So that's why we went for A3PL because especially. Sorry. Another reason we went through A3BL is because of fluctuations in sales. So, like say for example, January is very quiet, whereas November's mad. I look, I looked at as. I can't, I can't really hire another 50 staff for seasonality based on just this fault. What happens if our website goes down Black Friday? Not only is my stuff out of work, I've hired 50 temps that could pay double. So I, that, I can't really do that because of the essence fault like, but if I, if I had 30 different brands and all them 30 brands are going to fail.

Yeah.

So I can hire to my heart's content because the profit I'm making on the three PL clients can pay for the, for the extra stuff. If I get the staff wrong, I get less profit. Not, you know, not being let. So it goes from less profit to less or more cost, so to speak. So it's a win, win. One call I have by a client on 3PL. They were like, okay, so you own three DTC brands. You're obviously going to focus on them. You're obviously going to focus on them rather than my brands. When you, when it gets to the busy season, definitely not the case because.

So it's all in the same.

It's all in the same. So we, it's all in the same industrial estate, so to speak. We've got four different buildings in the industrial estate, the main one, and then three storage units.

So it initially started from, you are a brand owner, you are a 3 PL customer, effectively. Everything else looks shit. This doesn't make sense. I'll start my own 3pl. But then on top of that, it makes sense because like you just said, it levels out the risk.

It levels out the risk, yeah.

Your brand having a bad month or whatever.

As you said before that, we started recording. No 3 PL owner is below the age of 5, 40, 50. Do you know what I mean? And no DTC owner is above the age of 30, 40, 50. So it's a complete diversification. Like it's doesn't make sense. So that's why we've done it and it's working very well for us. We just hired our, our first account manager. Shout out to Melissa if you're listening. She's brilliant, very bubbly and the same sort of thing. I completely changed the. What I experienced with our three PL visits was a sales manager that was fucking hounding near like a wolf.

Yeah.

This Melissa has no experience and she has a little experience in sales, but she's more of a project manager, which is what I would have wanted for as an account manager at 3PL, someone that I can trust to pick up the phone if a customer from a few days ago says they haven't got their order. That's going to be Melissa. She's going to help, she's going to put the arm around the client. She's going to explain, okay, so this has happened or like something's went wrong, we're going to fix, don't worry. Whereas having a sales Manager. They're not just going to be focused on their next sale.

So how do you get your first clients for a 3 PL that has no clients? Because I guess it's probably a little bit different to obviously start an E comm brand because. Well, it is because the clients, obviously DLTV is way bigger.

Yeah.

There's less of them. Are you getting them through the same channels or what?

So currently we've got them more so from. From me networking. Just Facebook community. Yeah. Twitter now. So all NGO have pushed a few hours away as well.

Yeah. But they try to push me away. It's like. It's hard. They mentioned you first, actually.

We'll speak about that after. Yeah. Believe it or not, two, the two big ones we work with have came through Twitter or, sorry, TikTok ads. Looked at the ad and there were one's an Australian brand, one is UK brand and they were. The UK brand was charging like a 7 quid for a shipment. AOV or sorry, my order was 15 quid and 7.99 for shipping. It's like, what are you doing? He was still shipping out of his garage. And Royal Mail costs for. For a normal person is very expensive.

Yeah.

So we've got him. Yeah, we got no, drop that wine and we got him on board. And then the Australian company, they. They used a last. They call it a last man service, which is basically. They send it over from Australia on a pallet and then it gets broken up and shipped. Last man with Roy mail. That takes like 10 days, 20 days. So that wasn't very viable for them. So we helped them there. They. They're only really shipping 50 orders a day. But the savings we're making them is massive because they were going from like fucking like 17 Australian dollars to like 410 with us, which is. Our standard price is like 410, 420. That's a massive saving, obviously, as you know, like the scale. Knowing that that fixed cost stays the same is a big part of it.

Yeah. How the. How the fuck do you figure out how to run a 3PL?

I believe every. Every DTC brand that does their own fulfillment is a 3PL. Technically. They've got their warehouse. The SKUs are there.

Yeah. Yeah, true, I guess. Did you have like. I mean, I've never even thought about doing my own fulfillment because couldn't think of anything worse than like having to be in a warehouse.

Oh, yeah, it's born. It's boring work. It's repetitive work for the dispatch. A3PL is more so a DTC brand crossed with a recruitment agency sort of thing. Yeah, because not staff turnover. Our staff turnover is extremely low. But we have to hire fast and that can go wrong. So the process have to be in place. The processes have to be in place because a new packer to us still means we can't make mistakes with customers orders because they are physical cost there. Your customers orders, you have your product costs. To resend that out to a customer means you no longer get profit on that order. So that needs to be fixed. But once you over that barrier, like every DCC brand basically is a 3PL.

Yeah. So like did you have like fancy. I don't even what they're called. Like when I went to visit James and James in the past and you know all these systems, whatever that look like they cost like hundreds of thousands.

Right. I'm gonna. This is eye opening. Right. So 90 of 3 PLs all use a whitelisted service. It's all the same service.

It's all the same software, entire same back end. And they just obviously white label it to have their own. Is that why all these dashboards look the same?

Exact same. I'm just gonna say it. It's a system called Mint Soft. It costs like an extra 100amonth to white list it.

That's funny.

Yeah. So I've just, I've just giveaway.

I've been on sales calls like 3 pos in the past few weeks, like I was saying before, and they all been on about how unique their system is. And one thing I said was, oh, that looks like the previous system I've used. And they're like, are you sure?

They're saying that the only one that is bespoke is James And James, it was completely different than anyone else.

Oh really?

Yeah, yeah. I think their founders, they come from a software background.

Yeah.

Their. Their systems are out of this world. Like they're crazy. But we, we use PenSoft. It's a brilliant software. It's fantastic software. It covers everything. But a lot of them three pls are like, oh yeah, we do this software based and it's brilliant. And this is what, this is what it fixes. It's white labeled. It's not yours.

Yeah.

But yeah, crazy.

So how, how do you split your time and managed to run three. Is it. So it's all under one roof. But how is Aiden structured? Are they four different companies or what?

So we have it under two different LCDs.

Yeah. So three piano brands or what?

Sorry, 3pm brands.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely don't do the brands under the same.

Yes, that was another lesson that's getting changed out. But yeah, so dispatch staff, they all follow that all pay is all under the Essence Fault but structured differently. The team structurally is the same. The only part that isn't involved in the 3 PL is the production side of the business for the Essence Vault because we still do our in house production. So the rest of it is technically they cover the check for fault work as well. So customer service, any customer queries, they go through customer service. We just hired a new head of customer as well, which she's a breath of fresh air in terms of new ways to improve our retention customers and stuff which is huge. But generally it's the only things we've added from the essence faults fulfillment to the 3 PL. Fulfillment is account manager and bare software, which is M. The rest of it stays the same.

And if you had to pick either the brands or the three PL to keep working on now, which one would you choose and why? Oh, they are similar.

If I choose one, it goes against my. This diversification.

Yeah. But if you have to choose.

Yeah, if I have to choose one.

It'S going to be three po.

It's going to be three PL because.

So unglamorous and boring to me on face value. But I'm interested to hear why it's funny.

So I said something was like the best money's made in the born stuff he spoke about. I don't know if it was on the pod or was it on. Was it maybe Dubai? It's funny.

Every agency only would say that.

Wouldn't they All I said, I. I remember all you're gonna listen to this like. But he mentioned he was pissed. They said the same story to like four different people. It was a company that sold household goods like Fair Liquid and stuff.

Yeah.

It's like making like 400 million a year. He said the money's in the Born stuff. And I sort of applied. I was only two weeks ago but I did sort of think that's why three Bill was a great choice because no one else wants to do it. It's boring stuff. No one else. There's, you know and I know DTC owners are cunts. If we, if we're having a bad day, we are our souls.

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean? So no one wants to speak to them angry. But that's, that's why there's space in the game. Like we are different because I hate saying based on age we're going to be different than everyone else. We're going to foresee issues. There is going to be less issues to complain about, especially during peak seasons. Because first of all we're brand owners. We know that a busy period doesn't just start in November. It's going to creep up. Yeah, we know that Q5, as they call it between Christmas and New Year is going to be massive for some brands. Not all brands. We know to, we know what questions to ask brand owners that I was never asked at any fulfillment center we, we visited. And that's why there's space in it. Because of that. Because they aren't brand owners. They don't know. Okay. They see their software, they see what's happening. But I guarantee you over Covid they, they missed all projections all year because they never foreseen DTC making a, a big, a big growth period over, over covert. But if you actually spoke to the brand owners, they would have known.

Yeah. How big do you think 3PO can get?

A lot bigger than the three bands put together. 100%.

Like how big do you think you can build a billion pound revenue 3po?

I think there's more chance of a billion pound 3pl and the billion pound brand.

Yeah. And are you finding customer acquisition like easier or as in compared to ecom and like scale. Does it feel easy to scale? Because I obviously, I mean obviously even, even, even in 3 PL. Like I've seen a lot more crop up certainly in the UK 3 PLs. Yeah. Like there's a lot of money going into X, Y and Z. Fucking three PL providers, often from like America that now come into the uk. One of which I mentioned before. Or do you still think there's limited competition compared to the amount of demand?

There's very limited competition. Very limited. Because there's a new DTC brand every week.

Every day.

Every day.

Yeah, that's very true.

Three PL brands, especially I'm giving away one of our cigarettes. Especially because of the cost of storage in mainland UK is huge. But in Northern Ireland it's cheap. It's like a sixth of the cost.

Yeah.

So that we don't need VC money.

It's not to live in Northern Ireland.

Sadly true. But I don't. We don't need VC money because most of that VC money is going to be put on storage space, storage base that most of them small 3pls are renting. So they're not getting any benefit from renting more storage space. Whereas we own our storage space and we can continue grow from there. So we don't have that rental cost. That, all in all, which is one of the points. I don't know if I said it early on in the recording or not, but a lot of the bulk of the cost is paying for storage fees.

Yeah.

But because we're buying our property and not renting it, we don't have storage fees. If they, if we have more, if we have more brands coming in, they're paying for our mortgage on our storage. That's not something we should be charging for. Yeah, it's an asset for us. Yeah.

So would you plan to. So obviously what a lot of three pls do is. Well, especially the bigger ones, they'll have, you know, uk, eu, Amsterdam officer and around there, whatever, Australia, Canada and America seems to be the pattern.

Yeah.

Would you plan on doing that 100. Does that then defeat the USP of having cheaper storage?

Yes and no. We'll still, we'll still offer it because you're not going to want to work with two, three different three pls. You're going to want, you're going to want to pick up the phone and speak to one person who then deals with all your issues. So we will, we will open up to. To mainland GS first and sort of go from there. But from a strategic point of view, most of the benefits, most of the positives come from, comes from the UK base because we're like. We're like a baby us. Like when they speak about high CPMs and stuff, that hasn't really hit UK yet. So we benefit from being a year or two behind in the E commerce space from the us. So the benefits they had in the golden ages of. Of 2019, Facebook ads, we. We're still in them, I think, in the uk. So.

Yeah, maybe.

Yeah, it's harder. Definitely harder. But we're still there.

Who is your primary customer base then? Like, is there a. I assume it's UK.

Yeah, 100% UK.

Yeah. But like, do you find a particular type of brand? Because when did you actually launch officially, Jack Fulfillment, which I haven't actually said, by the way.

It's Jack Fulfillment, officially launched in November of last year.

So it's, yeah, five months old.

Yeah.

Four months old.

It's a complete baby.

But you find it a challenge signing people up with that without. Yeah, without the. Because I mean, even myself with the new brand, like, I would instinctively go for what I think is the bigger, well, you know, reputable player you look.

At what happened to you with, with Neil Beach. Yeah, you moved to the. Was it. You moved to the UK and sort of. Yeah, that so it's a very. You are trusting someone else with your whole business.

Yeah.

And that's hard. So like our, our. The. The two biggest ones we work with now, I, I lost the call. I call. Lost the call. I lost a call on the sales call and left it there. I, as a brand owner, I understand their problems or their reasons for not going with us. They come back to us three months.

Later because having signed up elsewhere, they.

Sent up elsewhere, had the problems and they, they came to their own judgment of we're going to get them. If we get them problems elsewhere anyway, we may as well go to you because then problems. So. So a big thing in 3 PL is, as I said before, it's like a recruitment agency, basically. So they hire wrongly in November and December because statistics say that revenue drops or sales orders drop 60% from November to January. Technically, that's not really true across the board. I know the essence. False orders only dropped 30% or something, which is quite good. So they're left with 30% more orders but 30% less staff.

Yeah.

So to speak. So that meant that them big names, not James and James, but the other one you mentioned before, they failed massively because they let all their stuff go. And getting them stuff back is costly, which is something they don't do. So I, I heard Stories on Twitter. Two or three people messaged me on. On Twitter DM, saying, yeah, yo, my customers have been waiting two weeks on their orders and my3PL is not replying.

I've had that issue in the past.

Yeah.

Temporarily. Do you find. So are your staff typically. Are they from Northern Ireland or.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. All of our staff is from 20 minutes driveway.

Yeah.

We pay. So again, based on the equipment agency thing, we pay higher. The minimum wage higher than the. Because the way it works in the uk, the minimum wage is split across ages. So the living wage, so to speak, we pay higher than that to. No matter what age they are 16 or 16. Between 16 25, they all get paid the exact same fee.

Is it generally a younger crowd that you'd be hiring?

No, there is younger ones, definitely. But it does vary. It does vary. It's very friends and family orientated. Everyone says, don't hire friends, don't hire family. About 60% of our staff comes from like. It's gonna sound inbred like me.

Yeah.

60% of our staff comes from like six different families.

So like aunties.

Aunties. That's another an like, like aunties, moms, sons, daughters, they're all working. But that Also means they don't want to let each other down at the same time. So like our sick calls are. Are extremely low. Our staff turnover, like we've got 75 staff. Like four, four staff have left in two years. That's huge. That's massive. The gas staff turnover is extortionately low.

Do you find you get imposter syndrome?

Oh, that's massive.

Being a young guy managing a very big team.

Yeah. 100%. 100%. I we.

Because that's what I've massively struggled with. I spoke about a few times and I've never had that many staff.

Yeah.

It probably never even would would be that scaled different business models. But yes, something dog's going mad. Something I've struggled with. So like. But yeah, especially when I guess. Well, yeah. I mean, have you. How have you dealt with that?

I find it very hard, that imposter syndrome. It sounds like a cool thing to. To talk about, but it is. Is a big thing in business, especially having so much staff. Like my chief of operations, Jared, he's. He's going to kill me if I say it older than what he actually is. So let's say he's 50. I'll be nice to you, jerd. Let's say he's 50. Like he's my CEO. He's my CEO. I call him my CEO. He calls himself my, my shit scripper. He does a lot of stuff I don't want to deal with.

Yeah. Like a dog. That's boring. So sorry.

He's. He's been brilliant. It is hard disagreeing with him.

Yeah.

Because ultimately you've got that feeling as he's going to be right and I'm going to be wrong. It's purely based on age. Do you know what I mean? I mean on the grand scale of things, a lot of our team are very young. Is that because I've got. Is that because I hire with imposter syndrome? Probably without knowing.

Yeah. Because speaking. Speaking kind of about this literally today in the sauna before we start recording with my flatmate, about like it feels kind of easy or more natural to hire people that are younger than you because like, I guess, I don't know, societally, like biologically, whatever. Like that feels like a kind of hierarchy of age. That's kind of what we're brought up with, like respect your elders, blah, blah. But then if you're the young guy that's the boss, particularly in a position where ultimately like a lot of the jobs are relatively low skilled. Like. Yeah, I don't I mean this brings me.

It's hard to speak about, it's hard to speak about. It's hard to iterate what you're actually trying to say when you're speaking about imposter syndrome because you tell yourself that it's stupid and you shouldn't have it. Yeah, but that doesn't mean that it goes away.

Yeah, because. Well, another point on that, off the back of that, I've always found it quite interesting because I mean you mentioned obviously like a lot of you have like families that are working in the jobs and. And then I've always found it interesting how certain people at a certain age can, I mean there's obviously a much wider, wider thing in general, but like can obviously fucking start a business. And Obviously there's like 0.0001% of people that be like 25 and like a fucking billionaire or some shit. But then you get like, I guess the bulk of society that fall into like kind of the middle and then you get people that work in, you know, McDonald's or factories or whatever. Like it's like super low skill stuff, super low paid stuff. And I've always wondered like, is that an, is that entirely like, is it a lack of skills? And because it's like places maybe you're brought up where there's no encouragement to seek new skills. Obviously it's different. You're 16. Like I've had terrible jobs when I was younger and stuff, but I always wanted to like as in, I'm trying to say this without being controversial, but like you go to a supermarket and you see a 60 year old bloke stacking shelves. Yeah, Like I've always wondered, and there's nothing wrong with that by the way, if, if they're happy. But like often I kind of think like, is that their like true potential at that age in their career? Like, do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

I don't know what the question is, but it's just, it's always something I've wondered about, like, does it come from purely a lack of like genetic potential skill or is it like an environmental or societal viewpoint?

This is one thing I'm, I'm working on.

I've completely changed the subject, something philosophical.

But this is one thing I'm working on on myself a wee bit more because I, I sort of look at it my way is the reason why I started the business and the reason why I hired the sort of call it the founding members is because we all hate our old jobs. Okay? So if I hate my old job and my head of dispatch who's again, he's 55, 60. If he hit at his job at 55 and 55 and 60, age maybe isn't a thing. His age maybe not really something that matters, do you mean? And then on the flip side, have I just got lucky with my, my Econ brand at this age? I don't know what I'm trying to say. I think what I'm trying to say is that I still respect it and he, he, he respects me as well.

I find the whole lucky, and I.

Hate the word lucky. I hear.

What was it? Because again, I've been thinking about. Because I put a thing on Instagram. Stop fucking being weird, this dog. Because I'm gonna do a Q and A podcast and I got like 100 questions or whatever. But one of the questions was. And it stuck out to me because I started thinking about was, why did you and all your mates, whatever this guy thinks all my mates are fucking us, which is kind of true. But like, the question was, why have you and all your mates managed to scale to 7, 8 figures, whereas most people don't? And it got me thinking, oh, yeah, well, I guess most people maybe don't, which probably is true. But then I was like, fuck. Well, I absolutely do not think I've ever got lucky because also, by the way, one of my fucking brands failed massively, which I've been very public about. So it's definitely not that, by the.

Way, being so public about it.

Yeah. And then it's like, well, I know I've built successful brands and I that one up and it would have been successful, the next one be successful. But like, it's never, it's never felt like, look, it's felt like just a raw combination of, I, I guess, to be honest, like base talent, I think, which is there in myself and clearly yourself and other. My other mates that are very successful, particularly some of them. I think there's like, there is a genetic baseline, I think, but I think that is very negligible compared to the massively controllable factors of choosing where you're spending your time between the ages of 18 and, yeah, 30.

I think it's all that it boils down to that whole thing and your environment that you're based. You are your five closest.

So fucking true.

You are your five closest at the.

End of episode 27 as well.

Yeah, I think that's what it boils down to. And I think that's. It's funny because my group of Friends, the four of us, we all do very different things. Like one of us is an actuary, one of us is in banking and the other is high up in an American pharmaceutical company. So we're all in four different massive things, but two of us in particular. Every teacher at school would have said, you are going to be a failure.

Yeah.

And I think because we were, how's this went from imposter syndrome to this.

But we went interesting parts.

We went from being not so much not the stereotypical. We've always been told that we weren't going to be anything all that shape because we just told him the fuck up. Because we, we still knew we were, we had our wits about us. But with that, I think imposter syndrome creeps in even more because we weren't, we weren't top of our class. So why, why should we be successful? Because we weren't, we weren't getting a stars, we weren't getting A's in economics, you know, we weren't in the, we weren't getting praised for our schoolwork. So, so why should we, we have no right to be successful, we have no right to be doing well. I think that's where imposter syndrome sort of comes from because you could, you look at a 40 year old that's doing very well, say a very rhetorical job, say a plumber making a very good living. And we, the revenue we're generating, I'm not going to say net profit, the revenue we're generating is more than his yearly wage. So we feel, oh, this isn't right. Are we doing something wrong here? You know, when's the level going to burst? And that's when an imposter syndrome creeps in. But I think it goes, the important thing about this is that it's only you thinking that, because the people around you are thinking it's not luck. It's not luck. He's not, he's not lucky. I know my management team, not one of them will think it's lucky. They know the work I put in. I might not be the first in the office, I may not be the first last to leave, but they know the work I put in, the risks I take is more than, more than enough to prove that I haven't got imposter syndrome. Yeah, but that doesn't mean I don't feel imposter syndrome. I fucking feel it every day. Telling a 55 year old that they're not doing their job right or having to go through, having to let go of a staff member that you've had since the start, you're thinking, is this the right thing to do?

Yeah, I think imposter syndrome. Now I'm thinking about more. There's like two parts to it, I guess. There's the day to day like physically feeling like, oh, I'm telling older, like typically older people what to do as their boss. That's like an element of it that I've struggled with. But the other element, which I probably struggle with less, which is quite interesting, is like thinking you're not, I guess, broadly not deserving of success or like X, Y and Z. Whereas, like, even from the age of like 21, where I started making like money, I guess from like drop shipping at the time, another clothing brand have with Ollie, and I always thought, oh, fuck, yeah, I deserve this because I've been like thinking about this since I was 12 years old. Yeah, I guess there's elements of it. Like I used to get major imposter syndrome going to car garages because I was always into cars and like, loads of stupid cars, blah, blah. And like, the first time I bought a nice car, I felt really nervous. And then I think. And then when you do it a few times, you think, I'm a fucking baller. Like, this is. This is what I do. Like, it becomes normal. So, like, experience. It's like the same time. It's like the same shit. The first time I flew first class with Emirates, which was on points, by the way. I've never paid for that shit. Yeah, like four years ago. And I was literally like apologizing to the hostess because I almost felt guilty.

Her making your bed and stuff.

Yeah, I was like, normally, I've never done this before.

Please stand there and I'll do it.

Yeah, yeah, honestly. Whereas now I do that and it's cool. But any appreciate it, whatever, but like becomes like normal. And I think the reason for that is experience breeds confidence. And like, is that the term? Like, there's something I heard and it's so true. It's so true in so many elements because, like, and it comes back to what you said, about average of 5 people if all your mates, which is literally true for me. And like, I said, it's true for you in your own ways. If all your mates are, in my case, running econ brands or like, most of them are, like, to fucking seriously high levels, it's like, well, obviously my next econ brand is going to be a multi million pound brand and because I've done it myself before, so it's like well of course, but if it was my first thing ever then I probably wouldn't even have even about the baseline skills is what I'm saying. I probably wouldn't even have the like mental confidence or belief deep down to even get started which is what I think the problem is for most people because this is going quite deep now. But it's actually interesting because like I got into entrepreneurship and kind of similar for you but slightly different but I never actually went into the proper working world. Like I had a shit job in Berg but I had all those part time jobs at uni but I dropped out of uni when I had a brand with Ollie and then blah blah blah. So I never got like why? Because I always wanted to drop out and then I built a business to a high enough revenue level where I had enough money to leave and it was like fuck it, I'm going all in now.

But why, why didn't you want to pursue your unique.

Of course because I knew when I was 10 years old I was an entrepreneur. Yeah, like literally I hit that word entrepreneur.

Entrepreneur.

Well so do I, but it's true. Like what else is it? Like that is what I am.

Yeah.

So we both are. Stupid dog. So I knew that. I knew when I was 16 that I wanted to build brands as well. Yeah, like I was very clear and then obviously gradually figure it out, whatever. But, but yeah like it never even crossed my mind to actually go into like a grad job. Yeah, I mean obviously when I started uni I thought I better figure this out over the next few years but it was always so clear to me that that's like the broad direction I'd go in because I like designing shit. And then I figured out like Internet marketing and that was kind of it basically. But I guess because I'd never got kind of corrupted inverted commas by the, by like salary. Yeah, by the salary by the potential group of people that wouldn't have been on the same page had I gone into a certain working world where 99% weren't entrepreneurs say. Whereas like the second I left uni I didn't know anyone that was an entrepreneur but I went consciously to meet other people that were and now my entire friendship group basically not entirely 90% and network is entrepreneur. So it becomes normal and then it compounds in itself because that's all you ever know. Yeah, I mean I think it's such an interesting thing because there's probably lots of people that I know that you know that fucking watching or that aren't watching that had like, much better genetics than XYZ. Successful person to potentially build the next major DC brand, whatever it is, like 10 tech company, FinTech, whatever. But because they, I don't know, didn't read a certain book at a certain time, they got into the wrong crowd in uni, say, or maybe not. They went into a grad job where they simply, literally didn't have enough time or resources to pursue what maybe they wanted to do. And because they never pursued it, they never got an idea of the possibilities, what they could have.

Possibilities. Yeah. Like, that's definitely fascinated by that. That's definitely true.

World goes if you don't do it, you never know.

It's one thing that me and my friend group, he's digging. One of them in particular, Kale. Me and him would have been the. The worst out of. Out of the friend group in terms of effort at school, the teacher's perceptions of us. And it's funny because we look at people that got the four A's and A levels and they got the uni, got their really chemistry degree and all that, and they're maybe not. One, they're not happy. Two, they're not in a job that they thought they were going to be in completing a degree like that, you know, and it is, it's true because when I'm hiring, I honestly, I've hired. I'm gonna say properly six times. I have not once looked at any of their school results, any of the university results. I couldn't tell you what the two new hires done at uni. I don't even know if they went to uni. Do you mean so.

So why are you hiring them? Based on.

Based on their experience. Based on. Not honestly, based on their interview. Based on how they speak to me.

Yeah, Experience and personality.

One guy, massive, was a fantastic salesperson. I didn't hire him because he kept staring at my operations manager when I was speaking. And that was because he was older than me. He kept staring at him, responding to him when I was asking the questions. And I. He was the only candidate until then. And after that I went, no, I'm not hiring you. You completely have disrespected me in terms of, you know, how can I be your boss? And I'm there, I'm. I'm no one's boss in my businesses, but he's just completely disrespected me because he has a problem with having a younger manager. Manager. I hate them words, manager, boss on that. But. And so. And I hired the next person was Melissa. And she was fantastic. No sales, very little sales experience, but was very bubbly. Exactly what I would want on a sales call. I couldn't tell you what she's on.

School.

I can tell you her. Can't even tell you her last job. She was a project manager in construction trade. But it was more based on her personality. And I think that's. I think that's why in 10 years time, imposter syndrome is not going to be a thing. Because everyone's going to realize that no one cares about your university degree. Unless obviously you're a fucking doctor.

Yeah.

Or in that sort of field. No one's going to care about that. And it's going to go away, so to speak. But, yeah, but right now, massive imposter syndrome. Because I haven't got. I've got a pass and a criminal justice degree.

I haven't got a degree.

If I have. If I had to go for another job, I'm not getting it. Do you know what I mean? If I'm going for a job. Someone done it on Twitter.

You're in. You've escaped the matrix.

I know, but someone's done it on Twitter.

No way. You can go back.

Someone's done it on Twitter where they were a c. They are a CEO of a make a billion dollar company and they went for five interviews. I actually think one of them was at their own company. They didn't get it so interesting with their. With their cv. Like, that's mad. That's the reason why imposter syndrome is a thing.

Yeah. So, I mean, we could go on about imposter syndrome and a million more philosophical things for three hours, which we always end up doing this podcast, especially combined with Good Red one. But what did I want to come on to? I suppose one thing I do ask. I think it's quite interesting, especially people that like, were going down a bit more attrition route and then fucking ended up changing into entrepreneurship. Like, how do you think your life and perception of the world is different? Well, that's not a good question. That's too ambiguous. Like, how do you think experience in like elements of financial success in terms of. Obviously you've grown businesses, been able to hire a lot of people, especially at a young age has changed. I mean, I don't think you're into it. You're into like fancy cars and shit or what. Like, I mean, is there any of that? Like, how is that idiot. That the second I got any money, I was like, oh, fuck, I wanna do everything that I dreamt about doing when I was 12 years old and I've done most of that and then it becomes different things, obviously. And I was never that sensible. But I'm always interested to hear other people's perspectives because it seems like most people that are on this podcast are way more sensible than me. And like. Yeah, I guess broadly the question is, like, how has that changed anything? If it has and I don't know.

I think it's two things. Part of it is the do the old thing that. Well, the thing they say in crypto was like, you're not. You're not at a loss until you sell.

Yeah.

I think that's with me and, and the brands. I don't feel successful until the brands are done. Does that make sense?

So. So on. Yeah. You're saying you're not a profit until you sell. Kind of.

I wouldn't, like, I wouldn't even class myself as successful.

Yeah.

Obviously getting away from imposter syndrome. That probably is part of imposter syndrome. Like, for example, I do drive a nice car, a Tesla Model 3.

I want to get a pink one of them.

I'll be Class for space kids.

That's why I'm gonna get a pink one.

Plus, to be honest, only reason I got it was a tax write off.

Yeah. That's also. I want to get one Sensible.

Yeah, that's. That's amazing. I got it. I think that that goes back to imposter syndrome where I don't want to drive a nice car because all our stuff's in the one warehouse.

Yeah.

You know, I would love to drive a Lamborghini Urus.

Yeah.

That's my gym car.

I want to get a pink one. Yeah.

Bright pink one. Class. My skincare brand's based on like a purple and I love a purple one, but by the same thing. What are they going to think of me? What are they going to think of me if I do that? And yeah, it's funny because everyone says, oh, like it's wrapped like a matte gray my Tesla and I love it.

Like, but people, Ray, come on, get baby blue or something.

But instantly, as soon as anyone asks me about it, I, I actually say, yeah, it's a tax write off. Don't worry. Why am I saying that?

I don't know. Yeah, because you feel like. You feel like you have to justify what other people might view as extortionate.

Yeah. I think.

Or lavish or whatever they want to say.

I think that is it. I mean, I help. Like I. We've sort of Provided loans for a lot of like six or seven members of stuff that have been going through hardship, especially now because of the energy crisis. If someone asked me if someone was a baller and I had just bought a Lamborghini Urus and I couldn't support them, even though that's not what business owners supposed to do.

Yeah.

I would still feel bad.

Yeah. I think that comes with maturity, doesn't it? To an extent. I mean, definitely like the difference in my mindset Even just from 24 to 26, it's quite stark to be fair. I think that's probably what happens when you have a taste of success and then have a taste of potentially losing a lot of it and then humbles you.

Yeah, yeah.

And you. Yeah. Probably get a more bulletproof perception on a lot of things.

That's that whole thing where they say that the meal is it meal or just people in general. They finally grow up at 25.

Yeah. Hell, like my dad's been telling me since I was 15 that my brain would be fully formed at 25. And I swear to God, yeah. When I passed 25, like something felt a bit different and it coincided with me going through hell as an entrepreneur. But yeah, I definitely felt like I came out like more wise and woke and shit.

It's funny because that's still one of yours though. Yeah. Fucking right. That's the end goal. Back when we nearly went bankrupt, that's when I turned 25. So looking back on it, that's when I sort of stopped chasing the sh. Face screenshots.

Yeah.

And started going after net profit.

Yeah. So on that stock's asleep on my shoulder, you know, I have to click this, put it on Instagram, on that we mentioned earlier. I think there's definitely an epidemic of firstly an epidemic. But like in the very niche world, I guess we are in relatively firstly people only sharing the front end of any E commerce business because probably their back end doesn't exist or they're fronting and just full of shit or just like chasing. Well, I guess kind of the same thing but chasing those big revenue screenshots which everyone's guilty of at some point. I've done it and then not really having any regard for like profit or Absolutely. Sustainability, you know, all that less glamorous stuff.

It's funny because I. I think triple whales changed the game there because, pardon me beforehand, your net profit mark, your net profit amount was never finite. Do you're working out your cogs based on your average skew.

Yeah.

Rather than your actual skew.

Yeah.

So there are people can be like, oh, I can't share my profit because that's not exactly right with Triple Whale. I feel like I'm a Triple wheel rep now.

Yeah, I need to start using that with them. Ollie told me they're going to sponsor the podcast for like five grand a month. I was like.

Buy Triple Wheel now. Your net profit amount per day is to the penny.

Yeah.

Do you mean. So now I think the next wave of Shopify screenshots are going to be Triple Wheels screenshots. They're going to be exact. Okay, you can fake them 100%, you can just leave your cogs out for sake, but your net profits, your net profit, it's an actual finite number. Now I know there was stuff like you could do your bring everything in through super metrics and have this, this Excel she. But it was never right. Mind was never right. No, it wasn't.

Yeah. Like on that whole profit versus valuation, blah blah, blah stuff, broadly speaking. And then particularly to E Comm. Like my view on that has developed over time. Like, I mean, obviously when you're getting started like in a bedroom, you literally have to be profitable. Otherwise you're in about a month or a week or two days. If you and me, we're like starting with like literally 50 quid. But now, I guess, I mean I've had obviously guys that sold SAS businesses and made a lot of money like eight figures from selling non profitable businesses. Like go watch episode 22 and then we've had Jimmy on that sold for a large, very large amount with a profitable business. But I wonder, like, yeah, I'm just interested because I, I guess my goal with building a brand financially even from like way back in time when I was starting, when I was like 19, was like, oh, I can build a brand and get a big exit because that's where you really get paid. Because I even as a brand owner say you're hypothetically making a million quid ebitda. You're not even realizing that personally, which again is something that people that aren't in the game don't talk about or realize or empathize with at all. It's like revenue isn't your. Isn't in your pocket. Net profit would be. But even then, not yours, it's the businesses. And obviously you have to fund stock, staff growth, whatever.

Yeah.

So like, to me it's always been, I don't really give a shit about making money until I can sell the business. But obviously there needs to be financials and mechanics and growth, whatever, that put it in a position to sell it. And obviously I've not got that 100 million quid exit yet, but that's still the goal.

Do you find? Do you think that's the goal for me? Would you be happy after you've. How long? Sorry, let me reword that. How long would you be happy for after an exit? Because I don't last a two week holiday.

As in what? As in would I want the next thing or would I just not be satisfied after that?

Bored.

Yeah. So, I mean, again, this is an interesting one because I think I tweeted about this the other day, like a month ago. So something was on my mind on a flight. I was like, hypothetically, if you had a billion pounds tomorrow just got injected into your bank account, what would you work on? Because you want to do something.

Yeah.

And it's like kind of a jarring question for everyone in the world because I feel like the answer to that question is what you should work on now.

Yeah.

And I say that like I'm fucking wise and shit, but I'm not figuring out. But that's just the way I think about it. And then I'm like, fuck the shit I'm actually doing now. Actually probably pretty fucking close to what I would do if I had a billion quid in my bank accounts.

Yeah.

The difference would be, yeah, I'd have like a fucking bugatti Chiron and 15 Cullinans. But even that would probably be boring after a while. So, yeah, to answer your question more specifically, I mean, it's always been a. Yeah, I don't know, I've not done it yet, but I would like to think, I've always said to myself, it'd be nice to be fucking done financially by 30. I think that's realistic. As in, like never have to think about money to any capacity ever again. Which by the way, I think is less money than people think anyway. I think 5, 3 to 5 million does that.

You mentioned that before. You thought it used to be 100 million.

I mean, it's a nice round number. It sounds like more than 10 million, but not a billion, because that's stupid. Like, I mean, so. Yeah, but I don't know, I guess it would be nice to have that big Champions League exit, as I called it in another podcast, and be like, I don't know, have some fucking sick recognition for something cool I'd built, but at the same time be in a position to either keep working on that mission or the next business.

I don't know, I think, I don't know.

I'm throwing out things that haven't happened yet.

But yeah, it's very, it's very theoretical. Like the one thing, if you ask me, would I be happy with if someone offered you. Someone did offer me multi million for the brand. It was, it was literally a Saudi prince from LinkedIn. Like. Yeah, but someone did offer me and prompted. It was actually with Joe, we spoke about it and he said it goes. Would, would you. Would you have taken it if it was real? If they had suitcases full of money, would you have taken it? I don't think it would have been. And the big thing was, was because we went in our. Me and Mrs. Went in our honeymoon to New York over New Year, had a fantastic time, didn't really worry about work. But see, on day nine and ten, I was itching to get back, to go back.

That's when you know it's real.

That's when you know. Yeah, you are here. Yeah. But I think if I sold, I would last two weeks and if I sold, yeah, my next band might not be profitable. So would I want to. I. I would. If I get. If I sold for 100 million, I reckon I'd burn through 90 of that. Finding a profitable business. It's one of them ones. If you give yourself 10 days to clean a room, it would take you 10 days.

Yeah. Whereas so interesting because, I mean, yeah, I guess the baseline is just I'd like to make you money, which whatever flippantly like 10 million plus probably is that, you know, I'd like to do that by like 30 and I think I will because I guess what I do with that, I mean, it would mean I never have to worry about money. Not that I worry about money anyway, to be honest, but like I would literally never have to worry about money because I wouldn't ever have to do anything ever again and I could fucking help my parents out, whatever, blah, blah, blah. But beyond that, and I still think it's the most important thing and I thought about it so much, I genuinely do believe I care more about. I actually just want to achieve something great before I die. Yeah, I just really feel that. And like I'm not just saying that for like.

Oh yeah.

I just actually feel that like I want to do something cool and be respected for doing. Doing something. There he is, barking just. So I was saying some epic. I have to chop a little bit out right into the mic. What was I saying? Yeah, I want to do something cool but also I feel like What I'm working on now, and I've not even launched it yet, so. Jesus Christ. But it's something cool that I enjoy creatively that I think can have a massive impact on an industry and be a fucking great business. If I. If someone then gave me 100 million quid for it, that's even better.

Yeah, two, two things for me, the dopamine hit is different because for the bigger brand, I'm really, really good day on the big brand would mean less to me than a 500 pound day on skincare. Yeah, it's strange and it's very, very strange because obviously the bigger brand at the bigger amount makes me more money. But why do I care about the skincare brand making what in the grand scheme of things is a very little amount of money? I think that it's all about dopamine hits with that one. And secondly, I think progress is key.

To progress in life. Yeah, yeah, but that's where that comes from.

Yeah.

0 to £100 feels better than £10,000 to £15,000, right?

Yeah, you've nailed on the head there. Second of all, best achievement. You mentioned about parents there was buying my father a Jeep Jagger FPS, is it? Bought one of them and he. The look on his face when I gave it to him was massive. That meant more than any Shopify number, triple wheel number, anything at all. That's weird. That was my. That was my moment where I pinched myself and I thought, right, what I'm doing is actually changing things, do you know? I mean, it's not just for me. It's not just money in the bank or it's not. I don't actually have that much money in the bank, to be honest. I fucking reinvest it. But that's where actually I thought, right, we're on the right path here, sort of thing. Which changed, changed the way I thought. That was. That was. That was back when we were near bankrupt, which was obviously a fucking stupid move at the time, but that's what.

Made you near bankrupt.

Yeah, imagine. Do you hear that, dad? No, that was one thing that it was the motivation more because. All right, I can get this dopamine hit from that. Okay. It was so cheap for him, but it was a dopamine hit for me. It was a progression hit for me. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

It's the sort of thing where you get money to the homeless person, you feel better for them than them do. They do.

Yeah.

Stronger than that. Another one of them was a little girl called Abby. She had got cancer. Age 13. 12. 13. Sorry, Sam, if I got that wrong. We released a signature fragrance called Abby. She picked the scent herself. What it smelled like everything. We designed the label. The label was her signature and we raised a lot of money for her. That was also a massive dopamine hit. It really helped them financially, but it was a dopamine hit for me as well. I. I say dopamine hit vaguely.

Yeah.

It was a motivation for me because I looked at it as if to say, right, how many more people can we help, so to speak. Because the Met some of the messages her mum Sam has sent me really pushes me through hard times in a business. And you do get hard times. Even when it's going good. It's fucking hard.

Yeah.

Where I could be a Facebook campaign that you. You plow thousands into the creative. It just flops and you have to turn off. Like, that's. It's tough. But them sort of progression hits. Progression points you call change things.

Yeah, completely agree. Yeah. I feel like this is what I was debating with a family member recently, who's being a fucking argument. It's always been something debate, but, like, I feel like a lot of people think like, money is evil or like, like pursuing wealth of any sort is bad. I don't know where this comes from. It's often, by the way, champagne socialists which run that narrative when they grew up in a 3 million pound Surrey house but didn't know how much the mortgage cost. You know what I mean? But. But the way I see it is like, ultimately, like to give a layman's terms example, like, if there's a, I don't know, person in a classroom teaching one kid how to speak French. Right. They're impacting one person. But if you then put a million quid of ads behind, like a course that that teacher made and they go viral on YouTube and a million kids learn from it, they've had more impact as a result of capital. Yeah. So that's, that's why, that's why I think bigger is better in terms of like money that you make personally and how big a business can be. Because ultimately money, it just means that you've impacted in some way, hopefully positively more people and then you've had a bigger dent in the universe.

Yeah.

To quote Steve Jobs.

Yeah.

I find it interesting when people think like money is evil and shit, but it's like, broadly speaking, like there's more money involved in a project or business, whatever person, it gives you more resource to have an impact. And if you've got a bigger business. You are affecting more people. Yeah. People are buying your products. They obviously like the product.

Yeah.

It's almost like a.

Like yourself.

It's a noble pursuit.

Yeah. It is.

To scale something.

It is especially when you do it individually like that that we girls, Abby and her mother Sam, they went through a tough time and no one that I had the ability to help them. Sam will disagree, but it meant a lot more to me than it did them because it meant so much to me that I had. What I was doing was beneficial to someone. It's obviously beneficial to me, my family, blah, blah. But no one that I affected. Someone that I had no notion of, no idea of. Apart from a George's ticket. Gorgeous ticket coming through. Customer service about this little girl who had cancer. That was massive. That was life changing for me to be honest. That was a point where I thought right, let's. How can we do this again? I still speak to her every day as well, which is nice. And she just rang her bell on getting clear of cancer. Oh, sick fucking. She got about to ring her bell and she got covered. And the week that happened is fucking mad. But thankfully she's all right. She's. She's all good. All clear cancer. Which is amazing. But yeah, the, the whole capital is capitalistic thing is wrong. Is fucking bullshit.

Yeah.

Completely, completely agree it's bullshit.

What's the plan over the next three to five years then?

Three to five years you have a.

Plan that far ahead and where do you see the mix of businesses and yourself going?

The mix of. Between me and my businesses?

Well, as in like do you think you'll be involved in the three brands as well as the three pl in three, five years time and you know, if yes or no, like where do you want to take them?

It's funny, I hate when people say that, you know when, when you're speaking to like finance people, where do you see the brand in five years? I don't see the brand.

Definitely not finance.

I don't see the brand anywhere more than five weeks time to build.

Yeah. Facts. Yeah.

Think of the whole business plan.

Don't get me started on that things.

The first thing I say to that is things change every day so there's no point thinking about it. Second of all, to answer it more, I guess.

Where would you like to be?

Where would I like to be? What's the plan at the minute takes up about 90 of revenue. I would love that split at least. At least 50, 50 between the three brands and the three PL. More so because the three PL is more consistent. No brand wants to leave a three PL because of the cost associated to get in your stock. I get it into a new 3PL. So we would love a little bit more consistency and sort of growing that. And we're not looking for massive brands with 3 PL. I want to sort of focus on people that are just about to leave their garage to getting onto the sort of big bad world of ecom. Because at that stage it's life changing. I would love to have had someone like that when I was leaving my bedroom to get in an office. If I had someone more so. Ollie speaks about it quite a lot, about how his people are outsourced CMOs. I would love that with our 3 PL J, we could turn around and say, okay, because it benefits both of us. It benefits both of us. If someone's doing 50 orders a day, I want them to get the 500 orders because it makes me more money.

Yeah.

Do you mean. So taking a leaf out of o book in terms of the outsourced CMOs, my account managers can speak to that client. Okay. This is. This is who to go to. Okay. So tell me your problems. My AOV, my OV is shit. My ROAS on TikTok is. Okay. I'll give you a CRO agency. I'll give you a Tick Tock agency. Here's your problem solved. Dumb. I don't have money to pay for my next stock run. Okay. I'll give you a number at Wayflyr. Yeah, I'll fix that. That makes me more money in the end, but it also grows them. That's why I want to get to there. Because I'm affecting other brands. I'm affecting other brands that are therefore affecting other people.

Yeah.

And let's not forget about the capitalist point. I want to make more money as well.

It's never a bad thing.

It's never. But it's not a bad thing. But yeah. What about yourself? Do you see yourself all in on space goods or what?

In three to five years?

Yeah.

I think in five years I'd like to have made 30 million plus from the brand.

Yeah.

Which I know to 99% of people sounds ludicrous, but I thought I'd have made 10 million quid by now from Neon beach. So I honestly did. I like private equity before it went wrong. I had meetings, a big PE house and it was getting serious and then that all went to. But I mean, yeah, like, I think just. I do think this is the one for me as a Brand, So everyone says that in it, but I've never been as excited by a brand in terms of like, if I'm right, in terms of my vision for the psychedelic renaissance, as I call it, then I actually think it's a billion pound brand. I don't think it's 100 million pound brand.

It's funny because we spoke on Twitter DMS ages ago about the. The idea of the brand. I personally think it's a year too early, but see the infectious infectiousness of the way you're talking about it covers that year well.

Yeah. So I know it's very early for like psychedelics and shit, but obviously like. And this is why I need to another podcast about the brand, specifically the way I'm positioning it is.

Is that bridge.

I mean, it's not a psychedelic. Right. First product is not class A drug. Newsflash, the amount of people that have messaged me saying, oh, my first time trying psychedelics, and that's probably going to be a problem with the market angle, but it's not the way I'm positioning it. It's ultimately a powerful, It's a great quality, nootropic adaptogen mushroom blend which exists on the market already. Similar stuff exists. The difference is my branding is way better than everyone else's. I just honestly think that the backstory to the brand is way better and I want to have personality and like we're doing a mad video shoot tomorrow, which is actually just ridiculous.

It's just very cool with the mic and stuff, isn't it?

Yeah, it's just very cool. And it's. It's an opportunity for me to just make movies, which I used to want. I mean, Jack told me before, like, I wanted to be a film director when I was like 10 years old. So it's a very creative brand. That's why I'm very excited about it. From a personal standpoint.

Yeah, but that's infectious. That's.

And then what was I saying? I guess the difference in the way I'm positioning it, which is going to get me in trouble probably, but I hope the Daily Mail writes an article on me saying that I'm a fucking scam artist this time because. Because it's not true and it'll be good pr, but like I'm positioning the products now. The best legal alternative to what we would like to make but can't yet.

Yeah.

And yeah, I'm just fucking excited by it because I ultimately right now, I guess it's a glorified supplement brand that is ultimately what version one is. Because that's all it can be legally. Because again, newsflash, you can't fucking sell class A drugs online and.

Yeah, and build a business.

Yeah. When they're not class A drugs and they're legalized, which a lot of what I think will happen. Because by the way there's billion, literally billion pound public companies like Compass, Pathways at High Life Sciences, all this bullshit which are like science companies that are doing research on this intellect. Psilocybin, xyz, psychedelics being like key to curing humanity of like mass depression because of social media and. But the problem with those companies is there's no product yet. They're like pathways to build something. So I'm building a consumer brand that's ready for a market that I believe will be happening in the next few years, but isn't quite there yet. So in the meantime, this is the best we can do. Our brands fucking way better than everyone else's. Everyone knows it is. And that's it. That's the vision. Right.

Personally, I think, I think the brand's gonna be amazing. Like more so because of the actual world we're living in now, which is where TikTok Organic is a massive part of that. I think it's a very tech talkable brand.

Yeah. And I also think it just comes down to. I hope I'm not deluded but I've got a lot of experience now building brands and I know, I know what not to do and like Christ, been doing it like seven years and haven't quite cracked it. Like I've obviously I've scaled brands. One I'm not interested in, that was fun and one that I was really passionate about that up and Yeah, I just, I feel like the stars are aligning in terms of the market, my interests, my creative passion, timing in terms.

Of, you know, I'm a strong believer of everything happens for a reason. Yeah, I'll be it. You don't like to hear at the time, I'm sure you heard it when Neon beach went up. Everyone's gonna.

Oh yeah now it's, it's. Yeah, it's one of those things that it's starting to make sense looking back. But honestly like this time last year I was in a hole.

Yeah.

I can remember almost to the week where like everything officially went. I was like a stone heavier. Probably more looking back like it was not a good place.

Yeah, I know, I know. I was bad at that period when we had in our business where we were nearly bankrupt and I know how bad I felt then. So I can only imagine what happened with you. Like, it's night and day.

Yeah.

But that's a motivation at the end of it as well. You're balls deep in space goods because of it.

Yeah. I have the world's biggest chip on my shoulder, and I always. And it's not a bad thing, but now it's big. It's almost like a. I don't know who the chip is towards, but it's towards just the. Like, if I'm not. Like, I just. It's like, if I can bounce back and do it from, like, actual. What I felt like was, like, borderline wanting to kill myself. Rock bottom.

Yeah.

Then it's just me. The greatest story of all time in, like, the E Commerce space. I just truly feel that.

Yeah.

And, yeah, I just. I don't know. I just feel pretty dangerous right now. Like, I don't feel like I have anything to lose. Like, it's like, fucking come on. Like, I can't get any worse than it did last year ever, in my mind, aside from health problems or whatever. But entrepreneurially, it's like, fuck. Like, I'm pretty dangerous because I know I'm good enough, but I know I also have the right people around me and have great investors now. Jack, who's the founder of Wayfly, is one of them. He's the biggest investor, by the way. He's trying to get on the fucking podcast, and people like that, which I'm very fortunate to know. So, like, funding is never a problem.

Yeah.

Is it? Well, because. And I spoke about this as well. I don't go too much of a tangent, but I. I went down the fundraising route very intentionally. We spoke a bit about on Twitter and the podcast, so I won't say again, but, like, I want to strategically inflate the value of this brand as much as possible.

Yeah. And give.

You also build a great brand, but don't want it to be a bedroom brand. I want it to be. How can we IPO this in five years?

Yeah.

That's the way I'm trying to think about it.

With the bear3PO.

Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah. Anyway, enough about that because I'm gonna do a Q A episode, and we've gone, like, nearly two hours, but, yeah, it's interesting. Last question before we wrap up. And we could probably go down a million rabbit holes that we haven't covered, but I think it's been a good episode. I've started asking this to every guest now. It's a bit cringe. But if you could give three bits of advice to yourself, you know, it's gonna become signature to when you first started, which, I guess, I don't know, a few years ago for you, bro, like, you know, just three bits covering everything. What would they be?

I take longer to answer this than the hairbrush guy.

Yeah.

But first one, definitely, and it's the biggest one, is stop worrying. That's a big one for me. It's that pessimism X imposter syndrome X, you don't deserve it, you're too young sort of thing. Just don't worry. Just go balls deep. Just do. Do whatever you think, do whatever suits you because that's what you're gonna have the most motivation for. That's what you're going to push the most. That's what you're going to succeed in. Because I've had some times with my brands, I pushed through them because one, we have the staff in there where I can't have a bad day because if I have a bad day, they could be at work, a bad week, a bad month, whatever. Number two being the best room you can be in. Going by that, you're the five, your five closest people sort of thing. You're a combination of them being them. Make sure them five are the best ones you can be. One of my biggest size fucking cheesy. As one of my biggest inspirations has been my father, My mom had multiple cirrhosis, died last year. How he handled that, how he handled her being sick, was massive for me. So absorb as much as possible. Absorb the good things and the bad things from everyone. But at the end of the day, make sure them five people are fucking strong people. I think my five, I wouldn't change my five for the world. I think my five are our top quality. Definitely. Number three is a hard one. Number three is definitely a hard one. What's your three? Have you been asked that before?

Haven't actually turned to those. My three, Christ. I think on the spot it's quite hard, isn't it? My three, going back to when I was like 17, probably when I started, I think one thing I wish I'd done a bit more was focus on one thing. Although I think that's in itself almost bad advice because I'm probably ADHD and, like, I think I'd have to do a lot of things to figure out what I was doing. But I think I often my only regret, if there was any, was I wish I'd focused on one thing earlier or someone had forced me to focus on one thing earlier, I. E. One brand. Because by now it could have been a fucking 100 million pound brand. So that's maybe one thing, I guess. Yeah, that'd be the first. Second one's gonna be fucking a bit wet. But it's so true. Like, don't chase girls and get caught up in. Don't get thrown off the path by people that aren't gonna be there when you fucking properly make it.

Yeah.

Like. And it sounds silly, but everyone watching the POD knows what. What I'm talking about and alluding to. And like it's not just been that girl but like, you know, I'm very guilty of getting overly romantic and overly involved in certain social situations that weren't a reflection of like my reality and so on. So I think that's big. Like stay on the war path and prioritize yourself and. And the good blokes around you. If you're a guy. I mean, typically that's the case in. In this audience at least. And I guess thirdly, I think the one that just sprung to mind, it's probably 20 I could give but like, don't take advice from people that haven't done what you're trying to do.

Yeah.

I think it's like massively controversial, which it shouldn't be. But like do not listen to a uni lecturer. And I had one, by the way, who tells you that somewhat too risky one. They're in a 30 grand year. A 30 grand a year job they hate.

I'd always. I'll always remember my. Have you got PSE over here? Psa Learning for life and Work. It was a fucking stupid GCSE class.

Yeah.

And she asked around the room, what do you want to be on your older. I said millionaire. She'd laughed in my face.

I mean, even including your own parents though.

Yeah.

Don't listen to them.

Oh yeah.

I haven't done what you want to do. Which is a hard one, by the way. My dad.

My dad, he laughed at me when I. When I walked in with my first perfume bottle. He fucking laughed at me. Me. He'll laugh at me.

He's doing something right and they laugh at you.

He laughed at me. Did he still support me? Yes. He gave me a thousand pound loan to start, but he laughed at me while doing it. He thought, I'm not saying this money again. Yeah, but he's still done it. He still supported me. But yeah, I totally agree there. Massive. My one. My third thing on it is you're supposed edges between the Five Great. Five Closest people again, two or three. Your partner. If you don't have a supportive partner. Don't have one. Yeah, I, I have opened my laptop at 11 o' clock at night and my message is bitched in my ear, but I can just say like I need to do it. I don't, I don't need to do it. But that's what I want to do at that time. And she's supported that. Probably hasn't supported in the. At the moment. At that moment. But she understands, she understands. I'm grateful for that.

Yeah.

But don't tell her that. To be honest, Hope she's never, never listens to this. So don't have to watch the other thing. Yeah, edit that out. But yeah, if you don't have a supportive partner. Don't have one.

Yeah, okay. Completely.

I know a few big people like Danny Box and stuff. Stuff has put a lot of his work down to his, his misses But I'm gonna go one step further and say if you don't have a supportive partner, don't have one at all. Just get rid.

Yeah, I agree.

We don't need to do it. If you've got the perfect metric between having a supportive partner and not going out chasing birds every night, taking coke and all that stuff, you're gonna be okay.

Yeah.

You'Re gonna be okay. But if there's nothing worse than a fucking having a partner that doesn't support you.

Yeah, definitely.

Because they can put you off it very quick. My, my ex would have been happy at me and a five to nine to five third grand a year. That's what I was looking at with her. I got out of there real quick. I didn't actually go. That fucking lasted five years. But eventually I got out there.

Yeah, no, I feel that. Feel that. Yeah, yeah, you made me answer three. Quite. So I could have answered better, but there we go on the spot. Fuck. That's been like bang on two hours. Nearly. Very interesting chat, I think again, as always. I thought we said we could do three hours. The more why we had, the more hours we could do. That was fucking interesting one. Very varied. Very, very varied. I hope that was interesting to listeners, watchers, whoever. As usual, weekly episodes even. I don't feel like doing episodes at the minute. I'm doing them because I get messages every day. People telling me this shit changes their life. It's like, it's kind of like you were saying, like gives you purpose and shit. It's actually quite powerful. Yeah. If you like the pod subscribe recommend it to a friend, all that good shit. And yeah, cheers for watching.

Push your course.

We'll see you on the next push.

Of course, A bit more.

That's in the promos. 11 minutes in.

Oh, is it? Huh?

Yeah. Christ. I plug that in every time. I don't do it in pod. It's like aftermarket. I. I'll start plugging in space as well.

I bought it for. For my Mrs. She wants to start an econ brand.

Oh, really?

She found it very good.

Oh, sick.

Okay, very good.

Yeah, buy the course. I almost forget I have that, to be honest.

Affiliate code is Connor.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's already. It's already in like 11 minutes in. But yeah, cheers for watching. See you in the next one. Sa.