Come with me from Dubai to London Office for Board and Team meetings + BTS on brand update - Ep 113

Right, we're here on, I think, the tallest, one of the tallest restaurant cafe places in Dubai. The highest infinity pool in the world apparently, Zeta 77. The lady behind the camera was doing some very fancy Pilates. Me having my Sunday off work, I just can't resist going on my laptop and doing some work because I'm just fucking addicted to getting cacked down. Very nice view. Yeah, go on, briefly give a little bit of a view. I feel underdressed for this place, to be fair. £12 coffee. I actually brought my own because I drink Rainbow Dust, not standard coffee, of course. Yeah, apparently not a great coffee for £12, but it's worth it for the view. You can see the whole of downtown and marina and everything else. It looked fucking AI this morning, to be honest, with the clouds and so on. But yeah, even on my day off, I'm just— well, I say day off, I try and have a day off on Sunday. I just don't really like having days off. I'd rather just look at my numbers and plan stuff. Probably going to go do some cardio after this. I feel a bit ill at the minute. Don't know if it's the aircon in the house or something else, but I haven't been ill in Dubai for a while. But yeah, it's a nice view. Shit coffee, but nice view. Maybe some more updates on specifically what I'm working on coming soon, but we are launching the new SpaceGoods website in 2.5 weeks, which is a very big— well, not just websites, new branding, which is a big, big moment. Always a bit scary, but yeah, performance has not been quite where I wanted it to be the past few months. Made a few changes recently on the team and approach side, and there's been kind of a step change in performance. To be honest, already. Partly because of that, partly because of other things. Um, yeah, I might make a video in the car specifically speaking about this until I get myself cancelled saying the wrong thing. But I don't know what I'm making a video about here, it's just random content. Maybe just do like a day out, a day out working different cafes, get different little bits. But yeah, we're halfway through January. I think our second half of January is actually going to be much bigger than our first half, ironically, partly because we Didn't fuck up the first half, but didn't nail it in hindsight. Made a few changes to offers and stuff, and it's already performing way, way better. So yeah, gonna be a big ramp up for the next 2 weeks up to the end of Jan, and then Jan payday weekend. And then on the 3rd of Feb, we are planning to launch the new website and the new brand, which is a big, big moment. There's gonna be some changes to offers, pricing, products, other stuff, which I might do a full walkthrough once it's gone live of why I've done certain things. With these changes, it's always a bit scary because, ah, is it going to fuck up performance and so on? But I think you have to full send it in a way. We were going to like split test it, but spoke to other founders that have done a rebrand refresh and so on, and you just fucking change it. I don't think it's going to affect that much. So yeah, busy few weeks ahead. I've basically had— well, I've had sinusitis for the past 6 days. It's the first day all week. I got fucked on Sunday morning. It's now Friday morning. Been working all week. I've not been able to train all week, which has been horrible. There's a random cat in my garden. Oh yeah, that's a dog bed on my ice bath chiller because I'm trying to keep it covered from the sun. And there was a sandstorm last night, so I think that kind of fucked it up. Gonna train today. I was getting in pretty decent shape. So annoying. I seem to get— well, I had sinusitis 3 months ago and I've got it again. Well, I had it again this week, been on antibiotics for 6 days, seems to be largely better now. Um, yeah, going to go train this morning, a light one. I hate not being able to train properly, but when you're— when I've been this fucked, there's just no point. So yeah, going to go train. Might actually do like a day in the life routine video, whatever, cuz that seems to be interesting to people. There's there's been a few requests on DMs and comments on that. I've never done that sort of thing because I've always just, you know, turned on the camera at the desk, but that is where I spend most of my time, in fairness. But maybe, maybe I can show some more BTS. Um, yeah, I think there's like this perception that I live in Dubai now, so I don't know, even like some of my team are like, oh, I must be so good, but I literally just go to the gym and work. It's basically it. Um, Obviously it's nicer weather, but I reckon I actually work more in Dubai. I genuinely think this. I work more in Dubai than I did in London ever because it's just less distractions, and all my mates here are founders, and the setup's just optimized as fuck. So anyway, the audio is probably terrible because I've not got my mic, but yeah, might vlog a little bit this weekend, see what happens, and yeah, take you along. So quarterly board meeting. Back to London for these every time. It's a good opportunity to obviously meet, well, I say meet, see our investors again, see the team again in person. We do quarterly board meeting, but then we also do like a quarterly team day, which is after the board meeting. So kind of run through numbers, the plans for the next few months, have a big team day out, night out thing. So here for 3 nights. In the past, I've come for like 6 or 7 nights for these trips, and I just find that it's not that productive because I don't have my own place there anymore, don't have the routine, don't have the gyms, et cetera, et cetera, end up eating shit food and all this. So 3 nights is optimum. I did think they'd have Starlink on this flight and they very much don't, which means I'm sat trying to do work without the internet, which is annoying 'cause it's a daytime flight. And in the past when I've had Wi-Fi, I've just bashed through a shitload of work, but not on this one. Got a cozy window seat today, which is nice. Looking fairly tanned, to be fair. I think it's adding up. The time in Dubai. Um, also I've learned the hard way from previous trips where I'm staying in a hotel, I just get fucking something local. But I've literally just got a hotel 120m from the office, so that reduces any friction. It's got a gym in it, keep it simple. In and out, 3 and a half days, 3 nights, back on Saturday afternoon. So yeah, land today, got to pick up my old Tesla cuz I'm now giving that to It was always a company car, but it was only me that drove it. And now I've got a retail team, 2 people doing that regularly. I have insured them, so I'm going to drive that from where it's currently at, which is at my girlfriend's mum's house parked, drive that into London, give that to them. Then in the office this afternoon for like 6-7 hours. Tomorrow is board meeting in the afternoon. In the morning, probably in the office. Tomorrow night, dinner and drinks with our board members, which is like 2 of them. So one from the investors, one is our Ned. That's always good to catch up and do that stuff. Friday, full day pretty much, is the team day. So morning, normal work, lunchtime, afternoon, do like a presentation. I present the plans for the year, the quarter. This one's a big one since Space Kids 2.0 coming next week, which is a huge period. So lots of stuff coming in Feb. Um, yeah, just run through numbers, get every— well, everyone in the team, but like key core, like, team leads to present stuff on their sections: influencer, products, retention, etc. Retail as well is a big focus this year. And then we're doing a team activity, which is go-karting this time, and then probably some sort of night after, then I fly back on Saturday. So yeah, I kind of prefer this route, go fully remote and then, you know, dial in pretty much 6, 6.5 days a week in Dubai, very, very deep work. And then I was back in October and November and December and now January, so I've been back every month since I moved in mid-September now, 4 months ago. Probably won't always be that cadence, but you know, we have a quarterly board meeting, then I've been back in between for other stuff, so So I stay back on average, will be every 6 to 8 weeks over a year period, which for me works well because you get intense in-person time for whatever needs to be done in person, whether that's seeing my parents, brother, team, interviewing people in person, etc. So I actually think it's more optimum for me, and maybe I'll make a separate video on that about the whole move and how I've made it work. But, um, yeah, the team is now is only 50% in London anyway, to be honest, and even those that are in London, it's office like 2, 3 days a week. So I'm pretty flexible on that. For me, this just works the best right now. So Yeah, first time back in the new year. Um, and yeah, I'll vlog a bit of it, show you what happens when I'm in London. Didn't bring my DJI, so we could be filming on the phone, which is less convenient, but with this mic it's probably just as good. And we'll see when we land, right? So this might fucking fall down. Feels very weird driving on UK roads again. I've collected my old Tesla, which was actually always a business car since right near the start, from where it was staying temporarily at my fucking girlfriend's mum's house. I had nowhere else to park it when I left London. I'm now driving it— oh, the fucking camera's gone. Bear with me. You might have to accept this is a bit of a loose one. Is it 70 or 50 here? I'm now driving it into the office in London because we're going to give it to our new retail hire, Julia, um, because they've been fucking having to rent vans and get trains and so on to go to like retail events we've been doing, retail listings, all this stuff. So given I don't have the car in Dubai anymore and it's a business lease, got like 2 and a half years ago, it's like fucking such good value, I'm just going to give it to the team. Insured like 2 people on it. Um, it's actually funny because now I've got a shitty old Jetta which I do love, from pound for pound, is like feels more bougie than this. But get back in this car and fuck me, like firstly driving electric feels so different because I'm now used to— I'm now reused to petrol again. Obviously going from electric to petrol felt weird, but now I'm back to electric, the change feels even bigger than the other way around. And also just makes you realize Teslas are fucking pretty good build quality in fairness. Um, I always thought pound for pound this car was pretty insane. Um, well, not insane, but you know, like pound for pound, I think about 50k new. I got mine new at the time. Um, but yeah, like instant torque and so on. But anyway, this is not a car review channel, but just a little note to anyone who's never driven an electric or a Tesla, they are pretty fucking sick in terms of just like a daily driver, to be fair. Anyway, I am staying in a hotel literally like 100 meters from my office. Because I made the mistake in the past of not doing that when I'm coming for like 3 nights, basically. Fuck me, this is falling down. When I'm just coming for a visit, made the mistake of not doing that in the past. So yeah, I'm just gonna go there, probably go to the office late afternoon. It's gonna take me like an hour and a half to get in. I got a bunch of stuff to do today, so I probably work in the office given it's literally 100 meters from where I'm going. Tomorrow is board meeting. And then dinner. I think I said this earlier when I was on the plane, it's been a long fucking day. And then the day after that, Friday, is the team day. So I always make these trips to London quite jam-packed. Obviously a lot of FaceTime, which I don't get as much of these days, but like I said, I honestly think that that works well. Deep work and then deep in-person stuff. I think you get the best of both rather than like kind of blending both all the time on a really half-assed scale, which at least was my experience of how I used to do things. So I also look quite tan in this lighting, I guess. I'm starting to realize it. What's these average speed check cameras? Also, one thing I've noticed, and I'm, I'm proud to be careful I say going, going forward, but on this general topic, it does just feel like UK roads are out to get you. Fucking average speed check. Which changes every, like, fucking mile. And then every time I used to get a speeding ticket, I would never be able to pay it. This is my main point. I would never be able to pay it because they would send it to an address I used to live at because I moved, like, every year, which is apparently quite a lot back in the day. And then you— I'd get, like, a £20 ticket would become a £500 ticket, like, a year later when it eventually got sent to, like, I don't know, debt collectors who found out where I currently live. And it's kind of like, well, why not just send it to me online in the first place and I'll just pay it, you know what I mean? Whereas in Dubai, there's the RTA app, um, and all of that's just through an app and it's automated. You put your card on it, if you get a speeding ticket it lets you know, you pay it. Not that I've had any yet, but like same with parking. And there's a similar thing with parking, right? I used to get parking tickets all the time and there'd be no way that I would know I had a parking ticket. Well, sorry, at the time I would, but like if you missed it, which I sometimes did, um, so it's parking tickets, they put it on the thing in fairness, but speeding tickets you don't know. But either way, it would go to like an old address, or even just the concept of letters versus an online digital experience to me is fucking mental. It's way more expensive, surely, for everyone involved. Bad for the environment, I would imagine, technically speaking. Um, and yeah, I don't know, it just seems very backwards. Certain things in certain countries, and in the UK, I just think are very backwards, and that is definitely one of them. Just like letters for, you know, collecting speeding fines and so on. Just fucking do it on a digital app, surely. That's one thing I've noticed, definitely far more efficient in Dubai, along with a lot of other things, in fairness. Um, yeah, anyway, that's not the point of this video. This is kind of just a general vlog of my trip. Um, yeah, I feel a bit out of it, to be honest. Slept like 4 hours last night, very annoyingly. No Wi-Fi at all on the plane, which is fucking annoying. And in a midweek flight, midday, during the day, because I actually think planes are a great time to bash out like deep work, especially on like stuff that you wouldn't normally get as much time to do because you're responding to Slacks and stuff. I guess in fairness, with Wi-Fi you'd still be doing that, but anyway, you get the point. And instead I'm forced to sit there with my thoughts and do stuff, do some work that's not on the internet, which for me is harder because I didn't pre-save stuff. Because someone told me Starlink was now on the A380 with Emirates, which it isn't yet, to be clear. It's on the 777, whatever, certain routes. But even the standard Wi-Fi for me on Emirates used to be enough to like do emails and Slack. But for the past like 6 months of flying— I've done quite a lot of flying with Emirates— it just hasn't fucking worked, which is very annoying. Anyway, might have to stop filming here because it keeps breaking. I'm not sure if I actually got the previous clip, but yeah, I end up feeling like I've lost pretty much a whole day to traveling, and I don't like that because I like being efficient and getting stuff done. And also now driving because I have to move this car instead of being on the train working, I have to fucking drive. So I'm trying to do a call in a second. But yeah, ultimately you can't really work in the car, right? So yeah, driving and flying and just traveling in general, unless you've got Wi-Fi, you've got a driver, and/or both, like, this is not very efficient to be honest. But yeah, probably allow one afternoon of less work. Busy few days coming up. I'll document it and we'll go from there. Boosh. Yo, so it's Thursday, day of our board meeting. I'm in the office, which is a rarity. That's a massive rainbow dust. We have like this corner, we share it with another business called Surrey, who are like a pretty fucking big toothbrush brand in the UK, probably a few years ahead of us in scale. Yeah, got like 8 desks here. This is the Herman Miller, which sits in the corner, used to be mine in London. I donated it to the office, so whenever I come, I use this. Yeah, setup's pretty simple, to be honest. I'm just here pretty early because I'm staying in a hotel and I'm jet-lagged. I mean, staying in a hotel literally 100 meters away. Been to the gym this morning and I'm very fucking jet-lagged. Yeah, might film a bit of what goes on in here, but to be honest, I actually probably get less work done in the office than when I'm just by myself. At least when people are here because I feel like the obligation to speak and all that stuff, which is obviously useful, but in terms of locking in and getting stuff done, usual routine, which I might show like a day in the life, maybe when I'm back in Dubai, is first thing I do is always look at numbers for the previous day, which is probably obsessive, but I think it's quite good to be that much on the pulse. I've always done that, even though other people do it in different capacities, but I think obviously as founder and ultimately leading growth, I need to be all over that stuff. So that's the first thing I do, and then it kind of guides my next actions. And then there's always other stuff going on. This afternoon's a board meeting, going to have a pre-read of slides. Um, they're like 3 hours long. Won't film in that, might film just before. And then like I said, there's a dinner, a potential drinks thing after with our board and David, our MD. So 4 of us, 2 other board members, myself and David, which makes up like, I guess, the main group at those board meetings, as well as the other investors that come. So yeah, it's pretty empty in here, to be honest, right now. I'd say in about an hour more people would be coming in. I only came in at like quarter to 8, so Got the cheeky new tonic over there in the corner. I'll be bashing that this afternoon. Luke, if you're watching, please send us more stuff and send me free stuff in Dubai. You can sponsor the pod. A competitor brand that was making an ad about us, which I haven't done anything about, but it is what it is. And yeah, I don't know what else I can really show you in here. Massive rainbow dust is pretty fucking cool. I probably need one of them in my house. But yeah, we share this office. It would get pretty busy. I don't tend to film with loads of people here in case people don't want to be on it, but this is all other retail stuff. FSDUs, some other stuff here. Obviously the office is a perfect place to store samples and all that. Space Good Socks, don't know what's going on there. Yeah, more samples on the table. But I won't bore you with a full tour. Maybe I'll do more later. Catch you in a bit. Right, I'm trying one of our pending innovations, which may or may not be obvious. No further comment. Incredibly functional. It's pretty fucking good, to be fair. It's functional but doesn't taste functional. Which is what you need. Yeah, I could smash that, to be fair. It's very good. Coming soon. All right, so I'm in the office by myself. It is Saturday. I'm still pretty jet-lagged. I fly back to Dubai 8 PM tonight, so I've been in here since 8 AM filming some stuff, catching up on some stuff. Locked in in the corner there. Um, Yeah, I was filming some shit with a new content agency we're using earlier on that stuff. Had a team night out last night. Had a few too many beers, to be fair. I rarely drink these days, but I do when it's a quarterly team day. And yeah, feeling very rough this morning, to be honest. But I've got a shitload of stuff to do. Does dampen the productivity massively, which is not a surprise. Yeah, office is empty. I actually kind of like— I mean, for me, this is like being in an office, but with the benefit of being remote, which for me is being able to actually lock in and get stuff done, because I get massively distracted, to be honest, when I'm just sat next to loads of people. I just talk a lot. It's probably the ADHD, but also just my general personality. Um, yeah, I actually like this office. Like, I mean, I've probably given the impression I'm fucking anti-office and shit. I'm not. I actually think this office, the one we have, because we share it with other brands and it's actually a pretty sick building and it's a sick location in terms of London at least, with nice views and all this. It's good. Um, yeah, just the environment. Monday to Friday, being in an office that's this busy, I actually genuinely struggle to get stuff done. So yeah, hybrid definitely works well if you're doing that. And for me, it's like extreme hybrid, right? So, you know, remote 95% of the time now, and then I'm back here like probably once every 6 weeks for like a few days for specific things. So it's like intense remote and intense in person. But yeah, the office today is obviously fucking empty. So it's quite a good environment though. Yeah, I just got a shitload of stuff to do. Brand relaunch is in 3 days' time. I fly later, overnight flight. I never fucking sleep on those. But yeah, trying to get caught up. There's no way. I didn't bring a tripod. Yeah, there we go. Fuck me. Didn't bring a tripod, so difficult to film. I'm just nibbling on a shitload of random stuff that's in the office. Yeah, this is new pouches that have probably come out or coming out very soon at this point. I'll do a separate video on that about why I've done the change. I'm a bit nervous about the change. There's quite a lot changing— product, pricing, offers, the brand visually. It's always like a risk to some degree, but I think it's a risk worth taking. And then, yeah, I'm fucking excited about it, to be fair. Yeah, we have unlimited Dash in the office as well, but I will probably call this vlog there. I don't know what to speak about. I've been doing content for like 2 hours this morning. I'm gonna film some ads as well while I'm here in front of the giant rainbow dusts. And other than that, you know, I could go out and see some people or do something, but I've just got a lot of stuff to get on with. Saturdays for me are like almost always a work day, at least like half the day, probably 8 or 9 AM to like 2 PM minimum. But today, since I'm not flying to 8 PM and it's only midday now, I'll probably literally lock in here until about 4 PM, then go to the airport quite early and work there. And then Sunday, tomorrow, I land in Dubai at like 8 AM local time, or 7 AM local time, and then I'm shooting in a studio straight away. Well, not straight away, I'm shooting in a studio like 3 hours after I land for 4 hours for new brand ads. So basically it's a 7-day work week this week, which isn't unusual, but yeah, it's definitely busy when you're traveling. And it makes it harder the fact that I didn't sleep very well last night because I had fucking 6 pints, which for me is a shitload these days, and I've got a banging head day. So I'm going to crack on with this and I'll catch you in a bit. Bosh!