Creating & Growing the Ultimate Offline Brand in 2023 - Hector Hughes | The Midnight Pod Episode 77

Most couples have been together for less than a decade, probably haven't spent a day together without their phone. And there's some mad research that just by having your phone switched off on the table doesn't even need to be on then it reduces the empathy between two people and it also reduces your iq. It's such an all consuming part of our lives that it has an effect.

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Right, we're back with episode 71, I think of the midnight pub. We've got Hector Hughes and Oliver Hudson from Saw, my co host. And we're in the new flat, which is like the old flat just on the other side of the building, which a much nicer view. Hector, you've got a cabin business.

That's right, that's right.

Essentially.

Is that how you describe it, someone asks?

Well, it's tricky. I think it's probably the easy one, but we're a digital detox business, you know, so we're about getting you off your phone and into the countryside and we do that for our cabins. So we've got 20 cabins across the UK and basically when guests arrive, they literally padlock their phones in a box. We give them map and a Nokia and leave them to it for three nights. That's it.

It's a cool idea.

Perfect timing. It's because I always say I'm spending way too much fucking time on the screen.

That's it, man. We all are.

It's called unplugged, right?

Unplugged, yeah.

Unplugged. Rest.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

That's a good domain. Yeah.

I'd never felt. I'd never felt that whole burnout vibe until moving into a big city. I'm from rural York and it's like, I feel like green space just changes the vibe. Like. Like you say, like getting in nature is like a very big. It's like a energy shift, isn't it? Like into a 2 degree. If you've spent all of your time inside or very. You don't even look like when you're in the middle of London, you can't see more than 100 meters ahead of you most of the time either. I just feel like that's a big. Just been able to see more space, a bit more life.

I decided a few months ago that I wanted to live more on the countryside. And then I moved into a fucking tower.

This is it.

Yeah, yeah.

Again.

So I told myself I'll do one more year and then I'm gonna somehow move to the countryside. Although that's probably really not practical. Maybe I should just do an unplugged detox every month.

That's it, man. Yeah, just do that. But yeah, I think we don't realize as well. I was. I know you're in Camden now, Ollie. I was living just up Camden Road and it was like where all of the ambulances went past all day and you just kind of normalize it, but. But then it's when you get away from that that you're like, fuck, that was nuts. You know, just got a low key. Stress all day every day.

Yeah, it's chaos, chaos around there.

Yeah, man.

One of the most.

I've actually never really been around there.

I mean, I've lived in London four years, four and a half years.

I don't really spend much time around there other than in my house.

And then kind of just in your safe, four walls.

Yeah.

But yeah, like I guess where I want to start with where you are now, like how many cabins have you got? I know they're based around. Is it just London and London and Manchester combining The two together or how many have you got and yeah, where are they based mostly?

Yeah, for sure. So we, we started an hour or two from London So we've got 20 cabins now probably 15 of them are around London in the home counties and then just starting to spread out across the UK now. So launched a few in Manchester, North Wales, got Bristol coming later this year, hopefully Edinburgh and also some, maybe some international as well. So starting to spread out and I think capitalize on the. We built good brand equity but maybe, you know, it's been the challenge with this business is you're so constrained by supply because a cabin is basically a hotel room, you know. So we've been going three years with 20 cabins, basically a small hotel, you know, so. But what we have done is built a lot of brand equity so it's now about how do we capitalize on that. And very much like the big hotel chains. So Marriott, Hilton, what they did in the early days, they owned their own product and built a really strong brand and over time they've moved towards more of an asset light model and now as a company they just focus on customer acquisition and loyalty. That's kind of where we see this going as well. But in the early days all about owning that supply and then as we grow you can do some interesting shit on the business model.

That makes a lot of sense in terms of.

Sorry, how the fuck did you get into wanted to do this because I.

Feel like it's way more unique than everyone's.

Every econ bro starts a fucking deep two seat brand, realizes CAC's too high and then goes to become a forex fraud or a crypto trader, which 90% of people I know that used to be in the space have done. What's your background A little bit before that? I know we spoke ages ago about it, but I probably forgot all of it. So yeah, like pre unplugged and what led you into that? Was there like some traumatic experience where you're just working too much and you thought you needed detox or was it a bit more commercial than that?

That's basically it, yeah. So I was, was an early employee at a tech startup, so I was the second employee on the commercial side and my now co founder was the first employee. It was iPad tour systems. So if you go into a restaurant or a cafe, like a square. Yeah, we didn't own the payments which turned out to be the issue, but didn't end up going well. But actually they got acquired by Revolut so happy ending. But the Bit I was in kind of ended failure. So we did the whole high growth international expansion. I did a bunch of roles there, so did sales for a year. Was pretty rubbish at that. Then I ran product for a year. It wasn't much better that and then ran growth for a year and that final year we're like launching internationally. So was flying around the world, setting up offices in US and Australia and just got a bit, I think dissatisfied with it, a bit kind of burnt out and was spending all day on my phones also living the busy London life, like going out a lot and I think just, just really didn't feel like right in myself. Just didn't feel like it felt like I was living life on other people's terms. I think bit of a cliche, but that's where I was. And then a friend of mine recommended a silent retreat in the Himalayas and you know, at a Buddhist temple. And I initially kind of laughed this off. I thought, I can't do that. What would the guys at work think? And then after a couple of months I was like, I may as well, what have I got to lose? So flew out there. It was literally a Buddhist temple on top of a mountain. And the best thing about it is when you get there, they take your phone off you. You just spend 10 days cut off from the outside world. So very cliche. But I came back from that, quit my job a week later and started, yeah, yeah, but I didn't actually intend to do that, but came back and had to come back for like a quarterly planning meeting. And two days into that we were losing 300k a month trying to raise 10 million series A. Two days after I got back, the series A fell through. And so boss, when I took a phone call, came back in, he said, right, I said, we gotta shut down half the company. So close the US office, close the Australian office. I was running growth at the time, pause the growth, spend. So it got less interesting overnight. So then had a week twiddling my thumbs. Heard about cabins, was thinking about digital detox. I spent three hours on a Friday night googling cabins and thought, let's go.

Did you watch the horror film Cabin in the Woods? We don't talk about that with this camera.

It's not good for the brands. I have seen that one. But yeah, we try and veer away from that one.

It's a cool story, very like experience driven story, I guess. Like mine's like, which is cool. Like unlike a lot of brands which I feel like are just a lot.

Of businesses just Start because people want to be an entrepreneur. Right? It's very.

Yeah, very interesting.

Like all agency owners, they just want to print.

I want to hear more about the silent retreat. I know that's probably not the main thing we want to discuss, but just how did that look like? What did. What was the experience? Is it just like, don't. You don't speak. I'm assuming you don't speak the whole journey time You've read a little bit about them, but yeah, for sure.

So this one was. Was called Intro to Buddhism. So it's a half Buddhist philosophy, which I didn't know anything about going to that and half meditation. So I was getting like more and more into meditation around that time. Anyway, did something called transcendental meditation.

Yeah, I've heard of that.

Which is good. That was really good. And then this basically spending four or five hours a day meditating, four or five hours a day learning Buddhist philosophy. And it's mostly silent. There's like one hour a day discussion. But the silence. Everyone's like, fuck, I don't know if I could be silent for 10 days. But that's actually easy. And that's. That's really nice, that. Yeah, 100%. 100%. So, yeah, I mean, you come out of that just. I came out of that just buzzing. And I think it depends where you are in life. Like, it was exactly the right thing for me then. But I definitely found the more of that kind of shit I do, the more I crave doing those kind of things, which is where the business came from as well. A lot of it was I wanted to go and sit in a cabin and lock my phone away, you know, makes sense.

So what's the journey been like from then? Obviously you've got 20 cabins now. Three years. How like. Yeah, talk me through a bit of that. Like, what's it look like? How's that?

Yeah. So it's been a steep learning curve. I think we got fortunate, to be honest, with. With timing, because we got started on it. So I quit my job and then went for a drink with Ben, old colleague. And he was like, yeah, I'd love to come and do this with you. So, teamed up then and then ordered the first cabin in February 2020, which is the month before COVID hit. But that actually turned out to be great. We got it in June, made by a Swedish company. Because we didn't know anything about cabins, we thought we'd trust the Scandinavians. And obviously everyone had been in lockdown at fucking flats in London on their Screens, basically. So actually, to be honest, the launch, we kind of fucked up and we've got about two bookings the first month. But then something just clicked, like some big influencer came to stay and then the Evening Standard got in touch and then it just snowballed from there. And the summer after that was at the summer staycations. But we spent, we took a long time, probably too long at the start, just fucking around with stuff. So we spent nine months, just me and Ben like messing around with one cabin. And then I went to see some investor, we're talking to a few investors and one of them was like, what, what you guys doing? Why, why have you still only got one cabin? So, yeah, then raised a pre seed, hired a head of ops and just, just started growing from there really. And that was, that was a couple of years ago. And then since then grow into a team of 11, 20 cabins, which should be able to double that in the next probably six or seven months. So feels like we've done a lot of, a lot of. Made a lot of progress this year. Like two years ago was the summer staycation, so literally didn't have to do anything and the cabins were just full all the time. And then last year was a bit of, a, bit of a correction where like, I think we hadn't built that muscle. You know what you guys always talk about, like just getting really good at customer acquisition because it had been so easy and we just got all this inbound PR the year before that. So last year was a bit of a harder year on that side of things. But then made a couple of great hires, got lucky there and you know, this year has been really kind of felt like we've reached the next level on just filling the cabins. So they're 100% occupancy at the moment and really kind of got a lot of momentum to. To grow off the backup.

Just on a practical level, if you want to get a cabin, where'd you go?

Is this pre made?

Is this bespoke? And also.

Yeah.

How do you, how do you know where you can put the cabin?

Yeah, like do you have to rent land? How does that work?

Yeah, so it's cabin logistics. Yeah, simple in practice, but. Sorry, simple and very tricky in practice. So the, there's a lot of like construction companies out there, you know, cabin companies, all the kind of really off the shelf stuff are probably, you know, higher price point than makes sense for us as a business. So putting in a bit of the work on going to someone and getting something made Bespoke, you know, means that we can get it at a better price, but it literally is as simple as that. It's like going to. So we work with a couple of different modular construction companies getting a cabin designed up with them, obviously iterating on it all the time and then takes a couple of months to build. Obviously building a few cabins at a time now and then. Yeah, we literally get it on the back of a trailer and work with landowners on revenue share. That's nice and simple. A lot of land out there, a lot of need to diversify the income and then literally just stick it in. Mostly off grid, so it's got a water connection, but then it's like solar powered, compostable toilet, all that kind of shit. So it's simple in theory.

Where was the first one?

First one was just west of Second World, which was actually a beautiful, beautiful part of countryside that we. We say it's like kind of in. Around Hertfordshire. It's actually Essex, but I think Essex. A bit of a branding problem. I have just been living in Essex.

Yeah, it definitely is. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's interesting. What's the sort of lead time in a cabin? Like, how long does it take to turn one round now? Is that improving as well?

You drop shipping these cabins is what you're trying to do.

Yeah, yeah, that's improving all the time. It's like with scale because, you know, basically working with different sort of work recently moved to a new manufacturer and like, you know, they're kind of building it around everything else they're doing. But then as you start to increase the order number, they can like open up a special line for us, so can get to a point where we're banging them out, like got them coming every week, but not quite there yet.

It's great.

Yeah.

So it's a great idea and great model. Love it. What's the sort of like target in terms of numbers in the say next? Have you thought. Have you got like a goal in terms of forecasted out, like numbers of cabins? Obviously, I guess it's every single cabin you release obviously raises your revenue potential in quite a predictable way. And then it's just having the demand to fill it and keeping that like chugging along at a predictable level. Similar to an Airbnb in it, really. Obviously you own it all. What's that journey look like? Do you have plans there? Journey? Have you got it forecasted out at the moment?

Yeah, I mean, I've done so many forecasts in the last years and they've all Been so far off. Yeah, I didn't say shit. So I think just going with the flow, like there's a lot of. It's one of those things where we. We kind of stumbled onto an interesting positioning that's quite a unique position around especially around the digital detox. So we just get a lot of interesting shit coming through now. So it's just going with the flow and you know, like seizing opportunities. We're still saying, like focused on what we do. So there's just a lot of cool shit coming through. I did filming with Top Gear this week because they got in touch. They need to like, want to do some. Something around digital detoxing. There's a lot of shit like that and as well on the supply side. So it's really just capitalizing from that and also I think focusing on staying true to that because the tendency. There's a lot of like cabin companies globally. There's a lot of cabins in the uk.

It's a position in.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But the temptation is just to kind of morph into that over time as you start to bring on like more serious investors and all that kind of shit. Then it's. It's just about, you know, there's a temptation to go down the private equity route and just roll out, you know, a simple business model. But actually I think focusing on this unique positioning just enables you to. To build something interesting and different over time.

More valuable as well.

Yeah, well, that's it. That's it.

Like if you build something different, then incredibly valuable.

Yeah.

And not. And underappreciated in that space. I think that kind of. Or like more is it appreciated by like the legacy companies you mentioned like a Marriott and Element and elements of that. But not by kind of newer, I believe.

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I'd be glad to have you in there. Let's fucking go.

You said it's fully organic.

Is that out of choice because you have limited stock effectively or is that just because you've never needed. Haven't felt the need to go down the paid route yet because I've never known how to scale anything organically. It's always just been fucking rent.

Instagram, it's not fully organic. It says we do some paid.

And actually is that Google?

We got a lot of kind of meta. So across the board.

All right.

Both Instagram's a good one. Yeah, yeah, Google's good. Is quite high intent. I think it's because like in. We're effectively in the travel space and a lot of that's an expensive space on the paid side of things competitive. But actually if you go down the organic route like again you can leverage the unique position. It's like influencers great for us because you don't need to pay them, just give them free stays. And that UGC is huge for us. We're probably getting three, four, five posts a day across channels. That all compounds. Yeah.

People love showing where they are. Especially if it's interesting. 100% nice. It's like so house everyone if you go so house everyone loves them. Let people know they're there.

Yeah, yeah.

I wrote a note in my phone. It's been really embarrassing.

I used to write weird shit like fucking date ideas.

I'm pretty sure I have a note on my phone from like 2021 saying I would take my ex girlfriend and unplugged cabin.

First thing you said to me when.

We met never happened. Maybe I'll say the new one there.

Yeah.

I think you sit in this really nice like quite well from my perspective. They completely correct me if I'm wrong but like you sit in this quite clear Persona of individual. Like it's like fairly like with the brand position you build and it's like this unplugged element but then this like the. The kind of high output person who's likely to get burnt out. I feel like that gives you a really clear person to go after in the market. Which is why did you. You've done some stuff with a few. Big influence. Have you done something with Grace Beverly? Did you?

Yeah, she came today. That was. That was a big one, I imagine.

I remember seeing an influencer.

You see the bump after she comes to stage.

Yeah.

I remember seeing her post about it and she's like a perfect. Imagine. Imagine she was a perfect fit. Like really wholesome, affluent, relevant business owner, really highly engaged audience. Like, fits the demo of that perfectly. So I can see why that works.

Well, the good thing about that with influencers is no one's suffering from the problem we're trying to solve more than the busiest people spending their lives on social media as well. So it just works well.

It's the perfect fit.

Yeah. And I think, like, you know, I've always. I've learned a lot from what you've done with space. Goes on the paid side of things, kind of seeing. Seeing that from a bit of a distance. But, you know, it's just about doing one thing really well. In the early days, like, you can really choose one channel. And I think a lot of startups, we did a mild company, made the mistake of trying to do a bit of everything, but, like, fundamentally want to catch that exponential curve. It's just about getting all your eggs in one basket and watching that basket tell.

So, yeah, a conversation I have with so many brands we do audits for is just, you should just do less, better fucking channel, really. You should do one channel because he can focus until you're doing it. You'll get to a point where you should start. You could. You'll naturally start to feel like you need to do more and then you bring it in and do that properly as well. Or you have enough resource to do it properly. I think that's something because, yeah, when you do it all, you do, by default, you nothing. Well, if you don't have enough resource.

That's what my recent episode is about. Basically just been doing too many things.

Yeah, yeah.

Boil it down to how can I be like, autistically simple?

Yeah, it's a bit. It's a bit of vanity, I've found whenever we've tried to do too much or I've tried to do much, my various roles, it's like me getting carried away with myself thinking, oh, we need to do this thing. And you know, you're feeling cool, you're doing all these things. But end of the day, like, what's cool is making it fucking work and growing something big.

Terms of the unplugged element Then I feel like we're chopping and changing in this episode because we're fucking four months off. People put their phone, on a practical level, they lock their phone away, like how easily can they just get it out? And anecdotally, do people actually stay off the phone for two days?

Yeah, so we, it's self policed. It's kind of a behavioral psychology problem, you know, rather than. We're basically an experienced company, obviously got the cabins, but what we're selling is, you know, we're actually enabling you to spend the time offline and obviously. So what happens is you get there, you've got the lockbox, you lock it away yourself and you got the key in a sealed envelope. So it's enough friction, you're not being on night one, but you can just open it. And what we found is it's won or lost before people even get there. So the first cabin we were checking people on ourselves, we were cleaning it and we would lock their phones away and drive back to London with the key. And what we found is that people saw a cabin on Instagram like this before we had built much of a brand and we tried to lock their phone away and they were like, no way, what are you doing? And so it's one or loss before people even get there. Like now that we've built I think a really good like almost halo around the brand. Like people have heard about it, they're excited to come and spend time offline. So once you've like told you told your family, you've told your friends, that's what you're coming to do, then you're much more motivated when you get there to actually do it. So yeah, we ask people this, probably 65% lock it away for the whole three days. There's about 30% or 25% that check it a couple of times and then 10% just, just don't bother at all.

So makes sense.

Yeah.

Three days, is it? Three days, two nights?

Always three nights. Yeah, three nights.

Three nights. Okay. For a Friday, Saturday, Sunday or any night.

Any night. Yeah. So we're kind of full throughout the week and what we find is that when you get off your phone it takes about a day for the mind to settle down. So the first day you're a bit more anxious and so we want to get through all of that but then give you.

I've actually never done three days off of phone. Yeah, yeah, not even a day.

Yeah, exactly.

I haven't for a few years. I've done days off. Crazy Ye, yeah, leaving it around.

But most couples as well. What I was expecting it would be just individuals going like reading, journaling, all that kind of shit. And we get that, but it's actually mostly couples. Makes sense because it's the same effectively half the price if you're a couple. And most couples have been together for less than a decade, probably haven't spent a day together without their phone. And there's some mad research that just by having your phone switched off on the table doesn't even need to be on then it reduces the empathy between two people and it also reduces your IQ because IQ is just a measure of brain performance basically. And if you think about like everything that your phone stands for, just like having the phone in the corner of your eye, is that pulling your attention? And everything that fucking stands for, all the stress and anxiety. There's some great stuff for your phone as well. But it's such an all consuming part of our lives that it has an effect.

It's that dopamine hit that's always trying to pull you back to that. Your brain's just trying to pull you back.

I mean, yeah, I'm so bad at that. Recently I used to, I just found myself checking Instagram at 11am where I used to like lock it away till 3pm at least.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like fucking like an actual addict.

Yeah.

Even don't even realize it.

Grayscale in your phone makes a big difference.

Yeah, it does.

Massive difference. You just don't. That's just dopamine again, like taking the color just makes it less enjoyable.

Yeah.

Just removing us. Do you find just on the audience you find it's mainly people under the age of 30 or broad.

I wouldn't, I wouldn't say, I'd say the kind of core is early 20s to 40s, so it's quite to 40. And then when people go on their own they tend to be a little bit older, just slightly higher net worth. But we're getting people, you know, we're getting teenagers, 18 year olds come in and we're getting some older people as well. I would say it's the experience isn't as well designed for an older generation. My parents went and stayed back in the day. The bed's quite high. So if you're above a certain age it's a little bit tricky to navigate. So we got to work a bit on the accessibility. But yeah, it feels like it's that kind of millennial is the core. But starting to see a younger audience come through as Well I had an.

Interesting conversation because I think that the value prop of that unplugged element, there's a few niches of product right now that you look at and you're like this is fairly new and really quickly growing. So that alcohol free. Yeah like drinking, the decline in that. I think there's a few others. Like even just like it feels like even just like run clubs, exercise clubs.

Like wellness, wellness in general.

It's like this idea I was having a conversation about the other day about and I can't remember who it was with to be honest. So if they're watching I've stolen your combo. But it was about like this idea that a lot of the Gen Z and the generations below them, the person I was speaking to is saying that they think there'll be like a really heavy counterculture towards social media. So that'll be there. Like there's been counter cultures through loads of. And like for much more like extreme things in some ways. But then like social media is so all consuming, not in others. But like the idea that loads of people just won't use it, loads of younger generations will just not. Will just like be like this. I've seen what this has done to X amount of people ahead of me. I'm just not even gonna sign up. I'm just not gonna even use it. I think that's an interesting like concept. Maybe it won't happen. Maybe it will but I could definitely see that being a thing.

Yeah and I think it's like adding value to people's lives and you know, it's like it is, it's kind of. I kind of always think about. You hear about these old CEOs occasionally who have never gotten to email and you just think like they must have so much fucking room to think. You know, they're getting like shit printed out and given to them in the morning and we were talking about alcohol before the recording. Similar kind of thing. I'm not drinking. Especially when you're running a company is such an advantage. It's those days when you're hungover and feeling shit that like it's all pretty overwhelming but it's just, it's just easier if you don't. So I think as long as like you know what works and as you say like that over time if you can actually give people something of value then yeah, there's always going to be a market for that.

Definitely don't drink when you're going through a breakup as well. Maybe I shouldn't say that on the pod. But I did that a lot two years ago. It was rough and that. Fucking writing love letters and listening to like old Drake songs and shit.

What's. What's the what? So, like, it's a cool business from the outside. What's the worst thing about running it? I always think that's an interesting question to ask people because every business looks amazing to run externally, but there's always like one thing that jumps to mind when you're like, what's the thing that just makes it a bit annoying.

That's a good question. I think it's like hospitalities are tough in many ways because you're always going to get unhappy people.

Karen's.

Yeah, exactly, Exactly. And it's 247 as well. So there is that. Like we had. Oh my God. We had. We wanted to close for a week over Christmas last year to give our head of ops some time off. And just before that there was this massive cold snap and it was the coldest that it had been since we started the business. And all of our pipes froze and burst. It was like, you know, thousands and thousands of pounds worth of damage. Me and my co founder were like on the phone to plumbers all over Christmas. And like, there's that kind of shit where it's just like it's on all the time. But, you know, I guess every business has that a little bit, so. But I don't know. It's also a very fun business to run. I really do enjoy it. And the last business that was in the point of sale system, the thing with that is you're basically someone's business management system in a restaurant and either it's working and they're not thinking about it or it's not working and you've literally ruined the whole fucking day because you got orders disappearing and everything's going wrong. So this is kind of the reverse where even if it goes wrong, which obviously it sometimes does, then people are still out in nature and, you know, they're usually pretty chilled. You obviously get difficult customers as well. And then when it goes great, it's like life changing.

Yeah.

And you lose a lot of that as well. So it's. Yeah, but. But you know, it's tough, man. Businesses, Business is tough.

How expensive is it? Is it like. I've definitely seen it, but just to go through again, like, is there multiple options or is it pretty fixed across the cabins? And was it like 500 new creators?

Yeah, we're moving to more dynamic pricing. So it's like 390 in midweek and then it can be kind of 500 something at the weekend. So, yeah, I think as we scale, we'll move to more dynamic. So it can go both ways. Right. So we can kind of make the most of the really busy periods, but then also make it more accessible in the middle.

Would you find a lot of people come back?

Yeah, for sure. We get some absolute power users who are coming out every couple of months or few months, and then a lot of people. I think what we. Where we're really working on now because what completely transforms this business is we can make it something people come and do every six months to a year. And I think it's like, how do we, you know, how do we get really good at getting that kind of big, big majority to make this like an annual thing, etc.

Yeah, it's like, I think it's that ritual habit, like habitualizing that dopamine detox, that reset, like, that reset element is like every quarter. It probably ties quite nicely into quarterly. But then you'll have one week, one or two weeks a year where you're just like, everything's full. But yeah, yeah, that's. I can definitely see it being like, once you've done it once, like you feel the impact. It's like it's very tangible.

Yeah.

Like very noticeable change in energy, I imagine.

Yeah. What we found is like some of the criticism we got at the start was that you can't change your habit in three days, right. Which is fair. It takes 21 days to change a habit or whatever it is. But that's not the point. It's not about changing people's habits. It's about changing your perception. Because when you spend three nights off your phone, you realize that the world doesn't end and you kind of access the state of calm that we just don't get in our daily lives because we're spending all day online overstimulated. So what we found is by giving people that unlock, you start the momentum off in another direction, because all the momentum is towards spending more time online. And you're going to be watching Netflix as you're literally fucking walking through the street. And we want to spin that in a different direction so that people are starting to crave, you know, time offline and seeking that out. So if anything, you know, you come back from a digital detox and you feel like more addicted because you notice it more, right? So at the start you're like, fuck, this is mad. I'm spending all the days going on my Phone like you do not come out of the cabin.

I'm not TikTok.

That's how it feels. So I think it's important to do that as well. But it's, you know, it's about how can we kind of take people on that journey and obviously we're talking about longevity and brand kind of thing. And I think that's a really interesting problem for us as well, which is like, how do we be the brand that can, can do that?

I've been thinking lately, I just need to. I know you speak about this but like I reckon I'd be better working 7am till 2pm and then not looking at my computer for the rest of the day. Probably not to like stent but like I'm so bad at just easy work. Yeah.

And that's so much of it.

I only get good work done before.

2Pm, then I have lunch at 2pm, I don't eat breakfast and then any work after that is a fucking waste of time for me. Unless it's creative work.

Yeah, I think it was everyone, to be honest.

Yeah.

I go through waves personally where like I can do like 20, like 20 days where I can do like nine till nine and then I'll have like the same like two week period where I can literally do like an hour. And I just feel like I'm doing fucking nothing. Which probably burn out to a degree, but definitely is. There's a lot of. I think that sounds, I think the world would be a better place if that was a possibility for everybody. One I think if you could do that shorter work period, higher output, I think if that was normalized, you'd come. It would make people more productive because they wouldn't feel like they just need to sit there for that period of time, regardless of whether they're being productive and actually doing anything that they could come in, do the work, leave. But the loads of loads of like I listened to a guy called Andrew Wilkinson Loads who just took that tiny co public who kind of built, acquired like 30 businesses. He, he works four hours a day. That's it. It was four hours a day, $1.2 billion company.

But the other thing is like, you know what we're doing at work's change especially we're all running companies here and fundamentally it's about like insights and good decisions. You say you just been through some big business changes and that is an insight. Right. It's like you've kind of had these light bulb moments of fuck, I need to change these things. And it's like optimizing for that. Whereas, like the workday, the eight hour work day is designed from factories where if you're making widgets, you know, obviously you can make twice as many widgets in eight hours and you can in four hours. But actually it's about now. It's about the quality of decisions and insights and obviously you do just need to help with some stuff and kind of support the team and all that kind of stuff. But really, as you know, if you're in the CEO role, like, it's about making those leaps as a business, you know, and that could be unlocked by one insight, one conversation and actually getting out the. Getting out of the fucking room really helps with that. Like getting away from the laptop, going for a walk, getting off your phone is experience.

Yeah, I think that gets more and more true. The bigger business gets as well. That's what Bezos always says, isn't it? Like, if you make one good decision a quarter, because he's making decisions with such extreme leverage, do I enter this market, do I bake this product?

There's so much more complexity to see through there as well.

Right.

You look at Amazon, there's so much more to work with. And if you just start like us at the beginning, one cabin, we've got to fill one cabin, that's one thing. But now we've got all these interesting opportunities. How do we synthesize and tie it all together? And so, yeah, I think it's super important.

More and more.

And the temptation is to get busier and busier. Right. And just throw yourself into more stuff.

100%.

Yeah. I'll literally find myself fucking sitting at my desk at 10pm being like, I'm working on something. What the fuck am I doing?

Yeah. I think a lot of people, it's just retarded sometimes.

It's just like toxic hustle culture, which I can't shed.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'll just be clicking around from screen to screen.

Find a lot.

Look at that. There's about 25 Internet tabs open. I didn't even shut them before recording. This goes like. I don't want to forget what I was doing.

A lot of that is like, when I feel like I haven't. I'm like behind on something or I, like, haven't figured something out. There's like a bit of insecurity that, like, makes me just get busy with other stuff because I know that I haven't like done the thing that actually is doing.

If you're moving things down you to do List, it's just like.

Yeah, exactly. So you just like the emails, all that kind of shit. And it's like, actually the one thing I need to do right now is just like solve this thing.

Yeah. There's a car, there's a concept where like. Yeah, just like when you think, when you that. But there's also like when you think of something you should. You need to do, you just actually start doing it straight away and you do. And you never have that symptom of because. Because it is. You write it down on a to do list and then it sits there and then it's like, actually that's probably the most important thing I need to do right now, but I really don't want to do it.

Yeah, yeah.

It's just actually starting it that has the biggest impact on that output.

I think the other thing is like most of what we do, if you look back at the end of the year, then I reckon 95% of what you did as a founder that year or as a waste time was a waste of time, 100% you could have not done it. I look back at running growth, the last year at that tech startup, over 95% of what I did was a complete waste time didn't affect the company in the slightest. If anything, it was a negative. And I think the problem with most work is it creates more work when you're sending emails that you're getting replies and that's just going to create more work down the line. And if that's on the 95%, that's not important, then you're just drowning in the mundane.

It's asymmetric returns, isn't it? I think that's the same in E commerce. It's like the businesses that pull the. Not every lever in your business is equal and the businesses that pull the right levers at the right time with the, with the most focus usually move the fastest and dominate the market. And then momentum, like keeping the momentum when you've got it is the other thing, I think from an E commerce perspective that I noticed the most.

I think part of it's like gaining the confidence over time to not worry that you need to do anything right because you're understanding what works and you can kind of leave it at that, you know. So I think there is something you talk about like Andrew Wilkinson, like he's working for hours because, you know, he's confident what he's doing, he knows what he's up to.

Yeah, you've, you mentioned you got. You went from two to 11 people. What would you say was the biggest, most impactful hire there? I guess, but like, you know what I mean in terms of like, not the people, but like the. The role itself, like.

Yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, fundamentally, you know, we are a marketing company, so I think building, you know, again, we obviously got to figure out the supply stuff, all that, all that kind of thing. But a bit like an airline, you know, hotels, which we kind of are. It's just about like filling, you know, filling seats, filling beds. Yeah, you basically got this perishable good. Which is the bed or the seat, and it's all about just filling that before it goes out. And so fundamentally, that is the thing I think that we really had to. Or have to get great at and so made a couple of great hires there and I'm really happy with. Yeah, I mean, we've got some. Got some great people on board now, so the team generally has really, you know, built out well. And I think that that makes it a lot of the joy as well. Because, I mean, I, as a founder, I'm not good at the doing. I'm pretty lazy with the way I work and I'm just. I don't know. I don't know what it is. I'm pretty dyslexic and I just was never good at any of the roles I did, but I just give it a task and I could, like, tell you how it should be done, but I just didn't do a good job of doing it, so. But on the other hand, I do have a. I do have an easy time delegating. Like, I basically just trust anyone to start with. And so. So different. Yeah, different. And then my co founder is different where, you know, he's probably a bit more skeptical and book and like, really sit down and smash something out himself. So I think it's also like leaning into what works for you as a founder as well. Right. Because I think people, again, you see the. You see founders talking about what they did to be successful and you're like, oh, shit, I need to do that or I'm not doing that or whatever it is. But I think every founder is so different and it's about, like, leaning into what's working for you, you know?

Yeah.

Like, and not worrying about that.

You know, I've been, I've made it, yeah, 100%. I think that comparison point, in terms of the way someone's growing, the way someone does the day, the way. The way they execute, I've made a really conscious decision to Remove the Lola from my consumption over the last like eight months. I just don't do any of that anymore. Just do what works for me. I think that's really like, just a lot of people would do better if they did that. Just follow like instead of following like 50 people, just follow like the two that really resonate with you. So we'll consider them one, start, watch.

Start following the four hour per day guy. I need a break. I think I need to work less.

It's like finding people but more so the way they think and the mindset and their approach, like find those similar similarities and then just go deeper into them.

Yeah. And the hard thing is like, you know, all the wisdom's out there, but it's like just doing one thing well. We all get so excited about, you know, all these new ideas. It's like, fuck, I do this, go transform my business and a week later I'm off down a different rabbit hole, you know.

Yeah.

So it's like just just really figuring out what the two or three things are for you over time and then just. Yes, just, just about playing the game.

Is your team in an office or remote or is it both?

We do. So we do. We've got six in London and five like in other countries. So obviously they're fully remote. But the team in London, we meet Monday, Friday, which is a bit different to everyone else. And then in the week, you know, I go in most days anyway. We just know we work and everyone else up to them. Some people work well at home. I personally work well. Just I'm not sure I ever work well, but I work better. Like swanning around kind of meeting people and thinking and chatting. But yeah, I think that FaceTimes for me personally that FaceTime is super important. I think there's a level of like, there's a depth of understanding when you're having a conversation with someone that you just can't get over. Zoom. In my opinion. So I do find the remote stuff quite hard right now. Like we have a lot of back office stuff there, so custom support, support finance, etc, and I find it really easy. Well no, I don't feel really easy. It's, you know, I think we've done a decent job like building the culture here because you get that FaceTime. But it's. I haven't figured it out for the remote team and I'm always thinking like, oh, you know, we did like a terrarium workshop on Friday with the London team and then I'm like posting pictures on social media and I'M like down with a. The remote team. Saying that and thinking, feeling left out. And so there is just this because I also feel like my role as a CEO, you're kind of looking at the organization as like a living organism. You're always trying to sense like where the issues are, like where the resentment is, how everyone's feeling and like is everyone humming and set up for success. And I find that much easier face to face with people in London than remote. So haven't quite figured that out yet.

But a lot of it's just doing the same thing but doing it over the Internet. It really is like just get them on a zoom and do the same thing.

Yeah.

I just have them sat on the tv, celebrate wins in the same way. Build like that it's. It definitely is harder obviously. Yeah. 100. Because I think there's like just like energy exchange in person and like just body language, etc. Etc.

But my problem is I might because I'm like severely retarded. But I just find because we were doing a lot of co Work stuff past few months, just trying to do more in person, I just get no fucking work done.

Yeah.

Literally not speak to people.

It's just like I need to be sat at my big desk by myself with copious amounts of rainbow dust.

That's personal.

Although I do like the swanning around, as you put it, like meeting people. That's the most interesting part.

Yeah, that's it. I think it depends again, like what value or like what your role is for the business at the time. Like it's not, you know, as you were saying on the video this week, it's like just getting back to basics and just, just smashing.

No.

And scaling it up and like, you don't need to go and talk to a whole bunch of people for that because, you know, you know. Whereas like a lot of I feel like, you know, we didn't have any experience with the space. I didn't have an experience with the space and a lot of it has been just trying to fucking figure it all out.

Like how does asset finance complexity. Complexity.

How does all of this kind of property stuff all of the cabin off grid, like hospitality and so yeah, I found it useful just chatting to a whole range of people and just all these kind of surprising things coming out of it. But again, like either works and I think it's just sticking to what gives you energy as well. Because a lot of us are energy management, you know.

Yeah.

Like if you're, if you're like forcing yourself to do something that just doesn't give you energy, then.

You should. So it's a concept where like usually the things you're good at and the things you're interested in give you energy. Don't take energy. And your zone of genius is where like your interests. Yeah. Like it's like something you're interested in is something that you're good at. And where those two things align is like considered what your zone of genius is, where you'll spend endless amounts of time doing that because you enjoy it and you're good at it. And therefore it usually gives you energy and you always. So you manage. The concept is like print off your calendar from the last two weeks, highlight, go through it, highlight everything that you felt sapped energy from you and then focus on doing more, positioning yourself in a way where you can spend more time doing the things that aren't highlighted on that sheet. Because you'll find you'll, you'll probably, you'll find it much more fulfilling and you'll probably progress much faster by then. Then you're meant to like delegate or eliminate and just kind of work through that process and you'll position yourself where you should be in your business.

I need to do that because I felt very energies apt for the first few months. I used to enjoy running econ brands. Now it's just miserable. When you happiest, always right at the start. Yeah. Going from idea to creativity.

Yeah. Creating things. But there's a lot of business which is doing the same thing over and over again and trying to improve it.

Yeah. So there's also an element of. I'm now self aware enough to know that ah, this is happening again doesn't mean do something else. It means pivot within the same thing and figure it out. Because in the past I'd have been like, oh, fuck this, I'm starting a new brand.

Yeah. Doing that. And then the hard part for that is that doing that process is easy. Finding the right people to delegate the work that you don't want to do to is probably the harder part of it. And being able to eliminate it through like systems, processes and stuff. But I think it's a cool concept. Yeah, definitely a good idea. Yeah.

I think you can just always push it much more than you think.

Right.

Like there is this almost to my hustle culture. Like you almost feel like I should be, you know, doing more, being busy, like working the long hours and yeah, there's a time and place for everything. But I think it's like challenging the assumptions a lot More because no one fucking knows what they're doing, you know, and like any of us know just as much as about how we work best, you know, more than anyone. So I think it's, you know, there is an expectation that it's hard not to feel that you should do, you know, be everything and anything. And it's actually like, if that's not you, then that's fine.

Yeah, I agree.

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I think the thing I've noticed about myself in the last few weeks, maybe.

Last three weeks, is that you are recession proof.

I'm fucking horrendous at saying no to things. I'm just like, I'm such like, in a work context, people are like, do you want to take this opportunity on? And I, I just, I'm just like, yeah. I'm like. And then, and then I, if I actually sit down and like the impact of that when you pull it out over like a Period. A long period of time. It's like I just should have said no.

Even this podcast, he said yes to co hosting this. You ain't got time for it.

No, but it's just like I just say yes to doing tasks and shit. I'm like, it's going to take me like four hours. Like, what am I doing?

I don't know how you split your time, to be honest.

Yeah.

You seem to have 15 businesses.

I've got like 80 people working for us. So it's like that's how. And like it's like the right people. The right to my. Our big best hire will be a coo. Like he just runs.

Is that across Hamby, Saw and Tev.

No, Tab separate. That's. That's for you. So have you got the person for that? Yeah, I got zero called Matt and he's like the biggest. He was the most important. Well, not the emo, not the only important, but like the way he's built the operations like agency is just repeatable process to different people, isn't it? And optimizing that.

Does he have equity? Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say you definitely don't pay him enough.

But yeah, just like saying I don't. I spent my time in really does vary. I spend too much time on phone calls. That's my bottleneck in life.

I quite enjoy calls. Maybe it's. I don't know.

But you are right.

You can spend. I spend so much time on calls and aren't necessary.

You can spend nine hours a day on a court on call. Sometimes like literally 9 till 6. Back to back to back to back to back. No gaps. That's absolutely hell. I just come up with them like six o'.

Clock.

I'm like. That day just deleted itself. Just like doesn't feel. I feel because when you're on the phone, time just flies by because you're speaking to people.

They're internal but external.

Bit of always a mixture. I wouldn't.

Yeah.

More external. More external.

How do you split. Sorry, I'm training him up again. How do you split the three? Oh, you have like four. Because you got jack. The Jack group, Tev stuff.

Yeah.

And then you've got the agencies, basically. But do you split them certain time per day or like split them into.

Just try and split them into days. Try and split them into days. I split calls now into like. I'll take calls on a Monday and Tuesday just to get them done and I'm trying to cut those out slowly and then the eight. Then I don't really split my days. I usually just book it, like big tasks into my calendar and book it out, like what needs doing. But the agencies, I'm pretty like top level. Like what you were saying, like, this is basically just making decisions and guiding strategy. And then on the odd case, I quite. I really enjoy the marketing. So, like for you or for like some other clients you work with, I'll actually just help on the account sometimes, which is an example of something I probably shouldn't be doing. But, like, it just. Sometimes it just needs to be known. So it varies. I'm not very good at booking. I don't work in a structured way. Like, some people would be like, I'm gonna do this on this day, this on this day. But it just doesn't really work like that in practice.

How long do you think you've been doing all of this for? Or would you be doing more?

Don't know.

Got anything else in the pipeline?

No, no, definitely not. That's the saying. No. That's my big goal for next year. Just say no. Yeah. Demonstration. What's most of your time spent on in terms of like, if you were to split it into people, ops, marketing, biz, dev? I don't know. Yeah.

Yes. It's a lot of like, I would say kind of growth on the supply side. So a lot of like, you know, structuring deals, talking to kind of potential, you know, both on growing our own supply and like potential, like joint ventures, all that kind of stuff. So a lot of it's like, looking ahead. I do, you know, have one on ones with most of the London team, which is pretty quick, just like an hour each week and very light on meetings. To be honest. I've got better. I've always been bad at saying no as well, but I got better at just like not replying to emails. Sounds bad, but it just works there.

That's a great idea.

And criminal for that as well, which.

Is like canceling calls, you know, like, because you just say yes in the moment sometimes and then just sitting there at the beginning, the week. Why am I doing these calls?

Yeah. Say yes to some, like, American esports agency from some niche Massachusetts town that want to do a collaboration. I'll say. Yeah. And then you realize, what am I doing on this call?

Yeah.

Yeah, 100. And I've also, like, just. Just really trying to practice, like, you know, sending stuff off, delegating stuff.

Yeah.

Because, like, people like, picking it up. They'll probably do a better job than me as well. And there's Just this, like again, when someone gets in touch, I almost like feel like sometimes your email feels like your to do list. People get in touch, you just feel this obligation to get on a call and it's just. Yeah. So getting better at that has definitely helped a lot. But just spend a lot of time thinking as well. A lot of time reading, a lot of time walking and just, you know, trying to practice what I preach and like trying to figure out what the next step is, what the next kind of step change is. But it's also capital intent, business, a lot of fundraising.

Yeah. So I was gonna ask about that.

Yeah.

How much fundraising have you done? Like you can share specifics or you don't have to, but have you done many rounds? Has it all been angels? Have you done vc, anything? Have you? What's the deal?

So it's mostly, mostly angels. We've done a couple of active rounds, very small friends around the start. Did a 300k pre seed and then the 900k seed round last year. Mostly angels. We're not EIS. So it did hit the ticket size. I mean, we got a lot of small tickets. We got like probably 70 investors, 70 angels and then a couple of funds as well. So we've got a small VC called Magic Fund and the Wilkinson family office. Rent the papers. Obviously everything's happened to Wilco. So we've got a shower.

How's that went?

Oh, yeah, we got a shower in the garden for that. Wilco, the discount chain's just gone bust.

Yeah, I should read the news.

Yeah. So nice.

That's interesting.

So, yeah, we've done that and then we've done probably about 400k worth of debt, so starting to move more towards debt financing.

The cabins, I guess, if you got the assets.

Yeah, exactly.

It's a very attractive business to invest in. I would invest in it personally.

Yeah, I nearly did.

Emailed me giving any money. But we, we also had had to do a bit kind of financial engineering. So the asset finance market got a bit tricky early this year with everything happening with interest rates and so what you get, you've got a cabin which has a good return, but then it's a soft asset. So if you're an institution, you don't really know what you're going to do with the cabin. So that got tricky and so. But then we had a lot of these kind of private investors who, you know, had money that was just sit in the bank account. So we created a financial product called a Cabin Back Loan. We've got a decent interest rate like 13, 14% and it's like 50k secured against an individual cabin. And that's worked really well. We've done a whole load of those this year.

What, so someone gives you 50k?

Yeah.

And you pay them back 40 every year. Yeah.

Big short in a few years.

Yeah, the cabin bubble. Yeah, it's one of those where it just like gets us.

But how does that work? Can you create your own loan?

Yeah, yeah, I just leave a document. It's just a document.

True.

Yeah. So the, you know, we're thinking you can like securitize it and that's where it gets complicated. But a loan's a loan and then that's it. As long as they're not like, you know, owning the cabins, they just got to charge against the cabin, then it's. It's fine. And yeah, that's it, like it's a. It works well for everyone and it's one of those where rather have friendly terms with higher interest rate than. Because I think there's this. There's a lot of porn around, like raising money. But what terms you raise it on I think doesn't get enough. Yeah, look, both on the equity and the debt side, right. Like we were doing some asset financing and it was like predatory, you know, amortizing super aggressively. So you're repaying the principal as well as the interest just means that we'd be launching cabins and you literally all the profit from that cabin will get into repaying the debt. And so as you're growing, you're literally not adding anything to the bottom line. And so actually what this does is because it's interest only, you're making pretty good profit on the cabins as well. And I think it's the same with equity. Like, you know, people signing so much stupid shit. And it's easy to say in hindsight, but I think yeah, just understanding it's really hard as well when you're, you know, haven't been through this process before, obviously, you know, I haven't done it before but to kind of extrapolate as to how it's going to play out. Like whereas the investors have seen these things play out hundreds of times but the founders haven't.

Right.

They've got much bigger data and that.

Like fucking 20 page term sheet you're getting or 20 page legal document, then who knows what half of these terms are going to turn out as in a few years. So I think it's like figuring that out over time and like what actually what's important and that's where like as we were saying, getting offline, stepping out the room helps you understand these things a bit better. So I think what I found is over the last three years constantly reshaped how I see the business in my mind. I realize what kind of business I'm running. Still learning. I'll look back in a year and I'll be like I had no idea about that, what business I was running. But then now to a year ago, you have a completely different idea of what it is. So I think it's also about understanding the game you're playing and like learning over time you know just what that is and that then informs the decisions.

Right.

And the quality of the decisions.

Yeah, definitely. I think that all my best creativity and insights come when I'm not sat in front of a laptop like so that clarity of thinking and on the, on the raising money. Cap table. The cap table is the only non irreversible decision in business. Yeah, it's like. And I feel like that's unless you buy them out but like it's not. Probably, probably not gonna happen in the, in the reality.

These are my caps hair but it's just like.

It's just a very hard, it's a hard. It's near in a irreversible way Taking, taking that and that. That money. It just needs to be very thought through and you start answering to other people. Which I think is a very underrated.

Like yeah, I got a friend who they launched fight or they started on business five years ago, raised a few hundred K out the bat and one of the angels there, they agreed to give them like equal voting rights with the founders. It's like one for one and completely derailed the business. First three years they're still going. They just launched five years in. I won't say just launched. It's just launched five years in.

They did for five years.

They spent three years back then with this investor.

But about what? Because there's no product.

Well, but they wanted to take it.

Down different parts decision making, you know.

Yeah.

So stupid that you did that. Whoever did that, that is a small print that's just like ruined. Interesting. Have you find it that you find it. I'm assuming you find it easier and easier to get that sort of money over time which is like scale secure I guess security of people. Like when you. As it gets bigger people's securities in giving you the money is going to be higher.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's the kind of. It's kind of business where as the Revenue starts to get more predictable. Like you've got a ton of funders for it, but it's just the early days where like, it's not a VC play because it's asset heavy. It's not an angel play because it's not. Yeah. So we went down that route. Just very time consuming.

As sexy as something as well. Yeah.

But actually, like, you know, you do have the assets and once it becomes this like predictable revenue stream, then there's all sorts of funders for this. We're starting to get a lot of inbound interest on that side of things and. Yeah, I think. But also just figuring out who the right partners are on that as well is key.

Yeah. The fundraising world's interest. And I've learned a lot about it in the past year because I've never raised money before. A year and a half then. I've been speaking to loads of VCs over the past year, which I've documented on the pod. I was probably very naive when I spoke to the first one. Probably thought a call meant three million quid. And actually it means tie kicking and patronizing you over a call from some 23 year old that just got out of union, has never run a business and is somehow looking at your financials and giving you feedback. Not all of them, but yeah, I feel like it's very different in consumer. I can imagine that. I mean, everyone fucking hates DC right now because it's 2023, not 2020 and it's like very different. Have you seen that across all clients? Like, it's just harder. Because I would say that it's black and white in terms of everyone I spoke to as well and not just me.

Yeah, it's harder. It's, it's, it's, it's definitely. It's more competitive. It's, it's like platforms are harder, data's changing, the way people buy is changing, the barrier to entry is higher, like, but it's still not that hard if you do it right. If you do it properly like this, it's still possible to launch and scale brands on online far easier than it is to do through any other channel. It's just like what the model of success and what you. The inputs needed for success has changed and like the approach to that has changed. But yeah, so it to black. I might answer your question. Yes, it is harder. I think that it'll always. It will continue to get harder as well. You just have to have a better product, better content, better brand, better messaging, whereas you just be able to slap a single image on Facebook and just print money. And that's a good. That's a very good thing. I think that it's. That it's got harder because people are now building tangible businesses, proper businesses. Proper. Proper. Value adds to the customer. Not just value adds to the person in the bedroom who's trying to make money. Like.

Yeah.

And all the grey hat drop shippers have moved into forex or crypto scams. I know plenty of them.

I think it's a bit. It's somewhat of a correction to like.

Yeah.

Not just rinsing people for shit experience and building proper brand. And if. And the cream always rises to the top. If you're really good at it, you can still build. You can still do just as well. Like always quarantine you.

Yeah.

The market is out here. Yeah.

CAC's too high. That's what keeps me up at night. So have you seen that? I know you said you mainly organic. Be the sun paid.

Yeah.

Like do you think it's got. I mean there's people talking about a recession probably already in one. Like do you think that affects your product and market or helps the staycation model or is it almost the opposite because people aren't going elsewhere and they want to just fucking do a staycation.

Yeah, it's one of those where there's been a lot of volatility in our industry because of COVID We're a travel company basically. So like that if anything has a bigger effect and actually we're in a positive of kind of momentum in that. And also like it's. It's fairly recession proof in the way that, you know, when people are low on cancer, recession proof, they're not flying, you know, and they're more stressed out. So like why people come and stay. We've seen go from I just want to spend a couple of days in nature to stress the world, all that kind of stuff. So see, I mean it's hard to say. Right. Because then we've also just like got a lot better marketing this year. So we haven't really seen that to be honest. I think it's a lot better than it was last year on the paid side of things. But a lot of that is that we just got a lot better at doing ads not being very good last year. So I think it's one of those where we're at the kind of scale we're still super early. Right.

So.

The data is much more variable on that.

Right.

I think you can mistake. Yeah, you can mistake the Micro influences for the macro, whereas for us it's, it's just like what's changing around us and in our company it has made all the difference.

So.

Yeah, I don't know. I do think that it probably is quite friendly though for where we are now.

Yeah, definitely.

I think. Yeah. I'm marking to that halo effect of things. You're in a really nice position from a societal perspective. I think it's cool.

But then the funding did definitely get harder this year, you know, so we had to kind of do some figuring out with the cabin backlog and see, you know, any business, you're always getting curveballs, right. And anytime it's going really well, there's a correction around the corner. You know, you saw all these companies who just boomed over Covid, you know, the pelotons, the patch plants and then had a massive. Obviously they're slightly different companies, but massive correction. So careful you wish for. It's very easy as well to look at. You know, you were talking about it in the video earlier this week where you see all this Success, Success on LinkedIn or anywhere else and you think everyone else got it so easy and then you actually go and speak to the founders and everyone's dealing with.

And that funding correction's been all over the place like dtc again, pretty much every dc brand new IPO is now just absolutely in the mud. Everything absolutely just painful to look at the graph. Like really painful.

Yeah.

So again then it's probably also a really good time to be building a startup because if you can weather the storm, I mean, you say it could get worse, I mean, probably will, but it could also get better after that. And then I think it's better to build when it's shit rather than start when it's really great and have the, you know, the rug pulled.

I think it's just a really good time to build a good business. Yeah. And if you build a good business with good product market fit, you will always find it. You will never find it that, like, you'll find it harder, but it's still like you won't, you'll never find it that hard. I think it's like just. Yeah, if you, if you fit that mold, like, like, like you've clearly got great product fit, great, very clear customer Persona, great business model. Yeah, just so although it's a bit, bit more challenging, it's still found a way to work at work. And I think that's the truth. A lot of businesses that fit that kind of mould and have good fundamentals behind them and good operators within them. What's the plan? Obviously, the plan is to just continue to scale the cabins from one perspective. Is there any other. There's probably elements you're not going to want to share. Any other elements around that? Is there just broader product plans, broader experience plans? Any like other verticals, or is it just for the next couple of years? Probably is for short term, but just let's just scale more cabins now.

We do have a few things in the pipeline I can't talk about yet. I'll say that. Read a book about Che Guevara recently, a biography, because I think every startup you're trying to make a movement and, you know, you kind of want to turn that into a revolution. And he's obviously the famous revolutionary. And one bit of advice he gives on that about successful revolutions is that to make a successful revolution, you got to focus on audacity. Audacity, Audacity. So I think we've played it pretty safe for the first three years and that's very much going to be the focus going forward. So talk a bit off camera about what some of those things are, but nothing's worse yet. But yeah, I think it's just, you know, we're an experienced company.

Cabins with Ayahuasca in them.

Cabins, all sorts of shit. I had a friend, a profession says on the podcast, but he went stay and, you know, like did a LinkedIn post. Like, everything was really nice but like, he didn't say he had a good time. It was just like everything was really thoughtful, etc. So I like messaged him, I was like, what's up? How was your stay? And he's like, oh, yeah, the camera's really nice. Do you enjoy it, though? And he was like, to be honest, mate, we had a really bad acid trip. He ruined the whole thing. So wouldn't recommend that if anyone's going to stay.

I was gonna say, I can imagine there's a lot of that. It feels like it attracts a certain.

Earthy experience, experimental crowd.

Yeah, we haven't figured out how to track that yet, but I'm sure there's a fair amount.

Have you had any horror stories about stage you found Covington?

We. So as a business, any orgies? We're quite so. We're quite fortunate. It's quite like. There's obviously some, like you occasionally get, you know, sex toys in the bin, that kind of thing, but. But what we are. It's quite wholesome, so we're not too bad. But I know people who Run Airbnbs and every other stay has an orgy and. And they trash the place. And there's even spoke to some other guy who's got a few cabins in the UK and he markets on booking.com, which is just a different audience. Again, just gets us to cabins trash all the time. So I think luckily, because it's very direct, so 95% of our bookings are direct.

Affluent as well.

Yeah, it's very like brand focus.

Right.

It's like very kind of well being. So I think people are going not to have a mad one. So that obviously is much easier for us operationally. But law of large numbers, there's obviously a little bit of that.

Yeah, I actually really want to go, like, how far ahead are people booking typically now?

It's one of those where, like, if you're burnt out, you don't want to go next year. So I would say our sweet spot window is probably four to six weeks. I mean, cabbage still got a bit of space in October, but September's basically fully booked. And yeah, you can always kind of get people in fairly short notice and then we do get some people booking further ahead. But it's one of those. One of the challenges of how to. Because really, you want to load up your order book as far in the future as possible, but then we also want to make it accessible for people. So if people want to go in a couple of weeks, it's how do we have the supply for that?

So you ever thought about just bumping the prices and seeing what happens?

Yeah, we're playing around with that. Playing around with that a bit more now.

We might have to cut that out, Miss. Hey.

And I think, you know, if you are. If we are, I mean, we're running at 100 occupancy and that probably says that we are mispricing it, to be honest.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So there's some optimizing to be done.

We. We've got a couple of Airbnbs, like, but I think that it depends where it is. But what would you say the average for a Cabin is like 70, like we forecasted off like 70 occupancy rate. They're in, man.

Airbnb.

We don't run them, just have rent to rent, long story.

So we'll probably do like 90% this year.

Just charge more money and make.

Yeah, it's one of those where it's a bit of a. It's like Elon Musk in the. When they were scaling up, Tesla was always like pushing his team to they had to constantly be sold out because as soon as you're not sold out, as soon as you're sold out, like the demand could be infinite. But as soon as you're not sold out, then it's saying that, you know, this is much people want. So it's kind of the same with us, where you just want to be full, you know, you just want to be full all the time. Because that, that sends a message of like that there's excess demand and there is.

Right.

Like it drives fomo. It's one of those where if people went on our site and you know, all of the cabins were empty, then they're probably like, this isn't going to be that good, is it? So there is that thing of just like being, being sold out. But again it's like for me it's, I need to. And I constantly flip flop on this. I need to understand like what's important. Like, is it about getting the maximum revenue out now? Is it about being just sold out all the time? And at different times it's different things, you know, that impacts the team, impacts fundraising, impacts all these things. So it's like understanding where you are as a business and a person in each moment and you know what the kind of right thing to optimize for is.

What story do you need to tell at this point?

I guess exactly that.

Do you need to paint a picture to these stakeholders? Do you need to paint a picture to your team? And I guess it's hard to balance all that.

Yeah, it's probably multiple stories at the same time, right?

Yeah. And you can spin them up in different ways. Yeah. But yeah, interesting challenge. I think that sellout points underutilized in the online space as well. Yeah, I actually seen the big negative. A lot of people see it as a negative to run out of products and it is if you've got one product, because that's like, yeah, scale, because your cash flow will be fucked. But like, I think if you've got multiple stuff skews, like selling out isn't always a bad thing. Pent up demand, that scarcity mindset is undervalued in a way.

Yeah. I kind of changed my mind on this after meeting Matt for the first time because I think we were a little bit too cautious on that side of things at the start. And then met Matt a few months into space gears and just saw you juicing it on the ads. So you're just like, really? And you just realize you can just turn it up, you know, like, you.

Know, I Come from a background of chad scaling. So just put number zero on the budget.

There's a time and replace that. Right. You want to. Again it's like understanding what's really important right now. Is it showing a big, a big margin or is it just about being sold out in the early days? It's probably about being sold out you.

Know and what you have the ops and back end to fulfill on and that's, that's an element that lag of like do you have the right.

But I just think there were times last year when like the occupancy wasn't full and we were just a bit too precious about not going above a certain CAC where we still would have made a lot of money. We still would have made money with a higher CAC and it's like you're literally just losing stock now. So. So yeah lesson learned. But you know you got to learn these things by experience.

Do you never do dynamic pricing into like urgency discount towards like obviously airline. I did a module at university in economics on airline pricing.

Yeah.

And the whole like that modeled process where there's a, a sweet spot to buy them. There's a point at which to start discounting. Imagine you will. Hotels obviously do apply that. Is that something you've stayed away from?

No, I mean it's the way to go. I think the, the just challenge is the flexibility of the platforms. We use a kind of outdoor system which is like shopify for experiences and there's not that much around that. So we're doing it manually now and we're experimenting more and more with that. And then there's things you can do like we've got a, an email list called Secret Sundays that you pay three pound fifty a month for and we discount the last minute stays on that. And that works well because there's that bit of buy in for people and you can get a good discount on that. So it's just building the levers and you know understanding better how to, how to fill cabins basically.

There's so many possibilities with the audience. Like there's so much community, such a community play as well. All sorts of stuff like that. That's really exciting. So that brand, brand side of things I'm really bullish on communities of concepts. Yeah, like really bullish. I think I've told you about it. I think, I think there's a lot of brands that are doing it more and more. I think you like the audience you're situated in is like perfect.

Who's it's doing really well, Pure Sport.

Are doing it really well.

You need to say that. Yeah.

I always say them like their first one that comes living in London. They do a lot of run clubs and I was with my mate a minute ago that works with me and she went from work to one of the road clubs. They do like loads of them and they built massive brand off that I think represent do it pretty well. Clothing brand a little bit different model. Outdoor Voices is a really good one that probably they'll be interesting reference points to you. They do the clothing brand built by the girl called Ty from America. But they do like loads of big community initiatives and it's like you get so many massive benefits from it. Content, content, word of mouth. Like so many. So many tangible benefits. And you can also just release products easier when you. When you spend it. When you've got a community that you can sound board ideas off.

Yeah.

Just shortens your feedback.

Yeah, I need to figure that out.

You'd be situated in very similar audiences. Like.

Yeah.

In terms of people and. And that. That's really useful. I think in some. A lot of brands. Like if I was to reference tev, like we sell to two. Like we sell to such a broad amount of people. The essence fault. It's just like the community play there is so much harder to do. There's so many mixed messages.

I was trying to think of a really funny, offensive joke to say about the community that would be deaf for context. It's a brand. Yeah. Cheap, inspired, but it's fucking Prince. Yeah.

It's great concept. Just saving people.

Your community play would be just like going to one of those Tesco car meets on a Tuesday night.

I think they did the community plays to lean into a culture of frugality and saving money and that hack side of things. I think that is a possibility. That is something that would resonate with the audience. Like how to get more out of less.

Yeah.

And you'd probably be able to build something through that. But it's not as compelling a message as a run club because you love being active where you can really.

Yeah. The problem is Run Club's really good idea. But I saw Gymshark start doing that now, which is like a pure rip Again.

They're just too. I think that it works very ground up. I feel organic from bottom up. Gymshark did it when they were. When they were a lot smaller and I think exposing expos and meetups, they did it really well. But now when you're at true scale like them, like you're not Marketing to everybody because you've got a clear tone of voice and a clear like tribe behind your product. But lots of people buy your product at that scale. Lots of different individuals through different backgrounds and lifestyles who interested in different things. So I think it's a little bit harder to build a community that resonates with like most of the people that shot from you. But I still think it's probably still possible. Yeah, I think you should do on 100%.

I know you're doing that, but I also just feel like we should just get to 10 million revenue first and then worry about that.

I think like.

It'S just the autistic simplicity again.

But I get.

Yeah, but I think I spend more on Instagram ads.

I think like the thing and then things subscription brands is like because everybody.

That definitely is an element of community there already.

Yeah, yeah.

But it's like they don't know each other. Just people that love the product you bring.

You're bringing people to your products aligns with a very quite clear Persona of individual. Quite like a clear like driven, motivated, high, high output. And I think you've got like subscription brands for me, always over people always overemphasize how much messaging decreases churn rate from brands. And I think if you think about your own purchasing experience, like what subscription brand have you ever not unsubscribed from because they've sent you an email or a text message? I can't name a single one. If I. The reason I've not unsubscribed from athletic screens is because I found it through Andrew Huberman. I know how good it is for me and I wouldn't not subscribe from.

Him because those little micro things do have an incremental value.

But what.

What has a bigger value is how you add more value to the person beyond the product. Which I think is what a community would do. It's like you're providing a tangible benefit from them through a community alongside the product that they're buying. So I think it would, if you did it right, reduce your churn rate. Cause that's the only way they can get access to it.

I always think. I thought that was heights. They do really well on the customer acquisition and I actually got it to see what they were doing on the community side. And I was surprised that there wasn't doing nothing. Yeah, yeah. I think there's a big opportunity there and they've got still great products and.

They'Ve got a network of really.

I saw their investor update last week. Because one of my investors shared it with me.

They've not.

They're not as big as I thought.

They're not. They're not.

I've raised a lot of money.

I've seen behind the.

Sorry, Dan, if you're watching. So bigger than me. But it's not as big as I thought.

They're a difficult one because they're selling a product that's a brain supplement that you don't feel the benefits for for three months. And then how the. It's very intangible. Like, how do you know you've got like. Does your brain feel better after three months of taking.

I do think it's a great brand.

I think it's a sick brand.

One of the best I've seen.

But it's a very difficult churn problem, I'd imagine. But how do you. How do you. It's like people increasingly. So people in society are after input. Like quick dopamine hits, which is not something that provides.

But that. That I think is what athletic greens do really well. Where it tastes really like healthy. Yeah. You know, and so you drink one of those.

I spent 80 quid on two grand, though.

Yeah.

I'm just convinced it makes me less sick.

Yeah.

I get a cold less.

They've got a real placebo effect gang, isn't it?

They've got a placebo effect, but I just think their partners and the way that the people like Andrew Huberman, Serena Williams, like the people who are on their website.

It's like the Rolex that you enter.

The point that you come into their products is the thing that keeps you there for the longest.

It's that thing about, like juicing one channel really well. You know, they've just. They just smack. They just haven't stopped from the influencer stuff. They're just like churning out new influences.

We've also been around a lot longer than you think.

Yeah.

20 years.

20 years? Yeah.

It's at least 10.

They came about after Covid as well, when that health kick probably really like. Like really kicked in like that period. But I think. I think communities.

I need to do some influencer. No problem. Even some celebrity. I just. It's just channels. I've thought about it. People say, have you done anything yet?

The good thing about DTC is that you never know that. One thing I think Heights have done a lot really well. And one thing they've done really well is they've just got lots of interest in customers. And the good thing about D.C. is you just never know who's going to use it. And I think almost the gold standard for a DC brand is when you get the celebrity. You see some of the. Whoops. Not really dc, but the consumer brands.

Celebrities.

Buying the celebrity and then investing. Right. And then it just becomes synonymous with the brand. Like this brand backed by.

Yeah, Roger Federer did that really well for. That's that he's earned a billion. Billion from that.

Yeah. And Stephen Barlow and Huell, you know, she's like, yeah, it's worked really well. It's such a win. Win for both of them.

And I think might got that number wrong about Rockefeller.

Yeah, he's got a billion from it.

Pretty sure he is. Yeah. Stephen Bartlett did it really well with Huel. Huel's another incredible brand, Hugh.

I always talk about Huell and athletic greens. Whenever I speak to anyone about what I'm trying to do with mushrooms, I just say those two.

Yeah.

Simple but hard.

Yeah.

So where are you trying to go with this cabin thing then?

Question? Well, it's always a social experiment. Like, I think the future's.

How big do you think it can be? Are you trying to put cabins in every fucking city in the world?

We want to be the biggest. The biggest digital detox brand in the world, you know, so that won't necessarily.

Always be Kevin, but are you trying to get unplugged.com?

I actually tried to get it 6 months before I started the business.

Is that a lot?

Yeah, it was like six figures.

Yeah.

But before I was even thinking about cabins, I read a book about a book called Digital Minimalism about spending less time online. I was like, unplugged this sick name for business. So he tried to buy a book. Too expensive. So Unpun rest was cheaper. But, yeah, want to just really. I think the future is much more malleable than we think and almost see this as a social experiment where we're going one way as a society and just by succeeding, we will move society in a different direction. And so I just want to see what the fuck happens with that. I don't really mind if we make a big success and I'm sure do well financially, but I don't really care what I end up with. Number of spreadsheet at the end of all of this. Like, want to just really fucking turn this up and see what happens. I think we have such an amazing opportunity now. The timing's perfect, the positioning's strong, and so just want to see where we can go with it.

Nice. Similar brand. Have you seen pairing?

What's that?

Pairing Yes, I saw that. So they're the social experiment.

Is that like a business?

Yeah. They're trying to do a similar thing to what you're doing in terms of like change. Society's going down this online dating path. How do you bring it?

That's a swing to the fences.

They've gone though. Yeah. Huge.

You wear the ring.

Yeah.

Yeah. You get. Wear this colored ring but it only works when you get to critical mass.

Yeah.

You have to get to the point of having quickly. Yeah. So many people. No one's gonna wear this class.

You'd be searching for the one girl.

In the whole of the UK that's wearing a yellow ring.

Yeah. I thought Thursday was interesting with that because they obviously. Yeah. I'm not sure what they're up to now. An events company but they were starting to do some interesting stuff on that. But then obviously never quite figured out that app side of things. There was one. There was one. I never figured out what it was. It was like Pipt Pip. Did you see that one that they had cheese ads for months like this is coming soon. You know these black ads and never found out what it was. Never saw anything more about home.

High risk.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Works. Works well for like my girlfriend works for Lucky saying.

But especially.

Really well for them.

Most people work for Lucky Saint. Small world.

They've done really well to like. I don't know why they're how. They're now official sponsor of Dry January. I don't even know how that's possible but they've commandeered it.

It's a bit of creative.

Very good.

Yeah, I like it. I like it.

But they're in the similar. I think they're in a similar place. You kind of very trend. Strong trend in sight.

Yeah. They've done well to differentiate in something that's very hard to differentiate, which is non alcoholic beer and getting way better.

They do have quite noisier by the minute as well with the amount of non alcoholic microbreweries that pop the scenes to pop up every two weeks. Yeah, yeah, they have. I think, I think it's brand. Brand. Their brand is incredibly strong. Really, really strong brand.

Yeah.

It's really strong execution. Really, really well done overall. But I think that social experiment, that bigger goal is great. It's cool to hear. I think like you never do it for the money beyond a certain point really, do you? It's just like you say, it's just a number.

Yeah.

Ollie was set for life three years ago after one year in the agency space in 2020.

It's just like, don't spend that much money.

I couldn't.

I mean look at this outfit. Brown recession proof socks, secondhand recession proof.

Trousers, trying to do us. Do you want to go through my fit?

My fit's even worse.

It's just like don't spend that much cash.

Yeah.

Go on.

I was just gonna wrap up with the final question, which is a cringy typical question I ask on this podcast. But I say three bits of advice to your 18 year old self upon reflection or maybe even just before you started the business. But I think going back a bit further is more interesting.

I think if I go back a bit further first was no one cares. I think I was really not sure of myself a lot of my early years. And you think everyone's watching, but everyone's just worried about their own shit. So that's a big one. Other bits of advice I think, yeah, what we talking about earlier, just like lean into what gives you energy, you know, because like you feel like there's a right path, there's not. So it's just like just going with the flow and see where that takes you. And another one is, is like just help yourself so you can help others. I think we often try and do shit from a place of stress ourselves. We're trying to do this business, we're trying to like be there for people in our lives and we're a mess. And I think read the Art of War last year, which is not, is not the most readable book but one thing that really stuck out there is like the kind of supreme general. It's just completely serene and it's like if you can just get yourself into that place, then everything else will fall into place. I was at a vipassana earlier this year which is like 10 hours a day meditating for 10 days. And what they talk about there is you've got right mental, you've got mental action, physical action, verbal action. So what you think, what you do and what you say and we spend so much time worried about what we should do and what we should say and really all you should focus on is what you think and if you can get your thoughts in a positive place, the other two will fall into place. So I think it's just that focus on yourself and life just has a funny way of working itself out.

Boom.

That was.

Anything to add?

You looked pensive.

That was just deep in a much, much better answer than I would provide or most people provide. Yeah, it was, it was no, nothing else. So I thought super interesting. Thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it.

Pleasure.

So yeah, I'll put all your links below. I think everyone's gonna fucking go and unplug now. Although my audience is 17 year old boys, so maybe not. I'll certainly be booking it. And as always, subscribe to the pod. We're actually back doing this again now, or at least I'm forcing myself to because it's probably good for my mind to get away from the screen and put it onto your screens instead. So. Been a pleasure.

Love it. Great stuff, man.

Thanks for having me.

Catch you later, Bo.