Dealing with Plateaus, Imposter Syndrome & Hiring the First Senior Role - Doc the Journey Ep 37

Yo, back with I think episode 37 of document the Journey. I haven't done this for like three weeks because I just kept meaning to do it and I was busy as fuck. And then I've moved flats recently literally over the road from where I was. My old gaff is over there. Over there. You can't hear me. And yeah, that was a long, long move. I'm in the office now. We've got a separate office. Haven't like fully properly moved in so it's not feeling that cozy yet. But yeah, it's pretty cool. Nice little set up. Living with a different E Commerce person than I was previously. Adam, he's been on the pod, he's moving in in like two weeks time. So yeah, it's pretty good setup. I didn't want to move far. I was thinking about moving to my entirely different Notting Hill or whatever but I figured I know this area everyone. I've literally lived in four flats within 100 meters of each other now which is fucking weird since I moved to London and one in Kensington prior to that. But yeah, I just figured keep it simple. I didn't really want to move. Landlord sold the gaff so I found a new place which is probably better to be honest. But yeah, just wanted to stay in the same area, keep things moving, keep it consistent. Because the main thing is I want to focus on the business and in the business there has been quite a lot happening recently I suppose a bit of me has been getting advice. People say oh I should definitely share less on like the pod of my YouTube and shit. But I kind of see what they're saying in many ways. But I just. The whole point of doing it is to just share stuff. So yeah, I guess I felt like we hit a bit of a fucking bit of a sticking point the past few months. Been struggling to scale revenue past that sort of 10k a day consistently level like 300 grand a month. It has been way more efficient than it was at that sort of level. So while the top line hasn't gone up, the bottom line has and like blended rice has, et cetera. But honestly yeah, just being super inefficient with a lot of things realized I wasn't putting any time into like landing page website stuff, offer stuff. So that's been a massive focus in like the past week particularly hired someone to do that and I've been working on it as well. So I always like to get like to get my hands dirty and that stuff that is on split tests outperformed everything was Gonna hire a conversion rate agency. But honestly like, I just, I just think at this stage you can do it yourself. I can be way more hands on, put way more effort into it, particularly to get the ball rolling when we don't really know what's going to work, what's not. And yeah, ultimately I shouldn't be doing everything myself, blah blah blah. But it still comes down to the end of the day, like I am pretty good at a lot of things. I'm competent enough to do stuff myself. Even media buying, I could do it myself if I had to because I've got experience doing it. So while I don't obviously want to be in the trenches doing everything myself, it's not sustainable doing shit like landing pages. Taking ownership of that in the short term has definitely paid off because yeah, I've been using Google Optimize to split test stuff like landing like homepage, normal homepage, normal product page versus a landing page version of the homepage, a landing page version of the product page. It's way, way better already. So that's made a material difference in like the past week. Switched my ads agency not because they were bad, honestly, just because I, yeah, I have a lot of mates that run ads agencies and I moved from a friend that runs an adjacency outside the UK to one that runs an ads agency inside the uk. They're both invested investors in the business, it's not personal at all. But changing ad agencies is always a bit of a risk because people approach things differently. I'm worried about losing momentum. We definitely have cut back on spend massively in the past week because they pretty much turned off what the previous guys were doing and putting their own structure in place. So that's kind of one set about two steps forward but always a bit scary. But I've done it plenty of times before and like I said, overall I think it's better because I wanted someone in the uk, in London, them particularly, which is personal preference and yeah, it's just a decision I made so hopefully won't be changing them again anytime soon. And like I said, the previous agency were really good. It's just, yeah, just a preference thing really. So yeah, I've done that. That's been quite a big change. I've also brought in a new fd. So part time fd, like you know, effectively two, three days a month. Ish. Yeah, just someone that's a little bit more specifically E commerce focused. Still working with Simon who was previously in that position, he's helped me massively with fucking every part of the business like fundraising, hiring and so on. But yeah, I just decided, I think there's definitely been a bit of a disconnect between like finance and the ads agency and like creative stuff. And I'm trying to bring those together which is partly to be fair why I brought that new agency in because they have, we're on the same time zone in the same place that makes it easier. But they have a connection with this finance guy as well who's also, he also works on their business and another investor and mates business. So it just feels like a good ecosystem and hopefully yeah, just really, really trying to tie in like finance, marketing and creative with supply chain as well and basically just bring parts of the business that felt very disconnected and like I was trying to have, trying to glue them all together, not very well and just bring them all together. So yeah, just kind of molding the foundations and hopefully setting up better foundations so I can reach that sort of million a month level within a year which is like my North Star right now. And yeah, other major thing is we have a senior person starting next week so I'm not going to say his name or speak on that until I know for sure that I can do that. Won't regret saying that. But he is starting on Monday. That's definitely happening. But yeah, bring in the senior person. I'll probably speak on that a bit more. It felt my gut feel on that was. It was. I'm denied about whether it being too soon or whatever but I just came to the conclusion I've never hired anyone senior. You know, I interviewed like five different people with, with some investors as well who are way more experienced, that sort of thing. I had massive imposter syndrome because I just think why would anyone that knows anything and have you know, 10 years more experience than me like this guy does, why would they want to work for me? That's just the way my brain works. But obviously they're an operator, they're not necessarily an entrepreneur. Well they're not and I am, I'm the risk taker I guess and I'm the zero to one guy in many ways. So I think I'm self aware enough to know that now. So my logic was worst case it doesn't work out and we lose a bit of money but you know, it's not lost anyway, it's experience gain. But best case it unlocks the next, the next level of scale and certainly puts the foundations in place to the next level of scale. So I've just come to the conclusion in this case it's like higher to grow rather than higher once you've grown because we still have a very lean team. But my hope is that bringing this person in will firstly he'll put a lot more structure in place and has a lot more experience scaling businesses from where we're at to where I want to go over the next three years. It makes it way more investable as well because all the advice I had from some investors I'm still speaking to was, you know, they want to see more experience around me because while I'm very good at 0 to 1, I haven't in the past gone 1 to 10, 10 to 100, which is obviously why I'm trying to go with this over a longer time period. So really implementing like that feedback, putting that in place and yeah, hopefully it can do that, but also allow me to not be so day to day stuck in the business and just work more on the firstly work more on the business like the vision and shit, which I know is a bit fluffy at this point, but also just work more like product development, brand content, which I want to do more of and we'll just enjoy doing more of, to be honest. So like I said before, I've never seen myself as a CEO type even long term, if the business got to like 100 mil, wherever, whatever, hypothetically, I wouldn't want to be the one leading it. I want to be the guy that created it and can lead like the creative side because I think that's where I'm best and that is evident in what I've done in the past and now I think. So I think I'm just self aware enough and probably finally have a high enough level of humility to fucking admit that I need help and would be better off giving someone else ultimately long term a slice of the pie and hopefully if it goes well, it's a win win. It doesn't go great. I imagine we'll know pretty soon and it would be a learning curve, worst case. So yeah, I made that decision. Felt like a pretty big one because I've never done that before. But yeah, that's pretty much what's happening right now. Agency has changed, finance guys kind of sort of changed and bringing in a senior guy and like a month ago as well, I already mentioned we hired a full time social media person which has been really good. So yeah, just putting in, kind of focusing a lot more on efficiency and building foundations rather than child scaling because we could definitely scale quicker. Even though I say we've been struggling to scale. Like we could just throw more ad spend but it wouldn't be efficient, wouldn't be smart, wouldn't have the systems in place. Yeah, I'm just very conscious of that. And really the goal now is that the next three, four months I really want double monthly revenue. I think a combination of landing pages, primarily landing pages, to be honest. Mixing up media, buying better creative system, better offers, going harder into the eu, potentially soft launching to America. I think all that stuff could really help us get there. Then within a year I'd like to be a million a month. So, you know, a little shy of forex. Where at now? So that's the goal. I think that is quite lofty, particularly in this market and I know a lot of dropshippers do way bigger numbers or whatever, but it is genuinely a different ballgame when you're producing stock. You know, you've got very long lead times, etc, etc. So I think get to a million a month with this business with a solid subscriber proportion, which at that point I feel it would be would be about 3 to 400 grand recurring probably. 400 based on the equivalent. Now in terms of MRR, obviously there's churn, but we'd be at that sort of level and I think to get there with this sort of business with a completely bespoke product would be fucking solid and would probably be quite a valuable business if we're as profitable as I would like at that level. Very hard to get there, very tall order for sure within a year, but I think it's doable. So that's like the North Star and yeah, I've been fucking working hard. Moving flat is a nightmare. The podcast as well. I'm considering testing out the new gaff living room. I just don't currently have a sofa there because we opted for an unfurnished place, which in hindsight was a fucking terrible idea. But yeah, I think I've been over complicating a lot of things in business recently, including the pod. I try to make it more professional, inverted commas, but then actually losing like the original appeal of it, which is the fact that it's raw and just has great guests and with red wine and in my living room and that was like the initial thing. So yeah, I guess you always learn. And one thing I tweeted the other day and I think about all the time, but it's just part of the process is I always look back on whether it's the pod or the way I launched the brand because I know something different now, the fact I didn't hire someone previously or I did, I look back and think I was a fucking idiot. I wish I could go back six months and change everything, but by definition I can't do that. And I guess I'm more aware now that in six months time or in a year's time, I'll look back on now and think the same thing. Probably. I just don't know what I'll be doing. I don't know what I'll be annoyed at myself about yet. It probably hasn't happened. I'll make some decision in the next few months, whatever that in a year's time I look back and think fuck. But I'd have learned. Which is what gives me the perspective to say fuck about it in hindsight. So yeah, I think that's just part of the process. As always, Space Goes to the Moon subscribe to the pod I'm doing these every week and I said every week in the start. I've missed a few weeks with the Doc Journey ones, which I think is forgivable given I do the pod every week as well. But yeah, cozy new setup. Subscribe to the pod. Space Go to the moon as always and we'll see you in the next episode. Cheers. 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