Featuring in My Own Brand Movie, Selling out of Stock & Speaking to VC Funds - Doc the Journey Ep 27

Yo, what is going on? Episode 27 of document the Journey. I've not done one of these for like a week and a half. I guess we have started the pod again. Just filmed a pod episode literally just before this. It's like 11pm on Thursday 8th December. I've had my hair dye blonde again, which is odd. And I'm still kind of. I'm still kind of in character because of the Dream Dust movie that we recorded. So these tattoos are not real. Although I quite like the vibe of having tattoos now I feel like a different person. Got one of my wrists here, then if you can see that on my forearm. Sorry. One of my form here, shoulder here, finger, finger, thumb, shoulder. There's like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 tattoos in total. Yeah. Film the Dream Dust movie, which you follow me on Twitter, that was probably the most fun I've ever had in business. And I actually felt like a movie star and shit. So I definitely need to do more of that, I think before it comes out. I will say that it's probably the sickest brand video piece of content that I've ever seen. I know I would say that sounds cocky or biased, whatever, but it's so detailed and so intensely over the top in every way that me and Brad put together as a duo. And yeah, I'm fucking excited to see the finished result. And it was just fun and it just felt like an opportunity to finally be in a film and probably always wanted to be in films and maybe found like, I lost that creative side or at least wasn't able to. Able to like, indulge in it as much as I got older and more balls deep into entrepreneurship and building this business and so on. And I never want to be the starving eyes. Never wanted to be just the creator. I want to be able to build something. But it's nice to actually, like, fully engross that part of my mind because that is probably where I feel like most naturally excited and happy. Granted, I can't do that all the time, but maybe I'll feature more movies and just generally make more movies and deloreans and shit. I just fucking love that aesthetic, which is evident to see if anyone watches my pod and obviously the brand. And yeah, if you follow me at all, you just know I love that aesthetic. And yeah, that was just so sick. So that's what happened. In the past week, I've spent a large proportion. There's kind of three topics. So that's one topic. Like, the other topic is we don't have any Stock right now. It's really fucking annoying because we could have probably done double the revenue, more than double the revenue we did in November if we had stock right now. We're basically not running ads. We have to turn ads off over Black Friday. Super annoying. Kind of a nice problem to have, arguably, but it is a problem. It's a problem I knew would happen because we just. It was hard to predict demand beforehand and then cash flow. Buying stock obviously is always hard anyway, even when you've got cash and then lead times are like up to like 18 weeks right now. They're meant to be like 10 to 12 weeks originally and then, yeah, stuff's just delayed now and I can't sell stuff, I don't have it. So we've literally got like, as I'm speaking, we have like 200 units in the warehouse and we have like a thousand coming on Mondays. We've not got enough to get over the weekend. But there's Royal Mail delays as well, which is fucked. Which is all out my hands. But long story short, within like the next two weeks will be like fat restock. Got 45,000 units come in over the next two and a half months. And it shouldn't be an issue again going forward because obviously just put finally at the point where I'm putting much bigger orders in like 20,000 plus units per order or at least 20,000 units in the most recent order. So it shouldn't be an issue going forward. But it's super annoying because I'm sat there like I don't want December to be smaller than November, but if we don't have stock, we can't sell. And if we can't sell, it might be smaller than November. So we're gonna have to have a really, really, really fat second half of December. And then Dream Dust is also delayed into January, but that's okay because that will be a boost in January. So that is what's going on with that side of things. We're going to try and keep this one fairly brief. I say this every single time, but I spent a lot of time in the past two weeks, particularly speaking to angel investors and VCs. I also learned today that VC is actually the smaller ticket stuff, not PE. I thought I was speaking to PE. Not that it makes a difference, but I think I put in my last video private equity stuff where actually it's venture capital, doesn't really matter, but investment funds. I've had a bunch of follow up calls, a bunch of them. I find it quite. It's Arguably a stressful process, but I actually quite enjoy just speaking about the business and selling my vision to people. And it comes very naturally to me. And I enjoy the ability to navigate questions and people digging in on it. And if anything, it makes me more confident that this is the right business and the right market and the right timing and I'm the right founder. So, yeah, it's been an interesting process. And, yeah, I'm very confident I can raise what I set out to at the punchy valuation that I was setting out to, which a lot of people said to me was ridiculous in this market, but I like a challenge. So we've had a bunch of funds already committed from angels, like 100% committed, which is nice. I'm still seeing where we're at in terms of funds, because that would be much, much bigger ticket, obviously, but probably more red tape, almost definitely. So it's just deciding where that goes. But yeah, it's interesting. There's like five funds. I'm like, in further down the line where they guess now, like past the second call, we're going through due diligence, all that sort of shit. And it's interesting how you speak to different people from different funds and different businesses, and they have different approaches to things. You know, some want to go bigger and less bothered about profit and they want to put more money in all this sort of shit. You speak to other people and other groups of people, and they're much more hesitant and reserved and conservative in what they think the business could do. And it's interesting. I think it's like with anything like, I guess, work, choosing the right investor, particularly at a fund level where it's more money and more people involved. I'm feeling like it's kind of like hiring someone and almost like co founder, like, you have to go with your gut feel on who you think you could work with and who aligns best with you. So, yeah, that's kind of what's going on. Biggest bottleneck in the business, like I said, is stock. I really can't wait to have more stock. Fulfillment's been a nightmare because Royal Mail, I'm sure a lot of people watching that, you know, run brands have found that's a problem as well. But if there's no problems, we're probably not pushing it hard enough. And, yeah, dream dust in January. And really things are pretty smooth. They're like, on target. We're well past 4,000 active subscribers now, which is nice. That has more than doubled in, like, the past 40 days compared to, like, previous six months. So something's working. Yeah. Honestly, like, I'm really just trying to keep things relatively simple and just double down on what's working and just focus on the fundamentals rather than. I'm trying to avoid a lot of fluff in the business right now, so feel like it's very easy and I've done in the past to just start adding in loads of random overheads, like softwares that you don't need, people that you don't need, new SKUs and products you don't need. Whereas my plan for 2023 is I want to do minimum 8 million in revenue and I want to probably do it with just Dream Dust. Sorry, with just Rainbow Dust and Dream Dust and the accessories that we have. We've got like, frothers coming. Show this. It's on the table. Four different frothers that I'm sampling from China and they're in price order. So this is just a little side segue. This. And they're all. This is all based on a thousand units minimum, just for context. So this is $0.67, so about 50p. Right? Bear that in mind. That's the cheapest one. This one is $1.10, so about a pound. This one is $2, so about one pound. I don't know, 80. I don't know what the exchange rate is, roughly. This is the nicest one, most ergonomic, nicest button, nicest feel. It's just the best. It would win every blind frother test. This is like $3.81, so like £3.50 a unit. And I think the middle two are just meh. But if you compare this, call it three pound fifty versus fifty p. So seven times the price. It's a difficult one because it comes down to, like, principles, doesn't it? Because this one is clearly better and every way. This one is retarded. The button should be on the top. In my opinion. The button here is there when it works the same, but it's got a real horrible click. You can't have the nice soft touch finish. Doesn't make sense. Pressing it down on the side. You wouldn't hold it like that. You naturally want to hold it like that. So which frother would you go for? The cheap one that works, but you just know is not as good an experience. Or the one that's seven times the price and is evidently the best. It's an interesting one, isn't it? So that's what I want to probably go for, but I just want to get the price down. So, yeah, Rainbow Dust, Dream Dust and accessories into 2023. Focus on subscribers, focus on LTV, focus on retention, focus on customer service, focus on expanding into Europe, probably getting a local warehouse or some other workaround to fix that problem. So we can actually run ads there. Because right now, basically one SKU in one territory in terms of ads. And even then we're not even scratching the surface, in my opinion. And yeah, try and target 8 million plus in 2023. I'm putting out there now probably a video at the start of January putting like, clear goals so we have it on record. But, yeah, that's what's going on. I'm very, very, very, very, very excited to release the Dream Dust movie when that does come. I just think it's a fucking work of art. Yeah, you'll see what I mean when it comes out. There's a lot of, like, specific details have been very thought out. But other than that, if you are interested in investing as. I mean, it's kind of along the way, a lot of people now. But if you're still watching this and you haven't seen my shit before and you're an angel investor, whatever, go look at the pitch deck on the link below. Subscribe to the pod. Obviously it's come back every Sunday. We're actually doing that now. And yeah, I'm tired. This is a short one. This is the reality. Late fucking Thursday night, knackered. Have a full inbox with too much shit to do. And yeah, scale time. Time to fucking just stay on the warpath, I guess. Keep chipping away. Time is flying by. I'm amazed. Final point, I'm amazed is December the eighth, like, what, six months ago. I was in like Marbella in that little trip we did in that villa, for example, I was just talking about earlier. That was nearly six months ago. And that's kind of scary because when it's in the deep, dark depth, deep, deep dark depths of winter, it feels like some. Like summer's never a thing. When you're in summer, you don't. You forget what winter's like. And obviously they're the exact opposite. And. And it's so gradual, but you get to fucking winter. And yeah, it's a pretty miserable time of year. But I'm going Bali in like three weeks for New Year's Eve, so that'll be sick. I'm long overdue a trip away after like four very heavy months in the trenches and a lot of other things. But yeah, space goes to the moon as always. Let's fucking go. Cheers for watching. Peace.