Finally Hitting £1m per month, Consumer is REALLY hard & Life Moves by Quick - Doc the Journey Ep 71

Yo, back with episode 71 of Dr. Journey. As always, not recorded that much recently. Try and keep this one semi brief, like just a general update, I suppose. I just got out of the shower as well. It's just got back on running and I'm in a rush, hence I sound breathless as fuck. Yeah. The reason I've been like chopping and changing whether I want to do this often, what can I do in the doc to mix it up? Do I just document the whole thing? Am I oversharing, et cetera? It's because I basically got to the inflection point where I felt like the benefit of doing this series. I was excited at the start, the honeymoon phase of starting a new project, obviously wanted to share it. Be great to look back on in years to come. But then, yeah, obviously people started ripping the brand. I feel like I'm giving, to be honest, too much free game away, which is actually really fucking valuable for people starting brands, which obviously generally I'm fine with. But when it's competitors, et cetera, I'm just a bit hesitant now to how much should I share? Do I just keep it high level and then it's a bit fluffy or by definition is that the only way to do it without sharing too much is net negative, et cetera. So what I'm probably gonna do is just keep sharing stuff, but maybe I'll just try and be less specific with what's working, what's not working, et cetera. I suppose the other point about all this is like people say, oh, don't make the dot. Cause that's why you're getting rips, et cetera. It's gonna just encourage competition. But I think to be honest, a bigger reason for that is just we spend a shitload on ads. People know the brand in the UK especially, so that's going to attract competition. I suppose that the personal element of it, me doing the doc probably does make it more, more prone to like people wanting to do a similar thing because they feel like a connection watching the, watching the doc. Like I've done like 70 episodes since I started the brand. Two years, two months now on this series. So, yeah, I don't know, I'm still going to keep doing it. I think it'd be great to look back on years to come. But yeah, that's kind of why I'm a bit hesitant to what I should share, how much I should share, etc. Not knowing like the best way to keep this series interesting and honest, but also not over sharing and just being stupid. For me to put it online. So, yeah, a few random topics. I always feel like I write down or think of cool shit to talk about in the YouTube or like to tweet about or a concept that's bugging me and then I forget what it is. I write a few things down that on my mind. The first thing is I think there's so many easier ways to make money than building a consumer brand. In fact, I'd almost go as far as saying, like, anything other than building a consumer brand in 2024 is probably an easier route to making money. At least like a certain point. Certainly to make like 100 grand a year, you'd be better off going to get a job in finance than you would be starting a consumer brand. Profiting, being able to take enough money out personally to pay yourself 100k. Just to use like an easy money example. Obviously the potential upside, if you get it right, is way, way, way bigger than some other stuff or certainly than getting a job. But you know, starting an agency, I don't know, starting a property business, working in recruitment, for example, I don't know those businesses. But I do think consumer, particularly D2C consumer and what just consumer brands in general, CPG in particular, is very fucking hard. You've got to be good at, at least very competent at product brand marketing, supply chain operations, customer service, managing a team, managing cash flow, and be always on. Because 24, 7, it's not like you open the shop, you shut the shop and you have the weekends off. Like, it's always on. Stuff's going wrong all the time. People are buying stuff all the time. Obviously that's great, like E Comm never sleeps, but it's also fucking challenging. And I just think, yeah, the reality is it's really fucking hard to build a brand. I think you have to genuinely want to build products and brands to do it. Because there are so many easier ways to, you know, build a lifestyle business or build some, like generate a good income. But at the same time, on the flip side of that, I think it's so hard, but it's also like the sickest thing. Like who wants to build a recruitment business really, compared to building like a sick product brand that eventually gets in the hands of like millions of consumers. To me, it's like the ultimate alchemy of entrepreneurship. It's like you literally think of a product, design it, create it, put it out into the world, and eventually hundreds of thousands of people or millions of people eventually are buying it every year and using it and hopefully Loving it. So that's what being a fan is all about in my opinion. And it's fucking hard work and there's a lot of variables and lot of things. But yeah, it is cool when you take a step back and think what other industry has that zero to one to many kind of thing. So I don't know. Yeah, I was chatting to my mate about that the other week and just got me thinking, yeah, another good milestone. So we hit our first seven figure month. That'll be this month actually in July, which is cool. I think we could have got there quicker but I've been very, very big on growing this business sustainably and also that's a profitable month as well. We're just burning loads of VC money because I know there's a bit of a stereotype that brands that raise investment just aren't profitable, burn a fuckload of money to buy shit revenue. That's not the case. So yeah, it's a good milestone. I haven't actually done a seven figure month in E Comm since I think it was September or October 2020. So like nearly four years ago which is pretty mad it's taken me that long to build momentum with. Obviously a proper brand would have been argued a lot quicker if I just, I don't know, started drop shipping again. But yeah, that's a cool milestone to get back to. And yeah, I think in I felt like the brand started relatively slow. Like a lot of people say you grow them really quick. I mean like in the first eight months, the first year 22, we did like 1.2 million last year we did about 4 million this year hoping for 10 plus pounds. So to me that feels quite slow because I've done quicker before and I know a lot of people that have built brands bigger and faster and that's just the downside of knowing a lot of successful people and being in those circles. But I genuinely feel like that's pretty slow. But I suppose to a lot of people they're pretty good numbers and yeah, I guess it's quite cool to hit that milestone. And yeah, it does feel like when you build a brand, especially one that people actually enjoy the product of, it's not just like a first order, fucking buy it once, never come back sort of thing. You know, a pump and dump like stuff I've done in the past to some extent, like Neon. Yeah, it feels like it can compound really quick. Like building momentum with a brand is slow. It's always going to feel slow especially even though if looking back it's actually relatively quick, like for me. But yeah, I can compound real quick. And I guess the work you do on the products, on the brand, building the team, building the back end. Because another thing I'm proud of with the brand as well, We've got over 3,000 Trustpilot reviews rated 4.4 out of 5, which is a lot better than most of our competitors. A lot more volume on there as well. And I think, especially in the uk, like, trustpilot reviews is a good general sentiment, like what customers think. So, yeah, like scaling, but also scaling with genuinely good reviews. You know, people messaging me every day saying the products change their life, all that sort of shit. I do feel like we're building like a legitimate brand and a genuinely good product. So, yeah, it's cool. But yeah, obviously the goalposts always move because, you know, I know people that are doing 5 or 6 million a month, which makes me feel very fucking small. But I suppose, yeah, the beauty of this series is obviously when I started A bit over two years ago, I wanted to get to 100k a month. And we did that in like the, I think second or third full month. And it's taken like two years to get to seven figures a month. So that's a cool milestone that's happened and hopefully we can get to like 2 or 3 million a month in like the next year or two, which would be nice. Cause it can definitely compound and, you know, it's exponential growth from here. Fuck me, I'm sweating. I literally got out of the shower, did a massive run. Yes, that's a cool milestone. Nice to get back in the saddle to that scale. Obviously a lot more work to do though. And yeah, goal posts keep moving. I think the other point on that is as well, like I probably used to be in the mindset of, you know, well, I used to literally run brands for like two, three years and then, well, two years and then do the next thing. I'm two years and two months into this one and I sometimes do get new ideas because that's just the way my ADHD founder creative type brain works. But I think it's five to seven years minimum to build like a legitimate, big successful brand to go like properly big. And by properly big, I mean probably like 30 to 50 million in revenue and beyond. I think that's gonna take me five to seven years, realistically. And we're two years in, so we'll see. But I guess just on that, you know, just learning to think longer term, be more patient. It's cringe and cliche. But I appreciate the journey. Like, smell the roses as you're growing. Like, stop to zoom out sometimes and think, well, we've actually made a lot of progress. So, yeah, I think just thinking longer term to build, like a legit. A legit brand at the scale that I want to get to. Fuck me. I'm really sweating. Yeah, I'll close out. I feel rusty on this pod. You can probably tell I've not recorded one, like four weeks something at my desk, properly speaking. And, yeah, the other thing is, like, five, seven years feels long, but time flies. It feels like five minutes ago I launched a brand. It feels like five minutes ago I was fucking 18, I'm 28, and now. It's crazy. And that kind of scares me how quick time goes. But at the same time, it's like, the time's gonna pass. In five years time, you'll say, fuck me, that time flew. So you may as well push every area of life, you know, fitness, personal life. Work as hard as possible in every area every day, really, because the time's gonna pass and you'll get to the point where I'll be 30 in two years, which is fucking mad. And I'll be like, wow, I launched the brand four years ago and it went like that. So sometimes shit can feel like it's taken ages, and it does to me a lot. I'm very impatient. But at the same time, this is like the dichotomy of time in life or something. Feels like it's taken ages, but then once it's gone, it feels like it was a blink. So I suppose the lesson and point there, I think I'm realizing is just don't stress about how long it's going to take. Just try and do as much as you can every single day, and eventually that'll add up and the time will have flown by anyway. So, yeah, on that reflective point, I'm sweating my ass off. I'm 10 minutes into this video. Yeah, things are moving the right way. It's been a good few months. A lot of groundwork has been done. A lot of lessons have been learned. You know, I look back the past few years and think, wow, there's a fuckload of stuff I shouldn't have done or I would have done differently in hindsight. But I think that's probably always going to be the case to some extent. The key thing is just learning from that, pivoting and pressing on to the next. The next next chapter, really. So, yeah, good progress being made, obviously. Always. Day One, I'm always humbled by this, the success and levels above of people around me. And I don't think I'll ever be that guy that hits a certain number and starts flash, you know, flashing the cash on stupid shit like I used to be. Because I'm just a lot more mature and a lot more, I don't know, just different mindset these days. Like, I really don't consider anything that I'm doing successful at all in any way. Even though it is going the right way, there is good progress because I realized that where I want to get to is so much further ahead of where I've ever been, that, yeah, I need to stay stay focused, stay humble, stay focused on the task at hand. You know, win the day, win the month, win the year sort of thing. Obviously, like, not to say I can't enjoy the process and be happy with how things are going. I wouldn't ever say I'm really proud of progress I'm making, but yeah, I don't know, I'm just a much more humble guy than I used to be, I think, whether that's evident on these videos or not. But anyway, I'm rambling. Good progress. Hope everyone's well. The next six weeks tend to be quite slow for E Comms. We'll see how they go, obviously, like end of July, August, historically quite slow. I'll be going away a bit, as will probably everyone else in the team and so on. So, yeah, excited to put the. Put foundations in for September onwards where we can really, really push it. So, boom. On that note, subscribe to the POD. If you're coming to the yacht event in two months, that'd be fucking sick. I might make a video a bit more details on that soon and I'll catch you in the next one. Cheers for watching PE. Sam.