First Year Numbers £££, Most Valuable Advice & 2023 Goals - Year End Q&A | The Midnight Pod Ep 54

Right, we're back with episode 54 of the Midnight Pod. It is the year. Well, I guess it's Year in Review we're calling it now. Is that wine disgusting?

Feel it feels. Tastes like it's been out for a bit.

It's not. It's brand new. It's brand new from Gorillaz about 10 minutes ago. Last episode of the year is 28th of December. We're joined with Lucy, who is the.

I want to see how you do.

The brains behind a lot of the podcasts, I suppose, and also does a lot of stuff for me on space goods. We've actually never met prior to today, even though I feel like I've told you more about my life than my own mum. Become a counsellor. Yeah. A therapist. As much as a member of the team, and a very good one at that. And yeah, nice to have you here on the pod.

It's nice to be here.

And we're gonna mix it up a little bit, I guess. We kind of GOT3CO hosts today, sort of. And we're just doing a bunch of. You've come up with what? A bunch of questions and general topics to review the year with. And then we have a few questions from viewers of the pod, which I left about half an hour before we prepared the question out. Not. Not with enough time, basically. But we've got. We've got a lot of questions, so. Yeah, so we'll see where we go with it and you can just chime in a little bit.

I got told off for apparently taking over the Connor one. That's my feedback. He said that everyone said it was really good, but I took over too much, so.

But yeah, I guess the whole. With the pod, then. It's never. It's never an interview. I hate when people say we interview people or I interview people to discuss. I never want it to be an interview. It's a mutual discussion that has a base theme, which is the guest. You know what I mean? And then just conversation in it. And we are back on the wine as well. We did whiskey in the last episode, which I was not a fan of. Sorry. Jason was very kind. Jason.

It's a heavy drink.

It's a heavy drink. I was just like throbbing headache halfway through and I felt quite angry. Wine's a different sort of mood.

Although, like wine out of the mugs is interesting.

It's the most male flat in London. We don't have any fucking glasses at all. So, yeah, standard practice.

Okay, I'm just gonna go straight in there.

Where do you Want to start.

So, I mean, it's quite a cliche question to be honest, but you can both answer it. One thing that you.

Is this all just about the year? Sorry. Or just in general?

Some of it's about the year and then some of it's more like general about. Well, looking to next year. Founding a business.

A lot of the questions on the questions thing were just random. Someone coming through the ceiling. A lot of the ones on the normal questions were just random questions as well. Which you could do.

Yeah. Sweet, deep.

Well, one thing that you both wish you knew at the start of the year, that you knew now, or know now rather, business wise.

Don't trust. Supplement lead times. That'd be one that springs to mind. Although that's a very boring answer. There's something I didn't know at the start of the year.

Yeah. Like is there something you kind of learned this year that would have been useful to know?

Well, I mean it's probably an obvious one that I always knew, but it's become more and more obvious is that can't do it all myself. And like to an even greater extent, which you've been saying for years, and you're much better at that. I'm just not good at hiring. But it takes me ages to even trust people. And like the good people now in the small team that I do have come to me. Really. Because you DM me on Twitter.

No, you tweeted and I replied to it.

Yeah, that. Yeah. That to me though is a bet that works better in my head than me trying to go out and like hire someone. It kind of feels forced. Whereas if I don't know if it comes out through like a genuine. I would like to be involved.

Yeah. Cause it's like genuine interest. Right.

Same with Florian who does the customer service. Like I literally couldn't do the run the business without him. If he was watching. It's like so good. He just came from watching the pod.

Yeah. You're gonna get more buy in from those people.

Yeah.

They're usually going to be pretty switched on if they're finding. If they're on Twitter in D2C. You don't consume a lot of D2C Twitter unless you're fairly. Unless you fairly. Yeah, fairly switched on or money Twitter even. So you're gonna find decent people. You should probably double down on that. Like you've done it passively, but why not like actively try and if you've got a role. I said this to you the other day because you're looking for that COO person, aren't you? You probably. You definitely better try to find that from Twitter or something. Unless you're going to go for someone who's like mad experience, who's been in a. Done the exact same role at another company, which is also an option, I guess. But, yeah, leverage the audience even further. I think building an audience is probably one of the, like, the power of content and building a personal brand of some form is one thing that I didn't appreciate at the start of the year.

Yeah, I agree.

Around. Around whatever you. Well, you've obviously done it around a brand. I've done it around a service. But then the benefit to us is more tangible, I guess, because you get like. You get. You get the odd. You get customers for it, but we get like clients which are a lot higher value, probably that. I think communication. I think I've got a lot better at communicating over the last year. I think that's obviously fundamental skill, but it's like just like having difficult conversations when you have to have them.

And.

Just communicating in general, getting things off your plate. Helping people when they have a problem, being transparent with things like that. I think that was something I wasn't very good at the start of the year, which I've noticed the power of that as well. And what else? Probably expecting things to break if you try and grow them too fast. That's a problem as well. Growing things a bit slower so they don't break. Yeah, definitely had that for a period of time. Those are probably the main things, like not as black and white, I guess.

Yeah. I would definitely second this personal brand thing because I'm like the anti. Personal brand. Personal brand. Because I just. I don't want to be seen as like a guru or someone that fucking forces it, which I feel like 99% of personal brands do, including yours. Because I'm a fucking ghostwriter.

I don't anymore. I got one for like two weeks and they were rubbish. So I got rid of them.

I literally don't. Just tweeting platitudes that have been said 100,000 times.

I never did that. That's why they wrote a load of tweets. And I was like, I can't put these.

It's even worse when it's actually not ghostwriter writing. And it looks like one.

Like, I think you can get away with that on LinkedIn.

Certain people I'm thinking of, you can't.

Get away with on Twitter.

Probably does work, though, because it does.

Definitely.

Yeah. I mean, I just saw the other day and there's probably a few questions which are relevant to this. Like I should definitely, when we've been speaking about, I should definitely monetize my personal brand more because there's a lot of like, stuff that people could get out of it. They just haven't bothered to like, do I E. Like the events and you know, that sort of stuff. Even just like the econ course.

Yeah.

Like, don't push it at all. Even though I should.

I don't really push it that hard. I did for the start of the year, but I haven't recently. It's just like you people will be able to get a lot of value from it because you don't need to know that much more than someone to be valuable to them.

Yeah.

10% the rule, a shift.

And a personal brand is just a modern CV really, innit? So obviously not everyone's. You don't have to be online, you have to. Have to have a big following to be successful.

But I think it's a bit of an insurance policy as well. Like your business could fail, but worst.

Case, just shilla course.

Exactly. No, but if you build a personal brand and people know you for what you've built, then it's very easy to go and pick something else up or pick up.

Yeah, I agree with that.

My opportunity with Connor and doing what I'm doing with him came through Twitter and I met him through that and I wouldn't have met him if I didn't start putting content out. Same with the second agency we launched that came through that pretty much.

Yeah.

Get opportunities then. Then it's about saying no to, not saying yes to too much, which is another problem. Like I've. I'm at my limit now. I can't do anything more. Just like, no more stuff for the next year.

It's true then. It's like create, over consume. Because most people, even people that are running businesses, like that's where the whole like pool party, social club thing came from, which someone has asked me a crush on that. And it's like everyone wants to like meet up or it's almost like fucking day, but no one's willing to like say it because we're all like Internet friends. But actually you could just be. You could make real life connections as well. I mean and having a good. Yeah, just having that credibility and context.

On who you are networking is massive.

But even people that said they'd never do a personal brand that I know have definitely started to jump on it a little bit more because it's Just so obviously beneficial even. Doesn't have to be financially, just like meeting people, building a reputation, but even.

Hiring, right, because the better your personal brand, the more people you're going to find on places like Twitter that want to work for you. So you're going to get better talent as well.

Definitely. Yeah. The better, like you said, the better talent will come to you. And it's all part of like a funnel, like a marketing funnel for everything, whether it's people or service.

I also think as well, myself included, a lot of people and just in general, just scared to put their, like, true self on the Internet because they have to uphold this perception. And to me, honestly, like, I probably refrained from putting certain content out on the Internet before because I thought maybe it might affect how a girl looks at me rather than like it. Because while it might be appealing to like an investor, if I'm talking about, I don't know, failed business in the past, like, even though it's probably the most toxic way to look at it, like, oh, what if this girl looks at it like, do you know what I mean? Whereas actually, you may as well just be yourself because you're gonna find out anyway.

You are money, Twitter's most transparent man.

Yeah, exactly.

And also, if it's the right girl, this is not like a relationship podcast. But if it's the right girl, should I care? Like.

It'S been missing.

Actually, I have an idea of an episode in general. We can probably do it at the end of this, but just get like three guys and three girls in and just completely switch it up. You know, there's ones in America, like, what's the one called? That's really Famous.

I don't know the name, but I.

Know what you're trying to fit. I know the one you mean.

I think Fresh and Fit. It's in like Miami or some shit. It's very American. But I was listening to one on the train coming down here and it's always interesting. But anyway, that's enough on that question.

But then, so I actually have a question about your sharing on the Internet generally, because you always say it's net positive, but is there anything you, like, regret sharing this year or is there anything that you wish you hadn't shared?

Probably wish I'd spoke about my ex girlfriend less because at the time. But then, but at the time, it was relevant.

It's a growth, growth lesson. I don't, I just don't share to the level Matt shares, to be fair, just because I use it as a different Tool and like it. Yeah. I don't think it'll be beneficial to what we do for me to do that. I just don't just not. Not my way of venting. Everyone get. Everyone needs to get out in some way. So. No, nothing from my side. I don't think. I don't think anyway, anything from. You've already said you're okay.

Yeah, I mean you could probably argue that. And I even had people say this to me recently, like maybe I'm too honest about the non successful parts of even like just building a brand. Because someone could argue, well that could put off, I don't know, an investor person, whatever. But then it's gonna come out eventually like the. That if you just tell the truth. No one's ever got any dirt on you, Jamie. Like I just. That's just the way I operate.

It's arguably like an easier life. Long term is less unexpected. Right?

Yeah.

So many people seem so obsessed with keeping up appearances and maybe that's actually way more profitable. And it probably is at least if they're like shilling courses and shit. But eventually like there's gonna be some scandal that reveals the truth. So if you're dishonest also builds more.

Trust in you if you do sell something to someone. Because like if you're gonna go sell. If you went sell call someone off the back of a very transparent personal brand, then yeah, trusting.

Because everything you do is more authentic.

Yeah. So I'm trying to think if there's anything I do think for the key to other people, obviously jumping on the bandwagon. We just talked about this with other people doing that kind of build series. I think it's fine to do as soon as you've got like a big enough like moat that people can't just rip your product idea and do it.

Yeah, people have said that to me, actually quite a few people.

It's just so much easier.

Are you not worried that someone's gonna.

Easier said than done.

I'm just like, no. Because ideas are so a million ideas doesn't mean they're gonna go and do it. And I also think in a way if you're so publicly the founder and it's authentically you are clearly the one that like started that whatever it is gradient packaging powder. Then it's like someone has to have some big balls to rip you off. It's so evidently not their idea and especially got a following. Someone's ripped me off. I just call them out and it would be like their reputation's ruined.

Happens in SaaS sometimes where people over share on their idea and then someone with more resource just rips it in like a quarter of the time and takes it to market and makes all the money before they can. But it's much harder, I think it's much harder to do for a brand that's your brand's very creative. If it was something with low, you don't see any dropshippers going like, oh, this is my whole marketing plan and supply chain infrastructure. Because obviously someone just goes and rips it and out markets them. But I think it's hard to do that for an actual brand with a vision.

Yeah, agreed.

Okay. So for this year, your proudest accomplishment.

Well, it's funny because I was looking back at. So when you go home for Christmas and shit, that's like the one. It always feels like every year flies by and I was always a bit me thinking nothing's changed. Then you actually look at the facts and quite a lot has changed. I don't know, I feel like that the marathon was quite.

Yeah, quite a good one.

What's the word? Quite. What's the fucking word?

Monumental.

Like a. I was just gonna say like, I don't know. Monumental, Glorious. It was quite. What's the word I'm looking for? I guess it was a good marker. I don't know, I just like. I'd gotten to telling myself I wasn't a runner and I don't know, I just liked the fact that it was. Was away from a screen rather than just purely chasing numbers on a screen. And it was. Yeah, like the principles in that. I think tire wouldn't try anything. You know, just focus, discipline, consistency, time. So it was probably the most clear goal I set. I did set a goal to do a million with the new brand. Done that as well, which is quite cool because it's easy to say that. But then you actually go and do it and it's like the ultimate alchemy, isn't it? Because it's nice to know I could do it again because I fucking lost my confidence big time when shit went the other year. That's just the truth. But it's nice to know it's not a fluke and you can actually start again and do it again. Like the zero to a million, which a lot of people say is the hardest part, which I'm not sure, not convinced it is because I've got there a few times and struggled to get much further past it. But yeah, probably, probably the marathon, but there are a few others.

Yeah, I didn't do any fitness stuff this year. I did it for the. I was into it for the first half of the year, then just let it slide. So I need. That's part of my next year is doing some actual, like, more off, offline shit. Yeah. I don't know. Mine's probably like, we hit all of the targets we set for both the agencies, which is good. We've just got a lot of people now. I find that the most, like, quite rewarding part of the agency side is the people. We hire a lot of our people with no experience and train them to be really good at the job. So like we've got like, what, something like nearly 50 people across the two companies, which is actually a lot of people.

Yeah.

For 20, 25, I find it a lot of people. Maybe in like five or 10 years it wouldn't be that many.

But.

I think that's quite a cool accomplishment to have a team that big that's working like, effectively.

What do you look for, like, in those people if they're like, they're not skilled to do the job? When you hire, what's the like, number one thing you can take notes?

We have like, we hire for Culture Fit first. So the reason for this is because especially now, you can teach people Facebook ads pretty quickly. You can teach people creative strategy, you can teach people post click optimization and those things. There's a lot of very good resources that help you teach them that. And then you also just get them to shadow someone who's much more senior than them and they pick up the skills over time. So if you've got a really structured onboarding and roadmap to training someone, you can bring someone in and ramp them to really proficient in like three to six months and then just like obviously hold the hand as they get onto the work. So it's a lot easier to teach that. But you can't fundamentally teach someone to be like motivated, self aware, proactive, curious, like just like have those fundamental character traits. Like, it's a lot easier to teach someone Facebook ads than it is to teach someone to be a proactive person.

So.

So we go and hire people who are fundamentally like switched on growth mindset, proactive individuals. And we teach them the skills. So like more soft skill. So we'll do like a Culture Fit interview, then we'll do like a, like a test basically, and then we'll do like a more practical thing. And it works really well. Obviously you want to. You gotta, you gotta have like skilled senior people for that to work. But most Companies probably do not every business we do. Interestingly, for the company that we're building with Connor, the way we're going about hiring is a lot more like just hiring people who are like some of the best people you can get in each position just because of the different structures. But it's worked really well for us. I'd rather have someone who's like, soft skills are great than someone who's really proficient at a role. If you have the infrastructure to train them, which you probably. You probably need a mixture of the two. Well, you sounds like you've hired loads of people who already couldn't come in and smash the job because they've got experience.

Yeah, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.

So you need a bit of a mixture.

But what do you look. What's like the thing that you would look for there, like people in your Twitter DMs or whatever?

Well, honestly, instinctively just someone that probably get on with for a start. Because we don't get on, we're never gonna be able to work together. So that's probably why I'm maybe subconsciously super honest. It's almost like a test. It's like, if I can't fucking be myself around him.

Yeah.

Then maybe that's a very unprofessional way of doing things. But.

No, but you spend so much of your time at work, you may as well be with people you like. Especially if it's your company.

Right. That's part of the culture fit thing. Part of that is like, do we like you as a person? And I feel like gut feeling is big as well. People.

And also just the one thing for me is that you feel like they can just do it without me having to even be involved. Which is a nice surprise because like in the past I have to handhold everyone.

You probably need someone who can do that hand holding process for people for a period of time when they join. Because it's very hard to just be like, you go own this. Not gonna give you anything. Which is what you try to find. I guess.

Yeah.

Then I think it works the other way as well. Like if you're looking for work or looking to work for someone, I would want to work for someone that I don't respect or think is a good human. But you know, generally. Yeah, because I don't know, it's like who you surround yourself with, right? Yeah, the whole like, I think that's been said like literally a million times. But being a product of who you work with and who you surround yourself with. Yeah, that's my two cents.

You spend 70% of your time. There's. So it's like.

Yeah, oh, there's a good one in the questions from.

So are you going through all yours first? How are you doing it? No, I'm literally doing a general Q and A.

They were all mine, but now I'm just gonna go through the. There's some good ones from. I think it's Instagram. Who is the number one person you've looked up to and learned from this year?

Exactly. Somebody know?

No.

I mean, yeah, to be honest. Probably is people I know. Probably. Probably two of my investors particularly. I'd probably say Alex and Jimmy because I probably speak to them the most. They are financially the most successful people I know, which is probably correlates with their ability. Older and wiser than me. And yeah, I probably learned a lot from both of them in different ways. I mean, Jimmy obviously built a D2C business and sold it, which is exactly what I'm trying to do. And Alex built a massive SaaS business and sold it for like nine figures. So they've properly been there and done that. Yeah, probably them amongst sprinklings from plenty of other people as well. But they're probably two names that spring to mind.

They're both solid. Both solid. I don't know. Mine are different for different areas, I guess. Like who do you look up to and who I consume content for. For an outcome is. It's probably different. Like I've consumed a lot of different people's content. But I wouldn't say this necessary because they're really, really good at what they do. But I wouldn't say, like I idolize them as a person. I don't know, actually. So, like people I've put like David Goggins. Yeah. Alex Hormozi consumes so much of his stuff. Cause he's just ridiculously switched on. I watched my first million podcasts. I find them both really insightful and interesting because they both sold massive businesses multiple times. There's a few people on Twitter. There's like Cody Plotfoot who runs Jones Road Beauty.

That's why you got a lot of shit. Cause it's like his mum's business or some shit. Yeah.

But it's absolutely massive. And just the content he puts out is really high level and good and you can learn a lot from it. So he's really good. So yeah, there's a lot of people that consume content for who I guess you'd look up to for what They've achieved and then. Yeah, you've got like the. The Goggins ones of the world.

Yeah. Kind of ever Goggins mindset.

Andy Fisella still.

Yeah, classic.

He's become a bit of a political preacher with loss like.

Don't follow him as much these days to be fair. No.

Yeah. There's probably a few.

Okay. And looking to next year. More like the biggest problem you can see on the horizon.

You've got. No, stop, mate.

Yeah, that's nearly solved. What in life or.

Well, you can interpret it how. However. But I guess for the businesses but also maybe in life. Probably linked.

No, my biggest problem is I probably fall in love with a new girl and she'll fucking distract me for six months. That's just the honest truth. Few will admit that. I have a habit of doing that.

Yeah, you do. High risk in all areas.

I think the other biggest problem. Biggest risks are probably. Probably trying Chad scale too quick again. Which is just a habit I have. And I don't want to make that same mistake again trying to go too quick and just breaking shit. So I'm very impatient.

We did that as well. Go too fast, things break.

It's just like even in the past month I've had to really look at things and. Okay. I probably would actually be more sensible if I slowed down a bit and focused on other things rather than just growing revenue. So that's probably in sync really the two things. And yeah, plenty of others. But what am I.

When you rely on service, obviously economy's part of it, but like you can't really do much about that.

Yeah. I hate even speaking about that. Everyone's telling me the world's gonna even.

Like look at it. I don't know. I feel like the. The saw as an agency is pretty like the growth path for that. Seems pretty simple. It doesn't like it's just build more awareness and hire more people who are good.

He's gonna fucking get about a million quid in revenue from this. That one episode we did. I swear I should have put an affiliate link on that. That's the thing with agencies. The AOV is so high.

Like this audience is perfect that one.

Wait, someone needs to sponsor the pod.

We could sponsor the pod, but I just soft sells better in it.

AKM sponsored it but they never fucking paid me the referral fee. So I took that link out.

Ruthless. Hate to say it, I think not having the right like not being able to make the right hires when we need to. We really need to hire some people really Quickly to keep the growth path that we've been going on at tev. Like as soon as humanly possible. Which you don't really want to be in a position where you hire out of like need or necessity. You want to hire from a place of like having time to make the right decision. So kind of having to have like having to make that work in the short terms, probably the biggest problem. But it's not really that it's not impossible. Obviously we can leverage some of our agency resources as part of that. So it's not too bad. But it's. That's probably the biggest thing. And then maybe TikTok getting banned, if that happens.

But can't see how something on that scale gets banned.

Like it got regulated. But yeah, you can't get banned. It'll get. So sure. You just get sold to a U.S. well, it already did do that, didn't it? I did not go through.

I mean, it got banned where I live in Hong Kong.

I should definitely know this. Have you been on Chinese Tick Tock? It's nuts. But you have on the vpn. It's wild.

You have to go on a VPN to post my.

A desktop VPN as well. You can't even do your mobile, really. Yeah, yeah.

It's wild when you go on there. Like every third video is like it comes up with a thing saying, are you sure you want to be on the app?

Really?

It's all educational. It's like. It's like I feel like they've just communism or genius. They've released this like serotonin weapon on the. On the west and then just like limited it for themselves. It's mad. It's bandit.

It's a good way of putting it. Serotonin weapon, Dopamine weapon.

Dopamine weapon. Sorry.

Like, what's the difference between dopamine and serotonin? The serotonin happiness. Dopamine's pleasure or something.

Yeah, I think so.

Something I'm not.

It's fast action dopamine, isn't it? When you get like scrolling through the videos and that's why people become like.

Don'T go on TikTok. I've got a blockage on my phone and I can't go on it because I can't because, like I've got myself.

Didn't trust himself.

Oh, really?

It's like months ago I did this. Yeah.

I've never really. Because I. Because I live somewhere it's banned. I've never really had it. So I don't. But I Feel like I don't need it because.

Because it's definitely worse than Instagram. As in, like, it's more addictive.

Yeah, it's just full of crap as well. It's just like. It's funny. I don't have it either. I've not had it for like three or four months, which a bit weird.

The baby's head candle has melted to a dangerous extent, so I've blown it out. That was a Christmas present.

You're not. You're not clear.

Not the highest quality wax.

Oh, you are recording.

Yeah, of course I am.

Sorry. Shouldn't doubt your skills as a host.

Okay, I've still got like 2023 questions. There is one half an hour in.

So there might be a lot more questions so we can drag them out.

There's a lot more questions, don't worry. Any plans? This one's for Matt. Any plans for Pool party social club in 2023?

Yes.

Well, look at the grin.

This was another one of my random. I'm very good at having a random spark of an idea. Then designing a logo on a website and then not doing anything with it for months. I used to do that with brands all the time. I've literally still got a folder of if anyone wants to buy a brand idea, I should start selling that, like, done for you. Brand launch. But yeah, the whole idea of that was basically just broadly, loads of people online, we have this community, why don't we do something in person? Basically, that was the broad idea of it at first. And then I started thinking, oh, we should all fucking buy a mansion together. Because I got overexcited while drunk in Marbella in this sick mansion. I thought, wouldn't it be cool if the pod audience could buy this mansion between us? Then I didn't really consider the logistics, even though it could be done, but that would be like the next step. So then long story short, I decided that the first step is probably going to be some sort of discord community, which is pending. So look out for that. The second step is the in person events. I feel like the third step is actually buy mansions together, which. Which could genuinely be done. But let's just start with level one and two and then the fourth step, long term, I think we could actually make a bench capital fund from like a podcast audience and like actually think about that. If we keep doing the podcast, grow to fucking million subscribers. Everyone puts in 100 quid, we've got 100 million pound fund, hypothetically. And then we start like. I honestly think that is how things will be done in like in the future and going forward, you know, things are moving more and more towards creator and community led and so on. But a lot of creator audiences aren't particularly like affluent or intelligent, whereas I think our audience is pretty niche in that respect. Like the majority of people that watch this are business owners or aspiring business owners. So yeah, that's the long answer for yes. The first two things will be coming in like the next month we're gonna do an event in London, we're gonna do one in Bali like next week. So I just randomly thought fuck it. There's a classic case actually of me thinking I got this idea, I really wanna do it, but I'm worried that if I launch it and it's not very good then what people think, blah blah, blah. It's complete hypocrisy based on what I just said like 10 minutes ago about just doing it. Anyway, so yes, I'm gonna force myself to do the first event because once I've done the first one, it's like doing the first podcast episode. Once you do the first one you get a bit of feedback. Probably won't be perfect then we'll do plenty more. But ultimately yeah, the whole broad idea of it is it's just a fucking cool name to describe a fucking. What I say online. I think it's an in person and online community for creative ambitious people or something.

There's not very many of them in the UK that we were going to do. We were going to do and the.

Ones that do exist even outside the UK in my opinion are very like nerdy and not actually that cool.

I thought geek. Geek out's really good to be honest. I learned a lot there. You went to it then, did you say?

Well, I wasn't thinking of geek out but I think geek out is probably a bit, even a bit more specialist, like knowledge focused. Whereas to me I just want to, I just want to basically have an excuse to send with interesting people. That's honestly it because that is where I've, that's where I've done the best networking in my life is just getting loose in foreign countries. So if we can monetize that somehow and at least just have it pay for itself, that's really the baseline goal.

You can make events profitable pretty easily with an affluent audience. Just got to make sure that they over deliver on the value like anything like if someone's going to come to it. Like how that's like specialists, that event. But it's like people like some People will want to come for the reasons you just mentioned but some people will want. A lot of people who come to this will want to come to fundamentally take things away that they can action. Obviously network is one big thing but like depending on how expensive it is I guess if we're probably not going to do that expensive but like if you're going to put on a proper. I think there's a massive value, if and I wanted to do this, we still might do it of having like an E commerce event in the UK.

At quite a high ticket because that's basically. Yeah, we could do.

Yeah, you could spin it off that like obviously what you're talking about is more of like a networking event where it's more like drinks, food, whatever. I think there's still massive value in like an educational event that has that side of it because there's. It's really, it's pretty well serviced in the US but it's not very well serviced here. And that's a bit like, like it's still a massive market of people and also there's a, there's value in like making it slightly higher price just by design like default increases the quality of attendee. Usually like most things obviously you don't want to price people out but. And that's not what I'm saying but like if something's five grand then the people who come usually you can guarantee are going to be quite high level because they're willing to spend that money as long as you make the event good enough. We looked into that. We just didn't have bandwidth last year to do it. I still don't have the bandwidth to do it now but I'd love to do it. I think it'd be good fun.

Yeah. I also want to do it in exotic locations which is why it was called Pool Pie because I've always felt most at home in a wavy shirt, in a palm tree esque location, working on a laptop. That's where like the whole thing started. That's where I met people originally like Bali and shit. So we would do like London, Marbella, Barcelona, Dubai, Bali probably.

I'm not good at this.

Yeah, that's the broad plan.

I watched your again.

I just need to fucking do the first thing really instead of talking about. I've got an email list with 2 and a half thousand people on it that signed up interested in that.

That was. That's a lot of people email list.

There's a lot of dons.

Yeah, he's just pulled me back.

Yeah, that's a lot of wine.

So we've got two and a half thousand people on list. I just need to do something with it because a lot of people that are interested in the concepts and I get messages on it daily like, when the fuck is this actually happening? So I should probably do the first one on a small scale test. So I. We'll go from there. Yeah.

When we. When are you going to do it? When we going to do it? You, Me? I don't know.

I think you got to do the first one within the next like six weeks. I think February start and do it in London. So. Because London's just the easiest place to start. Granted, won't exactly be exotic, there'll be no palm trees.

But yeah, you say you're most at home in exotic palm tree locations. You've sat in a flight in London for the last seven months.

Yeah, I know. Christ. I'll probably never come back from Bali tomorrow.

Here you go in. Yeah, I think that'd be good. I think there'll be a lot of people who will come and then it's only. I could just run it every quarter and then as we improve it probably spin off more stuff. I think the discord is valuable as well, as long as it's structured and the value is the people you have in it, really. And yeah, also people turning up to this. The things like if you're gonna put content on Q&As, like have people actually come into them because that's when you get the most value of it. Because I wearing. I'm in a mat. We're in two masterminds, I think, and they're a bit like, I don't mind them, but the one of them's turned into the fact that every time I turn up for a call, rather than me getting value from it, they just ask me loads of questions, which is therefore like, why am I really a part of this? But I think you should always be part of something like that. It's just the fastest way to learn is to surround yourself with people who have already done what you want to do.

Yeah, exactly.

How do you, you know, you're saying about like the first time you do something. How do you get over that though? Because I feel like that's something that everyone struggles with. Right. Doing something for the first time is like scary. So what makes you actually do it?

Just accept it's not going to be as good as you want it to be and know that you need feedback to make something better. So it differs depending on what it is like launching a business. You should always just try and go fairly fast. Like people try and perfect something before getting proof of concept. So then you spend loads of money doing something that might not work, which is stupid. Like obviously some businesses you need to for something like an event. I think it's just like launch it, make sure it's pretty well planned and decent and then get feedback and ask people feedback so you can make it better every time. Feedback loops are the most important thing. Like getting feedback from everywhere.

Yeah, yeah. You also, when you've done something else for the first time, like start a business for example, then like starting a new thing the first time, you know it's still the first time you've done the first thing before with something else. So you have a bit more context. I suppose when it's your very first time trying anything, you just gotta fucking have some balls and do it and just realize that anyone that's fucking judging you or hating on you has probably never done anything or will ever do anything with their life anyway. So. Including the cunt that said my rapping was shit. I'd like to see you rap after two bottles of wine in Marbella. One take on a song you've never heard before. DM me. And we can arrange a live call to do that.

Maybe you could start Muddy Twitter rap battles.

Yeah, legit. I'll happily do a rap battle with anyone live the first event.

That'll be a sight event all over again.

Yeah, some people take shit way too seriously. So I'm very self deprecating. I can put some shit up. Not. It's not. Not trying to be fucking Drake. It's not my debut album. Although I. I would bite myself to make an album if I really wanted to.

But yeah, okay, this is another audience. What's your favorite business idea that you've never acted on?

Poor Party Social Club.

There you go.

Probably.

Okay, but what about from your folder of brands that like you've never launched if you want to.

I had an idea of doing fake tattoos years and years years ago before I knew about Inkbox, which is the place I got fake tattoos, which you may have noticed on my arms for the recent episode, which is because they last two weeks after the Dream Dust shoot. So I think, I think that's a fucking great idea. And that's the only brand I've seen in the world that's properly scaled that I don't know how big they are, but it's got to be multi nine figures in revenue. Like it's crazy. Because it's such a good idea. I would never get a tattoo, but the fact I can have it for two weeks and look like a different person, kind of different character from, I don't know, go on holiday or whatever and also trial a tattoo. But I did have that idea, like, years ago. Not saying that they stole off me.

But I remember thinking that economically, that business must be so nice. Like your postage is everything. Must be letters. Small letter here, small letter, everything. Must be so cheap to manufacture.

So cheap. Like 95% margins.

Yeah. Basically just printing paper.

Expensive.

They're not cheap.

It's like 15 quid for one that would go on your arm. But I bet it cost 20p to make.

Yeah.

But then you get like, people aren't just gonna buy one.

I bought seven.

Yeah, that's what I mean. Like, most people are gonna buy five, six, seven at a time. And then if you're also. I imagine the repeat customer rate is pretty decent on that sort of thing. If you're buying them once, people probably trial tattoos or do they do custom stuff? I've got more expensive. The barley chair going out. Full sleeve.

Yeah.

Yeah. I'm trying to think of a business off the top of my head. I really like boring businesses. I really want to own a boring business. I've said this before, like. Yeah, but even more boring. Like, I think, like, you could make loads of money taking, like, online marketing principles and applying them to something like a fucking fence.

No one wants to do it.

Fencing or roofing. Yeah. But like, proper generational wealth. If you go and try and dominate, like, the landscaping businesses in the north of England.

Two richest guys I ever met when I was younger for the first time. Like entrepreneurs I met when I was doing this placement. I was like, 18, and these two brothers from Birmingham and one of them drove a Rolls Royce and drove a Lamborghini. I'd never seen anyone that had these cars. I was like, what the. What do you do? And they ran a business called CFS and Contract Fire Solutions and they do sprinklers in stadiums.

Yeah.

And it was 150 million revenue or something like that. I was like, you don't think about shit like that.

Yeah, there's more.

If you can do it well, there's always going to be a market for it.

So I mean, like, those kind of. But when I say boring businesses, I literally mean like fencing, roofing, landscaping. Like things that people will never not need.

Who makes the fucking plastic that goes on his cable?

I know someone in Hong Kong, his family business is like the.

Yeah, he's rich. D2C is, is obviously like the. More like the sexy thing.

Yeah.

But there's like, there is inherently more money in boring shit. So like going and dominating like the, the like roofing market in four cities in the uk. It's very hard for someone to come in once you've got a market share and just take that from you where it's quite. It's a lot easier. It's still hard for you to like for an agency go to go from seven figures to nothing overnight and it's still hard for a DTC brand to go from a million a month to nothing. But it's, it's still, it's probably more likely than for you to just that business just to stop existing. And there's also like once you've done it in one place, you could probably replicate that success over and over again because most people who run those companies don't have a clue what they're doing. But maybe. I don't know. I've never actually looked into it so don't know if it'd work. I heard a really good business idea that I liked which was split testing menus on Deliveroo for companies that was on a podcast I listened to. I think that's a great idea like CRO for like menus, which I think was quite cool.

Yeah, that is a good idea.

It's like so many like small things like that. I think a cool business ideas just don't have any more time to do anything, unfortunately.

Yeah, that's the thing you realize in it. That's the thing I've realized that I mean obviously ideas are worthless, but if you want to really do something well, you probably got to do it for like five plus years at least on one thing. Unless you get a team, certainly stay in the same realm. At least. At least I've never. I haven't gone from like Forex to E Com. At least I've stayed in Ecom. Even though granted not done one brand for like 10 years yet.

But yeah, but then what's your opinion on like, you know, I think. Well, it's commonly said like you should focus on literally one thing in your business and like just focus on one business. I'm incapable of focusing on one thing. What's your opinion on like whether you should just focus on like.

I thought about this a lot and debated it a lot because even with the podcast, when I paused that for a while in my head that was like. Because it's not to the brand. I do Feel like they relate and they complement each other and it's net beneficial for me not to be staring at screen by myself all the time.

It's also a hobby.

Yeah, exactly. Classes hobby. Yeah. And I think it's also probably quite particularly when running a brand, I think if you can have a separate thing that is like a cash flow vehicle, which the podcast has been. Not to the extent. I haven't pushed that much. Doesn't it like a crazy extent. But like, definitely has covered my life for like the past year just from that small bit of monetization I've done. And that's very different to like building a brand where you got investors and you're ultimately hoping to one day sell it. Because that's something a lot of people don't realize as well. That's why there's 90 fucking agencies for every brand. But even if a brand's really profitable, and Connor probably says this, I don't know, but even. Well, he's fucking rolling it. But like you're buying stock, you know, it's different. It's not. It's not like. It's not like an agency where it's big margin, you know, no stock requirements. So I think it's good to maybe have. Have two different things and take me a while to kind of realize that, but that's the way I view it now. But I couldn't do more than that. They're all in the same sort of round. Same with your shit. Even I don't understand that.

You do as many things with great struggle. I think it depends on where you are in the journey and also what you want to do. I think people, again, I've said this before, like, you shouldn't just do. Like you should do something. If you first get into something, you should do something to sustain your lifestyle and get you out of the nine to five, if that's what you want to do, which isn't again, isn't the only path in life. And yeah, but then once you've done that, it's like, what do you actually want to do? Like, do you want to do you want to. Like you've then got the luxury to choose your own path almost and spend your time on what you're actually passionate about. So then you might end up doing two things, but one thing's the actual passion. The other things, like a facilitator, you might find, like, as we. As I've done, we've got the other businesses I'm involved with, one's come from like wanting to do it because I enjoy that as much or more. Secondly, because they're in a position where I can do that because we've built a team. And then thirdly, just due to situational things like having to bring other people in to start them, things like that. I think fundamentally though, you'll always get further with one thing. If you just spend all your time on it. Just would if I spent all my time on one business. That's not the. That's not the one we have. Chin 2. Don't worry.

I was gonna say. Sorry, I don't need any more yet.

Yeah, I think it's. I don't think there's a right or right. Right answer to that. I don't think you can apply an absolute to that statement. Depends on the person. Depends on what they want to do.

Yeah.

It's also like, if you find building things fun. Right. Like it doesn't feel like. Well, it does sometimes, but it doesn't always feel like work.

Yeah. There's a guy on Twitter called. Is it called Levio? So Levios. Levios.

I think it is.

He's buil. He's like a one man band doing ridiculous numbers, but. And he's just a builder, an inherent person who loves building things. Like, and he's built these AI softwares, he's built seven or eight different softwares because he clearly just loves building shit. And like, I think if you asked him, he'd probably be like, oh, if I did less stuff, these two or three could probably get like 10 times bigger. But it's like if he doesn't enjoy doing that, he doesn't enjoy doing it. So I think it's like finding that balance within yourself and what you want to do.

I mean, like what's. I feel like people founding businesses are often like a certain type or have some things in common at least. Like, what's the most important values you think you need to have to found a successful business?

I'm still trying to make a successful one, but.

Mindset.

Yeah.

Self motivation, intrinsically self motivated mindset and then self awareness, I think are the three things I'd say.

Just being a doer over a talker. Yeah, I've always been very good doing like just fucking saying I do something the next day, the website's there. Like so many people that spend 17,000 years saying, Next week I'm gonna do just fucking start massive action. Because once you start, it's momentum in it. One thing leads to the next, leads to the next, and before you know it, you're in a different country with a different person doing a different thing essentially.

Yeah. So massive action.

Yeah.

Self awareness is big and being able to like seek. I think the ability to solve your own problems as well. It's people who ask. I see this in comments on stuff. Like even comments on your stuff on Twitter more so than mine is like people asking questions that if you just slap it in Google it'll give you the answer in two seconds.

Dons that watch my shit don't realize how clueless I am about almost everything I'm doing.

It's just like painful when people ask you Google questions. Stuff like that. Just like being a bit like self reliant and resourceful. Probably the biggest things. That's quite a lengthy list.

Yeah. So many things in it.

I feel like this time of year is also when people look in their notes at the business idea that's been sat there the whole year and actually contemplate doing something about it. But I reckon, well, way less than half actually do something about it.

Also just fundamentally think risk taker, innit? I think that's what entrepreneur means by definition. It's so cliche, but it's very true. And just not wanting to take a risk on anything. You're just never gonna do anything ultimately. It's not like you're flipping a coin either because you can control the input.

Yeah. That's why I always take when people are like oh, bash, like even tax rates for people who own businesses. It's like, well, you're not taking the risk of pet. Like it's like appreciating that we have the fundamental like duty to pay 50 people a month. It's not even 50 people. It's like 50 people plus anyone that's reliant on them for that income. Which is like quite a lot of responsibility when you actually think, sit back and think about it like. But I feel like no one. That's why I quite like think building a team is pretty mental. When you, when you sit back and like, well, this is a lot of people who are fundamentally reliant on this entity working and like not just disappearing overnight, which is inherently possible.

Yeah, it's very possible.

And like that's a big motivating fact today because it's like we haven't. It's not like, oh, this now pays me money. So this now sustains like, like 50 people. Then maybe 10 of those have like kids or families or reliance on them, which I think a lot of people do.

Yeah. I'm always amazed when like the Culture of the UK is bashing, like entrepreneurship and capitalism. So where do these dons think the businesses that like everyone works for come from? Originally, there's one don that started business. Literally every single organization was ultimately sided by one person or group of people. And I have to be someone that's willing to take the risk. Like, do people just think it comes out of thin air? That actually amazes me sometimes the narrative, broadly from society when everyone's like bashing on like successful people instead of just like, wow, they actually built something from scratch and add a lot to the economy. And you know, it's just a strange attitude. It's like tall poppy syndrome, isn't it? It's very Australian, English thing in America. You don't seem to see that as much. They kind of praise that more. But yeah, it's a big risk in it. Everyone wants. Everyone's jealous of the entrepreneur, that maybe they see the fruits of it. But no one's jealous when the business goes tits up and they get death threats for six months online, I. E. Me. So it's like, yeah, there's high highs and low lows potentially, whereas if you choose to be an employee, probably never gonna have the high highs or low lows to the same extent, but it's a much more stable path. And that is just the reality. But you're never gonna earn as much either.

I think that's where I'd push back on the E comms versus agency thing as well. You don't have to support how many people. Ours is a person business, so we've got. Not that it's better, it's just it is as real a business because it's just like.

Well, it's a better business in many ways.

Ridiculous amount of people, which is stressful, but good.

I just couldn't do it.

No, you couldn't. No way.

I don't want to.

No. It's just.

I'll die by the sword.

And then. I know you've spoken about this before, but how much of it is like you're born with, intrinsically born with the like, desire to be an entrepreneur or like go down that path? How much of it is like how you were raised? I don't know, like the biggest factors, like determining if you're gonna go into a corporate job or like build a business?

I think it's more environment. I had no interest in it until I met him, literally.

Really?

No, not really until I met him.

I should take your percentage of all these kind of. I know he's fucking way More caked than I am.

I had interest in doing. I knew I did. I don't know. I can't even think about that far back. I'd like started.

Yeah. I was disappointed when you didn't drop out of uni with me.

Yeah, I know you were. You were flaming me for weeks to.

Go get a degree.

Did you get your degree?

Yeah, I did. Big up. Useless, pointless. Got that piece of paper.

I was actually very shocked when you, you reached out to me like three years ago now or something saying you'd start an agency. And I was like, fucking hell. I thought you were civilian. I thought you were gone. I saw you finished the degree. I thought that was it. Got into the depths and then he comes out and he's actually started something. I was like, wow, fair play.

Did you try and like, did you leave Union, try and take everyone with.

You or just me?

Because we had, we had the clothing brand. Honestly, that brand could have been massive. Could have, but it wasn't.

With it it would have been.

But you got like Luke Hemings was buying our.

Yeah. You started seeing those dollars from drop shipping and you're off. Yeah, yeah, I started read. I think I'd read a few books and listened to a few like podcasts in that kind of entrepreneurial self development space. But then I'd never come across Shopify or anything like that until he. You showed me it and then that was the. I was the fork in the path.

Yeah.

So that's why I think, like, personally, I think you have to have some fundamental traits, but I also think a lot of the fundamental traits, if you try hard enough, you can change. You just have to have a willingness to change and you have to consume the right content. But I think it's more about who you surround yourself with and the content you consume rather than where you're from. Because there's a lot of people who. I think both ways. There's a lot of people who are born into mad successful families that end up being drug addicts and there's a lot of people who are born in the absolute state and end up being really successful, which arguably shows you that you're. That where you come from and where you start from doesn't matter as much as like the path, who you surround yourself with and how you get there. Almost.

Well, I've got twin brother, so it's a good, good example because he's a complete civilian. Not there's anything wrong with that. It's just the opposite of me in almost every way. And it is an interesting one because we're not identical, so we technically don't have the exact same genes. But we went to the same school.

You must have been raised pretty much the same.

Exactly the same, yeah. So to me, I think that was genetics. We had different wiring.

I'd love if you were able.

Because we had different wiring. We started consuming different things and focusing on different things at about age 18, which when we started to split.

Yeah. I'd love if you could map your life out and then almost like pinpoint, like these weird. Like.

Who said that one thing?

Yeah, that's what I mean. Like the will of being things.

Butterfly effect.

That has like that. Yeah. Like the will of being like decision trees. Like, where did that and what did. Why did that lead to? And like there will have been like five or six. Like fundamental. You obviously, you always said that when you went to that work experience with you. Whoever it was these. Yeah, that was a fundamental change. Like there's. There'll be. In everybody's life, there'll be one or two things like that where it's like you went this way instead of just carrying on on that path. It'd be really interesting to see. But I can't remember enough about like three weeks ago. So I've got no chance of reflecting that far.

Yeah.

Life.

I do. I do definitely think in a way though, whether it's resort of genetic and. And. Or environment, some people just have it, some people don't. At a certain point, I don't know if there's a point where your brain is molded enough. Maybe that's like 25, so they say. And past that point you've either done it, got it or done whatever it is.

Yeah, maybe. Yeah.

I don't know.

I used to be pretty soft when I was like Lacey when I was coxswain in that boat. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, I agree to your point.

Yeah. Yeah. He used to be a cox. For anyone that doesn't know. Most people don't know rowing. He was a cox in a stone loader when they were rowing at Box Uni Regatta.

God, isn't that the person in the boat who doesn't know?

Probably the tallest cox in the history of rowing.

Six foot two.

That's why we didn't win that event.

Geared out with back paid every.

Do you have to try, like do.

Train, just not eat. Everyone was just bullying me to not eat like one meal a day.

Such a shit life as a cox. Yeah.

And that's how you met live in.

The shadow of the Athletes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that she is, yeah.

Aw, cute.

You started rowing there before coxing, right?

Yeah, yeah. I only did that. I only did that because the one you had got injured and no one else would step up and I was like, I'll just do it. Fuck it.

Do you have a little mic thing?

Yeah, yeah.

That's funny.

It was really funny.

Very niche.

I mean, okay, so also then how much of like success is down to luck and timing and how much is hard work?

These are like deep.

Sorry, have to ask someone successful. Yeah, I mean I think luck isn't, isn't a useful thing to believe in because I do agree like timing and luck. But look, it just fucking. You could. It's a useful way to look at it. Is it? Preparation means opportunity in it, whatever. I think timing is important. But the irony of that in my case is I think I launched that neon brand at the perfect time. Arguably literally perfect. But then actually it was also the worst time because supply chains were fucked. Etc, etc so that was a two sided thing. I also think I'm potentially launching a mushroom brand at the perfect time because I got a better idea of timing and because of the previous stuff I'd done. So I was like, ah, I think now is the right time. So I think it does have a part. But at the end of the day if someone's better, doesn't really matter when they join the party or the market. Like they're gonna win, aren't they? So yeah, I think I wouldn't use it as an excuse because it's very tempting.

I think it can give you a massive leg up but it can't fundamentally make you succeed. I think we got a massive leg up a lot. Everyone who started an agency at the start of COVID got a massive leg up because one you couldn't do anything else other than work because there was nowhere to go. And DTC com boomed. So it was like, well there's. You don't have any other choice. But there's not much better things to do than work over that period, so you might as well do it. And then everybody shifted demand online so all these companies wanted to pick up marketing so we got a massive leg up through that and allowed us to scale way quicker than we probably would have. So you get time but then that only gets you so far and then the rest is like skill set and learning and fundamentals that you can't just wing. Luck definitely has impacts. But you met, as Matt said, I think you make your own look over time like you get luckier the more effort you put in and the better you get at something.

Yeah.

But then like there is still an element of luck and everything. Like reaching dunno. From an E commerce perspective I can give better examples from an agency perspective of like landing in someone's inbox just when they want to pick up a new service or when they're looking for something. Like that is inherently like two things that you have no control over meeting at the perfect time which is I guess luck. So from that perspective there is elements of it but then beyond that like your message starts to be good. So I think there's always an element of it there and like an undertone of luck and timing but there's. It's only gonna get you 20% of the way there. The rest of the 80% is like fundamentals.

Yeah, agree.

Even from the. I think from an ecom perspective maybe flip it on its head. Like you're lucky that your supply chain didn't blow up. Like you. You like you're lucky that like you're freight and get lost because there will be people who experience that. So like it's almost better to easier to give like anti examples of like how you're lucky for an E commerce brand. Like your order didn't get shop stopped at customs for six weeks. So you are lucky in a sense that's always going to be there to some degree.

But the luckiest part in a lot of it and that everyone probably watching this loses perspective. Perspective on is you're born in the first world country with a functioning brain. Like I think 90 of the world don't live in the first world. 90 of the world never even had the opportunity to go on a laptop and watch a podcast and learn amazing things for free on the midnight pod. I think because they're born in a village in Africa or some Syrian war torn town and they're worried about their fucking parents getting shot by the Taliban.

Yeah, I think. Yeah, I think like when you. A lot of people do like be. I don't really do massive year reviews. I don't know about you. No, I usually write a good few goals down for like I usually break out. It's like fitness, health, business and then like travel slash something like just. Yeah those three areas and then write a few things down that I want to do over the next year. But some people do like really holistic year reviews. But I feel like it's a good time to actually be like a lot of people lack perspective in life. I feel like a lot of people who have like problems. I'm not trying to. Like, there's some people who have like fundamental, like, I'm not. This is not like me having like. This is not me going down like a mental health problem like angle, because that's definitely a real thing. But there's, there's a lot of like stresses in day to day life. Whereas if you, where, if you actually just zoom out far enough to get a big enough perspective on it, it's like you're still in a very advantageous and lucky position. Like a lot of people use this time to take stock of things and I think that's quite a good thing to do is like your worst day is someone's best day times like.

A.

Million, like in many, many cases. But it's very hard to do that. It's like that moving yardstick that you always chase. Yeah.

It's like not quite the same thing, but. And it's not always useful. But I always kind of. I say this at work. It's like if nobody's dying, like there's no point getting that stressed about it, you know, like it doesn't matter if you zoom out far enough. But that doesn't always get well received. It depends on the situation.

Yeah. You can't apply. I feel like it's harder to apply in day to day life because if you're in the middle of a big problem, then it's like it feels like.

The end of the world.

Yeah. But like when you're, when you try to be a bit more reflective, it's like you actually can kind of apply that and be like, yeah, life's pretty decent when you zoom out. Obviously not for everybody, but it's useful.

Okay, another deep one. What does success mean to you? Because I feel like it's different for everyone.

It definitely is. And that's, that's a good thing. Not enough people. Too many people try and chase other people's idea of success. And like that's such a big thing you'll do. You'll get this. Will you? People will probably. People watch this. There'll be some people watching this who will basically check. Want to live your life? Definitely like a very small.

I don't want to live my life. Shit.

I know. But there'll be some people who look at it and be like, I want to own that brand. I want to live in that place. I want to be able to do that. Those things just when you're going to bar, you know.

Yeah.

Just because you do them. But then when they got there they'll be like, oh, this isn't what I want. And it's like. I think that's another, like, reflective piece to do is like. And it's like to step back and be like, what do I actually find fulfillment in? Like, one example of this that everybody seems to be going with is there's so many people moving to Dubai at the moment.

Yeah.

And like, that is like, there's a question about that.

I think there is.

Yes. It's like all power to those people. Sick place. But like, I know it's not for me and I know that there's reasons why it's not for me because I've got mates here that I enjoy spending time with, would be further away from my family, etc. And that's like having enough, like, self awareness to be like, that's not what I want to optimize my life around. I think that's what like, success is different to everybody. And then it's about being, like, aware and it's, it's ultimately like fulfillment and freedom and happiness. I think, because some people who work for charities would consider themselves like, mad successful because they've got to, they've got to like their idea of a dream job where they get maximum fulfillment and absolutely love the life.

Yeah. I'd say success is ultimately achieving what you want to achieve. But I think deciding what you want to achieve is probably the hardest part and the most interesting variable. Andy Prisella said success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. Which sounds very fancy, but it's just. Yeah, yeah. Ultimately progressing towards what you've set out as a goal. That is success. But I think the. Yeah, the hardest part is defining what it is for you. But also in society, money and success seem to be the only things that are, like, linked because it's the easiest scoreboard to look at. Some person has X money, some person has X, they must be more successful. Yeah, even I've started to realize that. Fucking hell. It's not like I think a mate said this meal today, like, there's many forms of like, being rich and it is true, but we all look at money. Whereas actually someone else could be way more. They could enjoy their, their job way more. They could have time, freedom, location, freedom, free. I've always said, like, I'd rather make 100 grand a year on a laptop in Bali than a million quid a year doing some I fucking hate in a cubicle in the city. And I actually would you have no fucking time to spend it for a start. So there's, there's different ways to look at. But yeah, ultimately I think it's, it's progressing towards what you want to achieve. But deciding what you want to achieve is the hard part because society tells you it should be money and nothing else.

Yeah, yeah.

Actually I was thinking about on Twitter as well. Everyone's just fucking obsessed with cash, cash, cash. But like, what the fuck do they even do? They sell Forex signals to 14 year olds.

I actually think it's more admirable to do something that's not money related and be like, I don't know, I have like as much if not more respect for someone who works on something that provides, like they live a decent life but get maximum fulfillment out of it. And just, I know some people who are just mad happy doing like real basic shit and like, and they get mad fulfillment from doing it. And maybe that's charity work or something. That's quite admirable thing to do. You notice that whole money isn't the only kind of measure of success. Again with team like we have some people who I know who work for us who like, maybe like 80, 20, like 20% of the motivation is money, but 80% of the motivation comes from like completely different things, like learning opportunities, being part of something bigger. And it's like, I think it's hard to appreciate that when your motivation comes from one place to then actually understand that other people's motivation can come from something else. Until you, until you actually encounter someone who's like, this is what I want from this and then you realize it a bit more.

Yeah, I completely agree. I also think that the flip side of that is I'm very practically aware of the grotesque importance of building wealth. So like, because I was arguing my parents about this, they always accuse me of chasing money. I always laugh back at them and say I sold pink lights on the Internet, for fuck's sake. I'm not chasing money. The company goes and does a grad scheme. Is chasing money a million percent more than me. I'm just trying to be creatively free and have freedom. The freedom's always been my goal. So that's kind of success. But I know you need money, connections and like time, time and location, freedom to have freedom. So I'm very aware of that. So for me it's like, yeah, I do want to make a load of money and make tens of millions of quid because I think that's a great thing. So that means I can help my family. Means it would also mean I've built A better business which has impacted more people, especially because the business I'm building ultimately, I feel like is trying to do good in society as well as just made money. So for me, it's like health, wealth, love and happiness. I think it's so cliche, but, like, I don't admire the billionaire that's fucking like so fat you can't fucking breathe. Do you know what I mean? Like, I'd rather be like in great shape, have good friends and shit. And they probably all do balance out to an extent. Yeah. Some one have more of the other probably have to slightly lesser the other one, but it's finding out what that optimum balance is.

But optimize around fun. That's what I do.

Fun, fun.

Like life should intrinsically be fun.

Yeah, I don't think I've had enough fun recently to be fair.

Like, life should be fun. Like you can't just have. But then again, like, I wouldn't have fun if I went out every night. Like, fun is a balance of like, what makes up that again, is very different to everybody.

But like building things is fun as well.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Like, I don't. I find it like when I sit at my computer, I'm having like, I'm enjoying what I do. So. Yeah, that was quite a long answer for.

I do. Like, also I find sometimes that I've got a lot of friends who are like teachers and they're so content in their lives and I'm like, oh, that's like. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's. I wish I had a brain like that. Okay. Like, I don't. But occasionally it must be quite nice to be like just content.

I watched a podcast episode last night. Again, it's like my first million podcast. I plugged in loads on this. Probably, probably bad from another podcast, but they. They did an episode yesterday about TikTok and one of the. They were talking about all these small video series that have been put. Been getting released on TikTok recently. And one of them is this guy who gets in it. And everyone should go watch. This is a great episode after you've watched the rest of this. Yeah, I can't remember the name of the account, so you're gonna have to go watch theirs to find it. But it's this guy who gets in taxis in New York and. And is like. He asked the taxi driver questions like, what's your favorite restaurant? The taxi driver be like, where do you want to go? And he'll be like, what's your favorite restaurant? And he'll be like, we're gonna go there. Drives to the restaurant, then he gets out, he says, leave the meter running. And he just goes into the restaurant with the taxi driver. And then interviews that just ask them questions about the Life for like 45 minutes. And it's so. And like so many of them are just so happy with what they do in life. Like loads of immigrants that came from other countries and they're just like so content. But they do, they love New York, they love the life. And that was like, really. I watched, I watched so many of them in bed last night. I was just scrolling through them for ages. And there's so that's stuff like that. It's like there's so many of those sort of things that are just really interesting because you are in a bubble. There's a bubble in terms of online business, massively.

I've definitely not enough people leave the money Twitter sphere. And it's a small example, but everyone just like jumps on the Dubai is one example of money, the Dubai bandwagon. It just proves that they have no life experience because they're disagreeing with what the masses are saying. And then they can't actually form their own opinion because they don't have enough context or years on the planet to develop their own opinion. So they just fucking start tweeting based shit. I don't know what that word means, but everyone says it.

Yeah, I massively disagree. There's a. There's a bubble on there. And one of the things I fundamentally disagree with is the idea that you should sack off everybody in your life.

Yeah, I said this before.

That wasn't. That isn't successful or wasn't or hasn't come on that sort of journey with you, which I fundamentally disagree with because it then removes you from. I don't know, it just gives you so much less social awareness and social skills. I've still really good mates for people from school, uni and like, I value those friendships because I don't want to sit and think about business all day every day. And maybe if I did do that, it would get me further. But I 100% enjoy life 56% less if I didn't have that kind of other side to it. I think that's like such a stupid narrative, like, so short sized Kruger curve or whatever.

And it's the same shit.

Yeah, Woke.

Yeah.

Caveman.

The basic dons, the middle dons who think they have to like read books 18 hours a day and they can only speak about Andrew Tate and Go to Dubai because they're based and all this shit. And then you get. The dons are actually really fucking smart who are much more like the basic johns because they just get it to a level that the fronters don't understand.

It's like, yeah, 100%.

It follows every aspect of what you're saying.

A lot of those people who sacked off like mates will definitely get to like 30, 40, 50 and be like, oh, I've got a successful business. I've got this like trophy wife that I really wanted. And then like. But I've got nobody around me that I actually have any like long term connection with. It's just like so stupid.

Those people keep you grounded as well. Right. If you're like in your own head and you spend a lot of time on your own, working on your own business.

Yeah. It's again, they're all also successful in their own right because they're doing things they enjoy and building. It's just. Yeah, it's one of the things I just fundamentally disagree with. But a lot of people would push back the other way.

I might ask the Dubai question because there's, there's a question on here about like, everyone is pumping Dubai and dumping London. What are your thoughts? But that's very specific.

I was, yeah, I was talking to Jack sat there. I was asking him about this earlier just to reference him. I think that said this earlier. Like Dubai and London, it's just like, choose what you want. Like, I, I know loads of people who move into Dubai who would enjoy it. And again, I'm not good at a lot of. I think there's one thing is people go to Dubai and then bash wherever they've left.

Yeah.

Which I don't understand because it's like, just because you don't like somewhere doesn't mean that someone else wouldn't like somewhere. It's this idea of like absolutes of like, oh, this place is absolutely better than that. But it's like, well, no, I can have an opinion that I don't want to move from London to Dubai because I. One, I don't really. I just don't think I'd like it living there. Two, I've got mates and family who I value seeing on a regular basis here or close to London, which is inherently easier to do and inherently easier to maintain those relationships if I'm not a five hour flight away. Like, yeah, we'd make, I'd make considerably more money. But like, money isn't everything. I'm. I currently have. I'm fortunate enough to have enough money to live the life that I don't really like comfortably. Like I get more fulfillment from the work I do than the money I earn now. And that's like definitely a better place.

50 million liquid definitely. So with us NASDAQ.

But I don't. I think like the idea of London versus Dubai is such a stupid argument. That's something you have to look at yourself and be like, what would I enjoy? I'd encourage anyone before like what people need to realize is living somewhere and going on holiday somewhere is two fundamentally different things. If you're gonna go to Dubai, you should go there on holiday first and then maybe go there for a month and then try and not treat it like a holiday. Try and treat as if you're gonna live there and actually live. Because. Because like you have to get into a routine. You have to like yeah, there's a lot of things.

I can definitely see the D Biologic in November. December in UK weather though to be fair.

And like I can see that side as well. Well but it's just not for me.

January primarily it's depressing as.

And like I think Dubai, I'd fall into it and I'd probably get into a place where all I did was work. Whereas I'm trying to get more out of that and more into a place of I work to enjoy the time work.

Is he settling?

I'm not settling because you can still get enough. You don't have to work 12 hours a day to get. I can get.

Well, you're only girlfriend. No, I'm sensing new girlfriend and I'm jealous. I want a more balanced life and I just fucking sit there realizing that romance isn't for me. So I may as well try and be a billionaire. And then I could buy cars and just hope that one day she looks at my profile and cries.

The question was Dubai versus London. I'm trying to say that you need to make that decision for yourself.

That someone trying to project. Too many dons that have self proclaimed like Twitter entrepreneurs have quit their job four months ago and they think they're Steve Jobs and they just jump on the trend.

Why is it like it's because of the tax.

But like I said tax and weather. But like I would, I would better places. It's like 50 more.

I've always said that's not for me. And everyone's been like why?

And it's like it's just like make more money so it's not a problem.

Or just don't put that before every.

Other aspect of life, Money, again, like, it's what you get. This probably stems from what you. What. And then I don't want to then. Because it would be contradictory for me then to say that those people are wrong for making that decision.

No, it's great for some people. I'm sure there's something.

So if it's. If that's your, like, life goal and you're. You're. Even if it's just for short term until 30, you just want to make as much money as you can. I'm not saying that's the wrong decision either. Like, you can. All power to you. You should move there. You should cash it in and then move back or do whatever you want. Like, Joe's moving there. My business partner's moving. He's moving there, I think. So he's going there for two weeks in January to see if he wants to see if he'd enjoy moving there and that I, Like, I can see him living there. I think it's like he. Yeah, I think he enjoys it a lot.

I could see that. I can see myself doing it three months a year.

I couldn't now, but I think maybe in a couple of years I could. This is what I mean. I'm not saying. Not saying either way is better. It's just for me right now, I wouldn't move from where I am to Dubai. I wouldn't make that decision right now. When. When knowing myself and what. I enjoy the two setups, but, yeah.

Don seems to jump off the whole bandwagon with things like the whole. London's a shithole. Dangerous now, mate. Brixton, where your fucking mum's from, is a shithole. If you live in a nice place, it's not a shithole. It's the same with anywhere.

I think people just need to appreciate that subjectivity is a thing. There's so many people who just push, like, this absolutist narrative of, like, this is the only way of thinking or this is the only way to do X, Y and Z. It's like, no, there's so many ways to approach life and get to the same outcome.

It's the same as the thing about, like, what job you do, right? If you want to be like. Like a teacher or like, just do a 9 to 5 or whatever.

Yeah, it's just about what you want for yourself and then kind of just blocking out the noise of what other people think. I've started physically unfollowing people who just, like, say, this is the only way to do things because it's just like a really poor way to approach life.

Yeah.

Where would you live if you could live in another country if you had to?

You're way more. I'll go second. I'm painfully untraveled. That's way more. You're both way more traveled than me.

Yeah, I've been to a lot of places, I think. I think I'll give one. That's an obvious one, and then I'll give an interesting one. I like Bali, but even myself, I've been like five times, but I haven't been three years. I'm pretty excited to go back. Apparently it's been kind of fucked since then because it's been way more mainstream, which I can understand, but I couldn't live there. I don't think I'd base myself there because it's still a third world country at the end of the day. One I did like and I could see myself living in for a while is Brazil. I went for the first time in March last year. I feel like this place called Leblon there, which is like Changu in Bali, and I'm pretty. I would put money on it. It's the next Bali. In terms of, like, nomadic community.

They always shift. They'll move from barley.

Yeah, it was cool. Like, the weather was sick.

So, like surfing stuff.

Like, same kind of similar vibe to Changu. I felt more developed in a way.

I think Bali's got the thing of, like, so many Australians go there.

Lisbon is cool as well. Lisbon definitely, definitely live there. Been there a few times, I think, in Europe.

Like, I feel like community wise as well.

Lisbon, I could do Barcelona. I think Barcelona is pretty sweet. Yeah.

Similar sort of bar to Lisbon. Slightly more beachy.

I think if I was mainland Europe, I'd hop around a lot. I wouldn't being English. If I was going to move to Lisbon, I'd be like, Lisbon for a month, Barcelona for a month. Because it's quite easy to travel through mainland Europe without like that much effort.

I think I'm getting the bug to travel more again next year. But I say that I've been away like 10 times this year, which for me was a slow year. Think it's good to have a base somewhere?

Yeah, definitely. I think it's just inherently more productive to be in one location for an extended period of time. Whether. Even though. Even if that's like two weeks.

Yeah.

Like go and live in one place for maybe a bit longer than two weeks. Maybe a month at a time. It's like, if you're going to wear.

Setup and like genuine infrastructure, there are the few things gym, work, set up and wi fi, they're like the three things you need.

I'm also a massive fan of a hotel over an Airbnb. I'm not having the argument this Airbnb is better.

Yeah. It's just living in a hotel is kind of weird.

Yeah, it is. Definitely. To answer your question about living, the place that I've been, this was hands down the place that I could definitely live is San Diego. I thought San Diego was fucking sick.

It's cool.

So mad.

I accidentally drove into Mexico there and got accused of being a drug dealer and we went past the border in 2019. That's not a made up story.

That's like a. It's just a cool place. It's like, I love that it's on the beach. I love that it's hot all year round. But then it's got like, it's just really nice as well. Like, it's like, yeah, just. Just really nice. But I'm really, really poorly traveled. I've never been to Asia, so I've never been to South America.

Asia's crooked when you first go. So we're landing in Thailand in 2017. I got my drink spiked on the first night and the rest was history.

Been to like Middle east, but never Asia. This is when everyone jumps on me being like, oh, you can't have an opinion on Dubai. You never traveled anywhere.

Yeah.

Yeah, I need to go to Asia. I want to travel more over the next few. Well, probably not this year, but I just don't think I can do it this year.

You also meet the best people. You meet interesting people.

Yeah.

In the most unexpected places.

I think I've traveled quite a lot, but not like further afield, which I think is the more beneficial because it's like you meet a more diverse. Surely you meet a more diverse range of people if you go to Asia compared to fucking mainland Europe, like vastly different.

Okay, this is another audience one. I guess it kind of links to like having a routine and not traveling. Maybe, but do you set day to day routines? Do you do the same thing every day?

This is the Oliver Hudson Podcast featuring the midnight poured in.

Lucy, you just need to fight up.

I'm off form today. I'm leaving it to you. I'm fucking. I've been drinking wine for six days straight.

It's a good balance though. You dominate some adults.

Yeah, I do have a bit of a routine. Well, I'll do a Routine I think it genuinely probably stays fairly similar even if I go away. Tends to be. I don't eat breakfast, I try and do all the hard shit before lunch in terms of work like generally speaking. And then afternoons, maybe more creative shit. Tend to go to the gym in the late afternoon and then in the evening. Depends where I am. But probably do more like creative work and shit like broadly speaking that's kind of the routine and I've always been that way. Get up early, don't eat, drink coffee, drink rainbow dust.

So if you're working abroad you do the same thing?

Yeah, pretty much to an extent, yeah. Always try and work and do the shit I need to do in the.

Morning so then you can do what you want.

I had a six scoop rainbow dust on this morning. It was power. I was seeing stuff I don't through the last. This is something I'm trying to get more into in Jan onwards is because for the last like five months I've been absolute slave to my calendar because I've had so many phone calls. There's been days where I've been on eight hours of phone calls back to me about just because obviously being involved in three businesses and a top level where you're like more strategic and team management focused. A lot of mine time has been come. Has come like community basically being communication and like working with people on projects. But into next year I'm trying to put more of a focus on just having more free time because that's when I do the best work I get. So like free. Like a perfect work week for me would be like three calls and just a clear calendar of nothing else. I'd love just to be beautiful, it'd be peaceful. So I'm trying to get into more of a routine. I used to have a good routine but I tend to because of the nature of the businesses I tend to plan. My routine in terms of what I do in a day stays pretty similar but the timings of those change quite a bit. So usually get up at the same rate of time but then beyond that it can be. And I tend to plan my week on like a Sunday night. So I'll like block out like gym and stuff on a Sunday night depending on when I can do it. Which is why I always rearrange on him.

Yeah.

Because it's just like hard to keep things fixed when you work across a few different time zones. Like a lot of our client, a lot of like. Yeah, just have stuff to pick up in different time zones, different times which I can't really move, unfortunately.

Yeah, that's one reason not to go to Asia. It's the worst time zone.

I couldn't. I could not run two agencies from Bali. No chance. No, I couldn't.

Midnight calls for a thing.

I just couldn't do it.

I could do it. 6pm to 3am I could do it.

I think that's a big benefit of Dubai. I think Dubai is a really good time zone because you can do like four or five hours of deep work before anybody's on slack and then you can be like, oh, I've got so much done before anyone even bothers me. Which is a really, a big inherent benefit. Which is nice. I do think routine's really good though. I think like if I would love to be in a better routine. I think routine is like just like even like if you watch Andrew Huberman getting, like getting up and going to sleep at a set time, doing things at a set time, getting like sunlight in the morning, like scientifically just better for you. So people should chase it.

Every few months I get this incredibly high risk tingle down my spine that just says I should fuck off everything I know and go to the Philippines and like fucking live in some castle. Like some weird shit like that. Definitely a weird part of me that just doesn't want to conform to like societal standards and have a routine live in one place. Although I know that's more productive and that's what kind of been doing past three years.

You could scale a filthy cash on delivery business in the Philippines.

Yeah.

No credit cards.

Ultimately I think the best balance is yeah, a few months, like have a base. Do a few months in one place. Well and then I do like traveling still. I think I always get that tingle whenever I step on Emirates. I'm like, here we go. I think about to have a hangover, but before the flight lands, it's a.

Big thing that Iman. Iman Gadzi pushes is like seasons, which I definitely think you can do.

Yeah.

If you do it right, you can, you can, you can work really hard for two quarters of the year and then spend the other quarter of the year spending three to four hours of doing deep work but then spending the rest of the time doing what you want. If you.

Then the other quarter just degeneracy.

If you, if you actually go hard in those first two quarters, like full lock in. I think that's almost a better way to do things. Like through winter, just lock in and just smash it like Q1 and 2.

Then Q3 is usually the past Four months. September, October, November, December. Simple light I've had in a long time.

But I think you'll reap benefits of that when you get to Q3. Q3 is usually the time when everybody even, like, our clients, like, they go on holiday. August is the month where everyone just disappears. And that's, like. That's not a wrong way to do things. I think that's a feasible way of operating and almost a better way of operating.

Yeah.

Because that's when you can get in a routine, a really simple, standardized routine for six months, and then you can have fun. When everybody wants to have fun through summer.

Yeah.

And it's like, just rotate that and that. That can work. And then hopefully get to a point where you can do, like, one quarter of good work and three quarters.

Yeah, Definitely had fun in summer. I prefer life in summer. I like being tanned. I'm like a different person. I'm. I'm like a. A werewolf. Like, if there's no sun, you just.

Need that Cape Town.

It's a moody cunt.

Cape Town mansion. And back to London for summer.

Yeah.

That's literally why I live in Asia. I'm a nicer person on it.

Oh. Fundamentally, for sure.

Like, I've been tired. I sunbathe on air every. In summer. Like, spring and summer. Beautiful.

On that heavy vitamin D supplement.

Yeah.

But I do think that if you do go hard with work, then it also makes, like, the fun stuff more fun because you appreciate it more, like, around all the time, then you don't really appreciate. Like, I think I shut my laptop for four days. It was like, balance.

Wow.

You know, like, because I never do it.

Yeah. It's like, balance. Like, you would. You fundamentally wouldn't enjoy just going out seven days on the. In a row on a lash, and doing nothing. Doing nothing in between. It's like you enjoy working and then going out for, like, two. One night and then. But because you've kind of, like, earned it or, like, you've got a plan. Like, you can't. It's like, you don't want to.

Yeah, I want to fucking send it in Bali and be a degenerate for at least a few days.

January's a good time to do that.

I mean, I'll still be working because I'm just fucking committed and I've probably not had a single day off my laptop in seven years. But there's an element of it. Yeah.

I feel like the environment, though, as well. Like, there'll be other people doing the same thing. Right. Working a bit and then off with Jordan.

Jordan will be sending it. Jordan will be vaping all the time. What question did we even get? Oh, it was the.

Where.

Where do you want to live?

Are you drinking that pint of wine or not? I am, but, like, I want you to get drunk.

It was really quite a big glass. Ollie.

We threw two bottles already.

It was a.

You can give some to me if you want.

Do you want some?

The. The first podcast. The first podcast we recorded together.

Do you want me to get the other bottle?

The first podcast. It might be a cork one, though.

At the start of this, I meant.

To be doing an hour run after this.

The first podcast we recorded together. I don't remember the last 35 minutes of it.

That was the loosest pod we've ever done. It's also one of the most views. It's got a 6 and a half K views now because I'm a big. That's not bad on two hours of some agency cunt pissed in the wine cooler fridge.

Put the red in the cooler.

I prefer red in the cooler. We're not chopping this out.

Not chopping out.

Comment. Your favourite wine. Also, I'm actually. I've got a sample on the way of unicorn blood.

Okay, next question.

Go on.

This kind of follows on actually the biggest lifestyle change you're gonna make next year.

Oh, I'm just gonna exercise more fundamentally. I'm gonna try and I'm gonna shift my priorities away from business and towards fitness and health. Because I think by doing that and basing my day and routine around that, it'll make me more productive in every other area. I didn't. I did that for, like the first few months and then I stopped doing it. So, like, basically being like, oh, I'm not gonna take this phone call because I've got. I'm gonna go gym. Whereas for the last, like six months, I've just been like, I'll take the phone call and prioritize everything.

Yeah.

In that sense. And I've been really bad at that. And it's not a good way to go.

Yeah, definitely. I definitely like the new habit of. I obviously went to the gym, but, like, the start last year, I just got obsessed with running. And then I decided that being in shape is now a new part of my identity. And then I quite liked the fact that I got shredded in summer and I was like, shit, I don't want to get fat again.

It's just George, he's a good example.

He's a good example.

Like, train like an Athlete and then alongside you work.

I mean, I definitely let myself go. In the past few days, I've had a lot of Christmas treats. I mean, it's a lot of shit. Yeah.

But whether you stick to your macros or you don't, you're still gonna die.

Yeah, I don't try.

Does it matter?

I'd like to get away from a screen more, honestly. Yeah. My biggest problem, just fucking. It's a lonely process. I don't have enough human interaction.

I think what I told you on that episode the other week about positioning yourself in the business where you're meant to be is true for you. Definitely. You're not best sat there on a computer screen 12 hours a day not being a creative. You're best being like the creative lead of a. Of a brand and then bringing other people to do that function.

I do agree. Yeah. So that's the lifestyle change I'd like to make. Basically, do less Work more.

Fun more.

Sense less painful work more. Using the mind in other capacities and thinking more.

Do you believe in New Year's resolutions?

I feel like yes.

But I think if you're waiting, you get the classic cunt who's like, I think someone actually messaged me yesterday saying, On January 1st, I'm starting this. If you're waiting till January 1st, it's not gonna happen anyway.

Yeah, definitely not. I do.

It's a nice premise. It's a nice idea.

Yeah. I think it's. This is like a proper business mentality to personal goals. But I think you don't get to an outcome without a system to get there. So it's like, you can't just be like, these are my goals for 2023 without a tangible way of achieving those goals. So if you want to. For example, if he wants to run a fucking 252 marathon, he doesn't just set that goal and go run an hour after this. Yeah. It's like, you don't need a bike. It's like, you don't just set a goal of being like, oh, I want to get down to this weight without having, like a systemized approach of like, oh, I need to do these steps a day. I need to eat these calories a day. I think as long as you set. If you're going to set up New Year's resolutions, you need to set up systems and processes in life that facilitate you to get to them, which is a really robotic way of looking at it. But that's ultimately how you get there. So if you want to get to X Amount of revenue in an agency, to use that example, it's like, what daily micro tasks do you need to hit to get to that macro goal of like, all right, we need to send these many messages and do X, Y and Z. So it's like, yeah, I, I do believe in like big goals for the year. It's just you have to set them with a basis in like a roadmap of how you actually get to them. Rather than just fucking being like, I'm gonna do this and this. Unless it's like, I want to go travel there, then that's like, obviously you don't need a system of how are you gonna get to fucking Bali other than books and tickets. But for like, personal goals and like business goals, I think it's important to like reverse engineer from the goal to actually how you do it. You gonna shred that marathon at 250? 249.

Sub 248 is the new apparent goal.

You gonna do it?

I mean, that's a big. It's a sub four pace marathon, basically.

Yeah, it's quick.

Have you entered?

Yeah.

Oh, you are gonna do it 17.

And a half weeks away, which is.

Why you've got to do it.

Well, I did a 5K on Christmas Day and I got. I ran. I've come to strava around an 18, 18 minute flat. And I was untrained, unwarmed, up, hungover. So. So I'm not unfit. I've got like a decent base still because I've been. I've been chopping it over the past 10 weeks since the previous marathon, but with 17 weeks to go and I need to get on the proper program, I think. So basically I'm gonna do it.

I feel like, yeah, I think you should do it.

I think, I think you're gonna do it anyway because you've got talked about.

It enough that it's just hard. But I know, I know what, I know what to do now.

I think. I don't. I actually.

It's just a lot.

I don't, I don't. That's what I mean. I don't think you'd actually find doing that hard. I think it's the opportunity cost of doing it in terms of like, what are the things you could do?

Yeah, it's not even the opportunity cost isn't that big though, because like. Well, not if you have more things going on. You get more done. Yeah, you just kill the dead time in your life. Like there's always time to, to go and do an hour run on a treadmill if you need to. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah.

Just put upon that time and do it.

Yeah, that's wrong.

It's easier to say, oh, I don't have time. But then what do you do for the last hour? You probably like sat on TikTok.

Yeah. This success like again, George Heat an example. He gets two workouts in a day.

And runs that Don is a freak. He needs to come on the pod.

He's a cyborg, mate.

Yeah, freak.

How much do you think of it as like mental though, as opposed to physical?

Marathon. I've not got the. I'm not well positioned to comment on this.

I mean, I'm not.

I think during the training we were obviously on the day a large part is physical because you have to be fit enough. But I know a guy that was on paper fitted than me and should have got a lot quicker time than me that quit halfway because he just didn't have it in his head.

That must feel really shit. Quit halfway through.

Yeah, I'd imagine so. I mean, I think you just win the battle by showing up to the training every day and if you can do that for like 20 weeks, wherever it is, then on the day it should be just like business as usual.

I feel like it's probably like net positive even for space goods though, for you doing that as well. To have like another goal away from.

Well, yeah, I just don't want to get fat again and that's not what it meant. I need to have a goal.

Yeah.

I don't know, it just keeps me.

Something like that's not to do with the brand. Right?

Yeah. And because it's away from a screen, although I don't want to put as much pressure on it this time. So I've not really spoke about it.

I mean, you have spoken about it though. I feel like it's on here.

Yeah, a little bit.

I feel like you can do it. So, space kids questions, do you remember when you first had the idea for it?

Well, I was going to launch a teeth whitening brand.

Really?

That's how desperate I was to start the next thing. And then I've been playing around with a bunch of ideas back in like October 21st, which isn't even that long ago really, but yeah, I have a document on Google where I've written down loads of name ideas, broad ideas, and I was very intentional about wanting to do something consumable and subscription based and something that I hadn't done before. But yeah, it wasn't it was a teeth whitening brand idea originally, which I'm glad I didn't do because I don't give a shit about that. And then it morphed into mushrooms because I was just researching and I just decided that that was the right thing to do. And then my gut told me that was the right thing to do. And then, and then looking back, you never remember the exact thing that you never remember when you decided to do something because it just happened. But yeah, it's quite mad actually because you can just come up with an idea and create something. Obviously takes a while to do it. But it was going to be a teeth whitening brand and I'm very fucking glad I didn't do that.

You needed a toothpaste. You sent me those. What was it gonna be called? That was a bit of a rip on it, really. Yeah, Spider rip. And be like, ah, I can do better.

Yeah. But yeah, it was about a little over a year ago and then spent about four or five months getting the first product sorted and then went live.

I feel like this is history different doing something that you really care about. I feel like doing something you don't like your boring business thing. I mean I've done a boring business before and the problem was I didn't care enough if that makes not care enough. But like I didn't enjoy it.

Yeah, I wouldn't want to run the day, I wouldn't want to run the day to day operations of the boring business. I just want to do the marketing bit. I fundamentally really enjoy, enjoy the market inside, which is why I've done doing the thing with Connor, because I'm more like actually doing the marketing. Whereas running an agency, one like you start, when you start an agency, you're very much doing the marketing. When you get an agency to like seven figures plus, you're very much opera. You're not even, I'm not even operations anymore. It's very much like strategic decision making. And I think this, every business does this unless you position yourself correctly and bring the right people in to support you on the journey, which is what.

I said to you.

It's like you have to position yourself where you're best positioned and for the agencies, that's where I'm best positioned. But like it doesn't mean that I enjoy that more than anything else, which is why that opportunity was really enticing for me. It's because I think I'd enjoy that more. But then I've got the kind of best of both worlds. I've Been able to do both at the same time. I think that's a bit of. I don't think I'm the most self aware person. That's some element of self awareness, of being like, right. Stepping back again and being like, this is what I enjoy. And then bringing people in who are fundamentally better than you at the elements you don't enjoy. And like, the best thing about. You want to get to a point in business where like you're surrounded by people who are better than you at what they're doing, where you learn more from them than they do from you, which is a really. Which is the place you want to be. Really? Yeah.

Do you remember like the exact. I asked Matt the same question about Space Kids the exact moment you decided to set up the agency.

Yeah, but it was true. Because we had no money. It's just a good, it is like, it's a good business model service. It doesn't have to be an agency, but service. Service based business when you have no money is easier. Like you, you obviously had like a bit more money than we did when we started. We started it straight out of university. We had a, we took a PayPal loan to get a course because we had no cash. And then did the course and then was like. But I, I knew enough about E commerce to be able to supply a service at a decent level. And when you start that business, whether it's like agency or whether it's, I don't know, cleaning, like, it could be anything. It's like if you have no money, you can trade your time for money. And an econ business or ecom brand, even drop shipping now, to be honest, I think the barrier to entry for drop shipping is inherently a bit higher now than it was four or five years ago. @ that point, you have to have at least a bit of capital to start, whereas we were in a position where we literally had no money. So it was through like, it was almost like a strategic decision to pick that business and that vehicle. And then obviously now, like, I still love building those businesses, but I'm also doing the other thing with Connor, which is more of kind of like what I enjoy doing, I think. And it's a good vehicle. Sick.

Business. What did you guys want to be like before you wanted to be like founders or like set up your own business as well? Was there something you wanted to do, like in the, I don't know, corporate or like business world other than setting up.

Your. We used to want to be a horror film.

Director. That's mad. I Did.

Not. Something like that. I used to love the idea of films. I still want to make a horror.

Film. You still love films.

Clearly. I think building a brand is just like trying to make a film in it, really. I just like the idea of building this aesthetic and feeling that feels like a movie, which is like 1% of the fucking.

Brand. But you need to spend more time with Lucas. That's what Lucas wants to do. He wants to move all his money from an agency into like, he wants to be. He used. He did film at uni. Wants to be a film director, basically. He's good at it as.

Well.

Yeah. Really.

Good. Instinctually. I don't know. I just feel like I get like, films and I don't know that sort of shit. The dream just maybe was just me indulging that and Brad made it reality. But, like, I view everything like a movie, which is why I give way too much credit to girls that shouldn't get it because I view them as like a character in my own movie, quite literally. And yeah, they don't. They don't.

Exist. I almost think like, your brand.

Is like, that's why I did the 80s movies and shit. It's not.

Necessary. Yeah, it's.

Like. It kind of.

Is. Like, becoming a film director is very hard and very low pay until you make it. Becoming a brand owner is kind of the same. It's like constructing this own, like, thing from your own.

Brain.

Yeah. And bringing in these ideas to life. But it has more monetary and more like. It's more monetizable in today's, like, economy. I don't know if that makes.

Sense. Yeah.

Exactly. But then it's a vehicle to.

Create reality out of ideas, basically, which.

Is ultimately what film is.

Really. Yeah. So that's why I got into branding. So I like the idea of making movies and shit and it's making.

Shit, which I don't have that kind of level. I'm more like. I'm quite like a rational, logical person with limited creativity. Maybe I'm just boring.

Fuck. But yeah, I'm just a creative cunt that got fucking stuck in front of a laptop with shit to do. And really I should just be out making movies and, well, there's still time. I also don't want to be the starving artist type, though. So I was very aware of that when I was younger. So I was like, let's try and be a rich creative, which is still the.

Goal. No idea what I wanted to do, to be honest. What did you want to do when you were.

Younger. When I was really young, I.

Wanted to be a chef. Actually when I was like fucking.

10, first business, I wanted to be a hairdresser. So I used to braid girls hair in the playground and charge them.

When I was like 8.

9. It was good like until got found out, but I didn't really know either. I think that's why I like.

I had no idea fucked off to.

Australia to be honest, because. Because I kind of tried investment banking and things and realized that actually I didn't want to be sat in a room with 200 people who didn't even know my name every.

Day. Yeah, I went to uni doing economics, but that was just because it was like what I was best at and went to uni because everybody else went to.

Uni. That's what I.

Did. I was just like. But then again, uni was good fun. Taught me a lot of soft skills in.

Life. Yeah, agreed. Yeah.

Yeah. I did a history.

Degree. I'm actually. This is interesting. My brother's currently doing his A levels but he's very, he's quite different to me but he's all like, there's a long story behind this but I think he's gonna come work for me because he's like, he's gonna sack off his A levels. Basically. He's about six months from finishing. Yeah, yeah, but it's just like.

That'S an early dropout and you'd have to do.

That. Yeah, yeah, he's. But it's because like fundamentally one, he's not enjoying it and therefore he's not doing his best at it and he's quite switched on person. There's reasons why he's not doing his best which I won't go into. But like I think that's becoming more and more of a thing like the online education space and like this that it's definitely becoming bigger, way bigger. And I think it's a lot to do with like as much as he's like as much as they shouldn't like Andy Tate and that lot. Like I don't, I don't like him at all. Like really, I don't, I don't really have an opinion on him to be honest. But like he's definitely like shifted like that whole city is like, like fundamentally quite self development.

Based.

Yeah. The ability to take control of your own life and get your own outcomes. There's a lot of controversial stuff he said which I've not really, I don't really know to be honest. I'm not really consumed enough as content to know any of that. The same with Iman. He's obviously now got like a ridiculous fallen following. But again, it's like that's a lot.

Of. It's Dear Part 2.

Pod. Yeah, but that's a lot of like younger people's gateway. Whether it's right or wrong, it's a lot of young people's gateway into like, probably longer term a better life than they probably would have pursued because they realize that they can actually take control of their own learning and take control of their own outcomes. They don't have to just go down this one predefined societal path of doing XYZ education to then get to get this job, which is definitely a net benefit of those kind of people, regardless of the massive negatives that they may have, which I don't really understand or want to comment.

On. I feel like we're lucky to be living in like the age of the Internet where you can just go make money online. I. Pretty.

Quick. If you get your mind to it.

100%.

No. But yeah, I had no interest in anything entrepreneurial until I met this.

Geyser. Did you always know you wanted to work for yourself kind of.

Thing? Yeah, I think when I was like 8 years old. Didn't know what it would be. Just knew. I can. I can.

Sense. I kind of disagree with you. I. I agree with.

You. Is that the third. You want a third bottle? The last time we had three.

Bottles on an episode was probably when.

I was in was the last episode he was on with Saul and we spilled a half bottle of.

Wine. Clients watching? No, I think you did. I think. I think. I think you didn't until you.

Went on that work experience with you that made it more real. I never met an.

Entrepreneur. Well, this is the work.

Experience. I fucking worked in Mergers and acquisitions in Mayfair for three months when I was.

19. But that's what I mean. That's one of those things when I said earlier, if you plot like a. Yeah, A life and then you get a.

Spot. I met rich people that weren't footballers or celebrities for the first time ever. And that changed everything. I was like, wow. Yeah, you can actually do that. What the fuck? So that's the only memory I have of first time thinking.

That. Did you like M and.

A? No. It was also very.

Boring. It was probably hard to like M and.

A. It was in the film Facilities Management space in the boutique M and A.

Firm. I worked in a boutique M. A.

Firm. You wouldn't have known.

It. Hopefully you'd be on the.

Sidewalk. I was, I had the managing director on the.

Pod. Hopefully you'd be on the other side of that in a few years. You would get immersed into someone. Well, yeah, quiet into someone. Life comes full.

Circle. Yeah, but it was very boring businesses. But it was an interesting space. But yeah, it was, it was very Mayfair and suits and shit and I just didn't, didn't like that.

Lifestyle. Yeah, that's.

Fair. It was interesting.

Though. I worked in an M and A firm for a while and like all the analysts used to cry all the time. So I was like, oh, maybe this isn't for.

Me. Yeah, it's.

Grim. I do think there are people who genuinely enjoy that.

Though.

Yeah. You know, like maybe if you're predispositioned to like that stuff. I don't.

Know. Cocaine, champagne. Some people like.

It. Yeah, yeah, it's very like.

That.

Yeah. How many more.

Questions? We have got some more. This one's from. Any plans on launching space goods in the Netherlands with actual.

Psychedelics? Yeah, I do have plans for that because that's like the next step in my roadmap. My long term vision has always been ultimately to build a DC psilocybin microdosing brand, knowing that that market isn't yet there. But the obvious next step to like do a pilot launcher. That would be probably in the Netherlands or Canada, but Netherlands makes more sense. So yes, that there's very much a plan to do that. I haven't yet figured out the legality of how to actually do it, but that is the next step towards my.

Vision. So yes, it's a good, good idea. You've microdose, haven't.

You? Do it fucking every day.

Lad. Do.

You? Yeah, yeah. Show you my cupboard afterwards, my secret look up. But I won't bring it to Bali.

Mind. Yeah, you.

Don'T. I probably feel like shit for two weeks. That's the.

Problem. I've done it a bit. It's good. I do think it is definitely like fundamental. It is a shift inside. It'll have 100% happen in the next. I think it'll happen. It's. It happens with everything. It happens faster than you think it'll happen. Like AI will happen faster than you think it'll happen. Psychedelics will happen faster than you think it'll.

Happen. Well, I'm just glad I documented me saying this is going to happen. So in 10 years time when we're fucking listed on the NASDAQ and I'm worth $14 billion, we can look back at this so that was a decent little.

Investment.

Yeah. This is another audience question. The biggest thing you've learned from your mentors or a.

Mentor. Mentors. Oh, that's a good.

Question.

Yeah. So many things. I'm very fortunate to have many impressive people that have been direct mentors to me, particularly in the past year. You've got a lot more directing. Do what the fuck I'm.

Doing. You've got a lot more direct contacts with much higher level people than I have. So you've. Yeah, go on, you go.

First. Trying to think of like some. I mean there's so many things.

I think I always.

Find. So many.

Things. I always find the things that come from those people usually are so.

Simple. It's the Kruger curve again. Yeah. So high.

Level. It's like, it's like, oh, you, you should just do more of what you're good at and less of what you're bad at. And, and you should hire more people to do the things you don't enjoy. And then you look at and you're like, that was mad. And it's just like, actually it's so fundamentally simple that you're like, why didn't I think of that? But then when you're so in it, you, you can't like zoom out, which is. Yeah. So like a lot of them come from like very small nuggets. Like I, I haven't got many tangible examples because I, as I say, like I, I consume a lot of content for when I'm trying to find actionable things, but I usually do like a seek and find mentality of like, I need to solve this problem, so I'll go find it. Whereas you've got a lot more like, you've got a lot wiser network of people and a lot more people who you just talk to.

Generally. Yeah. There's so many broad and specific things. One thing on a broad level that sticks out is when I, when I last saw Jack, founder of Wayfly, we're both loose, very loose. Like two months ago. And he just said something that was obvious, but he just said the thing he's learned is that he's not that intelligent. All the really intelligent people come and work for great companies. The less intelligent but more risk taking people start the companies and make all the money and on a big, big scale. So true, isn't it? Because if you're really intelligent and you're not a risk taker, you're never really going to. You might get a nice six figure job on a fucking whatever, but then you get the freaks like either risk point, you've got to be a fucking loose risk taker to ultimately put that make that thing that the intelligent people can come and work on. But that was a bit like fluffy. Suppose on a more practical level, which made more useful loads of things. I think one thing that's changed the way I look at building a brand is that I've always been 100% D2C in the past. And then the more I actually speak to founders of much bigger businesses, you realize that yeah, very few big brands are actually completely either all DTC or even majority D to C. Like they seem to make all their profit and real money in retail and wholesale and stuff. And it just got me thinking about sales channels rather than just marketing channels because I'd always just been marketing channels to my website. But then I look at a certain business and like they're doing less than. Doing less numbers than we are online. But they're much bigger business because they're doing a fuckload in different channels. And I'm like, wow, wait a minute. I'm probably looking at this the wrong way because CACs are going up. It's basically very hard to be profitable dtc. That's just a.

Fact.

Yeah. Unless you kind of mine. So now it's like, well, yeah, just looking at trying to mix the channels for everything. Sales, marketing. Don't be as reliant on one thing. Which is probably what a lot of people are like. I certainly was in the past. It was Shopify, website, Instagram, marketing channel. That was basically it. And I just chat scaled that. But then if you lose one of them, you fucked.

Yeah. And also diversification increases multiple. It's more stable. It's wholesale is inherently more. Almost like more valuable than dtc. It's way more predictable because. Well, I don't know, maybe it's.

Not. I think, yeah, I'm trying to do more of.

That. Yeah. Mine's probably. I had one big revelation in January from a conversation about how to like view business as a whole. And just the fact that you should always zoom out. You should have like try and get a holistic overview zoom out, find your bottleneck focus.

In. You said that. I actually wrote that down when you said.

That. Relentlessly solve that bottleneck zoom out and just repeat that process every however long. You need to just do that over and over again. And your business will just grow exponentially because people focus on the wrong shit. People sweat the small stuff. Not every lever is built equally. And it's impossible to work out what lever you should pull until you have that overview of, like, where is the bottleneck? Like, you can be printing money on Facebook ads, but you can have no customer service and you can be losing, like, or you can have no fucking supply chain and you can get hamstrung by different things and try to get that holistic overview. Business is massive. And similar to what he said, like, you want to surround yourself with people who are better than you at things. And, like, that's a big thing that one guy taught me is, like, you should. You should try. And it also makes it so much more fun when you can learn from people you're around. Like, some people I work with are just, like, ridiculously sick people. And I just love working with them because they teach me so much in different ways. That's kind of a lesson in.

Itself. Yeah. The other thing that Alex Packham taught me, and it's a whole, like, phrase and I refer to, is thinking about, like, how to actually structure the business from the start. The whole. The whole strategic narrative, he said. And I thought it was so interesting. Maybe I've just got obsessed with it. But it's the way you position a business to, like, investors, but also the market, like yourself. And not just selling products, but, like, I view this as like a mental health technology company, whereas I could just say, yeah, we sell supplements. Like, which one sounds more valuable to the right people? Do you know what I mean? It's like building the vision of a brand and starting at the end as well, which I've never really done in the past. If, like, an exit is a goal or whatever, what would you need to actually fulfill that, to tick those boxes to make that possible? Because a lot of people probably just chad scale and they don't really know what they're actually working.

Towards.

Yeah. And I think always having something that you could do that you haven't done yet as well is a great narrative, especially when speaking to investors and shit, which I'm doing a lot of, you know, like, if I can say, well, we've done this with one SKU in one country, we haven't even scratched the surface of basic supplements, let alone, like, the psilocybin market and so on. So just thinking really far ahead of what something could be right from the.

Start. Reverse.

Engineer. Yeah. Yeah. Amongst many other.

Things. Okay. And then, I don't know, maybe we'll make this the last.

One. Yeah, that's like two hours on the dot, so we can. Last.

One. Oh.

Sweet. Wait, I want to ask you about your business first. Your starting.

Business. So.

Started.

Started. I was gonna ask you, but I wasn't sure if you're allowed to speak about this shit because.

Of. I can speak about that I just can't speak about. I'm coming back on the podcast and, like, I couldn't talk about.

It. Well, yeah. What.

You. What are your plans? What are your plans for 2023 personal.

Business? My plans. So I've been building an agency, which I'm calling an operational consulting.

Agency. I think it's a good position because a lot of people need help with.

That. Like, I mean, my.

Background. Yeah, no, but not even just him. Like, there's so many businesses we work with. We work with. We've worked with like two, probably 200 clients this year. So many of them, they've got great products and they can. And they get someone to market it, but then they fall down on ops. So it's a. It's a really good position to be in, I.

Think. Like, back to your point about, like, doing things you love, I just like fixing problems and I like organizing things as you know, which Matt does not like.

Doing. People struggle with that, which, yeah.

Like, a lot of people hate, I realize. So I've been building agency, hopefully launching properly next year to be able to help founders in Hong Kong and everywhere in the UK. But yeah, that's a Q end of.

Q1. Nice. Yeah, definitely come back on. We can go through the fall ops and we can give Matt a.

Big lesson on operations on how, like, keeping nice, tidy.

Folders. Yeah. Honestly, so many businesses we work with, it's mad how they have, like, you know, they'll be. They'll be doing like 5k a month. Then I'll be like, oh, how do you do X, Y and Z? And they're like, it's got a Gmail inbox. And I'm just like, how are you doing? How are you doing this? How are you.

Surviving? I think that's thing, like, a lot of it's like the boring stuff. Right. But I actually enjoy doing.

That. So that's. Yeah, being like systems and. And operations for like, it's almost like a mindset in itself, like documenting processes. It is boring. I don't do like, it's boring because it's like taking things that you know in your mind where you think like, oh, I don't need to document this because I just know it. But then it's like, well, I can't remove myself from this process unless I do it. Not many people have that mindset. So I think that's a good value.

Prop. And it's also like when founders don't want to hire, like I think you said earlier, like you have to have like 90 agencies, right, to run a.

Brand.

Yeah. Well, if you need like a different company for every single problem you have, if you can find someone who can do like 10 of those problems. 100% in theory. Yeah. So, yeah. But yeah, I did used to have a boring business as.

Well. What was your boring.

Business? I used to source.

Packaging. Oh, that's beautifully.

Boring. So.

Boring. I love a boring business. It was really.

Bad. I also sourced like you should.

Try and start the most boring business possible just out of.

Principle. Just like.

Timekeeping. Who come up with the most boring.

Business? Yeah, we sell pencil sorts of.

Businesses like the anti D to C.

Tw. I come from a boring business family. My dad, my dad sells envelopes or he used to, which is like beautifully.

Boring. Stunningly.

Boring.

Yeah. Actually quite interesting when you look into it, but not right.

Now. A lot of skus. A lot of skus. Many different size envelopes. Do you do large, large packages as well or.

Just nice custom.

Packaging? Yeah. One more, one more question. It was an audience question as well. The one piece of advice you'd give someone setting up a business in.

2023, I'd probably say don't do it yourself. As in that doesn't mean don't found it yourself. That just means have people at least know someone else going along this, going through a similar path of hell, because it is and you will suffer. So I think you need to have some people around you doing it. Originally for me, that was like one mate that I knew, Adam, who I'm going to Bali with tomorrow, he was like the OG and then it was more mates and then now I guess I'm investors as.

Well. Is that Pod.

Adam? Yeah, the pod God. The richest man in Leeds. Yeah. So I probably say that.

Broadly. I don't, I don't. It depends. Like, I think there's, there's two ways to approach it. There's one, you can find the best vehicle to make money. Depends what again what you want to do with business. I, I'm a big proponent of like, you're not gonna get fulfillment just from starting a business. Like you're not just gonna get fulfillment from making money like you are short term. And I think that's still like justifiable. So you can either go and find the best vehicle and start like a service based business if you've got no money and start there and make money and Then transition into what you want to do long term. Or you can write everything you're good at on one side of a piece of paper and everything you're interested in on the other side of paper and try and find an intersection with potential between that and start a business. There's so many opportunities in the world like tick tock, YouTube shorts. Like if you are fundamentally, if you've, if you spend time being fundamentally the best at something, you will make money from it over time. It just depends if you've got that time to work with. If you don't have that time to work with and you want to get out of like a bad situation, then you should find the best vehicle that you should fight. You should go and start a service business if you've got time to work with, should focus on like honing across craft that you love and you'll make money out of it. And that could be like cooking, sewing. The top 1% of anything make money. If you get to the top of something, regardless of what that is, you will always be successful in.

That.

Agreed. It sounds like a bit wishy washy but a lot of people like, yeah, but most people are starting this. It's like, I think you should start the vehicle. Most people watching, watching this should probably start something that's low cost time investment to cash output and then once they've made enough money to be self sustaining, then transition into what they want to do. But make sure when they do that they actually provide a good service. Because most people just rinse people for money. And that's why a like our biggest objection as an agency is I've been burnt by other people before and that's because people just rinse them for money and just off. So that'd be my broad advice. Merry Christmas everybody. Happy New Year. Have you got any New Year's goals? I can tell you.

Mine. I'm trying to reach resolutions or goals for next.

Year. Goals. I'm trying to reach 80.

Kilos. Lean. Yeah, I mean probably not as many. I mean I probably did another marathon scale the brand. You know, the only goal I didn't hit last year that I wrote last year was I was way off on the podcast. I wrote I want to get to 50,000 subscribers. I mean you could argue the podcast was the thing I put the less the least effort.

Into. I think 55, 50,000 subscribers in this niche is quite hard. Yeah, like my first.

Million. I'm not a.

Guru. They've got like 250,000 subscribers, I think, and they're Fucking.

Massive. So, yeah, I mean, I've split my life goals into categories now and it's just the brand, the podcast, fitness, like fitness isn't as big a time consume, but I always want to keep that ticking along. So next year I just want to grow the fucking brand, stay focused, which I haven't done in the past, grow the pod, because we've got a good foundation and I've fucking done a lot of fucking podcasts. And it's a lot of work doing a podcast, to be fair. More than it looks. Especially when you start it like by yourself with no audience. And then. Yeah, probably another marathon. Maybe somewhere after that. Don't know. Stay in.

Shape. Ours is two and a half mil with saw. I can't give you Connor's numbers. Kind of maybe off the.

Board. Oh, you know.

Them. Two and a.

Half. They're on the last.

Episode. Two and a half mil with saw, two and a half mil with. For you grow Connor's brand to a monster and do a.

Marathon. You gonna do a.

Marathon? Yeah, but not until like.

December. Sub.

Three. No. No.

Johns. Maybe we should all just do.

Marathons. What yours? What.

Yours? I think you could do a sub.

Three. I think I.

Could. Maybe next six.

Months. Yeah, next year. I couldn't do it this.

Year. Mine, the main one is to grow the LEAF group, which is my agency. And then I also want to set up a network in Hong Kong. And then those are the main.

Ones. Really quite a social club. Hong.

Kong. Yeah. Can hang.

On. First franchise.

Already. Yeah, those are the main ones. And then just. I don't know, I always like to do some sort of fitness.

Challenge. Yeah, I didn't do enough of that. This year underpins your life as well. Like it's just like you can't be fleshy. Yeah. It's just.

Bad. I'll probably fall in love again and have a new like 6 month traumatic courting period. And then I'll write a. If you do the movie about.

It. Should do the Twitter.

Bachelor. Yeah.

Romantic. Yeah, I'm just gonna take over the.

Ending. No, you can't take over the ending. My fucking.

Podcast. I'll let you end it, but I want to hear everybody else's New Year's resolutions in the New Year's.

Goals. How do we boost the engagement on these.

Fuckers? You ask them for.

Comments. You ask better.

Thumbnails. Yeah. Call.

Outs. Yeah. So New Year's resolutions or whatever the fuck you're working on in the comments and the shit you want to see in 23 because I know it's fairly consistent last year, but this year is gonna be more.

Consistent. And who you want to see as well.

Right?

Yeah. And who. And.

Who. Any suggestions? Put it in the comments. And I guess. Thanks for watching in 2022. She's quite.

Mad. I just had an.

Idea. Go.

On. You could do like live pod episode at Pool Party Social.

Club. Oh, we could.

Yeah. Yeah. And have a live.

Audience. The world's most immersive podcast entrepreneurial.

Community. Yeah. Any and honestly, any suggestions of how we can make this.

Better? Oh.

No. I'm starting a newsletter. So go and put your fucking.

Email in below if you've got two hours into this shit. Like, you must have some good ideas of how you can make this better. So if you've got them, hit the. Hit the comments. Yeah. Whether that's in person, podcast guests, questions, anything, hit the comments and we'll do.

Them. And with that bombshell, thanks for watching the pod, as always. Subscribe. We'll see you in the next episode. Cheers for watching. Peace.