From Corporate Banking to Bedding Brand & Dragons Den - James Higgins | The Midnight Pod Episode 72

Obviously a bit bts these days.

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Let's fucking go. Right then back with episode 72 of the Midnight Pod, we have James Higgins, founder of Ethical Bedding and someone that many viewers may have seen recently on Dragon's Den. When did that air flying straight in?

26Th of January.

I always check I hadn't said that because I'd seen Inside Knowledge that hadn't gone out, but no, it has gone on the TV. 26.

Yeah, yeah.

And then you've been pretty vocal on LinkedIn. I mean that's where I kind of came across you on a few comments about that and, and seeing what you've been doing. Then I saw you in Bali by chance and obviously we've linked up for what I think will be a very interesting episode. We just spent about 45 minutes doing what I feel like could have been half of the bloody podcast downstairs. We can revisit, but we can revisit exactly. And I guess from my perspective, you have a pretty interesting background because you, unlike a lot of founders, at least that I've had on. You weren't always a founder. You didn't dive into that straight away. You spent, I think, at least 10 years in banking.

I spent a long time doing things that probably didn't align well to how I wanted to live and didn't satisfy the logical, creative side of me. The logical side of me as well as the creative side of me. Like, I was very good at what I did, but I always had this sense that there was a lot more that I. A lot more value that I could deliver to the world and to myself. And ultimately, you know, we had, as we had this chat downstairs, some people feel fulfilled by that and I never did. And I always felt, no matter how good I was technically delivering the things that I. That would. I was, you know, paid to do, it didn't align to how I wanted to live and how I saw my future. So. But there's not, you know, I don't regret any of the things I've done throughout my career. It's all about learning. Right. And it's all skills that you develop. And I'm just glad that I'm here now, like running. Running my business in a field that aligns to my values. And yeah, I wouldn't change. I wouldn't change anything. Wouldn't change anything.

Definitely. I like to go back chronologically. I mean, we've obviously just alluded to it slightly, but talk me through briefly. Childhood, growing up, don't spend too long on it. But then how you got into banking, obviously you said to me off screen, you kind of just followed the path that was there. We've obviously since. We'll come on to ethical betting next, of course. But how did that play out? You go to uni, you just take the first job and found yourself in something that was comfortable and spent long time there.

It's a funny one. So I grew up in the mean streets of Birmingham, went to a very good school.

Don't have the accent anymore.

Well, yeah, it's, you know, get it get beaten out of you over the years, you know. Yeah. But yeah, grew up in the mean streets of Birmingham, lived there till I was 18. I went to a very good school, a very lovely family and a, you know, great upbringing. I went off to uni, studied economics and didn't really know what I wanted to do. I used to play poker at uni and make a bit of money, use it to travel, see the world when things were much less trodden, you know, Bali, 15 years ago, totally different place.

Shit, I can imagine Big time.

So I've got some stories, you know, the things and experiences and memories. And you weren't traveling with iPhones and this stuff. You were just, you know, bumbling your way around. And I was never really sure what I wanted to do. And I remember actually when I was in sixth form, so I would have been 18 and the head of sixth form, you know, talented, this and that. And I said, what you want to do? I said, don't know, don't know. I don't know yet. So, you know, I'll figure it. I'll figure that out. But I remember I was here actually in Bali, and I thought, is poker a feasible option? And, you know, several bad beats in a row, and I thought, maybe I can't. Maybe this isn't the one. And I remember having a conversation with dad and he's like, I don't really know what to do. And I was like, well, accountancy is a good option. It's safe. Do accountancy. I was like, hey, I'll do accountancy. And, you know, at uni was that. This was. So uni was economics. This was afterwards. So I went off to, like, train as accountant. I was like, within months of doing that. I'm like, this is. This is not really for me either. So ground out for as long as possible. And then I realized, like, people were making. People in my peer group were making lots of money doing lots of different things. And everyone was like, well, in banking, you're making lots of money. I'm like, well, that's, you know, that must be the route then. So I was like, okay, how do I. How do I get into that? How does that happen? So I figured that out, went down that route, worked at several big banks all over the UK Household names, and primarily in sort of like strategy and change and building organizations and divesting banks or creating new banks and part of the project team and the design team as part of that, which is when through a side hustle with my ex partner. I hate this term side hustle, but this is what it was. That was like my introduction to E Commerce. And I could kind of see the scope of what you could do in that space and how big you could grow things if you got everything aligned from an operational and organizational perspective and you knew what your levers were to pull at the right times to produce certain outcomes. Right. So from going. So from, you know, designing highly complex organizations such as banks, something such as E. Comm. Is a little bit. It's very different, but it's almost much Simpler.

Was that on Shopify? Was that pre Shopify?

No, Shopify. That was Shopify.

And what vertical was that in? Was that clothing?

Clothing. It was. So it was, it was fashion clothing, headbands, other stuff. And then I had under two. One was merch for YouTubers.

Yeah.

And then as well, awful. Like awful. Don't do that. And then as well I'd partner with a boutique owner in London and again looking at like ladies fashion but using recycled ocean waste and other sustainable materials.

Had you always thought you'd do something like that? You get into banking? I imagine it's. You get on the treadmill, so to speak, trying to climb the corporate ladder. Did you get to a point where this kind of happened overnight? You start thinking I wanted to do something else or it had it always been there and you sort of parked it and never found the time Maybe to.

The best way that I could describe it is that. I don't think I ever took the time to properly understand myself and understand what my happiness drivers are, what my values were, what I saw my long term goals as. And instead of that I thought, well, if I'm, you know, you know, the triangle like earning, learning, enjoying and for a period of time like I was earning, you know, very good money, enjoying stuff fleetingly and learning quite a lot, but then there would also be plateaus within that as well. And I think it got to a point I thought this, I can't do this forever. It doesn't fill me with, it doesn't make me feel good in what I'm doing. Remember there's like several instances I turn up and actually still does now give me a bit of anxiety when I'm in the city of London or it just, it doesn't, it just doesn't fill me with any joy.

Is that where you were based? Were you working in London?

In London primarily. I was in Edinburgh for six months or so. But primarily in London.

Yeah. In the city.

Yeah. Well, in city, off site, nearby here, there.

That feels like the polar opposite to wearing a panther print shirt in Canggu.

Why not?

Yeah. That's funny because I actually spent six months on a placement when I was 19 working in M and A in the city because I used to think that was the path I wanted to go down because I watched Wolf of Wall street, probably like a lot of teenagers at the time, and thought I want this bougie, wealthy playboy lifestyle. Then I realized the reality is 50 grand a year, 18 hour days and commuting every day in a suit. And I was Commuting in a suit in summer. And I thought there and then, I'm never wearing a fucking suit ever again.

Do you know what? The suit thing was always a bugbear of mine because I never understood it. I still don't understand a lot, you know, this uniform and you know, but I never really got that. And I used to like, I always used to like to cycle in. Rain, snow, didn't care I'd cycle in. And so what do I do with my suit? Like your suits, like here, there, and like you'd have fold this. Then like it's like what's going on here? So it just, it never, you know, looking back, there were certainly people and it's the people that make it right. Certain teams that I would have been in. There was fantastic people and people I'm still friends with to this day.

And.

There are certainly lots of wonderful experiences that I've gained from that. Like I said I wouldn't change it, but I could not ever imagine going back to that way of living. And that's not to say that it's bad, it's just bad for me. So.

Yeah, so three years ago you mentioned ethical betting. Roughly three years you've tried. You said you had a side hustle before in the E commerce space. You obviously spent 10 plus years in banking. How do you then decide or realize that this is what you want to go into and how does that look? And is that a gradual process or is that literally quit my job, go all in?

I kind of went, I kind of went all in because I could see the scope. I could see the scope and the potential in what we were doing in this company. There were proven business models at the time in the US the fastest growing bedding company in the world were utilizing eucalyptus, specifically eucalyptus for their sheets. And those companies in Australia doing it as well. And I started to research a lot more into that as a textile and its benefits for sleep and its benefits environmentally. And really the test was whether it would work in the UK market, which could be tested for a relatively low budget. I say low budget, about 50 grand we could do the test work for. That's just for inventory and then maybe another 10k in ads and some warehousing costs. But the case study for the test was relatively low whether it would be a suitable product to be consumed by the UK market. But I don't think it was a sudden thing. I think it was like a really gradual decline of my, of my being, of my essence. And I could know and I knew it was happening, but I didn't know how to stop it and I didn't know what to do about it. But there was like just this huge misalignment in me and I think it was as a result of this psychological trap that I was in. Knew that, no knowing that I would be doing something potentially for the rest of my life that I didn't want to do in order to make money, to buy things that I didn't want or need, when, you know, I'm much more suited to a more minimalistic lifestyle with a lot more freedom, a lot more creativity. And I think that's where that misalignment came. But no, it's not easy to do that. And again, you know, it's a business like mine, I don't pay myself very much money at all. And it's not only the fact that I didn't pay myself very much, there's also this opportunity cost that I could have been paid a substantial amount of money during that time, but again, to do things that would not fulfill me. So yes, that leap of faith, isn't it? You've got to take the leap of faith at some point.

So did you literally quit the job and then start the business? How did that initial period look?

It was so I remember I was doing a project with one company in the UK and that came to an end and I thought, what do I want to do? And that's when I started this one. And also had at the time there would have been three other businesses running, two in their infancy and one kind of like could, could grow, but difficult to scale. Difficult to scale, which was the first one that I started and the other two, I was like testing them. I was like, doesn't work, doesn't work. Cut my losses because cut my losses. And then this was always there in the background. But it was much more complicated to set up, to establish supply chains, to understand positioning of the product. And it was far more capital intensive than all of the other businesses. So it was arranging finances in the background. And at the time I was with a partner and an ex partner. So it was like a decision like, is this the right thing to do? Which I think was kind of like half supported, but not really supported. And at the time, you know, I actually liquidated quite a lot my personal assets in order to invest into the business as well. So it was a big risk. But I think you have to take these risks and it's only just now really. There's certainly, as you know, there's so many hairy moments like on the journey, so many. But you know, it's worth it is worth it, it's all worth it.

And product wise, did that come from wanting to get into this space? Eucalyptus specifically, was that personal experience, you realised somewhere in some time and place that there was a lack of brand doing this or did you see it doing really well elsewhere and brought you to the uk?

Do you know what it was originally? So with one of the other businesses, obviously we had lots of contractors in fulfilling different key functional areas. And I think it was because I'd been in an environment for so long that didn't align to me as a person that I'd begun to look at the world very differently. And I saw it as a place where there wasn't enough joy and there wasn't enough kindness and there wasn't people treating each other in a respectful way in the ways that I like to be treated and treat other people. And so this would have been about 20. So the company was formed February 2020. We weren't trading for a good long while after that.

Yeah.

But probably in the 12 months leading up to that, I knew that I want, I actually wanted to start something that just spreaded kindness and I didn't know how to do it. And I spoke to contractors I work for, I said, well, if you're in the ads or if you're doing this, you're doing that, like would you be prepared to work for free? And I don't know what the idea is yet, but. But I want to do something that just creates kindness in the world because there's not enough. And I think it was because of the environment that I was in for so long had lacked kindness and had lacked any joy or any love. So that's what I wanted to do. And, you know, these are the things that, from a brand that we're aligning ourselves to is kindness, love and compassion for yourself, for other people and for the planet. How you treat yourself, how you treat others and how you go about your day to day being, you know, so. That's. I didn't specifically know that it was going to be bedding or I didn't specifically it would be this textile. But I knew I wanted to do something big that would touch the lives of a lot of people and be able to impact them positively. And this is through sleep and it's also through the engagements that we have with them as customers. And, you know, we're really just at the starting point for what we can do with this brand. I believe in terms of, you know, As a, as a, as a founder and as a business owner, if you have the ability to positively influence people's lives in whatever area that might they. That may be. What a wonderful thing. What a wonderful thing. And I hope for us to be able to do that as the brand grows through different areas of like holistic well being, sleep. And if you can touch and impact just one person's life and improve it and they go ahead and improve someone else's life. And that's wonderful. That's what life is.

Yeah.

And you know, I think there's.

I.

Feel so strongly about this and I think it's because I've been in. I spent so much time in this other life where there just wasn't this joy for me. And I go about my whole life with joy now. So it's kind of wonderful.

Yeah, it's good to see. But you mentioned as well. So I guess having that part is great, Having the core motivation, but then figuring out how that becomes a business, I guess is the other part. And you mentioned you tested a few different ideas. Were there different products that you thought could fall into that category? And then you landed on betting. Because you tested it and it worked.

Yeah. No. So the D2C space, so betting was growing as a. In the DTC space anyway. So I won't name drop any like competitors or like frenemies or whatever you want to call it, but I could see that there was a trajectory of growth in that space anyway. And I was looking at companies specifically in the US that had had a ridiculously fast pace of growth for very niche products. And it was, you know, I was always listening to Shopify experts podcasts.

Yeah.

And using that as inspiration for, for idea generation. And it was really that one. A couple of others. I scoped them out to think how feasible, how feasible is that as a business and what's the, what's the risk involved in testing it? And when I say testing, I mean what's the minimum? What's the, what's the MVP look like?

Yeah.

To land goods. It's already had warehouse capability in the UK to landgoods and get them out to customers with barebones website, minimal advertising. And this is pre iOS 14. So we did all of our testing and original business modeling, which is obviously totally superseded now around pre iOS 14 testing when the world was ever so slightly different again, but identified that there was a need for it. And I was always very firm on the values of what I wanted us as a company to stand by. And there was never an intention of this being like a quick smash and grab in and out business like fidget spinners, like hitting a trend, I'm thinking in decades here. I'm not thinking in months or years for what success looks like. And I think what we've got, what we've built the foundation of now there is a clear. It's clear to me that we can go really big with this.

Definitely. So validating an idea. How did that look to you? Is that a case of we run ads like you said, pre Rs14 and we get conversions at XCAC. Like how long do you do that before you decide to then. Well, I guess post validation, commit to the business and then what does that look like in terms of supply chain? The products you initially launched with and then in the first year and I guess. So it's been two years now you've.

Been trading roughly two years proper trading, I would say.

Yeah.

Although. So the full story would be. So company formed, let's say Q1. So Feb 2020. We weren't selling anything really until Q3 start of Q3. It was all sort of like idea stage at this point, which is stupid because actually time bound us for seis. But originally we were manufacturing in Portugal and it was like bare bones product set, so pillowcases, duvet cover, fitted sheet and we were running as you say, Facebook ads. We weren't doing Google PPC at the time, it was just Facebook ads and we were converting relatively well. I think we tested with like 5 10k budget and we were hitting 2.4. Roughly 2.4 ROAS which is enough for us to break even with a little bit of margin in it and obviously with lifetime value of customers like happy days, off we go. So I'm like okay, so the concept kind of works. In Q1 2021, pretty much all the products started failing.

How so? I've been there before.

Pretty much everything in fact everything failed. Everything failed. The. We went to a. I won't name the names but I went to. I actually tried to manufacture in the UK originally. No one would go near it. And then looked in two niche or two niche if you imagine that they would be. There aren't even. You can't even. I don't think anyone's even doing cotton or anything like any of this type of stuff. It just doesn't exist there. And you would. There were a few places that did have capability but it'd be so expensive to do it there because have to shut down all of the existing operations to use our textiles Right. So I found who the one of the manufacturers for the White company. I'm like, great. They're going to know what they're doing. And they do with cotton and with linen and with lots of other things. And with eucalyptus. They don't know what they're doing. And there was a treatment that was not added to our product at a particular stage of development, which meant that it suffered from like incredible piling. So when stuff gets like very bobbly now, it's a delicate textile in itself, eucalyptus. So it does need to be treated with a little bit of care. But the rate of failure was like colossal. And I remember the first few customer, like, complaints came through. I'm like, this is weird when you.

Say failure as in after they've washed it, for example.

So it'll be after ship. Yeah. So it's after like multiple, let's say after four or five washes, it starts to. It starts to bubble a lot. And so we had tested it, but when more and more and more and more customers started complaining, I was like, okay, like, this is like bad news.

Yeah.

So went back to the manufacturer, I was like, look, this is an issue. Then they did load of tests and this and that and that, and they actually argued with for ages, you know, and tried to screw us because we're small and they're big and that's what happens in the world. And we ended up taking a settlement and then donating a huge amount of inventory to. I think it was a hospice that was connected through someone in the warehouse whose mother had been there, basically. But I remember getting to getting in touch with all the customers, not just the ones that had product issues, but all of them in totality, and just said, stick with us, we'll fix it. And knowing there's a huge cost attached to that as a bootstrapped company, that's obviously coming out of my pocket.

Right?

Yeah. But it's the right thing to do. So fast forward now. So we're now in Q1, 20, 21 with, let's call it 50, 60 grand, like down concept works from a. From a CAC perspective. But.

But the product doesn't.

Product doesn't work.

Yeah.

So started looking out for looking. And it takes a little, I mean, it takes a long time to establish this supply chain. So looked in various places. We looked in India, we looked in Pakistan, we looked in China. Time after time. All of the highest quality in terms of stitching, in terms of finish of the products came from China. So we had one supplier actually in India that's very good as well. But it's a difficult textile to work with. And in China, obviously, you know, big silk trade there over the years, more used to working with lyocell or viscose type, you know, bamboo type fabrics. So I re established the supply chain had said, like proof of concept, like tick, it works. I'm like, now what? So it was almost like dormant for a long time, the company.

Yeah.

And then we went again. But we increased the product range, which was a mistake as well. So we kind of had this. You like, should I increase the product range? I'm thinking, yeah, I've done that as well. So we went for, for toppers, protectors, everything like, you know, full sweet pillows, duvets.

And you made sure to test more than five washes this time.

Yeah, well, the testing. We had the testing reports back from the Portuguese. It's brilliant. I'm like, great. This is great. So. But we learned lessons again here originally in the proof of concept we tested, you know, double size, King size, Super King. That makes up 95% or more.

I've got a Super King back home. Best thing I ever bought.

Super King's. Unbelievable.

Yeah.

Why would you not have a Super King?

It's like a square.

So we actually sell tons of Super King. If anything goes out of stock, it's Super King. So we always think how you won't need that many. It's always like people like just churn through it. So we've dumped a load more cash in single sizes and empress sizes. People don't really buy them, but this is the things that you learn. And we're learning them on what?

Sizing is a nightmare.

It's a comparable, a comparatively low budget now. But you kind of. These are, these are lessons that we'll use when we go into different, you know, geographies, you just stock the hype. We just go high velocity, you know, main stuff that we want. So fast forward now. So we're now Q4, just about 20, 22 and we've got the new products. We're ready to launch. I found the company who were based in Birmingham, who built the website for the fastest growing bedding company in the world. The fact that I'm from Birmingham and they were there, I'm like, this is a coincidence, but let's go with it. I don't think they should have really worked for us, but they did. And off we went. Me having been dormant for a while in this.

Dormant effectively from the start of 21.

To the end of 22, except semi dormant. Semi dormant.

So you just weren't running ads. Could people buy product?

They could buy products. Did we switch off at any point? No, they could buy product. So we were still putting money into SEO. All the time we were putting money into SEO and I've always been so adamant about that. Before we were even selling any products, I was investing in SEO and the longer term play for us is that 70.

I've literally never done that.

You know, SEO. I'm probably saying I love it.

I've always been heavy, heavy, heavy. Paid ads.

Love it, love SEO. It depends on the type of business, right. But I don't know, I'll have a little proper geek, so I'll have a little dig around and see.

Probably should add it in. It's another channel.

Right, great. It's perpetual revenue, right. And particularly in something like our space, because you can give people value up front, right? You can give them sleep tips, you can give them home decor and bedroom and things. And it's just perpetual revenue. So the longer term in the D2C space that we have, revenue model for us as a bedding company will be 70 to 80%, should be organic and only sort of like, yeah, high fucking 20 to 30 will be paid acquisition. So anyway, so Fast forward to Q4 or end of Q3, really, 2022. You might need some graphics for the timeline here.

Yeah.

And I'm like, right, here we go. Like we've mapped it all out. I've like, you know, put, you know, another doubled down, triple down on inventory, ready to go, like paid acquisition and iOS, iOS like 14. And I'm like, I'm gonna say this isn't.

Yeah, a lot of people panicked around then.

I'm like, I'm like, what's happening here? But I'd built a. Built like, you know, carefully built a team, a couple of which are still here in the background, ready for this like, explosion. And we didn't. We found it difficult to acquire customers at the price that we were previously. We didn't understand why and we kept trying.

A lot of fucking brands struggled to do that, particularly over the past two years.

I've heard it's changing now. Meta.

Yeah, I mean, I still think it's the biggest channel of DTC brands for sure, paid acquisition wise. But it's definitely not what it was in 2020.

Yeah, it's flipping. It's flipping back though. Obviously where I remember I saw the study, it's like flipping back a little bit.

Probably because a lot of brands fucking died and had to Give up on it. So the ones that stuck through or have just started, everything comes in cycles. I guess it's never going to be completely fucked.

And from here for a while as well. Like Google. Google's getting like super pricey.

Yeah.

Everyone'S just like has to deploy their capital somewhere, right? But.

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Course and let me know what you think. I'd be glad to have you in there. Let's fucking go.

So it wasn't like another one of these moments where it was like back to the drawing board, but it was like we need to rethink what we're doing here. I wouldn't say fortunately, I'd always invested heavily in SEO, but it's something that we've always had to fall back on knowing that yeah, even if we're not paying on, you know, paying for customer acquisition directly, that's always there and it's growing. And I think that it's something like it's about 6 or 700% organic traffic increase in the last 12 months. And it's something like it hovers around sort of 14, 15,000 now and we think it will go back up, we think it will go up again double, triple, maybe some of them will be up around maybe 40,000 organic traffic on the monthly with people who are specifically looking for our types of products. And it just keeps these things keep compounding and keep compounding. Which is why I said you're thinking decades rather than months or years, particularly for a business like ours.

So have you made paid work then or is that something.

We have fleetingly made it work occasionally. And I don't know how much scouting you did on the LinkedIn but imagine as a start, you know, a fresh brand that nobody's familiar with. Very few agencies are going to work on a model for with a profit share, particularly with a profit share. They might work on a revenue show, they might work on a percentage of ad spend basis. But I put a post out on LinkedIn specifically targeting companies that would work on a profit share which would mean using a broad break even roas across the board and drill down for certain products. For pillowcases, it just doesn't work. And for mattresses like you know, you've got a 1500 pound mattress, it just doesn't work. But very broadly set targets based on what a break even roas would be, set a margin of 10% which would be ethical bedding margin straight off the back and then do a profit share after that based on what a breakeven rouse would be after. We've stripped out product costs, payment processor fees, returns, packaging, postage, blah, blah. And quite a few got back to us and there were three or four frontrunners for a while that wanted to do it and some of the bigger agencies as well were kind of like looking at it thinking, don't know, maybe. But we're pretty confident now that we've got the right partner to really big bang.

Have you worked with an agency previously?

Unpaid loads.

I've been through the mill with agencies loads. I know the space very well for good and bad. Yeah, there's a lot of. I think there's too many agencies these days.

I think the model needs to change.

In what way? Because I have my own views on this. I'd be interested to hear what you think I would say fundamentally. I don't know if you're going to say the same thing. I think the problem with agencies is they get paid regardless.

Correct.

And they don't understand from a founder perspective how that doesn't work because, and I've said it on the podcast when I'll piss off a lot of agencies and I know plenty of agency owners, I've said this to their face. There's no risk running an agency basically because. Especially when you start one because you're getting paid regardless.

I could run an agency.

Yeah.

You sure?

It's a much easier business I'll flower say that than running a brand in every single way. Arguably it's a More customer facing business for sure. Like bigger customers. It's a people business I guess, which I don't think I'd be very good at because I don't want to deal with clients all day long, which is why I don't run an agency. But yeah, I think for me agencies get paid regardless. And I've had a problem. I've worked with good and bad agencies. The guys I'm with now I think are good but it's still fundamentally a challenge I think, especially in a new brand. So is that what you're going to say or words that effect?

Words to that effect. But I mean I think that write this down in fact timestamp it, right? The most successful agencies over the next in D2C space or just generally over the next, let's say three years, they'll be the ones that understand the client's needs the most. And that means drilling down specifically into the numbers for how a company is making money on those products and taking profit shares which are related to their performance based on that. And of course it depends on what deliverables are set within that. So our guys at the moment that we're having these conversations with, I'll explain why I've been waiting to like get this formalized because we've got a raise going on, blah blah, blah. But. They need to be partners and they need to share in the successes.

Yeah, I agree.

And the most successful ones will be the ones that, that are tied in for the long run and bear risk. I'm all about risk mitigation now. So I've taken on lots of risk in this business at the early stages that's taken on more banking history coming in then I've taken on more risk and I'm at a point now where I'm like okay, we're running at break even on the monthly, so now is probably quite a good time to start mitigating lots of this risk. But had had this, you know, rewind three years, nobody would have taken that work on. But now that there's this credibility in the brand and some more awareness and they can see there's a track record of success in what we're doing there, they'll be more inclined to do it. Right now I'm not saying that necessarily what we've got planned with the next agency we're working with will work, but what I can say is that we've structured the contracts with the deliverables and everybody knowing what they should be doing, when they should be doing it, why they should Be doing it in such a way that everybody can win together and it removes all the risk from the business. Agencies need to understand that their goal is to add value to the business, that business or their clients that they're working with. And I think that's been lost somewhere. And the retainer model just doesn't work. Maybe if for much, much bigger clients it does work where they might have, I don't know, like full time project teams pretty much that are assigned to them. Right. But there are a few like pretty smart cookies out there that have kind of realized this and there's a few and you know, we would be some of the faster growing agencies and they're like, well actually like founders just don't, they don't want to work this way anymore. They can't.

And there's, there's too, there's too much choice now because there's a lot of agencies competing for. I think that there must be 20 agencies to every brand in some ways in certain places. I certainly know 20 agency owners for every brand owner. Maybe that's just the bubble.

I mean actually.

So it's true. Actually it is true.

Yeah.

So they're gonna have to start increasing the appeal of what they're doing rather than just offering retainers. I completely agree.

When would you go in house?

I've been in house before with media buying. I think, I actually think to be fair, media buying is one of few things that is better with an agency than in house, regardless of the size of the business, in my opinion. Because. And I've tried both, so like I can say that, but largely because I think media buying, it's never going to be a full time job. So you don't need someone working like 10 hours a day. It's just, you just don't. Creative maybe, but you benefit from having the insight of agencies working with say 10, 20 other clients. I think because, because they can see what's broadly happening in the industry, whereas if you have in house, they're pigeonholed. So freelancer that's got all the clients or agency kind of the same thing. But I definitely think it's better not to be in house for that. Most of the things ultimately, if you can afford it, I think it's better in house. But media buying is not one.

Yeah, I think I tend to agree. I'm just thinking about it, right. So I've got this sheet and I share it with a few people. It's like my fuel, my profit analysis sheet for direct acquisition. Right. And across all my columns like how much you're gonna spend on monthly ads and how we get down to the bottom line. Like product costs, payment processor fees, this, that returns postage, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's basically how every contract should be structured for an agency. Like why is it not? And so much so it's like, and this is the funny thing for us, so I've put a 10% margin for us via paid acquisition first that comes out before we even consider it to be profit. Right. In reality, I'm actually happy to acquire customers at break even and really I'm probably even quite happy to acquire customers at a small loss. That's different for your model depending on the level of the subscription links. But we can sort of like map out pretty clearly, you know, what uplift we will get in, you know, month three, month six months, 12 sort of. And we don't know what that will look like in year 2, 3, 5, etc. But it shouldn't be so complicated, should it? I don't know why that isn't just the model for how.

It's because it means if they don't perform they won't get paid, which most agencies aren't willing to do. So that's the fundamental flaw. And I agree. But it's difficult to find agencies which will work that way. Difficult to find good agencies in general in my opinion, having worked with like seven of them. Or I'm just a terrible client.

It could be either or. No, you're not.

But my agency I work with now, I've worked with them before. They're actually my mates as well, which definitely helps. But they're also invested in the business. So that's separate to the agreement we have in terms of monthly to month. But I think it definitely helps because they just care more. So it's important.

One of these. We've got a raise going on at the moment. And when's this going out?

Two, three weeks.

Fine. I'm still doing like negotiating contracts at the moment. But it's a similar type of scenario. Like the guy that's, that owns the agency that I'm 99 sure is the, is going to be the one that wins the contract. You know, we're having conversations about him investing. Not huge ticket, but enough that it's.

Got skin in the game basically.

Yeah. And I think that that's really, I think that's really important. Yeah. And you know, there's one, one other guy in the, in the team that's, that's invested, you know, know not an insignificant amount of money into the business. And I think that's really important.

I think it's just aligning key people.

You know, so makes a lot of.

Sense in a lot of things in life.

Yeah.

Just on that lane, coming up to that area, broadly. I think the raising area is interesting. You could speak two hours about it. I certainly could, yeah. But before that, Dragon's Den, because that. That's relevant to all this. Yeah. Where did that come about? How did that come about? And then maybe we'll talk what you can share about the stuff. I can't behind the scenes, actually. Yeah.

I actually don't know what. I don't know. I've signed all sorts of stuff, so I don't know what I can or can't say or whatever. Like, I don't know. Worry about this tomorrow, probably. So I was in Costa Rica last winter and I came back and my friends, a couple of friends for a while, been like, oh, you need to, you know, apply for Dragonstone. I was, ah, I don't know. And it was. It just started again. I was watching it on TV with my mum and she said. She said, you should really just go on that. You'll enjoy that. And my mate was on me. So I said, oh, go on then. So I applied. And then next morning, like, straight on the phone, they were like, sounds like a really interesting business. Blah, blah. Accelerated the application process. Remember at the ideal home show at the time, and there was like a final screening interview and I was like, at the ideal home show, like, bouncing around on the bed, like, showing up on, like, pillowcases or something or whatever. I love it. Once I get going at these shows, I do love it.

You've never been to a trade show? As my brand, I've been to one.

I think it can be tiring, but if you get into it, you'd love it. So I just make sure there's good music on, like, good atmosphere, some aromatics, like, everyone, like, try and make people feel good, keep the energy high.

Yeah.

And they are fun. They are really good. So, yeah, that all happened very quickly and they were wanting to film very quickly as well, so we were one of the first that would have been filmed. And, yeah, it's an interesting experience. There's a lot of what I would say, there's a lot of due diligence that goes in behind the scenes in terms of what they're looking at in the business. But, I mean, most of it's there anyway, but there's certain things you can and can't say or whatever.

And.

Like most things in life, keep in mind. So use this as a baseline, like, you know, mindset. I. I'm convinced my business is going to absolutely smash it. Demolish him. Right. Convinced. Like, I wouldn't put so much time, so much effort. Effort into it. You know, there's a stack of evidence that suggests this is the route, that the direction that things are moving. So I'm like. Did a bit of prep, like, wrote, you know, what would be like a broadly, you know, sensible pitch and. But I was enjoying it. So, you know, enjoying the. The process of being there. You know, you speaking to the producers and how does it go for people.

That don't know, including myself. Are you there for a day? Yes. It looks like it's filmed in a warehouse. Or is it. Is that a studio?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can say this. So it's film.

We can always cut it afterwards. So say everything and then if you need to remove, we can.

So it's filmed in. We won't know whether it's your camera, whether it needs to be removed or not. So. With joint liability.

Yeah.

So it's filmed in BBC Studios, Manchester, by. Where they film the Crystal. It's where the Crystal Maze thing is. I don't know.

Right, okay. Yeah.

So it's by there and it's in this huge warehouse. You go there the day before. Now, for us, if you're selling, you know, say if you went on there with your products, it's like you just bring them in. You have a platform and it looks nice. I'm like, driving vans around the country with, like, bedding, like mattresses, like, bed, like all this stuff, like, ready to set it up, like, steaming all the beds, prepp, making it look good. But you go there the day before, they kind of like, make you feel a little bit comfortable. Show you be like, behind the scenes, like, what's, you know, what the setup will be and then you stay there overnight and. And my. My pitch was in the morning, slept terribly, was terribly nervous. Hate presenting to this day, myself. To this day, I hate presenting.

I'm all right on the pod, but if I was going in front of TV cameras, the worst. I hate it. But I'm back in school reading out a GCSE project.

And even if you know your stuff, and I've been obviously doing various presentations lately to investors and different things and bigger audiences, and still I'm just like, whoa. So I just do it as, like a conversational style and I just go. I like to just talk and I'M very conversational in my approach to how I do things. I'm there trying to memorize all this stuff that I need to say and blah, blah, blah. But yes, you get there in the morning, they do your hair and makeup and, you know, wear this, don't wear that, blah, blah, blah, you know, and it's.

There's a.

They build tension, right. So you know that you're going in, but you don't quite know when and you're thinking, I don't know what time I was going through. Might be, let's say 10am can you.

Meet and speak to the other people pitching or is it all.

I met one of the guy there, a young guy. If we give him a shout out, he'll love it.

I think I know who you're gonna say.

Go on.

Is it the guy that has. In fact. No, say it first because if it's the guy, I think he Messages me on LinkedIn. If it's him. I don't know if it's him, who is it?

There you go.

What's the business? I'm gonna look so bad now I've forgotten what his business is. He's like 19.

Yeah, yeah.

He went on with. Was it the phone case thing?

No.

Was it phone cases?

Cards?

Sorry, yeah. No, I thought something else was a.

Young man with phone cases.

Might have been phone cases. I completely. Custom cards. Sorry. Debit cards. Yeah, phone cases. I'm mixing up with some guy on Instagram.

So he's a great guy.

Yeah. So he's messed me a few times. He watches the pod, so.

Miles Dickinson, big shout out to.

Yeah, I'm gonna sound terrible now. He's messaged me multiple times. I've just fudged his fucking business.

But he's got a really cool business like, lovely guy. So we were just like laughing and joking a bit before we went on there. State obviously stayed in touch with them. I actually went up when I was in the UK recently. I was staying in Derbyshire for a while with a friend. Drove over to Manchester to see him for the day, had some breakfast and just caught up with him. He's a really good guy and I like to try and help him out with a little few bits and just thought, I don't know, chatting to him last night, just a really great guy. You just want to see someone succeed. They've just got such a good mindset and energy. And his girlfriend actually does some stuff in the socials for ethical betting. Oh, really? And. But yes, there's two of you. Where were we what we talking the build up?

Yes, the building tension. You've seen him behind the scenes.

So saw him. You see the team. There was a few little bits, actually. So I was running through what I wanted to say and I could. I used for a while, I could pretty much recite it and see. I went through it with the producers. There's a big team, let's say 20, like, you know, some sound and this and that and that and that. And they loved the pitch. I felt confident going in there. I thought, this is great. And then about, let's say, 10 minutes before I went on to go through to the next stage of the production, one of the producers came through and said, james, we don't like your. Essentially not word for word. We don't like your valuation. And also the Dragons like to invest between 60 and 70,000. And I thought, well, that's weird.

What was your pitch financially?

So we were going in at 2.5 and we were asking for 150.

Yeah. Which also, just before going on, which they had known.

Which they had known for. The contact was made in, let's say, February, and they'd known that. And this is like on the day of filming, 6th of May, I believe it was. And they were like, would you like to adjust your valuation and the amount that you're asking for? And I'm like, what's going on here? This is not. This isn't like, good etiquette, for starters. And you would have. Could have known this, like, a long time ago, maybe, you know, I could have had a rethink about whether I. Whether I even wanted to be there. And so I found that a little bit unsettling.

Did you adjust it?

No.

And that was on their advice or the Dragons advice. How was it pitched?

That would have been. It would have been one of the seat, like, exec producers there, presumably. I can't remember who. I can't remember exactly who she was. I thought, that's weird. Isn't that strange? So she said, well, you can go, you know, you can go with what you want, but they're going to give you a hard time if you. If you, you know, go out there and ask for this amount of money at that valuation level. I thought, that's okay. Like, I'm confident in myself, I'm confident in my. In my business. I know the size of our market, I know how we're going to attack it, and that's okay. Like, I'm happy to have these conversations with people, with anyone, and particularly potential investors. That's what you're there for.

Yeah.

You know, as I said, it's this conversational style that I would have. I said, but that's, you know, that's where we're at. And this is what we'll use that money for. And it's not. I'm not here to satisfy them. I'm here to pitch my business. Right. And I think I took advice from several other people before and didn't really think of it this way, but I was told to just. They. All the. All the advice they gave me was to treat it as a PR exercise.

I was going to come on to.

That because I just turned up and I was like, you know, I'm James. I've got this cool bedding company, like, blah, blah. Let's just, you know, let's just go. So anyway, that was a few minutes before I went on. And then they take you through. You get asked some interview questions beforehand. Now, what's interesting is that immediately before, you might get asked maybe five, possibly eight questions.

By the Dragons.

No, no, no. By. By an interviewer.

You're not even in front of them at this point, then.

No, no, no. See, so before, before there's any inclination, you know, before there's any indication you're going to go on, maybe get asked five or eight questions before, which they, which they pre record before you going through, and then again, five or eight questions afterwards. Of course, they're doing this to create different moods and narratives that they might want to portray. Say, what answered all the questions. Da, da, da. And then you go through to a different area behind the scenes, and you're kind of like walking around in a. In a, you know, setup lift area where you see, like, there's the jug of water. Ah, there's the lift. They're like, james, you need to stand here and press the button here. Like, okay. I remember at the time as well. You might be able to see if you watch the episode back. I had come back to the uk freezing cold, cycling to the gym. I'd fallen off my bike, shattered, shattered my elbow, like, horrendously broken. I still concentrate on it now. And I was like, I was actually in pain this whole time, like when I'm doing filming this thing anyway. And I thought you just battle through. I remember thinking at the time, like, when I was in there, I was like, it's actually starting to get a bit painful. But anyway. And they get you walking up and down for me anyway, for ages. And I think they're doing it to try and get Good shots, but also to build. To build some tension. The types of music that they piped in at the start compared to the middle, compared to the end. And I felt like I was in walking backwards and forwards, pressing this lift button for half an hour, like waiting. I don't know if it's like waiting to unsettle you or waiting for it. Maybe it's just, I don't know, coincidence, but I doubt it sounds like it. So. And then, yeah, then you. Then you're in there. You go through. But you know, it's very. It's an amazing experience and I didn't reflect on it. I wish I actually reflected on it more. And I did message a few close friends that are in a group that are related to this business and recorded some voice notes immediately of my. Of my feelings before and after. Enduring as a reflection. Which is. Which is great. But I was in there for a long time. I was in there for about three. About three hours.

Three hours.

Fuck.

I was gonna say how long you in front of the. In front of them? Because obviously it looks like a five minute pitch when you watched an episode.

Yeah. So it's about. It's about three hours.

I remember three hours of all. They're all sat there and you're stood.

Up in front of them. Something like that. Maybe I'd gone through for three hours. So let's say half an hour pressing the button.

Yeah.

Two and a half hours with the pitch.

Is that because there's just so much that isn't aired or is that heaps and heaps? Are they just framing the narrative? That's a long time.

But I think Miles said he was in there for an hour, something like that. But I don't know if it's because of the nature of our business being. I don't know if it's the nature of our business. I was having very interesting conversations with all of them, actually when I first went through. They said, you go through and you stand on this X. And I still on the X. And then I started like moving around and they're like, I won't say who it was, but I was basically getting in trouble for not standing on the X. And I was like, okay, that's the vibe. But I enjoyed the experience. I enjoyed talking about my business and to each of them. And there were some really fascinating conversations that went on in there about the journey that we'd been on so far, where we were, the market, where we saw our place in the market, my background, all of these things. And so when when it was aired, it was very disappointing to see that not only what we built as a brand had kind of been overlooked, the products had been overlooked, and there was obviously a narrative for each episode that they try and create. And it's like, James worked in the city for 10 years, like, villain, like, boo. It's like, hang on a second, what's going on here? But this is just the nature of the beast. And as with anything in life, you learn lessons from these things. And, like, I certainly wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't have changed anything as a result of that. But what's disappointing is that for me, I wasn't necessarily disappointed for myself. Like, obviously, the. One of the things that you have, you know, you place a lot of value on is the value of your character and the value of how you treat people and the value and the value of know what you're trying to do in the world. And I think what I'm trying to do in the world is quite unique in terms of changing people's mindsets and philosophies for how they consume and consciousness. But all of that was just overlooked and it was like, well, let's just create this story to frame this in a certain way. And I'd say, as well, you know, this would be a bit of a warning. I'm not going to tell. Has Miles been getting in touch with you? Because he wants to go on the pod.

I think he said he just watches the pod. He wanted to chat. He'd be a good guest, actually.

He's a good lad. So I won't tell all the story with what's been going on with his and his offer and how that's taken, because that's not my place to say, but have a chat with him. But I think, you know, there's probably quite a lot of entrepreneurs that go on there and. Maybe slightly naive in there, and I was certainly naive in my. I'm just like, yeah, I'm nice, everyone will be nice to me. It's like. Doesn't work like that. So I wouldn't say for anyone not to do it, but I would say just be mindful of what you desire as an outcome as a result of it and understand that, you know, you're signing your life away for it to be sort of like framed in any which way the BBC chooses for it to be framed.

Did you notice a PR boost when the episode went live in terms of the exposure to the brand and you.

So website, etc. Yeah, there's a huge. I can't remember the exact numbers. Huge website traffic boost, decent revenue boost, blah, blah. There's certainly more interest around the business and my profile now which will be increasingly be the case as you would expect with this type of business. But interestingly so we have a PR team and the PR team once we had the screening date which they didn't tell you until six weeks out, which is. And I kept saying like we need to manage, we need to plan our, our inventory for when they're screens. Right? Yeah, very limited information for what we, what we could, you know what they would tell us. The all of the major publications which we would want to have been featured in, we had connections to all of them, had their stories for what would be happening for that episode pre booked months in advance. So on the same episode as ours, it was the guy who had the pop up 3D chess and some pop up storybooks which was the headline for all of the major publications immediately after that episode landing. And my PR guys couldn't understand what was going on because they're like, well they said they've got their stories already. I'm like what's going on here? And actually most of the major news publications we were like an also run at like the bottom of like they're like these were the businesses on this episode and I'm like what is going on here? So I think, I don't know if I, if I ruffled some feathers when I was in there. I think they probably didn't like it that I was very clear on what I saw and I would have negotiated on the valuation but not to the level. There was an offer from Tooker Solomon and I wouldn't have negotiated to the level that was being.

What was the offer?

I think I missed that he wanted half the business for the 150,000 and I think that's just rude. Well, I think that he probably wanted for me to negotiate to let's say 30% but even then it's like no, there's no value in that for me. So I don't know if there was a little bit of, I don't know, hurt there from the BBC or from whatever was going on. I've got some theories about some stuff that we. Or maybe it's just, you know, that's the. What the universe want, that's what the universe needed to do. But, but yeah. So increasingly. So now there's much more awareness of us as a brand and as you know, like it's a, it's a perpetual ongoing piece not just about the brand, but also a lot of the work that we'll be doing post raise. So if this goes out in three or four weeks time, do you say two or three or three or four, something like that. So we'll have finished the, finished like the main part of the public visible rays through cedars and then we'll do, we'll do some other stuff through some angels and some other things. But a lot of what we're going to do from a business, you know, business strategy perspective is there'll be a wrapper around my profile. I'll hopefully have some interesting people to speak to on a podcast myself. There'll be a lot. There'll be a piece that I'm doing, we'll be doing around entrepreneurship, mindset, holistic well being, which will encompass sleep, nutrition, exercise and who knows what that might lead into. Maybe relationships or other things, like things that are of interest and things that I think that I can give value back to the world in. And there is a whole wrapper that we're mapping out behind the scenes for how it's not just as a customer acquisition strategy, but it's about building brand advocacy through, through people having an understanding of me and my mindset and how I live and as you live in quite an extraordinary way. I wouldn't describe the way that I live extraordinary. I'd describe it as unusual and I'd probably describe the way that my mind works to be extremely unusual. You know, as you said downstairs earlier, like, what was your words? What were you?

A lunatic.

Thank you.

To build a brand, to build a business, but certainly to build a DC brand.

So as long as we're happy lunatics and we're doing what we love, you know, definitely.

Do you think your personal brand has a big impact on the brand? Because something I've thought about a lot. I never planned to have a personal brand at a start, a fucking podcast. And people told me I had a personal brand. I was like, well, I guess kind of. And like the pink lights and sheers kind of lines with my actual mushroom brand. But then I never want the brand to be about me because then it's like it relies on me more. It might be unexitable, hypothetically in the future. But I also think brands that have found a story in context always win. And I think they're better brands and people relate to them more. Like if I look at a competitor and I can't say anything about the, the founder or the story, it just feels faceless to me. I don't know how you view that.

So what your business is selling is really interesting. It's really fascinating. Think about it, isn't it?

It's cool. Yeah.

Think about what I'm selling, bro. Bed sheets. How interesting can you make bed sheets? And this is the challenge that we face.

Well, I guess the story about the bigger picture, sustainability, like you said, adding kindness to the world, etc. That's the interesting part, which if you just go into a fucking, I don't know, sheet shop.

A sheet shop. Say it for us five times.

Yeah, exactly. Never said that before, but somewhere that. So I don't know, sheets, I guess you are adding, I don't know, you're saying it's a boring product. I suppose on paper maybe it is, but the story behind it doesn't have to be.

So this, so this is the other thing that we've kind of like realized. So I'm very passionate about sustainability and I'm very passionate about the world, preserving the world and people having. Living their lives and to become the best humans that they can be.

Right.

Which is why a product like yours is amazing as well. Right. Because it's enabling people.

It does lend itself to that narrative. Yeah.

What we've found is that a lot of customers, they love our products because their sleep improves their skin. Their skin improves the product. They're more hygienic, they're softer. It's a wonderful, luxurious sleep product. Everybody should be sleeping in eucalyptus and not cotton.

I have to try this shit now.

Yeah, go to the sheet shop. Yeah, I will actually, like, I know you'll be in London, won't you? So easy peasy. But the, and I would say I don't know for certain but there seems to be a segment of customers, but it's almost like, you know, lovely soft bedding, our sleep's improved and it's great that they're sustainable. It's almost like, oh, and it's like, it's nice. But it doesn't necessarily seem to be the driving factor for why, why people would love our, would love our products.

So.

Because of the size of us and because we are small and agile and this is the thing in the linens and the bedding space in general, there's a lot of very old, multi generation family, really old businesses that have captured just huge portions of it and people are very familiar with them and typically how they're marketed, they're marketing themselves. When I say boring, the product's been boring. There's only so many ways that you can make a photo or a Video of a bed or bedding look interesting. Think about from like a pattern interrupt perspective or it's just very difficult. It's very difficult. And so I'm super excited. It's really going to be sort of about July. This stuff's going to start landing but we're having a brand refresh in terms of how we're going to be positioning ourselves in this more interesting way. You know.

And.

It doesn't center around me. But for instance, lots of more people are going to be shopping or they do already with using video content. Right. So if you imagine like bottom of the funnel to get people over the line, you might use ugc. But we're also going to test stuff with, with me and top and top, middle certainly will be stuff that's got me doing stuff or my friends doing stuff in weird places that may be sort of related to bedding but not really like related to bedding. And it's these bits of the puzzles that we're putting together and again, you know, thinking in decades, not thinking in years here. So you know, let's say five year, ten year plan. But yeah, it's not, it's not boring. But in order to market it in an interesting way.

Difficult to make it difficult. Yeah, it's difficult definitely.

So I won't reveal too much about what we've got planned, but it's going to be, you know, we can be because of that, because of our size, we can be a little bit agile and a little bit gorilla in what we do. So tell me, tell me about your mushroom. Anyway.

Yeah, I did a 6 meter inflatable mushroom that I thought was a great idea to drive around central London, which we then did. This is the first like offline stunt I've ever done because I think brands should be doing more of that. And I was like, fuck it. And you just grow a pair of balls and do some stuff that isn't paid ads.

Yeah.

And it basically fucked up because you can't drive with it because I thought it was way more rigid than it was. So we have to just. I wasn't there but people organized it. I had this vision of this massive mushroom going past Parliament and you know, just loads of sick content because who the fuck does that? Well, at least we've tried first but we couldn't get it like under certain bridges. I mean, I think it was bigger than we thought and then it wouldn't stay inflated. And then people started complaining on the street saying it was gonna like be a health hazard. And I was like oh, God. So we got a few bits of content from it, but it was the first attempt.

Would you do it? Would you do it again?

I'm definitely gonna do it again, but I'm gonna drive the van because I think whoever was driving the van was worried about permits and shit. And I was like, what do you not get about it's a stunt, it's not meant to be, like, allowed.

How'd you feel? How do you feel about driving the van?

I can do it.

Yeah. So I'm like, regularly, like the van, like the van driver guy. Yeah.

You have to get your hands dirty. I just wish I was there in a way. But, yeah, that stuff excites me. I mean, I want to try loads of like weird and wacky shit because I just think in general, not enough brands are thinking outside the box and ad costs are going up. You know, it's cool content, it's like a win, win. Worst case, it's content. Best case, it goes viral.

Yeah.

With stuff like that. So for me, we just got a bit of content this time.

I don't know exactly what would happen, but what would happen? Like, can you get in trouble for it? That's the question.

Well, that's what everyone else was worrying about. And I said, fuck that, let's do it anyway. Probably could, but it's good intention, right. It's not like I'm going around killing people. It's just an inflatable mushroom that looks sick. It says fuck coffee drink mushrooms on it with a QR code. I'll show you a picture after.

Nice.

But yeah, just putting it on the record. If any other brand does that in the space, we did it first. So, yeah, that was the first attempt at that. Definitely. I want to come back to your brand, obviously, because I spoke about mine way too much on every episode. You keep mentioning 5, 10 years thinking decades, etc. Do you have an end goal with this broadly and your life? Because I know from the limited interaction we've had before this, we definitely see the world in many similar ways in terms of lifestyle and wanting to live, I guess, semi nomadically. And I've mentioned, you know, I'm kind of. I'm always the pros and cons for everything. Where do you see yourself? Like, is scaling the business more important than lifestyle? Or do you see it as a lifestyle business and it's a business you build around where you want to live and how you want to live and how does all that play out over the next 1, 2, 5, 10 years?

Short answer, don't know.

Yeah.

Like I know what we're on to and I know that we have the right people, the right products and the capability to deliver and add shareholder value. From now up until, let's say three year, five year, there's gonna be lots of winners. That's great. So from a purely financial perspective. So I'm 36 now, nearly 37. Still fit in. Relatively fresh.

You're looking good.

Pretty fresh.

Best physique I've seen on this podcast. I saw you in Body Factory the other week.

Thank you. Thank you, sir. The. I don't know. Right. You know, I'd like to have a family at some point. Like I have a beautiful son in, in the UK and who I don't see as much as I would like to. And he's always in my thoughts and my relationship with him will be very different from a traditional family unit. At some point in the next few years, then I would like to, you know, ideally meet some. Meet a wonderful woman and start a family in a traditional, non fragmented way. That's what I would like. And I don't know how that will coincide with this business. I don't know whether if the, if an offer came in at some point in that timeframe, depending on whether I felt mentally jaded or still wanted to go down this route, let's say in five years time, it's that business eight years old, then that's a long time. Seven years, maybe four years. So you just don't know. I think what I would like to do is to be able to influence change and people's perceptions of what they can consume and how they think. And when I say what they consume, you know, that means any product or whatever. Anything. Right. We as humans, what we put into our body, how we treat ourselves, how we think, what media we consume, absolutely everything. I'd like to be in a position to be able to spread positivity by influencing or as a minimum, enabling people to maybe have a second thought or having a second opinion about what they see, but also what's going into that, going into their bodies and how they're treating themselves. So I would like for that. I think when I set out on this journey, so this, you know, ethical betting, we trade through ethicalbetting.com I actually bought ethical, pretty much anything you can think of. Dot com. Oh yeah, men's, women's, children's, beach, mountain, bathroom, lounge, you name it. And part of the intention was that it's quite a high customer acquisition cost. Now if we go in direct to you know, to acquire customers, but you can kind of make, you know, the longer term plan. Had you asked me 12 or 18 months ago, I'd have been dead set on this, no doubt in my mind whatsoever. I'd have been like, right, we're going to go into this product, this product, this product. And really what I wanted to do was to create a web of sister companies with products that had been a little bit more well thought through in terms of the environmental impact, how the company was behaving in terms of manufacturing standards and people in the supply chain, carbon offsetting throughout the supply chain and through to delivery, what packaging they were using, but fundamentally making products better. Right. So if you imagine you shouldn't be really be sleeping in cotton, it's not so hygienic, it needs washing a lot more typically it harvest germs, dust mites, mold, blah, blah. Interestingly like we all wear, we're all wearing like cotton stuff all the time and there's like lots of things that I consider to be like commodity based products that people just need, right? Underpants, socks, shoes, shirts, all sorts of things. And like longer term I did kind of think, and even in things like in the bathroom, throughout the bedroom, throughout the home, there's things that you can make them but just make them better. You just make them better. And my longer term vision, let's say we'll call it a year ago for argument's sake, I don't know, it's a little bit blur at this point was why can't, why can't I be the person that introduces better versions of all of these different products to a really wide audience and doesn't just have one brand in this space but has multiple brands in this space where people have an affinity not just to the, to that ethical bedding as a brand but also to me. And they know that like our team of product designers will have put a little bit more thought into carefully selecting what people are buying. So I don't know what, I don't, you know, it's difficult to know what the long term, what the long term picture will hold. And some of it will be guided by when institutional money becomes involved. That's when we'll really have to really clearly define what is the strategy for this. I'm speaking to lots of different people. Some of them it's very clearly build it exit. And I was speaking to one VC and they go in pretty early. So they go in between 1 and 2 mil revolution and try and as a minimum I think and try and get quite a big chunk of the pie, but put some of their expertise in there. And some of them are buy and hold. And I think one of them they were involved in is ruggable, like machine washable rugs.

Heard of that.

And they came and those guys are doing 650.

It was in Guild Capital. Yeah, I spoke to them.

So they're doing six.

They approached me with my previous neon business. Really funnily enough. And then again about six months ago, not knowing that I was related to the previous business with space goods, I decided it was too soon for institutional money. But, yeah, I like them as a. I like their approach.

I didn't. There was a few bits I wasn't quite sure.

On Such a Small World. It's funny you mentioned that. And I spoke to him.

Yeah, they've got a shave. So there's two biggies. There's ruggable, which is 650 mil rev.

Yeah. I remember them telling me that went from loosely. It went from like 5 million to 9 figures in about 3 years or something. Absurd.

Yeah.

And that got my eyes wide open and I was like, okay, I'm listening.

And they can.

How they've done that and they can.

Bang into North America as well. That was their, like, pitch, basically. So, yeah, it's crazy.

The scale in America is different. When I hear like 650 mil rev. You just can't do that in the UK and Europe.

I don't think I could be wrong.

But yeah, it's crazy.

Yeah. Was there the idea? What's the other one they have.

They have like a shaving doctor something. Doctor shocks or something.

Shaving one.

You know the one I mean. Dr. Swatch.

Yeah.

Is that it?

Something like that. I could have phones out and have a look.

I think it's that. It's gotta be that. But another one, you mean. It's got really, like, controversial marketing and shit. It's massive in America. I don't have Internet, but. Yeah, it's that. Oh, it is that. Okay, I've got Internet. One sec. Dr. Swatch. Dr. Squatch.

Dr. Squatch.

Yeah, sorry, I kept fudging the name. Is it Gil Cab? It's definitely them. They're best than them. Yeah, it is.

Yep.

Yeah. So. Yeah, you're right.

So it's a funny one, actually, because it was so we were. When we were just sort of like flapping around, like ready to get started again after the product failures before, there was some private equity money in the US that were looking to buy us just like outright. And I Was like, we haven't even done anything yet. What do you mean? No, you can't buy us. Nothing to buy. And then I kind of did this dance, but I'd never done this dance before with institutional investors, and I didn't really ever want to give big slices away early unless I really understood the value add we do. We have a campaign on Cedars now, which is mostly there. Obviously, it's there to raise capital, but it's also there to build a bit of a PR play and also to build advocacy amongst the core group that will be in very early and likely to be. Be lifetime customers and tell their family and tell their friends and it's like a jewel. It's like a dual play there. But I've got, you know, I've got all this to come. I've got, like a pretty good mentor to sort of guide through this. So he exited a tech tech company for about 30 mil, and he's guiding through lots of the process for not only aligning, you know, all the terms through Cedars and through a different platform, but also as we progress and go through different funding rounds. I feel like I'm in quite safe hands there. Yeah, but it's like, when do you start chunking it off? Like, how. When do you have to see. How do you have to really see the value in what they're bringing? And how do you define that?

Yeah, it's the same for me. I've just had angel investors up to this point. I've decided to try and do that for at least the next year. But maybe that would change if someone put a big number in front of me and said, let's go and scale this to nine figures.

But would it feel like your business then? What do you think? The vote?

I've definitely concluded that, for me, I'd rather have a smaller slice of a monster than, you know, a much bigger slice of something really quite small.

Yeah.

I don't know what that looks like. It's probably more like to be somewhere in between. But, you know, hypothetically. And I've. I think I've got over the ego part of wanting to own everything. On.

Yeah. Yeah.

Which I definitely used to do and didn't end well, as I was telling you before. And everyone on the POD knows. What do you mean?

I don't know.

Well, as in I was the. Well, sorry. Okay. As in my previous business that fucked up.

Yeah.

It was just me. I didn't have any experience around me. I didn't have any investors. I was very naive. I Wanted to own the whole thing. Had I had wise investors around me and not owned the whole thing like I do now, that may have been avoidable.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it's only by going through that that I realized the value in people that are much wiser than me, which is every investor I have, basically.

Are you quite stubborn?

I used to be. Well, yes, but I used to be very high risk and probably in many ways arrogant and. But I think, yeah, now I'm much more. My humility has risen to the point where I know what I'm not good at.

Yeah.

And realize that I'm very good at certain things, but. And I'm competent at a lot of things, but I'm not good enough. A lot of other stuff like finance, operations, team building, you know, all that shit doesn't excite me and I'm not good at it. So I finally accepted that I need to relinquish control of many things, like hired an MD recently, like I was saying.

Yeah.

And that's been a huge exercise in. I mean, there's been parts of it haven't enjoyed, like, they've done stuff, and I haven't even been involved. Which is great because it means it's a business now, proper business, but it's also a bit weird. So I'm trying to ride that. That change. But I also know now that I used to be sewing the trenches on everything all the time, which is probably just like this toxic.

It's really draining, isn't it?

Yeah, it's a really toxic mind. I mean, you have to have to do that at the start. But, yeah, I've just realized that isn't productive or healthy or even good for the business because it means that I haven't got enough people doing their bits.

Have you ever had burnout?

Oh, definitely. Yeah. I think probably even recently, to an extent.

Do you sense when it's coming now?

I have realized in my stage one of maturity, maybe in my relatively late 20s, that what I used to think was productivity, which is, you know, basically not allowing myself to enjoy any part of life, because if I wasn't. If I enjoyed myself, I wasn't working hard enough. Yep. Like, even recently, I've kind of realized that I'm so toxic because I look at people that are way more successful than me and they don't work all the time. They just work smart and. Yeah. And they have family life and social life as well. And I don't know where this comes from. Is it like the. I don't know. I've always had a bit of a weird, toxic mindset where I think almost if I'm happy, I'm not working hard enough. And it's so strange. And then there's obvious. And then it's like you step back and think, hold on, that's obviously not sustainable. Or even the right answer.

It's a funny one for me because.

I'm working on no, no, no.

But.

Then I come to like Bali and realize you can actually run a business and enjoy elements of life and have relationships and social life. I mean, there are of course periods where I need to be head down and grinding a lot more. The past few weeks have been more cruise mode to an extent, but it's been proof that by putting the right people in place. It's the first time I've been away and not felt like I wasn't doing enough because I know it's now getting done by this MD I've hired and the team we already have. But he's leading that. Whereas in the past I'd have been stressing like, oh, everyone's looking for me, I'm seven hours ahead. Time zones, you know all this. Yeah, yeah, that's quite a nice thing.

How did you find the onboarding for the md?

Well, he led all of it because I was very honest and said I've never fucking hired anyone senior. So I don't know what success even looks like in this role yet. I kind of just said I want to be able to focus on what I enjoy, which is the creative side. So I guess the onboarding. Yeah, I feel like we're still kind of going through that in a way. It takes a while. It's just like brain dumping a lot of time together, realizing what we're trying to do with the business. What do I not want to be doing? I e 90% of what I was doing and where can he add the most value? Yeah, which is why you bring someone like that in. And I was very. I thought it was arguably premature because the business only one year old, but I decided it was a hire to grow rather than hire once I've grown situation. And given my past experiences, I was like, fuck it, I'm gonna do this now. Worst case. Yeah. Hire the wrong person doesn't work out, but I think it's been really good. So, yeah, it's five to six, by the way.

What time do we finish?

We can go. Well, six officially, but just to give you a heads up, unless you in.

A real roof, you got a really cool like sign off.

Yeah, we'll go like another five minutes, I'll wrap it up. But yeah, just an area I've been thinking about.

Yeah, it's, it's a funny one, isn't it? This like when like how do you switch off and I don't, I'm still not totally clear on what the right thing is because if you, if you live in a very balanced way every day and are structured with your work and have time for exercise, time for relaxation, time for all the things that you would like to do, this like notion of a weekend is a little bit confusing for me because it's, well, why wouldn't I just do the things that I enjoy doing all the time? And so that's kind of what I prefer to do. But then most people like to do things on the weekend that might be more time consuming socially. So then I'm like, oh well, I'm.

Going to do yeah, more like black or white rather than constantly a nice shade of grey.

Yeah, I don't know, it's a funny one but I've definitely like got to points of burnout before. I definitely, I have done certainly or just like freeze up and I not be able to like make decisions on stuff that should be like very clear or obvious. But I think I can like sense that it's coming now and I have like my tools to just like reset and what's interesting as well. So now you say you've got your MD and this is, you know, what we have planned and you're saying you enjoy the creative side of it more. This is what I'm looking forward to, is to be able to, you know, like I said, I'm left brain, I'm right brain, but I almost have to shut down this creative part. Whereas if I don't have to worry about this, this, you know, I can't wait to see what happens when I can just be like go full throttle into this creative side. So that's what I'm looking forward to most as we start to progress because the nature of what of my role in the business will just change so dramatically.

Yeah, definitely, definitely. I've got a final question I ask everyone. Okay, on the pod. It's become a bit of a cliche but it's actually quite introspective and interesting. If you could give three bits of advice upon reflection to your 18 year old self, what would they be putting you on spot here?

Three bits of advice. Take more time, use more of your time to reflect on the things that you enjoy and write them down, record them and the reasons why, and probably keep a diary on how you feel and why you think you feel those things. So you've got a record of those things forever. So that would be one bit of advice. I would say keep a record of your emotions, your feelings, your goals, your drivers, why you're doing the things you do, and consistently do that from a young age through until adulthood. I'm just about an adult now, I think. So that would be one piece of advice, and that would be to understand myself more, because I think you don't understand yourself as well as you should do when you're so young. The second piece of advice would be focus more on probably sports, physical activity and education. Even though I was very focused on those things, do it even more. So. I kind of, like, grew up in a time where I was so focused on, like, partying and the next. And it's like, really? Yeah, it's great. Like, I had loads of fun doing those things, but it would not be beneficial for my life in the long run. Although, with that being said, it's now turned me into the person I am today. And the third piece of advice would be very simple. Trust your gut on everything unwaveringly, and don't worry so much. Trust your gut and go with it.

Yeah, Agreed on the final point, for sure. Right. It's been a pleasure. Cheers, mate. We could probably go for four or five hours. It's always a sign of an interesting episode. I'll put James Links below to your personals, your brand, obviously. Maybe a clip to the Dragon's Den episode and other bits that you want down there.

I'll get some content ready for the.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. As always, subscribe to the pod. We've been banging out these episodes. Episode 72. Pretty consistent. And we'll see you in the next one. Cheers for watching. Cheers, guys.

Sa.