From Drawing Logos to Building Brands my Entire Adult Life | My Story so far - Doc the Journey Ep 44

Right. Then diving into module 2, and probably the most interesting one, if you can really stick with it. It's my story, obviously. You can see my screen here. I'm going to go over in the next 10, 15 minutes how I essentially went from. I think I was maybe 16 years old here, maybe 17 years old about 10 years ago, which is mad with the GoPro on my head. Always been a creative to this was more recently wearing one of my signature wavy shirts, which I'm also wearing right now. Please, All Saints, if you're watching this, can you sponsor me? Because I have about 35 of your shirts and this looks like, I guess, dramatically, you know, zero to hero. This was when I was just lost, ambitious, wanted to do something creative. Used to want to be a YouTuber, used to try and be a YouTuber into here, where I've been. This is just, I guess, a depiction of traveling the world, running my own brands, which is really what I've been doing for the past six years, pretty much full time. But I also want to reiterate before I go into details, there's been a shitload of highs and lows and it's been an absolutely mad roller coaster. Probably me more than anyone I actually know in the space, and certainly more than anyone that puts content on the Internet about their journey. So just diving back to a slightly older presentation I made previously and excuse some of the wavy pictures, but as I said before, we're going to go through the history over the past seven years, pretty much in a nutshell. And then also what I've been working on more recently in the past year and a half or so, which is probably the most relevant and most interesting to anyone watching this. But as I said, my name is Matt Kelly, Matthew Kelly, on my Instagram Matthewsius, which is. People seem to think my second name is Husus. It's not. That's just a play on the Chinese philosopher Confucius. So that's my username. Go find me there on Twitter, Instagram. And Matt Kelly, the Midnight Pod, which is my podcast and YouTube channel, which I'll get into in a minute. So that is me in a nutshell. But in the ecom game, like I said, nearly eight years now, full time, about six years, which is crazy. Actually slightly more than six years at the time of recording, since I dropped out of university in Newcastle in the north of England in about March 2017. So this is gonna sound like I'm blowing smoke at my ass and I guess a little bit of it is, but you'll see as we go through that actually the JO has not been all up and I'm not going to sit here and pretend it's been easy because it absolutely hasn't. I've fucked up more than most people are probably willing to admit and I think that's what really gives me the credibility to actually speak about starting brands because I've been there, done that and I've got the war scarves to prove it. I'd say I've launched well over 10 different brands over the years. It's always been what's come most naturally to me, building brands. Initially it was just designing logos. Had no idea what I was doing. Was working in Waitrose part time like everyone else. But I built dropshipping brands. I built print on demand brands as well as custom stock UK based fulfillment brands which is probably why I say are the most legitimate ones and we'll get into all the details soon. Spent well over £10 million on ads whether myself and with agencies, Facebook, Insta, Google, worked with a bunch of influencers, probably most notably J Alvarez. Didn't go too well but that was for the biggest guy I worked with. I've done well over 25 million pound in sales since getting started in 2015 with the vast majority of that in the past 3 years as you might imagine. Built 3 multi million pound brands and this is outside of any drop shipping. So when I say a brand I mean fully bespoke product, fully bespoke fulfillment from scratch idea to reality to reality. Which is exactly what I'm going to be teaching you in this mini course and beyond. Hired well over 40 people, freelance agency, full time in house and I guess what most people really want to do is travel the world and build a great network of guys and girls and friends and colleagues in this space. So yeah, that's probably the part I'm most proud of. I guess most people, like most people that ultimately become entrepreneurs. This is going really bad now. This feels very, very nostalgic. I tried a lot of things, I was naturally a doer but I never felt like I fit in. It really all started with design for me. I wanted to be a creative designer in some sort. Never knew what that would look like. But I used to design logos for fictitious brands and by that I mean I would draw a logo but never knew how to actually create a product and how to turn that into a business. My earliest passion was rowing. I spent many, many years rowing. I actually wanted to go to the Olympics at one point. I spent about eight years absolutely obsessed. That was My first obsession, which I think taught me, like I said here, a lot of the key principles of entrepreneurship and just hard work and consistency really. So yeah, I really enjoyed that in my youth. Had a few different YouTube channels which I've said. I originally had a music one. If you go and search that Matthew Kelly One Direction cover or something, you'll probably find me pretending to be Niall Horan but not sounding quite as good as. I then had to pivot when I realized I wasn't quite gonna make it as a musician sadly. Also had a travel vlog channel, so go and find that because that's linked on my current podcast. Went to uni but always hated it. Never felt right for me. So yeah, I actually ended up dropping out twice which we'll get onto. This is me with Jony. I've who's the creator of the iPhone which is probably the most. The most impressive person I've met, I guess. And here's me, you know, doing what any 19 year old would do. Go to a car garage. And R8 was always my obsession. So coming on a little bit, I tried building many, many brands over the years. First few years nothing worked at all. And this is not an exaggeration. I look at people now and think, you know, 19 year olds or whatever doing TikTok dropshipping and they seem to have made it work in the first six months. That was definitely not me. Gentry Club was my first ever brand. And when I say, I say brand loosely, you know, it was ultimately this. This is in my parents house back where I used to live obviously. So June 2015, go and search that on my Instagram. These are not Photoshop dates. This is real proof of how long I've been doing this. Which is actually quite crazy and almost a bit emotional looking back at because it has been so long. That's what, eight years ago now? That is crazy. This was my first thing was literally just a logo on a T shirt and you know, didn't have a fucking clue what I was doing. But you have to start somewhere. Had a print on demand brand called Retro Chill. Cause I've always been obsessed with synthwave, et cetera. You might see the pink lights behind me and this ended up becoming sort of becoming the neon brand in the future. I had a. I say I had had an attempt at building a watch brand which is part of a uni design project and instead of, you know, most people just submitting the coursework, I decided to get samples from China. So. And again this was years and years before Shopify or building brands was way more mainstream, which I guess it is now. So in late 2016, early 17 start to see some success. I had a leggings brand called Wavy Leggings. This sold about ten grand organically, but it was print on demand, the margins are super low. Then I started just dropshipping jeans basically the end of 2016, early 17, which was when I discovered Facebook ads which will come on to way more later on. And this really showed me the potential of what you can do when you know media buying. And you know, this was again before Facebook ads were, before everyone else was on Facebook ads. To be honest, it was pretty niche to be doing this while at uni and this became a proper UK fulfilled clothing brands. When I say that, I mean we went from drop shipping jeans to actually buying our own stock, holding it in the uk fully bespoke designs. And what was most exciting about this brand now I always wish I'd stuck with it because coulda, woulda, shoulda, I've done so many things over the years. Luke Hemmings from 5 Seconds of Summer used to buy our stuff and this was our office while in uni. This was 1st of February 2017. Again, go look back on my Instagram to see the receipts of this because I've been doing this a long time and it's pretty nostalgic looking back. So start to see some success here and at this point I really just stopped going to unique. And again you can go see more details of this on my pod, on my YouTube. I've spoken about it over the years, but I was running. We did my. I say we because it was me and my friend at the time that were doing this. We did about 50 grand a month in revenue with a proper office. So we ended up moving from the previous office to this place called Toffee Factory which was like a 1500 square foot office. Way, way, way too big in hindsight. But yeah, this became a proper, proper brand and I hadn't even told my parents I was doing this at all at the time. And we had this sick. This was in Newcastle, so if this was in London, it'd be ten times the price. We'd never be able to afford it. But yeah, really fond memories of this time. This is when I really started to see the potential of actually building stuff online because I stopped going to uni, I'd quit my part time job at a burger bar which used to be opposite where I live and I would literally run Facebook ads on my break. That's not an Exaggeration because I had zero money like everyone else dying in most realistic scenarios. But yeah, start to see some success here. And if you go back on my old YouTube channel from early 2017, you'll see me with much more of a, of a big lid talking about this. That clothing brand ended up ending due to a legal dispute. In other words, me and my friend fell out and then the name Dusk turned out that someone, some big conglomerate in America owned it. So we basically just decided to part ways and sell off the stock that we had and that was that. So I guess that was my first taste of building something but then ultimately it failing because we didn't have proper legal advice. I was 21 years old at the time, but this is when I went full nomad. Full high risk, rogue nomad. I guess in many ways again before this was really common. There's plenty of people now documenting this on YouTube, being a nomad, living in Bali, et cetera, et cetera. But I just got back into the dropshipping space, was back to square one really. I went to an E. Comm event in September 2017, which is here in Singapore, which is what I credit to meeting most people I know in this space now and really catapulted me in that direction because I knew that if I didn't meet other people, if I didn't go balls to the wall into E. Comm and just potentially went back to uni or got a grad job like most people doing, even though I didn't have a degree, so that wouldn't work so well, I could have lost a lot of moment. So I'd left uni and yeah, really decided to go all in. So the next few years are pretty crazy because I pretty much full time traveling and like I said here, focus on traveling, networking and drop shipping. So this is when I got back into dropshipping rather than branded products as in fully bespoke designs. Holding our stock got to the point where I was doing circa anywhere between 200 and 500 grand a month in revenue. Fairly slim margins, I will concede with doing circa 8 to 15% margins, but still making crazy money given I was 22, 23 years old at the time. And this was really when I experienced true freedom during this period. It was actually chaos. Looking back at as a young guy, you know, this is Bali 2018, Las Vegas 2018. Most of this is 2018 and this is 2019 Ibiza. This is just an example of one of the stores I was running at the time. This was a legging store, I believe. So in 30 days doing 407 grand, which was fucking crazy to be fair. And yeah, really the key thing that I credit being life changing here was meeting a lot of people doing similar stuff, some of which are some of my closest friends now and have been on my podcast very recently. So that was that period. Then in 2019 I realized that I wasn't passionate about dropshipping. I'd done that to make some cash to get started because obviously came from nothing like most people that get started in the space. But ultimately brand building and being a creative first was my passion. So this is when I moved to London. Just here actually in this picture with Floris and Fred, both guys I'm still good friends with. Now this was April 2019, it's about four years ago. And then I built a brand called Midnight City which you probably, you might be familiar with, go and search. It obviously still exists. Now I'll get into the story of what happened on with that. But I built from nothing to over a million pound in revenue in the first year. Completely bespoke like a proper brand, not drop shipping, holding all our stock. I designed everything myself really just making stuff that I wanted to wear and couldn't find on the market for a reasonable price, especially in the uk. I saw a real big gap in the market, ended up doing over £3 million before I ultimately exited that business in 2021, which I'll get onto later on as well. So yeah, built some great relationships in China. Some very fun times out there. I think this picture's from China, me wearing a crazy shirt and yeah, this was the first time, I guess I'd built something proper based on my previous experience. The first brand, Dusk having failed, you know, then getting into the drop shipping space, learning about how to build something at scale, but never quite, never quite building anything long term. It was always just what's the next product? Or is the ad account going to get disabled, et cetera. But this was the first time I saw some real success. This isn't a Flexi page as we'll get onto later. I guess it is on the surface of it, but I'd always been obsessed with cars. You know, I'll reference back this image where, where is it here? I used to post this. This is in like 2015. That was my dream car on Audi R8. And I guess the thing here was cars, being able to buy cars. And again just referencing that picture here, referencing another picture here. I went from having a Mini as my first car, the Mercedes AMG then a gen 1 V10 plus Audi R8, Range Rover Sport SVR M4. This is probably my favorite car I ever had. A viper green Audi R8, and most recently a Ferrari 458 Spider, which was actually very over the top. And in hindsight, I wish I'd kept this. All right, but yeah, I mean, chasing goals is magical and gives you purpose, but you realize material things don't matter that much once you achieve them. But why am I sharing this? Because I had all this stuff before I ever put any content out. This is all from building brands, wasn't from selling a course like 99% of people that are posting this sort of stuff online. I was just absolutely passionate about cars and this was some of, some of the, some of the fruits of my labor, I guess, over the previous years and was absolutely a huge passion of mine from a young age. So by early 2020, I was running two very, very successful brands. 2020 was an absolutely chaotic year, which I'll explain in full shortly. But my passion for creating brands meant I launched my next venture, which was Neon Beach. So the story behind this was led. Neon signs again, go search. It still exists. I'm no longer involved. I wanted a neon sign for my jewelry brand, Midnight City. Couldn't find it. So obviously being me, I went 0 to 1, created the brand. So by mid-2020, my brands are doing well over a million pound per month in revenue. I guess my years of compounding efforts was paying off. I had the penthouse apartment, living with mates in London. You'll see here all the dream cars, more AMEX points than I could ever spend here. This is just kind of a funny screenshot. Over 10 million Amex points. That got to like 15 million at one point, which is just proof of how much I was spending on ads, really. It was absolutely chaotic. And none of this was paid for by being a guru or coach and like 99% of other young people living a similar lifestyle. But like I said, I mean, I want to make very clear it was still 99% work, not play. This is obviously a highlight reel, but this is Neon beach as well. You can see over nearly 8 million pounds, which is about 1112 million USD in. I think that was the first, the first year and a bit. So it grew crazy, crazy, crazy quick. In 2020, I was 24 at the time, living with two of my best mates in the London penthouse. And then things went very wrong, which is probably the most surprising part of this because you'll probably think I'm like all These other people that put this content and pretend their life is perfect, pretend they've never fucked up. I did fuck up. And I'm going to go through this briefly and then explain why I'm talking about this and then come on to the journey since then, which I think is actually the most important and powerful part of all this. But it's a long story. You can go and search up my YouTube which I'll show in a second. Long story short, I had a supplier go bankrupt. I went through nine months of absolute hell trying to save the business and my reputation. And that brand, Neon beach, was ultimately bought out by a private equity investor and I then sold my shares that in March 2021, which is two years ago now. So this is all settled a long time ago. But looking back, this experience made me much better on in person in general. So essentially ended up scaling both the brands about 12 million. One of them had a load of problems and then I got bought out by an investor, then decided to sell my shares in both of them because I wanted to move on to the next challenge. And I think the social media culture of only sharing the wins and highlights is incredibly damaging. And you know, my entire brand and just who I am has always been about authenticity. And I'm going to back that up in a second by moving on to the next thing, which is my YouTube channel, which I started after all this. I've been spending about five, six years in the trenches, has scaled to real, real heights, had all the badges and stripes and stuff to prove it and all that stuff from building brands. I'd love to stress, you know, there wasn't from being a guru, like 99.9% of people posting similar stuff. I didn't need to be a guru because I had legitimate businesses doing crazy numbers. One of them went very wrong. I learned a lot from it and honestly it was like a real life mba. But I guess if I want to be anything to people listening to my content, it's authentic, real and trustworthy. So since then I started my YouTube and new brands. So that's what I'm going to show you next. So this is my YouTube Matt Kelly, the Midnight Pod. And I think the key thing here is so I've got the podcast where we interview other guests and then I've got my document of the journey which I'll show you again in a second. But the first ever episode which you can go back and watch is pretty much bang on 18 months ago, from £10 million self made business to rock bottom The Neon beach story. So talking about that brand that fucked up and I learned a lot from it and the proof is in the pudding. You can go and watch that. You can see that from 18 months ago. I'd gone through a terrible breakup at the time, so I was about two and a half stone heavier than I am now as well. And I started just, I started the POD from that. And I never intended to start a podcast or YouTube channel, but I wanted to share my story for just personal documentation process. It got a shitload of views in the community. You know, 16k views of a guy sat at a sofa who's quite a lot in the DTC space. I then started interviewing people every week, entrepreneurs that come on the show. And this became a thing we've now done. What is it? As of yesterday, 70 episodes. This hasn't gone up yet. This is actually going up in the next hour as I'm filming this. So we've done 70 episodes pretty much every week in the past 18 months with a few weeks missed here and there. So that's become, I guess I've built a personal brand out of it and it's become this thing we started doing real life events, masterminds, all this stuff. But also after all that, I started my, my new brand following the exact same process I'm about to show you, which I think is what makes me most uniquely placed to actually talk about this because I've got the authority to say I've done it multiple times. Midnight City, Neon beach, all the stuff previous to that as well, scaled to multi millions. But in terms of brands from scratch, Midnight City did over 3 million in revenue. Neon beach got it to over 10 million pounds in revenue before we ran into issues and I sold it. And then Space Goods, I've proven again that I can start from scratch in an entirely new space. Obviously Space Goods here is. Well, not obviously. Space Goods is the next generation wellness brand. It's an all in one mushroom coffee essentially with the long term vision to bring psilocybin and psychedelics and microdosing to the masses in D2C form. And I've documented every single week since launching this, which I don't think it's ever been done before. So go and check this out in your own time. I'll link it in this, in this module. But the first episode, 11 months ago, pretty much bang on a year ago. As of tomorrow, nothing exists until you create it, which became this thing. And we ended up making brand movies that had that name, working with beautiful models. Yeah, Just dive into these because I've made a video pretty much every week alongside the pod of me building this brand, which is exactly what I'm going to show you how to do yourself. And I think the fact I've done it twice before or three times before if you can drop shipping as well, I'm doing it right now. I've documented every single week from scratch building this brand. You know, not knowing if it would have done well, but in fact We've done over £2 million in the first year which we'll come on to. And I've documented every single week as well as, as well as me losing a lot of weight and running a sub three hour marathon because I guess in the interest of building from scratch, that was another journey I went on as well. I got really out of shape with all the stress of the previous business, breaking up my ex girlfriend at the time, it was all a big mess and I really just documented all of it. And anyone that has watched me will see the transformation and something I'm pretty proud of. I'm really glad I documented and I think it's inspired a lot of people and I know it has in the community to go and start their brand and document their stuff. So yeah, I guess that brings us up to now really. So Space Goods, this is my brand at Space Goods, you know, obviously fully transparent. I've documented literally every step of building it. We've made movies. I featured a movie called I Chase My Dreams While I'm Awake, which is I guess going back to my childhood ambitions to make movies. This is me on set here wearing a custom Space Goods painted jacket. And this is just the stuff I'm most passionate about is the creative side, you know, building something from nothing. As a creative first myself, that's really what's most exciting about building brands. It's incredibly difficult, but it's very fulfilling and I think it's the most powerful thing in the world. I think it's really alchemy that you can go from an idea like this is my idea and I'll show you how to come up with your ideas next. And this is now a multi million pound business. I've documented all of it. Go watch the pod. The proof is there. This is me running my 2 hour 52 marathon which I'm still pretty fucking impressed with myself for having never done a running race. Never running. Having never done a running race or marathon ever. Before this I publicly said I'm, you know, I'm going to run a sub 3 just because it's really difficult. This is me training while traveling. This is me most recently in my pink trousers with my mate flying to Dubai. So that was pretty sick. And I guess, yeah, kind of the whole brand is really what I believe in. It's all about working hard and creating your best self. And that's what the brand is about. That's what my content is about. But doing it in an authentic, honest way as well. Because I think there's a lack of that on the Internet. But yeah, really, that's my story. I would encourage you to go and check out the pod, you know, the channel as a whole. Like, I literally posted last night from Bali, where I was most recently. I think dive into that, you'll learn a lot. You'll see that I'm actually doing this. I'm in the fucking trenches as much as anyone, if not more. And I think, yeah, it's unusual for people to be making content. They're actually doing it and I definitely am. So, yeah, go check it out. I've probably revealed way too much about myself and my mind. It's certainly not all positive. It's just very, very honest and authentic and I'm glad I've documented it because, you know, it's just nice to look back at Trips and like 10 months ago, the first three months we did 250k, then I raised some money. Etc, etc. So hopefully when I keep doing this every week the next 10 years and I'll look back and it'll be crazy, but that is pretty much my background. I hope that gives you a decent overview and I will catch you in the next module. Peace, Sam.