From Market Stalls to £5m per month with a Fragrance Brand - Connor Martin | The Midnight Pod Ep 52

Right, we're back with episode 52 3. 53 Three at the Midnight pod.

You sure?

And we're on. I don't know what wine it is, but two bottles of Waitrose Special, the deers.

And Waitrose, which was like seven quid.

It's a Tilly Muk Malbec from Argentina.

Yeah. Argentina. Topical. Who's gonna win the World Cup?

Argentina, Tina, hopefully.

I'd like to see Argentina win it.

I don't like the. Well, I don't not like the French.

But like Mbappe or the French.

I agree. I'd like cms.

You win it.

We're back with Connor Martin, who is the fucking richest man on Twitter.

Came.

On the pod, like nine months ago, is soon to be running all my fulfillment. Is also an investor in space Goods. And I feel like you've scaled a brand that maybe on Twitter people know about it, but it's way bigger than I realized and probably way bigger than a lot of people watching realize. And I think. I think we should talk about that today, because people fucking hate agency shit. Hate fulfillment shit.

Yeah.

Ollie, co host, obviously. Now, what's your role? The Essence Vault.

I've come in as a fractional CMO for the brand or the brand at the moment, but the brand's plural. Hopefully through Net. Well, definitely through next year and through.

The next few years at the Jack Group. Yeah.

But focus very much on ESSENCE Fault in this. In the last three or four months. Got it moving, got it cooking.

Got it moving. You bankrupt us.

Yeah.

So ESSENCE Fault, for context. Anyone didn't see the previous episode, it's your brand. You started, what, three years ago?

Yeah, just before. Well, I started three years ago, but really only took off just before COVID Well, just as Covid happened, actually. It was just me, one other employee. And then we. Obviously lockdown happened. I shut for a week because at that stage we weren't really aware if online business could be open. Shut for a week. Got an Amazon parcel through the. Through the door, realized, what the fuck am I doing? Shut reopened. And I think we hired 20 people that first month and then like five extra people every month since.

About 100 people in it now. Probably somewhere around that ballpark.

You do all your own manufacturing, everything.

From start to finish.

Yeah. How do you even do that? Where'd you start with that? Is that how it started? I know we've been over this before in the previous episode, but, yeah, when.

I track back when I turned up at the. The operation, it was pretty interesting. It's like it's like a chemical lab. Like proper Breaking Bad.

Three steps up from Breaking Bad. That's it, you know, you know when he moves into the. Underneath the washing machine, that's definitely what it's like. Yeah, but no, it's always been that we've sort of, without giving too much away, that the actual production, the manufacturing part is hard, but as soon as you have all the right suppliers and everything, it's very scalable. It's only like a four or five step process.

Have you always done that? I was ever in like China.

No, it was always, always in the uk. Always. It was always in house.

How the do you go from not having a business in that space to just manufacturing perfume? I think we went over this before, but I've forgotten the story.

Yeah, I mean a lot of the. Our mixing process is still very manual but we just employ more people rather than sort of upscale machinery and stuff. It's a very big investment which we actually have all of manufacturing equipment now, but we still haven't had the chance to start using them because of how busy we've just continued to be because it takes a while. Like say for example, one machine will manufacture 2,000 items an hour, but we have over 500 SKUs and that machine can really only do three SKUs in it. Three. Three SKUs a day. So it's still all semi automatic machines and. And just more people. Heavy. Yeah.

When did you get involved?

Three years ago July.

July. July in some capacity and then October.

More like what I was in two months ago.

Yeah, I got involved in July from like a service delivery and then transitioned to more of like an internal role in like early October, maybe late August. No, that's not, that's. They aren't consecutive months. September, September, September, October. And then it's been foot on the gas since then, literally. And then we've got obviously still just in the uk but big, big plans to diversify into like that brand, specifically into us, Europe, Australia, Canada.

Does that mean you only ship to the UK?

Only run out of 5% of sales is in the. As in the EU. But literally we've just never had the chance to scale in Europe because of how busy the UK was. I actually, before Ollie started, I kind of thought the UK was at its maximum in terms of growth and we were starting to look at Europe and he was. Oh, I came bored and scrapped them plans.

Yeah, I think it's, it's good offer. That's fundamentally, it's just a very good offer. Save money on something that's expensive. And have a good. And have the same experience. So we're very. We're still fairly flies in the kitchen coming at me. It's fairly. It's fairly linear business at the moment, but there's so much more untapped potential in the uk, I think. And then obviously we start. Start adding some more regions and territories and horizontally scale.

But.

Yeah, and then obviously starting to bring in some of the brands, hopefully with some of the cash flow and build a monster.

So basically, three years old. 20, 20, 21, 22.

Yeah, yeah.

How has growth looked since then?

I think over. Over the course of three years.

I want numbers. People like numbers.

I don't like numbers.

Percentage numbers.

Percentage numbers. I mean, over the course of three years, there's only been four months that we haven't been on an upward. This dog's shagging me here. There's only been three months. Four months over the course of three years that we've ever not increased from the month before.

Yeah, yeah.

I think since I got involved, we've grown about 15 to 20% a month. Consistently more than that.

Probably 153 up in September, first month.

So. So how big was November this year compared to last year and 2020, in fact?

403.

403%.

403%.

And we ran out of stock. So we started the CL Thursday afternoon, Thursday evening, ran out of the bulk of our stock on Saturday morning and we've been running with samples and 30 mils since Saturday. We only actually just restocked our 100 mils, which is obviously the big AOB product two days ago. Yesterday.

Yeah, yesterday. We could have done much bigger numbers.

Oh, sorry.

We could have done bigger numbers, I think. Get rid of him.

Yeah. She calms down. You got two minutes to calm down. I'll start properly hurting you.

We could have done bigger numbers for Oct through November and December, I think, but selling out isn't a bad thing. Creates, demand creates. Well, it's not an ideal thing, but it's never ideal. But you just got to try and spin it as a positive and I think once we got that sorted, we'll be able to just. We've got like the changes we made to get to grow it through the last four months have been fairly simple changes. There's a lot of other things to do to continue that growth trajectory. There is going to come a point of diminishing returns, but I think there's a big. There's loads of things like LTV plays and things that we've not really tapped into to the full extent yet which are the real profit makers? Obviously over the long term.

What do you think has been the main, the main thing that's grown it from 2020?

A lot of restructuring, simplification of all processes. Like for example emails. We switch to plain text every email and like the ultimate chat scale works.

We're going to, we're changing that a little bit. Obviously we have flows and stuff but we're reworking all those at the moment. I think like a systematic approach to content and media buying has been the big thing and turning on TikTok effectively, that's been huge awareness play, feeding through to Google and enhancing Facebook efficiency. Jamie who works for my agency but also does work on tev, has done something really, really solid media buying work. A really good feedback loop with creative you can get a lot of leverage out of. You can get to a very large revenue business if you have a good product just through good creative and media buying feedback loop. And then you have to start adding other things onto that beyond that to get past some plateaus. But I think that just enhancing and optimizing that has had a massive impact. There's been a lot of CRO work, a lot of like offer playing around with offers playing around with conversion rate. Obviously if you can get a really high conversion rate, which we've, we've worked on quite a bit like it means that you've got a lot more leeway to play with on the front end because you know, you know that you're going to be able to sing a lot of traffic through and it's going to convert. That's been a big. Keeping things simple and then obviously putting process in place that make things run efficiently, repeatably and just incrementally improve things over time has been probably the big thing. Interested to see if I think we can replicate it across every market as well.

That's the plan is to create something that we can just duplicate into other brands and sort of become like a privatized top grip without the sort of pain of a massive shareholder base. You know, keep it very simplistic. If we're taking on finance, it's a small group of people so we don't become that whole sort of, you know, if you want to put in live, it has to go through three layers of approval and that sort of thing. If, if we can create a sort of group that's very fast reacting, especially the product trends and stuff where we can, we can go 10x20x.

Do you think you can build loads of brands and be Successful with the same processes or do you think it is ultimately dependent on the product and that brand and it might be hard to scale a new one even though you've got a new one you're working on?

Yeah, I think Tev the essence fault's a very good offer, as I just said, which makes it a lot easier than a brand that's got high about like high about like. That's a really strong offer. So replicate using this exact same formula on a brand that isn't as strong an offer like without changing anything won't work. But you can still put like fundamental processes and systems that are repeatable across brands, like that media buying system of content feedback that's going to be the same across every brand the way that you do. Retention is going to be fundamentally similar across every brand. Some brands may lend themselves to community, some brands might not. So there's still elements you're going to change, but there's a lot of repeatable systems and processes you can put in place. The brand itself, the position in the product is obviously the variable, but I think it's spotting the right opportunities in that, like almost reverse engineering. There's one brand we're working on at the moment which I think is going to fly, which is kind of. I'm not going to give it away, but that's in a niche that's passionate.

Rainbow dust rip on her.

Yeah, it's just Space Goods 2.0, Earth Goods.

He's just reading the fucking monthly report. Putting more money behind it.

No, it's like one of the ones. It's like strong branding in a niche that lends itself to good content and community. Passionate, subscription based. Yeah, like there's some spot in the right. It's all, it's spotting the right opportunities. If you can't just rip brands with no thought process behind them because they're not going to work.

I feel like that's what I tried.

A lot of people rip brands. Was talking someone the other day about like a lot of people launch brands with what I'd now consider like the minimum barrier to entry. Like beauty is a good example. Like you might have really nice branding, eco friendly, vegan, cruelty free. Like that used to be like enough to have success, whereas now that feels like the floor and you have to have like a, like you have to have a USP or something that really distinguishes you from other people because that's just like the barrier to entry is increasing and moving like the goalposts are moving in terms of what gets resonance and what Gets people purchasing. And I think it's important to consider that and not just kind of launch things willy nilly and think that it's gonna work like we're trying to build it where every brand is self sustaining beyond like a three to six month period. Because if not like we don't want to be in a situation where like TEV just funds a load of.

Yeah.

Other brands because then you've not really.

Got a grip, you've just got, just got like loss meter.

Yeah, yeah.

Where's the logic in hypothetically building on a group of say 10 brands compared to just focusing on TEV and getting it to a billion in revenue?

I think broadly speaking, I think in terms of any, any brand there's going to be limits on how far you can grow the life cycle of the brand and the problem, the legal problems behind any brand. Jim. Like anything can happen realistically. You know, let's look at the big designer brands now that are on the, going into the floor now that you would never have thought six months ago that you know, that Balenciaga was going to hit the dirt. But so that's sort of the thought process behind it. If we can spread the sort of negativity amongst a group of successful brands, you've ultimately got a larger, you've ultimately got a larger cash flow because none of them brand or the group doesn't distinguish itself on summer months or winter months. Yeah, help me out.

I also think we're in a nice position with that business that like it's fairly simple, it's growing really rapidly. It's giving us the cash flow to build a team that can then manage that without me or you needing to spend any time on it and then running another brand through that team. The idea is build an internal infrastructure that can support multiple brands without jeopardizing the growth of another one, which I think is very doable. TEV has grown pretty rapidly with a very small marketing team. We can use the cash to hire a bigger marketing team. Then when we plug in another brand it doesn't jeopardize the growth rate of that and then it diversifies through more brands and then it also increases the enterprise value of the group as a whole. Because a group of 10 brands is inherently way more valuable as an asset to someone. If they're all self sustaining, they're all. And you've proven not even just the brands like that. If you can prove that you've got a repeatable process to launch brands, the enterprise value of that organization is massive because you Can. It's just a massively attractive proposition for someone to come in and buy.

That was always my vision. That's why I had two, bro. I used to call it infinity 85 group. I was just too fucking stupid to do it.

It's just like, yeah, you just did it without like a.

And now I've decided I sleep better at night with one brand.

Yeah, but you could run multiple brands as long as you build the operations where you're not the one running multiple brands. Like, you need to get to a place where you have like a team which is structured correctly running one brand. And then.

And don't structure two brands under the same limited company.

Yeah, well show you the shimmer.

Still recovering from that emotionally.

And as well as that offers do run steel. So if the brand doesn't continue to make the right steps, you know, like we're being copied by. Directly copied by four or five brands already straight off the bat. And they're obviously growing well, but they're growing off the sort of stuff that we implemented 6 12, 24 months ago. So all it takes is for us to take our eye off the ball or chip up on one or two ideas and then we're sort of in line with them competitors right now. We're lucky and we're thankful that we are so far ahead of them. But that's, you know, that can change. So the diversification obviously helps that.

How did you come up with the concepts initially? Was it like, did you test a bunch of things or was it like you just started and it worked?

I've always loved perfume. Thinking back at school, I was always that twat that stunk of Jup.

Alpaca.

Yeah.

A million men Jup and CK1. I used to open up the screw top of the CK one and the next generator created my own.

That's some gangster.

Yeah, yeah. And then obviously forgot about it for a while. You and I broke as. And yeah. Just sort of came to the conclusion that's what I was interested in. So let's just do it. I never. When I started it, I was never the intention of turning it into a business. I just wanted to make it for myself. And then realized. Realized that there was, you know, if I'm having this problem, other people are. And. And that was. It kept going from there. I've done it at markets for six months. Obviously touched on the first pod, but done markets for six months. Didn't know that outside of big brands you could actually run an econ brand.

And then compared to now, it's like the ultimate. The ultimate should. Irony if anyone.

If you're familiar with web archives, go on the web archives and slap EssenceWalt and look at Connor's first Shopify website. Oh, my God.

I think it's pretty shit now, so it must be really bad.

You haven't seen that prestige thing. You haven't seen that conversion rate chief.

I probably care too much about what someone looks like.

Functional is what it is. Yeah.

Yeah.

Have a look at the web archive and look at what Connor put together. It's a good one. I found that website really interesting. Just looking back at, like Uber's first website.

I got the best birthday present ever for Fred last year. Fred at founder Sanouci, and he nearly cried when I gave it to him. I probably shouldn't even tell this story. I got him a web archive framed picture of the first ever sanouchi website in 2016 or something 17 with a nice handwritten note on the back. And it's just, what do you get the man that has everything?

Please don't get that from me.

Getting something that sparks feelings. The message was like, look how far you've come. But yeah, yeah, yeah, you can do that.

Ours was awesome.

It's all. I think I've. I think this saying is like, if. If you're not, like, ashamed of the first website you put up, you're doing something wrong.

Yeah. I even look at space good six months ago. Look different. Yeah, you should always. Yeah. I just realized I didn't put the actual lighting on for this episode.

It's dark.

Should we pause briefly? Put that light on. I'm wearing a dirty jumper and I'm out of trim in like three weeks.

It's all good a bit.

We're just raw around here, aren't we? Just straight in.

This is the Goblin mode flat. You know, prior to this podcast, I hadn't seen a person. Since the last podcast, I haven't spoke to a person in thousand for a week. I haven't seen anyone apart from at the gym, which has only been. Well, yeah, the. The. The gym and CrossFit. That's how Goblin mode I've been the past few weeks.

That isn't a good sign for investors. I don't know what it is.

Christ. All I've been doing is speaking to investors. Just give me 2 million quid and off.

What's it like talking to investors on a. On the reg? Suppose you can.

I actually quite enjoy it because, I mean, I really get out more and speak to more people. But yeah, it's quite interesting. I mean, it's different speaking to angel investors. Right. To loads of angel investors, some of which they giving me money, which is great. And then a load of just VC funds and shit. And it's the same. I mean, I think I'm quite good at it because I'm just no fluff. I just say the truth. Like there's like two parts of it. There's the story and then there's the business and then I guess there's the vision as well. It's kind of like three parts to it. Yeah. So I just fucking talk about how I fucked up in the past, which is actually a massive plus for them, I think.

Think next time I said that on. On his podcast.

So I just say I've done this before. Yeah, I fucked up the last one, but I've gone again. This is what I'm trying to do. Here's what we've proven in the first seven months. Here's my vision for the next five years. Basically. That's kind of the conversation and then it's an interesting.

It's good feedback loop as well. Like we're doing it with the app at the moment, trying to raise money and it's just like interesting. First one we did, they were like, you need to have more numbers in there. Like your projections of shite, basically. And I was like, that's great feedback. Like these two guys worth 100 mil plus, just like interesting to get feedback on your idea. Interesting for them to give a. They always give good, like tangible insights. Who's the maddest investor you spoke to as a person? If you could. Obviously don't need to have a name person.

I'm trying to think probably some bloke that is investing and was. He's probably not watching this, but apparently he's some billionaire. I mean, probably is. I don't know for a fact, but he invested in Alex's business Content Co. Yeah, a few times. And he put me in touch with him. We had one call, he agreed to invest, then we met in person and then we started chatting about cars. Like you just gotta find common ground. I mean, I didn't know. He's not a known person. Just like it's interesting. There's a lot of private money out there. You just gotta get in the room and then spark a connection. Mm. Same anything really. It's like dating, but slightly different. Yeah.

It's funny when people ask you for tips on how to network, it's just like have something to give to them.

It's funny yeah. Because I would. I would even go as far as. That's not even that. You just need to show up because I. I'm shouting out, we're going, and I absolutely hate it. But from the few times that I've done it, like I met you, you and Joe.

Yeah.

I met other people, you know, Nick Shackleford's Get Go.

Just become a valuable person and then go network is a lot easier. It's much harder when you don't have.

That just got a story in it as well, I think. I think the thing I've done well with my inverted commerce personal brand is because it's not a personal brand, it's just me.

Yeah.

And there's no agenda. I really should have more of an agenda so I could fucking make money from it, which would be insane. But I don't know, I just think no one's really got any dirt on me because I just self deprecate every single episode.

Yeah.

Like, I've already said it. Yes, I'm a soppy romantic cunt. Yes, my last business fucked up. Yes, I'm not as rich as half the dons on Twitter. But it just is the truth. And I think, yeah, people just buy into that, innit? It's evident when people are funny.

It's funny because you look at Twitter and everyone's saying the same thing.

It's like, I tweeted about this the other day, didn't I? That's where you got a lot of engagement. Touched the nerve.

Talk about fucking shit instead. Yeah, people care just as much about that.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's like LinkedIn, innit? Like LinkedIn's just a.

People can just see Bertie signaling a mile off, can't they? Like, just be yourself. But it's actually quite rare if people just be themselves these days because everyone's trying to be another version of some perceived version of someone else. And like, the irony is no one actually fucking has any backbone because they don't stand for anything. They don't have their own opinions on things. Yeah.

It's like a level of vulnerability, I guess, that people aren't.

Yeah. It's like everyone on Twitter now, they fucking have to live in Dubai. Everything they talk about is based or whatever that fucking term is.

What does it even mean?

Everyone, like, hates women and shit. Like you have to eat raw fucking liver or something. Do you know what I mean? There's that like, bollocks, clique. Everyone jumps on it. It's like, fucking hell, just have your own opinion on something.

But yeah, I Can't believe that Livers King story. It's so funny. How did people not think he was.

Actually proof.

Yeah, with a. With a breakdown of what. What he was dosing.

Oh, so that got leaked.

Yeah, yeah. It was like he was on loads. It's like, like, it's just like, people just don't. It's like, look at him. I. Is this level of, like, lack of self, like common sense? Like, look at the state of him. There's no way he's not roided off his tits. He's absolutely wham. It's just like. Yeah, that was funny.

It's funny. Yeah. Getting in shape's hard unless you run every day. That's why I'm trying to keep up the running. That's why I've quietly entered the next London Marathon. But I wasn't going to announce it because I don't know if I'm going to do it yet.

Would you want to do one like in New York or something?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Maybe you need to do it.

I'm deciding if I can be bothered being fit enough yet because it's fucking difficult.

You need to go full goggins.

We all just go over to New York and do the New York Marathon.

Yeah.

We finished an hour sub five hours sub five challenge. I wanted to. I wanted to come back to Essenceville, ask you a question about. Prior to. Obviously, since. Obviously I know the story since we met you prior to that, did you ever bring. Consider bringing other people into the business from an investor capacity, from a team capacity, like, I guess what, basically what I've done with you. Have you. Did you ever. Did you ever consider any, like, macro shifts in setup?

No. Trust's a big thing for me.

Yeah.

I have to trust that person to a big extent before letting them anywhere near sort of baby, so to speak.

Even with us, it was a chip away.

Oh, yes, it was.

Yeah.

And like we worked on an agency aspect before.

Yeah.

Even coming near Tev and it was. Yeah, because we went Zena skin first and then. But yeah, I've just been burnt with. Burnt by agencies in the past. Even. Even going back to my, My dad, you know, he'd always say, no, make sure you own everything yourself and. And that sort of thing because, you know, you're at someone else's mercy, which is, you know, to an extent, why you would get into business in the first place. So why would we want to. Why would I want to give that up? And obviously I wouldn't say being proven wrong bringing you on board, but it's you know, there's some stuff we disagree on and you just.

It's productive to have. It's productive to have conflicts. Like, you want people who are going to challenge you. Like, even you get that. I'm obviously seeing that in the WhatsApp group. People push. Yeah, yeah, it's productive. That's what you want.

People there.

You don't want yes men around you. You want people there to be like, this is we need this or we need these numbers. Or like, you shouldn't be doing this or you should be doing this or your idea is. Or it's not. Like, again, it's not the person who's calling. Your idea isn't also right. But it's like, it's worth having that discussion. But it's a balance. Yeah, it's balance about bringing them in the right point, I think.

So you just. Were you running Facebook before? From Saw?

We run Tick Tock initially and then convinced him to give us Facebook. So we were running all the paid.

How did you meet originally?

Everyone fucking knows everyone in Dubai. In Manchester?

Yeah.

I did a tweet saying, anyone going geek out Dubai? And then Eve replied saying yes. And I was like, you flying from Manchester Airport and we met over a crisp Heineken and a full English in a sweet spoons just before we got on the plane.

Cold full English as well.

No, he was on first class. Obviously we were in economy.

Just like, that's when he knew. He's hard.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I went out to there and then obviously just connected since then.

Yeah. Worked in the skincare brand first and then Tev and then obviously where we are now.

Yeah. So is it two brands currently with a third pending?

No, there's. There's three and two pending.

Three, Three runs currently are two pending. With the vision of probably doing more next year.

My brain just don't work like that. I've got all the ideas, but I can't exist with more than one.

It doesn't mind. Doesn't really. But it's like I. I can't. Well, yeah, like, again, it's. I'm not gonna run them all or we're not gonna run them all. Like, there's gonna be a team that runs them. There's gonna be people who have their own, who own certain OKR, setting KPIs, certain responsibility. Giving people responsibility is key. Massive key. Like giving people ownership of specific metrics. Giving people ownership of both for their fulfillment and for the progression of the business.

Like, it's one of them. Like, if we. If we didn't and we just thought right, actually you know, the Essence Vault is doing very well. We can just focus on that. We'd never give up responsibility because there'd be no reason to give up responsibility. But if we're creating these other brands our focus has to be on them which forces us to let other people do things for you know, in the Essence Vault. So it's a. Isn't nice at the time and it can cause hiccups which it has in Q4 but it's went very well after dealing with them, you know.

So out of like you said, 100 people.

Yeah. Well including the agency staff now we're up to about 145.

Is the majority of that like production?

Yeah.

We say flash fulfillment.

Yeah, yeah. Talking about out of that 145 probably 110.

Somewhere between 110, 130. We've not got a massive marketing team at the moment. I was pretty actively pursuing bringing that in at the moment. Like in transitioning away from are you.

Still working with agency or you just run it yourself?

We are still working with agency and we always will work with. I fundamentally believe some roles in. In the econ brand are better fulfilled.

By agencies view on other brands.

Paid ads is a prime example. I think it's good to have a head of performance in internally who maybe for us I would like to have a head of performance who manages the brand, all of the brands but then maybe the brands are run by agencies or external staff because like you say like having cross sectional data from a. From like five or six accounts at a similar scale invaluable for like seasonality even just got creative trends and like it's really hard if you're just in. In the, in the trenches of like one or two businesses within specific vertical.

It's similar taking nuggets from Twitter. Usually when a knocker goes into it's actually on the way out. So if you've got an agency working on, on other brands you're getting that sort of nugget two months before it reaches Twitter, you know.

Yeah.

Trying to think what else would be fundamentally better served outside. It really depends. I think like stuff like I think retention is better internal long term because you want someone who lives and breeds the community and the message and the brand. So it's like better I think like post post like emails, SMS and community builds. Because basically like CRM is, is in. In my opinion better internal. Obviously that's a bit of a conflict of internal interest because we do email marketing as an agency but like that is how I would move a brand long term. Because you want someone who's always working on your messaging, always working on that retention play. Because retention is bigger than just sending a few emails. It's like how you nurture someone to being like an advocate for your brand over time.

And it's funny because I up until very recently, I still don't know all of the plain text emails myself. And like if you've seen some of the replies like, like what our list is maybe 500,000 people. You'll get maybe every email a thousand people thinking that they are actually I've sent them a direct email to them and they can. They're replying like even to the point where people tell me what they're having for dinner, like it's fucking insane. And the odd time I actually do go in and reply to that email again just to keep it, keep the thought in their head, extend that otv.

So like that's function that I think is better done internally. I don't know what else. What would you say?

Well, yeah, it's funny because like all these investors and that one of the first questions I say is how big is your team? I'm like, well it's like five freelancers and me because in my head I feel like you should be able to get to a million a year per person in dtc. However, having said that, I'm saying like five people. But yeah, there's actually like five people in that agency, which I'm counting as one. The supplier is effectively a person but because of the way it's set up, it's kind of an agency like they do the product development for me.

Yeah.

And then like with a 3PL, I guess that would be a person or two, a few people. So it's not quite five people. It's probably more like 10. And then obviously I'm not a million per person yet, but I think you could get there.

I'd say a good one is keeping them. I think I suppose the actual target is keeping your wage bill about 20% of your. Your actual sales, where we're sitting, about 8%.

But yeah, 20% seems pretty high.

Yeah, that's what's 8%.

That's what she's about 10% for team broadly. Well, I mean what do I know?

Again, it depends what your team.

Depends what you say if it's a service business, way higher for an econ.

Brad specifically it depends what you. It depends on a lot. It depends on how Fast you're growing. It depends on like what you what, what your team's doing versus what external contracts are doing, how efficient the team are. Like, I think you can get a team of five killers who can build a brand to an absolute ridiculous level with a bit of external help. Like five people always working on one brand. Like if I. If I pulled our five best staff from the agency and we launched a brand we do, I reckon we could do some damage. But it's just because I know like you know that they're absolutely killers. And the A players.

Yeah. Honestly, I'm literally hiring so like the three people. So the whole team is me, Simon, the finance guy, Arceland, the agency, Lucy, Florian and Brad. And those three, I feel like they're all ridiculously good. Like you know Lucy now as well a bit. But I couldn't run the business out here. I couldn't run the business without Florian who does all the customer service and just that I just don't want to deal with. And then Brad's the most creative genius I've ever worked with ever in the history of people. And he's probably gonna get loads of inquiries now, but. So he does all the movies and shit. Indigo. Yeah, he's really good genius. But I'm. They've all either come to me or I've met them through a friend over time. I've never hired. I've never hired someone. I mean, I've not really hired that many people but like I've shy away from it.

You are challenged when it comes to hiring.

I don't know what it is though. It's definitely a form of autism.

I mean, it's just again, it comes down to the trust aspect. You just either become over trust and too easy or you just don't trust enough to the point where you don't give them responsibilities because you still want to do it yourself or vice versa. You want to give them responsibilities and they're maybe not the right fit for the brand. I think one of our big hires hopefully we have already in place, but is a head of recruitment because like, although that's another wage, it's worth a lot. It's more damaging to have a wrong person in that job than have a good person in that job in theory. Because, you know, a few bad hires can completely stop a brand or a service, as I know firsthand. So that's why I would rather have someone in place where they're making sure that that's the right person and I've got the third party choice. @ the end, you know, she comes and says, right, Connor, there's four absolute, you know, top notch from the job description you've given me, these are four or five people that I would hire and then I pick the, the one I think out there. So it's. And that drops the chance of it becoming a problem. You.

Know, I'm a big fan of poaching people as well. Like, like fundamentally the best people for a job usually have a job. Yeah, like, like just if we were going to hire like we're currently trying to hire a head of strategy and I already know the person I want to poach for it and I know that she'd be a good fit for it because she's doing the job for another company and she's doing a job for another company that we're trying to, we're trying to, we're trying to replicate the.

Success. There's an element though of like, because I've always thought like, is there some kid in fucking Botswana that's better than Ronaldo? But he never got, never got taken down to football practice when he was 5, do you know what I mean? So is there an element of that with, with jobs? But I guess there is, but.

Because, but then again, at the same.

Time they've already been interviewed by a good company if you poach, aren't.

They? Yeah, yeah. They've already jumped through hoops and it's also like, yeah, like, you know, if they're in a certain job and if they're, they're also like, they'll usually they must be doing well in the job otherwise they wouldn't be there. Especially if it's just like a slightly senior.

Position. It's a double edged sword because that person's going to be a lot more expensive than the kid from Botswana, but he's going to need trained for two or three months so it's going to cost you either.

Way. How would you go about poaching.

Them? We built a really good system. I've not actually put this into practice for Connor, but people can steal this. We built like a system through the agency where you'd. And you can run this with one virtual assistant. You profile the job you want, you profile the companies that they might be working at based off that job profile. You want, say you want a media buyer, like a senior media buy for an agency. Like you write down like what does that job look like? What other companies, like what other agencies would they be working for? And then you reach out to them on LinkedIn and be like we're looking for this job, do you? But then you. We phrase it in a way of being like, is there anyone in your network who might be interested in this job? So we send that, then that kind of leaves the door ajar for them to say they're interested in it or refer us to someone else that they know because if they're usually quite a high performance person, they'll know someone else who's good. And then off the back of that, we'll send them like a loom video that looks like it's personalized but isn't. So we word the first three, four seconds as if we just recorded it, send them that and then basically push them from that through the same hiring process we'd use for anybody else. But yeah, so like profile the job, cherry pick the companies that they might already work in. So for that you pick another like hundred big E comm agencies in the UK and then basically just go after the staff on LinkedIn. We don't do that for Saw.

Because we need to get you to hire training in the.

Future. Can't do it for Sora because he just give it.

Away. Yeah, we don't do it for Soar because we hire and train everybody for that business. We hire everybody with no. With no prior experience. We hire them off culture fit and then train them to the point of proficiency. But for the other agency and for the essence for it's very different. We're playing at a different. Our goals for those businesses are different. So we would probably, we would use that system. But that will work. If you apply it, I can send people, if they ask me if they want to DM me for it, I'll send you the sop for it. But like, yeah, like ahead of brand. I'd probably go poach ahead of brand. If we're going to hire one, which we probably will do things like that senior hires, more more so than like I think a media buyer, you probably don't need to do that. You could just hire and train someone. If you're already pretty proficient in it, which I already feel like I am, I can teach someone that role. But for something that's like a slightly senior position, like a head of strategy or a head of brand, like I'd want someone to come in and be like, if you're going to pay them decent wage, be ready to go and bring cross learnings from other businesses. It's really valuable to get someone who's worked in another big organization and done that role, I think because they can Teach you a lot. They can bring a lot of systems and processes with you with them. A lot of best practices which you wouldn't have been aware of if you hadn't hired them, if that makes.

Sense. Yeah. Honestly, I feel like the person I need at some point, just someone to run the fucking.

Business. You need an OPS person, you need a coo. I think like someone who's going to manage hiring team management. Because also that then reduces your cognitive load and allows you to focus on creativity. Cognitive load is such a thing. Like you should be minimizing the things you have to think.

About. The only time of the day when I'm happy, when I get to think about the next video we're doing the next product. But I spend 90 of my time miserable dealing with supply.

Chain. What you should do instead of.

A sea world trying to manage little.

Things and get a NEA like a proper ea. But that's. That's changed. That's. That's probably been. Apart from Ollie, that's probably been my biggest button pusher, I.

Think. I think cognizant Lucy could do that. She keeps asking.

Me. Yeah, you should.

Get. I just get massive imposter syndrome also when it comes to hiring.

People.

Why? I feel like I'm not good enough to have someone fucking better than me working for.

Me. Yeah, that's a.

Flaw. Massively.

Yeah. You need to get out of that.

Mindset. I would honestly.

Hire. I still just default to like the first kid on the laptop designing shit. That's the identity I still have. Even though I believe I can build this massive.

Brand. Well, yeah, you could. Yeah. Well, but that's. But that's like a side of where you should position yourself in a business. Like we. We've actually had this issue in, in the agency. Like we have creative strategists and our service delivery quality started to fall because they weren't spending enough time being creative because they ended up, for some reason they were picking up loads of admin tasks like sending contracts to creators, which is not in their.

Wheelhouse.

Yeah. When we stripped that out and they focused solely on being creative and coming up with briefs, this. The quality of content in the last like two months exponentially increased. So like when I say cognitive load, it's like you should be reducing the things you want you need to think about on a daily basis and focusing your attention only on the things that move the needle massively or your best suited to. To do so, like bring in someone to manage the ops so they take things off your plate. You don't even have to think about anything. So I got to a point with Saw where I was having to, like, I was like, oh, how are these all. All these accounts doing? Like, I haven't. I haven't got a pulse. So we built a dashboard where I could just go in and see like, a scored rating of performance. And like, that's means that I don't have to think about that anymore. It's not something I have to, like, have on my mind, which is like, when you free up that capacity to think and that energy, you can then shift it into where you're good at. So you should focus on, like, bringing someone on who is going to take so much off your plate. So you can be even more creative than you've been now and focus your.

Time. Yes, I do think that's what I'm best at. I'm this weird sort of hybrid where I'm not the starving artist type, so never been that. But I'm definitely, like, better at the creative stuff than most founders. But I've just like, begrudgingly sort of figured out the business side to an extent. Even though some bits I'm still retarded with because I sit in this limbo where I'm like, I'm not quite Brad, because I don't want to just be the creative, just want to make loads of money and build a cool brand. But I also don't. I don't want to be a CEO.

Ever. Yeah, but that's like, you're like.

A. I think the main part is a.

Founder. Founder is like vision, vision and strategy. And that's what that is. It's like creative vision and strategy. So like, you should focus on just doing that and then everything else should be out, like, pushed to someone.

Else. Yeah, like, I agree. Like, I learned it the hard way. You need to enjoy everything you're doing. So the job of a CEO is. Should be redefined to do everything that you like and outsource the stuff that you either hear or you're not good at, or more so you hate it because naturally you'll be more creative once you sort of have a bit of fun with what you're doing. And if you are, 90% of the time, if you are just sort of disinterested or sort of begrudgingly doing it, then that doesn't mean that you have to be good at it. Someone else can be good at it for.

You. You know, I think cognitive load's a really good way of looking at it. Like, just, like, just think it just think about less stuff. Yeah, just think. It.

Just. Like when I'm in the sauna, for example, which you go to pretty much every day, I get mad ideas and I've actually got a habit now. I'll make sure I'm wearing my Apple watch so I can take notes in the sauna in case I forget.

Them.

Yeah. And I'll come back and I have no time to fucking work on.

Them. So try and gate. Like, getting time to be creative and think is important and like, the only way you do that is get things off your mind and have, like, less things to think about. So you need it. You need an ops person who can serve that function, who can take all of those, like, supply, like the supplier stuff. Like, do you really need to do that? Could they not report back to you on those calls? Could they not report back to you on like a weekly basis? Could they not, like, even like, obviously at different stages, but from like a. A paid media relationship? Like, do you really need to be on. Like, can you not just. Well, you probably do receive like weekly report and everything, but like, how do you get further away from that? How do you get people just reporting back to you on what you need to know and remove yourself from like the actual nitty gritty of the decision making? I think the idea. Yeah. Because your position should be vision and strategy, because that is like what you want to do in it. Like, yeah, you're similar to that. I feel like not. Not maybe not as creative, but like.

Thanks. He's just definitely a lot more profitable. A lot.

More. What you lack in creativity, you make up in cash. Yeah. Like, you're similar though. Like, you're very good at ops and like product and product development. And then I've come in obviously to help with the marketing systems and.

Processes. Yeah, I mean it was. Yeah. Especially the last six months, it's been more I find myself not having to do as much, but more the stuff that I want to do, which.

Is what you should optimize around. Like, what do you don't build a business to. For the business to own you and operate. You do you build it to operate? Like you want to build it to.

Operate. Like, best time last year in Cute. Well, basically we. We ran into issues with our supplier. Literally got an email from. Got an email from one of the machine supplier saying that there was a. There was a massive conference in Dubai with all of the manufacturers. And at three days notice I was like, right, I'm gonna go off there for a week and just get as many business contacts as I can. But last year I would have. Wouldn't have been able to do it unless it was.

Planned.

Yeah. Three or four months before that, I think, which was massive for us. It knocked like, it knocked our cogs down by like 3%, which is.

Huge.

Yeah. And in a time where cogs were going up by 6 or 7%.

It'S definitely not 7 pounds, by the way. It's got to be 14, 7. 99.

Really. I think, I think that's a question of like self awareness, like, and being like, I, I, from an agency perspective, I, I'm like fairly average at managing people so I don't involve myself in that process because both, it's something I don't really enjoy but it's also a disservice to them if I do.

That. Space goods.

Brandon. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think a lot of founders, quite a lot of founders lack self awareness. Like, it's definitely something you have to work.

On.

Yeah. Think they're good at everything, which they just fundamentally.

Not. I'm shit. Almost everything.

Yeah. That's a.

Bet. That's a good at being a high.

Risk. That's a way better mentality to have than I'm good at.

Everything.

Yeah. Way.

Better. And I used to be that. We used to do all of our own marketing and I thought I was, I thought it was classic. I thought it was better than every agency to ever do it. And then Ola came and determined that there was an extra 50% revenue out of the.

UK. Yeah. They're also the founders that when you work with them in any capacity, you're almost like working against them. It's like, I'm not like, if you're like. From an agency perspective, it's like you get into. I don't really want to segue down the agency route. You keep getting hate for the.

Agency. But this is the anti pod agency.

Yeah. They're the owners. When it's like they don't ask productive questions, it's always like, why is this, this not working? It's rather than like, how can we make this work? Or like, like we're in this to, to like work with you to get the best results, not just to like burn your.

Money.

Yeah. Coming back to Ted for a second then. It's very profitable from what I hear and I'm sure it.

Is. But this makes me like share. This makes me sound like I share your net.

Profits. I know you do. You.

Don'T. Well, no, I'm just. If it's doing all Right in it. I mean, I don't actually know where I've got that.

From. It's doing okay at the.

Minute.

Yeah. Yeah, it hasn't.

Been. Is that the sort of business you think you can, you would ever try and get an exit for or is it a cash cow business? Because I don't know, is it, is it complicated with. Is imitation perfumes? Right. Essentially. Is, Is there difficulty there in terms.

Of. Inspired.

By. Not.

Imitations. Well, inspired by.

Leslie. No. Like, I would never, I would.

Never see you selling.

It. No, I don't, I don't. I just always. There's the. Obviously you're worried about cash flow. I think selling it would only satisfy me for so long. I think it would be if I sold it and had that much free time in my hands, I would spend that money making the next dev anyway and perhaps not working. So I would prefer to have it, you know, and if it gets to the stage where it has to be toned down, so be it. But I don't, I. At this stage, I don't think.

I would ever sell from, from my perspective, looking inwards, I wouldn't consider selling it now because we barely scratched the surface. Like, we're just doing the UK and the numbers are already crazy. So like, like just take that and put it like there's so much growth opportunity. Like, I feel like when you want to sell a business, you want to sell it when it's growing, but beyond the point of like where it starts to become a bit of a struggle to grow it or a bit of like a, like you're not enjoying it as much or it's not easy to grow.

Something. It's funny because, like, off the bag of TEV, we've been able to grow a 3 PL that can get prices cheaper than 90% of the UK 3 PLs. We've been able to get sponsored by Jack Small Plug. Small Plug, we've been able to grow other brands at a stage where, you know, the level of cost to, to launch a new brand is relatively close to zero because we've already got the staff there. You know, we can take risks on that. We can take risks on tev, we can take risks on other brands. We learn a lot from it. We've got access to a lot of our tech stack. We get really good pricing on a lot of things. We get opportunities, we get to contact, you know, finders of these tech stacks or tech companies and it gets us into different circles. So unless I had another brand at the same level as tev, I would never consider selling it because you lose that sort of.

In. Yeah. You know, still built. You still build it to sell. I fundamentally think every business should be built to.

Sell. Do you think that, do you think the answer to that is because you've made enough cash to not for that not to be.

Like. I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say I've made enough cash but I've made, you know, because it runs at a nice profit level we can confidently look at other, other avenues and not have to worry the same way you would do with an.

Exit. It's, you know, I view it as being a vehicle to a much bigger exit further down the line. Like it's a, it allows us to make, to build. It's allowing us to build a team and an operation that could be sold for 10, 15 times what TEV alone could be sold if we got it right over a 10 year.

Period. You got Jack Group equity on.

Her? I actually.

Haven'T. No, not.

Yet. Not.

Yet. I want to put two grand.

In.

Yeah. My life savings into Jack.

Group. Like I fundamentally believe that we could be, we could become bigger than the hot group. Because I look at the hot group and think that they have.

Done. No pressure.

There. That they've done exactly about myself.

With the, the infinity 85.

Idea.

Yeah. I just kind of flopped.

It. I love everything about the Hub Group but if you look at even their websites, their, their social media is their marketing of all of their brands. They are just a duplicate of each other. Yeah, they are like they're the, if you look at, look fantastic. And it's literally. Well, it's all based on the same back end in genuine like what.

I said like they got, they tried.

To sign me up at.

3Po. They got into the market when it, when that barrier to entry I.

Discussed earlier so much lower was, was.

Low. So they could launch these brands that are very, very similar in different niches and meet like the minimum entry requirements and then just pump so much money into it that they just blew everybody out of the water. So we've got to approach it in a different way. But I almost think it's better to make something self sustaining at a small scale because even if something, if we make brands that are self sudden at a small scale then we could sell those like you could, you could split those brands off and sell those and it's a cash injection to do bigger things. Things like acquiring brands further down the line as well that we haven't really looked at. Yeah. I think there's a longer play that's more valuable than selling Tev. But as I said, I think you should always build things to sell. I think that makes it operationally more.

Efficient. The biggest barrier to entry in the DTC market is the fulfillment side of things and the customer service back end the market and back end and we have them. So we can now, you know, if we, if we see a sort of, sort of a new market arise that we like, we can sort of. We can grow into it very quickly and not have that sort of upward sitting of. Well, if it is a short term trend, we can only make X on this because we'll be three months late to the party. We can do it there and.

Then. Yeah, that's something I need to. We want to work on next. Early next year is that research to product development cycle. Because that's probably the biggest thing if you can get on trends and you can spot. It's a bit like if you're trying to get into drop shipping but like we have the ability to do it straight to brand rather than.

Dropship. Yeah. I really like to do like we're saying before, more product testing with space goods. Yes. So great having one sku, but I'd like to be in position where I could trial a new flavor or a new ingredient.

Overnight.

Yeah. If you're way more scalable.

Effectively. You want to get to a point with, with if we're going to build this group where we can do the whole. If obviously dropshippers try and spot a trend, jump on the trend and.

Rip. The fulfillment and experience is not scalable past like three months.

But. Exactly. So we have that infrastructure to make it where we can just test the product very quickly, move it to fulfillment and then not have any of the problems that dropshippers would encounter with much better cash flow, much better infrastructure and then just repeat that process. With brands, obviously we don't want to do too much but like just test, test, fail, test, scale. Like it's not. Not every product's gonna hit. Not everything we do is gonna.

Hit. You just have to accept that Q1's plans are product dev team and the recruitment. Well the recruitment team first and then the product dev team and have four or five killers that might specialize in different things. You know, the one I've got eyed up at the minute is more from a makeup and beauty background. I want to have one from like a supply background and sort of just have them together and just to the point where, you know, problem with.

That is they're gonna realize that mushrooms are hot. That's gonna be conflict of interest and we're gonna fall out. The essence.

Mushroom. The essence of.

Mushroom. Yeah. We're doing a mushroom.

Bowl. We're doing a supplement brand and that guy I introd you to tried to push me to do a mushroom supplement. I was like, I can't do.

It cuz he knows it's.

Coming. Yeah, he.

Did. We can say right now that we'll never do a mushroom.

Supplement. We can hold us a lot. He pushed. Yeah, he did. His trend analysis was very clear that it was. It is coming. It is the wave. It's everywhere at the moment. Everywhere. It's like.

Mushrooms. Like Netflix in.

It. Yeah, it's huge. Yeah. I think like you should build a business to sell. You should read the book Built to sell. Everyone, everyone should read that book. So good. So.

Good. Who's it.

By? I can't.

Remember. Amazon affiliate link coming in. The bio of.

This. That's all. That's. That's our monetization for this podcast. This point. Just Amazon affiliate links for everything. Yeah, but it just makes you make less like even if you look at like there's so many tech companies that just so just spend money on stupid. I think we discussed.

This.

Yeah. Like if you actually build things efficiently and self sustainingly from the very start, you make so much better strategic decisions. You don't just throw money at something stuff like pointless that doesn't move the needle. Like pointless. I don't. I was going to name drop some company then but I'm not going to do it. Yeah, I think it's better way to do.

Things. Do you think it's possible to launch a new brand these days and be profitable from day one? And if so what do you need to achieve that? Or is it kind of a. Because I guess yes. This is a broader question because like my approach with the brand is at the minute I'm kind of in like scaling mode where it's like we could be profitable. We just didn't want to scale as quick because just on subscribers is like nearly 200 grand a month in recurring obviously that this churn. So if you stop running ads you wouldn't have subscribers in six months. You'd have some but wouldn't have turned you.

Grand. You go.

First. So. So my approach is trying to get to like a critical mass at least in like the next year and then we can fucking like strip the.

Fat. I think that makes sense when you've raised money as.

Well. Which is why I'm raising more.

Money. Yeah, yeah, raise. But then, but then like because.

The numbers add up on an LTV CAC.

Basis. Exactly. Like you're playing the 12 to 18 month game where there's like your profit comes from LTV over time. It's like a SaaS business. Eventually you get to a tipping point where. And a lot of SaaS companies don't reach that tipping point to be honest. But like you get to a tipping point where that profit and LTV comes through. So it like covers your marketing spend and you breach profitability. But that makes sense when you're raising money. I guess you go first on.

There. I think being profitable from day one sort of coincides and runs parallel with the barge entry. I think if it can be profitable from day one there's a low barge entry and everything. I think if you're not investing quite heavily in research and development with that idea then someone else can copy it pretty quickly. Say for example skincare brand. You can launch a small white label brand and with them 10,000 units, sell them all and be profitable straight away. But then so could you. Or so could you. But with yourself like it's a very bespoke product and space goods where you know, you might not be profitable from day one but because you've got the personal brand you can foresee profitability very soon, very, you know, very quickly. But unless you had that, that I don't really, I wouldn't want to launch a brand that you can be profitable from day.

One. I think it was profitable from day.

One. You came from a different.

Foundation. I guess it was, it was from a different foundation because it wasn't directly into T2C. It was markets.

First. Yeah, yeah. That's.

Mad. You did market street markets like.

Proper. I thought it's important.

Poverty. Yeah, I think you can be profitable from day one depending on the, the business. So like example would be if you're drop shipping and then you pair that with Tik Tok organic. Like you've got no outgoing if you make the video. So like to answer your question, yes, you could do, you could do like drop shipping, then pair that with Tik Tok organic or social organic or like content marketing where it's where like.

The only time speak about that in.

A second where the only time investment on that market is your own input and therefore you don't have any outgoings other than that, other than a few subscriptions and then you make money off good content. So you can be profitable on day one. I think in, in Your situations or in my situation, like, I wouldn't expect to be profitable in day one. I wouldn't want to be because you want to kind of spend enough on acquisition to get learnings. And I wouldn't want to be spending ten pound a day on ads. It's pointless, rather, going at like 500 to a grand where you learn stuff and then, like, you lose money but you get the learnings and then you get to the point of profit really quickly and then you grow at a much faster.

Rate. When I first left my job to do TEV, we were doing £20 a day in.

Ads. Yeah, that was a few years ago. Impossible to do.

That. But as soon as we done that, because we weren't getting the learnings of our aggressive skill, we then went from making enough to be profitable to no sales in like 10 days and I shit.

Myself. You have to, you have to spend when you.

Start. I think, I think it's almost impossible to start a brand where you buy when you own stock with like no.

Money. Yeah. You have to go in a.

Decent, like 10, 20k at.

Least. Yeah. Because you're not in those early phases. You're not phases. I went a bit Yorkshire then. In those early phases, you're paying as much for the learnings as you are for the sales. Like, you have to learn about content, you have to learn about your funnel, you have to learn about like, even, like the product.

Itself. Such a momentum.

Thing. It gets. You get momentum, you get learnings, then you just incrementally improve things over time. So I do think you can be profitable from day one, but it wouldn't be a way I'd operate. But I think you can on a drop ship. I don't think you can on a.

Brand. I mean, we are actually one of the brands in very early stages is sort of geared to be able to be profitable from day one. Yeah. But we're going to keep it a secret for.

Now. But the, the reason for that is the way we're going to set up the market, though. That's a, That's a product, as I said earlier, that lends itself to content marketing and building a list of content. So that. And we're going to build that list over a period of three to six months before we launch the product through really good content marketing. But then obviously we're. I'm not going to build that content myself because we've got the. We're going to employ someone to do it. So technically we're not going to be profitable from day One, but we can build. I think we can build a good enough content infrastructure to have like a hundred thousand subscribers so that when we launch the product, we instantly get that sales.

Throughput. It's like.

Influences. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. If you've got a following, the millions. I'm sure she spends ads, but maybe.

Previously. I think that's the way I would approach it. If I had no money trying to start an e comm business, I would pick a niche that lends itself to having really good content strategy. Because then you can just put your time into making good content and building an audience through that content. Be that like blogs, good Instagram feeds, TikTok organic reposting. Funnel people to a website which has more of that content, capture their lead information. Do that for six months, build another big enough list and then launch a product off the back of that. Then you can get to profitability straight.

Away. I don't know what you said last. What were you.

Saying? I can't.

Remember. Do some co hosting. Help me.

Out. Took a little break.

There. The Tillamic, you organic.

Malbec. Tokyo's joined me over here for. For chili looks worried. Oh, he's on the.

Move. He's a wine.

Connoisseur. Finish this. Oh, he's drinking.

It. It's really bad for dogs. You can't. You can't let him drink it. You can't pro. Yeah, don't let him drink.

It. There's any lick in this side you can't.

Process.

Grapes. Yeah, grapes kill.

Dogs. It's just.

Chocolate. No, grapes. Because they can't process grapes in general.

Generally. I used to feed them grapes. Spit it.

Out. It's because they can't. Hey, grapes have the same effect on dogs as wine does on humans. They can't process the alcoholic thing in it. I don't know. I don't know enough about it to be honest. I can't remember what we're saying. We were talking about something. Obviously. It'd be a bit of a podcast if we.

Weren'T. It's a podcast anyway. People listen to it. Where were we? Help me out in this episode. You're an interesting middle ground because you're a co host but also involved in the.

Business. Yeah, it's unique, isn't.

It? If there's one thing you would change about this, what would it.

Be? So now the guest is asking the.

Question. Asking me.

Questions. Desperate.

Scene. God, I don't.

Know. I could see the way he's.

Pausing. It's good to think about your answers. What would I change about it. Oh, I'd solve our. I'd solve our supply chain problems. Yeah, that would be nice. I think if we could expediate a couple of hires. Having a head of brand would be really nice. If we had one of those right now. I wouldn't change much about it. I think the growth trajectory is ridiculously good. Like, I'd be. It would be stupid to wish for much more than how much you.

Plan on doing in 2360 mil. 60. Yeah. I knew it was big. I think it was that big, Bosch. And how are you going to get there compared to what you've done this.

Year? So the. The last, sort of. My last three months have been focusing on ensuring that the US can go sort of unscathed. So. So we've got our expedited shipping method, which we're one of the first three brands in the UK to be able to ship stuff dangerous goods free. So it's still basically chart. So obviously perfumes, Dangerous goods has to be kept separate in an airplane, but basically we're being allowed to ship because we're shipping quite large quantities every day. They're trying us to change the rules on dangerous goods. So the rules at the minute is every. There has to be a dangerous goods certified engineer on every.

Flight. Localized.

Fulfillment. No, no. But this is like. This is going to allow us to enter the market because of the. The price increases from the US market. Like, our competitors over there are charging like $70 for 100 bottle, whereas we're charging 25 quid. So we can sort of find a middle ground in price and still make up that. That.

Margin. But, yeah, we'll do that. We'll do. I'm confident we'll do that. We'll get. We'll get the uk. There's so much growth to get in the uk, where we can get it to a point where it makes up a bulk of that. But we'll get. I think we'll get to.

America. So do you think you can get to 50mil in the.

UK? Let me do.

The. Probably not. Not quite that. No, not maybe. I don't know. It's difficult to project next year.

How much I'd spend for 60 mil.

Rev next year, 10 to 15. Well, 15 to 20%.

MER. Only 15% of.

Revenue.

Yeah. At those product margins.

Probably. Yeah. I don't really want to give too much. I don't know if we're giving too much away. I don't know. No.

Not. But yeah, the UK market definitely depends on how much our competitors rip Us.

Off.

Yeah. Because it's like getting notoriously bad to the point where we are looking at legal options because, like, they're literally just taking our ads, give them to incense and getting people to rep the ads.

Word. Yeah, but there's, there's. I don't think that's a worry. Like, I was talking to a client. I was talking to the client the other day. Like, if you're. If you're a business that always has to go to other people's ads for inspiration, you're fundamentally behind by like two or three months every time. Like, you want to be the person who's leading with exceptional ideas and leading.

With. I'm waiting for all the.

Rips. They all.

Come. They will.

Come. You've had one on Twitter. I remember that guy. So, like such, such an obvious.

Riff. He's probably watching the.

Pod. It's just like, if you copy perfumes and like, that's good enough to get you to a stage, but it's not good enough for you to dominate a market. Like, you're always going to be chasing. It's always going to be those. Fundamentally, you got to be saying.

It'S the first one in the space, haven't you? To be like the.

Brand. It's funny because we weren't, we were. We were the second to. To another brand and, you know, we sort of overtook them quite quickly, but they raised their prices, like double their prices to the point where they were trying to be the luxury. Luxury in a space where you're capped at prices based on other perfume brands, you know, so it's. It was a bit of a weird move, but like, they're, they're definitely. Obviously they're maybe playing like an LTV play in terms of subscription and stuff, but whereas we went for more of a LTV push with multiple purchases rather than just one purchase. Our repurchase rate is like 65%. So we know our products are very, very.

Good. That's growing alarmingly fast as well. Which is why I think, like uk, we can get to some stupid numbers next year. And then we put plug in the US, plug in a few other regions. I think 60 mils defo doable just, just through that and maybe one. 1 of the.

Brand. 15 of our customers rebuy every month and that's grown by which is.

Just like every single.

Month. Everything they. They're eligible.

Purchases. There's no subscription in place either. It's just like come to the website and buy again. So I think there's a lot of work to do. But like if we can. I think there's, as I said before, there's so many places to still work on that will add.

Massive. So can I put 60 mil in the title of this podcast to get more.

Clicks? Of course.

Yeah. Just so you can hold me.

Accountable. Allegedly blew.

It. Yeah. Come on. Come on. With some Shopify screenshots in a year's.

Time. How big do you think it can be in 10.

Years? Don't.

Know. Yeah, it's a weird one because I never wanna, I never, I don't even like looking at the next 12 months. Like before Ollie, I was purely month on month and then hit that depression phase in January where our sales fall off a.

Cliff. But yeah, does that happen in.

January? So last January was our first sort of. Because that we were very, very high in terms of year on year growth and then last January it sort of, it did sort of plateau that last January, February, the, the only two months we were. We haven't grew once a.

Month. I think the thing I would say is like fundamentally it's a product that benefits from economic.

Downturn.

Yeah. It's a, it's a cost saving exercise. Like how does that not benefit from people having less money? Just, it just fundamentally does. Like there's obviously going to be a subset of society at the top of levels that are never going to move away from the designer perfumes, but that's not who we're to going, going after, we're going after those people who want to save 50, 60 quid a month and.

That'S. And like do people get through a perfume a month? I buy a fancy aperture, it lasts me two.

Years. That's the.

Concept. But when it costs you less, you just slap it.

On. Yeah, yeah.

True. Like you just a bit more loose with it, aren't you? So I like, I think fundamentally it benefits from an economic downturn. It benefits from people having less money because it's, and then once people have had a good experience with it, it's very hard to then go back to paying more for something that you've had the same experience for.

Less. Like I, I, I don't even try and I try and deter away from that and, and, and just provide like our, I generally believe our perfumes are amongst the best in the world at any.

Price. Have you got an Aqua De Palma one inspired.

By. Inspired.

By. Cuz my favorite right now is. I mean I've never, I've never found the perfume for me. I always like try a new one but one I liked in Summer was Aqua de Palma forgotten the fucking variant. But have you got any of.

Those? Maybe we do a space goods.

Collab. Space goods.

Club. I fucking like that one because every time I smell it reminds me of this moment in summer with a certain.

Someone. You romantic cunt.

Sense. The thing, it's so mad. It's mad. I literally was in the lift, I don't know, fucking two months ago here and someone was wearing my ex girlfriend's perfume. And I was like, wow, I really brings you to like a different fucking.

Planet. That's a campaign I want to do this.

Year. This year I think smell is the most associative sense or whatever. But you smell a perfume and you just bring like. Brings you back to that person, I.

Think. And someone might steal this, but I think a great someone we know might steal this. I think a great like, I think a great campaign would be like something around like memories like make, make. Make yourself memorable basically through.

Send. No, they'll just wait until after we've done it.

So. Yeah. But I think that'd be a really good big campaign to do for a certain part of the year. I don't know when. Maybe Valentine's.

Day. So this brought me on to a good point actually. If you're going to 60 mil or whatever, like have you done any brand marketing yet? Has it all been performance.

Marketing? It's all.

Direct. Moyes Ali spoke about this. I actually agree. He said like until you get to 10 mil should just be performance.

Marketing. It's funny because like I think until you get to 10 miles, your word of mouth is brand marketing. You know, like it's only a good.

Product.

Yeah. Your focus for that period should be providing an extremely good experience and finding an acquisition channel that.

Works.

Yeah. And those two things alone because you get the word of mouth benefits of providing a really good experience which is brand. And then have an acquisition channel that you can pour money down.

Profitably. I would argue that tick tock. When the ads manager wasn't as strong as it was now was a.

Brand.

Yeah. Exercise because of how cheap the CPMs were. Like we were getting like 65p CPMs at a stage. So that was a brand play and performance marketing play at the same.

Time. Yeah. I guess when I think of brand marketing and I'm not expert, but I just think of stuff that evokes an emotion rather than a.

Sell.

Yeah. It's a long. And because of that emotion and association, like your me say that sort of campaign, it's memorable. Like this 80s movie. I've done, I guess, is a. That is brand.

Marketing. So I think on one of our new brands that it's going to be in the fragrance niche as well. So that's going to be more of a brand play. Yeah. Because the, the hair, the higher AOB can sort of combat.

That.

Yeah. I think, I think beyond the point, like, you have to lead with brand equity and then the performance catches up to that and you need the brand equity in order to make everything, everything else work. But it's like, when is that point? That point will differ for every brand. You're gonna need a lot more brand equity because your offer is a lot more complex and there's a lot more like, trust involved with the purchase. I think, again, skincare is a good example of this. Brand equity is massive in skincare because you don't just have to convince someone that the cost of your product is worth it. You have to convince the risk of switching from, from their current skincare routine. It's worth that risk of making that jump. So therefore you have to have like a trust and brand equity play that kind of makes the perceived value of your products exceed those two things, the cost and the actual risk of.

Switching. I think a large part of every consumer confidence is a placebo effect, whereas it plays into word of mouth, it plays into influencer market and it plays into the price, it plays into how good your packaging is. A large part of it is a placebo play. You know, like your pacing looks is on point so naturally before a person. And it's funny because we, we ran this last year. That was about 12 months ago. So we switched from Hermes to roy mail track 24. So everything goes out track 24. Our returns rate was sitting about 2% when we were with Hermes. We switched everything to Royal Mill 24. So customer were getting. Instead of waiting four days for, for an order, they were getting it next day. And our returns rate halved. But reviews based on product quality also halved, also.

Doubled. Sorry.

Yeah. So customers thought our product was better just because they had the Amazon effect of receiving it.

Faster. It's like that's, that's an example.

Of. Wait a minute. So that makes me think we've switched to Roma 24 in the past.

Week. Don't.

Tell. Which is 40 more expensive? No, we haven't mentioned.

It.

Yeah. But like a bit of me saying, oh, it's more expensive, but it's probably worth it. So that just for the returns potential change, kind.

Of. It's an example of like what you did there Was an example of under promise and over.

Deliver.

Yeah. Which.

You. Which everyone opposite to most.

Brands. Everyone applies that really heavily to service based businesses but not that many people apply it heavily to.

Brands. I'm a big believer of rating the customer's happiness between 1 to 10. So naturally say for example the customer's happiness is 5. Right. Products late by two days. Customer happiness is now 3. They open your product, your product's okay. So it goes up to four. But if your product, if the customer's product happiness is five, receives the parcel two days early. Now it goes up to seven. They open the product and it's still only a one. The difference is a customer happiness level of four and eight just based on how they got the parcel. And I have a big believer like part of the reason why I love Represent is because I order it and I get it next day. Yeah like next two days, three.

Days. I reckon I spent five grand on.

Represent. Yeah, you spent about five.

Grand. I used to buy from them in 2016 before it was cool. 17,017 K. I've never actually checked.

But yeah it tells you.

Prestige. I think you can apply B2B.

Sass. I think you can apply like a. An under promise over deliver mentality to econ brand. And like not enough people do like for example if you can, if you improve your shipping times, maybe should, maybe should just test not telling people but just exceeding their expectations. So keeping if you get next day delivery as standard maybe just keep your shipping times as two to four.

Days.

But. But then everybody gets it next day and everybody's just like holy. I expected this in four.

Days. You could also split test increasing the product cost by the £1 extra. Just, just they wouldn't know it's that. But the perception of the experience would be.

Better. It's like well yeah perception is everything in that sense and like they're going to remember that. They're going to remember the experience of getting that quicker and probably tell people about even if it's just the partner and be like that's how like.

That word of mouth spreads our product before then our time to second purchase which is something that I believe in heavily from. From a gifting product. Our time to second purchase was 19 days. We swapped to track 24. Our time to purchase. Our time to second purchase halved.

To nine days straight away despite exceeding expectations. Yeah which is just huge perceived value and expect indexed expectations are two big things that you can.

Prioritize. I really thought about that with shipping. That's a good.

Point. How.

Many. So you don't need to tell everybody everything like.

Just. Yeah we do. We still do the same thing. You know we say you get standard shipping for 2.99. Fast shipping is 4.99. A majority of people still choose the fast shipping but everything gets sent out at the time. Same, same time. Now don't get me wrong in terms of process time the express always gets processed first. So if we're really busy like Black Friday we'll process the express orders first. But they all get sent on the same service of track.

24. Yeah. Another thing I was thinking earlier is because we do free UK shipping just for everything right now Dragon's bad idea. Should I would have been more leverage in doing free for subscribers for example. And then you push that if that's your.

Play. But it's one of, it's one of the things that a B test like is. Yeah it's. There's some abts where we thought are going to be clear winners like for example floating CTA bar on product.

Pages like yeah, it just didn't.

Work. That was in our heads was like right, that's a no brainer. Why are we not doing it? A B test is it? And it dropped CTR by like.

3%. This is Google Ultimate.

Yeah. I don't know if I would change that because like thinking about your.

Products like what, what my logic was and I've always been pissed off on brands in the UK trying to charge me for shipping. It's not my fault you happen to be online. Yeah. Like you're paying for the product, it needs to be delivered so it should be free. That's my logic.

Yeah. I mean it's hard for you because usually what I would recommend would be have a 3 free shipping threshold of.

Something.

Exactly. But that's what I used to.

Do with Midnight City and.

Shit. But then are you going to force people end up buying two bags at.

Once. Yeah. Because it's not a product that lends.

Itself. That's what I was about to.

Say. Unless you've got like more than two or three SKUs which you don't.

Yet I feel like for you like when you try to convert those first time customers like what you're trying to do, you try to reduce the friction so that they can try the product and then you try to have an.

Insert. Yeah. I mean sample pack is the most common question we get. So I still need to do that. I did have those on order. Then it turned out the supplier fucked up the packaging because it was too Small to get the same effect on the touch. I didn't want to do a matte.

Packet. Yeah. It's like, how do you still do it? So like, for you, for you, it's like, how do you decrease the friction so that people are more willing to try the product? And then how do you make sure that they have a perceived like real or perceived in like, benefit as soon as they take that product that then they make someone to buy.

Again? Like, would you really, like, from your point of view, would you really want the impact of the negative reviews on a. On a customer that's only paid ten pounds to try the product? You know, it's not the same. It's not the.

Same. That's. Yeah, it's the flip side of.

It. I do think that, yeah, the risk in sample packs is like, whether people have committed to it as.

Much. I don't know. So for six months, instead of sample packs, we're just giving out a 50 discount to people that asked. It was better than not having them. But I just stopped doing it because people started telling each other, if you comment on Instagram, you'll get 50 off. So then every comment was, where's my discount? We just said not do it anymore. It's.

Not. I mean, yeah, like, it's just. It's weird. Like, it's. In the early days of the brand where. Where I was still doing the customer service, I found that massively it was where. When customers were asking for free, like samples and then you were saying, no, look, here, you pay for the. The sample, but here's a free shipping code. Like, they tended to be the ones that gird about.

Everything.

Yeah. Like, they're g. That they were out when Roy Mill came. Like, yeah, yeah, obvious. Like, they're gonna. They're gonna. If it can't fit through your letterbox and you haven't put a safe place, they're gonna leave you a.

Card.

Yeah. They're the most likely to have, like, the ones that are going to leave you negative. Same as an agency client. The agency clients that haggle you, like, are the ones that. Are the ones that are going to be a nightmare. The ones that pay the least are usually the ones that. The biggest.

Problem.

Yeah. Whereas the ones that pay the. Pay the best are like, oh, there's my report 6. Spend some more.

Money.

Yeah. It's the same with people. Like, the ones that haggle you down are usually inherently just difficult people to deal.

With.

Yeah. So I think, like, yeah, I would just try and reduce the friction to People to actually trying the product on the front end and then just have. Give them a great experience and have a perceived. Like increase your perceived value of that through other.

Methods. But, yeah, yeah, gonna test.

That. That was our bit. That was our. That was definitely our needle mover in terms of growth and our sort of. I would almost call it a hack because, yeah, it was. Now, obviously, we're at a level where it's like, well, do we need that? Do we need the. That cost? Because it is dear. Like, it's a lot dear than try 24. But then you think, well, it's only a.

Pound. Yeah, it's worth.

It. And an average order value of. Of, you know, 30 pound. It's like all you need is like one of the 30 customers to order again. That's covered, you.

Know?

Yeah. I think your biggest players community. I've told you this multiple times I've said.

This. You know, one thing I noticed over Black Friday and it really pissed me off because I thought I'd done the wrong thing, is Athletic Greens have never done a sale. And I'm obsessed with that brand now because every investor call, I say, I'm trying to be the next Athletic Greens or Hull Greens more because I love the simplicity of.

It.

Yeah. They didn't do a sale of Black Friday and Recharge told me. They probably shouldn't have told me they have 300,000 active subscribers paying 89amonth. Do the maths on.

That. It's like it's a SaaS company. I'm.

All. I've never fucking.

Tasted. It's like 26 million a month, 300 million a year in.

Subscriptions. Yeah. That's.

Crazy. That's why they're worth 1.2 billion, probably more.

Now. Yeah. What did you run over Black.

Friday? I think it was retarded. I did a fucking subscription only for a week, and it was basically half price on the first.

Month. Is that so.

Bad? I mean, we got a fuckload new subscribers, like two and a half thousand new subscribers, which was more than doubling the previous entire.

Amount.

Not. But then Churn went really high after Black.

Friday. Not enough brand owners do and analysis post Black Friday on LTV of those people they.

Acquired. I know it's straight away on Skier, which we're currently. Because it's like that Churn went up, like. So once we stop the offer, we're getting like 300 subscribers a day or whatever. We didn't really spend much on Black Friday. We've got no stock. But that's not the Point. But then churn just went way up in the two weeks.

After. Did it go up as high as losing all of.

Them? No, it's still like a net.

Benefit. Not enough for now but see I.

Refuse. But then I thought because the thing with subscriptions is because those people got in at 29amonth there wasn't quite half price. That would piss off everyone paying 39amonth. So my theory is a lot of people cancel that were paying 39 during the offer and jumped.

Resubscribed. But, but you're not really, it's not really discounting because all you're doing is discounting the first month. So all your. But I'd love to see that the cut in CPA versus the 10 pound discount on the front end. What's your CPA? Not 10 point cheaper than.

That. Yeah but your product cost is the same. Your fulfillment cost is the same. Yeah but that doesn't matter because.

You'Re CPA is you're taking 10 point off your CPA and taking it or sorry taking 10 off your CPA and taking 1010 off your AOB. It's a direct.

Correlation. It is to a degree but it's also like there's brand equity to consider. There's like lt.

Yeah. I wasn't sure if it was the right move but I did.

It. There's also the LTV of those people compared to the LTV of people who pay it full price. There's no way they'll be the same. Like people don't consider contribution margin enough over Black.

Friday. Like what is contribution margin? I sound so retarded saying that because I've heard of people pump that around. It might be a different way of saying the same thing. But when you say contribution margin, what do you mean? Have you just said a big word? Because when you say contribution margin, my perception of that and I got caught on a call invested video said sorry, I don't know what you mean by contribution margin. I don't know if we're talking about the same thing. I thought he meant the margin left just basically the gross margin after product and fulfillment. What's the margin you can afford spend on.

Cac? Always looking.

Up. Right now I'm getting a phone call from Lucas. Sorry, I've got six phone.

Calls. I know I, I would, I would question whether or not customers actually lower the perceived value of the brand.

Guy in two minutes it's been a rushed podcast.

Over. I would question whether or not cost consumers actually lower the brand awareness.

Or.

Brand perception over black Friday I think all brands are allowed a sale over Black Friday without running because they, they don't associate it with the sale of the brand. They associate it with the sale of the time of year. So they're not going to buy over that period unless you've got a.

Sale. Yeah.

True. You know, or you know, what's that you've got that customer's attention over Black Friday with your ad. Right. That you've got shown. But the first thing they're thinking of, oh, it's Black Friday, where's their sale? And then you've lost them because they're, you know, they're not interested in your product but they want to go with a competitor because it's. There's going to be a sale with your competitor. Yeah, you know, we were lucky over Black Friday that our sale was bigger than every other competitors. You know, the closest competitor offered buy one or buy two get one free. Where ours was simplistic buy one get one free. So you know that's a net positive for us because you know the customers expect that from us. That's okay. I don't, you know, I'm not really in a decision where they're going to. They don't care that we offer the buy on grandfather. They're not going to assume that we're lower quality because our trust partner. If you say otherwise compared to competitors, you.

Know.

Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah. Not.

People. Have you found the Google result for what is.

Contribution? No, I don't want to butcher the explanation of it and like I can waffle an explanation. It's like contribution margin is like your the revenue attributed by a sale minus the variable.

Cost. It's the variable cost of the.

Ad spend like anything that's variable basically. So if you decrease the price of a product and then even if your variable costs remain the same but usually increase over Black Friday because you spend more, then the contribution margin decreases because you're selling the product for less and you're spending more through for not your CPAs. I guess so I might have butchered that to be honest. I usually wolve off a lot.

And you took a.

Question but I think the fundamental thing is a lot of people do enough analysis around the customers they acquire over that period and whether they're actually worth acquiring for a higher cost and selling a lower priced product. It's like some people and, and I don't believe this whole narrative of you should never run a.

Sale. Yes you.

Should. You should fundamentally probably do some offers especially like us based offers they pop. But if your brand is not aligned to do that. Athletic screens didn't run one, for example, that's perfectly aligned with their.

Brand.

Interesting. Then you got to think that through because a lot of people tend towards becoming busy for falls over that period of making the same amount of net profit but selling five times as many.

Units. It's like five.

Times. And then that's okay if the LTV like from that becomes worth it. But a lot of the time it probably.

Won'T. Obviously the LTB push, you wouldn't know yet because it hasn't been 30 days.

Since. Yeah, that seal, we did quite a lot of analysis over it last year and there's a lot of brands that didn't benefit from it. But depends. Depends on the ecosystem you got set.

Up.

Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting one.

Yeah, he's sinking that seven pound mile.

Back. You've got to go for the community play next year.

Though. Have you ever tried doing podcasts? Podcasts.

Sponsorships? No, but I was thinking this the other day because I originally converted on athletic greens from.

Huberman. I did as.

Well. Yeah. I actually straight up converted from that. And then I got hit loads of times after that on Instagram, which I'd never seen him.

Before. I bet that ROI on that human podcast investment's ridiculous because he's like the perfect person. Like authority to the.

Authoritative. Yeah. And like just.

Massive. Literally a Stanford scientist on health and. Well, not.

Neuroscientist. He knows everything. Yeah, he does Google.

Huberman. So funny. He's such a meathead as.

Well.

Yeah. A me. I did this.

Black. I watch him and Friedman. Friedman a lot. Yeah. Likes.

Freeman. I like Friedman. I also like Rogan. Rogan's.

Funny. It just goes to show this like, consistency of podcasts, how you build an audience and obviously good.

Content. Humans, humans off the back of ridiculously good content. And. Yeah, well presented, well delivered, well structured. Like he came from nowhere. And he grew really fast. Like 18.

Months. I thought it been around like 10.

Years. It probably has. But like the point of becoming big was. Yeah, people have always been around longer than you think, aren't.

They? Same with the midnight pod. We'll go from. We've been sat on like 5 to 6k subscribers for about five years. I mean, well, one year, then we'll go to 5 million overnight. That's the.

Plan.

Yeah. What's the final question I was asking these pods? I've probably already had an answer.

From. He asked it last. He asked it.

Last. Well, it's so Cliche, but I ask it every time. Now I have to find a new cliche to go with from like next week. But cuz know you getting in trouble. He's got to leave. I'm not invited to Christmas party. I've got no Christmas parties this year.

Cuz. Not my.

Christmas. I would invent it mine but it's already.

Been. Yeah, well next year. Three bits of advice to your 18 year old self. Knowing what you know now. Also I feel like. How old are.

You?

27. You definitely have. You're definitely wiser than the average 47 year old. Yeah, you're just like a wise figure. Do you know what I.

Think? Yeah.

Definitely. When I first met you I thought you were like.

35. Got pure.

Dad. Is that the hairline.

Or. No, I don't know, I just feel like, I often feel like I'm like 16 year old kid that's in like a fucking 27 year old's body now. I look around and there's cunts that are my age that are clearly.

Just like, you've got pure dad.

Energy.

Me? Yeah, yeah. I'm like struggling to be a dog dad.

Anyway. I think the first one would definitely be give up responsibility a little bit faster. Be in control of the sort of being controlled doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be overseeing everything. What we sort of, we learned, you know, if we put the sops in place you can sort of manage it from afar. I think the third one would be just put your head down, just enjoy, enjoy things. I think naturally, if you have a problem, think about it in the way, is it going to be here in five days? Probably not. It's going to be here in five weeks. Probably not. So why are you stressed about stuff that hasn't happened and that sort of eat my own words because the last three months have been the most stressful I've ever been in business. We were days away from running out of stock, like seven times, eight times. So like. But yeah, we at the silver lining is we got through it anyway, so. And we've had the best Q4 we've ever had times four. And yeah, just if you're not enjoying the process, you'll get bored of it eventually. So you have to enjoy the process. Enjoy the process, not the.

Goal.

Yeah. Process over.

Outcome.

Yeah. And the last year has definitely been all about pushing out everything that I don't like to do in business and doing everything I do like. And it's been a lot more enjoyable. Apart from working with Ollie. It's A bit.

Stress. It's.

Tough. Jarring, as he.

Says. Yeah, I was going to say I asked you that, but I asked you that at the end of last episode. And no one's saying that.

Again. No, I've not got that many.

Insights. He shares them all on.

Twitter. His personal brand team shares it on Twitter. Yeah. Fucking hell. Well, I guess with that said, on that bombshell, we'll wrap up the episode. Was it 52 or.

53? It's 53, I.

Think. I was really pissed off myself that I originally never managed to do the 52 in a row. I got to 48 in a row, I think it was. And I took a strange four month hiatus and then like sort of hiatus. Two months. Two.

Months. You needed those four months to yourself just to grow. Yeah.

Exactly. Better than ever.

Exactly. To end, not to hijack is like January. We've got a lot of guests, sponsors, structure, more. It's all coming. It's all coming in hot. There's a.

Lot. There's a lot. There's a lot of guests in.

January. I can't wait to see your new.

Sponsor. Yeah.

No. Sponsored by one small fulfillment company, Jack F. Yeah, I'm gonna check Chuck the link in this episode just to provide more value to the sponsor. Yeah, yeah. Right. Cheers for watching. Subscribe to the pod. Let's go. See you in the next episode.