Got a Small Office, Big Ups and Downs in March, Am I Happy in London? - Doc The Journey Ep 62

New office. It's funny, the worst week in the history of the business performance wise. Moved into an office. I don't know how the fuck feel about it. This is raw Dr. Journey stuff, which I am debating whether I should do or not. It's a very cool spot. We haven't like filled it in yet, but it's a bit of a wavy building. Got the OG Roma dust, the first ever pouch on the wall. Got a fridge. I just bought some shitty HP monitors. I've got a studio display at home. Didn't feel like I could justify getting four of them. Trying to be stingy, but yeah, it's been a tough week, to be honest, and maybe this style of content will be what I do next. But here we are, yo, back with episode 60 something and dock the journey. It's a bit different. I'm in the car for the first time. I probably sound horrible. I've got man flu. But I'm still filming because I committed to doing this for anyone that cares. March has been a rough month. There's a lot of shit about Meta. I don't think it's just that. I think we just took her out of the ball and certain things figured out a lot of margin issues, a lot of fulfillment issues, were ahead of budget and target on top and bottom line for the past month, and we probably still will still be this month. But our marketing metrics on new customer acquisition have been terrible, to be honest, it feels like everything suddenly went wrong overnight at the start of March, literally Friday 1st of March, and it hasn't come back in the whole month, basically. And ultimately that's my fault because I'm in charge of everything and I'm the founder. But it's not ideal because, yeah, we've been outperforming on marketing metrics for the past few months, which is good. We're being really propped up right now by retail, which is going better than I thought, so that is good. Increased margin on product and fulfillment, that's also good. And then also returning customers and subscription because retention has been better than we thought, but still doesn't get away from the fact that new customer acquisition just hasn't been where it needs to be. Where do I look here, by the way? So, yeah, sometimes you just fucking question your. Your business because you're like probably a lot of D2C founders and consumer brand founders. You're so. I feel like I'm so tied to the numbers every day in the sense of. Feel like my personality and my mood is defined by whether my CAC was good yesterday or not and whether my numbers were good yesterday or not, dunno. It's been that way for ages. Like I'm not as affected by it as I used to be because I've been a fucking D2C founder for seven years, which is wild. But it still does get to me. I'm drinking the coffee at 6pm which is a bad sign. That's usually a sign of degeneracy as a result of stress. So yeah, that's pretty much where we're at this month. Fucking hell. I can't really. It's harder to do these videos when I'm driving. Just focus on the road. I going to post this anyway because it's part of the process. But yeah, need to focus on some more bigger macro things. I think I'm getting too bogged down in like how is our CAC performing? Trying to like almost gain the system but actually we need new flavors, we need new SKUs, both of which are coming. We need to launch properly in Germany, Netherlands, Europe, mainland in general. I do feel like the UK is a really shitty market right now. A lot of people have said it. I speak to a lot of brand founders that are also saying it. It's not an excuse but I just think we're, we're pigeonholing ourselves too much by basically having one sku, largely one channel in pretty much one country and doesn't feel like the smartest move so. Oh, going the wrong way. Yeah, I think I need to take a step back. I'm not as involved in the day to day growth marketing as I was. I would like to focus more on brand and product like the actual basis of everything we do, which I haven't been doing the past few months. Also I look overweight and stressed in this video. I've got it on front facing camera which is a bad idea because I end up looking at myself the whole time. But yeah, really need to focus more on macro factors like product market rather than just micro details like conversion rate, testing, optimizing content. All that shit's important but it's honestly not the shit I feel very competent with anymore. Not what I enjoy. Like I'm definitely more of a high level generalist like coming up with the, the products and brand and like the direction of what we're trying to do. Because yeah, I mean I do come from a media buying background and having to hustle and do it all myself, but I don't think that's where my skill set is anymore. I mean I haven't run the ads for this business ever myself. But obviously I've still been pretty involved in terms of leading agencies, working with agencies and so on. But yeah, basically performance has been off this month on the key thing, which is cac, to be honest. Like we're still being propped up on our targets like revenue wise from other channels, outperforming. But yeah, it's pretty because our CAC has been like 30 higher than it should have been this month out of Nowhere after like 12 months of being on target. So yeah, that's what, that's where we're at. On another note, I feel like I need to leave London. Not now, but maybe in the future having kind of a. Don't know, it's not midlife crisis, is it? Third life crisis where I feel like maybe I'm forcing myself to live a certain way which isn't helping me feel my best physically or mentally and as a result probably not doing my best work. And. Yeah, maybe I shouldn't share this on the Internet, but that's what we're doing. So yeah, maybe just a bad week, to be fair, a bad month. A few weeks of feeling like everything's going to shit suddenly, even though taking a step back, it's actually not. I mean, I felt like this before obviously, but even more so the past few weeks probably than usual. I think part of my problem is the grass is always greener when I've not got an office. I want an office when I've got an office. Now I'm starting to question do I want an office? I don't know if that's typical for everyone, every founder or I'm just really bad at it. But that tends to be how I work. Like I made a video April last year or May last year when I was in Bali saying I'm done with this whole nomad lifestyle. I want to get an office and scale to the moon. And now I've started to do that, a bit of me is like, am I just lying to myself? Like the main thing is the business growing. It's not necessarily having an office and bigger overheads and all that shit. So. And I guess it comes down to as well, I do my best work when I feel good. And I wouldn't say I've felt particularly good in recent weeks. And I think largely it's like, I don't know, maybe I'm starting to think I need to actually fix the root cause. And I feel like a large part of the root cause could be forcing myself to be in a place which doesn't necessarily bring the best out of me, particularly in winter, living in, like miserable fucking rain in London. So that's something I'm thinking about. I'm still very, very bullish on the business. Obviously I've got loads of new shit coming, but I just don't know. I feel like something's telling me something needs to change and I think it's where and how I've been living. It's been quite a lonely existence in recent months, particularly in winter. I mean, probably the same for a lot of people when you're founder working from home, but I just feel like the UK environment, particularly in winter, hasn't been helping my mindset. Doesn't make me feel like I'm in the best headspace to do the best work. I haven't felt particularly inspired. That's probably normal to some extent, but also genetically, I feel like I'm wired sometimes. Really? Yeah. Swings in terms of my inspiration and motivation and obviously keep working through it. But yeah, I'm thinking a change in environment and putting, like putting myself first, blah, blah, blah. It's kind of true. Putting my mental health first will enable me to do my best work and actually build a better business. So I don't think there's any one way to do things these days. You've got to figure out what works for you. I have tried both sides of the coin in the past few years and I'm still not sure exactly what the best way to do it is going forward. But I just feel like what I'm doing right now doesn't feel entirely like in alignment with what makes me feel good and therefore what makes me build a better business. So, yeah, it's a difficult one, very difficult one. I feel like I need to prioritize my health more, is what I'm saying, physical and mental. And as a result, the business health will be better anyway. So this is going to have to be edited massively because I'm talking a lot of. But there we go. Maybe I'll do more of these car videos when I'm going on longer drives and I don't have to pay attention to the road as much because I've been going through central London, which still feels like winter at the end of March, by the way. Catch you in the next episode, Sam.