Hardest Moments, Ad Creatives, Hiring, Marathon Training + Dream Dust | The Midnight Pod Ep 49

Alright, fuck it. We're back with the Midnight Pod. It's been a while episode. I don't even know if this is recorded me. This is a fucking freestyle setup. I think it's episode 49 or something. Did like 48 episodes in a row and then. Oh no, 44 episodes in a row. Something then had a hiatus and then started season two for about two weeks. Six shit episodes and then decided to launch it again. So. So this is a potentially reformatted season two and a half of the Midnight Pod in some fancy fucking boardroom which you've never used before, but introduce yourself.

Yeah, I've been on this before. I'm Ollie from saw with us 4U and 4U advertising and a couple of agencies. One of which was with Lucas to my right and also working as a CMO on an E commerce group that we're trying to grow. Yeah, it's been about. I think about a year ago I came on with Joe. Maybe longer, less.

It was like February and you still got a bottle of wine.

Yeah, I actually met up with you lot that night.

That was the loosest podcast episode we've ever done.

I can hear your voice towards the end of that as well. Absolutely.

I don't remember last 20 minutes.

After that episode.

Yeah, so did I. That was good fun. So we're back. I'm gonna hopefully be on these more regularly if it goes to plan when you can't find guests.

Yeah, plan is guests and non guests because I think it's therapeutic to do pods. It documents the journey alongside my fucking weekly shitty episodes that people still watch. But just mixing it up, I think it's a surprisingly good networking opportunity as well. Doing a podcast. When I stopped doing it, I stopped meeting people. Yeah, hold on, wait a minute. So yeah, yeah, Lucas.

Yeah, I'm Lucas. I've been on the pod as well, but more interviewing. Matchi run another podcast called Unwind. Also run a creative agency called Hammy Media and yeah, co direct a tick tock agency for you advertising with Ollie as well. So yeah, that's me pretty much.

Yeah.

Good, good to have you here.

I just got a text from. This is not a joke, this is live. I just got a text, my old jewelry supplier saying hey boss, congratulations. England versus Iran, big win. Six one. So random. Not spoke to this don for two years.

Six' two as well. So is it six' two?

No, six' six.

Yeah, it was 62. I actually saw something where you messaged.

Me on my birthday. That's quite deep.

It's just such A send him so much business. That's what you are.

Yeah.

I've already coached about four people for you.

Yeah.

I've got a question that I think would be just interesting to, like, kick things off just for. We can probably all go round because, like, I found this is something that, like, resonates with most people. Like, what right now is your biggest problem in business and what. What are you doing to overcome that problem?

Who wants to go first? You go first. You already told me it's yours, briefly.

Biggest problem, honestly, right now, just not having enough fucking stock.

It's a nice problem.

It is a nice problem. Yeah. I think it's actually very simple. Once you get a proof of concept with, like, a brand with one product, like, all you really need is more fuel on the fire to make it bigger. And that's like two things. More stock and more ad spend. And. And then you can either kind of wait until you stack more customers in cash and shit, or you can raise money and go quicker, which is why I'm trying to raise more money.

You're 100%, 100 miles an hour at all times. Yeah.

So that's probably the biggest problem in, like, a nutshell. And then every fucking problem under that, like, fucking trading standards sent me a letter the other day saying some customers claimed that there's psilocybin in the products and now they're gonna have to do a site inspection from the food crime unit.

Interesting.

That's one of many.

But, I mean, that proves your marketing is pretty. Pretty well on point, maybe.

I mean, you've been able to suggest you've had to, like, fully pull back from that message, though, haven't you?

Yeah, like, I still. I still get. I had a post banned today, like a post removed from Instagram. It said it was selling illegal drugs. Even though it's literally just an ad.

Yes.

I think there's always going to be a problem with the aesthetic.

Do you think you'd. Could you spin up another product to the US and Canada? That's more obviously difficult because it's not fully legal there. But, like, is that a route that you'd probably go down, or would you keep it completely away from that until it was kind of normalized? And I guess it's quite a big question. You probably do a lot of research around it.

Yeah, I mean, ultimately I want to do a psilocybin rainbow dust. That's always been the vision. I think I'd be like, the most amazing supplement of all time.

Yeah.

But it's, like, impossible. To do.

Yeah, well, it is now. I think it'll be possible in. In America and Canada. Fast. Way quicker than here.

Just based on Canada always comes first, doesn't it?

And then.

Yeah, there's a lot of psilocybin brands in Canada, but you can't, like pay with card. It's still like pretty underground. Like you've got to transfer bitcoin, all this. Yeah. It's not like viable. It's a scalable DTC brand yet, but eventually it will be like they live in. Yeah, yeah.

Track your ROI on ad, spend on.

Cash on delivery, something.

Yeah, it's a decent problem. It's not a good problem when you've got subscribers, but it's not the worst problem to have because the demands clear there and you say you can do much bigger numbers than you're gonna do. But yeah, yeah, I don't know. I have different. Across the three companies I'm involved in, we have different problems. One of them is related to supply chain for Black Friday, whether we can sustain how much we want to sell, which is a nice problem.

Can you reveal which brand that is?

I don't think so, no. I don't know. I don't know. Because he'll watch this.

It's a fat brand in the. In the money Twitter space.

Yeah, it's a big brand in the money Twitter space. Probably could, like. Yeah, I actually definitely could. I don't know why I didn't say yes that. Because he already revealed that I work with him just because of how quickly it's growing at the moment.

And there's also.

There's one thing about selling everything, but then like selling stupid numbers over Black Friday weekend. But you don't. You've obviously got us. Like the way that that business is set up is a lot of moving parts that Conor takes ownership of. Obviously I've taken ownership of the market in there and don't want to put him in a position where he. There's a ridiculous amount of customer complaints or anything like that. Not saying that there would be, but he's just trying to balance a few efficiency with good experience. So that's. That's not really my problem. That's his problem to deal with. I just have to sell it. So. And he just tells me to turn the ad spend off if it gets. Gets a bit too chaotic then for Saw. So is an interesting position because we're at like 30 people nearly now. And what gets you from 0 to 1 doesn't take you from like 1 to 10. Like at 30 we were just hiring people based off like whether it felt like we needed more people and like, rather than having like some forecasted based. Forecast based numbers, forecast based projections of like supply and demand. And I feel like now we're at a stage where we need that. So we're doing a lot of like finance work and financial systems and more of like a roadmap growth plan on like hiring based on like projected value added by person. And then for you, you obviously involved in seeing some of the problems there.

It's a shit name for you.

It's not the for you page of TikTok. It's a beautiful day.

It doesn't roll off the tongue sore. Makes sense. Fya, like for you is like you're missing a word for you advertising. Yeah, I suppose it's just the for.

You page on TikTok. Isn't it though? That's where it goes.

Oh, is it TikTok? Yes, TikTok specific. So I deleted TikTok.

The problem there is working with so many creators, like creators are so difficult. You've had some bad experiences.

The creators, they're all cowboys.

Like they just, they're just hard. There's just so many moving parts. When you work with that many individuals, it's like 20 is 80, 20 principle. 20 of them are really good. Eight of them are awful. And just. And then like one of them, one creator we had build our card through stripe somehow for like 25 grand cash. Just build it. This build is 3 1/2 K5.

Like how do they have access?

I don't even know. I paid one of their invoices and somehow they then had our card on file or something and she just billed us like 6 times with like 3.1k or something. So I've been having to get that back offer, which has been a right odd deal.

Did she claim it was legit?

No, no, she, she was like very apologetic once I pulled it up on it. But it's just like how do you do that? Like it's not, it's not easy to build someone for like a stupid amount of money. They're just very like, I don't know, they don't understand business. Like they want pain and in 24 hours, even though. And they don't read contracts, they don't, they don't hit time frames.

Been a lot of trial and error there, like working out the best system in place to be able to keep reins on these creators. Because like Ollie said, there's just so many fucking moving parts with it. And you know all it takes is one or two creators to delay delivery and it's put, it's put the whole process out of sync. So yeah, that's, that's been difficult for us to work out how to, how to navigate that and we've, we've changed our offerings several times because of that. I mean I know some agencies and again I don't think this is the best way to do it personally just because I do. I'm very much a believer if you're creating UGC it should be like semi authentic and not like fully scripted. But I know some agencies that, I mean we've got in house tick tock editors anyway but that they will purely. They'll script everything, they'll storyboard everything, send it to actors. They'll basically record the raw footage and then their in house editors will, will edit that themselves. Which again obviously solves a lot of problems. Actors, a lot of actors are more professional to work with, more reliable. But again it's for me I don't think you get the best, best quality creative that way. So there's different ways you can approach it, but it is a difficult one.

He's had some. You've had some bad stuff. You show, you show me a few things.

Yeah. You, you've got an interest because I know, I know a few, quite a few craze in the space now obviously we've got a fairly big network and I've heard creators like bitching about some of the shit you were saying on Twitter about, about like you, you know, creators should be paid based on performance which is like an interesting way to look at things. Yeah. Like UGC creators shouldn't be paid up front. They should be based, paid based on the performance of the creative.

I think that's good if you can track it granularly.

I think the issue with that though is that what we found is ugc, the quality of UGC and UGC theory. What makes a good piece of creative doesn't always translate into an ad for that is well converted.

I was on about TikTok Organic. Right. Like a whole new market which I still ain't cracked. I actually paid an agency to do this recently. I paid like two months ago. Still not posted anything. But that was mainly because of shipping and because they chose a creator in America. Right. Anyway, long story but yeah but for actual UGC creators I still think a lot of them just think don't realize how much of a commodity there. There's literally 10 million UGC creators there is like that's you can't be asking for like, you can't be asking for usage rights. Like it's going to go on ads. That's what it is. Yeah.

I mean, yeah, I think the issue is that obviously there was like a supply and demand issue where there were too many. There was a lot of demand for creators and not enough creators. And now everyone's kind of jumped on the bandwagon because they've realized it, you know, fairly quick money, easy to make, no, you know, low barrier to entry. But then obviously, you know, now there's, now there's a lot of supply, but then the supply, the majority of it is fairly, fairly low quality.

So yeah, agencies as well. You get a lot of that in agency. I used to anyway.

Yeah, that's very true.

But it's a set. It's a 2820 principle. Like I said, there's 20% of creators are really good and you get results.

To be honest, the most common cold email I get, I must get 20 a day, is, I'm a UGC cray. Can I create content? I don't read any of them now because our entire system use incense for ugc. That's literally it.

What do you think of incense?

Because we've done 120 craves a week. You can't. And like originally I was like manually paying like UGC creators and now as we do all three incense systemize as we have an editing team in the Philippines that churns it out into performance and it's just a system. I don't even look at it. And there's like 100 plus. I don't know if it's 120. It's like 100 per week. New creatives that this Filipino team churn out from the raw ugc and then Lucy manages it all. So I didn't even look at it. Now it's like, finally I'm actually systemizing.

This because I'm not a system.

Well, like, yeah, people, I think UGC craze reaching out to founders of brands. I mean, maybe that works, but I'm just not. I just don't even look at it because why would I want to manually be sorting out content it neat. Like they need to understand the level of scale that brands are testing. At least ones that are trying to scale. It's like you're not going to work one on one with one UGC creator.

Lowest hanging fruit for UGC Craze is approaching agencies, not brands.

Yeah, I agree.

And platforms onboarding onto as many platforms.

Just go on Incense like there's plenty of our creators. We're paying probably over a thousand a month because some of them are on like repeat and they're good and why incense?

Because it holds people accountable to like the quality of the world.

Exactly. Because it goes into escrow and everything and like you get like a rating and it's how it should be. Yeah, yeah.

It's a good platform. On the performance. I read a, read a really interesting Twitter thread I think it was this morning about how athletic screens obviously they're pretty similar. They're similar business model to you one one supplement.

It's like the most beautiful business.

It's done ridiculously well with a few jars as upsells in a container. They, they their whole influencer marketing is just paid, paid by performance. They don't do any or like it wasn't. I don't actually know if like the real top tier because like Rogan probably gets paid so like he's not going to do that on performance. But like the majority, majority of their influencer marketing was pure performance. Obviously that's very different. I feel like if you pair influencer marketing with TikTok you can really rip some numbers. Obviously a lot of TikTok influencers, I don't think that's very saturated at the moment. Like some of the fashion brands like Represent's a really good example. They do it. Pretty much every ad you see from them is a whitelisted influencer ad.

I don't really see ads from them.

I never see it from them other than I see some on Facebook but see everything they push seems to be whitelisted from other people which is interesting. Not many brands you don't see that like as much from brands like doing everything through that method. I just thought it was interesting. The athletic screens, this whole, whole setup was performance based. It is harder to do that for content post, you know, even, even tick tock organic. It's hard to do that because it's so inconsistent I feel.

Yeah, there's not an exact science even.

Yeah.

With both paid and organic creative on that platform you can get pretty close but it's, it's, it's constantly evolving. I mean we've, we've found just. You can't just what you what worked six 12 months ago on, you know as a piece of UGC just isn't working now. You've got to be way more out there, way more obscure. Like it used to just be, you know that in terms of like thumb stop ratio and hooks. It was about the hook itself. But I feel now it's way more about that opening visual as well. And you can't just do A Day in the Life or Get Ready with Me or unboxing video. It just. They just don't really work anymore. You just got. I feel like with. With our creators, we're like briefing them very much on going really fucking obscure with the visuals in the first kind of three seconds. You know, like throwing money down the toilet or just doing weird shit. Just works a lot better.

Yeah.

Just realize I sound incredibly croaky. I've not done a pod in like two and a half months, so forgotten how to speak at length.

Two different microphones as well. So he sounds. He sounds raspy and deep.

This is the worst quality pod out of all the ones I've ever done. And it's the newest one.

Yeah.

So it's a new season, but it's not quite a new quality yet. We'll figure out. We'll figure it out.

Just gotta get back in the swing, back in the flow.

We're doing random questions, then we're gonna do random questions.

A few random questions. Obviously. Lucas, I think. Did you have someone else to say about your problems? Obviously we touched on ours.

Yeah, obviously for you, I think again, just cash flow is a big thing there. And just the importance of building up cash in the bank, obviously, if you can get a Runway of three to six months, that's. And a proper system in place for ensuring that's going up and you know, you've got a good cash flow position. That's one thing that again, we're looking at there. But I think, to be honest, on a few things from my side, it's being able to. Since we started. For you this year, a big thing is just being able to. Because unlike Saw, you've disconnected quite a lot from Saw. I'm still very much at the helm of Hammy Media. So it's like. It's been difficult to come in and obviously as we've kind of grown quickly with 4you, it's been difficult to then manage two agencies and knowing how to divvy that across the two. So for me that's been a big thing. And I've been looking to bring in a sales manager to take over the sales size. Then obviously we did have a head of growth last year, but he'd left. So that. That's something that we've been looking into. And I mean, I don't know if you want to talk about it now, but yeah, had a pretty fucking shocking experience. With someone recently and had to fire someone for the first time. Like, we've, we've. We've not passed people on probation before, but never actually had to fire someone. So that was a bit of an experience. And I think, again, we've spoken a lot about this, like, the importance of that hiring process. And you know this.

I'm not good at that.

Yeah, you two are both pretty shaky from what I've heard of this. On this.

Well, I've been pretty good other than this one. And to be honest, like, the whole process, he was so good from everything that he did from the task stage to. But then I guess the one thing maybe that in hindsight could have done better is going far deeper on the individual. The individual and culture pillars, do they align with those culture pillars? And that's, that's the side that's difficult. And I know you said about that.

Article, yeah, Losers exist, Don't hire them. Best article ever written.

It's just like, it's savage.

It's literally. It's a famous article from Silicon Valley. It's literally called. I can put it in the. Put it in, like the notes underneath. It's called Losers Exist, Don't Hire Them. And it's like how to identify a loser in your hiring process because you don't want to work with losers. Um, it's like asking them. There's like. It breaks down four or five different questions where, like, a lot of them are.

I wouldn't.

You don't have to use the same five questions. But it's like asking these people probing questions about them as a person and them as their mindset and them as an individual to work out whether you'd enjoy working them with them or if they're a loser.

It's true, though, because, like, that's one thing that I learned from this guy, that you can't train. Like, someone could be a sick salesperson, which he was, but he just had the wrong mindset and you can't. You just can't train that.

Yeah, he sounded like a bit of a. I don't want to slate the bloke too much, but it's a bit all over the place. Turning up late in his first week, but, like.

And every week after that, like, just like. I think the issue I found as well is someone that has. And there's nothing I. I like, promote people having side hustles in my business. Like, people. Quite a few people do. And a lot of the stuff that they do actually does really help. You know, what they're doing internally and I feel like just not putting the reins on people. You know, you, you get the most out of them and you get that buy in. But I felt in this case because of the atmosphere that we have, like we've got a very flexible working environment but you definitely have to earn that flexibility. And I don't think he quite understood that. And you know, anytime that he wasn't, didn't feel like he had anything to do, he would just go and start fucking taking calls for his side hustle and spend a lot of his time doing that. So you know, it's really difficult in that situation to be able to manage someone in the correct way. Especially when you know someone's working from home three, four days a week.

Yeah, that's trust. Yes. I think the sales side hustles for sales people and side hustles for people who are on service. Delivering an agency is very different. Salespeople. You want someone who's very motivated to shoe like outcomes for you and work like it's very like allocate your own time. Allocate your own time to doing things. Yeah, we do the same. You've had some interesting hiring experiences. You got screwed. Well, not screwed. Yours was for a recruitment agency which is even more. Yeah, even more interesting.

I mean I've only ever had two pay employees and it was not good. Like everything, everything up to that point was freelancing agency. Right now same again. Yeah, freelancing agency. And everyone right now is fucking killer. Got Brad who's creative, he's freelance, not even full time. Florian who used to watch the Pod, he just pitched me on doing customer service and now I couldn't run the business without him. He's like operations and customer service.

Yeah, sick.

I've got Lucy who does all the content stuff and she was previously on the Pod and probably will be again. Then Simon who's like finance guy part time but does like all the admin and then AKM Media who run all the ads which strong you won't like but they can't spend on Tick Tock. So we need to have a conversation about that. We're spending six grand a day on Instagram. Spend 100 a day on Tick Tock. How does that add up?

Yeah, strange. You should be able to spend on something.

It doesn't work. But yeah, come back to the hiring. Yeah. I just made the mistake of hiring a full time paid media person at the end of 2020 and on a salary and like it was just. I would never do it again. I'd rather pay an agency. Agency three times as much and have more flexibility. And I think actually for media buying, you shouldn't have an employee. I think you benefit from having an agency that's seeing other accounts. So that was. That was a big mistake.

Yeah. He came in off the back of a recruitment agency. He paid a whack as well.

Did you get a lot of the recruitment agency?

Mike got a portion of it because of when he left.

I don't know if it was your biggest problem at that point, getting that.

No.

There's a few more snowballing issues in the background. Yeah.

I think people don't realize how many fucking issues actually are, even when things aren't going that wrong. But that was combined with things going that wrong. Yeah.

Because he'd just done loads of Legion ads and then he was just.

Yeah, he'd never been held accountable for actual performance.

Yeah, it was interesting. But that. Yeah, but he was.

He was a loser. Shouldn't hire them.

Yeah. Yeah.

Honestly. And I wouldn't say that. He just. He was very unprofessional about it all and it was very bitter in the end. But moving on.

Yeah, it's difficult. It is difficult to hire people.

To be fair.

I think it's even more. I couldn't imagine trying to hire developers and stuff like that. Like, it's just be so hard.

I feel like. What's as hard as that? What we're finding with for you is being able to scale and hire at the correct distance apart. Do you know what I mean? It's like. It's really hard to roadmap hiring with scaling and bring. Obviously it's slightly different in terms of an econ brand, but with an agency, when you know we've got a lot of lead flow, it's. It's really difficult to build new pods into the system, train them up accordingly with. Whilst obviously keeping keeping an eye on cash flow and that growth.

Yeah.

You can run an ecom brand ridiculously lean if you have the right. If you have like a team of. I think a team of five or six absolute killers can take you really, really far as an E Comm brand. Plus agencies and contractors.

Yeah. Because past a certain point it's just automation, innit?

Yeah. And it's just doing the same thing. But like you can't. There's only so many acquisition channels, arguably so much content you can make.

The only thing you need more is customer service, probably more than anything. Once you start really scaling then like.

Product production probably and like manufacturing, which is.

Yeah. That's all outsourced to me anyway.

Yeah. Whereas an agency, obviously for every six, six to eight clients, you need full three more people for what we do and like trying to. Yeah. Try to balance deal. Deal flows. Way less forecastable than like scale for Ecom company as well. Because we can go like to like for example, November, the end of November, you're not going to sign in many. You're not gonna pick up any clients because people aren't going to change agencies. But then you can have that kind of. You can have that through the year. You can have two weeks of signing. Nobody. Then everybody joins in. Like a three day window or wants to. It's like very hard to follow. It's a lot harder to forecast, I think. But it's a good problem to have, I guess. But yeah, it requires quite a robust hiring system which is difficult but everyone has problems. It's all good fun.

Like with the founder of Gymshark.

Forgot his name.

Ben Francis.

Ben Francis.

You've been to the Gymshark shop?

No, not yet.

Pretty cool.

I've heard a lot of mediocre things about it, but I've not been.

It's cool to see. I mean it's not the best shop in the world. There's better ones out there. But yeah. Anyway, Segue.

Yeah, he. I mean he always said like for him the most important outsource as early as you can, the things you're weakest at. And I feel like since we brought on for all of our agencies, fractional CFOs, that has been like an absolute game changer just in terms of like forecasting, cash flow, budgeting, etc. I feel like that. And to be honest, as we're scaling, I feel like hiring is going to be another thing.

Yeah.

Hr.

HR definitely need to bring that in. I feel like they're two really important parts of the puzzle that again, we're not that experienced. Experienced at. So no.

So I don't really involve myself in the interview or process for soy is because I'm not great at it and I don't like it. So he's got someone else.

You.

You brought finance on early for space goods this time.

Yeah, that was the most important one. Yeah. But that wasn't me that hired him. Alex, one of my investors literally hired him. Didn't hire him, but like helped. He basically said, I've worked with this guy, you'd be perfect, you should meet. And then we got on and it made sense. Yeah, that's been valuable.

I just. The reason I Wanted to work without CFO is because I asked Adam Reed when we were in Mart Bay. I was like, what's been the best hire you've ever made? He was like fractional CFO and I was just like this.

Fractional. Just mean part time.

Yeah.

Like just works across multiple businesses.

Yeah. That's what sounds.

He has like insights into loads of different agencies. So he comes in and just is like, you should put a process in here.

Yeah.

He's specialist with just agencies and ecom brands.

It's been really useful.

Yeah, it's really useful. Gives us like a financial report every month. Like looking into key KPI's forecasting. It's really good. It's just a thing not to worry about. Obviously you still worry. But yeah, it's a big part of the puzzle that is important.

No one likes to go and sit in QuickBooks all day looking at boring reports and numbers. It's just draining, innit? It's boring.

Yeah, it's.

I need a random question. So we're gonna go to some random questions. I feel like we're gonna need to cut this again.

Energy's feeling kind of low.

Yeah.

I'm off form.

I want to get into some random.

I've forgotten how to do a podcast.

Ask some random questions and go into some random. We should have definitely planned these more.

Should have written down a few.

I've got loads here. Read. Read through that list and take some out.

Yeah. Or you can just read them. You can read the best ones out or as in literally to get started. Or we can talk about this. This is a warm up episode.

Yeah. You can just.

It's quite a good setup though. I reckon if you got like a neon light in there. I mean I'd like to try next door.

We try and having the corner people in here.

Yeah.

It's not. It's nice facing.

It's good having a big table. Yeah. Actually I had to face someone because in my setup it was always like looking sideways.

You know, it'd be a sick.

I do miss the pink lights though.

Is we should try and do a Christmas episode with everybody who invested in space goods.

Yeah. Lucy had that idea. So she wants to come and interview me because she's. I've never met before. So she's coming to London. That's how I am with team members. Is I. Literally on the first day I met her I started speaking about like my ex girlfriend and shit.

So.

So she knows everything about my life.

And you're a transparent man.

So. Yeah, she knows more about, like my female situations and shit than anyone, more than I do. She's a therapist as well as a deep content manager.

With your content manager there.

Yeah.

So I guess you've both. You've both been in fairly stressful situations in terms of, like, you definitely have. You've probably been in some stressful situations. Like, how do you cope with those? Obviously Black Friday is quite a stressful period, which is when we're recording this for a lot of owners. Like, how do you cope with stress? I'm not a very stressed out person. Naturally. I don't feel. It's just not like how I operate. But, like, how do you do. How do you deal with, like high stress? I feel like obviously we're in a business high stress environment and you can't. I guess, like, obviously I get stressed, but do you have any. Like, how do you switch off? What's your route there?

Like, this is becoming such a cliche pod in it.

Yeah, it is.

I don't know if it's a dead topic. No, it's quite, quite a good topic. We can definitely make it darker. Yeah. More corrupt and more crooked. I definitely think I've reached my highest stress points in my life. Hopefully. I definitely feel more immune than I used to.

Yeah.

Because when you spend six months with constant anxiety because your business is going fucked in front of your eyes and the whole fucking world wants to kill you in the daily mail at your door, not much stresses you anymore. Yeah.

I remember that period of your life. It was pretty heavy.

But I definitely think working out and running particularly, I didn't used to run then. I was fat. Like, even now post marathon, like, I stopped running a bit for like two weeks. I was like this. I can't even sleep. So now I'm back on, like sprinting every day. And I think particularly cardio helps over just like weights in the gym or whatever.

So, yeah, painful, like exercise, it's almost like meditative in some way because it's like, I feel like it takes you full focus.

Yeah.

Like some people meditate, but I've got a borderline adhd. Just can't sit there and just think about nothing.

Yeah. I do think, like having another, like you say, and that could. I think. I definitely think fitness is, you know, aside from this, but having another hobby, whether that be running or. It does help if you've got another way that you can disconnect from what you're doing. Because I. I'd always massively struggled being able to disconnect from work when I was on holiday, like with my ex girlfriend, I used to get fucking told off all the time from like being on slack on the beach.

Like the business version of X on the beach. All your customers just come out the water.

Yeah, exactly. But like really struggle. But I've really made an effort recently to try and actually get other hobbies that are outside of work to try and just be able to fucking get away from it all. So I think if you can find that thing that you're also passionate about outside of what you do in your business, it's a good way to disconnect.

I find routine massive as well.

Yeah, routine fucking huge.

Just being like, just doing the same things the same times every day. I find it. Ever since moving to London like a few weeks ago, I've not had a routine. It's been chaotic.

Yeah. I regret moving in with you.

Trying to get back onto a routine. Defo helps get so much more done, so much more energy. But yeah, you need something. It's hard. It's hard to switch off completely. Just not a massive meditator.

That's what I think. I lied to myself. That's why I stopped the pod. I was like, oh, I'm gonna have time to do it. But then I was like, it's the only time when I'm not staring at a screen. Yeah. In like my entire day.

Yeah.

Other than the gym is when I'm doing a pod. Because like, I mean, yeah, people, I'll switch off, whatever, but I'm always on something in it if it's. If I'm not on my laptop, on my fucking phone, refreshing notifications on the brand page and like looking at comments. Yeah. It's always something. Yeah.

It's always like one, like just two taps away to get something work related.

Yeah. I just, I'm not convinced there's any, like. Is there any such thing as fucking balance?

No, no, not bad.

Because I don't know, like the irony is I see people that are way more successful than me and that I look up to and they seem like they have loads of balance. But. But is that just because they're at a certain point where they've now gone past that kind of trenches stage or they just look like they're doing on the front of it, but actually they're fucking 18 hours a day all in. I think, yeah.

I think you can get to a point where your hands off in a business if that's what you want to do, but it's also like if you enjoy it. And I feel like people Push the concept of balance. Because the people who do that usually don't enjoy.

Yeah. They hate the job.

So, like, I think there's an Alex and Mosey videos where he's like, I've come to the realization that I just love, love working this video, which is just so him. He's too far because he did that thread about how he optimized finding his wife over. Which is a bit like.

It is true though, because if you actually like what you do, what the else you gonna do, Go to the pub, like to celebrate. What. I'm all for that now and then.

Yeah.

Like, I think that separates someone. Right. Because I. I feel like one of the biggest things, if you're like an entrepreneur, you work for yourself, you've got to learn to manage that stress. And I feel like people that genuinely love it are the ones that, you know, the cream rises to the crop and the people that don't and can't handle that stress are the ones that genuinely don't. Because like you say, it's like it is your life.

Yeah. Threshold for stress default has a big impact. I feel like if you have a high threshold for stress, you've got. It would be much easier to succeed in certain areas, especially like E commerce. Feel like it's just naturally quite a stressful area.

Do you think that's something? I mean, it definitely is to an extent. But do you think that's something that you can train or do you think you either have it or you don't? What, in terms of like being able to work for yourself and be an entrepreneur and manage that stress.

I think you can manage it. I think some people are just predisposed to it way more than others. I think some people, I think it's. I feel like you almost can't manage it, but you've got the idea of like relativity is something you can have. So like, if you've been as stupidly high stress, stress moment. So like, obviously you said about when you're running Neon beach, it's probably going to take a lot to ever reach that sort of stress level again. So therefore everything else probably appears a little bit less stressful now in relative, like, relative to that. I also think some people can just like, perspective is also big. Like if you actually take a step back from where you are. And that's something I think I'm quite good at. It's like compared to most people's problems, like the elements of some sexes of society, it's like you stood a very, very, very, very privileged position Even if it is high stress at that moment in time, it's unrealistic. A lot of people I've spoken to, in quite a few people I know quite well actually still run the business, even though they're doing stupid numbers, run it from this, like, mindset of everything could collapse tomorrow. And I think that's like some. In some ways that's good because it motivates you to go at like a million miles an hour. But I also think that must be really, really draining on your mind to be like, oh, to have this, like, unreal thought, unrealistic thought that you're gonna go from like, this million a month to like, nothing.

Well, I did.

Well, yeah, I guess you did see your case.

So it can.

Your case of how it can. But that was a very, like, extreme, extreme case. And there's a lot of steps that led to that. I didn't just go from there to there.

It's really difficult.

But then again, FTX did that in, like, two days ago.

So I guess, I mean, generally the longer something takes to build, the longer it takes to crash.

Yeah, yeah.

General rule. I mean, we.

We like, spoken before when we did that pod about like, gold medal syndrome and how we've both suffered it from it before in terms of, like, when you have this big goal in place. And again, I had that with one of my agencies this year. Hit like, a really big goal that we had and then kind of had like a few months after of just quite demotivated because you'd hit that big target and, you know, it didn't give you that fulfillment that you thought it would. When you completed your marathon, did you have anything like that? Because I know that was like, a huge goal that you'd had for a lot of the year.

I reckon I almost obsessed more about that marathon than, like, any element of business I've ever like. It was to the equivalent level. I don't know what I built this story in my head about it so much. Like, I'd literally listened to David Goggins, like, every day when I was training and shit. Being like, I built this enemy in my head that didn't exist. It was. Was like the man that wants me to fail. Yeah, no one gave a really. And then I knew a few other people doing it that should have got quicker times than me, but just broke. And I know someone that quit halfway and they're going for a much quicker time. It's like they clearly can't deal with stress. So. Yeah, but that marathon, yeah, it was quite lit but afterwards I was just like. I mean, it's different, but it's, like, so tangibly relevant because that's just on a shorter time frame. It's like five months training or whatever. Now a bit of me kind of wants to do it again and go like, sub 245, just because. Because I know it'd be disgustingly difficult. But then I've kind of lost. Now it's done. It's like my eyes bothered, whereas before I was, like, excited about it. Now it's more like, don't be fat again. Yeah, but, yeah, there definitely was element of that. I think there's an element of that with everything. Yeah. It's the dangerous thing about achieving anything.

The goal posts always move.

Yeah. I still think there's. There's another level of elite mentality above that, where the people who have, like, smashed every record and keep going.

It's like Goggins, Novak.

Novak Djokovic is a good example. Yeah, he's like a.

They're just sick in the head.

He's like, best that just keeps going. 35. Not gonna stop. Just gonna keep ripping every record there is. And he's. He's probably just a mentality freak. And there are like, yeah, Goggins is not another one. Ronaldo's another one.

Yeah, well, yeah, it's like the best in the game. You know, they're like, you got to be obsessed, and it's not healthy, but that's. You need that. You need that, like, pure obsession. So did you have. Were you, you know, when you'd completed that big goal? Because, you know, it's always difficult, isn't it, when you've got a big go and then it kind of ends and it's. It's kind of like, what next?

Yeah, what's your next one? You're doing ultramarine next?

I was gonna say.

Yeah. I mean, I thought about that, but then it's just like, it's not my life. Like, it can't take up to. Physically. I can't allocate that much time to it because it's not. It's not paying me. It's not my bigger goal. Like, obviously, my goal is way more on business, but I do want to have more physical goals.

Get your marathon info product going.

Yeah, I mean, I fucking know. Yeah. I definitely reckon I'm a better fitness coach than 99% of money to our fitness coaches. Name me no names like, average rigs and, like, selling programs for, like, 400 quid a month and. But I'll just Drop like a free training, marathon training course. But yeah, what was I saying? I mean, a bit of me does want to do it again just because you gotta have somewhat to chase that's off a screen, I suppose. And like, obviously business takes way longer than like training for a marathon. I suppose, like the end goal of business. But then it's like, do I actually care about running that much? Not really. It was more just like to prove to myself that I could do it and I did it. But it's definitely a confidence boost because, like, the principles you take from that apply to anything.

Yeah.

But then I already knew I could do it because I've done similar physical things in the past and. Shit. Not marathons, but like rowing. So, like, I knew I was a fucking pretty savage cunt when it comes down to it.

Yeah. That was ridiculous. Yeah, it was rude. Not gonna lie.

Documentary is good. I think the confidence thing's definitely true. It's like when you set a goal and hold and actually reach it, I feel like you build confidence by, like.

Hold, like actually reaching and discipline as well.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, confidence in yourself comes from, like, set. Even if it's small things like not making promises to yourself that you're not going to keep over and over and over again. Builds confidence.

Yeah. Honestly, like, that was the. I was so consistent about training. I remember being in Marbella in September for like a random trip and then everyone was like, oh, should we get beers and shit? And it was a Sunday afternoon and I said, well, I've got to go run 90 minutes on the treadmill first. So I went by myself to a gym 20 minutes away, ran on an incline treadmill for 90 minutes on a treadmill. That is like torture. It's so boring. Just because I had to do it.

Yeah.

Because I knew that that was one brick that wouldn't be laid otherwise. And like, so definitely because I knew that. I knew that sub 3 was in the bag before I did it because I. Yeah, like, those things are earned long before you actually do the race. Yeah. In like, all sporting endeavors, they're earned on, like the rainy Tuesday night. I mean.

Yeah. The winter training.

So, yeah, it's just consistency in it. It's the same now. It's like, I'll go to the gym because I know that that's what I do now. And I always went to the gym, but I want to train a certain way, get a run in. And that's just like, you earn your fucking sleep at night almost. It's the same with, like, work. You Know if you've put a decent day's work in or not. And if you keep putting it off, you'll get nowhere. But if you keep stacking the bricks, you'll get somewhere. So, yeah, it's just principles in it.

Yeah, definitely.

So, like fitness is a good one to start with, I think. I don't really trust anyone that's never like trained hard genuinely. Because if you can't do that, how can you do your job well or like build a business? I don't know. I think the mentality carries over.

Yeah, definitely.

Obviously there's exceptions, but that's again, links.

Back to the hiring thing that we said earlier. Like hire for your mindset. People like, you can't teach a mindset. You have to build it.

I would always hire like an ex rower or something. Yeah. I just think there's probably a lot of examples of them where they're just always going to be on it on time, disciplined. Yeah.

It's probably why I see a lot of ex military people doing like cool business stuff as well. Like obviously you got jocko willing color people who is in. Oh, he's mates with this. There's same with. I can't remember the bloke who from. From the UK was pretty famous.

Chris Williamson.

Yeah. Isn't he?

No, he was scared to Newcastle.

He was a club promoter. Not Miller. Literally the ant guy who does cringe but like he's still like. See a lot of military people who tried. Obviously they. Elite military people that obviously transfer pretty well into business. Probably for the same reason that they've got the fundamentals of like ridiculously hard.

Work and just discipline.

Mindset and discipline in place. Yeah. Which transfers.

Yeah.

Chris Williamson's. He's huge now. I didn't realize.

He's got mass to train at CrossFit Tyneside, didn't he? Yeah. And used to be a promoter.

He used to stand at the door of. I can't even remember the bars now. But yeah, used to see him darting around.

Yeah. Honestly, I think if anyone wants to fucking turn their life around, run a marathon and like do a quick one because, like, if you actually commit to doing it. And I reckon part of the reason I actually did it was because I said it publicly. That's why I made such ridiculous claim every one minute I'll give a grand to charity. I was never planning on giving any money to charity because I knew I was gonna go sub three. Yeah, I raised a lot of money but like only could have said that publicly if I'd never Said that I never told anyone's doing it. Probably half asked it. Yeah.

They say don't put. There's a big. Obviously the big thing about like not making and not talking about what you're trying to work on in business but then that's kind of credence to the other idea of like tell people So I feel like there's a line.

There is a line.

I think people who tell people probably try and go too big on like I'm gonna do like this mad thing and don't realize have to back it up.

Depends the sort of person you are. Most people just talk is.

Yeah I think. I think it depends on the position you're in. I think there's probably people who get into like E commerce like I'm gonna build a hundred million pound brand but don't realize how incredibly rare that is compared to like obviously fitness is very different. It's all you. Yeah.

That's what I liked about the running.

Because.

No other variables maybe is a.

Bit different because there's so many different variables that go into that.

Yeah.

Maybe that is the big. That could be a big 75 hard push. Just like run a marathon. A 75 hard's pretty good.

I never did that.

It's quite the only thing that is good. I've done it once.

Was it twice a day?

It's like four. It's Andy Frisell is like multiple different like things you do every day. It's basically to build discipline. But it's like two 45 minute workouts. One has to be outside drink a gallon of water a day, read 10 pages a day. But it's not the actual act itself. It's more like doing things that are inconvenient. The only thing that's difficult is it takes so long. But then I guess that's the whole point of it. Yeah. It's like if you actually make it priority and make time for it then it's. It's like you just get into discipline.

Isn't it taking you out your comfort zone?

Yeah, maybe.

Do you want to fancy running a marathon with we should do it. Maybe we should join.

I definitely want to.

I've got a place in London in April which is the next one it's confirmed. I got a pre qualified I'd like to do one.

Yeah.

I just haven't decided because if I'm gonna go sub245 I need to decide pretty soon if I'm going to commit to that or not.

How hard do you reckon it'll be? To shave that. How many minutes is that exponential, isn't it? Obviously to get that seven minutes.

I mean if I could go sub 245 at 86 kilo, I reckon I'd be in the top 0.1%. If you, if you age. Sorry. If you weight adjusted it, even my time at 87 kilo.

Yeah, it's pretty quick, like.

Yeah.

What were you at? Would you have to average a kilometer.

For the time I did it? Quick for the time you did 405.

Yeah.

That's quick.

That's pretty fun.

So it's the same as doing a sub 21 minute 5k 8 and a half times and it's quick. So 245, you need a 355. So it's like a 19 minute 5k times 8. Hell. To give you an idea.

Yeah. It makes you realize how quick that.

That's just 251 per km.

Seen so many tick tocks of him, people trying to hold his pace for like. Yeah, two minutes and it's just absolutely grotesque.

Yeah. Like not many people can do a sub 25k either.

Like.

Oh, like barely anything.

Yeah, it's like that's harder than it's in my absolute prime. I think I did like 20 minutes 20 and I was like, how the. I'm never going to get below this.

I don't have that in the locker. If I. If you put some trailers on me, went outside.

I wouldn't do that very quickly though.

Yeah, you get, you get.

I got down to like 17 minutes.

You build cardiovascular fitness and you lose it really quickly.

You do. Yeah, I did that 35, 30, 10k which was shocked me because I didn't think I was a sprinter. I'd like to break 35 on 10k. I reckon if I was going to do sub 245, I need to do that. Like 16, 35k is a. So I fancy trying a 5k and 10k soon. But I'm only running like 40k a week at the minute.

Saw some decent yards.

I'm doing more like sprints on the treadmill so it's more sprint focused but it's more just like maintenance right now. But yeah, definitely fancy.

I think it's good to have a fitness or some sort of fitness goal.

I just feel and look better.

I was thinking. I think it's just. Yeah, just. I think it's good to like have like something like a marathon or like an event that ties your goal in something if you keep you accountable to it. I think it's good to do them in groups. Seeing people do that a lot recently. I'll do like group.

Yeah. That was the only thing with the running. It was such a lonely process. I've done it all by myself. Pretty much all my training was solo. It's probably good, like hardening the fuck out of my brain, but it was just like a warpath. But no one else wanted to join me. So, yeah. Surprise.

When you look at. Looked at the video you put together, no one fancied that.

Yeah, it's pretty rough.

What are your opinions on, like. Because again, it's. It's a debate that goes around a lot. Focusing and dialing in blinkers on with one business venture or what a lot of entrepreneurs seem to do and, you know, have a wandering eye and start something else and have several kind of plates spinning at the same time. Because I know that's something we've all had questions over in the past, that we've all diversified and maybe spread ourselves too thin.

Yeah.

But what are people's thoughts on. On that?

I think that they have to be closely complementary.

Yeah.

I don't think you can be running a restaurant and an econ brand. I also think, although I know someone that does that quite literally. So that's a funny example.

I think it depends what stage you're at.

Massive. Yeah. That's what I was concerned about.

How in the trench, how removed you are from one business. How much? How much. Obviously if you still just spend more time on that business, it would still probably grow faster regardless of if you remove from it or not. Yeah. How complimentary, how big the opportunity is and how big the vehicle you're moving from is. And what, like, so, like, like. Oh, God, you're right there, chief.

I got dodgy, bro.

So have I. I sound horrible. How big the opportunity is, whether it's complementary. I think like jumping from one agent running two agencies is, you know, like you say, is a lot easier in print just fundamentally than running two businesses at different. But there's a lot of people like this guy called Andrew Wilkinson, who I follow quite a lot, who just acquires elements of business businesses. And he's got everything from like a bakery in his hometown, which he says is the hardest business he's ever run in his life up until like this crazy like e commerce aggregator for Shopify apps. He has so many different businesses, but obviously he's not. He's not involved in it to a level where he's really doing much. He just allocates funds and puts things.

In positions I think if you build the right systems and the right team in place, like you, you know, like with Saw and the teams we've got around us. Yeah, it's. If you're in those early stages where you don't have that backup, it's. It's very difficult. And people. I think that's where I see a lot of. A lot of people struggling and failing when they. They pull back and spread themselves too thin too early with a venture that hasn't necessarily got to that stage yet to start focusing on something else. And then as a result, the original business slips.

I think some sort.

Yeah.

I also think there's a element of. I think you. You probably had this when you're running Midnight City. Midnight City could have been massive if you just stuck at it and just focused on that. Telling me it's crazy profitable through that summer.

Yeah.

And. But then. But then Neon beach was a massive vehicle and a huge opportunity. So it's like, how do you. He didn't reconnaiss. Stumbled on that. So it's like. And it was more of you.

I mean, you see people on Twitter, like, they said they run like 35 econ brands or something. I just couldn't do it. I'd rather be like emotionally invested in one. I think you can have something like a podcast, because I debated that myself. Like, is a podcast too distracting? But then it's like it's kind of still within the same realm because we're talking about similar shit. You get guests on that that are in the world. I can learn from them, I think.

As well, for your personal brand, what that's done for you and the buy in that your team have had. Because you said a few of them found you through the podcast.

Yeah. Then I just sat the podcast off and everyone. I was like, oh, maybe I should keep doing this.

Yeah. This has tangible benefits for hiring. Definitely. For you. Personal brand.

Yeah, 100%.

Because the people you find through that are going to be switched on already. You're not going to find anyone.

They're bought into the vision. Like, they're bought into the roadmap.

Yeah. And investors and shit. Like two of my investors now I met through the pod. And I reckon there could be plenty more. So I'm just gonna start inviting everyone I want to invest in my business in the future, get them on the pod, get drunk and then it's like the ultimate way to get to know someone. You spend two hours in a room with them speaking. They get to see what you're about and Then you've documented it. So like someone wants to know, like more details about how I'm building the brand. Just go and watch 25 episodes I put out. Yeah. Like if they really want to know. So. And then beyond that, it's just in like 10 years time. You're fucking crooked to look back. Yeah. Because I look back at travel vlogs from like four years ago and I just think, fucking hell. Glad I filmed that. You know, it's so pointless content wise.

Yeah. You just forget about things. You just naturally, if you don't document is that your employee on board and you just haven't watched every single 12 hours of just you talking to a computer screen.

Yeah. Legit.

I think. Yeah. I think podcast and personal brand for you is very complimentary. I don't, I don't know if there's a right answer to that. I think it very much depends on like, wait, what, what your current business is, what the X, what the other opportunity is, what the upside and the other opportunity, which one you want to do. Like a lot of people start a first business as a vehicle to get to a point where they can then pursue something they're actually passionate about.

Yeah. You just gotta get in the game. In it. Yeah. Escape the main street, like, most important step.

Oh, very fucking ill.

I don't even feel ill. It's just like I felt ill last week. I just had. My throat feels off. I feel like I can't speak properly.

I do feel like as well.

What.

We'Ve done with four you and having four, three, four people come together, you know, running the business together, see smaller piece of the pie, but different complementary skill sets that can all lead different parts of the business has meant we've been able to scale it way quicker.

Yeah, definitely.

And it's, you know that old, that old wise saying, I'd rather have a slice of the watermelon than a whole grape.

Yeah, classic. It's a classic saying. It's a classic.

But it opened my eyes because obviously you and Joe had saw together and obviously you, you know, both different skill sets. You've been able to build that together. And I'd always, with Hammy Media had always been just me and it's, it's definitely as a solo founder, more difficult in that sense. And it was always something that I'd kind of crave to have.

Yeah, yeah.

I quite like having co founder. You were, you were originally very anti co founder, weren't you? You were for ages. But then again, he probably's not. Yeah, you're not like you're not gonna have a co founder now but I guess you've got people on board who have got the right skill sets. It's just got to be that thing like you say, complimentary. There's no point in having someone involved if they don't bring pick things.

Yeah. Worked that well with people at the start. Don't know. I mean yeah. I think the setup now is kind of ideal because I've still got way more equity than I would have from day one as a co founder but I've got loads of experience mind and more money.

Yeah.

That's kind of like the investors and my co founders in a way. I just have to do the legwork. Yeah. So yeah it's pretty ideal now but yeah definitely I didn't want to be the only person involved in the business after the last business because I was lonely.

Yes. And also just it shortcuts your learning and shortcuts the outcome. If you've got someone who's already done it or like someone who's already in an investor situation. Definitely that's very different to a co founder I guess co founder if you start in something could come from a place of pretty low experience like me and Joe did but have like more like fundamental skills that lend yourself to focus on one area. Whereas for an investor it's obviously most of them have already trodden the path or have some like learning experience from a previous venture that shortcuts what. What you're doing which I think is massive. But then some, some firms get investments from obviously always wondered how those investment relationships higher up where they just chuck you a lot of money and leave you to it. What, what that's like and don't actually get that involved because there's some, some firms approach it like that.

I guess it depends though, doesn't it? It's like you either two objectives I guess of an investor it's like cash injection or. Well obviously that for both sides but also just experience and expertise in a certain field which is I think probably more as well as the cash injection what you were looking for.

Yeah, I mean I didn't want anyone to invest that wasn't a value add. I mean especially that early stage. It's kind of maybe fairly niche because had a really good networks it was like easy to like raise money I suppose now with this new funding round I'm looking at doing and kind of I'm in the process of doing like it's way harder because I'm going to people I don't know, to get money. I mean, in a lot of cases, they've already come to me and there's been, like, interest and. But then it's like speaking to, like, private equity funds and shit, which I've always been interested in anyway. And it's just, it's different because they. It's not their own money. They're managing other people's money. And there's a lot more red tape and like, much bigger ticket, and they would probably be more hands off in most cases. But, yeah, I mean, there's an argument to say try and avoid that for as long as possible. Some people say that, but other people say, well, if you're gonna fucking raise money, just go big, get a fund involved, and just commit to the fucking cause.

I think it's how you use it. It's more important. You see some companies that raise a lot of money then start doing like, classic. I'm gonna spend money on stuff like.

Fast checkout, raise 100. That's the problem. And then like, hired Coldplay or some.

Shit, just started using it in ways.

Yeah.

Like, obviously there's been so many layoffs. It's pretty crazy how many people Elon Musk cut from Twitter. It still works.

Yeah. I mean, I don't. I don't understand the whole leftist hit. That's wrong. It's a business.

It's like if you. If you compared how many people. I think they had 7,000 people. People, something like that. But then you compare it to, like, how many people. I think it was. I looked into the whats. How many people WhatsApp and Instagram have on their use, like, staff, and the amount of users they have. They had like, similar, similar also in some case higher user bases with like 10, 10, like 10 fold less staff. It's like, what. What were all those people.

Zuck's just cut a load as well, didn't he?

Yeah, he just cut away. But he's focusing on VR ar like he's a lizard. He is a lizard. He's just pivoted his focus to something that's not even like a thing yet.

I really don't understand the. So anyone with this. Anyone can get a subscription now to the blue tick on Twitter?

Yeah, I don't really get it. I mean, I got it. It's just funny. But now it's like I don't actually know who's the. The legitimate version of someone.

That's what I mean. That's what it kind of takes all legitimacy out of. What, what the verification was Yeah, I.

Think it's a weird one because, like, if you did that on Instagram, it wouldn't mean now, would it? I think Instagram is always higher value anyway as a blue tick. But yeah, it is interesting. It's kind of funny. Everyone's got blue ticks.

I didn't buy it yet.

I bought it just because he rolled.

It back, didn't he? Because there was all those impersonations. Did you see the one?

That's what I mean. How can you stop that?

Well, because he's gonna. I think he's gonna change the color. The reason he brought it back wasn't because. Because people were impersonating like president.

There was some company. It was changed the stock price.

Someone went on, bought the blue tick, pretended to be this medical company which produced insulin in America and tweeted, insulin's free, Insulin's free. And it wiped $9 billion off the stock price.

They probably shorted it in like 20, 20 minutes.

Yeah, they definitely shorted it.

Made loads of money. So obviously he's had to pull it back. I think there was. There was another case of the same. I can't remember what the other company was. That's like absolutely crazy impact from one tweet. He also did that poll to like Donald Trump back on the platform.

Yeah. You can't be free speech and not let people on.

Yeah.

Tony. Someone impersonated Tony Blair as well.

Yeah, I saw that. He won't let Alex Jones back on, though, which is. I think after that court case is probably.

Yeah, it's like conspiracy level shit.

Sued so hard. But yeah, that's. Obviously he made it. I think it's not far off profitable now. I don't think as a company it was nowhere near or. I haven't read into it enough to know. And I don't want to say something makes me like an idiot. So I'm not gonna delve into it. But I think with that and then getting rid of loads of people, it's not far off. Like balancing at least, which it wasn't previously or I didn't think it was. That's. I guess that's another thing for stress. He must be pretty stressed. Probably puts you into context of like how.

Yeah. I mean, he must just love it, though.

Yeah. I don't know how he can want to do that.

Guy doesn't sleep.

Yeah. It must be so unhealthy.

You see that picture of him on that Yachet guy? Hadn't seen sunlight in 20 years.

Gonna go to Mars.

I saw on the Jo I forgot who it was on Joe Rogan. But they were like. When you see someone like that invest the. Into his brands because, you know he does not sleep and he does not go outside.

Yeah, that's that.

He's like. Then you see Bezos, like all looking all bulky and tanned.

I thought it was quite funny that. Yeah. Do you know Gary Vee obviously used to be mad.

He's got a dank new one.

He used to be mad from the orientation. I think that's just so funny. Like he pushed this massive narrative of like family, family man, family man. Got this point of just being absolutely wadded. Sacked her off and just married some new.

To be fair though, you never know what went on there.

Yeah, you don't. It's just like, just interesting.

But it's. Yeah, it's true.

Say one thing, do something else. It's just funny. Yeah, Bezos is shredded. Amazon's really a nightmare at the moment as well. I've heard of you.

You. You can't. You can't add stock there or some.

Yeah, they have their own like freighting service and they're the only freights that don't have to wait in these mad queues. So loads of people have struggled to get stock into warehouses for Q4.

I'm trying to send stock from Amazon back to the warehouse right now because I've not got enough stock for Black Friday. But then I found out I sent 2000 back from Amazon, but it takes 30 days. I thought it'd be two days. So now it's basically pointless. But once you've submitted the order, you can't stop it. So I've now just basically deleted 2000 pieces of stock from Amazon. So we're gonna sell out on Amazon now and not have any more stock in warehouse.

That's such a stupid move.

Have you found that move to Amazon?

Yeah, I'd never done Amazon at all before. I mean it's doing like 20 grand a month like semi organically now. So spend like 50 quid a day on ads. That's pretty good PPC. But it's just building the reviews. It's got like 35 reviews now. 4 star plus. I think it needs to be like 4.8 plus really. But just another channel. I was hesitant to do it, but it's. It's a much more profitable challenge channel. But yeah, I think it'll always be second to the website because you can't do subscription on it.

Can't do any post marketing, can you? Can't put any inserts in the packaging you're not allowed to do.

Why can't you do subscriptions on it?

I think you can for some. I don't know if it's being like a new brand or what, but I can't do it right now.

No, you can't. Yeah, you can buy. You can definitely do repeat purchase because you get the option when you.

Yeah, you do get the option.

Yeah. I don't know if it's on my listing right now.

Maybe you have to go through, like, some sort of approval process. It's just such a monster that, like, being on that platform, it's just so big.

Yeah. I guess the only thing is, it's like more stock management, but yes. 35 reviews.

Yeah.

Oh, wait. It has got subscribe and Save, but it's the same price. Maybe I need to do something about this.

There's a revenue opportunity for you there.

Yeah. Wait a minute. That's weird. But, no, it's all right. I just. I think it's good to have multi channels to some extent like that. And then retail, potentially, which I'm looking at.

Where would you target for retail?

Well, Holland and Barrett approached me, like, two months into the brand, really. I'm speaking to them a bit, and then they've just been super slow on, like, anything. So I think that would be massive scale. I just don't necessarily think it aligns with where I want to take the brand. But at the same time, if they wanted to do 5 million quid a year, I'd probably say yes.

So I think you stand out of shelves.

I was gonna say it's a product that would do well.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think you do really well.

I feel like Selfridges would be cool to do. It's not gonna make money. Purely just a brand thing.

Yeah.

So. And dirtier in there.

So going through.

I have to change that.

I've seen a lot of their ads recently, actually.

Yeah, let's go. There's no pink lights and no red.

Wine and a lot of Black Friday chaos going on.

And a few colds.

It's just a somber atmosphere.

I thought we'd kick into gear, but.

It just never really happens. It's a corporate atmosphere. I'm just not used to it. I'm used to the pink lights and, like, the red wine mood. I think that is. Maybe that is the vibe that gives the midnight pod. It's just that unique energy. Whereas most pods are like this, they're just corporate.

Maybe this is archived footage that never gets released after.

Maybe I've just come through for the.

Hour and a half. You could bring red wine in here. It's definitely a red wine vibe.

You definitely could, I think doing them at night time as well as vibe. But it's kind of more vibing as dark.

Do you just. I was discussing this the other day in terms of like. I feel like there's a 50, 50 split in business as well between business owners who are like fully straight edge. Don't drive, drink, don't do anything. Yeah, don't do it like don't, don't like go out. Don't do like anything. And then there's the other 50 who just seem really loose.

That is true.

Events like there's no middle ground to be found.

Yeah.

Yes. I don't know if you get. You get. Maybe the red wine attracts a certain type and turns away others.

I do think you get into a nicer flow of conversation as well.

It's just 100%.

Just gives you that.

It's like going on a date in it.

It's the same.

Yeah, exactly. Like wine is just. Yeah, it's just the right vibe in it. Red wine and pink lights. It's kind of deep. This is the first episode ever when there's been no red wine or pink lights. It's the shittest episode we've done. I just.

Just put that in the bin. Just dragging the file straight to the bin there.

I've just. Just received the Dream Dust Studio shoot images.

What's your immediate thoughts?

I haven't looked at them yet. They're property is fucking good, so they'll be good. It was a fat shoot as well. Nah, I'm still waiting on that. This is website. Like still imagery sort of shit. But. Oh yeah.

You said you went in a. I can't even say the name of it.

What's the DeLorean DMC?

So unnecessary from Back to the Future.

Look at these images. Oh, they're nice. I won't be able to show you because I'll turn it around. First impressions though. They're fucking nice.

Mansion in a DeLorean. That's a proper space. Good shoot.

Yeah. I mean people would say it's like unnecessary, but I think long term it's actually not because who the fuck does that? In short, where's the mansion? It's in Kensington.

How much is that?

Which is not that much. It's like 600 quid for four hours.

That's not bad at all.

It's not. That whole first shoot cost three and a half grand and people thought I spent 50 grand on it. So I'm not retarded. It's just like resourceful and using good people that over deliver and undercharge. And these images look good to be fair. I'll have to show you after.

Yeah, I do think it's gotta. You gotta play into the longer term vision of the brand. Like just how far can you take it? What's your watch like? You're shooting. You're doing 10 million, 10 mil a month. What's your shoot level gonna be then?

I literally think this could become like a Netflix franchise.

I remember when you said that on the pod. I think that's a fucking sick idea.

Like, honestly, this second movie that we're doing, it's like so crooked in the sense that there's so many Easter eggs and shit and it links to real life and I'm featuring in it by the way, as a character. And I'm getting a custom. Well, not, not custom, but we're getting a leather jacket, we're printing the logo on the back. I've got like fake tattoos and shit.

Like the drives.

Yeah, exactly. It's based on that, so. And then a fucking Delorean, which is just completely unnecessary. But that was in. That was on the ad at the start of the first movie.

Right. Okay.

So this is the shit that gets me gassed. It's like just an excuse to literally make a movie.

Yeah.

But it's also just like unique as fuck. I've literally never seen a supplement brand ever do something to this extent.

Yeah.

And that's probably because it doesn't make.

Money but do things that others won't do though. I think it, I think it's because your brand is inherently creative. The way you've positioned it allows you to do this and just like justify and also probably help your performance attract more.

Can you not maximize that creative though, and actually, you know, contextually convert it into ads and.

Yeah, probably more than we currently have done. I don't know. That's. I think probably doesn't work as well. In short, but did you run the.

Other one as a YouTube video? As a YouTube ad?

We actually haven't, but I feel like we should. It's like it's very top of funnel.

What would work well though? You've seen those ads that they're working really well in UGC at the moment. It's where it's someone green screened over a piece of higher production creative so it's still native to TikTok and they're reacting to that creative and it's like, have you seen this brand kind of thing? Obviously stronger hook than that, but that could work because you're taking that higher production content and making it more native to the platform.

These images are cool.

Just segued away from the podcast and just give it up at this point, haven't you?

So what to wrap up then? I guess I'll take over. What's the goal now of the pod? What. What's changing? What can people at home expect better than this?

Better anyway?

Well, I think we need pink lights and red wine or just at least pink lights. Some form of mental stimulus which this episode hasn't had as much and better mics. But I think it's just people liked. I think everyone got pissed off when it wasn't econ people. Like, it was. It was like a fairly cult, like UK Ecom podcast. People still comment like it was the greatest econ podcast of all time and shit. And I do agree, but just need to be consistent with it. I think the uniqueness was the rawness of it compared to a lot of fluff that's out there. Even if they're like more impressive fluff, it's still fluff. So, yeah, I think it's like, so we said about Gold Medal Syndrome, it's like, oh, I did an episode a week pretty much for a year. That's what I said I'd do. And then I got like, ah, can't be asked now. But then it's like it, people, the people want it. There's a lot of good guests. It's just consistency in it and just doing it regularly and also getting co hosts on and mixing it up, which will probably take some getting used to, but definitely think it's worth doing.

So you're gonna go more of like a topical route then to talking to someone about their life story.

I think both, I think you need both.

I think it depends if they're new. You want to do. Probably do a bit of both. I think if you're going to do topical, I think consistency is the key and not needing to have a guest on every single one of them. You need to have regular people that you can fall back on because it's quite a heavy admin and it's also hard to always guarantee. But then, I don't know, I think you did pretty well at it last time. It's probably doable again. But then obviously if it's someone new, you want to kind of know about them as a person. So I think it's worth. Worth digging into the backstory. And a bit about what they do, but then maybe dive down other routes as well. Consistency. You just need to stay consistent at it.

Same with anything in life, isn't it?

It got so exponential. I think it gets so exponential if you just stuck at it. Yeah, yeah. We've given up here, haven't we? Pretty much. This was a good time. Two hours not getting back.

Two hours not getting back. Nice, decent little warm up episode. What was I recording? Oh yeah, it was good. 75 minutes. Yeah, sweet. But it's because I wasn't really sure who the host was because I'm so used to being the host and I was letting you take the reins a bit. But then we didn't really plan it. Completely freestyle and all the mics were a shambles. But I remember doing the first episode originally though, like I didn't know what the I was doing with the mics and shit and then you just quick pick it up in it. It's like the same as anything. So I think with that said, on that bombshell, subscribe to the Pod. Plenty more coming soon. Better quality, bigger guests, more consistent content and we'll see you on the next episode. But no, let me start again. Swallow my own, choke on my own spit. Subscribe to the Pod and we'll see you in the next episode. Cheers for watching. Peace.