Here's my Exact 2022 £££ Numbers Review and Plans for 2023 Brand Growth - Doc the Journey Ep 32

Yo, what's going on? Back with episode 32 of document the Journey. First proper sit down episode this year, obviously. I was in Bali last time, which is pretty much two weeks ago for the last episode where I did the famously shit record, the famously shit quality recording across the pool, which looked ridiculous. Did a few pods in Bali, which obviously good. Back now to. Well, not to reality, but back to more full work mode, Full in the trenches. I feel like, again, it was a nice way to start the year. Being in Bali for two weeks. I kind of, as I discussed in the previous episode, because I wasn't really holidaying or fully working, it was sort of limbo and I got a bit done. It's fine and so on, but you come back, realize there's a lot of shit to do. Kind of hate January in London. Can't lie. I can definitely see the appeal of Dubai and so on, but not there right now. Actually moving out of this gaff in like six weeks time. So I'll do like a house tour of where I'm going next. And the people I'll be living with is gonna be a fucking sick setup, to be fair. And I'm very keen to get out of like high rise central London flats. It's gonna be a little bit different mixing it up. I'm keen and excited to do that. Yeah, I said I'd do like a full year roundup and in the interest of full transparency, I'm gonna do that. I feel like I should really show something on screen and I'd make it more dramatic and up the production quality of these. But for this episode at least, I'm not doing that. For obvious reasons. I'm not gonna go into like every fucking fine detail of literally everything. But in the interest of transparency, I will go through, like top line stuff, what we did in 2022, and speak a bit about plans for next year and how I've maybe pivoted my mindset a little bit. Because the only way to do this series is to be honest and talk about shit that's going on at the time, things I want to do at the time, things that are going well, things that aren't going well. Because, by the way, news flash, not everything goes perfectly all the time. And I feel like fucking money, Twitter and Instagram people play this perception of everything's perfect all the time and certainly isn't for me, and I'm just gonna keep it real and speak about that as well. So, yeah, like 2022, it's quite mad because we're what 32 episodes into this, obviously 32 weeks since properly starting to document a bit longer with the brand. Like a month before I launched, a month before I launched the series of running the brand. So we launched at the end of April, pretty much didn't start running ads till May. So properly 2022, first calendar year and first financial year as well because I've lined the two up was eight and a bit months. Call it eight months properly. So May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December. Yeah, we finished a year on 1.4 million total revenue. So eight months. This is all in the eight month period, not in full 12 months. Just shy of 30,000 orders, just shy of 25,000 customers and four and a half thousand active subscribers which equates to roughly 165k of MRR at the time on the 31st of December. So yeah, I set my goal last year. Be nice to do a million with a new brand. I was very conscious that probably wasn't going to be as big numbers as like Neon beach, my previous brands in the first year because it's a different market we're in now. I was going into consumables, having never done that before. But I feel like doing a million with this brand is like more impressive than doing 10 with neon beach because they're just very different things. Completely bespoke products started from scratch. There was always the chance it was going to completely flop and find no traction. Fortunately that's not been the case. So yeah, it's a seven figure brand now I guess. Multi seven figure run rate now. Yes, it's kind of mad that that's happened pretty quickly. Like I've said on like previous videos, it honestly feels very, very, very small to me, those numbers. But I think that's because I've been you know, corrupted for better or worse in the past. You know, back in the day when drop shipping was. Well when I was doing drop shipping like general Source. So I've done massive numbers in my early, early twenties. Then I did a few million with Midnight City, got that to like 3 million run rate. Obviously Neon beach, you know the story there, grew way too quick. So doing like 1.4 on the first eight months I guess well worked out on a 12 month basis. It's like a little over 2 in the first year in terms of run rate. As in like if we did 12 months it probably would have been like first 12 months. Probably like two and a half, potentially three. We'll see what happens next few months. But yeah, 1.4 million first calendar year, like I said, just shy of 30,000 orders, just shy of 25,000 customers and around four and a half thousand active subs. So they're the headline figures. I'm not going to go into like the fucking P and L and so on. To be completely transparent. We lost money on that. Not a huge, huge amount. Like that was intentional. The plan was to. Obviously I raised money and I had money to start with, so Brady from story to like completely bootstrapping it. But the plan was to kind of go out the gates hard, build a lot of momentum, build the customer base, build the brand awareness, like asap, maybe overspent. If I'm honest, we probably could have done maybe slightly less revenue, but been profitable first eight months. That wasn't the approach. I've kind of pivoted to that for 20, 23 and in the last two months and I get onto that. But yeah, I think pretty much did exactly what the objective was. Obviously there's been a fuckload of hurdles, you know, primarily one a few months ago, obviously if watch this series was Instagram's a big problem. Kept getting disappoint disabled up our ads. Supply chain's been a massive problem getting stock on time. Like I think we could have done potentially 2 million first. First year if I'd had enough stock for first 8 months. If I had enough stock. We didn't. So that's obviously not reality. What are the problems? I mean, so many things, you know, having to change stuff that we're promoting on the website. Can't speak about psychedelics and so on, which has been a bit of a shame. But yeah, given it's one sku, obviously accessories, granted, one primary product with rainbow dust, one flavor, one SKU there, one country we're running ads in. We tested ads in EU and so on, but obviously, as I said before, we tracked back on that a few months ago because of fulfillment. So, yeah, it's pretty much been one sku, one country. They're the numbers for the first calendar year. Eight, eight months. Just over eight months. And I'm pretty pleased with it. I think it's been decent. It's been, you know, some people say it's the hardest part getting to. Getting to this point. Jimmy said that in a pod. I would like to think it's. Well, I hope it's the hardest part. I've done it a few times now, but evidently for me it's not the hardest part. The hardest part I think is the next bit, which is like taking it from being a Bedroom brand to potentially multi, well, eight figure brand sort of in the next year, which would be the goal in terms of trajectory at least. So yeah, obviously plans for 2023, I kind of put them on Twitter as well, like goals and stuff, but full transparency. So I've been doing this. Obviously I went down the whole rabbit hole of raising more money and wanted to raise a million quid was the number and pitch debt was going out and so on. And that's been a really interesting process. Haven't raised a million quid yet. The answer on that is I've raised about a quarter of it. That's done from new angels at the target valuation, which was very, very chunky to be fair, given it's nine months old. I've had a fuckload of conversations with VCs and so on and learn a lot in that process. I think I've learned that it's not actually necessarily even a good thing at this stage for me. It's definitely having had the conversations I've had and learning a bit more about the process in terms like pref shares and so on and what you're actually kind of tying yourself into. The long and short of it is I'm not sure if I'm going to raise any more money because we don't need to, to be honest. It was really just maybe I was pressured from outside influence and so on and like thinking that we had to chase a much, much bigger second year number than we necessarily do and that would have required more funding because it wouldn't necessarily been profitable at least in the early half of the year to do it. Basically still kind of going through that process, having conversations. I definitely think raising money and working with a VC or a fund or whatever it is at some point in the next year, two, three, two, three years, whatever it ends up being will be valuable. So those conversations are certainly not a waste. I've learned a lot in it. I'm still going along that process. I'm just not convinced that we. Well, firstly, we don't need to raise any more money, whereas I maybe thought we did because kind of pivot the approach, which I'll get to in a minute. But secondly, I'm not sure I actually want to do a deal with the VC at this stage, given what I've learned about some deals and what they might look like. That's not to say I don't want to do one, that there might be one that comes around tomorrow. I'm still speaking to people and having those conversations and if the Right partner comes along and we align on the numbers and what we're trying to do with the business, then I definitely still want to do it. But just in the interest of transparency, I still have been raising money, I've been going on that process, but I'm not dead set on it happening now, which is interesting because two months ago I was, I thought it was like mission critical, but now I just don't. And part of the reason for that is basically pivoted to being profitable, which was always kind of the plan at the start of this year. Like the first year we budgeted to burn a bit of money and we'd done that and I don't think that was wasted. I think in hindsight maybe could have been a bit more efficient if I'm completely honest rather than just chasing. I want to do the first million in the first six months, whatever it was. But yeah, like we were profitable last month in December, which is the first profitable month by the way, to be completely transparent. Obviously I'm not sharing like my full P L because I just think that's probably net negative. But yeah, first seven months we weren't profitable. Losing money every month on like an EBITDA basis. Obviously accounting for that and everything. Like actual accounting, not just like bro science accounting. Like probably a lot of drop shippers or whatever profitable last month by decent, decent amount. Like not a huge amount if I'm honest, like percentage wise, but decent, respectable in line with what we're trying to do similar this month. And really like now I'm pivoting to the mindset of basically scaling profitably or at least break even. Plus because if we chase profit too much at this stage we could miss out on growth which isn't a good thing necessarily. So it's finding that sweet spot. And for me the sweet spot is if we can do like 5,6 million this year profitably as like a baseline. That'd be really fucking good I think and just build on solid foundations and really like the way I'm thinking we get there is pretty much three things. New SKUs obviously dream dust, big one been massively delayed. That's coming while we're launching Monday 30th. So in 11 days time from when I'm recording and posting this, I've got like two new SKUs as well that I'm working on, but that'll be probably a few months down the line. I think new markets like localizing to Germany is a big one. That's our second biggest country sales wise. Even though we don't run ads there. And it's all UK website. So the first thing we're doing there is we've got our EU website, EU website, EU warehouse going live probably next week, which means we can start running ads in the EU again because fulfillment will be fixed. It's been complete nightmare up to now. And then on top of that, new channels like Amazon, I mentioned a few times, I'm really pushing that hard. So we've got mugs going there, all our accessory Skus, of which there'll be more in a few months as well, and Dream Dust and then Obviously any new SKUs will go there. So Amazon's looking better. It's still nowhere near as big as the website, but doing like 10% of sales on Amazon. I'd like to push that to like 30%, to be honest. So that's another focus. And then retail as well, being another new channel that still pending with some big retailers, big retailers that I've been speaking to, they're like the three drivers for growth. And then other than that, probably one or two new hires. Some people that are in the business already that have been like part time up to this point and are going full time because I just think in certain areas, like in the back end, got Florian that's been doing customer service. I want to get him way more involved in operations and so on, just lead that part of the business because I think it's useful to build that trust and relationship with key people that maybe started part time. But actually instead of just hiring someone else to do another role, you can kind of just develop their role, which is one thing I'm doing. Probably need two more people in the next few months, I think, to really get to where I want to be, like team wise. So, yeah, I'll keep you updated on that. But really the plan there is to still keep things super lean, keep it fully remote. Obviously I bang on about wanting to travel more. It completely depends kind of seasons. I'll probably go Brazil like next month and probably do a month here now. I've got back, been here like five days now. Do a month, head down. Lot of shit to do. Especially like dream desk launch coming up and everything takes longer than you think. Everything requires more admin than you think. Of course, that's just always the way it has been and will be. But yeah, that's pretty much what's happening, I guess. Just focus on being a bit more lean and efficient and not necessarily going down the growth or cost route, which I probably was a little bit in the. In the first few months and thinking like two months ago, that's how I was viewing 2023. But it's a tough market out there as well, if I'm complete, completely honest. So just focusing on, yes, sustainable and efficient and like horizontal growth. Like I said, new skus, new channels, new markets, rather than just one skew, throttling it on Instagram, which is what we have been doing up to now. And it's worked. But I think there's a ceiling to that, at least in terms of doing it profitably. And I've definitely hit that ceiling to an extent. So, yeah, but that's, that's really what's happening. And yeah, obviously my focus entirely. And I'm very aware of the fact that I've never run a single brand. Fucking flies in here. Never run a single brand by itself for more than like 18 months. So we're only nine months into this and I sometimes find myself thinking, oh, new ideas, new ideas. I'm very aware of that now and I'm trying to make sure I don't veer off path and just stay knuckled down, like applying new ideas to this brand. Don't be thinking, start another fucking new brand. So podcast YouTube pool party stuff, which is coming, by the way. I've actually been working on it. That and the brand is really all I want to be doing. And then obviously training on the side certainly for the next few months. They're my three big kind of pillars for this year. Brand first, podcast, fitness. That's really it. And obviously life fits around that and is ultimately a blend of all three. That's really what's going on. I don't want to ramble too much. Hopefully that was fairly informative. I feel like I should hire an editor to start making these, like nice chops and nice, nice visuals like Iman's videos or something, or Jordan's videos. But yeah, just keeping it real. That's what's happening. Excited for the new year? Well, we're already in the new year, but excited for this year. I just fucking hate January in London. I can't lie. And yeah, space kids to the moon. As always, cheers for watching. I never cease to be amazed by the fact people want to watch me ramble in my home office staring at my screen with a hat on. Usually because I need a haircut. But yeah, document the journey in it. So we'll get to a year before we know it, Five years before I know it. Time just fucking flies, doesn't it? All the time. The older I get, the quicker time goes. Something I've found. So, yeah, cheers for watching. As always, subscribe to the POD podcast, episodes coming every week. We're filming lows the next few months and obviously this every week. And I might start doing some new shit. I don't know, documenting certain other parts of my life. We'll see. But as always, cheers for watching. Space Goes to the Moon. Let's fucking go. Peace.