I Don't Want to Run a DTC Brand - Doc the Journey Ep 45

Back with episode 45 of document the Journey. It's been a few weeks and I very much felt like I had to force myself to do this episode because I'm just out of habit with it, to be honest. Quickly, before I dive in, There is the second, not the second, the third ticketed fourth proper Midnight Social Club event on Friday 16th June. I will link that down below. It's gonna be fucking epic. It's at this crazy like Masonic Temple, which I actually didn't realize was associated with the Freemasons, but that's not a bad thing I've heard. But it's just some crazy, like very trippy, borderline psychedelic venue. And yeah, should be sick. So yeah, go get tickets to that. We've got a few left. And yeah, we've got like a panel of speakers gonna do. Do a big proper set at this time with like microphones and stuff. We had a lot of feedback from the first event that that was missing and I definitely agree, so always a work in progress. These things are way more expensive and way more arduous to put on than I first thought. When I was doing the first one. I actually lost money on the last event, which might surprise people, given some people said the tickets really expensive. But that is honestly the truth, hand on heart. But I really enjoyed doing it. I think a lot of other people did as well. So, yep, go check that out down below and I think it's gonna be sick. Friday, 16th of June, 8pm There's a few tickets left and message me if any questions on that. But yeah, that is out of the way. We're back. I say we're back as if anything changed. But episode 45, I'm aware that I started this series over a year ago, which means I didn't quite keep up to the one episode a week, which I feel like when I'm doing it alongside very much in the trenches building a startup business ultimately, and alongside the podcast, which is fucking hard words, it's pretty good. Going to do 45 episodes in roughly 53, 54 weeks, I think, since I started this on May 12th. So 54 weeks I was actually looking back at some stuff from a year ago and it already makes me realize why I'm glad I started doing it. Because at the time I can't really be bothered at times, certainly now when I'm past the honeymoon period, this series, in the same way that I'm past the honeymoon period of running the fucking business. But yeah, when you look back at it, it's actually quite nostalgic. It's kind of. It's quite powerful because you realize that actually every day does add up and you've done quite a lot. At least that's what I feel like I've done in the past year and a lot has happened and it's also just like nostalgic and kind of. Yeah. Nice to look back and I suppose as the years go by and I do more and more of this, if I commit to it, which I've said I will, then it'll be even more powerful, I guess, in many ways, especially if things go to plan long term, which part of the reason I'm doing this is to put pressure on myself to make them go to plan. The title of this video sounds like I'm fucking quitting my brand. I'm absolutely not. I've not written any notes as always, but I just really something I've been thinking about recently, and I think it's pretty relevant to a lot of people, is just thinking, changing the way you think about running a D2C brand. Because I think E Comm on like money, Twitter, maybe it's a bit of a bubble, probably is. Not every founder is in it, but all the founders I've met typically over the years are certainly aware of this bubble and it's become money. Twitter, it used to be like Instagram, YouTube stuff like E comm guys loosely inverted commas and people like oh you know, E comm's dead. Or building D2C brands are dead. But either even if that's true, like building great products and a brand is not dead. And I think really moving away from just thinking We're a DTC brand. I never wanted to build a D2C brand. I wanted to build great products that actually touch people's lives and fucking help people and build a product brand, ultimately a product business and D2C and running Instagram ads and all that is literally just one channel. And D2C is one channel of the retail business. Like long term, honestly want space goods to be way, way more than that. Like it has to be a DTC brand because that's the best place to get started to generate revenue, generate customers, build data etc, etc, build a customer base and doing it D2C as opposed to retail, which we are doing soon by the way, was the best way to get started. But really D2C is one part, is one channel of one part of the business long term. I'm not a D2C founder. I don't think of myself as running a D2C brand, as in, obviously I am right now, but that's not the be all, end all. It's not how I want to think about it. And yeah, I just think so many people are very fucking pigeonholed into thinking. Run social media ads to a website. This is my entire life. Like that's the only thing that matters. And on top of that, like, so many people are very obsessed with only talking about ads and landing pages. No one talks about products. Like it's a very consistent theme. No one talks about products because it's not glamorous. It takes often months if not years to get right. And it's really fucking hard to build a good product that hasn't been done or, you know, to build a good unique product. And I think that's what I've done, particularly with Rainbow Dust. If I'm honest. Dream Dust hasn't gone down as well. We are actually pivoting and going to rename it for other reasons I won't discuss just yet. And we're going to reformulate it because just based on feedback, it wasn't perfect. And again, I don't want to feel like I'm saying everything is perfect because it's fucking not. Rainbow Dust has been a smash hit. Very proud of it. It's a very solid first product. Dream Dust hasn't been as much. But yeah, I mean, that was just what I was thinking about when I was cycling back from the gym earlier and I thought, fuck, I need to record one of these episodes. So just changing how I think about it. And yeah, I know it's cheesy, but like, I genuinely do see this, this space and probably this brand because that's obviously my vehicle in this space of ultimately wellness and longer term psychedelics. I see myself building in this space for the next 10 plus years. Not necessarily on the brand, obviously. I would like to build it, sell it, whatever. I don't know, I don't know what that looks like exactly. I'm certainly not thinking about that, obsessing about it yet, given we're 13 months since launch. But yeah, I don't want to be someone that just runs this for a few years, makes a bit of money and I don't know, girls and sits on a beach or chills in Bali, which I feel like, is this fake? It's what everyone trained themselves to think is the end goal. Because that's what some guy on Twitter said or that's what some guru on YouTube said. Whereas actually I think the goal should be ultimately, yeah, you want to have all the fruits of your labor, certainly, and have freedom. And I've already got a lot of that. Not as much I would like in certain places, but I think you want to be in a position where you can work on something and build something indefinitely really, and actually enjoy it. Which also brings me on to. I've been really, really, really thinking about. I actually want to move quite quickly and aggressively towards having everyone in one place. I'm not 100% convinced on like a solo office, everyone in the office five days a week just yet. Although I think actually there's probably a lot of merit to that. What I'd probably like to do is certainly what we're gonna. What we are moving towards in the next month is everyone has access to the same CO workspace, expect everyone to be in two or three days a week. We can use the shared spaces for like our own office, but it's not actually our own office just yet because we don't have enough people in London to warrant that really. And it would just be stupid. But I think everyone in the same CO work space having a bit more of a solid routine and eventually that would pivot towards having my own office and having like somewhere I want to be rather than just slaving away thinking, oh, I'm doing this now so I can get there, put myself in a position where I actually enjoy the people, enjoy working the people around me and just enjoy the process a bit more. Because I'm very aware that I don't necessarily enjoy a lot of the process. And I mean, I think a large part of that honestly is because I've kind of pigeonholed myself into being like, I need to work in my, in my flat and almost like if I'm having social interaction, if I'm like excited, then it's almost wrong. And it's just such a toxic mindset. And I spoke about it before and I'm very aware of it and I think the fix to that is physical presence. In other words, in person stuff, doing stuff out of the flat, doing stuff even with customers in person. I've been doing some cool shit the next few weeks and again just trying to move away from everything being 100% raw online, which is like the laptop lifestyle which everyone gets pulled into when they first get into EE, comm or D2C. But I'm not trying to build a DTC brand, I'm not trying to build a laptop lifestyle anymore. I've been there and done that. I want to build something for the sake of building it and build cool shit. And it starts with the product and it also starts with the people because a business is ultimately just a group of people coming together to build a product or service that's literally it at the most raw form. So, yeah, I'm rambling as always, but maybe I sound quite mature in this episode because I'm finally figuring out and I'm doing it on camera because if you watch back in my older videos, I've always toyed with these ideas. Obviously you need revenue and certain scale and the finances to back up having more people in one place, etc. Getting to the point where we are, where we do have that. And yeah, hopefully in a year's time I'll look back and we'll have a team of 20 people. And I won't regret saying this and I won't wish I was in some Changu Co work space. I'm almost certain I won't because I've moved on from that part of my life, I think, and I think I'm in the right vehicle. But now I want to actually enjoy, enjoy driving the vehicle and building the thing because the end goal, actually, of course there is an end goal, but it's always going to be moving and I want to enjoy the day to day, maybe more. I'm very effective right now being on my stuff. I don't think I'm necessarily very effective at motivating, inspiring and collaborating with the team, which is growing. We're eight people full time now. We just offered someone a job full time again, literally today. So hopefully will be nine people soon, as well as agencies and so on. Obviously still a small business, but the biggest like in house team I've ever had, which is cool. So, yeah, still winging it very much. We had a record month last month, another record month this month. We've been profitable since January now every month, which is good. So it's not easy, but it's definitely moving the right way. It's never moving as quick as I would like and I'll probably always say that no matter what I'm doing. But is I do feel we have a lot of momentum. There's a lot of grind pains all the time, every single day, like every other founder will tell you. But I'm kind of used to the stress now because I've been doing it for years, obviously. But yeah, that's probably enough for this episode. 10 minutes of rambling as always. Yeah, I'm gonna get back on doing these weekly because I do enjoy ruminating and reflecting back on them in the future. Knowing that my future self will like watching this back in the year makes me want to do it more. So I'm going to keep doing it. And yeah, a reminder to get your tickets to Friday 16th of June. It's going to be a very sick event. Feedback on the first one was useful. Generally good, but useful as well. And as always, subscribe to the pod I guess this and the main pod, but just the whole fucking channel. Appreciate the support. So baffled that anyone watches me and I'll see you in the next episode. Cheers for watching.