Instagram Disabled Nightmare, Building the Team & Scale Plans - Documenting the journey - Episode 6

Yo, Episode six, I believe now of the fucking document the Journey. I haven't prepared what to say in this one. I'm just gonna wing it. And I'm recording it in the morning instead of the evening for once because I realized I was doing Wednesdays, then it's Thursdays, now it's Fridays. I think for these uploads. It seems to be. Been a bit all over the place. Just got back from fucking Marbella. Which is funny because I guess I'll start with the bad news. I was saying stress free scale, all this sort of shit on my last episode, I felt like things were going so fucking smoothly. Didn't have like the crippling e comm anxiety I've had in the past. Didn't feel like anything was particularly wrong, which I was saying was testament to my experience and putting the shit in place. But then out of nowhere, on Saturday, I think two days after I posted the previous video, or a day after fucking Instagram account gets disabled, which is just like classic huge fucking issue because 90% of our ad spend is on Instagram. Obviously you can run ads on Instagram without an Instagram account, but it's not the same. And I was like, for fuck's sake. Didn't even give me a reason. Didn't show why I was disabled. I thought just from previous experience that maybe because we've mentioned psychedelic, we're probably gonna have to be super fucking careful with that in the future. But yeah, that fucking ruined my week, my weekend, at least to an extent. Because, yeah, like all ads go off, you know, fill up, for fuck's sake. Here we go again. Like just stress free scale to very stressful scale. And it was annoying because we literally just started to like. Ads are starting to really work very nicely, particularly on Instagram. Followers were increasing again. It's going up. I just acquired the username which I was about to put on the space@SpaceGoods username, which I was about to put onto the account spacegoods Co and then the accounts disabled. So six days later, it's still fucking disabled. What I've done about it, it's one of those things where you can try and go down the standard route and, you know, send all the fucking emails to the reps, blah, blah, blah, you know, apply on the page to get your thing back. But that shit either takes potentially like six weeks or doesn't really work. So, yeah, I have a few contacts who have spoken to certain people. Basically, it's getting sorted. I don't know how much you can Say on that. But yeah, it's not cheap either. But I've had to pay a fair amount of money to get it sorted. But I'm confident it will get sorted. That's what I had to do two years ago with Neon beach when that got disabled, like prime peak scale. But the difference with that was I had warnings about the problem with that product at the time was other brands would claim it was their design and then you get a copyright infringement bullshit. But at least you had a warning. Whereas this zero warning. I didn't have a single email from Instagram. I didn't have anything saying, you know, your account may be disabled, blah, blah, blah, which is super fucking weird. Which makes me think, I don't know, maybe it's some black hat attack, I'm not sure, but it's happened. Ultimately, all ads on Instagram went off for like two days and we decided to just like relaunch some shit two days later without the account still running on Instagram, but without being connected to the actual Instagram account, surprisingly and thankfully that she's been performing pretty well. Not as well, probably like 60% as well as it was with the Instagram account. But I just know once we get the account back, which I'm confident we will in the next few days, might take a week, a bit longer, then shit's gonna be flying because we have loads of stock that's landed, which I mentioned a previous episode. Ads are looking good, subscribers are compounding very nicely. Product reviews been genuinely very good, which has been fucking nice. So yeah, I mean that, that's the first like major thing that's gone wrong. It's the fucking Instagram account. So I'm just shell out a fair amount, fair chunk of cash to, well, a fair chunk of something to fucking fix that. And I've acquired the username, which is another fair chunk. But you know, I have to have the Instagram account. We need to figure out what happens, it doesn't happen again, most importantly. And yeah, it just feels like one final little fuck up before we can start properly scaling because like I said, SHIT was getting into a really good position, momentum was good, contents looking really nice, reviews are good, customer service is going smooth, Supply chains pretty smooth. So yeah, that's like the first major fucking issue. But once that's fixed, which will be the next few days, we'll be starting to scale up again. We're still at like where we were before, but about a week ago scale was. But I wanted to like double that within the next few weeks and we need the Instagram account for that. Really? So, yeah, that was the first fuck up that's getting fixed. Fucking lose sleep over that shit, to be honest. Anyone that's an Econ founder knows that when you have that sort of issue, that's like a tier one problem. Like everything has to stop until that's fixed. Well, not stop, but like that's number one priority until that's fixed. So yeah, came back from Marbella, was discussing with a few guys there, one guy there in particular, about potentially investing in the brand coming on. There's like a, well, I guess more formal advisory position which we've been discussing for months. You probably work out who that is. So yeah, that's potentially happening, which is pretty cool because I'm conscious now. I know what I'm good at and I know what I want to focus on and I know I enjoy importantly and I'm actually, I would rather, and I've said this before, but I would rather end up, you know, in three, five years, whatever it is, with 30 to 50% of a massive business I enjoy working on rather than being so pedantic and like almost naive and arrogant with like equity and being like, oh, I need to have all of it. I need to have 75% plus of what's probably gonna be a smaller business and a more stressful business, which is, you know, the position I've been in in the past, having 100% of business that then fucked up because I didn't have the experience around me. So yeah, putting the right people in place. We've got a part time FD guy potentially coming on, which I've got a call with for an hour just after this, which again is one of those invaluable things which I wouldn't have even known where to start with that, to be honest. But Alex, one of my investors from Content Cow has basically teed that up and it's just fucking invaluable. Like I didn't even realize the value that was missing by not having like properly experienced, weathered brains in the operation until I started actually speaking to him. Guys like Alex and other people that I mentioned and yeah, like, they can just add so fucking much because basically I want to put myself in a position where all I have to worry about really is product, brand growth and you know, everything else, largely speaking is taken care of, like primarily finance because that's where I fucked up in the past. When you scale in so quick to have that completely bulletproof, robust, like budgets, forecasts, plans, do we need to raise Money. Do we not need to raise money? If we raise money, this, this and this, you know, if X, then this, all this, you know, scenario planning have operations largely taken care of, which would probably be maybe a role I would hire for. Maybe the first proper full time in house role I would hire for is someone like above me rather than like some social media person or whatever. Someone to really just take care of. Almost like a coo, if you want to call it that. That probably something I look at in the next few months, if and when. Well, when I hope growth is going where I want it to go. So yeah, that'd be another thing that's taken off my hands and yeah, because I'm just so convinced based on early results, granted issues like Instagram aside, that I can scale this very, very quickly and profitably and well, whereas in the past less so in Midnight City. But even that. Well, I guess compared to my past ventures. Midnight City grew really quick, had a great margin, etc. But it didn't have the repeat purchase, the LTV potential that this has and it was in a much more competitive market and something that's way lower barrier to entry. Neon beach on the other hand, you know, massive growth, super low barrier to entry which was evident after loads of brands started coming in and it grew really quick. But obviously the problem with that was supply chain is almost impossible to be really good because it was a fucking bespoke product and no one had quite figured it out yet. So the supply chain wasn't even comparable. The product was less unique, wasn't a subscription again. So it was high, high aov, but high CPA and pretty low LTV as well. Because how many people buy fucking a neon sign every month? Not many. So yeah, like the, the metrics in the business now even at this early stage, like pretty much bang on two months in a way, way, way better and show way bigger potential straight away. Which is obviously why I chose this market and this product. I was very intentional about that. But it's nice to see that like my predictions and thoughts in that respect are actually true based on the first whatever 150 grand in revenue we've done there or something. So yeah, there's a lot of shit fucking going on. I definitely feel like I've got back to that stage where I've got 15 fucking Internet tabs open, there's 55 unread emails and I'm like massively probably adhding my approach to work and I'm just trying to work on a million things at Once. But yeah, trying to bring it back to what is critical like Instagram is critical right now. Getting this FD set up is critical right now. So I don't make stupid financial decisions when scaling quickly. Potentially getting on an operations person to basically just run the fucking show and I focus on growth could be important. Might be slightly too soon right now, but in the next few months. And yeah, looking at potentially getting another angel on board who's already like massively involved in terms of like I speak to him a lot about this sort of shit but getting him formally involved is on the cards. I think that makes sense because we like working together and that's super important. Brings a wealth of experience. More money is obviously better. I don't think you necessarily need to raise loads more money because I don't need more money right now to do what we're doing. But if I had hypothetically a million pound more then you can just move things quicker basically. And primarily what I would do if I had a million pounds more I'm not doing now is probably just launch more SKUs quicker accessory products, you know, get the AOB up, potentially hire that full time person on a proper salary quicker and ultimately everything just moves quicker if you have more capital basically. But you obviously have to consider the implications of that, giving away equity etc, etc. I mean there's obviously other options but I'd prefer to raise money for equity if I want to raise money rather than, rather than going down a wayflyer or a pipe route, something like that, which are obviously options as well. But yeah, I mean that's just my gut instinct right now because I think anyone that's coming in financially is actually adding a lot on top of just money which you don't get from someone like a wave flower or a pipe. So yeah, there's basically a lot going on. It's that super exciting but scrappy startup stage still of course. But I'm trying to see like how quick like I always ask myself the question like hypothetically, like how do we get this to 100 million run rate in three years? So you know, like 10 million a month basically in three years. And it sounds ridiculous but it makes you think like, alright, maybe I'm not thinking big quick fast enough, you know. So yeah, I'm trying to get, get the balance right between putting shit in place and having, having the operations be, you know, bulletproof, like financially sound. All this sort of shit set the foundations which I didn't quite get right in the past. But also like fuck if there's a big opportunity here. How quick can we do it? Like, you know, other. Other brands and businesses have scaled revenue valuation team just growth. Super fucking quick. So why can't I do that with space goods, you know, because I do massively believe in the vision for it and. Yeah, so, yeah, if not me, who. If not now, when? Sort of mentality, which is a bit cringe, but it just is the way I view things now. So, yeah, that's pretty much what's going on. Yeah, I think I'll close off with it. Maybe a relatable point. I feel like everything was going so smoothly and I was really enjoying the trenches for a while. Well, for a while at the past particularly two months when once shit started. But yeah, the past week though, it's definitely brought up like, I'm gonna say, like demons of my past E Comm. Stress, but just reminds me, like, shit can be fucking stressful when stuff goes wrong. Of course it can. And it's a reminder that when shit's going well and it is still going well, but it was going like almost perfectly until last week, it's just a reminder that, you know, shit can go wrong. Have plans in place, know what you're gonna do if. If worst case scenario, I think always worst case scenario planning. You know, that's an ad account getting disabled. What happens if you get sued? What happens if. What happens if, hypothetically, you could never run a TikTok ad ever again. You know, like, planning for those things I think is good because, yeah, it's easy to think everything's perfect and great when shit's going well, as I've spoke about before and stuff is still going well, but when stuff goes slightly more, when you have something go wrong, like the Instagram account, it like, you know, taps you on the shoulder. Yeah. Not out the fucking woods yet. You need to. Granted, stuff is growing well, it can grow super quick, but you need to make sure every. Every stone is unturned. You know, leave nothing un. Leave nothing undone. So, yeah, I think having a bit of stress now and then is good. It reminds you of that. It reminds you that if you want to build something fucking massive, you gotta have everything covered and it's obviously gonna be fucking growing pains. And this is just one of the early ones. So. Yeah, with that said, this is a morning episode. I probably just fucking drop it now and catch you next episode. Cheers for watching. Peace.