It's Been a Very Rough Month, Making Tough Decisions and Back to the Basics - Doc the Journey Ep 54

Yo. Back with episode 54 of Documenting the Journey. And it's been a while, as I seem to say in a lot of recent episodes, it's been a while since I've recorded anything. Podcast, documented the journey, been on other people's shit. Just felt incredibly fucking busy and stressed, to be honest, and just sleeping behind me. It's my. My last day in this flat. I'm moving back near to where I used to live, very near to where I used to live, to a much better place, in my opinion. But it's that weird period where you don't have WI fi in the old place. I'm working out of here, even though all my shit in my bedroom and so on has moved. What's been going on? A lot's been going on. I feel like I've been going through a process of figuring out what matters and what doesn't, which is the constant process of entrepreneurship. And in the nature of documenting stuff, which is what I do on this series, I have to be honest about stuff. And stuff hasn't been going perfectly recently. And I think I know why. And I'm changing things to make sure it goes better because ultimately performance is the main thing. And I think I've been getting a bit too caught up in trying to look like a startup and hiring people that didn't necessarily need so soon, which is a mistake. Doing stuff that is probably a bit fluffy because it's fun, which is a shame because it's fun. And, yeah, just probably losing sight of, like, typical case of when something goes past, like the initial six months, a year, and now in my case, like 16 months in, I think, April, May, May, June, July, August. Nearly 17 months in. So a year and five months. Very much past the honeymoon phase. And you can definitely get that back. But it's like, what am I trying to say? I've added too much fluff into the business and I've lost sight of what actually made it kick off really well in the first place. And we have been growing. We just haven't been growing as much. I would like, if I'm completely honest, certain things have been way off. Like, CAC was too high last month. Subscribers haven't been growing as quick as I would like. Not Been profitable enough based on budget and so on. Fundamentally, it's my fault, because everything's my fault. I'm the fucking founder and that's always been a heavy burden to bear, especially when I have investors and so on, which I do in this business, but also just on myself, you know, because it's fucking hard being a founder. Like it's actually, I think being a D2C founder and operator, someone that actually builds shit and scales, it is probably the hardest thing in my opinion. I spoke to a lot of people, I think it's the hardest thing you can do as a founder because there's so many fucking moving parts, particularly in D2C and consumer. I would say that and I'm biased of course, but yeah, it's just tough and I think I've made it harder for myself by adding in too many moving parts too soon when really we're a DTC brand that needs to scale essentially two products primarily one, but two products online and run more ads, get cacked down and sell more shit. And we have been doing that, but I think we've been doing it slower than I could have because I've been adding in more people and fucking stuff that I didn't need so soon, if I'm honest. Adding in other costs and agencies that don't add any incremental value, adding in softwares and complications in other areas that don't add much incremental value. And like it's so typical because it always comes full circle back to simplicity in probably every area of life. And I've just realized I've been over complicating shit for myself and yeah, in the past few weeks it's been a bit of a sprinkling if I'm honest. I've had to let a few people go, which was difficult. A few agencies, we've changed, a few other agencies I'm going to be cutting just because you don't need that much stuff to scale a product brand in 2023. Like, and this is another thing, and I'm rambling because it's a classic episode and I've got a lot to talk about but I kind of wanted to move away from just me in a bedroom with a remote team because I didn't feel like it was that enjoyable. But by moving away from that I've added in cost and complication and structure and process. That actually isn't the shit that made me do pretty well with different brands in the past and this brand in the first place. I think enjoyment comes from growing it. It doesn't come from looking like you're in a fancy office or co work space. It comes from the fundamentals, the KPIs and just. Yeah, I don't know. I think I've probably like a lot of people, I've grown stuff to a good level and Then I thought, fuck, we need a bigger team, we need an office, we need to look more legit. And I don't know if that's because I'm considering raising like further money going down the VC route, which I'm not sure on yet, or if it's just an ego thing or if it's me running away from working a lot by myself because the process is lonely as fuck, which by the way, it is and I'll be the first to admit that, and I've said that many times and I know loads of founders feel the same because, you know, being super lean, having a fully remote team and working from home has many, many pros, don't get me wrong, go to Bali and go to Dubai whenever I want or whatever. But you do miss that human element. But then it's like, fuck, maybe I already had like the freedom, and maybe that's the beauty of building DTC brands in the first place, is I've always had that freedom, time and location, and I haven't tied myself down. So yeah, maybe I took that for granted and thought the answer was tying myself down more with like an office and a bigger team and more overheads and that would somehow be the solution. But at the end of the day, what's the goal? It's to grow a profitable business and to maybe have an exit in the future. And yeah, I think like the setup to do that is actually less. How it looks from the outside is way less important than how it actually performs. And if I can get to 10 million a year with me working from home and a bunch of freelancers remotely, a great team, but mainly freelancers working remotely, then isn't that better than getting to those numbers with a much bigger team and massive overheads and less margin and so on, which is maybe where I've been incorrectly pivoting towards the past few months. And yeah, it's just like, fuck, maybe I should simplify shit because I think in D2C, I think you should be doing a million pound per year in revenue per person in terms of your core team. And I haven't been doing that just yet. I think the team has grown quicker than revenue, overheads are growing quicker than revenue. And I think I've just taken a bit of self awareness and just looking at the numbers and being like, well, what's actually driving performance and same shit in everything in life, but 80, 20 rule, right? You know, 80% of results come from 20% of things. And like those things right now are more landing pages, better offers better creative, etc. It's not adding in an affiliate agency, getting an expensive co work space for five people, hiring three more PAYE employees, necessarily. Not saying that couldn't move the needle, but the reality is for me right now, they're not the things that are moving the needle. And yeah, it's just funny because yeah, if I could go back six months, probably I'd do a lot differently in terms of what I've done in the past six months. But it's always going to feel like that, right? If you don't feel stupid in hindsight, if you don't think your previous self was stupid, looking back in hindsight, you're probably not growing or learning enough, etc. But yeah, sometimes difficult to accept that you maybe made bad decisions in certain areas and they cost a lot of money and time and effort and emotional turmoil or whatever. But that just is entrepreneurship, isn't it? And it's like that Kruger Dennis, I don't know what the fucking thing is, that curve where it's like, you know, it applies to so many things. Like stupid people would say X, middle people say Y, incredibly clever people, experienced people say X. And it's like, just comes back down to simplicity, basic. Almost like Chad scaling. And if I think what enabled me to scale two brands previously with a very fucking small team, even smaller than now. Granted, Neon beach went wrong, but Midnight City, my clothing brands before that, what enabled me to scale that? And it was doing a lot of shit myself and stacking my experience and leading stuff. And I think a lot of founders can be guilty and I've been guilty of it and it's pretty difficult to accept, but guilty of trying to delegate so much to the point where I forget that I'm, I'm like the, the original source of what created the thing. So I need to be fucking involved in loads of stuff. And I think I've been, yeah, just, I don't know, almost trying to get to the point where I have nothing to do because everything's so delegated and systemized and hired for, then realizing that actually I need to have input on every fucking thing because I'm the founder. And I'm not to say that I'm the best at everything, but I'm certainly should be involved in everything. And also that's why I enjoy because if I'm not working on anything and you're just managing people, then I'm not really getting my hands dirty. And I'm an operator, I would say. I mean, I just listen to the operators Pod and that's kind of, I guess founders are operators, right? But I think I almost lost my confidence in terms of my skill set and thought I had to hire for like everything. Whereas actually the whole beauty and miserable pain and suffering at the same time, but beauty as well of running a DTC brand and being a founder from zero to one and beyond is you do wear so many hats, you do so many fucking things. You do product marketing, website stuff, pricing, customer service to some extent, you know, you have an input on it. Social media, stock management, logistics, finance. Like you build this elite like war chest of skills across. Not saying I'm an expert in probably any of them, but very competent in most of them and you have to be. And yeah, I think I've just been hiring too much and not just hiring too much, but delegating too much and being hands off with too much and thinking oh, I want to run a business and be able to exit tomorrow and not be needed. But I don't think that's ever going to be the reality as a founder. So yeah, trying to get that sweet spot. And I also think because in the past when shit did go wrong for me at the end of 2020, as everyone knows, I felt like I had no experience around me and no one to delegate kind of higher level stuff to. And now this way around, this time around I feel like I've maybe gone too far the other way and hired too many agencies and people to help me with stuff and provide expertise and consult and all this shit was actually the sweet spot probably in between where you have a solid core team. But I still lead stuff. So yeah, it's a learning curve. I just don't want to fuck it up again like I did previously. Not that that's happening and isn't gonna happen, it's very different. But yeah, I think I'm aware that that probably bad experience in the past has made me overcompensate in terms of not doing it on myself. But actually I've gone too far away from that and I need to remember that I am skilled enough to lead lead a start a business because that's all I've ever fucking done. Right. So yeah, that's general vibe. I guess the other thing I'm thinking is I feel like I'm at a bit of a crossroads between either a growing slower but doing it profitably, doing it lean, maintaining control of the business and owning things like kind of in the same way I always have or because there's a lot of interest in it. I'VE been having a lot of conversations. Do I go down the route to raise like VC money, venture capital money, potentially raise a few million, whatever that looks like, you know, 2, 3, 4, 5 million or whatever, try and pump this to like 30 million revenue in the next two years, you know, something like that? Well, I can't decide, to be honest. I think. Nice. It'd be a nice problem to have to have a literal choice between that. But I'm more just saying I can't decide which, which one. Which goal I want to approach because right now I feel like we're kind of in between having a lot of these conversations. I feel like my gut leans towards wanting to go as big as possible, but then I've never done that before. I've never raised institutional money and had, you know, other people have a big say in the business and maybe that's what I need, I'm not sure. So that's a weird one. But yeah, it's always interesting to explore options. At the end of the day, I want to grow the business and build a category leader. It's not going to happen overnight. It's not going to happen. Well, it could happen, but it's not going to happen likely without raising any more money, at least as quick as I would like because I know a lot of our competitive competitors have raised a lot of money in the UK and America. Mud, Water, Dirty, a few others, in fact, pretty much all the ones that are really big. I've raised a bit of money, but, you know, less than 10% of what these brands have raised. So very different ball game. But yeah, that's something I'm trying to decide. And there's obviously a lot of fucking responsibility when you start doing that, even more so. And there's a lot of shit, there's a lot of responsibility as a founder anyway. Right, but there's a lot of responsibility, a lot of responsibility in life, regardless what you do, you know, it's just everyone's got bills to pay and shit to sort out and. Yeah, so that's an update, basically. We're going in September. September's looking like it's gonna be a record month, which is nice. I mean, we need it to be. And October, November, December, lots coming. New website that was a bit scary because kind of fucked up. It seems to be pivoting back to sanity again. Doing a lot of work with landing pages, offers. Got new products coming, new flavors, new actual products. RTD and a gummy. And yeah, retail day is starting to come in a few more Things happening there as well. But look, this is a bit of a scrappy update. It's the middle of the day. I Never record at 1pm I'm doing this because I just knew that if I left it till tonight, like I always try and do, then I just wouldn't fucking record. The podcast is coming back. I feel like I just need to go back to scaling it. Scaling things in the way I was a year ago when I felt more excited and things were less complicated. I think it's so easy to complicate things. So take that as the main lesson from this. I mean, I think it's fucking powerful advice, to be honest. I know a lot of founders are in the same position. They just don't put theirselves on the Internet. So it feels like it's just me sometimes. But yeah, I'll make some more structured videos soon. As always, subscribe to the pod. I hope this was insightful to some extent. I don't want it to be super moody all the time, but the nature of this series is I tend to speak about stuff when I'm feeling like, reflective. And by default that has like a negative vibe to it sometimes. Cause I sound like I'm fucking sad and shit. But that's not the case. There's a lot happening. There's a lot of good shit. I'm just reflecting and documenting it because I said I would. And I don't always want to put myself on the Internet. Honestly, like last week I was like, fuck it. Do I just delete the channel? But then I thought, no, myself a year ago would not want to do that myself in a year's time. Probably wouldn't want to do that either. So yeah, we're sticking at it. The POD is coming back. I'll do these weekly. Pretty much weekly. Subscribe to the pod. Appreciate you all watching. Hope it's useful. Peace. Sam.