Nationwide Retail Launch, New Website & an Honest Update on Scaling in 2023 - Doc the Journey Ep 53

Back with episode 53 of Documenting the journey. And my new flatmate runs a brand called Vacay, which if he's watching, which I feel like he is, he'd be very pissed off I stole this from the fridge. But he'll be very happy that I'm supporting the brand. So it's a hard seltzer. It's a Thursday, it's August, so it's allowed. And it's the first time I've drank a hard seltzer on the pod. Well, not on the Pod. I actually drank Paul Seltzer on the pod ages ago back in like season one. But. But on documenting the journey. It's good shit. And it's the first time I've drank anything or been remotely influenced on documenting the journey, which also happened on episode 52 in Krakow, Poland, which I feel like was a really shit episode. And I shouldn't have posted that because it wasn't reflective of the articulate, insightful content that I maybe want to post on the pod. This is very random episode, as they all are, but I actually wrote down a lot of video, video ideas that I want to make the pod and document the journey. So I keep this one off the cuff. First things first, I made a Discord. Go click the link in the bio of this video which will link you to the Discord, which is Midnight Social Club Discord, basically. I've been asked a million fucking times to make a Discord. And I honestly don't use Discord. I'm very new to Discord, which if you join the Discord, you'll realize I'm very new to Discord because. Cause for the first few days no one could see any messages or anything of that sort, which is very, very fucking amateur of me. But now I got someone that watches the POD to help me with the Discord. And the plan with that is to basically give a free platform for people that watch the pod, who some people that came to my Midnight Social Club, actual in person events, which there's gonna be another one late September, by the way, said they met people through those events and through the pod. And I thought, fuck, that's actually kind of pretty cool because even though I've only only got 8,000 subscribers, like plenty of people have stopped me in like Bali, even Mykonos, Rome recently when I was in Rome, if you're watching this, Paris as well, and London plenty of times, particularly Bali, to say they watched the Pod. And I was absolutely fucking flattered and flabbergasted. So the point being that the, the numbers of 8,000 or whatever people that subscribe to this shit and some of which watch it every week are actually real people. And if you put those people in a room, it's actually really sick. And that's what we did for the first event. And the Discord, which I've linked down below is gonna be more of that just online I guess, and trying to make some sort of community that' valuable to people, which I would like to do. It's not just trying to fucking rip people off for selling shit, which a lot of discords are in my opinion, or at least what I've heard. Because I decided I use Discord, which is true. And I wrote loads of fucking YouTube video ideas. This one is not going to be one of those. It's just going to be a general catch up. So the first thing is join the Discord. Please do that. We have like 300 members in the first day, which is pretty cool. Don't know if that's a lot or not a lot, but I am actually going to genuinely put some time into that and give it some effort. The other thing is the next midnight social club event, we've done four now. I think the last one was the sickest one we've done. We had a panel. We did it in a fucking Masonic Temple which is arguably very controversial and I realize now in hindsight wasn't the best location. I didn't know the implications of that culturally or religiously or whatever else, but it was a sick event. We had a panel of like four of my mates and very wise people that I think was valuable to a lot of people. And a lot of people that came said it was fucking amazing. And that was the idea with the in person events. We did one that was more just casual back in like February I think it was. I've forgotten when we did that now. Bulgaria lounge or something. Then we did one with Carl Weisha which I hosted, co hosted with him. I went to his Barcelona event recently, it was cool. A part of it in the Ivy in London. Then we did one in Sexy Fish which is probably like the most hyped one in terms of most people came to that one. Then we did the one in the Masonic sample which was the sickest location. But yeah, long story short, I'm going to do more of those. I'm just so fucking busy trying to build this brand which is what Document the Journey is generally about. And yeah, I'm really fucking busy. I'm very stressed right now, if I'm completely honest. There's a lot going on. We've got a new website going live, Was meant to be tomorrow, but I feel like when you launch a new website, everything takes longer than you think. A conversion rate and CAC and retention are massive fucking things. I mean, to be honest, to be completely transparent, our CAC has been too high recently. Our retention has been too low because of summer. I think that's largely influenced by that. Our conversion rate has been too low. Plenty of things going on to sort those things. But the way I look at the business now is in terms of most important metrics. This might surprise some people. Number one is retention. Slash reducing, churn, slash increasing, LTV or ltr, whichever way you look at it. But the amount of money a customer spends over time and obviously keeping them on subscription, coming back and buying new shit is number one. That's the number one thing we're looking at now. It used to be ncpa, so new customer cac, that is now number two in my personal hierarchy and the hierarchy of the way I look at the business from a data perspective. And then number three is probably accessory metrics in a way, which are aov, conversion rate, which ultimately play into ncpa. So if NCPA is coming down, then the other things are doing something right. Things I'm doing to increase retention. We're doing a membership program. Basically. We're pivoting our subscription from being just buying a product to how can I get the most value out of people that are spending 39 pounds a month? And how can I. Sorry, how can I give them the most value for spending 30, 39 pounds a month instead of how cheap can we go on a subscription, which I feel like a lot of brands eventually do, to reduce share? I think that's the wrong. The wrong way to do it. I think providing more value instead of reducing the price is a better way to go long term. So that's a massive thing. New products. Where is it? We're launching a gummy. This isn't the final version, but it's fucking delicious and actually really fucking works. We have a lion's mane and a Chaga Tremella. I really shouldn't be telling you this because this is like two months out and the RTD coming. We launched in Holland and Barrett nationwide pretty much was meant to be in September, but it happened early in August and people started sending me pictures and I was very confused. And you may have seen on my Twitter, because I reposted it when I realized it was there and people started sending me pictures then I saw you in Holland about. That's cool. It's a bit of a milestone. It's not financially what it may appear to be as as many things are not. And I'm just keeping it real on this pod, on this YouTube, which I always have done. But it's a cool milestone nonetheless, to be honest. Go check out Bay Case, Paul's brand. My new flatmate. So, yeah, that's what we're doing to reduce Churn ncpa. It's been too high recently, if I'm completely honest. The ways we're trying to cut that is better content. We're doing a lot on that, which I won't say better landing page, website. Massive work going into that. I won't give away all my secrets for free because I give away way too much shit for free. What's the other thing I guess is having a better offer. So trying new offers, new combos of accessories, subscriptions, increasing AirB so we can spend more on CAC, etc. And yeah, they're all the things that are going on, which is basically a lot. I feel like August, historically July and August, but I would argue that historically August, in my previous experience, plenty of founders I know say August is typically quite a slow month. July was our biggest month ever in a good way. We scale back, spend massively in August. I don't know if that was the best idea, to be honest, in hindsight, but we're going to spend about double what we're spending in August in terms of media buying and ads in September compared to what we're spending in August, which I think it is what it is. We've got a budget now. I didn't used to have that, used to Chad scale. We've got a budget based on stock, based on cash flow, based on our forecast for the year and what we're trying to do, which is driven by a few things, it's driven by spend. Ncpa, target conversion rate, AOV subscription percentage. I mean, I'm the sort of guy that probably share this incredibly expensive financial model, incredibly valuable financial model on my screen. But I shouldn't do that because I'll regret doing that, especially when I've had two or three vacays. But yeah, that's. We have a proper model now and we cut. We cut back spending August in that budget and that model. So kind of not sitting on my hands a little bit. But it is frustrating because I love growing top line, which is my child scaler in me coming out. But yeah, September onwards is going to be Huge for us. September, October, November, December. So obviously Q4 plus September, the end of Q3 plus the end, well, at the end of Q3 plus Q4 in its entirety will be huge for us. We've got new products coming, we've got new flavors of our hero product coming and obviously it's Q4 and we're going to spend a fuckload and we've got a new website, new content, loads of new shit coming based on the past. What is it now? April, May, June, July, August. Sixteen months we've been in business now nearly. I think we launched on the 13th of April 2022. So 16 months and 4 days I believe. And we've yeah, grown a lot, done a lot. I've obviously made 52 episodes prior to this. Talking about the process building this business, which maybe in 10 years time, or almost definitely in 10 years time will be a good watch regardless of what the outcome is. And yeah, I guess I'm going to keep this pretty short. I want to send a message to myself in a year's time and just say, keep winning the day, stick to the plan. It's not easy. It never is easy being in the entrepreneurial game. I think plenty of people watching this are incredibly lonely in that game. I would say join the discord as a start to trying to be less lonely. Come to one of the events, speak to people, speak to other founders that are also incredibly lonely, but be finding it fucking hard to scale a startup in 2023 because it was easier in 2019. I was there. I was also a startup founder in 2019 and it was fucking easier and I was less good at what I was doing then. So that says a lot. I'm better now, but it's still harder because the market'. Harder. The world has changed. But if you keep your integrity high, keep your moral compass in check, which I think I've always. Well, I have always done that. I've tried to do that and made from the outside looking in May may not have looked like that. Obviously people that fucking accuse me of being a scammer in 2021 with Neon beach and so on, but do that, try and build something great, win the day. I think it's a massive thing. Maybe one day I'll get that tattooed on me. Currently I have a shitty version of the psilocybin ink box, custom henna, whatever you want to call it, temporary tattoo on me, which I had in when I went to Bali. I Show this in January 20th this year, January 23rd, about six months ago, seven months ago I got it again because I'm very close to getting this tattooed properly. And for some stupid reason I thought it'd be a good idea to just sunbathe on my balcony when it was setting. So it's gone up blood. But yeah, maybe I'll get whatever I just said tattooed on me as well. And season three of the POD is coming back. So what I mean by that is guests in the pod, recent episodes weren't good enough. Honestly, I'm just calling myself out there weren't. The production wasn't good enough. I wasn't. My head wasn't in it for whatever reason. Many of many things which I may or may not go into in future, but my head was not fucking in it. I wasn't there. I miss season one of the pod. When I say season one, I mean the OG pod. When I did a fucking episode every week. It was the original flat setup, it was the pink lights, it was the red one is great guests. It was deep or honest conversation. I missed that. I think that was something. I don't know what something it was, but it was unique. I think people bought into the fact that it actually wasn't scripted. It wasn't corporate, There was no agenda. I wasn't trying to sell anyone anything. I did it genuinely out of love for the fucking process of doing it. It was an infinite game. Then I got to 75 episodes after season two and lost the love for it, which may or might have happened to a lot of people creating shit, but for me it did. And I realized actually, fuck, I want to make 750 episod of it. Or at least I want to keep playing the game. And if that takes 10 years, so be it. And I can't promise I'll do it every week, but right now I want to get back onto it. I'm still figuring out exactly where we're gonna do it. I'm moving flats again in a few weeks time, which is very stressful and kind of annoying, but potentially back to somewhere better to film the pod. And if we don't do that, then I will potentially get a long term studio to do it. So yeah, season three is coming back. As always, I am baffled and amazed and appreciative that anyone watches this shit. Me talking shit, especially when I'm drinking this. But please do go join the Discord. I'm actually gonna be pretty active in there. Subscribe to the pod, recommended to a friend. Hopefully it's useful to you in some capacity as it will be for me in five to 10 years when I look back at it. Or maybe next year, or even in a month's time when I feel nostalgic about August. And cheers for watching Peace.