'Nothing Exists Until You Create It' - Documenting the journey - Episode 1

Yo, right, different format for once. I was thinking about doing this before and wasn't sure how to do it, wasn't sure if I was gonna do it. But basically instead of the fucking pod. Not instead of the pod as well as the pod. I was thinking about just doing like a 5, 10, 15. I don't know what it'll end up being per week, probably 5 to 10 minute. Basically rundown on what the fuck I'm actually doing with the brand. And I guess just documenting more of that process of building space goods and the pod. I just documented the process really, because I put out a tweet saying what people like to see it. A lot of people said they would. I've been thinking about doing it because I've only ever regretted not making more content of, you know, building previous brands, previous shit, traveling. I've got like travel vlogs from like 2017, 18, but never went fully balls deep into them. And I just thought, fuck, like I'm gonna definitely net to regret not documenting this and probably not putting it out because there are risks, like downsides potentially to sharing certain stuff. But yeah, fuck it. Like I've started to, you know, I've put most of my story up to this point, like entrepreneurially and a lot of my life on the Internet, and it's probably been net beneficial. There are some downsides, like weird messages and some people have shit to say and all that. But at the end of the day, this is what I'm doing. I'm not sure it's ever been done in terms of. I mean, maybe it has. I've not seen anyone document the process, like pretty much from scratch of building an ecom brand. I mean, I know it was done in America, I think, with a few brands I've seen on YouTube. But then like that shit fizzles out, like most things. And I just thought, fuck, maybe people want to see this shit completely unscripted. Like the pod. It's probably like even more. Well, it's definitely even more raw than the pod because we don't know. I guess it's just me. I'm not even doing a screen share. I'm just gonna chat about shit. Like I'll look at stuff on my screen, maybe to reference, but I'm not gonna plan what's gonna be in this. But yeah, this is just like a new idea. Probably a once a week video, five to ten minute update. Because for my own sake, if anything, and if other people want to watch it when it's on the YouTube channel, which it will be then. That's great. If you're watching this now, you're the first person watching it or the first episode. And. Yeah, fuck. Because I just think it'd be interesting for me and other people. Obviously, I'm not going to share, like, supplier information, not going to share most, you know, financial information. I'll share, like, honest updates on what's going well, what's going bad, what I'm working on. And I know, like, a lot of people say and would say and have said to me, like, why would you share the process? It's going to, like, help competitors start a competing brand. And I just think, again, it's a net benefit to share it because for my own sake, it's interesting. Think it'd be an interesting thing to watch for other people. And I've enjoyed doing the pod, which I wasn't sure about putting myself out there before, and then I just fucking, you know, said who I am, kept it real like I do with most things on the Internet. And it seems to resonate with people. And that's become like a little business in itself. So that has gone well. And I just thought, why don't we add this to the. To the YouTube channel, basically. So I don't know what the format's gonna be. Probably five to ten minutes of me just speaking about what's gone on in the past week. Maybe this first, like, episode, if you want to call it that, will be more. Because I'll give a bit of a rundown of what's happened up to this point. But, yeah, like, if you watch the pod, you know, my story up to this point, I've built multiple brands. I've done loads of shit in the E comm space. Like, had a, you know, I had a great run for, like five years, then had a really bad year last year, which taught me a lot and made me very wise. And then I kind of like a phoenix from the ashes, decided to fucking get myself out of that hole, like, mentally, physically, which, looking back now, I was really fucking in. And now I feel like I'm on the up again through nothing but just fucking sheer grit. Will determination and like, fuck being average, to put it bluntly, I was like, I'm not falling into that trap. I know I can do great things. I know I can build a sick brand. It's what I'm passionate about. It's what I've always wanted to do since I was like 12 years old. And I guess, yeah, this new little mini series will document reflections, what I'm doing in the process of trying to build, well, not trying to build the process of building space goods because I know everyone says it's about every brand, but like having had multiple brands that were successful, successful, then failing, and then actually been in the game quite a while now, I think I'm. I have a better barometer than maybe a lot of certainly younger people and people that watch the podcast on what, at least for myself and self awareness wise, on what I can see myself working on for the next five, 10 years as industry, as a passion project, as a creative venture and space goods. Really is that for me, like it's come out of nowhere in the past six months. I guess a bit of context on that for people that don't know. And just to kind of summarize before we move on to other shit and give this a bit of a format, I obviously got fucked with Neon Beach. Long story short, you know, go watch episode one. I then got bailed out basically by private equity guys who again, go fucking watch the full story on that. There's a load of details. I did leave like kind of a lot of the dirty details out of that. So that story was probably way worse than anyone actually imagined. Like it was probably underplayed in the podcast, to be honest. It like basically ruined my mental health for about a year to the point where I just wanted to kill myself. Which isn't. Which sounds flippant now, but that genuinely was the case. And yeah, I worked with for six months with them and basically was handed like a blue pill, red pill, whatever you want to call it, opportunity. They're either going to put me on like a six figure salary and like get a chunk of equity in their group, which, you know, to 99% of people, 25 at the time, fucking great. But I just knew deep down that was not me. So I took what is definitely now in hindsight, the much more ballsy approach, which is always what I was going to do, and said, well, fuck it, I'm not working with you anymore. It wasn't like a bit of fallout. I can still make some of those guys. One of them. Jack, who's the founder of waveflyer, is my biggest angel investor in this. So then I was like, well, I've got a load of experience now. Granted, I've lost a bunch of money, haven't lost all my money. I wasn't completely like broke, but I've got a lot of experience. I have a great network. I have a chip on my shoulder because I got fucked and it wasn't a fun time, but I was kind of like, well, I either settle here and do what isn't me, or I can try and rise from the ashes and build something great. And then kind of looking back, it's one of those things where everything sort of makes sense in a way. And now I'm way more passionate about this. And like, I'd always been interested in the mushroom space, you know, microdosing X, Y, Z, obviously in legal countries. And then I was like, wait a minute, there's something there. Like, I see this wave of mushrooms and psychedelics, you know, that whole space I can just see from my own research, my own intuition, my own gut feel that this is like the next fucking cbd, you know, potential trillion pound market, whatever you want to call it, it. And I was like, well, there's no obvious consumer brand positioning themselves in that space. But then I thought, well, I can't sell psychedelics, so this is like a six month process, right? I kind of. I sat down with a blank slate back in October, whatever it was, October 2021. Literally like, what I'm gonna work on next. So just to track back a bit, that was the first step. And a few things that came into my head were like, well, knowing what I know now, I've never done this before. I'd always just kind of jumped into things pretty randomly and sporadically and never planned that much, which is kind of a good and bad thing. But I sat down, I thought, well, I want it to be. I want it to be fucking simple. Because all the shit in the past was super complicated. Like Midnight City. I had like 250 SKUs, was always a headache. Neon beach, it was like custom products. I had like potentially a million skus. Horrible. So I was like, I want low sku count, ie one skew to launch, which we have rainbow dust, v1. Fucking sick. I want it to be high gross margin, which this is like 80 plus. I want it to be consumable so as potential for subscription, obviously, ltv. And I want it to be in a space and a market that is massively underserved and relatively low competition, particularly in the UK right now. And then I was like, well, needs to be a supplement, probably. Like, I looked at doing some like, bathroom products. I actually even nearly launched. Some people may have seen this. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking. Looking back. I nearly went into the teeth whitening space. I was just jumping into something to start building. But then I sat that off. I was like, nah, fuck that. I'M not passionate about it. Then, you know, I'd seen, I'd always like stack supplements like Lion's Man, Mushroom, all this shit. Always been interested in nootropics supplements, brain power stuff. And then I was like, well, all right, fuck it. So I've committed to this space. Mushrooms, like broadly speaking, like adaptogens stuff for the mind, Nootropics xyz. And then I was like, well, I'm good at branding, I have a feel for that. Let's do something that no one else is doing, everyone's doing, you know, brown, white, gray, whatever it is boring as fuck, vanilla packaging and branding. And I was like, right, I love pink. That kind of applies to this whole angle because I'm sort of pitching it like we want to sell you psychedelics but we can't yet. This is the next best thing, the legal alternative, which is in my opinion, obviously with the long term view, to be a consumer psychedelics brand, which is, you know, why I keep saying this could, I honestly think could be a billion pound business or a 5 billion pound business, who knows, maybe even a 10 billion pound business, but we've got to get to fucking 10 million first. But yeah, then I was like, you know, I make the product for me, I always make the brand for me first. And I was like, well, I take these supplements like there's other brands on the market. I came to the conclusion that powder was a great product to start with because it's most versatile, basically the cheapest to produce as well, to be honest. Best margin and it makes sense. It's what I would want to use. I don't want to do a tablet. I want to do something that's enjoyable to consume, which I think this is. It tastes great, it's all in one, you know, super simple. It ticked all those boxes. Super simple, looks great, stands out like a fucking sore thumb from everything else on the market, is way stronger than anything else on the market. It's kind of like, I think when Elon Musk said something about Tesla, like to compete in a market that's already got brands and stuff, you need to be like leaps and bounds better, not just, you know, the same with a different angle. And I genuinely believe as a version one first product, and even the name Rainbow Dust. Who the fuck calls a product Rainbow Dust? I do, because I'm trying to be, I'm trying to be a reflection of me creatively, which it very much is, which is kind of weird, eclectic, whatever you want to call it. Some people might say it's gay. But I don't think it is. I think it's very unisex and yeah, it's a fucking good product. So basically I went down the rabbit hole of how the fuck do I make a product like this. Because I knew nothing about consumables at all. Literally nothing in terms of like producing them. Obviously I have supply chain experience, obviously have experience broadly in econ, building brands, building products and not just dropshipping by the way, like building actual bespoke products, like jewelry stuff I'd done. Had a clothing brand in the past as well and yeah, basically found a supplier. I mean, try and speed this up now. Find a supplier. Made the fucking first product to ages and ages. I raised a C round of funding the first time in my life. Not because I couldn't afford to fund it myself, mainly because I didn't want to do it myself again. I didn't want to be the single shareholder. I learned from my mistakes for once and now I've got five angel investors, most of which are my mates. Two of them are like much. Well, two of them are older than me and have sold businesses for very large amounts and they are very wise people that can help me on this journey, basically. So, yeah, I raised a C round of funding the end of January and then the past few months were just preparing shit and I felt like I was twiddling my thumbs a bit. I was working on the podcast mainly and like, well, doing a lot of groundwork for this as well. But yeah, anyway, so we launched pretty much four weeks yesterday, nearly a month ago. So on 13 April with 3,000 units in the warehouse. Obviously it got a good organic response, which was always going to be the case because I kind of built the following around like on Twitter and so on and from the pod. But I haven't, but I haven't really viewed that as, you know, I wasn't planning to view that as like a fair test in terms of how it performed. The one thing that was scary about this is it's the first time I've spent six months and a lot of money making a product when I've ultimately never sold it before. But. And people say that stupid, whatever, but they're people that will drop ship the rest of their lives and never build anything long term in my view. Most, most of those people. But I had enough conviction in this market in the products and I just had a gut intuitive feel that this was the right space to get into. That has now proven to be the case in the first four Weeks of trading. Like, you know, we're running paid. I'm just gonna really try and fucking speed up now. We're running paid on TikTok. Google. Facebook had a few issues in the first few weeks. Well the first week because the website mentioned psychedelics. I've had to tweak around a lot of that because the ad accounts got banned on day one. We're now spending about a thousand pound a day on ads, getting a very solid roas. Ads looking really good. We would, we can and would be spending more and scaling much more. The only limitation is stock right now. So I mean to put it bluntly, the first month has been good. Probably like every box has been ticked for like the first cards down on the table. There's clear demand for this outside of my organic, you know, audience which I don't even count because they're always just gonna, they would always support it and it's kind of fake but there's clear demand from like actual customers. We're only running ads in the UK right now and yeah, it's been pretty smooth. Like fulfillment in the UK has been good for outside the UK has been fucked. I'm looking at changing the three pl within the first month. Creative has been the biggest focus from me because with one sku, one product, one website, like that's kind of the biggest variable creative ads obviously and the biggest variable in ads in my opinion and my media buyers opinion. The agency I work with is obviously creative. So fill it with nailed creative. When I say we, it's me and agency and a few freelancers like that is the team. I have like a wizard creative guy pretty much full time in house who I've worked with for a while who's an absolute fucking beast. And we have a lot of creatives coming in from you know, different freelancers, studio content, UGC etc, etc, just testing a load of shit right now. But the certain stuff that's really, really working. So it's kind of exciting. So yeah, that's like the first box box ticked. We got another 5,000 units coming in like four weeks and I'm gonna put an order in for another 15,000 units ASAP. But put it this way in terms of like scale because now everyone wants to know fucking numbers. I'm not gonna share exact numbers but it's gone well. We're holding back right now in terms of like spend and revenue because I just don't have the stock and I want to scale sustainably, you know, making sure customer service is good, the reviews are good. Shit's flowing smoothly, which genuinely 97% of it is. I'm pretty confident based on what I've seen in the first four weeks and the experience I have scaling shit in the past, that we can get this to three to 500 grand a month run rate this year in 2022. So, you know, in the next seven to eight months, like, we could get there by the end of the year going into next year, I think at like half a million a month. I mean, it's kind of easy to say that after four weeks, but that is genuinely what I think. I think that's a. Maybe we could do more. I'm not sure I'd want to do more because I want to scale it sustainably and I've scaled shit way too fast in the past. The thing that's exciting about this is obviously single sku sing. Um, I'm pretty convinced we could get it to 10mil run rate with a single skew, probably in the UK alone, which is mad. Again, easy to say. I haven't done that yet. Of course, hopefully in like a few weeks, months time on these episodes, we will have done that. But yeah, ltv, we have a lot of subscribers already. A lot of people are choosing to subscribe. Obviously the key thing will be, do they stay subscribed? The general, like, general tone in like customer service emails is people do genuinely like the product. I think there's an element of ass licking from like organic or whatever. People say it's a new brand, you know, want to be nice, but, you know, I'm confident people will stay. So the key thing, yeah, the key metric with this brand ultimately, in terms of like scalability, acquisition potential, future acquisition value, profitability, all that good shit is really LTV to CAC, right? So someone pays 40 quid a month, Call it, how long are they staying? Are they staying for a year? Call it 10 months, you know, 400 quid a year. 400 quid LTV. Let's just say say that in layman's terms, I mean, we're getting customers for 20 quid CPA, like on Facebook right now, Obviously we haven't scaled up yet, it's gonna get more expensive. But if we can get 400 pound LTV, potentially by building a genuinely cult brand, which is the aim. And obviously this is just product number one. We haven't even brought out some of the other shit I'm working on, which is on my desk, which I'm not showing you yet, a gummy and another powder moon shoes. But yeah, like The LTV could be fucking mad. And I'm really almost viewing this as like a. Not a SaaS company. But it's a lot. It's a lot. It's a much better baseline business and brand well business than the other shit I've done in the past. And that's very intentional and it's exciting to see like that is already proving to be the case in terms of, you know, people have, have subscribed, so they're gonna pay again. Unless they cancel and hate the product, which is unlikely. It's unique, it's uniquely positioned for now I'm pretty sure there's gonna be a million rips of this packaging, which I designed all by myself. There'll be a million rips, I'm sure very soon. But yeah, I mean, that's kind of it. I don't want to drag on too long. We're a month in the first. Signs are good. The shit I'm really trying to plan a lot more than I did in the past. Because in the past right now I'd have just gone putting a. Put another fucking digit on the Instagram daily budget on the ads. Like, that's what I would have done. That's what I did do with like Neon beach, particularly because we weren't monitoring stock. And even with Midnight City, I would just be like scale, scale, scale. I'm not trying to do that now. I'm trying to be a bit more measured and like planning share. Like, what's the actual budget this month? You know, like, how can we make sure certain issues like overseas shipments. Granted, we're not running out overseas yet, but we will do soon. So I'm looking at changing the 3 PL because I can just tell that it's going to be a problem later down the line. So doing the legwork, the boring shit now to fix that building systems, I built like a content system. I'm not good at that shit, but I don't enjoy it either. But I know that I can't spend all my time making like 80s introduction Brand ads like we did. You know that nothing exists until you create it ad, which is fucking sick if I say so myself. Brad, my editor smashed out the car out of the park, but I can't spend all my time doing that. You know, a lot of it's a lot of my time right now. That's what a lot of people ask. It feels like it's never ending, but I guess it's just fucking. A lot of supply chain just hired a customer service person like already Because I know that just putting, putting those things in place, even when it's a very small requirement right now is necessary. And, yeah, just applying learnings from the past and excited to, like, consistently scale. Because I would rather have consistent growth every single month, or certainly like every quarter, but ideally every month, than be like, oh, let's scale it to 7 million in the first calendar year like I did with Neon beach, and then we do 9 million the year after, which that would be insane. But, you know, the growth rate wouldn't be that good. I'd rather do like 2 million this year, which is kind of the goal, by the way. 5 million next year, potentially. You know, these are numbers out of thin air right now. And then, you know, 12 million a year after that. Like, that's a much better trajectory in terms of, like, positioning it because. Yeah, one thing to mention before I turn this thing off, I guess I've really tried to position it from the start and that's also why I got angel investors involved. Maybe we can speak about that more later down the line. I really tried to position it as how can I actually put myself as a founder and this brand in a position to get acquired for 10 20x revenue by, you know, P and G, Hook Group, whatever it is, a massive conglomerate that will pay a strategic acquisition price, ie, paying a multiple of revenue, which is kind of. You know, the biggest deals you read about are usually strategic acquisitions. You know, where a brand looks at the next big thing. It is the next big thing. It's a risk. We need to buy it. Rather than being a bedroom brand with an EBITDA of, you know, 300 grand, few million, whatever it is, and getting bought out for 2x2 to 3x EBITDA, which would be insane, but you're not gonna make 100 million quid doing that, you know, or beyond. And obviously I've not done that yet, but I'm. But a lot of my investors have done that. Well, a few of them have and beyond. And that is their advice as well as what I'm trying to do. So, yeah, it's interesting. And I think, in summary, like, I obviously started fucking building in public on Twitter. A lot of people do that. And there's an element of sharing parts of this brand on the pod. Obviously, most of the pod is about other people. Obviously chime in a lot. And I think that's why it's interesting because I actually have context in the game. I'm not just some interviewing people that's never been in the games. Never felt the pressure of the trenches. Because I am in the trenches right now and I have been for many, many years prior. But yeah, I think sharing this in this format is probably quite unique. I don't know, someone's going to call me out and say it's been done a million times. But yeah, I just think it's interesting. For me it's kind of like it's just a fucking documentary style thing. Absolutely nothing is planned in this. Like this first one has already rambled on 21 minutes. But yeah, that's the format. I'm gonna chat about this once a week for my own sake. If anything, it's probably quite a useful self reflection tool if they want to call it that. And yeah, hopefully it's interesting. Subscribe to the Pod. We're doing the Pod every Sunday of course. Anyway, that's like the main thing. But I'm gonna start chucking these out midweek. I might even chuck this one up tonight, see what happens. But yeah, if you haven't fucking bought rainbow dust yet either get the fuck off my, off my channel or go buy some rainbow dust. Ideally stay on the channel, subscribe and go buy rainbow dust and let me know what you think. Because I think that's one benefit of like building in public is. Yeah, I put myself on like the. Put myself out for ridicule and fucking hate or whatever. But I think it's net beneficial because I actually want to know what people think. Like people think it's shit actually tell me rather than just saying it's good, it isn't shit. But sure, there's a lot of genuine feedback that can be very useful. And yeah, I think it's quite cool to get everyone that watches the POD kind of involved in the brand because at the end of the day, fuck it. Like I never really used to be. Final point. I never really used to be someone that. I always kind of ridiculed people to put themselves out there. Like why are you sharing so much on social media? Blah, blah. I don't want to be an influencer. I don't want to be an influencer but if I can build a following by being authentically myself and doing what I think is cool shit, at least to me, and being honest along the way and it inspires people, helps people, gives people something to watch and is relatable, then I think that's a net beneficial thing for the world. I enjoy doing it. I tried to be a YouTuber when I was younger. I used to make music videos. I think there's a link to one of the old channels down here actually maybe there's not Go and go and try and find search like Matthew Kelly One Direction cover and come and comment when you've watched that. And then I had the vlog channel which is in the bio of these videos and then I never really found like the niche or space I wanted to be in and I think this is an interesting one because yeah the poly seems to resonate with people and it we're building a big fuck off brand and I'm just going to do it in public. Hope it goes well. So yeah, subscribe to the pod I guess subscribe to the channel which is the pod and these videos I might put. I don't know if I should put these on Spotify or not. Maybe I'll do it separately. Let me know what you think and yeah, see you in the next episode. Cheers for watching. Peace.