Reflecting on the Ambient Sense that I Need to be Doing & Achieving Way more - Doc the Journey Ep 72

Back with episode 72 of Dr. Journey and I'm playing some fucking meditation music in the background. Excuse that, but I thought makes me more pensive, more reflectful. I don't know. Just left it on. Been playing for like two hours. So fuck it, I'm recording off the cuff as always. It's been about two weeks. It's the 12th of August. August is always a weird month because it's like proper deep summer. I mean summer to me is like June, July, August. But August feels like everyone's offline. You get noticeably less emails, noticeably less spam on LinkedIn. A lot of team members are off and stuff. I was away in Ibiza going away at the end of the month again briefly. But yeah, just feeling reflective like I always do for these videos. And then I expose myself on the Internet and talk shit for like 10 minutes. Yeah, what's been going on? July was a record month. Most revenue in a month. In a month. Most profit in a month as well. Importantly, don't want to be like just chasing revenue like a lot of venture backed businesses because I know that that's the kind of stigma which comes with venture backed consumer Very aware of that. Do not want to be that. I am not that August won't be quite as big, but it's August. We've intentionally scaled back quite a bit. Retail is growing nicely. I also feel I should share way less of the source, to be honest. I'm seeing more and more of my existing competitors probably learning from my valuable insights on this pod, but also all the competitors which have explicitly launched brands because of watching this pod of which there's maybe four or five that I can properly count but it is what it is. I'm not going to rant about that. I already have before. Yeah, I know it's an interesting things. I'm just going to chop and change topics because it's like a general catch up, which I always do. So there's a brand in this space not going to say how they are. Dropped too many hints. I don't expose them. But yeah, they're a big like they kind of. I guess I did like the building in public thing way before I did one of the first brands that I noticed in the uk like consumer brands seen similar space to me but not quite the same. I noticed they posted on LinkedIn recently they were stopping building in public. I don't remember exactly what it said and I should have it in front of me now. But it was basically saying, you know, when they started doing that similar to Me, they were like the underdogs. They wanted to build, document the process of building up again from effectively zero. I think the previous business had failed for them as well in some capacity. I done other details, but similar thing to me and putting out an Internet starting from zero was like cool, it's this journey thing. But now they've got to, I think they said 10 million profitable. So very similar to me. I'd say I'm a bit bigger now technically, but similar stage to me, business wise. And they were saying, yeah, basically it's not, it's not worth it anymore in terms of, I think they said copycats, like commercially that don't make much, much sense anymore. And I kind of feel the same basically. And I saw this and I thought, is this the point where it becomes questionable to like put yourself on the Internet and like build in public? Even though I feel like I, I probably share too much about my personality and myself rather than the actual business, which is maybe the better way around in terms of not attracting more competition. But yeah, I thought it was interesting that they were stopping to do that. And I guess what I thought was wrong though about that was I saw a comment on it which was like, and this is in line with the whole LinkedIn in my mind, like toxic positivity brigade, which probably sounds super cynical, but I think the comment was, you guys have made it, you got to 10 more profitable. And I'm just like, I know a lot about this business and that is not made it in that case, in my opinion. Obviously it's a good milestone. But yeah, I think that's kind of the problem with being on LinkedIn in particular as a platform is people are so fluffy and constant positivity and constant smoke and mirrors in my view that it can kind of make founders believe their own shit a bit too much. And I mean, yeah, I feel like kind of another thing to say is I feel like my default as a person and as a founder and there's pros and cons to this, is like my default is a negative view of myself and I have to prove that I'm not a piece of shit. And like, I guess it comes from like lack of self worth, bad experiences in the past, you know, PTSD for my previous business failing, which is to honest, completely true. I definitely haven't got over that fully, probably never will. And for me it's like, I don't think I'm worth anything. My business is shit. Any success I have is just we're not at the next level. Yeah, it's never good enough. Always very self deprecating, not just for effect, but organically and naturally that is who I am. I'm putting myself down a lot, which is probably not good, but it's kind of the opposite to what basically every personal brand type founder on LinkedIn in particular does. And I'm not going to name any names, but there's a few I'm thinking of and it's just constant. Here's a happy picture of me, here's what we've achieved, here's this, here's that. And then you check the facts, because I've checked the facts through my network and investors and stuff and like the business is burning millions. Founders own fuck all equity. It's just a smoke and mirror PR brigade, honestly. And maybe there's some merit to that and maybe that's the business strategy, but I just find it funny because I kind of default to the opposite, which is I don't want to put that shit on LinkedIn because I want to put it on YouTube instead. And I talk about how much I struggle with feeling like my business is good and don't know what I'm saying. I guess my point is, for better or worse, my default is I'm a piece of shit. I need to prove to myself by being exceptional or trying to be exceptional, which I don't think I am yet, and building an exceptional business and achieving good things to prove to myself that I'm not a fucking shit entrepreneur. Whereas I don't know if it's all fake or it's actually what they think. Like founders on LinkedIn can have, like objectively maybe a worse business, or objectively a worse business in some cases, but they believe their own shit so much that no matter what they do, they'll probably always love themselves. And it's kind of this weird dichotomy because I naturally feel like the opposite. So I think, am I just really toxic and is this just my like autistic brain and like depressive episodes coming out of me? Maybe it is to some extent that's just me. Or are they just lying through their teeth and they feel the same? I don't know. It's weird. So, yeah, that's kind of just naturally how I am. And even when the goalpost move, you've reached a certain revenue number which is still tiny in terms of the scale I'm at. But obviously I shared that last month and you know, two years ago I would have been really happy. But now it's like we got, you know, Bigger overhead, bigger team, bigger expectations on what numbers we're going to do this year and numbers we want to do next year. Um, and yeah, basically my, what I'm saying is my default attitude, whether it's learned or whether it's genetic or whether it's a mix of both and it's a, you know, it's my previous bad experiences in business and lose my confidence coming in, all of that means that it's kind of hard to enjoy the process because I put so much pressure on myself that my default is fuck, like I could lose tomorrow. I've got some momentum now from, you know, from a standing start a few years ago again when I got them and did really well for a few years, then fucking lost it all. And coming from that, yeah, I've just been so paranoid about shit going wrong again that I really struggled to enjoy the process, to be honest. People regularly ask me like, how are you enjoying it? How's it going? And my honest gut feel answer is often, honestly, probably not that much. I want to win really badly, but I want to win so badly that and I put so much pressure on myself and I tie my personality and my fucking identity and my sense of self worth and all this woo shit. But true woo woo to how the business is performing and how it's performing against competitors and new brands coming into the space and other startups by founders of a similar age and all this. But yeah, I find it hard to enjoy the day to day a lot because I'm. There's always this ambient sense of this could all go wrong in a few months if I'm not careful. Even though it's not like objectively that black and white like my previous business because there's obviously much better management, you know, better guidance around me, you know, I'm a better founder, better experience, less financially stupid, all that. But I do think that, and I think there's pros and cons to that. I think commercially as a business that is definitely a better attitude to have, you know, assume that things could go wrong and prepare for the worst and not need to use that preparation rather than being so like smoke and mirrors head in the clouds that you think everything's perfect, you're burning too much money, you're self obsessed on LinkedIn, personal brand type founder that actually you take your eye off the ball and your business is shit and it always was and it's about to crash and burn and you're away with the fairies. So like there's pros and cons. I feel like that LinkedIn type founder would or that person in general. I'm paraphrasing here, stereotyping a bit tongue in cheek, but it's true. That person probably enjoys the day to day a lot more than I do. And yeah, I struggle to change that because I would love to. I've even had like a background on my, on my fucking phone for a while. Being like worse. The effect of just choose to enjoy the process a bit more because life is fucking short. But yeah, some I struggle with, to be honest. And I think I've always just got this underlying and people have commented on my videos and said it and I see it myself. I'm not fucking retarded. Like I know it's there, there's just an underlying internal like darkness to my mind which makes being, well, it probably comes from being an entrepreneur, but it makes like startup life pretty difficult sometimes because I'm always praying about, fuck, I need to get this right, otherwise I'm a piece of shit. And that might sound like flippant, but it's genuinely how I feel. And then because there's so much pressure on, like, fuck, my entire life is worthless unless this business succeeds. That's literally how I feel. Then it's like, ah, fuck, you know, my mood is determined by how good yesterday's sales were or how good last month's profit margin was. All this. So yeah, pros and cons, there's probably a lot of founders that can relate to that. You kind of tie your literal sense of self worth to the business because kind of like without the business, then what, what are you, what is your life? Because I don't know, obviously. Do you have a social life to some extent? Like I have a girlfriend and I see my family sometimes, quite rarely, but like ultimately most of my days thinking about achieving in business. Yes. But also outside of that thinking, like, how can I be a better athlete again? How can I do the next thing that pushes me? So yeah, I don't know, I'm going on a bit. It sounds like negative, but I'm being more, I'm trying not to be negative on here, but it's more just reflecting and being honest about. I don't know if this is me reflecting in how I run the business and how I talk about the business or it's entrepreneurship which is crushed me the past few years and that's how I feel as a result of it. It's probably a bit of both two worlds colliding, like my genetics and my circumstances. Yeah. So that's Just kind of. I've been feeling recently just so much pressure on myself that I like literally actually lose sleep over it. I wake up sometimes like thinking like having a bad dream that like the business has gone to again or something. Probably because I did literally have six months of the business objectively going to shit and going insolvent and having to call in the administrators three and a half years ago. And maybe there's some shit coming out from that. But yeah, I wake up in like cold sweats and shit quite a lot recently thinking about, oh, don't want to get that wrong because then I could like, basically my mind is, I'm either gonna make 100 million quid or I'm gonna be homeless by 30. And it's very black and white. And a therapist would tell me that's not very healthy. You know, binary thinking. Life is actually a real range of gray colors usually in most scenarios. But that is where my mind goes. It's like I'm either gonna make an absolute home run of this or it's gonna fail and I'm gonna be left with nothing. Which is nearly what happened with the previous business, to be completely honest. Maybe more on that another time because I never told the full story about how bad that got and all the details outside of what I put in the first episode. But that's a story for another day. So yeah, that's something I deal with and then. But the flip side of all this is like, put so much pressure on getting there. It's like the goal and I'm trying to enjoy the process more and I do enjoy bits of process, don't get me wrong. And I'm very fortunate to travel where and when I want all the sort of shit and run the business from anywhere. But yeah, there's definitely this ambient sense of pressure I think that's always been there, even pre investors. So I don't think that's the biggest factor. The other thing is like just getting older. It's fucking weird. There's something I've been thinking about a lot and I don't know if it's just me. I've literally been having nightmares about getting older. And I think if I'm brutally honest, oversharing here, it's because I attach a certain age, say 30, which isn't two years for me to like, I thought I'd be. I thought I'd have made it by then. I thought I'd be further ahead by then. Whatever, mate, you know, whatever made it means. But like for me, I guess I thought I'd have 30 million quid by 30 and the current rate of players that I want. So it's kind of like, am I gonna have to wait till 35 for that? Which, you know, in reality is fine. But my mind is like, oh, Fuck. If I'm 30 and I've not got to where I wanted to financially or like intellectually or just in terms of my status in the world from the shit I've created, then I'm a failure. And then it's like, you know, I'm 29 in like three months, which is terrifying. I don't know why. I just associate like late twenties with should be further ahead. And then I feel like my business is only doing like a million a month. I know guys that are younger that got a business doing 6 million a month and it's making a shitload more margin than me as well. So it's like. And they haven't got investors either. So, yeah, real pattern of comparing myself to the.001%, which is again, has pros and cons, but it does. It is pretty heavy on you, I think. And yeah, this is kind of all comes back to the culmination. What I'm saying is my personality is built in a way which, you know, the dark side of it is it makes me feel shit about myself for not being further ahead. The good side is that I'm probably. Well, I care deeply about what I achieve in life, not just financially, but, like creating things even as shit is like, I don't like feeling like I'm out of shape. Like recently I've been slacking. I've said this many, many times and doing another hyrox in like 2 months. Try and beat my initial 1 hour 11 on my first attempt earlier this year, but I just don't feel like I'm pushing myself hard enough in every area of life right now and like, you know, in work, in, I don't know, spiritually or some bullshit, because I'm not committing to hardening my mind enough, I don't think, which is evident in these videos. I don't feel like I'm push myself hard enough in training because I feel like the dog in me that was there for the marathon two years ago just sadly isn't there right now. And I don't know if it's ever going to come back. I don't know if that's an age thing. I don't know if that's just. I'm going through a phase where that's not as relevant and my. My body's telling me not to focus on it. But, yeah, I just feel like at the end of every day, I feel like I've spent myself physically and mentally most of the time, which is what I want to feel. I want to go to bed, but I just don't feel like I'm squeezing enough out of it. Like, there's almost like I just don't have enough in me to. To have the output that I wish I could have. Don't know where I'm going with this point, but, like, I probably need to be less hard on myself. I probably need to focus on output rather than time and being effective with my time rather than just, you know, grinding 12 hours a day, which I probably toxically associate with being productive, which isn't true objectively. So, yeah, just trying to figure out, like, the next few years, it's in this weird stage where I. I just don't feel settled enough in life. Like, I don't own any property, I'm not married, obviously, I don't live with my girlfriend, but I'm also not at that stage where I'm living with four other guys in, like, a hustle house. We're grinding every day like I did in my early 20s, which I kind of miss, but I just don't feel like that's me anymore. Something that's weird in between where it's like, I know, I know I've been an adult for 10 years, but I feel like I'm only just really feeling like an adult in some weird way, but also not so much an adult that I'm settled. Like, I bought a house, I fucking moved in with my girlfriend or wife. I'm still, like, not sure where I want to live long term. Not really sure how I want to run the business. I'm very clear on what I want the outcome to be, which is build a fucking massive great brand, which is incredibly difficult and scares the shit out of me sometimes when I really think about that. But, yeah, I don't know. It's probably relatable to a lot of people. It's this weird. It's not like quarter life, because I probably won't live to fucking 115 or whatever, but like one third life crisis where, yeah, just have to figure out how to, like, get the most out of building the business, but also enjoying the process, but also planting seeds for the future physically, financially, socially, what to focus on outside of the business day. Today. Do I do more with the YouTube? Do I not? I'm fucking rambling now. But, yeah, just being honest, to be honest, because that's the. The whole thing of this YouTube channel. The business is growing, stuff's objectively going well. But I always have this ambient sense that I'm not doing enough and stuff's going to go wrong, like tomorrow or next week or next month or even next year. And it definitely grates on me a lot. Probably just the price you pay for playing this game. And there are many, many, many easier routes to make money. So I'm not doing it just for that. Even though I do want to make a lot of money. So, yeah, fuck it. I'm rambling too much. I just wanted to get some shit out on this YouTube soundspot for a while. Episode 72. Just keep scaling the brand. Gonna keep pushing myself in every area, documenting it. Cause I committed to. It's pretty cool that some people have started doing this off the back of this pod. I can name, like three people. I won't name them, but they've messaged me and said, I started my YouTube because of yours. Which blows my mind, because I feel like I talk shit and put it on the Internet, which I do, but it's valuable to some people. So, yeah, on that note, I'm gonna go lie on my spiky Shakti mat. I've just been to the gym. I'm sweating. It's 32 degrees outside. Cheers for watching. Catch you in the next episode. Peace.