Scaling to £10k a Day, 2 New Hires & First 3000 Customers - Documenting the journey - Episode 7

Right then back with episode seven, I think of Document the Journey. Fucking hell. The days are getting longer because it's summer, but I feel like my work days are getting longer because there's just more and more and more and more and more shit to do. It's like reminiscing on two years ago when I was like deep in the scale trenches. It's like nice busyness but still like stressful business a little bit. But yeah, last week gonna try and like keep this one short because I'm fucking hungry and I feel like it's boring people to listen for like 20 minutes. But big issue obviously last week with the Instagram going down. Ended up getting that back. Took six days and cost me a lot of money to get that fixed. Basically got it fixed, learned why it probably got taken down, long story, and made a lot of changes to make sure that won't happen again. Because that was fucking stressful for like it massively killed momentum. I mean it did kill momentum, you know, it killed all our ads, which are primarily on Instagram at the time because previously we also had the TikTok ad account disabled that has also now been fixed. I said the ad accounts disabled, like the domain got like blacklisted basically. I tweeted about the other day, ended up getting on the call with them, just being honest about like who I am, what the business is about, etc, etc. Turned out one of the guys that's like fairly high up at TikTok knew Jack, who's one of my investors pretty well and that helped the situation because otherwise probably would never even got a call to like fix it and run through shit. So like the domain has been whitelisted, TikTok's gone back up today. Instagram started running again last Friday when I was in the gym. I got gas, we got the account back and yeah, like those two things are fixed. Another thing on the ad buying side, we've been having issues with Google shopping since day one. Whole host of reasons that's now finally getting fixed. It feels like we've never actually had all three ad channels, you know, Facebook, TikTok and Google running properly without issues, all at the same time consistently. So this week, well, well probably next week onwards. But in terms of full week will be the first week we've actually had all three running properly. So I'm keen to see how the that affects because without TikTok for example, Instagram was doing not but a lot worse than it was when they're both running. That blended rice was down like scale was up, but blended rice is quite down. CPA was up all that sort of. So, yeah, like, we're coming to the end of the. Well, there's another week left near nearing the end of the second full month and we've like more than doubled the first month revenue, which is good. Probably don't plan to do that at the same rate for next month, maybe just about. But, yeah, it's been a solid start. We have over 3,000 customers now. We've got over 600 subscribers and this is like eight, nine weeks in. So, yeah, pretty happy that it's gone, like, properly. Got the proof of concept, got a bunch of data now and I'm just starting to like, properly look at things and, you know, make changes and put in place to obviously get to where I want to be. Because, like, thinking about it, like, a lot of my mindset now is, well, I know where I want to be with the business in terms like three to five years. How can we do that in two years, hypothetically? And thinking that way, because often I think, like, yeah, you want to be like, aggressively patient and shit, but sometimes I just don't want to be patient. I just want to like, how quick can we actually make this thing massive? And, you know, I've done it before and fucked it up and I've done it to a smaller scale, another round and not fucked it up. But now it's like, how can I get this to a million a month? This is like my mindset. How can I get this to a million a month within the next year, like, consistently run rate and be smooth as fuck. And I think that's so doable based on what I'm seeing. So, yeah, it's kind of exciting. I feel like I've been here before in the scale stage where, like, shit's working and you want to double down and go as quick as you can. It's not always the best approach because, like, you want to take into account obviously, like cash flow, stock implications of scale scaling, like the back end as well. It's like the customer service offering, making sure that's all like, super smooth scale the team, which I'm starting to a little bit and I'll get onto in a second. But yeah, it's been generally pretty smooth. Obviously we had like, the biggest hiccup really has been that Instagram issue. Product feedback's been genuinely really good across the board, which is like, I think probably one of the most important metrics, which is like, not a number, but it's just, you know, I see it every day on Instagram trustpilot messages I get to the personal page, to the brand page as well as comments, et cetera. Obviously not everyone loves it, but most people do. We've not had a single charge back, which is another good thing. So like customer service has been on point and that's out of 3,000 plus orders at this point. So yeah, all that shit's going smooth, which is good because it didn't always go smooth in that respect for me in the past as a lot of people know. What else has happened mentioned before, we're looking for like a part time portfolio fd which might sound really fucking fancy but basically just a person that beyond the accountancy stuff like the basic statutory filing, all that, that's already taken care of. This is more like management accounts, budgeting scenario, planning for potential future, fundraising for potential acquirers in the future. It's building that financial picture from the start and building out like a plan. So that person has now been found and would agree terms with. I say we, me and Alex and one of my investors has been invaluable, has helped me with that. Would not know where the to even start with that without him. So thanks for that Alex. And yet we've agreed a very small equity slice which is like vested over three years because I think it makes sense for that sort of thing. Like he's massively experienced, he's bought more into the brand then and he cares more about the outcome like now and in the future. So I think it makes massive sense. Another thing that's happening, I just got off a call with one of them trying to work out a deal with another. Well, call them like strategic investor. Like it's not just for cash, it's to get the person in that I want to get in because I know they can help with a billion things and open a lot of doors which is something I've realized just even in the first few months of having investors on from back in January when we closed that round. It's just, it's so invaluable. Like other people, certain people more than others that have maybe more time and like mental bandwidth to give to the business. But yeah, about to do a deal with, well, likely to do a deal with someone else to bring them in. Say I'm excited about that because again more money does help things go quicker, means you can primarily hire people quicker, you can invest in stock quicker because just investing profits, a small scale isn't going to get you to that like parabolic scale. It's just not possible, like in terms of how quick I want to go with this, like growth wise. But then also it allows me to be more, be quicker on like new product releases, for example, a bunch of accessory products I've got on the way, a second flavor or all that sort of stuff, which you would just be more hesitant to do with less cash in the bank ultimately. So yeah, there's that side, but there's also like the input, the impact they're gonna have and the input they're gonna have and helping me and shit. And like, like more formally. And this person already does a lot of that kind of anyway informally. But when they got skin in the air, it makes a big difference. So yeah, that's the other thing. One thing I'm trying to do is get better at hiring. I don't need to hire loads of people because I try to work out the other day. It's probably like seven people I work with, like almost full time if you include like agencies and stuff. But I do want to hire like a performance content manager at the minute. And kind of what I guess what I mean by that is it's not a social media manager, it's more just someone to manage all the content that we have coming from a million sources, ugc, Tick Tock, like photographer, videographers that we work with regularly. So just basically outsourcing that to someone that's better at that than me, but also can focus on that because I'm spending a lot of time doing that. But I'm terrible at hiring. I always probably fucking have been. And yeah, again, another one of my investors and good mate is helping me with that because they're much better at that. They've built an agency with like 30 plus people now, team members. And yeah, I'm just really bad at that. So I'm trying to get better at that because otherwise I can never really build the business at the scale I want to. And I'm very conscious I'm shit at that right now. Well, so write a few notes down. TikTok Organic, I was banging on about that before. I think that still has massive potential. I don't. I'm not convinced it's as scalable as people think. Or maybe Twitter because it's so susceptible to very likely pending algorithm changes and it's so hit and miss. And most creators want to be paid up front. And you just can't pay creators up front if ultimately the impact of their content relies on an algorithm. Because if you pay someone to say a grand bunch of content gets no views like on that side of things, it's just that is literally just burning money. Whereas at least a thousand quid on ads, you know, generally speaking that's gonna have a certain return based on averages and just, you know, general cpm, cpa, whatever. So yeah, I think it's a good supplementary channel, but it's a lot of work to manage creators as well. I mean the person I'm trying to hire, like the content stuff would probably do that as well. But I'm not convinced it's as scalable in my opinion as maybe other people think on TikTok and maybe that's because they just nailed it more than I have. But I think it's got potential. I just don't think it's how I'm going to scale the brand like to where I want it to be consistently, at least not long term. I still think paid is absolutely where paid and obviously repeat purchase and word of mouth but you know, initially paid. I think that's, that's the best thing to focus on, at least in my mind. With like limited team members right now. Horizontal scale plans only running out to the UK right now. I think the best way to scale would be to scale into Europe and my flatmates just walked in episode seven. But yeah, no time soon. Just fully UK for now I reckon for the next six months just really focus on that like quicker shipping, like build a name in this country first, probably go to Europe rather than us next for a few different reasons. But that's probably the plan in terms of scale. Like I said, we probably doubled from last month. Next month I think we can do similar. I think we, we can be at like 10k a day within like the next two months consistently. We could be there now in terms of like ad performance but just don't have the stock for it. That's literally it. So yeah, stock management's hard but trying to get better with that using a few different softwares. But yeah, the scale potential is definitely there because the ad performance is there, the repeat customs there, the reviews are good, Facebook feedback score is good, etc. Etc. Etc. So yeah, it's really just fucking doing shit every day to move the needle because needle is moving and pretty much bang on where I want it to be by month two in terms of numbers which I set pre any numbers. So it's pretty good guess and yeah, just more and more of that really. Another thing I mentioned, like the podcast plans, I feel like doing the pod every week felt a bit forced because when it's in person. Particularly in summer, it's kind of hard to get guests and I feel like I'm just getting guests for the sake of an episode. So I still want to keep doing the pod, but like I did one in Marbell with Tyler and it like had like high production quality, cool location and it makes me think I'd rather do less but high quality ones and like focus on the documentary series as my like YouTube endeavor, obviously. The brand being number number one by far. But then I had the sick idea about like the pool party social club thing about somehow trying to get people to come together, like the whole community, like Twitter that watches the pod and so on and literally buying a fucking exotic mansion like the one we're in in my Bayer. Maybe that's a mad idea, but I think it's got legs. So I'm playing around with that alongside as well. But that's probably it for the update, to be fair. There's a bunch going on. Start to feel fairly stressed, which means that's good. It means my head's in the fucking game. Means there's a lot happening. If I wasn't stressed at all, I probably think I wasn't doing enough. So yeah, and remember, pressure is a privilege, as I've said before and gotta learn the fucking. Gotta learn the fucking. Learn to love the process of the game. And that's what I'm trying to do. And yeah, if you're in the trench, if you're in the trenches, I can fucking relate. We're all in this together. Let's go build some sick shit and get rich. And space goes to the moon, as always. Catch you in the next episode. Peace.