The Man Behind all of Your Favourite Creator’s Brands - Shan Hanif | The Midnight Pod Episode 74

Foreign.

Fellas, another sponsor for the POD is probably something you're very familiar with if you're in the E Commerce space. It's certainly something I am. It's Wayfly. Cash flow is the biggest killer of any fast growing E common brand. As I probably more than most know very well. Go and watch episode one if you haven't already. Wayfly is an E Commerce funding partner. Essentially they confront you to cash for a month or so worth of sales. You need a minimum of 6 month sales, minimum 20 grand a month I believe right now, if you've got a brand that you're super, super passionate about, you want to scale it quick. But cash is a problem to invest in inventory mainly marketing, overheads, team costs, whatever it is, you can get funded in as little as two to three days. It's literally that quick. No bank loans, no personal guarantees. I've worked with them personally in the past, took a six figure sum off them. Plenty of guys I know in my network and people have been on the POD and run massively successful brands have also used them as a funding partner because everyone knows that scale cash flow is the biggest killer. Even if you are profitable.

If you think this could be a.

Fit, potentially you could be a fit for them, then go click the link below, speak to the guys at waveflyer.

It's a referral.

Links and we get a little fee. You save a little bit as well. Support the pod, support your business. Cash is king, especially in this market. Let's fucking go.

Right, we're back with the Midnight Pod episode 73. We have Sian Hanif from Gen Flow and a million other things. Ollie is back as well. I thought you were gonna flake on this episode again, but it's nice to have a co host. Yeah, I'm just saying I feel like you have a very intense blend of things we could speak about and probably many things that unlike a lot of our episodes we probably can't speak about because you work with a lot of interesting, famous, influential people from different areas, like Ecom, SaaS, I guess, personal branding, YouTube, load of other shit which is like this podcast blended into one episode essentially. So this is gonna be an interesting what's going on.

It's good to be here. Yeah, I'm excited. I think just for everyone. Yeah. I'm Sean, CEO Jump Flow, I guess.

Yeah.

I built my own agency. It's been seven years of doing it. We're worth more than 100 million. I employ 100 plus people. So it's been a crazy journey. But in that time, what we do is we help creators, the people that you follow on Instagram, YouTube, et cetera. We help those guys make money online pretty much to everything from starting your own business, starting your own software company, working with brands. We do kind of like the trifecta, so. And we pretty much work with the top 1% creators in the world. That's the focus. We call them mega creators. To us, the mega creator is someone who can sell at least $250,000 a year. That's the minimum if you want to be a client at jumplo.

Just organically.

Yeah. Just through their own channels. So if you can't do that, then essentially we don't work with you or we just drop you, basically.

Do you think I'm already going deep? We'll go into your background in a second. Do you think there's way more influencers that can't do that? The people looking from the outside would think could, because I have big numbers, but actually they're not very influential. Is there a lot of them?

There's a lot of them. 100%. I think it's a misconception that creators can't make money. You can make lots of money, but.

As in, is there lots that are really bad at it, though, because they've got a massive following, but they just don't know how to monetize an audience.

Yeah, I think there's lots that don't know how to monetize.

Yes.

It doesn't mean that they can't. They just don't know how. The right way, for sure.

Yeah.

They can do what a lot of people in our world probably thinks the harder bit, which is generate a lot of awareness. But I can't do the. Do the bit that we find a little bit easier, which is like generate the money.

I guess you're right. I think that that's essentially why the business even worked in the beginning. Because my background, a bit like, I guess you guys was, I was making my own products, selling it, but I was like an ebay, Amazon power seller, you know, I was buying things from China, selling, selling it online, starting a makeup brand. I used to stand in Spitfields markets and sell them. I've did it all. So when this opportunity kind of came, it was second nature for me to be like, okay, these guys have audiences. Surely they can sell to these people. So I came with the knowledge and understanding of manufacturing, logistics, development, learn how to code. So, yes, so they bring the final piece, that puzzle.

I think they bring the two. Two of the hardest Things like high intent audience that are very engaged with their content and the ability to create community. And those two things are two of the most powerful things. And even, even like dc. Com, if you can build a community and you can have a highly engaged audience, you're doing probably the hardest thing, one of the hardest things, honestly.

That's why it's a win win, because that cost of acquisition is nil.

And then you put ads on your CPM's about 2p.

And then you start, I think the retargeting you do custom audiences of people's. Like, we have one creator, she has 14 million on TikTok, 4 million on Instagram. We launched an app. When we're retargeting those people, like, it's so warm. It's just. It's the most fun thing to do if you're in digital marketing or anything. Because like, people that work for us, they come from normal jobs. They're like, what? Like, how much audience is there? Like, I could do what, what's the email list? Or it's 400,000 people.

Like, what?

400,000 people on the email list. It's so easy from that point of view. For sure.

It's crazy. I wish I'd focused on YouTube when I was 17 years old and fucking built a massive audience.

Compound growth.

Yeah, yeah. Coulda, woulda, shoulda go back before that.

Yeah.

Used to be an accountant. I was reading.

Yes. How.

How do you go from that world into this world, but you feel like polar opposites and like, yeah. So how did that happen?

Obviously, growing up, many people have this story. Obviously parents think education is important. It was important for them to kind of make something of their lives. My parents are doctors. They're both educated. So they saw that's like the way to succeed. So I knew I had to go to university. I ended up picking accounting because it was like the money side of business. So by then I was already hustling. I was only making money online when I was in college. I was making about five grand a month and that was about 2006. So, like, it's a lot of money. I bought my car, we're going on holidays, like enjoying life. Then had to go to university, picked accounting. But I was like, I'm gonna do it. So I end up getting a job here in London in a firm that focused on tech startups. And essentially that's how I kind of fell into the world of tech startups, SaaS, raising money, businesses. Like, what is all of this? And I worked on Jamie Oliver's app. He was one of our clients. I worked on gsp, the MMA fighter. So I fell into apps before and subscriptions. I remember we Jamie Oliver launched £2 a week subscription. It was the first subscription almost on the app store ever. And Apple was commissioning companies to be like please develop on the app store, do some new stuff that we're doing. So yeah, I guess the accountant kind of. That's kind of how it happened. I was lucky enough to work for some amazing startups and our firm was like you go to the company and sit with them and work. You almost don't work in your own office.

Like fractional almost.

Yeah. So every week I would be in like in a different company's office sitting and working with them. So like City Mapper. So I was there when the three people were at satmapa is when I was deployed.

Keep going. No, that's so good.

I feel like accounting's solid kind of base for. I'd say it's one of the best bases in terms of formal education to come into business from. Like it's what I probably wish I'd done if I'd done. If I was to do university again.

Yeah. Cause to be honest, that's my biggest strength is financials. And that means you know how to.

Run your business property. In hindsight I wish I'd done that. What happened two years ago.

It's where people get found out.

Definitely most founders weaknesses. Yeah. I think it was my weakness 100%.

So many people don't understand the difference between cash and like profit loss. Yeah, cash flow, you know, like the difference between you sell something now, you record that sale now, but the money comes in two months. That's the money.

Yeah, yeah.

What like. And that even to even every creator we have the same conversation because they have no basic financial understanding or like contribution margin.

Like not everything you sell produces the same amount.

I didn't realize how little I knew about that shit until I started working with good people. I Seamus for example. Yeah. And I was like hold on. I thought I knew how to read a P L properly and there's so much more to it.

That's a lot of people get found out in that.

So I think it's a good base. So yeah, I guess the story from there I finished my acca, became a qualified accountant. I gave my notice that same day and the big idea in 2014 was I was a massive bodybuilding.com user.

Yeah, I used to be as well.

And those plans.

Yeah.

And I guess the. The thing that Was struck to me was we're here on this forum trusting, like other random dudes, but not like a professor on Amazon that has a book on this stuff because some guy named Ziz is saying, blah, blah, blah, drink your, you know, protein 30 minutes after a workout in water, otherwise, you know, it's not going to work. And I was fascinated by that. So I left, left my job. The idea was I wanted to build a social media network which allows you to also sell to each other. And it was called, that's what I launched first. It was called Nom Nom and made it myself at home, launched it and we all got to about 40, 50,000 monthly active users. And it was pretty much like this. Sitting in an apartment, had a couple of interns come every single day. I was just like trying to build this thing. And then I realized I'm doing up against the wrong thing, that I'll never win in social. And then Instagram was getting more and more popular. There's me trying to like, I remember I developed swipe posts and also like, wow, this is gonna. This is it. This is my big thing. Mostly years later, they did it. I still remember it sounds strange, but like profile pictures, I did them hexagon. I was like, this is. You look for little things to be like, why I can be better. I realized that's the wrong game. I always knew about buying and selling, etc, so I, I thought instead, let me help creators sell stuff. And the concept was if you make free content, there should be paid content. And again, this is so early. There was no way for people to sell content. So that's why I launched in October 2016, which is what Jambalo is today. So I emailed about a thousand creators. Obviously 100,000 then was like 5 million now. And I was like, look, you create this content. And I went after the fitness space because of the bodybuilding understanding. So I went to people and said, hey, you create this fitness workout, etc. Why didn't you sell that? And people like, what you mean the farm saying, sell a spreadsheet? I was like, no. I was like, can we build your user experience? If someone buys it on the other side, there'll be an actual experience, meaning that there's workouts you can check, videos, etc. As one of the first ever workout experiences. It's called Athlete. It's still live today. We launched that so you would buy on the creator's website and you download the app, login and access the content. So it's like the first ever Gated content and this was October 2016. I worked with, don't know if you know like Andre Dio, he was a big bodybuilder.

He was.

Got like 5, 6 million followers now. Grace, Beverly, Tasha Ocean, Hanno Berg, essentially all the early gymshark athletes were all our clients selling programs with us. And that's kind of how the business started.

Did you just quit being an accountant overnight or was it like a gradual? You started hustling on this Nom Nom thing and then you saw. So it had legs and then.

Yeah. I'm a big believer of like this whole thing of you build a business on the side and like slowly leave one day or side hustles, etc. Like I. I just don't think you can build a real business like that. So yeah, I think I left because I was like I have to do one thing and put all my energy into it.

Burn the vote kind of vibe all in.

That's what I did. Six years ago we had a clothing brand together in uni. That's how we first met. And then you stayed at uni and I off. I went all in. It came around in the end.

Yeah. So for me it was a. It's because it was impossible. I was like I had qualified my accounting stuff and that's why I stayed. It was never because I'm scared of what's going to happen and all that stuff, like I'll make it work.

So who was the first actual ever client of Gen? Was it called Nom Nom in the same. It was the same business. It was called Nom Nom. Or did you. You just rebranded over time?

I rebranded at the time, yeah. And moved to Jumper essentially. So I guess the funny of the first creator we ever launched with was actually in Texas. So this random girl who convinced her to like sell some fitness stuff, she's the first one that went live. And I remember we sold like, I think it was like $3,000 or something in a day. And I was still a bit like I'm not too sure about this. When it all came together was the 26th of December 2016. We sold 25,000 with a creator. And I was sitting at home and I remember thinking like this is it. No one knows about this. That you can sell this much from a creator. Putting up a post and it just sells. There's no cost, there's no nothing.

And that's a digital product.

It's a digital product, yeah.

Yeah.

I wasn't called that in the days. Right. Like I was info product all this is after. So yeah, that's what it was. So. And coming from a business degree, coming from seeing all these startups raise so many, so much money, having all this cost and all of a sudden I've done something that essentially there's no cost, is pretty much profit only. And yeah, that was it then. It was like a rinse and repeat from there for like two years straight to build a business.

What was the model fundamentally then? Was it a revenue share, was it a fee per whatever?

One of the best things I think I've ever done. And I would say this too, and obviously lots of people make content on this. Yes. For me, even to this day we take a percentage of if now it's different, it's like revenue or profit or it could be a range of things. But yes, a percentage based. So we both are in it for the same reason versus a traditional like retainer for service fee.

Yeah. Would you take equity?

We do together now. But I didn't back then. No. Would have been like too complex back then to like start talking about equity.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So yeah, for me, honestly it's very like let's make the money. I've always been a believer I'll make the money, figure out the rest afterwards. Because. Because when you're making someone money, all that stuff is easy. So when people lose deals at contract stages, when what I do is just get it done alive and then worry about it afterwards and it actually works. Also one of my strategies always is to charge less and then increase over time and it always works versus saying I'm worth this much. So if you don't pay me this much, like no, because I know my worth or the company or we should charge raise your prices this much. I'm the complete opposite. She tries the least possible they can afford to. And that's worked wonders for me because same creator that may have charged 10%, maybe today we're on 40% or 30%. Yeah, it's just over time you can prove your worth.

How do you get in the room with the first people when you've got no. I guess at that point, no. Not even a proof of concept, I'll be honest.

So my whole thing is like showing, showing then telling. Even to this day like today. Honestly, just before this I spoke to. She's one of the biggest creators in the world and I would never get on a phone call and start like asking questions to then come back with the pitch. And that's the classic mistake that people make in the agency space. You try like getting to get the brief or you're trying to like figure out what is it that they want, then you're going to come with your solution, your package with your price point or whatever else. For me, it's always show. So I think what I did in the early days and what I do now, like I would literally make a landing page and on the first phone call be like, hey, how's it going? I love your content, love your shit. Guess what I made for you? I just showed to them, I'm like, I would sell this product. I even make them a cover. I'll sell it for $27. And this is what I would do. Do you like it? And so you guys were like, yeah, I like it. Like, cool, so this is what you need to do next. And they're like, okay, so I literally pretend like we're already working together. That's, that's the, that's the way to obviously how to get them on the call. You know, you have to work on emailing people and all that stuff. And your outreach has to be again, problem solving, not selling services, if that makes sense. And then when you get on it, you're just showing. That's been my probably biggest strategic hack.

And it was just you doing everything at that point in terms of creating the product with them, marketing it.

Yeah, I was quite lucky.

Obviously.

I've probably had my core team with me now for like four to coming up to five years. So in the early days it was me and I had some team members. But then I guess 2018 is where most of my core team joined are still with me today.

Who's in that core team?

It's like my leadership team. Essentially we're split between like functions. So I have one guy who runs all my product, meaning physical product and what we have five warehouses and obviously thousands and thousands of SKUs. And all of that world have one guy that runs digital product in the similar way have one guy that runs a brand strategy. So that's for our bigger brands obviously, strategically, to forecast the numbers, running them, all the creator stuff. And within that we also manage all the creator relationships, have someone who manages all brand partnerships, all our relationships to the brands and everything we do there. Yeah. So yes, nice split. Then I have like kind of like a coo. She manages pretty much the whole business operationally. So that's. And then I cfo, then I have a board. So yeah, it's like fully set up.

Nice. I think that show not tells. Great idea. We do a bit of that for Our content agency, just like most other people won't do that, won't go that far. So by just doing it by default, you put yourself ahead of pretty much everything.

Then you run ads for free to start with.

Yeah, we run ads for free. We still, we don't do that anymore because I feel like that's like proper not knowing your worth. But we'll still, will still do like. We will go low and then just grow as we get trust and as we also get them results. But we'll make free content, we'll make free ugc, we'll make free high production ads. We'll also use that and distribute it so other people can see it. It's like compounding effects. Not the same. We don't get to the same depth as you because we don't do as many functions or areas of the business. So it's harder. But it's kind of like one of those things where you say it. It's like that's just a really simple concept. But no one does works.

My experience with other agencies has been is that people say they're going to do this, they're going to do that, but no one follows through. I even spoke to agency long ago. Yeah, they were like we can do this for you, that for you. We get you, you just see creators etc. I was looking at a brand so I was like for one of our brands, like all right, go ahead. And people just don't follow through. Like they say everything.

Yeah, they go for the prioritize new clients, not ltv. They prioritize more and more new relationships and less and less focus on people who are already working with them. Yeah, it's a mindset shift that people can't get into.

It's the hardest thing. I think it's so easy to come up with a good offer if you know how to sell. Create a good landing page. Like get some clients get going. And people immediately switch to like I'll start selling how I did it because they start struggling to actually do the thing itself. It's the most common thing I've seen.

Yeah.

In the agency space.

Yeah, for sure. Referring to all these agency gurus who run an agency for a month, then they find it's hard to scale so they sell how to do it pretty much. Which is probably more profitable just on that then. So you start with info products. When and why did you move into physical products as well? Because there's pros and cons to both for sure. But what was the first physical products and was that Just a natural progression. Because you found an influencer that wanted to do that. Because I always say, like, I run a physical product business. I always have. I wish I. Because I run a physical one. I wish I did digital products. And it probably be the same if I run digital products, I want something tangible.

I think for me, the whole business has been come out of the need from our creators from the very beginning. So we were doing digital. It became obvious that the same people I'm working with can sell physical stuff. So we just naturally leaned into it. There was no, like, that's the big thing we're going after. It's like, I know how to do it. I've done it before in my life before, so why not? And I think also I've been privy to lots of stuff, you know, So I knew how much people were selling for Gymshark, for instance. I'm like, you just sold a hundred thousand for them. Surely if I work the numbers and you sold your own item, you'll actually make more cash in your pocket versus your 4% commission or whatever. So they're just seeing in front of you. So you're like, I could do that. And then a lot of people be like, yeah, let's do it. So it kind of just came out of that. It was never a.

And who was that first? And was it Grace?

I think very first was. I think it was some clothing and stuff for some randoms. But yes, then I guess with Grace, what was a big hit was we almost was like the first people to start selling like a cloth resistant band which sounds like very intricate, but in those days there were only rubber ones. So I remember me and her were like having a chat. We were like, okay, we're selling thousands, thousands of programs, millions of dollars worth of all these girls. You know, include activation was like a new concept in the world. They're like, what? Is that what you mean? Yeah, so it was kind of. I've always been a believer of trying to create something functional product versus just a nice to have product. That's why I've stayed away from merch. We've like never done much as a business because merch is just not a product super fans will buy. There's no repeat purchase. You can make some money in it, but it's just. There's no like. Yeah, I guess you do like Nelk's Merge. Of course you make lots of money, but yeah, other people just won't.

Yeah, top. Top point zero.

Anyway, we did Mav for Logan in the same way, but If I was to do merch, I want to do it more branded and properly, but still only like the same percentage could sell. That's like quote unquote, that's like community.

Backstory merch where it's like snowball impacts. Like it has, has kind of a high message to it, I guess.

But I think the truth is what merch sells today is actually full. It's full brand. It kind of feels merchy. But yeah, I guess we did a resistant band. I sold hundreds of thousands of units of that and it's a massive success. Success. And yeah, from there done lots of stuff. I think now what we do, we. I have many activewear brands, supplement brands. Supplement brands are stocked in Superdrug, Hollander, Barrett Selfridges. We're going to Sainsbury's, Stockton, uae. So on Amazon as well, we did a little bit of beauty, lots of like high fashion stuff, like dresses and stuff at high prices. So I guess now I have like departments for different things. I have a nutrition team and apparel team. Yeah, do all that stuff.

Do you have. I'm assuming you have a pretty like in depth process in terms of. I'm going to onboard this person, how you do the research, decide on what products, what niche. I guess there again that's where you.

Like, I have so many questions about this.

You have this like.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You have this like massive leg up. Even in that process where you've got a lot of people who probably would answer your questions if you're actually like, what do I do?

It was a big problem.

Right.

So like how do I scale the business? And I have to be smart about this. So essentially we built our own algorithm, it's called Genlytics and essentially we can pull any creator's data from any platform and analyze it and that's what we do. So I can see immediately if someone has. So I'll tell you someone who can sell you the question of like, if you have an audience, can you monetize it? So we're trying to guess how much someone's audience worth is. And the way we do that is a number of things. You look at how much same sex following, how much same location following. And then you look at the interest overlap between the creator and then the creator's own interests and then the interest of the audience.

Yeah.

So and then alongside that we do stuff like. So let's say I run an example. You're a 27 year old guy who has 70 male following 45% live in the UK.

Just probably check My actual numbers, it sounds quite accurate.

And then you have the, you know, you have a few certain interests like startups or business or podcasting etc, etc. If I've worked with a guy like that before, I know how that audience converted. So I know that audience did $700,000 in a year. So from that we can over time have been learning and I can apply like the next time I come across another 27 year old with a similar thing. Doesn't even have to be similar countries, but similar like statistically you can start to draw parallels of like, yeah, basically and start building from there. So I think that's, that's our like secret weapon. So right now I have an outreach team. Their job is to search using genlytics and the moment someone pings us what we think is good, then we'll try to go after that person trying to sign them. Email, dm. Is it intros and that kind of stuff?

Influencer before brand slash product idea. Or do you come up with a brand slash product idea and go, ah, there'd be a great person to front this influencer. And how does that influence even?

I think both in reality. Yeah, so I think, yeah, so I think sometimes it's fully from the creator. Like I'm working with Ali Abdel right now. We sat down and he was like, he wants to do X, Y, Z. I was like, interesting. Didn't think about that as a thing. When I did some research, looked at it, looked at the market, look at the exits, look at what people are doing and it's like, okay, let's do it, should be out in a few months. But you know, and that's, that's an example of that. Always the other way. Like you know, this space with cognizant and all this stuff is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger and that's like I'm interested in that, being interested in teams, been looking in it. We already sourced the factories, ingredients and stuff and it's like, okay, we don't know the form format, is it going to be powder, is it going to be a drink, is it going to be tablets? But. And then let's find the right people then sometimes it happens naturally. So it's a bit of both. Yeah, I'm very fluid or agile is probably the word. Like doesn't really matter. Like a real. It could be either way.

And how before a new partnership appears, are you, are they coming to you? I assume now you get a lot of influencers pitching you, but how was that originally? Would they come to you Would you go and find them or.

I think I've been quite blessed that when we had some big successes like Grace, Beverly or others, people come to you quite easily because especially in those days, it was like, how are you doing this? People were like, oh, I'm working with Sean, I'm doing this. And they're quite interesting. So it was a. We grew from inbound. This is the last year, was the first year I hired people to start outreaching to try and assign creators and the history of the business. We've spent about £70,000 in seven years of marketing. The whole business has been grown by.

Ruthlessly big case studies.

Yeah.

Basically like just proof. Proof is in the market. You know, like you don't even need to like even. We don't even. Honestly never even created case studies because the case studies in the public.

Yeah.

You can see it likes more of its pr. I might even carry a lot of weight.

And on a typical. Probably about a million questions, I'm trying to pick the good ones. Is there a baseline deal structure you'll do or is it bespoke every time?

I think at this point it's bespoke every time because my biggest concern right now is that we don't bring a creator in. We like sucks our time and the return on investment isn't there for us because it is. Honestly at this moment the business is wherever we put the most attention into almost. We like have the biggest growth because you've moved from on from there to helping the creator actually grow their audience as well. So now we do full social media management, YouTube channels, scripting, etc. Like podcasting. Like we're doing that final step as well to get more distribution. So yeah, it's very agile.

That's a really, really smart move. Again, very simple thought process but like to pivot into that just multiplies because.

We have something working. The ceiling normally is either we start paying lots for ads.

Yeah.

Or we trying to grow the audience.

Yeah.

Obviously we go trying to convert more of the audience and that's ongoing. But it's like while that's happening, can we. Shall we.

Yeah.

And smart thing is to grow audience.

And drive down costs.

Do you find you get a better return from many smaller ones or like the odd unicorn, someone like Logan or anyone else.

I think that's probably the hardest part of it all in reality because some people that you think are going to be big. So I think if you don't sell 250,000, like we, it's.

It's.

We remove Them anyway. So it's not worth our time because it means even if I was taking 20%, that's 50,000 a year for us. If you don't make 50,000 from a single creator, then they can't really be a client in general sense. So we, the way we work is a lot more strategically. So I, we have like one more. We have a forecast per creator to understand how much we think they're going to sell or deliver. So on that basis the decision is kind of already there because you've already got mapped out that these 20 guys are going to deliver me 20 million and these three are going to deliver me 30 million. So we do see that for sure. And then it's kind of like a, a balancing act between them.

Then how is every brand and business in itself structured then? So they all their own entities under this gen flow umbrella?

No, no. So it's only, that's only to take equity, right? Yeah. Otherwise it's their business, it's our business.

Okay.

The third bundle is rev share. Rev share profit share. But then small amount of equity yield basically makes sense.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I guess structured in different ways too, but yeah. And sometimes we're investing, sometimes we're not. You'd be surprised about how much people are willing to invest in their own stuff now. Like the world has just changed from when I first started. Now sitting with the credit and saying It'll cost you 500,000. Do you want to do it? They're like, yeah, let's do it. It's like, it's like it's that instant now that people so badly want to do their own business, which is great.

And how are you splitting your team on new projects? Is it like every apparel brand is under a team you have and they'll just split their time? Every supplement brand, every E book brand, whatever it is. Or are you literally hiring a team for every brand itself?

I guess it would be interesting just to go one step back. Like, what's your kind of organ? Obviously you've talked about your cease level. What's like the functions you own. Where do you go deep in a relationship? Do you go deep on products?

But then as in me personally, as.

In like the business itself. Do you own everything for them? Do you? Kind of.

Our biggest thing is everything is in house.

Everything.

Yeah.

So we run the ads, we create all the content, we shoot it, we edit it. We just have our hands on everything ourselves. Never worked with third parties, generally speaking. I've done now for the first time myself or like Some content stuff. So like little bit but on like the main stuff within the business, keep it, keep in house. My personal focus is more around tech because that's my natural instinctive thing and I'm very good at it. Yeah, it's like product and that kind of stuff I kind of stay a little bit away from. Just because knowing what fabric is for the band on someone's high waisted legging is like not my specialty. I can tell you what was and stuff. Yes, I think the other question, I think a bit of both. So we have specialist teams that deliver certain things but on the commercial side we do have dedicated teams. But when I say commercial side because you don't need a dedicated person like on product to make one sort of thing that's actually quite limited. So the way it works is almost like that my teams are delivering things to like the commercial team who then are the ones who are in charge of the creators, if you know what I mean. That's kind of the way we structure it. So yes, if you're, if you're a big brand delivering millions, you will have dedicated people sitting there working on them every day. But at a commercial level, if you have commercial directors. So I've hired like such good experienced people from like one of the guys he was at PhD, he helped their US business scale to like 15 million a year. He came in and he runs like a supplement brand for instance for us. So I hire commercial directors, managers from other brands to come in and run a creator's brand. Almost like the MD basically.

Yeah. Interesting. And how involved does the typical creator get? Are they literally just given a set of posts they have to do or are they actually looking at product 100?

So I think that is not us. So there is another model that exists in the creator economy which is we want to launch a brand now, call it, you know, space items. And we're gonna be like let's go.

Find probably does exist at this point of copycats and you know, we'll give.

Them 20 equity, they'll be the face, we'll give them the deliverables and put it into the contract. You know, X person is gonna go and do the post once a month. Like that's, that's not what we do. I think that doesn't work because that, that's like your classic David Beckham launching a perfume deal. You know that it's a face. They don't give a. They just care about what's my upfront fee or do I get a fee?

It's completely Like Roger Federer and I'm running. That's like a big example of where that they've absolutely. Instead of giving him like he got offered. I think he offered like a fee or to take equity.

Yeah.

I read about equity and they're like impacted him on that run.

So I think that that's been our structure. So we have all our competitors in the space. Some of them have gone bust because they just didn't fall follow like we only do it if someone wants to genuinely do it. That's why they have to invest their money.

And change is everything every time.

Yeah. Generally I would co invest with them but they fund their own business. So like when I'm saying they're putting 500000 and they're putting 500000 of their cash in. So of course then the relationship is very different. And we'll speak every single week. You know everything's in person. We fly to them. So team is like. We'll fly to the like we got. I think the guys are going to New York for an activewear brand. We'll sit with the creator. Room full of samples, try everything on. Like I would say our creators are the most successful. Are full. Hands on for sure.

Yeah.

And that people don't realize. Yeah. Because otherwise it just won't work. But that being said, hands on. On stuff that we want them to be hands on with.

Right.

They're not there like speaking to the factories or that kind of stuff. They're more like on the actual product. And how do we sell it? I think the smart ones know that because they're like my job is to figure out what to. How to sell this and will my audience want to buy it.

Yeah.

The wrong ones are like can I go to the factory with you? And it's like no. Because this is a waste. Like we're here to do just that. So you don't need to be doing that. So you know, it depends how smart the creator is. It changes everything.

Quick one fellas. You probably heard a few months ago I dropped an E. Commerce. A very fucking guru of me. But it's not that. I promise you 0 to 1 how to start a brand from scratch with no budget. Some budget. A bit of budget. Take your idea from a bedroom to reality to potentially 7, 8 figures in sales. Like I've done a few times based on my seven years of experience in the trenches and my current experience building my current brand space goods.

It's no. No frills.

We've had like 75 people go through so far, not a single person has asked for a refund. Plenty of people have actually built some seriously impressive covers every aspect of the business, not just the front end stuff like Most gurus on YouTube and Twitter are talking about. Not just product, market and all that shit, but the real shit, the logistics, the back end, the supply chain, the customer service, the finances as well. This covers the whole spectrum, every part, 12 hours of video. If you're interested in scaling a brand 0 to 1, actually turning your idea finally into a reality, then click the link below, Go check out Learn Real Commerce course and let me know what you think.

I'll be glad to have you in there. Let's fucking go. And do you have the same Systems and like KPIs and processes in gen flow as a whole for every brand? Because it's effectively like a group of brands essentially.

Yeah, yeah.

Or do you tailor how you run the businesses? Per.

I think we got like we call them, like essentially it is service levels depending on size of client type of client type of thing that we're doing. So it's a bit bigger than that. But yes, I'm very big on process and we run very tight ship. So things have to happen a certain way every day. There's got to be like end of day emails, end of week, there's meetings that have to happen a certain way. The whole company works through Asana. There isn't a task that'll happen at gemflow that is not in Asana. Like I'm talking.

You're a notion guy.

Notion is honestly like thousands of tasks and everything has to be tracked. Yeah. In real time.

Ollie. Does that mean they're okay?

So yeah, big, big, big believer in process. That's the way to scale because things start to like fall apart.

Yeah.

So I fix something through process instead of like fixing it manually. It's so easy to call somebody up and be like, do it like this or do it like that. We try to fix it through process and that's what's worked essentially.

Is that how you operate?

Yeah, we're just systems everything. We've got about 65 people for us and we're just like operations driven, agency wide everything. I'm trying to say same for the ecom price, but I find it a little bit less repeatable for E Comm. Like it's more transitional through growth phase than it is in an agency where you're providing a repeatable service. In some ways, yeah, depending on client size. But yeah, like operations for communication, meetings, like you said, onboarding Forecasting everything to the nth degree. Kind of remove as much thinking as possible to some stage, but then leaving enough room for creativity. Is how we've always kind of thought about it.

Yeah. One thing we've done well is that if it's. If it is something that can't be like do it like this, then instead it's making them think the right thing. So like landing page structure.

Yeah.

Is something that we'll have like, you know, this is how you should set it out. And the person can decide like how they're gonna apply that.

Yeah.

They must follow a methodology of some kind. It can't just be whatever you feel like.

Yeah.

It's like six core ingredients. But then those ingredients can look different. Like it has to have a header, has to have a buy box. Like, bit more flexibility around that.

Yeah. And I think what's hard in my business is because when you've done. When you've been around for so long now, like as people change, you lose knowledge. So preserving that knowledge is. Is like. It's hard because you did something unique and that did it so well. Then it's like two years have gone by and maybe that girl is not here anymore. And it's. I struggle with that because I'm like, oh. It's like I'm repeating myself but to new people. So it's like I need to repeat myself.

Turnover as a team more so. As in like people even.

Yeah.

Taking that knowledge with them, that specialism with them. That makes sense.

Just that thing that you did because. Yeah.

That's like the worst nightmare for me as well. Just losing person that you've put loads of time resource into.

So I've been lucky at the senior side. But general business, like, it's tough. We probably hired around 250 people or something. So. Yeah, it's been that. That's been hard. Just people as a whole, like, that's the hardest part of the business is. Is people like managing people, getting the best out of them and just living with the expectations and how to manage that. That's the outside.

Yeah.

Once I sell the company, I don't think I'd ever run another business with lots of people.

Yeah. We're kind of at that transition point of like, do we go boot? Because I'm kind of in that mindset. Like, do you go boutique for that reason. Like, bigger isn't always better in a way. It isn't if you. It is to some degrees. But like you can make as much profit and get as bigger exit to a degree by not having the same people. I think going after like profitability, like really driving up structured better deals.

Yeah. I think, I think where the world is right now, it's all about profit.

Yeah.

No one will even look at your revenue growth and give you any multiple based on that.

Yeah.

So at this moment it would be trying to generate the most profit physically possible for sure. And one of the ways is to reduce headcount or reduce clients that don't drive much money. So you can reduce the headcount. I would definitely say that's the thing to do.

How do you think your role has changed since you've found the business? Obviously, massively. But were you always really like organized and process driven? Because I've always been a creative first, but it's only. I've just realized that I can't always be that if want to build a good business. And it's taken me like six years doing this shit to finally understand managing people. And I'm only, literally only in the past few months starting to get better with that. Do you find it's a constant process or were you always good at that and that's why you build a good business?

I think weirdly, I feel like I do the same stuff that I always did. That's what it feels like. Maybe it factually isn't. I think I've been quite lucky with when we needed to do some of stuff, I had someone that could do it. I don't know, in a bit because again, so I guess my same leadership team, it was just us and I made them into the people running the areas. So that's the big difference. So it's like. So like we were the team that like launched an app, hitting them all on the app store, you know, doing 200,000 in like an hour pounds. And you're like, what? What the hell's going on? Like, how are we doing doing this? Remember 2019, we did 12 million and there was 12 of us and it was just insane. Like how, like, you know that that's not normal. And so I think for me it was like it was a collective decision of like, okay, we're a team now. We exactly know what we're doing. And we've spent like evenings, nights working on shit, traveled to different countries. I've done all that stuff. So when it came to, okay, we need to hire a team and we have to tell them what to do, it's like, okay, you go solve that. So it was a bit different because it wasn't like, so, yeah, I Guess in our collective team it was more like, you're very good at organization so why don't you be the organized one and you are very good at thinking of new ideas. You be that guy. So I think the luck in our business was that we always had something to do. Most businesses you're sitting and thinking of what's the offer or how should we get more clients. We almost had no downtime. It was like we launched one thing and it's like, oh shit, two weeks later we'll launch another thing. So we just were running after the work. Running after the work.

Must adapt or die in a way like.

Yeah, so I think skills. So that decision kind of just, kind of just happened. And I've pretty much been doing the same stuff which is that I like being hands on, on the biggest projects in the business and I probably have still, I've still been doing that myself.

Just on team as well. So I think this is like an endless debate. So I think about are you fully. Are you remote or is everyone in an office?

We do. My product team is in about three times a week, sometimes four. The other guys are once a week. But then we have hired people like all over the world. So it's a very big.

So it's hybrid pretty much. And based in London and la.

Yeah.

And you don't have enough in Dubai how you do?

Not currently, but I probably will end up setting up one by the. By this end of this year.

Do you think you can build a big business fully remote? What do you think as well? Because you've got way more team members than me. But I'm already thinking we've got one.

Agency that's two remote person which is. I think you can, I think you can. But I think, I think in persons, I think a hybrid is optimal in my opinion having a bit of both. I think fully remote relies on really nailing every hire or like how you, like you have. You inherently have to put more trust in the individual. And I think, I don't know, I think it's a bit more difficult.

I don't know.

What do you think?

I think. I think you can bring a. Build a cash flow business fully remote because they're just doing something you need them to do.

Yeah.

Can you build an actual business of value which you can sell one day that is. Has genuine value within itself, like. No. Because there is no way someone remote will ever get to know you and what you're trying to do and why and you as a person to then be able to manage Other people. I think it only works almost in a flat structure where it's you, you got all these freelancers, maybe you can get them like doing some stuff. So it's just completely different. And for me, like there's two completely different mindsets. Right. There's the cash flow businesses that you see everyone online, what they're really doing is that trying to make 30, 40k a month, trying to get remote people to do the work, put as much money in the pocket. Wherever money comes in, put it in. Every few months there'll be a few more companies you can sell to.

Yeah.

And it's just an ever circle thing because you keep making cash, it feels great and you can live happily way more than a job. Or as on the other side where you're trying to build a tangible business which you can sell one day and that requires you to build lots of the stuff which comes with building a real business that someone could buy one day. And I guess I've always been on this side. I've looked up to the biggest companies, the slacks, the Ubers, etc, to be like, I want to build a real tangible business and sell it versus just cash. So I think could you do that for your remotely? Like, I think that's tough and that. That's what I would say.

Do you want to build something big so you can get really rich or so you can build something that is impactful?

I think you do it right. You do both. Yeah. I think the beautiful thing about my business is that even though Yup. Is creators, yes, they make a lot of money, but fundamentally you do have a lot of impact on a lot of people. Like right now we reach 147 million people. I think last time I checked, that's a lot of people. And creators make content for those people and the impact it has on them. So I think there's a massive thing of impact for sure that I care about. Secondly, the lives of the creators themselves. Like I know the inner workings of like someone helping their mom, like leave their, you know, abusive dad or the whole life, whole family's been like in poverty and she made 2 million and now like bought a mama house. Like it's a shit that you get from having the audience. I think it's a lot of value, sentimental value for sure. But I think no, no doubt about it. I'm here to make money and sell the business to make money.

Yeah. And just on the careers then, has there been a few or one or two that have stood out either for good or bad in terms of they've done way better than you thought they'd ever do and they've grown insanely or some that have been a big flop.

I'd also be interested in ones that had a big impact on you personally, like the one you just mentioned. Not just monetary, like people you've met that have had like a personal, Personal impact.

Yeah, I think lots of different ones. Obviously, you know, we work with Iman Gadget. I think to see him go from a kid that essentially worked with us and I hired him to kind of, you know, develop his career. Yeah, it's been an amazing journey, you know, to be, to be. To see him go through that and I think it just shows how anyone can do anything. It shows, it shows you a lot that you gotta. The whole. What the audience wants. Like, he's, he's figured that out really, really well over everything. People stress about the other things. He's worked on that side of things. So I think I draw parallels from like different things from different reasons. Yeah. Then also seeing like someone saying no to stuff, not saying no to money for like good reasons. You're like, actually that's a good reason that you're saying no to doing this project or to another million that we could have made. But I see why you're saying it because your mental health or, you know, people on Reddit are hating you so much that it's just you rather just not do it versus more cash that you already don't know what to do with. So I've seen stuff in that sense to be like. And then, you know, some stuff where managers are in the middle and they're like completely blocking stuff and all they're not seeing. It's a lot of frustrating things too. You know, boyfriends coming in the way and trying to make as much money for themselves and ruining creators like, you know, future almost and stuff. So yeah, I think there definitely is a bit of a dark side to the, to the creators space as well for sure.

Are there any specific examples of ones you can share? Like, is that my dog scratching? Who's the biggest brand out of all of them that you've ever done? I mean, I'm sure some people could probably guess, but if you, if you can share them.

I think not financially. I think obviously one of the biggest brands we've developed that's done commercially well as a whole is Shreddy. It's a supplement brand and is a mobile app just because obviously we rolled it out into supermarkets. It's been going for almost four years. This year and it's having his like best year.

So I think even 2023. Yeah.

So I think that that's a proud achievement. Like years later they're no longer like quick little things. It's like a full blown business doing well, very highly profitable. We have obviously trying to think of a digital one, a digital creator that does really, really well. And again I worked with for years is Natasha Ocean. She's a YouTuber. It's just the audience is so loyal. Like she, she would, she would, she sells really, really well. Others she wants even Mike Thurston here, his brand is, is this year is, it's, it's, it's fully on the rise Madness fitness brand. We did an engine with him called Morsi Energy.

You did roll upset as well, right? Pancakes.

We did. It's closed down now.

Oh really?

And he'll be doing it himself. It was where the, the numbers just weren't where they need to be for us to continue. But you know, I think he's working on it. So yeah, I'm sure he'll make a success of it. But yeah, so I think some things work, some things didn't and for various reasons because I think a lot of times if the creator hasn't got the distribution through their own channels, through their own content creation, haven't got the understanding how things work that like hinders it. So yeah, I think a few things like that. So we launched a. There's a creator of ours called Shanada Greca. She is Kim Kardashian's personal trainer. She's got 4 million I think on TikTok, 3 million on Instagram. We do activewear brand called Zentoa. It's also us based that does really well. So many. I think obviously a lot of. We have so many businesses probably between like 500,000 a year up to like 3,4 million, you know, and in there then some are like spiking higher. But that's kind of like general sense. What I would say.

Do you think I was gonna say.

What, what do you find like biggest bottlenecks to growth on like do you see hit thresholds at certain spots?

Traditionally, I'll be honest, the bottleneck is.

That.

That it's creators are not that money driven.

That especially when I guess they've got like probably five things going on that.

I think at some point when you're making enough cash, it's you're okay with it.

Yeah, marginal utility just goes down.

I can be like, oh we did, you know, you did 2.4 million last year, let's do, let's do four this year.

Time to effort to reward.

I'm happy to have the exact same year again. And we're like, well, you can't have the same year in business. You got to be growing year and year. Like, what is this? Like, this is not how it is. Do this. Let's, let's go. Got more product range. The amount of products that haven't come to market because of that stuff is just like, can't be asked. It's just like, yeah, more stressed. I really need it. I'll have to go through all this, more dms, more this, more that. So like there's a lot of that stuff is what I would say is probably the biggest hindrance to us. I think I would have grown some things way bigger if I could done my way. And you remember how people, young people are. If you're like under 25 and you're making millions, your life has changed, you're famous. Like, do you really need to do like one more business or one more product drop or one more this? So I think I've now learned to kind of calm down and it's like, okay, cool, let me focus on the other person or let's get another person. So I have to strategically move around that because for me it's all about the total growth. And I've, I learned that the hard way. I think of really trying to do stuff. It's an creators of people and trying to push to be like, actually I'm pushing too much. There's no need.

Makes a lot of sense.

Do you scale all the brands primarily organically and you don't run paid ads, you just use their audience, or is it a mix of both?

We start organic and then paid.

Is that when you, when you reach like a ceiling organically?

I think to be honest, retargeting is just a big thing just because of the large warm audience. So I think we use that.

I bet it cleans up a the right career.

Yeah. And obviously historically we did really, really good. Obviously, as everyone knows, it's not the same as it used to be, but at the same time, yeah, seeing good on the retargeting, especially new audience is a bit harder. It works when you can get the creator to do good content, to go alongside it, like more educational etc. Problem solving. And also the creators that let us run ads from their accounts obviously changes things.

Yeah, yeah. Do you think it's in. Is it creator or product? If you have to pick one in terms of a Successful brand or creator, really?

Oh, yeah. Oh, distribution. The right creators, we joke about it could sell like toilet paper. Millions. Yeah. Like a man could sell, I think anything. Yeah. Because. And it would work.

Yeah.

Like, because it's all about your delivery on camera. How do you speak for me? Like, a good crate is almost like a good politician. Like, how manipulative can you be when you speak? Right. Because that's what a politician is like, very good at telling people. And people are like, yes, I believe this guy and people. That guy can do anything. Like, people still support, you know, Boris Johnson. And it's amazing, right, because you just have this trust alike. No, he's my guy. And it's like, that's the ultimate thing in marketing, if you think about it. So. So I think, yeah, all day long, like, I would rather. Yeah. Like, we joke, me and Grace always joke about it, that she could sell anything, like, literally anything. It would sell.

Coming back to the. The business model and stuff then. So you raised money, $11 million in 2021. Is that the right amount? Yeah. Is that the first time you'd raise money?

No, I raised back when I was in the normal days, I raised 50, 000 pounds from an angel investor. It's because I fell out the tech startups and raising money game that I knew about it. So I was like, I'm gonna raise money. That was the first one that I raised directly from a family office, probably around 2, $2.5 million. And then I raised this $11 million.

What was each of those wealth? What were they used for? Basically, what was each stage used for?

I think in the early days, obviously the business was just different. The first tranche that we raised back in 2018 used that to develop the business. Almost, funny enough, we didn't need it because all the stuff that we were doing, we had a lot of cash.

Yeah.

So almost kind of like didn't get used. The 11 million was raised to. To grow the business. We were at a stage where like, okay, if you find the right areas, grow the teams. Because you have to invest in a team, right? Like, yeah. I think especially around the product side, it was like, we've got to learn how to make products properly. Like, honestly, in the early days, obviously I was making clothes. Like the pattern, the design that this designing it. I couldn't get the shoulders to be right. Like, I was trying my best to make things look good. So I was like, I need to bring in people that know what they're doing. So I hired a girl, she was like, Senior in Ralph Lauren to come and like lead our apparel team. So we used it to hire. So I had like, I aggressively hired. Essentially had losses to then turn that into a bigger business that can do more.

Yeah.

Because I realized you just have to go through this cycle and some people invest in you. Like, okay, I need money. I'm gonna do all this stuff. We'll burn some cash, your cash. And then on the other side, will you hire bigger business, more valuable? So that's why we. That's my raised. I raised from BGF British Growth Fund, the one that I think the.

Oh, yeah, I spoke to them before. Yeah.

The biggest investors in Europe. The like consumer and all that stuff. So, yeah, they've been great ever since.

Do you think you could have raised that money in 2023 or do you think. I just think the market. Do you think it's true that the market is very different now?

Oh, it's very hard now. Yeah. Very, very hard. I'm close to the market still, so. I know. So, yeah, I think right now if you're a profitable business, you can raise. But the valuations are like cutthroat.

Yeah. I've been speaking to VCs for six months and I just decided to park it. And we're now just profitable. We just pivoted. Because if it was. I was joking. If it was 2021, I'd have raised 3 million quid at 30 mil valuation by now. Probably not, but it's just different market in it. So I'd never raised money before. So I raised 600k of angels for this thing.

Okay.

But just like my mates that he invested, he also invested.

Okay.

But then I'd never spoke to a VC before until about six months ago. Bootstrapped, huh?

For which business?

For this space. Yeah.

Yeah. Especially consumer VC is very.

And then you realize shit about D2C is fucked, blah, blah, blah. But then it's. But then I've been learning about how to position it because actually I don't position it as an E commerce brand. I position it as a psilocybin healthcare business long term. And this is the ground floor. We're building a brand that's ready for a space that doesn't yet legally exist. So getting now imagine what can happen if legislation changes. That's my pitch. It's not mushroom coffee.

Yeah.

Because that's boring. Even though that's what it is.

Who did you speak to? Everyone.

Jam Jar, active, bgf, Piper, probably every VC in London. But I just. Because I got the pod, so I just shared a video on LinkedIn. I never went to any of them. I just put. I just put a Pitch.com link. So here's the deck. But then there's a lot of tire kicking. It's like dating in 2023. There's a lot of first days, there's not a lot of second ones. It's a fun process, but it's also soul destroying.

Yeah. I would. Raising money and having invested in stuff, the business completely changes because. So I would be very hesitant about that unless you truly want to build something big.

I think I'm stupid enough that I do because I already had a bunch of stuff and I had a business that went bankrupt when I was 24. Right. So I've seen the highs and lows, which I think a lot of people in their 20s haven't. So now I'm like, I'm still in the game. I'm still swinging. Fuck it. We may as well try and get as big as possible. And I just genuinely don't care if it goes wrong again because I'll just start again. Thing is, but it won't go wrong again.

I think what I would do is try to like, really the investor is like whoever. It's more about modeling out the money and how. What would you do with it and yeah, when would it like almost come whole and when would the return come from whoever. What I've seen with having that much money in the bank at once, whatever, like what it does to you and the team is actually something to really manage because all of a sudden it feels like it's free cash flow and it's hard because everybody wants pay rises. Everybody wants this. Everybody wants. And you want it all too, for yourself. Meaning, like you just want to spend more because there's more allocation. You start to think if you did this, you say, we'll sponsor events, we'll sponsor podcasts. I'll give this to every big podcaster out there and then I'll be on the table. Like you start to. Because you have the money.

Yeah, yeah. It's VC sauce money. Start making stupid decisions.

What is it? Fast checkout. 100 mil in a year. That should be illegal.

Something's a little bit. Bit of that. Plus, yeah. I think in. I always find it interesting in DTC when people raise because I'm like, what for understanding tech? Because tech is expensive.

I guess there's two things fundamentally in there because you're either not profitable or you need a lot of sunk cost to get profitable, basically. So I had wild Cosmetics on. You probably know them. Massive brand in London and they're doing like 30, 40 mil now. The founder of them came on, they've raised 8 mil. I don't think they're profitable now. I mean, he said they weren't on the pod, but their valuation was crazy.

Yeah, but that's got a team of.

60 people in every shop.

But that stuff is just not real. What I mean by that is you shouldn't. That is not success.

I don't know if it sounds like I'm talking bad about him now, but is the game not to just playing devil's advocate, Because I find it fascinating, the whole fundraising, especially when it comes to dtc, because everyone says it's not a BC game, dtc, it needs to be tech. Have you pitched Gen Flow as tech then, rather than a group of brands? Fundamentally, yeah.

So our biggest piece of my business, though, we spent the whole time so far talking about brands. The biggest piece of the business is our subscription revenue, because from every subscriber subscribing to a creator, we take a percentage. So there's a massive monthly recurring revenue in the business business. You have hundreds of thousands of subscribers across creators. I mean, you're getting a percentage on them. So essentially we're making a few million a month on subscription revenue from creators.

And that's the business from digital products primarily and physical supplements.

Everything digital through subscriptions.

Right.

So obviously people subscribe to someone's content and we get a percentage of that. So we do that through mobile apps, web platforms. So I think that that's actually the biggest part of the business. Second biggest part of the business now is actually working with brands. So for example, we've just done one of our creators, Liana Deeb, she's working with gymshark on something very cool. She was. She did a post with Ben. My team was there two days in Gymshark's office. So we're doing like brand new products with brands. One of our creators, she worked with Addison Rae on a big Google stuff. We got paid shitloads for it. So, like that's where the second part of the business, third is actually the brands and the products in terms of money. So, yeah, I think going back to it, I think tech and also audience, because the brand itself is like the last part of it, you know, even the fact that we're working. So my pitch to a consumer VC would be don't invest in all those consumer brands because they have to pay for ads. And that's, that's. So I have A slide on consumer brands versus creative first brands like in my deck. Because I'm making the point of for every £9 of your money they're gonna spend on ads, you know, it cost me £2 to convert that same customer to buy my stuff for the cream.

But then I'm just interested in this. Like you said, there's a lot of brands in. I'd kind of, I guess bedroom brands, what I'd call them like single figure, millions in revenue. Which arguably that's where a lot. That's. That's where I've got twice before. That's where you've got. The part I'm finding hard is how do I get to 20mil, 30mil, 100mil revenue, which obviously is very, very hard anyway, but can I create there without being LOGAN Paul?

Yeah, 100.

Because you still need to run ads right past a certain point.

Because the way you start doing then is you start leveraging other creators, audiences. So what you would do smartly is immediately start working with other creators, doing collaborations with them, bringing them in, make sponsoring them, etc, because that thing works, you just find others to do it with to get bigger. Right?

Yeah.

Like gymshark did, like and we've seen that too. And we're doing it too. So if it was this, I would look for a creator to immediately flavor.

Because the one example, one of my investors, guy called Jack started waveflyer. Don't know if you know that business D2C lender. But he was telling me, he just, when he was really drunk, he said you should try and get Emma chamberlain and go 50 50. I said she's got a coffee brand but obviously, I mean she's the fucking biggest influencer right now. And I was thinking, do you think it's a good play to hypothetically get a massive try and get just Justin Bieber came on board, I gave him 70% equity. It's probably worth it in theory, right? It's just how do you get in the door?

I would not do that. And they wouldn't want to.

He's laughing at me.

But it's just a Bieber biggest example. Yeah, yeah. I've had dinner with Justin Bieber.

Yeah, Yeah. I need to get him some fucking randomness.

He would want to do this.

Why not?

People are looking for. People want to launch their own thing for sure. I think that would be the wrong way in here. You should go the level below to people that create good content and trying to do like their flavor this and don't need to give equity. Nobody if you gave people a little bit of a fee and a percentage of the sales. People would say yes. And if you gave them like creative control, work with them, make them feel special, they will do it. It's like the Molly Mae plt thing, like making someone just feel like it's yours, but it's not really. I'm just paying you and you're gonna do exactly what's part of the agreement. That's what I would do. So I was saying, how do you scale to that for me? So you need to leverage other people's audiences. So you need to find who they are. I'm sure you already pay small creators and that stuff and probably they do like videos and stuff of them drinking, like all that basic stuff. I would just try and do that at a higher level. Like who is the perfect person to collaborate with and someone that creates content about, you know, for example, like if like Chris that I'm working with. The reason is because this whole content is about being, being. Being smarter, being a slightly more, you know, meta man versus a normal one, you know, in other words. So just people like that, I would go to and say, let's. I want to do your flavor with you. So we did a similar thing with Bloom Nutrition, who's actually a creator of ours. Her name is Mari. We don't do the brand. So her and her husband started the brand. We do her digital stuff.

I think I've seen that brand, Bloom.

Nutrition, and they're killing it. Like probably, probably 100 million this year, I would say. And it's perfect example create a brand monetizer audience. We've done collaborations with creators for them. So then we launched a flavor with all our creators for them. That. That made them more famous. So yeah. And then they've killed you on TikTok. Like sell greens basically is the main product. And now they're the best selling product in Target, I think two top based on the price.

Yeah, she's on the website now. Yeah, I've seen this.

Yeah, yeah. So. So the owners of that is basically we work with them on their digital product.

So this is doing 100 mil.

You know, I don't know, but I'm saying they are on that trajectory for sure.

Yeah, yeah.

Because they're absolutely blowing up.

Greens are popping right now. Athletic greens every morning.

Creative Branches brand. This is the biggest female brand.

Interesting.

The same thing. So I think, going back to think, is it possible?

Of course.

And I think I'm in that chase too, if I'm honest. I want to build one Brand to be bigger than the rest, for sure. Just to say I've done it and I would love to exit a brand too. And that's something that I'm working on as well. I want to build a portfolio brand and sell it as an achievement.

But do you think it's more realistic and arguably less stressful to build 100 brands doing 5 million a year than one doing 500 like Gymshark? Because you said this as well, like he's got a group of brands with someone else that he's working on.

Yeah, we've got one really big brand and we're starting a lot of other ones at the moment. Sort of like mid eight figures. One of them.

In theory, it's easier in it, but then it's just depends on what it's like. The noble pursuit of trying to build one thing is huge, I think.

I think one is easier.

No, it's not simple.

Really. Depends.

I think having one thing to only focus on would be nice coming from the world where I have so many things to focus on. But I think it wouldn't be as fun, especially if you stay in your lane, even using Gymshark example, because it's only clothes. Like, surely after the 900th legging launch you like, what do I do now? Like to. Actually, I think that the other thing that I would personally struggle with, what I enjoy about my role and my business, is that it's so fun to go from product to product to product or digital. Digital to digital or a brand deal. It's just. It's more fun for sure. So I think I prefer this side because of that. And I love tech. I love tech revenue, digital revenues, SaaS revenues. Because the funnel of you did nothing and it created promotion and lots of people joined and we did absolutely nothing. That's the best part on the tech.

Was that firstly, that's a genius way of monetizing. I think that's. Was that baked in and intentional from sort of day one, or is that something that you brought in?

That was our first thing. So when we launched on October 16, like so digital content and subscription and tech has been the core of the business from the very beginning. And then the others have been added on.

Was that. Was that revenue that. That monetization for yourselves, that fee structure.

Baked in from first launch, from the very first sale?

That's really genius in terms of like, I bet, like in terms of how that.

Yeah, otherwise it would probably would have gone bankrupt at some point.

Yeah.

So our competitor, we had some competitors here in London, some in the us A lot of them have gone bankrupt who only focused on DTC brands with creators. Because if the creators away in Bali for three months and like they're not doing whatever, like what you're not going to. Well, you. How you going to pay your staff? So we couldn't take that chance. So for me, like digital is the core of the business. Delivers the most money. And then we do all the other stuff around.

Margins isn't even just margin based. Isn't it just difficult. Different physical product.

Yeah. And then, you know, retail and stuff. We do the margins are terrible. But it's just fun in wholesale.

Yeah, yeah.

That's becoming massive in America at the moment, isn't it? Like Walmart, Target, all jumping on that bad Morgan of like of Creative Arts consumer.

I think it's only top 1%. Everyone else will be absolutely hard done by, that's for sure. Just because people charge listing fees, marketing fees, like if they put a little banner for you, they'll charge you like 20,000 for doing so. Like it's everything you have to pay for once you're in the store. So it's not the best model.

Yeah.

I guess top ones are low risk to them as well. Isn't it like buyer's not going to be like, oh, we're going to take Mr.

Beast, like happy dad.

Yeah.

Is that. Do you know the background of that brand? As in, like, obviously Nelk haven't actually developed the product. I mean, I highly doubt they have. Is there a competitor of yours that is. Is orchestrating that? Because that's a huge one.

Yeah. So I know who manufactures it. I think the team that actually sit and do it is they've hired in now. But there are a few people. Yes. In the US that are competitors of ours, but way more boutique. Like one's called Beach House.

I was literally about to say that Kendall Jenner's teeth thing.

Yeah. But that's the earlier model that I was telling you. So they'll have 70, 80% equity and it's their brands and they give 20% to the person. It's their face. But that's why those people will never talk about it. Like their thing. If you go to Kendall Jenner, she'll never have Moon in her bio. There'll be a post here and there, but that's it. Because it's the other way around. They did Millie Bobby Brown's makeup brand.

Yeah.

So some of those exist. My biggest challenge is so in Hollywood, let's call it the big agencies. They Only want to work the traditional way, which is what's the money up front? So I like pitch the Rock. And his team was like, oh, we would want a million up front for any discussion. I was like, fine, let's move to the next stage. Like, you know, let me call their bluff and see what happens. So from there, move to the next stage. Did the pitch. Next stage. Did the pitch. Then there was a call with nine people on it. Did the pitch. Then there's a call with the Rock and his right hand person in his house. He didn't actually come onto the camera. It was so annoying. I was just like, I just like waiting. Come on. He was like in the gym and she's like, yeah, it's coming any minute. And then she kept talking to me, kept talking to me. So we did the whole thing. He's like, oh, sorry, yeah, he's just not finished yet. I was like, oh, for God's playing chess.

Yeah.

But, you know, we were pitching him this thing and that thing. He never launched. He launched Zoa instead. I like to believe. And she did say, the day we decided to do this project, we will come to you. So, you know, I don't know, I don't want to say what it is because it may still happen. But the point is those gatekeepers make it really hard. That's why the agencies that exist in the us, they are doing the model that people accept, which is pay me upfront. Wants more like a tea, I'll do your deliverables. Done. And it's just. That's just not what I want to do. Mainly because then I'm actually running five of my own brands with some partners versus what I'm trying to do, which is leverage audiences at scale. Because I feel like that's the big opportunity because there's nothing. Feels great about, like, there's nothing greater for me to like. Like, even when this thing that I'm working on, Chris and James comes out, it's a brand new audience, brand new product. And the fun of that is just it's its own thing versus trying to be like, how to keep selling this one. Right. Keep saying this one brand. So I think I'm in the game of lots of small, profitable DTC brands combined with maybe one or two that have equity in. I'm trying to scale bigger.

You got a brand with Bieber coming then? No, no, he's launching a mushroom brand called Space Foods. Yeah, it's an interesting space.

If you want to pitch to him. I can do that. We pitch to Hailey Bieber. So Swim brand. It didn't work out. I've pitched almost everybody at the highest level. I've tried to in some way or the other.

Do you think celebrities like that is a slam dunk if you get a deal done, or is there still cases where it just might not hit?

It's the inner workings. So right now I'm currently negotiating with, without saying names, I guess, some of the biggest following on Instagram as a whole. And you think slam dunk? I am thinking Ronaldo.

Imagine that.

Probably almost that big. Well, just another version of that. But the point is, no, it's not because it comes down to the team, who's around them, who's the smart one around them, who actually gets it. It's it, it's that. So I think in my experience of working people, so when I did Anthony Joshua, of course growing up here, obviously it was like, wow, imagine working with him. We did. And you know, his team is just not business people, so just don't understand anything. They're like the boxing people that he was with him when he was young and now is his team. So they just don't get online business anything. So we're like, this is the strategy. This is how you should launch. So we launched all the boxing products. They did well, let's watch the kids range. Let's do this. We launched JD physical and online. But every strategic thing you want to do, that's where it becomes hard. So let's say if you didn't do the adjusting B, like, yeah, man, let's do it. And then he puts a post up. You sell someone day one, but then when you like, okay, can you actually. The post was of you driving and he just had this on the side. Could you like, remember you meant to do a post where you like drinking it? Nah, man, can't do that. It's like, why are my social media guys said it's not not good. It's like, no, no, you meant to do it properly. And that's where the problem begins. Because every person that's in that relationship will be against you. And I can't explain why, because people have to show famous people that they have some value. And the way they do that is by making you feel like the people, the outsiders, know nothing. And I know everything because I'm your boy.

I'm just a point.

So it's very hard. So unless you can build very good relationship with the main person or people around them, it's very tough to get the best out of them.

You Know, Is that why you probably.

Do you find that past a certain size of person or even like. Yes, you know, celebrity versus an online celebrity, like say a Grace Beverly, again, using an example, she probably doesn't come from a background of that. She's very obviously switched on herself. Probably doesn't have this massive. I don't, I don't obviously.

You know, I think people later in life, it just depends. Right. So I think people that I've met earlier in the journey, like, different relationship, trust you more. Yeah, it's different. Right. So like, if it was email, I can message him now on something he'll get back to immediately. But obviously there'll be people I've met and they're like, oh, I've been chasing him, doesn't get back to me or whatever. It's just because so just relationship. Even in the Justin Bieber thing, it's not that. It's not bad. It's just when you're not in the circle and people see you, you as you're here just to make your money from our thing that we got going on, people are very reserved, which you can understand.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's not a good or bad. I understand why. Because. Because of that reason. But when you're in the circle, then obviously people are like, let's make more money together.

Yeah, yeah.

And they're willing to.

It's like level playing field almost.

I think that's the hardest thing with the top 1% of. If that's Hollywood, creators, etc, just getting into that circle of that person, not the industry as a whole.

Is it getting easier over time? I guess as you get bigger, you get more reputation, your business gets bigger or worse.

I think definitely the more moves we make, the more people see it gets easier and easier. Yeah. I think we're quite blessed to be in a position now that almost every door is unlocked. It's just about timing and everything else. Like, I can easily go to like, we work with Superdrug a lot. We've got three brands of Superdrug. I can easily go to Superdrug for something brand new before I've launched something and they would want it.

It's like the Reggie.

There's not much money in it, but we can do it, you know, getting you into store.

Have you got an exit plan then for. You've obviously alluded to that a few times. I mean, I'm sure you've had offers. Like, where do you see this going? Like, you're so young.

Yeah. Yes. I think for me, probably like in the I guess next three, four years I would want to sell the business I think for sure. I think business. I'm doing this for seven years. I think for me I want to prove a few more things which is like I was saying, we'll launch a few big things with that, have equity in, keep scaling, want to grow into the US more. We grew really well before COVID Covid hindered us. So now we're kind of like back, back growing. Need to spend more time on there. I've just got my five year business visa so that was a must need because traveling on Esther again and again is problematic. I mean stopped a few times on that which has been annoying and so yes I would say and creator economy, everything that's going on. I think business is a lot to do with timing. If we don't sell I need to be able to upsell the idea of audiences to somebody before it becomes so normal that no one thinks that's valuable. So yeah I would want to for sure.

Who do you think would buy it or. Or which sort of business or group or.

This is quite interesting. I think Shopify could buy us and they can call it Shopify Creators. Yeah on that at the moment, aren't they? Yeah, I think it'd be interesting if. Do they want to provide a hands on approach or call it. Yeah like creators where. So I think that that's a. That's a valid one. I also see maybe large influencer marketing agencies could. Because a lot of people they want to come onto the creator side at the same time because they're like actually because it's happening more and more. Right. So DTC brands are launching white label like you can call it space items and that one is 5050 with you and B. But while you still have yours. So that's becoming so common with brands doing that and so I think it could be an agency for that reason. It could even be a big brand for that reason. Then that's probably my initial thoughts.

Of.

Course like a private equity or someone else could just buy it to like run it. But those would be my initial. Or it could be like I. I had based in Canada. It's like a core selling platform they listed recently.

Mind Valley is it?

Course. Yeah. There's not a teachable kind of vibe. Yeah it's not. Podia is another one. I think it's Kajabi. So Kajabi listed on the stock exchange. So then they approached us to like buy Interesting. I guess that's just sauce because they could, they could Again, add on to. We sell courses, but actually we can. You can also launch a brand.

Yeah.

So attach us or you can work with our brand.

So.

So I think there's interesting place.

I think like, yeah, your proven ability to like monetize and generate awareness is ridiculously valuable.

So I think the biggest IP of the business is we know how to monetize an audience and we know how to work with creators because we've been in the trenches for so long. So I think that's our biggest asset over everything else. And then we understand tech to be able to build like, I guess digital revenues which are a bit custom and sticky and all that stuff. A bit more bespoke than your average course or something. That's probably our biggest IPs.

Yeah, I can see that.

Yeah.

It's huge value add to many businesses.

Have you got a number in mind or just want to get as big as you can and then you're out?

Because it's quite interesting because when you think of like, yeah, if I was to, you know, have like 30, 40 million cash in my pocket, of course that's a lot of money. But then as in like that would be enough for you to go and start your next thing with or a few things or whatever. Or if it's. But then you're like, yeah, I wanted to get the most possible. So there is a day number. I think it's more about when I'm. When I'm done with what I was trying to do. Number would be what it'd be. I'm not supposed about the money in that way actually more bothered about. Yeah, I guess once I've built and sold a brand in itself. The other thing we're working on this year is. I didn't talk much about it. We're launching our own stuff, not products, digital stuff. So we're launching a thing called Creator College. So one thing, the last bit of my game plan is going after the long tail of the wannabe creator. Because you've already worked with the biggest. That's all working really well. It's profitable. Business is great. I wanted my. My last roll of dice is I want buy to monetize the long tail. So we're about to launch Creator College. Essentially it's a.

Is that with Ali Abda? No, that's where he does that. So that's the YouTuber. Sorry.

He does something like that. But we're going more. So essentially it's filled with a. Essentially software but with content. So yes, you'll be able to learn how to build an audience and all that stuff. Be interviewing our creators to be inside of it. Me and the team create lots of content for exactly 60 hours of content. You connect all your social platforms, see all your stats in real time, you have goals and stuff then that you can be like, I want to get to 10,000 followers. What you need to do. So that's probably my last thing that I want to go after. Building our own subscription revenues for our own products. Genetics dimension. About the. That we're about to launch that as a product. So yeah, I think that's the final bit of my plan. I want to. Because that's going to make the company valuation go higher once we have our own revenues also flowing in alongside the percentage and the rest of the stuff that we do. So yeah, that's. That's the final piece. And then so.

And then what? Go to Bali and Sandovich?

No, I think I would probably do two things. No, honestly, I think I would either, I would either raise a fund. I'm quite interested in that. I think I have very good connections to like family offices. I think I'll be able to go and convince someone to give me 200 million to sit and invest whilst I also invest some personal money alongside it. I'm quite interested in that. I think that because I would love to invest in other businesses. I have this idea of maybe even launching a creator focused fund that they only invest directly in creators and creative businesses. Because imagine going to a creator and saying, you know, I'll invest in you, let's get to 10 million subscribers.

Yeah.

And building the team around and everything.

I saw a platform this. It's like you can, you can invest in YouTubers. You've seen that. I forgot what it's called. I thought it was genius on paper.

Yeah. So I think they're doing a bit more like basically that you're licensing your content etc. So I think the model needs to be better than what's out there now. So I think I'm interested in that. The other thing would be. I just, I think there's no sitting on the beach for sure. You can do that in your life anyway.

See that's a mindset thing, isn't it? Like some people. I'm just not wired like that either business. It's like you have to keep going, you have to have something to do.

Just love the game, don't you? To some extent. Love all the pain and suffering.

Lots of other stuff. So we run a charity hospital in Pakistan right now. So I would want to grow that more we do like a food program where we get give food out to like poor people and stuff like that. So I think I'd want to do more of that stuff. I would want to raise money probably from some of my creators to funnel it that way for charity stuff. So, yeah, I'll see. I think too far away at the moment. I think I feel like I have lots to prove. I'm gonna build my own audience. So obviously this year I've started to do a bit more content, but that's definitely up there to do list.

So you got any philosophical questions? I haven't gone that deep yet, but I feel like we've covered a lot.

No, I've just been fascinated. Yeah, it's been really interesting.

What do you think's been the hardest thing over the past 7ish years?

I guess. Yeah. What's been the low, low point? You obviously said Covid hindered your growth, which is interesting because they are indeed.

No, sorry. It was just the us, but otherwise Covid was.

Yeah, it was a blessing.

It was a blessing for sure. We sold every item, every fitness possible item that we had. We sold it. It was amazing. And business was like amazing during that phase. That's when I raised the money was actually through Covid, hardest, I think relationships with some creators for sure. Which is disappointing when you look back at it because, like, you did something for somebody and it was so much work and it was hard and you made them a lot of money. But because a boyfriend or somebody came and said something like, you know, almost like your value is nothing because of that. So I think that that's been tough. I think I've had to learn that nothing is personal.

Yeah.

Because it feels personal for sure. Yeah. Especially in my game when you've like sat with somebody like this and I've made you like millions of cash and I've done it from my own bare hands, and then for someone to like turn on you or not respect you in the same way or speak ill of you, that shit's hard. And I think that I've had to learn like how to deal with that other stuff, even with team members, similar thing. Like, you know, I think. And then I think the part that is hard and will always be hard is how your employees think of you, perceive of you, because they don't actually know you as a person or what you're actually doing in a big company. Especially with hybrid. Everyone thinks the CEO is like this big bad CEO and what. What does he actually do? And that's the Natural thing for, like, a larger business. I think that's just hard because people have no idea that it's a hard.

Problem to solve as well. Yeah, I've become more conscious of that. It's like, how do you set the vision from the top and how do you stay present with the people that it's at the. At the lower end? Like. Yeah. Obviously, if the further up the chain there you get, the more complex contact they have with you further down. It's like you still need to somehow try and engage those individuals or at least get.

So in my journey, like, yes, I've gone through the journey of. I tried really hard to make a big effort for the whole business to now. Slowly, slowly not caring.

Yeah.

So we do a thing called MGM, which is monthly Gemflow meet. It will be in the office, like, 90 people. I'll stand and go through the whole business where we are. What's going on? Team will get up and present, like, make a lot of effort educating the people about the business culture. What are we doing? Why shout out? So I've been through that, like, that and basically put so much effort in trying to get people to make sure they're well informed. All the stuff looked after. But, yeah, I guess in hindsight, like, people are gonna have their opinion no matter what. And it's not actually, you can do much. Like, I, like, will spend 10 grand on, like, a summer big thing. Half the company won't come because I'm busy. I'm doing this, I'm doing that, whatever. And it's like, well, like, I thought you guys want to spend time together, keep saying, company should be doing more social events. And I've put this massive event on, and now you're saying, yeah, my train's a bit, like, far. I don't think I'll be able to come today. It's like, what? So that's hard. It's just because, again, it's. I live with this principle, actually, which is like, zero expectations. Every time I've had any expectations in my life, I get disappointed. So, yeah, so it's like. So I'm like, zero expectations. Everything, like family, this, that, everything. Like, if you. I just don't expect much of people to lie down, like, in a good space. Because once every time I've done, it just feels like it's not gonna go the right way. Even a deal. I'm expecting to win this deal. It'll never happen if I'm like, whatever. Then it's like, oh, yeah, you want to do this? All right. Let's do it. So I think that's probably my. My big thing to like cope with everything now for sure.

Do you think this is like a slightly off topic one but something most recently. Do you think you could have built the business you had if you drank alcohol every week? I don't know if you've ever drank alcohol or.

I see the point.

I've debated this recently and I feel like and I'm trying to go like tea total for like a few months and even just in like three weeks. I feel it might just be a placebo to an extent but just that clear headedness because I used to drink probably twice a week. I would have midweek drinks on the pod the next day. I feel fucking fuzzy headed. I'd drink on the weekend with some girl or whatever and it's just so ingrained in UK culture. Then I started like reading about some guy on Twitter who runs a fund saying founders shouldn't drink. And I'm like there's a lot of fucking merit to that probably but there's obviously exceptions. Get the old guy, that's the Lena and he's like a cocaine addict but he's built a billion pound company. But it's probably not most people. Right.

I think there's no hard rule ultimately is like what makes you you right and what are those ingredients are so and learning and doing that in certain level of control. I think I think it's more about that there isn't no right or wrong people have done. People are super religious and the best people in the world but not successful in business. On the other side we the worst people in the world could have you know done whatever to people but still make a lot of money. So I think it's again it's a weird measure but I think yeah the answer would be are you drinking because you want to or is it peer pressure? Is it because everyone else is too is doing it is it. I think it's more why you make the decision. As long as you made the decision wholeheartedly then then yeah you look a good parent. Don't you see that you sound like an alcoholic.

I think it's some people's only vehicles are fun is when it becomes a problem it's your relationship to it.

Like if you I think what is fun for you and if that revolves around you drinking then that's probably a problem.

If you can get fulfillment from multiple other things other than just getting absolutely whacked with your mates.

I guess the thing is do you think then you I guess the same concept is like, basically what we're saying is, do you need a vice to make you feel a certain way?

Yeah.

And that's a conversation I often have with people who are like, what's your vice like? Surely you do something which is like, what is it? And I think it's interesting because people, obviously people normally think they need something which is like the down time, the me time, something which is different than work or normal or the normal stuff. So it's just that everyone has their own thing.

Yeah.

That they tend to drink weed. Whatever.

My final question, which I ask everyone. This is a bit of a cliche, but it's interesting. If you give three bits of advice, you're 18 year old self, upon reflection, what would they be?

I think not to doubt yourself because I'd probably stop myself so much from taking that step on certain things because I'm like, not now, not yet, etc. I think that'd be number one. Number two, The stop. Don't try to get other people to see your way. When you're building a business, it happens a lot that you'll be saying, hey guys, come on, let's do this. And everyone's like, no, you're like, okay, then I'll leave it. Like, it's not a good idea. But now I was like, man, that was an amazing idea. I appreciated it, like in podcasting for like, we should launch it as a service. Like, wow, it's really worth it. So much headache editing back and forwards. Do you want to do it always take equity or so much paperwork. Like, we're gonna be stuck with this creator forever. Like there's always that. And then, you know, because I'm asking for the opinion when I should just trust my instincts, I think it's kind of like, yeah, so I'll be second. Number three, I think. There's a funny one. I think I would say don't to like raising money is not the answer. Because for a long time I thought that's the way to scale the business. I need more money. That's probably what you said earlier.

Yeah.

But honestly, because I always thought that's it. And it was never that. And I realized that truly that if I want to do the next move, last time I raised money and did it, now I'm like, I need to generate the money and put that to work and grow it that way. Because I think it's the right way to grow. I did it the raising money way. I think the, the, the other side of that is, doesn't look that great is what I would say to myself. Because you just think I've had more money, problem solved. And it's like, not really because what happened with me was money gave me the ability to hire better. So I hired better people. But those better people don't actually come with like that understanding that you want them to. So I hired like a guy that was running Selfridges online, did a billion in transactions. So different then I was like, okay, he knows all consumer brands the day and night are working on. They're selling billion dollars through their website. How can this guy not know how to optimize PDP pages, blah blah. He must like be the master at it.

What works for selfish will not work for a creator that's never run a product online before.

Like saying, yeah, but it's just, you know that. And before that he was at asos, like yeah, so so much hands on experience. He ran the whole men's division at asos. And like anyway, so I've been through that because then if you, if money's not the thing, you'll pay someone 250, 000 salary. You said the best. You're like, it's worth it. That's what everyone's always told you. It's all about teams, all about hiring the right people. You know, hire people who are experts. All this stuff that I've always heard and read in books, I almost followed that because I had the money. It ended up being the wrong decision because I should have stuck to what I was doing. Me and the guys knew we're doing so well, should have stuck to it. Firstly trying to do a bigger step because I thought we're big now, we need to, we need to big. And that's the mentality thing, right? Because yeah, you're. When you feel like you're successful, you want to do the next thing, the big thing. Even to the US like we went probably prematurely thinking back now in 2019, set up an office, hired people because you were like, let's go to the us We've already done it here. I was like, we don't really haven't done it in the uk. So yeah, that's all I would say think very hard for raising money. And that's it.

That's probably a very relevant final comment in 2023 in the market room. On that bombshell, it's been a pleasure. I think we probably could have gone for three hours, but I'll let you get home. As always, subscribe to the pod. We'll link all the stuff down below, and we'll catch you in the next episode.

Cheers for watching, guys.

Peace.