We're at £300k per month profitable - here's my plan to 3x that this year - Doc the Journey Ep 34

Right, we're back with episode 34 of Documenting the Journey. I have forced my dog to join me for an episode because he was sitting. Well, he always fucking sits on me. He's basically the office secretary. So he's gonna make a little feature or I'll put him down. I am indeed wearing a fucking poker card. I don't know what these called fucking a deck of cards shirt, which I got on sale. I'm still in my gym kit, but I just, instead of doing it topless, thought I'd put on a fucking shirt because it wouldn't go down so well. Episode 34, I've documented the journey. I look like I'm in fucking Goblin mode, because I am. Which basically means all I've been doing for the past, Certainly the past week, 247 is either working or training or sleeping or eating, which is probably pretty standard. But time seems to fly by when you're just. I've come up with Goblin mode, which means I just don't fucking leave the flat and I don't fucking meet anyone and I probably should do more of it, which I'm trying to do, especially as I'm hiring a few people, which I'll get to. But. Yeah, what's going on? I guess it was a fairly big week because it's the first time since I launched the fucking brand that we released a new product which is obviously Dream Dust. As you know, that came out on Monday. Quick rundown on that. I feel like it's always a fucking anticlimax when you build up something so much like, like the film and shit, which was ultimately a bit of fun. We're going to start running ads to that because I actually want to make more use of that. I think doing that stuff makes the brand stand out, but it's obviously it's never going to move the needle like revenue wise, that specific content. But I'm still going to do it. I think it's like net overall worth it in the long term. Dream Dust, we had a record day on Friday. Not Friday, fucking Monday when it launched at 6pm Bear in mind, we just, we just decided to do it fully organic. Weren't running any ads to it, no landing pages, anything yet. Partly because we had very limited stock with 4,000 units. Well, relatively limited stock. And I just wanted to see how it went down organically with existing customers pretty much, and obviously like people that follow the brand organically, et cetera, et cetera. So that was a record day. That was good. The past few days, three days since Then Tuesday, Wednesday and today have been pretty similar. AOV is up like 20%. Obviously a lot of bundles and stuff, which is good. So I have a good feeling about it. Obviously I'm working on new SKUs. It's always kind of nerve wracking launching a new product because obviously the entire business has been built on the back of Rainbow Dust. Again, as you know, if you follow this shit, having two Day and Night is obviously a way more comprehensive offering. And yeah, seems to have gone down pretty well. We're gonna start running ads. I think that would be more of a telltale sign, but that has happened. Started running ads again. The eu, which I think I probably mentioned already because you got local warehouse that can ship to there in like two days instead of fucking four weeks getting stuck at customs. So Dream Dust and EU ads are like the main levers I'm pulling right now. We're at like 300 grand a month level now, just to be completely transparent. Pounds, which is pretty decent level to be at. I think we could have gone harder, but I really pulled back a little bit in terms of efficiency, so we're doing that. I'd like a 2.7 blended ROAS, which is profitable. I wasn't profitable and I wasn't that high on Roas the first few months of the brand. So, yeah, like, I think that's the partly benefit of a lot of marketing, a lot of acquisition and subscriptions in the first few months. Obviously like the benefit it repeats starting to come in, but also new product helps with that. And I think, yeah, maybe we're just starting to get some proper momentum, which feels nice. But obviously long, long, long, long, long way to go to get to where I want to be. But yeah, I think we can keep pushing it and someone's just walked in the fucking door, so I'm gonna have to stop recording my episode. What was I saying? Fucking Jack walked in distracting me. Yeah. So all that's happened. Don't know, it feels like starting to. I mean, it probably always feels like this and the carrots always moving, but it feels like it's starting to become like an actual decent business. Whereas before, first few months are always a bit like, is this a fluke? I don't know. And there's still loads of things that are going wrong that could go wrong. But second product starts to feel a bit more established now, which is cool because worked very fucking hard on it. Probably more than any brand I've ever worked on, to be honest, because I now, with maturity and experience, feel like I know what it actually takes to even give myself a chance of building something like genuinely successful. Whereas in the past I was maybe a bit naive and was maybe a bit more focused on the fucking lifestyle of an entrepreneur. Even though I worked a lot, but like I was still fucking on auto trader every day and thinking about what watch I could buy next. Whereas I just don't care about that right now at all. I genuinely care a lot about the business and what I'm building and the fucking product and what the brand vision like actually feels like my entire fucking purpose. Which probably sounds very dramatic, but my vision for it is much bigger than just, you know, an econ brand or a fucking supplement. So, yeah, I don't know, it's very, very hard, but I feel like I'm doing the right thing. So, yeah, what else has been going on? Horizontal scale, like I mentioned, like my plan to scale over the next few years really is just. And this is why I get asked by VCs and stuff all the time. I'm still speaking to you, by the way. New products, really that's a big lever to pull, obviously. New territories we've only been running out in the uk, so localizing, obviously gone into eu. Probably next step of that would be German website, for example, something like that. Obviously new channels been big on Amazon. Amazon got disabled actually 10 days ago. I said disabled, like the product just got like temporarily banned. They've got an agency that fixing it. But that has hurt revenue quite a lot because we were on track to do like 35k on Amazon last month in January, which is a decent chunk, like coming up to over 10% of revenue in January. And yeah, we didn't end up doing 35k on Amazon because you got chops like halfway through. But it's really annoying. To kill some momentum, dream dust has launched on there. We're launching the mugs on there. I think Amazon could be a really good channel because it's very profitable compared to D2C, like 30, 40% net margins. Just, yeah, it got fucking disabled. So working on getting that back. Also working on some potential retail things because I want to start dipping my toe there. Yeah, deciding to like gradually spread sales channels, marketing channels a little bit, start doing a few interesting affiliate things, which I may look at. I'll talk about specifically in like another video to show you like what the full market stat looks like. But still very, very heavy Instagram, as you might imagine. One thing I've been thinking about, which is probably a bit premature, is potentially hiring like a COO or maybe even a CEO. But I think that probably whether you call my fucking CEO or COO or whatever, I guess the difference is are they responsible for like the P and L in the same way that I am? If they're not CEO, probably not. But I spoke to an interesting potential person who I don't know if I should even say his name or whatever, but would be like the sort of, the perfect sort of person potentially. You know, he's like in his mid-40s, spent 15 years at Adidas and probably giving it away. Then he worked at two startups from like early stage to exit, like private equity exit and the most recent one which is like about a year ago now he's moved on from that and is potentially looking for another challenge. I got put in touch with him by two different people and it's just interesting speaking to guys like that and you think fuck, is it too soon for someone like that? Obviously they'd want a big salary and a bit of equity basically that'd be how you'd structure it. Or is it a case of bringing them in now is actually how you unlock the next level like way sooner. My gut feel is it's probably in between and maybe the better way to do that with whether that person or someone else equivalent would be like bring them in as a consultant on like two or three days a month or something to start with or maybe a day a week. So four days a month to start with and see how it goes for like three to six months and then maybe bring them in full time. That's probably the best compromise of both. So yeah, thinking about that. And also I'm hiring right now for a full time social media, I don't know what to call them like social media manager but someone that can just get the hands stuck into a lot of things. So working with a recruiter for that but also doing my own things, speaking to a bunch of in candidates, my standards are very high probably for everything because I've worked with good people and I've worked with shit people and the difference is insanely big as you might imagine with any, any job. So yeah, bringing on someone full time for that. Florian has gone full time operations. So I guess the core team right now is me, Florian on on operations and customer service. Lucy does a lot of performance marketing content stuff, Brad does a lot of the creative stuff and I've got Simon doing finance. That's like five core team. But then obviously we lean on a shitload of agencies so AKM run all the Ads. Got any? Got Zarac doing emails. Got an Amazon agency. I've got an affiliate agency now which I might talk about more my supplier. Kind of consider them an agency because they're providing a breadth of services. Yeah, I mean like nutrition compliance, production. 3 PL is effectively another team member or group. So when you think about like that it's more than five people involved. It's just like five core people and probably six pretty soon. So I think you can, I think this could scale to million a month, like 10 mil run rate consistently with 5 or 6 people core team. So especially because you just obviously leverage a lot of agencies and shit. So yeah, that's what it looks like right now. But apart from those two people, definitely the social media person first. Like the COO, MD type person. Not quite sure yet. Would be probably longer term, maybe the next six months or something. But I'm definitely very aware that I'm not the best person to be fucking running every part of the business because I just don't enjoy it and I'm very self aware and I've got to the point where I think there's enough context to potentially bring someone in to work with me so I can focus on what I want to do. But I also don't want to do it too soon. I feel like we're just burning money where the return isn't that great because obviously I can do it all myself, like lead, lead things myself with the current team. But yeah, it's finding that balance. Then there's a lot of potential investment stuff that's also kind of up in the air right now as well. So that potentially changes how I look at the year. But yeah, that's pretty much what's going on. I also keep meaning to do stuff with the football pipe social club thing which is gonna happen and more with the pod. But I just keep getting drawn back instinctively to I just want to work on the brand more. Even though other stuff could make me way more short term cash and all this shit. But that just isn't a concern of mine. And doesn't. I don't know, it just feels I'm. My gut feel is just focus more and more and more on the brand. That's not saying I'm not doing the pod, not doing other things, but my entire being just sways back to like the brand, thinking about the brand, stuff I want to do on the brand and I think that's a good thing. And yeah, that's how I'm just feeling right now. Like you couldn't Pay me a million quid to fucking spend way more time on the podcast almost. I don't know. That's kind of how I'm feeling. So a lot of people managed to do loads of things. They have a personal brand, they have a fucking info product, they have an agency, they have a econ brand. I just don't want to be that guy. I just don't naturally feel like I am so focusing on one thing, trying to pour everything into it, especially when actually building some long term, which I'm trying to do or obviously documented it, haven't done it at all yet. So it's like bamboo. It's a lot of work that goes on that you'll never see until it happens. And now you're doing stuff now that might not have any effect for certainly six months when it's like a supplement business developing new shit takes fucking ages. You're trying to think six months ahead in everything, which is difficult. But yeah, it's just. But then you look back and realize how much can happen in nine months, which is quite mad. So yeah, even just looking back at my first video in this series, which is a month after I started the brand or something. So yeah, I just feel like I'm very all in and I definitely think it's the right vehicle for me to be in. Obviously some fucking days I think I'm a retard and wonder if this is ever going to go anywhere. But then other days I think, Jesus Christ, I can actually see this being a hundred million pound revenue business within five years, which everyone fucking says. But like I actually do, I think it's genuinely viable. And then you speak to certain people, whether they're entrepreneurs, investors, whatever, and they'll make you believe that because they believe it. But then you speak to others and you think, ah, maybe it's not as good as I thought it was. But yeah, I definitely feel like I'm instinctively and naturally now always questioning my myself and wanted to go one more and never think, never rest on my fucking what feels like a little accomplishment or whatever, like a good month or something, which in the past I probably would have done way more. Whereas now I'm so conscious of shit potentially going wrong and like seeing round corners that I may have not done in the past because I didn't have the same experience and so on. So yeah, I just think I'm a better mind to deal with the perils and the ups and downs than I used to be, which is just testament to having been there and done it a few Times, and particularly been there when it went very badly. So I have that insight that maybe very few at this stage have, having not done it before in most cases, whereas I have. So, yeah, it's already February, which is pretty fucking mad. 2023 is already flying through. But kind of the way I'm doing things now, just like, win the day, brick by brick, like, they're literally things I tell myself when I'm on the fucking treadmill. I don't want to be there reading Goggins new book right now, never finished. And it's just that mindset, innit? I just focus on winning the day. And that's all you can do, really. You can think about the future, but just fucking win the day. And I don't win every day. I don't get everything done every day. I don't do every workout as good as I'd like. But most of them just getting shit done and controlling what you can control, which is usually more than you think, because, yeah, just even speaking to one new person can fucking light a new fire in your fucking mind. Which has happened a few times this week. So, yeah, it's pretty much it. I'm gonna start. I always say I'm gonna start sharing shit on screen, but I never plan. It gets to Wednesday or Thursday, I'm like, fuck it, I've just come out the gym, I'm sweating my ass off. Let's put on a shit shirt and record an episode. So on that note, a naked boy has walked into the room. Now I have to cut that. On that note, cheers for watching. As always, subscribe to the pod. Plenty more coming. We're actually doing this every week as well. Just I've been pretty fucking consistent, to be fair. Even though it's a load of waffle, I also see a lot of people tagging me saying they're starting their own document in the Journey series. That's pretty cool. Let's just fucking keep it up. Because I wish I'd started this when I had no one watching. Not that there's that many people watching now, but I wish I'd done this when I was 19 with two views or one view, because looking back, now would be gold. So if anyone's doing it, keep doing it, because you won't regret it. Do it for yourself. And if anyone watches, it's a fucking bonus. So cheers for watching. As always, space goods. To the fucking moon. And I'll see you in the next episode. Peace.