You Need to Keep Everything as Simple and Focused as Possible, Always - Doc The Journey Ep 67

Yo, back with episode 68, 67. I keep meaning to record these. Then it gets super late in the night because I'm working Bali time, working UK time, episode 67. And then it gets to like midnight and I'm like, fuck, I'm not recording anything. And the irony is I'm pretty much doing what I did back in London while I'm in Bali, which is kind of just work all the time, go to the gym. Although I do spend a few hours in the morning. I like get up at like 8, work for like 2, 3 hours like I normally do. But then instead, what's different is I'll go to the gym and sunbathe for like three hours combined period with lunch and shit between like 11, maybe two, maybe three, if I'm really dragging. And then from like three till 11pm or midnight, I'm pretty much at my desk and I've got a little home villa set up going. I call it like the fucking scale cupboard. It's basically like a cupboard in this villa. We did have Jordan Hill, who's famous, who was on the pod twice, he built my website. He came over for like four days, meant to be here two weeks, broke his fucking foot on the first day or second day, which I thought he was exaggerating. Went home to get it seen, to send me proof of the X rays. So hopefully he gets better soon. But yeah, I'm gonna try and not ramble for once. Cause it's fucking late and I told myself I'd make a video. It's been a week. But yeah, basically the theme is just simplifying everything. I feel I've massively over complicated everything in the business. I tweeted about this the other day and it's something I've been thinking about a lot recently. And it's one of those things where. Well, the same with everything. And also I've had a terrible Balinese haircut today, ignoring that for a second. But the same with everything. I end up feeling stupid in hindsight when I think about something and have a kind of realization, which is always probably going to be the process. So maybe it's a sign that I am getting better and learning and learning from my mistakes and so on. But at the end of the day, I launched this business with the intention to be simple, like two years ago. One skew, one channel, one market to start with. Granted, we've expanded a bit of all of those. More skus. Still primarily one more than one market, but still primarily one more than one channel, but again, still primarily One and I think I just deviated away from. I've just brought in too much fluff. Like really, I mean I gave some examples before and like we've got over 100 products. What we did until like this week in the back end on Shopify when basically we've got one hero bundle which is like the starter kit been running like 25 different landing pages when actually we turned all of almost all of them off in the past few days. Just focused on the product page, the PDP optimizing that and that's already converting better. CPA is reduced. Working with too many agencies, like little things like I don't want to call anyone out but it's like got an agency for TikTok shop, got an agency for Amazon, got an agency for retail, got an agency doing ad creative, got an agency doing Meta, got an agent, a different agency doing Google, a different agency doing something else which I've forgotten. Oh, CRO and another one doing bits of landing pages and other stuff. It's like, oh, it's just too much cost, too much complication, too much headspace, too much stuff, too much stuff to manage that ends up meaning you're not doing any of the real work. And yeah, I feel like seem to hit a plateau every few months which kind of feel like we're hitting again now. And usually it's like oh well, we need to strip back, get focused again, cut the cut, cut costs that have crept up, which they always do. Get rid of all the noise and just ultimately like really in my mind we should just do more of what we're already doing and do it better. More flavors, going deep on improving the product rather than trying to launch something new. I've done a few of those new products over the past two years. I don't think any of them were slam dunk compared to the first one in rainbow dust. And yeah, it's like basic shit. But I feel like at least for me by default I know it's basic shit. But then in the pursuit of trying to scale quicker, get better results, build a more sustainable long term business, blah blah blah, not rely on myself for everything in the pursuit of those things, I end up unintentionally adding a lot more fluff than needs to be, unintentionally adding more complication, more cost, more headaches when you strip it back it's like just do one thing very well, at least for my business. It's not the same for everyone but I think for me right now it's focus on performance, content Focus on optimizing the offer and conversion rate on one page instead of fucking 20 of them. Focus on very few very good team members and or agencies rather than seven agencies plus eight people plus a few consultants. It's just got way too, way too bloated recently, which slows things down. Results get worse, margins get slimmer in every sense. And yeah, I think the theme for the next few months is just simplify, double down, trim the fat basically. And I think that's what's going to get us from where we are now to 2x3x where we are now in the next year. And that's certainly the goal. And yeah, another side note, this is the longest time I've ever worked on one brand sponsored specifically or solely one brand. And that might sound crazy because it's only been 25 months or two years in one month, which it feels like it's gone really quick but also feels like that's taken a lifetime to only be two years. But yeah, like previous brands, my record, my previous PB I think was like 22 months of solo work on one brand before I either launched something else or started working on new ideas, etc, maybe even not that, maybe even like 20 months. So yeah, I seem to hit a two year point and I don't know, shit just gets hard after two years because I've never done two years before. Which is crazy because it probably takes five, seven, even 10 years to build a proper, proper band brand. A big one, maybe five I think is probably better. That's what I'm aiming for. But yeah, the honeymoon period is definitely over and I feel like my business, I've become a bit of a slave to my own business recently because of the fact that I've introduce too much complication, too much cost, too many people, too many agencies. And it's like I do want to build a big business, but I want to build a business with lots of customers, not lots of bullshit and jargon and too many people and too much fluff. Because I do think some companies and startups particularly kind of optimize around how big their team is rather than how big the business is. They are different things. Often they are correlated, but not all the time. So yeah, that's kind of what I'm thinking about. Build a big business, think big, act small, focus on the main things. You know, really focus on revenue per head, focus on deep work over staring at screen doing fluff for 15 hours. Focus on quality over quantity and product revenue, customers, cohorts, team members. Yeah, I think as I'm getting older as well. I just want a more simple I rather go deep than wide on like everything I'm doing and that applies to business life, setup, fucking people and relationships financially, mentally, physically. Do few do a few things very well and focus on the main thing. So yeah, I'm rambling and I probably already have done 10 minutes or something, but that's kind of the theme right now. I made a video a week ago. It's been much the same. Bit of sun, a lot of work, looking more tanned, got a terrible Balinese haircut. But I felt like I had to put this in because it's a big, big topic of mine right now and trying to figure out where that line is between adding stuff in that's relevant to grow, but also just keeping stuff simple and focusing on the main thing. I think we're all guilty and I'm definitely very guilty of thinking surely it can't be this simple. Well, actually usually probably can. And on that note, subscribe to the pod. Thanks for watching. Catch the next one. Peace. Sam.