My journey from $500 to $500M | Davie Fogarty

my first three products skyrocketed they did minimum a million doar in their first year already did two then 20 then 200 or something like that it just went really really quick there's not a million opportunities to launch an e-commerce business at all times there might be one in each Niche each year testing a product on the paid format of your choice getting initial traction and then doubling down on that and building processes to just keep repeating it it is really about having that right product and that right knowledge about how to get that product out

there in the early stages enjoy the process that's 90% of the battle cuz you'll look back and you you'll wish you enjoyed it more before we dive in I want to extend a warm invitation to join our thriving founder Community it's the perfect place to discover more insightful interviews aimed at helping you build grow and scale your business so don't forget to hit subscribe your support means the absolute world to us thank you so much for subscribing let's get stuck into today's discussion here are the story learn The Proven methods and accelerate your growth and

future through entrepreneurship welcome to the founder podc with Nathan [Music] Chan I'm really excited to speak with you man because um I've watched your story from afar for the past year since you've kind of really put yourself out there I'd heard of you through our mutual friend Greta for many years of you killing it behind the scenes so um the first question I ask everyone is how did you get your job AKA how did you find yourself doing the work you're doing today you know it's funny I was I was telling you before that you're

actually the first podcast that I listened to and when I heard and you were asking it back then it would have been four or five years ago or something like that and I remembered that I just did not have a good answer for that question I still don't think I do um my job is is interesting it's obviously progressed like most people um it started you know standard School SCH um graduated school and then I went into University everyone was telling me get into University get that piece of paper it's it's required and then I

um got into growth hacking Instagrams which is how I met Greta she's the Instagram Queen um and I was growing Instagrams 600,000 followers or something like that um that was really kind of at the same time as the mining engineering so I had a bit of a decision to make what to kind of pursue I realized that I really liked entrepreneurship so I did what every normal person does and I started a Vietnamese rooll shop so I basically dropped out of I dropped out of University to start a Vietnamese rooll shop or are doing the

Instagrams honestly I don't know why Vietnamese rols asides from the fact that I really liked eating them um which is probably not the main requirement of starting a business but yeah started that that went downhill really quickly Instagram kept doing really really well um started selling the Instagram selling advertising as people still do to this day and then yeah basically um launched a couple of e-commerce businesses as well so you know that was obviously fueling a lot of my failures I've had a lot of them um the and then I launched e-commerce I tried to

do seasoning so I I was basically in my shed grinding up seasonings trying to sell them through these Instagrams and I realized that I was doing a lot of like hacky permissionless stuff and I really didn't have any idea how to connect with the audiences because these Impressions on Instagram are very you know low connection low relevance if you don't know what you're doing and that's pretty much what I had at that point is really kind of unengaged um followers so it didn't really work ended up yeah moving to Melbourne um and just to keep

learning this stuff learned a ton from Greta a ton from yourself and a lot of other people as well and then ended up launching you know I was actually started videography and I think that that was really a massive turning point because it helped me create video ads and connect and learn how to tell a story how to Pace things how to work with the platform algorithms and then yeah ended up La using that videography all those skills that I learned along the way to launch caling blankets which was my first e-commerce brand and yeah

that was kind of like I was actually just like on the Tipping Point of quitting you know yes as as this um I probably wouldn't have to be completely honest but it really felt like that it almost felt like I was really at HP I was really at peace and happy with videography cuz you know I could travel I was doing something that I really enjoyed and I kind of left this ambition kind of just be like look if this is what my life is it's fine I'm I'm just not cut out for entrepreneurship yes

and I just said look one more go and then that's when I launch climing blankets and I brought that in and it did really well it really it was just right product right time um definitely my ability to communicate and Market at that point was was way way better so it grew really really quickly I'm not sure what Revenue we did first year but would have been over over a million dollars in its first year which was great um and then from there I launched ODI pretty much at the same time yes and UD is

now our biggest brand that that grew very very quickly and since then I've just launched a lot of other products yeah wow so love to fast uh before we fast forward I'd love to kind of just go back so you started the Vietnamese rooll company local business in Adelaide yeah and where did you come up with that idea and when was that like how long ago was that okay you're testing my memory I think it would have been it would have been 5 years ago so pretty much straight out of school straight out of school

18 one or two years out of school yeah that's right so 20 okay and then at what point did you realize so you you got a you know you got a store location front you set up branding you hired stuff like you assume I set up branding so you hir stuff like how much did it cost to fund that where did you get the money to kind of fund that for sure it was all through Instagram so I I was sold um one of my Instagrams for over $330,000 and I I did that you know

multiple over $10,000 kind of at that age selling them there was other people um that had you know that was probably a failure on my part as well considering the past that my colleagues that were also growing Instagrams at the time bu businesses Greta as one of them building million dollar businesses you know I I was just constantly doubting what I was actually building I didn't have the foresight to or people around me to kind of communicate this is a legitimate business um you know one of my mentors is is 100% my dad he's always

helped me with business and and I don't think he understood it yes um obviously incredible other things in with his business and whatnot but yeah I was entirely self-funded at that point got you and how long did it take for the Vietnamese role uh business uh for you to kind of go you know what this isn't working this isn't for me what was the Tipping Point there yeah that was um I'd love to say that was you know I thought I needed to give it a crack I I don't like giving up it's against my

nature but the lease was 2 years I gave it 2 years I think I actually exited 6 months early um from that so and just kind of sold it didn't make any money from it um but yeah it was I was cuz obviously when you don't have a successful business like that you need to be the employee in it you're constantly working so I was doing 12 hours days just cooking Vietnamese roles in my lunch break flipping Instagrams and what not doing what I probably should have been doing the whole time so um yeah it

was brutal it was a big year and a half um Sprint yeah there you go okay so when did you start the seasoning and get into e-commerce when did that so that was about four years ago three years ago so I think that overlapped when I moved to Melbourne so um I stopped that in fact yeah I stopped that and then came over to Melbourne was doing the seasoning while that was happening wasn't working um I think that was was about a year stint and then I came back to Adelaide um and then yeah that

takes us to 23 24 years old um and that's when I started udy yeah got you so you've only been doing udy for about or and caring B for about 3 four years and some yeah like yeah I've done only been truly in e-commerce for about four years yeah wow that's impressive so where does this entrepreneural Spirit come from I think it's a good question I think there's a you know it's not not a simple answer i' been very fortunate in my upbringing um I'm very you know cognizant of that um I always had Security

in my house my parents were um business owners themselves their business doesn't exist anymore it was just a local furniture shop but they've always encouraged me to take risks I think that's kind of the the one of the main reasons it's just always been part of my upbringing another one is just you know in year 10 I was like asked to pretty much leave school I was you know going nowhere getting in trouble a lot um people were just uh very aware that I was um yeah doing the wrong thing on a lot of occasions

and then um yeah basically I had two teachers that kind of saw past that and saw that I did have ability my physics and my English teacher and they basically just um sat me down and and really gave me the the attention that needed to believe in myself and then you know so long story short I think that the doubters in those situations really made me want to do what I can do and then also make you know my parents proud as well yeah awesome um so you could say that you had a bit of

a chip on your shoulder something to prove definitely definitely and I think I think I think that is one of the strongest motivators you know and I don't think it's the most healthy motivator and I think if you're lucky you let that evolve into something that's more internal rather than external so more so really wanting to prove it to yourself and you know just enjoying the process rather than proving those other people because I think um I've already done that in some some regards so what were the biggest lessons that you got from the early

Ventures with the Vietnamese role company the seasoning business it sounds like you probably had some other e-commerce businesses even from flipping Instagram back in the day what could you share um was been great lessons yeah there's obviously been a lot I think the first one is um learn who you are as a person you know the so me if you kind of break that down what that looks like is I just jump in and I just do stuff and that causes me issues to this day you know I'll just buy this business I'll do this

it just like it's it's a very action orientated mindset action creates um information like that is okay um if you kind of have the foundational knowledge to make sure that that action isn't going to be extremely detrimental so this the Vietnamese role business is a good example of that so getting the Baseline knowledge is really really important especially when you're a young entrepreneur um to before you start doing those Ventures but at the same time don't be on the other side where you're just constantly learning and you're not doing anything because you're just not going

to get that information um that you really really do need so you might fail a couple of times don't be afraid of that the second probably more practical one um that you can also distill from those stories is the um is is is product is everything you know if I had caling blankets even in that situation that product I probably would have succeeded um so it is really about having that right product and that right knowledge about how to get that product out there in the early stages yeah and you do some really cool stuff

with product testing products I want to talk through all of that because um it sounds like that's been a key successful ingredient to the ventures or any of the brands that you you've had in your portfolio that really take off um I'm curious though just this one isn't uh one thing I've noticed about you is you you you can do media buying you can do videography you can do social media you can write direct response copy you can start things like you you are a real Jack of all trades where does that come from because

that is not unique right usually you you either got a marketing or a product guy you've got something that's quite operational like yeah like yeah how how do you force yourself to kind of work all these things out and where do you find that time because that's really impressive do you think that that is unique about you or do you not or I don't think that's unique about me I think it's a relatively rare experience and that experience is a privilege of being a single founder you know you're kind of forced to do that if

you're bootstrapped founder not hiring people straight from the get-go you're forced to learn all of those things to make it work I think if you go the above layer of those things that you just mentioned that I'm good at I'd like to say that my team now are much much better at me that if I'm in the at account I probably will stuff it up if I tried to touch it nowadays but in the early stages yeah I was doing all of that I think extract parts of the media buying which is the more um

patent recognition element of it you've got you're a creative so the videography the copywriting you're just a general marketer in all of those senses and that really um became apparent about how bad I was at operations and finance so there definitely is the strengths and not kind of an anomaly where I can do it all um but my mar marketing is definitely my strength creative is definitely my strength the other stuff has been much slower to learn um so yeah do you think that these skills are required in you know if you want to launch

an e-commerce business tomorrow um to have an unfair Advantage yeah I think there's obviously a lot of ways to launch a business to do a bootstrapped e-commerce product and follow the path that I did you 100% need to understand the marketing you can't forecast your way out of that business you can't be super good at Ops um you need that marketing person and generally you don't have heaps to spend on it and as you know marketers are actually quite hard to get um so I think you know unless you're co-founder as a marketer um or

something like that you're going to struggle to get that cash coming in to fuel your growth that being said if you are you know raising capital or you do have a best friend that's a gun at Facebook ads then that that can make it work as well because you are going to need that polarizing skill set um with and on finance as well and is there a reason you don't have a co-founder or co-founders or you do actually yeah you do some stuff with grar yeah so you have a few co-founders with a few Brands

right yeah so the daav group like udy calming blankets that's all 100% me and that was you know probably not really by Design like I see value in having a co-founder it's just I I I didn't launch it that way um obviously grew quite well so um it worked out really well but not not against working with people that's for sure yep so let's talk about the udy how that concept came about how you came up with that idea I know you have a unique process when it comes to finding product ideas you have the

Davey Group which is kind of like uh a thio thio Amazon brand you're trying to build like a PNG kind of proor and gamble is that the play there and you're just always testing different brands is that yeah I think the the play there is probably a bigger topic um like how I find products I'm generally looking for Trends globally that's how um cing blankets and and all my products have kind of come about we find trends that haven't been kind of capitalized in certain markets or in certain marketing channels yes and then we also

obviously add our flare to it you know we you need to differentiate your product otherwise it's just your margin's going to get eaten away and um you know it's just obviously better to progress businesses like that so um yeah that's kind of how we find our products we make sure that there's a strong contribution margin we make sure that we can build like yeah a really good value around the product we do ton of Licensing we make it's like the highest quality possible fabric that you can get so um that's that's pretty much our requirement

I'm actually building I I have big workflows and I'm building tools around how to find products as well Y and right now across Davey group how many products are you testing how does that all work in that machine yeah it's interesting to say that since last podcast I've done probably my answer is going to change a little bit here so iOS caused a huge issue the Privacy updates that have made tracking in Facebook very very difficult my also knowledge around the longevity of these products has also changed so you know we used to test hundreds

of products a year um what that looked like is getting you know sample 3 to five units bringing it in understanding the CPAs that we could get shooting it as if we had a million of the products um and then understanding the CPA because the cost per acquisition is the variable cost that you don't understand it's it's hidden in The Ether until you're to bring it to light so the the reason why that that that was quite flawed in some ways is you don't actually understand how far that's going to scale as well you can

get that initial CPAs and over time you get a touch and a feel for it you'll get 15 return on ad spend as soon as you launch it and you're like okay this is this is an Odie style product um and then some products you'll bring in I'm not sure if you've had this experience you probably have all entrepreneurs have you're so excited about the product you've done all everything right all the market research you spend so much money on it so much time and it just doesn't even convert you don't even get one sale

so there the that that validation process that I just mentioned is great for finding those polarities um and I still see a lot of value in in doing it if that's the question you're trying to answer I think over time I realize that you know what is going to move the needle for us as a business that's you know doing over 150 million Revenue a year we need to go after something a bit heavier and like time is also a bit of a problem for us resources is a problem so we still look at it

like this is going to be a validation we'll commit a little bit harder but we'll also consider the longevity of the product how does this fit into our brand narrative and stuff like that as well got you so when it comes to Dave group how many brands do you have right now good good question we have about five major brands um yeah so there's cing blank it still the udy what are the others are you able to share cnaps yep uh udy outdoor play and then the other one I can't can't share just yet so

um yeah outdoor play is a us-based business that was an actually an acquisition yep um which is an interesting business you know you mentioned thio before they're an incredible rollup company um a there's a lot of aggregators out there at the moment focusing on Amazon which makes sense um the business model of of Amazon aggregators you know they obviously going to be struggling with the current Financial climate you know the supply chain crisis then also multiples now coming down that was their whole play multiple Arbitrage so there's lots of complexities with that but it in

it's it's Foundation really does make sense in that the optimizations that they can make on one Amazon listing may be able to be transferred to the next um and the tech stack is much simpler the Shopify aggregators which I don't consider us as one just yet I'd probably say WABE proone gambles as you kind of phrased it um there is complications around the Tex stack and stuff like that that you need to consider like what so for example different 3pls um different uh front end so Shopify gento big Commerce like you can't just apply a

base theme across things the way you split test things are going to be different workflows all of those kind of things even acquisition methods is Big so um and you know these are all hindsight things I probably didn't think about these before the acquisition as as much as I should have um but you know the acquisition methods you know one business is heavily reliant on say Google versus you know Facebook acquisition which is more about Udi side of things so even your team um resource need to be different and your knowledge gaps need to be

filled got you so are you kind of realizing that if you slowed down on testing new products launching new products launching new brands you'll still do it but perhaps there's a more Focus play on on the ones that are really working and doubling down is that definitely I think that's my main um main takeaway and uh from last year is you know we really need to focus on our main levers the udie could be far bigger than was it was sold out 50% of last year um so now we just need to focus on our

kind of main levers and since we've done that you know 's just skyrocketed you know we restructured teams and whatnot to allow um single focus on Brands not getting heaps spread across which is a massive massive lesson also obviously capital is an incredibly important thing we shouldn't be applying heaps of capital to products for a brand with you know 1 million customers when we could do it with two for example um with 2 million customer so yeah some big lessons in that for sure got you so coming back to the Udi how fast did it

take for you to get traction like like you said you tested did you test other products and you just saw nothing like with Udi like what's special you know it's an interesting question um I I I think where we feel very well I know I certainly do feel very lucky around the products that I hit granted I failed a lot of times I've already been into that but the the those products my first three products skyrocketed you know they did minimum a million dollars in their first year um you I think OD did two then

20 then you know 200 or something like that it was it just went really really quick and this is where the whole business model of testing and validating and finding those products um came in play because I was like okay I've hit these three everything is easy you know I'm okay media buyer I'm okay at this I'm okay at that and it's still taking off and we're over we're surpassing other business businesses so it really is that core foundational product but as I said before and this is why I'm developing tools and processes now for

a data orientated approach before we even validate to really tick all these boxes and pick these right products um so that when we launch them you know we you know just trying to find the the answer before we even bring it out if that makes sense hey guys I really hope you're feeling inspired from today's interview now the truth is is all successful e-commerce Founders started from zero with a spark of an idea and a whole lot of determination but let's be real building or growing an e-commerce business is no walk in the park and

that's where founder plus comes in which I'm really excited to share with you it's a culmination of a decade worth of work at founder so if you're feeling stuck in your e-commerce business you're lacking confidence to move forward or you're worried about making costly mistakes or not knowing how to grow your business founder plus is here to support on your journey you get access to a customized learning pathway with proven Frameworks from successful e-commerce Founders for fast results incredible programs a supportive Community weekly live mentorship exclusive savings on Startup tools and 24/7 real human support

try founder plus today for just $1 for 7 days so you can accelerate your business goals visit founder. comom slstart dollar trial or click the link in the description to claim your trial all right now let's jump back in the shot I'd love to delve a little deeper on that like what does that look like you said you know like you you're setting up tools and processes to to work out from a data driven approach not just from a paid acquisition you getting these CPAs what what other things it's a good question I don't want

to plug my products too badly you bu build a SAS yeah I don't want to use your platform to plug my products um yeah I started a toour called Trend rocket yep and basically what it does is it scrapes all of these data points so Facebook trust pilot reviews Instagram um it looks at ad libraries it looks at it even goes to Alibaba contacts suppliers for their feature products that exist out there understands the cost of goods what that looks like in the end is you're getting a large data pull of how and how well

this product is growing in a certain region what tools they're using to grow it um and then also where that trend is not currently leveraged cuz that that that ad inventory is so important to cpms I think it's one thing that's kind of not understood well enough um is how competition affects your ads and not and more because obviously it's a um relatability question so if there's 10 weighted blanket um people advertising in Australia they're all going to and someone shows interest in that that's we're all going to be compe comp in so if there's

no Advertiser what then happens to your cpms and that's really asides from the products asides from you know how good calming blankets and oody were for our customers I think that that's one of the main reasons they grew so quick is because there was very little competition in those regions for for similar Trends so what I'm hearing is effectively what you're trying to do is productize your process of finding Brands to use software to scale that out exactly I I've had so many many people ask me how I've done that um so I've just you

know gone gone and reverse engineered it um cuz we've launched so many you know learned using the lessons of those failed validated products as well I'm like why didn't this work so yeah just trying to reverse engineer that and put in a sass so other um people can learn it but if you were selling it wouldn't wouldn't it make it difficult to have the uniqueness like wouldn't that be an unfair Advantage for mhm your group look I think it's say I think it's a it's an interesting dilemma and I'll cross for that to become a

problem both for my group and the existing customers on the platform you know there's going to be a million brands on this on this thing what I'm what I do believe is there's not there's not you know a million opportunities to launch an e-commerce business at all times there might be one in each Niche each year these success stories um that you see so but my theory is that if I can get it to a point where that becomes a problem it's going to be a big tool and it's already helped a lot of people

so um yeah I'll I'll cross that bridge when we come to it okay interesting so little similar to like jungle Scout right like jungle Scout you go on Amazon you can see volume you can see opportunity all sorts of things right exact exactly right as I've mentioned before the tech stack becomes more difficult because there's there's multiple um things at play and people are using different review platforms and stuff like this on their Shopify store so it's like yes it's like jungle out but more complicated because there's a lot more other Tech involved gotcha so

anybody watching this right now is looking to launch a brand like what's the most common mistake you see new brands making I think just crap marketing like you just you I think you know I I put it in different buckets and I think that's important to do as well so you're a brand new founder and you're trying to launch a product you go to the Shopify website there's nothing in the footer it's like the copy is really really bad they're using stock images they're like they don't understand what C that customer actually wants you they're

not they don't have clear product images it's just like all of these things that install trust which I'd like to say is just crappy marketing the other brands yeah I like when you're trying to get when you maybe found that successful product and you've got like a bit of a better website and stuff like that that's when it probably more comes down to the the the feedback loops that they are then creating within their business to scale it which you know maybe it's a technical problem maybe they're structuring that at accounts poly maybe they're just

not producing enough content on Facebook it's kind of those things that they need to just keep repeating um but it's that that's the common question that I get when they first new entrepreneur and they just haven't taken enough time to go look at 50 Brands and just look at how they've structured their website and kind of copied those elements to build trust got you um so do you have like a template around a Shopify and like a cro like CU you would have done so many split tests where you're like we know if we do

this we know if we do this like I I I follow guys on Twitter where they're like there was a guy this Carl I forget his last name he did he did recommendation for my fiance's website healthish and then you one for yours or and and like it looked like he had a sort of a blue do you have a blueprint of things to do yeah can you share some of that yeah Kyle's Kyle's fantastic so I think I think that that element is maybe a step further which is probably those brands that are already

successful which is yeah you need that framework to start split testing and you hit the nail in the head going to Twitter and following people like KL and a lot of other people as well that are publishing these best practices and then just going in and implementing them that's a great way to do it I think um for the new entrepreneur I would do that as well but you just need to go to an established website like the the traditional the big guys are kind of setting the ideal format for a website that you then

just need a copy you can even go to like granted we've got actually a lot of things that we need to fix on that but you could go to like an Asos or an iconic and really look how have they structured their foots okay I'm going to do that how do they structure their descriptions in their products and just kind of look at that and and really dissect how do I build more trust got you so um when it comes to kind of I guess all the different brands you talked about product being a common

denominator is there anything else that you could share with our audience around the repeatability of of the framework that you're using across the group that you think is key when it comes to starting successful Brands because you have a incredible track record to be honest man and the the speed in which you've grown um the Audi caling blankets all these other brands it's it's seriously impressive so I'm just trying to kind of decode that a bit more yeah look I appreciate that um yeah I think the main thing is you're trying to find a product

that scales through a very scalable paid digital format and if you just break that down that might be Tik Tok organic so really testing a product or an idea on the paid format of your choice getting initial traction and then just doubling down on that and building processes to just keep repeating it it's um that's the main thing so you talk about paid a lot and there a strong way to kind of test different products you talked about data privacy iOS 14 um and the performance of paid advertising no business has been immune to that

like for us at founder you know we' we've we've we've been H all businesses have been hit many businesses have un fortunately shut down um because they've been so ring on paid advertising it still works like you know we still still spend a lot of money on Facebook ads and and all sorts of PID traffic channels I like what's your take there what's the lessons been for you are you still spending a ton of money on Facebook ads Tik Tok ads like what's your take I'd love to hear where things are at for you there

yeah everyone's been hereit I think our larger businesses H uh smaller businesses have been disproportionately hit um I don't have a strong theory behind why that's the case um even when we're looking at percentages changes I think um maybe there's just less data to work that Facebook can have even more um you know od's got a lot of data that's flowing through it um it's incredibly tough and I think that this is where a lot of businesses that have poor products are going to to Really struggle as well I think one of my main lessons

which wasn't really it was you know hindsights 2020 when people ask you are you Diversified from an acquisition Channel you're like yeah I'm advertising on Tik Tok and it's just like I think that the to have the level of thinking to understand that there's actually a platform issue and Reliance on Apple iPhones was would have just been incredible so you know we can say that we're Diversified through Instagram and Facebook so Instagram influences and Facebook but it's all flowing and so reliant on that single element and I think that that's going to continue you get

worse we've got the Android privacy update coming I think next month um I do think that that's going to be a lesser extent um because a lot of our uh you know everyone probably in this room already has an iPhone so um not too many people are getting served ads on Android especially within Australia so lesser extent there I think um yeah it's there are attribution tools out there to name a few we've got the Triple L pixels just came out but um a more robust in my experience tool is North beam um which is

I think these tools um there's there's a couple of others out there so do your own research I think these tools are great to remove um multi-touch attribution and really understand if a platform's working so really strong example is um in so in North beam we'll get a even roll as for say Facebook and Tik Tok but Snapchat will be one 100th of that and we're and in the platform of Snapchat we're getting a seven rowers so it's just like it's great to kind of iron out these tools that might not be working that are

they saying they are working there's no answers to that of course but that's kind of how I'm using those tools at the moment I'm not looking at them from an adset budget optimization at this stage because um Taylor holiday has got some really good quotes on Twitter about this so go check it out but he talks about how these tools aren't actually feeding data back to Facebook so they therefore you're making optimization decisions that won't be the same the next day um so I'm not using them currently from an adset I am checking it just

kind of seeing how off it actually is um cuz in some sense you know Facebook should just be doing this stuff themselves so um I think asides from that we use kind of like a multiplayer approach so where you know the a 1.5 say rise in face ad account um might be you know a three in the previous state yes now over time that's going to continually shift so we are constantly kind of watching that and kind of using our own multipliers within the platforms and making sure our media buyers really do have a touch

and a feel for what was what's currently and then also what the output is of those channels so we use what what's called an me which is like a a full funnel return on ads Bend we plot a graph in our dashboards which is sales and then we have an M Target if you know our m m goes too high which is like let's say 31% um what we'll do is we we'll pull back Facebook as kind of like our main driver yes now that's problematic because while Facebook is like our primary driver we're starting

to get some really good results with Tik Tok so Tik Tok is starting to really Drive some traffic for us so that can also move the um sales and M quite dramatically this is where we're starting to get this is starting to get a little bit more advanced and probably not for for all your listeners I probably wouldn't advise going ahead and doing this unless you're spending quite a bit on these platforms but building platform specific roll as targets within North beam so that's where we're getting to um but right now we're just really using

M we optimize on very much on like ad carts um cost as well um from an adset level to try to get the best decision and then you know just hope and pray not actually and like what else are you doing like I'm just genuinely curious because it sounds like you guys have been really really strong on paid advertising sounds like you still are but you know like for example um do you know Rob from quadlock another Melbourne guy big e-commerce brand um you know for those guys it was really funny I we interviewed him

I interview him like three years ago and he was saying like I'm going to move into retail and so he said when we caught up he said oh Nathan it's so funny somebody watched the interview that you and I did 3 years ago and they were like rob you were right retails where it's at now like are you guys going hard on retail are you doing more on influencers are you going harder on Tik Tok influenc like yeah talk to us kind of like what are you doing to combat this stuff cuz it's easy to

see from the outside you know you're super successful you've got a nine figure uh portfolio of brands or one nine fig brand like it's really impressive but what are you doing at this kind of level to kind of you know cuz CU this will continue to happen right like platforms come platforms go like one of my mentors he you know he was doing one one cent clicks with Google ads 10 years ago founded Co co-founded big Commerce right when when they were playing against Shopify right that platform you're not getting one cent clicks yeah you

know it's a dollar $2 right so platforms come platforms go I'm just curious like what what is what are what are you doing what are you appro how are you approaching this yeah I think um I totally agree with the retail and wholesale approach the because I think you know we we say we're direct to Consumer e-commerce Brands I think that that's pigeoning us as you know we're Brands like we need to think that way we need to think that um you know we can be in all of these retailers and stuff like that the

reason why I didn't in Australia early is because we were moving so much and this might not be the right approach in hindsight but there was n many retailers that could move enough to kind of make it worth in Australia in the US and these other places where they've got you know Walmart Target um all of these massive retailers they they um it really does make sense and it's I think looking at it now it's all about Focus for us like where previously I wanted to focus on creating a ton of these Brands and CU

that's what the landscape was allowing me to do yes that digital was easy I was in aore a virus period where I can launch kind of any product and it would scale like crazy granted we still probably could do that but I don't think it's the best use of our time and capital I think the Udi we're really refining what the brand actually is as a first step getting all of our levers and workflows sorted within our existing business core business because I don't think we've done that yet you know one thing that's maybe different

to a lot of other brands is we went Global really quickly like we tried to the market you know we kind of own the market in UK there are some people growing there um we're slow in the US but we're probably biggest in Canada as well um Europe we we can grow quite dramatically there if we were to kind of then put our resources into like retail or wholesale here that might just not be the best opportunity or best area for Focus for us right now but I'm very much in favor of the the strategy

because I think it's just a good cut providing you can maintain the customer experience I think it's just good to be a to give the customers your product in their medium that they want it you know whether that's Amazon you got to make sure the financials make sense but if they're in the store and they see your product and they already wanted your product that's just a good customer experience so um yeah definitely in favor for it so I would say to answer your question what else am I doing we're just getting that sorted um

dealing with the volatility of the market right now we're not overleveraging ourselves with inventory to facilitate that kind of stuff um and we'll probably look at retail wholesale next year yes what Market that is I'm not sure it might be Australia might not but we're also I'm putting a lot of resources into making the Udi the the biggest clothing um comfortwear brand in the world so we want to you know really own that Lounge pajama space globally um you know there's other big players that are doing clothing that really rely on their Tech and their

AI like shin and stuff like that you know that's that investment in that rapid testing framework how does that fit into the retail strategy and the retail strategy is very much more Downstream um finding these products is more important what I've been talking about and that goes down to a skew level of clothing as well so I really want to get that nailed and then we we'll go to the retail fale I'm curious like the Udi sounds like it's just such a behemoth have you ever considered just cutting everything else and just going all it

on the look it's a good question I think I think I had investors that were you know wouldn't come in because I wasn't Diversified enough and that really played in my head that what I should be doing is getting Diversified my answer for that was to build all these Brands some that didn't work um which in hindsight was a really bad Capital allocation decision um I I actually talked to some other people recently and they're like you're too spread thin and it's just like always people are always going to poke holes in that but uh

to answer your question I don't think I would enjoy that I think I really do enjoy launching lots of stuff and trying new things and learning stuff like I I I love the other brands as well so really from a capital allocation return on investment point of view yes it should just be Allin but um you know I I don't think that that's as fun as it could be I really want to build like a fun brand we just launched a bay range that's selling really well just about to launch a fleece range as well

doing lots of licensed collaborations and stuff like that so it's just it's just good fun yeah no I respect that man because um that's what it's all about at the end of the day like you know it's about having fun and uh you know the highs are high and the lows are low right like uh but um no it's obviously something you consider I just had to ask you so um we have to work towards wrapping up I'm conscious of your time as well and like uh you know this an awesome conversation man I could

talk to you all day um you're selling a product every 10 seconds I'm curious around the machine that you have to support that around what does your team look like can you talk us through that you said you restructured things you now have one person not working on multiple Brands which is kind of you know economies of scale play which yeah so so talk to us about that how the team is structured so the smaller Brands I think smaller Brands really should run lean and that's the beauty of e-commerce you can run a small with

kind of like one brand manager that's either generally marketing focused um and then you probably need a counterbalance of customer service and Ops and that can be a small that can scale you know $34 million just that team you can use agencies as much as you want scale up scale down um the bigger brand um you know we will share finance and HR to those smaller Brands just because it's a very um scalable kind of resource honestly when a brand hits a certain size I'd definitely get a fractual CFO and fractual bookkeeper and and separate

it as quickly as possible but they can't support that at this point the um the the team you know we have CMO uh Co CFO and then underneath I'm not sure if this going to get too technical but we do have like ahead of content um ahead of Ecommerce which is handles merchandising everything goes on the website handles developers um we also have uh what else have we got under that team we've got like a head of creative who handles a lot of that they're the kind of the custodian of the brand managing that side

of things um we've also got uh you know obviously our media buyers we've got a head of retention which is kind of like our email marketing people um yeah and then under Ops we've got a a a big team underneath that that handle forecasting all of those kind of elements um yeah I'm not sure if that's getting too gram yeah that's cool um and that team is split between Melbourne and Adelaide it is y y so customer service we've we've got a lot in Adelaide we've also got a lot of our content creation over in

Adelaide that's just how it happened um and then we've got uh yeah a lot of two of our sea level people here a lot of our Ops Team here as well yep and do you so you often fly your leadership team to Adelaide or you guys are moving in between we do fly our leadership team over to Melbourne so we got more leadership team here and we do you know our strategy days here which is really really good um I think the main thing with remote work is to build uh a certain Cadence of meetings

and all the key things really need to be structured in a weekly meeting where you you tick everything off um you know cameras on to ensure that culture but then also nurturing it in different ways is is really really important it's been a bit of a challenge but we're definitely learning how to do it yeah got you and then um I have a lot of respect that you're still building the business out of Adelaide when you're like you know Talent you know there's not as much talent in Adelaide right it' be usually in Melbourne or

Sydney um why is that is that a lifestyle Choice Family Choice uh yeah it's a it's a good question I think there's a lot of value in it as you mentioned before Toby Pierce from sweat um did it as well there there's huge it's especially when you're struggling to find someone for a role it's amazing to be a to post in two regions if you've got the full remote set up it's so so good because you can compare candidates we have not you know picked or choosed from if someone was better in Adelaide would hire

them in Adelaide that's just how that splits ended up um granted a lot of recent rols have been in Melbourne but our Adelaide team is you know top um top class as well they're they're incredible so that's just kind of how it fell obviously if you can't afford you know two offices it's not the best go it's not the leanest structure but you know our people are kind of everything and the reason why we've been so successful so it it's worked out well yeah awesome and um you as a leader right like what are you

26 27 27 um you know you've got a a senior leadership team seweet leaders um what are you doing to develop as a leader and uh yeah moving into like this true CEO role actually quite fast from how fast your business businesses have grown that must be a big change it's been it's been the most natural thing um that I've done to this point you know both from me being less Hands-On which is just against my nature but also you know just how much you have to learn and how there's no actual there's I've read

a lot of books on becoming a CEO and listen to a lot of successful CEOs on on podcasts and it's just so variable across you know what your role needs to be what your team is where your company is at is it in Wartime is it peace time it's just so so difficult it's definitely something think like as a huge introvert I re really do struggle with um and it's it is really my main thing that I'm just trying to learn how to lead and um how to structure organizations like through okrs and encourage your

sea level suite and stuff like that it's it's really really unnatural and challenging all I'd say is um you know Trea people with respect and and just keep learning and ask for feedback you know constant feedback from the people your direct reports are and even other people as well get a coach so yeah that's kind of all I'm doing for it awesome and you have a coach CEO coach yep yep I've got a coach I've got coaches in kind of a lot of elements of my life like different parts and and not just formalized coaches

you know they're just mentors that that help me out oh I'd love to hear kind of you would you be able to share yeah yeah sure so uh look it's not not hugely detailed I I have a coach in in Adelaide he um more uh more from the business side of things so very uh White Collar kind of um he's also like a psychiatrist as well um so he helps a lot of people so he's got that real ability to kind of bring the best out of yourself as well as like you can talk about

lots of things you know it's an incredibly traumatic and stressful thing running a business you're dealing with a lot of other people um so it's great to have someone that's incredibly mindful rather than this is results results results because you got to look after yourself as you know so he was incredibly helpful um I also think that getting a formalized mentorship and that could be in the form of a board as well um that you need to report to some accountability was really beneficial so that's what I'm kind of setting up now hopefully Toby Pierce

will help me out in that that kind of form so yeah oh awesome so seeting up on board uh I won probably won't set up a formal board but I'm trying to get more formalized mentorship and like a bit more accountability um for me and my sea level suite yeah awesome all right well look um we're going to move to the hot seat round got a couple of questions for you and then we'll work to wrapping up um if you could go back to your first day in business and give yourself one piece of advice

what would it be and why enjoy the process because it you know that's that's 90% of the battle and it's just yeah you got to enjoy it as well because you'll look back and you you'll wish you enjoyed it more what's the hottest product Niche to be selling in right now oh God they're all good the one with the most contribution margin that everyone's talking about okay uh if you could have dinner with any entrepreneur Dead or Alive who would it be El musk he just couldn't go past it I hate to be boring but

he's amazing Y and the last one what's one thing you've learned today um that you should book flights with long stopovers because I got stuck in by and Bay coming here that's not a problem yeah that's not a problem exactly oh awesome well look dve you thank you so much for your time man and actually just being so open honest vulnerable and humble congratulations on all your success thus far I look forward to watching your journey and it's great to connect thanks so much mate appreciate it hey guys if you love this episode make sure

to check out this interview with scooter braa on how he identifies talent that could go on to find wild success like Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande Justin Bieber was the most talented gifted kid I'd ever met it was so insane how great of a singer he was how Soulful he was what he could do on the drum naturally taught himself with guitar and drugs like he was a phenomenon and we met at the perfect time in both of our lives