Building A $10M+ Brand by Doing What Others Won't

(soft music) Hey, it's Andrew here and welcome to the Econ Fuel Podcast. The show dedicated to helping seven and eight-figure brand owners build incredible businesses and amazing lives. And an incredible story today. I had a blast talking with Kareem Rosalam. He is the owner of Brain Game Company that makes adjustable dumbbells, co-founded it during COVID. And what a fun guy. First, it just upbeat, friendly, personable, a lot of energy. And his story is phenomenal. He built this business while working in finance in the investment making industry, which, and he did it for like three or four years, almost five years until he stopped. And he didn't stop until the business, as we'll get into here, was pretty much the eight-figure mark. So that in and of itself says a ton, but the way he did it was fascinating because we talk about this business. It's a low margin high volume business. And the way he is built it, he's done it by doing a lot of things that other people were unwilling to do, dealing with shipping hard products, dealing with fulfilling into different countries that are logistically complex, optimizing supply chains, deeply understanding unit economics. Just doing a lot of the basic things that a lot of other people would say, "Hey, that's too much work." And he dove in, made it work, and was able to build a pretty impressive business as a result. So we talk about that, geek out about all of those things, as well as a little bit on the fitness side and his thoughts on health at the end. Given, you know, he's in the space. Love talking with him. Hope you enjoy this one as well. Let's bust into it. (upbeat music) Cream, so you were telling me, before we jumped on, you hinted that you were in banking for 10 years and that you just happened to start this business up on, you know, in the evenings, and in the weekends, and all of the free time that you had, as a, which is almost nonexistent in that industry. I'd love to, I'm not a huge, for people listening, they know I don't go into the nitty gritty, you know, 45 minute backstory of a lot of businesses. I think they can be believed, but this is interesting to me. Tell me how that worked, 'cause that's a hard thing to pull off to have the stamina and the time to do it. And what's, what's, yeah, how did this get started when you were, you know, slammed? - Yeah, honestly, for those in banking, 'cause you say, "Andry, it can be kind of quite intense, kind of long hours and into the evenings and kind of weekends." So if I kind of rewind back to kind of 2020, you know, the world of lockdowns, we're at home and, you know, the world is kind of largely closed. It was actually my co-founder at the time, it stumbled across an ad for basically a pair of adjustable dumbbells that were selling for kind of four times the retail price on Facebook marketplace and at the time. And he just said to me, he was like, "Hey, man, like, what do you think?" A couple of weeks later, placed an order for about 25 pairs of adjustable dumbbells. So for those who don't know, they're kind of multiple weights in one, designed to be a space time and kind of money saver, which was just perfect for kind of lockdown. They arrived, and obviously from our perspective, we're like, "What on earth are we gonna do with them?" Listed them, and actually within about two days, they sold. And then we were like, "Okay, hold on a second, there's an opportunity here." Then placed an order for 75, and this kind of truck with all these dumbbells would turn up to our parents' houses, and we'd physically, manually unload them from parents from the truck into our parents' garages. - So that's how you get so ripped, was just, you know, that the. - I was in the best shape of my life at the time, Andrew. And look, to be honest with you during COVID, there were some of my best times, 'cause we'd literally just be driving around London, dropping off dumbbells to people's houses, and we met so many interesting people, 'cause look, whether you were rich, poor, fat, thin, young, old, you just couldn't get Jim Equipment. And yeah, that's where the company kind of brain gain started. So yeah, I was thinking, "Bizzy during the day," and then, yeah, busy in the evenings and the weekends as well. - So how did you get, I mean, obviously the one off, you were buying wholesale, probably from factories direct, but even then supply chains were messed up during COVID. So how were you able to get dumbbells so quickly and how were you able to get around that? - Yeah, honestly, Andrew, we were subject to exactly the same kind of supply chain constraints for everyone else. And I think to be honest with you, we were just like two naive at the time, kind of 26-year-olds. We were just like, "Cool, place the order when they come, "we'll be fine." And I think what we, and again, looking back on it, you know, containers were like $20,000 a container at the time, admittedly, the price of kind of the product, was at a serious premium. But I think that since kind of come down. But I think what we did, Andrew, was, you know, when we first started, it was very much a, this is a COVID play. And we were probably one of the very few people who were praying for lockdowns, as opposed to kind of opening up. And I remember it was maybe like the 12th of April, 2021. We had three containers worth of stock landing in the UK. And the Prime Minister at the time announced the lockdowns were over. And I think for us, we were like, wow, we've got, you know, 1,500, 2,000 dumbbells, one earth we're gonna do with them. And I think what we've been kind of positively reassured about since then and even into now is, I think whether it's COVID or kind of more broadly, like people are getting increasingly used to training at home, whether you're a busy professional, or you're a mother with a young child, or like you just can't really feel more comfortable training at home. We have found there is a steady state if not kind of upward demand. And at the time, you know, those three containers went, went pretty quickly as well. And was definitely the beginning of what has been quite an exciting and fun journey as well. - Yeah, I recently just built out a home gym and for a while was training just it. Yeah, a local place about 5 to 10 minutes away. It was relatively close. And it wasn't bad, it was a good light filled equipment. But man, there's something about being able to roll out with your coffee and your slippers, you know, your son can come join you, you can leave, you're on your own time, you're not having to like, you know, you don't have like two people, about 18 inches away breath and on you when they're doing their squat. Like it's, you don't, you save the time in the transit, it just in general, it's a huge unlock. So yeah, I can see the train. - And I think even back in the kind of the COVID days, when I'd be on kind of some training sessions, and again, probably shouldn't say this publicly, you know, training sessions in the banking world, you know, camera off, dumbbells in hand, kind of getting some arm curls in between kind of meetings, it just makes it kind of that much more kind of accessible and easy to kind of get your pump in during the working day as well. - Yeah, and you just thought that those are awesome. I have a pair that I didn't know about your brand, but when I picked them up, I should have. But yeah, they're amazing, like as you can go, you kind of hinted at it, but 10 and 1, 8 and 1 saves a ton of space, they're pretty cool, the different ways, and there's all different ways they work, and but a very cool product line. So we, you were dropping these off in London to people, like you'd show up at their door, and just bring the, bring the bell, and people come down from their flat, and you just hand them their dumbbells. - Yeah, they, basically not, not fire off. So I'd say like the, the innovation in the adjustable dumbbell space, as you can tell them a bit of a, a bit of a geek on this side, is kind of far, far improved kind of since then. And I know Andrew, before this, we were, we had quite a long conversation about your adjustable dumbbells and the features and what makes them exciting. So thank you for, thank you for humoring me with that conversation as well. - It was a very niche mark. We've lost 90% of the people, but the 10% are here can be riveted. - Exactly, exactly. So yeah, to be honest with you, Andrew, like my local kind of spot was, like our local kind of supermarket, as a chain haircut, chain's breeze. I literally like me in the car park, give them the dumbbells, they would then make whatever the bank transfer, and then we kind of go off our separate ways. And I remember there was a couple of times, we'll be like two o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning. I'd get a message from someone saying like, hey man, like I really need the dumbbells, like can I come pick them up now? And I'd be like, I'm in bed, and I went and met some of these guys. And like people were turning up and like custom rolls, Royces that are probably worth like half a million dollars that were just desperate for Jimicwitman. So yeah, like I said, there was a weird and wonderful time, but yeah, no regrets, no regrets in terms of where the business started. - Hey man, hey, you got the stuff. I can meet you tonight, 2 a.m. in the parking lot. - Sounds like something else going down. I love this origin story. - This is just kind of random question about popped in my brain. Are you working harder on your business or were you working harder on banking? Which one has been more of a marathon? - I think where I was, say I look kind of brief, we'll stop kind of tour. So was in banking for kind of 12 or 13 years, kind of straight from university into an internship to working in a bank. And honestly, absolutely, you know, love debt. You know, I was working with kind of, you know, big corporates who had borrowed too much money, were then struggling. And it was basically how do you help to kind of heal them, fix them, and kind of get them back on their kind of two feet, which was awesome. And I absolutely loved it. And loved the people that I was kind of working with. But then I think, you know, stumbled into this kind of selling online, e-con world. And honestly, like when you first set up, you know, your Shopify store, and you get that like first Shopify ping, just like the dopamine here that someone is spending their money on your website is honestly like, you know, and I do sometimes I'm still turn it on just like, you know, if I'm having a slow day, you know, put that back on again to give me a bit of an uplift. But I think for me, like very different kind of worlds, very different kind of businesses. But I think what I've found kind of now having jumped in kind of full time in this kind of in-set, September kind of last year. You know, there is a never-ending list of kind of things to do, opportunities to go after and kind of to try and kind of explore. And I think what we found, and again, as a business, what we've been really trying to do is, like, pure play focus, like focus on what are the biggest downmovers, what are the things that are really going to make a difference. And I know people like Alex Hummerzy talk about, you know, the lady in the red dress, you know, my co-founder and I, we probably say, dude, man, like, that's a lady in the red dress, like ignore that stick, we say it maybe like once a week. Because I think what we've almost got is the opposite problem is like, you see so much opportunity. And for me personally, I'm trying to be a little bit more active when you know, linked in and all this stuff. And, you know, getting a lot of inbound queries like, hey man, like I'm working on this really cool thing. Do you want to have, and I just get very excited. So I would say like, I probably am struggling a little bit to kind of switch off, you know, in the evenings and then holidays and stuff. But for me, it feels like a more enjoyable, like, you're doing stuff that you're working on for yourself. Whereas I remember kind of one of the trigger points for me kind of quitting the day job and jumping in full time was, you know, on the trip I was going to China, add some work to do. And my 13 hour flight from London to Shanghai. I was like, modifying this PowerPoint presentation that was going to someone on like super slow British Airways Wi-Fi. And I was like, man, like this is so depressing. Whereas so, yeah, when I landed, I was like, you know, look, I think it's now got to a stage where I do just kind of need to jump in. So yeah, but both equally as intense, but this is probably got a little bit more enjoyment and upside on the other side of it. Did you grow, did you hit an eight figure run rate before you quit your day job, the banking day job? We were on track. We were on track. So we officially hit kind of eight figures, kind of, yeah, probably about September time last year. Why? So that just, that's insane. Why did you wait so long? I mean, most people would be, would be quitting, you know, when you were approaching, you know, million, million dollar run rate. They'd be like, okay, I've got some momentum. I'm going to put all my time here. You give grinding it out at the bank while doing this. What were you waiting for? Honestly, I think I just the lunatic. Honestly, come because I, you know, to my co-founders credit, you know, he jumped ship maybe like a year before. And I think from my perspective, I was like, you know, again, this is kind of comes down for like a bit of human psychology. I was like, you know, I'm infallible. I can do everything, you know, kind of no problem. And I think what I found was, you know, kind of speaking openly, I wasn't doing a particularly good job in the banking world and I wasn't kind of doing a particularly good job on the, the, the kind of the company. And then there are things like, you know, kind of, it is important to spend time with your family and spend time with your wife and exercise in health. And I always refer to kind of the life wheel. And my life wheel was kind of like all over the place. And I was kind of going in a direction, but kind of going quite slowly. So I think kind of that was the part of the trigger. But I think to be honest with you, because we were kind of operating so like in the shadows in Kolknoto to an extent, like, and again, this sounds very insensitive. But sometimes you kind of like, you just see like numbers on a screen and you don't necessarily kind of get a real sense of the scale. And maybe I'm the only person who feels this. But I think when, for example, like you go to your three P.L. you go to your warehouse and you see, you know, a thousand pallets worth of your goods and you're like, well, hold on a second like this is, this is wild. So I do think one of my regrets is probably not kind of jumping sooner. But I think that kind of transition from, okay, you know, monthly salary, certainty, living kind of comfortably to, you know, in the short term. Because again, we've just been investing every penny back into stock. I mean, it's interesting because I was just, you know, listening to some of your, there was like your seven financial kind of lessons on the pod. And you know, one of them is talking about, look like, you know, you do need to pay yourself and you do need to invest in diversify. And it was, you know, kind of quite a hard hitting. So I'd say like last year it was a, you know, do I, you know, kind of hesitating around, uncertainty around, should I jump and what about my job and safety and security? Whereas I think, you know, my regret is not doing it sooner as opposed to doing it at all. Well, kudos, sir. The fact that you stuck with it for four plus four and a half years. And the fact that you, you know, you look very well and healthy. I've seen people in a banking for 10 years and look like an age of 25. You seem like you came out of it very in great shape, especially for doing the duty. Very good. Question on the financing side. Like, you just alluded to that. You know, you've grown, started in 2020. So it's been about five years, grown to, you know, over eight figures. That's a decent clip. And you also mentioned, you know, it is a lower margin business. And so if you're doing that, you've got to have probably a decent, you're going to have more tied up and working capital and inventory, just given the nature of the economics. So how did you finance all this? Did you, did you bootstrapped it all? Did you take out lines of credit? Were you, is that why you, you know, were you taking the, that nice banking salary and that was you, you were your own bank and how did you do it all? Yeah. And again, Andrew, I'm probably going to reference one of your podcasts that you did and give people, haven't listened to it. I'd 100% recommend listening to the series. I haven't been paid to say it, but I think the one especially on the merchant cash advance, one absolutely resonated because I think for us, we have bootstrapped, we haven't kind of got external funding, we have kind of done it all ourselves. But I think what we did very much kind of like in the early days, we funded myself, my co-founder as we kind of started to scale, but as kind of working capital kind of became more of an intense feature for the business, we were using kind of merchant cash advances. We started with Shopify, which again, the, the trap that you talked about, which is a, hey, this is a 10% fee. You're like, man, this is amazing. Like, it's so easy. I've just clicked a button and I've got 50,000 pounds in my bank account and fine, like they're taking it from my revenue. So it's okay. So like we absolutely fell into, again, I'll be transparent. Like we fell into that trap, which is it's like quick, easy money. And I think last year, you know, we were kind of on this, I mean, speaking openly, you know, we were kind of on this like rocket ship for one of the better phrase, you know, a SaaS or an AI company, but like sales were growing and we couldn't keep up with the working capital requirement. And we'd taken a fair chunk from a company called WayFlyer, if they're big in the US as well, but say it's same kind of concept in terms of MTAs. And I think what we found was like, you know, the levels, you know, the levels we were taking out was like, you know, more than the value of my house. And I think we were like, it's great in terms of driving that, but it just wasn't driving to kind of the bottom line. It's kind of July, August, September time. We were like, look, you know, kind of, we don't have deep pockets to kind of keep funding this. So that's where we did like a 180 full focus on kind of profitability. And we've moved away from kind of using the merchant kind of acquirers. And we're just in the process now. We've got better, stronger financials from 2025. We're speaking to our suppliers to try and get better payment terms to soften some of that working capital flow. And we're also talking to kind of, you know, more traditional kind of lenders, you know, the likes of the HSBC who have trade finance teams who can actually support and fund this stuff. So I think we kind of fell into that MCA hole. We've kind of got out of it, you know, kind of somewhat fortuitously, but you look through like rigor, focus and pure play focus on profitability. But yeah, I think the next phase of our journey is kind of more, I say, slow and steady. It still feels like we're on a bit of a rocket ship, but like more measured kind of growth using more traditional kind of, you know, avenues. But I think look like, you know, my own ambition and a big part of why I joined DCF was, you know, the US is kind of where we want to, where we want to be in terms of demographic market opportunity, etc. But again, like that's probably a, you know, to build the supply chain, to build the working capital, you know, you're talking maybe a million dollars, which, which we can't, we don't have lying around. So look, you know, maybe the next phase of the journey is, is some sort of external funding. But yeah, the MCA, the MCA trap, we fell into that very, very willingly. And yeah, look, I do kind of feel like some more education doesn't need to happen for kind of e-com guys, because when they see, when they see the money and it's so easy to get it, I think it's a very dangerous, you know, very dangerous game those guys are playing. So I mean, you hear you are five years later, build an eight figure business doing this. On the dumbbell side, when you think about dumbbells, are you, I'm guessing that those early, those early iterations were existing models. Have you iterated on the models and kind of put your own DNA into the design and the, you know, the, the features of each, each one? Yeah. So I think, you know, for us, Andrew, when we started, similar to a lot of kind of wild classifiers back in the day as a, as a bedroom seller, you know, we were kind of on Alibaba.com, saw the first product that kind of came to mind. There's 20 different sellers selling the same kind of homogenous stuff. And we were like, you know, bring it in and let's sell it. And for about 12 months, that was brilliant. And it was like flying off the shelf and fantastic. But what we didn't know at the time was anything about intellectual property rights, design rights, pattern infringement, and everything kind of in between. So as the kind of the naive 26, 27 year olds, we were high-fiving ourselves. And this is going fantastically well until you get that cease and desist letter from quite a serious sounding US or UK law firm suddenly kind of put us in our tracks. So at the time we were unknowingly, and again, the suppliers, when you speak to them, they're like, this is completely fine to sell. No problem, no issues. Very much took that naively. And I think what we found at the time, blessed the lawyers that we were discussing with, it wasn't a case of like, we're here playing the fools. We are fools that aren't entirely clear on what we're doing here. And I think, hopefully they said, look, we understand that you're not here kind of acting maliciously. They provided us with a bit of a runoff period. And actually, what we found in that time was, because we built up credibility and an ability to market and sell of those products, it kind of opened us up some doors to kind of speak to some different manufacturers, to kind of co-create, and also get our own exclusive distribution for certain products. So we then started to diversify into products where we were the more unique distributor of them in certain geographies. And at the time, we were 100% UK, but shipping from the UK into Europe, which some of your US audience may or may not know, there was a big thing called Brexit, where the UK exited the European Union in 2021. So we had a bunch of products going from the UK to Italy and France and Germany and Spain. They would basically get all the way there for whatever reason a customer wouldn't accept it and it would fly all the way back. And what might have cost us $50 to send was costing us like $500 to bring back. So we were like, hold on a second, like this clearly isn't viable. And we found a very specific product we did want to sell, but someone in the UK had exclusive rights to sell it. And they said to us, well, what about Germany? And we were like, hey, why the hell not? We don't speak German. We don't know anyone German. At the time, I'd never even been to Germany. We were like, hey, why the hell not? Let's give it a go. And today Germany is our biggest market, probably about two or three X, the size of the UK. So I think what we found was like being in the game and building up a reputation or be it on very shaky foundations in the early days, it opened doors up to us to sell those more premium, better products. And I think where we are in our journey now is co-creating with some of our suppliers our own products. And I think what we found, Andrew, is a heaviest number at the moment is 41 kilos, which for a lot of people isn't heavy enough. So people are asking for 50 kilos and 60 kilos. I mean, for me, I'm a 20 kilo man and I'm all good. But yeah, who these guys are that are pumping 60 kilos, I'm not sure. But yeah, now we're starting to co-create and trying to work on their own designs and creating our own innovations that we're bullish on in terms of unlocking that next phase of our journey and our growth. Talk a little bit if you would about shipping. One of my favorite quotes is, if you don't have a hard part to your business, you don't have a business. And you were talking about in our community, had a couple posts about how you like the fact that shipping is a royal pain. Because to ship a 40 kilo 80-ish pound, set a single dumbbell or double that for a pair, it's hard. When I got mine, I could barely pull mine off. I felt bad for the dude who dropped it off. It was just like solid lead. Anyway, talk a little bit about why you like the fact that shipping is hard and expensive and difficult. Yeah, it's a great question, Andrew, because I think when you come back to like, what is your competitive edge and how can you kind of create a motor around your business? I think what we found, especially in the UK, setting up a company very easy, setting up a business very easy, listing on Shopify, Amazon eBay, also kind of very easy. And I think what a lot of people default to when they start is light, cheap and easy to kind of fulfill. So there's very few other people that would kind of go, OK, hold on a second, how do I make my life as difficult as possible? Which, again, I'd say, it almost wasn't intentional, but with the power of hindsight, it really is kind of a competitive edge. Because I think even when we first started, these containers used to come to the storage unit we were storing at the time. And for us, we used to hire 10 guys to come and unload these containers. And when we started selling kind of D to C on Amazon and Shopify, I used to go to the warehouse, take out the 40 kilo boxes. Sometimes UPS would collect them. Sometimes they wouldn't. When they wouldn't collect them, I'd have to hire a van, drive up to the depot, drop them off myself. And when I turn up to this depot, all of these big UPS guys who are there to unload this stuff, which is like, walk the other way. So I think for me in the early days, if someone's starting a business new, they're not going to default to big and ugly and heavy and kind of difficult kind of logistically. But I think what we've found over the years between optimizing kind of the shipping side of things in terms of getting your stock over from kind of the fire east into the UK or Europe, all the way to how do you get the product to your consumer? And I think for us, we started shipping 40 kilo boxes. But one of the big things we've done is, OK, instead of two 40 kilo boxes or 90 pound boxes, cut it into say four boxes of 22 and 1/2 kilos. And find that brings some complexity around, OK, call the customers need to then assemble there. But if you can layer in good assembly instructions, assembly videos, actually customers' customers kind of don't mind. And I think what we've found is all 3PLs, which we're super reliant on across the board, they are not created equally. And I think even then, each 3PL doesn't necessarily have the same rates with D8L or UPS or the underlying careers. So we were trying to get a great D8L rate with a 3PL in the Netherlands. And they were charging, I don't know, 50 euros a parcel. We managed to find this really random 3PL on the German border in Poland that can do it for say 10 euros a parcel. So I think that being willing and able to shop around and kind of be willing to optimize almost kind of like every single piece of your unit economics pie, it can be a real differentiator. And I think what we've found even in the adjustable dumbbell spaces, the number of people selling a 10 kilo adjustable dumbbell, you might find 50 sellers selling a similar product. Whereas in the 40 kilo space, there's only maybe five. So I think that maybe the audience and the market size for people in the 40, 50 kilo dumbbells are smaller. But if you can kind of make the niche work there, then actually you can grow yourself kind of a pretty decent business. And yeah, I think the logistics side-- I'm a bit of a geek for all this stuff-- give me my 3PL invoice to pick up our end to kind of sense Jack. That's me in my happy place. But yeah, I think if you can get that right, it can be a real kind of different change or a game change. It's spoken like a true Excel junkie coming out of there. Looking at those 3PL invoices, it's funny you mentioned the assembly because I don't know if it's necessary that consumers and customers don't mind assembling, but they don't think about it. So when I bought my stuff recently, quite the recent last three, four months, I kind of knew I'd have to assemble it. I didn't know the extent though. So when I got the rack and everything, it was like a week and a half of my life putting it together because two hours, three hours here, four hours there. And even the dumbbells, they weren't bad, but it's still taking a 45 minutes an hour. And so it's nice because it's this thing that you can-- it's something you can do and optimize that is you're very aware of because you have to do it 1,000 times. And the consumer only has to do it once. And they're not thinking about that when they hit the buy button. So that works out really well. But I think, I do. It's interesting because it's almost fed into a lot of our product and skew selection. Because I think we've often debated-- I mean, we've got, again, some-- I don't know if they're horror stories or battle wounds or what you'd call them, but I think for us, last year, 2025, we were like, OK, cool. We sell dumbbells. We want to sell everything in the home gym to that customer. And we also want to sell them anything unrelated to wellness and health. And so at one point, we were selling reformer Pilates machines. We were selling under-desk treadmills. And I think what we found was actually A, our expertise is in adjustable dumbbells and our very specific niche. But I think connected to that, we were like, look, we also want to make our customers lives easy. We don't want a customer to be spending two or three hours. or a week kind of, you know, assembling a rack, whereas for me it's like adjustable dumbbells land, you know, within 10 minutes, you're good to go, you're good to start working out, you're good to start training. And I always use the example of like the Reforma Pilates machine that we diversified into last year and then diversified out of again. You know, we were in China seeing some of our supplies in May last year and Reforma Pilates in the UK and Europe much like it is in the States. It's booming. It's everywhere. Everyone wants to do it. And you know, I spent 15 minutes on the factory floor trying to figure out how this machine works. So bless our outsourced customer service guys in Pakistan. They don't know what Reforma Pilates is. They've never seen a Reforma Pilates machine. Imagine them having to kind of give customer service experience and helping someone to build it. And I think what we've said is, look, rather than expanding out the scoop or furlough, let's really focus in on what we're good at. That's adjustable dumbbells and making sure that we can give customers the best possible experience with that specific product. Because yeah, I hate flatpack furniture. I hate building stuff for myself. So with all that stuff, I'm just, yeah, white glove service all the way. It's not something I personally enjoy, which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy either. - Well, there's the, it's not just the assembly, right, like you assemble it. And then you've got crap everywhere. You've got like a hundred pounds of cardboard. You've got the little styrofoam that like becomes, you know, it's static and just sticks to everything. You can't get, it's just, it's like a three hour clean up job even after you assemble it. - Hey, Sandra here with a quick sidebar. I want to introduce you to Ori from industrialstores.com. I met Ori at a Shopify event. Oh man, maybe six, seven years ago it was, there's a period right. I got the insane and the very poor decision of visiting like 10 cities and 10 days to host meetups and Toronto was near the end of the event. And anyway, I met him there, become friends since and he's one of the kindest and nicest and just best people I know. And here's what he has to say about his experience with e-commerce tool, our private and vetting community for seven and eight figure founders. - The connection with people through the form and the events and ECF live each year is just so impactful. I've made friends and connections and a support, built a support network all around the world through ECF and the ability to just reach out through the forms, the local events and any CF live, the annual event is just mind blowing what it's done for me. So I think that is most valuable. - After hearing literally hundreds of comments like this over the last decade, our community has been around. It's easy to offer our 10X guarantee. If you don't get at least a 10X ROI on your membership in the first year, in terms of increased revenues, save time and saved money, we'll give you a full refund plus an extra thousand dollars. But many of our members report seeing massive value in just the first month or two when applying it to their seven or eight figure business. You can learn more about the community and apply for membership at e-commercefuel.com. Okay, back to the show. (upbeat music) I would love to hear about 3PLs. I'm speaking of Excel stuff. Like I am knee deep in the middle of doing the analysis for the this year's e-commerce fuel trends reports. I haven't released yet, maybe you'll be out by the time this comes live. But one of the big findings I was pretty surprising is that one of the biggest predictors of how a company is doing in terms of just their health and vitality is if they own or if they lease a warehouse. And kind of counterintuitive to me, owning a warehouse was actually not a great sign of doing well. And maybe there's some kind of inverse correlation like maybe if you've done better and you have more money and you're growing slower, it makes sense to go into a warehouse, I'm not sure. But you have done an exceptional job of picking 3PLs. Logistics is one of your competitive advantages. You're selling into Europe, which is one of the most fractured places to sell. I'd love to hear just a little bit about that infrastructure. Do you partner with one 3PL that has places everywhere? Are you like super opportunistic? And what do you look for in a good 3PL partner? Yeah, again, like you said, Andrew, I think kind of for us, if I go back to maybe 2022, which was again, like busy job, both me and my co-founder were kind of in full time employment. And we're trying to fulfill orders. And just the amount of time it was taking every day to go to the depot and label up the boxes and kind of sending out, sending it out. So I think for people on their journey, again, if you are scaling, I think looking to outsource full film and kind of, again, people always ask, what's the best time? Is it a certain volume? Is it a certain cost? And I'm just like, look, if you can get the economics to work, the amount of time and effort you'll save that you can then reinvest into higher value stuff, absolutely will make your kind of money worth there. So I think we were kind of introduced to the concept, probably about two years in, which was very, very late by my own kind of admission. And I think for us, like, price is absolutely, a kind of a factor as part of all of the economics kind of discussions. But what I've learned over the years is, price isn't everything. You do need to factor in other kind of factors around, look like, what is their responsiveness? What is their cutoff hours? And I think the other thing that I would say is, 3PLs can very heavily focus on your, very heavily focus on your off-the-shelf, what is your final mile pick-pack delivery rate? But what we found, especially as we kind of went into Europe, that there's a bunch of other hidden fees, whether that's fuel surcharges, whether that's residential handling. I think what we found with our warehouse in the Netherlands was our outbound rate was something, but our return rate was, again, 3X or 4X the price. So there's like a bunch of other, like, don't just focus on the headline, delivering to your customer rate. You need to look at all the other value added, kind of service stuff, the kind of comes with it, comes with it as well. And I think what I would say is, when you are speaking to a 3PL, be mindful that they are in sales mode. And what I would always recommend is, the reference is critical, and be very specific about the references you're asking for. So for me, I'm sending 60-pound boxes on Amazon, Sell-A-Field Prime. Okay, don't connect me with a supplement seller who's only selling on TikTok shop. No, no, I want to know that you've done this, kind of, before. So I'd say, like, reference is super, super, super important. And then I would say, similar to what we were saying earlier about, you know, not every 3PL was created equally. And the trauma that I had in kind of October 2025, we've been using a warehouse in the Netherlands for, you know, kind of 18 months or so. And then on the 25th of October, I get a notice that as of the 27th of October in two days time, any shipment that has a box over 25 kilos is going to be an extra 15 euros. So the cost for fulfillment only was going to be, like, another 60,000 euros a month. And I was like, guys, like, you know, in big, heavy stuff, you know, the margins aren't huge. It's a volume play. I was like, guys, I'm better off just closing up shop and not selling a single item for the next three months, rather than fulfilling with you guys. And what I found was with another 3PL relationship that we've got that we use in the UK, I was like, hey, guys, I've got this problem. And they're kind of more of like, a bit of an aggregator, they're more of like a tech company that work with 3PLs. And I just said, look, this is the problem statement. I need your help. And this was on a Friday night by the following Monday, he'd managed to find me this warehouse on the Polish German border that would deliver to Germany next business day at 20% like a 20% reduction of my usual kind of freight cost. So like the silver lining of it, I found this absolutely brilliant partner. And I always say, this warehouse is like, in the middle of nowhere in the Polish countryside, very rundown. And I was like, if your 3PL is like shiny and new, they're making too much money. I don't know if I'm allowed to swear or not on this Andrew, but for me, it's like the more rundown the place can be, almost like the better. So I would say, look, I think as you scale and get bigger, you know, diversification is important. Because I think what we're also finding is, again, if you're sending out 100 orders a day, 200 orders a day, like you've still got to physically lug this stuff around on trucks and put it through the distribution centers. And what we're finding in Amsterdam at the moment is that there's too much stock that's going through the UPS network that they just can't kind of handle it. But I think Andrew, it's your original point about building your own warehouse and then managing your own warehouse. I think there is definitely a point where kind of scale does come into air. But at the same time, the debate we often have is, but running a warehouse is a very different business. You now need to-- you're creating a long-term liability for the business. You've got to hire a warehouse manager and warehouse staff and insurance. And you then need to manage your relationships But the career is at the end. And then, then, then, then. So I think there's definitely a sweet spot where it does make sense to kind of, you know, start bringing things in-house, kind of vertical integration across the supply chain. But I think for us, especially as we're UK and Europe, it kind of doesn't make sense. There's still a lot more scale to go with our existing model before starting to think about kind of in-housing or in-sourcing some of the logistics stuff as well. - Yeah, and sure, it's, you know, the more skews you have, or it probably makes sense, the more complex your product or high touch, you know, the more it makes sense. But yeah, it's, man, running warehouse seems like, sounds like the least enjoyable part of any e-commerce journey, in my opinion. How have you marketed the business? I mean, we'll talk in a minute here about how you're increasingly trying to get first order as profitable as possible. But maybe we focus a little bit more on, you know, the last year, year and a half, as opposed to the beginning of the business where you're really scrappy and making it work and advertising economics were very different five years ago. But yeah, how are you advertising and marketing today? I mean, you mentioned that this is a high volume, lower margin business. And so you probably don't have as much room as maybe other people do to spend on ads. So how do you, how do you market effectively? - So for us, Andrew, I think the most important thing that we did, and I would absolutely recommend this to both kind of any e-commerce people that I speak to now, what people are starting out is, look like really, really knowing your unit economics. And again, sorry, that I'm turning into like, a bit of an Excel geeky kind of podcast, which may not be right now. - I'm here for it. - The initial approach you're going for, Andrew, but I think for me, look like knowing your unit by unit economic, like skew by skew unit economics, absolutely kind of paramount and critical. And I think what we did last year was quite a deep dive exercise into each skew on each channel, in each geography, what is basically our kind of ceiling hack that we can kind of accept. And for us as a business, because again, we went from like 2024, 2025, trying to sell everything to everyone, to now kind of narrowing down our skew portfolio again. So for us, the huge focus is on, look, first order profitability on the dumbbells, because again, for us, we're selling a great product, giving people a great experience, and the products are designed to last, 5, 10, 15, ideally a lifetime. We're not the iPhone that's designed to break after I don't know, 18 months or two years or whatever it may be. - Self-destructing, yeah. - So for us, it's how do we, first order profitability critical, and kind of the 20, 26 question challenges. Okay, now that we've kind of solved that, or solving that, how do we then upsell, crosssell, complimentary kind of goods. So that's what we're testing and running at the moment. But I think for us in terms of funnel, we are quite heavily reliant on Google as a channel. So I think for us, we're kind of investing very heavily in pure play, bottom of funnel, people in market for adjustable dumbbells. And I think what we found interestingly is the market for people that are looking for adjustable dumbbells is actually pretty big and pretty broad. So 80% of our paid spend is Google, and then 20% is meta, which again for us, it's primarily kind of, you know, retargeting warm audiences to kind of get them in the funnel. And I think what we've found, and what we've been doing a lot of testing in, kind of in the last kind of 12 months or so, is YouTube as a middle of funnel, top of funnel awareness, kind of channel. And I think for us, we've been like super, super intentional, particularly in Germany and France, where we're growing quite aggressively, but don't yet have the same kind of brand name, brand presence there. For us, the journey we're assuming is someone searching for adjustable dumbbells, they see our ad from Google, they kind of fish around, they don't know anything about us, back to Google, brain gain reviews, they see a couple of YouTube videos unboxing dumbbells after six months, dumbbells after 12 months, they then come back in the funnel, email marketing starts to do its thing, meta does its thing, you know, we've just started playing around with WhatsApp marketing as well, which is really interesting and kind of really cool. And I think the final bit of our funnel, so we're actually as a business, 50% Amazon 50% Shopify, but what we've found by surveying our customers is, Amazon is again, a brilliant top of funnel, middle of funnel, kind of channel, where people then do come and shop around and land on our website as well. So I always say to all my friends, like if you're a pure player, Amazon purchaser, consumer on Amazon, always shop around and find the brands underlying site, because odds are you'll find a discount code, you'll find a cheaper price, and you'll probably get a better service than going to Amazon directly. So when you're doing some of this video advertising, let's take the French, for example, I know the English and French are super tight. Is this Korean speaking English, hey, your friend Korean from the UK here, the dumbbells, or do you hire someone who's a native French speaker? Are you using AI to do that? I'm curious how, because that's one of the things, I mean, Europe is just not only do you have, especially with Brexit for you in the UK, you've got so many different cross-border issues, but you've got the language barrier. So I'm curious how you approach that. Honestly, Andrew, we, and again, there's a bit of a theme here around kind of naivety to start with, then kind of improving as things kind of test. So I think when we first started in Europe, so in May 2024, I think it was, our first containers landed in mainland Europe, which again, I can talk about VAT and compliance and regulations, which if anyone is sad and depressed and wants to talk about this stuff on a Friday evening, I'm always happy and available to talk about this stuff, which I say facetiously, but in Europe, it is quite bureaucratic, and you have to get that stuff, you have to get that stuff right. But I think for us, our, when we first started, was we've got an awesome product, great price point. If we just put some Google money behind it, English website, build it, and they will come, was kind of the mentality. And we started by taking like a super broad approach across Europe, which was let spend, I don't know, a thousand euros a month in every single country and every single market in Europe, which was just a complete disaster and money down the drain. But I think what we found now is, in Europe especially, I would take a country by country market and go super, super deep. So for us, Germany is our biggest market, our core market, website, German language, meta ads, German language, Google, German language, email marketing, German language. And then when it comes to kind of content and copy, find, we're not so big on the macro influences who are 100,000 followers and 500,000 followers. For us, it's more of the authentic, 5000 plus followers on YouTube who can create more authentic videos. When we first started, we were doing some like 11 lab zask videos where I was speaking in German, and when you hear yourself speaking in German, it's bloody terrifying. So I don't know if you've ever done it, but it's like the weirdest thing in the world. I have not done this. But now I think for us, we're going down look like authentic, working with people on the ground, because I do think in this like AI world that we live in, it is getting way better and it's super impressive. But I still think there is this like authenticity play, which is, you know, if the story is "Kareem is from England" and it's abundantly clear I don't speak German, and I come on and I'm speaking perfect fluent German. I don't know, like, I'm one of those where I'm, I wouldn't say I'm an early adopter, but I'm absolutely embracing technology, but I'm probably not quite there yet in terms of handing everything over to the machine. I'm probably a little bit more of a gradual, gradual kind of progress, progress kind of guy. I don't know, Kripp, you look like a multi. You look like a linguist, but you just, you know, French, German, fluent right after tongue, I would believe it. I mean, Andrew, I've learned, you know, ask me, ask me what adjustable dumbbell is in any European language and I'm all good, but anything apart from that, I'm struggling a little bit. So you were going, it sounds like an influencer out, maybe not ponying up and trying to court like, coop from home gym reviews. He's kind of like the big guy in the space or one of them, but you were kind of going for the smaller to mid-size. Did you do much influencer marketing for this? Have you done much of that or was it all been paid? For us again, like we've been very kind of intentional and strategic around, like where are we placing our chips? And I think the kind of the challenge and inverted commas for us as a business is, you know, 'cause our product is expensive. You can't really do like a spray and pray approach of, you know, dishing out, you know, dishing out 50 dumbbells or 1,000 dumbbells to a bunch of influencers and kind of hoping for the best. I think what we did do in the early days in like the COVID period was, you know, we found an influencer who had, you know, a million followers, gyms were closed, he used to also train at home and we gave him a pair of dumbbells and the thinking was, he's gonna use these organically in all of his videos anyway, you know, he posted one video and then we never saw them again in any of his content. So I think for us there is probably a still a living place. little bit of distrust on like the proper, you know, the big macro kind of influencer kind of guys. And I think what we found is actually working with the guys who are kind of call it up and coming, you know, these guys, they're doing a lot of it like the enjoyment of them. But to be fair, what these guys also have is like, you know, an affiliate link and a commission in their YouTube videos. So, you know, some of these guys are earning, you know, 2,000 euros a month having posted two or three YouTube videos, some of which six or 12 months ago. So I think these guys have got an awesome, awesome deal, which I'm slightly biased by. But again, like when you look at some of these YouTube videos, the social proof on them, there's like, you know, 200 comments on them, which is like, hey, I just got my dumbbells and they're the best things ever. Or people asking questions and people are interacting on the kind of the comments. So I think for us YouTube super valuable. I think we're being a, we're being a more selective when people with like, you know, 300,000 TikTok followers, Carmore Instagram followers, because I just think for our product, like attention, like attention is so short, whereas YouTube is an evergreen platform. So we get a bunch of these guys with like, you know, 500,000 followers on TikTok. And quite quickly, we're like, look, sorry, man, we're not interested. And they're like, but what do you mean? I've got 500,000 followers. And we're just like, look, it's just not, it's just not where we're focused on kind of right now in terms of that kind of consideration phase that a lot of our kind of customers are in, where they're looking more for social proof and validation than that pure play top of funnel. How do we kind of get people interested in the idea in the first place? Interesting. I like that idea. It can't kind of the idea of you're going to get a lot more attention. And you're going to be a bigger fish in the smaller influencers. Pawn is pushing you, too, versus a flash in the pan for the bigger ones. You know, when you are thinking about conversion and becoming first order profitable or as much, you know, as far into that territory as you can be, you talked about being very big on unit economics, contribution margin on a per channel and a per product basis, which makes a ton of sense. Is there anything you've done on the front end, either with advertising strategies, with the site, with Amazon listings that has made a meaningful difference on the conversion rate side, outside of the fulfillment economics? Yeah. So I think probably like the highest, well, one of the highest value things I think we've almost ever done. And it sounds so kind of archaic and boring in the world that we live in is doing a customer survey. And what we found was, you know, we sent it to our customer base and we got, you know, 700 odd responses. And I think for, and, you know, people get warning us, you know, you need to do a five question quiz or a seven question survey or a 10 question survey maximum. We completely ignored it and we put 50 questions in this survey. And what's quite cool is like, on some of this software, you can see like tracked responses, like progress, they might have got to like question 40, but you still get the answers, which is great. But there was a number of people that actually went the whole way. And I guess like, what you have to be conscious of with like surveys is like some survey bias. So, you know, what we found in Germany, the majority of people who did the survey were people who bought 41 kilo dumbbells. So these are like serious gym goers. They love the gym. They love fitness. Any opportunity to talk about this stuff. They're all for it. But I think what we found there is actually, you know, what is it these guys are looking for? These guys are looking to build muscle. They're looking to train for endurance. They're looking for benches and kettlebells and stands. They're looking, they're not interested in fitness apps and workout guides. So it was almost like as helpful to know what they're looking for, but also like specifically what they're not kind of looking for. So what's come off the back of that is basically a 50 point action plan around, you know, kind of solving some of this stuff. And some of it is like really low hanging stuff like, hey man, like I was really nervous because I couldn't see what your return policy was. Okay, make that more visible. So I think for us a big part of our focus this year is that CRO side of side of things. And I think what I do see on like, you know, I think as you'll know in others, I think people like Groon's are naturally like the inspiration from a CRO perspective. And I think what we're doing now every week is what can we incrementally improve tests, find what works, and then basically kind of keep keep iterating. And I think for us, you know, small thing, but you know video player with faces talking about how great their dumbbells are. That's what we're just about to launch now. And I think Andrew like very small thing, well, hypothetically small, but we've been using an AI translated website for Germany and France for the last like, you know, 12 months. And just again, there's always a million things to kind of do. But I was under the impression it was like 95, maybe 98% there checked with the German person. They're like, oh my god, like instead of Olympic plates that you use in the gym, it's directly translating to be like Olympic plates that you eat on a table, which is completely different. And they were just like cream like how the hell you're selling and you've got a business in Germany with this website. So I think again, it's just an example of like, I think we sometimes get quite caught up in like big revolutionary big swings, which I think you do need to do. But actually it's some of that lower hanging kind of fruit that sometimes like directly in front of you, that just by tweaking a few things incrementally, you will start to see an improvement. And I think even just simple things like for the first three years that we're operating, we didn't have product reviews on our page because we were like, if we start, it's going to show we've only got one or two reviews, whereas actually being site, but again, it's just made like a big a big difference. I think the Amazon machine is a bit different because that is a, you've just got a PDP that you need to make sure that PDP looks optimized. And that is all about kind of obviously, adds is a big part of it, but it's how do you get the message across in the image carousel and how do you basically build up reviews? That's the game. Whereas D to C between obviously PDPs and landing pages and thinking about your email marketing and how that kind of comes to play as well, super important. And I think one of the other things we're doing, Andrew is like, we were just blindly sending eight email campaigns a month and we were basically saying the same thing, which is hey, we sell adjustable dumbbells, which gets quite bought. Like we were we were bored writing them. Whereas what we've tried to do now is, okay, cool, let's be like super intentional with our post purchase experience. Let's be super intentional with abandon, check out abandon car. Because if someone is, I don't know, taking three months, like I don't know, Andrew, for your adjustable dumbbell journey, you probably didn't see your first ad and then bought it was a bit more of a longer term considered process. So it's how do we educate people and how do we build more social proof, et cetera. So I don't think very like, I get really angry. I'm not angry. That's probably telling me out to be a bit more emotive than I am. I've seen very angry just from the start. Yeah, let it let it. But I think like when someone says to me, let's change the ad to cart button from yellow to green. It's like, no, no, maybe that does work when you're like, I don't know, a hundred million dollar a year revenue business. Maybe you've exhausted all the other low hanging fruit and that does make a difference. But yeah, some of that UX stuff have changed this color to this. I'm just like guys, I think you've got bigger fish to fry, especially when you've got people that haven't done the unit economics. They don't know where the leaks are. And they're like, should I change this from green to yellow? It's like, no, no, like fix all the other stuff and then start thinking about tweaking colors on. Got more passion about that than I thought I was. No, I think you're spot on. Last question before you hear before we wrap up, totally unrelated. And I left this for the end because it's a little less on the e-commerce side more on the health side. You're in the space. It sounds like you were getting some reps in between Zoom meetings, which is pretty awesome. What big question, but how do you think about fitness and workouts and staying in shape and you can approach this however you want? What your routine looks like, what's worked for you? I think it's such a interesting broad field. Everyone has their own little quirks and ways they approach it. And there's a lot of different, it's one of those odd things too, where it's such a basic thing about human health and longevity. And there's so many different opinions on it. So big question. But yeah, what's your philosophy and how do you, what do you look like in that kind of realm? Super critical. Not just saying this is the founder of a home gym fitness company. But yeah, look, I think both my co-founder and I are very, very big on, look, the importance of health training, wellness, staying in good shape, whether that's healthy body, healthy mind, or how you can better serve other people. And I think for me, when I look at the older generation, my parents included, they both used to play a lot of sport when they were younger, but as they've got older, it's just like falling off a cliff to kind of eat what they want and they just don't look after themselves in the way that I personally think they should. So I was do try and encourage them to kind of look after themselves. I think for my own journey, I mean, yes, it's kind of a gone through my own journey of like when I was younger at school and at college, I was playing a lot of sport. So good eat whatever I want and kind of didn't really have to worry about that stuff. Finish that, got into the banking world and then like gym exercise training was a bit of a back seat. And you know, you're eating out and client dinners and client lunches and everything in between. And what I found was like I kind of gone up like, I always use like how my clothes there. I'd gone from like I don't know what the US equivalents are, but from a size 32 waist to a size 36. And I was like, this is a disaster. Did a 4 180 for about four years. And I was eating like the same thing for breakfast lunch and dinner. Well, breakfast lunch, a second lunch and dinner every single day. If we go out, I'd be getting like, you know, instead of a burger and chips, it would be a burger take off the top bun instead of fries, having vegetables on the side, which was deeply, deeply depressing. So, you know, I got to like the 8% body fat and it was absolutely brilliant and I loved it. Oh my goodness. But again, it was like, it was just it worked for me, which I was like I'm eating healthy. I was cycling to and from the office. I was gyming every day and it was amazing. But I think we're at which probably in hindsight was maybe a little bit too intense. So I think where I'm at now, I'm kind of feel depressed to say, but like, you know, I'm 33 now. I think, you know, the days of having a, you know, an eight pack are probably behind me. But I think for me, it's, you know, getting, you know, working out, you know, four or five times a week, trying to be more active in terms of, look, cycling where I can cycle, walk way you can walk. And again, just like being mindful of what you're eating and not kind of overindulging, I think for me, that's like the most important thing of just having balance. But what I have liked in terms of, you know, kind of being a, being kind of the master of my own time now, which is great is, you know, for me with my kind of nutrition and my day and meetings, you know, going to the gym at 10 a.m. or two o'clock in the afternoon, works perfectly. So I think one of the benefits of like the post COVID world is that flexibility, whether you are your own boss or whether you're an employee, you know, kind of training when you want to train and being a bit more flexible around that, I think is super critical. And yeah, like one of our, you know, some of the, some of the girls in our team lift heavier than than we do as the founders said, we're trying to kind of encourage it, encourage it as much as we can. My eight percent body fat days a salary behind me. It's funny. You mentioned the, the banking side and, and kind of the diet and and he'll stuff that I went the other way. I remember the very first day I went first week. I was banking. The whole team went up to lunch and we went up to the counter and ordered and, and I think I ordered first or second and I ordered a sandwich. And then one of the guys took me aside. He said, uh, Andrew, yeah, you can't order a sandwich. I was like, what do you mean? He's like, well, we all order soup and bread because it's ready and the sandwich takes five minutes and this, it just takes waste time. I was like, oh, okay. So we all get our soup and we go and the soup was like eight ounces of soup and like a piece of bread. And it was maybe 250. Anyway, I lost probably like between the, you know, single guy. I didn't cook for myself very well. You're working hard eating the Oliver twist soup rations at lunch because it saved time for the banking crew. Like I close or just hanging off. I just blow away and I probably lost. I didn't have a lot of weight to lose, especially at the time. I probably lost 10 pounds. My parents saw me one time. They're like, are you okay? Like you looked terrible. So yeah, it's, yeah, banking is not necessarily optimized for, you know, for long-term health, I would say one way or another. Good to agree more. So like I think everyone's just got to try find their own balance of what works for them. Yeah. Korean, this has been awesome. Thank you. I'd love to, you know, before for people who have been listening, they do happen to be in the market for adjustable dumbbells or health things in general. Can you give them the link to your site, the UK site and and do you have a US site? Because you're not selling in the US. You're looking to, hoping to, but what's the best place for people to check it out? And if you're in the US, can you buy them? Or is it just Europe and the UK? Yeah. So at the moment, we are only UK and Europe. So if you go to braingain.com, you'll find us. Yeah, not not in the US yet, but yeah, hopefully something in the kind of the not too distant future. But yeah, at the moment, LinkedIn is probably the best place to kind of find me. And yeah, look, what I just say in general, again, I've said this a couple of times in the pod. I'm a bit of a geek for, you know, UK, you kind of expansion. So look, anyone listening, if if it is helpful to kind of get a second opinion, if you're thinking about that kind of part of the world, happy to help. I'm a big believer of the power of the network as you know, Andrea. So yeah, look, anywhere I can be helpful because I can down well, guarantee what I'm looking state side. I'll absolutely be trying to, trying to cash in the favors to get any advice and help as well. Well, you did your new member experience share. We ask all new members to the community to to write something up to share the community. And you did a great one on your learnings expanding into into Europe. So we'll link up to that in the show notes for any ECF members. And if you are someone who has a million or two around that you've really invested a $200 million dollar evaluation to help help them get into the US, I'm sure Kareem Wood would enjoy chatting with you. And then also you mentioned LinkedIn. You're trying, you do a lot of posting a mention network. Where can people find you there? And what kind of stuff you post it over there? Kareem Razan just here. My name on, hit name on LinkedIn. I think yeah, look, I'm kind of trying to find my fee in terms of like what I find interesting and what I like to post because I think again, it kind of does need to be authentic. To be honest, it's it's a lot more around the D2C kind of journey and kind of building, building the company in the brand is kind of the main focus area. But what I have found, I mean, interestingly, I'm looking for a French translator to review my Shopify site in France posted. And I've just got 200 connection requests. So I've got, I've got that as a bit of work to get through today. So yeah, look, I think, you know, from my perspective, just just meeting cool people doing cool things is kind of on the on the agenda. So yeah, look, always always keen to meet me, others. My only slight regret on being on this side of the pond. You know, I think the US is is leaps and bounds ahead of kind of the UK and Europe in terms of, you know, founder networks like Econ fuel. And I know you guys do your kind of annual event. So I'm definitely going to try and plan the diary to try and come out to the States to kind of meet people in in real life as well as on Slack or on on WhatsApp as well. We'd love to have you. And we, hopefully at some point, can get something happening in London as well too. That's been on the list for a while. So well, Karim, so fun to talk to you. Congrats on building a business. I'm so impressed that you you did this in tandem with banking for four and a half years that you still got as, you know, upbeat and fun, an attitude at the end of it. And yeah, appreciate you being in the community. It's been wonderful to have you and hope to meet up either in London or some more in the States at some point in the future to, I don't know, we can we can have a drink and cheers on your US expansion holds. Late that point. Absolutely. That looked likewise, Andrew. Thank you. Thank you for having me and yeah, great to great to speak. If you're an entrepreneur who wants to connect with other experienced owners who are working to build a financially vibrant business alongside a rich, meaningful life, head on over to ecommercefuel.com to learn more and connect with a thousand entrepreneurs just like you. Work hard, adventure often, and forage with matters. Look forward to seeing you again next Friday.