Guest Episode - Stefan Husanu - The Systems & Team Behind £600k+ Months (Fractional Integrator Playbook) | Part 2 | Ep 37

Hello, listen to this. So if you didn't tune into last week's episode, I would highly recommend that you do that. This is the second part of last week's episode. So this is our guest interview with the fantastic Stefan who Sarnu, who has exited one of his businesses and has in the last five years taken a starter from nothing to doing over 600,000 pounds worth of product sales in a month or based in the UK. No external investment. So he's a really cool guy and he's able to do this whilst taking a whole of these last year, one on 11 weeks, where the whole of these whilst taking this business into the stratosphere. He's a lovely humble guy, absolutely legend. He's a client of us. So this is the second part of the episode of the interview. Sorry, last week, we talked about how he's been able to do that in the business. He's mindset, the tactics that he's used. This week, we're going a little bit more into how he's worked with us to help him exit the first business and scale this second one. So this episode is a little bit more tactics around working with a fractional integrator or fractional COO. Even if you don't want to do that, it's highly worth you listening to because Stefan will go through some of the structure and systems that he uses to make sure that his team aren't just doing the day job, but also growing the business, even if he's not there. So I hope you enjoy the episode. I'm sure you will. And if you want to connect with Stefan, his name is Stefan, with an F who Sarnu, who Sarnu, excuse me, H-U-S-A and you, he's on Instagram, and LinkedIn. I won't do a wrap up at the end of the episode. We'll just wrap it up. So let's jump in. Yeah. So I did want to just shift gears slightly now then. So you've taken this business from concept to idea, however you've managed to do it, it's an amazing story. You've built this team. You've got, you're the epitome of jump off the cliff and build the plane on the way down. You're doing it. You know, you like lay the track as the trains go in. So you're doing it, you're creating problems for yourself and achieving amazing things as you go. Obviously, I've had the pleasure of working with you and knowing you. I think we were trying to figure out before the podcast and I was like, we shouldn't try and figure this out. We should do it on the podcast because it's quite funny. So we were trying to figure out how long we've been working together. Did we come to a conclusion? I think we started to think it was two years, but it's probably more than three now. It's probably more than three. Stefan plays down the time because he's trying not to paint me. I'm a joking. So any two years I A for no jokes, jokes, jokes. So, yeah, so we've worked together. And you know, a part of my reason for wanting to work with you is is the excitement around Pith and Stem. And I've also helped help you on at Lantis and part of it is the excitement around Pith and Stem. But part of it as well as just you and we get on. You're a good, you're a good egg. I think you attract people around you that are committed and hard working and I'll cast myself as one of those. So I help you out with Pith and Stem as what I'd call a fractional COO or a fraction integrator. So that's work in the businesses that probably don't need or kind of forward a full-time chief of operations kind of structure. How is that how is that having that resource, which is me? How was that helped you with Pith and Stem and with the small team and with scalability? And is there anything particularly that you think you would struggle with if that wasn't there? Well, first of all, it helped me with Atlantis. So it was without like us working together then I would have probably not been able to exit the org chart. Initially we tried just systemize in everything and then there was still a missing link and then we identified that so then I went out. It took a long time but I managed to hire the right person for the job and now that missing link brings everything together and with the systems that we implemented. Like he's able to run that business and they're there doing great. He's an amazing job. Yeah, as you go. So first of all, he helped me with that. He helped me organize a business and it didn't feel very quick but looking back very quickly exit the org chart and then the same things that we implemented in that business we started implementing in Pith and Stem and where they started being a little bit more systemized and where it where there was a lot more chaos we started taking out chaos and just putting it in different compartments. Organizing the chaos. Organizing the chaos and then take those compartments and then give them some set of numbers. I was like, okay, well how does this chaotic chapter work? These numbers operate fine so let's name that manufacturing. Let's name that marketing. Let's give it some label. Yeah. Yeah. And what we do have is we have weekly meetings. We have numbers that we're looking at and that lays the foundation for everything else that we're doing. Yeah. And the quarterly meetings that we have where we look at the previous quarter, how do we do? What did we exceed? Where do we fall short? The scoreboard of the last quarter and then we take the lessons from that creates the targets for the next quarter which are all based on our overall direction and then we create those OKRs and they're the big objectives that we have said that we will try to achieve by the end of the quarter or make you know a certain amount of progress towards those. That is how that is how our business operates. So that is how we stay consistent because what was happening before I was having the same great ideas but I was having them much faster than we were able to implement. So I'd have you know we'd be working at something for three four or five weeks. Yeah. And then another great idea over a great deficiency would come up and we'd go, okay well let's fix this now but we would dump something that's half finished or three quarters finished or 90% finished and started something else. This structure really helps us finish things and then start with other things. Yeah or if you are going to drop a thing it has to it's very obvious that things being dropped mid-quarter because it's all written out. It's all planned and you know no plan survives its first contact does it but yeah I think I've definitely seen you guys you and and and the team develop you know and you as an individual through through this process and it's been really nice to watch and be a part of because I you know I've witnessed that that loads of ideas trying to change everything called the time typical entrepreneur right it's just how your brain is how wide you come up with ideas you want to solve problems with ideas but they get to point where that becomes an outfall doesn't it that gets a point where it's like okay well we could do this new stuff but actually we probably just need to fine tune some of this stuff over here and I know there is a conversations that that we've had on regular occasions like should we be doing that new thing right now or should we just make this thing a bit better that's already over here and generally your energy is going to be well I want to do the new thing because it's exciting and I like ideas and I like creativity my brain goes. Yeah well that's the sweet spot isn't it yeah that's the sweet spot if you can find the position where you're doing both. We try to do both and then we do none. That's what happens yeah we're trying to all of it. I think one of the things that I noticed that I think's been beneficial for you but is a really common theme with pretty much all of my clients is a lot of business owners when you're nice people like you don't want to you want to pursue ideas you want to create careers people you want to make money you want to solve problems you want to create a great a win-win for everybody around you and unfortunately something that happens in business is we end up having to have conflict with people people within our own team difficult conversations disagreements and all this stuff and I think that when we start recording things like our objectives and our scorecards and values and all this stuff it makes it easier for those things to be facilitated those conversations to happen quite naturally disagreements to come out without it feeling difficult but one of the things I notice is when those things aren't in place it's all the owners is on the the owners shoulders to try and identify this issue that a person's not performing that those numbers aren't being met and then they they have to go and talk about it which they often don't want to do so it's kind of like is this person performing I don't know it's all in my shoulders whereas when it's written black and white it's it's it's it's very it's very obvious and it takes it away from you the owner to have to kind of like identify and raise these things it's also if I if I say no you know we're not doing this we're doing that like that's my opinion yeah that's that's my judgment whereas if I say no we sat down we spent a day we spent the whole day looking at everything yeah and then we've decided as a team that this is priority then while we now say that we're not gonna do this and we're gonna do this something else and that might be a conversation that's external but that's often an internal conversation yeah that's that's like I might have this conflict with myself I'd be like no no we've said I know I know the email marketing can be 40% of our revenue and this is all amazing but we sat down in September and we said these are things that we're gonna do an email marketing is not within those and you know I've now listened to this podcast or seen this you know 15 minute minute YouTube video about this company that went from struggling and did nothing to this, you know, implement this email marketing things and now they're thriving and I'm all excited about it. But it's not on the OCR. We didn't say we'll do it this quarter and it makes me very happy. Yeah. Am I willing to say, okay, we're not going to make progress in manufacturing, you know, with the numbers that we said they will do, we're not going to make progress on, you know, Instagram, which we said we will focus on, we will know LinkedIn, you know, whatever we said, we're now going to the email marketing. But we've already started on this. It's already like four weeks, you know, worth of work has already gone into this. Yeah. We know dampen this because email marketing is a new thing. No, you know, let's move that to the meeting from January. Yeah. And then see, okay, how we finished everything that we said that we'll finish is there, like is there space for this new thing, which is email or do we still need to focus on other ways of converting? Yeah. And I think having that structure in place adds a bit of rigidity, which, but not in a bad way. So like, you can have too much rigidity. And then you, you know, this is why entrepreneurs would never work in big businesses because you're just so constrained by the stiffness of the system that, you know, yeah, to get a new project launch has to go through 17 meetings and 12 letters and it's like the UK planning. Yeah. And then the process right. So, but the opposite end of the spectrum of that is a business that's got no structure. It's all dictated by the owners ideas, owners love learning and listening to new things. So every week they've got a new idea, a new thing, this new thing that's going to blow over up. And then the team just living this constant state of overwhelm. So I think there's a happy medium where you get enough structure in place where everybody's been involved in the planning process. You get good employee engagement. You commit to what you're going to focus on for the quarter. And if there's an emergency or a really strong compelling argument for why we should deviate from that plan, then we can do it. And you guys have done that. You have done it. You've needed to. But there is a process in place and it's not just a case of Stefan's listened to a podcast we're changing everything. I think putting a little bit of rigidity around you gives you sanity as well. It gives you team sanity. It just gives enough rigidity because, yeah, as you said, we have had situations where, we planned and then, unfortunately, circumstances changed the plan completely. And we've had quarters where we said we're going to do five things and we did none of the five things. Two weeks after we started the quarter, things started going in a certain way that we had just completely shift folks on something else. But there's enough rigidity to then bring us back to, okay, this is what we said that we'll do. This is what we will do. Yeah, love it. Okay, so there's kind of like three, I see it as being three key things that we do together. So there's the quarterly planning. There's the building of your systems, your score cards, you're okay. I put in all those processes in place. So you've got somewhere to channel ideas and numbers. And then there's also you and I do a bit of external soundboarding. We have intermittent chat, something about, if there's a thing that's on your head because I'm not an employee. So how do you think it would impact the business if you didn't, if you hadn't got those things? What do you think the impact would be of not having those things in place? But especially like the quarterly planning and the score cards and stuff. So it's now been just over five years since I started with this them. I think a year, like I lost, I lost the year. So I could have done it a year fast. I could have been at the point that we are today, a year faster. If those internal conversations that we spoke about earlier, the, that derail your process, that small hole that allows water in the doubt, like if I was perfect at that, so if there was no doubt, and I was just like boom, boom, going at it, I would have probably been at this point a year ago. If we hadn't set up the processes that we set up, and if we didn't have the, the rigidity and the structure that we have now, I think we would have repeated year two for another four years. Yeah. Like we would have just lived through the same chaos over and over and over again. So it doesn't work the same way. I can't say that we would have been here a year before, but I can say that it would have been probably in year five where we actually wore in year three. We're going to ask Chuck Gbt to make sense of that. Matthew just did. Please, please, break down that. No, I can't. No, I can't. I would say no, it could have even been that like I got to the point where I just physically cannot sustain this anymore. Like I can't keep this business going. Like there's, I've given everything like because it's burning through so much money that I physically cannot keep it going. Yeah. I think what I see and I draw it as a diagram as a pyramid, I think entrepreneurs are amazing starters. And I don't want to downplay the value either because you finish as well, but I think on your own you're in amazing starters and amazing like early years traction builders. Like you'll just make the thing happen. You'll find a work ethic that other people cannot, can't fathom. You'll build teams around you. You'll work in the evenings. You'll research. You'll just make stuff happen. But I think there's a spot where there's a stage where you have to wrap some structure around it. Otherwise you just drive yourself insane and you get stuck and you can't leverage all of that creativity and I think it's anywhere between kind of two to five years. You need to stop putting that structure in place so that you can actually make sense of all your ideas, make sure you're not overwhelmed with your team, get everybody aligned and just think, yeah, but if you started with the structure, I think it'll get in the way. I think you need a couple of years to just go and make stuff happen. Like go and figure it out, go and be crazy, chase your ideas. And I think like you, like I know for a fact, you do, but I know a lot of other business owners as well. I'm myself included like that first early bit you love because it's like I just speak of fully creative. I can just do what I need to do. But yeah, definitely needs to have structure applied to it. Prove that there is a market to yourself and you have a business not just an idea. When you sell this time and time again, are people happy with what you're buying? You have to just do that in the beginning. And as you say, there's probably not much space for structure within that. You just have to fall on, just make it happen somehow. But after that. Just the last one on that. And then I just want to move on to the last section. Like I lean to structure, I quite like structure and planning, you lean to action. And I know for a fact that it doesn't come naturally to you to like do a fall day on our quarterly planning days that we do, which we've done very consistently for years. But I still, I know for a fact that you, it's not like a thing that you would like, get super excited to put in the diary, block out a hold. I know you value it, but you'd rather be busy doing stuff. How do you overcome the temptation to not do it and to just push it aside? Because I know a lot of business owners do, we ain't got time for that. What stops you just falling into that mindset of what's too busy to do planning? What's too busy to get the team together? I think it's the right choice, right? And how do you consistently make the right choice experience? And how do you gain experience through bad choices? Right. It's just making all the bad choices, doing it like so many times, like operating for so long without a structure, then you then keep on failing and hitting your heads on the brick wall and understanding that you need structure, therefore getting the structure in, because you know how the experience of knowing what the alternative is, which is no structure will lead us nowhere. Yeah. Therefore, okay, this isn't something that I am the most excited about, but I understand that it's critical and without it. And not just without it, without it being done well. So I could just do a half a day without you. I could just bring the guys around and say, guys, Thursday, 12 o'clock. Let's finish the day by looking at the last quarter, looking at the numbers and say something that we're going to do. Okay, I asked for the next quarter. I could just try to do that, but I just know that if we don't do this right, and the right way can only be shrunk into a one day. And realistically, we could probably spend three days to do this the proper way with full energy and to just have it perfect, perfect. It probably needs three days, but it can only shrink into one and it needs to be done right. So yeah, it's through experience, the answer is. Yeah. And I guess for the business owners that have never gone through the process of doing it, they haven't, because you've experienced the bad of not doing it for years and then the positive of doing it and the way it can speed things up and get your team more focused. So that's because you've experienced both sides, it kind of pushes you back towards other side, but some business owners are stuck just banging their heads on the wall, doing the same year after year, feeling a lot of difference in proven because they're not doing it self in they need to have that taste of this could be better if you systemize and structure it. And one of the things you said is well about doing it yourself, you can do it yourself, you know, of course you can and it's probably going to get easier to do it. if you get really organized with GPT and AI and stuff, but even then there's some challenges. But the problem is I think is that you're heavily involved in this business. You don't want to be thinking about structuring a day and staying on time. You want to be in that room with your team thinking, and if you're trying to facilitate the day as well, it makes that very difficult. The other thing is as well is it's nice to have somebody that kind of, and this isn't just a cell for doing this, by the way, but the other thing is it's nice to have somebody external because they don't care about calling out issues and facilitating difficult conversations and creating a bit of tension, whereas an owner, you tend to not want to do that, especially if you're agreeable. If I'm leading that, I'm just thinking out, but if I'm leading that meeting, then I have my agenda maybe. I think I know what we need to prioritise, whereas because I'm not leading it, I only have an influence and I try to have my influence as much as everyone else. Like, I just try for everyone to put their best ideas, write them on sticking out, you know, stick them on. And the reality is, like, this is your job. Like, you will do it a lot better than me, because this isn't my job. If I made that my job, maybe I'd have a chance to do it, you know, as well as you do it, but this isn't my job. I have a hundred other jobs and this isn't one of them. Like, me trying to think that I can do it as well as you can. Just one happen. And that's improving to me time and time again. Like, for us to be able to get out of the situation of we're losing so much money every month, like, shit, we lost 40 grand this month, you know. That doesn't come out of, you know, I don't download it from the cloud, that is money, like, that we lost, which means we need to put it back, right? Next month, 30, next month, 40, next month, 3, next month, 7, you know. All that mounts up and all it does, it just creates more and more pressure. Anyway, for us to get out of that and go from losing a lot of money to, like, not losing so much money, to not losing money, to then be profitable, to then be at the point now where we're making really healthy profits, which we are able to put back into the business and see real growth. That has been, that has come through people. A lot of the time has been, has been who, not how, manufacturing, we had severe problems, manufacturing, we were losing a lot more than I wanted to face that we're losing in, like, damages and like, making stuff wrong, like, we were throwing so much stuff in the skip because one thing that one thing identifies and I've always known, I've always said, like, and I would not compromise on is the quality that the customer receives. Right? So we might have internal issues and they might, like, we might not be able to create at the level that we want to create. The customer will not get a shit product because if the customer gets a shit product and we have no tomorrow and this isn't the business that I want to build, Adam wouldn't like, not good enough. So because maybe I'm a perfectionist in that regard but because we don't compromise on the product, we threw so much in the skip. Like, sometimes we made four drop tops to make one because we had the new CNC because, and I'm not, not just one, like, that's times a hundred in a month. Like, and we were losing so much money, that was resolved through a who, not how. I would have not been able to create the systems that Michael, when he came in, created in manufacturing. He came in within six weeks. He did the work that he would have probably taken me at that same rate, he would have probably taken me three years to put in place. Like, who not how. And if I have a skill is to identify the things that I don't know and to acknowledge that these things that I don't even know, that I don't know and then just go and look there and try to figure it out myself and try to do it myself because that's free. So that's what I will always try to do first. But then when I realize the problem is much bigger, then I will look for a who, not how. That might be someone that I hire. If it's an internal problem or otherwise, if it's a strategy, if it's a bigger problem, then someone external. Yeah. And I think you mentioned that at the very start that you recognize what your few super strengths are and then everything else, you'll research it, but then you'll quickly outsource it. Yeah, I do think that's one of your simple powers. That's one of the things that I've always, I know it's a lot about you. You're a good friend and I admire you. But one of the things that I really, really know is your ability to just get good people quickly. Like, you just make it happen. Like in the space of weeks, you'll have a new person who's all over this thing super motivated. And that is definitely a Stefan super guy. And you'll hold onto him as well. Yeah. So the final segment then that I wanted to wrap up on is around how you've done all this, you've built this business, you've been very open and candid about how much you've worked, the stress, the not making money. You've been doing this for five years. You've only just really started paying yourself in this business. Yet, along that journey, and I know this as a fact, you've continued to look after your health. You've continued to have a very healthy relationship with your wife. You spend time together. It's like, I know that I'm sure you've had weeks where you've been busy, but it's definitely a non-compromised thing for you and Nicky that you spend time together. You go out, you have fun. You go on regular holidays. You last year you went on loads of holidays because every time with the court you plan in, we were like trying to figure out when can we talk Stefan because he's never here. I'm exaggerating. But you've got married abroad. You're still having a lifestyle as well. I think the common belief at the moment is that to do well in business, you've got a hustle, yes. But delay having a life until later. I feel there's a bit of a message going around by some influences around that. And you are a living case study that doesn't have to be the case. You can work extremely hard. You can graft, work crazy hours, do incredible things, and look after your health, and have a relationship with your wife, and go travel in. How do you think you manage to make all that happen along the side of the demands of a business like this and a growing team and financial stresses? A lot of people have gone out of this pressure in the business. I can't go and hold there. I can't do this. I can't go to the gym. I can't go out for dinner with you tonight, Nicky. How do you think you've managed that? Because you are very consistent with it. Yeah. You just love holidays. Partly. Yeah. I do. I do. I leave. I leave. I leave for that. Like, I like. I want to leave a life that I'm proud of that when I look back, I haven't gotten very great that many people have. And I'm sure that I will have regrets. I'm sure that I will have. Yeah. There's always a better way of doing things. Life without regrets would not be a good life. Yeah. True. No, those kinds of regrets. But, um, for one, you've helped me a lot with that. So the fact that we've got systems in place, the fact that, um, there is structure means that I can be a way. And the company continues to operate. Mm-hmm. Now, um, that's one part. The other part is it's not my first business. Part of what I hated from my first business is that the more the business grew, the more of a slave I was. The more trapped within those four walls I was, because everyone depended on me. So from the beginning, I identified that. And I didn't want to be the one that's holding back, the one that's holding everything back. So I empowered people with systems in place. We, um, we've got, and we're not the best of that yet. And we're getting much better now. But we have co-procedures that people are following. So if I'm not there, the business doesn't stop. If there is a decision that needs to be made that needs my input, anywhere in the world I may be, I have signaled. I have this magic thing called the mobile phone. And I can spend an hour or two hours, I have an hour or five minutes, I can take a call and we can keep things going. That wouldn't be able to happen if we didn't have the basics in place, but we do. And we're able to do that. So that's, that's the biggest part. But the, the, the, the other element of that is, like, I don't believe in hustle culture. I don't think that you have to sacrifice everything for, like, yesterday late gratification, but in other ways, not in that, not sacrifice my 20s completely. Sacrifice my 30s now completely for what? For to then find another reason, a bigger challenge to sacrifice my 40s, then find another bigger challenge to sacrifice my 50s, then get to my 60s to want to do stuff, but I'm too old and like, I'm wasted my life. Yeah, I'm not going to be that person. Yeah. Well, one, I don't care about money to the extent. Like, I view it as a tool. It's brilliant. I fully see the value of money. And I fully see where money can do nothing for you. I don't care about like, having five houses in five different continents, having a yacht, having a helicopter, having a private jet, flying private, flying first class. I don't care. I went on my honeymoon and when I saw that just the upgrade, trading my flights to first class. There were four flights, Dubai, to Sri Lanka. Anyway, four flights, the operators four flights, it would have cost me more than the whole of what I paid so far for everything. So flights and hotels and transport. Just said no, it's not that important to me. I don't care. Like, and I don't care. Like, if I just decided to care about flying first class or flying private or having a collection of expensive watches and having the latest car every time the new range overcomes out or whatever, then I would see hustle culture as the only way. Because you then have to hustle because those things you've decided are those things that are important to you. And then the only way to get success, like the bar raises so much more. If I needed a million pounds to sustain my lifestyle, a million pounds every year to spend, because of course, such an expensive taste. And I don't drink anything below, I don't know, a 500 pounds champagne. I just don't touch that because this is who I am. Then hustle culture is the only way. Right, you have to hustle. I don't care. I don't care about impressing people with my collection of Patak Philippe, 100,000 pound watches. I'll impress people with something else, with who I am. So I chose to grow. I chose to-- I chose the important things to me. Will be for me to be happy, not to impress others with stuff that I have to maybe impress others with the person I am. I chose that health is above everything. I don't care about anything more than my health. Like health comes before everything. And if I lost businesses, house, like everything, and I still had my health, I'll be OK. If I lost my health and had everything else, I wouldn't be OK. It wouldn't matter. It wouldn't matter. So it's just acknowledging that. And I honestly don't think that we live in the West. It's a little bit different in like the World Countries. And I always want to experience that. And I always want to remind myself how lucky we are to just even be here. And you do need to work hard in the beginning. When you're coming from the basement to goal to level one, you will need to graph. You will need to work really hard for a period of time. Once you've gotten past that, making the right decisions is more important than going that fast, than working that hard. Because it's more important to go in the right direction than it is to go fast. Because you can go really fast and go in the wrong direction. And then you have to come back. So at some point, you have to make the right decisions and it's kind of like the younger you are, the more it's about quantity. And because you want to learn and just get as much experience as you can. But then as you get older, it becomes more about quality. It gets about there less better. There's nothing wrong. Like in your 20s, or when you start not, you might be starting on your 50s and your 60s, I don't know. But there's nothing wrong with in your 20s, pulling an old knight or pulling two old knighters a week, like just doing the work thing, what's required. Get yourself up to a certain point. But you can't do that forever. And it's not enjoyable. And you're not going to enjoy the fruits of your labor ever. Because-- I think you would still do an all night. Now, if you had to, I think if needs required, me and you, would if you rang me and said, my-- I don't know what's going on. We just need to-- I need you to come out, we'd sit up all night till this is fixed. We do it. But there, it wouldn't become the norm. Like we wouldn't let that affect a health or relationships and things like that. I think there's a kind of-- there's a level of compromise that you're not willing to go past because for you, your health isn't on the gochable. My life is in on the gochable. I like that. The life outside of work is non-negotiable. I will grow this. But for this to be a fun business to grow, it needs to be a fun business to grow. Because the fun is in the building. It's not in the look at what I built. That probably lasts a day or a week. If this stands into a billion pounds, like 10 over a year or profit a year thing, I would probably sit back and look at that for a day or for a week because it's grown so big. I'd probably be happy looking at it for a week. And then I'm bored. And then I'm like, OK, so what now? What's my meaning? What's life about? So the fun is in the growing. So if you're not having fun growing it, then what's the point of growing it? And yes, you need, when you've got the financial constraints and everything's going really bad, you have to put in the work and get it out of there. But then pass that. Enjoy it. Why do it if you're not going to enjoy it? Yeah. I won't compromise on my life. That needs to be a little-- Need to edit that out. That's a little clip for Stefan. I will not compromise on my life. And it's seeing that your life isn't just your business, isn't it? So put your whole identity into your business and forget that there's these things outside of it as well. You're also husband. You're also a brother. Yeah. So a son. You're also a friend. How often do we forget about our friends? And I'm not talking from my high horse here. I am doing things as well. I am in perfect. There's a lot of-- I spent a lot of time doing this honeymoon break thinking that I'm not seeing my friends enough. I'm not there for them enough. I know that I've had friends that have gone through certain things and haven't contacted me as much or at all. And I know that they've gone through something. And that's because if someone knows that you're busy, building your thing, maybe they won't contact you when they need you. But-- You have to remind them that you're still there. I'm there. Yeah. You won't just remind them by calling them once a year and say, hey, if you've got a problem, I'm here. It's something that you feel. When you feel-- So I am aware of this year, I want to be more intentional and be a little bit closer to my friends and also spend a little bit more time in relationships outside of work with other friends or other things. Because I have given-- it seems-- it might seem that I've been on holidays a lot and things, but you can be on holidays and still be working. Oh, yeah. Or you mind. Or you mind still 70%. Well, both of us have been on holidays together working, anyway. So-- If you could go back in time-- last question. If you could go back in time to the very beginning of a drop-top, let's say-- because Pith and STEM had a bit of a story before. You actually uncovered the fold down desk. Knowing what you know now, what's the one bit of advice that you would give to yourself five years ago? One is not enough. One, you're only allowed to-- You're only allowed to-- you've got 20 seconds, you'll 30 seconds whatever. You're only allowed to give yourself one bit of advice from everything you've learned that would help you. I know-- and obviously, I know, probably spiritually, we'd say, I don't want to change anything because it's the journey that's made me who I am. But what's the one bit of advice that would make everything a bit easier or a bit quicker or a bit less painful? The reason this is harder to respond is because-- to what? To make the business move faster, to get to a level of success faster or to not stress so much about the uncertainties. That's why it's too open-ended. Thanks. It's a bad question. OK. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. I can't question you. No, no, no, no. I know what you mean. Well, I mean, that is what one of those things would be if you were going back, would you be like, OK, I need to-- ideally, you'd have got that quicker, or ideally, you'd have just stressed less, or ideally, you'd have done this. Or-- No, ideally, I would have spent more time in the very beginning testing which way we will go to market, which we will go to market before just going to market in the way that we went. But as an overall theme is, I would spend more time in laying the right foundations at the beginning to then work off of that as opposed to laying the foundation, laying a certain foundation, breaking it, laying a certain foundation, breaking it, and then start, yeah. Perhaps, yeah, plan things a little bit better. But yeah, then-- But then you wouldn't know that if you hadn't. Yeah, of course, that's a well-deserved question. OK, cool. Thank you so much for your time. It's-- I love chat with you. It's been a pleasure. Where can people go to connect with you if they don't just want to buy a drop top, but they actually want her. come and find out more about you or connect with you on a MetDrop via message or anything like that. My Instagram would be the best place at Stefan Husano. I haven't done anything on my Instagram yet, but I am planning to be a little bit more transparent in how I'm building this business. I have not started yet, so if you follow me or want to message me, you will see that I've got 300 followers. You're going to have about 50 clips from this. People and friends, friends and people that I know. But I will start, a lot of people have asked the CEO a little bit more behind the scenes. I will start showing more of the behind the scenes in what we're doing. Brilliant. And how we're doing it. So that's Stefan Husano, no dots, just as is. Yeah, okay. Thank you. So yeah, go and find Stefan on Instagram @ Stefan Husano. And of course, if you want a drop top, which you should have because they're actually amazing, we've got on the now house. You just stick a drop top into Google. Don't click on the ad. I got Stefan a bit of money. Just go down and click the link below. Paper click with paper click. So just scroll down right after the ad. Brilliant. Well, that's been absolutely fantastic. Thank you for listening to Stefan. And then I hope you took loads of value from that episode. And I look forward to you joining us on next week's episode. Amazing. Thank you, Mike. Thank you for having me. It's been so much fun.