How Purdy & Figg Made £1 Million D2C in One Day by Ignoring Marketing

If I was redoing perting figure I would grow way slower than we've grown. We've grown at like 300% compound, right? So it's been insane. We'll be worth billions and billions pounds, which is one of the best outcomes ever in consumer. What people get wrong is they spend a lot of time up front on branding and not a lot of time on. Jeff Fezos always talks about the power of good judgment. One of his leadership principles has been right a lot. And judgment's complex because it's a mixture of data, rationality, and also instinct and intuition. One of the biggest block is to grow. It's just demand planning and working out what you're going to sell and what volume and when. What you're doing to your teams is inundating them with complexity to the point where their decision-making and prioritisation becomes very, very difficult. When you truly think you've reached the absolute limit of what you're currently doing. Until you fail, you've done that. Why would you take on anything else? If you can have a meaning and a constant and you're able to apply that through your whole life, I think you'll do much better. I mean, it's the key to everything. (upbeat music) But I think to start with, the so was it's first in November, about 20 million, oh, it's 1 million pound day sales. - Yeah. - Fucking sick, grats. I want to use kind of a metaphorical question to explore this. And I use, I explored this with Al Barrett from Grenade. - It's basically, basically, imagine the gym analogy, right? So you've got your big compound exercises. So you've got your deadlift, your squat, your bench, your shoulder press, super important. Those are your first principle things. But then you also have, which to some people may seem a name and superfluous, but your sort of isolation exercises. So your bicep curls, your side raises, they don't necessarily move the needle as much as the big compound exercises. But when you put them together, you have like this delicious kind of barbell strategy of intensity, right? To get to that a million pound day, what were the big sort of compound exercise or big first principles you had in place in your business? And then start there. And then what were some of these subtle nuance things that you were thinking about that other businesses probably weren't thinking about that actually helped that. I'll bring that. - Yeah, the compound exercises. I mean, most, yeah, a large portion of that million pound day came from existing customers. So probably 80% of it. - Right. - So the compound exercise was acquiring customers for four years. And having over a million customers on a database. So ultimately, it was four years of customer acquisition, acquiring half a million customers a year. And doing that day in, day out. Behind that is a thousand bits of creative a month. Behind that is probably probably over 500 AB tests on our site. Constant iteration on offers, on retention testing that allow you to keep spending more on advertising and keep acquiring more customers. So you get to that day and you've got that customer base. And then once you have the customer base, the other big macro is how do you engage them? And campaigns are obviously a very powerful tool, you nurse and you've got to find, you've got to find the, you've got to find the thing that gets them going at the right and launch at the right moment. And so finding our fragrance and some mercy and at Christmas, it just hits. How did you find that? What's taught me through the exploration of, again, I've read a lot of your stuff like the more you know your customer, how do you find that thing that's that? Yeah, I don't need a customer insight, to be honest. Interesting. Like I don't think you can ask your customer what will really turn you on at Christmas? Yeah, yeah, yeah, they won't really know. I think basically it's, it's, it's constipated. And so we've just done so many central launches and so many have failed and probably one in four or five work. What, if we were to die like, I love favorite failures because favorite failures lead to successes. What were some of the ones that failed and what were some of the, so the ones that failed, when we tried to create our own narrative behind a central launch, we found it, it stopped working. So for instance, we did a, we, we, we, we tried to spring sent last year, which was called gentle camo mile and the idea was, it's safe, safe babies. Right. And then we used like my mom as like a grandma with a newborn, my sister had a baby at the time. We got them on a photo shoot and we tried to create this whole story around, yeah, using, using this, using gentle camo mile with the baby around and it being safe for children. Mm-hmm. And it was just too complex and it was too, it was just too, it was too focused on us. But what's going on our lives, you know, my mom's become a grandmother and she's worried about that particular thing. Yeah. And in a snapshot, in a moment, you can't, it's too complex to get across and it just didn't catch. So what we learned from that is you have to latch on to culturally relevant moments. Wow. So if you try and do all the heavy lifting yourself, it's going to be very hard to create something that really lights. And can you find, so this one of my obsessions at the minute is like, so do you know the brand, the agency on Common? Yes, I've seen them. No, I mean, so you know the British Airways campaign where they've been like looking through the window. Yeah. So he's, Toby's good mate in mind, or we came to podcast, we've become very good friends. He is doing a lot of work with Bulbingco. Oh yeah. He's a brand strategy behind that and he's a fucking genius. It was a bug last week. And he was saying what so many brands get stuck in there, they're kind of category thinking. And he says his thing is like, let's get out of your category. Brand positioning needs to kind of a new, we're kind of in 2.03.0 versions of that. And goes, you need to see like spot the cultural tension. Where's the tension in culture? And if you can get to that point, bang. So like with Bulbingco, it's like, okay, the cultural tension is, we need to eat less meat. We want to be healthier. You know, foodies are becoming a big thing. But then we've got suddenly at this point, you know, five years ago, we've got all these vegan meat brands that have actually kind of, everyone's thinking, what is this really good for me? It's like a process burger. That's that kind of in that tension. And then that's, you know, so how did you, as you said, what I think is interesting, you see you use data a lot, but with these cultural frankincense stuff, that's kind of, how did you think it's marketing instinct? I mean, because it's different to brand, right? So brand strategy, I would put in a different box to campaign idea, campaign product idea. Sure. And for campaign product idea, it is, I think it's marketing now. It's, it's, it makes sure of marketing now's commercial instinct. Yeah, and you just gotta, you just gotta try things. I mean, another one that fell, we did a summer lawn idea where we were trying to get the scent of Wembleden grass and we were trying to during Wembleden, but just didn't, it just didn't pop in the way we wanted it to. And then, you know, most recently we've done, we've done two campaigns that have hit crazy. So frankincense was insane at Christmas. And then we did Valentine's Day, we did a William Morris collaboration. I don't know if you saw it. What's it? A William Morris? A William Morris was a British designer. I see. And he has all these prints. And so we did a partnership with them where we did a print on the bottle for life. I don't know if it. Yeah, but yeah, we did a print on the bottle for life. We did a print on the box. And then we launched a Valentine's scent rose and violet. Wow. And then we launched a Valentine's Day and the campaign was, I'll show you how we love it. So rather than, you know, showing your partner, I'll show you how home. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we sold it out in like 36 hours. Wow. So yeah, launched on the Friday. It was gone pretty much Saturday evening. Yeah. Saturday in the day. And yeah, so just another one to hit. We leveraged the cultural moment, rose and violet worked. People really wanted the design, the prints. And in terms of the marketing now, I love that. Like I feel like, imagine we use like a golf swing. It's one of those things. You do it a thousand times. You will get that subtle nuance of how do you hold it? I mean, I've never played golf, but like steamer and ship. But like, it's those little things. And then say, well, I might just say a little zero, zero about one, one, one percent, one, make the ball go an extra five miles, it's 500 yards, whatever. How have you developed your new, your, your now's, your nuance? Like, I know we've talked about sort of reading, you know, Russian literature, like, how are some of the weird ways you develop that, that, that now's? I think that now's is less about the details, we honest. It's the big, it's the big, it's the big ideas. Right. So it's not in the nuance. It's in the, it's in the, it's in the big picture idea. So Christmas, frankincense, a, it's, it's got all sorts of connotations. Yes. And it's culturally relevant in that moment. And it, and it just hits. I mean, yes, the campaign execution was great, but the campaign execution probably could have been half as good and it would still have hit. Some of the long campaign execution was incredible. There was so much nuance and how we did it, latching onto Wimbledon, we did an amazing creative exercise with like tennis and volleyball, but it didn't matter. It didn't matter. The idea was wrong. So it's just not going to work. So yeah, it's the idea comes back to the idea. It's back to the big idea. Yeah. So that's why it's, yeah, macro. So basically, back to original question. Yeah. Yeah. Those are the, I'd say the million pound day was driven by basically those two macro macro things. This was the subscriber base over four years. And an amazing campaign idea. And yeah, it was pretty awesome. And we've been working up to that day for, yeah, two years. I mean, we set it as a goal two years ago to have a million pound day. Right. Yeah. And so the big idea comes to your head. This macro, culture, tension, frankincense and I love that because it's just got all the storytelling of the three kings as well. I was fucking brilliant. What do you actually do to make sure when you, like what taught me through the campaign, say four, five weeks, like how many weeks out you planning, planning that and then how are you getting people? Are you emailing your customers? How are you, how are you getting it? So when we hit Saturday, the first or second of November, it goes, go to yeah. Yeah. So the campaign strapped line was the Christmas, the Christmas cult classic. And so we, you know, the marketing started in, well, the preparation starts. I mean, basically when you run a peaky business or business about how campaigns, big campaigns, oh, like a big sales price. Oh, yeah. I was thinking like, piggy blinders. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When you run a, yeah, I mean, your peak preparation starts a week off to peak. So if peak, if peak finishes in mid December, we're planning peak from early Jan, the next year. Oh, wow. So it starts straight away, basically. What are the learnings? What are we doing next year? How's it all going to work? How are we going to improve on it? The thing isn't it gets harder each year. So I mean, if you're trying to grow 20% year on year, which isn't a crazy growth rate, especially for us, the other thing that's happening is it's getting, it's, you've got to grow 20% and it's going to get 20% harder because on the, on the advertising CPMs are going up around 15% a year. And then you're, let's say we're quite another half million customers, we're another half million customers into the town. So it's going to be harder to quite make. Yeah. So another half million into the addressable market, that makes it harder. So let's just say you want to grow 20% and it's going to get 20% harder. So that means the following year, just to grow 20%, you need to, you need to basically improve your business by 40%. So, okay, you don't improve your business by 40% by the micro. You've got to take big swings to do that. So the straight, straight way off to peak when you're thinking about, okay, how do we grow a million pound a by 40% next year in terms of the campaign quality and the idea. So it needs to be 1.4 million pound a year. Yeah, the prep starts early. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's go back. So, so I want to sort of go back and forward of this one. So working back from that million pound a year. So you have the big idea. You've got the, the, what did you call it? So the cent or not the cent of Christmas, the, from since when? No, no, no, but the, the, the, the campaign line. Oh, the, the, the Christmas, the Christmas class, that was it. Yeah. So then what are you putting in in place so that one, once that day lands, it is, it's a, oh yeah, that could. Yeah, I mean, we, we, we ran a wait list basically. So the, because it sold out every year, we've done it. Yeah. We, we've created a bit of a, yeah, a hype around it. Customers know that it's going to sell out. Yeah. So we had, I think, an 80,000 customer wait list for the launch day, which started in, yeah, mid September. Wow. Where it starts in mid September. And then in terms of that, I love that idea of you want to grow 20% better, you've got to go 40% better. That's such a delicious insight. If you were to diagnose that million pound a year and thought, what the one, two, three things you're like, we could have done that better. We should have tweaked that. I think we could have made it more special. So, so in terms of, we, we relied on the scent again to do all the heavy lifting for us. And I think there's, there's a lot of opportunity for us to start leveraging licensing and partnerships and packaging collaboration to basically blow it up and make it feel bigger and better. Oh, so what, like you'd go and work with another brand or. Yeah. Yeah. Or even would you get like a big slab on it? Like, is that? Yeah. That kind of thing. I'm not going to go into details of what we think. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm just, I'm just being stupid. But like, okay, interesting. So, so, you know, to, to, to, to, to make it, to make it, um, basically don't rest on your laurels, basically. Because it's like, oh, yeah, Frank, this is my work. So let's just roll out again. And it's like, you know, how can we actually make this? Okay, there's thinking orders of magnitude. How can we make this order of magnitude better? Um, and then if you've land on half of that, you're still doing pretty well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that's how, that's how we got to think. And what other, so, so the, so the sort of the bit you could have blown up made it more special, anything else? We could, though, we could improve on it. Yeah. Like any, this, we, it may not even have to be the big swing idea. It could have been just, well, it's really boring. Yeah, yeah. But like, as a business, as, as the businesses grow, um, the one of the biggest blockers to growth is just, um, demand planning. Um, and, I'm working out what you're going to sell. And in what volume and when? Yeah. Because, um, when you're, when you're buying in small volumes at the beginning, you can flex a lot more. So I used to call my brother back in the day. And like, this is selling fucking well. Um, we need another 10,000 bottles. And he'd be like, yeah, yeah, that's fine. Sort it out in three weeks later. It sold out for a bit. Then it comes back. And we just were able to, to grow from three and a half to 18 million one year doing that. The problem at our size now is it's like, we need 50,000 bottles or 100,000 bottles. Um, you can't access that quickly and easily. Um, the volume of, just the pure volume of it, the production time, all of that stuff. So everything needs to be perfectly planned. If you run out, you run out, you're not getting more. Um, and actually the biggest blocker to grow sometimes just becomes not having enough of it. And that's what happened. Definitely. Discretesmas. And it's happened again in Valentine's day. And it's, it's something we need to, yeah, we're, we're spending a lot of time on. And basically as your business gets bigger, um, you end up spending a lot more time on the nuts and bowls. Yes. Of just, um, yeah, making, making sure you've got enough of the stuff. Yeah. What are some of the other nuts and bolts sort of the, the boring stuff under the purdian fig hood? Almost like the shash, shash, shashy or whatever it is of the business that you've been focusing on. Doing it's important that you see these million pound days as salacious, it's wonderful. It's, you know, but that, it's important to know the stuff under that keeps the car moving. Everything we've had to go from producing three million bottles a year to eight to 12 to 17 million bottles a year of counter clean. Um, you know, how'd you do that? You got to constantly upgrade your machinery, improve the, the put through rate of your bottles per minute in those machines. You then got a, um, grow your packing capability. You're going from doing 10,000 hours a month to 100,000 hours a month to 300,000 hours a month. You know, how does that happen? It doesn't just happen on its own. Yeah. Like we had 250 people packing all of those over Christmas, they all need to be trained. They all need to be know what they're doing, what sense go and what box they feel to do it quickly. Um, therefore, and then you start thinking about, okay, well, um, our packaging takes three minutes to pack a box. How do we make that two minutes so that we need 30% less people to train and we can scale up faster in the moment? All of these things than the customer service, you know, we had, um, you know, 15% of orders become back orders, we were doing, uh, become customer service tickets. So we're doing 40,000 orders a day at the beginning of Christmas. I mean, so you're talking about, you know, 10,000, let's say tickets a day. How'd you answer 10,000 tickets a day and keep your 24-hour response rate? Yeah. So that, you do that. Or like, is that what you're, yeah, that's where you have to work out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So have you fixed that or is it, uh, yeah. I mean, we're, yeah, we, we, well, yeah, we're fixing it. Um, it's, it's changing the structure. We've had to, uh, you know, because you also need to maintain quality. So you could, you can, you can answer the tickets, but the quality is really poor. So you need the, you need the quality and the quantity, um, it's scaling the team, putting the right structure and process then that kind of thing. So it's, you know, behind the sales figure is what really makes a good business this size is operations. And it's, and it's really slick and well done. Ops. Um, because the growth levers are obvious. You know, you get to a size where in a way, I think early on the strategy really matters, because it's when you make the big mistakes. So just, yeah, go, I know we've talked this, I think it's like three years ago since the day I first saw it. What's that really? No, fucking mad. It's gone so quickly. Um, but let's just go back to those, those, those first principles to refresh people. Yeah. So what you said, the strategy, that's where we make the mistakes. That's really important. Yeah. Early on, I think is, is any, any, any mistake you make early on compounds throughout the rest of the day. to your business life. So if you expand too quickly early, you're dealing, you know, you built into the business that mistake from the beginning. And it, and it, that, that lack of focus is what kills a business as it grows from an early stage, because there's just too much going on. So you need to pick what you do very carefully and prioritize. That's where I think early on you make, those early decisions are super critical. And you get bigger, you have more resource and you've, you can attract better people, you can attract great executives, and you can do more, because you can do, you can do more in a more structured way, in a more planned way. And then the growth levers become pretty obvious. So it's like, okay, for us to keep growing at 34% a year, it's going to be markets. And this is how we do markets. We can get the resource and we can plan it. That's going into other countries. Yeah, let's say other countries. Yeah, there's always three, yeah, my mind is always three ways to grow a consumer business, channels, which is like distribution or online or Amazon or whatever, markets, which is new, new territories. Yeah. And then, product. Yeah. So number skips. So remember when we first spoke, which was again, it's lovely having this conversation now, your kind of thing was, we're not going into other markets. We're not going into other channels. And we're not really going, we're not going into actually other products, we're just going to do a calendar cleaner and maybe change the sense. What have you changed your mind on now? You've got a much bigger business, you've got a much bigger team. Are you going into other markets? Like what have you changed your mind on since we last spoke? Not a lot. And we're still basically the same. Okay. So, you know, we've stayed that focused. And that what that's enabled us to do is just become better and better and better at what we're doing. And we managed to get market penetration that is pretty much unheard of in terms of, I think we're in almost 10% of households in the UK. So we've done that through that focus just becoming incredibly good at that one thing. So like, I saw these questions, I'm not like that. Well, I was like that. I remember you saying to me, when we sat down on the side, I was like, I'm going to start this other podcast and you're like, what the fuck would you do that? You're like, just do hungry and just keep going on that for as long as you can. And I think the whole thing is like the hard truth is you need to be focused almost two, three years longer than you think. So I said, that's been burnt and baked into my soul. So it's in there, mate. But I'm like an excited little puppy when it comes to other ideas. And then basically more and more people are coming into the hungry orbit being like, well, you've got this thing brewing, we've got this thing bubbling. Like, why don't we just do this as a separate thing like we set up. We leverage the thing and we do like a spiff, I think I was saying like the espresso martini tent at some fest that the idea is first. So I'm like, oh, that'll be sick. And then like, well, then another thing comes in on that, or that'll be sick. And another thing comes in like that would be sick. And then I'm sort of like, I mean, even yesterday, I had meetings. So did that work on the podcast meeting and so her then down to sorry, then back in and I was like, what the fuck am I doing? But none of it is actually building this thing. What are your mental models for working out like what's an opportunity versus distraction? And then like what's what's your mental models for saying? No, because I think this will help and look myself and a lot of people because I just need something to be like, because this knows hard, knows really hard. It was hard. And I think you're like the best at it, but it's not easy. The mental model for me is when you when you truly think you've reached the absolute limit of what you're what you're currently doing. So if your core focuses the hungry pod and you're probably main growth lever is I imagine YouTube until you think you've absolutely cracked that that growth lever, ie, you are doing it better than anyone else in the podcast space on every single dimension, whether it's hook ray, watch time, new audience discover it like all the key metrics you might track and you've optimized it to death until you fail you've done that. I mean it's your main growth lever. It's obviously going to grow your podcast audience. It's obviously going to be how you grow an order magnitude. So you shouldn't be doing anything else at all. Until your until your at least good enough at it that someone else can do it for you and optimize it and you can focus on on another area. Yeah. So for instance the only reason I'm now thinking about doing anything else and we are looking at markets mainly because because we can deploy our model into new territories without complicating the backend of the business too much and without complicating the model or the marketing setup or anything like that. That's why I said no channels and products. Yeah, it's going to be so what yeah because that is very counterintuitive. That's why I've speaking to you mate is a lot of people I would speak to, right? You know, fucking innocent founder Tony Tocque-Loni see as I like they're like do one market, do one market well and actually go through more distribution channels and more go and get more skews it. It's almost like safe as yeah. Perly and fig goes deeper into that market. Deeper into that market more skews more more channels and then once you've got that whole market bubbling then go into Germany then go into Portugal then go into Lithuania. What's the why did you say no to product and channel in the UK? Essentially complexity. So what I looked at is what would make the business more complex? So in my view, introducing channel and product into the UK makes the business more complex as the operational business more complex than taking what we're already doing. We're already doing an ops, we're already doing a marketing. We've got all the processes, we've got all the executives, we've got all the staff and deploying it as a replica into another territory. To me that is the simplest thing we can do to our business while growing it. But what about the marketing nuance of the cultural differences, cultural language barriers? Well that's what we're testing into before throttle but our belief is our brand is more similar to so in CPG typically yes you do need to localize the brands and that you see that in supermarket products for instance in America they have fairery they've got things like links and acts. Yeah that's very typical in CPG. But if you look at European fine fragrance and European luxury products basically the brands are identical across Europe and the US. For that luxury stuff yes and then like all the fine fragrance and all the fine beauty product brands they are global brands. They don't localize their sense for the US they are what they are. Yeah yeah yeah. And I see our product what we're doing in our category I see it more akin to that in terms of we're bringing a kind of European sophistication to the category which I'm hoping is global in nature and has global appeal and therefore we can keep the brand identity and the core marketing promise very very similar. Localization maybe at like a growth level. Like growth marketing so like yes we might localize the UGC creators or we might localize you know we'll definitely localize the dollars the pounds the dollars or whatever. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. But it's quite service level the actual things that matter the core brand identity the product naming conventions and like you know the value proposition i.e. what are we doing for customers? I think that stays the same and so yeah I mean and then if you actually think through what it takes to go deep in let's say channel in the UK you you you you you you complicate so the marketing gets complicated suddenly you're selling in Tesco let's say and your marketing team is running Facebook ads you'll are a way model changes because suddenly you've got a sales challenge Tesco different margin profile your meta-rides are having an effect on the sales there and they're having an effect on sales online how how they have an effect what as an like it's could it could cannibalize sales or yeah well yeah I mean it could it could cannibalize sales but it could also it could also enhance your yeah if you're doing meta advertising for DTC it could enhance grocery sales in the area yeah yeah but it could also cannibalize your DTC sales when there's more margin yeah where's more margin so suddenly your whole commercial model is the complex to it is is much greater you're spending hours or two hours every morning and trading meetings being like what are these metrics mean oh is that actually efficient or is that not efficient because we've got those sales in Tesco but the sales report comes out a week later and okay maybe last week wasn't that efficient whereas now we've got such clean data we've got one channel we spend money on advertising we know the allowable cag we know the we know the return profiles they're very clear so it makes all those decisions super super quick and easy and conversations are much much simpler so that's like the marketing side on the distribution side suddenly you know a distribution model to supermarkets is very different to distribution model to to direct customer. So you're you know you're three PLNES. to be different. Suddenly you've got stock in two different locations. Your packing, your packing lines are different because packing for groceries is very different to packing for direct consumer. You've got to train staff differently. The way it's got to be produced in your factory is different. The labeling might need to be different. So you've got new labeling lines. So do you see just by. I mean, almost, but everything you're saying is already giving me, like I feel like just relax when you're saying it's just so simple. The reality of complexity in a business, suddenly, so you add a challenge and think, "Oh, it's like 20% growth year." What you're doing to your teams is you are inundating them with complexity to the point where their decision making and prioritisation becomes very, very difficult. The Leonardo da Vinci quote, which is simplicity is the greatest sophistication. Right. I fucking love that quote. My mate, Razz, got it tatted on him. He's quite a complex bloke, so it's ironic. But what you are the master of simplicity when I speak to you, because you've taken, again, a counterpoint to everyone else I've spoken to and it just makes complete sense to your business. How can people think about simplifying? Because I feel like there's a complexity is. I think complexity is easy, simple, hard. Yeah, definitely. And I'm the worst at this. I just kind of love chaos. And I think there's a narrative in culture of hustle, be busy, back to back. That gives you status. And actually, how can people get better at just simplifying their business? And I'm talking like big macro mental tools here, not like specifics. I think it's. What do you think about the. I think about the actual impact on decision making and prioritization is the best way I can think of it. So what really matters in a business, what really matters about, let's say, executive or people that make a difference, people that are actually running the business, is that they are able to prioritize. Because real productivity comes from prioritizing one thing, going really deep in that one thing, to the point where you unlock extra levels of secrets, let's say, in that one thing that other people don't have access to. And the only way you get that, it's like when you're writing an essay or. You know that last 20% when you're writing an essay or writing a newsletter and it's like, you're tired, you've been working on it for five hours, you know, I don't want to read it again and do another edit. But it's that push, that last 20% is when you unlock. Yeah, so I prep all my podcast, my creative process on a timer, it's weird, it's 57 minutes, that's like each block is 57 minutes. And by the time I'm typing away and I've got this thing and weirdly, I can look at the thing and I'm like, when it's that last three minutes I'm like, this space, but it's done, it's done. If I just keep going, fuck, I don't know what it is, that last three minutes, like a brand, an insight will come. So that's. That's a. Often when you're, you think you've, and this is, and so it runs through the business, but what we've taught our creative strategist as well is like work on one value proposition or one idea, like do it an extra day and extra two days or focus on it for a whole month, till blue in the face on it, because that's when you find that last insight about it, that are not some more value. And that's the value other people aren't finding. So back to your original question. The mental model is, how can I make what people are focused on as simple as possible and how they can prioritize as simple as possible, so it's one idea or one thing? So anything in the business that basically splits attention or makes things, you know, splits the actual people that are doing the work to tension, that's what you need to cut out. So let's look at this from department basis. So how so Roof is, he's still head of marketing. Yeah, yeah. So it Roof on head of marketing, whoever's head of, so this is, yeah, head of marketing head of creative, head of finance. Sure. Based on that mental model of, you know, simplicity is the greatest sophistication ever. How, so it's like everything they do is to help them prioritize and simplify what's happening marketing, what's happening creative, what's happening finance like right now? Yeah. So friends, so, well, right now they're focused on, well, I think the best way to say is if, let's say we launched another product or let's say, so right now all those teams are completely focused on how do we grow counter clean penetration at good ROI in the UK? So all the finance is spending all of their time figuring out how to improve the ROI on our core hero offer and make them financial model work. Our growth team is spending all their time figuring out how to improve customer acquisition on our hero's skew. Our marketing team is figuring out how can we best present the brown proposition and the value proposition of our hero's skew. They're not thinking about multiple sews. They're not thinking about multiple markets. They're not thinking about, yeah, and they're not thinking about all the complexities that can come where that becomes confused. Everything is simple for them. It's like this is what we need to do. This is the product that matters. This is the model that matters. So yeah, I mean, yeah, so I'm almost in, in meaning, opportunity, hide, silent complexity. I think that's the thing because it's, you know, it might be, I was about to go over, we just launched this skew, but this one's doing all right. We'll just launch this one. And I think Jack, I was had the luck dinner with Jack from Dash. You know, Dash was. Yeah, yeah, I like Jack. He's a G. Yeah, and he was, I don't know if you remember. So if you're a David Milner, who does, I don't know, never met him. He's very similar in times he said all things focus, but they did a thing where they launched almost like bigger sparkling waters flavoured. And they got, I think they got a good few listings. And the whole thing, I think it was kind of be like a bit of a mixer. And it can, and they're like, oh, it makes sense, you know, we'll have a raspberry water and a lime water. He was like, if you're going to a dinner, say there's five of us having dinner, and you bring a raspberry water to a table. Well, what if you don't like, if three of the people don't like raspberry water. So the opportunity for consumption's just not there. Do you see what I'm saying? So the other thing I will put these in food service. And it's like, in theory, it makes sense. In practice, it makes, sorry, yeah, in theory, it makes sense in practice. Those sign in complexity is bubble up. And now they've just been like, no, focus focus. And look, the door is success dashes. They're doing fantastic. So, okay, so it's this simplification. It's just picking that one thing. Yeah, and actually it's in the data. It's thinking through when you're making a tracing in your opportunity, you've got to think two things. Firstly, is it worth my time tracing it versus working on the core? Fine, one mental model. Secondly, if it works, what does it do to my overall operation and business? And is it going to, is it going to make things more complex and more simple? In a way, if you use those two frameworks, you can kind of get the right. Most people don't look at the operational headache. They don't think they don't think through exactly what it will look like if it works. So it's like, okay, let's say we launched another hero's queue and it gets to a million units a year. Okay, what's that going to look like? And do we want to go down a path where that's a reality? Yeah. And then if that becomes like a no, that's too much. You can stop the project right there and then right to start. Yeah. There's also ways that there's ways to do new things while keeping simple. So for instance, product development, the rule I put in place for product development in operating figures, we will not make any new product that is not a liquids effect. Or is it a liquids effect? Liquid's effect. So so fact in its cleaning, it's like a cleaning agent, essentially. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And liquids, a liquid. So when the MPD team present a paste or a powder or any other format, it's an immediate no. And our expertise are in surfactants. That's what our chemistry, our 11 PhDs work on surfactants. That's what they know. Yeah. So just by having that rule, you can do new products, but you're keeping your business much simpler because, okay, think about our factory. We have filling lines at the moment that can do liquids. So if we launch a new liquid product, let's say another type of cleaner, let's say a bathroom cleaner, which we have launched and very successfully, they can run through our machines. So we don't have to set up a new manufacturing process. Bathroom bliss is also a matter of fact. And so we could use our existing chemistry team to formulate it. The product is in a glass bottle in a concentrate exactly the same, exactly the same packaging set up. So you know, all the requirements are kind of the same. And therefore it's we've been able to get the incremental benefit, but without massive complexity. We've seen massive opportunity in launching a powder product. I won't say exactly what it is. We had amazing commercial trial, huge success, take up rates that were when you say commercial trial, you send out to exist. Yeah, we sent out a portion and saw the passengers that took it up. They paid for it. Yeah, paid for it. And then it was huge. I mean, basically people wanted it. And you know, probably would have added 5 million pounds of profit to our business if we'd launched it. But on the flip side, it was a powder. And we don't know how to manufacture powders. We don't know how to stabilize powders. It requires new packaging, it requires new packing techniques. So we just said no to it. The beautiful thing you're saying here, I think it will help it, it's helping me. And when you say it's like within, in the opportunity, you look, think about the operational complexity once that thing is successful. You know, because I think people think, oh, what if that is your save, it's bringing in 5 million pounds, like, why would you not do that? But it's actually what's the operational complexity. And I think for me, operational complexity is not necessarily like, say with this podcast, like the team that's running it. It's also my head space. IE, like the time I could just spend doing, you know, we've got four podcasts next week, which is actually kind of good because it means I can't do anything else. That's great. But I'm like, bro, if I just did, if I could eat, doing the podcast recording it, like, I can just do that. I could do three a day. Like, that's not the issue. It's all the other shit around the side. And actually, it's all these other ideas that kind of bubble up. You know, I could do that. But it's just taken, so I think it's almost from what I'm learning from you all, you know, bouncing around the ideas is it's won the actual operational complexity, but also the fucking head space complexity. Yeah. Because it's like, even now I was just talking, it feels good thought. I kind of was like, right, that's going in my head like, after this, like, that's going, that's going, that's going, that's going, that's going, that's going. And let's just do this. Yeah. Interesting. And then also on that nuance of, like, so we do these supper clubs, live podcasts, like it still is in terms of the complexity of the business, like we saw, we produced the podcast live, we rent a venue, like renting a venue, I can get, I have someone who can do that for me, but it's still, it's almost that umbrella of focus. It's like, we're going to, you know, if I started doing a hungry, coffee range, or like coffee cup range, I mean, I've thought of that. It's just that secluded distraction. So it's almost like that umbrella of focus. Yeah. If you have these little things that don't add operational complexity and don't add headspace complexity, then you can keep, keep pushing. Well, I take your live pod, for instance, because even within focus, you then got, let's say you focus on the pod. And then it's like, okay, well, how are you prioritizing within the pod? Because when I say, following podcast, so, because then the next most important thing after focus is prioritization. What's the difference? Well, within a focus area, what do you prioritize? So like the number one job in executive in my view, and a company, for instance, is knowing what to work on. Like, the amount you work and all of those things, that doesn't matter that much. What are you working on? Yeah. That's what really matters. And prioritizing what to work on is the most important decision. The Abraham Lincoln thing, which is about to cut down a tree. I'd have, if I had four hours to cut down a tree, I'd spend the first three hours sharpening the act. Yeah. And then picking what to work on. And then, yes. Where's I think I'll just be like, "Really? Let's fuck it up." And it's like, "Joseph, we're like, yeah." Which comes from judgment, ultimately. Well, judgment, I don't know if you've seen the Amazon thing on judgment. If you really have shoulders, letters, Jeff FaZe always talks about the power of judge, good judgment. Interesting. And one of his leadership principles is be right a lot. So it's basically have good judgment. And judgment's complex because you need to have, it's a mixture of data, rationality and also instinct and intuition. So a good decision requires all of those things. It's not just, yeah. If you're just using a data point to make a decision, that doesn't require judgment. That's like, okay, what weight load can this bridge hold based on the suspension? That's mathematical. You don't need judgment to decide that. But most business decisions require a mix of data and instinct and intuition. So it requires judgment. What's the hardest decision you've ever had to make and how did you use judgment to make that decision? It's very hard to explain how to use judgment because it's. Have you had the nascent to everything about when professors are trying to teach birds how to fly? No, no. And it's like, you can do all this thing of that. I don't know what the principle is, but I noticed it because the books behind the books are behind you. I think that's like a genius bit. I don't know what the principle is, but it's essentially like if you're. We try and teach these things, like professors, we get professors up on stage, it's like, we're going to teach you, it could be judgment and it's whole thing that you can't teach a bird how to fly. Right. Because a bird just goes and flies. I'm butchering it massively. That's. It's like you can't just teach judgment. It's kind of like. I don't think you can really teach or explain what judgment is because it's what. I think Jeff A. Zostezet said it right, it's being right a lot. It's a similar to that. Very. Okay, how do you get better judgment? I think experience helps with judgment. And I think to an extent, rationalities are taking a motion out of decisions really helps with judgment. And rationality really is the key to everything. To be honest, if you dive deep enough. What do you mean by dive deep? How have you dive deeper into rationality? Because that's. That to me seems interesting. Well, rationality is the only. It's the. Okay, if you want to go really deep on that. I mean, iron ran to the philosopher who is big on rationality. Who's iron ran? She's a philosopher. Yeah, yeah. How long ago? I don't know when she died. Okay, yeah, yeah. Probably like 30 years ago. And. So, she proposed a philosophy of rationality basically, which is the idea is that in order to survive, humans have to use their mind. And therefore, the mind, the mind is the meaning of life, because survival is also the meaning of life. So, essentially, your intelligence, your faculty for intelligence and your mind is the most important thing to humanity. And the only way to explain what the mind. The only way to objectively explain what intelligence is is rationality, because rationality is basically objective. It's logic and reason. So, it's using logic and reason, I intelligence, to survive, to make your life better, etc. And therefore, so, that's the kind of background to. And then, essentially. So, from a survival perspective, is that your basic saying rationality and logic is kind of linked to instinct? No, rationality and logic is linked to intelligence. Intelligence? Intelligence is why humans have survived and proliferated. Okay. What's the difference between instinct and intelligence? Instinct, what instinct is animals have instinct. It's a feeling, isn't it? Or an immediate reaction that you don't have to be involved. Generally, you've been saying that last time, I'm a bit of a head coach who is teaching the difference between instinct and intuition? Yeah, instinct is. Yeah. And then, intuition is. Well, okay. So, intuition is a feeling, to be honest. It's like, you've got reaction to something. Instinct is an immediate reaction, which you don't really control. So, for instance, Pavlovian response for a dog is an instinct. Instinctive. Like, an automatic response for a dog when my dog comes in from the garden, he always gets a tree after going to the loo. Okay. And he looks up at the cupboard. It's. He doesn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's not using intelligence. It becomes Pavlovian. It becomes instinctive. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or, like, how animals know how to do certain things when they're. Yeah, when they've just been born, they know where to go. That's instinct. They just do it. And then, rationality is this logic. And intelligence. Well, yeah, it's logic and reason. So, it's being able to think through why to do something or why not to do something and discuss it and explain it. And it's the key to everything because the opposite of that is emotion and lack of logic and lack of reason. And it's the cause of, I think, most bad decisions and most. Yeah, most of the incorrect objectives, society has set itself over the last couple of decades, especially in the UK, I think is down to emotional objectives, not rational or logical objectives. So, would you almost say simplicity blossoms out of rationality and complexity and blossoms out of emotion? Hand forward like that, to be honest. I've never thought of that before, but I need to think about that. No, it's because, more I'm saying is because you, in terms of that root of. I don't know how we got there. No, no, no, no, but if I'm comparing myself. I'm highly emotional, highly neurotic, highly. Right. And I, like, kind of love chaos and. Right. I love the kind of craziness of it. which makes it maybe for a more interesting ride, but that definitely comes out. I'm complete in a complete motion. If I don't like someone, I won't give them a time of day. See you later with business time. That sounds like it's fucking go. Which is kind of what's a point, but then I fill up with you, mate, you have this socially with friends, right? So when it comes to business, it's you've got this ability to just go into that rationality, that logic intelligence, pause. And I think if we're really baking and going deep into that thing, that is the Abraham Lincoln. I think what your thing is, is you will spend three hours sharpening the sword, sharpening the axe, working out where the decision is, prioritising, simplifying, and then you'll go, whereas I think a lot of people will come out of this and just start fucking hacking at it. It comes out of emotion. So I need to cut this tree down in four hours. Aaaaah! I mean, I think that's the kind of a nuance there. Yeah, no, that's interesting. But judgment, the thing, so back to the judgment conversation, I think judgment does require both rationality and intuition. Because you need to, sorry, I keep going. Oh, yeah, well, it's fine, we'll figure out. Because you need to, well, because some decisions are not just, well, yeah, sometimes you do need to do a leap of faith. I mean, starting, per-ing, it was a leap of faith. Mm-hmm. It was rational judgment, because I thought there was an opportunity there, and I saw some data and sort, attended the workshops, my mum ran and saw certain things that I liked that were rational, but there was a feeling I had that this was the right thing to do, that I followed as well. So it's hard. Let's talk about finger, because I remember like, this is young to go, it must have been at least 10 years ago, when we met up for that tap-ass lunch in Broadway market. And I don't know if you vaguely remember that, but we were, that's when Pingo was sort of bubbling, and you had the office you worked, I think you were living with Maca and stuff and two eating. And, yeah, we were going around the stores where you were sort of. Oh, yeah, yeah, in a two-tune Broadway. Yes, yeah, in that market. And, and I remember a sort of thing like, everything you learned from the failures of Pingo set you up for success with Purdy and Fig. Like, what were some of those lessons you took from that period that have been? I suppose almost, I think when you said, "judgment comes from experience," like, how did your judgment get better from that? Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. So, so the big thing with Pingo. Actually, yeah, just for context. Yeah, what was Pingo? What was Pingo? So, Pingo was a, it started as a peer-to-peer tasking app. So, the idea was you could send out a request for something, like, I need a can opener, a tin can opener, or I need some salt and pepper, or whatever. And someone within a certain radius, like a mile, could bring it to you and you could pay them to do that. So, it wasn't gig economy. It was, it was peer-to-peer helping and tasking but with some financial incentive. The gig economy is like Uber, right? More like Uber, it's more like paid driver. Like, people who, it was more community driven as an idea. The vision was, Yes. A community app that had an element of incentives built in. Sure. But, yeah, that was like the vision for Pingo. What happened over, we launched it, I thought I'd come and win, so it was probably 2017. And it did really well, but what we were seeing was that all the requests were coming for groceries. So, this was before the big grocery delivery boom. So, we saw, you know, 90% of the requests were, literally, I need lemon, or I need a, chopped tomatoes or something, whatever. And people were picking up the jobs, going to the supermarket, getting the thing and bringing it to people's houses. The problem was it wasn't that reliable. So, we were seeing, you know, 50% of requests were picked up or something like that. And so, basically, as a customer experience, it was like, I'm not going to keep using this because I only have half time, imagine if only half time you got an Uber or half time you got an Uber. So, but we were stuck on the vision and we were obsessed with the vision. But what we should have done is looked to the data and realized that the data was telling us something which was people wanted groceries in 15 minutes. And it was very obvious when you look back at the data, that was what the market was telling us. But we were emotional about the vision. And so, we didn't pursue the rational thing to do, which was high-geek economy workers set up a task force to get 100% completion rates and grow, and we would have probably grown the first 15-minute grocery delivery app. And those companies raised hundreds and hundreds of millions. I mean, they didn't end up working 'cause the Unites of Longings don't work. But nonetheless, we would have done better than we did and we would have at least followed the demand. And it was just so funny after that seeing what happened in that space. And I remember the thoughts. I actually remember the thoughts of, I remember looking at the data, I remember thinking about whether to follow it or not. So my big lesson there was, follow the data. - Well, that's the judgment thing. It's a mix of emotion, a mix of data, too much emotion, too much belief in the peer community thing. Whereas now you apply, that you let them two things meld together. - Yeah. - How else did you polish your judgment from that experience, even like closing the business, like from maybe some of the darker days, like I think some of your judgment polishing comes from dark days? - Yeah, I mean knowing when to quit. Knowing when to throw in the towel. 'Cause there's a kind of, there's a inconsistency around persistence and quitting, isn't there? - What did you mean by that? - Well, like a lot of people say you need to be persistent to be successful. But then also you need to know when to throw in the towel. So how do those two things, how do those two things play together? - Society, the sort of hero's journey, when his story is the whole thing of like, just don't quit, bro. - Exactly. - But I've got the thing I was like, it's also being self-awareness. Like, it's like, much like I'd love to be an NBA basketball player, mate. I'm five foot seven. - Yeah, and a bit of a podger, like they ain't gonna fucking happen. I think so many people in society tells us like, everyone can be a basketball player. So we're actually like, are you six foot seven to begin with? - Yeah. - I think we have a lot of, you know, kind of an allegoless in terms of business. A lot of small people think they can be basketball players. And it's like, actually, you could be really good at Bob's slave. You're actually, I'm trying to say, like, it's knowing when to quit. But society doesn't reward quitting. - No. - So many people persisting on things that just aren't working. - Exactly. - So, for instance, no one really knows this, but Buddy and Fig was a hands-on company originally. So we, well, we always had the vision for counter-clean. And that was like the original aim of the company. But when COVID hit, we couldn't make counter-clean for various reasons. So we tried to make the simplest product we could, which was hands-on at the time. And we built a seven-figure hands-on business. But we shut that down. We shut down at a multimillion-pulled company. We shut down at a multimillion-pulled business. We just took off the skews, ended them and pivoted. - Was it under a brand? - Underperly in Fig. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 2020 to '20, end of '21. We were selling hands-on, and we built a multimillion-pulled business selling hands-on at the time. - I didn't know that. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And, but we shut it down. - What was the mental process or thinking behind shutting it down? - We just didn't think, well, we always originally wanted to build the counter-clean business where we thought the real potential was, what the brown was about. And it came back to focus and doing, and placing our bets in the right area. And we just, we didn't think the hands-on proposition had enough, had enough in it. And if we're going to pivot to the counter-clean proposition, we have to do it properly. Tell me the difference between business and brand. I think when we were talking, I know you've written somewhere that was the biggest learning was actually building a brand versus a business. What would you define those two things as first? Again, I know it's kind of a two-year-old question, right? - Business, well. - And then what have you learnt about building a Perly and Fig. That was a brand? 'Cause I felt like a lot of people built a brand first and then tried and built a business. - Yeah. - Like you built a real solid operational thing and then I've done the brand. - If I'm right. - Yeah, yeah. But I saw those businesses like the commercial entity, isn't it? - Yeah. - Yeah, it's a corporation essentially. - Yeah. - And then I think a brand is, a brand is what people think about you. - Mm-hmm. - There's some total of what everyone thinks about your products and your services. Advertising can influence that. but probably the most important thing is the products themselves and the customer experience. What have you learned about building the podium fig brand like those moments? Basically the product is the most important thing. Product dictates. Before we had any fancy branding and we had any TV advertising, we had a great brand. So we had a great brand from the beginning. We just didn't have the kind of gloss and the polish over the top of it. But it didn't actually matter because customers kept coming back. They referred other customers. They loved the products. So I think what people get wrong is they spend a lot of time up front on branding and not a lot of time on how we're going to make our product incredible for customers. And then you can do pretty well with a polished brand because it looks different, it feels different. But ultimately if the product quality isn't there or the differentiation isn't there, it's going to eventually add a tap out or fall over. Whereas if you start with the product or the experience, you build off that, you know you've got something real, real product market fit. You can always add then you add the kind of glossiness after. I mean this is a wrote about this in New Zealand. It's can heinously crass. But it's like always it's like the brand versus product thing. It's like you meet me someone fit person at a bar. They look amazing and you go home and you get jiggy right and it's fucking awful. You don't go back from all those. I feel like so many people have actually spent time focusing on the product making it good. You get the repeat then you can gloss it up later. I think so. I think that's a better way to go. What so I know this is a really southern thing which is the best books and advertising actually nothing to do with advertising. I know we've got kind of a shared love of literature and I actually think you learn more from these weird books about marketing and business than others. You read War and Peace. Yes. Leo Tolstie. Oh, sorry. Tolstie. I've been reading Dostotesky. Is it Dostot? I'm really bad at advertising so that's a fucking hell. They're Russian names. Yeah, they're Russian names. But really interesting insights. What did you learn from War and Peace that you applied to brand building, Purdy and Fig? Also, what's it about? Yeah. I mean, War and Peace basically about aristocratic society in 19th century Russia during the war's early 19th century Russia during the war's Treesar Alexander who's like the Yap the Zahar there and Napoleon. And Napoleon's invading Europe and invading Russia. That actually happened. Napoleon was invading Russia. Yeah. I didn't realise. I read a book about Napoleon. I didn't finish it. I didn't finish it. Yeah, he invaded Russia. Yeah, he invaded Moscow. Took Moscow. Fucking hell. I didn't realise that. Yeah. Yes, he's the OG challenger brand. Uh-huh. So that's what the book's about and it's and I mean there are there are I could bore you to death with the insights in the book. The core philosophy though. The core takeaway from the book is that you think you're in control of events but you're not. So the core the core thing is there's a kind of a great man of history theory which is that figures like Napoleon and Churchill etc. shaped and Hitler to an extent shape history. And they influence everyone else. But Tolstoy's view is that those figures are more an amalgamation of all or everyone under them than they are they are a shapers of history themselves. So Napoleon and all of his decisions and all of his victories and losses was more about the combined will of all the soldiers than it was about him. He was just he was just a figurehead in a way and a and an easy and easy kind of mental model for understanding why certain things happen because you can put all in one person. And he writes a very convincing argument about this incredibly convincing about how there are so many factors that go into a victory or defeat in a war let's say. Hundreds hundreds of things could have gone one way or another and the result would have been different and the hero or the antagonist could have been the opposites if you know what I mean. Yeah. Yeah. So so his idea basically is that you are not in control as much control as you think you are. There is a there is a there is a kind of determinism to an event to events over time that are the combined will of all of of all the people and the idea would be like perlian fig is as much about the combined will of all of our customers over the last five years that happen it's kind of happenstance then it is like me or my brother or perlian Charlotte. We are almost just we are almost just kind of the yeah I guess the show puppies for for everyone once and and so what to take about to brand of marketing is like it really helps you zoom out. So basically you think all your decisions and all these things that you're doing every day matter so much and you think you can control everything but you can't control nearly as much as you think you can most of the things that happen are going to happen anyway. And so when it comes to business building and brand building as much as you can zoom out don't sweat about all the micro decisions and all the small things and try and get the big things right try and basically ride the wave of of the combined will of let's say millions of people. The that's the idea that's no no I love that but it's also this is more sort of a cultural thing but and it's so true but we love heroes the heroes journey like we idolize heroes as part of human nature and David Ogleby's got the quote which is kind of it's an inter counterpoint to that which is you never see there was never a statue made of a committee. In all the parks there's never a statue as you say you see Churchill you know you go round Trafalgar Square or Trafalgar Square what's the Parliament Square you have all those icons but actually below that is this big movement. And you can't put 200,000 soldiers in the square. Yes exactly that's the busiest hub but I think it's a really interesting thing to think about is and it's also that what I love is one thing I was going to ask you is like how did you get lucky you know it's that happenstances. Well that's the thing it's that's that's the big thing it's like it's a lot of luck. It's a lot of luck and realizing that it keeps you humble and it helps you zoom out more and I just understand the wider context of what you're doing. What's an uneasy ballroomy to death in Insights that will that will excite me to death. What's some of the insights from that book? Well that's that's the big insight. Yep. I think because wildlife fiction is is it's a safe place to play to explore emotion. Yeah. That you can't explore and really any other sort of setting like if you watch a film you don't you can't think when you watch a film you can't actually get inside the character's head. Yeah. Whereas like in fiction you've got that space to actually think that the antagonist is thinking. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? I say yeah yeah I do. It's just a better it's a safer place and there's depth to literature but you know films now and a half you'll be with a book for a month. Yeah. There's these layers of depth like. Yeah I mean there's the thing about Russian literature it's all about the meaning of life so I mean most of the insights are more about what really yeah it's probably not great for this podcast but it's it's it's what's weighed I guess the relation to the relationship to business is is knowing what you want. Yeah. And why you want it. Yeah. Because you know most of the main character Pierre and most of his struggle in one piece is about is about like the meaning of his life and what what he's an aristocrat being given all this money by a dead uncle and he's just at pain to understand what he's here to do. And most of his struggle is about that and he eventually understands the meaning of his life at the end of the book based on based on almost dying basically a living in a living in a cell for a few months when when he got taken prisoner by the French and he realizes the meaning of life is is in in the most simple things which is very Russian farmer kind of thing but it's not doesn't matter his meaning of life is irrelevant it's it's more about understanding your own meaning and then I find that really I personally think about that a lot because if you can have a meaning and a constant and you're able to apply that for your whole life I think you'll you'll do you'll do much better yeah yeah yeah you're not chopping and changing what you're doing but this links to focus links to focus links to focus I wanted to thread that weave and the the as I said to you I've read Dossi Teske whatever crime punishment is mouth like it's big now I was starting reading notes from the underground which is the it's took most two books it's like notes from the underground one other thing the first books this guy and it's his is his absolute desire for status right in the the world. I forgot that the protagonist name is, it's like, and he's belittly everyone going, "I'm clever than you." And just, and then the first part of the book is just this kind of just flow of all his thoughts. And what that taught me about sort of brand building business is one, brands need to give their or help their consumers garner status. So with your counter, counter, what's it called counter? - Counter clean. - Counter clean, I'll start out. Counter clean, that gives someone status versus like, dritt and vanish. - Yeah. - On someone's dirty, you know, dirty, the brand dirty. That gives people consumer status. I'm really obsessed with brands that give people status. Then the other point I learned is that, oh my God, like, we are so, when you walk along the street, everyone is just so stuck in your own, in their own head. So like, from a marketing or brand perspective, like it's the whole thing, tell them, want, tell them, tell them again, tell them again, kind of think it's like that, like constant, non-cares. - Yeah. - And I think that's kind of really, really, sure. - Yeah. - Even with the podcast, that everyone can hear the amount in. I don't think it was a fuck mate. - I think about it for about five seconds. - What other books have been really influential for you? - There's a book called Atlas Shrugged by Iron Rand, - Yeah. - Which I recommend everyone in the world reads. - Fiction. - Fiction, it's, it's, our Iron Rand's who we spoke about earlier, rationality. - Yes. - She, the culmination of all of her philosophy was this book called Atlas Shrugged. - Right. - And it's about, what year was that? - What year was it written? - Yeah, not as in like, was, I'll be talking. - Based in like, based on the industrial stage, in America, and it's baited, and, yeah, I mean, basically, I think I'll bet it's so annoying. - Yeah, it's fine, we'll fucking play that. - Yeah. - Basically, all of, the book is about, all these industrialists, who are basically inventing new forms of metal, inventing, building railway lines, doing amazing things with electricity, and they are the heroes. They are highly rational business people. They are innovators and they're industrialists. And the world gets taken over, it's a dystopian world, by bureaucrats. And the bureaucrats have, have a view that money is evil, that progress is, needs to be balanced fairly between all peoples, and they start essentially redistributing the industrialist's wealth, but also creating all these rules and regulations around, if they invent a new metal, so the main character, Rydyn, he inventes, think, would rear the metal, which is cheaper and better than steel. And they've introduced a law, for instance, that he can't produce more of it, than the current steel, because it will be unfair on the steel producers, et cetera, et cetera. But what happens is society completely breaks down, all the industrialists disappear. And the book, the book is a, the book basically is, it explains what happens when you lose rationality in society, because rationality is the only thing that we can all agree on. It's the only way to be objective. Emotion, you can feel a certain way about inequality or certain things, but it's an emotional view. You can change that at any point. It's not based on anything, whereas the industrialists, the rational industrialists, they care about facts, and they care about science, and they care about things that are objective. And yeah, it's an amazing book. And it basically highlights the importance of what we talked about earlier with logic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I do think the reading fiction is just, but the other thing I think about fiction, as I actually think about the other day, is one, it's like the big lessons hide within fiction. But two, from a, like, if you, you know your whole thing, I was like reading the other day for 20 minutes in the middle of a working day from the office. I think reading gives you altitude. So you know what we were talking about earlier, like when you're on Slack, when you're on your blow, and it's just like, I mean, I hate turning things on. It's like, (blows raspberry) It's like this, if you read a book for 20 minutes, it's not about reading the book. That's like one part of it, but it's like it gives you altitude to see the bigger picture, because you're like, and then when you go back to your actual work, it's the whole efficiency versus effective thing. Yeah, totally. Which I think, which you're really good at, is like, is, yeah, well, I suppose the efficiency versus effective thing is the Abraham Lincoln thing. It's the sort of thing. No, toad degree. I mean, it's like this morning, I had started Went to the gym, and then read for 45 minutes of the gym, and then came here, and it's, what were you currently reading? Out of truck. Oh, sick. Yeah, I'm right, I'm a little bit. What, we get back to D to C and set, well, I just, I just, I just go over this conversation. It seems to be working, so I'm just going to keep doing it. But I know, like, what sort of period is a history, because I've this might, I'm reading a really good book, called The Cultural Shooter. He's amazing. You should listen to his podcast, like reading that book. He talks all about that different architecture and stuff. Honestly, when you walk around London, it will make anyone read that book, will make you fall in London, in love with London, but a million times over. It's the most, you understand all the different architecture, different architecture, and he says architecture is the soul to how people were thinking at that time. It's just glorious, like, you know, you take it for granted, it's just fucking these old churches, and then you have the Gothic and the kind of the classical stuff is beautiful. Yeah, that's awesome. The reason I'm reading it is also me because I want to understand more about culture, because I believe, brand-shaped culture. Nothing to do with that, but it's really, really interesting. But I'd love to know, what's it gonna say? Oh yeah, so the periods of history. Yeah. What periods of history do you find really fascinating that you think is history that helps us as long as the future lives in the past, I really think that. Oh, I tell you a really good story about that. So, Napoleon, when Napoleon invaded Britain, Nelson, you know, the Nelson Column. Yes, yeah. So Nelson defeated him. Did he die there in that battle? Yes, he did. And he stood at the front of the ship, wearing a massive purple thing to be like, come and get me, motherfuckers. To basically inspire his men. Yeah. But I was reading into what, how did that battle culminate? Like, how did Britain defeat Napoleon in that battle? And what was all the context around it? And it's a fascinating story, because British Empire, they made a decision in the late 18th century. William the Pit made the decision to, he looked to Britain. He was William the Pit. He was the Prime Minister at the time. It's called William the Pit. Yeah. Like, as it, that's the pits is certainly. Yeah, William the Pit. I just thought, I just thought in my head, it's like, he's in a pit or something. I think it's William the Pit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just sorry, that's really-- You know, maybe doubt that it's William the Pit. But I think it is-- The Prime Minister at the time, yeah. Yeah. William the Pit, William the Pit. Anyway. Yeah. He made a fascinating decision. So he looked to Britain. And this is-- and he said, what is Britain's natural strength? And he said, well, we don't have a lot of land. We're not connected to continental Europe. So we're never going to have a great land army. So he basically took all the budget that was going into the land army. And he also, by the way, believed that land armies were the lead to authoritarianism. And partly, mostly because of what happened on continental Europe at the time. What did you mean by that? Well, basically because you can invade other countries with them. And you can take other countries. Right. It leads to that kind of aggression. So he also had a thing about that. But what he did is he said, what's our great strengths? We're an island. And he said, what we can become the best at, more than any other developed nation in the world at the time, is our navy. And so he started to invest in sane levels of GDP in the navy. I think it was something like 40% of GDP was going into the British Navy. And I met investment meant that Britain, Britain, and all the waves essentially led to us creating the empire, being able to control all these different regions, not in an authoritarian sense, by the way, but in the way Britain did it then. And also, and then we control the trade routes. And then we had all the commercial benefits from that. And eventually, it worked out, obviously. And the British Empire was so successful. And eventually, we defeated Napoleon in that battle, because we had the best navy. I mean, we were so focused on our navy that the cannons on our ships were firing at five times the pace of Napoleon's cannons. And all of our British land comes from naval terms. If you look up on track, GBT, what words come from the navy now in British language, phrases? There's an issue like this of 100, you're like, oh my god, that's insane. Which ones? Oh, I can't remember them. But look at people listening. So it kind of made a whole country. And what I loved about that story is that it all came from exactly where we got started the conversation, which was prioritization and focus. He looked at-- He looked at our setup versus other people and he worked out what our natural strength was and he worked out where to invest all the resources and he cut everything, all the other spends, he cut the inventory, he cut everything else and he was just like, we're going to put everything into the Navy, I'm going to become the best Navy in the world. And I just found that to be an inspirational story of kind of. I think it's also, and I remember you again, you know, our first conversation, that had developed a real feverish cult like following that first one. I'm fucking loving this as well mate. But like I think the thing, and I think, you know, so many people in business get, even myself, you get insecure at some stage and it's like actually looking at what you've done well or what you've got, what it's about prioritization but focusing where your actual strengths are. Yeah, exactly. So I feel like in business and you, it's like, don't look out what you're competitors are doing, which so many people do. You see, you see, they're doing note milk brown, we'll do note milk brown. It's like, actually look inwards and be like, what made you different and actually just do more of that longer. Yeah. And it's like, say with this, like sometimes I'm like, I'll wash you just do 45 minute episodes and like that could help the YouTube retention, that could help like it would go viral and all this shit. But I'm like, no, there is a me listening because it's this, everyone says it's just just like, do more of the thing that you're actually, be focusing your Navy. Yeah, what are you, counter cleave? What are you best at? Yes, exactly. You're probably best at conversations. The longer form. Yeah, it's not a Q and A. It's, yes, it's, it's, it's, it's mad. The other thing is the, if you do Tom, Tom Brown, the chef. What a question on the, you see, had cornerstone in Hackney. Okay, yeah, I've been there. Then he's got island in Kings Cross, which is, I'm, I'm, mate, it's like basically two missions chefs, surf and turf, fucking quality. That's what we did at the club. But he's got all the tattoos of home is Odyssey all over him. Oh, yeah. And he know like the sirens. Yeah. And he'd like the guy straps all the girl who have straps themselves to the mass and the mermaid's like, didn't he? Yeah, yeah. And I was like, it's the whole, that links in business to signal versus noise. And I think like we have all this, this distraction of noise. It's like, we have to almost like to your point of focus, strap ourselves to the mass and just, you know, keep on, keep on doing the main thing. The, how's the D to see landscape changed since 23 when we've last spoke? I think it's getting stronger. I think there were kind of those early, so you had like different waves of D to C, right? The early wave was Dollar Shave Club and that kind of thing. And they got really great exits. But I'm not sure the actual business fundamentals were there and I think a lot of the statistics who bought them weren't too happy. What do you mean by that? Like they weren't happy with the investment basically. No, but the business fundamentals were. Oh, they basically just lost making companies and they didn't have strong commercials. It was, it was a lot of marketing growth, but not a lot of commercials. And they're Vc, Vc funded. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like wave one of D to C probably in mid, mid 2000 and early 2000. Well, I guess early 2010s mid, mid, mid 2010s. Wave two, which I put like all birds and, and like the glasses company, I can't say, Harry's for instance and some other brands like that. A lot of them went public and have really struggled on the public markets. And what happens when you go, again, I don't really understand it. You just, you just become open for investment to the public and then you have a stock price and a ticket. Yeah, you don't understand that. But like why would they struggle when they go public? Well, because they just investors, public market investors basically don't rate them. With, okay, okay. And that's how they generate, okay, yeah, that's how they, their stock prices determined and they've basically all gone to like close to zero. And then so that's the wave two. So it's been a bit of a disaster for D to C. Wave three is very different though. Wave three is post COVID and there are now a lot of nine, eight and nine figure, multi-nine figure brands that are, that are big and profitable, very profitable. And they're getting bought for a lot of money. What are some of those? Well, I've touched land, got bought by church and Dwight. It was like a fragrance, sanitiser business in the US. Yeah. Like 800 million pounds. I can have it. You had Dr. Squatch recently bought by Unilever for one and a half billion. You had Pat Labco recently bought by BC Partners for like 350 million. Like these, these brands are getting bought because they're big and they're profitable. And since 21 basically D to C has not been able to get any funding. So it's become all about the Uniteconomics, the commercials of the business. And so there's this wave of incredibly strong brands with, with, with really, really good financials. And I think they're going to be, yeah, I think there's going to be a big wave of consumer activity because of that. Indeed to see over the next five years. The other interesting thing that's happening is DC brands are increasingly proving their ability to go into retail when the time's right. It just needs to be thought through and done well. And that massively improves their value because a big strategic can buy them and put them into retail with a bit more confidence. But as that continues, I think, valuations are going to increase. And then the final thing that's happening is AI. Yeah. And I think in it for consumer more broadly, you know, one has to think about where they are is what are the things that aren't going to change. And I think the things that aren't going to change with AI are people want great product, great physical product. So I think consumer is one of the few industries that's going to see a lot of inflow of capital as basically all other industries are getting decimated, services, SaaS, software, all that money used to go somewhere. And it's going to go into things that I think are permanent. So it doesn't matter if there's robots in AI, you're still going to want physical, the physical world and like physical things that you like. We can put it more. You can put it more. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think it's going to be a huge inflow of capital. So I'm seeing, I'm seeing us going into a bit of a golden age for consumer, which really excites me because I love consumer. And I think over the next, well, and my other view on this, by the way, is that I think great brands are built over decades, not years. So I think, you know, a lot of people talk about exits and that kind of thing, but really, really big, great, profitable long-term brands. The oldest consumer brands, well, the best consumer brands are 100 years old. Yeah. Coke and Louis Vuitton and all these things. It takes decades. So don't start a brand and think it's a three or four year flip job. I mean, we're seven coming up to six years at Perlin thing, I think it's going to be at least a decade, maybe decade and a half, maybe two decades. And you've got to be in for the ride. Does that, does that, expanding your timeframe? Does that, I assume that helps make it take in the emotional, it's very powerful. Yeah, it takes the emotional, extending the timeframe takes the emotional, almost helps the judgment, what do you say? Yeah, I mean, one of the other principles Jeff Bezos talks about a lot is taking the long of you and long-term decision making because it becomes a real competitive advantage because basically everyone else is thinking on one or two year cycles because they're impatient. So if you can get into a place where you're thinking in five or seven or eight year cycles, you just got massive amount. What is 20 years at like for party and fake, we're just playing a game here. Well, if you think about what really matters over 20 years for party and fake, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you wouldn't be launching like hundreds of products, would you? You wouldn't be expanding into 50 markets. You would do one thing at a time, you would do it really well, you'd be thinking about the brand, you'd think about quality of product. Tabasco, you know, like, you think about custom, the customer experience, you think about the things that matter, the things that really matter over because you're not, that's what I think all the errors they come from, that rush, that like, oh, we need to be here in one or two years and so proliferation and panic and chaos. But if it's soon you start thinking 20 or chunk, it's like, yeah, so why would you launch in 20 markets next year? Or a lot of people do that. They open up all the markets and they open up all the products and it's like, if you were thinking in two decades, you just wouldn't do that. Obviously, you, you, and the other thing, sorry, on that is growth rate. So the other big thing that I've changed my mind on, if I was redoing, perting, I would grow way slower than we've grown. Again, because we've grown at like 300% compound, right? So it's been insane because over the 20 years, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether you grow. If you grow 20 to 30% a year, every three years you're doubling your size. So even if you're growing 10% a year, every seven years you're doubling your size. So over 50 years, if you're doubling your size every seven years, which is a 10% growth rate, you grow 126 times. So if you're, if you're a 5 million pound business now, in 50 years, it all you have to do is grow 10% a year and you'll be 126 times five, which is 700 million pound business or something like that. 300 million pound business. Yeah, yeah. It's like, grow much slower. You don't need to grow at 102, 300% a year. That's just chasing a lot of status, chasing a lot of hype and we're high growth with this or that. My mission over the next decade is if we can grow 30% a year, 20 to 30% a year, we're for a decade, we will 5X Hub business over a decade, which will be unbelievable. We'll be worth billions and billions of pounds, which is one of the best outcomes ever in consumer. So why do you need to go bigger than that, generally? - Yeah, yeah, mate, it's just the long-term view. Long-term view is the simple rational view. I said, yeah, the Napoleon's got a quote, which is chaos as a ladder, which I love. Because you know, the guy who wrote, oh, God, really, he's the most British bloke ever, historian. He wrote Churchill's-- - Oh, right. - Monjury, Monjury. - Yeah, whatever. And no, Andrew. Name just gave me. - Oh, the one that wrote the thature stuff on the Churchill stuff. - The Churchill stuff. Andrew, something, he's like, speed, is like the most British bloke ever. He drinks red wine and writes fucking about Churchill. But he's got a quote called chaos as a ladder with Napoleon. And it's like, I suppose, so kind of, not playing devil's advocate, but counterpoint, is all this rationality, all this long-term thinking, - Yes. - Simplicity, all that stuff. In business chaos comes, whether you like it or not setbacks come. How, when has chaos been injected into your sort of rational, simple ecosystem, how have you then used that to build, as a ladder to move up? - Yeah, I mean, we've had, anyone who's been in party in Figuille say it's been chaotic. - Yeah, that's what I'm saying, that's what I'm saying. - Very chaotic. 'Cause even within a focused business, there's a lot of chaos. But partly that's down to, I'm trying to reduce the chaos for sure, because I don't think it's necessary that healthy. I'm trying to think about your question, which is, how can chaos be a ladder? - Maybe first, I think it'll be refreshing for listeners to understand what some of that chaos is. - Just because of-- - But everywhere, I mean, look, we've had a 40,000 on a backlog in November. Genial chaotic that was. We had, we had a seven day waitterm on our customer service, on our customer service tickets. - Yeah. - And when that happens, you've got a backlog and a backlog on customer service, what happens is your contact rate spikes, because any new order that comes, you have no customer service for. So contact rate goes from 15% to like 50%, so for every 10,000, all of a day you're doing, you're getting another 5,000 tickets, and you can't answer them. I mean, that is chaos. That is real chaos. The factory was probably almost burnt down like three times. We once had an IBC, I'll probably-- - What's an IBC? - It'd be the next Prince Andrew soon, if I continue this story. But we had an IBC, which is 1,000 meters of ethanol, and we had nowhere to put it. So I called my parents, I was like, guys, can we just send you this ethanol? Yeah, sure. 1,000 liters of ethanol is really explosive. Very illegal to store not in proper conditions, and we just had it on our parents drive for a few weeks. And one day we were at home, and the police came driving down the lane, and they came into our drive, like, you've been reported, like, literally goes jail. And they walked up, and they were like, oh, excuse me, I'm like, yeah, hi. They were like, oh, there's been a disturbance down there. Is anyone, do you know where this road is, whatever? And we were like, oh, yeah, yeah, just down there, and they drove off. - Fuck it. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Could have gone to one or two ways there. So the whole first three or four years of the business, we were scrappy as hells. We built our first factory on a farm. There was oil running through the gravel that was on our feet all the time, used to, like, - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - The whole thing was just scrappy and chaotic, yeah. - And then how, what I'm trying to, 'cause this is, this is like, that's basically my moment, it's operendly, like everything I've ever done has been scrappy. What I'm trying to understand, I think a lot of people in listings this will be in that scrappy mode. - Yeah. - Right? - Do you know the brand Solt? - Yes. - Well, I've, yeah, yeah, see that. - So that case in point, using these guys an example, their pod goes live on Monday, they're fucking genius. Probably the most natural storytellers of ever sat. - Really? - Mate, I was like, I'm going off piece of it, but like, I was like, the way they create hooks and stuff, a millie, she's got like a big following and Henry's amazing in it. They were literally, she's rifting, like you'd get sort of pull McCartney to play like a riff. - Oh, really? - She was like, okay, I was like, say your cat got knit, so opening hook would be like, ah, I was crossing the road to find it. It's like the curiosity gap, but they were just rifting on that. But this was, sorry. So, but they're really kind of kept, they're on this scrappy mode. Lot of people being scrappy mode, 'cause it's just nature the beast. How would you apply some of the rational thinking and rationality to scrappy mode to make it less chaotic? - I think the scrappyness comes from, the scrappyness is good. And it comes, if you ever done like an insights wheel on like different personality types, you know what I mean? - Like the mice brinks. - Yeah, that kind of stuff. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, so red, the color red on the insights wheel is like, piste direction, directive, gets stuff done, whatever. One'spreneurs tend to be very red. And blue is more the rationality on the insights wheel. And I guess you need for the strategy you want blue. So like, what are we prioritising? What are we doing? You want as much blue as possible? And maybe a bit of yellow, which is like vision, visionary stuff. But then, to actually getting shit done in the business, you want it all to be red. So just biased to action, solving problems, improving things, like finding any solution. And that is chaotic. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. - Yeah, yeah. How do you plan your week, like as in what's a typical week in terms of meeting structure? Do you know what we were going to do this on a Monday and you're like, this and, or I need like a headspace to do, like energy, sorry. Like, so I think that's really intentional. - Yeah, so my week is very structured. - That's it. So. - I wish I had a bit of that. - So my early week, basically Monday, Tuesday, is all information gathering. So I spend basically two days speaking to all my executives, going to the trading meetings, executive meeting. - So a trading meeting. - Trading meetings like reviewing all the numbers, for the previous week's trading, et cetera. And doing one to one with all my reports. And it's pure listening, though. So all I'm doing is, I'm information gathering about the business that week, what everyone's concerns and problems. I basically do that for a couple of days. - You have like a specific questions to unlock that information. - Just one to one. Yeah, high trust environments, one to one, listening a lot. - But like, do you log that information? - Yeah, I take notes. Yeah, lots of notes. - Okay. - And so that's the first part of the week. So I don't take any action on my Monday, because I'm thinking, I just need to learn what's going on. And then I split my next two days into two different hours of business, which I won't detail right now for as reasons. But basically, that one day is sort of in problems on one part of the business, the next day, solving problems on the other side of the business. But using the insights from the first two days. So I'm like identifying where are the biggest problems, what are the biggest issues, and then going and solving problems for two days. And then my final day is, bring it all together, reflection, and normally longer term strategic stuff, writing like any to-do's and actions and papers I need to write. And that's the week. - What's talking about the reflection stuff? Like how do you wrap up the week? - Well, just thinking. I mean, just basically looking at everything that's happened that week and then thinking about the longer term, any change of mind I might have had or any important issues that have come up that I just need to mull over. So I normally like Fridays like today, I'm blocked out just thinking time. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I won't really do anything. I'll do it. - That's another really insight I love from you. And I think more people could apply it. It's kind of the value of doing nothing. And because it's not the, if you had Charles Bukowski on May, you should read him, like he wrote the post office, kind of like a cult American writer, but he didn't become famous, he was like, you know, his books, every book was failed, but just a really interesting insight to American, American like the 1950s, 60s. This is like alcoholic, chain smoking, postman, but really interesting. And here's one of his big quotes is just don't try. - Right. - And the reason I love that is it's because we book, we want a book more meetings, we want to fill the day, it's that input so it's output. It's actually the value of just doing fuck all. - Yeah, yeah. - And just as you say mulling. - Mulling, isn't it? - Mulling such a great light. - Mulling. - I'm the great thing to do, mulling. - Definitely, definitely, it's really good. But yeah, I mean, and I sound like superstructured and that I'm like this kind of bot, but the thing about me is I'm actually, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm incredibly also chaotic and disorganized in many ways. And like a lot of people my team will say, you know, God, don't give Jack any admin to do. I'm not very detail-oriented. So a lot of the things that wouldn't main match with a lot of stuff I've said today, but I think I use what blue I do have, which I call the rational side and the thinking side, I try and use what I do have, because I think it helps so much with the red in terms of the drive to action. - So almost a macro-focused micro-scate? - Yes. - Yeah. - That's good, I like that. - Yeah, interesting. When you get those problems from those first two days, again, back to prioritisation, prioritisation please, say like six or seven, like how do you work out which one to focus on? - Um. - Would you go after one or is it like, "Right, I'm just gonna do this one problem?" Like, 'cause I feel like, for example, of me, if I was to spend my first two days of the week, right, thinking about all the thing that's problems, in my head I've already got lists of a hundred fucking things. So, what do you mean? And then I'm like, "Me, well, what a fucking way "how do you work out that part?" - Um. That is partly judgment, that's kind of the judgment side. I think I. - Or would you write lists? Like, I mean, it sounds like a midday. - Yeah, I do write lists, yeah. I basically write my three priorities, whatever, for that week, after those, after those two days, all day and a half basically, 'cause the training meetings, and the exact meetings finished about midday on Tuesday. Um. Uh, basically line up the issues against the goals, what's the limiting factors, what's the biggest limiting factor to achieving our goals? - Mm-hmm. - And then focus on that, so. Um. It's pretty. It's relatively simple in terms of. What's going to move the dial on things that matter? - Yeah. - Yeah. I want to talk about the creative and behavioral science of D to C. - No. - 'Cause I know we talked about that last time. - It's time. - We. Oh, shit, we got seven minutes. - Yeah, yeah. - You got dead paws. - 12, yeah. - Yeah, that's fine. Let's wrap up with that then. This has been fucking amazing, mate. - I don't know. - Oh, yeah. - Oh, why did you not think so? - I don't know. Oh, mate, no, no, this is better than our first one. Hands down, bro. - Okay. - Like, the first one was. 'Cause I was a bit like apprehensive, like that first one was fucking fire. Like, is this one. Yeah, this is amazing. - We'll cut that out, right? But the. So just get. "Aval science, D to C, testing creatives, "the small things really matter." You know, citizens of soil, right? - Yes. Lovely delicious example of this. They change from. You know, get your. Okay. They change a few words to join the Olive Oil Club. Overnight, I think it was like, "By your Olive Oil, like, delicious olive oil, "join the olive oil club." Three word forward changes, changes everything. They're business like doubled, like literally doubled over that week. - Yeah, that's right. - What are some of the things you've learnt about that? Like, behavioral science, words, framing, context? Yeah, I mean, it's. I think it's all the basic direct response principles are really important. So direct response principles around urgency, social proof, problem, solution, action. You know, getting those into your funnel will drive a normal. Say that again, sorry, so the. Okay, so problem, solution, social proof, what action you need to take is the fundamental idea. - Yeah. - So that's how. It's like the sales. - Essentially. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's sales, so. Building that into your funnel, probably, will probably. We'll probably double your business, yeah, if you haven't done it yet. So that's fun when I say fun. - You see, build it into your funnel properly. - Yeah, properly. - It needs to be well done. - Yeah. - So you need to start with the right problem, thinking through the solution, make it compelling, have a really strong social proof, et cetera. A great offer for the action. So that's like the thinking side and you wanna come up with three or four different versions of that to test. And then you wanna implement it in your funnel, which is your ad creative, your landing pages, you'll see our RM, whatever it might be. And test them, test, completely, always innovate on new ones. And I think you'll build a good funnel. - What, and have you seen any of like what have been some of the best creatives that have had. - The join all of all of our club is a offer. It's a form of an offer. They use language to actually to make the offer more compelling. - Yeah. - Which is amazing, 'cause it's free for them. So that's like one of the most ingenious ways to improve your efficiency, no cost, but you enjoy the return. - What are some of those you guys have put in place? - Well, I even noticed on the website that some of the languages changed a lot, which is interesting. - Yeah, yeah, we're always constantly testing. I'm not, to be honest, I'm not as close to some of that now as I used to be. So I'm not sure on the most recent changes, but. - Final question, Mix, and I got to run. What's one truth you believe most people disagree with you on? - I think in this country, probably, that I think, in this country, basically that money is a moral and objectively good thing to strive for as a thing in or of itself. - So money's good to go after? - Money is a good and moral objective, yeah. Because it is the ultimate explanation. It's the ultimate rational way to judge your personal contribution to the world because basically it's the only way. Money is a tool to trade productivity, goods and services that are productive for the world in a fair way. So without money, what are you left with? You're left with basically guns, force, aggression to control things, whereas trade, trading your goods for money or trading your services for money is a fair exchange of value and it's objective and it's rational. And to get it, you therefore, to get it in a non-corrupt way, you have to be productive in the world because you are essentially producing something to get money in return. And it's the best method we have of deciding how, how your contribution in a non-emotional rational way. And so I therefore think it's a really good North Star, but most people would say it's a really shallow North Star. - Mate, you're a fucking legend. Always a joy, that was sick. Lovely, mate. The better I'm saying. Thank you so, so much for listening to the podcast. I really, really do appreciate it. If you like that episode, only if you liked it, please do give it five stars, subscribe, tell all your friends, families, foes, next door but one, cat dog, whatever. Please tell everyone about this podcast. It means the world to me. And I really want to understand what your pain points are as the new wave of, of "Change of Fiend Drink" brands. Please do hit me up a LinkedIn search, "Damp Hope" and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of "Change of Fiend Drink" brands. Thank you so much.