The Numbers Never Lie: How to Scale a Luxury Brand | Adam Bouris

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the story of the business is told on the p&l people would say it's told by the marketing efforts and it's told bya Sephora and boots and it's not I'm sorry it's [ __ ] it's told by the p&l biggest mistake I made was in today's episode we interview Adam Boris the co-founder and CEO of who is Elijah who is Elijah was traction on the on the GetGo from the moment it was it was brought to life it was like we're chasing product because we don't have enough always looking at the numbers the

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metrics you want reporting and you want it immediately Adam's deep understanding of business financials and e-commerce has helped scale and guide who is Elijah to incredible success from humble beginnings to selling over 32 million during Black Friday this year alone Adam has prepared who is Elijah to disrupt the international luxury fragrance industry I started as Captain maker like doesn't matter where you start as long as you just keep going keep going and keep going you can you can achieve

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[Music] anything if you want to learn more about the Brand's history and origin please check out our interview with Raquel Boris in episode 52 thank you for joining us Adam M it's great to be here thank you excited man and we had Raquel on the Pod and she is an absolutely natural creative yeah she she wasn't always like that but um yeah she's really found her her moment in the last few years yeah yeah have you seen her like shift from like I guess uh one perspective from to another like what's

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been that shift I think she mentioned she was an EA for a while for most of her early career uh she was at model uh she was uh at Crystal Brook collection the hotel company and when she was there she was like the most efficient admin person that there is C EAS you have to be right you're powering to be on the ball man you're powering the CEO's you know life um and when she sort of Switched when she started who was Elijah it the good thing was that she sort of brought this creativity out but she's

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not one of those creatives that hates doing things cuz she was so task orientated and and deadline orientated and and now not tomorrow and then you build that add that creativeness over on the top of that and you get this sort of like superpower that you don't normally see out of these just hardcore creative people I find that interesting and and you know when when I was recently having a conversation with my mentor he said that that we all have Parts in us and there's different parts that are good at

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different things yeah and he said to me uh he said there's a good book about this it's called no bad parts okay so there's different components of our psyche yeah according to I guess some of what psychologists look at from Kong and whatever it sounds like maybe she had a part of her that was like very regimented and another part of her that was super creative and then she's like combined those two parts of herself together together she was up until you know late nights all the time as an EA

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doing tasks for these guys the founder of Crystal Brook he was Saudi Arabian he lived in Saudi the CEO was here in Australia um and she was working on all time zones and that was when she was in EA for someone else's brand someone else's company so once it became her company you know just like she already had that muscle built um and obviously only not not that long ago probably only 12 months ago I mean there's still times where she's up you know in the middle of the night talking to the UK PR or

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whatever but you know in the those early days she was up on a laptop doing customer service at 2 a.m. or she just had that in her always I find that fascinating now for yourself yeah where did you learn the skills and mindset that would I guess later prepare you for business uh and personal development yeah so I think when I go back to like how I found the drive like how that came to me and when it happened when I sort of can now with hindsight look back on it and figure out when it was I think

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for me my sporting career when I was younger okay was really the driver for like well really like the the fundamentals of business really and I played a lot of rugby league I played you know the semi-professional rugby league um I played for the Greek national team okay um and in those early years of rugby I was I knew I wasn't the most talented um I could play we had a team where you know there was 17 of us and you know 13 or 14 would get picked in the in the rep teams in the rep sides we were unbeatable as a rugby

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league team from when I was 11 years old to when I was 21 years old and it came down to our coaches just building us into from boys into men early on and that competitiveness that we sort of harbored as kids into men stayed with me for a long time um I was always first to training and last there because I wasn't the best but I was in the best team so I always had to be like making sure I was going to get picked and it was probably this I was I was a good player um but the guys in my team will go on to play

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for the roosters for for Australia for New South Wales uh in the NRL in their careers later on so having that those people to compete with every day like it forced me to be this like very Fierce competitor um and then as I left football um and went into business those same characteristics what got me through the hard years early on when I first started business I started a a kitchen design company um on the back of being an apprentice you know for four or five years and you know I ran that for8 years and had immense troubles

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and and success in there and it just equally it was because I could just persevere through the hard times and you know being competitive helps you do that I would agree yeah yeah what were some of the I guess key things that you took from Sports as like fundamental lessons that you could easily apply to business I think like a really good one is that tomorrow like you know if you lose a game a footy there's always next year there's always the next game and it's always about like when you go to back to

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training on Tuesday it was either you're going to get absolutely destroyed by the coach um or for us it was destroyed either way win or lose but it was about you know we would always reflect we'd have our time together and if we played poorly you know we wouldn't touch a football for a week and it would just be laps and you know training till you you can't stand yeah and that was the punishment that we would get for for losing as a team but it was never like you know know this like really bad sort

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of situation it was all around look guys you lost this is why you lost you weren't fit enough they outmuscled you now we're going to fix that this week wow you know uh and in business it's the same thing you get this time to reflect when you make a mistake and you have to you have to take that time to like look back on the mistakes that you made and and retrain your body or remake new decisions or rehire different people or rest strategize because the strategy was wrong um I think that win or lose mindset from

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early sporting days for me has like definitely propelled me forward because I don't I don't complain about the mistakes I don't complain about um you know the wrong decisions we just get on with it and we can you know play another game the next day so then how do you correlate this you know you can't touch the football for a week um you know they out muscled you we got to muscle up how do you translate that into business like what would someone I guess take from that and go okay when

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it comes to this in business like with the Cabinetry business yeah like how did that lesson apply well we got you know I got like a few builders that we worked with back back then and I was early days so I didn't understand contracts I didn't understand payment terms I didn't understand you know leverage or any of that and some of these big Builders just like stepped on me as a little business yeah and they didn't pay me they they pushed me in ways that I didn't understand because I didn't understand

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the game properly um and cuz this a fierce industry construction is hard and businesses in the construction space are notorious for you know not paying people muscling people like getting in debates and arguments like I've just heard some stories yeah it's it's tough and happened to us a few times in the first 2 years it was I needed to realize what is it what do I need to fix I need a contract I need a contract and my contract needs to be better than their contract and I'm just not going to sign

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their contract if they give me a piece of paper I'm not I'm not signing it you can sign mine or I'll go somewhere else right and obviously it's hard early days because you want the work especially in construction um but I just buil you know the lesson learned was I keep signing their paper and this keeps like losing the keep losing again um so I'm going to like make my own contract and I'm going to make them sign it and that was the lesson learned and it was you know painful but the difference

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is in a game of rugby league like you got it happens immediately the next week in construction or in any business it takes months for those decisions to come back to life again after you know you you get a new contract or or you change something sometimes you don't see it for 6 months the effect of it for a while so that's where business is the patience comes into it because you don't get that immediate you know resolve straight away from a decision so that's why it's you know it's a long game I would agree it's

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it's very much a long game and I've you know I got a guy on my team his name is Jason and he he jokes about it he calls it champagne and razor blades okay one week business can feel like you're popping champagne it's all great and the next week it feels like razor blades as an entrepreneur it constantly feels like you're at a high you're at a low you're at the peak you're in the valley uh and it's cliche but you know there's so many lessons that have to be learned in those

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early days what do you think were the biggest lessons I guess in the early days of business for those eight years yeah that I guess prepared you for who was Elijah yeah yeah there was so that that business um was called Beans by kitchen and it went for 8 years and during the 8-year period I started two other businesses in the same in the same block completely different Industries so one of them was a bow tie business okay very different very different Ecom bow tie this was was 2015 or 2016 and it was because I went to you

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know one of Ty Lopez's events in in La back in the day when it was like the little groups of people um and it's like you need to make money while you sleep you know oh I'll go start Ecom brand right I can sell online right but I said yes and I went over there and I just decided to like you know be open to new things um came back started this business with my mate got it into a partnership with gov and Vena Sports on the back of like you know pretty much we was doing the garage right and how it

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happens wild so we were one year in to this brand it was called nice ties finish last right and that's pretty great ntfl was the the acronym and um do you still have the trademark that's brilliant still have it I looked at the Instagram the other day and I'm like it could have had legs this because we were sort of like we had a cool product um I was very like influencer driven back then and Creator driven back then based off what I learned from Tai and the American World at the time um and then

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Gary ve just posted on his short story when he had probably 2 million followers so you know he was still he wasn't what he is now but he definitely wasn't on zero he said hey I'm looking for a men's accessory company um hit me up so I'm like I'm one of them wow and I just dm'd back and I said I'm one of them um this is what we do it's called ntfl yeah um and then he hit back straight away he's like looks epic bro um send me send me details to Tyler holy crap yeah and I'm like holy [ __ ] cuz I

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was a big fan of him yeah me too you know grow in those early years still still there now but him and Ty obviously Gary went different path but I listened to them a lot early days um and then all of a sudden I was on a to to New York to his office and I had some bow ties that I packed in my garage same garage that who was Elijah start started in something about that garage yeah same garage um went there with him and showed them SOA Sports had just started the uh Agency for the uh NFL players and

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sporting athletes uh AJ and another guy were like it was ear there only three of them at the time it was brand new and they were looking for partners um so gave them the bow ties they gave it to a bunch of their NFL players and they started making content with it so that was me saying yes to an opportunity that like why not just ask and see what happens yeah right on the back of that um no sales came from these from the creators from the content and now what I know now about e-commerce I know exactly

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why but back then I was like well of course these guys are going to post and we're going to make he money and that's how it should work and what I thought then was that back then there was actually no mechanism in any of the apps to be able to purchase from the creators content oh I see right so like even now here in Australia we don't have Instagram shop or any of that stuff and none of it was even a thing back then so I was like well we need to build an up that allows you to purchase from someone

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else's content um so my brother and I started an app and it was called uh snatch it and we launched this app and it was you could add a product to a piece of content and the content would turn into a URL wow so any image into a URL and you could put the URL anywhere obviously email swipe up text whatever and essentially you'd be checking out from the content it wouldn't direct you to the website the purchase would happen inside the the asset interesting so we launched it um on the back of nice ties

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finished last not not converting um we got it to about 10,000 users 200 Brands and we're trying to get funding and it just failed um and you know after on the back of that who was Elijah was starting to move and all of these things built me into what who Elijah is now but I think what I learned in my early years about business and I totally get now in hindsight when the the entrepreneurs that we all look at the Gary Vees and everyone they all say do as much as you can when you're young and just figure

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figure a few things out try a bunch of stuff and see what sticks and I was blindly listening to that back then cuz I was you know listening to Gary a lot I was listening to all of these now big guys when they were still on their on their early grow Journeys I just listen to them like you know these guys say that it's right I'm just going to do it yeah um and now when I look back on the three or four businesses that I had like I sold the kitchen business that was somewhat of a success the bowai business just stopped

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because the app took off so you could say the bow tie business failed um the app failed because we couldn't get funding for it because I was an incredible founder and we didn't have as much traction as Instagram did when they got bought out so big difference a big difference right so I think the early years for me was just about trying as many things as I could um what like failing fast and not fatally though I think we almost failed I guess you could call it was almost fatal this the app fa

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failure because of how much money my brother and I put into it but I didn't die I'm still here like we had I had something else come up with Raquel and um I think a lot of people especially these younger kids these days kids these younger you know entrepreneurs that are wanting more they they just need to go and try five things in six months or five things in 2 years you know and I know that the power of like just doing one thing is very important because that's what I do now I just do who was

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Elijah that's it um but sometimes these these younger people that don't know what they want they don't have a you know a a brand that's got traction straight away they need to go and try things and I think that there's power in in trying something see if it resonates fail fast move on to the next one yeah it makes sense to me because I I you know when you look at a being young and being in the world of business you're kind of in this limbo of like I don't know what I want to do I

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don't know what I'm good at you're still kind of exploring your skills your traits your Ambitions and I agree I I ran really fast and a lot of different things I went all in an MLM simultaneously I was trying to build an entrepreneurial event company simultaneously I was trying to do all this other stuff and you don't necessarily make a lot of money but you learn a lot of skills and you meet a lot of people and you figure yourself out and then when something clicks and you know it when it clicks uh you kind of

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get this feeling like oh this is the thing yeah that's when I felt that I needed to start going all in it sounds like you did the same thing which was you're trying this different stuff like maybe this is going to work doesn't work maybe this is going to work and sometimes things can look amazing like it's totally going to work out but then like you said the nice tires finished last you know it seemed like it had had legs and even when I look at it now I'll show you the Instagram later it's like

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it's still cool yeah um so maybe you can leverage like your current success and bring it back BR back resurrect that thing and look the app the app was a cool thing like it was something that was brand new we we pitched it all over the world we have meetings you know we're in after pay's office every other mon every other month zip pay's office every other month Blackbird here you know these guys were all interested um and I think timing is important when you do these things at the time Instagram you know was having

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its big moment I guess it wasn't its early moment it was 2016 2017 um and it was really growing quickly in the US and you know there was a lot of functional things to it that weren't built yet right like reals was nowhere short story was just coming you know on the back of Snapchat um the actual backend functions of it connecting Shopify to it product tagging when they were playing around with um the shop section of it that was all like still brand new then so we were like well this is going to work um but

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at the time there it seemed like there was a lot of Founders that were getting funding because were X Google or X Shopify or x Facebook which is you know it doesn't matter if they were ex marketing assistant they were still they was still X Shopify um and you know we my brother and I was a cabinet maker and had a bow TI business um the no one's going to you know give us a shot unless we had you know a million users or 50,000 users or a perfect threeyear business plan you know um so you know there's lots of

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lessons there as you were saying there you're in the room with afterpay and these big tech companies what did you learn from that like you're like I'm this Cabinetry guy with this tie Brands and now I'm pitching to this huge multi-million multi-billion dollar Corporation it was nerve-wracking you know it was um I wouldn't say scary but like you feel very vulnerable and you feel like a cabinet maker in a tech in in a tech room you know what am I doing here what am I doing here um those are the

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thoughts you have in the back of your head like like M do will they respect me you know have I put this pitch deck together properly um have we you know thought of all the things that they're going to you know critique us on what if they just go guys someone else is doing this we have the network we've already seen it before you guys are too slow you're out um all of those things go through your mind and then when you get there most of the time people are very happy for you and they're actually like

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shocked that these you know two brothers from krala the trades could come up with something so significant so we would always leave the meetings and it was like such like high of energy uh and this roller coaster of like we're going to be a billionaire you know you know like they going to invest in this and you know they've got you know 50,000 retailers and we need those retailers on the app so they're going to do it they said to come back and change this and if we change that then they'll be in you know um and

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we just went down that path with with a few of them a few times and obviously in those very fast moving Tech spaces things change for them 6 months down the line and they get too busy or something else happens and you just go to the you know you're just not important anymore yeah and if you don't have traction or credibility or you not forcing your way you know into the market correctly um then you're just going to be forgotten about and you know my brother was was very good at at like building the tech

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and building the stuff um and I think that we learned that you know to you could get into those rooms if you had something and if you if you had the right connection in there I think just a lot of people are afraid they just can't get into the room and just getting into the room is is a is a pretty significant thing this was afterpay when they were you know 2017 they were you know in their moment like their biggest moments going into their obviously you know exit but um yeah I think it was it was an intense time and

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when it failed my brother and I like we were pretty pretty down on it you know we just we knew we'd failed um and I think part of us knew that they were maybe right you know that we were these just two guys from konala that were construction guys and you weren't going to make in this world um and that sat with me for about 5 minutes to be fair and it probably sat with my brother for a bit longer how did you feel in that moment I just was like I was I was like frustrated I think you know you just get

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you see something so clearly and you just can't get the other person to see it the way that you see it um which comes down to communication and storytelling and and actual traction and effort but um yeah I think we just hugged my brother and I just hugged it out um and we just you know he went off to do developments I did a development as well who was Elijah was doing its thing um I was watching it and I was there in the garage and in the in the kitchen with r and I was the one moving all of the you know building the garage

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for her and building the sheds for her and helping her with all of the stuff um and what I what happened with who was Elijah was that all these other businesses didn't have traction M right the one thing that was missing was traction who was larger was traction on the on the GetGo from the moment it was it was brought to life it was like we are chasing product because we don't have enough and that was the moment you said before that was the when it clicks that was the click because the app was

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needing you know we were trying to force it on people that you need to do this because you know what I mean it's a problem they don't have right and and we have a solution to something they don't even know is a problem yet I heard someone recently describe you know launching a brand into the market is like debating and you're trying to justify this app is good you should adopt it XYZ and you had adoption yeah however the market it always inevitably decides yeah and you're watching you know this

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business you're putting a lot into not get traction yeah meanwhile you've got Raquel there you know being in EA and working from The Boardroom and just selling a ton of product and it clicked for you guys yeah yeah completely clicked and you know she was you know again those first two years um in when she was in the boardroom at her office and we were you know I was we're in the garage still and um was there was there a particular moment that happened where you're like whoa yeah cuz it

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sounds like you were really busy were you constantly like keeping an eye on what was she was doing or yeah I was just like her biggest fan the whole way through and whatever she needed I would do and whatever you know crazy idea she had if I had to make something for her to go and do it I would just drop everything and do it um and that was probably just me being the the husband more than the business partner um but I think for when it clicked was when David Jones was when we're on the Shelf in

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David Jones yeah and did you go into David Jones and just we went in like holy [ __ ] you know um and it was only 1 month you know from email to on sale was like a month now it's like 2 years a year to get into a place yeah um but yeah she at that moment I remember we went to dinner and canala after David Jones was sealed done you know Sign Sealed and Delivered and there's a photo and I took it I'm like you're going to quit your job tomorrow cuz you were in David Jones and we had a glass of wine

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we had a pizza she went in to work the next day and quit a job wow yeah yeah she quit a job on the back of that and I you know I was obviously unemployed um at the time and you know you are an entrepreneur I was an entrepreneur I was an entrepreneur entrepreneur at the time I had just done a development down the coast with a friend of mine we made some good money on and I was deciding what to do next you know um and I just put all the money into who every dollar fantastic how has that transition

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for you cuz obviously you're in a relationship a lot of couples say how they could never imagine working together or running a business together yeah uh and seldomly does it work um what what is your mindset between you and your wife about how you operate together and why do you think it works yeah I think the first year for me was and I didn't really tell Raquel or talk to her much about it um I knew it would be you know just a longer game to get sort of to feel better about it but the

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first year even even now I still say it but the first year it was her it's her business and I'd watch her put her life into it and her pain into it and her stress and tears and happiness and excitement all into it so I wasn't going to come in and start to take over you know I was just going to be there to support her and what sort of you know was a weird moment for me as like a man I guess who's always been the provider and has always been the bread winner and has always been that like you know not

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that Raquel was ever not making money but when I had my own things going and you're in that passion and that excitement that you're in control of um that first 12 months when essentially she was still in control of the company bank account and the operations and the things and the business was still like very early days we weren't making much money at all and you know we were sort of paying each other like a little bit of a wage here and there like nothing much all of a sudden I felt like a bit

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of a burden to the business right because I didn't have a job as such to to help us outside of the business I'd obviously invest Ed you know a bunch of money into it but that goes pretty quickly in in when you're working with retailers and marketing and all sorts of things um so the first 12 months I sort of felt like I lost a little bit of not lost but I just I lost a little bit of like my my you know masculine you know like I'm I'm in I'm in charge of my own you know life here and it took me 12

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months and the business 12 months for me to have significant impact in the business and prove that I was like I was you know able to be there um which I had to sort of prove to myself I didn't have to prove it to Rael um but I wanted to be responsible for the business's growth immediately um and the first 12 months was was a strange thing for me who had been an entrepreneur my own age my own things for years to then sort of somewhat take a backseat and not be told what like I'm trying to ere exaggerate

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it so you can feel it not like sort of be be told a little bit how things are going to be done and then when I sort of came in and really probably 6 or 12 months in I really started to like find the problems in the business and fix them immediately and not just fix them but like really Excel the business on the back of this problem um then we started to grow and make revenue and then you know obviously I sort of took over as like CEO um not until the start of this year end of last year okay so I was there two years you

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know just as you know operations person or like growth you know specialist type of role um and Raquel was still doing a lot of the heavy lifting but the pressure was too much on her cuz she was trying to be creative and marketing and this is the EA in her trying to do everything for everyone and I just said look like I've got this now just let me do it I'm going to take over the finances I'm taking taking over Ops I'm taking over um people I'm taking over I'm going to run all the agencies I'm

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going to do all of this do what you're good at you're the best at product you're the best at marketing and build your personal brand that's what the company needs that's what excites her and I don't want to see you stressed behind a spreadsheet cuz you hate it I love it so let me just do it you know and it wasn't a conversation like that but it was just like a this is now time for me who loves detail and building blocks and growth and and these things to come in and be like I'm let me be

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responsible for this and go and make incredible products go and make incredible marketing moments and be the face of the brand and everything else other than that I've got it cuz e-commerce is a complicated system yeah and I I I can only imagine rael's relief in that moment yeah for the business when you're seeing the success in the business and and the two of you figuring out your place in the business how do you feel that there's a fusion between your personal development and success

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Raquel's personal development and success and the companies yeah do do you look at them as one in the same like how do how do you kind of look at that yeah I wouldn't say that we've like planned like you know things in that in that structure in that process but the way that it's naturally happened for us is you know I think the first step was recel becoming the face of the brand and being confident in front of the camera and really owning that that founder Le brand um when that happened 2

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years ago things started to pick up for sure um second to that was when I took over um the advertising for the business and I learned meta and Google and Tik Tok and learned it top to bottom and really took control of that so that was a big personal development thing for me it was like there's a problem in the business we don't know what these agencies are doing we don't know if they are you know telling us the truth we don't know any of this they could have been telling us the truth we didn't know

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we just look at money spent money in Money gone we could have had a bad cash flow we could have had a bad balance sheet we could have had a bad p&l we're just letting the agencies be the the sole responsibility for the business's growth which is terrifying cuz you you famously fired your marketing agency and then like you said you learned meta ads all by yourself um because I think two too often I see this happen where I talk to a business owner especially in the e-commerce space because it's so

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dependent upon consistent advertising and um consistent you know attention through the website is that people don't understand the numbers the metrics and the mechanics that generate profit in their business they they give all the responsibility to a third party yeah what's your advice to someone who's thinking like that right now where they're like well that's their job that's why I pay them yeah yeah I think you know knowing what a p&l is knowing what a balance sheet is knowing what um

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a cash flow statement is like if you could just turn your business off and learn that for 6 months 12 months and get Best in Class out of it you you your business is in a significantly better spot than probably 70 80% of most businesses out there yeah we we um brought on Paul Wy from Paul PA Wy Commerce um and he sat with us for he's been with us for two years now and he really taught me how to structure a p&l how do you structure a p&l for e business for an Ecom business so it's um

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uh so figuring out like what metrics go into gross profit first of all yeah and for us and for everyone it should be uh cost of goods landed cost of goods from your supplier into your Warehouse uh then it's for us because we have a production element inhouse we have warehouse wages for the production then there's uh shipping so shipping being uh ex us shipping EX externally to our 3pl partners how much it cost us for the HL to do that and then there's the Fulfillment element of the Pick and Pack

00:36:08 - 00:37:28

of the individual orders and last mile of those orders to the customer so you're like breaking it down into stages yeah and looking at how each stage breaks down into cost into cost correct and then there's Merchant fees from you know afterpay zip pay these guys have fees tied into things so stack all of those things up on your p&l and what are those costs as a percentage of your Revenue wow right yep so for us right now gross profit is about 65% which is good but we only just got to this very consistent part of it about

00:36:48 - 00:37:52

three six months ago when we really started to dial in on it and then what happens is you look at those metrics and you just obsess over them every day and every week and every month and you start asking yourself how can I reduce these down not by reducing quality not by reducing you know Customer Loyalty not my not by doing anything ridiculous that's going to hurt the brand by doing only things that are going to help you scale and help you bring these costs to a more manageable Point what were some

00:37:20 - 00:38:37

of those things so really easy one for us was like uh the shipping element us sending out um our bulk product to our 3pl partners we had to look at it one day and I was like we spent $80,000 this month on sending to our 3pls Jesus which was like 14% I'm like guys what the [ __ ] is this um so like 80 grand I'm like what the hell is this you know for us it's heaps um so it became a project to my offs manager and others I'm like guys fix this immediately um so turned out it was like we kept sending things wrong um

00:37:59 - 00:39:00

to our three p partners and they kept getting sent back and then we kept having to send it again so it was like this double send of just you know simple errors on paperwork for us okay that was making this mistake and it was not correct training for whoever was sending it out and it was when we were small it didn't matter because we weren't sending much you get one or two come back it's not a big deal in the space of 12 months you grow 3 400% all of a sudden this this gets highlighted to you yeah y but

00:38:29 - 00:39:29

you can't see that it's been highlighted if you don't know where to look and you don't know how to read it and you don't know how to track it so that was a you know now we've got it down from I think it was like 14% now it's like it's guys you have 3% you have 3% of the revenue of this month to send stuff do not go over it so then you you do the other it goes the other way you start to set the targets for the spend and once you do that you start to track it you start to think of more

00:38:59 - 00:39:59

efficient ways to do things instead of sending two you know once or twice a week let's just send one does that work let's send it this way instead of that way let's do better demand planning maybe we can put it on a boat maybe we can stop sending by a plane um so that was you know Big Moment like that for us so it sounds to me like you're always looking at the numbers the metrics you want reporting you want it immediately and you want to understand it I I can agree like you know I'm not in the

00:39:29 - 00:40:24

e-commerce space I'm in the agency building space and you know we sell creative and products and we have deadlines in XYZ and it wasn't until yeah like a year and a half ago we sat down properly and thoroughly started to look at the numbers so I thought uh then 6 months ago we we hired a CFO and then we're like oh we're not tracking anywhere near the stuff we need to be tracking and he was going into everything and he's like what are we doing here he's like there's 2% here 1%

00:39:56 - 00:40:51

there 3% here % there and you stack it together and you're like that's a lot of money there and when you when you stack it on top of each other in your profit and loss and then you monitor it it's like it's such a profound moment when you go oh [ __ ] it makes you sick makes you sick I I just had this immediate regret I'm like what have I been doing for 5 years so you're right I think so often in business people don't know their numbers they don't have their reporting they don't have their stats

00:40:24 - 00:41:29

and you're saying Clarity what does that give you in a business that's right it gives you uh confidence and it gives you um it gives you this control back in your future for your company you can decide in that moment we need to get to work we need to fix some things instead of not knowing and in the same week you might can you might say yes to this big marketing expense because because you didn't have awareness about what was actually going on so you might have the awareness you might have the opportunity of the

00:40:56 - 00:41:55

marketing thing happen and you'll just say no I'm not doing it and that's when discipline comes into it and you start to you know if you have a good advice you guys had a CFO I sort of learned to be a CFO with u Paul and a few other advisers that I have they just I just wanted to I wanted to know it like you have to know it's your responsibility and if I was going to be responsible I want to be best in class at it I don't just want to be mediocre I don't just want to be like you know 30

00:41:25 - 00:42:32

the 70% of everyone else I want to be able to dominate in this um and I feel like this year I was terrible out at the start of the year I feel like I'm pretty good at it now I feel like I can Zone in on any metric immediately now with my eyes closed and I can I can pick it apart um and I can teach it to my team we hired a marketing manager she came on and showed me how to visualize it better cuz I'm not good on spreadsheets yeah um but I know what I want them to look like um and she was been amazing for us so

00:41:59 - 00:42:59

you know knowing knowing it yourself bringing in people to support you and then every day I probably spend more time with my finance manager than anyone else just because you know this stuff's so important because we had such an up and down year 2024 um watch the story of the business is told on the p&l I know it's like people people would say it's told bya the marketing efforts and it's told via Sephora and boots and it's not I'm sorry it's [ __ ] it's told by

00:42:28 - 00:43:23

p and you can see very clearly the things that you did right and did wrong um by just dialing in yeah I did that this year and I was like well that was a terrible month cuz I made one decision that spurred into this into this and it's like the opportunity cost so I like to break it down in the three types of costs you have soft cost hard costs and opportunity costs for me soft cost is like time away from the kids time away from my family hard cost is like well it costs 100 grand for you know I hired a

00:42:56 - 00:43:50

marketing agency this year this year an advertisement agency sunk you know multiple six figures into it did nothing for the business um and and it's like well what's the opportunity cost of that well had I had that 200 Grand I could have done this over here but I didn't do that over here and it's like in a business everything kind of Cascades and like impacts the next month and the ongoing months do you find that when you're looking at your business you're trying to forast the next six months

00:43:23 - 00:44:42

like how do you foresee where things are going with the p&l yeah so this year like we already have every month locked in 2025 January to December even going into 2026 um that's just how how much confidence you can get by doing this wow and yes it like the other part is like this is just numbers on a page right and it is you have to go and execute these things the same the way that you want them to the way that you want them to be done um we have been for the last two months working on this Global um plan

00:44:03 - 00:45:01

and we're in four countries now so all these countries are all split out into their own you know their own pnls and their own plans um and you start to see how you can how some regions are performing better than others New Zealand for us just because I hadn't looked at it properly New Zealand for us is probably one of the best places to be in and so now next year we're going to spend a lot of time there we might do a lot of in region creators and influencers in UDC and really push it

00:44:31 - 00:45:33

because I can see it now the UK is uh investment which means it's losing money it's an investment for us at the moment because of how much money we're putting into PR and and launching over there so I know that because that's money going you know investment over there I guess um that I can't we can't be too crazy in other places you can't be crazy everywhere if you've got you know some places that need more time than others and Visually seeing that from any level

00:45:03 - 00:46:09

of business I sat with you know this girl I'm mentoring yesterday and I showed her a few things and she's in her first year just finished her first year and I'm like if I knew this if I knew this at the end of my first year holy [ __ ] things would be different I'm 6 years in and now we're here um and I think anyone listening like you know the quicker you can get to understanding it it's not an overnight thing for you to be intuitively attached to every metric in your business financially it takes

00:45:35 - 00:46:40

you 12 months but if you start today this time next year you'll be very good at it you previously scaled your business to 40 stuff and you currently have 20 stuff Y how did the challenges of scaling and staff management help with what you're doing with the PS the cash flow like how did this all interconnect business owners if you're stuck using one platform for every project you're probably stuck in a growth bottleneck more clients means more hires which just adds noise and cuts into profits to break the loop you

00:46:08 - 00:47:16

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00:46:42 - 00:48:05

cost of third-party plugins plus Wick studio is a low maintenance platform meaning you can redirect the client budget towards real growth initiatives think more value for clients steady income streams and stronger relationships to get started simply go to wix.com Studio I think the problem that happened was that we we planned out the next 6 months or 12 about 8 months of the year um you know about 8 months ago now um and we planned it out based on hope you know let's like let's just of course we can do that we should be doing

00:47:27 - 00:48:29

at this point we're 5 years in we've got this we we're here we should easily get that number per month easily from a revenue perspective I know this brand that's doing that I know that brand that's doing that without any structure or process conversation it was like I think we should we should be at a million a month um or $2 million a month or whatever the number is on this date so when we get there we're going to have more time more money to spend on wages so that sounds to me like

00:47:58 - 00:48:59

comparison and justification yeah of course that's exactly what it was it was we don't know what we're doing um we think we do but we don't we've just learned out how we've just learned how to look at the numbers properly that's like forecast out best case scenario now I forecast worst case scenario um forecast out best case scenario and see where we can spend money and it's the dumbest thing you can do right so obviously let's we're going to go from you know 500 Grand a month to

00:48:29 - 00:49:21

700 Grand a month the next month which is a 3E period and you're going to increase your business scale by 20 or 30 or 40% how are you going to do it we would just put the number there just like oh yeah we'll get that easy no worries so that means we could spend more in marketing we could spend more in wages we could spend more here here and here and then you start to think well if we do get to that number we're going to need people at that time to help us in those moments so let's go and find

00:48:55 - 00:49:55

people right let's go and find people you know we're going to need a marketing a head of marketing a marketing manager a product manager we're going to need all these people because when we get to that number which we don't know how to get to yet when we get to that number we're going to need them and it's delusion it's ridiculous so we did that and we went and hide people and we hir good people to be fair like I'm not taking away from the guys that we hired they

00:49:24 - 00:50:36

were very good at their jobs but we just didn't know how to get to the Target so they became the significant expenses and because we could track the revenue and we could track the wages percentage per Revenue very easily when it was like 30% of Revenue was going to wages I was like guys this is a problem so I sort of tried one last little effort I'm like we've got all these people here that all great this is going to be we've got everyone we need for 2 million or 2.5 million a month now guys let's get it

00:50:01 - 00:51:11

this is how we're going to do it so I laid out the plan wholesale to be this retail to be this online to be this new acquisition for retail here like laid it out but it was a plan that that needed to be done in 3 months and the team that we had based on that plan was not the right team um because I didn't have the right plan when I hired these people in the beginning I brought them in I said this is this is what we need this is where we're heading this is what's going on um and then when I realized it wasn't going

00:50:36 - 00:51:45

to happen um and I knew that we need to switch from this retail Focus to Ecom Focus I learned about content engines and and tracking um individual assets correctly and how to actually dominate that space in the Ecom world and just lit a fire in me I'm like this is this is it this is for us um um I knew the people we had weren't Ecom dominators so I just had to like you get that feeling immediately and you just have to act on it straight away and it's hard but like the moment I knew I walked into the

00:51:10 - 00:52:19

office and I'm like the [ __ ] all these people doing here like what do they even do you know and I'm like I hide them it's my fault um and then the next day I just one by one just just let them go yeah um lots of te lots of like Anger from them some of them had left jobs some of them had done you know changed their lives around a bit which is horrific for me to be that person that did that for them um and that's my fault and I live with that but that's also the nature of the beast in a startup we

00:51:45 - 00:52:45

weren't you know this giant company that was locked in um and the biggest mistake I made was not having a completely Clear Vision for the business to be able to start hiring people that accelerated that plan because they have the skills to do it yeah the people we hired had skills in other areas so they weren't going to be needed I would assume that most people in that predicament would try to find a way to keep their team or to change someone's role uh and and you were looking at that

00:52:15 - 00:53:15

like that's probably not the best maneuver I was looking at the p&l and I was like if I keep these people here um we're going to be in a real bad spot in four or 5 months and because because I had Clarity on it because I could see it clearly every day because I would every morning was updated for me what was going on um I knew that it was you know it needed to be done immediately so you know some of these people had never been let go of before cuz they was that good at their jobs um in other businesses

00:52:45 - 00:53:49

that they've been in and you know that's just part of it but also I think what I learned as a you know entrepreneur CEO in those moments was like doing the hard things like is really empowering not empowering in like a you know I feel good about what I did but the business needed it what why is it that doing the hard thing becomes empowering because a lot of times in business people think about they know the thing that needs to be done the most right they just know it and it's in the back of your head and

00:53:17 - 00:54:10

it's in your thoughts it's in your dreams it's in your first thing when you wake up especially if it's a significant challenge that the business is in when you feel it you need to act on it and especially if it's something that's a hard thing that needs to be done you try to dance around you try to go for advice somewhere else to get them to tell you that doesn't need to be done at the end of the day you're the boss you're in charge and it is your outcomes you have

00:53:44 - 00:54:49

to just step up to the plate and you have to do the hard thing and doing you know I did that a lot this year I did that a lot this year but it becomes addictive because you do the hard thing you're like whoa you start looking for the next hard thing like let me add it exactly and you know I think that you know there's so much confidence that can be made inside internally from when you just actually do it so when you're looking at hiring now on your team what do you look for I'm making sure first I have the

00:54:16 - 00:55:20

right plan for the business and then I'm not hiring just on a on a busy time of year everyone could hire during November cuz there's always you need cuz there's money everywhere to be made and spent in November and December you just had Black Friday money's in the W yeah and it's all you could hire you know five people in November and you wouldn't notice it um financially but right now I'm looking for first of all do I have the right plan in place and if I do first thing I'm going to do if it's a

00:54:48 - 00:55:52

creative person as an example you know we just one of our graphic designers left and immediately we were like let's hire another one we need them and 6 months ago would have said yes let's get two we need two you know cuz this person left cuz she was burnt out and you know November Christmas packaging all this stuff was a bit much for her and I be like that's high two and now I'm like can it be outsourced and what does that process of Outsourcing look like there is definitely agency and Freelancers out

00:55:20 - 00:56:17

there that can do this as good as we can do it what does the process look like let's go and find these people get price ing get you know get a feel for them can they keep up with the brand do they have bandwidth to do this this and this so we went and found Freelancers for graphic design straight away instead of hiring an house and the graphic designer Freelancers they're sort of like they get paid to be for for you to be happy you have to you won't pay them until it's complete and it's right so in house

00:55:49 - 00:56:50

it's different you pay them regardless if it's pay them hourly you know so that's something that we considered cuz liability sits back on you when you hire someone that's right when you Outsource it fingers crossed the liability sits on them on them that's right and there is this two and fro moment that happens with um the economies of scale of a business as you would know we could grow really quickly with this freelance world and we could do lots of agency and lots of Freelancers but at some point when

00:56:19 - 00:57:19

the business is so big that's going to be very hard to manage and then you're going to want to bring it back in house because the agency fees to run these other things um twice as much as it would be to run a full in-house team and then once you bring it in-house and you run the in-house team they start to get overworked and overwhelmed so you start to look back for other help externally again and that's what I think happens as businesses grow and businesses scale but yeah we look for

00:56:48 - 00:57:49

agency first and if it can be done if we can manage it is it going to burn out the team that's now in charge of the agency um cuz that's a consideration um and then you know if we really need it we don't really hire now unless we really need it yeah yeah yeah now when it comes back to culture and and I guess balancing you know the headcount that currently is in a team before you expand it you guys seen to place a strong focus on nurturing staff development both professionally and personally both in

00:57:19 - 00:58:23

the workplace and at home yeah how do you Foster a culture of self-improvement yeah it's something that um I don't think we've spent enough time on internally with our team um to be completely fair I think the business has grown very quickly and it's sort of forced the guys to grow with it I'm not sitting there having you know constructive 2hour meetings about their personal growth with them as much as I would like to um more of a practice of Osmosis they're watching this happened yeah and

00:57:51 - 00:58:48

they sort of have to like they have to learn this thing because it's stopping the business from growing the crew that we have now which we call them that OG crew they want to work for the brand they love the brand they love Raquel and I and we need to make sure Raquel and I need to make sure they always feel like that whether that's through you know um bonuses or through trips away or through constant Improvement in their in their work because I do think that you know everyone wants to improve everyone wants

00:58:19 - 00:59:31

to get to that next level there's one girl in particular that I think of and she's like very growth driven she's young 22 23 a creative and content manager she's always comes down to my office and she's like what can I do next how do I grow I want to build out a team I want this can I do this how do I do this uh so I'm always constantly thinking about her and how I can push the business bigger so that she has more work to do that's in that next level for her um and then what I think I struggle

00:58:54 - 01:00:18

with it is I'm not I was a cabinet maker right beforehand yeah um and I built apps that failed you know and MCO was an EA right we're not we're not CMOS we're not CFOs or CEOs by description by default right NE neither of us have done this before at this level um so I can't really teach them the right way to do it I can go out and I can lead and I can I can push my boundaries to grow the business but does it mean my ops manager that's currently with me is she an actual ops manager or is she just

00:59:37 - 01:00:38

who is Elijah's ops manager that's grown as we've grown I see you know what I mean yeah and it gets s of to this point that you know yes I could keep promoting her up as the business grows but would she you know would she get the COO job at high smile based on the experience that who was larger I don't know because the COO requirements you know we might tick them off but are we actually that good at them yeah our business is growing it's quick you know yes it's it's great but

01:00:08 - 01:01:12

do my am my team like fully able to take those roles on if they were to leave and go somewhere else yeah so that's what I sort of look at and that's why I feel bad if I'm not fostering that relationship with them and that growth with them and I don't know how to how to answer it correctly because I don't I want them to succeed I want them to one day if they ever leave I want them to go and get the COO job at high mile I want that for them because then I would have felt that I've got

01:00:39 - 01:01:45

them into that right position so I think for us it's like if I'm continually pushing the business forward and pushing it into new places where we need you know new growth and we need new new understandings and new processes then they will grow with it I'm sure there'll come a time in a couple years where we need to hire these professional SE level people to come in and not just you know take control of a bigger business but to teach the team below it's a tricky one it I think I've

01:01:12 - 01:02:14

juggled with it a bit and one thing that has helped remedy some of the challenges is hiring fractional people so like you know a fractional CFO then develop a c a fractional CEO CMO so on and when you bring someone in fractionally it's like they're there one day a week or two days a week but then they're able to kind of like poke holes and the problem and then challenge the team to go hey we should be focusing on this yeah and if they step up to the plate rad if they don't well okay yeah option b yeah you know so

01:01:44 - 01:02:35

that's how I kind of look at it which is like option A is like let's see if we can yeah test our team and can I bring someone in who's done it to test our team test them and if that doesn't work then option b um what you say when it comes to the business because we had Raquel in here and it's very clear that she's super creative is a bit of a BAL haer and just knows what and where she needs to be and how to get the creative and how to get the I guess the the people to listen to her and pay

01:02:09 - 01:03:21

attention to the content what do you think your superpower is and what do you think rael's is from your perspective rael's superpower is that um she won't take no for an answer um do you have an example of that well look at boots for example obviously when she went over there and she she knocked on the door literally and she you know gave samples out and said like you have to stock my product because they told her no 2 days before she was in London 48 hours later that's her saying you know I'm not going to take no

01:02:44 - 01:04:00

for an answer um where she also doesn't take no for an answer more from a creative aspect is if she wants to do this you know big marketing campaign like this chemical addiction shoot that will probably have come out by the time this comes out um pretty wild what it is um and she was just never going to be told no what is chemical addiction yeah it's a new scent it's it's one of it's our next uh fragrance the the name is perfect the name's chemical addiction yeah so it's coming out end of gen and

01:03:23 - 01:04:42

the shoot for it like it's pretty cool um and she thought of it you know she brought the team into it and it almost was supposed to happen one day she wasn't into the some of the props some of the things some of the outfits she canceled it you know photographers everything canceled we're doing it next week and I'm going to go buy the stuff myself so that's her saying she wants it done her way yep um my superpower I think so like I just love the details you know um and not that I'm like I don't get like

01:04:02 - 01:05:14

um what is it called uh information paralysis or whatever where I just I just can't make a decision like paralysis analysis analysis you don't get it no I'm very good at making decisions and I can make decisions quickly um but for me I just love like I can see I can see the impact of a decision today in 12 months time uh in 6 months time I can just feel like I can be very connected with those decisions we make now for the future um I do think though on a personal level intuitively I'm very emotionally aware of everyone

01:04:39 - 01:05:49

else around me and I have very good emotional intelligence when it comes to reading the room situation making sure people are okay are they you know are they like my team and I when we have one-on ones with them or when we have meetings with them most of them think I'm going to come out and ask them about our kpis or whatever and I'll just stop and I'm like how are you feeling you know I really deeply genuinely care about how people feel about what they do every day um and I think that that for

01:05:13 - 01:06:21

me is a superpower for me because I can you know get the most out of people and I can push them to be people that they didn't see in themsel well I have the ability I think to see the best in people um and then I'm I'm willing to commit to help them get there and that's something that I think is in business as well it's such a powerful thing to have and to Foster for me because as our team grows and as our life grows you know I want these people to grow with us and some people might not see their best

01:05:48 - 01:07:05

version but I'll always go in there trying to find that person and bring it to life for them hearing parts of your story here from being a cabinet maker to you know selling ties to NFL players at Gary ve uh to you know I guess watching Raquel build this from the you know the back rooms of being in EA and then jumping in and investing MH if you were to say from I guess Genesis to now looking at your mindset evolving over time if if there were something you have now that you could give yourself at the

01:06:29 - 01:07:55

very beginning of the investment what would that be it's such cliche but it's it's patience like it really is patience and in those early days you make decisions based off now and tomorrow and next week and next month and only the last few months I've really leaned into this much longer term view on everything not long longer term view on I'm happy to waste time and just see what happens longer term view on well our warehouse right now is in its infancy in 2 years time in 3 years time I want it to be

01:07:11 - 01:08:16

this automated AI production line that's just like efficient as anything and I can't go and do that tomorrow but I know if I make the right decisions and I stick to it and I'm patient with it and I go for it for it we can get there in two 2 years probably when I'm implementing new apps or when I'm implementing new Tools in eom I'm not just waiting for them to change to to make us rich right so many people download an app and they think it's going to make them Rich overnight

01:07:43 - 01:08:48

because someone forcs to you know those stories you see on the case studies of these websites you know we 40x in you know 9 minutes and it's like it's doesn't doesn't happen yeah you know or it's really rare or it's really rare and there's times of course when maybe it did but maybe the crypto Bros or what something like that but I take a longer term view on most of the decisions now and I'm also aware the reason I'm like this is because decisions we made pardon

01:08:16 - 01:09:28

me um 12 months ago I now see now today and were they the correct on some were some weren't now with patiency why is it as essential that entrepreneurs focus on that as a key tool in developing their team developing their pnls learning these skills that can't happen overnight I guess how do you weaponize patience yeah I think it just generally takes longer than you think to do things like it really does building a brand you know yes you can start it in 90 days you know you can build something pretty

01:08:52 - 01:10:04

significant in 90 days um but but the brands that really last they stick to it for years agreed you know years and years 90 days is just the fire up the engine up to get to the destination takes ages so if someone was to be short-term thinking and say I'm going to start my brand in 90 days and then they expect on day 91 to be rich and to be you know known around the world and to be walk down the street and have Paparazzi and have people know who you are and have that loyal connection to customers it's it's not going to happen

01:09:28 - 01:10:27

in 91 days and I think that things just genuinely take longer than you think and there's obviously you know the saying you know takes we underestimate what we can do in five and overestimate what we can do in one year and it's so true what we've done in 5 years you know I didn't think that we would have got this far we always knew that it was going to go but you know the last five it's it's taken us perfect example it's taken us 5 years to get to this point where I can sit

01:09:58 - 01:11:07

with you and I can sit with some of the biggest people you know in the space in Australia and feel comfortable in the seat I couldn't do it after after one year so I think that what what is it that you think that that is that gives you comfort now it's it's reps you know it's the scars of battle you know it's the the success of decisions it's the teamwork it's the the late nights it's just like it's just the work that you put in over and over and over again and

01:10:33 - 01:11:35

yes you can put in work and you can go nowhere and you can fail you know so you have to make the right decisions it's not just about you know working 50 hours a 15 hours a day every day you have to make sure that the ladder you're climbing up is leaning against the right wall otherwise you're going to go to the wrong spot right you're going to end up somewhere where you don't want to be but you know it just takes takes time and it's not the fact that it takes time and you could just go slowly we are moving

01:11:03 - 01:12:02

extremely fast at least it feels like that um to get to where we are in 5 years I see what you're saying I I have this term and I don't know if it sounds like crap but the the term I coined was patience agility yeah CU you hear patience and you think okay slow it down yeah that's not the case patience is just like it's going to take time yeah the agility piece is like we got to act now yeah so it's like what can we invest agility into um and then what's the thing we're waiting for yeah you know no

01:11:33 - 01:12:12

love that that's I'm going to take that steal it but yeah patient agility it sounds like what what you're describing there as like hey we got to like we can't just be like you know where is it and then the house was burning down and we're panicking it's like it's going to take time it's going to take two years to do this automated system but there's something I need to do today what's that first piece what's the second piece and then you start like stringing those

01:11:53 - 01:12:55

things together and it takes two years you know you lay down a brick today and then you're trying to build the Taj Mahal but it's like that starts with a brick yeah today yeah that's right and this is where it's hard for Founders that are brand new and it's day one because you know they don't where's the lab where does the start you know where does it start for them and what is their 5 years end like if the decisions they make today are not the right ones so you know it's um challenging but fortunate

01:12:24 - 01:13:41

now being five or six years in now I'm looking at the next 5 years and I see this huge growth and this huge opportunity but I we need to start now how did the mistakes in scaling who was Elijah in Australia prepare you for the global expansion plan the mistakes that we made first is important um financially we made two pretty bad or one pretty bad mistake that I think a lot of people probably have made I know a lot of people have made it but we leaned on short-term Finance through Shopify capital and another one um and

01:13:03 - 01:14:22

this was again early days recell that Shopify sends you a thing they said here we'll give you 100 Grand take it you know sends it to you know your your your Shopify app and you press the button and send your account and for us pretty dope yeah for us that was those early days the first couple years um you know didn't know what what the what the pro what the effect of that could be um and why do you what I suppose the other question is why did we need it um and for us we were retail heavy so we were 70 80% retail operated

01:13:42 - 01:14:51

and our sales were 80% from retail and wholesale so that world is a very different world to e-commerce the payment terms from Supply from retailers are 60 days 90 days and then they pay you late because they don't care about you you've got to order large bulks amount of infantry which in the early days you don't have payment terms with your suppliers so you have to pay for things up front so you pay for you know you pay for product up front from your suppliers you make it you send it to a

01:14:16 - 01:15:34

retailer and you don't get paid for 90 days so you're of course in this bad position and because we wholesale dominant in the beginning we were always in that bad position so leaning on some of these finance options was a big mistake for us and it took us a while to untangle out of it so anyone listening just don't do it um and equally what we learned from that going into new markets to your question was we don't want to be in hundreds and hundreds of retailers that can make us vulnerable in this position yes we built

01:14:54 - 01:16:11

the brand to now be 70% Ecom 30% retail but the strategy changed because we had 800 retailers here in Australia 800 doors to be we've only got 80 doors now here in Australia and it's very much more specific people and over in the other countries we just want to have the best why cuz $800 sounds a lot better than 80 yeah and it it it does seem that way and if we were in8 00 Sephora doors that's great but if we were in 800 Boutique doors we were dealing with 800 individuals right you're dealing with

01:15:34 - 01:16:34

too many liabilities too many yeah too many liabilities too many people like could potentially pay late or not pay or whatever that's right so that was like a big problem for us that we didn't know probably for the first two years because it was small scale but it still adds up and it eats away as you as you grow from an Ecom perspective going into new countries what we learned this year was building out these content engines to what's a Content engine to how yeah so this is for us something that I

01:16:04 - 01:17:04

learned about 6 months ago a bit longer actually Simon beard told me about it a few of the people in e-commerce equation Jay's group told me about it um and it's really like how do you produce the volume of assets that you need in your Ecom business to compete with everybody else and a lot of people obviously it's different now but 2 years ago you would just post on socials and you'd use that creative in ads and that was sort of your ad strategy right most people would have done that you know done yeah job

01:16:34 - 01:17:56

done and today it's just far too competitive so you need to have a completely different ad strategy to your social strategy so the ad strategy for us we call a Content engine is how many content pillars do we have available which is just a style of content founder um found a creative uh ugc flatlay ingredients Ecom imagery those are the styles of creative and then how many of those assets for say one of our product Nomad how many of those styles do we have live in the market you really need five of

01:17:14 - 01:18:25

each style per product going through these content engines all the time once you know that and we think we've got say 13 products you need five assets time 20 pillars time 13 products it's like that's about 900 pieces of content yeah it's a lot of work that's a lot of work but also when you do the um when you take a look at your existing Content Library you realize there's a lot of opportunity because you haven't made all these assets and you'll find that that your best sellers probably

01:17:50 - 01:18:53

have the most amount of content for them and your worst sellers probably don't have any content maybe it is a shitty product but give it a chance and go and make some content for it so we didn't we taking that into the UK taking that into Europe taking that into New Zealand and the us to do in region lifestyle ugc Creator founder videos all in the regions um that's like on day one over there is what we're doing and obviously took us years to get to that here yeah cuz what you're saying there it sounds

01:18:21 - 01:19:31

like it'd be very rare for a competitor to be doing that yeah and if you can be the one psychopath that's doing that yeah you're going to get the attention and really like Ecom is is who can spend the most money on Facebook effectively right and yes you got to build brand yes you have to do all those social things and you have to do all of that with the advertising world the winners win because they have more effective good content right that's it full stop full like full stop who has the most amount

01:18:56 - 01:19:58

of really good creative that's crushing it in the ad accounts and I think that that sounds like your exactor yeah right Raquel's really good at the creative you're really good at the analysis and the numbers and it sounds like both of you are very patience agility oriented where you're like big picture let's build it but let's work now and you're making a lot of micro decisions that lead to that big decision yeah correct that's you know and the two of us every day you know obviously we we married

01:19:27 - 01:20:34

together we're married so every day you know 20 15 16 hours a day we are talking about the business so we get to make these decisions quickly versus having a CEO and a head of creative that would have a 1 hour meeting twice a week right so you guys have a lot of time so we have the 15 hours a day so you like 15 years worth of time a usual team would have 15 15 hours would take you know sometimes what you know you do that once a fortnite once a week it's 15 weeks we can do it in a day so you're just saying

01:20:01 - 01:21:09

a lot of people out there are just need to get married yeah yes correct um okay so like another question I have here that I'm really interested in in knowing is like how do you balance the delicate relationship between uh I guess the retailers and maintaining the premium Brands cuz it sounds like it's a bit of a tight rope situation where you're trying to balance it's just right on the knife's edge yeah it's it's hard because we didn't know it in the beginning so we didn't realize

01:20:35 - 01:21:35

how important how much these retailers were all intertwined with each other and how much some retailers like despise the other one right and like gang wars yeah yeah and it's like if you're in that retailer we are not touching you wow right and it might not be because they're direct competitors but it might be because you know if we were in cus warehouse and we're trying to be a luxury brand even though Louis Vuitton's in there and Gucci's in there and even though there's

01:21:04 - 01:21:59

brands in there CU they sell the most in Australia but um if we were in there we're not going to get into David Jones because the brand alignment is different so people and you don't have the household name that Louis Vuitton has yet that's right cuz both of them like please just let us stock you please just let us stock you that's right whereas in your case they're like you're know that big yeah correct know your place and here in Australia we obviously you know we went in to Price Line which was you

01:21:31 - 01:22:35

know not a good decision I don't think um from a branding perspective and it affected us with Sephora here in Australia Sephora is still you know we're with them we're grown with them here in Australia but Sephora is this big you know Beast of a thing globally and if you can get into Sephora it's obviously you know gamechanging for your brand but you have to be very careful with who you align yourself with as far as other retailers so that Sephora sort of don't feel like a competitor um to that person

01:22:04 - 01:23:16

or they feel like somewhat they get the exclusivity to the brand do you see that changing as you evolve into the future and globally yeah I think was just on a call out the front before we came in um with our like Global team um about the 3year 5year plan right because uh patience agility starts today and it takes 2 years to get into these places so any decision we make today that could be a short-term you know what used to be a money grab a short-term decision could seriously affect us getting into Sephora

01:22:40 - 01:23:43

Europe in in mid 2026 because these retailers have closed you're not going to get into Sephora in 2025 it's over right it takes that long to get in they've booked up all of their shelf space they've done all their stuff all their promos are in till December next year well you're not in so to get in you're in 2026 and it's September 2026 so if you make a wrong decision today they could drop you at the last minute and then people will say and I sort of says well why are we just

01:23:12 - 01:24:23

pandering to these big places why don't we just go and dominate ourself and let them come to us and that's part of the discussion it's like how big can we go by ourself and how much can we be undeniable to these places so that they're trying to come to us versus the other way around I think we're somewhat established enough to be able to do a collab with some of the biggest creators in the world to then show to these retailers we're here to stay you know we've just done this with Chloe

01:23:48 - 01:24:50

kardashan we've just done this with Alex ear or we've just done this with this and we can exclusively give you the drop to your stores if you give us X so that's how I think about it I'm like I don't want to wait 2 years for them to say no I want us to be like undeniably a decision for them sooner rather than later so that they have to have us in 18 months this feels very much like 3D chess fully yeah I have to make a move now yeah but I'm also trying to think 36 moves ahead exactly on a

01:24:19 - 01:25:20

three-dimensional plane and it's like one wrong move could topple the whole King the whole thing yeah and that's why you a good Ecom business to to to build up underneath and not rely so heavily on this wholesale world if you were to say okay back to the wholesale world the retail space What puts pressure on their neck from a brand I think it's you know if we did some significantly big collabs with the best creators in the world in region to them so obviously us you'd pick you know

01:24:49 - 01:25:46

Alex Cooper or Alex L or one of the Kardashians or any of those guys in Europe you just find the biggest creators there and do collabs with them so you do a collab with someone who's in the Zeitgeist in the Press uh who's a name that people care about then the retailer is like well everyone's watching that if you're collaborating with them you're in yeah and Retail is about I think where people get it wrong and we probably also got this wrong early on is it's not about like what the

01:25:17 - 01:26:19

retailer can do for us because obviously we get POS and yes we make money but the retailer needs to feel like what are we going to do for them like what new customer is going to walk into the door has not been in there before to buy our product and if they know that this this group of this cohort of customers from hills larger is someone that's not been around before it's going to come in and spend money because of a collab or just brand Equity over the years then that's that's how it should work would you

01:25:48 - 01:26:44

would you liken it to a concept around who's the draw card so for example a retailer I'd say well you need us to succeed yes but then they look at Louis Vuitton is like well we need you in our store to bring the customers in correct to succeed so it's like who which which one's the draw card yeah it it's it's a tug of war for sure um and I think you just have to not put all your eggs in this basket because you know it's retail and they could do anything they want you

01:26:17 - 01:27:16

don't want to end up in a vice crib you don't want to end up in the grip so this is why Ecom and your own brand and your own channels um um are like more important than that I heard a quote and it's that you know someone's intelligent when they can hold two complex ideas at the same time yeah so you're holding this e-commerce uh concept together with this retail concept and you're equally feing both yeah that's right and that's we didn't have this direction you know we

01:26:46 - 01:27:48

didn't have this plan it was like let's be all retail let's be let's be let's just go to here cuz you know they want us there but it's not LED with luxury but we'll just go there because they want us and that's short-term thinking and now the plan is you know to be you know in these biggest and best you know luxury but like you know retailers around the world and but build our Ecom brand like as the as the big core of the business because that eventually over 5 years 10 years is what's going to get us

01:27:17 - 01:28:14

into these places yeah um let's talk to them now cuz it takes 2 years anyway and you know we'll show them over two years what what we can do would you say that as you're trying to become a luxury brand you're having the Revelation that scarcity is what makes it luxurious yeah it's been a weird one for us you know um choosing this model potentially where we sell out or where we don't you know we cut supply of certain things and you know I've spoken with Brands like J up

01:27:45 - 01:28:50

that do it probably the best um and how they run that model and I think because of our retail presence right retailers you can't stock on store and then sell out yeah cuz they make time they they put they change their store layout for you they want expected sales you're going to commit to marketing so this like Drop model doesn't work with retail the way that it works with online interesting it's not like a Rolex where there's a two we twoyear waiting list no that's right to get your Rolex but you

01:28:18 - 01:29:17

have to buy it today and yeah like would would Sephora you know if Louis Vuitton did a drop do you think you'd ever walk into Sephora and see an empty Louis Vuitton shelving right no and Sephora would be like we're losing money not having stuff on the Shelf here yeah we have space and there's nothing to there's nothing there so it's interesting that yeah is is that where your mindset sits in in how you need to build this as a legacy brand yeah I think so I I think long term we have to

01:28:47 - 01:30:03

build our own channels we have to build the H Elijah brand as if you know retailers are going to come to us um we have to have incredible product I think we have we have a great product I think there's more around the experience that the customer could you know have with the product that we haven't really delved into too much I think that there's I think there's a lot more marketing around emotions and experience and how memories tie into perfume that you see the big companies like McDonald's do really I saw this one

01:29:26 - 01:30:26

the other day where the guy's driving around the drive-thru with his kid in the back and you know how emotional that is yeah um and a few of those other really I think Volvo did a really good one recently um those type of things I'm always watching them thinking about how we can bring that emotion to to our brand we're not there yet cuz I think we're I think overall we're too product focused at the moment because we're a brand new brand and we need to talk about the product and then there's

01:29:56 - 01:31:02

people that say well you should only post the product once a month and I just don't think that would work for us right now um so I think there's this like growth in patience to build out that longer plan with that um I think there's a lot we can still do with it yeah yeah and I think you know when you look at Brands typically it's it's on the balance sheet yeah right if your if your company is focused on predom selling products at a certain price point and the customers see it that way then you

01:30:29 - 01:31:28

might be able to sell your company for 2 or 3x what it currently build in rev yeah but if you have a brand yeah it's different hey it's eight or 10x and that sits on the balance sheet same product same customers same price point yeah very different balance sheet very different exit definitely and and and whether you guys have the intention of exiting or not that's that's another case but like you're trying to build that into as much equity in the brand as possible yeah and look I sort of I

01:30:58 - 01:32:10

definitely do think about you know an exit down the line um and what that would be so I do have that you know at least as a contingency plan like you know begin with the Endy mind I've always been like that um and I do think that when I look at comparable exits you know obviously Culture Kings look at asop recently um and a few others you know yeah well we had Simon on the Pod yeah and and we worked with those guys I looked at this story where I was chatting to his cousin and he's like standing out the front of an ATM machine

01:31:34 - 01:32:38

and it you know displays how much he's just had enter bank account he just keeps refreshing it cuz he's in shock like we want that Vision right yeah and I think it's you you look at guys like Simon he he tells you it's achievable and I think that it is and I think it is for us I think that brand credibility um you know Community all of those building blocks are the most important thing and obviously you know the growth trajectory at the point of negotiation is the most important part of it and what is coming

01:32:06 - 01:33:05

and what are these you know potential acquirers what is their growth plan going to be based on what you've done yeah um that increases the multiple for sure I definitely think about all this stuff um well I talked to Simon about some of this and and you know we're at a dinner and um we're having this conversation and I was like you know it just seemed like Culture Kings was on a medior rise like why did you sell it yeah and he was like well dude like at the end of the day it just to me he's

01:32:35 - 01:33:26

like his mentor said to him at you know it's the time to sell when you don't want to sell it you want to sell yeah and he's like that's when it's that's when it's worth the most yeah and yeah I mean I followed Salon from the beginning the early days and you know we talk here and there on DMS as well and he's a great he's a great guy definitely you know listen to what he says the same as why I listened to Gary back in the day and those guys you just have someone

01:33:01 - 01:34:06

like him who's done it very recently very fresh and he's very keen to talk about it so he's great he's he's phenomenal man he's just got a great energy and he really knows what he's talking about so in conclusion Y how do you want to be remembered I think in business like I want obviously there's business and friendships and um family and all those things um I think in the business world I want and it's probably why I still want to push hard and have this somewhat like

01:33:33 - 01:34:49

blinkers on I want to succeed you know I do want to succeed you know in business at a really high level you know which is obviously this big exit or this big um this big moment but I think like obviously you know so I'm related to mark Boris um and a lot of people would say are you related to Mark you know and I want that to switch in a few years right is he related to and for people to ask Mark if Mark's related to me right um and I think that Mark and I would laugh at that if he heard that but um we'll snip it and

01:34:12 - 01:35:16

we'll send it to him send it to him yeah um and look I think I want to I want to be remembered for doing it the right way I think you know for being nice for being not a pushover but for being nice and for doing the right thing by people and for building people up and for building a team that didn't think they could they could achieve things that they achieve personally I think that you know I want to look back and have really impactful memories of the time spent with the team building it and I want to

01:34:44 - 01:35:47

look after them when it does happen if it does happen I think that's you know important to me that people that put in the effort they get rewarded um regard this and I think you know I want to do it with my wife you know I wantel and I to do it side by side I want us to you know live this life and go through these challenges and have this time together that you know inevitably will it will end at some point 10 years 20 years and we would have done it together you know and our kids would have watched us do

01:35:15 - 01:36:14

this pretty significant thing and it would be a blip in the ocean comparatively to the rest of the business World um but it would be recel and I that you know breaking away from I guess our you know maybe expected paths from where we started and I think that's like you know it's motivational to me to be like it is doable and I think I want people to know that I started as a cabinet maker like doesn't matter where you start as long as you just keep going keep going keep going you can you can

01:35:44 - 01:36:43

achieve anything so yeah it's going to be good I would agree with that 5 years ago I was a telra yeah you know 10 years ago you were a cabinet maker yeah it's crazy Anything Can Happen what's a quote or a mantra that you've carried with you on this journey that you wished everyone listening to this would immediately adopt and Implement oh it's a quote take your time um I wrote it down the other day actually um and it's it's actually Alex hos it's been recent for me and it's the

01:36:14 - 01:37:25

world belongs to optimists um o yeah and I think that that's very powerful like it does you know and if you want to do something significant you have to first believe that you can do it you have to have this Vision that it can be done and you have to be optimistic about it even in the hardest times this year when I thought I don't know if we're going to make it because of some challenges that we put ourself into I was have always been there's a way out there's a way out it's been done

01:36:49 - 01:37:57

I'm going to find it we're going to get through it we're going to be great because of it and I do think again Alex hosi said he's like this is when I mean when you're in these challenges it's like this is the chapter this is the chapter I'm going to reread a few times but it's not the end and I think that you know the world belongs to Optimist is a is how it should be I I liken that to you have to be big on the vision but ruthless on the details yeah love that right cuz you have you have to like I

01:37:24 - 01:38:24

think no one's ever erected a statue for a Critic true yeah you know the the people that tend to claim territory in the market tend to go out with optimism and the challenge I think in the Australian market for those listening to this who are Australians if you want success in the Australian Market you're taking it off someone else yeah if you want to sell perfume yeah you're taking sales off someone else yeah if you want to sell centry you're taking business off someone else and I think as a

01:37:54 - 01:39:12

culture we can tend to be very nice and kind and courteous business is tough yeah and you have to be truly invested in your product you have to know your stuff is the [ __ ] or that you can develop it into something that is yeah for you I around that optimism piece is there a practice or a meditation that you do to stay optimistic I do you know I think I didn't realize it was like a you know thing that has had impact on me but it has uh each day when I I train in the morning I go for a walk um after that I

01:38:33 - 01:39:43

walk the espanado at canala get a coffee it's about a 45 minute walk and cuz I've always been so like intuitive with who I am and you know what I'm going through at this moment or what is who I can become um I've always on these walks probably for the last 3 years four years maybe every day and I'm constantly like living in that future manifesting I guess you call it that where I'm I'm imagining going into a boardroom and potential exit I've got the pen and the paper and the the glass and I can feel

01:39:08 - 01:40:22

the room and the people and the chair and all of it um and that might be that day and then another day I might be thinking about when we're in London and my son's at school picking him up again his uniform his hat his thing and his happiness uh in that moment because I really feel like I need to live in those you know future States um to be able to build myself today to get there and I like to spend a lot of time there on these walks so that I can really feel it right and then I sort of will catch

01:39:45 - 01:40:40

myself if I'm not you know aligned or my actions aren't working towards those moments you can sort of feel that you're you're not aligned with those and those things that you want for yourself and that for me over the last 3 or 4 years just happens on those walks every morning and it's not like I go on the walk I'm like I'm going to manifest today today I'm going to think about this I can just walk and really just like be in those present future moments sorry those future moments um and I

01:40:13 - 01:41:27

really enjoy it and I think that a lot of people need to spend more time living in the future that they want to create powerful yeah and it's like you said if the pnls tell the story yeah maybe your vision uh walks in the morning remind you of why you're doing it correct that's exactly it yeah when you wake up in the morning what's what's something that you do specifically that gets you really fired up aside from the walk yeah look I'm not like a like a you know let's jump out of bed

01:40:49 - 01:41:55

ra let's go type of person cold PL cold PL you know meditate 6 hours neur Science and philosophy yeah and not that I'm against that stuff I think this cool and I have done the ice bars and all the stuff um I think for me like where I get momentum in my life is when I I do the things that I say I was going to do you know if I get up at 5:01 I feel like I've wasted the day versus 4:59 Jesus man it's 2 minutes I know and it's just mentally it's like I you said you were going to get up and you're you're pretty

01:41:23 - 01:42:28

much awake you just got your eyes shut cuz you're just whatever just get up and go yeah and if I um do the things I said I was going to do then I the confidence just builds and builds and builds and builds and it starts you know in the early morning when the alarm goes off 4:30 4:45 whatever it is um get to the gym do the workout do it hard you know do this last part that you you don't normally you don't want to do you know go for a walk make sure you eat healthy it's all for me about these little winds

01:41:55 - 01:43:00

every day throughout the day if the day is [ __ ] and things go wrong if I've at least hold true to myself you can go to bed sweet right so like because you beat the Sun up yeah you're like okay you loser like I'm awake before you are [ __ ] and then you get to the gym smash the gym so you know at 6:00 you've already beat the sun you beat yourself up in the gym you feel pretty good bad meeting happens at like 11: at lunch you're like whatever whatever yeah it can all be all be fixed but the flip

01:42:27 - 01:43:16

side is for me that if I don't wake up you know when I told myself I would if I skip the gym and I'm not saying I go to the gym every day because like I'm perfect but like if I skip the gym like I feel like a piece of [ __ ] yeah because I told myself I was going to go cuz I think on social media you see all this stuff like the morning routine and it seems like they're doing it just to flex on you yeah but you're saying you don't care about that you're just doing it so

01:42:52 - 01:43:49

that you can feel and establish self-esteem and confidence yeah and I think like self-confidence comes from doing what you said you were going to do that's if you just say I'm going to eat this today and you eat it you've just you know you've you ticked off something you said you were going to do You' you've signed a contract with yourself saying I'm going to do this thing and you've completed your end of the bargain and that's confidence building and that just starts can start small by your

01:43:20 - 01:44:13

alarm clock or it can start big by like how am I going to show up you know in this meeting or what do I want to get out of this it's like you saying with the contracts like people always stitching you up by not fulfilling their part of their obligation so you wrote a contract and you held them to it this is like you holding a contract against yourself to yourself yeah and I think I'm probably you know probably a bit hard on myself at times when I'm you know for whatever reason I might not

01:43:47 - 01:44:55

fulfill that part that I said I was going to do um that gets frustrating for me and then what happens to me the flip side is I have to be careful I don't compound the bad decision cuz your kids are watching yeah that's right and I could you know Miss the gym and then eat a bad meal yeah and then three or four things go and then I'm I'm not like you know angry or anything like that but you know the next day is like okay I'm I'm up at 4: because like you know you you you didn't have the best day the day

01:44:21 - 01:45:29

before yeah and then equally it's like you know don't be so hard on yourself that you don't find happiness in in things because you didn't wake up at 4:48 instead of you woke up at 501 instead of 458 um but that for me when I'm at my best to answer your question is when I'm really doing the things I said I was going to do I love that I'm going to start implementing some more of that in my life I'm inspired now last question um and be selfish yeah what's something that you

01:44:54 - 01:46:22

need right now that others can help you with I think I need from an eom perspective I need like a bit of a road map into the US World and the dos and don'ts for launching properly into the US from an ads perspective brand perspective positioning perspective I feel genuinely like we're guessing and I don't want to waste time climbing up the ladder up the wrong tree of the wrong wall right during the next 12 months or 18 months I'm not expecting the US to kick until maybe mid 2026 from like

01:45:39 - 01:46:45

retail perspective and activation perspective but I want to have a really good 18 months there yeah basically I want to also want to know what not to do cuz you know that's equally as important as knowing what to do and you need to simultaneously do the right thing and not do the wrong thing at the same time so I feel like I've got a really good grip on Australia the UK I know how that's going to go New Zealand I'm good there I just don't know if the same strategy is going to work in the US I

01:46:12 - 01:47:10

think you're in luck uh so um serendipitous that you brought this up like tomorrow we're meeting up and there's a gentleman I'm introducing you to uh who's done just that oh wow yeah okay so the universe provides man whatever whatever D into is like I got you back um but yeah so we'll chat more about that afterward but um yeah man I just love your energy thank you it's it's obvious that you and Raquel have just an enormous amount of respect for each other uh a lot of love and a

01:46:41 - 01:47:40

beautiful family and a legacy that's taking place as we speak sounds like you got a gangster team behind the scenes and yeah it just sounds like you get a really good grip on exactly where this is about to go and you're open-minded that there's a lot left to learn yeah yeah no thank you it's um great to chat but yeah it's feel like we're just getting started I feel like you know the last four or five years have been ups and downs and unstructured and all of these things we spoke about and I feel

01:47:10 - 01:48:16

like 2025 is you know this re not restart but like back to day one again and I like that day one mentality always um so yeah we'll see where we go beautiful stuff and I'm sure we'll get you back sounds good thank you so much yo my name is Dane Walker and I am disgustingly obsessed with branding I had to figure out a way to do branding every single day so I branded myself then I started my agency rival and hired a team of branding Mavericks hellbent on creating Brands so good that they'll make you a competition

01:47:53 - 01:48:51

their pants so here's the thing you want your brand to go viral and rival makes Brands go viral that's why we're offering you a free 30-minute branding session to get an expert's opinion if you don't believe me the proof is in the pudding here's what clients have to say about rival rival is trusted by Brands like nutrition Warehouse light my bricks and V so if you want to absolutely smoke the competition and make your brand go viral hit the link below and book in your free

01:48:22 - 01:48:25

30-minute branding set I

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