Latest / The Empire of Wealth / Oodie Founder on Building an _850M eCommerce Empire (Before 30) _ Davie Fogarty

Transcript

Oodie Founder on Building an _850M eCommerce Empire (Before 30) _ Davie Fogarty · The Empire of Wealth

0:00
Speaker 1: My first three products skyrocketed. They did minimum a million
0:04
dollars in their first year. Woody did two, then 20,
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then 200 or something like that. It just went really,
0:10
really quick. There's not a million opportunities to launch an
0:13
e-commerce business at all times. There might be one in
0:15
each niche each year. Testing a product on the paid
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format of your choice, getting initial traction, and then doubling
0:21
down on that and building processes to just keep repeating that.
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It is really about having that right product and that
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right knowledge about how to get that product out there
0:28
in the early stages. Enjoy the process. That's 90% of
0:32
the battle because you'll look back and you'll wish you
0:34
enjoyed it more.
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Speaker 2: Before we dive in, I want to extend a warm
0:40
invitation to join our thriving founder community. It's the perfect
0:44
place to discover more insightful interviews aimed at helping you build, grow,
0:47
and scale your business. So don't forget to hit subscribe.
0:51
Your support means the absolute world to us. Thank you
0:54
so much for subscribing. Let's get stuck in today's discussion.
0:59
Speaker 3: Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your
1:03
growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast
1:08
with Nathan Chan.
1:13
Speaker 2: I'm really excited to speak with you, man, because I've
1:16
watched your story from afar for the past year since
1:19
you've kind of really put yourself out there. I'd heard
1:22
of you through our mutual friend Greta for many years
1:25
of you killing it behind the scenes. So, um, the
1:29
first question I ask everyone is how did you get
1:31
your job? AKA, how did you find yourself doing the
1:34
work you're doing today?
1:34
Speaker 1: No, it's funny. I was telling you before that you're
1:38
actually the first podcast that I listened to. And when
1:40
I heard, and you were asking it back then, it
1:42
would have been four or five years ago or something
1:44
like that. And I remembered that I just did not
1:47
have a good answer for that question. I still don't
1:49
think I do. Um, my job is, is interesting. It's
1:54
obviously progressed like most people. Um, It started at standard school,
2:00
graduated school, and then I went into university. Everyone was
2:03
telling me, get into university, get that piece of paper,
2:06
it's required. And then I got into growth hacking Instagrams,
2:11
which is how I met Greta. She's the Instagram queen.
2:14
And I was growing Instagram's 600,000 followers or something like that.
2:20
That was really kind of at the same time as
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the mining engineering. So I had a bit of a
2:25
decision to make what to kind of pursue. I realized
2:28
that I really liked entrepreneurship. So I did what every
2:31
normal person does and I started a Vietnamese roll shop.
2:34
So I basically dropped out of university to start a
2:38
Vietnamese roll shop, all while doing the Instagrams. Honestly, I
2:42
didn't know why Vietnamese rolls, asides from the fact that
2:44
I really liked eating them, which is probably not the
2:47
main requirement of starting a business. But yeah, started that.
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That went downhill really quickly. Instagram kept doing really, really well.
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Started selling the Instagram, selling advertising as people still do
3:00
to this day. And then, yeah, basically launched a couple
3:06
of e-commerce businesses as well. So, you know, that was
3:10
obviously fueling a lot of my failures. I've had a
3:12
lot of them. And then I launched e-commerce. I tried
3:17
to do seasoning. So I was basically in my shed,
3:21
grinding up seasonings, trying to sell them through these Instagrams.
3:24
And I realized that I was doing a lot of
3:26
like hacky permissionless stuff. And I really didn't have any
3:31
idea how to connect with the audiences because these impressions
3:35
on Instagram are very low connection, low relevance if you
3:40
don't know what you're doing. And that's pretty much what
3:42
I had at that point is really kind of unengaged followers.
3:47
So it didn't really work. ended up, yeah, moving to
3:50
Melbourne and just to keep learning this stuff, learned a
3:54
ton from Greta, a ton from yourself and a lot
3:57
of other people as well. And then ended up launching,
4:01
you know, I was actually started videography. And I think
4:05
that that was really a massive turning point because it
4:08
helped me create video ads and connect and learn how
4:12
to tell a story, how to pace things, how to
4:14
work with the platform algorithms. And then, yeah, ended up
4:18
using that videography, all those skills that I learned along
4:21
the way to launch Calming Blankets, which was my first
4:23
e-commerce brand. And yeah, that was kind of like, I
4:27
was actually just like on the tipping point of quitting,
4:30
you know, as this, I probably wouldn't have to be
4:34
completely honest, but it really felt like that. It almost
4:37
felt like I was really at peace and happy with
4:41
videography because, you know, I could travel, like it was
4:43
doing something that I really enjoyed. And I kind of
4:46
left this ambition kind of just be like, look, if
4:50
this is what my life is, it's fine. I'm just
4:53
not cut out for entrepreneurship. And I just said, look,
4:58
one more go. And then that's when I launched Calming
5:00
Blankets and I brought that in and it did really well.
5:03
It really, it was just right product, right time. Definitely
5:09
my ability to communicate and market at that point was way,
5:13
way better. So it grew really, really quickly. I'm not
5:16
sure what revenue we did first year, but would have
5:18
been over a million dollars in its first year, which
5:21
was great. And then from there, I launched Udi pretty
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much at the same time. Yes. And Udi is now
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our biggest brand. That grew very, very quickly. And since then,
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I've just launched a lot of other products.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, wow. So I'd love to fast– before we fast forward,
5:36
I'd love to kind of just go back. So you
5:39
started the Vietnamese roll company, local business in Adelaide?
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: And– Where'd you come up with that idea? And when
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was that? Like, how long ago was that?
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Speaker 1: Okay. You're testing my memory. I think it would have been,
5:52
it would have been five years ago. So pretty much
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straight out of school.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. Straight out of school. 18?
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Speaker 1: One or two years out of school.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. So 20. Okay. And then at what point did
6:05
you realize, so you, you got a, you know, you
6:08
got a store location front, you set up branding and,
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You hired staff.
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Speaker 1: You're assuming I set up branding.
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Speaker 2: So you hired staff. Like how much did it cost
6:17
to fund that? Where did you get the money to
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kind of fund that?
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Speaker 1: For sure. It was all through Instagram. So I was
6:23
sold one of my Instagrams for over $ 30, 000. And I
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did that, you know, a multiple over $ 10, 000 kind of
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at that age selling them. There was other people that had,
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you know, that was probably a failure on my part
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as well, considering the past that my colleagues that were
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also growing Instagrams at the time built businesses. Greta is
6:43
one of them building million dollar businesses. You know, I
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was just constantly doubting what I was actually building. I
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didn't have the foresight or people around me to kind
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of communicate. This is a legitimate business. You know, one
6:58
of my mentors is 100%. My dad, he's always helped
7:01
me with business and and I don't think he understood it.
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Obviously incredible other things in with his business and whatnot,
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but yeah, it was entirely self-funded at that point.
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Speaker 2: Got you. And how long did it take for the
7:15
Vietnamese role business for you to kind of go, you
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know what, this isn't working. This isn't for me. What
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was the tipping point there?
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that was, I'd love to say that was, you know,
7:27
I thought I needed to give it a crack. I
7:29
don't like giving up. It's against my nature, but The
7:33
lease was two years. I gave it two years. I
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think I actually exited six months early from that. So
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I'm just kind of sold it. I didn't make any
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money from it. Um, but yeah, it was, I was,
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cause obviously when you don't have a successful business like that,
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you need to be the employee in it. You're constantly working.
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So I was doing 12 hours days, just cooking Vietnamese
7:56
rolls in my lunch break, flipping Instagrams and whatnot, doing
8:00
what I probably should have been doing the whole time. So, um, Yeah,
8:03
it was brutal. It was a big year and a
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half sprint.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go. Okay. So when did you start
8:09
the seasoning and get into e-commerce? When did that? So
8:12
that was about four years ago, three years ago?
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Speaker 1: I think that overlapped when I moved to Melbourne. So
8:19
I stopped that. In fact, yeah, I stopped that and
8:23
then came over to Melbourne, was doing the seasoning while
8:26
that was happening, wasn't working. I think that was about
8:29
a year stint. And then I came back to Adelaide
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and then, yeah, that takes us to 23, 24 years old.
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And that's when I started Udi.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, got you. So you've only been doing Udi for about,
8:43
and coming back for about three, four years.
8:44
Speaker 1: In some, yeah, like, yeah, I've only been truly in
8:48
e-commerce for about four years.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, wow, that's impressive. So where does this entrepreneurial spirit
8:54
come from?
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Speaker 1: I think it's a good question. I think there's a,
8:58
you know, it's not a simple answer. I've been very
9:02
fortunate in my upbringing. I'm very cognizant of that. I
9:08
always had security in my house. My parents, well, business
9:12
owners themselves, their business doesn't exist anymore. It's just a
9:16
local furniture shop, but they've always encouraged me to take risks.
9:19
I think that's one of the main reasons. It's just
9:23
always been part of my upbringing. Another one is just
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you know, in year 10, I was like asked to
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pretty much leave school. I was, you know, going nowhere,
9:32
getting in trouble a lot. People were just very aware
9:38
that I was, yeah, doing the wrong thing on a
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lot of occasions. And then, yeah, basically I had two
9:47
teachers that kind of saw past that and saw that
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I did have ability, my physics and my English teacher,
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and they basically just sat me down and really gave
9:58
me the attention that I needed to believe in myself.
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And then, you know, so long story short, I think
10:04
that the doubters in those situations really made me want
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to do what I can do and then also make,
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you know, my parents proud as well.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, awesome. So you could say that you had a
10:15
bit of a chip on your shoulder, something to prove?
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Speaker 1: Definitely. And I think... I think, I think that is
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one of the strongest motivators, you know, and I don't
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think it's the most healthy motivator. And I think if
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you're lucky, you let that evolve into something that's more
10:32
internal rather than external. So more so really wanting to
10:37
prove it to yourself and, you know, just enjoying the
10:40
process rather than proving those other people. Cause I think
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I've already done that in some, some regards.
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Speaker 2: So, What were the biggest lessons that you got from
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the early ventures with the Vietnamese roll company, the seasoning business?
10:55
It sounds like you probably had some other e-commerce businesses,
10:57
even from flipping Instagram accounts back in the day. What
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could you share? What's been great lessons?
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Speaker 1: Yeah, there's obviously been a lot. I think the first
11:06
one is learn who you are as a person. So me,
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if you kind of break that down, what that looks
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like is I just jump in and I just do stuff.
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And that causes me issues to this day. You know,
11:20
I'll just buy this business or do this. It's just like,
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it's a very action orientated mindset. Action creates information. Like
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that is okay if you kind of have the foundational
11:34
knowledge to make sure that that action isn't going to
11:37
be extremely detrimental. So the Vietnamese roll business is a
11:40
good example of that. So Getting the baseline knowledge is really,
11:46
really important, especially when you're a young entrepreneur before you
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start doing those ventures. But at the same time, don't
11:54
be on the other side where you're just constantly learning
11:56
and you're not doing anything because you're just not going
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to get that information that you really, really do need.
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So you might fail a couple of times. Don't be
12:04
afraid of that. The second probably more practical one that
12:08
you can also distill from those stories is the.
12:14
Is product is everything you know if i had calming
12:16
blankets even in that situation that product i probably would
12:21
have succeeded um so it is really about having that
12:24
right product and that right knowledge about how to get
12:26
that product out there in the early stages yeah and
12:29
you do.
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Speaker 2: Some really cool stuff with product testing products i want
12:32
to talk through all of that because um It sounds
12:37
like that's been a key successful ingredient to the ventures
12:40
or any of the brands that you've had in your
12:42
portfolio that really take off. I'm curious though, just this
12:47
one is, one thing I've noticed about you is you
12:52
can do media buying, you can do videography, you can
12:56
do social media, you can write direct response copy, you
13:00
can start things. Like you are a real jack of
13:03
all trades. Where does that come from? Because that is
13:05
not unique.
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Speaker 1: Right?
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Speaker 2: Usually you either got a marketing or a product guy,
13:10
you've got someone that's quite operational. How do you force
13:15
yourself to kind of work all these things out and
13:17
where do you find that time? Because that's really impressive.
13:19
Do you think that that is unique about you or
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do you not?
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Speaker 1: I don't think that's unique about me. I think it's
13:27
a relatively rare experience and that experience is a privilege
13:32
of being a single founder. You're kind of forced to
13:35
do that If you're a bootstrapped founder, not hiring people
13:39
straight from the get-go, you're forced to learn all of
13:41
those things to make it work. I think if you
13:44
go the above layer of those things that you just
13:46
mentioned that I'm good at, I'd like to say that
13:48
my team now are much, much better than me at that.
13:51
If I'm in the ad account, I probably will stuff
13:53
it up if I tried to touch it nowadays. But
13:55
in the early stages, yeah, I was doing all of that.
13:58
I think extract parts of the media buying, which is
14:02
the more pattern recognition element of it, you've got, you're
14:07
a creative. So the videography, the copywriting, you're just a
14:10
general marketer in all of those senses. And that really
14:16
became apparent about how bad I was at operations and finance.
14:19
So there definitely is the strengths. I'm not kind of
14:22
an anomaly where I can do it all. But my
14:26
marketing is definitely my strengths. Creative is definitely my strength.
14:29
The other stuff has been much slower to learn.
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Speaker 2: So yeah. Do you think that these skills are required in,
14:36
you know, if you want to launch an e-commerce business
14:38
tomorrow to have an unfair advantage?
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's obviously a lot of ways to
14:44
launch your business. To do a bootstrapped e-commerce product and
14:50
follow the path that I did, you 100% need to
14:53
understand the marketing. You can't forecast your way out of
14:56
that business. You can't be super good at ops. You
15:00
need that marketing person and generally you don't have heaps
15:03
to spend on it and as you know marketers are
15:05
actually quite hard to get um so i think you
15:08
know unless your co-founder is a marketer um or something
15:12
like that you're going to struggle to get that cash
15:14
coming in to fuel your growth that being said if
15:18
you are you know raising capital or you do have
15:20
a best friend that's a gun at facebook ads then
15:23
that that can make it work as well because you
15:25
are going to need that polarizing skill set um with
15:29
ops and on finance as well and Is.
15:31
Speaker 2: There a reason you don't have a co-founder or co-founders? Actually, yeah,
15:35
you do some stuff with Greta. Yeah, so you have
15:37
a few co-founders with a few brands, right?
15:38
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the David group, like Woody, Calming Blankets, that's
15:43
all 100% me, and that was probably not really by design.
15:47
Like I see value in having a co-founder. It's just
15:51
I didn't launch it that way. Obviously grew quite well,
15:56
so it worked out really well, but I'm not against
15:59
working with people, that's for sure. Yeah.
16:02
Speaker 2: So let's talk about the URI, how that concept came about,
16:06
how you came up with that idea. I know you
16:08
have a unique process when it comes to finding product ideas.
16:12
You have the Davey Group, which is kind of like
16:16
a Thrasio, Thrasio, Amazon brand. You're trying to build like
16:20
a P & G kind of Procter & Gamble. Is
16:22
that the play there? And you're just always testing different brands?
16:25
Is that?
16:25
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think the play there is probably... a bigger topic,
16:31
like how I find products. I'm generally looking for trends globally.
16:35
That's how Calming Blankets and all my products have kind
16:39
of come about. We find trends that haven't been kind
16:43
of capitalized in certain markets or in certain marketing channels.
16:48
And then we also obviously add our flair to it.
16:50
You know, you need to differentiate your product. Otherwise, it's
16:53
just your margin is going to get eaten away. And,
16:55
you know, it's just obviously better. to progress businesses like that.
16:59
So yeah, that's kind of how we find our products.
17:02
We make sure that there's a strong contribution margin. We
17:05
make sure that we can build like, yeah, a really
17:08
good value around the product. We do ton of licensing.
17:12
We make, it's like the highest quality possible fabric that
17:15
you can get. So that's, that's pretty much our requirement.
17:19
I'm actually building, I have big workflows and building tools
17:22
around how to find products as well.
17:24
Speaker 2: Yep. And, Right now across Davey Group, how many products
17:30
are you testing? How does that all work in that machine?
17:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting you say that. Since last podcast I've done,
17:37
probably my answer's gonna change a little bit here. So
17:41
iOS caused a huge issue, the privacy updates that have
17:44
made tracking in Facebook very, very difficult. My also knowledge
17:48
around the longevity of these products has also changed. So,
17:52
you know, we used to test hundreds of products a year.
17:57
What that looked like is getting, you know, sample three
17:59
to five units, bringing it in, understanding the CPAs that
18:03
we could get, shooting it as if we had a
18:04
million of the products. Yep. And then understanding the CPA
18:08
because the cost per acquisition is the variable cost that
18:11
you don't understand. It's hidden in the ether until you bring.
18:15
Speaker 2: It to light.
18:15
Speaker 1: So the reason why that was quite flawed in some
18:20
ways is, You don't actually understand how far that's going
18:23
to scale as well. You can get that initial CPAs
18:25
and over time, you get a touch and a feel
18:28
for it. You'll get 15 return on ad spend as
18:30
soon as you launch it. And you're like, okay, this
18:32
is an Udi style product. And then some products you'll
18:36
bring in, I'm not sure if you've had this experience,
18:38
you probably have, all entrepreneurs have, you're so excited about
18:41
the product. You've done everything right, all the market research,
18:44
you spend so much money on it, so much time,
18:47
and it just doesn't even convert. You don't even get
18:49
one sale. So that validation process that I just mentioned
18:53
is great for finding those polarities. And I still see
18:59
a lot of value in doing it, if that's the
19:01
question you're trying to answer. I think over time, I
19:04
realized that, you know, what is going to move the
19:06
needle for us as a business that's, you know, doing
19:09
over 150 million revenue a year, we need to go
19:12
after something a bit heavier. And like time is also
19:15
a bit of a problem for us. Resources is a problem.
19:18
So we, still look at it like this is going
19:21
to be a validation we'll commit a little bit harder
19:24
but we'll also consider the longevity of the product how
19:27
does this fit into our brand narrative and stuff like
19:29
that as.
19:30
Speaker 2: Well got you so when it comes to davey group
19:35
how many brands do you have right now.
19:37
Speaker 1: God good question we have about five major brands um.
19:42
Speaker 2: Yeah so there's calming blankets still The Udi, what are
19:46
the others? Are you able to share?
19:48
Speaker 1: PopNaps, Udi. Outdoor Play. And then the other one I
19:51
can't share just yet. Okay.
19:54
Speaker 3: Yeah.
19:54
Speaker 1: Outdoor Play is a US-based business that was actually an acquisition.
19:58
Speaker 2: Yep.
19:59
Speaker 1: Which is an interesting business. You mentioned Thrasio before. They're
20:02
an incredible roll-up company. There's a lot of aggregators out
20:06
there at the moment focusing on Amazon. which makes sense.
20:11
The business model of Amazon aggregators, you know, they're obviously
20:15
going to be struggling with the current financial climate, you know,
20:18
the supply chain crisis, then also multiples now coming down.
20:22
That was their whole play, multiple arbitrage. So there's lots
20:25
of complexities with that, but its foundation really does make
20:29
sense in that the optimizations that they can make on
20:32
one Amazon listing may be able to be transferred to
20:35
the next. And the tech stack is much simpler now.
20:38
The Shopify aggregators, which I don't consider us as one
20:42
just yet. I'd probably say wannabe Procter & Gamble as
20:45
you kind of phrased it. There is complications around the
20:49
tech stack and stuff like that that you need to consider.
20:51
Speaker 2: Like what?
20:52
Speaker 1: So, for example, different 3PLs, different front end. So Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce,
20:59
like you can't just apply a base theme across things.
21:03
The way you split test things are going to be
21:05
different workflows. all of those kinds of things. Even acquisition
21:08
methods is big. So, and, you know, these are all
21:11
hindsight things. I probably didn't think about these before the
21:13
acquisition as much as I should have. But, you know,
21:17
the acquisition methods, you know, one business is heavily reliant on, say,
21:21
Google versus, you know, Facebook acquisition, which is more about
21:25
Udi side of things. So even your team resources need
21:29
to be different and your knowledge gaps need to be filled.
21:31
Speaker 2: Got you. So are you kind of realising that, that
21:36
if you slowed down on testing new products, launching new products,
21:41
launching new brands, you'll still do it, but perhaps there's
21:44
a more focused play on the ones that are really
21:46
working and doubling down?
21:48
Speaker 1: Definitely. I think that's my main takeaway from last year
21:53
is we really need to focus on our main levers.
21:56
The Udi could be far bigger than it was. It
21:58
was sold out 50% of last year. So now we
22:02
just need to focus on our kind of main levers.
22:05
And since we've done that, you know, Udi's just skyrocketed.
22:07
You know, we restructured teams and whatnot to allow single
22:12
focus on brands, not getting heaps spread across, which is
22:15
a massive, massive lesson. Also, obviously capital is an incredibly
22:19
important thing. We shouldn't be applying heaps of capital to
22:22
products for a brand with, you know, 1 million customers
22:25
when we could do it with two, for example, with
22:28
2 million customers. So yeah, some big lessons in that
22:30
for sure.
22:31
Speaker 2: Got you. So coming back to the Udi concept, How
22:33
fast did it take for you to get traction? Like
22:37
you said you tested, did you test other products and
22:40
you just saw nothing like with Udi? Like what's special?
22:43
Speaker 1: You know, it's an interesting question. I think where we
22:48
feel very, well, I know I certainly do feel very
22:51
lucky around the products that I hit. Granted, I failed
22:54
a lot of times. I've already been into that, but
22:57
the the, those products, my first three products skyrocketed, you know,
23:01
they did minimum a million dollars in their first year. Um,
23:05
and I think what he did to then 20, then,
23:08
you know, 200 or something like that. It was, it
23:10
just went really, really quick. And this is where the
23:13
whole business model of testing and validating and finding those products, um,
23:18
came in play because i was like okay i've hit
23:20
these three everything is easy you know i'm okay media
23:23
buyer i'm okay at this i'm okay at that and
23:25
it's still taking off and we're over we're surpassing other
23:28
businesses so it really is that core foundational product but
23:32
as i said before and this is why i'm developing
23:35
tools and processes now for a data orientated approach before
23:39
we even validate to really tick all these boxes and
23:43
pick these right products um so that when we launch
23:46
them you know we You know, just trying to find
23:49
the answer before we even bring it out, if that
23:50
makes sense.
23:53
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24:58
back in the show. I'd love to delve a little
25:02
deeper on that. What does that look like? You said
25:05
you're setting up tools and processes to work out from
25:10
a data-driven approach, not just from a paid acquisition, you're
25:14
getting these CPAs. What are the things?
25:17
Speaker 1: It's a good question. I don't want to plug my
25:18
products too badly because it's SaaS. I build a SaaS, yeah.
25:22
I don't want to use your platform to plug my products. Yeah,
25:25
that's okay. Yeah, I started a tool called Trend Rocket. Yep.
25:28
And basically what it does is it scrapes all of
25:31
these data points. So Facebook, Trustpilot reviews, Instagram. It looks
25:36
at ad libraries. It looks at, It even goes to Alibaba,
25:39
contacts suppliers for their feature products that exist out there,
25:43
understands the cost of goods. What that looks like in
25:46
the end is you're getting a large data pool of
25:50
how well this product is growing in a certain region,
25:55
what tools they're using to grow it, and then also
25:59
where that trend is not currently leveraged because that ad
26:04
inventory is so important to CPMs. I think that's one
26:08
thing that's kind of not understood well enough is how
26:12
competition affects your ads and more because obviously it's a
26:19
relatability question. So if there's 10 weighted blanket people advertising
26:24
in Australia, they're all going to, and someone shows interest
26:26
in that, we're all going to be competing. So if
26:29
there's no advertiser, what then happens to your CPMs? And
26:32
that's really, aside from the products themselves, Asides from how
26:38
good Calming Blankets and Woody were for our customers, I
26:42
think that that's one of the main reasons they grew
26:43
so quick is because there was very little competition in
26:45
those regions for similar trends.
26:48
Speaker 2: So what I'm hearing is effectively what you're trying to
26:51
do is productize your process of finding brands to use
26:55
software to scale that out.
26:57
Speaker 1: Exactly. I've had so many people ask me how I've
26:59
done that. So I've just gone and reverse engineered it.
27:04
Because we've launched so many. I'm using the lessons of
27:07
those failed validated products as well. I'm like, why didn't
27:09
this work? So yeah, just trying to reverse engineer that
27:12
and put it in a SaaS so other people can
27:14
learn it.
27:15
Speaker 2: But if you were selling it, wouldn't it make it
27:19
difficult to have the uniqueness? Like, wouldn't that be an
27:23
unfair advantage for your group?
27:27
Speaker 1: Look, I think it's an interesting dilemma and I'll cross that.
27:33
for that to become a problem, both for my group
27:36
and the existing customers on the platform, you know, there's
27:39
going to be a million brands on this, on this thing.
27:42
What I'm, what I do believe is there's not, there's not,
27:45
you know, a million opportunities to launch an e-commerce business
27:48
at all times. There might be one in each niche
27:50
each year, these success stories, um, that you see. So,
27:55
but my theory is that if I can get it
27:57
to a point where that becomes a problem, it's going
27:59
to be a big tool and it's already helped a
28:00
lot of people. So, um, Yeah, I'll cross that bridge
28:03
when we come to it. Okay, interesting.
28:05
Speaker 2: So a little similar to like Jungle Scout, right? Like
28:09
Jungle Scout, you go on Amazon, you can see volume,
28:11
you can see opportunity, all sorts of things, right?
28:14
Speaker 1: Exactly right. As I mentioned before, the tech stack becomes
28:17
more difficult because there's multiple things at play and people
28:22
are using different review platforms and stuff like this on
28:25
their Shopify store. So it's like, yes, it's like Jungle Scout,
28:28
but more complicated because there's a lot more other tech involved. Gotcha.
28:33
Speaker 2: So anybody watching this right now is looking to launch
28:37
a brand. Like what's the most common mistake you see
28:41
new brands making?
28:45
Speaker 1: I think just crap marketing. Like you, I think, you know,
28:52
I put it in different buckets and I think that's
28:55
important to do as well. So you're a brand new
28:57
founder and you're trying to launch a product. You go
29:00
to that Shopify website, there's nothing in the footer. It's
29:03
like the copy is really, really bad. They're using stock images.
29:07
They're like, they don't understand what that customer actually wants.
29:11
They're not, they don't have clear product images. It's just
29:13
like all of these things that install trust, which I'd
29:17
like to say is just crappy marketing. The other brands, yeah,
29:22
like when you're trying to get, when you maybe found
29:26
that successful product and you've got like a bit of
29:29
a better website, And stuff like that. That's when it
29:31
probably more comes down to the feedback loops that they
29:37
are then creating within their business to scale. it, which
29:41
maybe it's a technical problem. Maybe they're structuring their ad
29:43
accounts poorly. Maybe then it's not producing enough content on Facebook.
29:48
It's kind of those things that they need to just
29:50
keep repeating. But that's the common question that I get
29:54
when the first new entrepreneur and they just haven't taken
29:56
enough time to go look at 50 different brands and
29:59
just look at how they've structured their website and kind
30:02
of copied those elements to build trust got.
30:04
Speaker 2: You um so do you have like a template around
30:07
a shopify and like a cro like because you would
30:10
have done so many split tests where you're like we
30:13
know if we do this we know if we do
30:14
this like i follow guys on twitter where they're like
30:17
there was a guy, this Carl, I forget his last name.
30:20
Speaker 1: Yeah.
30:20
Speaker 2: He did, he did recommendation for my fiance's website, healthy.
30:24
And then he did one for yours or, and, and like,
30:26
it looked like he had a sort of a blueprint.
30:28
Do you have a blueprint of things to do? Yeah.
30:31
Can you share some of that?
30:32
Speaker 1: Yeah. Carl's, Carl's fantastic. So I think, I think that
30:37
that element is maybe a step further, which is probably
30:41
those brands that are already successful, which is, yeah, you
30:43
need that framework to start split testing. And you hit
30:47
the nail on the head going to Twitter and following
30:49
people like Carl and a lot of other people as
30:51
well that are publishing these best practices and then just
30:55
going in and implementing them. That's a great way to
30:57
do it. I think for the new entrepreneur, I would
31:01
do that as well, but you just need to go
31:03
to an established website. Like the traditional, the big guys
31:08
are kind of setting the ideal format for a website
31:12
that you then just need a copy. You can even
31:14
go to like, granted, we've got actually a lot of
31:16
things that we need to fix on that, but you
31:18
could go to like an ASOS or an Iconic and
31:20
really look, how have they structured their footers? Okay, I'm
31:22
going to do that. How do they structure their descriptions
31:25
in their products? And just kind of look at that
31:27
and really dissect, how do I build more trust?
31:31
Speaker 2: Got you. So when it comes to kind of, I guess,
31:36
all the different brands, you talked about product being a
31:39
common denominator. Is there anything else that you could share
31:42
with our audience around the repeatability of the framework that
31:46
you're using across the group that you think is key
31:49
when it comes to starting successful brands? Because you have
31:51
an incredible track record, to be honest, man, and the
31:55
speed in which you've grown the audience Calming Blankets, all
32:00
these other brands, it's seriously impressive. So I'm just trying
32:04
to kind of decode that a bit more.
32:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, look, I appreciate that. Yeah, I think the main
32:09
thing is you're trying to find a product that scales
32:14
through a very scalable paid digital format. And if you
32:18
just break that down, that might be TikTok organic. So
32:21
Really testing a product or an idea on the paid
32:25
format of your choice, getting initial traction, and then just
32:27
doubling down on that and building processes to just keep
32:30
repeating it. That's the main thing.
32:33
Speaker 2: So you talk about paid a lot and as a
32:37
strong way to kind of test different products. You talked
32:41
about data privacy, iOS 14. And the performance of paid advertising,
32:47
no business has been immune to that. Like for us
32:49
at Founder, you know, we've been hit. All business has
32:52
been hit. Many businesses, unfortunately, have shut down because they've
32:56
been so reliant on paid advertising. It still works. Like,
32:59
you know, we still spend a lot of money on
33:01
Facebook ads and in all sorts of paid traffic channels. Like,
33:07
what's your take there? what's the lessons been for you?
33:10
Are you still spending a ton of money on Facebook ads,
33:14
TikTok ads? Like what's your take? I'd love to hear
33:16
where things are at for you there.
33:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, everyone's been hit. I think our larger businesses, smaller
33:24
businesses have been disproportionately hit. I don't have a strong
33:29
theory behind why that's the case. Even when we're looking
33:33
at percentages changes, I think... Maybe there's just less data
33:38
to work that Facebook can have even more. You know,
33:41
Udi's got a lot of data that's flowing through it.
33:44
It's incredibly tough. And I think that this is where
33:48
a lot of businesses that have poor products are going
33:51
to really struggle as well. I think one of my
33:54
main lessons, which wasn't really, it was, you know, hindsight's 20-20.
34:00
When people ask you, are you diversified from an acquisition channel?
34:03
You're like, yeah, I'm advertising on TikTok. And it's just like,
34:05
I think, that the, to have the level of thinking,
34:09
to understand that there's actually a platform issue and reliance
34:13
on Apple iPhones was, would have just been incredible. So,
34:17
you know, we can say that we're diversified through Instagram
34:19
and Facebook. So Instagram influences and Facebook, but it's all
34:22
flowing and so reliant on that single element. And I
34:26
think that that's going to continue to get worse. We've
34:28
got the Android privacy update coming, I think next month. Um,
34:32
I do think that that's going to be a lesser extent. Um,
34:35
because a lot of our, uh, you know, everyone probably
34:39
in this room already has an iPhone. So, um, not
34:42
too many people are getting served ads on Android, especially
34:45
within Australia. So lesser extent there, I think, um, yeah, it's,
34:50
there are attribution tools out there to name a few.
34:53
We've got the triple whale pixels just came out, but, um,
34:57
a more probably robust in my experience tool is North beam, um,
35:01
which is, I think these tools, um, There's a couple
35:05
of others out there, so do your own research. I
35:07
think these tools are great to remove multi-touch attribution and
35:13
really understand if a platform's working. So a really strong
35:16
example is in NorthBeam, we'll get an even ROAS for, say,
35:23
Facebook and TikTok, but Snapchat will be one hundredth of that.
35:27
And in the platform of Snapchat, we're getting a seven ROAS.
35:31
So it's just like, it's great to kind of, iron
35:34
out these tools that might not be working, that they're
35:36
saying they're working. There's nuances to that, of course, but
35:40
that's kind of how I'm using those tools at the moment.
35:43
I'm not looking at them from an ad set budget
35:45
optimization at this stage because Taylor Holliday has got some
35:50
really good quotes on Twitter about this. So go check
35:52
it out. But he talks about how these tools aren't
35:55
actually feeding data back to Facebook. So therefore you're making
35:58
optimization decisions that won't be the same the next day.
36:01
So I'm not using them currently from an ad set.
36:04
I am checking it, just kind of seeing how off
36:08
it actually is because in some sense, you know, Facebook
36:13
should just be doing this stuff themselves. So I think,
36:17
aside from that, we use kind of like a multiplier approach.
36:22
So where, you know, a 1.5, say, rise in Facebook
36:27
ad account might be, you know, a three in the
36:30
previous state. Yes. Now, over time, that's going to continually shift.
36:35
So we are constantly kind of watching that and kind
36:38
of using our own multipliers within the platforms and making
36:41
sure our media buyers really do have a touch and
36:43
a feel for what was, what's currently, and then also
36:47
what the output is of those channels. So we use
36:51
what's called an MER, which is like a full funnel
36:54
return on ad spend. We plot a graph in our dashboards,
36:58
which is sales, and then we have an MER target.
37:02
If our MER goes too high, which is like, let's
37:06
say 31%, what we'll do is we'll pull back Facebook
37:10
as kind of like our main driver. Now that's problematic
37:13
because while Facebook is like our primary driver, we're starting
37:17
to get some really good results with TikTok. So TikTok
37:20
is starting to really drive some traffic for us. So
37:22
that can also move the sales and MER quite dramatically.
37:26
This is where we're starting to This is starting to
37:29
get a little bit more advanced and probably not for
37:32
all your listeners. I probably wouldn't advise going ahead and
37:34
doing this unless you're spending quite a bit on these platforms,
37:37
but building platform specific ROAS targets within NorthBeam. So that's
37:42
where we're getting to. But right now we just really
37:45
use an MER. We optimize on very much on like
37:49
ad cards cost as well from an ad set level
37:53
to try to get the best decision and then, you know,
37:55
just hope and pray.
37:58
Speaker 2: Not actually and like what else are you doing like
38:02
i'm just genuinely curious because it sounds like you guys
38:04
have been really really strong on paid advertising sounds like
38:06
you still are but you know like for example um
38:10
do you know rob from quadlock another melbourne guy big
38:14
e-commerce brand um you know for those guys it was
38:17
really funny i we interviewed him i interviewed him like
38:21
three years ago and he was saying like i'm gonna
38:24
move into retail And so he said, when we caught up,
38:27
he said, oh, Nathan, it's so funny. Somebody watched the
38:30
interview that you and I did three years ago. And
38:33
they're like, Rob, you were right. Retail's where it's at now. Like,
38:36
are you guys going hard on retail? Are you doing
38:39
more on influencers? Are you going harder on TikTok influence? Like, yeah,
38:43
talk to us kind of like, what are you doing
38:45
to combat this stuff? Because it's easy to see from
38:48
the outside, you know, you're super successful. You've got a
38:52
nine-figure business. portfolio of brands or one nine-figure brand like
38:56
it's really impressive but what are you doing at this
38:58
kind of level to kind of you know because because
39:01
this will continue to happen right like platforms come platforms
39:04
go like one of my mentors he you know he
39:06
was doing one one cent clicks with google ads 10
39:10
years ago founded co-founded big commerce right when they were
39:13
playing against shopify right that platform you're not getting one
39:18
cent clicks yeah you know it's a dollar two dollars
39:20
right so Platforms come, platforms go. I'm just curious, what
39:23
are you doing? How are you approaching this?
39:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I totally agree with the reason. and
39:30
wholesale approach because I think, you know, we say we're
39:35
direct-to-consumer e-commerce brands. I think that that's pigeoning us as,
39:40
you know, we're brands. Like we need to think that way.
39:43
We need to think that, you know, we can be
39:46
in all of these retailers and stuff like that. The
39:48
reason why I didn't in Australia early is because we
39:52
were moving so much and this might not be the
39:54
right approach in hindsight, but there wasn't many retailers that
39:58
could move enough to kind of make it worth in Australia.
40:01
In the US and these other places where they've got,
40:04
you know, Walmart, Target, all of these massive retailers, it
40:10
really does make sense. And I think looking at it now,
40:15
it's all about focus for us. Like where... Previously, I
40:19
wanted to focus on creating a ton of these brands
40:21
and because that's what the landscape was allowing me to do.
40:24
Speaker 2: Yes.
40:25
Speaker 1: And that digital was easy. I was in a coronavirus
40:28
period where I can launch kind of any product and
40:30
it would scale like crazy. Granted, we still probably could
40:33
do that, but I don't think it's the best use
40:35
of our time and capital. I think the UDI, we're
40:39
really refining what the brand actually is as a first step,
40:43
getting all of our levers and workflows sorted within our
40:47
existing core business, because I don't think we've done that yet.
40:52
One thing that's maybe different to a lot of other
40:54
brands is we went global really quickly. We tried to
40:57
get the market, we kind of own the market in UK.
41:00
There are some people growing there. We're slow in the US,
41:03
but we're probably biggest in Canada as well. Europe, we
41:07
can grow quite dramatically there. If we were to kind
41:10
of then put our resources into like retail or wholesale here,
41:14
that might just not be the best opportunity or best
41:16
area for focus for us right now. But I'm very
41:19
much in favor of the strategy because I think it's
41:23
just a good, providing you can maintain the customer experience.
41:26
I think it's just good to be able to give
41:27
the customers your product in their medium that they want it.
41:30
You know, whether that's Amazon, you've got to make sure
41:32
the financials make sense. But if they're in the store
41:34
and they see your product and they already wanted your product,
41:36
that's just a good customer experience. So yeah, definitely in
41:40
favor for it. So I would say to answer your question,
41:42
what else am I doing? We're just getting that sorted.
41:46
dealing with the volatility of the market right now. We're
41:48
not over leveraging ourselves with inventory to facilitate that kind
41:51
of stuff. And we'll probably look at retail wholesale next year. Yes.
41:56
What market that is. I'm not sure. It might be Australia.
41:59
It might not. But we're also putting a lot of
42:02
resources into making the biggest clothing comfort wear brand in
42:08
the world. So we want to, you know, really own
42:10
that lounge, pyjama space globally. Yes. You know, there's other
42:15
big players that are doing clothing that really rely on
42:19
their tech and their AI like Shein and stuff like that.
42:23
You know, that investment in that rapid testing framework, how
42:27
does that fit into the retail strategy? And the retail
42:30
strategy is very much more downstream. Finding these products is
42:34
more important than what I've been talking about, and that
42:36
goes down to a SKU level of clothing as well.
42:39
So I really want to get that nailed, and then
42:41
we'll go to the retail wholesale.
42:45
Speaker 2: I'm curious, like the Udi sounds like it's just such
42:48
a behemoth. Have you ever considered just cutting everything else
42:52
and just going all in on the Udi?
42:53
Speaker 1: Look, it's a good question. I think, I think I
42:58
had investors that were, you know, wouldn't come in because
43:01
I wasn't diversified enough. And that really played in my
43:06
head that what I should be doing is getting diversified.
43:09
My answer for that was to build all these brands,
43:11
some that didn't work. which in hindsight was a really
43:15
bad capital allocation decision. I actually talked to some other
43:20
people recently and they're like, you're too spread thin. And
43:23
it's just like, people are always going to poke holes
43:25
in that. But to answer your question, I don't think
43:28
I would enjoy that. I think I really do enjoy
43:30
launching lots of stuff and trying new things and learning
43:33
new stuff. Like I love the other brands as well.
43:36
So really from a capital allocation, return on investment point
43:40
of view, yes, it should just be Udi all in. but, um,
43:44
you know, I don't think that that's as fun as
43:46
it could be. I really want to build like a
43:47
fun brand. We just launched a boucle range that's selling
43:50
really well, just about to launch a fleece range as well,
43:54
doing lots of licensed collaborations and stuff like that. So
43:57
it's just, it's just good fun.
43:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I respect that man, because, um, that's what
44:02
it's all about at the end of the day. Like,
44:04
you know, it's about having fun and, uh, you know,
44:07
the highs are high and the lows are low, right? Like, uh, but, um, No,
44:11
it's obviously something you consider. I just had to ask you.
44:13
So we have to work towards wrapping up. I'm conscious
44:17
of your time as well. And like, you know, this
44:20
is an awesome conversation, man. I could talk to you
44:22
all day. You're selling a product every 10 seconds. I'm
44:27
curious around the machine that you have to support that around.
44:31
What does your team look like? Can you talk us
44:33
through that? You said you restructured things. You now have
44:36
one person. not working on multiple brands which is kind
44:40
of you know economies of scale play which yeah so
44:42
talk to us about that how the team is structured.
44:46
Speaker 1: So the smaller brands i think smaller brands really should
44:49
run lean and that's the beauty of e-commerce you can
44:51
run a small with kind of like one brand manager
44:54
that's either generally marketing focused um and then you probably
44:58
need a counterbalance of customer service and ops and that
45:01
can be a small that can scale you know $ 3,
45:04
$ 4 million, just that team. You can use agencies as
45:07
much as you want, scale up, scale down. The bigger brand,
45:13
we will share finance and HR to those smaller brands
45:16
just because it's a very scalable kind of resource. Honestly,
45:20
when a brand hits a certain size, I'd definitely get
45:22
a fractional CFO and fractional bookkeeper and separate it as
45:25
quickly as possible, but they can't support that at this point.
45:29
The team... You know, we have CMO, COO, CFO, and
45:36
then underneath, I'm not sure if this is going to
45:38
get too technical, but we do have like a head
45:41
of content, a head of e-commerce, which handles merchandising, everything
45:45
that goes on the website, handles developers. We also have,
45:49
what else have we got under that team? We've got
45:54
like a head of creative, who handles a lot of that,
45:57
they're kind of the custodian of the brand, managing that
45:59
side of things. We've also got, you know, obviously our
46:04
media buyers. We've got head of retention, which is kind
46:07
of like our email marketing people. Yeah, and then under ops,
46:11
we've got a big team underneath that that handle forecasting,
46:15
all of those kind of elements. Yeah, I'm not sure
46:19
if it's getting too granular.
46:20
Speaker 2: No, that's cool. And that team is split between Melbourne
46:24
and Adelaide.
46:25
Speaker 1: It is, yeah. Yeah. So customer service, we've got a
46:29
lot in Adelaide. We've also got a lot of our
46:31
content creation over in Adelaide. That's just how it happened.
46:34
And then we've got, yeah, a lot of our, two
46:37
of our C-level people here, a lot of our ops
46:39
team here as well. Yep.
46:41
Speaker 2: And do you, so you often fly your leadership team
46:44
to Adelaide or you guys are moving in between?
46:47
Speaker 1: We do fly our leadership team over to Melbourne. So
46:50
we've got more leadership team here. And we do our
46:53
strategy days here, which is really, really good. I think
46:56
the main thing with remote work is to build a
47:00
certain cadence of meetings and all the key things really
47:04
need to be structured in a weekly meeting where you
47:08
tick everything off, cameras on to ensure that culture, but
47:11
then also nurturing it in different ways is really, really important.
47:15
It's been a bit of a challenge, but we're definitely
47:16
learning how to do it.
47:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, got you. And then I have a lot of
47:20
respect for, that you're still building the business out of
47:23
Adelaide when you're like, you know, talent, you know, there's
47:29
not as much talent in Adelaide, right? It'd be usually
47:31
in the Melbourne or Sydney. Why is that? Is that
47:34
a lifestyle choice, family choice?
47:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good question. I think there's a lot
47:41
of value in it. As you mentioned before, Toby Pierce
47:43
from Sweat did it as well. There's huge, especially when
47:49
you're struggling to find someone for a role, it's amazing
47:52
to be able to post in two regions. If you've
47:54
got the full remote set up, it's so, so good
47:57
because you can compare candidates. We have not, you know,
48:01
picked or choose from, if someone was better in Adelaide,
48:04
would hire them in Adelaide. That's just how the splits
48:06
ended up. Granted, a lot of recent roles have been
48:09
in Melbourne, but our Adelaide team is, you know, top
48:13
class as well. They're incredible. So that's just kind of
48:15
how it fell. Obviously, if you kind of forward, you know,
48:19
two offices is not the best guy. It's not the
48:21
leanest structure, but you know, our people are kind of
48:23
everything and the reason why we've been so successful. So
48:26
it's worked out well. Yeah.
48:28
Speaker 2: Awesome. And, um, you as a leader, right? Like what
48:33
are you 26, 27, 27? Um, you know, you've got a,
48:37
a senior leadership team, C-suite leaders. Um, what are you
48:41
doing to develop as a leader and, uh, yeah, moving
48:46
into like this true CEO role actually quite fast from
48:49
how fast your business, businesses have grown. That must be
48:53
a big change.
48:54
Speaker 1: It's been, it's been the most unnatural thing that I've
48:58
done to this point, you know, both from me being
49:01
less hands-on, which is just against my nature, but also,
49:05
you know, just how much you have to learn and
49:08
how there's no actual, there's, I've read a lot of
49:11
books on becoming a CEO and listened to a lot
49:13
of successful CEOs on podcasts. And it's just so variable
49:18
across what your role needs to be, what your team is,
49:21
where your company is at. Is it in wartime? Is
49:23
it peacetime? It's just so, so difficult. It's definitely something
49:27
as a huge introvert, I really do struggle with. And
49:31
it is really my main thing that I'm just trying
49:33
to learn how to lead and how to structure organizations
49:37
like through OKRs and Encourage your C-level suite and stuff
49:41
like that. It's really, really unnatural and challenging. All I'd
49:44
say is, you know, treat people with respect and just
49:48
keep learning and ask for feedback, you know, constant feedback
49:51
from the people your direct reports are and even other
49:53
people as well. Get a coach. So, yeah, that's kind
49:56
of all I'm doing for it. Awesome.
49:58
Speaker 2: And you have a coach? Senior coach?
49:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I've got a coach. I've got coaches in
50:02
kind of a lot of elements of my life, like
50:04
different parts and not just– formalized coaches you know they're
50:08
just mentors that help me out.
50:10
Speaker 2: Oh i'd love to hear kind of would you be
50:12
able to share.
50:12
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah sure so uh look it's not not hugely
50:17
detailed i have a coach in in adelaide he um
50:20
more uh more from the business side of things so
50:24
a very uh white collar kind of upbringing um he's
50:27
also like a psychiatrist as well um so he helps
50:31
a lot of people so he's got that real ability
50:33
to kind of bring the best out of yourself, as
50:36
well as like you can talk about lots of things.
50:38
You know, it's an incredibly traumatic and stressful thing running
50:42
a business. You're dealing with a lot of other people.
50:44
So it's great to have someone that's incredibly mindful rather
50:48
than this is results, results, results, because you've got to
50:51
look after yourself, as you know. So he was incredibly helpful.
50:54
I also think that getting a formalized mentorship, and that
50:59
could be in a form of a board as well,
51:02
that you need to report to some accountability. It was
51:04
really beneficial. So that's what I'm kind of setting up now.
51:06
Hopefully Toby Pierce will help me out in that kind
51:09
of form. So yeah. Oh, awesome.
51:11
Speaker 2: So you're setting up a board.
51:12
Speaker 1: I probably won't set up a formal board, but I'm
51:14
trying to get more formalized mentorship and like a bit
51:17
more accountability for me and my C-level suite.
51:20
Speaker 2: Yeah. Awesome.
51:22
Speaker 3: All right.
51:22
Speaker 2: Well, look, we're going to move to the hot seat round.
51:24
Got a couple of questions for you and then we'll
51:27
work to wrapping up. If you could go back to
51:31
your first day in business and give yourself one piece
51:34
of advice, what would it be and why?
51:37
Speaker 1: Enjoy the process because that's 90% of the battle and
51:42
it's just, yeah, you've got to enjoy it as well
51:44
because you'll look back and you'll wish you enjoyed it more.
51:47
Speaker 2: What's the hottest product niche to be selling in right now?
51:51
Speaker 1: Oh God, they're all good. The one with the most
51:53
contribution margin that everyone's talking about.
51:57
Speaker 2: Okay. If you could have dinner with any entrepreneur, dead
52:00
or alive, who would it be?
52:01
Speaker 1: Elon Musk. He just couldn't go past it. I hate
52:04
to be boring, but he's amazing.
52:06
Speaker 2: And the last one, what's one thing you've learned today?
52:11
That you should book.
52:14
Speaker 1: Flights with long stopovers because I got stuck in Byron
52:17
Bay coming here.
52:18
Speaker 2: That's not a problem.
52:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's not a problem. Exactly. Oh, awesome.
52:22
Speaker 2: Well, look, Davey, thank you so much for your time, man.
52:24
And actually just, Things are open, honest, vulnerable, and humble.
52:28
Congratulations on all your success thus far. I look forward
52:31
to watching your journey and it's great to connect.
52:33
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, mate. Appreciate it.
52:34
Speaker 2: Hey guys, if you love this episode, make sure to
52:37
check out this interview with Scooter Braun on how he
52:40
identifies talent that could go on to find wild success
52:43
like Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande.
52:46
Speaker 4: Justin Bieber was the most talented, gifted kid I'd ever met.
52:51
It was so insane how great of a singer he was,
52:54
how soulful he was, what he could do on the
52:56
drums naturally.
52:57
Speaker 3: Caught himself with guitar and drums.
52:59
Speaker 4: He was a phenomenon. And we met at the perfect
53:03
time in both of our lives.