Drew Fallon teaches how to raise Ecommerce capital and financial modelling.

Mad rabbit, rabbit, mad, mad rabbit, rabbit, mad, mad rabbit tattoo Test, test, test, test, test, test, test, test, test, test, test, test, test, test, two. Thank you very much for joining the podcast. How are you? Sorry. Just bring the camera on you last minute. I spoke So can you give us an overview, high level overview of what Mad Rabbit is and the products that you have Great. And can we get to know you a bit? Who's Drew? What does your daily routine look like? What habits do you keep? What gets you up in the morning? Help us understand a bit more about your background before Mr. Rabbit. When did you What's your what's your life story, if you like? What's your life What pulled you into e-commerce? Why did you once. How did you become interested in e-commerce? Or how did you gravitate to Mad Rabbit Can you see Yeah. See, on Twitter, you got you recently posted about getting additional funding Your first outside investment came from Shark Tank, which is the equivalent of Dragon's Den here in the UK. And that was around $500,000. Can you tell us a bit more about that initial money from Shark Tank, how you used it, and then why you raised another round Can you break it down for sure. It's really interesting for people to understand the process and steps involved with getting that second round of investment done. What are some of the positives and negatives of raising three Shark Tank vessels, otherwise raising funding for business? And would you advise is strategy for other companies Do you suffer from the syndrome known as do you just go straight or are you trying to say you don't really want to see your role because that's all the way down just as way now. If you want to be open Yeah. Congratulations. Thank you. Now, you won the open. Yeah. Congratulations. And you're How good is this one from the one you've got with your experience That's. That's that's now that's called junior high That's where work, huh? Yeah. You got a lot of it. Number one there they believe in this sport. I've seen what it is. I've seen what it can be when it is at its peak. At this point, I've seen the passion and these fans and I've seen the passion of the athletes. Want to go and see specialist oh, yeah. They got to play it for the open is about 30 days away. What do you guys do with what is it that you don't have working the do you think is the better job Okay. So it's here. You know, we go there it is. Sorry about that. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. I, I was travelling. I forget where but I was grabbing my laptop into like a really packed backpack and I like one. I took it out of my camera. Just doesn't work anymore. So I had to know the field. Yeah, I should have said, like, I just assume that everyone does vodcast now. Vodcast, but, you know, it's so it is a podcast. So uh, but try and just to stick them on YouTube as well and do some shorts and stuff like that just to get makes. It makes more sense to be able to chop up content and stuff. So you got a great background going on there as well. Are you in the office? No, it's actually my apartment. I just, I have a little corner here that I set up for stuff like this. Whenever I'm doing like new pictures and stuff, it makes it a little more legit. Yeah, it looks good. Are you working from home? Mainly then. So yeah, our entire company is remote. Like, we don't even have an office I'm at school okay. So like I said, we just keep this rolling and then we do a lot of post anyway so we can cut it down if you want to take your time to think about questions, you can do that, uh, because we'll just splice it at the end and tighten stuff up and. Yeah, this is going to be probably episode three or four, so it won't be airing until maybe June. But so like I said, we're just going to get you in the back and then we never miss a week is the plan to just have oh, so that but I am super excited to talk about this one because of the finance aspect of it. It's actually why I reach out to you because a lot the other sites have been and founders and things like that, but it's just so important and yeah, I don't know a lot about it, but I know enough to get by. But I'm sure you'll be able to give a bit of a better overview of some of those aspects. So if you're right, we'll jump right in. Yeah. Okay, cool. And Drew, thank you very much for joining us on the show. How are you doing? Well, thank you for having me and happy to be here. Awesome. It's great to have you on. And we'll jump straight in with the first question. Can you give everybody an overview of Mad Rabbit? Yeah, so. So Mad Rabbit is the leading consumer tattoo skin care company. Really? We sell all natural products, skin and skincare stuff, right? So lotions, balms, gels, we just launched a body wash probably ago essentially in the value prop behind that Rob Matte Rabbit is not very dissimilar to how people with dyed hair use certain kinds of shampoos and stuff. Right. But like mass formulated products are those are bad for dyed hair and they're bad for tattoos and they're bad for all kinds of things, really. And so Mad Rabbit was basically born with this value pop in mind of these these these giant companies are making these big products that are really bad for tattoos. And there's this whole niche that really can benefit from an all natural tattoo conscious skin care formulations. And so, yeah, that's pretty much, you know, the 30 seconds to go there. Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you very much. And I think everyone would be interested just to get to know you a little bit more before we jump into the other questions. So what is your typical daily routine look like? What kind of habits do you keep? What gets you up in the morning? The answer your question. No, I did do I did the whole sort of morning routine thing for a really long time. I remember when I worked back in in actual banking and I had to be in the office like super early. And so I really bought into this whole notion of morning routine. And I would wake up at like four 30 and like go to the gym before work. I had to be there at six and have like meditation and all that. I think honestly, you know, as I, as I moved into a more cumbersome is not the right word, but a more sort of all encompassing sort of lifestyle with that rabbit, right? Like it's in the Start-Up World. Like you don't really turn work off honestly. Like it's just kind of always going like and so, you know, really what, what I do these days, this isn't totally dissimilar, right? Like I have my whole morning routine where I wake up and I do a little bit of journaling and I do a little bit meditation take some vitamins and stuff. But, but really, it's, it's kind of like I have this weird sort of like anxiety about, about work where I kind of like get up and start working right away, you know, for better or worse. And we'll see how long that is sustained for. But I think honestly, the whole, like, morning routine sort of like to really type attitude is like a little bit overrated because I did do like a whole like wake up at four 30 like our hour and for so long, like maybe like a year or two, I did that and like honestly, like we got to a point where I was kind of like, damn, like this sort of sucks. And I'm like kind of moved away from it. But there are there are certain things that I, that I did that I do still keep journaling, I think is really powerful. And just, you know, I started my morning by writing down three things that I'm thankful for every day. And I think it's just a good way to kind of wake up with some gratitude and put yourself in sort of good mood and stuff. So I guess like, you know, long story short, I don't, I don't have like a giant routine that I do anymore. But there are certain things that I took away from from that period of my life that I got really do it that I do think people could benefit from seeing that super interesting. I never had a corporate job, um, and I never really had to be plays at a certain time with certain tasks to do for a certain amount of time. But right. You just never turn off when you're especially in Start-Up World, your brain's always going. That can be somewhat exciting. But again, it also leads to anxiety and I know a lot of founders that just can't switch off. But those kinds of things meditation, exercise, journaling, ditto. I do exactly the same. And it's interesting how many people are picking up those habits and how impactful they are on people's lives is a big shift, I think in that way where people are just self-care focussed and then, you know, the work actually becomes better in my opinion once, once you are that. So help us understand a bit more about your background then. You mentioned banking before Mad Rabbit, so I saw that because you want to go really all the way back to school, if you like, what classes you took and how you ended up on on this journey. Yeah. So basically it all kind of parlays into itself. So I went to college with the two guys who founded Mad Rabbit. So Oliver's Islam and I were classmates of mine, and I guess I would, I would probably trace this whole route back to like maybe 20, 16. I was a sophomore in college when I launched my, my first e-comm company on my own. And so basically kind of started tinkering around with like just side hustles, right? Like building stuff on the internet, building websites, running Facebook ads back when they were super cheap and like all that kind of cool stuff. And so I met Salaam actually kind of through just through that ecosystem, right? I mean, the two entrepreneurs at the same school, right? Like you're never too far removed from each other. And so Salaam and I got really close well, maybe like even before probably before they started that rabbit maybe was a little bit after. But basically we were both working on e-commerce businesses and so I was always more financially inclined, and Salam was always really good at marketing, particularly Facebook marketing. And so I would help him with like his books and forecasts and budgets and stuff, and then he would help me on the other side was like the marketing and creative and branding kind of things. And so, you know, you do that for a certain amount of time, right? And you just kind of start to get really acclimated to working with somebody like that. And to be honest, like I was, I was, I was good at school. I think I had like a 35 GPA or something. Like I wasn't bad at it, but it was never really like my biggest focus honestly. Like, I think I was always just had the opinion. Like, there's a lot more to learn and that's like sort of outside the classroom. I did really enjoy my, my finance classes and stuff. Like when to go to it. We went to Miami of Ohio and like we need it. When you go to a school like that, it's like all those professors and all they really care about is like giving you the knowledge to like get into like the sexiest, like sort of Wall Street job, right? And so they like to go work at William Blair or JP Morgan or something like that, or Roberts for instance. But I I basically kind of got like almost like entangled in this sort of like entrepreneurship thing where it's like I started this business, started to get involved with like Slum and Oliver, and then you basically just get like it's whirlwind of like once you start something like that, like you don't really stop. It just kind of becomes like part of what you do. And so I think honestly I probably learnt a lot more from just like dabbling in my own sort of, you know, ventures and working with Salon and just kind of Googling and researching around and stuff. And so ultimately we'll talk a little bit more about this. I imagine like ultimately like Mad Rabbit starts to do well at the time to me seemed like just crazy numbers, right? Like I remember when when Salon was talking about how they were doing, like I think$1,000 a week or something in sales and I was like running my, my own business and I was doing, you know, a quarter of that maybe. And I was like, holy shit. Like, these guys are like going to the moon. How do I, how do I get in on this? And, you know, in hindsight, like, it's funny to look back on that because like, obviously, like, you know, that's like an hour these days, but like, it's just like I was I was looking at these guys are like, how how are they doing it? So I couldn't I couldn't really get to that step it they were at and over time, just kind of continue to work with them until ultimately about a year ago, it became it it made sense for us all to go full time. So we actually worked full time in the business for the first two and a quarter years, basically until last February, I think. And by that time, Salama and myself were we're all we're all full time. And so we're kind of just, you know, going back to my background, it was like basically just dabbling around in an e-commerce and finance. And then I did go work for two years. And what was equity research? It's like a division of banking where I covered e-commerce companies for two years after college while we were all running that rabbit on the side. Right. And so what happened there was like, I'm covering these e-commerce companies, right? Like, I think Wayfair, Carvana, Amazon, Shopify, Facebook, like that whole universe of stuff. And that was where I really learnt like how to like do modelling and how to really understand the statements of these kinds of companies as well as fundraising, right? Like I think we did four or five IPOs while I was there in my sector. And so, you know, my, my experience between my own entrepreneurship, my own, my own journeys, on that side. And then also, you know, the more sort of tactical finance stuff that I learnt a couple of years after school really just kind of led into what I think slam. And I saw a lot of value in early on as far as, you know, bringing somebody on that kind of understood that side of things. Awesome. And what that as a couple of questions I have, that was the if you're the financial side primarily, what are the other founders? What do they bring, um, in terms of their core key skillsets? Yeah. So slam I mean slams the guy who literally sailed Mad Rabbit from zero to $40 million in sales by just like being in Facebook ad manager and, and to this day that's really his job right like we use more of our acquisition performance marketing head right and so he's just frankly gifted at that and he always has been. And then Oliver Oliver is really kind of the brains behind the whole operation. I like the idea was his the branding was his, the logo was his name was his or you know, all that you can you really get on with the whole thing. And so I think Oliver is really good at kind of being the one to take a step back and really understanding where this thing can go and and crafting really, really the vision for the company. He it's cool, right? Like if you're in a CEO position, you kind of get like information from all angles that you can kind of synthesise that in a way that nobody else in the organisation can. And I think Oliver does an exceptional job of listening to his people and understanding how it all works together. It sounds like you have a dream mix of the right people in the right positions, you know, pushing forwards. I think a lot of founders would love to have that kind of structure straight out of the gate. And then you said you tried a couple of businesses before. Matt, Robert yourself, you remember what you were selling. Yeah. So my first one was like a hydration Start-Up. So I started it in 2016 to. Right. And so I think of like, like a hydrate, like a liquid is like a packet of like electrolytes and vitamins and stuff really just like that never really got anywhere exciting. I mean it wasn't like doing $0 in sales, but nothing that was like ever going to have me like quit my job is and then I did also try another one where I wanted to basically like supplements. So I was kind of like the food supplements space when I was dabbling and stuff. And so like protein powders and pre workouts and all that stuff are like marked up like insanely and so I basically wanted to take. Are you familiar with public goods at all? Well, dive into it anyway. So for the listeners just to go public goods is just, is just a company that basically will sell you stuff at cost, like maybe like a soap or I mean, they have all kinds of stuff like soaps or probably they probably have protein powder they probably have body wash shampoo just like random household goods. Right. And what they do is like they will sell you a subscription to public goods for I think it's like 60 bucks a year and then you can buy that shampoo for like $3 instead of $10 at the store. So they basically take the mark-up and just get rid of it. And then they make their, their contribution margin basically off of your subscription. And so I wanted to do that with, with supplements you know, you could basically charge somebody $10 a month or whatever and sell them a protein powder tub that would probably be $30. You could sell them for 12 and so that one, there was a lot of technical challenges with that one, like Shopify like at the time, I just wasn't equipped to support that kind of business model. I don't, I don't know what, what public goods is built on, but I had a really hard time basically getting the actual technical infrastructure to support the subscription and like it was just a weird like checkout situation. So that one like literally like barely like didn't really work at all. Honestly, I thought it was a good idea. I think it's a good idea, but those were my two kind of experiments before. And like all, all the while, like I was working for Mad Rabbit, like on the side, right? And so I was just kind of trying like all these different kinds of things, but I could never get it to work as well as a lab and all could with that rabbit. So yeah, that's kind of how you end up here. Okay, great. And it sounds like you're being put to work on the things that you're best at, which is primarily financial by the sounds of things, which is, which is cool. So can you just walk us through some of the key financial milestones for Mad Rabbit since you since you started their Zen milestones? Yes. Sorry. Um, some of the key moments, I guess, for, for, for you guys like your first meaningful amount of sales through to your, your first investment uh, how to and subsequently a second round, just some of the key moments that have led from when you joined to now. Yeah. I mean, the, the first thing that comes to mind was our, our, our first million dollar month, which was, I mean, just you feel so on top of the world, right? Like, I think it was, it was a year ago, it was March of 20, 21 and it was like we did like, I think like, you know, I thought I shouldn't be too specific on numbers but like, you know, a couple hundred grand like a few months before and then it's like a really ballooned into this like million dollar month. Right. And you, so you hit this run rate where it's like you feel like you've reached this escape velocity. And so that that was by like the best that I've ever felt. Honestly, when I was like two and a half year, two years in the making too. Right. But other than that, like, I mean I remember in 2019 Black Friday was like we were doing this is like really early on for me. So, so, so that started in January of 2019. I was probably involved, you know, by July or October maybe kind of like you think you two, three, three kind of deal. And like when I first started looking at all this stuff I think they were doing like maybe 30 grand a month like not even and then like by November, by Black Friday, by December it was like 100 grand a month. And so like it was just really cool to see this insane sort of growth coming from just pure product market there, right? Like this is just a product that hadn't been offered before and that like everybody wanted and like, you know, the half of the customers are women, half the consumers are men, right? Like it's totally gender neutral. Granted, everybody kind of universally agrees that like this is something that should have existed before. And it was it was really cool to see that unfold. So I think as far as like watching the growth, like tripling in the matter of like two months in the Black Friday, 2019 was super exciting to watch. Our first million dollar month was just euphoric is like that once you get there that's like when it goes like this, it could really be like an actual like venture sale business, right? I mean like you're doing a couple hundred grand a month. It's like, that was going to be awesome. Business is right. But like we had set out where we were at that time setting out to like go and raise a bunch of money like we're closing up, like where we go all the way with it and then as far as like financing. So our first financing was with Mark Cuban off of the Shark Tank deal. So that that one wasn't like super exciting. I guess honestly, like you don't really I didn't feel like super good about that, partially because we didn't really know how Mark Cuban was going to be as a partner. He got a, in my opinion, a really good deal on Shark Tank as far as valuation goes. He tends to do things Mark Cuban and it was actually like I mean, they shot Shark Tank in September of 20, 20 and that year that we didn't even like get funded from that the until May so it was kind of a really it was a rigorous process. I mean Cuban's team was seems like there is so much due diligence like so much going on a background like this the documents were so complicated compared to like what you see and traditional sort of anything like that. And so I guess, you know it's obviously like it's awesome to have Mark Cuban as a partner and he's been like way better than I think we would have anticipated. But at the time, it was a really long kind of intense, drawn out sort of process to get that one wrapped up very shortly after we raised our our seed round to sit around. And so that was a $2 million round that was led by venture capital and that was last June. So that was I mean, that was like that was really validating right? Because you get like Mark Cuban involved. You have this New York venture capital firm involved. There is some, you know, some other institutions and it was really validating. And it's to kind of get real, you know, institutional investors behind your mission and behind your vision and buy your team and kind of like, you know, you have this capital of people who, like all agree that like, hey, this can be something really special. Right? And so I think that was you know, that was the biggest thing that I kind of took away from that, right? Like, we didn't even actually need the money at that time. So we saw opportunity and things that we can use it for. So we decided to to raise it and we got a pretty good valuation for it. So so we did it and it just it's really great. So like every time you raise around, right, like you get these new partners that bring value different ways and you get capital to make investments and accelerate growth and double down on things that you, you know, you him wanting to be doing for a long time. And then we and then we also raised just last month for a $4 million round. So we've actually done to do real rounds like three I guess technically the included Cuban and that that one was was just because we saw so much opportunity in front of us and that's like $2 million. It's a lot of money, right? It is a lot of money. But it wasn't enough for like what we wanted to do and like where we were going. we basically just took the existing investors, raised the money from them and then got a couple million bucks from from some other outside institutions that came in as well. And your background in e-commerce equity research, how does that help you in those kinds of situations? Does it give you confidence? Does it actually make you feel frustrated when you see a deal, when you know the other guys getting a good, good option there? I mean, how does that how does that play? Yeah. So I think it's really important and this is like really honestly, one of the biggest things for me is like I was on the sell side, right? And so what I did is I covered this list of of like 20 e-commerce companies that were publicly traded companies and like are you familiar with like sounds like equity analysts? Like they're the ones that like the price targets, right? They're like like I think Twitter should be a $60 buy, buy, buy what you don't really like. What most people really realise is that I think like 80% of the companies that are covered in that context by those analysts are rated by because it's the sell side right like we're trying to sell stocks to the hedge funds on these the other big facilities like whoever and what you're doing is you're selling equity right. I mean whether it's in the form of covering the stock or if you do an IPO, you're selling equity. Correct. So it was really no different from what I did with the seed round, right? Like that if the institution was different instead of fidelity, it was a different, better capitalist. But at the end of the day, like you're just selling equity, right? I mean, it's all sales. You're just kind of basically putting some more numbers behind it than like maybe like a selling a software or something. But, um, so I think that was super relevant experience for me, you know, because, you know, I'm dumbing down a little bit. Like there's obviously like a lot of due diligence like background work that goes on. But at the end of the day, you have having that experience with what, what makes investors eyes light up, right? Like what are they, what are they like? What are they like to hear? You know, what, what do people really like? What what is it? What is it that you can convince them of that will give them conviction to make the investment? And so I think my experience on a sell side selling equity basically was was super, you know, related, was super relevant to sort of that that a lot of the major like fundraising initiatives that are gone. Can you summarise some of those those points that make investors eyes light up? As you said? I'm sure it's quite complicated, but if you could wrap it up in a bow for our listeners, what sort of things would be in that? Yeah. So and I'll also explain this sort of as it relates to the sector that we are in, which is duty and duty investors really like high gross margin products, right? So you know, if you're in food and beverage, let's say you're something like a like a drink or something and it's like your margin's 30% like a venture capitalists will have a really hard time. I shouldn't say really our time. We'll have a harder time getting behind that because there's just less room to play with them, you know, after you sell the product, like how much money are you are you left with? And so people really like strong gross margins right so big Mark-ups, they really like large opportunities. And so like one of the examples that I could get here was like instead of trying to convince investors that tattooed skin care was like this billion dollar category, right? Because it doesn't really exist yet, like Mad Rabbits creating the category. So I don't have like item. So I just point to from like a Nielsen article and be like that's how much people are spending on passive skin care. And so what like the basically the language that we use and like the pitch deck and stuff was like, hey, like there's over 100 million people in the United States that are tattooed. Like, imagine if they just use some, some skincare products that were good for their tattoos, right? Like, how big is that market? Like that sounds pretty big, right? And so I think like big markets, strong gross margins and then advertising efficiency is really important too. So and I think this audience will understand us better than most. But we have really, really good customer acquisition costs. And that's just a function of two of two things. Really. No one start a lack of competition. Frankly, we don't really run into any real big spenders on online channels. And then to Matt Rabbit's not bad at advertising and branding. So I think at the end of the day, what is what do all those things sort of trickle down to? Right. It's like bottom line, like high gross margins, like good advertising efficiency in a big market, right? Like if you do those three things, the investor who's buying the equity, right? And like what is equity like? It's a stake in future earnings. If they think that those three things can basically amount to future earnings, then they'll go buy it, right? So I think as far as is summarising it goes, those are probably three most important. I mean, there's a time where they get into. But for high level purposes. Yeah. Thanks And how have you found the VC world? Obviously were quite recently. You've quite recently been through it. Um, I was listening to another e-commerce podcast and they were talking specifically about the pressure on VCs to invest because of the current climate and interest rates and things like that. But that's obviously changing now. Um, but what was your experience? Um, did you, did you have one VC in mind? Did you have a network there already and you went to them, did you, did you shop around what was your experience of, you know, directly working with VCs? Yeah. So there's, there's certain you can raise capital in a number of ways, right? So you can either go to venture capitalist who is going to require extraordinary return. You can go to friends and families like angels who will probably just be money and hope that they get a little bit more back. Or you can go to like a family office or like a private equity firm that doesn't necessarily require the 100 times that the VCs looking for, but they'll they'll be more comfortable underwriting a deal that they can get. Call it five to 15 times on and so what we did and so like what the methodology is for raising a seed round, right? Because in theory, like your seed round should be the lowest price that you ever issue shares that and so we were like, okay we can go and do venture a venture. It's a pure venture round right now right because this is the lowest that whatever any price that and so I knew a guy from from college who he's the founder of a company called Clorox, which is like a technology apparel company and his name is Michael. And so Michael was incredibly helpful to me even before I was at Met Rabbit. And so he had raised, you know, maybe you see a around or a series at a time. And he basically helped plug me into that network. So it's honestly kind of a domino effect. Like once you get into like one intro, like you might, you put together a deck, you you send the deck out, whoever bites, like buy it and you got to call them. And even if they end up passing if they're a good person and your story is interesting enough, usually they'll pass you to somebody else. The big hey, not for me, but I do have this friend at XYZ shop who, you know, who would take a look at it. And so that's kind of what happened to us. So we set out to raise the seed round last like December or January maybe. And so I had a Michael and I was like, How do you do this? Like, what do you like? What's that one? And he was like, I'll put you in front of a few people. And so he did. And I don't think any of us people said yes, but they, they kind of pass around and and these, these VCs are they're all chasing deals, right? I kind of like what you alluded to. Like there's like this this idea right now that there is way too much capital and way too few deals out there. And so it's their job to look at stuff. Right? And if you put together a deck that's interesting enough, they'll they'll they'll look at it and they'll usually take a meeting with you. And so it's really just this domino effect. It's like getting in one meeting and then getting intro to people. I mean, fundraising is a full time job, right? We're just taking intro, taking calls, putting it on materials, like getting getting through rounds and around the ground. You know, you get there for our due diligence with someone and they tell, you know, and it's like, okay, that was two months. And there's a there's the whole thing. But ultimately, and this is something that's, I think really important for people to understand is usually you just have to find there. It only takes one. Yes. Right. And so you just have to find somebody to start with. And so are RC lead acronyms that are capital documents. The overview there, it was just a fit, right? Like it fit his thesis. And not everybody has a thesis that involves tattooing, skin care and whatever else it isn't. So you have to find somebody that's looking for something in your sector. Be somebody who's looking for something that they think that they can get. They're required to turn on and see somebody they want to work with. Right? I mean, like we talked to all of our investors a really fair amount, and you don't want somebody who's, you know, up your arse all the time. But you do want somebody who's paying attention, who can do things that they can help and be strategic, etc. And so, yeah, it's really just, you know, only takes one. Yeah. I mean, we probably to be honest. It wasn't like it wasn't like we got like 100 no's and one. Yes. I think we got probably like 30 no's. And before we got to. Yes. Which is emotionally exhausting, honestly, like you just get beat down left and right and it's like you start to doubt yourself and you're like, maybe they're right. Like these are all, you know, world class or professional investors like and they're telling you that like it's not going to work but use have to find that one. It's really just a matter of meeting people again. It makes a lot of sense. Um, and there seems to be division, but I don't know what by what percentage. Let's just call it 50 50 of founders. They're trying to bootstrap their way all the way up to as big as they can get their business. And then other founders or companies who are looking to get investment and I don't think there is a right or wrong way. But maybe, could you explain some of the advantages of each and why you might want to look at getting investment versus not taking investment? Yeah, so bootstrapping is, is great. It was bootstrapped for two and a quarter years or so, I think. And I do think there's this little bit of like a glorification of bootstrapping. Like people think that like if you raise venture capital, like it's it's because you can't do it on your own. And that may or may not be true in certain contexts. I think that if you have a business that can be a $100 million business and like top line business one day or you think it can be, there's no reason not to go raise money, right? Because what people that subscribe to this notion of bootstrapping are all concerned about it, like nobody else. Nobody else owns my company. Right. And I it's it's 1% of the pie for myself, but like the typical sort of like bigger pie, smaller piece kind of maths basically. Right. If you think that your company can be worth a couple hundred million dollars at some point, it makes way more sense to go out and raise like venture family, obviously private equity capital because hey, you're going to get there way faster than than someone else. And B, if you don't do it, somebody else in your space is going to write like it. Mad Rabbit decided to want to be bootstrapped forever. We'd probably be comfortably doing eight figures in sales right and you'd be it'd be an awesome business for the people who own the most company. But like why wouldn't somebody just go out and raise their own $4 million seed round and just absolutely crush us? Right. Because if they think that if they think that it can be worth$100 million top line, one day they're going to go out there and they're going to raise money because it's going to help them gain all the market share that they can. And so I think, you know, at the end of the day, if the flip side of the coin is if you have something like insanely proprietary that can produce cash flow on its own, no reason to raise money, right? Like like with Facebook, they raised money, but they raised a very small amount of money for a $500 billion company or whatever in their in their sort of private round. And so that was because simply they just didn't really need to. And so if you have that kind of like total unicorn sort of opportunity, I would say no. But if you're in a space that like is in wildly proprietary and like does require like creating a brand, creating a brand is expensive. And if you don't do it in a in a potentially big category somebody else will. And so that was kind of our methodology in our thinking as far as, you know, going out and raising money but bootstrapping is great, right? I mean, like what's better than owning 1% of your $50 million company? Like that's fucking awesome, right? And then like if you wanted to sell it one day, like you could cash out, but you know, at that point, like, you know, nobody's like making rules for you. Like you don't have to report to anybody. Like you do whatever you want. And it sounds great, right? I mean, we don't have any investors that we disagree with fundamentally about the business at this point. So I think I think as far as autonomy goes, it's it's not much of a differentiator for us whether or not we own the whole company. But there's there's give and take. Right. I just think if you're in a category that requires, you know, building a brand and building a category like like we are, it's going to take money to do that. And and generally speaking, the best source of capital is, you know, something like a family office or a venture capitalist or a private equity firm that has kind of seen it before and has connexions and stuff. And so that would be my sort of my take on it. Of course. What kind of KPIs are you focussing on now that you have investment or keep it as a metrics for the business? A daily, weekly, monthly, yearly audit? Or do you do you have autonomy on that and do you change it depending on who you're talking to, whether it's the founders, whether it's the investors? Um, how do you kind of measure the business at this point? Yeah, I think, um, it, it could be different for different businesses. I think for e-commerce businesses in general, a really important thing that everybody's always managing to is, is Out-Compete attack. So I think between like LTV to cash burn and revenue growth that to, to a sophisticated investor that tells pretty much a whole story, right? It's like how, how well are you doing acquiring new customers? How are you doing monetising those customers how much money are you earning while you do it? And so is the revenue growth. And so I think, you know, for investors that's certainly what they care about with like when Salam Oliver and I get into it, we're quite a bit more granular than that. Obviously, like we have like monthly review or monthly reviews where you really dive into it and you kind of see like like what went wrong. Like, you know, you do a variance analysis every month. Like if you have I call it like an RFP and a department, like a mad rabbit. Like that's just me literally. But like if you have anybody who's like working on this kind of stuff in your business, like they'll take their monthly budget for, say, February and then they'll take the actual February and go back and look at, you know, where did we miss on accounting or marketing? Where did we miss on wages in the overpaid contract? And then you basically just do a variance analysis and you can kind of pull forward the learnings and try to basically get as close your budget as possible. So we literally all go through every single account every month, which I don't do with investors because you just don't I mean, it's not they don't want they don't wanna hear that but yeah, I mean high level like LTV to cash burn in revenue grab are probably like the three things for us for this kind of business model, right? For like an e-commerce sort of consumer goods company that you could really kind of get the whole government picture for and variance is only can you dig any deeper on that and what that actually is or is as simple as just looking at what were you predicted or forecasted as well. Well actually yeah I mean it's it's pretty simple right? So like what I do is like I put out monthly or quarterly budgets to the marketing team because like I mean, the biggest cost internally is, is marketing. And so like specifically like the marketing team. And I'll be like, hey, guys, like spend this much on Facebook, spend this much on Google, like Pinterest, like whatever, all the way down, right? So then like once I finish closing the books on, on March or February or whatever example, then I'll be like, hey, like, you spent, you know, $5,000 instead of $3,000 on Facebook or I'm making these numbers up on Facebook this month. Like what? Like what happened there? Like, why, why did we go over, like, why are we seeing good return? Like with them? You're holding like what was was it worth it basically now? And it it is honestly that simple, though. Like, it's literally just like comparing your budget to your actual and then and then diving in with the appropriate managers basically to determine whether or not that was like a good thing or a bad thing. Right? Like, like if we overspend on like paid search or TikTok you know, it's it's not necessarily a bad thing. Like we I think for my budget, like we crushed my TikTok budget for like January or whatever, but it's like it's because it was working and like I didn't magically know that, like, tic tac was going to start working for January. I just said, hey, go out and spend a couple thousand bucks or whatever. You know, they end up spending the time and it's like, oh, well, good. Like, it's because it was producing your turn. And so it's slightly nuanced in that sense. But at the end of the day, I mean, it is quite, quite simple. I think you we really just compare like what you thought it would be to like what it actually was and then trying to figure out why. That's super interesting. So how are you? Um, so you're passing on a budget and is in essence to marketing to a department to go ahead and spend. How are you forecasting that budget? Are you using previous data are using what are you factoring into that? Um, I love the flexibility of, and then being able to overspend that that's obviously needed. Um, but how are you, how were you able to forecast that for them? Yeah. So this is a slightly loaded question depending on how and how granular your model model is basically the way that I do it is I model our revenue off of ad spend, right? And like how many customers I think we can acquire, like let's just say our track is $10 and we want to produce$100 in revenue in a month. Then we have to acquire at least ten customers to produce that revenue. Right? And then whatever comes back from an LTV perspective is pretty much a bonus I guess. But you basically can back into how much you're willing to spend to acquire a customer, how much you think that customer is going to be worth, and then how many customers do you want? And so that all fuels into the top line and then when you have like a like we have a subscription element to our business, right? So then you have to kind of model, you know, what is the recurring revenue component to that. And so all of that feeds into top line stuff. And really it's all I do it by week literally. Like I do like literally weekly spending, like weekly cohort sizes and like all these things that I think are reasonable. And I'm the finance guy, right? So like my definition of reasonable is, is slightly different than the definition of reasonable of marketing. But so I literally will do it like by week. How many customers do we want? How much are we willing to spend, how much we think they're worth? Like if I want to do, you know, a couple million bucks in a month, like how many customers do you need to do that? And that's that comes down to like your AUV or LTV, right? And you kind of back into the cohort size how much money do we need to acquire a cohort of that size? And this is like a model that feeds this is like the entire company model, right? So like if you change, you know, your desired cohort size for the third week of March, like that was literally change like your balance sheet cash, right? Because there's a cash flow involved with the acquiring customers. And so it's cool because you get this really like holistic view on like how the company is affected from every single angle. But yeah, I mean, it's it's literally it's a quite a classic like restatement financial model. And like if I, you know, a series$4 million in February and I was like, hey, like April was a really strong month for us usually like there's really good seasonality there. Like if I'm cool with taking that $4 million cash balance down to totally making this up like 3.9 million or you know, how many more customers can I buy was cool. The balance sheet look like 3.8 million or 2.9 million because because I'm going to be spending money to acquire those customers and they don't. In the case of Mad Rabbit, they actually do. But typically, like you don't always make money on the first purchase, right? Like you can have a $30 and a $30 cash and like you have to wait for a purchase two or three to actually make money off of that. And so basically long story short, like you build a financial model for the entire company of what you want the company to look like. And the budget is just the middle of that model that's amazing. And I suppose who then? So one thing that popped into my mind as you were talking, that was just how, how dynamic that can make the business not necessarily just when times are good, but also when times are bad. And I don't know if you've experienced any supply issues at all or stock issues or anything like that, but I suppose that gives you you have that insight ahead of time and gives you the ability to factor that into your model and therefore decrease budgets and do things that way so that you hopefully shouldn't sell out or burn any customers in that process. Has that actually happened? Have you got an example of that happening or. Yeah, so we launched a sun screen in March of 20, 21. We bought 60,000 units, which is a fair amount, and we sold it all just, I mean, insanely fast, like I think like three or four months and it was like, like I'm going like, it's a long running marketing. It's like, yeah, like we just sold it all and then me and financing on like we just resell it all. And so like I think, I think that was our only really big stock out. I do think that was more of a function of like we had no idea that the business was just going to be that successful and like you'd have, you'd be really hard pressed to justify buying 130,000 units of a product that you haven't lost before and that you have no idea what the velocity is. So I'll chalk it up to just like we just weren't prepared, honestly, for, for how quick that was going to be. But since then we, we really haven't experienced any stock outs. And so what we do now and I brought, I bought on I had a head of operations who helps me realise this. What we do now though is like that revenue model that I was talking about, you can basically take like let's say that I think that half of our sales are going to come from top to bottom. 30% are gonna come from sunscreen or whatever, whatever the breakdown is, you can take those weekly revenue numbers strap percentages to them. As far as like what you think product wise is going to make up that revenue number and then divide it by the selling price. And you have like your weekly units, right? So what that does is that nowadays, like now that we have like a little bit more capacity, like it's not it's not just me anymore. Like I have this kind of operations. Is this really good planning I can basically give her my revenue build for the month and then she and then we work with her to determine what makes up that revenue. And then you can basically make account like a production schedule and make sure you're never stopped or never got a stock. And so I think we've done a much better job of it since that's because that sunscreens sell out like that, hurt like that, hurt like we should have. We should've done a couple more million dollars last year. I think like if we would have stayed in stock of that for full year sales. And so you really don't. And that's part of the reason we had to bring on our head of Ops REI. We were like, damn, like that just can't happen again. And so I think once you add people to the team, like it starts to unlock just I mean projects and initiatives that you literally can't do by yourself. Like a year ago, like it was literally just me, Oliver and Salom, right? And like we just hired our 10th person that starts in like a week or two. And so it's like you start to just be able to do things like that. That really maybe don't like obviously drive impact to the business like right away. But like just the fact of like we won't sell out this year of anything. Almost like something crazy happens. The fact that we won't sell out this year of anything is just incremental growth year over year, right? Because it's like if I sell, let's say it was like 60,000 sunscreens last year and like now I can sell 120,000 simply because I didn't go out of stock, you know, that's just low-hanging fruit. Like that's just a layup basically. You know, it makes a lot of sense and from a logistical perspective, do you ship your own goods? See these three people? Yeah, we have a three people out in California who's actually also our, our co-packer. And so we have a really great relationship with them and it works out really well. That's good. And how do you from a financial perspective make those decisions? Is it simply just a cost play versus know time materials to ship your own goods versus using a 3 p.m. when it comes down to making those fundamental business logistic decisions? What you looking at, uh, in your, in your modelling to understand what's the best way to move yeah. So for a company like a beauty company our cost to ship stuff is actually more than it cost to make it. So this is like probably $4 that ship but only cost couple bucks to make. And so it's like where does the leverage in the piano really come from? Not really the product, so much so as the actual fulfilment, right? Like if you're spending more fulfilment, there's just more room to save. And so like the motivating factor for we used to use a, it's a more traditional feel, I'll say but then once we realised that we could save all this variable cost on like the fulfilment by going with him because you know he we have a just really great manufacturing we basically came to an agreement where we could save money with him and it just, it drives leverage like through the whole business in a way that you couldn't even achieve if you got cheaper. Product costs are so, so also like organic and all natural. So it's a little bit more expensive than like a typical sort of like garbage sort of, you know, lever product automation. And so that that makes it really important for us to have a focus on getting cost savings elsewhere all while maintaining that growth mindset. Right. Like you don't want to like raise $6 million of like B.S. and then be like, oh, how can I, you know, basically you want to grow, right? Like you're doing it to grow. Like you don't want to necessarily just like cut back on everything and like hinder growth. And so it's kind of a balancing act. But generally, I would say my my predisposition is usually around cost. Like I said though, like while maintaining the growth mindset. And so I realised that we could say no expense per unit basically by using our, our business and it just it makes a lot of sense. So you mentioned a bit about your competition there. Um, and maybe them that they don't use uh organic materials in their products and potentially not the best fit for tattoos. What your feelings around the general space in terms of your products positioning, in terms of the competition, how would you summarise the product market fit? Yeah, so kind of like back to what I said at the beginning of the broadcast, so tattoos forever have been like this sort of thought of as like this taboo, grungy, sort of underground, like sketchy sort of culture, right? You know, if you ask your, your grandparents or parents like what do they think of tattoos? I'll be like and like that's so gross. Like why would you do that to yourself? Kind of thing? And now it's like my, my 19 year ten year old sister like has like a little flower tattoo like on her arm and like I have a tattoo on my leg and our CEO Oliver has a couple of cat designs, arms and stuff, and it's like, what are my, what are. We were just 20 something year old kids like walking around the city with tattoos and like it's, it's just commonplace at this point. And so this whole idea that like tattoos are this weird sort of grungy, overserved culture sort of overlooked culture is really changing now. So like depending on what surveys you look at, like I think it was 2012, there was like 21 or 23% of people in America had a tattoo and like from that same survey like by 20, 19 or 20, 20, like it's like over 40%. And so now you're talking about a population of over a hundred million people that are completely underserved by the skincare market. And so you're talking about the actual positioning of products. It's like when rabbit launches a daily body lotion, okay, why on earth would you pay $25 for a daily body lotion when you get Rabbit, when you go to CVS and pick up a Jergens for a box, well, maybe you're somebody who, who has a couple of tattoos on their arm, right? And you spend $2,000 on them. Jergens, for example, has it's very rich in vitamin E. Vitamin E is great for people that don't have tattoos because it's really good at pulling impurities out of the skin. Like who wants impurities in their skin and every once a baby's in their skin. Vitamin E, however, does not understand that like a tattoo is like something that you want there. And so it just it sees the ink as a security and it basically in like the subdermal layer skin, it would break down faster over time. It's like basically you end up with this tattoo that your mom told you was 20 years and now that looks like crap in 15 years because you're using stuff on it that just makes it fade quicker, you know, etc., etc. And so this demographic of a hundred people that are talking about should be and apparently are willing to pay a premium for these all metal products that contain ingredients that are that are effectively cognisant of the fact that they have got to use either they want to preserve their tattoos, etc. And so I think from a positioning perspective, you know, this is the joke and I've said it so many times now that it used to be funny, but like in pictures and stuff, I'll be like, I've never been in a Procter Gamble board room, but my guess is they're got a lot of tattoos in their right. And so it's like, you know, you got this, this group of like 65 year old white dudes sitting in the boardroom in Cincinnati and they're like, they're not thinking about tattoos, right? And they're not like, Oh, like how, how can we help that? Like, they don't, they're like, they just don't think about it. And so many addicts experiencing this first mover advantage, I would say, in the category, frankly, because nobody else really thought of it before, at least not on the Internet. Really. We have competitors, right? Like this isn't like the newest idea in the world, but as far as like going direct to consumer and like innovating on the actual business model, Matt Rabbit was was the first company to do it in the category. And that's why we've scaled past what all of our competitors have done, you know, even launching seven or in some cases 20 years after an upgraded and a lot of the time for founders at least I think their first products gut feeling of intuition and experience and they bring them to market and do the research afterwards and worry about the financials afterwards so fast and and that kind of ethos. But since that very first products that you guys banked on you've released subsequent products and really broadened that range. And I think for a lot of founders they would still be acting on gut when they do those sort of things from their first product. And their intuition. But have you because you were engaged in the business so early on, were you able to influence the products that were launched from a financial perspective? And if you were, what kind of things were you looking at? It's a good question. So am I involved in product development? More from an operational perspective, right? Like I actually help them make the products. I don't think of the products necessarily. I think I think the body wash that we just launched with my idea maybe but really, Oliver and Salom are the ones that really drive the product sort of formulation. And the board that said we also kind of let our community tell us, right? So Matt Rabbits in this like interesting vertical where like we have this unique opportunity to really foster this community of tattooing people. So like real quick, I just example like think of like Harry Harry's razors is a multibillion dollar CPG company. But like why does Matt Rabbit have more Instagram followers than Harry's razors? Like there are literally 105 sides. Well, it's because nobody looks nobody likes looking. You're talking about razors on the Internet. You know, there's no there's no real community for that. And so Matt Rabbit, you know, we have this very outsized for our SAT, for our company size, like social ballet and Discord and Facebook, VIP groups and like all these different ways of like fostering community. And it's because people actually enjoy engaging around this topic with each other online. And so like the bar of soap that we're launching in front of us is public. I'm a lot to say this, but we're launching a bar of soap in like two months. And it wasn't our idea. Like, I didn't think of it and think of it and think of it. We just sort of saw people talking about in our Facebook VIP idea of talking about how they really want a bar of soap from it. And, you know, if you have a Facebook group of 5000 people and there's 40 people commenting on a thread about how they want a bar soap, like let's just say that's a good sample size. And like extrapolate that to our, you know, our current customer base of a lot. And it's like, okay, like that's, that's a real way that we can provide value to the community, right? So I think we really look to them honestly to tell us what they want. And it's because, you know, our ultimate goal the other day is, is to bring these people value in ways that no other brand has. And how do you do that? You do that by doing what they want. And that's that's really been the main driver, I would say. Like we're a very community centric company, more so than I think, you know, everybody likes to say that in our community that's not throw up because everybody on Twitter uses it so much. But like I do think that Matt Robinson, a unique position to kind of leverage that community because people are just so engaged around tattoos. And so we do really we lean on that honestly for that side of things. One of the ones that gets me is family that's see and community. My various but one observation that I've made, I'm looking at some of the fastest growing brands that we've had the the pleasure to work with people like Gymshark and others in the past is that they initially became part of the community or accepted by the community. And then that community, including their brand, became a culture. And then finally they became the leaders of that culture. So they were so symbiotically engaged with the culture that it was almost impossible to tell the difference between the community of the brand and the products and everything was just part of one big oozy soup of it was just this culture and I guess that seems like the trajectory you are on. You become indistinguishable with, you know, tattoos. And that's just a super interesting, um, some something that gets me excited anyway. And whenever a brand is so deeply embedded in community, I know that's such a strong place for you guys and that's just going to be so interesting to see how that, how that evolves. How are you it, is it organic? Does it feel organic to you to just cultivate this community or you having to actively work at it? Are you trying to build out the community or is it organically building in? You're just you feel like you're a part of it. I think a little bit of both. I think it was super organic at one point, but now it's like we're putting like real resources behind it, right? So like when we launched our Facebook VIP group, like it filled up with like 2000 people and like a day or something. And like we literally just like post about it and it was like, hey, like, come check us out, like share your tattoos. And like but one of the things we say is like when you join the group, like share your tattoo and it's like there's all these people sharing their tattoos and be like, hey, like, we did that. Like, we're doing that. I'm like, What is that? What does that mean? All that stuff. So I think, I think there's certainly an element of like organic ness I do think though, like, now that like part of the reason that we do raise the money is because we're trying to do things that I don't think a typical brand has really tried to do in terms of cultivating community. And so I think at this point, it really does feel like we are trying to build it because we honestly really are one of the things that, you know, we talk about like it's like Reddit, for example, the R slash tattoo subreddit is like 4 million people and it's like it's bigger than like the bodybuilding subreddit. So there's 1.4 million people in the bodybuilding subreddit. There's it's almost four times the size of the body. Is that right? Right. And it's like I think when you think about like bodybuilding NBC.com, I think that's a kind of a good proxy for what we're trying to do with that rabbit, right? Like you had a bodybuilding that com your fitness enthusiast. You have all this content around, you know, not only nutrition plans, but workout plans. You can buy supplements there, you can watch videos, you can you can learn about all kinds of things. Right? And so I think we're we're basically trying to do something similar in the tattoo space, although it is a little bit easier honestly because of our vertical and there is that like organic component to it. It is a serious focus bar. So we are we are certainly intentionally building this. I want to squeeze some final finance stuff in before we get to a lightning rod, because I'm conscious of how, how, uh, how quickly we're eating this time. But it's so interesting. Um, one thing I did see on Twitter is how we connected actually is through your great post on Twitter. It's definitely follow if you haven't already is WINC. While we have, we have an episode with them and a public company. And I can see even, you know, based on the tweet and the stats that you posted the company has 4 million of cash in the balance sheet and as public is insane. It seems insane to me. But can you can you explain your reaction and maybe how you think or why they became a public company? Yeah. So let's think about this like from from my perspective, right? So I did public equity research for two years covering mega-cap companies, right? So think of Google would have been have 100 billion,$200 billion of cash on the balance sheet. And then also like Mad Rabbit had just closed a $4 million around three weeks before I read that report. And so like for me to like see this like literal like CC formatting that I used to look at every single day for 12 hours a day that had thousands and then at the top is it in millions. Right. So you talk about billions of dollars or whatever and it just and then they go see like $4 million. I just, I thought it was, it was just like hilarious. Like I was like, oh my God. Like I didn't even know that was possible. I want to be clear, like, not big on those guys like at all. Like, that was, that was not my intention by any means. I was just like, holy crap. Like, I can't believe I get just it's funny. And so the reason that I'm so shocked by it is like, it's so expensive and cumbersome to be a public company. Like, as far as, like, reporting goes, right? Like you have like all these different compliance issues, like, you have to really have like an entire accounting team. I don't know what the winner's team looks like, but it just it seems to me and these guys are obviously way smarter than me, so they know what they're doing and I'll just I'll leave that there. But like, it seems to me like an unnecessary stressor to like a public company that like just doesn't necessarily need to be public yet. But and then somebody pointed out to me in the comments there was like they also did like a really successful equity crowdfunding thing. And so they're just pursuing sort of alternate routes of financing. And there's nothing at all wrong with that. It's an awesome company. They can I just like I was looking in like the footnotes for like in thousands or millions kind of thing on the reporting because like it's just I just I was, I was so blown away. I, I honestly didn't even know that was possible. And I spent two years in that field and I'm going to try and dig into that with them. I find out they haven't come on yet that they're due to come on. I don't know what the episodes will be released, but something really interesting you just said outside of all of this is it wins. So you say it wins. I honestly just said because I thought that's what you said when I said I said wink but I really need to find that out. It's the first time I would have done that. I'm not looking how they say the name. I'm going to have to look that up. You know, one of my first e-commerce meetings back seven or eight years ago, I was meeting with a well, I now know to be a lingerie company. And I sat through the whole meeting and said, linger, where instead of lingerie and I still got the business, I have no idea how, but they honestly just well worth researching, especially for you. Come on podcast. So I'm going to look into that for sure. Right. So so there's so many other questions that I have here, but we're just not going to have time for them. I think what's going to be most beneficial for people listening is just some of the mistakes or myths or common misconceptions around e-commerce finance. If you don't have the luxury of someone like yourself on your team, and your founder and your strengths lie in creative or marketing and you're trying to bring your products to market, what are the things you just absolutely cannot afford not to do from a finance perspective? A couple of things related to the question. I'm glad you brought it up. I think so. Number one, I want to say this. I want to say people who are really good at marketing so finance has been like paying it out to me, this whole black box, right? And like it was done by the financial services industry. Like we just used big words like make people think that they can't do it because they think they can't do it. Then they go pay us to do it. So, you know, pressing on with that, I think that these days and in this particular business model, marketing is so quantitative and so it's so numeric. Right. And like like I said earlier, right, when we're talking about budgeting, it's like our budget is 60% of it or something is, is marketing, right? And so it's like people in marketing, they understand finance way better than they think they do. They just, they just they, they haven't like sort of like grasp the idea that they do. So like let's think about like a pencil, for example. Like you have revenue cost of goods generally marketing, right? And everything else. And so what these with these marketing owners don't really realise is like they own 60% of the right and it's like they understand, like they understand like customer acquisition costs and like that's like those are really, really like financial metrics, right? Like it all trickles down into the numbers and like they just I sometimes think that people don't even try to understand finances. They think that they can't. And when at the end of the day, it's so closely intertwined in e-commerce with marketing because what do we spend all of our money, we spend all of our money, our cash flows, cash flow savings in e-commerce literally have like three lines in an operating cash flow section. And it's like, what do you spend on inventory and what did you not pay for payables? And then on the other side, it's like, how much money did you spend on marketing? Right? And it's like that. And so it's I really do think that people would have a better handle on this kind of thing if they would just try a little bit more. Not just chalk it up. I mean, it's boring mostly, right? Like people who are into branding and marketing, like they don't really want to do the accounting and shit. So like, okay, maybe that's the reason, but I think, you know, so no one, I think anybody who understands marketing probably understands finance better than I think they do. But number two, as far as like don't fuck this up is getting everything in place. So all of your systems, your accounts or your inventory tracking system, you need to be able to account for stuff right so you cannot afford to lose track of anything in your business, right? Especially if you're like a bootstrap business and you know, you're trying to make money and all this. Like you have to understand where every single unit of inventory, once you have understand where every single dollar of sales came from, the margins associated with those sales, how what kind of marketing spend did it take to generate those sales, etc., etc.. So I think just getting all the fundamentals in place is super important from day one because once you do that, you don't have to go back and fix it like I did when I started in that rabbit. Like one of the first things I did full time was like literally went back and like fix all that stuff that like for my 29 years ago was just wrong and like that sucks and at the time stuff and I don't wanna do that. So I think just getting all the systems in place from day one is like for sure the most important thing that you can do when managing the back office of probably any company, but specifically these because it'll just make your life so much easier. And it's kind of an ongoing process, right? Like you're never done with that. You're never done sort of optimise your systems in accounting and, and all that. So, so I guess take it with a grain of salt. But what you don't want to do is set up your QuickBooks on day one sale $3 million stuff, realise that you didn't expense anything in QuickBooks, then have to go back and like figure it all out, right? Or like sell this inventory and then realise that you only have 20 days left of stock and it takes you four months to get shipped in China. Whatever you there's, there's a lot of that you can do sort of on the foundational front to ensure, you know, a certain level of lack of headache I guess if you will, and what the tools that you're using to, to help you do all of those things. Yeah. So QuickBooks like my next company is going to replace QuickBooks because I just can't believe that it's like the only option you have next week, right? I like the enterprise level and QuickBooks like for everything else and it's like, how can there not be some sort of SMB solution in between? I don't know. But fine. Maybe QuickBooks works. You know, it's not the greatest thing ever, but it does work. So we use QuickBooks for accounting for our banking. We use a company called Row, sort of new Wave like Neobank. They actually do accounts payable too, which is super nice because it's like, I just want everything to be in one place. But we also do accounts payable with them, and then there's like a bunch of like other like sort of back office type systems, like goosed over for payroll guidelines like a for like, I mean there's like that, which is actually boring. But like as far as like accounting, QuickBooks and banking is row rows. I I'm a big fan of any Shopify apps that you use to help you with specifically finance. Yeah. I mean, like you like texture. It's like you got to pay your taxes so like tax dollars, like it's probably a necessity if you don't have that sort of like you definitely should. Other than that, though, I mean, most of the chat by apps are like marketing stuff. I mean, there's a lot of really good apps that help you track like LTV on like a cohort basis, right? So you can kind of like I spend most of my time looking at that stuff because it's like, okay, like how is LTV trending? Like if LTV has gone up 50% in the last year, should I be willing to spend 50% more to acquire a customer this month kind of thing? So I think that those apps do a really good job of helping me inform, helping inform me around like what kind of budgets I'm willing to put out, I guess. Right? Like if your customer today is worth 100 bucks and it would last year worth 50 bucks, it's like you shouldn't it? You shouldn't keep your cash probably the same, right? I mean, you want to maintain like a good LTV to cash ratio, but like as customers get worth more, you should be willing to spend more to acquire. So why was that sorry texture that different? Oh, I didn't, I didn't name a certain app. The one that I use is called by the numbers. And that's, that's a really cool one. But you can see like it's only like a cohort waterfall of like each month, each LTV you no orders. I mean you can see it all adds. And if you're trying to manage the finances of a company like that and like this goes back to like the idea of like marketing people understanding finance. But if they think of you right like LTV, the cap is like a total like marketing metric. But like, no, it's not. It's like purely a financial metric. Like it's like LTV. If LTV is revenue and cash is marketing spend, like that's 80% of, you know, right? And so like just under understanding that from a financial perspective, which is also the marketing perspective is important as far as like what you like to budget for, for certain initiatives or stuff. Excellent. Um, I think we'll move into the lightning round. I wish we could talk some longer on this and maybe once this has gone out, if there were any additional questions we could have a look at doing another round because finance is just so important to e-commerce. And I think you've said some great light on some of those subjects. So if not mad Rabbit, what do you think you would be doing today? My accounting software that's going to uproot QuickBooks, I guess you are. You're developing this. You're going to break. No, no, no, I'm not. It's just my it's my, like, wet dream. I got to be well, I got into something that should totally exist, but it doesn't that was kind of a joke, if not bad rabbit. I mean, I think I might still be an equity research. I so like I really like that. Or maybe even like somebody like those guys just work so much like it's such a cool and that makes it a cool profession. Like, I don't know why they make it so, like, I don't know how I would do that, but either start my own company or, say, an equity research or what are the most important elements for measuring value in an e-commerce company form? In your opinion, how would you measure another company's value? What metrics would you look at? You mean like an enterprise value perspective, right? Yeah. If someone came to you and said, How much is my, uh, ecommerce Start-Up Worth in your eyes, what kind of metrics would you ask them to provide you? Hey, this, my computer is going to die. And I was going to get a yeah, yeah, for sure. If you fly in fly. And I appreciate, I think, I think I've barely got that oh no, you're there. But your, your video is not there. So we do hopefully come back I can hear you so you know, we should I refresh let me I may hide you and then bring you back. Hang on. It's just called black screen. Now maybe your camera is dropped. That's okay. I can hear you. So why browsers like I got a little spinny really thinking, well, I can still hear you. So that's what I do is just cut this and then just say the stream statements are I mean, most people will be listening to this anyway rather than, uh, rather than the maybe actually back up. Yeah, give that give that could go. Okay, I'm awesome. Something hey, you know, so we're almost there. Anyway, thanks for doing that. Okay. Uh, sorry. 2 seconds. Just for the edit so I can see the sound spike when we start. So how how big in terms of revenue do you think the company could get um, I mean, we're, we're building on $1,000,000 company here, honestly. I mean, I think we've experienced a certain level of success with relatively little resources. We only had really two products last year. We had for most of the year, just the three of us with like two sales channels. Right. And so I think, you know, we've gotten to a point now where it's like we've we firmly believe that this is a company that can scale to 57 to $100 million in top line just because there's so much that we haven't done yet. Right? Like we're not even in like a serious retailer yet. We're launching a lot more new products now, but like we're going to launch six or eight products this year and like that's, you know, that's that's LTV, that's top line. That's, that's a lot of a lot of opportunity to grow from just, just honestly things that you would have done. So we're in year for your three depending how you look at it. I guess let's call your three. And really it's like you're one honestly because we've only had full time employees for 13 months and you know, we only had two products to get since your question, I think we can build this company$200 million company over time as we launch new products and go through new sales channels and get big retailers like a target obviously is going to be critical at reaching that kind of scale and a UN how many countries are you in So online we've sold in like a lot of countries honestly we don't we haven't launched any countries. We like a marketing perspective but like they somehow just find us. I think 3% of our business last year was Canada. So like with like will launch in Canada, maybe like late this year or next we'll launch in the UK. You guys actually have a really great market. There's a cool brand called Stories and that does something pretty similar. What we're doing in the UK but we get a lot of UK, a lot of Australia. What are sunscreens like lowkey popular in Australia? And so there'll be some yeah, like international expansion. You write your last questions like you know, we had a certain level of revenue in 20, 21 with like no full time employees, like two people and or two products and like three people in like one market, right? Like the United States is the fifth most tattooed market per capita. So like it's not, it's, you know, there's so much other opportunity internationally as well. Yeah. And the education piece, well when I was researching this and the product, I mean I have a couple of tattoos myself and I had no idea I just accepted that fading was a thing that happened and yeah, but just no clue. And I spent them, but them, it's like a baby. Um, a baby's like kind of nappy rash cream when I got mine done because honestly, that just wasn't really a product that was recommended to me by my tattoo. Artist. So it is like, yeah, you can just go grab this and. Okay, cool, I use that, and I've never done anything since. And yeah, definitely feel like it's like, tattoos are literally thousands of years old and like, you got a tattoo today, and it's like, the first thing you ask the artist, like, what? Now he's like, I don't know, Vaseline, which is petroleum jelly, which is like chemicals on your open wound or catheter like that because there is so much anxiety as well when you get your first tattoo, you spent all this money on it and you really want to look after it and you have to look after it. So you just got to have that the proper product to do so. It just makes so much sense okay. How many web domains do you own personally? Like two, three, two. I think I own product Avalon dot com and sidekick dot com or something. Um, what motivates you in life? What, what? What do you want out of life? Maybe, aside from money? Oh, it's a good question. I honestly, money's not really a big part of my life. Like when I took the job with Matt Rabbit. Like, I think I cut my pay by like, 70% or something. Like, I, I just, I just want to build something honestly. Like, I'm kind of bored all the time if I'm not, like, doing stuff. And I think, you know, what, what really motivates me is just being a part of something with great people like Oliver and Salam, you know, those are my brothers at this point. I just want to build something that wasn't there before. And it's obviously, you know, it's like the manifestation of that today. But I think, you know, as you sort of think about how you want to be remembered or like what you want your legacy to be like, for me, it's, it's really two things. I want to be able to help a lot of people, you know, at a scale that, you know, traditionally probably isn't like super reasonable and also just like building something that I think should exist that does it. And so I think, you know, a lot of people are are motivated by money. And money is probably a really good motivator. Right? I mean, there's like who doesn't like I don't think I don't like money. It's just like it's not like why I do matter. I have it right. Like there's a reason that I took like a huge piece of my account, my compensation and equity, and it's because I want that equity to be worth something. Right? Like, I don't I don't care about like this really the salary that much. I don't care about how much money I'm getting my paycheque every single month. Like, I just know that if we can build this thing into, like, what we think it can be, like, the money will come, right? Like, it's about as a by-product of like really doing the right thing and then helping the right people. So I don't worry about that. For me, it's really just like I don't it I don't want to sit at a desk until I die, you know, I just I figure like kind of like why not try something? And so that was like, honestly, like, kind of my thought process. And, like, I remember quitting my job a little bit over a year ago and something like certain people are like super support, like Metro. It's a very different business today than it was when I did that and when I started working with them. But at the time, like, it probably like wasn't like in hindsight, even like the smartest decision that you could have made. Like, I had a lot of people telling me, like, are you sure you want to I give you a pretty good job, you know, that kind of thing. But I was like, yeah, but like, that's not cool. And like, this is fun. Yeah, so true. I think there's so many people that relate to that, and if they don't relate to it, then they should because it's just not about the digits in the account, but having said that, how much money in the account is enough for you to say job done, boots hung up? And what's that figure um, that's a good question. If, like, for me to never want to work again, I mean, you can't passion projects messing around, you know, like not saying so you're not nine to five I think if you have a couple of million dollars, you're probably good right up to 3 million bucks. Like if you ever hit that number it's right in terms of like liquid, you know, availability to invest it and you know, not like an idea and like compounds pretty well and like you're probably pretty good to go. And then at that point, like if I were ever blessed enough to get to that point, I would probably just do passion projects or like maybe I'd start another company. You know, it's such a rollercoaster man. Like, there are ups and there are, there are downs. Like, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's been going on for a while. Now, like it's been three years and like the roller coaster of this whole, of this whole journey is just so insane. And, like, I really, I really admire serial entrepreneurs because people who are able to kind of wrestle that roller coaster, you know, more than once, even if they don't have to. It is pretty incredible. Like, it's, it's, it's a great emotionally, physically, spiritually, mentally, like it's everything. So I don't I don't know if I would, like, go off and, like, start a new company, a really serious new one, you know, if I got to that point, but I wouldn't say never and you're Chicago, right? I am in Chicago. Yeah. So if not Chicago, where would you be? Anywhere in the world. According to Austin, Texas. What's in Austin? I feel like everybody's in Austin. I have a bunch of friends down there. The E commerce ecosystem is awesome. I mean, the weather is great. Like I visited down there in July of last year, and it's it's just got a good vibe, man. I mean, it's just like a bunch of young kids all kind of hustling at the same thing, all moving down to Texas where they don't pay income tax, I guess, which is like, oh, so plus. So, yeah, I'm thinking about moving there in the near future. But other than that, I'm really I'm really into snowboarding. So I love being out in Colorado and my family's got a place in Steamboat that we love to go to. So maybe, maybe somewhere over there to go riding in Nice. Who in e-commerce or finance in general is worth following in your opinion? Yeah, I think like around finance on like Twitter specifically, like there's this like pretty robust lack of content and like like I like to like tweet about this stuff and like put out some stuff. But like if you want to like really like build a following, like it's like a like a lot like I feel like I tweet all the time or like, you know, nobody cares. I think partially because like, again, like finance and accounting is boring stuff, but like I do it. I do it because like I look I looked for it at one point, I couldn't find it. And so like I think, you know, like one of the things that I tweeted the other day was like a cost of capital model. And it's like when I remember, like, I've spent four months in the debt markets last year, I try to figure out like what what's the best thing to do? And it's like nobody puts content out about this stuff because it's boring, I guess. I don't know. I don't know why they don't. So so to be totally honest with you, like, I don't think there's anybody that at least not that I'm aware of that is like a have to follow as far as like learning about finance and stuff. As far as like e-commerce goes. I mean, there's a million people, you know, you're, you know, you're sort of like Blue-Chip guys like from like Shama and Dennis and like those kinds of worlds versus like, you know, the smaller guy's stock. So I I honestly don't really have anybody like particular in mind around finance. But, you know, there's no shortage of I mean, like sort of broader e-commerce or marketing. I wonder if because you put crickets and all of your co-founders posts and just oh my God, it's so fun. So I don't think I'll ever like just got on Twitter and I was like, I was like, make fun of him by like tweeting cricket. That is post because nobody, nobody would say anything. And then like four days later, he has like half a following these other I laughed when I was looking through. I laughed. He put a tweet and instantly put a cricket. And then he just put Come on, man, with the face that personally that got me. Don't stop doing. That is funny. Drew, listen, thank you so much for generously taking the time. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I hope everyone listening has enjoyed the conversation as well. And we wish you all the best with the business and your future. Appreciate it. Yeah, this is fun. I really appreciate you bringing me on here. With Don, buddy. Thank you so much. That was like, well, we're like almost an hour over, so, um, but I love that song. So that was a great conversation. You're really good at kind of getting it wrong. Oh, thank you. I mean, it's just the finance stuff is just so interesting and several unpack I really do firmly believe that, like, if people would just give it a shot to understand it, like, they would realise that it's not that complicated. Yeah, I like that perspective. I think that came across very strong. I mean, the stuff you put together and I know they're complicated subjects, but you packed them into just such easily bite-sized absorbable chunks. I think this is going to be a really good episode. We're going to be sponsoring the episodes as well, put in quite a lot of budget behind each one just because, like I said, our aim is to get to number one. The first six months in the UK, we work we are actually working a little bit with Shopify on this, so yeah, we're really going to push this out and the guests that we've got a just fucking top notch and you included. So thank you. Yeah, and I will send you a copy of this once it's all edited up in the intro now choke on it and everything like that. But thanks for taking the time. Yeah, man, let me know if let me know if I can help otherwise. Anyway, appreciate it. Thank you. Bye bye.