72 staff, $200k MRR, and why I am going back to software

Hello everyone um yeah nice to to be back and hope everyone is safe and well um i just thought that i owed like um maybe like a little bit of an explanation about where i've been for the past few months and just like an update on what's happening um with like everything on my side and all like projects and everything um so about six months ago like i'd set up a just another i guess sort of what i originally anticipated to be a a side project um

Like a marketing business social media company um and it's gone like extremely well like it's grown to i think about $200k MRR in the space of like six months so from that standpoint it's been like a really uh successful project um and it has at the moment like 72 full-time staff and we're still like actively hiring um new staff members so it has been like an interesting journey however it's been like very stressful as well and i've been like just fully occupied on on that to be honest like building a team to 70 staff in like three months is quite a quite a big endeavor um

For anyone and then it's also come with all a load of like other issues and not so much like actual issues with the business more in terms of like staff and people based issues which i guess is business related but in terms of that growth everything is done perfectly product is actually good but more like in internal based issues and this is it's been like an interesting lesson for me because this has been the first time that i've ever had quite like a people intense business um

Like as most of you know my background and companies are all like software based like the biggest team i'd ever built before was about nine or ten people and that was over the course of like two years um because we were doing everything through like software and automation and now on this business like 72 people in in three months has been um it means things are very like unorganized and that generally happens in like a startup anyway but um like you're quite unorganized to start with right because you've got so

Many things going on at once um but then we had like issues where i had hired like some people who were friends in like the early stages and that went sour pretty quickly it was actually like a husband and wife which is never i i've definitely learned that the hard way is is never a good idea um and i wouldn't say like don't mix business and friends because i do have i like this quite an interesting thing i have people that i've gone into business with and then become friends with them through owning businesses together and generally for me that works very very well however if you do it that way around if you're friends with someone before and then you go into business with

Them most of the time for me it's gone very sour um for like whatever reason some people aren't able to take feedback and realize that your friendship and business is actually separate other people don't work as hard and like i have had it before i was pulling along a business whilst my like friend was there and it puts you in a very awkward position when you have to bring up these issues with friends so my uh idea on that is go don't go into business with like friends and people that you have a previous relationship with um

However if you go into business with someone who like you're not particularly close friends with but like you like them you get on with them and so on and then a friendship blossoms out of that you can go into business with them in future as well even though you are friends and i've done that with one of my partners who's partner on multiple companies that we have um very different skill set to me and very different person um i'm much more quiet and reserved and technical he's much more sort of talkative and social um

But very clever guy and very hard working um so he's actually a partner on this business so yeah the big issue that we have was hiring like friends and they and then we took referrals from them so they almost felt i don't know that they like owned and have built the company because a lot of their friends were working there but they were just people that like we've been doing this business for four or five years and and we just sort of hired them and paid them a very good salary um

And yeah that's another thing to mention to like i thought i was being nice by offering someone a high salary and good bonus structure and uh but they but people gen they didn't actually see it that way um at first they definitely did they were in shock when when they had like the salary um and bonus i offered them which was is much like maybe four or five times higher than than what what they were earning previously maybe even more maybe closer to eight times higher um

And i was just doing that to be nice they were there from the early stages and i did like appreciate the the help that people were doing however what i learned quite quickly is if you treat someone too nicely and it's actually maybe treating them unfairly you should treat them fairly you should pay them what they deserve even if you want to try and be nice to them to help them improve their situation instead don't they then after a few months made themselves believe that they delivered that much value in the business and because they had that high of a salary because they were um

So valuable to the business where really they weren't so i so i don't know i guess i've planted the seed for delusion in in some way um which is my fault purely through offering a higher salary than than someone was originally worth it led them to believe that they were more valuable than they were um and yeah so then that happened that all went like downhill and i we had to i ended up like firing him over it and then he had a number of friends and referrals who were working in the company and like six or seven seven people walked out two of them were relatives and and yeah

So that was just like a very interesting thing in the end like most of them most i think 90 of them came back and asked for their job backs in the end when they realized they've made like an emotional decision or like whatever the reason was they came back and and asked their jobs back and then last week like we were also like victim to like a a cyber attack um i i don't want to go into too much detail on like a public forum i have who has done it but i don't want to give any information out here now like there are people who do know me and who are involved in this company who who watch my um

Videos so but yeah there's like also an ongoing police investigation um there's apple are involved as well and as well as airtable who gave us all of the logs of of what happened um so yeah that was like very annoying as well and anyway just to like summarize the lesson that i've really learned is that i this has been like a very interesting experience i don't want to take away from it at all but i prefer sorry software-based businesses working with clever people um we're we're hiring like quite like low-skilled people and i feel that a lot of the issues i'm solving they're not like interesting or challenging it's almost like um

Babysitting i don't want to use that term but babysitting of adults and in some ways almost what this like level of management is and i feel that i'm solving very like childish problems of like gossiping little stupid people having stupid arguments it's not very like complex and engaging issues to be be working on um so i'm very happy to say that i'm going to be just like switching back onto my software um products like this business i'm going to it's going to keep running in the background um

Of it like we have like a really cool team and i don't want to take away from the people there are some really clever and smart people there as well it's just when there's like a a percentage of them who have like different mentalities it becomes like very stressful so for the first time i've taken i've also been working like non-stop um and when i say seven days per week i really do mean seven days per week minimum 12 hours per day often 16 hours per day i worked on my birthday the whole day i worked on my girlfriend's birthday um

So setting up this like business it has been like very draining my skin isn't good as you can see i'm having like outbreaks so i'm just i've come out to uh this region called Kazbegi which is like a mountain region and uh georgian countryside very and i'm just staying in like a hotel here for probably for like a week and so yeah to summarize um so i'm going to be reducing the number of hours i have on this current business quite drastically i'm going to like automate everything we're going to make some senior hires and i'm just going to keep investing in like ads as long as i do keep this business running it does stand to make like a few million dollars profit from

Me this year so i am like i'm i'm not going to shut it down i'll keep it going um but yeah i just thought i'd share some of my like lessons and experiences uh for from there and some of the issues that i've been dealing with um so there's a new project that i'm actually starting to build now which is why i've actually come out here generally what i do when i have like a new idea is i'll just book a hotel like nice hotel um

This is like a four-star hotel and it was of corona it's quite cheap at the moment i think i'm paying like 60 per night um including breakfast which isn't bad at all and then i can just come out here i get away from everything i get away from the office and i'm just going to spend the next seven days doing nothing but working on this thing obviously room service i can just call up to the room at any time it means i have no distractions and then maybe like i don't know i'll go for like a massage or go for a swim or go to the gym for like one hour per day and this is just like a really easy i'm just giving myself

Seven days to get as much done as possible it's gonna cost me i don't know a thousand dollars to stay here including everything and and by the end of it i'll have like an mvp launched so this is just like something i've i've done recently just getting a hotel and just taking on the expense and just telling myself that i'm not allowed to leave until until the mvp is done um yeah and so i'm working on a new project i'll release some more information on it later i think it's like super interesting um

I've managed to get so frank is on board um my so he's the co-founder of growth hacking very very smart guy i really like working with him um he is involved in it as well and then my other co-founder involved in these other businesses is involved as well and i think it's going to be like a really um interesting team um frank is actually like really all-round skill set as a person as well but on like a technical side of things he's very very good and also with building teams he's very good i'm mostly focused of course on marketing and growth um

And then my other co-founder joel he's quite heavy on like branding and like business operations um so it's the first time that we're all going to collaborate together on a project which i'm really quite excited for they're both very smart people that i've collaborated with on different projects and i'm very interested to see what um what blossoms as we team up and work together so i'll release more like details on that later um but yeah it's a social media related startup um and then in terms of like growth hacking like i i think i owe a massive apology to a few people just because i've been so um

Absent and particularly like to frank uh so but now i've like spoken with him and because i'm reducing hours i've been like sucked into in in this other project growth hacking is going to become like a primary focus of me um originally like it was my idea to build this i can take on that thing and i'm just so happy to see what it's blossomed into and i i really am very thankful for um frank uh as well as Ben and Thief who are the two other like developers on on the project for being able to like hold everything together and actually build everything like with i mean pretty much no no input from me um

So i really need to actually like pick things up and pull uh like um start working on like growth because i i just haven't had any inputs i've just been fully occupied before all this other stuff um then also like Notifia i do want to like get back into it's actually like relatively self-sustained which is like really cool to have a project there um and i am even thinking of like an interesting business model of what about building a business that is almost like a self-serve business so

It literally does need like no input from my side and i have been thinking to Notifia there maybe just hire one person for customer support because technically everything else does work without needing any like input from yeah i think that is like the main updates from my side um i think i've mentioned i bought an apartment a couple of months ago um and there's been like no no progress there at all either just because i've been so sucked in on this other business and that has actually caused like a lot of stress for me as well um

So like one just a final note to end this video on you know like when i try and share some like information is generally things i don't i share like my own experiences and lessons that i've learned generally mistakes i've made like on on this channel i don't like to share things i haven't experienced myself so i will share like a lot of mistakes so one thing that i really haven't done well recently is like balance i've had no no balance in my life at all it's literally been wake up go into the office and i'm there till like two o'clock in the morning i pulled like a number of all-nighters the past few weeks trying to fix uh things after this like cyber attack

And i was doing like 24 hour days even like one 32 hour day just working non-stop and so like balance is just so important in life like right now i have actually just burnt myself out which is why i've had to come out here and whilst i am still working um like i was going into the office i wasn't feeling good and you know as like a like i'm the ceo of the company right i need to be like the the leader and um it's never good for a founder to like burn themselves out um

So it's just really important to focus on like balance in life if you're working on multiple startups make sure that you're nurturing all of but not even that just taking some like personal time like it's been so long since i've like read a book it's been about four months since i've actually picked up a book and been able to just sit down and read an entire book um youtube i haven't had time to put out videos which i do like really love doing and um i am like just so

Happy for the community that i've managed to build on on this channel um and as well just like my health and fitness you know as they say like health is is true wealth um like without health you don't it doesn't matter how rich you are how successful you are you need to focus on health like nothing else matters aside from that and i've not been to the gym in maybe two or three months um my diet has been terrible as well just literally living off takeaways so

I'm just taking a few days out to reset and like reboot and also just have a think about like what i want to do with my life i've got so many uh like opportunities in in front of me um it almost just becomes i actually have to choose like what do i want to prioritize um you know to have your hand in so many different ventures and parties um as we would say in britain it's good however if it's better to do one thing well or two things well or like very well rather than having loads of different businesses that um

That are just being like neglected because there is a limit to what you can do um so that's something else i'm just taking some time out here like in the mountains to to think about as well um yeah i think that's like the main update from my side um i hope everyone is like very safe and well i have one other thing as well actually that i have noticed completely off topic but uh one i like i've lived in in like a foreign country and i've never had an issue with it at all because i've always had the option to be able to to go back home and one thing that i've realized now is now that i haven't got the option because of corona

And flights being restricted um you i start to feel a bit like a prisoner so and just another like thing is when when an option is taken away from you i think you become much less happy with the situation even though if i did have the option to go home i wouldn't have any feeling of wanting to go back home but because the option isn't there i want it even more right grass is always greener on the other side as they say so that's just something quite interesting that i've noticed um

Recently and yeah i've got a number of emails to come back to i've also had a lot of messages from people offering their support like checking if i'm okay and everything like that people that i've never met or spoken to before they've just found my youtube videos so like really thank you very much for all of the support yeah everything is is fine from my side purely was just sucked in entirely on a on a business venture um other than that i do plan to be making a lot of videos over the next few days so

Yeah stay tuned for that um i hope everyone is safe and well with the whole corona situation and yeah look forward