- [Female Announcer] Next year, David hopes to study
Mining Engineering in Adelaide Uni
and in 10 years time, he hopes to be a billionaire.
- What's up everybody?
I'm Davie, I'm 26 years old.
I'm going to take you through a week in my life
to show you my routine and hope you get something out of it.
Let's go.
(funky music playing)
I don't really want this to be
one of those YouTube series,
where you're showing your flashy house and flashy cars
and stuff.
It's just not really me, so.
I'm actually going to take you through
the real elements of my life, the daily routines,
nothing's going to be fake.
Yeah. Try to keep it authentic.
This is my business partner, Sherlock Bones.
Pretty much my job, let's call it a job
is I run 10 direct consumer e-commerce brands on Shopify.
The biggest is the Oodie.
(funky music continues)
We're pretty close,
I believe we have done $200 million revenue
across the group of our brands.
So I feel like this way
would actually be a pretty good one to document.
I've got a couple of podcasts, which would be cool
where we can share a bit of knowledge.
I've got a Sydney trip as well
with some of the team.
I showed them new Oodie drops, licensed Oodie drops.
We can kind of share a bit of the creative process
and fly around a little bit.
And then I've got a quick trip to New Zealand as well.
You know, borders have just opened up.
(dramatic music begins playing)
So a lot of people ask me what I do when I first wake up.
And morning routines are an interesting one.
Most, I guess entrepreneurs would have a routine
in most areas of their life.
Routine builds structure and consistency.
And you know, these success doesn't happen overnight.
So building those routines is kind of key.
My morning generally consists of either waking up
at like four o'clock to five o'clock.
I don't set an alarm
just because I go to bed super, super early.
I get that standard amount of sleep, seven to eight hours
pretty much every single night.
I get up and I do a couple of hours of work.
And then I either stretch, meditate
or walk or do weights
healthy breakfast, small breakfast
and nothing, you know, I don't fast
or anything crazy like that.
I drink coffee.
Yeah, I don't think you need to work ridiculous hours
unless you have like a very competitive space
in the short term.
So, you know, and you're versing other founders
that are very competent, like you,
then it's somewhat of a race
and it is really important that you work really hard,
but you know, you can create a lifestyle business
where you work the same amount of hours
that you would, anywhere else nine to five or even less
and create freedom for yourself.
So it is situational.
The stigma that, you know,
you need to work ridiculous hours isn't exactly necessary.
It could probably stop a lot of people
from actually getting into a more entrepreneurial space,
which can create freedom.
So yeah, I think it's important to stress that.
But with that being said, you know,
if you are wanting to achieve insane things,
you are needed for insane hours, so.
(chill music begins playing)
- Davie has built an empire of e-commerce brands
worth over $250 million.
He is someone that has absolutely crushed it with branding.
- So constantly, hey,
not having that drop shipping pipeline of ideas.
and then you take them through to development
and then inject them into your brand
is a good way to go about it.
If you don't have a unique product
that is actually solving the issue,
and it's just a gimmick
or that you're going to want to like
go back to the product development stage.
There's a lot of people that I admire in certain areas
like you can't just pick one person
and say I admire them in all
because that can, you know
people aren't experts in everything.
You would look at someone like Navarro
and look at how he focuses on happiness
and try to take things from his life.
And then you can look at Warren Buffett
and look at his stability
and in terms of investment
and really not follow every crazy trend.
But then you could look at Elon Musk
and look at never settling for what people are saying
is impossible.
So I think it's important that you, you know
take small bits of everyone that you admire.
And then just try to apply that
as best as you can to your current circumstance.
(groovy music plays)
- Davie Fogarty. Welcome to the podcast.
- Thanks man. Thanks for having me.
- And I've already done the intro at this point
so that's why we're going straight in with this.
But I really want to, I suppose,
the best place for us to start with you,
I see seven brands online, turn over 150 million
but it's a bit of a mad journey.
How do you even get started in the e-comm space?
- [Male Interviewer] Figure, founder, and CEO
of some of the fastest growing e-comm brands,
such as the Oodie, Calming Blankets, and Pupnap.
- I had a house in mind that I wanted
a level of house that I would want.
I was living with my parents
when I was doing over 10 mil a year
on e-comm, just because I knew.
- [Male Interviewer] Really?
- Yeah, just cause I knew I was like, I don't want to
I don't want to buy a house and then move on.
Parents were a big part of who I am
They're a very kind, giving people.
My short term goal is to, you know,
build two, three household name brands,
similar to Oodie, you know,
ones that everyone loves.
That bring a lot of joy.
Long-term, I probably want to reinvent
how people actually launch businesses
using software to really de-risk the process,
reduce waste that way as well.
Really reinvent e-commerce as a whole
or product development through using data
and automating the processes as well.
Obviously I have ideas during the day
I keep track of them just in my Apple notes.
You know, a lot of people use fancy software, but the
you need to make all your processes frictionless.
What is it? That is easiest.
Whatever you're currently doing,
as long as it's easy, just stick with it.
And then I can either assign it to a team member
through, you know, a project management software
or something like that.
Or, you know, I let it just manifest for a while
and flesh it out a little bit more
before I actually assign it to a team member to implement.
(upbeat music begins playing)
(grunting)
Oh, hey.
My least favorite task is working with my videographer.
He's a pain in the ass.
(laughs)
Today's actually an exciting day.
We're heading to Sydney to do a shoot.
(upbeat music continues)
Obviously it's not optimal
to have your team spread around Australia,
but we obviously had a massive growth in COVID, so.
We also probably didn't expect it to get this big.
So, you know, that was one of our main mistakes
but that being said,
it did allow us to hire awesome people, so.
(upbeat music continues playing)
I've hired people all around the world,
probably not by design, just by circumstance.
Probably a good lesson to learn
understanding where to hire initially,
because you do want to create a work environment
where people can collaborate.
More and more things are going online.
We have offices in Adelaide, Melbourne.
We definitely do our best work
when people are working in the same office together.
But you know, there are plenty of organizations
that are completely remote that do quite well.
They build systems to harness that
and incubate that communication with people being remote.
I think there's a time and a place
to hire someone internationally.
And that's generally around price and the ease of the role.
And if you've already got a system
and all you require is someone
to actually operate that system
and you've got the proper standard operating procedures
or SOPs, then you can hire someone anywhere.
But you know, it is really good
if you are developing systems
to hire someone in Australia
or your localized country
to work closely alongside you, to help set them up for you.
So, time and a place,
if you're requiring, you know, high level experience,
hiring locally is probably the way to go.
(upbeat music continues)
This is going to be so good.
(upbeat music continues)
I'm tired.
Motivation is a term that gets thrown out a lot.
I don't really require motivation
to get up in the morning,
you know, just really enjoying it.
It's a lifestyle choice.
I love solving problems. I love launching new products.
I love working with my talented team and learning from them.
So, you know, you really do need to love it.
People say follow your passion,
which is actually a really frustrating thing to hear
because what if you don't know your passion?
Especially if you're younger,
you haven't tried enough things to know.
I'm not going to lie to you.
It is challenging a lot of the time
when things are just all going wrong.
At that time, it just requires resilience to get through it.
And also mental headspace to compartmentalize
and just say, okay, this is another
it feels like a doomsday event.
You know, everything's going to end at this point
but you just need to, you know, take it one step at a time
find the solutions to that problem.
And you solve it enough times
that you realize that it's never actually a doomsday event.
You know, you can solve almost anything.
(gentle music begins playing)
It's definitely not monetary reward
that motivates me anymore.
It's probably, you know,
I guess I was pretty financially driven initially, but
- [Photographer] You are getting worse.
(laughing together)
That quickly changed.
I can't think of a specific dollar amount when it changed,
but it shifted to just enjoying the process
rather than the financial reward.
If you get connected to the financial award
and then that gets taken away from you for any reason,
you know, your business falls downhill.
It's actually going to cause you a lot of anguish.
The quickest way you can figure out that though
is obviously to make money.
So I don't think it's a,
(laughs quietly) Hey.
I don't think it's a negative thing
to initially first seek money and then find it
and then find other things
that make you happy and fulfilled.
(Lively music begins playing)
The most successful trait every entrepreneur has
is intellectual curiosity.
So, you know, just how does this work?
How can I create this?
And then a lot of other traits kind of flow from that.
So, motivation, you know,
trying to find why something works
is a great form of motivation.
I don't think IQ has much to do
with the level of success that you can achieve.
And I think that that's one thing
that holds a lot of people back.
"I'm not smart enough to do something," it's just not true.
I'm not a high IQ person.
I'm hardworking.
And I focus on mental models that I can control.
♪ And it's never coming down, we're invincible ♪
- Hey, so I actually popped over
to New Zealand just for a little bit.
It's my girlfriend's birthday. So, popped over.
I'm not sure if you can see the mountains in the background.
I'm just going to have a weekend of skiing.
A little bit of work,
but try to switch off a little bit
because we have a big week.
♪ Down the highway ♪
- So I guess the reason why I want to teach is
you know, I kind of want to pay it forward a little bit.
And I feel incredibly blessed and fortunate with, you know,
where we are.
All the people that have taught me
and shared their knowledge.
I also disliked the way a lot of other people teach
you know, they overcomplicate things to sell their courses
and stuff like that.
And I just genuinely think that's really bad
because that's exploiting the most vulnerable people.
The people that are currently failing
and are susceptible to that kind of fear-based marketing,
that you need my course,
and without it, you won't be successful.
So I'm kind of excited to disrupt that stigma
and yeah, really just help people, I guess.
I guess my biggest joy in life
I don't actually know what it is anymore.
You know, I've got so many things
that I'm happy and feel very blessed about, you know,
the customer satisfaction
that we can bring with, through our products,
you know, family and friends, all of these things,
you know, travel that I can do.
I can see the world
and do things that people my age, you know, couldn't do.
So I feel very fortunate about that, but you know
I'm still figuring all this stuff out, you know
what makes me actually happy.
I think it's a very different and harder question
to answer than, you know, how to make money.
So yeah, it's something that I'm big on.
Just still, yeah. Trying to figure out.