[00:00:00] Speaker A: I just got off the line with Kareem Raslan, the co founder of Brain Gain and the conversation couldn't be more timely. We dug into how founders can set themselves up for real momentum in 2026. Pressure testing their foundation, tightening operations and putting focus back at the center. So growth next year is intentional, sustainable and actually feels good to build. I'm Sierra Christo and this is B2B Breakthrough.
Kareem, welcome to B2B Breakthrough.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: Hey Chiara, good to, good to be here.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: Can you lay a quick foundation for us about what Brain Gain is and how you started?
[00:00:34] Speaker B: So we're a D2C home gym equipment company operating in the UK and Europe across Shopify and Amazon. We started a good number of years ago and often you hear a lot of founders talking about how, you know, their business was a carefully designed plan with growth forecasts and you know, kind of a very well laid out strategy. I think our story is a little bit less romantic in the context of we kind of stumbled into it as you said, it was the pandemic during COVID home gym equipment non existent.
And me and my co founder kind of stumbled across Alibaba actually on a Facebook ad bought in kind of 2025 dumbbells started selling from our parents kind of garages, driving around London, dropping dumbbells off to anyone and everyone that.
But yeah, fast forward to today. We sell in over 30 countries. We've got over 100,000 customers across Shopify and Amazon. And yeah, it's been one hell of a journey kind of so far. But look, still relatively early in our journey. I look forward to seeing what the future holds and will bring as well.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: The fact that you've grown that fast, that large is incredible. I mean I say we're at six years, like it's this extremely long milestone, but that's a quick scaling story that you have here. So how did scaling factor in? How did you find your way out of that door to door pattern with your co founder into you know, all of these countries, all of these markets? How did you get there?
[00:02:12] Speaker B: Yeah, look, honestly, like I said, Ciara, it's been one hell of a, it's been one hell of a ride. And look, and I think for us there's been a couple of different parts to our parts to our journey. So the first couple of years it was all about how do you build kind of, you know, the infrastructure around selling at scale. And I think in the early days our problem wasn't necessarily kind of product market fit and kind of selling. It was More on the operational logistics side of things, where when a container of 40 kilogram dumbbells would turn up at your parents house, we used to have to hire a bunch of guys to physically unload it. When orders would come in, we'd be sticking the UPS labels on ups. Sometimes would come, sometimes they wouldn't come. So in the early days it was around, you know, kind of logistics and making that work.
So for us, our first kind of almost like peak that we overcame was, you know, finding a good third party logistics company to help us deal with the volume. And then for us it was a sales, working capital, cash flow, kind of making sure that you had enough stock to kind of meet the demand.
And then I think for us it was okay, cool. In the UK we're doing well, how can we then kind of grow and expand what we're doing to, you know, new territories, which is then where Europe came into play. And actually, I think one of the challenges that we have actually had in, you know, 2025 was we had an ambition to sell everything to everyone, everywhere. Where we actually ended up trying to kind of do too much. And what we actually found in 2025 was a bit of a reversal of that, of trying to kind of scale down the number of products we were selling, focusing more on specific markets, specific customers, on specific channels.
So I think for us the pendulum kind of swung too far, which was we were trying to do too much too quickly. Then now focusing on look what's really working, what's not working and doubling down on the winners and either optimizing or killing the losers. For one of a, for want of a better phrase.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: Yeah, that's, I mean it's, it's that you can't be everything to everyone and you have to find where to carve out that special space where you really resonate with your audience and that you're reaching people and that you yourself aren't getting burnt out in the process. Because especially, I mean this is, this is niche for, for your industry. We're talking about weights.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: Yeah, no, absolutely. And look, like I said, we, you know, we used to have to physically unload these containers ourselves. And as you can imagine, by trying to kind of load these containers as much as possible, there'd be weights stacked maybe like 2 or 3 meters high. And it was not just a physical workout, it was a health and safety nightmare.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: Truly.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: Navigating some of those. And again, I think this is always interesting where when you speak to founders in the early days, they think it's a simple Sourcing, marketing, figuring out someone to buy it. But there's a whole load of process that goes into obviously sourcing, bringing it in on the containers, picking, packing, and then after sales, logistics, spare parts, warranties and everything in between. So there's a lot that goes into running a business and particularly if you're us with big heavy stuff, you know, logistics plays a huge part in it.
[00:05:34] Speaker A: So what does your infrastructure look like as far as your team goes? How many people are you working with now?
[00:05:40] Speaker B: Great question. And I think for me, having, you know, having good people in your organization, your structure is critical.
So for us, we're a team of about 10 between operations, customer service and marketing. But we also work with a number of kind of third party agencies or suppliers or contractors as well between, you know, logistics, shipping agents, marketing agencies. So yeah, I think one of my big things is, look, finding the right people that can help support you on your journey is critical.
And I think as founders we can often be focused on price.
But actually what we found over the last kind of couple of years is, you know, price is clearly a big consideration and factor, but actually quality of service and output, you absolutely need to be factoring that in as equally as important, if not more important, because when you get it wrong, the amount of extra cost, headache, stress, you know, it causes, it's absolutely not worth the pennies that you might be saving on the other side.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it sounds like you're sharing that from a place of experience, from maybe a hard lesson learned. Was there, was there a speed bump somewhere along the way that that kind of taught you that the hard way?
[00:06:56] Speaker B: Yeah, look, on a ccr, there are more examples that I can probably, probably imagine. But yeah, look, I think for us what you always need to be mindful of is when people are in sales mode especially they'll promise you the world. But then when it comes to the reality, you know, kind of some things that you might think are kind of small can actually magnify to be quite, quite big things. So, you know, for us, you know, in the uk, we sell a lot on Amazon and we sell through something called Seller Fulfilled prime, where your criteria are incredibly like, there's a very high threshold that you need to hit and one of them is a, you know, you need to buy the label through Amazon in order to dispatch it.
We were speaking to a third party warehouse who were, I don't know, 20% cheaper.
We asked them if they could do it. They were like, yeah, yeah, we do this all the time. And lo and behold, when we came to try and set it up, they couldn't set it up. Six months later, they still hadn't got it set up. And I think by this stage, it was candidly a bit of a disaster.
So I think it's one of those things where actually kind of doing your due diligence and making sure that there's no crosswires as you go through the process, super, super important.
And I think that also applies to staff.
Other agencies of, look, have high expectations. And also, if your gut is kind of telling you, look, you know, I don't think this person is quite the fit for the organization or what we're trying to do.
Often your gut is right, but they're often not easy, you know, conversations or decisions to make. At some point. It's, you know, sometimes for the best.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean, especially when you're operating with such a lean team. You said you're 10 people. That's pretty lean. And, you know, you really feel the impact when there's a misalignment when it's a team that. That tight. So you got to. You got to be on top of that and find ways to pivot. So I think that's, you know, kudos to you because those are hard decisions to make, and it's not a conversation that anybody wants to have.
[00:08:57] Speaker B: You're absolutely spot on. I think the only thing I would add there is, you know, kind of top, you know, good performers, 18 players, whatever you want to call them, they want to be surrounded by 18 players.
So I don't think it's. What I think we sometimes underestimate is the impact that those guys may have on the rest of the team. It's not a case if it's an isolated problem, it does actually impact everyone else. So, yeah, not easy decisions that we've sometimes had to make over the last couple of years. But, yeah, I think it's. As long as you're doing it for the right reasons and in the right way, then, look, I think it's something that I think we should all be keeping in mind while we're recording.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: This is the end of 2025. This is going to come out the beginning of 2026. I want to think about that mindset of reflection and progress and how we move forward. So I want to take a beat, you know, as we. As we talk about making these tough calls in the last six years. What happened in the last 12 months, what happened in 2025 that you take away as. As a big win for brain gain and that you, you want to manifest moving forward or just have a little bit of gratitude for. In this last year, I think for.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: Me, the two big things are, look, simplification and focus. I think going into 20, 25, our SKU count was maybe 50 plus, which for a lot of people in retail or other areas would be like, Man, 50 SKUs is nothing.
But I think for us, we were selling adjustable dumbbells. For each adjustable dumbbell, we had a different stand.
And we were also selling Reforma Pilates machines and we were selling rowing machines and treadmills and a bunch of stuff. And I think for us, like I said earlier, we were selling in the uk, we were selling in Europe. We were selling on Shopify, Amazon, ebay, and a bunch of local channels in each of those different markets. And I think the challenge we had is we were trying to sell everyone everything.
And candidly we were. But in the pursuit of trying to do everything, we were basically doing kind of not a lot well.
So what we've done this year is narrow down the SKU count to really, really focus on those that are kind of winning and doing well. And we're being very, very clear on, look what our kind of USP and our proposition kind of is. And I think as part of that exercise, what we've done as well is, and I'd recommend this to anyone in any kind of D2C E com kind of businesses, a very, very clear view on our unit economics. So on a skew by skew basis, what's making money, what's not making money? And for those that aren't making money, you either kill them or you try and find ways to optimize. And I think why we found that exercise so helpful is we've almost like broken down each piece of that pie to say, okay, cool, your cogs or your landed costs, can we improve that? Yes. No. Okay, your logistics, how can we improve that? Yes. No. Your refund rate per skew, how can we improve that? Yes. No. And what we found is each piece of the pie, we've been able to improve by 1 or 2% that when you add them all together, they kind of quantify to be quite meaningful savings. So, you know, one success for this year, and again, it's a very European specific kind of problem to solve was, you know, we were fulfilling a lot of orders from Netherlands to Germany. But what we found was actually there's a warehouse just on the side of the Polish border where we could fulfill, reduce our fulfillment costs by 20 to 30% and deliver on a better service and had a number of other benefits as well. So by changing one small thing, and for those listening, you won't be able to, you know, one small thing in inverted commas has actually had a, you know, a massive impact. So I think for me that the theme of 2025 was look, simplification, focus.
And just having a very, very clear view on unit economics has been a huge game changer for us in 2025 and definitely something we're going to continue focusing on into 2026.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: So how are you trying to interrupt some of the patterns that you establish in 2025? Are there learnings, you know, along the way that not so much, you know, learnings like this product didn't work, but learnings about the way that you operate that you want to correct or kind of tweak going into the next year?
[00:13:31] Speaker B: I think we all have this like habit of okay, it's a new year, we now need a massive new big bang, new product, new marketing launch. We need to like rip every, not necessarily rip everything up, but not far off. Rip everything off and start again.
Whereas I think actually and again we've just come off the back of our own like 2026 strategy planning. And in a way it was actually quite a boring session because it was basically, let's just keep doing what we're doing.
And we narrowed it down to almost like two things, which is make our existing core business look more profitable by continuing to squeeze, you know, the more juice out of the lemons that are kind of hanging around us. And I think the other thing is we often have like, you know, we sell to a customer once, which is, you know, the adjustable dumbbell. And what we find is we don't really make a second or a third or a fourth sale. It's a little bit of a double edged sword where we sell a great product but we can't then sell them another dumbbell in like 12 months or 18 months. So they. The other bit for us is what other kind of value and service and offerings can we offer to our customers where we've given them a great experience with a great product, but how do we then bring them more value by bringing them to something else? So I think for us the big thing is not forgetting all the progress we've made in 2025 of optimizing simplification, focus and, and continuing that in. And I think what we're trying to really focus on is look short, sharp sprints, which is this is our focus for the next three months. And for the next three months. Look, we are not necessarily closing the door to new products, new opportunities, but it needs to fit a very specific set of criteria.
And I think Alex Hormozi is a huge advocate of this, of just because it's a good opportunity doesn't mean it's necessarily the right opportunity for you. And I think what we found was, you know, Reforma Pilates is absolutely booming. There's an opportunity, let's bring them in and sell them. But then what we found is by bringing in a new product, it's new marketing, it's new customer service problems.
And for me personally, you know, we were out in China in May in the factories, looking at the Reforma Pilates machines. You know, it took me 15 minutes of sitting on the floor and filming and understanding how this machine works.
So for us, if it's something outside of our core, there's a very specific set of criteria whereby we all kind of consider it. But I think for us, it's just having a very clear view on these are the focus areas for three months. Not forever, for three months. And then making sure that we've got the time and the milestones in three months time to pick up the. What other weird and wacky and wonderful ideas do we have that we want to consider as opposed to getting distracted week in, week out when we need to be focused on pure play execution.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: And these short, sharp sprints that you're going through, how are you identifying these opportunities and these moments and where to focus your energy?
What qualifies a product or an idea for that attention?
[00:16:50] Speaker B: We, as a business, and I'm sure this is reflective of most founders, we're never short on ideas. But what we often have to say is there are other constraints, whether that's time, energy, capital, resource, whatever else it may be. So some sort of prioritisation matrix or system I think is critical. I think we often try and look at it through the lens of value versus effort on a matrix to say in an ideal world, your high value, low effort ones are the ones that you kind of pick up quickly. You pick it up, you kind of set the hypothesis, you test, you get data, you iterate.
But I think at the same time, the high value, high effort ones, similarly, you shouldn't neglect. So I think we do always try and look at it through the lens of value versus effort on the axis and then basically apply prioritization in. In that way is typically how we try and approach it.
[00:17:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's super clear. I think that makes a lot of sense. And I'm just curious about your industry now. Is, is there some kind of seasonality that goes into that in these three month bouts? How does seasonality or holidays mindset for your audience impact the way that you're evaluating these opportunities?
[00:18:10] Speaker B: I think for us, November, December and January are our biggest periods of the year, kind of in particular. So November, Black Friday, et cetera, naturally a big driver for a lot of people. December, Christmas, buy January, that the New Year, new Me kind of phenomenon definitely helps us as well.
A lot of our orders need to be placed in kind of July, August to then arrive in October to make sure you've got what you need.
So I think for us, that period, which coincides with a lot of Europeans going on holiday, not necessarily being at home, training is always a little bit of a lower point for us.
So part of our focus into 2026 is how do we also work to mitigate some of that period?
So, for example, we've been very focused on D2C consumers training at home. But one of the this is in the wild and wacky kind of category is where you've got a bunch of Airbnbs and hotels, small boutique hotels that are crazy busy in the summer periods. Should you actually be targeting them before the summer period to try and get a pair of dumbbells in the Airbnbs or the apartments or the hotels?
So we're thinking about how to kind of mitigate some of that cyclicality, but hopefully we are seeing a general kind of upward trend of kind of demand, which is great. But yeah, it's that summer period where particularly the guys in Europe.
So now, because Europe has become a bigger part of our business, you know, between France, Spain, Germany, you know, a lot of those southern European countries take the whole of August off. So the question is, how do you then localize and tailor your marketing, your outreach to try and tap into that problem to solve, which is, you know, you're on holiday in your summer home and you're not training, as opposed to, you know, kind of pure play. You're at home and the rest of the year kind of trying to get in shape and trying to exercise as.
[00:20:12] Speaker A: Well as you're talking about this seasonality and capturing people in the right moments and addressing their mindsets. How has your mindset adapted, you know, as a founder, as a business owner alongside them to keep up with this momentum? You know, you're clearly so tuned into the way your audience functions. Is that something that was innate in you from the jump or that has kind of Evolved as the business has.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: What none of us should ever underestimate is like, you know, kind of customer feedback. What is it that the customer's looking for and what problems can kind of we collectively solve for them.
So I think for me, I've always been the Keenan to health and fitness and training and exercising kind of throughout. I think, yeah, being, being the co founder of a home gym company, it does encourage you to be in better shape, better shape than you, than you kind of could, could otherwise.
So look, I think in terms of me and my journey, prior to brain gain, I had a corporate job. I was in banking for kind of 13 years or so. And what I would say is the transferable skills that came from there in terms of kind of analysis, negotiation, legal, the modeling to understand whether kind of the numbers made sense or not. A lot of that definitely helped from my kind of corporate world. I'd say one of my kind of regrets is not jumping into kind of entrepreneurship, setting up your own company a little bit earlier because I do think the amount you learn by candidly just doing is infinitely more valuable than like you're kind of working on someone else's time and you're, you're kind of learning for them.
But I think when it's your back against the wall and it's okay, you're under pressure to make a decision and is it the right decision or the wrong?
I think that's when you truly do learn a huge amount. So I think, yeah, for me, I'm kind of on my own journey in terms of again, you know, work, life, balance and health and fitness and wellness and all that, all that stuff. And I do think there is, there's quite a lot of mixed messaging out there in terms of, you know, some people are like, you know, if you're an entrepreneur and you're a founder and if you're not working 24 hours a day, then someone else is going to beat you to it. So you need to always be working and always on. And then there's the other school of thought which is, you know, unless you are, you know, if you are working all the time, you can't be at your best, you can't be your most creative. So I'd say I'm kind of somewhere, somewhere in the middle where I'm, you know, finding my own fee. It's a very personal journey for everyone.
So I don't think there is a one size fits all. And I'll use the example for me of helpfully with E Commerce. A lot of what we do. You can manage on your phone on the go.
So for me, when I'm training and exercising, I find it quite helpful to actually reply to whatsapps and just keep things ticking along or, you know, have ChatGPT open and I'm just like fencing with it on a couple of things.
Do that when I'm training. Whereas other people would say that's awful, you need to switch off and you really need to focus. So I think it's, it's kind of horses for courses and you need to kind of find what works for you. I'm still in that process, but I think I'm getting slightly better to my, hopefully my optimum equilibrium.
[00:23:33] Speaker A: So the mindset shift is more about how to grant yourself the grace and the flexibility to do what you need to do because you are accountable to yourself as a business owner is kind of how I'm gathering what that shift was in the way that you process your time and your energy.
Am I on the right track?
[00:23:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's right. And I think the other thing is kind of building systems and organizational structure and not feeling like you need to be the one that has to do everything.
And I think that's probably been again, like a big learning for me personally in 2025, which is your natural reaction when you see a problem is I'm going to jump in and solve that. But I think what we've done this year is whether it's customer service, whether it's operations, whether it's marketing, actually, you know, A, finding great people, B, investing in great people, and C, you know, kind of trusting the systems and the processes to kind of operate without you in them.
So, you know, if I think about December 2024, I was away with my in laws, I think it was. And because we hadn't optimized the fulfillment process, I was spending four to six hours a day manually booking in orders on the system.
Whereas fast forward 12 months we've invested time, effort and energy into finding the right partner, automating that. So actually December 2025 has been significantly less, less kind of stressful on, on that front.
And I think especially when you try and distinguish between, call it high value stuff and low value stuff, you know, kind of manually fulfilling orders probably isn't the best use of a founder's time.
Whereas freeing yourself up, whether it is just to take a bit of a break or to take a bit of a breather or strategic thinking or focusing on sales or marketing or whatever else it may be, I think that is a real Challenge of how do you build the systems and the infrastructure that takes you out of it.
One big thing that both me and my co founder at the moment are doing is documenting where we're spending our time on almost a daily basis, if not weekly basis, and just identifying. Okay, cool. You're spending an hour a week, I don't know, making manual payments that could be automated. Okay, how do we solve that one? Okay, you're spending, I don't know, three hours a week doing X, Y or Z. How do we solve it? How do we build a system around it? How do we automate it? So I think again, that relentless, every person's time. And again, this isn't just for me and my co founder. It's okay. Our operations lead. You're doing a manual process that's taking you six hours a week. How do we get that down to be one hour a week? Okay, let's invest time into solving that as opposed to just accepting the status, the status quo. So we're taking that mentality across the whole business as opposed to just the founders time is really precious. And everyone else's isn't? No, everyone's time is precious.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: As we're ruminating on momentum and carrying all these good vibes into 2026, thinking maybe a little bit more tactically, how operationally are you? Are you setting yourselves up within brain gain to, to continue to scale and to expand even further into Europe or whatever markets you're trying to tap into?
[00:27:05] Speaker B: I think again, the relentless focus on, you know, how do we incrementally improve things, whether it's from a pure play, cost, profitability perspective, but actually from a, from a systems perspective. And I think one of the things that we've been battling with is actually, again, we all have this desire to come into a new year and launch a bunch of new stuff and new products and kind of make things very complicated. But actually kind of ascribing to the view of almost by doing nothing, everyone and everything will get 10% better.
So I think for me, almost like changing nothing. People will get better at their jobs, our marketing machine will get better, we'll have more reviews, we'll have more word of mouth, who have more, etc. So that there's almost the kind of guys, let's almost not do too much. Which I think is an interesting, is an interesting kind of philosophy for us. As a general question, it's like, what is the role of AI? Because I think there is a mountain of progress and movement happening there. Is it more in the the ad creation space, the content side of things, you know, we're quite reliant on. Not necessarily, but you know, we invest a reasonable amount of money into Google Ads, meta ads, Amazon adverts, you know, how is AI going to play a role in each of those different systems and ecosystems as well? So I think whilst the focus is to be on look within our very specific core, you know, we can't ignore the external factors out there around, you know, this I was reading earlier about was it a AGI and all this other instead of SEO, it's ag, E, O or something similar, which is how do you then start ranking on ChatGPT and the other LLMs?
So it's something that we can't ignore, but it's something that probably does keep me up a little bit at night, which is we've just kind of figured out the existing systems and algorithms and it's okay. We now need to kind of invest time, effort and energy into the new ways of marketing.
[00:29:13] Speaker A: For sure. For sure.
[00:29:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:15] Speaker A: SEO has been the cornerstone of so much of what we do as marketers. To now adapt to the wild west of the Internet now is a whole new ballgame. It's really great that you're thinking about it and finding ways to optimize with that in mind. It's really forward thinking.
So this philosophy that you have of, yes, you're thinking forward about how to optimize your marketing and your SEO, your ChatGPT visibility, but at the core of this, you mentioned this notion of, well, let's stay the course, let's do nothing and trust that the foundations we've built will carry us there. And I think that foundational element is the piece that we can't gloss over because you've done the hard work, you've asked yourselves the questions and figured out how to get yourself in a place where you can trust that it's going to compound into something productive.
So what are the questions that you would advise a founder to ask of their own business, of their employees, of their processes? What foundational questions do you need to ask to figure out what you need to tweak and modify to get yourself in a place where you can trust that momentum will build organically?
[00:30:28] Speaker B: The biggest and kind of most profound thing we did in this year was, like I said, that the SKU by skew unit economics.
And I think for anyone that hasn't kind of come across this, it's essentially breaking down on a per product basis, every single kind of cost that goes into it, and then your profitability or contribution kind of thereafter. And I'd say, look, there are different people use different approaches and different calculations and kind of different methods. But I think for us, the very simple kind of equation, you know, gross revenue minus your VAT or your sales tax, your cost of goods, your marketing, your fulfillment, you know, a lot of people don't factor in things like return rates or obsolete, you know, kind of stock, which is quite a big one.
And then you're basically left with call it a contribution margin, which then goes into does that cover your fixed costs of the business, which is then, you know, subscription staff, office rent, kind of, et cetera.
So I think when we went into 2025, we were like, you know, this product, the 32 kilogram dumbbell is our best seller, the most profitable. This is what we should be putting all of our, you know, kind of, you know, advertising efforts in which what we found was because we were spending so much money on advertising them, we were selling so many, so we were kind of getting false signals that this is a, this was a winner.
So I think what we did by doing this exercise, what we actually found was that product didn't make sense to spend a single pound advertising and we were better off spending X, Y or Z on a different product.
So what's actually happened, we went from ordering almost like exclusively product A to now almost exclusively buying product B. And what we found is from a 0% margin contributor, or we're now making let's say a 10 or 15% margin contributor. So getting your the first bit right, which is like, what's my contribution margin and what is actually helping me get closer to my goals? Super important. And then I think once you got visibility and clarity on that, you then look at your okay, what's my cost to serve in order to sell a thousand units at a 15% margin? Okay, this is then the setup that I need between people, fixed costs, etc. Or what we call your operating expenses. So I think almost before you can do anything, I think having that visibility is critical.
And I think once you've done that, then having an idea of, okay, if this year we've made a million pounds in sales at a 5% margin, the target for next year is a 2 million pound revenue business at a 10% margin.
Okay, what are your then building blocks and stepping stones to get there?
Because I think we can, as kind of founders, we can sometimes kind of come up with dream targets and ambitions, but we don't have clarity on the building blocks. So we then don't know what are the steps we need to take to get there? Whereas I think, and again, as kind of founders and creators, we can get very sucked into the marketing and selling and this, that and the other.
But actually we kind of need to do it, take one step back, which is what's in the numbers, what are the numbers telling us? So we then know what to market and sell and focus on. And then we also know what is the cost to serve this business once you've then got that visibility. And for us, it was a complete game changer in terms of how we see the business, what we prioritize and what we kind of pick up first.
[00:34:13] Speaker A: I love that. So if you haven't done it already, it's time to do the audit. Let's dig deep, understand where your money's going and how to optimize.
Because that's, I mean that it, that was such a clear formula. And I hope people are listening close and following this roadmap because it sounds like it set you up in a really good position to really take off even further in 2026. I want to just leave our audience with a couple quick rapid fire takeaways. I want to know what habits we're keeping from 2025, what we're dropping and what we're gaining.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: What are we picking up, what are we keeping? And I sound like a bit of a broken record here, but clarity on unit economics and profitability.
Know who your winners are, double down on them. Know what your losers are, optimize or kill. So that I would say is absolutely 2025. We should keep one habit, they should drop. Don't chase every new opportunity that you hear about. Focus, focus.
So FOMO is not a feature of 2026. So we kill that.
And then, yeah, look, one habit they should build in January. Look, a small one. But I think, look, kind of planning your day, your week in terms of what are the two to three non negotiables that I absolutely need to do today or this week before I then roll into the next one.
And that kind of feeds into the focus view, which is these are the three biggest things that I need to do and if I don't do them, I failed. But don't beat yourself up. But having that clarity of priorities I think is something that we should all strive to have as well.
[00:35:52] Speaker A: I think that's awesome, that's great. I really appreciate the way that you're able to distill that because it's so clear and it's so actionable and to pick up just Three things, three non negotiables feels so achievable. And I think sometimes we get so wrapped up in doing the most that we need to remind ourselves that a couple of things a week move the needle a lot further, a lot faster than inching along and not achieving the thousands of things we think we have on our plate. So I think that's huge.
[00:36:22] Speaker B: Agreed. And pick up a pair of adjustable dumbbells and get training at home. That's the other final call out as.
[00:36:29] Speaker A: The first non negotiable. Grab yourself some adjustable dumbbells from Brain Gain now. Speaking of, where can folks find you? How are we getting our Brain Gain dumbbells?
[00:36:39] Speaker B: Our website or Amazon is the best place we are in the UK and EU. We do have aspirations of expanding further into like US Middle east, but that's a H2 2026 kind of thought rather than a H1. But yeah, at the moment we're in the UK and EU. Our website's Braingain fit.
[00:37:02] Speaker A: And can we follow you on social media?
[00:37:05] Speaker B: LinkedIn is my personal kind of position where I'm trying to share a little bit around the journey of building Brain Gain and sharing some experience.
I have recently started working with a couple of brands in terms of helping them to get the business off the ground and shape things as well. So I'll be sharing a little bit more of that into 2026 as well. But yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best avenue for keeping up to date.
[00:37:33] Speaker A: I love it and I highly recommend it. I saw a great story about you chasing down a DHL van in Paris and I think so follow along. Karim's a gem. Thank you so much for being part of this conversation. I can't wait to share with folks in January.
[00:37:47] Speaker B: No, likewise, thank you very much for having me. And yeah, look forward to 2020.
[00:38:01] Speaker A: This year, 100 Bold founders took the co create stage, pitching their products for a share of $1 million in prizes. Small Business Spotlight is our way of continuing the conversation, highlighting standout products we believe deserve a little more love. Please welcome to the podcast Jesse Haynes of Solaro Shades.
[00:38:17] Speaker C: Thank you for having us.
[00:38:18] Speaker A: Let's talk about Solaro Shades. Can you hit me with the elevator pitch?
[00:38:22] Speaker C: We sell baseball sunglasses. We sell softball sunglasses. I have a co founder with about a million followers in baseball comedy and there was a big demand for affordable, high quality sunglasses in the baseball market. So we started there. Now we've pivoted to all sports, from running to fishing to even snow goggles and now blue light glasses. Because so much of us spend so much time on the screen. Everything we sell is backed by a lifetime warranty. All of our adult sunglasses come with interchangeable lenses so you can adjust the different light conditions. And it's worked thus far. We're two years, two and a half years in and we've started to find some traction for sure.
[00:38:58] Speaker A: Now remind me, how long ago did you start this company?
[00:39:00] Speaker C: We launched it in January 2023.
[00:39:03] Speaker A: What has that momentum looked like for you?
[00:39:05] Speaker C: It's been awesome. We put $3,500 a piece in an account and said let's see what we can do with it. Now we have a team of six where I expect to do probably one and a half million this year on the website if the growth continues. And we've 5x to 4x'd year over year for the first three years as we try to diversify who we're selling the products to from the runners to even this year we're targeting yoga moms right now. Right.
Selling the products as more of a lifestyle fashion accessory on Pinterest. As we've been able to diversify, the revenue thus far has continued to climb.
[00:39:38] Speaker A: How has the product changed with each of these new iterations?
[00:39:42] Speaker C: It's one of the most overlooked blind spots in the market was glasses for women, like sports sunglasses for women. So we were able to, thanks to Alibaba and the sourcing, work with factories and some of our softball players that play for team USA and leading NCAA teams. And hey, we want to work with you to design a nose piece that helps our glasses fit women. So we have like six, seven MLB guys wear the same sunglasses that are five foot £90 college softball players wear. And because it has this very adaptive adjustable nose piece, both of them can wear it comfortably and perform well with confidence that their sunglasses are going to lock in space. So that has been one of the big competitive advantages that we have seen and tried to fuel as growth.
[00:40:29] Speaker A: It sounds like you're building this community as you're doing this.
[00:40:32] Speaker C: Absolutely. We couldn't compete on legacy when there's a lot of big companies that have been doing it for a long time. So we had to compete on product and offering. So I think with what we provide really high quality products at a very affordable value and we back it. We put our money where our mouth is.
[00:40:47] Speaker A: So what motivates you to keep going?
[00:40:49] Speaker C: Absolutely. We have been very lucky to have grown a very tight knit community of athletes. I'm not a big skier, but just seeing the reception that the skiing community has given us for this, like, you know, same concept, same good value, premium product at an affordable price. All of that is just motivation that we're in the right spot and we're doing the right thing that there's a need for. We're lowering the barrier of entry to all these different sports and all these different equipment.
[00:41:19] Speaker A: What was some of that early advice that you received that you found to be really valuable?
[00:41:24] Speaker C: The best piece of feedback that we've got throughout the whole process and is just in as cliche as it sounds, we just learn from our mistakes. Every year we have done something stupid to just shoot ourselves in the foot. It's like, you know, we're just constantly messing up or constantly stumbling. But I think you scrape your knees as you learn to run. And along the way, we have managed to pick up a lot of good nuggets from the the stumbles and the falls.
[00:41:49] Speaker A: How has that relationship with your manufacturers and your partners overseas helped you do that kind of forecasting?
[00:41:56] Speaker C: It's like any relationship in a friendship, a romantic relationship, whatever. You meet as complete strangers and it's like, here's my vision, here's what I want to do. Here's where I see the future for us. But obviously to them, you're just any other potential prospector with a big idea. So as we've learned and as we've grown and as our orders have scaled up, there's come with more flexibility. Our moq by color has gone down. We have more ideas. They're giving us exclusive first looks at some new designs that they say, hey, if you want to check these out before we list them mass market, then you guys can, you know, give this a peek.
[00:42:33] Speaker A: Now before I let you go, I want to make sure that everyone can find you and find your shades and follow you on this journey. Can you drop some links, do some shameless plugging for me?
[00:42:43] Speaker C: Absolutely. You know, as a self, you know, self employed business owner, you got to do that shameless plugging. We're at www.celerashades.com. all of our socials are just Solero shades. We're the number one organically ranking baseball sunglasses company. So we've managed to overtake the big boys there. So if you just Google baseball sunglasses, you should, you should find us. Hopefully we're not hard to find and we would appreciate your Support for sure.
[00:43:06] Speaker A: B2B Breakthrough is produced by Alibaba.com to find out how Alibaba.com is empowering its customers with the tools, services and resources they need to grow their business. Visit Alibaba.com and then make sure to search for B2B Breakthrough on Spotify, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your podcasts. Make sure to follow us so you don't miss future episodes. On behalf of the team
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