S2 Ep7: The Man Behind the Sidemen’s $100 Million Global Empire | Jordan Schwarzenberger

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They were the biggest thing in the UK, like serious celebrity status for a specific generation. I went to the Sidemen charity match in 2016. They packed out 13,000 people, sold out in like 2 minutes. Sidemen was just a bunch of kids who were making incredible amounts of money, had huge audiences, massive amounts of opportunity, but no strategy, no structure, no support. I would say they were culturally enormous, corporately not enormous. And we said, look, our proposition is let's help you structure a business that can make sure that this thing works for 10 years rather than 5 years. And we said, do you wanna go for it? And they said, yeah. And that's how it goes from this to like a totally another level, I think. Meet Jordan Schwarzenberger, the visionary mastermind behind The Sidemen. He is an expert in converting content success into multi-million dollar empire by creating strategies that turn influence into long-term legacy. Scaling is painful and it is hard. And at the time, looking back, there wasn't a creator economy. It was all quite scrappy in an entrepreneurial way. Our biggest job as management has been to make sure that they keep enjoying what they do by automating as much as possible and taking away all of the boring business headaches that inevitably come with scale. If we do that, then they'll carry on keep going.

KSI these days is obviously one of the most successful entrepreneurs ever. Like, is that ever a problem within the group?

I think, yeah, it's caused a lot of, um—

Even if you don't know The Sidemen, Prime is objectively massive.

Yeah, Prime's been incredibly successful. I mean, there's no two ways about it. It is probably, I would say, in human history, one of the fastest and most successful launches of any brand ever.

So thinking about The Sidemen, thinking about Prime, and I suppose all that you've learned over the last decade, what is the recipe that other creators watching this can take away for their own product or service that they launch?

The biggest secret to launching a viral product is—

Hi everyone. Did you know that 85% of people who watch the podcast aren't even subscribed to the YouTube channel? Now, I don't like asking people to subscribe to the show, but honestly, it is the single greatest thing that you can do to help us grow our podcast. If you want us to keep bringing you these conversations, the kind of stuff that you simply cannot Google, then do us a favor. Hit the subscribe button. And let me know in the comments who you want me to interview next. It helps us to grow the channel, reach more people, and get the best guests in the world. So let's get into the show. Jordan, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much for having me.

I think that anyone who follows you nowadays will see this like incredible business that you have, that your association with the Sidemen, etc. I would love to hear a little bit about the sort of early entrepreneur in you. I'd love to hear a little bit about the early years, like what did, you know, 17, 18-year-old you look like?

Yeah, I would say it feels like a lifetime ago, but it was 10 years. 10 years ago. 10 years ago. That's— it's not a long time, and it is a long time. A lot's happened in 10 years, but it's also a bit of a blank. Um, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I was very fortunate. I went to a school called King Alfred School in Golders Green. I was very lucky to be in an environment that was very creative. It's kind of known as being a bit of a— it was like a bit of a hippie school, but a little bit of a hippie school, kind of. Everyone was, you know, we had like a— we had like a treehouse and a big field, and there were some chickens and random stuff. Like, it was, it was very, it was very open in that sense. And what was good about it was creativity was quite a focus for the school, and I was able to, during my my time there not be boxed down just into deep academic study. And I think, look, you know, for some kids very needed, for others actually, like myself, where I could be driven in academics but also wanted to be quite creatively expressive and explore, like, it was really good for me. And, you know, we did things like learn how to mix and master, um, school play audio, and I did music tech as like an A-level, and it was just me in the class. I did all sorts of stuff and it was amazing. And during that period of time, I launched a bunch of projects, things that only I could have done really at school like that. I actually made an album, made a music album at 14.

Very cool.

Which I released on dapiff.com back in the day. It was like the mixtape place and did that. That was great and a lot of fun. I launched a film magazine called Lost VHS. So I was just really into film at the time. Had a couple of other film nerds who we just nerded out about Kurosawa and all sorts of random stuff. And we came together to write a film magazine and then reached out to a bunch of PR companies and tried to get access to screenings. How old are you? 16 or so. And we did, and we got it. And we got— I was like, 16-year-old being invited to screenings in, in Leicester Square, but like a WordPress blog, like 200 people reading it or whatever, was, um, was great. Uh, launched a clothing company called Black Mountain Clothing. Last name Schwarzenberger, which means Man of the Black Mountain. I thought, oh, that's kind of cool, maybe that would be good on a t-shirt. So I made t-shirts and sold them. Like, just did a bunch of different projects and things during my time at school, and my parents were always really supportive of it. And it just helped me, I think, learn, especially given my age at the time. Like, that was Facebook era. That was the first kids with mobile phones, you know, we were that initial guinea pig generation for social media. It was a great time, dangerous time. There were some prickly things going on, but also for those who saw it as an opportunity to distribute, like I definitely did at the time, it was an amazing sort of opener, if you will, for creativity. Because you can go, wow, I have 1,000 Facebook friends, I'm gonna make this t-shirt and share it with my 1,000 Facebook friends, and they were gonna see it and hopefully buy it. Um, and they didn't. Some people in the sixth form did, but were you—

so were you with the album, with the clothing, et cetera, were you making money?

No, no, no, absolutely not. But they didn't cost anything really. I mean, clothing costs, I didn't have any money at the time. So like the clothing maybe cost, I don't know, £100 of an order from some dropshipping place. And the Lost VHS, the magazine that was free on WordPress, the music album was done by myself on Logic. So it was more just creative projects that I put out there without any real expectation for money. But I was like 16, 17. Now the kids who are 16 and 17 are making like 20, 30 grand a month and like killing it, doing all sorts of stuff. But it was, you know, it was V1 of that era, I think. But yeah, and then I think from there, you know, it really gave me a sense of you can just go and do stuff and you can just put stuff out there. And if you have an audience, even if it's a small one, you can make some level of an impact. But more importantly, your creativity can be seen, right? And that was the stage at that point. It wasn't so much around commercialization, but it was more, you know, you can be seen and heard. And that was in a way enough, I think, at the time. So yeah, that was like me, 17, 18, loving life and just trying stuff out, you know?

You said your parents were very supportive. Were your parents entrepreneurial at all?

Not really at all, actually. They're both kind of more corporate. Uh, my dad definitely more corporate, like, you know, IT security, kind of nerdy tech. Yeah. My mom more in sort of social, social work. Um, so not really entrepreneurial in that sense, but I think they saw in me someone who was always— I think when I was young, I was always going for stuff and being quite, um, you know, if I had an idea, I wanted to do it and just get it done, which I think is sort of typified by a lot of the decisions in my life. They've just been quite— I don't say impulsive because not impulsive in a— as if that's a negative, but if something feels right, you go for it. And that's been something that has driven me with every single thing that I've done. And that was definitely the case when I was young, young, young, and then young in school, and then, and then sort of 17, 18, I was getting older.

And you got a place at King's College, but you, uh, yes, didn't even go.

I went, I went for 12 weeks. Okay, over 12 very long, fresh, boring weeks. The introduction, oh, it was horrible, it was horrible. I hated it. And we're not too far from King's College right now. Yeah, uh, shutters down my spine. It wasn't that bad, it wasn't that bad. So I ended up getting to the end of school, and as somebody who had this sort of creative pent-up energy. I was like, I wanted just to go and do stuff and get stuck in. But when you're 17, you have no idea what there is, right? So I've done a bit of work experience, did work experience at a production company called Way 2 Blue. Um, I then was looking at— that was in year 10— and then got to year, uh, 12, 13. I was like, okay, I don't want to go to university. I just knew I didn't want to go. But when you're at school, when you're at that age, what else is there? Especially at that time. I think now kids have TikTok and they have social to inspire them at such a higher level because there's so much volume of what's possible. So you're seeing a lot of kids not go and make better choices, I think. But for me, I was I was at that point where I was like, I don't want to go, but what else is there? I don't know what the industry is. I just know I have to do this because what else is there to do? So I applied for the most unserious, if you will, undegree degree you could ever take, which was Digital Culture. Because I did quite well at my A-levels, so I knew I could go and do something decent. But Digital Culture was the degree, which says everything because like, what is that? Like, what is that?

I don't know if I've ever heard that before.

I don't think— I don't even know if it still exists though. I wouldn't be surprised if they've got rid of it, but it was called Digital Culture. And the irony was that I'd been working at Vice over that summer because I had this instinct that I wanted to speak to somebody in the real industry. And I managed to get a bunch of emails from Vice and I emailed 20 people and said, can I come and speak to somebody please? Like save me from the future of university. 2 people said, yes, please come down. I then ended up going and then they gave me work experience actually over that summer. And I learned more from like a day doing work experience at Vice than I did at those 12 weeks at King's. But I got to the end of that summer and then had to start uni. And I remember the dichotomy of that, right? Digital culture, literally Vice at the time, the most digitally, I guess, relevant.

It was a zeitgeist, wasn't it?

It was a zeitgeist. I was in that and then going to this degree, which was talking about Dungeons and Dragons and RPGs and all this crazy stuff that I was like, I don't want to be here. This is terrible. And I always thought if you had a card machine outside the door at university, because the mindset at university is such a mess. If you had a card machine outside the door for university and every time you entered you had to tap £40, would you say that that was money well spent? And for the vast majority of people, I think no, if they even went. But because of the student loan dynamic, which I think is a real problem, generally speaking, that £40 is never thought about. So you go to these things and then you cock it up and you go, hang on a minute, I've just spent £300 this week to talk about RPGs and Dungeons and Dragons and all this crazy stuff in this course called Digital Culture, which shouldn't even exist. And yet I'm working at Vice at the same time and looking at that and going, I'm learning more than I could ever imagine. I'm working on incredible projects with big brands. I'm understanding the industry each and every day, and I'm loving it. I want to do that, not that. So thankfully I got to the Christmas party that year, and the MD— and no, the creative director and the associate creative director— we were all there. We were talking together and saying— I was saying to them, look, like, I, I love being here. I really want to be at somewhere like Vice. Um, you know, I'm at uni, I hate it. And they were like, look, we'd love to have you join us if you wanted to come full time. We just don't want your parents to come with pitchforks and try and, like, you know, take us out. So the next, the next day I went home and said to my parents, I was like, hey, like, you Vice offered me a full-time job, become a creative there, one drop out uni and go and do that. And as supportive as ever, because they're very supportive, they were just like, yeah, that's what you want to do, go for it. So literally that same day, that Saturday, because the party was on a Friday, that Saturday handed in all my stuff, went on King's as quick as I could. I was like, get out of here, get out of here, like binned off. And then, um, yeah, handed in the forms and then started at Vice in 2016, January after Christmas. So 12 weeks.

What was Vice like at the time? Because I think that it's hard now to to try and look at it as it was then, because now there's like, there's so many different microcultures everywhere, and like, we see our own culture as opposed to the culture now, and it's like— but Vice at the time was, you know, like an undercurrent of culture.

Totally. Well, this is— I mean, this is something that I'm like a big believer in at the minute, is this concept of the monoculture era and then the culture we live in today, which is microcultures. And Vice was very much the monoculture sort of king at the time in 2015. I think you can go back over the last 15, 20 years really pre-TikTok and COVID, which I draw as the line in the sand, you sort of had a leader in—

Because of the algorithm.

Because of the algorithm and discovery algorithms, which changed everything, obviously made it all about you, your choice. You get to decide your own world. What does that mean? It means everyone's living in their own bubble of media and culture, and therefore there isn't really a culture. There isn't that connective tissue anymore, which is why we all feel so disconnected and live in these individual streams. And I think we all feel that. Whereas before, everyone talked about the same thing, same references, same ideas, and everyone followed things like Vice, right? Vice was the zeitgeist. The concept of the zeitgeist is has drastically shifted. And at the time, Vice was, I think it was the coolest place in the world. I went in there, I remember seeing these offices near Old Street and just my mind being blown by the neon sign behind the front desk, the palm trees, this concrete floor, the music, the energy there was so attractive to be in, especially as somebody who grew up in that monoculture popular culture and lived and breathed it and really loved it. Being at Vice was this amazing thing of like, wow, this is where it's all happening. It really felt like that. And the talent there were incredible. Many of them have gone off to do unbelievable things. And you just felt that energy in the room. And I think that really, that left the media industry, I think actually. And I think Vice was that because curators and editorial publishers had a voice and the voice was what they wanted to get out there, right? So people were connected to the voice that was then being shared. Nowadays, it's hard to find that because of this shift where everyone's just chasing awareness and attention. Back then, there was more of a captive audience around things and you could really hone a sort of tone. So yeah, Vice was amazing. And like the brands they were working with, I mean, they were doing incredible money. I mean, I think that at the time they were valued at around $4 billion. $1 billion. That was at that right at that peak. So I was very lucky to be there for that peak.

What a time.

And then it all went downhill and now they went bankrupt and then I think were bought out for a very low amount of money. But at the peak it was amazing, amazing to be there. No, still friends with a lot of people from that time.

How long were you at Vice? Because for those not like aware, we talked about this a little bit before, like you're 28.

And so yeah, it's been a bit of a speedrun.

Yeah, like through life, biggest underestimation ever, like speedrun, unbelievable. 28 years old, who've done what you've done, you obviously started super early. So you're, you're 18 at Vice.

Started— well, did work experience when I was— interestingly, it was 10 years this weekend, so I would have started Vice 10 years ago today doing work experience because I was— it was after my, my 18th birthday, which I had at Glastonbury in 2015.

Wow.

Um, I'm pretty sure. So that was when I started work experience at Vice.

Okay.

And then did that for 12 weeks and then started there in January. But then I I didn't stay there for too long because the managing director of the agency— again, you kind of understand what an agency is when you leave school and you go into business like Vice. You'd have it, you know, you have no idea how—

as an advice agency.

Yeah, the Vice's agency. So the creative agency within Vice called Virtue, the managing director of that business, Ian, uh, he basically took me for a walk around the block and was like, hey, he's a person who hired me. He's like, hey, um, you know, I've been offered a job to go to Lab Bible to build their agency. Do you want to come with me over there? It was like this coy little walk around Old Street together, and I was like 17, I was 18 at the time, going, okay, well Well, why not? Like, literally, what have I got to lose? Again, where's the ball going? Vice magazine publisher 1.0, 2.0 was social publishers, Facebook publishers especially at the time. And Lab Bible, for anyone who grew up in that time, will know it's, you know, more problematic era that predated when we came to then it's more grown-up big business era, which it now has sort of been in for the last really 7, 8 years. And we sort of came in to help it grow up from a commercial perspective. So the goal was come from Vice, bring all of the sort of DNA around the sort of business model around that, you know, the, um, the agency function, helping brands connect with the audience, do it in a way that's editorially native, and bring that to Lab Bible, which at the time had a small commercial division, but really give it some structure. And so we went over there, like I was advised for another 3 months. I left in March, I think, or April 2016 with Ian. So we lifted up and went and then started the agency over, over at Lab Bible. So it was myself, Ian, got good Will, a guy called James, and then yeah, we created this agency there called Joyride, which then grew to— I think it's now doing like $25, $30 million a year for them. Wow. I think it's like it became the heart of their commercial operation and really helped it scale up. And then, you know, LAD went public, I think, 2 years ago, $360 million valuation. They did incredibly well. But because of that agency, without that commercial function that came in, that's what made Vice a $4 billion company, right? It wasn't the ad revenue on site, it was the brands that sponsored and paid for collaborations, but also the brands that wanted Vice's secret sauce for themselves on a white label basis. So those two wings really ran that business. And then Lab Bible did exactly the same thing. And we're, interestingly, we can get onto this later, doing the exact same thing for The Sidemen now. Yeah. Because there's literally nothing new under the sun. I've also come to learn in my old age, semi-old age.

You're 18, 19, you're at, um, Lab Bible. How long were you at Lab Bible then?

I was there for a year and a half. So definitely, you know, I've had them, like, literally when I say the most talented people in the world, yeah, in the world, in the UK, we're all good but not like in the UK at that time, we're at Lab Bible, right? So they had an unbelievable roster. If you were to put everyone up, it's one of those things you put like, you see the PayPal guys in a very like, not PayPal way, right? I wasn't that, but like in a very kind of, uh, yeah, like you look at that team of people people and some of the best talent ever. People like Ian Moore, who was there, who was the editorial director at Lab Bible when— sorry, Vice went over to Lab. Ian Richardson. I wouldn't count myself in there, but like Sam Zanuzi's gone off. But gone on to start Picante, went over to Burberry. You've had like Stephen Mai, who's like an unbelievable marketer, who was CMO there. John O'Yates, who, um, started OnlyScrans. Like, you've had this amazing lineup of people. We've all gone on to do great things. I think Lab Bible at the time was this hotbed of like, again, where the bull's going. So it attracts people who go from where was to where it's going. And a lot of those people were at Vice and they went to LAD. So I was there for a year and a half and we did some really cool stuff, you know, built the agency up to a big size, worked with amazing brands, got to go to some amazing events, got to meet the Sidemen actually for the first time while I was there randomly at the Sidemen charity match in 2016.

As the agency self that you were, like, you were meeting them in a business context or you just ran into them?

So this was when Instagram Stories just became a thing and I was running the Instagram Stories on, like, activations for Lab Bible, right? So we would go to events. So they hosted the first Sidemen charity match in 2016. and I went to cover it on Instagram Stories. Like, literally when Instagram Stories was first created, I think in the summer of 2016, if I remember correctly, and randomly then went there, went in the VIP area, met them all, and this was like the first ever Cyberman game. So funny how the world works and also how YouTube immortalizes stuff, right? Because you can go on that stream of the Cyberman-Jerry match and see me there with this like massive high top sat in like the dugout, like filming for Instagram Stories. And then obviously fast forward and we're doing what we're doing now together. So yeah, it's funny how things work. But, um, yeah, it was every year and a half. Loved it. Amazing time. Won Lad of the Year, actually, my first year. Very much, slightly employee Lad of the Year with Sam, who went off to, went on to start Picante.

Can I just ask, you're 18, 19 at the time, and you're in an incredible company that's considered one of the coolest companies around. Like, is everyone taking you really seriously at 18? Like, how are you? That's quite impressive that everyone is listening to you, working with you at that age.

Like, to be fair, people were incredibly open and collaborative, and they wouldn't— I never felt young and I never felt looked down on. And maybe it's something around the changing culture that I think is expedited even more so now, right? We're actually— some of the best talent you'll find are some of the youngest. I worked with a kid recently, a kid, he was like 18, 19, one of the most talented people I've ever spoken to and met. Yeah, that isn't weird anymore. And I think maybe that generation that I've been lucky enough to come in through, through business was the first which broke that hierarchy down. Because in reality, where audience moves younger, when you need to get younger audiences, like building, working of your brand or supporting you, whatever it might be. You need that audience to be on your side and to be at the heart of your creative business, right? So for Lab Bible, they understood that, whereas more traditional publishers, more traditional media businesses would've said, no, there's a hierarchy and we're curators and we're all the way up here as like commissioners and directors and you guys are down there as the young, you know, the young kids. But actually now you have to be on trend, you have to be living and breathing it. So you need that replenishment of talent way more than you ever did. I was lucky enough to be in that. So it felt like I was super respected, never felt I felt very grown up. I felt like a big boy there, which was great, and very treated, treated super fairly. And also like the work was brilliant, what we're doing. We're working with amazing brands, giving amazing opportunities, and I was always able just to go for it and just to do stuff. So I loved it. And but yeah, there for a year and a half, and then I got to the end of that and I was like, you know what, I didn't get to the end, but I got to a point where I was like, I know, I know what I'm doing now. I'm 19, I get big brands, I get it, I understand business, I'm going to start my own. So I did and started my own agency, um, in August of 2017. And left La Babel to go and do that. And, um, that agency was called Roundabout, which was, uh, at the time the first Gen Z agency in the UK. I think there were others that came after, but that was the first— was the first one. Saying it was the first one for sure, um, because who else was that for Gen Z? I was probably the youngest person in one of the more senior positions at the time in the industry to be able to then go and take that out and say, well, look, if you're a brand and you want to connect with me, my audience, my generation, I know this better than anyone in theory because I am that generation. That was always what I tried to of. So created Roundabout to do that and to help brands plug into culture. And, you know, had a lot of fun doing that, that business. Worked with, um, like Boiler Room, MTV, company called Dugout at the time, big football publisher. Um, worked with James Grant, which became YMU. And so when I, I worked with James Grant, the whole brief was, right, you are coming from a publishing world, you're Gen Z, come and help our talent to future-proof themselves and make them more relevant. So great strategies for them. So I think we were given 3 talent at the time, 3 people Rylan, uh, Reggie Yates, and Frank Lampard is the three. Wow. And there's myself, a guy called Michael, and Stefan, who had been apprentices with me at La Bible, who came over. They were also part-time at university. And like, Michael's like the biggest— he is the biggest Chelsea fan in the world. I remember going into this pitch with like Frank Lampard presenting his strategy, and Michael's there like shaking, like, this is my dream, like, what the hell, this is Frank Lampard. But we had a lot of value to add because as talent managers, their whole job was how do we strategically help Frank Lampard to stay ahead of the curve. And they need the 19, 20, 21-year-old in the room because they understand what's coming. So we did that, loved it. And a light bulb clicked in for me when I was working with James Grant, which was that the future of media really is talent-driven. That has to be the way because you look at this business here, James Grant, and you had 300 talent, if you will, or celebrities ranging from your Anton Decks to your Steve Iokis, your Frank Lampards of the world, Holly Willoughbys, Philip Schofield— can't say that now, but Philip Schofield, et cetera. And you look at them and you say, your socials, your brand presence online is bigger than LabBible's if you were to put everyone together. You have in this business, and it's not as simple as that, but in my mind at the time, you have in this business a publisher. Think of it like a publisher with verticals, and each division has media that can be verticalized: sport, music, entertainment. Take the same thinking of LabBible, which took the same thinking from Vice, which took the same thinking from whoever, and apply that to talent. And then you have a business that can work with brands at a much higher level. You have media value that you can actually extract for the first time because traditional talent in world. They're very used to doing pay-for-play on TV, show up on This Morning, or show up on Saturday Night Takeaway. That's it. But treat them like publishers and you'll unlock a huge amount of value for them. And that was my mindset. But then also bringing creators and talent who can be on the front foot of culture, but also have media value within their very DNA, because most traditional talent don't. And maybe that traditional talent blew up on social because they were big on TV, but that's changing now. And actually audiences are being built natively online. So first thing I did there was WhatsApp Amelia de Moldenberg, actually, because I'd met her at LabBuy. But we'd met at LabBuy Lab Bible. And, uh, me and Amelia got on well there, met very briefly, but the whole meeting at LAD was to try and bring Chicken Shop Date into Lab Bible. So to try and like buy it, like $25,000 or something. Obviously she said no, very good decision. Yeah, we ended up, um, I ended up— that was the first thing I did because she was one of very few people at— in the culture who was creating content independently, had a format, had a show, but also was clearly on a trajectory in my mind that was just growth. It's like, okay, do this again and again and again and be consistent at it. And you'll— she'll win. It was, it was clear as day. So I messaged her because I said, look, I'm over here now, we're trying to build a more future-proofed roster, you're somebody who wants to get more into traditional, into TV, build out brand partnerships and really scale out, do you want to have a conversation? She said yeah. Uh, we had a pitch and I worked out strategy, presented to her, and she, she liked the vision and she came in and she was there for I think 7 years or something, 8 years. I always say, no surprise, she had the best time in her career since I've left without a doubt over the last 2 years. Definitely no coincidence. But I know she's obviously done, she's become a global superstar and is incredible as a talent and as a person. But that was the first thing I did because again, it was this sense of creators are the future of talent who are really the future of media. And if you can incubate, support, and help creators who are media brands to elevate and to not just try and become like a traditional celebrity, but to become a media brand in a much bigger way, then you could unlock huge amounts of value and they can just go on to incredible things. So yeah, people like her, her. And then over 4 years did some really cool stuff. Like, you know, we sold the company, private equity, for like $300 million, which was amazing. I was— it was myself, Neil the CEO, head of M&A, and then the head of North America in a room that they asked me to be like, I guess, the creative rep for the business, which is like the best learning experience ever. Like, shopping that to private equity at 19 years old, 20 years old, ever. Like, me being like, hey, is this what we're going to do with David Walliams? Or whatever it is. But it was an amazing experience, that alone, because it was like, right, how do you actually get to value as a company? How do you get to that level of scale? What do they— what questions do they ask? What do these, these private property houses want? Like, what do they even see as good and successful? And to be in that pitch, that was like, you know, a couple of sweaty— two sweaty weeks in Mayfair this time, I think, as well. Like, 4 years ago— no, sorry, 8, 9 years ago. 9 years ago now. 9, 8 years ago. Long time ago. And, um, it was an amazing experience, that. And then we, you know, brought in clients like Munya Chihuahua, Woody and Kleine, Jack Harry's, Zach and Jay. Like, it was like so much fun. And they gave me so much freedom to bring people in to support the divisions. Um, and I was Chief Creative Officer there at like 20, so it was this of, again, to your point, how do you get taken seriously by a room full of much older people? And, you know, at the beginning, definitely, like, I definitely didn't play it right because I came in, I guess, quite confidently, let's say, because I felt like I had to pretend.

19-year-old man.

I'm a 19-year-old man.

I'm a big boy.

So I had to come in and pretend to be the guy. And they were so nice and, and very, very kind about it, but clearly it rubbed a couple people the wrong way. As of course now I look back, prefrontal cortex has kicked in. I'm like, what the hell would that have looked like being 20 energy coming in, and you're just kids.

But you need that energy as well, you know? Like, amazing things happen in the time that you have that energy, for sure.

But it's like, now at the back, I'm like, if that was happening to me, I'd tell that kid to get out my face. Like, what are you telling me about anything? But no, and Mary, who's the CEO there now, she had like an amazing moment with me in my first ever appraisal where I got my first ever negative feedback in my career, which was, you're rubbing people up the wrong way. Like, basically, you don't need to sort of sprint ahead and come up— you're coming off a bit arrogantly. Slow down, bring people with you. Remember that forever because it's so true. Like, slow down. Your job, the more senior you get, is to bring others up. It's not just to steamroll ahead and forget everyone else.

So you got this negative feedback and you thought, sod it, I'm leaving, I'm gonna do my own thing.

Yeah, no, well, no, so that was like at the very beginning, and it was so transformational for me because it changed my whole approach to business, to people, to diplomacy, to how you manage in organizations of 300 people plus, like, to what— how you actually stature yourself. And it's not about posturing, it's about listening, helping, supporting, leading from behind, not always in front, and just being a support for people that actually— yeah, the more senior you are— I was Chief Creative Officer, C-suite, that business, in the center of all these different divisions, and they all use me as resource. So how do you help and be additive to those divisions? And that's another dynamic, is like the dynamic between being in the central team and being in the divisions. These things, like, who knows this stuff until you're in it? But then when you're in it, you realize, oh, like, no, you're not just supposed to go off and do all this. You have to bring everyone on the journey all the time, and your job really is pitching and selling into people and helping people within the company to get to your vision vision, because if you can't do that, you're going to lose them. And so your job is around galvanizing teams, and that's a totally different mindset when you're used to just going off. 4 years later, I get to the point where, you know, me and my wife had our first kid. I was 21 at the time, and just looking at the, the sort of the time drain of— again, senior positions in big companies require a lot of time and lots of overtime. You're working, working, and working, and you don't have control over your time because your time is paid for essentially by the company. So that was felt when I was doing things like, you know, 8 board meetings a month I was saying to you before, 2 hours each, and I've got a baby and my like, you know, we're just getting to terms with grips with that. And then you've got, you know, the pressures of just like corporate culture at senior level where your time's just taken away from you. And then also the trenches of just the first baby and like, what is going on? You're just like, oh, this is crazy. And I felt at that time definitely a sense of like a seed was planted that I knew that if something could come up, I'd probably be ready to move on now. I also felt like at YME, I kind of got so much from it and it felt like my business school. So I looked at it, and I think more people should look at employment as business school. Totally. Look at treat it as your education. Learn and get paid. It's the best combination. Rather than pay to learn from people who aren't even in it, learn within a company and make strategic moves to different companies. You can learn the lay of the land, but don't see it as a way you're going to make, you know, tons of money or you're going to do incredibly well commercially. No, that's your, your education to then go and do something yourself. And I think it's a better, better use of your time than university, personally. Um, but I got to the point where that seed was planted and I said, look, if an opportunity came up, I'd be taking it, I think. And not to work for someone else, but to do something myself. And I managed to to meet two other people. So Aaron, who's the business manager, was a business manager at YMU. He looked after people like Zara Larsson and he looked after a lot of the Rolling Stones stuff and a bunch of TikTokers. So he'd just been at that cusp of TikTok when it became TikTok from Musical.ly. And he had this creator called Holly, 70 million followers at the time, huge. So he went off to manage her and take his own leap, which was amazing. So me and him were friends and are friends obviously to this day. He's a co-founder of Arcade. And I sort of supported him from afar. And then he ended up meeting someone called Sam, who's our third co-founder in Arcade. And Sam is amazing, very under— like, he wouldn't say this about himself, but he's like, he's been way ahead of the curve for a very long time. Sam has been the YouTuber accountant, so to speak, for probably about 12 years, if not longer. So his best friend at school was Marcus Butler, if I get that right. Well, he was obviously a big YouTuber and was at the time one of that Brick Crew that really rose. So he needed an accountant, and Sam was his friend and was studying for accounting. So I said, oh, do you want to be my accountant? He said, And from there, he then grew this roster of every single YouTuber in the country. So he looks after, I mean, this company now, Starbox, which is within CarpenterBox, looks after 300, 400 creators, right? And it just, it's word of mouth. It's, oh, who do you need? Sam, go to Sam, go to Sam. So he was always that guy from when he was, I mean, he's only 32, I think, or 31, no, 33 maybe. Um, so he's always, he's not old, but he's always been plugged in. So for the last 13 years, he's just been that guy. And so from there, he met the Sidemen. And he, you know, looks after them all individually before they were the group, and then the group, you know, once they formed properly in 2013. And so he'd always seen this opportunity for them and also for the space, that there was this total lack of infrastructure supporting these creators who were making incredible amounts of money, had huge audiences, massive amounts of opportunity, but no strategy, no structure, no team, no support. And so he'd seen that, and that was a seed planted in him. And he had met Aaron, and then Aaron said, oh, we need to speak to Jordan. So we all together. This is in 2020, so COVID was just kicking off, but we're having loads of fun on Zoom together, so it didn't matter. And, um, and we ended up jumping on Zoom and going, you know what, like, this is a real opportunity for The Sidemen specifically, and why don't we speak to them and see what they say? So we put together a strategy, which was my, like, the thing that I've been churning out day after day at YMU. Like, I had it just the autopilot of how to make a good strategy, because really the principles for any talent are the same in terms of what they can do. It's just what for what person, but the principles are the same. The opportunities really are quite clear. And had 15 things in there around what the Sidemen should be doing. And we said, look guys, jump on Zoom, do you want to, do you want to go for it? And they said yeah. And so handed my notice, which was one month, tiny notice, because they had— they forgot to change it, thank you very much. Was out there, out there on April 1st and started Arcade then. And then yeah, since then it's been obviously a lot of fun.

So what stage were the Sidemen at the time? There's obviously— they had their individual stuff, they came together, like they were successful at the time time? Like, give us a bit of context, because obviously now to everyone they just seem enormous.

Yeah, and look, they were— I mean, I think I would say they were culturally enormous, corporately not enormous. So culturally, at the time, I mean, I went to the charity match in 2016 where Stuff Goes Bad— this is when I was at Lab Bible— and they had, you know, they packed out 13,000 people, one stand. That's all they were given by the stadium, because imagine if again a bunch of kids come to them being like, oh, can we rent out St. Mary's Stadium for a football match? They're a bunch of YouTubers, like, obviously going to say no, like, what do you think you're doing? You're going to have problems and whatever else. And actually they did have problems because they had a pitch invasion at the end of the game, which caused a few problems down the line actually. But they were only given 13,000 seats. They've given one stand, sold out in like 2 minutes or something, right? And so they had this impact. And I've grown up with this impact because I'm, you know, I've been on YouTube, been a fan of YouTube for a long time. So I understood this space and we'd grown up with it, right? So you'd seen the impact, you've seen the cultural resonance. This is what kids were talking about. This is what me and my friends were invested in, right? YouTubers, YouTube is a thing. All the way through school. So it was all like, of course these guys are massive. But then when you really saw it and you dug under the hood and you go, wow, okay, they have, I think at the time, 9, 10 million subscribers. Walk down any street in London, got mobbed. Our first meeting with them, I've got this picture of us in these offices which are actually in the, uh, in Alternet, that big thing in Tottenham Court Road where I was doing some work with them. And we used their office for a nice picture. And like, we walked to Ciccone's for, for a pizza, right, around the street. And literally like two things happened as we were walking. I think it was like four of us, like myself, Josh, Simon, and maybe Vic and Aaron. We walked down down the street, and on the way from like Outnet to Ciccone's, it's like a 5-minute walk, probably mobbed about 6 times, right? And then we get into Ciccone's, and then as we all sat there, I'm just trying to have a nice pizza. Every single table in Ciccone's turns around, they're like, oh my goodness, that's a Sidemen! And you have people stopping in the street, and you'll just go, what the heck is this? This is insane. Like serious celebrity status for a specific generation, which you either understand and you're in it, or you just don't get it. And this was in 2021, right? And it's even— it's got obviously even bigger now, but at the time they were huge. They were the biggest thing. They are the biggest thing still, but they were the biggest thing in the UK without a doubt. So for us to come in, it was more, okay, you have this immense amount of, of, you know, impact and audience and engagement, but our proposition is let's help you never be reliant on a brand deal again. Let's help you build some long-term legacy and value from a business perspective. Let's create some independence from you and AdSense as a revenue stream, because that's your sole revenue stream pretty much, apart from a few brand deals. And let's help you structure a business that can make sure that this thing works for 10 years rather than 5 years or 3 years. And crucially, there was building owned income streams rather than relying on brands. That was always the pitch. It was like, we're not going to actually do the agency stuff, we're going to rely on building your own brand. So that's why the focus has been on sort of own brand building. And yeah, but in terms of size, massive. Um, but again, it was massive in one sense, but they had one employee, one person on payroll.

It's really between them?

Yeah, as a group they had Tanya. Bless Tanya, she was doing a lot and she still is. She runs our Cyber Sunday production, but it was just Tanya at the time, one person.

And so in terms of moving them from, I suppose, the sort of AdSense, you know, brand deal market to where they are now, what was the strategy at the time? Like, we're going to build our own assets, we're going to build our own businesses? Like, where were you at the time? Because obviously now, I mean, they're involved in so much stuff.

Yeah.

But at that moment in time, how were you thinking about their businesses?

So at the time was, and this wasn't maybe the most scientific way of doing it, but it was, what do you love and what do you want, what would you love to have? And remember, this is post-COVID, so there's a lot of energy. The world is ready. They're like, everyone wants to get back out there. There's this like sense of confidence, like people have been trapped indoors for a year pretty much. So there was this real energy, I think, around industry. Obviously a lot of companies raised a ton of money in 2021. Most of them have collapsed. There was this sense of, I would say everyone was in a bit of a collective daydream for 2021, and everything that happened in that year should kind of be looked cynically because it was all a bit weird and fake. Like, everything was just a bit odd. We're all a bit hungover, I think, from COVID And I think we were a little bit too. But we go in and say, okay, what would you love to have? What would you love? You click your fingers, what would you love? And I think it already come up that they'd wanted a restaurant, just they'd said that'd be a cool thing. And an alcohol brand, that would also be a cool thing. And also at the time, they're more, you know, they were young, younger, going out partying. We'd love to have our own alcohol in an ice bucket in tape or something as a concept, just like that would be really cool. And a So it was like on vibes, it was like, that would be cool. So we had this system where in the deck, having known some of that, we presented the 15 ideas and we had a voting system, which was set up by Josh, I think, who runs all of the kind of automation, the systems for them as a 7. And it was a great spreadsheet which had all their names and had a number at the end and it ranked them 1 to 10. So each of them in a line down here, the 15 things, and on the end it was a number that pumped out. And I think 60 was the pass line. Anything below 60 didn't get the 4-3 majority that you need. It needs a full majority in a group of 7, right? So, but it pumped out based on, based on, uh, you know, how much they actually love the idea. So 60 was the pass mark, something like that. Great way of doing it because then it's very simple. It's like, okay, they want to do this stuff, they don't want to do this stuff, but it's all done to the vote. And we've still got that spreadsheet somewhere and it's also useful to have.

They're young, and so to an extent, like, with talent, they kind of have to love it or they just probably won't do it.

Totally. So it was, it wasn't a sense of, right, you guys should do this thing and this thing. It was more, okay, these are the things that we think could really work? What do you want to do? What gets you fired up about them? And on that list, you look down, and now we've done most of those things, interestingly, in pretty much the right order. So restaurant was one, alcohol brand was another, uh, trading cards was one, uh, a membership club was another, podcast was one, uh, VC fund was also on there, I think, pretty sure, and a few other things. But you look down the list, it's like, you know, most of those things have actually been done now. And it was all driven by that sense of they're going to vote on it, that gives us a mandate, and then we're gonna just find a way to make it work. Yeah. And at the time, looking back, we didn't really have that much of a network. I'd add a bit of a network, but nowhere near as much as now. So we were just like, you know, cold emailing, cold calling, like just reaching out to people. There wasn't a creator economy infrastructure, right? Like no one even saw it as a thing. So you're trying to convince distilleries in Belfast to like have a call about a white label rum with the Sidemen. And it's like, you know, this is a totally different world to the world we're in today. But it was all quite scrappy in an entrepreneurial way. We've got the mandate, we're going to do a membership club, we're going to do an alcohol brand, and we're going to restaurant. We can just find a way to make it work, you know.

And when you think about the, the group now, like, they've had lots of different businesses and varying successes. Are they individual business people now? Are they group, you know? Are they all sort of co-founders and shareholders of the same stuff? Like, yeah, do you know what they're worth as a group? Like, it's all fascinating now that you see they're so successful, and I'm interested in what has worked and what hasn't worked for them as well.

So Firstly, are they entrepreneurs in their own right? Yes, in different ways. Um, I mean, all the Sidemen projects are all done collectively, right? So there's— just to give a sense of the business and the scope, you've got, um, Sidemen Entertainment, which within it has Sid+ which also has Sidemen Productions. So that's within Sidemen Entertainment. Sidemen Productions is the vehicle for Netflix and Inside and any further productions that happen on that front. And then, uh, Sid+ is the membership club that's £6.99 £69.99 a month or £69.99 a year. And that's a big membership base, been growing now for 3, nearly 4 years. And then of course the channel content, which is the engine room of everything. So main channel, more Sidemen reacts all on YouTube, and then all the social channels as well. So like a huge operation. There's 50 people in that team run by Victor, who's managing director of that business. He's incredible. You then have the consumer brand. So XXVodka, Sides, and Best. XXVodka, vodka brand, you know, one of the biggest sellers in Wetherspoons. Big up Wetherspoons. Um, Sides, which is the, the restaurant chain which just launched in Singapore, had like 1,500 people in the queue in Singapore. Simon weren't even there. It's like crazy strength of brand. And you know, it's got 7 stores in the UK. We've got a big pipeline of stores, I think about 20 or so that are confirmed that are coming. We've had some ups and downs. I mean, restaurants are tricky business, tricky and expensive businesses. So, you know, ups and downs.

I was gonna say, when you said restaurant at the start, I was like, oh no, no, we all get into the worst business models in the world. I couldn't name What's your worst business?

No, you can name a duo of worst businesses, alcohol and restaurants.

I had Tom Kerridge on the show recently, the other famous chef, and he obviously is super famous Michelin star. He's got like 6 sites and he's like, oh man, he was like, it's not the business you want to do.

It's no, no alcohol for different reasons. Alcohol and restaurants are the 2 worst businesses in the world and they were the 2 we chose. So look, we've learned a lot. Yeah, we've learned a lot. Lots of ups and downs. But with Sides, you know, we've got an amazing partner with that who, you know, Hero Brands, they're behind Joe Madonna Kebab, Chopaluna Island Poké. They understand this space very well. And, you know, I think we're in very safe hands with Sides, with Vodka, with, you know, with United, who are part of the same sort of group. But United, you know, they're the biggest wholesaler in Scotland. Um, incredible. Look, they— lots of ups and downs with all of those businesses. I think the biggest thing I would say though, for any creator— and I say this a lot— for any creator who wants to launch brands, stick with your strengths or find the best of the best partner who has the deepest pockets possible to go at it with you because the expense of these businesses— thankfully that the Sidemen haven't paid to fund these businesses. That's the trade, right? You have a JV partner who invests in funds, and then the Sidemen, you know, build the brand, marketing, creative, development, products, etc. But there's a nice line there. But the expense that has to go into making brands for creators, especially because retailers— we haven't even talked about the cereal brand— but retailers and, uh, you know, property developers, etc., they look at your numbers and they expect a certain amount, and that certain amount has to be satisfied by rate point of sale, but it also has to be supported at a very high level, especially in retail. So you get this trap where, you know, you have a brand that goes into retail, like Besta to an extent, which requires support because in order to produce the quantities you need in order to support the retailers, which is really how they make their money, which is on media, right, and sponsor— not on product. So that's another thing you learn: retailers don't make money on product, retailers make money on the advertising around the product. So it's all a gateway in to get brands to support them with retail media. And that's why retail media is becoming this huge thing, because they're going, wait a minute, we have all these brands, and effectively they hold the keys to brand success. So they go, well, if you don't spend X, we're not doing this, or you need to support it with this amount of extra value. And that's how they make their money, by the way. You learn this stuff in— as you, as you dig into it. Same with, you know, with, uh, with shopping centers and so on. Like, you're in an expectation battle there because you've got a big audience and they expect huge numbers, which you can deliver on. But then how do you support it when those numbers inevitably go? Because everything becomes normal at some point. And then it's about how the scale and the momentum of the business can be funded, because it requires a lot of money to fund it. So you have— that's like the biggest advice because most creators do not have the money to fund what these businesses need to be really successful, and they just require a lot of money. So that's just a slight aside.

I always think what was my entry point to the Sidemen, because I never got caught up in the, the like hype. I think I'm maybe a tiny bit older than the ordinary consumer. However, like, I got into watching Vik on Call of Duty.

Yeah.

And I don't know, I didn't even know he was part of the Sidemen. I just watched him and thought he was just epic and really funny and whatever, and then sort of like entered into the sphere of like learning about them. So forward. Yeah, they've definitely had like individually greater success than each other. Like KSI these days is obviously like, I don't know, one of the most famous people ever, one of the most successful entrepreneurs ever. Like, is that ever a problem within the group?

No, I think, you know what, they— success is relative. And for someone like, for example, Harry, he had— I think he still does— 60 million subscribers on his main channel, something like that. And he didn't, he didn't want to do it. He didn't want to become that guy. He has a different standard of success. So success isn't just about, you know, scale and growth and being more corporate and having more sort of entrepreneurial endeavors. For him, it's more about being able to enjoy making videos with his friends, living the life he wants to live. For some of the others, it's different, right? So everyone has their own subjective view, which is also the dynamic of a 7. Everyone's very different in terms of lifestyle and what they want. And so the group has to be that steady ship that kind of holds everyone together. Together but doesn't place undue pressure on anybody. And I would always say our biggest job as management has been to make sure that they keep enjoying what they do. They enjoy making content by automating as much as possible and taking away all of the boring business headaches that inevitably come with scale. So we stomach the pain of scale and they don't feel it. If we do that, then they'll carry on and keep going. But that has to be the end goal. It's a very human thing, and it's not about more money, or it's not about more stuff. It's about making sure that they're providing value to their fans and they're scaling and growing, but they're also not feeling that pain because there's pain to scale, as you'll know, right? Scaling is painful and it is hard and it requires a change and, you know, in terms of the way that you approach business, etc. But they don't feel any of that. That's all protected. But that means that, look, they can have their own individual view of what success looks like. And for someone like JJ who wants to do Britain's Got Talent or they, you know, he wants to obviously do his boxing or his music, anything he's doing over there on Prime, he can do all of that. Harry can do the opposite, not do any of that stuff and, you know, live his life. Vik can do what he wants to do, DJing now. He's launched an incredibly successful DJ career already over the last couple of years, launched his brand Circular, which we have helped him with, which is a sunglasses brand. He's really got his own stuff going on over there. Simon's making incredible YouTube videos, doing his thing. Josh, Toby, the same with their clothing brands, Internet Made and Ill Vision. Ethan, he's got Olive, his daughter, and Faith. So he's living again a different life. He's a parent. Simon's about to become a parent soon. So there's all these different variables and dynamics within the group that mean that, you know, individual success is about what they get in their own lives for their own families and their own, uh, pursuits whilst the group continues as it is. Um, so it doesn't cause this like tension point where, oh, he's really successful over there doing his thing, because it's like, well, I don't actually want that necessarily.

What's it been like with Prime? Because from the outside, like, even if you don't know the Sidemen, even if you don't know any of this stuff, like, Prime is objectively massive. And so what's that been like as a— that must be the biggest breakthrough through the group, you know, and, well, you know, has had.

Yeah, I mean, we weren't, we weren't involved in Prime. Prime's JJ's separate individual team. And Prime has been like the most incredible thing to watch and study as somebody who is also, you know, all of us are working on brands ourselves in retail, doing, you know, all sorts of stuff in the space. And it's unlocked so many doors in that sense, right? Because it gave a lot of confidence. And I think, yeah, Prime's been, been incredibly successful. I mean, there's no two ways that it has been probably, I would say, in, in human history, one of the fastest and most successful launches of any brand ever, without a doubt. And you can look at the numbers, like, the numbers were and are incredible. So huge respect to that. I think no one can knock it for that. Um, and I think, yeah, it's caused a lot of, um, confidence amongst retailers and amongst people in the space because it's given a sense of what's possible. Yeah, second, also, the other thing, the challenge, the other flip side of that is it can distort expectation because obviously the virality of that brand and the story of Logan and It's like a very unique story. And that story created a momentum that then retailers and people who aren't necessarily within this generational space don't necessarily understand. That isn't just— that's not normal. Like, yeah, yeah. KSR, Logan Paul, the, you know, the background of that, the fight they had, like everything built up to that in such a beautiful way. And it was very clever to bring those stories together because I think if either of them tried to do it individually, the story wouldn't be there. The story carried the brand and I think really launched the brand into an amazing way. So I think, yeah, it's just that's the only— that's the flip side. Expectations can be a little bit higher and unrealistic based on that story and applying it to everything else. So that's not, that's not right.

So thinking about the Simon, thinking about Prime, and I suppose all that you've learned over the last decade, like, what is the secret to launching a viral product? Like, what is the, what is the recipe that other creators watching this can take away for their own product or service that they launch?

Totally. So I would say the biggest secret to launching a viral product is to make sure that you've got a great story and that the content is in the DNA of the product and the brand itself. The biggest thing I, I've personally seen, it's a thing that we're putting into all the stuff we're doing and we have done for a bit now, is like merch doesn't work anymore. So the concept of merch, people buying into fandom, is gone because of this concept really, as I've been saying, of the monoculture dying. Like fandom doesn't really exist in the same way because fandom in large, in a big way, was around that having that kind of that unity with others who also share that same fandom. So wearing clothes and representing ourselves to others who also understand the reference point. But when culture is so divided and you wear a shirt in the street to represent your favorite artist, but people might not have any clue of who that artist is, and there's no touchpoint to that with anybody else because everything's so, uh, I guess, microstream now. It means that merch as a concept doesn't really work anymore. Same way memes have died. Memes don't work anymore. Think about memes. Memes are dead. Why memes dead? Because there's no monoculture. One for another, another day. But I think you need to think about, about culture being more about how do you, I guess, how do you intercept as many people as possible in their microstreams of content and their little bubbles? And you do that through a great story and high-volume content that cuts through and entertains. And the entertainment factor is the thing that's going to get people looking, and that has to be done in the DNA of the brand, which is why funny brands, silly brands, brands that have a personality to them— think of a Dr. Squatch or think of a Liquid Death over the last couple of years, two big breakthroughs from America TikTok, why have they done so well? And did they— why did they do so well so quickly? It's because they were funny and entertaining, and they had content and virality baked into their DNA, storytelling in their DNA. So I think that for me is like the absolute key. It's like, make the brand in and of itself content. Everything is content. Think of every element of the brand as a story and as something which can go viral and be shared and be entertaining. Remember as well, people go to social media for relief. It's the biggest thing forget, right? Especially when you're more of an entrepreneur or creator, you're in the— it's like people don't go here to be lectured. They go here to feel something. They go here to be entertained. And I think people a lot of the time forget that entertainment is predominantly why people are scrolling on TikTok for hours every day before bed. They don't want to hear some stuffy product tell you about how great they are. They want to be entertained. So make content that entertains and make the brand at its very core entertaining.

And I suppose one of the concept I find very fascinating with creators is how they can start creating their own intellectual property. And I think that has a lot to do with products, but it has a lot to do with, you know, their own stream of content. And you said something at the start, which is like, everything's a copy of a copy. Bearing that in mind, how does someone nowadays create their own intellectual property?

In a way, it's easier to build brand than ever. In a way, it's also harder than ever, right? Because in one sense, you have access to distribution more than ever before. You can reach audience. On the other hand, there's so much noise and saturation that building anything of any value and weight is really difficult. And I think that the only way that you can build IP and really brand that is at the heart of the IP is through consistency and compounding of connection over time. You need to be so consistent and compound and compound and compound. And the conversion rates of everything are as low as they've ever been. Why? Because people can see through the noise. There's so much noise and so much saturation that people— it takes a lot more to get somebody to actually go into your world. So you show up again and again and again and again. You have to do that in a way that's entertaining and cuts through. So I think for anyone to build IP, it's have a real sense of tonality, have a strong, clear brand, stand for something that is maybe in a previous era would have been seen as niche, but actually niche down in a way that's entertaining and brilliant that can then become mass. Because mass even as a concept I think is strained. I don't know if there is a mass anymore. There isn't really a mainstream anymore, I would argue, or not a big It's much more than it ever was. So you need to be very defined. Maybe that's the key— defined and compound yourself. And do it in a way that has, like, that nerds out about what works on social. Nerding out about content is so important. You need to know what's happening today on social. You need to know what's happening tomorrow. You need to be constantly adapting your content to what's working now because it changes every single day. And I think if you can take a great story, great brand with a strong defined personality, and have a great person who somebody connect to, can connect you with that, and you compound it over time with a smart, you know, a smart brain around social, that's always looking to learn and change and adapt, that over time I think will work. But that is a— that requires a lot of different variables and a mindset that a lot of people don't have. It's like, well, you put one piece of content out, oh, no one cared. Yeah, surprise, surprise. Okay, well, I'm gonna try a thousand more. Try a thousand more.

It's funny, a lot of what I do nowadays is actually teach established business owners how to make content. And recently, for the first time ever, I've been teaching creators how to build businesses. And it's such a different skill set. Like, I Do you think that both those worlds could learn so much from each other?

You should make a bridge in the middle.

Yeah, I mean, busy enough.

But that's— but you're right, it's like we say all the time, you know, the brands that will win will think like creators, the creators that will win will think like brands.

Totally.

It's the meeting in the middle that's the one.

I'm so fascinated by those two things. And like, I've seen you talk about like examples like the Hokuto girl. Like, the rise of that platform for her was absurd. Like, the speed and growth of that was absurd. And then the management of that talent, as it were, was the worst I've ever seen.

Yeah.

In terms of like product choice, completely destroyed what was like— it was a meme, which to cut through at that level, it's crazy.

Yeah.

And then to choose to monetize the way that they did was appalling.

They— yeah, I mean, the great example of, you know, but, but I think also it's hard, right? Because it was a meme in a sense, but it was actually a viral video that then just got shared tons of, tons of times and became a mini, a mini meme in this, in in the world that's lost its mainstream. But it was, it became a moment, right? But the problem is with that, and the hard thing is that you can get totally stuck in you becoming a meme. And I think it's very difficult to know because she's not, I don't think from what I understand, somebody who, you know, she didn't expect any of that. So when you're not expecting it, and this is why virality can be such a curse, when you're never, you're not expecting to go viral, when you're not expecting something to, you know, blow up at all, and now your life has changed, you're pushed into this limelight around something that's not great, and you probably don't wanna be associated with that thing. How do you then dig in, dig into that, right? How do you, how do you even build something in it? And I think it's, uh, it's very difficult. You're there really trying to squeeze as much money as you can out of that situation, but then that's going to come at the cost of longevity. So then you have something like the, uh, Hawk to a Coin or whatever it was, which obviously like crashed and burned. Yeah, scammed a lot of people. And something like that where you go, okay, like that's almost the inevitability of like you're in America, you're in a culture which is you know, quite, uh, what's the word, passionate about making money and making money very quickly and taking your opportunity. And there's more of that entrepreneurial spirit if you don't have people trying to build something. But then also, what can you build around Hawk Tour? So the fact they've kind of squeezed the podcast out of this, and the fact they've— like, I think, yes, bad management, but also, I don't know what I would have done.

Yeah, I mean, where'd you hang your hat on that?

Where'd you hang your hat on that? You know what I mean? It's like, to get even some level of IP and actually to build Talk Tour, which, yes, became a meme, and obviously became a whole thing. I say memes, it became a trend, I'd say, more than a meme. But it's like, to build Talk To Her out of that meme and to have that become like one of the top podcasts in the world, which it was, is actually, I think, pretty successful and actually quite impressive. But where do you go from there? Yeah, I don't know.

You talk a lot about creator entrepreneurs. Yeah, as like a new, a new trend. So first you've What is that? Like, how do you define that? And who are you looking at and saying, they get it, they're nailing it, you know, people should follow these people?

It's a creator entrepreneur I would define as really the next era of simply entrepreneurs. It's like when we talk about the creator economy, there's no such thing as a creator economy, it's just the economy. It just is. So I think it's these outdated terms that sort of separate this new and old world when actually the new world is just the world, right? Everyone's playing the same game. Every single industry is trying to gain attention leveraging social and content and storytelling online. So everyone, whether you are, you know, the CEO of Salesforce, who's one of the biggest users on LinkedIn, all the way through to, you know, a music artist signed at a label, all the way through to a footballer, you're all playing the same game of content creation, and you are all creators. Everyone is a creator. It was interesting, H recently came out on a podcast and was like, you know, music artists are now social media influencers and creators. That's the switch. And labels have been pushing that for a while because they know that that's the way they can resonate and break out. But it's ever— it's It's more apparent than ever that everyone's playing the same game. And with creative entrepreneurs, I would just say entrepreneurs of tomorrow, entrepreneurs of today, those that are doing the best, no surprise, they're the best storytellers, they're the best at building a personal brand, they're the best at making content. Someone like yourself, if I say who's to look to, you, you know, you're incredible at this, right? You've been doing this so well for so long and you've really nailed the— I mean, it's interesting watching your own personal journey as a fan of everything you do because you've become a creator. It seems like from the outside that's so big now. Yeah, that, that is, that it's that's your business really. And the business that you've built, all the businesses you built underneath that has sort of spun off your audience and the leverage that you've created at scale. And that's the goal. Audience is gold of today, and you have that in abundance, and therefore you're able to build incredible value for your audience but also make incredible businesses out of it, right? So that's the future, right, more than anything else. And I think, you know, you look at some of the kids today come up in the tech scene in San Francisco— I don't know if you're following some of those kids— amazing things, right? And it's like, oh my goodness, like they are so dialed into content and storytelling and making videos and going viral. Louie, yeah, yeah. So like that guy Roy, he like 50 million from A16Z from really like a tweet. It's funny, you asked the future.

You're right, like I would say these days a lot of people, a lot of people wouldn't even know the businesses I've built historically. You know, I've been, I've been an entrepreneur for 16 years, so started at 16, have built 4 decent-sized businesses, and by that like multiple hundred of people, businesses, and yet people be like, you know, he's a creator.

I didn't know that you co-founded Lottie for most of the time that I've known about you. I didn't know because— but then also, you know, you don't need to know that. And, and your business now, I'm sure— I mean, in terms of Lottie's unbelievable success, it's been incredible, incredible. And Verb. But I didn't even know you do— I didn't know, I didn't know.

Yeah, it's crazy.

I didn't know that.

And so like a lot of the time, you know, you get people being like, um, you know, I want to hear from people who have done things. And it's like, oh, I mean, for, you know, for 10 years I bootstrapped a company to 100 staff and sold it. Like, that's not bad, you know. And then I did a VC-backed company for 5 years to $150 million. It's not bad. But people don't— people don't know that stuff. And so it is challenging to an extent. And actually, now that I've got you here, um, if you were looking at like my brand, for example, and I'd love your view on some other people's, like, how do you, how do you create long-term value? As you will know from my stuff, like, I'm a big proponent of consistency, and I do think the volume is so important, and people underestimate it. And you do annoy people who are so dialed into you with your volume sometimes, but then they might forget that you're playing a much bigger game. And so, yeah, how would you, how would you improve my brand? Like, how would you think about creating long-term value?

So I would say for your brand, I, my thinking is that you're at a point where you've probably made enough money, you've had a lot of commercial success off the back of it, and you've gone down the business and conversion model with your brand for quite a long time with Creator Accelerate and everything else. I think for me it's time to, if I was, let's say, working with you, I would say let's dial back on that and let's pivot more into story and more into narrative and build something that has more of a mission and something to, to kind of end and to point towards as a future reason to, a, follow your brand, but also for you to have something to aim towards that's more than just business and commercials 'cause your business seems like it's driven mainly by that funnel, and the funnel's incredibly successful, done very well. But it's like, actually, can you build more of an entertainment brand off the back of what you've got now? 'Cause that's the bit that's gonna connect even more deeply, even more from a mainstream perspective, and has, I think, more scale potential, of course, than a business brand. So obviously you look at like the Dave Fogartys of the world, or you look at—

Had him on the show last week.

Yeah, big fan of his stuff.

He's awesome.

And his videos are great where like he'll do stuff like his YouTube videos of helping a business go from X to Y. It's like Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares businesses. Love that stuff, that's great. It's like entertainment meets business. And because of exactly that, it's also like what you've done needs to be more clear and prominent in, in the entertainment side, because that's your proof point. It's like, imagine it's a TV show. I think you're— you could have an unbelievable YouTube channel with some investment of similar, similar in that sense to Dave. I'd use him as a good reference point. And Cody Sanchez is another. Obviously I'm sure you've had him on the pod as well, as two people who I go, okay, they're like creating great entertainment around business. And there's not many people in the UK who've got the scale, the size of— that you have, that have the credibility you have in real business that most people wouldn't even know, uh, plus the personality, everything. So you, I think, are doing an amazing job as like an edutainment YouTube creator and, and somebody who can build great entertainment around the world of business, more than using your platform to sell businesses and to create a funnel for value products. Because that seems like the main thing for you right now. But I would imagine that's done well now, that kind of— for me, it'd be like, cool, done that, great, banked, next chapter, entertainment. And that's how it goes from this to like a totally another level, I think.

It's funny you say that. The Creator Accelerator came from effectively being asked non-stop, can I teach people how to do personal brand?

Yeah.

And I was like, well, I don't want to do it one-on-one.

Yeah, totally scalable, right?

I was like, I was like basically backpacking with Lou, and I was like, there's no way I could do this one-on-one, and I don't want to do one-on-one. And so it was completely like opportunistic at the moment. But then I could never have guessed that, like, you know, you take Verb, for example. Verb was like nearly 100 people, did $2 million in EBITDA, sold the company.

Yeah. And $100 million, how— what was the revenue of $2 million EBITDA?

Like $20, $25.

All right, so 10%.

And this, this was a profit.

What's the margin?

Well, this is the thing, 93, 95, like we talk about it internally is like the most ridiculous story ever in that the customers are so happy, the results are so amazing. The only people who don't like it are those who haven't done it.

Yeah.

And the results are so amazing.

It's become so commercially successful that because the results are amazing and because it's so clear to you, right, and clear to your brand.

It's like a $10 million in the last year since we launched and it's like a 90% profit business.

There we go.

And we've put zero into it.

It makes you want to never do another business model again. Exactly. Not yet.

For the first time ever, like we are doing, we're doing a cohort now. So by the time this comes out, it won't even be relevant. But it's interesting to think about, like it has been a moment. It's been an amazing thing. I'm not going to say it's not going to come back, but we're going to take a break from it because I look at my own brand and I go, okay, I think there's bigger things we can do here. You know, like I, I want to launch a new tech business. I want to do more entertainment content. And so you can have like really commercial moments and then not. But the great thing with an audience is that as long as you provide value, they're coming with 100%.

But also the, the business is part of the content. So the Creator Accelerator is part of your content, right? It is content. And yes, there's a commercial endpoint, but actually it's just part of the content you're making. So it, it can come and it can go like any TV show can come and go, and then it can have a rerun and come back. But I would look at your world more from an entertainment— again, in this dialing in on this concept of like social is principally entertainment. And that's one thing that you've done that has been entertaining and valuable for people. But actually, I think the entertainment needs the dull way up, and you become more of a network for content all around the things that you're passionate about and business, and do it in a way that is really fun. I don't know if you saw Jordan Welch recently did a thing, it was like day 1 to day 30 of taking a follower from broke to rich. Sick, it was so good. It was like a random kid, he got applications in, it's like 19, and he helped him launch an e-com store. And I think by the end he made like, you know, $2,000, $3,000 or something a day. And yes, it would have been low profit because of ads, but still like, this is a kid who had literally 30 cents. Yeah, and he spent 30 days with them and he's come out. I think they've grossed, they gross like 11, 12 grand in a month.

The annoying thing I actually think sometimes about that, right, is that some of the people we've had on the accelerator have gone from like leaving a job and like dead broke to now making an absurd amount of money. And yet because they're like professionals, they don't want to talk about it publicly. Yeah. And so like we—

and they're English and no one in— and they're in—

no one wants to talk about I have money. You often do get a couple of Americans who do, who do it, who are like, yeah, like, shout about the fact that I made millions. And it's like, awesome. Yeah, I will. I suppose when you look at the, the, the space, like, who do you think is doing that really well? Like, would Simon Squibb be up there? Because his brand is now massive, you know.

Yeah, no, I think Simon's, someone's done a very good job. But again, the end, he's done really well entertainment, really well entertainment. And obviously that converts in a different way because you're not going to maybe make $10 million from audience in a year that is an entertainment audience. You've done very well commercially, whereas that brand will not do as well commercially if he was to launch a product because it's mainly a kind of generalist audience.

Yeah, they'd be annoyed if he launched a product.

Exactly. What do you mean, try to charge me for this? Like, no way.

I saw like when he launched his book, which I helped him do, it was like, why are you charging for your book?

It's like, what do you think I'm going to do?

Like, the publisher needs to get paid at some point.

Exactly. It's paper, right? That stuff costs money. But I think he's a good example of more entertainment. He, I think, can dial down more into— interestingly, it's kind of the inverse. I would say for him, it's like dial down slightly more, focus more around kind of cultivating a space for an audience that's more focused around business. And then that could be your value audience from your main kind of entertainment mothership, if you will. You've got a very big value audience, and that can obviously convert incredibly well into what you're doing. But actually now, how do you superscale that into an entertainment audience? No surprise though, his audience on the entertainment side has done— it's been huge in terms of scale. Um, so it's almost— but I would rather actually start in a way from your position of high-value audience that's focused around your value prop to then big entertainment audience. It's harder, I think, the other way around, because again, to your point, expectation— they're expecting entertainment for free, they're not expecting to pay. So you've got, I think, a really good opportunity. But I think Simon's obviously great, Dave's great, Dave Fogarty's great. Dave, like, I know him— I've never met him, but Dave Fogarty's great. Cody Sanchez is incredible as well, I'm a big fan of her stuff. Obviously people like Alex Mosey, done incredibly well. And you watch their content, and again, they're getting more and more entertaining. I think as time goes on, it's like that era of like, here's how you go from zero to ten, I feel like it's kind of over. Ever since even with, um, Daryl Bassey and Flight Studio, who, you know, incredible. Steven's brand is amazing, right? And I think, you know, what they've done, they've pivoted more towards entertainment as well. And like the debates, very good, you know, really good. And like, I'm in, like, I'm here to be entertained. Yeah, that's where that brings me back.

I'd stop watching that a long a long time ago. And the debates, I was like, I'm in. Yeah.

And it's hot button topics, it's stuff that they can see is working, and then it's framing it in a way that is just entertaining. So that for me is the dial-up now. You have to be entertaining. And I think for you, you've got a huge opportunity genuinely to do that. And there's people doing it well, but there's still a gap here in the UK.

Um, so I think, yeah, you see, you hit a point which I think is super interesting about the creator space. And like, I've seen and lived this myself. The reason I I don't do a lot of brand deals is that I monetize a completely different way.

Yeah.

And so like, I don't want to, I don't need to, I don't feel like I have to. And so you mentioned San Francisco, and it's like the heart of crazy fast growth business, lots of funding, etc. Do you see a lot of creators launching SaaS AI businesses in the future? Is that how you look at like creator entrepreneurs?

Oh, this is, this is a thing for me. I'm such a believer, right? To the point of what are the worst business models in the world? Restaurants, alcohol, all this stuff. Like cereal even, it's not, they're not good business models. They have big reward if you invest a ton into them. Interestingly, recently, Proper Popcorn, they've spent £20 million and I think they're not even EBITDA positive yet. Or they're just about after 10 years of building. It's like, oh my goodness. But they've hit a lot of volume. £20 million has gone into Proper Popcorn. So you just have to plug money in again, again, again. But with tech, it's obviously a totally different world. And with software and the changes in software development. Obviously the increases in— increase in AI, the ability to, um, you know, for anyone really to be able to develop in a way that you couldn't before. All of these things, it just opens up a whole new world of opportunity. And I'm a big believer that the next frontier where we need to get to for creators, yourself as well, is tech software. Please, please, we need—

it needs to have this space.

Watch this space.

I, I had my first VC meeting last week about a new idea.

Very good, very good.

And I, and I think it's because after doing the Creator Accelerator and Digital Business one for a year, I was like, I want to build something again. Because like, people will forget, as you said, like, I am an entrepreneur first. Like, I love building, I love the pursuit of something. And so I can't wait to try and now blend like incredible distribution with such a high-value audience.

Totally.

With great product. With a great product.

Yeah, like, that has to be the next frontier. Because what— again, why do we all go into physical, cumbersome, heavy, third-party dependent business models when you scale digital audiences that are global, and you have software that can be distributed globally at scale for nothing, relatively. It's just night and day. So I think that is an easy win, massively easy win, sort of like under everyone's nose, but no one's done it yet. So I think that has to be the one. Obviously, ViewStats and MrBeast, good example of someone who's done that well. Um, more of that has to come, I think, but for the right creator in the right audience with the right value audience, not for everybody.

So what's the one thing that creators should stop doing? Right now?

Uh, creators should stop trying to go viral and focus on compounding a quality audience.

And what's one thing that brands misunderstand about creators?

Brands misunderstand that followers mean nothing. And the reality is, if you're not showing up and hitting consistent engagement and reach every single video, then you're not going to win in content as it is today. So stop overpaying on creators that aren't actually delivering results.

Outside of The Sidemen, yeah, people you work with, who are your gold gold standard creators, influencers right now?

Gold standard creators, influencers right now, I would say, is a quick list in like the— I mean, the entrepreneurship space, you. Um, I would say, you know, Simon Scripps, incredible. Obviously Stephen of Flight Studio, amazing. Um, done incredibly well. I'd say on the more entertainment side, you know, in America, people like Ryan Trahan, unbelievably good at what he does and such a great storyteller. Um, you've got people, uh, yeah, like, who else thinking in the UK? People coming up, people like, you know, your PK Humble of the world. People have come through Inside and the Simon ecosystem and been accelerated by that. I think a lot of great people on that front who are making the most opportunity. The streamers, of course, like people like your, you know, your Speeds and your Kais and your AMPs who are just doing unbelievably well. Yeah, that stuff's just going through the roof and will continue to do so. People like Angry Ginge over here has obviously done amazingly and been one of the only real, like, streamers that have kind of broken through here, I think, at high level. But he's done brilliantly. So yeah, tons of examples obviously outside the site. Side men who I would consider, yeah, we're out there.

A lot of people should just get a really good EA and it's 99% of their problems will go out the window.

100%.

The best—

the thing that I don't understand is why people don't have— they're at some level of scale, even some of the side men don't have assistants.

But it is that thing of like, I train entrepreneurs to be creators and creators to be entrepreneurs. And like, entrepreneurs are very good at understanding quite quickly that you have to delegate, whereas I think creators try and do everything themselves and burn out super quickly.

And also there's control around that creative freedom relinquishing. There's so much, so many variables that go into that. So yeah, totally agree.

So I wanted to finish on why do you think The Sopranos is the greatest TV show ever?

Because there is this in it. No, um, I, you know, I do— I think, do I actually think it's the greatest TV show ever? It, it was really good. It was really good. I think, you know what, the more I've dug into the lore of The Sopranos, the more I'm just blown away by like the depth of that show. Like there's so much richness and like the— obviously all the theories and the world building is so good about it, but it's because there is a Xena. That's the only reason why I care.

Thank you very much for coming on, man.

Thank you very much, man.