Albert Slade, Founder & Director @ DOUGH

Welcome back to another episode of The Graduate Guide. Today is a very special day, joined by Albert. Albert, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you very much, cheers for having me on.

Yeah, no worries. Yeah, and if you could just sort of start off by giving us a quick run-through of your career journey so far and what it is you're currently up to.

Yeah, so I co-founded and run a business called Doe, which is essentially a staffing agency for students across the UK. So we provide bar hospitality, stewarding, that sort of thing at big events like Ascot, Cheltenham, Twickenham, Wembley, all that sort of stuff.

Yeah, well, how did you realise that that space, like, there was actually a viable business model in that? Like, obviously you were at uni, you were at Exeter, doing some work with Invades, you probably saw the power of events. Where did you realise that this was a problem that needed solving?

So yeah, I helped out with Dom, founder of Invades, and he founded Doe, I worked with him at Exeter, I sort of ran some events for him, and we sort of saw one day after I'd left that a client was like, 'We've got no bar staff, do you reckon you can help out?' We were like, 'Let's have a chat with some students, see if we can get anyone down.' I think it was Cheltenham asking for 75 bar staff the following week, and we sort of put some messages out and had 75 bar staff the following week, so yeah, sort of saw that there was money to be made in it and then made it into an actual business sort of after. After we'd done our first trial of it.

Yeah, yeah. And it's cool when, like, I think a lot of people— I don't know what your sort of interpretation of entrepreneurship was while you were at university before you actually did it yourself, but like, it can seem like a very scary and daunting thing. Like, you know, constantly people talk about like, you know, iterating and validating your business model and like before you even put anything out there. But sometimes it is as simple as there's a problem, can you solve it? And then a business can just start from there, right?

No, for sure. Yeah, I mean, there are obviously businesses like especially like in tech where you need to sort of iterate and build it up pre-launch, but no, it was very much a case of we need some people, can you get it done? We just had to look at the laws that we needed to sort of pass and then we did it. Yeah, so it worked, it worked pretty easily.

But obviously not anyone can just start an events company, I guess you kind of have to understand students, you have to understand like what companies want and you can't just give them any kind of person, I guess you're pretty selective in the, you know, whether it's with Doe or your new project, like the ambassadors that you would give. How do you go about curating the right kind of people for events?

Well, we, with Invade, so Dom Matcham, the founder of that, he has built some really strong teams. I think it's 6,500 ambassadors around the UK from 90 UK universities. He's got a team of 90 managers who are essentially really outgoing, well-connected people within their university, and it sort of, it gives us a shared accountability when we have workers who all know each other, they're all from the same sort of, how do I explain, I don't want to say background, like they're all sort of similar type of people, they're all outgoing, they're all able to hold a conversation, and so we're picking from a really nice pond of people where we've got really great staff who can come and work at your event and they can chat with your customers, they're happy to be forward-facing.

And what do you think are some of like the tangible benefits for students getting involved in the event space that like, I think most people go to uni and they don't really see you going to uni for a career in events, but there's like, I've worked in events as well and I think there are just so many transferable skills to whether it's entrepreneurship or different industries, what you has been the biggest benefits of working in events?

Well, I mean, there's obviously the easy ones, which are you can earn some commission, you can go to some really cool events, but for me, like, university— people often say uni is this thing that you have to go and do, or some people will come on a podcast and say it's an absolute waste of money, don't do it. I feel like I personally learned probably nothing from my course at uni, but if I didn't go to uni, I couldn't do what I do now. I met so many cool people, got really well connected in both sort of event space and then now with the staffing side of it as well. So I mean, I feel like it's just, yeah, it's a career path to go down that can be really quite interesting and evolves quite quickly.

Yeah, I guess you didn't maybe think that events would be your career when you first went to uni. I think rugby was your thing, and I think obviously when you have something that you're, you know, whether that's a sport or maybe a subject that you're so good at, like, did you feel like you were putting everything into that at one point and not really like thinking about what you actually want your career outside of that?

No, I was completely sort of like, yeah, single-minded with it. I went to Exeter, didn't have any other choices of uni, it was just Exeter, Exeter. Did the rugby program there, and then when I finished, I sort of went down to— I got the promise of going and playing professional rugby at a club in their first team. Didn't turn out that way, was getting paid not a lot, so we started Doe while I was doing full-time rugby. And then yeah, just, it started performing better than I was doing with rugby, and I thought, why am I killing myself for not a lot of pay with a sport like this when I can be doing much better elsewhere?

So yeah, so I think, but when you're actually at university, I guess what does it actually look like, that, that realization that, okay, I've got this degree, I've— but I've gone like full into rugby? And obviously you were lucky that the business kind of came to fruition while I was there, but like, was there— what was like maybe tough about like that realization that, okay, I actually need to find out a new, new direction in my career?

It's really bizarre. I don't think I've ever had a period where I've been like, what am I going to do? It was— I was all in on rugby, I was going to keep going with it, and then I found found this business that I could, well, with Dom we sort of built up and it just went from strength to strength. I mean, I've not got a CV, I've never made a CV, I got a 2:2 in sports science so I don't really have a degree. So yeah, got my 2:2 and that's all I really needed. So yeah, just building that, I've never really had a period when I've been unsure on what I'm going to do or anything, I've just gone and worked really hard at initially rugby, worked really hard then. Now with the business, I mean, it was— we're turning nearly 3 years in and it's just been, yeah, every day work really hard, 10, 12-hour days and get it done.

Yeah. And I guess having not come from a business background and starting up so young, like, what are maybe some things that you've had to learn along the way that, you know, if you were talking to your younger self at university and they were, you know, looking to start this business, like, what are some learnings that you couldn't have anticipated that you wish you knew now?

Some learnings? Oh, it's a tricky one. Yeah, really too short. I mean, just maybe be a little less single-minded, to be honest, because I was completely pigeonholed down that one career path and I never thought, I never considered anything else, and it took me to need to do it to actually end up going and doing it. But, um, I don't know, I'm not really too sure, to be honest. Yeah, I've not got anything off the top of my head.

Yeah, like in the actual day-to-day, like that, this is like a full-time job now, running the business. So like, I guess, you know, you're thinking about the direction and how you can grow and everything, and you know, one thing that you're fortunate with is like there's always going to be more universities and more countries and everything you can expand to. But what are you actually like, you know, doing to capitalize that and build your company? Are you doing partnerships mainly? Have you found that to be a really useful—

Firstly, there's so many events in the UK, we're not going to run out of events to staff here for now. I mean, we've got our hands pretty full here. But I mean, so the business model is that we send staff to work and we charge X, pay Y. We've got our events company with Invades They are already in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and looking at expanding elsewhere also. So I mean, there's always the possibility to then go and follow in their footsteps. We've got— the way we can get staff is through customers of Invades, so wherever there's customers, we can always find staff. It's just about growing the client pool, which is what we've been trying to do recently.

Yeah, and on Invades, what is it that— because I think if you go to university in the UK, you've probably heard or known or been to an Invades event, but You know, there are loads of people that are trying to do something similar, you know, whether it's like a student club night or whatever. What do you think really, like, is special about Invades in terms of, like, if you were to try and describe it to someone who's never heard of it, like, why are people coming to it in flocks?

Well, I mean, firstly, you've got to see that Dom, the founder, he puts everything into that company. His, like, life and soul goes into that. He'll always be at an event, so he shows his face to a client. He always thanks all the customers after they've come at the end, and he'll say while they're getting back on the bus, 'Thanks for coming, hope you had an amazing day,' all this sort of stuff. But I mean, essentially there's live sport and music which hasn't really been done at university before. You've got your varsities, but they happen once a year and they don't really have live music. So we— well, Dot Invades bring multiple universities to one venue. They put on live sport, whether that's cricket, rugby, football, polo, darts, all this sort of stuff, and then they bring some really cool DJs. We've got one of the founders of El Dorado is quite a regular DJ, he's really good, and then we give, uh, give some local students some chances on the DJ booth as well.

Yeah, that's great, and I think they're all quite unique experiences, aren't they? Like, they're not what you'd normally see, like, if you're just looking for events or something to do, like, I think this, the concept really stands out. I mean, obviously, you know, Dom started it and and you joined in and helped them grow it, but what is it like in terms of how did you actually go about identifying exactly what, you know, what you wanted the events to be moulded around? Because I think obviously you go music and entertainment, but all those like actual sports are very niche in themselves, aren't they?

Yeah, well, I mean, I think you're giving me a bit too much credit for Invade here, to be honest. It's all Dom. But no, I mean, unsold capacity is where the idea sort of sprouted. So you have these massive stadiums like Cheltenham Racecourse, for example, they're built to be able to take 85,000 people on Gold Cup day, but in November when you've only got 10,000 tickets sold, there's 65,000— 65,000? Is it 70,000? 70,000 spare capacity there, and we essentially go to them, we can sell you some tickets, would you like us to?

Yeah, are you like, I guess now a lot of your job is involving going to actual venues and persuading them that you're the right people for the job, and I think, is there any element of like imposter syndrome in that? Or like, you know, because you've just gone from a student or rugby player to now you have to go into a room and, 'I am this businessman that can fulfill, you know, operationally, like the marketing of it all, like I can do that.' I mean, yeah, you just have to be confident, I think.

Like, yeah, I'm quite young, 23, just, what, graduated 2 and a half years ago. But I mean, just, yeah, go into a room and, I don't know, be confident. It's not really like rocket science. I think it's just, firstly, work really hard so you build something that's actually good. So I mean, we've built a genuinely good business model, and our people are actually better than most other agencies, so that's why we sort of we know that when we walk into a room we can be confident and we're not just going to be bullshitting anyone.

So yeah, no, it's a refreshing attitude towards entrepreneurship because as I was saying, I think at university it does seem just very inaccessible at times. I think you're often told to just follow the path that everyone else is doing, like whether it's like, you know, whether it's for sporting or whether it's for, you know, you want to go do banking or law or consultancy, you get the spring weeks, you do this, you do that, like I think it's very hard to get that external extra experience and it's cool that I guess you're helping fill that gap in the event space, like by actually bringing it to students as well. Yeah, so I think what is the future for Gimme Dough? And I don't know if you want to touch a little bit more on Loud that you're Yeah, cool.

I mean, well, though we want to grow, we want to be staffing every essentially sporting venue, music venue in the UK. We've got, through Invades, we sell X number of tickets a year, so we've got that many people we can reach out to. And I mean, we haven't really scratched the surface on the number of workers we can have, so it's just about building the client base, which is why we've hired and sort of started building the team. So yeah, just more venues is the goal in Doe. Loud is very much a new venture, it's sort of a side thing for the moment. It's event ambassadors for essentially again unsold capacity, so you've got a festival such as Eldorado looking to sell more tickets, I've given them a team of 22 ambassadors who share on socials, they message group chats with their friends in it and they essentially sell tickets for money. That is, yeah, it's a new project, but yeah, it's quite exciting. I've got 3 festivals on board at the moment and it's growing.

I'm excited to see how it goes. And I think, yeah, one thing that, you know, I think is tough even, you know, with me and building this out, is that you want it to have as much reach as possible, but you want to also, you know, keep the quality of, you know, stuff in your giving, for example, consistent. And I think like scaling that, what do you think are your core values in terms of who you're looking for and the service you're actually trying to give, and how do you make sure you deliver on those?

I mean, the main thing we've said since the beginning of Doe is our voice is very much present throughout the whole business. So the way we run it is through WhatsApp, so there's a WhatsApp group for any corner of the country you want to find a person to work in, And we keep it very young, so it's like a good morning Stallions or morning Legends, that sort of thing, and we don't want to lose that. So a lot of agencies will say morning team or morning guys, it's a bit less personable, and we try and show that we like speaking to everyone, we've got almost a personal connection with 80% of the staff, and yeah, we want to keep that as we grow. So we're bringing on people who are young, who are engaging and able to actually hold a conversation with people and not just be a desk droid, I suppose.

Yeah, I think that's just a really important skill in general for any industry. Like, I think everybody's seeing how tough the job market is, full stop. I'm not sure if you ever post-rugby looked at more corporate jobs or anything, but I think everyone's finding that, like, your CV can only be one thing. Like, you have to, like, have that confidence and ability to tell your story, and I think Events is a really interesting way to do that and tell a story at university. And yeah, my final question to you that I ask all my guests: when you first started off, you know, doing your rugby at university and hoping to go professional, you would have a certain idea of what a successful career would look like. But, you know, fast forward to where you are now with the learnings you've made and the business you're building, what is your idea for a successful for it?

I mean, I think it varies massively. So you've got, obviously, success in business might be different to what you find personally successful. So I mean, for the business, obviously, it's growing out, making it bigger, more revenue, more profit, and, but keeping that sort of personable feel with all the staff. I never want to lose that within Doe. But personally, I think it's more about sort of contentment. So I've I've got my dog, I've got my sort of my life that I'm sort of settling down now and I'm quite happy. I'm not too fussed about like making— I obviously want to make some money, but I'm not fussed about the money side of it as such. It's more building a nice life for me, my dog, whoever I end up with, I don't know, but yeah. No, I love that.

And I think what's nice about that is, you know, I think people put really unachievable metrics on success, and I think like that's sometimes the detriment of like your own happiness and just general well-being. So yeah, I think it's a really good guiding star and mission. So I appreciate you coming on, mate. Really appreciate it.

Thanks, mate. Excellent. Cheers.