Elliot Hackney, COO @ Fellas Studios

Welcome back to another episode of The Garage Guide. Today we're joined by Elliot. Elliot, welcome to the Thanks, mate, thanks for having me. Yeah, it's a real pleasure having you on, and you're the COO of The Fella Studios. I'm a big fan of the work you do, you know, growing up with all these creators as a kid, like, being able to sit with the person behind building them into the brands that they are now is, yeah, really exciting. I think an interesting place to start with your career journey before we get into what you do now is When you were at university, you were in the sports science, that was your interest. What did you see your career panning out to be back then?

Well, at that point I knew I wasn't good enough to be a footballer, unfortunately, which was always the, you know, I always wanted to play football. Even at college I took a course which meant you could play football 2 or 3 days a week, and I signed up to do football science at Liverpool John Moores. It didn't transpire to be the course I'd hoped. Again, I was just hoping to be I'd be able to coach and play more football, but it went into, you know, the biomechanics and science around sport and the body, and it really wasn't what I was looking for. I stuck it out, but I did not have any idea what I wanted to do after that, actually. And I, you know, my first job after university was with Bet365, and, you know, I'm sure we'll come on to it, but there's always been an element of live sport throughout every single position or job that I've done, and I think I've just, you know, gravitated towards sport in any way, shape, or form. So yeah, uni, I had no idea. I just, you know, stuck it out for as long as I could and thought, right, see what happens after this. But it was by chance to end up in what I ended up in.

I think that's a pretty common theme in this podcast, all these people that are doing these amazing roles that people would love to work in, like No one at university really knows what they want to do, but I think you clearly, like, more than anything wanted to work on something you were passionate about. And yeah, so talk me through actually how you even landed in Bet365, because that's no easy feat either.

Well, I used to live with my mate, and I'd always apply for the same jobs he'd apply for, and I'd get them and he wouldn't. But sometimes do it to spite him. So like, I applied for a— he applied for a job at bowling alley. And I applied, got it, didn't even take the job. It was almost, almost just this weird rivalry that we had going on. And he applied for Bet365, he didn't get it, I did. And it was originally in a place called Telebet, which was just, you sit there, call after call, day after day, just taking bets over the phone. And this was slightly before, I wouldn't say online was not there, but it was certainly, you know, becoming what the force it is today. It wasn't fully there, but Telebet and the phone betting services were still very much a big part of business. And that for me was a dream job. I could sit there, watch sport all day. I've got people on the phone wanting to place 20-fold accumulators. And it was so much fun. I remember I was in work for the Aguero moment. I literally remember I had to put the guy on hold. I was like, I can't believe what's happening right now. And then through Bet365, I slowly made my way into different departments. And funnily enough, the last position I took there was social media. In my first position taking bets on the phone, I actually got a written warning for social media. And then funnily enough, ended up in the social media department. Just on my own personal Twitter account, I was just moaning that I was having a bad day. All the systems were down, handwriting every single bet all day. I said, God, this is crap. Paddled 'Paddle bets, paddle fucking bets,' like swearing about the term that we did. Got a written warning, got sent home early, then they brought me back and then literally moved through department to department, worked on the website for a little bit. Again, another great job which I thoroughly enjoyed was called Team Colour Manager, and you were on the Bet365 website. Say it's a table tennis match, volleyball match, whatever, your job was to sit there, work out who's who, and put the colour of the kit that the person's wearing.

Yeah.

That was a dream job for me because Saturday 3 PM, if I was put on the football, I'd just go and fly through it in 1 minute because I know all the teams. And then eventually I ended up in the social media side again, which is just you commentating on live sport every weekend. What's better than that?

Yeah, no, I love that. And I think it's interesting sort of talking about how you entered the industry that was changing really quickly while you're in it. And that is also very true of the space that you're in now. I've always seen YouTubers and creators, like, as I started watching them as a kid, getting bigger and better and it becoming more a business and they were becoming more entrepreneurial. And I think I had Ellis Platten on this podcast just over a year ago, great guy, and from the outside looking in, he was going just to away matches, vlogging them, and he was opening football shirts and what he's done with it now, like the actual depth that they go into, I think is wild. And I think, when was it you realised there was potential in this space? Is there a moment you're like, okay, this is the time to sort of transition from betting and sport into this world of production that you're in now?

Well, it was sort of, I noticed the change and I noticed the shift of like online creators and the power that they had very early on, just from seeing like the brands that were getting involved with these kind of people. From a very early stage, even people who maybe hadn't figured out what their content is yet but still getting involved and probably seeing a really good return on investment. But even though I was still in the sports and betting world, not at Bet365, this time at Ladbrokes Coral where I'd moved to as the head of social media at this point, you know, worked my way up through a couple of different jobs beforehand, all still involved in live sport in some way. I was 25 years old, head of social media, and, you know, been given a big pot of money, here's your budget, 'What do you want to do with it?' And I sat there and said, 'Right, I want to make the internet's version of Soccer Saturday,' and it didn't exist. There was a few people doing watch-alongs, like shout out people like The Red Men TV, I think they were one of the first to do a live watch-along, sit there for the whole game watching the match, and they were the sort of pioneers of doing it for a certain club, but there was no one doing it with people from various clubs, you know, people arguing with each other about, you know, each of their teams. So we made a show called The Kickoff with True Geordie, Lawrence McKenna, and, you know, initially there was Statman Dave, I was on there at some times rotating guests and a different cast, and it was pioneering YouTube as well with touchscreen stats, everything in a studio, studio-based, which the likes of YouTube probably hadn't seen in the UK. It took off, and me being brand side as well saw a huge return on our investment through affiliate links and how this, you know, show was propelling people to bet on certain offers and specials, and it was a huge hit, you know, internally. You know, I'd sit there looking like, you know, the golden boy for having figured this out. But it was just being in, you know, in so in tune with that space early and knowing, okay, these people have got a huge audience for a reason. They're so in tune with the, you know, the, the content this creator is making. They have such an investment in the content, and so that they'll go and also spend money when a brand gets involved to support that creator. So yeah, I spotted it early, got involved with it quite early, and then through there, you know, made a huge network of creators and people within the space and still work with lots of those people today.

Now I think obviously there's one thing identifying it and there's another thing executing it, and a key skill in making it what it is now I think is having that creativity in the way that you produce it and being kind of disruptive in the way you did it. I'm curious if you go back to that when you were dreaming about being a footballer back then, did you see yourself as a creative person at all? Was that something you had to find within the working world?

Yeah, no, I wouldn't say I was a creative person at all. I would, you know, play football, maybe play a little bit of poker, and that would be it for me. Football was the majority, like, if not the be-all and end-all, whether it be watching it, playing it, even coaching it. I did a little bit of coaching for a period to get my little badges.

Casual coach.

Yeah, my badges, even volunteering at Stoke, which is my team, doing some volunteering sessions, like anything that was football, that was literally it. I'd play like 4 or 5 times a week, whether it be 5-a-side, 11-a-side, everything. So no, I never really saw myself as a creative person. I was crap at art, like I could not do anything in terms of like drawing a nice picture or making a song, or even my handwriting's terrible. I was the last to get a pen in school, you know, when you get graduated from a pencil to a pen, I was the last. So yeah, no, I never saw myself as a creative person, but as the boom of social media, that's what captured me. You know, I would be tweeting a lot, I would always be recording my friends as soon as, you know, video first happened on phone. You know, Vine, I was like so plugged into Vine when that kicked off. So that's what captured me creatively, is social. You know, Twitter, I used to be very, very active, much more active than I am now. You know, trying to make viral tweets and jokes and commentary on like things that are happening in the world. I don't do it as much now, but yeah, that was where I would have said my— I sort of became creative trying to be funny, trying to, you know, put things out there that might go viral or get a reaction. So yeah, not in the traditional sense, but as social media rose, I would say in that sense, definitely.

And I want to dig a little bit deeper into the actual career path of being a creator. Obviously you work with some of the world's biggest at the moment, and you've got like Calphreesy and Chip, who are— they've been around since the beginning, and obviously like in their time it was quite slow progress, like for what they were doing, they were building quickly, but it wasn't the kind of numbers we're looking at now. And then you've also got people like Rufus Rice who are very new to the scene and just like blew up almost instantaneously. What do you think, like, consistently, whether it's the old form or the new form of creators, separates someone that can make it as creative versus can't?

I think they've just got that mindset of being able to jump on what's either something that's very unique, which is like down— that becomes theirs, or they're able to jump on and slightly maneuver and edit current trends or trends that are working well for other people. You know, there's no such thing as an original idea. Everyone has got an idea from somewhere. You know, the people that you meet throughout your life will always have an impact on you. Nothing I think is an original idea. You'll always have bits that you've pulled from certain places. And Rufus, for example, you know, you mentioned Rufus there, the songs that he makes. I think he's one of the greatest songwriters of our generation, just not in the traditional sense. Yeah, I don't know how he does it, but that's his thing. Like, if I want to watch or if I mention Rufus to someone, I know they're going to mention the viral songs. Which has been a huge hit for, you know, Radio Rufus Hour Show with him as well, which has propelled his TikTok account to like 350K, I think it's at, in the space of maybe 5 months, which is, which is crazy.

Yeah.

And Carl and Chip and all those guys who were first to the scene as well, you know, they would just be making those videos in their flats together, which I've got no doubt that they'd got inspiration from people doing in the US and other places as well, whether it be Trouble in your challenges, or, you know, shaving their head. That was always the go-to. If your channel was in a little bit of trouble, you'd shave your head. That's why Chip's probably got about 3 shaving his head videos. But those guys know how to jump on trends, edit trends, and make them relevant for their audience and do it consistently. I think consistency is key. Consistency is why those guys are successful. They never stopped uploading. They would always upload in that period. You know, maybe they've slowed down a little bit now, but because production values have gone through the roof and You know, it takes time to put videos together at, you know, the top tier of YouTube nowadays. But the consistency, you know, and the people we can speak about in terms of the most consistency on YouTube is The Sidemen, for example. Every single week there's a Sidemen Sunday and has been since the dawn of time. They've got gaming videos going out every single week. The second channel videos, that has never ever paused. Not once has that paused. They've never taken a break, they've never had a holiday. There has been a video there every single week. And that is the kind of consistency it takes to get to the top. And I think that's another factor what these creators have got, you have to be consistent.

Yeah, I think another factor that I'd add into that is, um, very much from the outside looking in, but it's that sort of youthful naivety or like that delusional optimism that you can make it work. And then the actual process of refining and cultivating that and learning how to manage money, how to delegate, how to empower other people to make your content better. Talk to me a little bit about that process because obviously You know, when Fellow Studio was born, it wasn't what it is now, but you clearly maybe had a bigger vision for what it could become. What, what the steps been like from, you know, what was this, you know, viral show that Chip and Karl Friesi started to owning and producing all these, you know, just podcasts like no other? Like, podcasts have gotten so stale, and that's one thing that yours isn't. They're all different in their own way. What's that process been like?

It's been great, it's been so much fun. I think I'm coming up to nearly 3 years now when I stepped in. When I came in, there was only Pitchside and Fellas. We'd just signed Grace, but it hadn't started, and that growth, adding the shows and seeing the slate grow and seeing the business grow has been such a rewarding and exciting experience. Every single person who stepped in, you know, to do a role and join the business has been an absolute pleasure. They've all, you know, The staff that we have there are amazing, and I say that in the sense that they just come in and they get it. They see the vision for the studio, they're brought into that vision, and they do some of the best work we could ever envisage. Some of the producers themselves have sort of grown within the company, whether it be Prodi or Lewis or Aidan, or— I just have had so much fun building out this slate, um, And it's been such a rewarding experience to see those shows and ideas just all come to life. And we're in, you know, we're in a stage now where we've got a really strong slate and we're only adding to it when we want to. We're not in the process now of like, right, we need to build a slate. We've got a slate. We are just adding what we think are diamonds to that slate now and shows that could be really valuable to build the studio. But the process has been a crazy one. It's been— it doesn't feel like it's been close to 3 years. It's just all seemed to happen so fast. Grace, of course, is another show to shout out, was our third show. And Grace's rise has been another one. Just, you know, no one could have envisaged what's happened with Grace and how big she's become. The biggest female-led pod in the UK by some distance. And, you know, she's got these huge tours And she's doing a lot of TV work now, her personals, she's got, you know, she had a huge campaign with KFC last year, she's just launched one with Wagamama's. She is, you know, another huge star of many stars in our studio that has just, again, just been such a joy to watch grow. And it's been such an exciting process, we've made a lot of mistakes, things that we've learned, but we're able to apply those mistakes and things we've learned to the new shows that come on board, we're able to test so much, we've got 12 shows right now, you know, any other podcast would have to wait, you know, 12 weeks to test something out across 12 weeks. We can test something in 1 week across 12 shows, which is such a powerful thing to have.

Just sort of zone in on that a little bit. I look, you know, on this podcast we have very traditional careers, we've got, you know, the likes of Ipsos or Google, we've had CEOs, managers for them, and I'm those very traditional corporate career paths, like, it's been interesting seeing brands like yourself and like, you know, we've had like Liquid Death on, which is very disruptive in its nature, um, and even like, you know, you look at the success that even you have on LinkedIn, yeah, a platform that is traditionally very professional. There's clearly some sort of pendulum that's like swinging towards people wanting to embrace their authenticity, um, And I think there's got to be some hidden tricks within disruptive companies like yourself that I think any company could take, sort of take note of. So what do you think it is? You mentioned there about being able to like constantly experiment, iterate, like the lack of red tape and what you do. What do you think you would sort of say to more institutionalized companies in what they can learn from companies that are growing so quickly like yourselves?

I think they, you know, a lot of these huge companies so often don't want to let people have a peek behind the curtain. They're so scared about, okay, what is this going to do to some relations? What's it going to do to HR? What's it going to do to, you know, investors? God, we can't show off what's going on behind the scenes, or like lifting the lid on what happens in the office. But I think the brands that are being able to connect with people nowadays in 2024. Other ones who do, just be a bit more open and honest, give that inside peek to what goes on. You know, I'm not sure how many other offices have a video series or YouTube channel that's hitting the thousands of views and subscribers that we have, that is just a peek into the office. Like, people seeing just the day-to-day of what goes on and what it's like to work at this place, the good and the bad, like what happens. And yes, there may be some people who look at that and think, why are you showing a bit too much here? But that's actually what's resonating with the audience and what's actually getting people invested in our story as a business away from the podcast. This is just the office.

I bet that does wonders when it comes to recruitment as well, like producers, like them actually knowing what they're in for a little bit more before they make that application and take that jump. Definitely as a company, your return on investment and training them up is probably even better as well, right?

Absolutely, like people are well aware of who we are before they've joined or, you know, spoken, even spoken to us, interviewed, because everything's out there, whether it be on LinkedIn, YouTube, we put the weekly vlog up, there's, you know, there's so much more content to come even just around the studio, never mind the podcast that we've got planned, but there's a weekly vlog and it gives that insight and everyone is so enthused about being a part of that journey and being a part of that whether it be, oh, come and do this for the vlog, we've got, oh, we've got a challenge here, or let's get this bit. Um, and you'd be surprised at how many leads and, um, business it can drive up on LinkedIn too, just from people seeing what we get up to and what we do. It expands our business to new audiences that we wouldn't have probably hit before, or, you know, CEOs and marketing directors of companies that, you know, we're just able to see a business having fun and seeing what they do but being brought to it through a different a different method or platform than they usually would. Oh, Fellow Studios, what are these fun office vlogs? Oh, I'll go and see what they make, and then they see our shows and see what we do and they're brought into the story already because they just enjoy the content. So yeah, it does numerous different things, the vlogs, from, you know, provide a great picture of what it's like to work at the business for people who, you know, potentially wanting to join or come on board in some kind of role, to businesses who potentially want to spend and work with our podcasts. So yeah, it does numerous different things, it's a very powerful marketing tool.

And that talent coming in then, I think you probably attract a certain type of person though where they're clearly very capable at what they do, they need to be to like, you know, be a producer for example, but what are some like common traits you've noticed if there's someone sitting here listening and thinking like, okay, this sounds like me, I want to work in a company like that, what made them stand out amongst others, like, if it wasn't just their core skills to be able to do the job?

I think a great, a great trait to have is just being so dialed in to online culture, trends, because it's such a fast-moving, such a fast-paced environment, you know, the producers of these shows sometimes have to act so, so quickly, from whether it be if a guest cancels, to there's a breaking news story and we could go and grab this person and get them on. For me, when I'm doing interviews or, you know, looking at people who potentially come and join, I start asking them, you know, do you know about this trend or have you heard of this trend? And if they haven't heard of 2 or 3 trends right now, then that's pretty much a bit of a red flag because you've got to be so dialed into this space for it to work. And a great example of this is yesterday. I don't know when this will go out, but yesterday at 4, around 4 o'clock, Molly Mae and Tommy Fury have broken up. Oh my God, this is huge. Drama in this world of podcasting and Gen Z. And we literally were able to turn around some office views within like the space of 20 minutes, get it into the vlog that was going up within an hour, title and thumbnail about Molly Mae, Tommy Fury, best performing video of, you know, the past couple months. So you've got to be so dialed into what's going on in the space because that will make or break how well your show is doing. You've got to know what guests are coming, you know, what guests are potentially coming up when, Love Island hits every year. Okay, who's just won? Who's just been evicted? Are they free? Like, can they come on? Um, who's blowing up right now on TikTok? Who's, you know, what's, what's the latest trend? What's the latest person that's blown up for a viral reason, whether it be the breakdancer from the Olympics? Or those are the people that, you know, you need to go and target to be able to grow a podcast and to be able to, um, really get decent numbers. So for me, I'm always looking for people who are absolutely dialed into the space.

And knowing what you know now, if you look back at the confused version of yourself at university, is there something that you wish you told yourself about, you know, maybe believing in yourself or how you can actually like find and cultivate the right fit for you in an industry?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'd always say just follow what you are passionate about. No matter what that is and how you can find it, something that you enjoy, because if you, you know, it's the age-old saying, you know, if you enjoy what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. And I truly believe that. Mine's always been alongside some variation of live sport, whether it be football, F1, horse racing. And because I'm working around that, I don't feel like it's ever work. You're dealing with current events, sport, live things happening. It just doesn't feel like it's even a job. And there's a huge element of that now in the studio with our two sports shows, and the rest are all, you know, speaking about current events and cultural moments. And, you know, those are things that, you know, anyone would like to speak about and chat about and listen to. So yeah, if you find something that you truly enjoy, it won't ever feel like work, whatever that is. That could be, you know, laying bricks to, you know, taking bins out. If you enjoy it, it will not feel like work.

And you spoke about some of the transitions you've made in your own career, and like some of them were purposeful, some of them were kind of out of your own hands in some ways, but how do you know when it's the right time to move on or like challenge yourself with the next, the next stage in your career? Obviously it wasn't when you went into Bet365, it maybe wasn't obvious you'd go into the production world and then that you'd even be a capable COO, like that's a whole new role on itself. How do you inside know when it's the right time to make that jump?

So the early stages of my career, every time I moved positions, it was always a step up. I'm very driven, ambitious, and, you know, I don't think without those traits you get to a position of like where you are, for example. You have to have those traits to want to move up and want to progress and better yourself, otherwise it'll never happen. You know, I'm from Stoke-on-Trent and a lot of my mates, you know, are in jobs that they despise and have never really wanted to, you know, move it, try and move themselves. I've had friends who've even turned down promotions because they want to stay just in their group of mates at work. They don't want to be the boss. That's a very different attitude to what I had, and I wanted to step up and up and up. From Bet365, I moved to London. That was a huge move for me. Like, I had so many friends saying like, 'What are you doing? We've got football, we've got next football season, what are you doing? We've got a team to try and win the league with.' How did that go? Yeah, I don't think they did. We did the season before, before I left, we won the treble, but, well, local treble.

Yeah.

But no, I don't think they did. But moving to London, that was a huge one, and that was to go and work for Digitas LVI. I did the social media for McLaren Honda. That was the worst job of my career, by the way, by a country mile.

Why? Wow, curiosity.

So I was the social media manager for an F1 team that blew up every weekend. They had two huge drivers as like a brand new team in Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso, and God bless him, the creative director of the agency had this wacky idea to give the engines of the cars their own Twitter accounts as if they were people. Every engine had a different profile picture, different tone of voice, different way of speaking, everything. Like one was speaking like a pirate, one was speaking like a cowboy, Every weekend I'm managing 3 different Twitter accounts: the Honda Racing account, both of the 2 engines I'm pretending to be about everything that goes on in every single race. So in a standard F1 season you'd hope to have like 10 engines max, and so they had this list of 10 engines, the characters, and then they ended up on 26 engines. So I had like this schizophrenia every weekend of like trying to change the tone of voice and character I'm trying to be, you know, it's like 6 in the morning because we're doing like a Japanese F1 race, then the next week it's, you know, US or Canada or— I still loved it because I'm watching live sport and commentating on it, but that one got a bit too much when, you know, I was pretending to be 3 different people or 4 or 5 different people in some circumstances. But from there, back into betting and sport, Head of Social for Coral, which then became Head of Social for Coral and Ladbrokes, working across 2 brands. Then I moved to become a content director at Racing Post and start a brand new department from scratch, which was making content around football, horse racing, everything else, and then partnering with bookmakers to make it profitable. And I was only there for 1 year, but I took that department from nothing to a £1 million revenue department, which still exists now, a lot of those shows that I put in place, which is great to see. Then I went and worked with True Geordie, got all these brand partnerships and multiple shows from the kickoff to the True Geordie podcast sponsored by Gymshark, Twitch for all live streaming as a partnership deal, PokerStars for a poker show, all these huge brand and content partnerships, and then eventually led myself to where I am now, originally managing director, now CEO of Fella Studios. So every single job I saw in my eyes anyway was some sort of step up, and that's what I was always looking for— what's next— if I wasn't getting it in my current position. So yeah, it was always just a what can I do next, what is the next level. So to say.

But is there like an element of, you know, self-awareness where you're like, okay, you just reached a bit of stagnation, or like you were so proactive and looking ahead that you never even got to that point?

No, no, I don't think it did. I don't think it's ever— I never felt stagnant or like I'm not progressing. It was always, okay, I'm progressing, is this enough progression for me? If not, okay, this thing's available. Or it was all quite circumstantial as well. Like I'd never— I don't think I was ever sat in any of those jobs unhappy with what I was doing or like really not, you know, not enjoying myself. It was more so, oh, this is available, or this step up is here, does this make sense? Yes. Okay, let's go and do it. So yeah, it was very, a little bit circumstantial, but it was always just, okay, this is a good step up.

But it is interesting, you know, obviously a lot of people have the dream of becoming a footballer, but having to become comfortable with the idea that you weren't going to make it when you were young, that must have been quite formative for like knowing, okay, like, this is where I'm meant to be. Like, you know, I think when you go through that feeling of like, like, something's just not realistic at a young age, it can go one of two ways, and you clearly were able to like embrace that and like actually go like, okay, well, that's one industry, now let me prove myself in another, right?

Yeah, no, absolutely. I'm very much a realist, and I have never, even though I'd love to have played football, been a footballer, even coached, I very much realised that that was not going to be me. There was way, you know, I've been exposed to way better players than me who I've seen not even get half as far as I'd like to get. So I was very aware that, you know, I would not be doing that. So what is next? And just happened to, you know, fall into that world and take it from there. But yeah, I completely agree with you that for some people it can go, it can be very hard to take when the the right path or the path you envisaged doesn't happen. And again, I think you can just try and pivot to what is as close to that as I can get without actually doing it, or what is some elements of what I enjoyed there in something else. So yeah, for me it was fine. I wasn't too hung up on not becoming a footballer, which I don't ever think was even close for me.

I know it's funny you were mentioning someone above you in that role that you said was the worst one you ever worked, where you were being told to do X, Y, and Z and probably felt like little choice in what you could and couldn't do at that young age, but with the team you're building now, I guess, is empowerment to like do what you think is best and execute a big part of your culture?

Absolutely, one of our key mottos is fail fast, and Cal always says it to all of the guys, whether it be in our stand-ups or yearly keynotes, we want you to fail fast because you make so many more educated decisions down the road from learning about failure. We have got no problem with anyone testing something new, trying something new, whether it be a slight change in how to post a clip or subtitling or the length, duration, thumbnails. We're fine with, you know, you trying something completely wacky and off the charts because it may— even though that one idea may not land, one of 4 or 5 might land, and we may actually learn something really valuable around whether it be short-form or long-form content that we can then go and apply to the rest of the slate. So yeah, absolutely, we really encourage failing fast because it can teach us so much in such a short period of time that we can apply, you know, to all of our slate of pods that can provide a huge upturn in whether it be revenue, views, or other social statistics. So yeah, we absolutely encourage that.

And what's the point where you become sort of comfortable that, okay, we actually have achieved something here and this works? Like, actually knowing when to let something stick and when to not, not just, you know, in terms of production and leveling that up within your team, but like even in your own career, because I guess you're always chasing the next thing and improving, but You must at this point that you're at now feel just like very present and comfortable with the point you're at.

No, no, never. It's always, it's always what's next, yeah, unfortunately. And you know, I have this conversation a lot of time with some of my other friends who are like, do you ever just sit back and go, oh, this will do? No, never. Even with the Fella Studios, we've got so many, like, I know we're talking about a slate that's established here, we've got huge shows, we've got great It's a great team, but this is maybe 2 or 3 steps, you know, a longer 5, 6, 7, 8 step plan.

Yeah.

We've got so much more in the pipeline in terms of what we want to do as a business. You know, we only had, it was last summer we did our first investment round as a business, and that was for £1.5 million at, you know, a £15 million valuation. And that was a friends-only investment round, KSI, Sidemen, you know, people within the space. Yeah, because they are the people who trust you, they know the space, they're gonna go, here's money, I'll maybe see you, you know, 3, 4, 5 times in a couple years, go do it. They're not going to be a traditional investor over your shoulder going, what's this, why don't you do this, or what's going on here. They won't, none of them will do that. And they're, you know, they're all amazing people and that's why they are where they are. But for, you know, we use that investment to expand the next iteration of that is what I spoke to you earlier off camera about. We're about to move studio, our own space for the first time. We've been dotted about in a shared workspace with 5 or 6 different rooms. We've even got like half of the office split up at the minute because we've got so many people that we expanded to, you know, so quickly. So it'll be great to the next stage where we're all in one building, all one office. 2 studio floors completely to ourselves to do whatever we want with, a lot more space. We've got 2 or 3 huge shows in the pipeline that we've signed. We've got subscription which has started now in terms of Fellas Loaded, which is a paid app where, you know, the boys can put tonnes of extra specials content, get the podcast a day early. It's all just starting for me. It feels like, and it may looking in, it may think, God, you know, you've done so well, or, you know, you've created a great thing there, but it doesn't feel anywhere near finished for me, Kyle, Chip.

Yeah, well, I love the attitude. I can't wait to watch it grow. I'll be watching along. And, you know, my final question to you, which I ask every single one of my guests, which is, when you first started off in your career journey, you know, hoping, aspirations of becoming a footballer, studying sports science at university, you would have a certain idea of what a successful career looked like back then. Fast forward with everything you've learned and done along the way, Yeah. What's your current definition of success?

I would say success is just being super happy with what you do. You could put figures or, you know, targets and things alongside this, or, you know, what other people see as traditional success. But I think you're successful if you just enjoy what you do. If you enjoy getting up every day and doing the job that you do, the work that you do, the career path that you have, the people that you work with, the teams you create, or even a part of or manage. I think if you enjoy that, then you're successful. I don't think it matters how much money you're making. I don't think it matters whether, you know, you've hit certain milestones, won awards, built businesses, because I know plenty of people who've done all those things and are well unhappy. So for me, success is to have, you know, be doing something that you actually enjoy. And I don't think I'd have said that when I was, you know, maybe 18 or 17 or 19. But that's what I know it is now. Just as long as you're happy what you do, I think that's success.

Thanks for coming on. No worries.

Thank you very much, mate. Thank you for having me.

Cheers.