Harry Savage, Head of Partnerships @ Thursday

Hi, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me.

If you could just start off by telling us a little bit about your career so far.

So I'm currently Head of Partnerships at Thursday, the dating app, but I've had many different jobs in the past. I've worked for an office space company, I've worked for a luxury Airbnb rental company, I've worked in a pub, I've managed a pub, um, yeah, but currently I've been 2 2 years at Thursday, but kind of in 2 different roles. Um, I kind of got a promotion 7 months ago now.

Yeah, and you got promotions to the role of Head of Partnerships?

Yeah, so originally I was brought in as Events and Community Lead, so really focusing on the event side of the business. And then when I say community, like, you know, CRM, you know, talking back to members. And then, um, progressed into Head of Partnerships, which is kind of My role's a bit of everything. It kind of focuses on majority sales, but then you've got kind of marketing, you've got events, in-app advertising, so it's kind of a bit of everything. So I kind of oversee that kind of area of the business, which is fun.

And for people that don't know Thursday, just a quick explanation of what it is and also why you chose to work there.

Thursday, so Thursday is, it's a dating app for dating app haters. So essentially we are an app that works one day a week and that is Thursday. Um, people kind of call us the Cinderella of dating apps, you could say, because we're— what we're doing is we're cutting out all that endless, you know, swiping on apps. People don't want to spend their time on dating apps, so what we've done is we've narrowed that down into one day. So on Thursday you can go onto the app and you can match, chat, like with people, but also we do, uh, in real life events of, um, for singles across cities of like Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, New York, But that essentially is what we are, we're a dating app that works one day a week.

Yeah, so when Thursday like came to you, or you came to Thursday, what was it about like its disruptive nature or what it was doing differently in the dating space that made you want to work there?

In all honesty, this is really weird, so my actual— how I got my job at Thursday is very bizarre. I actually didn't know what Thursday was, and I joined, I officially joined in November Nearly 2 years. So was that November 2021? I think. Um, but I was working at WeWork and Thursday had just moved in to buy, to buy an office. Um, and I was working on the community team at WeWork, and I just became quite friendly with the team at Thursday. I kind of knew who they were on Instagram, but this was kind of like right at the beginning. Obviously, because I'm not single, I didn't have the app. Um, but I knew that I didn't want to be at WeWork. WeWork was kind of a stopgap for me. Um, I was in a job before that that I just really had been there for 2 years, really didn't it and I wasn't progressing anywhere. So I thought, look, I just need to earn some money. And WeWork was quite— the role itself was— I'm not saying it's something anyone could do, but it was kind of an entry-level role that paid quite well, to be honest. Um, so I was at WeWork just for like 6 months, and then the founders actually approached me and were like, hey, have you ever kind of worked in events? And I was like, I had done some event work back at university, um, just kind of on the side. And I was like, yeah, I've done a bit of event work. And they're like, would you potentially be interested in working for us? And I was like, 'Oh God, I don't really know.' Their plan was to launch events on the apps. They hadn't done this yet, so they wanted someone to come in and launch those events, speak to venues, etc. And I would say it was a risk because, you know, WeWork is quite an established company, whereas Thursday at the time was a brand new startup. So at WeWork, I had perks such as, you know, private medical care and all those, like, you know, perks you get with a job. And with a startup, you don't have that as much. So it was going to be a risk, but I knew that I could see from online the kind of noise they were making, that it was going to be a cool company to work for. So yeah, I just took the leap and then was like, goodbye to WeWork, and then moved into Thursday and was still working in the WeWork. So yeah, it was a bit unconventional of how I got my job. I didn't apply for a role. I did send my CV over, like, I quickly remember the night before editing it, adding stuff in, which at this time probably wasn't relevant. But I think what they saw, which I would hope, is just they wanted someone kind of, you know, communicate that kind of a lot of the event side role was kind of, it was going out approaching venues, talking to people, email management, that kind of side. And yeah, that's kind of how I landed my job at Thursday, but I would say I kind of went into it slightly a bit blind, but I think that's kind of a good thing because I didn't know what to expect and because there was no other role like mine in the company at the time. I kind of made it my own, but yeah, I didn't go through like some long application process. It was quite unconventional.

Yeah, is it fair to say that now Thursday, one of its biggest parts of it is the events itself?

Yeah, the events now, I mean, they've been going for like 2 years. We've run over 1,000 events, we've had over like 100,000 people attend the events. Both London, UK, and in New York. And, you know, now when people think of Thursday, they do think, oh, the dating app that does events. So yeah, it is a big aspect. It's also kind of a, you know, a core revenue stream for the business as well.

Yeah, and like, aside from events, a big part of your role is obviously getting these partnerships, and you've partnered with some of the biggest brands in the world, the likes of BrewDog and all amazing establishments around London.

Yeah.

As somebody who has been building something as a student, I think there's a lot of lessons that can be learned from the power of partnerships.

Yeah.

In terms of like, you know, you don't have to be sponsoring something or anything to grow your brand awareness, like you don't need that money necessarily from the get-go. What's some advice that you could give to people in terms of like securing those partnerships, be it like the actual conversation and getting to know that person, or just like what you think Thursday's gained from doing so?

I would say a piece of advice in my role, a lot of it I would say is you've got to be approachable and you've got to be, I mean, you've got to be, you've got to put yourself out there, be a likable person. Like a lot of my, I can spend weeks, days on end speaking to one brand to try and get a deal over the line, but it's how you approach the brand, it's those conversations. I'm not saying you need to be best friends with them, but you need to, it's kind of You need to be friendly, you need to also show them what you can do for them, but I think the main thing within my role is being approachable and being friendly as well, because, you know, that brand, they're putting money into you, they've got to be able to trust you. So that's something I would say is a piece of advice, that to be in that kind of partnership role, you need to be approachable, talkative. I guess mine is kind of sales-based in a way, but I'm not like— I wouldn't say that I I like, it's heavily sales-based. I'm always talking about sales. That's just, just a part of it.

Um, yeah, yeah. One of the partnerships I want to ask about in particular, yeah, I don't know how much you can say about it because it's a, um, well, let's just say it's a very underground brand that's grown massively. Yeah, but you know, PEAR?

PEAR, yes.

So I saw that there was a little collaboration with them. What can you say about that collaboration and also just Is there one partnership that stood out to you in the time you've worked there that's really like excelled and accelerated the company?

So Pear, I think there's more— I don't know how much you can say, there's more to come from that, but Pear obviously is, it's a ring to signify you're single. There's two massive alignments between Thursday and Pear, right? Like we are trying to get people off dating apps, meeting in real life. Pear is there to signify in real life that you are single. So it kind of collides and it makes kind of perfect sense. Obviously we're partnering with them at the moment on our ski trip, so we're taking like God knows how many singles to the Alps in March. We did this last year as Thursday alone. This year we partnered with PEAR because it just widens our community. I would say one of the favourite brands I've— it's hard to say what favourite brand I've worked with. I can work with an amazing, amazing brand, but sometimes I'll be really honest, maybe working with that team behind the brand has been a bit difficult. They might feel it vice versa as well. So I would say some of the really fun ones— Ben Jerry's was a recent one. It was all kind of about brand awareness, and I think for them it's kind of getting their product in that, into the hands of our, you know, our members. That was a really fun brand. We've worked with loads of travel brands. We are currently at the moment working with Sky, which is one of our biggest ones yet, which is really, really exciting. And we've there's like, it's, it's gonna be like a month-long partnership. But I think for me, when we kind of got Sky and was like, well, this is like a big deal, um, obviously with that comes a lot of teamwork, um, but those two kind of stand out to me. And there's also really fun ones we worked from the past that we worked with a, like, last, I want to say last Easter, it was an Easter egg that had sex toys in, um, and this was kind of a really kind of odd partnership. They kind of messaged us on Instagram saying, hey, would love to collaborate with you guys. They kind of sent us, I think, 40 eggs with the sex toys in. Um, our amazing kind of marketing team, um, at Thursday thought of like this really cool idea to get, um, uh, a fact on a sandwich board. It was like 79% of people masturbate like it's normal type vibe. It was very like loud, and we went into the middle of Liverpool Street with the interns and had these sex toys, and we're just going to give them out. That gained organic press, and sometimes those kind of partnerships which don't have a lot of thought into them can go the furthest. I've done partnerships before, we've put so much work and effort and planning and preparation into some, let's say, marketing activation, and it could flop. Like, we don't know if it's gonna succeed. And then you do the ones where you literally, you know, our founder and some of the marketers, you may have come up with an idea in like 2 seconds over a pint, and then that's the one that goes bang and gets all the media kind of attention. It's really, it's sometimes, it's just really difficult sometimes to navigate. But yeah, I would say they're the kind of ones that are standing out. Definitely Sky at the moment, which I'm currently working on, and then Ben Jerry's because it was a recent one. Yeah.

I want to go in a bit more depth about that process of actually collaborating with another company.

Yeah.

So I imagine it all starts with ideation, right? You know, who do we want to be paired with? And then you'll kind of have to, you know, validate or justify why you'd do it by like maybe researching and speak to the team there.

Yeah.

And then you've actually got the process of what you're going to do together and working that out. Like, could you maybe use a case study or something that worked really well to explain that process?

Yeah, so how I guess the structure, how it kind of works, it can work either way. I can reach out to a brand I think they really align with Thursday, that works well, e.g., Sex Toys and Easter Eggs, we're a dating app, works well. You know, we work with Durex a few months ago, works well. Or we'll have brands that reach out to us. We get a lot, I get a lot of inbound inquiries through LinkedIn, through emails, through a kind of a press account, and what will happen is we'll have, you know, a quick email thread and then we'll jump on a call. And what I would really want to know is what do they want out of this partnership? Is it brand awareness? Is it user acquisition? Is it They haven't launched yet, but they want pre-signups, for example. So we'll go through kind of what they want. The majority of the time, people will come to Partner Thursday because they want brand awareness and they want, they want something loud. It's quite funny, we're not a marketing agency, but some of the brands like will treat the partnerships as if we are a marketing agency, which I think is quite flattering. But sometimes you've got to be like, hey, like, we're not a marketing agency, like, it needs to be a collaborative idea. Some brands will be really free-willing and let us do whatever we want. They're the fun, really fun brands to work with. They're normally the brands that are kind of still in that startup process. The bigger brands, they've got more people to, you know, to go through to get approvals. And then, you know, they'll come and say, okay, we want to do brand awareness, and I'll go back to them and say, okay, we can do that through in-app advertising. Obviously, we are a platform, we're a dating app also. We have, um, the space on the app for advertisements. It can be apps in the ad that we've got You know, every time you swipe through, there'll be an ad that comes up the 10th time. It can be a lot of the time people want to do an event because that's kind of what they know us from, doing an event. And then of course social media. What I think Thursday is doing is we are, we're twisting it a bit slightly where, you know, influencers earn money from posting on socials. Thursday, in a sense, is kind of an influencer for the singles. If you look at our social media, we're very, again, loud, outspoken. We kind of like our social media to be that kind of feisty girl that has kind of got— doesn't really care what she says, and she's kind of— whatever she's talking about, it relates to dating in some sort of manner. So that's another avenue people may go down. The best partnerships is when they take the— they want to do a whole campaign where it's in-app advertising, it's social media, it's an event, it's the whole shebang, and they want to do it for a month long. But then some Brands may say, hey, I just want to do— just want to work with you on a social media kind of basis, do a collaborative video, and then we'll go through that. And then what happens is, I'm no kind of marketeer, let's say. I'm definitely more of a sales-based person. Um, I will— our team at Thursday is very small. We are still in a startup process. I believe there's kind of only like 12 full-time employees. Um, but everyone like hops into every role, so we don't have someone specifically that works on marketing. Like Our founders, they're great marketeers. We'll go to them and say, I'll have a catch-up with them and say, hey, I've got this brand that we're working with, what can we bounce about, brainstorm some ideas? Um, let's say it's your brand here, we would come up with some ideas. I would then present those ideas back to you of what we think we could do, whether that's on social media, that's in ads, and that's in events. Um, and that's kind of how, how it goes. That's a smooth process. I'm not— I mean, every day is definitely not smooth. There's always you know, there's those really easy partnerships, but, you know, the bigger the partnership and the bigger the reward, it's going to be harder, which I know. It's just at the time it's quite like, oh God, that's a lot to do. And I think what is rewarding is because we work in such a small team and everyone jumps on to everything, everyone kind of knows what's going on and everyone is there to support. It's not like I've got to go, you know, I've got to go up to— I don't always have to ask for approval to do stuff. I think my founders take trust in me to do the right thing for the company and what we're doing, but also in the same way everyone feels that. So whether you're working, whether you're an intern or whether you're the events lead, your opinion is still kind of valued, which I think is a great ethos that we've kind of got within the company. But without going on a tangent, I hope that's kind of what you meant. That's kind of the details, and then also boring stuff like contracts. Obviously, contracts, invoices, chasing invoices, doing more contracts, revisions, which I hate revisions. Yeah, that's kind of what essentially would happen. I would approach a brand, a brand would approach me, and then we'd go from there.

I want to go back to something you said earlier about how a key to being good in your role is being personable, and, you know, so the career you're doing now, yeah, it seems like it almost comes naturally meet you, like, just from first meeting you, like, you are that kind of person, just very bubbly, energetic. And there was a point in your career that you, you know, we spoke about before the podcast, that you felt confused and a bit lost. And when was it that you sort of identified that you could actually turn that sort of naturally bubbly person into, oh, I can actually make a career out of this?

Yeah, it's weird because obviously I went to university drama school for a year to do acting. I always kind of want to be an actor. I was quite real with myself very quickly that I was not going to be, you know, the next big thing. But then I thought to myself, okay, where's my skill set and where does it lie? And I knew that I kind of, as you just said, I'm quite approachable and bubbly. I kind of, yes, I have an E in GCSE maths and maybe I shouldn't say I'm sales-based, but it's not those kind of qualifications. Don't really, didn't really mean anything. It doesn't really mean anything to me now. But I knew that I could sell, right? I can talk to people and I can sell things. So I kind of, when I was in that kind of low period, I thought, okay, how can I utilise my attributes into kind of maybe another career path? And especially at Thursday, like, even the events, when I was doing the events lead, that was sales-based as well, because, you know, you're working with money, all different kind of stuff, you know, getting percentages down, commissions on bars, etc. And yeah, I kind of leaned into my sales side a bit more to kind of lead to kind of where I am today, if that makes sense. But I do think when I was in a low and like, oh, what the fuck am I gonna do? I was thinking, okay, what have I got to sell? And in all honesty, I think it is myself a bit. And being that, like, you know, having some charisma about you really helps within a sales role. Let's be honest, if you've got no— not saying you've got no personality, but if you're a bit of a dull person, I do think you're going to struggle to be in a sales-based role, but what helped me is just finding that, finding that thing I know I'm good at and then, you know, developing that a bit more that has now led into kind of where I am today.

Yeah, I'm sure in every situation you always are your authentic self.

Yeah, sometimes.

What I want to ask about is, you know, the term personal branding. It's really come to the fore recently and it's really important for anybody trying to build a company or, yeah, you know, just trying to build their career in general.

Yeah.

How are you making sure that you're conveying yourself, let's say through LinkedIn, you know, you do your posts on there, like, how are you making sure that people are like getting the right version of you so that when they come to, you know, doing business with you or anything, like, yeah, that is, you're the same person in person and online?

Yeah, I think personal brand, personal brand at the moment is your, I'm, you, are seeing it all over LinkedIn. I feel like everyone's trying to build a personal brand. If I'm really honest with you, I don't know if I have built myself a personal brand. I work for a really, really cool brand, and you know, a lot of my LinkedIn— all my majority, if not all of my LinkedIn posts are about my actual job. I'm not one of those people that are on LinkedIn that talk about things outside of work, not because I really— I don't really know what to say. I use my social media, my personal Instagram and stuff for that. So I kind of do keep that balance between, you know, this is my role and that's my platform for there, and then I have my personal, you know, brand somewhere else. But I would like to think that if you approached me on LinkedIn, I am the same person you see in real life. But again, it's just, I think it comes from kind of our founders. They're kind of got a big presence on LinkedIn and they're so fun. Like, it's not, when I remember when I I didn't have LinkedIn before I started Thursday, and when they're like, you need to download LinkedIn, like, you should start using it, I was like, LinkedIn, isn't that like for— isn't that like boring Twitter for work people? I didn't really know what it was, but now I've realized how important it is. Just even being on LinkedIn, commenting, having a presence, also for networking. A lot of our inbound leads come from LinkedIn. So obviously when I'm— when I do a partnership, without a doubt I will post about it at some point once it's done on LinkedIn, because what that does is that shows the other brands 'Wow, they, you know, Thursday hooked up with Ben Jerry's and they did this. I want to do that, let's message them.' So it's just constantly keeping people's minds for these really cool things we're doing. I think that's— I'm building on the partnership side, which we've done already at Thursday, but for on LinkedIn. But yeah, my personal brand as much, it's kind of just work-based, but a lot of it is just, you know, smiling photos and outrageous like Vox Pops. I picked one up the other day because looking for brands partnerships for our ski trip, so I just put up about how we're gonna have them— let's hook up when we're skiing. The terminology we use in the copy in my LinkedIn, it is cheeky and it is flirty, but that's what gets people engaged. If I'm looking through a LinkedIn feed, even from like line spacing, right, I'm— and like having a photo, I don't really read things without a photo. That's just me personally. I think sometimes people do get lost in that, so I always make sure if I'm posting something, I always majority do it with a photo. I add emojis to give it some character. I am an exclamation mark person over email in real life and on LinkedIn. So yeah, you kind of see is what you get. Yeah, so that's kind of, I guess, my personal brand really on LinkedIn, but it's quite work-focused.

Yeah, and earlier we spoke about the actual practicalities of your role and how to do it well, but I think an important thing for making sure you're sort of sticking to your mission statement and, you know, feeling fulfilled after a working day is understanding your why, like why you're doing what you're doing, why you work for your company. Why is it that, you know, from the outside looking in, I can imagine the events are very rewarding, seeing like people actually consuming and like utilizing something that you put months of hard work into and actually maybe meeting a partner or whatever it is. What's your why for the work you're doing?

Why for the work I'm doing? Do you know what, it's a really rewarding job. I— what I love kind of about the job is essentially I manage my area, my role, right? So I— it's rewarding to know that whatever I'm kind of doing at work, whether it is, you know, recently I've been— it's been a bit of a busy week, you know, dealing with kind of loads. You've got to get decks and briefs ready and, you know, presenting back to massive brands. But then after doing that massive pitch and then for them to email back and go, we want to work with you, I go, well, that was because, yes, it was because essentially I work for this amazing cool company and you want to work with them, but what I did was pitch that enough to you to want to work with us, and it makes me feel rewarded. I would say that's kind of, that's kind of my why, if that makes sense. Also, working in a small team, like, it's not like working in a massive corporate operation where I work my 9 to 5, I go home, I'm stressed, I hate my job. I get excited to go to work. Yeah, there's some days, maybe some days more than often, that I'm like, oh God, I know I'm working on this project, I've got to fix it. But at the end of the day, it's a job, I need to do it. But 70% of the time, I'm loving what I'm doing, I'm really enjoying it. And also knowing that I'm— I think when I first kind of stood into my role I'm in now, I did have a bit of doubt. I was like, oh God, can I do this? It's a completely new area of the business, and it took me some time to find my feet. And then once you finally land on like a massive, you know, a big deal, it makes you feel quite, "Oh, I can do this," and it's quite self-assuring. I also do think, what else would I be doing if I didn't do this at the moment? Certainly wouldn't be acting. But yeah, I think that's, without going too much on a tangent, that's kind of my why.

Yeah, let's talk about what Thursday specializes in.

Yeah.

Dating.

Yes.

So You're in a relationship yourself, however, you know, everybody's dated.

Yes.

And the way Thursday are doing it is disruptive, it's different, it's cool. Why do you think— well, I mean, one of the big missions of Thursday, right, is to make it in person.

Yes.

How important do you think that is? Because people, like, when you go to university or when you're younger, I think people are already being sort of forced online today, like, whether it's you meet them and you text the whole time, you never really meet up, or like on dating apps, you just You text and you never meet up. Why is it so important to just get there in person and actually meet?

Well, I'll reverse the question, and I think you could kind of ask anyone this. Would you rather meet someone on a dating app, or would you rather meet someone in real life?

Well, for me, definitely real life.

I think the majority, 99.9%, is probably real life. Maybe there's somebody that want to meet online. If people want to do that, then why aren't they doing it? Because they haven't got, let's say, you know, you're not— it doesn't happen anymore. You don't just walk up to people and be like, hey, 'You're fit, should we go?' I mean, if you do, kudos, you've got confidence, but I, I wouldn't. And so they need that platform there that allows them to do it. Essentially, I guess what Thirdy are doing is we are giving you that platform of, 'Wow, we've got all these events where you know you don't match beforehand on the app. You, you know that all these events there's going to be single people.' We are just a bar where everyone is single, or just a fitness class where everyone is single, or just a quiz night where everyone is single, but you're guaranteed that everyone in that room is going to be single. So we're filling that room and we're sending you there, and then it's up to you. We're not— we don't give, you know, we don't give you prompts, we don't give you like cue cards. There's not a host, essentially. We have done that before, but essentially it's down to you. We're just giving you kind of the area and the space and the platform to do it. Because, I mean, we're trying to make it— we're trying to make, I guess, dating cool. I guess people don't always relate dating to be cool, and I think what Thursday has done with the brand The brand is cool, it's a cool brand, and obviously I'm biased, I work there, but I think from the outside, friends, family, when they look at it, like, cool, that is cool. And that's because we are disruptive, like, we're not, you know, plain sailing, like, we're not telling you you're going to meet the love of your life on Thursday, you know, you may meet the love of your life, you may meet a great shag, or you may meet a great friend, like, that is essentially what could happen, but we're not, we're not gonna lie to our members and say, oh, you're going to fall in love when you go along. Just go along, see how it goes. But we're essentially, I guess, putting that platform there for then you guys to go and do what you want. Um, because again, everyone does want to meet in real life. And that is, I think, the events kind of grew, I guess I could say, kind of that need after lockdown. Everyone was inside and wanted to see people again. And that's kind of how the events kind of grew from there. And there was no other dating app doing it at the time. Um, You might know that now there are a few dating apps that are doing it, which I guess is flattering. And a lot of dating apps are actually kind of launching those kind of IRL events. And when I say events, they're not speed dating events. Speed dating events have been going on for years, and there's loads of apps and different people that do that. I'm not saying that, I'm just saying essentially this event is where we take over a bar and we guarantee that everyone there is single because they've all been verified to be on Thursday. So it's kind of like we're just putting the platform there for people to go and do kind of what they want.

Yeah, and more relevant to our audience of younger students, you've recently launched or pivoted to sort of, yeah, offering the same solution to younger people, right?

Yeah, so we know that, I think Thursday, we are majority kind of London-based, we are UK-based, but we know what it's like in London being a student. Drinks prices, like I lived out in, when I went to uni, I lived out kind of towards Essex, and even that was expensive. Student nights going up was the only thing that I knew was kind of cheap and good to go to. Like, you as a student, you want free drinks, you want free shots, you want freebies in general, or you want something on the cheap. So what we've kind of done is we've kind of got a sub-brand, I guess, we kind of look up— we look after. I don't work on it as much, but it's launching to kind of get those students in because we want, we want that demographic on the app. We've got it, but we want them attending events, but it needs to be students aren't— not all students are going to go to events because drinks prices are, you know, outrageous in London. So how about we do what we do on Thursday, but we do it for the focus on the student market? So student events with low-priced drinks, with really cheap tickets, and a really, really good night, because we know how to do them. So that's kind of what we're looking and doing at the moment, which another kind of team at Thursday's working on. Um, it's exciting, really exciting. I'm not kind of helping out at the moment. Hopefully down the line I will be, but that's kind of the goal. And obviously then to kind of— that they'll bring members on to Thursday and then those students will be like, "Oh, okay, I can go to these nights," because I know it's £2 a ticket and it's like free shots and it's all the things that students, I guess, at freshers love. Because you don't want to be an 18-year-old student, go to one of our events which is open to everyone, because the majority of our events, I guess, were between 23 all the way up to kind of an under-30 event would be, yeah, just under 30. So I mean, an 18-year-old would feel a bit out of place there. So we're just kind of putting something out there. We want to be an app that kind of covers every age demographic. It should be an app for everyone, even if you're, you know, your sexuality, everything. But one step at a time, we'll get there, hopefully.

I know you're not the founder.

No, but thank God I'm not. I could not be a founder.

But why is Thursday on a Thursday?

Why is Thursday on a Thursday? Oh, I wish I had a pound for every time I asked this question. So essentially, if I'm I'm gonna say and get this correct, the day was chosen Thursday because in statistics show that the most amount of time that people spent on dating apps was on Thursday. Which actually makes sense because Thursday is the new Friday. You don't want to give away your weekend. You don't really want to give away your Friday night because you want to go out with your friends after work. And Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you've just come back from work and you're tired. And a lot of people now work from home on a Friday, so they can go out on a Thursday night and a day. So that's essentially— it was just numbers were saying that most people spend the most amount of time on dating apps on that day, so that's why it was Thursday. And I think, you know, calling that Monday sounds a bit boring.

Yeah. As we come towards the end of the episode, I want to ask about specifically for you, and, you know, obviously speak authentically because the whole point of this podcast is that we have guests of different kind of people, you know, in different roles and different career paths, and there'll be some people listening that are a lot like you, much younger, you know, maybe education wasn't for them, but they knew they wanted to be successful and have that career. What would be one piece of advice you could tell your younger self?

God, what one piece of advice can I— Keep going through and do the soddy jobs, like do the jobs you don't— you do the jobs you're not going to like because it's you're not going to be there forever, like, you're going to need an income, so do the jobs you don't like, but always have something, always have what you know you can— is an attribute to you on the side and kind of hone in on that, because I think for now it's hard, people coming out of university, especially, you know, people in London and want to go straight into jobs, the money is sometimes not great, people are doing like 3 jobs at a time, but I think if you know what you want to do just keep going and you will get there, hopefully. And then also, I think networking would be a massive— that's actually probably a better, a better piece of advice. Networking. Get on LinkedIn. Even if you're not on LinkedIn now, get on it already. Even if you don't know how to use it, just get on it. Start talking to people, even in areas like— I know people at Thursday that have got jobs just from messaging, you know, someone at Thursday on LinkedIn saying, hey, you've got a job going. Next day they've had an interview and they've got a job. Like, you never know. Even register your interest in companies you're really interested in. If you're interested in makeup brands, connect with the brand manager of that makeup brand, slide into their DMs maybe, comment on her stuff, like it. Don't stalk them, but just— that's, I think, a really key piece of advice. And if I was leaving Thursday this week and I wanted to go into a completely new job and I knew what company I wanted to work for, I would be stalking them a bit on LinkedIn maybe networking, going to events they're doing. That'd be my key piece of advice, probably better than the advice I gave before.

And my final question to you, which I ask all of my guests.

Yeah.

When you first finished school or went to high school, you might have had a certain idea of what success in your career would've looked like to you.

Yeah.

Okay, now a few years on, working at First Day, what does success look like to you in a career?

That's a hard question. What does success look like to me? What is success to me in a career? Oh God, it's definitely not money, I would say that. I would say success can be measured by how rewarding you feel, I think, and how rewarded you feel in your job. That's like self-rewarding, like happy, confident in your job. I think that's how you can measure success. Success isn't a title. Definitely not. It's not money. I think it's about you being happy and how fulfilled you feel in that job, I think, would be my advice. That's a hard question to end on.

Alright, thanks so much.

No, thank you. Good to meet you. Thank you.