Johnny Kay, CCO @ Versus

Welcome back to another episode of The Graduate Guard. Today is a very special day. Joined by the CCO of Versus. Johnny, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, if you could just, uh, start off by giving a quick run-through from your side of your, your career journey so far and how it led you to this point that you're at now.

Oh, starting with a big question. Um, how far back am I able to go?

Well, you have done a lot of things in your career, so I think the early ones are very formative, um, whether that's what you stay in or not. So yeah, the beginning, I guess, from when you graduated.

So when I graduated, and even whilst I was at university, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I had done one job before graduating university, which was in the summer holiday between school and uni, and it was like a really crazy job. You won't see this on my LinkedIn, but I worked for the whole summer in a call centre for BT, right, selling phone, broadband, and TV packages to people people. And when I went in for the assessment day, I actually got pulled out of the room and they're like, can we talk to you separately please? And I thought, oh, I was like the youngest person there by some distance. I was literally like 18 years old. I was like, I obviously haven't got this job. And what they did actually say was, we're so impressed by like your natural sales ability that we're actually going to put you on the hardest team, which is the team of calling people cold who have left BT in the last year. And trying to get them to come back. So that's what I did for that summer. I think the target was to convert 3 sales a week, and I was able to do that. It might have been 3 a week, it may have been 3 a day, I can't quite remember.

Really ambitious.

But what I do remember is I was one of the very few people who was consistently actually able to hit that target.

Yeah.

They ended up trying to get me to like not go to uni and to like stay, but I didn't think I was destined to work in that particular call centre, although it was actually a fairly legitimate job with some of the best salespeople I've actually ever seen. But what it taught me is that I could sell. So when I was getting towards the end of uni, I did English at Goldsmiths. That obviously doesn't lead to like a very natural graduate career. I thought, well, what I'll do in the first instance is I will like do a sales job. And I like shopped around a little bit. And the thing that a lot of graduates do, because it's fairly easy to get a job, to at least try, is to work in recruitment. So that's what I did. I worked in a recruitment firm for about a year and a quarter recruiting electronics engineers into contract roles in the UK and Europe. Super random. Yeah, um, really high-pressure sales, but there were people who were like 25 years old in that business earning like £170,000, £180,000 a year. Like, the money was very real. Um, like, the dreams they sell you, they could come true if you were good.

And you worked hard at it, but at this point in your career, it's like passion, that side of things still missing though, even if you've been told you're good at something.

Totally. So growing up, like, all I really cared about, all I really do care about other than people, like what moves me literally is just like football with music. Like, those are my two major passions. And I've reflected this on this a lot, particularly with my younger brother. That's all we did. As kids is anything to do with football and music, but we didn't for one second, either of us, consider that they were viable career options. So whilst I was getting towards the end of uni, working in either of those spaces wasn't even a consideration, genuinely. It's not something that crossed my mind even for a moment. But it was through the process of like going into a job where I thought, I can do this and I think I'm good at this, and I was good and I was starting after a year to do quite well, and you could really sense if I stayed that maybe that kind of earning potential that I could see some of my peers hitting who were slightly older, um, was like on the cards for me. But for various reasons that I'm not going to get into, um, it just wasn't quite right. But the main reason is what you touched on, is that it obviously just like wasn't playing into my interests whatsoever.

Yeah, just before you go on with the rest of your amazing career journey, what— when you say that like the music and football industry wasn't accessible back then. Is that you saying it is now, or is it because you've worked in the industry you now see it as accessible?

I don't think it's that accessible still. I think the reality with any of the like highly desirable sectors like football, music, or fashion is there are loads of jobs, but there's very few at an entry level. I think that's one of the biggest challenges, and I think in hindsight I'm really proud of myself for what I did. It wasn't actually that deliberate, so I can't be too proud, which is that I looked at what the steps were I could take in a sort of, you know, like diagonal, sideways, upwards, downwards way to eventually get in, um, which I think still is what I would encourage like a lot of young people to do. Because the reality is, you know, you look on the website of anything from football clubs to record labels through to like music streaming platforms, and yeah, there's loads of jobs on there, but how many of the people immediately leaving university, like very, very few.

And what are they expecting you to have done beforehand?

Exactly.

Yeah.

Um, and you know, it's really interesting, the one thing I did do whilst I was working at, well, in recruitment was I did interview for the like big internship at Universal Music. This is like really esteemed internship where if you get it, it's a huge break into the music industry. A lot of people apply. Someone that went to my school had got in, he was 2 years older than me, so 2 years previously, he had done that internship, he's actually now extremely successful in the music industry, he helped me get that interview. So already it was around knowing someone and them giving me a bit of a foot up, in all honesty. But when I went for that interview, what the guy actually said, the reason I didn't get it, is he said, I can overwhelmingly sense that you have a deep passion for music and like a much better understanding of the space than a lot of the other people we've interviewed, but you haven't actually done anything.

Yeah.

To like pursue a career in music. Bear in mind I was 21. I thought that was so interesting, like what do you expect that I would have done at this point? So I didn't get it, basically.

Yeah, and then, well, you did end up getting something in the music space, and like to me, I almost don't even see it as a company, but because I've been to so many of them as an attendee, but Boiler Room, one of the coolest companies. Like, how do you reflect on your experience there? How did you land that job as well?

In terms of how I landed it, I'll answer that first. So when I left recruitment, I went and worked at The Guardian newspaper for a couple of years. I had a friend from uni who'd got a job there working in like the IT tech department, and he actually said to me once, he said, the sort of job you're doing in recruitment, you can kind of do like a similar ad sales job at The Guardian. And he said, it's not as difficult as you might think it is to like work somewhere like that. He said they employ a lot of people. Like a lot of people— this is what he said— far less talented than you. But I was so paranoid about getting rejected and looking like a fool to him that I never let him refer me.

Right.

And The Guardian has a £1,000 referral fee when you refer people, or at least they did when I worked there. So I just applied through the website because I didn't want him to know that I'd applied. And they got back to me, interviewed me, and I ended up getting a job there in the ad sales department. Worked there for a couple of years, and the big thing that happened to me whilst I worked at The Guardian is that I started to understand that some of the skills I was picking up, particularly around advertising, maybe I could use those as transferable skills to do like a similar job but much closer to home and something that I was deeply passionate about. And from like day one of working at The Guardian, I would email people that worked at Boiler Room, club promoters, festival promoters, and I would change my email signature to like music correspondent in order to get guest lists at like Boiler Rooms, at like festivals I was going to, like every festival with like AAA access because I was lying and saying I was a journalist.

What's your favourite festival?

Now it's Glastonbury.

Yeah.

I don't think any festival compares to Glastonbury in reality. If you've been, you'll know. But at the time that I was working at The Guardian, like my favourite genre, grime, was going through its sort of like second major resurgence. So there were these like major festivals were booking booking like almost entire, entire grime lineups, like in almost entire grime festivals, really like the first time ever. And it was those festivals I was emailing and the club nights to, um, basically get free guest lists and free backstage passes and stuff. That actually ended up being quite significant because I, towards the end of my time at The Guardian, I thought, right, I think I've got enough skills here. I was coming up to 2 years to go and take those and work for like a culture business. And I ended up getting an interview at Vice. Now, Vice, still at that time, this is in 2016-17, were like the major cool, like, youth publication. I ended up being able to get a face-to-face interview there, and I don't know who it was, but the guy that interviewed me said to me, 'Johnny, you seem like super credible, and I think you could really do this job, but the work you're doing at The Guardian is just totally irrelevant for us.' For context, the clients I was working on at The Guardian were like local authorities, the NHS, charities, all like huge advertising spenders with The Guardian. I wasn't working with like major blue-chip brands like Nike or Adidas or record labels or anyone. And the Vice guy said to me, if I was you, what I would do is I would look at what like a stepping stone job for you could be where you do work with these like major clients. He was like, in my opinion, you you've kind of got like the advertising sales experience now with what you're doing at The Guardian. So the next thing you do, just do it for a year, it doesn't matter what, and then you can get a job like this one.

How old were you then?

So I would have been 24 at that point.

How did you receive that news? Because I think like that's something that every young like graduate should hear, but I think people like build up an idea of how quickly their career should be developing one way and like The thought of moving sideways and not forward sometimes a bit daunting. How did you like feel about it then and how do you reflect on it now?

Do you know what, I think that was the first time I ever felt like I've got a shot at moving towards the place that I want to be. Because I'd only so recently before that had this thought of maybe I can actually take these skills and use them to work in a business that I think is like really cool.

Yeah, well actually applying is the first step, right?

Yeah, exactly. And then to have someone say to me really directly, you can do this, you just gotta, you just gotta do this thing first. I actually just took that as like a really positive thing. I think the one thing I do reflect on though, looking back, is how little I actually asked for help, like sought out mentorship. Like these are things actually other people could have told me. I didn't have to apply for a job. If I had made more of an effort to seek out people that were willing to help, and I'm sure there were loads at the time that would have been more than happy to help me and give me advice, I could have come to these answers a lot quicker. But I was really determined to do it all on my own, which isn't what I would do if I went back. Like, I try and correct that now where I'm obviously doing much better, I'm a bit older, I've developed in my career, but I've very much come to understand the serious importance of seeking out mentorship and looking up the chain and seeing who's willing to, like, lend a hand with their experience, who has walked the path that I have already.

Um, yeah, yeah, I think mentorship is— it's weird, like, because I think you go through the UK education system with teachers or your parents telling you what you shouldn't, shouldn't do, like holding you accountable. University, that completely goes, and then just when you probably need it most, your most formative years in your career and, like, how you think you don't have anyone and it's you against the world. And it's like, I think everybody's kind of not fully explaining how they do it either. Do you know what I mean? Like, someone will have a job, but you didn't know they were getting this mentorship from this person. So I don't know if that's because people think that there's not enough to go around. I, I can't really— for me, mentorship has been everything. Um, so doing a podcast, like, it's a very easy way to meet people that can help me. Um, But yeah, I think so, okay, you just made this realization that people do actually want to help you in your career, you managed to land this job at Boiler Room, like, in something you're passionate about, and obviously let's get on to the company that you're actually at now and you're representing. You've already told me a little bit before, and it's a crazy journey into how Burst actually became a thing, but how would you explain it, what it is today?

So how would I, sorry, how I would explain Versus today is a media brand and fan community that is trying to shape the future of football. What do I actually mean by that? Well, we're the only media brand in football solely dedicated to covering football's relationship with culture and society. Social-first platform, that mainly comes to life through Instagram, TikTok, Twitter or X, Facebook and YouTube to some extent. And yeah, talks to young people about football the way we think they actually speak about it themselves.

And what about that mission has made you buy into it so much? Because, you know, you said you want to be in football or music, but why this type of football? Why from this angle?

Well, here's the thing. When I worked at Boiler Room, so full transparency, I worked at Boiler Room for a year, I ended up getting made redundant at the end of that year because they were going on a totally different strategy where at that time they thought that they were going to change into like a ticketing business. Got made redundant from Boiler Room, but what I started to see when I was at Boiler Room is we were getting briefed by some of the major sportswear brands like Nike and Adidas on these campaigns that felt very performance-based, and it really made me think, why are these sportswear brands wanting to work with a music brand like Boiler Room? That's so interesting that in the UK that is starting to be a thing. Then we look at the US and sport and culture have always been converged. If you watch The Last Dance, like the Jordan documentary, you can see that those worlds have been intertwined, especially like the NBA and hip-hop for decades. The UK just hasn't been like that. Sport and culture for most of the time have been kept totally separate. So I started to think maybe if I was to start my own thing, I would start some sort of like football culture publisher. Left Boiler Room, got found out I was being made redundant, and then a week later like, this is one of the most serendipitous moments ever. Yeah, got a call from a recruiter who was like, who I was already speaking to, Hussain, wicked guy. He said, I've got another job to talk to you about. It's this UK football, music, fashion, like, social publisher that are looking for a partnerships person. And I literally said to him, what are they called? Because if it's covering those areas, I will have heard of them. He said, they're called Versus. And I said, yeah, I follow that Versus thing on Instagram. We now know, we look back because you can see it on the, like, social tracking on Instagram, that I was in the first 10,000 followers of Versus way back, like a year before I actually ended up joining, which was literally when the platform first started. And I had other offers, like I had a really, I mean, amazing job offers to go and work at, like, the British Fashion Council, like a really exciting partnerships job there. Another like major publisher who I won't say because they're vaguely a competitor. I remember saying to my mum, funnily enough, I'm telling you, this Versus thing is where football was headed. Because at that time I was still like 25, 26 years old. I was the consumer that Versus was looking to speak to. And whilst I'm really into music and I followed like music-specific platforms like Boiler Room, I was interested in fashion and followed, you know, fashion-specific platforms, then in football, followed some football-specific platforms. I could really see that on like a consumer level this convergent space was going to develop, and my own interest just fell so much into that. So both from like a personal interest level, but more than that, you know, the job I was doing was like a commercial partnerships job. I just thought, I think this is a real opportunity, and I think I can sell the hell out of this going to brands. And that's why I took it.

And just touching on partnerships there, like, I myself have been in a partnerships role at a company before, and, you know, with The Graduate Guide, I guess, like, as a bootstrap company, we are inherently reliant on partnerships, and I see the importance of it. But it is a real skill and quite hard to get right, especially when you're starting from scratch with it. But what I identify in your story is that, like, obviously you come from a sales background, we're very good at that, and then you've also been given like sort of glimpses of, okay, you're a great person without maybe the backing for a job. So I think the convergence of those two skills to sell something but then also sell yourself is basically what partnerships is, right?

Yeah, that's exactly it, yeah. And I think in the world that we operate in, when you're like a publisher, to be able to really embody what the media brand represents when you go and speak to brands and agencies about it is just so important. And Corey Lewis and I just have all of the same sensitivities and cultural tastes, and although I didn't start Versus, I joined like just over a year in, it just felt like the perfect match really. And I never ever, and I never have, questioned our editorial output. I look at it and always have and think that perfectly represents who I am as well. So to then be able to like go out to brands and speak to them about it, and I would literally say to brands in the early days, I could have gone and worked at this publisher you're working with, I had an offer to work at this one, but I joined Versus because I'm telling you this is the space that the consumers are moving into because I am the consumer. And how do you say no to that?

Yeah, one thing I find really crazy about Versus, so on that, is it makes complete sense to me that you would do really well on Instagram and TikTok and everything like that. But, you know, I, I found you through LinkedIn as an individual, but your content does so well, and it's not exactly at all what you normally see on the platform. It's so left field, but maybe that's why it does so well. I don't actually— I'm not actually sure. But from your side of things, like, you know, you're, you're basically telling football stories, you know, or like updating, informing people on football news that they might not know of through like BBC Sport.

Exactly. Yeah.

Um, but yeah, how have you sort of built your brand alongside— your personal brand alongside this? Because it does so well.

Yeah, it's so interesting. We made, between Corey Lewis and I, a really like concerted decision in 2021 that we were going to be more active on LinkedIn. And for whatever reason, that fell on me more than anyone else. That at that time, there wasn't much of a reason for that. And this was not the only factor, but in 2021 we increased revenue by like 700% in a year. And we recognized that we couldn't fully quantify it, that LinkedIn had played some sort of role in that, in getting our brand visibility up amongst the right kind of decision makers, right? Because you can't guarantee you're going to reach the CMO of a major like multinational brand on Instagram. Yeah, your chances of reaching them on LinkedIn are actually like fairly high. And what I used to post was just like our brand work. But as time went on, I think to like your point, I started to think, God, this platform really in a lot of ways, I think we all know it, it's just like in the absolute mud in terms of how people generally talk on there. Yeah, there was a post that went viral recently with a guy that proposed to his partner.

Yeah, I saw that.

And he said, this is what it taught me about B2B sales. I've seen it all over TikTok, people like criticizing it, rightly so, it's ridiculous.

Yeah.

I thought maybe there's a space to just talk normally on there and talk as I do in real life, and then also just deliver the same news that we deliver on IG on LinkedIn, because I know no one else would be talking about it. Um, and it's just proved to work really well. And it's like, it's kind of embarrassing because more often than you'll imagine, probably once a month, I'll be out with my partner or with friends, some random person will walk up to me and they'll be like, you're Johnny K from Versus. The reason they know is from LinkedIn. Like, every time it's from LinkedIn. Um, but it's been such a powerful tool for us as a challenger brand that has generally like really low brand visibility just due to our size compared to our competitors. We've had to use LinkedIn to just get the awareness up.

It's so refreshing to hear that because I think like I never thought, for example, for me when I first went on the platform as a student, I was— I just thought it was where successful people congratulating other successful people, and it was like just emojis flooding everywhere. I was like, this is not the place for me, I, I need some actual career advice. And but then I think it's a really weird one where like the power comes from the ability to basically tell your story in your own way and then reach out to someone and cut the steps of like having to prove your worth of that conversation, if that makes sense. And I think obviously like you've now got a brand and a title to come with your outreach, but is it something that like you use on partnerships like to get them like actual outreach?

Oh, 100%, man. Yeah, it's like our main outreach tool, I would say, is messaging people directly on LinkedIn. And what you're suggesting is true, like the change of job title helps out even more. I mean, the fact that when people click on my personal profile, it's not loads, but I've got like 7,000 followers on there. Yeah, that probably adds some credence to it when they click on my profile. My latest post might have 2,000 likes on it or whatever. Um, ultimately my main motivation, like, and I'm happy to be transparent about this with LinkedIn, is to drive revenue for Versus. Like, that's my main metric that I target both myself, that the business targets me against. Um, that's what I use it for. The personal brand really is just a vehicle for that.

Yeah, and I think it's like, it's really interesting your angle in that because I think my biggest fear is coming up off too, like, salesy and being one of those guys, like, that floods your inbox. It's like, why have you not replied to me? But I guess, like, like, for me, um, I've found my own way to speak, like, authentically and humanly. Like, like, even inviting you on this, for example, if you use that as a case study, like, you— people are going to buy into the concept or they're not. And, you know, I'm not, like, asking much. And I realized this very early on, is that my lens of, like, asking, saying, I don't know anything, I'm like naive young student looking to learn from you, like for whatever reason someone might want to come on board, but my biggest learning was about hyper-tailoring and personalising the messaging. So I guess, is that something you've had to maybe learn the hard way in your whole partnership journey?

Yeah, it's really important, but that's something I was really fortunate to learn really early on. The fact I cut my teeth in recruitment, I like, I've just benefited from it so much. It's the only really serious, rigorous hardcore sales training I got. And that was everything from how you compose emails, how long you wait till you follow up, like the exact wording that's like statistically proven to be more effective than other wording, like what to use as personal hooks. Like, I learned all that at 21, um, in like a really hardcore sales job where we were targeted on the number of calls we were making a day. I think on average, like, we were meant to hit 100 calls a day. And whilst I didn't pursue a career in recruitment, which was the right decision, I think that that like hardcore basis for sales training with a lot of like, I guess you need like emotional intelligence to really reframe that for the world that we work in, really set me up for success, I think.

Yeah, and you've spoken about like learnings you've made through your own career journey and on like how you could become more hireable or, you know, what looked better to an employer. But now you are actually building a team and, you know, in charge of who joins your team. Like, what are you looking for, especially in this industry? Because it is a novel one and it is a novel company. It's, I guess you'd call it a scale-up right now.

Yeah, definitely, I think that's fair.

Yeah, and, um, yeah, like, and it's so essential to get that right. So who are you looking for?

I think that the skills obviously are really important, like, like the raw skills. And I feel like at a junior level, unfortunately, even though we've talked about this already, If it is someone coming in at like a graduate level or a recent graduate level, what I do want to see is what they've done in their personal life to like upskill themselves or show that they have enough passion in that area and building a career in the area that we work in, be that football or wider culture, that they've like gone and done some stuff. Like an example I'll give, we've got someone on our team called Jay Smith who joined us when he was 19. He's now our TikTok editor. But the reason we hired him is because when Versus Captions— it's like our main IP that people love the platform for, the captions we write for match coverage— when we started doing that, very quickly a lot of like copycat accounts like started just trying to do the exact same thing, picking the best imagery and trying to write the best social copy to cover matches in like a new contemporary, like very culture-driven way. Everyone did it really badly, but there was one account called The Footballist that actually was doing it not just as well as us, but on some match nights was getting out more posts than we were. And we found out it was just one guy, a 19-year-old, doing it in his spare time without really any end goal, just because he loved it. And he was also like a really big fan of what we did. We ended up having to make him a job offer because he was like a threat to us. And I mean, he's a great example because he was actually working in a relevant job. He didn't go to uni, went straight into work at another football brand where he was a graphic designer. But with him, it was like, you're doing, you're spending so much of your own time really delving deep in, in this area that we directly work in. So the interview process was like very minimal, to be honest. It was like, do you want to come and join us? Can we agree terms? Sign on the dotted line, come, basically. Um, the biggest challenge that we face when hiring people though is people that say that they are a fan of the brand but don't actually get our mission. I think that a lot, and for a lot of people, what that represents is they either see us do cool shoots with players from teams they support and they're like, 'Oh, I love Versus for that reason,' or they really like the captions. And it's like, those things are cool, but what about the mission of like making football more like culturally credible in terms of how it converges with music and style? 'What's your interest in those areas? Like, what about our mission to make football like a more equitable place for women, the queer community, you know, ethnic minorities?' And they're just not engaging with like that part of the brand, and that it just doesn't make it workable most of the time.

Yeah, and just to follow up a question from that then is, say you take this competitor 19-year-old into your team and you, you know, there's not an interview process, you would just identify that he's perfect for your team, you want to align them with your mission and bring them into the workforce, but how do you harness what was great about them and let them keep doing that within your company? Just because I think that is, from my personal experience, it's a fear that anybody faces if they're doing something for themselves. Yes, they would love the financial stability or the support of a bigger company, but how are you reassuring them that this is going to be a place they can thrive, not just become another employee?

Yeah, I think we haven't had that challenge so much because up until now we've been quite small. So in the example I gave, when he joined, he was given like almost total freedom to start our TikTok page from scratch. And he really, for a long time, was the only person working on TikTok, has grown it more or less independently from 0 to 500,000 followers. So props to him. And so for him, it was really all about actually where we think you're best served isn't actually continuing what you've been doing on Instagram, we're just going to let you figure out with like very little pressure initially, how do we use TikTok, what sort of content is going to perform on there, continue to fine-tune that, and you will have this like entire business unit on social. So just run yourself basically. And he's done an absolutely amazing job of that. And I think that given our size, that we're 15 people now, um, what we've been able to do, which will probably change, like, and it is changing already to be honest, it's hire people because they're right and then actually finding out how we can then best maximize them once they're there based on their interests and their skills.

Yeah.

Now obviously we've got a bit bigger, we're becoming a little bit more of a proper company, to be honest. It is moving into the more traditional space where we have this really specific needs, whether that's in a partnerships team for a partnerships person, it's a creative strategist, it's like a writer. Yeah. And we hire for that skill set specifically. But once those people are in, we do still try and give them the freedom to like shape those roles, to just make the most of it really, and ensure they're actually enjoying what they're doing, and in turn we're able to max out from their skill set.

That's great. If I was a graduate, I'd definitely try and apply to find my way into your company. But yeah, you've been an amazing guest, and my final question to you that I ask all my guests is, when you first started off in your career journey going into recruitment, you would have some idea of what a successful career would go on to look like. Fast forward to where you're at now, what is your definition of success and how has it changed?

I'm going to tell you a story to answer that, which is that I didn't know what I was going to do in school, in university, and a lot of the people I went to school with, some of my best friends to this day, had really firm ideas about what they wanted to do. And a lot of that was motivated by, like, security. And those people are extremely successful now as doctors, like financiers at companies like Goldman Sachs, I was extremely down on myself when I left university and was working in recruitment, and I looked at my friends on those career paths and thought, why didn't I just work a little bit harder in school? The reason I didn't is because it didn't play into my interests. There were no subjects about sport and music in school, not the way that I wanted to do it. And I actually was like quite resentful towards my friends, is the truth. As I then started pursuing career in my passions and it started to blur the lines almost between where my personal life is and where my work life is, I got to a point probably 3 years ago where all of those friends who work at those major like financial institutions or in the medical industry or lawyers started saying to me, "I wish I did what you did. I wish I followed my passions." And the thing is, it's different for everyone. I think there are so many people, probably the majority, who can have actually clearly defined and different personal lives and professional lives, and they can be— and that's how they find happiness. For me, happiness and success is really being able to turn up to work and then not feeling like work, because all I'm doing is talking about football, music, and fashion.

Yeah, I think that's a really great way to end this, and I think amazing piece of advice to any student, um, I guess just generally speaking, finding yourself in a career sense and not letting other people tell you what is and what isn't. Exactly. So yeah, thanks for coming on, mate. Appreciate it.

No worries, thanks for having me.

Cheers.