Julian Osborne, Co-founder @ Batch LDN

Welcome back to another episode of The Graduate Guide. Today we're joined by Julian. Julian, welcome to the podcast, mate.

Thank you.

You are the founder of Batch.

Co-founder.

Co-founder of Batch. Yeah.

What is— Sam will kill me if I was parading around as the founder.

What is Batch and where was it born from?

So Batch is a casual suit fashion brand first and foremost. My business partner Sam approached me with an idea or a problem that he couldn't find decent casual suits. The timing was quite interesting as it was just after post-COVID, and when we started rolling around with the idea a little bit, you realize that the traditional suit has become overly formal. We all got used to wearing casual clothes during COVID and when the, when the workplace reopened, people were reticent to go back to the traditional formal suits, and as a consequence, the workplace had become quite casual. So we were like, right, there's an opportunity there because there's not many decent casual suits, or there's no good brands owning casual suits. Um, so took that as an initial idea. Sam and I had no fashion background, so steep learning curve finding out where and how to make garments that we did. And we can come on to that in a little bit more detail later. Um, realized that the fashion industry is an unsustainable mess. We all sort of know this, but sustainability, whether we like it or not, is quite a boring conversation. And the way that it is approached is quite boring. So as two guys that aren't particularly conscientious shoppers, or weren't, definitely I'm better now, wanted to set Batch Up in a way that facilitated a way for people to try shopping a little bit more sustainably. So as a consequence, decided to make everything to order. So we make all of our clothes in London. People come to our shop or buy online, they take 4 to 8 weeks to make, and then they're either shipped to them or they can collect them from the store. I'm wearing it quite smartly today, but the whole idea is that it's super versatile, very casual. You can wear it with a t-shirt, you can wear just the jacket, just the trousers. It's a nice outfit, and for men and women, it's important to know. I think as a casual suit brand made by a man, people would often assume that we wouldn't have a women's range, but female clothing is a big part of our brand, and female Batch members are a big part of our community.

Yeah, my co-founder and I, Marleen, we recently bought our own suits.

Yeah, you did. Thank you very much for that. Marleen's great. She looked great in the Batch suit.

She did, yeah, yeah.

No, you looked all right as well.

Um, before we get into like the whole story of Batch, um, I want to just go back to your time at university studying at Newcastle. Obviously, I don't know, there's no specific like career path that leads you to where you're at now necessarily. Um, so I was wondering, what do you think your career like was panning out to be at university? What were you thinking?

So I studied international business management, which is business with German, with the loose intentions of going into business, you know, whatever that means when you're at university as a student. And I kind of always saw myself as probably in the slightly more corporate fields, like maybe working for a big corporate consumer business. When I say corporate, but like a big business that's got big teams and big offices and you're around hundreds of members of staff and you're part of a small team. Um, for example, I applied for, well, like, one of the Just Eat, uh, graduate schemes, came down to London, was like super excited. I'm like, I've got a job, like you do when you apply for a job and you think the interview goes really well, and then you're gutted when you don't get it. Um, went back to post uni. I'd spent a bit of time in Berlin, as I was telling you just before, worked for a startup there, so I knew that I wanted to work in like a a business creative environment, but you just really have little idea. And the job market is so tough that you, to a certain extent, when you first start out with a business degree especially, really, you kind of should take what you can get. And I know that's like quite a, an interesting message, but you've got to get your foot in the door somewhere and learn. And then you can learn on the job about what you like and what you don't like. And I was very fortunate to, to land on my brand manager role at Oddballs, which was 7, 8 years ago now, to be fair. So quite a long time. I'm getting on, I've just turned 30, so, uh, slightly removed from the student scene, but it does feel like it was just yesterday.

And you know, there is— I, I do understand what you're saying about taking what you get, but even like knowing what that— where that is, like, you know, finding a company like Oddballs that will take a chance on you in its early stages— that is a case study. How did you come across the company, and how did they come across you?

Um, so they're based up in Newcastle. For context, it's an underwear brand that raises awareness of testicular cancer, um, based out in North Shields. So not really even in Newcastle. My parents are Geordies, so post-Newcastle, I was like, Newcastle Uni, I was like, well, I can live at home for a bit. Or actually, I ended up renting with my brother who got a job in recruitment in Newcastle before, like, we made the move down to London, which we always had the ambitions of, but made sense to sort of settle in Newcastle for a bit for first jobs. Um, and yeah, one of my mates was like, they're looking for a brand manager. I'd just been sort of rejected from a few opportunities down in London. Um, I went to see the facilities. They work in a huge warehouse where they also make sports— they manufacture sports clothes under a different business called Core37. Um, so I met Will Cooper, the managing director at the time, and then there was two other members of staff, like a designer and somebody working in the warehouse. It was literally three people, and he explained like the concept and where he was hoping to take the brand, and I was quite inspired. But so I got employed on like £18K, which like, you know, is pennies, but that didn't bother me at all. I was like, I want to come into this business and add like genuine impact and grow and learn. And I thought it was going to be a stepping stone, like it was selling pants, underwear, like, and that raised awareness of testicular cancer, an important cause, but Did I think that that job like matched my ambitions at the time? I wasn't sure. As it transpired, um, it was an amazing job. I mean, I was there for 6 years, learned loads, um, all areas of business, and it really laid the foundations to kick on. And I literally had the best time there ever. So it was a nice start to my career, really.

Is that one of the reasons, aside from the massive growth company, let's go on, is that you actually like found out your own value add in the career, which maybe the business degree doesn't really set you apart from anyone else at university. Like, do you think, um, you know, what were the things you were doing within, within that role, within that company that were actually like helping you work out who you really were, what your— what kind of founder you would go on to be?

Yeah, I think because I was like the, the fourth employee, they, they were— Oddballs was 2 years old at the time. They'd got the e-commerce element of their business right, so like the Shopify website was functioning, they were starting to sell more and more online. I came in and had a very frank conversation with Will about where I thought I could add value to the business. And ultimately, I think a lot of startup founders, when they're hiring, they want to hear— they want— they hire on culture, they hire on talent, they hire on experience. But like, what they really want to know is that this person is going to come in and grow the business, like, from a revenue perspective. So pinpointed that Oddballs makes their, their underwear and all of their other garments, hats, bobble hats for example, bespoke. So I ended up taking the business-to-business side of the brand, um, and turning it into a really big revenue stream for the business, um, in that selling to like local sports clubs, schools, and then all the— and then eventually the business grew to selling to Premier League football clubs. I was working with all the Premier League football clubs. I love sport. All of the Premiership rugby clubs, England rugby, England cricket, England football. So the exposure to sport and then licensing deals and quickly with what became like quite like a, a small idea became very big. And there's a lot— you're very quickly having quite significant commercial conversations around how using other brands' licenses and other brands' IPs and what the costs are associated. So I think it was like a really steep learning curve and gave me a really wide basis to learn, one, how to sell and pitch, which is essential because like when, like any— when you're trying to grow a startup, you're basically having to explain for 10 minutes what the value is of it. In order to be able to create a partnership. So that was a core skill that I learned. And then just the commercial— understanding the commercial value of certain deals and ones to leave and ones to lean into is kind of the big learning curve.

Yeah, I think it's interesting to think how different it all could have gone if you got those big corporate jobs. Um, you know, I, I often wonder, um, and I think even since you were at uni, it's probably changed. Like, startups a bit more glamorous now, like it's a little bit more viable to do it out the back of university, but it's still really hard to know where to look. Do you feel like you needed those rejections to actually even start mentally considering, okay, here's like something small that I can really work my magic on and grow my career with?

Yeah, I was just looking for a shot, to be honest. Um, as I said, like, it is a kind of a case of your first job, you have to be willing to compromise. And ultimately you just want as much exposure as you can get and for it to be as fun as possible and then just get stuck in. Because people take their first few jobs, people take the first 10 years of their career so seriously, and really they should just be years of learning and getting to understand what you like, what you don't like, how you fit into teams, how you work with people. And those were the sort of times and that Oddballs, where, you know, I was like, this is the right place for me at this moment in time in my career, and I'm patient and comfortable here. What also helped was that it quickly became quite like the money was quite good, and Oddballs would have like a fleet of cars. And because I was second in or like basically like the MD's like right-hand man, I was getting his old cars. So I joined and I got given like an Audi A3 Oh, and I was like, that is enough for me, I'm happy. So I was like driving around Newcastle like chuffed. I've just graduated, I've got a car, I've got a job, I'm living in the Northeast, it's a beautiful place. And yeah, I think sometimes as well, like, people are so insular about how important the job is to like have like value in your life. And ultimately it's the bigger picture of like how job fits into enjoying your life. And I had that balance at Oddballs, and that's something that I always sort of carry on with.

So you're happy, you're content, you're getting paid well, you're getting cars given to you, opals, but there's probably some, you know, burning desire to do something for yourself. Um, did, did Batch come, or even the desire to want to do yourself, from being prompted by Sam, or—

No, that was definitely always something that I would have done or had ambitions of getting a job within a business that I could continue to learn. I have no issues learning from or working for people. I think like a lot of founders, like one of the key things is like, I want to work for myself, I want to make my own decisions. And obviously that autonomy is amazing, but there's real value in working for people that are way smarter than you that you can learn from. Like, and if, if God forbid, you know, Batch was to fizzle out or we were to struggle, I would be really excited to go and learn from another business again because I, I still have ambitions of working for a bigger business with like bigger scale and bigger international decisions and learning that. But no, I think Sam definitely helped the decision. So for context, I'd been working in London for 4 years. So after 2 years of working at Oddballs, I managed to persuade the owners and Will to move down to London to open up opportunities that were down here, which you're missing out on in Newcastle, whether it be like some of the London-based football clubs, Twickenham, which we're always going to with the, the RFU partnership. and I just wanted the autonomy. I wanted to work from home. The sales, the business-to-business element, I was running internally by myself without any support, which was bringing in Oddballs a lot of revenue. So if I was hitting my sales targets and continued to add value, my bosses didn't mind, so I moved down. Um, and then it was about, uh, well, for what— for the best part of 18 months, I was working on Batch and Oddballs at the same time. Because Sam also had a very autonomous role, and that enabled us to have the freedom to be able to take batch calls in the Oddballs workday. Um, and, and Will won't mind me saying this, it's like I was always trying to make sure that I was being as professional as possible with Oddballs and being honest and transparent. But at the same time, like, I've got a big opportunity here with my new business taking off.

Um, how important was it for you to de-risk entrepreneurship, like, actually you know, did return it before you went full time on it.

I think that's huge. I think like every financial pressure on like paying yourself and being able to have a nice quality of life, especially of how expensive London is, and yeah, mitigating the risk financially and the pressure of like it having to work, and if it doesn't work, what am I going to do? Sam and I were very fortunate in the fact that we were like, let's take our time, let's get paid by another business whilst we set up our own business. Like, that's a very fortuitous position to be in, but we were in that position because of how hard we'd work for Oddballs and Punchy respectively, and how much respect our senior figures in those businesses had for us. And to the point where, you know, I'm calling my old boss Will, I'm like, I need to tell you about this business. No, we were about to launch, right, on LinkedIn and— on LinkedIn, on across all platforms. Batch was about to launch, right?

Yeah.

And at that point I was like, I'm gonna have to tell my boss about Batch. I was like, yeah, we've got this venture. And he was super supportive about it. And then as it got bigger, as we got a shop in Spitalfields, suddenly the conversation's like, you actually doing any oddballs work? And you can't really argue. You can't be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. When you're like, well, I was taking calls from the Batch shop with my bosses. They were so sound about the whole situation. And eventually it just got to a point where we were raising I was raising for Batch whilst working for Oddballs, and they gave me the time to work out whether the raise was going to be successful. If it wasn't successful, I was able to keep my job at Oddballs. But if we raised the money in order for me to be able to pay myself, I could leave on good terms, and eventually that's what happened. So I was like, it was a really interesting period, but it's one of the main reasons that Batch was able to get off the ground was that I was working for somebody else at the same time.

Yeah, I mean, I can relate to it a lot. I think I denied, you know, The Graduate and everything here being my career or business for the longest time, I think. Um, and it— I think in an age where entrepreneurship is really glamorized, um, and you know, the lifestyle around it, and you don't really understand startup life and the reality of what comes with it, I think it is really important. Something we tried to do this podcast, like you know, not scaring people away from it, but really letting people know the reality. And I know recently you had, you know, something happen— well, I say something, a robbery happened, um, that you just can't predict or account for in startup life. But, you know, talk to me, you know, not just that example. I mean, I'd love to hear how you actually made a really bad thing, you know, a great thing by the end of it, but also just the reality of entrepreneurship in general.

Uh, the reality is that it's just consistently highs and lows. It's like that the entire time, and if you can manage that, then you're going to enjoy it. Um, we've been fortunate in the fact that we've been able to raise like reasonable amounts of investment, which does take a fair amount of the stress off. That being said, like, you're still stressed and working hard. Um, I, I've got a really, really, really strong work-life balance. I'm very happy away from Batch. I enjoy lots of other things other than Batch, so that helps, to be honest. Um, forgotten where I was going with that. What was the question again?

Just the reality of entrepreneurship.

But I mean, the reality is that it's hard work, it's not easy, it is stressful. Um, I don't know whether I think it's glamorous necessarily. I think people who aren't— I guess that's what the point you're making, right? People are like looking at like the co-founder of Batch, how lovely it must be to have a shop in Spitalfields. And the constant thing is you guys are smashing it. The amount people that say that, and it's like, the reality is like, we're not— well, I would not even say we are close to smashing it. Yeah, like, we are doing lots of cool things that get lots of good attention and raises lots of awareness for the brand. Like, we've got a shop in Spitalfields, we're moving to the flagship in Covent Garden. Like, okay, that could be seen as smashing it, but revenue is nowhere near where it needs to be yet. We've only just been able to hire— it's been 2 and a half years. We were, we're Well, we were 2, then we're 3, now we're 5, um, and sales still aren't as good as they want to be. Nowhere near. Um, we're not hitting our targets. So by that, that is the value of if you're smashing it or not, like how much revenue is the business, is it profitable yet? And we're not. Um, so that's the reality. It's like you've got to work hard and understand that it's going to be 5, 5 years at least, full-on, full-tilt graft. And that's at least where I want it to be because I, I don't want to work that hard for that long.

I want to be able—

I want to work hard for a long time, but I don't want to hard as I am now. It's such heavy touch, especially batch managing a physical retail store, managing the online, managing all of the ops, the marketing, the finance, all of it. Like, it's such heavy touch, and I want to be in a position where I've got other members of staff that are, that are better than me at these things that can come in and grow the business, and then I can focus on where we can grow the brand in other areas. But, um, yeah, I'm not sure if I answered your question there, but the reality is that it's hard.

Yeah, definitely. And I think something really interesting you said there is, uh, and, and I'm a big believer and you can't actually start building a business or a career until you have your personal life ducks in order. And you, you have other things that you care about because, like you said, I think getting really emotionally attached to an idealistic way of your company or career going, one of the worst things you can do. Yeah, like it's great to have ambition, um, and, you know, ideas of how you can— what success might look like, so you have a target to aim towards. But, you know, I, I want to sort follow up on, on the point with the robbery. Like, can you just walk me through, like, what, what, what, what happened there? And how did you, you know, between you and your co-founder, and, you know, even just like you said, it's constant highs and lows. How have you got to the point that an instance like that, you were able to just like see it for what it is and move on and actually like build something great from it?

Yes, it's a good question. Um, I think before coming on to the robbery, the amount of highs and lows, you do get used to it. And I had a moment after— there was about a year into the business where I was kind of like, Oddballs was coming towards an end and Batch was looking like it might work, but it might not work. Are we going to get investment? Are we not? It's the first time I would have ever said I felt like anxious or like slightly depressed. Not myself, never like struggled with depression, but I did— I was feeling the weight of house— like, because when you're, when you're trying to set up a business, you become so insular and it's all you see. You've got the, like, you it's tunnel vision. That is not healthy. It really isn't. And I just had a— I went— well, to be totally transparent, I went to a festival, went to Halton, literally had 3 days with like the best 4 days of my life, like the best time ever. And it made me realize like, that's like those moments with your friends and your family, enjoying yourself, enjoying music, enjoying the great outdoors. That's what's important. Those are the moments you're going to remember. And so long as you can like realize that, then all of the other stuff, the other shit that you deal with at work that really shouldn't matter— and that's the perspective that I've got. So I've got—

I'm—

batch does not stress me out. I'm very, very relaxed. So the fact that some things— upsetting customers, yeah, that stresses me out. Or like when we've set a deadline, for example, the new Covent Garden store opening in 2 weeks— and I'll come on to the robbery in a second— if we don't open in time, we've got like press days, that shit will stress me out because we're letting other people down. But like everything else, like whether the business is a or not, or how much— like, I'm gonna work, I'm gonna always work hard and make sure that we make Batch a success, but I don't allow it to stress me out. So when we got the text Thursday morning last week, it was at 5 AM, from the guy that manages like the real estate, he's like, your window's been smashed, you need to get here ASAP. And that's the only context that we had, and I was in the gym Sam had texted me and I laughed when I saw it. Didn't think too much of it because a lot of, a lot of people go around just smashing windows. So dumb. And that's what I initially thought it was. And I was like, you need to get here ASAP, that doesn't sound good. And then I was like, what happens if they've raided the entire store? And it's not just like suits that we've got in there, we've got like the accumulation of 2 years worth of business in there, like speakers, iPads, petty cash, furniture, shoes, loads of other brand stocks. I just literally got gifted by a speakers brand, Ruark, like £5,000 worth of new speakers for the new shop, which are sat in there. I'm thinking, like, how the hell am I going to tell these guys that have just sent me these free speakers that they've been nicked? So when you arrive to the scene of the crime to see— Sam and I ironically pulled up at the same time on Lime bikes and just, like, laughed. I was like, the herringbone seats are gone. And it was just like, what can you do but laugh? What are you going to do, get angry or get stressed or cry? And it was interesting because all of the people that immediately reached out to us, everybody is sorry, angry, feeling those emotions that we should be feeling as founders. But we were like, one, I was relieved that it wasn't the whole store. It's 10 suits. They're our best suits. We've just launched that collection. We need them in the store, we depend on sales. It is a serious situation, I'm not mocking it. Like, we've been robbed, it is quite serious. But at the same time, like, you need to be able to rise above it quickly and just realize that it's another, like, bump in the startup road as per usual. It's like, it's typical turbulence. They're replaceable, we can get them remade in our factory in London. Yes, it's going to have a detrimental effect on sales in the short term, but in the long run it's fine. And then obviously we're hounds on LinkedIn. I'm like, well, this is gonna go down well on LinkedIn. So had a quick chat, banged it all up on LinkedIn as you do, and on Instagram immediately press a like. Can we post about this? Because we had footage of the CCTV of the guys launching two bricks through the window. Uh, Daily Mail, etc., picked it up, ran with it. And then you're, you're sitting there realizing like, oh, we're actually getting a lot of traction here and a lot of awareness. And like, it's a 6 grand's worth of suits being stolen, right? The amount of press that we've got, I'd have paid 6 grand for.

Yeah.

Um, I wouldn't have taken the knock on the sales, but like, other than that, it's been worth it. And you know, it's developed into like a bigger marketing campaign. So it's been, it's been an interesting one.

And I think the reason you are actually able to like, you know, make it into what it's become is because of the focus you put on community and actually being like very authentic online from the beginning. Like, if you didn't have that, it would just be like— I'm sure other people get robbed and nothing happens to it, but like, I've been following your journey for a long time now, and it's like, you know, just your demeanor is so yourself online, which— and I think, you know, not many— a lot of people struggle with that. Uh, I wonder, in actually building your career building relationships, everything like that. How, how important have you found actually just being yourself? And what advice can you give, you know, to someone who's at university right now thinking that's a very difficult thing to do? It's way hard, um, easier said than done.

It is. I think I've, I've always liked writing and I've always liked expressing myself, and I'm very honest and transparent and try to be as authentic as possible. Um, people want to support people, not businesses and brands. And have you been able to use LinkedIn and Instagram as a way of presenting who we are as people? And I think like Sam's also quite likable. Um, so yeah, we, we do quite well on LinkedIn, and I think that's because we're trying to show authenticity. And as you say, people can get behind a story and love watching building in real life. They like the ups and the downs and the good and the bad, and they want to follow it. And LinkedIn's just been— because people take time to read stuff on LinkedIn and consider it, and they'll click through links, and it's not like classic, like, brain splurge that you get on Instagram and TikTok where you're just like, next, next, next. Like, we can't compete on those platforms, we can't. But where we, where we are able to compete is on LinkedIn. And I, I'm— I don't know why enough— I do think that I've got, and not without blowing my own trumpet, like, a certain style with the way that I'm writing things that seems to be striking a chord, because you're not the only person to cite it. And like, when something's working, you have to accept it. I don't think there's anything wrong with saying like you're doing something well.

Yeah.

And double down on it. People are messaging being like, I love like the way that you write on LinkedIn, it feels really real. And it's like, well, I'm not trying. I haven't ever given it much thought other than like write eloquently, write honestly, and, and see how it lands. But then, and then, then it comes into like the whole like consistency thing. But for me it's like post quality over quantity, really. Always, always. I don't, don't do any LinkedIn rambling. I don't talk about stuff that I think people will like. Yeah, don't talk about any subjects that I don't know about. I'm not trying to get involved with AI conversations, anything like that. Just keep it down the line on who's Julian.

And I think the other side of like, you know, it's all well and good having this big following online, but you know, there are these people now that actually have nothing to show for it in an actual product or, you know, what they've built. And I think, yeah, the quality of what you've built is like, it's next to none. Like, yeah, that's, that's why I've gone and bought one. And I, and I wondered like Why in an age where I feel like fast fashion is a thing and people, you know, influencers are just putting, you know, their name on, on whatever and selling it to people, it— they've shown you can do it that way, but why has it been so important to you to actually make a real product in a different way to how it's been done before?

Um, so when you start a business, you have to have a, a why. Like, why are you starting it? What's the story? Like, that's a really essential part of when you're— if you— if anybody's considering starting a business out there, work out like what problem are you solving for people. Where— why we started was that we wanted to tackle fashion waste and overconsumption. That's why we chose to made-to-order. That's a really strong story. And then in terms of the product, people struggle to dress them, smell smart, casually well, and it's expensive, and the traditional suit is too formal. So could we create an outfit that people turn to when they need to look smart casual? So, and I think our story is quite unique in that we haven't come from a fashion background, so we've had to be very careful with how we've created clothes to make sure that we're doing right to avoid like a total disaster. And trust, we've had some in the past. Like, I guess we can go into that another time. But yeah, I think having a product that is really strong— like, if you're gonna sell clothes that are essentially— we aren't a luxury price tag. This retails at £395, which for a handmade to order suit made in London with Italian fabrics is really good value. The reason it's really good value is because we make to order. So because we're operationally sustainable, we pass that on to the consumer. Really, this suit would cost a grand if we bought stock and had to account for the waste, the overproduction, manufacturing the dead stock. But because we make to order, it means that we can charge significantly less. So yeah, I think making sure that your product is really strong is— it goes without saying, it's obviously essential if you're going to try and break into a consumer brand without any past experience in a very, very saturated market, in a market where consumers are more careful with what they're spending their money on than ever. So you have to, you have to have a strong why. Have to be solving a problem, and your product needs to be the dog's bollocks, otherwise you're going to really struggle.

Yeah, I think a lot of people will be listening to this, this journey, and they'll think, um, you know, I want to go on to have a career that's similar to yours. Um, and maybe— well, not yet, but there'll be people inspired by your story and admire your way of going about it. Um, and I, I just want for the listeners, um, you know, a big part of what we do is to try and make everyone feel heard in a career sense. What would you say that, that young Julian is? I'm like, you know, Who is he just as a person?

Um, so I was like fairly naughty at school, but not that naughty. Um, studied English, history, economics, and German. Um, I then went to uni, as I said, studied business and German. So German was like a third of my degree. I bunked the first 2 years of uni going out partying. You can pass your business modules with like cramming in work and get a good grade if you're smart enough. You can't bunk studying a language. And I, for my first 2 years at uni, knowing that I was going to be going on an Erasmus year, um, didn't go to my seminars and like had to pretend that I like was like really ill and like make up stories all the time because I was basically on a fat comedown or like really hungover from the night before, like most students are. And the thought— and I was ashamed— the thought of having to go to a seminar and speak to a stranger in another language when I was feeling ropey, I just, I just avoided I was like, it's calm. I'm going to go to Berlin and learn to speak fluent German. Obviously. Yeah, obviously I went to Berlin and did exactly the same and partied in Berlin for a year. Loved it, to be fair. Went to university, did all right. In fact, I didn't. Here's a story. On my first day after bunking 2 years of uni German, I decided at my— so in my Erasmus year, it was 6 months at a Hochschule. And 6 months working. And on my first day of Hochschule, I decided to study law in German. And they were asking German students, because it was a German uni, why they chose to study law. And I was stressed, and I literally got up and left the classroom and then burst into tears and called my mum. I was like, what am I doing? This— I've screwed this up. In hindsight, I was— I should have knuckled down, been less foolish and learn to speak fluent German. In my defense, I can speak it all right. I went on and studied like Level D, so it's like the top, and I just about scraped through. So my German's okay, could have been a lot better. Point being, like, that's a relatable student story where I was like, I know I've got a lot of talent and I know that I can make up for it in other ways. I had the best year ever. I made friends for life, worked for a really cool, uh, well, they're called cinemagraphs, which is like photographs where an element is moving, and I was their community manager, and I managing their artists all over the world in this one portfolio. And I did that for 4 months, and I worked for some really smart, like, uh, German startup people. Like, that was my first experience, and his name was Marco and Lydia. Still remember them really fondly, um, and had the best time ever. And as a consequence, I wasn't too downtrodden on the fact that I hadn't learned to speak German properly because it was a life experience, and I was learning and having fun and meeting friends and putting myself out there in other ways rather than like worrying about what the exam results are.

Yeah, I think, yeah, just accepting who you are in a career sense actually allows you to then go on and like build it in your own way. I think as soon as, like, as soon as I stopped saying that I was meant to be this person that worked really hard and always spent my time in the library, I think I was actually able to find my feet and my value add.

Yeah.

Um, and it's been, it's been, it's been a great interview. My final, uh, question to you is when you were at Newcastle during this time, you might have a certain idea of what a successful career would go on to look like. But fast forward with everything you've learned and achieved along the way, what is your definition of success and how has it changed?

Um, my definition of success is being happy in your everyday life, having really strong friendships that you care about, um, enjoying and being able to appreciate small things like food, music, fashion, enjoying what you wear, being conscious, being kind to others, um, being respected by people because of those traits and characteristics. That is the— that is how I measure success, rather than like all the material things. Do not get me wrong, having a successful business is huge for me, and that's gonna— and if I guess to answer your question pre-uni, Julian creating Batch and selling it for multi-millions would have been like my idea of success. But since starting Batch, it puts into perspective what's actually really important, and it's the, the other things which we all take for granted on a daily basis. So yeah, work hard, play hard.

Thanks so much for coming on.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, been great.