Victor Bengtsson, Managing Director @ The Sidemen

Welcome back to another episode of The Graduate Guide. Today, joined by Victor. Victor, welcome to the podcast.

Ah, thank you so much for having me.

So you are the managing director of Arcade Media, who is the team behind The Sidemen, as everyone knows. And I think we're going to get into what it is you do and, you know, everything that comes with working for The Sidemen. But I want to start off at the beginning. You know, you've had a weird and wonderful career, and I think you probably couldn't have expected your career to end up where it is now. When you were at university in Sweden, what did you think your career was going to be back then?

Well, yeah, so like I ended up in uni because of like necessity more than like aspiration, I guess. So in Sweden, the system is slightly different. Like anyone can go to uni in reality and obviously take on loans to make things work. But I was— I'd just broken up with my girlfriend at the time. She had established clearly that I was too boring for her. And I was like, maybe you're right. What do I know? But I was kind of like in a sort of like a crisis where it's like, what am I going to do with my life? I've got a job here now. And at that point I was like doing sub teaching. Is that what you call it in English? I think so. Like you're a sub teacher for like a class.

Yeah. The toughest job possible.

It's actually great. Like it's such a good gig. The summertime when you do teaching, it's just great. Kids are also like just the— they just think differently to all other creatures on this planet. And I think that I was doing what I could to like take care of some of the creative stuff that I wanted to do. But in reality, uni became almost like— my friend was moving out and he said, I live in this hall and this room, I don't want to lose it because it's so fun living here. Would you like to try it out? And I went to the uni hall, and when I came to the uni hall, I met all these people who were like studying things, and like they felt like dreamers compared to the people I was surrounding myself with. Um, so I was like, you know what, I'll do I'll do 6 months of Modern English just to try uni life. So I did that and then I was like, I like this, but what am I actually liking to do? And then I applied. So I basically did political science, strategic communication, and then a little hint of, yeah, as I said, Modern English, Modern Literature at the beginning there. So I kind of had a widespread, but my idea after like a year there was that I wanted to work as someone who helped people get into power. So someone who works behind the scenes on like political campaigns, PR, helping a political party maybe reshape how they approach social media or how they go about hiring people in who are younger than themselves to understand kind of like you need to have a young team in order to understand a young audience and stuff like that. So that was like what my initial thought was and my, My paper at that time was on the difference between left-leaning politicians and right-leaning politicians and how they amplify their own social media growth and like researching the use of social media and digital platforms in the political life. Yeah, that's what I thought I was going to do.

Yeah, and I guess the next step doesn't really necessarily add up with that.

No.

Explain that.

So, yeah, so I— I was working on a couple of different creative bits in my private life, but I was primarily focusing on keeping up to date with how social was developing, but also the Swedish political landscape, stuff like that. But I also had a couple of friends who were working at agency, and they were basically letting me know that there was this project that we're gonna do with Netflix, or pitching to Netflix, I can't recall now. And they were also going to be doing some stuff with Volvo. So I got introduced to some people at Volvo and they were doing this innovation project and I was like, this looks sick. Like I think this is maybe my calling. So I joined Volvo at that time during my time at finishing up like the last bits of my university degree and worked at Volvo and was kind of like now heading in the direction of innovation, digital development at like bigger corporations. And then I went home for Christmas 2017 and my brother, we don't necessarily meet very often, but it's like, I guess it's like family, you come together when it's family time. And he tells me that he's playing this new video game called Fortnite and he is like the second best guy on Fortnite. And I'm like, well, I mean, how many people are playing this game? And he went through some stats and I was like, this is looking like a really, like, this is big time. Like, this is not like little, little bit of like a title coming out, or like it's not just Call of Duty for 6 months, and it felt different. And I started looking into like, well, how many people playing this, who were playing it, and my brother continued playing it, and the only other guy who was beating him at that point was Ninja. So like, he was obviously the guy back if you were playing Fortnite back then, he was the guy. So I, that Christmas, decided to start managing my brother, almost like a side thing and started picking up other players around Europe by kind of like measuring their growth on social, which didn't necessarily come from the stuff I was doing in uni, but it was the same sort of side, like looking at growth patterns. How are you daily growth? Why does it happen? Connected to your posting schedules? What are you posting? And then how many kills they got in the game. And then I built a roster of players and started pitching that to esports organizations around the world. I made like a little, PDF or something where I outlined my 4 guys, and I was just like, these are going to be the next superstars of video games. Yeah, and that kind of got traction in Sweden first. Like, my brother got quite successful. We did a couple of interviews, we went to a couple of schools. Like, it was, it was like, it was getting, gaining traction, and he was like one of the main guys at DreamHack that year. So he, he became someone in Sweden in the Fortnite scene.

Before we just, you know, go on with the story, I just wanted to dig a little deeper into I guess this mindset where, you know, you kind of had passions and ideas of where your career could go, but from the outside looking in, you were kind of buying yourself time and observing this shift in social media and these new opportunities and, you know, biding your time to, you know, break into it. Well, you didn't know it'd be through Fortnite or with your brother, but I actually heard in a different podcast you did that Christmas is your favorite time.

Yeah, yeah.

So you kind of got your, your career gifted to you by Christmas as well, in a way.

No, no. Also, like, Christmas is like my recharge period. I'm born on the 25th of December. So it's like, it's a, it's like, it's without being holy. It is my personal holy time where it's like anything that happens in those 3 weeks from like the 20th, maybe 15th, leading up to the 3rd of January, that is just like where I can be anything I want to be. But you are right, that's also when a lot of good things have come to me. So maybe they are— there's a correlation why I love it and things have happened then. And I mean, my, my brother at that point, like, I think that I was biding my time, but I also knew that I needed to be in digital. I had worked in something so physical. I was, I was a cow farmer at that point. We were buying up cattle. I had a company when I was 24. Didn't end up the way we wanted it to be, maybe, but like, we, we, we did some good stuff. We made I would almost say like a small disruptive movement within the cattle industry, which is obviously very strange to talk about. But I've been in that very physical industry. I've been at Volvo, which was super physical. And all of the things that these industries were talking about was the digital challenge of like, what happens when people are creating products that don't exist and they're selling them at the prices that we are selling them at? And we have production lines and stuff like that, right? So I knew I needed to head into digital. And with Fortnite, The game itself became popular, and that's why we did what we did. But also the launch of the battle pass, stuff like the monetization of gameplay, even the gamification of your time spent in video games, everything was just so innovative. And how Epic Games decided to build that out, I felt like I needed to be on some form of trajectory where I was parallel to that. So my pitches to all these organizations eventually led to me getting approached by a London-based team called Fnatic. Which obviously being a Swede, they are like legacy pieces there. There are some legends there, like Kaan is the Counter-Strike legend of like, if you played any games growing up in the 2000s, like he would be a legend. I got to work with him, that was crazy for me. And then just like getting that Fortnite squad into that organization, that company, meant me moving and leaving everything I had in Sweden to come and move to London and start a new life here. And my players obviously did not move, they were living in their separate countries around Europe, but I moved to manage the team and the project and the strategy for us as a unit from the HQ in London. And that kind of set in motion my start in real digital work.

Yeah, it's a big change that, and I think you can only really make such a big change when you believe in yourself or what you're doing so much. Obviously you'd seen this opportunity and you're working with people and maybe brands that you could never have foreseen doing so.

Yeah.

What was like really internally the desire and the motivation to make you take that leap?

I think it's a two-parter for me. When you're from a small town or like I'm from a town of 6,000 people with the greater area, maybe 12,000, maybe there's more people now. I don't know. I haven't been there for 7 years. But when you come from a small town, there's this constant strive that there is this big city somewhere and you believe that you belong there because you have great ideas and you have great drive. And if I stood next to all these people on this massive treadmill and we ran, I promise you I will stop running last. The rest of them will stop before me. That sort of mentality existed. But on the other hand, I think it was simply that everything in this industry I was almost maybe blinded to. But at the same time, I firmly believe that the future lies within digital, whether that be gaming, whether that be products turning digital. And I felt like I wasn't taking a bet on myself, even though I back myself. Yeah. But it was more like I felt like I needed to be in a time and a space that was happening. And it was, it felt, didn't feel like a window, but it felt like this might be, it's now or never. And that move in the beginning of 2018, like cemented almost like my belief that now I'm taking the leap, but I'm doing it because one, I think I'm good enough. Or at least I'll run longer than other people, even if they're better than me. And then the second one, there was a time and a space, and I felt like there was a moment that I couldn't miss.

I think a lot of people have this aspiration to move to London, a big city, and I think some people can come and feel very detached and incentivized to really treat it in the way that London can treat you. So I think there's very much you have to give to take back from a big city. And I guess that adjustment period for you, how did you actually find that? And what did it look like making the most of this big city life with all the opportunities that would actually look like?

I mean, I think there might be some more information for people who live in England in terms of like what London's going to offer. Maybe they have friends who've gone. Like, I didn't know anyone who had gone and uplifted their life and gone to London, right? So for me, London is— I was shook, like, what the fuck is going on here, man? Like, Where's the Queen? Where's Harry Potter? Like, it's very odd. This is not what you market. Like, America has such a strong marketing campaign around what New York is. There are TV shows that take place. LA, Hollywood. Even if you think of like Midwestern America or Dallas, Texas, any place, Florida, you can pick any place in America and you will almost immediately imagine what it might look like there. If you think of Blackpool, you fucking see nothing. And if you think London, you almost immediately, as someone who's not from the country, you see royalty, like you see Buckingham Palace, maybe stuff like that, right? So when I came to London, it was an immediate shift to like, wait, I'm going to live with other people? And they're like, absolutely. Like, there's no way you're affording a one-room apartment on your own. And I'm like, okay, but I'm 27 years old and I worked at Volvo, so I think I should be able to maybe get like a small one. No. So I moved into this tiny little shoebox and I remember like I landed with the plane, came to the company and said, listen, we'll take you back, we'll take you to the apartment and took me to the apartment. And I stood up and I just put my hand between the two walls and then they had this string that they handed me and I could hang it on two hooks and they were like, you can dry clothes there. And then they said I had a TV, but the TV was like an old computer screen with an HDMI cable that connected to my laptop. And I was like, I mean, sure, but it's a stretch calling it a TV at this point. It was just like, it was not glamorous in any capacity. That experience, having had that experience, right? I tell all the people that I bring into our team now when I hire them, and I can see it in them the moment they make the leap from their parents' house. It's like, we have two people now, like young people between like 21, 23. One of them lived out in Surrey somewhere. The other person came from outside Manchester and they moved to London after they got, they passed their probation periods. And I tell, Everyone, London shits on you before it loves you. There is absolutely nothing good about London the first night. There is only loneliness. Why are there rats in the house? Why is my neighbor smoking cigarettes through his window, leaning into my window? Like, what is the actual thought process of doing that? The noise, the everything. But then I also like look at them and I go, but you made the leap. The leap's done. You've already fallen, you've hit the ground, and you're still okay. You're standing. So it's like, I had that journey of, fuck, it hurts a little bit, but progressively, if you do good, you start seeing the value of it. Like, I could suddenly go to the theater. I could, um, I— we would go to events that I wasn't invited to unless I'd been here. Uh, I had a launch of a book that happened where the author actually came to store here. They would never have come to Schäflinge, where I'm from, So like you suddenly start seeing these little glimmers of hope everywhere and they come together and then you suddenly remembering your head, like you're sitting down, you're laying down your head on the pillow. And I tell these people as well, like that they get into the company, they tell me, oh, my friend's 26, he's got a house now, he lives in Chatteris. I'm like, yeah, he's got a house in Chatteris, bro. Like, what the fuck does that even mean?

I've lived there all my life.

Well, then you back, you've had it all your life. It's like it shits on you before it loves you, but when it loves you, it feels great.

100%. I found it interesting that you mentioned, um, sort of your observation of Fortnite and how they, uh, they monetize something that on the face of it seemed a pretty difficult challenge to monetize. You know, there's so many games that have struggled with that. And interestingly, once you moved to London, you got this, this massive opportunity after earning your badges within the world of esports to, to set up, you know, The Sidemen, who have always been just giving content for free, for free, for free. Like, they You know, I was a consumer of it for the longest time. KSI and Simon actually went to my old school, as it happens.

Oh, there you go.

But yeah, always followed it, and, you know, I could not have foreseen what would happen to this, and, you know, in terms of business and entrepreneurship and who they've become. But they need— there's— it's really hard to thread that needle of how you can actually take something like relatively philanthropic in its mission and actually monetize it. And I guess that comes down to giving so much value that you have no doubt that you're, you're doing the right thing. So what was that, you know, that process of Jordan coming to you and saying, right, we're setting up SitePlus? Like, why did you back yourself to be able to do that? And in practice, what did it look like?

Yeah, I mean, we met, uh, one— they basically said, do you have lunch plans? And I met Jordan and Aaron And they were basically like, I'd met Aron a couple of times at that point. We'd always had a good vibe, but it was like, they had no idea, they'd not seen my body of work. Like they went solely based on our first interactions, I think. And they just slid a piece of paper over and said, we're gonna build a subscription service. Imagine Netflix, but for the sidemen. And I'm like, oh, right? And they're like, yeah, yeah. And you want me to do it? And they're like, Yeah, yeah, we think you can do it. And I'm like, right, I don't code. Like, no, no, no. And then I, but they basically, this paper, they slid across, they said like, if you had, if you could have like 5 things on it, like 5 ideas that you think would be good, what would it be? And I just went like, ah, and I sat for like 3, 4 minutes and then turned around, something like this. And then they looked and they went like, yeah, do that. Go tell me you're leaving your job, handing your notice, come join us. And you'll be head of Site+, at that point it was called like head of special projects, 'cause that was gonna be the first project, then moving on to others. And why did I back myself to do it? I guess it's back to the same thing where it's like, there is no one who's gonna run longer on the treadmill than I will. And in the back of my head, I say this a lot, to be a fantastic worker, you need to give a 7 outta 10 performance consistently. To be a great creative, you need to be 9 outta 10. I'm not a creative, I'm a dog. I get on the ground and I run and I don't stop until we get where we need to go. So I'm like, okay, how long do I have? And they go, well, about, we don't actually know. You have to meet the boys. Okay, so I get on a call with the boys. First time meeting all of them. KSI is laughing hysterically about something that someone has just said. That's like, I join, wing, and it's just this iconic KSI laughter, like echoing in the Zoom call. and they basically say, okay, the floor's yours, pitch. The Sidemen don't like to get pitched to. They're not like, I can waffle about my CV, my career, what I've done. They just gonna look at me like, what the fuck are you talking about, bro? So instead I went for like an approach of, I think I'm gonna do this and I think it's gonna make money and I think we're gonna piss off no people. And if they're pissed off, I promise you I'm gonna make it up to you. Like, I'm gonna make sure that they feel better afterwards. And they were kind of like, I think they saw something in me. They have this great character. Like they can read someone incredibly well, super fast. And I think that's how they've navigated their life, someone to those points. So just like, I would like you, how about 75 days?

Yeah.

And I'm like, maybe more. And then we didn't actually get to 75, we got 73 or something like that.

But a similar story has actually been told on this podcast already of a guy called Dec Penfold, who, the sides, he was telling us about how he came in like a shoebox for the sides and pitch into this room, they had no idea who you were, and it was a very similar story, like, cool, let's do it, like, just do it. And I wonder how that made you feel after that moment.

Fucking terrified. Like, you're fucking terrified. You're like, well, who are you? So do I have a budget? And then obviously you're on notice period. So I now had to prep for saying goodbye to all my teams, all the people in my team, but also the people that I've been working with. I'd say goodbye to gaming. Which was also like a really strange thing. One of the things of working at a club is that every Saturday or Monday or Sunday or Friday, whenever the games are being played, you have this gathering point where you like feel real camaraderie and like you wanna win this, you wanna go and win the World Cup. That was also kind of gone. So I had to find like, partying without was one part of it, but the other part was also like, I was not gonna have like a downtime of a week to like rest. It was just gonna be like quitting on Wednesday, starting the build of SitePlus on Thursday. So I was just terrified. And then looking at like different services that we could use, I started talking to some of my creatives that I knew and I was like, would you like to come join me at Sidemen? That was one big winner in all of that was that you have the Sidemen badge on now and almost anyone sees that, they go like, yo, I wanna give it a try. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll go up and I'll hit a ball. I'll do it. So I was terrified but also like, excited.

Yeah, I think one of the things that you've not mentioned that, that may have made it all that more feasible for you is it sounded like the way it was pitched to you was so empowering, um, you know, and I, when I see Jordan's like job post, for example, it is all about empowering young talent to just take what they've got and just really just give it their best shot to do what they have of it. And I think there's a lot of lessons that any student can take in any career path in that, um, And just, I'm curious as your mindset, now you're hiring and building this team for OK Media as well, what does good delegation and empowering of your younger team members actually look like?

I mean, I think delegation is the only way forward for anything, especially when you work in a new industry. The power of corporate and the power of structure is a two-edged blade. One is that you have more safety and you can feel better at work because of that safety, but it also is just slowing you down and it is draining you creatively. When you're in a startup setting, like we are now 3 years into this project, and we have a team of about 35 people, and I primarily hire people who are out of uni or like young people to come in and do it. I have this management style that is almost like mission-based. So it's like, I'll tell them, I can't tell you 100% what your workday looks like, but I can tell you they're probably gonna spend around 65 to 70% of your time fulfilling this mission. And that mission will be quite a big mission. And that is delegated over to you. And I'm not really gonna check in with you until you raise your hand. And if you don't know the power of raising your hand, you don't belong here. Then you need to go somewhere else and you need to be, you can't be in startup. Someone who sits silently and fails is someone who can never survive in this industry. But someone who fails, but letting us know that that is happening, that is someone who's open and honest and telling you, I can't fucking do this, I'm 21. And I'm like, great, but you did 35% of it, so let me help you get to where you need to go. So delegation is everything to me. And it is that my team now, all of them, no matter age, no matter part of the hierarchy, have a mission, big or small, but they own that mission and it's theirs. So delegation is the only way for me to make the Sidemen actually function and run.

Yeah, and obviously you're talking about the ability to, fail and learn quickly. And, you know, if you look at your career journey, even just within Arcade Media, you start off heading up Sideplus, you go on to being head of content, and you're now managing director of, you know, the biggest social media group in the UK. Yeah. And I think clearly that there's probably been a similar story in your own actual journey.

Yeah.

So I want to sort of get a bit of a masterclass from you in the actual process of How do you actually know when something's, you know, you're throwing a lot of stuff at the wall, how do you know if something's stuck or if it hasn't? And then how do you then keep building on that?

Yeah, I think we do, we set out at the beginning of each year here, so '22, '23, '24, kind of like, what are we going to try to throw? What are we going to throw at the wall and see if it sticks? And with the more success of The Sidemen, the bigger the scrutiny, but also the bigger the expectation, right? So when you come up with something, the one thing that is good, like a good leading, like a guiding light, is that if you're sitting in a room of a lot of people who were not part of developing this process, and they are people you trust, and they all feel like this is not a bad idea, that's usually a good, good sign. The idea of the brain trust, the idea of like confidants, the idea of people you believe in or trust to be able to pitch to them in an honest way, that is like super valuable. If you can have friends who can tell you when you're shit or colleagues who can tell you when you're shit, then that is amazing. That is a great starting point. Once you've actually produced it and it goes out, it comes down to quite basic stuff. It's like sentiment review. You look at actual average view duration. You take a look at what your, how did people feel about it inside of the team? What was their experience? There are so many different variables to approach at that point. So like for us in 2022, We're gonna make this subscription service feel like it's not a scam. You should not feel like you're paying £6.99 and you're not getting value. I need to provide you so much value that you feel comfortable staying with us 'cause we wanna respect you and do what you do. 2023, we said, what's the difference between doing a small football game at Charlton to doing a Premier League level football game with 14 staff? Well, we know now. Was it successful? Yeah, it was fucking successful. It was great. It was super fulfilling. Filling. This year we said, okay, what happens if the side men are not in a piece of content? And we made Inside, which is our first stab at like a reality show, right? And that's a crazy bet to take and saying, guys, your channel, let's not have you on it. Let's build out this whole show where you will feature about 15% where you usually feature 95%. For them to have the balls to just go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, back it, do it. That is the liberating thing of working on the segment. And that is like how we have to review, like if something works or doesn't work, it is the happiness of the segment, obviously the happiness of the audience. How does it do financially? Is this viable? Does it have longevity? There's so many variables to look at. But I think that at the core of it is still like, did your audience like what you did? If they didn't, then it's time to go back to the drawing board.

And we look at the same conversation through the lens of being a creator and the career path of being a creator. You know, when I was growing up, and I'm sure you as well, it wasn't this glamorous thing where you could actually make it your career at the time. And since it has become that, and I think actually Simon have forged that and, you know, they pioneered that movement through just years of consistency and doing something for longer than necessarily they were meant to. What are some telltale signs that you are somebody that could become a creator? You know, working with Simon now, what is it about them that has made them stand out and become who they are?

Yeah, and this is interesting because a lot of creators are also creatives. And now I'm talking creatives, I'm talking about the professional title of working in creative execution and creative work. But you can be a creator without, without being equally much of a creative. But creators have this crazy commitment to production and being consistent in production, whether that be that you're going to upload a video a day or it's one a month. And that is like how you're heralding your own— like, this is my thing. They don't drop the ball. If you're a person who just refuses to not— like, you refuse to not drop the ball, that is like the telltale sign. And that is the number one thing you look for. It is someone who is essentially they won't stop until they're there. The second one is someone who is funny but understanding that funny is an asset. So not funny on the expense of other people, not funny because they try to, like, make funny content that people want them to make. It is actually them just being genuinely funny and being able to turn that into format. So you have KSI, who has turned in, like, the FIFA game is not that fun. No offense, but like FIFA is fun, but it's not that fun.

Yeah.

Road to Shaw, FIFA's not that fun. The guy's still not even good at FIFA. I mean, Harry, sorry. But like he made a career out of being who he was within the format of FIFA and being able to take you as a personality, put it into format and making that successful. Even getting like one comment and say like, this is actually jokes. That's almost a good sign as well to just see it as like, you have something and you're able to turn it into something valuable. Not for you, maybe for you, hopefully for you, but more importantly for others. So it's like a grind mentality of production and consistency and then being able to take who you are and what you have specifically and format it. Those are two great, great signs. It's changed slightly with TikTok. It's easier to do TikTok content than it is to make YouTube content, for example, which is also why it's much harder to sustain an audience on TikTok because you expect it to be funny 4 times a day in 4 different clips. But it still kind of applies.

I think that first point you mentioned leads me nicely on to the question of Elliot Hackney, who's the CEO of Feather Studios. He had a question that he wanted me to ask you, which is, you know, you look at probably the closest to the Sidemen is the Beta Squad, and he's saying they've taken a 3-month hiatus or they're taking a break, and he was curious about, you know, the future of the industry, like how anybody could actually come in. And, you know, the Simon have obviously been around for so long, but yeah, in this day and age, you see, it actually is quite fickle. And I think it's the fact that every single Sunday, it never stops, the machine never stops. So what do you think for groups, creators who are coming in and looking to make any similar sort of legacy, like, are the absolute imperatives Yeah, I think that the world of entertainment is drifting and slowly changing now.

I mean, even you see now, Niko has his video on YouTube, sorry, on Netflix. We had our documentary on Netflix. There is going to— the journey that Sidemen have had are not going to be similar for the next Sidemen group. Like, I can't go and tell someone, you know how you get to be a Sidemen? Well, if you go the Vikkstar route, you're going to make 10,000 Minecraft videos before it even takes off. That's a crazy proposal to anyone. So I think that what the Sidemen have done is set up a unique and exceptionally well-executed conceptual plan. Do I think that that can be done again? No. I also think that it's crazy that these 7 people have not become unfriendly with each other. Like, this is not how it will ever look again. No one's gonna do 14 videos a week, push it out. They're not gonna have a Reacts channel, a More channel, a main channel, a Side+, they're not gonna have additional businesses. That are running externally to these things as well. We are running at, we're running too fast and we're keeping up with our own speed. And I think that if you told me 3 years ago we're going to be running at this pace and being able to keep up, I would have been like, I don't fucking think so, bro. Like, it sounds a bit crazy. Let's not do it that way. So I think that in the future, people are going to look more to productions. Like, you look at MrBeast now, how he's approaching it. You look at how BetaSquad, for example, they're their break comes, I, like, in my head, a creative, being creative every single week is tough. Coming up with videos every single week is tough. I know that you will see TikTok comments or like comments on social media being like, oh, it must be hard to make videos. My job is quite hard. I just sit and make financial decisions basically every day. It's not physically hard, but it's mentally draining to always be thinking, if I don't hit this number, back to Sweden. Like, that lives in the back of my head. Even the government sends me a letter saying, hey, you can stay another 2 years. Thanks, bro. That lives in the back of my head. But for these boys, when they sit down, and it's usually a room like this, a random room after a shoot, and they sit all together and they're looking at each other, 7 minds, and then someone goes, "How about," and then the magic starts. But for the magic to automatically happen is crazy. Game of Thrones makes 10 episodes every 3 years. Even if they're higher production, The idea, the core idea has to exist and be delivered basically every 3 days. And I think that for the future, there's going to be way more structure and expectation from the audience. You don't need it to be every Sunday and every Thursday and every Tuesday. It's going to be more towards the beta squad and it's going to be easier to handle, I hope, because I can look at the Sidemen now as they're getting families, they're getting, you know, lifelong partners. They're settling down into marriage. This is not sustainable. Their schedules are not sustainable. And we have made moves to make it as sustainable as it can be. But they are running at the— too fast and they know it. They know it. And I have days where I look at them and I'm like, Jesus Christ, you're— Yeah. But I hope that we live in a content landscape where people want to see slightly higher production but never getting to the point where you're thinking of Netflix and stuff, right? It's still YouTube, but we're not expecting it to be so simple to make because we live in these two landscapes. We're making a vlog back in the day was just you walking with a GoPro. Now we're making a video with 68 POVs on an island where there's a helicopter chasing and there are smoke walls closing in. And we are not like Netflix, but we're also not there anymore. And this middle ground has not been defined fully. So you're expecting it to be move fast and be delivered consistently often. And I hope that we get to a stage more where people maybe go, nah, just give me something I laugh at and have fun with, but I don't need it every day. That's what I think it'll take to turn to.

Going back to your own personal career journey, a common theme throughout this interview has been your ability to understand who you are and what your allocation of your skills, your personality is, both in your career but within a team as well. Yeah. And At the beginning, you referenced sort of, you really knew from it very early on that you wanted to sort of empower and platform other people to achieve exceptional things, and then you went on to reference yourself as being this dog who will constantly run on this treadmill, and I think there's so many lessons that people can take from just relentlessly trying to find out what your value-add is in a career, and it's like, I guess it's such a refreshing feeling when you truly know not everybody has to be the the lead singer. And I think there's so much value in the silent workers. So have you got any advice on how people can actually go about finding out who they are in a career sense?

Find out if you're good at boring stuff, because if you're good at boring stuff, you are exceptionally wanted. Like, boring is sexy. That is the thing. Like, listen, you don't want to be the number 9 on a football team because you're going to have to put in 35 goals. You want to be someone who is consistently stepping up for your friends, the people around you, then you don't have to be the best. I mean, if you wanna play in Real Madrid, you're still gonna have to be the best. But to play on a team, you need to be able to fill a purpose. So find out if you're good at taking up admin. But if you tell me, I wanna do, I'll do the admin, I'll run the admin, I'll do the boring bits, that's how you get access to the fun stuff. So like my, one of our key creatives now, He basically is our game designer for SAI+. He started as a runner, so he picked up salads for Ethan when he needed a salad. But now a year in, he's the one who's designing the games. And that's because he said, listen, I'll do it, I'll fucking do it. I want my foot in the door. So find out if you are good at boring stuff. And that's not boring as in running, but that could be something like understanding how to find different options to, we need a clown find me 50 different clowns and build out a spreadsheet so we can have one click for the head of production to go, dit, dit, dit, then you will rank them and make yourself want to do the boring stuff and not suffer with them. 'Cause the boring stuff is what leads you to get the opportunity to work on the other stuff. In the creative setting as well. So it's not only working on my finance team. I don't think that they work on anything creative. Mark's fucking hilarious though, but like, I don't think he wants to do anything creative.

And is that blend of delusional optimism with the actual ability to show you can just get something done, I guess, is like that, That sweet spot you're looking to hit.

Yeah, it's also like most people can get shit done. Very few people are good at what they do. So like most people can run, most people can be a nice person to have in a team. Most people can get the mission of, okay, we're doing Inside season 2, I'm gonna need to find locations, I need to go there, I need to visualize how the set could be built. One of our senior members of staff, Jas, she's the one who's leading on Inside, for example, she did season 1. She doesn't do anything creative really, but she created Insight, which is creative. But most of the work was figuring out how the fuck do we make Insight. So it's like you can easily become valuable. Most people can become valuable. Very few people are good at what they do. Most people think they are. They're just not like I am not very good about it. I don't have a high IQ. I am not exceptional in my execution. If I was, I would be a fucking author and I would have 5 bestselling books. I don't, but I'm very good at talking to people and making them feel like they want to be in this place right now and they want to work on something. And that's my skill. So it's like, let go of the aspiration of grandeur and the big things and just accept yourself to almost be like, but I'm just a good— I'm just a good person and I want to apply myself to something, especially if you're young. Just try shit. See what you hate. Don't find out what you don't want to do. Find out what you hate to do. So like try running for a year if it hurts you and it's the worst year of your life. Cool. You don't belong here. Everyone ran. Everyone did. So it's like, don't come in here thinking, oh, never come with, oh, I have a solution for you. Shut up. You don't have a solution for anything. Where did you find that out? Fucking PE. Like, no, you don't have a solution. Be humble and be available. Those are the two things I would hire you in a moment. And if you go like, oh, I don't, I haven't worked anywhere else. Cool. No one else in TrueMass. 'Yeah, welcome.' That's, that's basically the setup.

Um, there's a lot of learnings that I think big corporates could take from this messaging. Um, I mean, you know, following you guys on LinkedIn, the way you do recruitment and try and get the right person before you even have to cultivate them within your team, like, you do it really well. And like I said, it comes back to that empowerment piece, but obviously the disruptive nature of a company like Arcade Media in such a fast-growing space. I think I would love for you to sort of try and extract some of the great things about what you do and how you behave as a company and send a message to, you know, we also, this podcast, we platform big corporates and there's amazing people within it, but they're just so sort of handicapped by the red tape and everything. So what would be some lessons to actually truly making some Making something exceptional and innovative will be your message.

I also think it's like corporates, it's not the corporate's fault. Like people who work in corporate are some of the biggest heroes of my life. Like I meet someone who's like a mid-level boss at M&S, I'm like, bro, I don't know how you're surviving, but like respect, do your thing. Being able to handle the sort of red tape, being able to survive in there. I know that when we get to a certain level, a certain size, there's no way we can operate the way we do. But there's this beauty between, 1 and 6 years of a company's lifespan where you can kind of just fuck around and find out, which is the only place I've ever really been in except Volvo, where it was very much a different experience. So if you want to do something exceptional, think that you don't want to do something exceptional. Go and look for an issue that exists. So for example, when I hire now, I look at people and I ask myself, what's the worst thing that's happened to you? And they'd be like, I got furloughed in COVID. Just made me feel like I was the least valuable person there. Okay, cool. So your personal experience now is that I need to make you think that you're valuable, even if you're not from the beginning, because you're probably not going to be when you walk in the door. But like, you need to feel that way. So being able to— and that's the struggle for the corporates, right? They have tens, 15, 20,000 employees. How do they have a mid-level manager who's 46, who's got a mortgage, is just divorced, make 3 25-year-olds feel like they're being seen, heard, and their ideas are being cultivated? It's impossible almost. But for me, it is cultivating and seeing that you are thinking and having ideas. So there's, I think, 3 of the people at my company right now have an idea bigger than The Sidemen. And I've been like, if you ever speak to me about these ideas unless I ask you, I will straight fire you. Like, I will straight fire you. You're here to do The Sidemen now. Keep your dreams, learn from all the people around you, and then go make that. And then come back to me in 3 years' time and go like, bro, Fuck you, I'm a multimillionaire. Now that's what I want them to do. But when they're in here now, full focus, do what you do and pick up all the learnings you can. So when I put our stuff out on LinkedIn or when Jordan puts out the stuff on LinkedIn, it is the idea that you come here and it might hurt a little, but you will learn so much. It's a bit like uni. It's like, it's also the building we work in, a bit like uni. It's a bunch of different small companies everywhere and we're in the middle of all of it. And it's just like, get your head down, build a body of work, Calculate then if this is pain or if this was gain. And if it was both, stick around. If it was just pain, fuck off and go and try something else. Maybe you should be developing, I don't know, courses for men who are lost on the internet because they seem to be making money somehow. Yeah.

My final question to you, which I ask every single one of my guests, is when you were first starting off in your career, university, sort of workshop on what your career could look like, you would have had a certain idea of what success would look like back then. And fast forward with everything you've learned and achieved in your career, what is your definition of success and how has it changed?

When I was at uni, I had this— I had one line that was like, it was like blood, written blood. I get here, it's done, it's done. If you can pay for lunch every day and it's not a Tesco meal deal, you made it. That was my plan as I kept saying.

You said that in Sweden?

No, no, no, not Tesco Meal Deal. I was like, if I go out and eat at a restaurant, then you made it. So like 9 quid, then you made it. And I was like, that's gonna take, like also why would you fucking waste the money? But in my head I had this idea like, you don't pack lunch, you eat lunch. I remember thinking that as a 22-year-old, like that's what success looks like. That's not what success looks like at all anymore. Success now, I think there's two parts to it. Which is one is like an egotistical piece of it. So like making something that someone sees and they go, well, someone has not done that. That for me feels like you've done something. It could be a small thing. It's like, I wonder what it was like. I talked about the Nobel Prize a couple of days ago with my barber, and we talked about the idea that there's a man who's come up with a blue light. I wonder if he sits at home and he realizes that he has changed every single light setting on the iPhone. For every human being on the planet, and he just sits there and having like a, like a little breakfast and he just goes, nah, man, I made it. I don't think he does, but if he does, great. But for me, it's like the way we did charity match and everyone looked at it and it was 2.6 million people tuning in. We had just like families from all over England travel in. Like those are big moments that feel, feel successful. But if I look at it from the actual standpoint that I look at back, and it was almost like a paradigm level. Like I could buy, instead of packing lunch, I'm eating lunch. Now it is more that if I can sustain good profit margins and the same level, like a sane level of happiness for my company, then I as an MD am successful. The moment I start hurting people to make more money, then we're losing. I can hurt you for a little while 'cause we're going through trenches period, But if I'm hurting people actively to make just marginally more money, then I've failed. So my success rating now is purely based on, are we having a good time? Are the Sidemen having a good time? Then I am successful. Some form of balance. Money's important, but we're gonna do this until we're 65. Well, some probably gonna be 75 at this rate. So it needs to be a place that you enjoy being at. And I think that I have found a place in our office now where people feel excited about going to work. So my definition of success is to provide a good place to be for other people.

Victor, it's been a pleasure. Thanks so much for coming on.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.