The OG Creator Manager on What's Actually Coming Next | Behind The Growth with Dom Smales

0:00The audience is getting bored of the perfect social media world that's being presented to them in mega short form.

0:07Laura Donadio: Social media has made the entry to building a business so much lower and so much more accessible to people. Yeah, and obviously so much of it is utter bullshit. How easy it is to make money, selling you courses, to be able to become a billionaire within 10 to 15 working days. For 50 pounds. It's unreal. I focused too hard on the business not to look around and spend more time with people that were nothing to do with the business. What was going through your head when you started that business? It's funny you should say what was going through your head because the health scare was a brain malfunction.

0:40So I had emergency brain surgery.

0:42Laura Donadio: Gleam disappeared. Some of your talents disappeared. Speaking of disappearing, where is Zoella? Hi, I'm Dom Smales and I'm the original creator manager. I'm now working on building the next generation of creator talent and IP, and this is Behind the Growth.

1:02Laura Donadio: We always start by asking you who you are and what you're known for. Do you mind starting us with that? Hello, I'm Dom Smales, and I'm known for founding in 2010 the first business that managed creators in Europe called Clean Futures. Beautiful. when you started the business it was on the back of a health scare what was going through your head when you started that business it's funny you should say what was going through your head because the health scare was a a brain malfunction oh wow so I had emergency brain surgery yeah uh and that kind of like going through the brain surgery made me have a bit of a kind of like epiphany moment or like a reset kind of what what is life all that kind of stuff I am I think I was like I don't know 34 years old 35 years old and I was like what else is there that I can do because I wasn't happy with my professional life at the time and I wanted more autonomy and And I wanted to see my kids more, that kind of thing.

2:14Laura Donadio: What were you doing then? What was I doing? I was running a production company that was a specialist in making radio content, doing radio promotions, and it also managed radio presenters and audio presenters. And it wasn't my business, but I went in as sales and marketing director and then went up to managing director. Is that how you spotted a gap? in the market and realized that maybe some of the presenters might move their identity onto social media or what what gave you the hint because at that point in time influencers weren't really a thing it was still very early days yeah well the word influencer hadn't been invented until probably around 2014 when the marketing industry got hold of it um so there was nothing at all facebook was very early on.

3:09Google had just bought YouTube maybe a couple of years previously. There's no TikTok, there's no Instagram, et cetera. And it wasn't like something specific about what I was doing then that twigged me. It was more the fact that I just wanted to run my own business and I wanted to be in charge of my own destiny. And for the first time, I think probably in my whole career, I thought about what I was fascinated by, what I was interested in, rather than what I was perhaps qualified to do or what I thought might pay me the most or all of those factors kind of went out the window because I was in my new kind of epiphany moment era.

3:51And I just focused on what am I interested in? And I'd seen social media as it became beginning to take root and attraction beginning to build and it fascinated me because I came from a media background I was really I was really into the value of attention so how much is someone willing to pay for a unit of someone's time or a click or a turn of a page or a listening hour on radio or whatever else so I knew the value of attention and then I saw social media arrive and I noticed creators to be specific there were two makeup artists the first creators that I noticed on social media were two makeup artists called Sam and Nick Chapman and I noticed them garnering a lot of attention and more importantly a lot of engagement so people caring about what it was that they were talking about talking about presenting and also they had some knowledge to give so they were delivering a unique value to their audience and uh it was also mega tangible so that number underneath the youtube video player and then the stream of comments that were time stamped and uh were exactly to do with the content which was just above them that all absolutely fascinated me because it was so far removed from the the calibration that i've been

5:17Laura Donadio: used to selling yeah in media you don't really know exactly i started in pr so i can completely relate to like magazines and it was like oh you pay for you know a page and the value of a page but really no one knows what impact it has right so that was so much more tangible straight away incredibly so if you think about i was i was in radio at the time that i came out radio and into the into clean futures my business and radio is measured by modeling up about i don't know 5 ,000 paper diaries that they drop randomly through doors in houses in the country. People tick what they've been listening to for how long?

5:555 ,000 people. That might be wrong, by the way. Check my facts. It might be 10 ,000 or whatever, but very few. And then they'd model up, you know, what hundreds of millions of pounds and dollars was spent on, basically.

6:10Laura Donadio: Which is crazy when we think about it, right? Crazy, huh? Yeah. So it was that basically. I saw these girls and that really, it was that that twigged me because I was used to kind of media and the value of media. And I thought, well, this is completely new and different. And I also really liked Sam and Nick. We just got on well. And so that's what gave me the idea, I guess. Did you just approach them and ask if you could work with them? I I was working at so I'll rebound slightly when I started the business I started a consultancy in social media probably one of the first consultancies in social media and I specifically was consulting for brands to start with because that was my I was commercial so I so you're about selling media to brands and um and uh I my first client and this is a bit of a this is a bit of a jammy one my first client was chanel because i had a relationship with the chanel team previously and so i had a it was a really good door opener with anybody if you phone them up and say hey i'm working for chanel and would you like to come to this event would you like some chanel products kind of like people were interested and um and i was working for chanel introducing chanel to social media and the power of online communities basically and what they thought about their products this was not done at this point this is the interesting thing um and uh i called up sam and nick who had this youtube channel and they were experts they were using chanel products uh they had awesome personalities that translated brilliantly on screen and they were demonstrating um makeup basically and we met and it was actually at that moment that the penny dropped that this could be I was consulting for brands but then when I met the creators and I met those specific creators the penny dropped that they could be talent and so that's when I pivoted into talent basically in managing talent so the penny dropped how long after that did you realize that you were really onto something with gleam oh uh I think I mean it It went at a million miles an hour right from the beginning because social media went at a million miles an hour right from the beginning.

8:29And I had four years, like I had it away for four years because nobody else was anywhere near it. And so I spent the first four years convincing, doubting rooms about the velocity of this, the power of it, and the effectiveness of this basically. And so I probably realized about 2012 that it was going to really kick off. Obviously, the numbers were growing, both audience-wise and revenue-wise, but they were very small still. There wasn't any really serious revenue. There weren't brands properly interested in spending money until about 2014, I think. But I was busy putting together IP plays at that point because brands came later.

9:18I was about what can we build with the talent that is worth something from an IP perspective. One of the very first deals that I did for Sam and Nick was with a makeup brush manufacturer from America to launch a range of makeup brushes that were cruelty free and had synthetic hair and the price point was accessible for high street shoppers in retailers like Boots and Superdrug. Um, and we launched that makeup brush brand with the manufacturer and it went crazy. Like the brand was a rocket ship. Uh, the manufacturer had amazing experience in distribution in the States and it grew to a global, uh, brand basically.

10:09And then there was publishing. We did publishing right from the outset. We did touring very early on. We did, um, we tried podcasts. there was there was lots of it was all about ip basically that's my point rather than uh brand partnerships which i feel like the industry has become much more kind of distracted

10:27Laura Donadio: by now do you not feel like it's because at that point in time it was still a very talent-led space and what i mean by this is it was more like your traditional musicians models um actors that very much had to build that sort of like 360 presence because social media didn't really exist yeah They couldn't really have that, you know, huge personality online the way that you can today. And so they had to build all of these other things to have the touch points with the audience. And I'm wondering if that was the start of it. Yeah, it was that. But it was also the fact that, and we might come on to this maybe in a minute, but the touch point with the audience was really potent.

11:12like there was a generation that were bored senseless of legacy media at that time looking for something else when Facebook arrived and YouTube arrived and then Instagram and TikTok and so on but when those mediums arrived the gen there was a generation gen zed I guess and millennials now were looking for something they were bored of BBC one and ITV and the legacy media owners and they wanted people that were much more like them to entertain them they felt like they could be a part of and they were looking for more inclusivity and that's actually the reason that we went in on ip and building things because we were building things with the audience and it's one of the major differences now between what creators are building now online versus what creators built then online is that creators now have to tackle the fact that their audience will maybe see a small percentage of what they create even though their audience has followed them and wants to see content from has chosen to see content from them only see five percent of is it five percent five percent five to ten the rest of it at ai will decide what you see and it be based on a huge pool of all of the videos being produced in the entire world the ones that are grabbing people's attention in the shortest amount of time will be then be served served to you and so as a consumer you lose i think because you're seeing things that you don't necessarily have you haven't like um you know bought into although you can't help but watch it because it's like crack obviously probably not allowed to make a hard drug you can you're fine it's really uh addictive shall we say yeah and uh but you you're missing you know everybody else that you follow because you really wanted to but in 2012 to 2016 your creator would make a post about something they were interested in and their audience would see it not the case anymore sadly so we built vehicles where the audience that were really interested and we could reach them through social media were given products and touch points where they could get to know the creator even more or they could see the creator in a different light be it a book or we did a we did a we did movies as well with joe and casper for example um or a live tour or you know other longer form content but the fact remained the audience would always see it and that's changed now

13:54Laura Donadio: you had some amazing people on the roster especially you know over the years do you feel like some of the successes that you've had with joe casper with zoe with zoe sorry do you feel like you'd be able to recreate that today so yes i think that we are at the dawn of a new era of developing ip on social media because i think that the audio and this is all my opinion yeah but I think that's what we want that's why you're here yeah I think that the audience is getting bored of the perfect social media world that's being presented to them in mega short form the perfectly curated you know reels and photographs and flat lays and perfect lives and the flashy edit techniques that everybody can access through the same platform I just think it's being homogenized too much.

14:52And I think we're on the brink of the audience reverting or new audience coming to the platforms, looking for real people, real touch point, wanting to engage with people that they relate to like intensely. And I think at that point, I think creators have got an opportunity to build IP that they own. They can't have taken off them by an algorithm change.

15:18Laura Donadio: do you think we manufacture talent and content too much today uh i mean there's a lot there's obviously a lot of creators like millions and millions like when i started there were like 10 000 globally if you went to social blade and you checked out who who calls themselves a creator about 10 000 or so now there's 80 million yeah or or maybe more people I think I saw something that like it was, I can't remember if it was like 20 % of the population that has access to internet counts themselves as a content creator of some form. Yeah, crazy. Which is crazy. And I think that's probably set to rise as more and more people, like everybody now has to be a creator.

16:00Like here we are, like executives making content in order to reach audiences. And I think that the bar is now set so low. I think that there's such an enormous tsunami of creators. I think there's probably too much content, if I'm honest. But I think that there's an opportunity, again, with the building of the IP, there's an opportunity to curate content that people who are interested in what you want to say, do, present, can engage with.

16:31Laura Donadio: It's the same with business, isn't it? Social media has made the entry to building a business so much lower and so much more accessible to people. But that also means that there's so many more brands being created and not all of them will make it through, right? Yeah, and obviously so much of it is utter bullshit as well in terms of how easy it is to create a business, how easy it is to make money, the absolute onslaught of people selling you courses to be able to become a billionaire within 10 to 15 working days. For 50 pounds. It's unreal. And so I think that the roots through all of that rubbish, again, falls to quality creators building quality IP with reliable sources and passion and commitment, I guess.

17:24Laura Donadio: So I have a funny story for you. Yeah. I did my master's degree in PR. We're talking 12, 13 years ago. And my master thesis was on influencer marketing. No way. Yes. and mine was on whether you could build a business on the back of influencer marketing as in if an influencer could become an entrepreneur and i think to this day it's my favorite story about my career because my conclusion was no really yeah and i just then went on and proved myself wrong right because i've made my own career on the back of influence why do you think they could though what was your point in time in a nutshell um so i started my career in fashion and at that point in time it was very much like you fashion bloggers that was slowly starting to migrate um their presence onto social instagram first and my experiment was to turn um a blog into like a money generating platform within 30 days and i failed quite quite terribly and therefore i was like well you know if you don't have the resource if you don't have the connections you're not going anywhere it was obviously a little bit deeper than that because it was a thesis but um Yeah, the conclusion was no.

18:34Laura Donadio: And so I think for me, that's always been my funniest story. But how much do you think a talent's success is related directly to who represents them and who manages them? Oh, that is a cracker, isn't it?

18:54so i mean it's a nuanced question because i i wholeheartedly believe that management plays a enormous role in the success of a creator obviously the manager isn't solely responsible for the creator's success so it's not a case of like if i get the right manager i'm going to be successful no problems whatsoever it is a perfectly balanced partnership between the creator and the manager to be able to make the most of double down on and reach the potential of the creator in terms of building a business and i think that um the right manager can provide not only access but also the right inspiration the access comes from experience and um a network that allows a talented creator with great ideas both content wise and you know commercially through if they want to build businesses in other categories, but allows them to reach their potential by connecting with the right people to make quality things.

19:55But also I think the manager's job is to inspire the creator to be able to believe that they can also make them feel empowered. But it is very much a partnership. And I think that something else that we need to tackle at the moment is there's a very low bar in terms of entry for a talent manager now. It could be your best mate from school. It could be the guy you met down the pub or the girl you met down the pub. Not a problem. And you just sit on the inbox, look at the emails that come into the inbox of the creator and try and convert them into a bit like, you know, it's a bit like being an estate agent and recruitment consultant.

20:32I'm not saying that those jobs aren't skilled.

20:34Laura Donadio: No, but they're a bit more accessible. But it's more accessible. and also it's more kind of like um you know commoditized you know it's kind of like volume driven and it's um so i really think that there is there is a waning of proper strategic application to creators now uh which again i think is an opportunity like for really great creators of which there are so many one thing i'm obsessed with is creators on social media i can't stop stop looking at them because I think there's so many fascinating, talented people on the social media platforms making content. Uh, and I just love discovering them.

21:17Uh, it's about finding the really great ones that yes, they can do all of that, but they're also have a great work ethic. They're reliable. Then, you know, they can put them in a room with people and they will get on with them. And all of those, uh, kind of attributes that my early roster had, and that's what gave us the launch pad um i can't wait to find them again basically do you have a recipe to find them and not so much a recipe but um i have i haven't i certainly have an instinct now to find great great creators and i see them popping up my frustration now comes from being able to access them because the inboxes are so cluttered there are so many managers in the space controlling inboxes and access to great creators as well so sometimes i think i see talent go begging um and uh that's a shame but uh i think that there's so many uh like outlets as well for creators to make money they might think that they've they've done it they might think they're smashing it but i think there is a shit ton of money being left on the table right now because the industry has grown to such a size such a scale um that there is money available to be made across a whole load of um disciplines but because it's so busy if you're

22:50Laura Donadio: a big creator with a lot of attention there might be any time to focus on one or two or three but there is there really are some really diverse ways to uh monetize and build businesses online now it's also become a very transactional industry hasn't it yeah i find that a lot of time and i'm not involved in talent negotiations much nowadays but i find that a lot of it is very what's the money on the table you know and there's not really that much of an interest to understand a little bit more onto like what is you know the reason behind the project what is the brand trying to achieve or and i know it's a bit naive to say because we're all very busy but i feel like it's very much like what's the check and then you know yes or no so i i think that's a race to the bottom because again it's a lack of it's a lack of attention to strategy proper long-term strategy and i think that's the route that all talent managers who are passionate and responsible about their talent should be pursuing is it's not about next week's check although that's nice and there should be it's not something to be you know doing transactional brand deals is not something to be ignored and will always be with us i think the platforms will change the delivery methods will change the distribution will change the algorithm will change but i think it'll always be there that kind of like the quick short-term transactional brand feature but i think that above that ought to be the one, three, five, 10 year strategy for creators on building proper businesses.

24:24Laura Donadio: I'm quickly going to interrupt this episode to remind you to please hit subscribe if you're listening on YouTube. And for those listening on Apple or Spotify, to not forget to hit the follow button. It only takes a second, it's free, but it will mean the world to us. I've also read in an interview recently that you've done, well, this year, that you believe that sponsored posts are dying. Might be exaggerating a little bit, but roughly. Can you talk me through that perspective? Yes, I can. So this is us going back to the transactional brand deals and delivery methods. It was a little bit of a baity title.

25:00I think that the creator's ability to be able to deliver results for a brand through an organic post are being throttled.

25:10Laura Donadio: Yeah. by the platforms. An algorithm, yeah. Attention on social media has actually plateaued a couple of years ago. There isn't, people don't have enough time now. People don't have any more time to spend on these apps. So you're seeing attention decline, but of course revenues are going through the roof. And that's provided by the fact that the platforms are selling the attention back to brands and they're selling the attention back to brands by getting creators to create the content and then brands have to pay to have that content seen by anybody. Yes, there will be that 5 % that you mentioned that will organically see it.

25:51Laura Donadio: Well, partnership ads have been having a moment for the last three, four years, right? Because you can get all, you can get access to not the 5%, but maybe like 60, 70, 80 % of the influencer's audience, right? Yeah. By just paying more for it. Just paying more for it, yeah. Yeah, so this means that the creators are going to find it harder to maintain rates, drive value for their partners. And this will mean that the brand deal as we know it, if I were to kind of like put a brackets at the end of that as well, the brand deal as we know it will definitely evolve. And I think brands have got to get smarter.

26:29Creators have got to get more creative about how they partner with brands. and I think brands have got to be it's always a thing we've said right the way from the beginning brands shouldn't be prescriptive with creators about what they make with them and I still go to conferences now and people are like saying exactly the same thing like 15 years later but

26:50Laura Donadio: it continues to be pushed in that direction because unfortunately with partnership ads as an example that spin is controlled by the paid team right the paid team wants the hook at the first three one second now of the video right because that's what catches the intention yeah and will stop people from scrolling but we know that this is not what makes a good piece of content yeah and that's why people aren't there to be sold to they're not there to see the brand deals are there to be entertained and informed and comforted and made to laugh and all those kind of things that you get from social media and a really great creator you know um audience relationship So I think the brand deal, as we know it, is dying and will die.

27:30And I think that we need to evolve fast now to become more entertaining on social media, but with brands. So one of the businesses I'm working with at the moment, running at the moment, is called Glow Motion Studios. And our kind of North Star is making original entertainment IP led by creators and also led by creators for brands. so we're persuading brands that you know fill your boots with paid social and it'll always have its part to play but also make entertainment with great creators for audiences that love to be entertained and audiences that love to be entertained do also use skincare they also you know buy cars they also buy clothes and all those kind of other things but i think audience I'd love to hear your opinion on this as well, actually.

28:21I think audiences are the most savvy they've ever been to being sold to.

28:26Laura Donadio: I completely agree. And I've seen a huge decline across a couple of the brands I work for when it comes to organic performance from talent. When I'm talking direct revenue, I'm not talking, you know, just impressions. But I'm finding myself creating strategies where I'm making teams pay for deliverables where talent will not talk about the product but just have it visible in shot right just to create brand salience and brand recognition and a brand relationship but it's part of the package right it's something that you know we want the talent to start the association with the brand in whatever way that needs to happen yeah because i agree you can't just go with oh here's a discount code that doesn't work no one wants that and how are you finding clients who are responding to that type of idea it's a tough one it's tough huh because you have to pay for something that ultimately is going to drive nothing yeah no one no one wants to know about a video that gets views that doesn't mention a brand yeah no one wants that but so it's like a sale it was the process all over again though if you imagine what we went through from 2010 to 2016 ai is going to be suggesting a lot of it and yes there's the ai that's in the back end of uh you know facebook and YouTube and Google and ByteDance and so on, suggesting videos to people.

29:46But there's also ChatGPT. There's perplexity. There's OpenAI.

29:53Laura Donadio: All the LLMs are just brilliant. Absolutely. The LLMs who are now finding that they are the destination for people to go to to find things out. Yeah, because they index everything from the content. Absolutely. And get suggestions fed to them. So I want to know what's best for oily skin or I'm looking for a fun, entertaining chat show that's got guests that I'm going to like on it. And short form is almost invisible to LLMs, TikTok, Instagram Reels, and so on. YouTube produces transcripts that are crawlable by LLMs and so on and will then drive a lot more interest from inquiries on chat GPT than you will do from short form.

30:37So I think we'll see changes happening there as well. You're going for a second round with a new business managing talent, aren't you? Wow, you are like on the cusp, aren't you? So yes, I want to get closer to managing talent again. I want to get back involved. I have an investment company called Winnie Wood, which I launched back in February this year. the idea was that we would invest in great talent-led ideas and that has given being kind of like exposed to all of those ideas and people and creators and capital sources and all those kind of things at that point in time has given rise to me realizing that I think that there's a real opportunity to manage talent again but with real strategic focus with a focus on building IP with a focus on recruiting real storytellers and people that are passionate and real about entertaining their audiences again.

31:44So it's almost, this is probably unpopular of me to say, but it's almost anti-influencer. But I think there's a gap there now. And I'd like to do it by creating something of real value, value, a real resource for creators to build the businesses that they deserve. I won't give you any more details, but watch this space. And we're hiring as well. So if you're

32:14Laura Donadio: either a creator or a creator manager or a wannabe creator manager or whatever, then love to hear from you. Cool. We'll put a link somewhere. What mistakes are you hoping to not make again? oh that is a great question but well i could funny enough i could reel them off personally business wise um i wouldn't sell my business one of the biggest mistakes i made was selling clean futures probably with hindsight now and it's a uh it's a it's a real shoulda woulda coulda thing and of course hindsight is a wonderful thing how would i know what effect the pandemic it would have had on the creator industry.

33:00It could have so easily gone the other way. Did I mean for the entire thing to play out in the way that it played out? No. I find myself with as much energy and passion for the space as I have ever had, but without this enormous global best-in-class vehicle to make the most of all the opportunity out there. Suddenly to have that stripped back, however much money you suddenly have in your bank account, it doesn't replace purpose, passion, and also...

33:37Laura Donadio: Something that you've built. Something you've built, but the feeling of working with an absolutely brilliant team as well. And so I find myself wanting to put a team together again and build again. So maybe that's something, a mistake I made. So many of the people that you had in your team at Gleam have gone on and done absolutely amazing, built incredible careers on the back of it. How does that make you feel? proud, like mega proud. And, uh, it also feeds into the fact that there was so much more opportunity to be had. And I'm really glad that was the best thing about Gleam Futures were the people that worked there, the team, as well as the roster, the combination of those two people made all the magic happen.

34:25I was just a guy that kind of put them in the same room and gave them a kind of a direction and so on. But it was the team and the talent that made that business as successful as it was. And I was just, I was very, I was honoured and privileged to work with them all right from the senior management team who were there throughout the entire thing. They know who they are, won't name names, but there's loads of them. And right the way down to the mega passionate undyingly hard-working talent coordinators and people that when we went through hell and high water uh carving the way for some of those creators the the the press

35:10Laura Donadio: nightmares and the um some of the cancel culture you were in the midst of it it was awful and we we managed to get through it all by being there for each other. And I, and I was just so proud of them all for kind of like being the people there. And then for creating the businesses they've created since gleams, uh, disappearance hasn't surprised me at all because that's why they were hired in the first place. These were, these were people that were the whole culture at gleam was about entrepreneurialism and trying things. And it doesn't matter if it fails, we'll fail together. And that gave people real courage to try things.

35:56Because I knew that we were all trying. Everyone was trying stuff. You know, the talent, me, everyone. We were all trying things. So you couldn't really fail.

36:04Laura Donadio: Gleam disappeared. Some of your talents disappeared. Some of them have fallen off the surface of the earth. Where is Zoella?

36:15so um zoe is a phenomenon and unique in that everything you see is 100 real and her she's the original kind of like vlogger real vlogger the reason that she had such enormous success and related to so many millions and millions of people is because she puts herself properly herself out online for people to engage with and i don't know i haven't seen zoe now for a while so um i can't give you an answer to your question unfortunately but i don't think it's anything to worry about. I think she's, she's a young mom now and she's got a gorgeous family and she is probably really enjoying that. And part of, if I were to give some advice to anybody about growth and if you're successful to enough to achieve huge growth and be successful in business, one of the things and i can link this back to my mistakes i made in business perhaps

37:32Laura Donadio: is enjoy that success take time for yourself to um exist without the expectations of other people for a bit because otherwise it'll sink you and one of the things i one of my regrets i guess in business is that i never did that myself and i went through a decade with my nose just to the Grimestone and nowhere else at all. I had two young kids and, uh, they went from like, you know, six months and, uh, 18 months all the way through to teenagers and young women with me building gleam and flying all over the world constantly and so on. I missed a lot of key moments with them, which is a regret. I've had conversations about it and, um, you know, they're very gracious or like they they maybe just didn't notice but uh i do regret that a lot and i see a lot better work-life balance available to people now especially with the changes in the way people work but um i think that's probably what so he's doing and and so she should and who knows she may well pop up again and she i don't think she has any responsibility to explain where she's been either because she deserves it.

38:53Laura Donadio: That's very fair. We have a quick fire to finish you off. Quick fire me up. The first one is the least glamorous part of growth in one word. Decline in your physical health. I look back at pictures and I think about the times when we were having astronomical growth and it took its toll on my physical and mental health, but I saw it take a toll on teams physical and mental health as well and um it's not uh anything to be proud of or uh and it's definitely not glamorous um so i would i would say that probably so finish this sentence i felt most out of my depth when we were having national press crisis on a weekly basis.

39:44Laura Donadio: I can imagine that wasn't fun. No. And we had amazing advisors and publicists and so on and so forth, thank goodness, to help us get through that. And also what really underpinned it all was, of course, you know, there wasn't anything awful happening. This is not kind of life or death situations. but it's extremely stressful and it takes its toll on the creator as well because that kind of scrutiny is um is very hard to deal with what was your most expensive lesson and how much did it cost you i don't have any regrets but a lesson that I've learned quite clearly is always not to go too early and always take a beat to assess the situation it can be a noisy marketplace it can be a noisy environment and a lot of the time people make decisions too hastily and I've learned to take a breath, give myself some space and think about things more carefully because I've made some decisions in the past that have cost me hundreds of millions of pounds.

41:05Laura Donadio: What is the best piece of advice that you've ever received and whom was it from? So I have two pieces of advice, but they're not, they're not really pieces of advice, but they're kind of sayings or quotes that I really kind of like pay dues by. first one is never wrestle with pigs because everybody gets mucky but the pigs love it and the second one i heard first when i watched uh like a actor's round table on youtube and tom hanks was sat around the table and i think al pacino was around the table and so on and they're chatting basically um look there was a question about what's what what saying has given you the most value in your life and tom hank said this too shall pass which is always bankable i think i agree the best moment of your life this too shall pass the worst moment of your life this too shall pass no audience no network and a thousand pound in the bank what is your first move

42:16we're savage with these yeah take myself on an ai course oh learn how to use efficiency tools provided by ai because i think it's a game changer and of all the negativity that's out there about how ai is going to take all our jobs and you know kill us all etc i think you if you're you won't be beaten by ai you'll be beaten by someone using ai yeah absolutely you'll

42:50Laura Donadio: be beaten by someone that has made it work super hard for themselves yeah and made themselves super efficient to be able to do 10 times more work than they would without it yeah but that doesn't mean kind of like just give it over to ai to do because i see that quite a lot as well in the in the workplace people forget you have to be strategic about things oh man like these documents that come out of AI and people just verbatly just send them from AI, it causes confusion, I think. And AI is not always right. And it also does a lot of things really badly. And also when I look at LinkedIn and I see 80 % of LinkedIn written by ChatGPT, even videos that people present on their LinkedIn videos, which is the latest craze, the script is ChatGPT.

43:35So they sound like ChatGPT when they're presenting it. So I think that's the same reason that I said earlier that I think we'll go back to some more authentic blogging, longer form content, real people, real opinions and so on. Because I think AI is just, everything's too polished and optimized now.

43:52Laura Donadio: Abby on our team has said to me yesterday that she refuses to read any AI documents anymore. If it's a cloud document, she's not reading it. Yeah, shout out Abby. Shout out Abby. And then if you lose everything tomorrow, it would be your first call. Oh, can they be alive and dead? Oh yeah, go on. Just to throw her. curveball in um my dad who isn't with us anymore he was my biggest advocate and greatest cheerleader and he never saw how successful gleam got really and i here's a regret it's a personal regret it does kind of like become a business regret as well is that i focus too hard on the business not to look around and spend more time with people that were nothing to do with the business but deserve my attention more um and that i think is what people like you and um people that are making a cornerstone of the way that they build a business having balance in their life as well being able to say no I think that that is a key skill going forward so I would I would call my dad and say just tell him the story about how I made it but then he'd also be just as fascinated in how I lost it all as well because I think that's always possible and going from nothing is actually what makes the opportunity.

45:27Laura Donadio: And we always close off by asking you one question. So at the start, we ask you, what do you are known for? The closing question is, what do you want to be known for? I would like to be known for providing the framework and opportunity for some of the greatest creators that the world has seen to be recognized and successful, as well as providing the opportunity for some of the greatest entrepreneurs that we will see in the creator economy coming out of the UK for sure and the States to be fair to have found their stride. I like to think that Gleam helped a lot of people find their thing and a lot of them have really run with it.

46:17Creators and some of the staff that worked at Gleam and now built businesses. So I'd like to be known for providing the facility for them.