How To Start With No Experience, Andy Varley, Insanity Group

0:00My fundamental view is that the entertainment industry was going for a complete industrial revolution. Linear television is being overtaken by streaming platforms. Social media is now flooded with AI content and it's hard to know what's real. Music consumption is changing pretty rapidly. And all of this means that we're having to constantly change our strategy to ensure that our talent are best positioned to continue to grow their career. In today's episode, we're joined by Andy Varley, founder and CEO of Insanity Group. Andy started Insanity at just 17 years old, well actually as we found out at 12, and has since grown into a multifaceted business spanning artist management, brand partnerships, music publishing and content production.

0:46Stay tuned to hear Andy's journey from teenage entrepreneur to leading one of the UK's most respective companies. Okay, so my name's Andy Varley. I'm the founder and CEO of Insanity. We are a 360 degree global entertainment company. We have three key kind of pillars within the business. The core business is in talent representation, where we manage a whole bunch of clients across the areas of entertainment, creators, music, and podcasting. We also have a brand partnerships function within the representation side of the business. We have a content studio, Insanity Studios, that was born out of many years of managing high profile podcasting clients.

1:29And we now have in-house capabilities here at Insanity. We have a physical kind of studio space and we have a small production team that are working on a blend of audio and visual content properties. And then the third pillar of Insanity is music. We have a record label that's been responsible for breaking many exciting music artists over the past 10 years. And those three parts of the business form the Insanity group. How long have you been doing Insanity for? I started Insanity 28 years ago. I was 17 at the time and Insanity Entertainment was initially born as a live events and slightly more music skewed company.

2:09But actually, it does go back slightly further than that. I was 12 years old, believe it or not, when I launched Insanity in its first iteration, which was as a computer games business. I grew up in a very working class household. My parents bought my brother and I a computer for Christmas one year, but it was caveated with the fact that, yes, they bought me the computer, but we couldn't have every game that we would love to have played. That just wasn't possible. So I had to figure out a way of making money for myself. And we're on a camping holiday one year. I would have been 12, 13 at this point.

2:47I have an older brother who's three years older than me. him and my cousin, who's two years older than him, were talking about this idea of creating a computer game business, which was essentially taking public domain software, so games that could be legally copied and then sold on. I quite like the idea of this. It was actually my brother who was like, oh, maybe we'll call this Insanity Public Domain, like a bit of a crazy name. And then unbeknownst to my brother, I had then spent some time around doing my homework, figuring out how I could start this business as like a 12, 13 year old kid. And that's when insanity started.

3:27So I guess at that very young age, I had to learn about tax and profit margins in between doing my homework. And I think the sort of fundamental thing for me when you're just starting out in those early days is that I guess founding a company starts with an idea, but the success comes from the strategy behind it and the relentless commitment to trust in the process. And that's something that I really stand by today. So at 12, with or without your brother, did you move it forward? This was without my brother. Yeah, it started with me. I just decided to run with it. I spoke to my brother. I was like, I like this name, Insanity PD.

4:07I'd always had like part-time jobs from a really young age, whether that was like selling programs at the local football club or later in life working in a shoe shop in between kind of running insanity. But yeah, that's essentially how it started. It was me on my own in my bedroom, copying computer games legally, selling them on for a profit. And I think by the time I was maybe like a year, 18 months in, I'd started to advertise in a national computer magazine. And by the age of 14, I was selling computer games to about 20 odd countries around the world. So yeah, it was a proper operation. That is a proper operation.

4:46And did you just, there's so many questions I have around this because most 14 year olds are not doing that. For you, did you feel very comfortable just cracking on and learning as you went? Or did you feel like, oh, actually, I need to pause this, go off and do a degree and do my education and come back to it? Was it just instinctive for you? It was definitely instinctive. I come from quite a long line of entrepreneurs like my great grandfather had a bike shop, which over time evolved into an electrical business. My grandfather then took over the family electrical business, Varley Electrical, based down in Kent, where I grew up.

5:21My father then took over that family electrical business. And I think it was a pretty obvious choice that at some point I was going to take over the company, but electrical goods, they weren't really my vibe. So really, I say that Insanity became Insanity when I turned 17 and I really got into music and entertainment. And Insanity Entertainment was founded officially on the 27th of November, 1997. So you put yourself through your own apprenticeship scheme. This is a million dollar question, but if you could have your time again, would you do it any differently? You know what? I probably wouldn't.

5:59I think for me, I've really loved building Insanity over a prolonged period of time. I think there's been lots of opportunities along the way to potentially sell some equity or to take in external partners. And for one reason or another, that hasn't ever happened. So I think we're a rare example of a British company that has grown very organically over almost three decades now. And I think from my perspective, it's been about trusting my gut and trusting the process, really. And it's been very difficult at times. But I think from those sort of challenges, you really channel them back into the strategy and the belief of where you're going to take the company.

6:43And ultimately, I feel very proud of where we've got to today. And I feel very proud to still be fiercely independent. it. A lot of people I meet, so I started nearly six years ago and people were like, oh, you're going to scale, you take investment. I don't know if I want to take investment. I don't know if I want to scale. I don't know anything. I'm just starting literally off the back of redundancy with an idea. I just want to keep the rouge off my head was my first week's goal. And then I was like, well, what do I want to achieve with this? Which I wondered, did you ask yourself that in your teenage years of what am I trying to achieve?

7:15Yeah, I think there's two answers to that question, actually when i started in the computer games business obviously all those years before i think at that point i was very young very naive and if i'm honest i just wanted to figure out a way of having more games to play with my family and friends and the computer game business was just a kind of means to an end to raise some money and to collect more games most people go and do a milk round andy they don't found a company i was actually doing that as well i was doing the paper around at the same time as doing all of this. But there was this thing from quite a young age where I would go to my grandfather's shop on a Saturday and I'd see him behind the counter kind of serving.

7:59I'd hear the till ringing and I quite liked that idea of creating money for myself and create an opportunity for myself. I come from a very supportive family and whilst my background and my upbringing was very working class, one thing that my parents were able to give me was a huge amount of love, support and encouragement. And so even at that young age, the day that Insanity Entertainment started back in November 1997, it started with a live music event. And we just literally celebrated our 28th anniversary just a week or so ago. And I messaged my mum that day. I was like, mum, it was 28 years ago today.

8:36You were there running the catering stand, selling burgers and hot dogs to all these young kids that were there to watch bands and experience kind of entertainment and and i think that was really what my parents were able to give me was yeah that that sort of the love and support i'm not sure if i necessarily imagined at that stage that it would become what it's ultimately become all these years later but i think for me on the entertainment side i love the idea of seeing bands that i'd start working with really early on go on to have varying levels of success and obviously back then success looks very different to what it looks like now.

9:17Back then it was like, oh great, I sign a band and I get them a gig in the local pub. Brilliant. They get paid£150. I take a commission from that and I'm walking away with £30 in my pocket. So that for me was success. All these years later, watching an artist like Tom Grennan, who we signed super early on in his career, who's just celebrated his third consecutive number one album and a sold out arena tour, success looks very different now. But I think it's all relative. Also, you have to start somewhere. And that's what I'm so fascinated about is that your expectations of the business and of yourself in your teenage years will obviously evolve as you and your twins in one.

9:56If someone's sitting on an idea to start a business, but they have no experience in business or that sector, what would you advise them to do first? Yeah, it's a really good question because I think ultimately you have to have that idea in the first place. I think one of the things that was really important to me was building up my network super early on. And I would attend this. Again, it's early and then it's really early. Exactly. But I'd go to lots of events. I'd go to lots of parties. I'd go and watch panel discussions. I'd read lots of books. I would try and meet as many people as possible.

10:32And obviously I'm talking about the late 90s here. And so I guess social media wasn't a thing at that point. the internet was a thing but it certainly wasn't as readily available as it is now and so ultimately my network was everything to me so it was like a case in the early stages of almost like faking it to make it i was this yeah 17 18 year old kid who had a dream of growing at that point a predominantly music-based company and the only way that i saw that i was going to be able to do that was to to understand as much of the music industry as possible, to consume as much kind of music content as I could, which again, back then it was like going to Woolworths and Al Price at the weekend, buying cassettes and CDs and later mini discs and listening to as much music as possible.

11:21My dad was a sort of part-time kind of DJ. And by that, he had a mobile DJ business, which was him and his best friend going and playing kind of birthdays, weddings, and getting paid some money to go and do that. But I guess there was always music in the house. There was always lots of records. My dad bought us up on kind of Tamela Motown records and the Beatles. And my mum was a big fan of the Carpenters and Status Quo. And so we grew up on all of that. So there was always music in the house. And I just figured out a way of turning this kind of love of music into a career. You were obviously dedicated to the cause and really investing your time in getting to know the music industry.

12:05A lot of people think they can start a business and then do five other things at once. You were all in. And at the age of 17, did you go on to a higher education or further education? Or did you go straight full time into the business? Yeah, I did. It was really important to me and also important to my parents, I think, as well, that I would see through my education. So I've got the GCSEs that I needed to do, the A-levels that I wanted to do. It all come as no surprise that kind of media studies and business studies were subjects that I really thrived in. But ironically, given that I'd started a computer game company when I was much younger, computer science was perhaps not a world for me.

12:44But then I got the grades that I needed to be able to go to university. university but as I was already running insanity at this point and as things had really started to pick up and grow with the business I said to my parents I was like look I've got my place at university I'm sure I'm going to come back to that at some point but I'd really like to give the business a go kind of full time so I finished my A-levels the family electrical business did come in handy because my dad gave me he actually tasked me with the job he was like if you want some office space, then you need to get up to the attic in the shop.

13:16You need to clear that out. We'll paint it and decorate it together. And that can be your office for your year out before you go to uni. And so that's what I did. And the company went from strength to strength. I signed more bands. I was booking more shows for those bands. I'd set up a whole bunch of kind of ancillary music businesses from like fan club management to booking agency to management company. But fundamentally, I knew I wanted to go to uni for life skills, experience, and to, again, build up my network. So I took that year out. And in the September of 2000, I started a three-year business degree at the University of Kent in Canterbury.

13:59Again, it will come as no surprise that I became the music editor of the university magazine. Again, that was all around building out my contacts and my relationships. I started to meet record labels for the first time. There was a whole kind of plethora of amazing DJs and artists that would be touring the university circuit. And I'd go and consume a lot of music and entertainment in my spare time. So yeah, that was really cool. Was this your spare time? You were doing your degree and continuing to run Insanity at the same time? Okay, so this is the crazy part. So I was doing my degree. I was running Insanity from my dorm room at university.

14:37And I also had two part-time jobs. I was working in a shoe shop and I was working at a football club. So the weekends, Friday through Sunday was the part-time jobs. And the rest of the week was building Insanity and studying for my degree. So there was very little downtime, although I'm quite a sociable outgoing person. So I very much made the most of everything that the social life of being at university could bring. So, yeah, it was it was a pretty wild three years from 2000 to 2003. But I'm so glad that I did it. And I made so many friends and contacts along the way. And obviously came out of a degree.

15:18And I remember that about university. I learned more about people and living with people and working with people than I did about my actual degree subject. But it felt like such a luxury in the fastest three years of my life. But I wasn't running a company and I had a part-time job, but not two. But it sounds like you were very clear that insanity was going to work and that you needed to fuel that. What would you advise a founder who's umming and ahhing around their idea? Like, how should they flesh out to know that it is a really good idea that they should go all in on to make it work? Yeah, you know what?

15:47I think it's a really interesting question because ultimately it has to start with that idea and it has to start with something that you feel really passionate about. So it might be that you've identified a gap in the market. It may well be that you've seen somebody else create a company that you actually think that you could provide that product or service in a more interesting, exciting and compelling way. But I talk about this kind of ideology around like trusting the process a lot. But I think ultimately it's got to come from that place of passion because obviously the stats are against you.

16:24So many companies start and they're very lucky if they get past that first year, let alone five years, 10 years, or for me now being 28 years in, which is mind blowing really. But I think if I didn't love what I started all of those years ago, then perhaps I would have lost interest by now. Because I think the world of running a company, being an entrepreneur, can be pretty lonely at times. Quite often it's you in those early stages, by yourself, trying to make the decisions, trying to balance the books, deliver a marketing strategy. You're problem solving the whole time without a sounding board.

17:05Totally. And I think one of the things that I very much learned, particularly as recently as the last 10 years, actually, is the importance of shared decision making as you grow a business. And as you start to employ people, you really want to be in a place whereby the onus isn't purely on you. Like Insanity is now a large diversified company with 70 employees and 250 plus clients. And a B Corp, I think as well. Exactly. Yeah. And every day is challenging, but we share decision making. We have a really fantastic leadership team and between us, we run the company. But obviously in the early stages, you don't have that.

17:48It's you and you on your own. So one thing I would advise when people are starting out is to try and surround themselves with interesting, smart advisors, whether that's a great accountant, a great lawyer. If you're fortunate enough to have access to mentors. It's something that I spend a fair amount of my time doing, sometimes officially, sometimes unofficially, is spending time with young founders, giving them advice on my journey and mistakes that I've made over the years and how they can potentially avoid those mistakes themselves as they grow their own business. It's almost like your now self looking back to your old self, looking out for those young starts that are coming through.

18:30Because I think something in the UK economy is 98 % of the GDP of the UK SMEs and then 78 % of our service-based businesses. There's a lot of entrepreneurship in the country that we don't recognise. How do you vet a good mentor or a good coach? So I went through three accountants before I found the one and I realised every single podcast guest has said two things, be okay with a rollercoaster and get a good accountant. And good is defined differently by everybody. So for you, how would you vet that support network it's a brilliant question and i it's such a a timely question as well given that i was in a meeting this morning talking about an individual's experiences with bad accountants and bad business managers and quite often these things make it to the press as well but i've been pretty lucky over the years i had i've only ever had three accountants i had a family accountant when I first started out and they were a local based company.

19:29They'd looked after our family businesses and my family. So recommended. Exactly. Personal recommendation, I think is really important. I then, as the company grew, we took on a more established music accountancy company. And again, their track record spoke for itself. They were running the financial affairs for some of the biggest artists in the world. And I guess I felt that if they could be keeping these big bands and globally successful music artists in check, then they should be able to deal with me and my company. We were with them for many years. And as the company became more diversified into other areas of the entertainment industry, we made one final switch.

20:12And we're with a great firm now that helps us to deal with everything. But I think it's having any kind of a professional advisor in a business, I think the best place to start is through that personal recommendation. I think if you've got people in your network that can validate and authenticate the relationship with a business advisor, then that's probably a good place to start. And on the mentor front, it's really interesting. I feel like when I first started, it didn't feel like there were many kind of mentorship programs that you could be a part of. Whereas I feel like now there's certainly in the entertainment industry, there's a whole bunch of brilliant mentorship programs, some that perhaps work more closely with people from challenging and diverse backgrounds, others that are just really great kind of starting points if you're a young aspiring executive that wants to have their big sort of break in the industry.

21:10And I think also there's been a lot of changes in legislation under UK government to prevent young people from being exploited in the workplace. When I first was trying to get my foot in the door, you'd hear horror stories of people that have been working for free for companies for years. You're speaking to someone that's in PR, so starting out on an unpaid internship, which now is illegal. Yeah, exactly. And I feel really proud that as a company over the years, that we've really We lent into some amazing programs. Like many years ago, we lent into a program called Small Green Shoots that gave people from diverse and underprivileged backgrounds the opportunity to take a paid job in the music industry predominantly.

21:54And we had one particular shoot who came in and she ended up being my assistant for many years. And she's gone on to work for some really incredible companies. I feel very proud of that. And then more recently, we've partnered with an amazing organisation called Shadow to Shine. And we've recently completed our third work placement, a work-based training programme with Shadow to Shine. And we've seen some amazing executives that have come through that. It's also great because people can get some experience and test the water because if they're not entirely sure, and I think I probably only worked out about four years ago what I wanted to do with my life and I'm in my mid-40s.

22:32But I've learned and worked since I was 15 in different jobs in different sectors that has taught me what I don't want and maybe what I do want. And ultimately, any job, it all comes down to the people you're surrounded by. But the same thing, we were so privileged to have one of the graduates from the MA in podcasting at City University join us for six months. And then she went on and got a full-time job at Laritha Roo. So I was like, great, we've trained you well. It's so wonderful to see these people go on and succeed. Or they join your company as well. But for you as a founder, looking at what you've achieved over nearly three decades, you have grown the business and diversified as well.

23:09How have you rolled with the punches of the media landscape changing, the way people consume music's changing? How have you continued to educate yourself and keep up with it and even lead the way with it? Yeah, totally. I think for us, we are a people and a service-based business. So I think in the world of talent representation, the industry does move incredibly fast. And it's really important for us to ensure that we stay culturally relevant. And we do that by constantly looking at our roster to ensure that the roster feels broad and balanced. And ultimately, trends and tastes really can change overnight.

23:50And it's really important for us to stay one step ahead of the curve. So I think when you're... It's hard, isn't it? Because you're starting a business, you're doing something you've never done before. You're probably doing a business that hasn't been done before either. And the business is changing itself and evolving in technology. Everything else is changing. So you're constantly all moving forwards. But it feels a little bit rabbit and headlight sometimes with how much change there is. Yeah, totally. My fundamental view of that is that the entertainment industry right now is going for a complete industrial revolution.

24:22It's like linear television is being overtaken by streaming platforms. Social media is now flooded with AI content and it's hard to know what's real and what's AI these days. Music consumption is changing pretty rapidly. And all of this means that we're having to constantly change our strategy to ensure that our talent are best positioned to continue to grow their career. And so I think in a slightly strange way, because every talent strategy looks so different, in a way, I almost see my role as not just being the CEO of one company, Insanity. You're essentially the CEO of 250 companies that all have individual needs, that all have different expectations and all have to have a unique strategy.

25:14So it's, yeah, it's exciting, but also very challenging. The joy of working in a business that involves people, because I think everyone says it's the people are the hardest part. And it's like, okay, I've really done a number myself because I employ people. I talk to journalists who are people. I talk to podcast hosts who are also people. And then the dynamic of how people behave in work is fascinating. But sometimes I just want a day off humans. It's like, well, I wouldn't have a business if I did that. But yeah, managing people and then managing yourself as well, because you are leading, you have to be your own best motivator.

25:46How do you manage that? Do you ever have a down day where you're just like, I'm done, I'm off? How do you manage yourself? Yeah, again, it's a great question because I think that I'd be lying if I didn't say that you have those tough days where perhaps you've had to have a really difficult conversation with somebody or you've had to restructure a part of your business, which has sadly meant that you've had to let somebody go or perhaps there's been a disciplinary situation. And I think ultimately that's inevitable as you grow a business and particularly as you get larger and you scale up. And interestingly, you mentioned B Corp and that's something that I feel very proud of.

26:29We started our B Corp journey three years ago. We found an amazing company that acted as our critical friend throughout the process. Can I ask which one? Because we work with Sid Connects who are game changing for us. Who did you use? We use Seismic Chain and they were fantastic. And they continue to be great partners of ours now as we continue even post certification. But it's really interesting because when we started that process, you get kind of like a pre-score. So they will come into the business, they'll score you against the B Corp criteria. And actually we scored really highly in the people category, which wasn't completely unexpected.