Will Clarke, Producer and DJ: Hustling Your Way to The Top, Making Things Happen Out of Nothing, Interviewing Carl Cox, Moby, Patrick Topping, Cooking & Creativity and The Worlds Best Restaurants

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1:27Northstar Category Management help you create banging supermarket pitch decks so good that buyers find it impossible to say no to. Challenge your brands like Perfect Ted, Trip, Bulbinko, Dash all love Northstar. Look, I am so confident in Northstar transforming your brand. We've got an exclusive Hungry offer. Your first month for free. Yes, free. Plus, we're going to give you a free 30-minute consultancy session to see how your brand is currently performing in category click the link in the show notes to put your consultancy session and thank me later morning this episode is super special with will clark will clark is a dj he's a podcaster and he is an outright foodie although i hate that word foodie but he knows his food he's got banging food instagram page called will make you hungry um we connected because his podcast is sick he's interviewed some of the biggest DJs in the world Carl Cox, Moby loads, he's released music with Claude Von Stroke this episode I wanted to speak to Will because I wanted to dig into the creative process what makes him tick, how to hustle your way, he literally built himself from nothing I love people who are high agency, who can make things happen out of nothing and Will is one of these people he saw to the top he's got a super successful podcast he just played with Calvin Harris in Ibiza um so yeah it was kind of my some of my favorite things in this world of creativity food music the creative process branding we talk all about that so this is an episode if you're trying to be a leader how to hustle your way to the top we talk about kind of branding so like the consistency of your brand allows the audience to feel comfortable i love that how to evolve as an artist and a brand loads in here for like kind of creative organizations and these spaces creativity is zero expectations which i love because i think so many people go into meetings and brainstorming sessions with super high expectations he's like no look zero expectations we talk about the grit like he says there's dark parts of every single day but you just need to push through those and you know if you don't change the goalposts you're going to see that hard work pays off um you know a lot of this is business like yes he's an artist but he's built himself as a business he's built will clark as a business he talks about how to plant the idea in other people's heads great sales lesson like why what's their goal what's your goal business is compromised there's loads in this um and i really hope you enjoy it please do share the podcast it all helps leave a review five stars preferably a really really really really means the world to me the bigger we get the bigger guests we get the bigger everyone learns it's all going to be amazing thank you so much

4:07your record label is called all we have is now yeah and i think it's a great name and i think one thing i'd love to ask you out of sheer curiosity is when you're when you're playing a set how important is it to be present in the moment in the now versus and like trying to feel that what the audience is feeling or what the crowd's feeling versus like going off your track list i think that's something i'd love to explore i think it's really important i think realistically the art of being a dj is to entertain i think a lot of people forget about that um but i think for me is i don't plan sets like there's i'm i don't know when this episode comes out but i'm playing Coachella in about a month's time in California and you do like two weekends in a row and that's probably the first set that I've ever like really like I'm putting thought into it of like what could be the intro do I need to make a new intro what records do I need to put in the pull to potentially play um and also look at it's like a bit of a marketing tool where okay i'm playing in front of a shit ton of people like what records have i got coming out that i need to create content for that coachella content will be the best possible thing also it's being live streamed so it's like okay it's being live streamed to potentially millions of people so So what records do I want potentially millions of people to see?

5:49It's a bit of a different concept of the whole like set planning. Whereas usually, and also like it's a bit more of a commercial crowd. So festivals are generally a bit more of a commercial crowd. So like you can probably get away with a little bit more than what you would necessarily in like a dark dingy club. On the levels of like commercial ability of records, if you know what I mean. um so for me like at the end of the day the crux of djing is i i feel like it's changed over the time whereas djs have become i don't class myself as this but it's for people that aren't in the electronic music world a correlation is djs are rock stars now where djs people go watch djs play to play their music that they release.

6:39And if DJs don't play their music at those sets, you have fans that are pissed off. So DJs, the concept of DJing has changed over the years. But I guess in answer to your question, being able to be a good DJ is, in my eyes, is being able to read the crowd, but also educate at the same time. and and i think it's and i and going into detail that so reading the crowd means okay i just played this record okay it went down really well they want that they like that but what's the next record that i need to play that i'm gonna get a better response or i've peaked so like let's say for instance this last weekend i played i think four hour set in montreal is this iconic club called stereo and i played the bar called stereo bar again an iconic venue um like because i'm playing a longer set i don't want it just to be slamming all the time yeah like there has to be peaks and troughs and it sounds wanky as fuck but like some people say like i have to take you on a journey it's for me it's peaks and troughs it's like okay i want to get you to a to like a crescendo and then i want to bring you back down i don't need to keep you there i don't need to prove a poignant because you're going to be in this club for four hours listening to me to be play i don't want to just like absolutely burn you out i want to be able to like okay get to a level of like everyone's going absolutely mental then just like bring it down a notch bring it down two notches and kind of almost like kill the dance floor to a extent where you can then build it back up and i think those are the moments some of the best djs in the world do that if i'm honest and and that to me is a good dj in answer to your question yeah it's fascinating it's almost so the more in the now you are and i suppose with the more experience you can kind of i just as i said the record the name of the record label was just made me so curious so so when you're um can i can i add one more thing sorry yeah crack on me a really interesting thing that i do to fill the room is you feel the temperature in the actual room when it's like really hot and sweaty you know you've like changed the room you know that people are moving around when you when you're in a room full of 500 people or you're at a festival in like a bunker with like 15 20 000 people when it gets sweaty you know you've changed the room and and i think that's also a goal is like how you get people moving it turns into heat it's kind of weird but yeah it's i find these i find these things like insane obviously i've never i'm not a dj but i love going to raves so i'm the other i'm probably the sweaty guy in the crowd right um so so and then when you when you talk about this journey these peaks and troughs and stuff i think that's um how is there like it must be a hard or brave move as you said you could just play slammers and stompers all night when you're starting but you get more experience you can almost bring bring the crowd down and up and you're kind of the commander of of the room have you ever tried to bring it down and it's been a bit of a clangor and then when it's been a clang like how how do you bring like bring it back up i find that art quite yeah i'm curious yeah i think the whole point of i think there's actually points where you have to do that there's like i can't remember who it was like it was either like kenny dope or dennis ferrero i can't quote who it was it's like one of the legends of like house music and they said like at some point in your sets you almost have to make a purpose mistake if the crowd aren't vibing at all like turn the music off really act like something's not gone wrong you've got all attention on you then everyone's paying attention the minute you put that record back on completely changes the atmosphere of the room it's it's almost like when i'm playing especially festivals when i'm playing after a dj i can i have complete silence and it's kind of like okay you've you've listened to that now it's my time and if you listen to if you go to watch a band when the support act comes on there's like five minutes before the head headliner comes on and people are just waiting and i think for me is like there's a level of like we live in this world where everything's so instant everyone wants like instant gratification they they want that kind of like money shot all the time right and by making people wait by like giving something giving them something that they're not used to silence in a club it can really game change everything that's unreal the so what i want to talk about is um one of i know you've referenced a lot on your podcast and i mean actually this this laptop is resting on the book is is rick rubin um i love his his book and i think it's just like an ode to creativity one of his quotes i love which is is the audience comes last yeah and when you're when you're djing you're trying to like get to the top or producing music i should say is you've got on the say on the right hand side is creating something super commercial that could that you know is is on trend people are wanting to listen to versus this is what will wants to create and this is what's coming out of your creative being how do you kind of swim or navigate between those two opposing things well i think like let's let's talk about the dj and aspect and then the production aspect yeah when dj and when dj and the audience always comes first right okay when producing the audience comes last in my mind yeah and i mean that by realistically i have to play these records and and this is this has been a process it's taken me a long time to get to this process right especially now in my career like but at the end of the day i have to play these records every single time i play sdj set if i'm playing if i'm making these records if i'm going into the studio making these records purely to have commercial success I don't think I'm truly gonna love those records like and I don't think I can truly put my name to those records however if I can make records that I absolutely love I'm happily I'd happily play them every time and I'm not gonna worry about going to my DJ sets and playing them every time I've got records that were big records at the time that my sounds changed and everything like that and i don't play them anymore luckily i've had more since then so people don't necessarily know those bigger records back in the day but as my sounds changed over the years it's i'm purely just i'm trying to write music for myself especially now there's there's a lot of music i don't know when this comes out probably about a month or so mate okay so may may the 3rd is like my first release of like a different of a newer project that i'm working on for will clark and it's like a long-term project that we've done with the record label and that's the like the first start of the new kind of not sound but the evolution of what i've done um and for me it was just purely spending a year of just with no external influence of me thinking oh i need to be a dj i need to play this in a venue i need to do this it's just purely me writing music that i want to listen to and like i i've got to that point in my career where i know i can write club music i know i can And I've done that for the last 15 years and I, I know what will work in a club.

15:18Right. But for me is like, I don't really listen to club music when I'm not at a club. What kind of stuff? I listen to like a lot of electronica. I listen to like a lot of country. I listen to just like old hip hop. Like I listen to a lot of things apart. Like electronic music now is not my first listen. and if it was it would be one of the iconic acts like chemical brothers faithless like moby where i'm going to listen to an album and for me now it was just like how can i make mute like songs that can that i love that has the potential to reach a bigger audience and but the audience i i during the process of this whole process of me writing a bunch of like records it was the goal was not for the audience the goal was for to write absolutely amazing records that bring me emotion and and i like the difference between djing audience comes first producing audience comes last you've talked there about your own kind of crafting your your own sound and you said 15 years you knew how to produce club music i think the best best in anything best footballers best chefs best artists have their unique uh tone or sound um or kind of brand really like what are the what are the hard points from from you kind of starting out to creating the will clark brand like and that unique sound like how did you cultivate that i think it just evolves over years and i think also realizing that you need in this day and age you need something for people to kind of catch on to right and like if you want to talk about it on like a commercial aspect it's like what sets you apart from other people realistically who are you and this is this is kind of moving away from the this is kind of moving more in the commercial aspect but like okay if i talk to producers and they speak about my music they're like i've i absolutely love your drums and i love like the vocal the gospel vocals you use like i'll go into sessions and i'll get people like that i write for and stuff like that they're like we're writing like more of a commercial record but we want your drums on it we want you to do this we want you to bring like a little bit more of an underground to it so it's like okay like maybe that's what i'm there i'm known for I don't know like I think everybody has their own perception of what your sound is and at the end of the day I can't control that the only thing for me to create a sound is consistency on how I produce and what I use to produce so let's say on my like club stuff like I have a drum machine here like I use that drum machine pretty much on every record that gives me a sonic sound that can be the Will clark sound and i think it's very easy to to as a producer to just go in the studio and just start writing a bunch of shit but there also comes i'm not talking about the thinking about the audience but i'm talking about the brand and it's how do you how do you keep a consistency to your brand which i think is so important there's so many artists that jump from sound to sound because it's popular and because they think that's going to give them success and realistically that doesn't give you a brand people don't know what to expect go listen to like james blake go listen to moby go listen to faceless go listen to like chemical brothers that all the iconic people in rolling stones beetles like all of these people that like have had extreme success calvin harris like there's something on every single there's some there's a consistency to what they do that allows the audience to feel comfortable no one likes change yes no one likes change it's almost like go for it oh sorry i was going to say it's almost like the brand is a is a i interview a lot of brand founders in like building brands that we go into supermarkets and stuff but like it's almost like the brand is a promise and as you said you don't like consumers or listeners don't like change one thing i'm obsessed with the beatles i mean you don't probably see the thing behind me but what i liked about the beatles is they were consistent and they had that unique kind of lennon mccartney sound and just that was almost that partnership was a bit like your drum behind you it was consistently there but they also evolved and kind of ripped up the rule book whether you go from like yeah so that's one thing i think um um is like super interesting so i think it was the podcast i don't know it's one i one i listened to i think it was with in may a comment which one it was but you were talking about how quickly music evolves like yeah and you have to evolve with it so how do you keep the consistency of the will clark brand yet evolve with because the sound changes so fucking quickly do you know i mean i don't evolve with the sound i i don't necessarily agree with having to evolve with the sound right i i agree with evolving as an artist um and evolving as a person when it comes to doing what makes you happy it's like chefs right yeah like we all know how to make money in in the food industry open a fast food joint yes yeah right but how many chefs like one of my best friends own has like james beard awards like voted best restaurant in in america top 10 best restaurant in america super like really great high-end restaurant what's it called make khan in portland oh sick okay it's gregory gaudet's restaurant and but again like i was talking to him he won't mind me saying this but like finances are fucking rough he's booked every night every night is fucking full still to run that it's like finances it's impossible and every high-end restaurant has exactly the same there was a michelin star restaurant who casimir in bristol like i think it was one or two michelin star like it had to they had to like close it down because it just costs too much money to run and then they're not making the profits they open two separate restaurants that are like less michelin starry but a little bit like more they're still very good but just not as high end and yeah they're making more money from it and they can sustain a business but it's it again it that's what i'm kind of getting at with with that correlation is that like you can chase the trends you can chase the money and there's artists that do it very well same in the food world there's people that do it very well and can chase chase that money chase that brand and look at matty matheson like what he's done with with his with his restaurants um but most of his restaurants are based on fast food and then he's only got then he's only got prime prime steak in in canada that in toronto that's like the high-end restaurant um but like you could as an artist you could you can go and copy trends but then you're not an artist yeah you're just you're just going with what what fits commercially to sell music to sell tickets and there's some people that do it very well and i really respect it but i don't think that's true artistry who who does it well in your opinion i i don't really want to say names no yeah no no no worries no worries the you you said how the artist evolves and i think that is a that's a common theme in rick rubin's book how have you how's will evolved from i think i saw a picture on your instagram like pre the beard of you and ibiza like how have you changed from the world sat well albeit virtually in front of me today versus then like how have you evolved i think my maturity in music has changed it's grown right um i think also i've experienced more in life i've grown as a human being um my morals have changed my what i want in life has changed my goals in life have changed which what i listen to kind of changed um what i see valuable has changed in a in a life sense in a music sense um my skills have got better i can write better music at the end of the day practice is again it's like a chef you start shit right you get good the more you practice just like anything and i've got better I'm not great I've got better um also for me where I'm at in this at this point in my career of the music that people haven't heard coming out there's a lot of collaboration where I'm working with people that are better at me at certain things so whether that's a keys player like I've I've worked on a lot of projects with a guy called Mitch Jones who's an insane keys player he's a great producer but he's an insane keys player as well and we've worked we wrote a whole project together um working with singer songwriters because like for the last 10 years i've just been writing in my room by myself and just kind of collabing with friends occasionally when they come down or online but like you're just collabing with another dj you're like it is what it is it's cool but like whatever for me it's like how do i make actual songs that like bring me joy and working with other people is just so nice now because it's yeah it makes the business side of things a little bit more complicated because you've got multiple dynamics right sure um but like on the creation sense you've got multiple dynamics which is an amazing situation to be in and if you can control the room not control control is not the right word but to a certain extent it is as a producer like this is kind of exactly what rick does if you can control the room that you're producing or allow the bring in uh an atmosphere to the room that allows everybody to be as creative as possible then you're all going to be writing the best possible music you can write on that day whether it's a hit whether it's whatever it's still the best possible music that day how do you i love that mate how do you create ala rick rubin how do you create that atmosphere with these collaborations like what are some of the things you've done to set the um fill not fill the room as you said that that kind of that level that kind of galvanizes creativity i think there's like two things first one is zero expectations right so starting the day off with zero expectations like yeah we might not come up with anything but okay then going to that it's if I don't have anything musically what can I get out of this day is this a relationship that I can build for the rest of my life is this somebody that I want to have in my life for the rest of my life on a creative on a friendship base whatever like and I think that's the thing for me is like how that is the other side of it is like how can we be we create build a relationship like i don't want to be in the studio with somebody that i don't like absolutely not and i won't there's people i just i've worked in in studios with before and written huge records like some of the biggest records that are out there today were written in a studio session with some people that i didn't vibe don't vibe with anymore and i won't ever no matter what the commercial success has been i'm not going to get in the room with them again because i don't need that in my life like all the money in the world all the success in the world doesn't at the crux of it you take all of that away what we left with the relationship and the relationships are so much more important to me and i think that's that's the process that i've done in the last two years of it's it's what rick does to a certain extent from what i i've learned um from his interviews is that it's like how do you get on a deeper level with the person in the room how do you get to know that person and i listened to a james blake interview after rick produced his album and it was to a certain extent where like i think james like played all of all of his music to rick that like he'd written for the new album and Rick was like just feels really super surface level it's not that great you can do better and then Rick I think just Rick just told him to stay at the at the studio for like a month his wife or girlfriend came over and like got into therapy got into like really deep conversations and things like that and it's for me it's like how do you grow a relationship it yeah it's almost the deeper you go with the person the the almost the deeper the roots go the more it can blossom out the other side yeah because i think it's also it's like we're getting put in the rooms with people that have are known for certain things but sadly in this industry especially vocalists in in electronic music i don't i can't say in the pop world i can't say in the hip-hop world or anything like that but like sadly in the house music world there the singer songwriter is kind of the afterthought to a certain extent however a lot of them are writing the biggest hooks for these records and i mean that they're an afterthought by just being used as tools going okay i want a top line like this i want this I want that so like for me my thing is going into the session with a top liner with a singer songwriter I when I say a top liner it's somebody that writes lyrics okay yeah yeah and and sometimes that's the singer sometimes that's somebody else um but what I generally what I try and do is go what do you absolutely love listening to if you could be any artist in the world who would it be classic example i did quite a few sessions with a singer songwriter called hayley may great artist if you listen to her uh her spotify like she's done some really big house records really big house records and then i get into the studio with her and was like what who's your favorite artist and she's like lauren hill i'm like let's write a lauren hill record let's let's like we don't have to write house music we can write whatever the fuck we want i can go away and turn that into an electronic record after like if if i need to if that's the goal for me or maybe we just don't maybe we just keep it as a song and it's a song and we put it out like who's saying that we can't do that and i think for me it's like just allowing the people that i'm in the room with to just be free and like have zero expectations hey guys thank you so much for watching this video honestly means the absolute world to me um i'd be so grateful for a small fame please it is so hard going on youtube channel it's so bloody hard um if you please enjoy these videos just click the subscribe button um more subscribers equals bigger guests bigger guests equals better conversations and hopefully you can learn more as you build your friend drink brand Thank you so, so much.

31:53Yeah, it's almost, yeah, that no expectations, no expectations leads to freedom. And I think it's almost like you need a lot of lead to stumble upon gold. And not necessarily lead is maybe the wrong way of phrasing it, but having every idea can be a good idea. And as you say, you can kind of morph and move it into what it needs to be. I want to go back to the, I want to explore like the climb, the climb to the top. as you say you're now well international dj um producing amazing music or this amazing podcast but one of the parts i love about interviewing people or chatting to people is is that is their climb to the top and almost the stuff you don't see so what were like some of those those dark days where you didn't think you were going to kind of get to where you are now and how did you push through them to get here i think i i it's a really good question and i think a lot of people people that are listening that run businesses will understand people that listening that are happy which is absolutely fine and this is not me saying it's a bad thing but working for it being employed don't really kind of get to because i've had both sides of it right um but there's there's dark there's dark parts of every single day like yes and i and i think for me it's like okay what you see what what i show you right is only what i want you to see and i think a lot of people forget that social media whatever form that is i choose what you see and a lot of that's chosen because i know what's going to be successfully do successfully on on social media right none of it's because i necessarily have to tell you right none of it's because i need to tell you like me putting a post out about my latest single doesn't change the streams on spotify like that's completely different like so for me is like what we're all seeing from anybody that looks successful doesn't necessarily mean they are having success in their world and i think yeah you have grind like there's there's a level that i feel like to have any success you need grind the the the point for me in my younger career was i was living in ibiza i had a pretty successful residency i was working for a production company recording all the all the DJ sets for a radio company for a radio on on Ibiza um doing all these cool things that everybody be like oh wow you're you're killing it and realistically me questioning why the hell am I doing this because I'm warming up for all the headliners I don't want to warm up for the headliners I want to be a headliner and then realizing okay I need to make music so I quit I left Ibiza and didn't go back for a season and pretty much I split up with my girlfriend at the time and I was like right I need to produce and I literally didn't have a social life I went to the cinema once a Tuesday once a week every Tuesday with my cousin because it was like orange Tuesdays where it's like buy one get one free yeah yeah I was working for my parents at the time i was fortunate enough that they gave me a job um so i was working full time and i'd i think i'd wake up and go to the gym go to work were you sober at this point so i know you're so were you sober at this point or yeah i've i stopped drinking when i was 21 right we'll get on i want to talk about that shortly yeah but let's carry on with this thread yeah just just out of curiosity there yeah so i went to the gym went to work got home from work and was in the studio till one two o 'clock in the morning every night and that and then on weekends i was in the studio from 10 o 'clock in the morning till five o 'clock at night and just like that was that for like two three years and i was writing such shit music but i had one goal and that was to sign to a certain record label and i got there and for me it was like that was a proof that like hard work does pay off especially if you don't change the goal posts at the beginning you can always change your goals of course you can but i think there has to be a severe focus at one point in your life to go i need this and this will get me to where i want to get to or this will start the journey of where I want to get to a thousand percent what was the same this podcast I left my job left London I'm in my parents house now I need to do this it was a year and a half of graph but now it's like paid off but the um the what was that that label that you were striving for it was dirty bird at the time cool and um so so you you go back you leave Ibiza you want to go from the kind of the warm you want to be the headliner uh you get get the goal of dirty bird um but how do you go about when you kind of come out of that period of hibernation of just music cinema tuesdays gym how do you come out of that and actually go about getting books because as you say because one thing i think you could literally line up uh have you seen that meme where people are like oh there's like a guy on the floor who's um i think like ill and it's like going around it's like what are you and goes i'm a dj i'm a dj i'm a dj i'm a dj that's basically no doctor yeah so everyone wants to be a fucking dj what was i suppose the question is what was different i could line up a thousand djs who work super hard what was different about the way you approach things to to kind of climb well there's working hard and there's working hard talk to me about the difference there's people that say they work hard and there's people that actually work hard right and there's working hard and there's also working smart i think also back then we're talking 10 years ago i think yeah 10 years ago this year 10 years ago not everyone wanted to be a dj there wasn't spotify like the way the music i i think there was spotify but i don't think it like let me i don't think anyone used it like when it was yeah the launch so 2006 spotify launched but no one was using it right soundcloud was what people were using at the time so it was like the soundcloud boom which was completely different to what like you would release a record on soundcloud and it would pop off and then everyone would go buy on beatport if you know what i mean yeah like now everything is streaming um it was hard to release your music back then now it's a fucking piece of piss you could literally write i could write a record in a couple of hours and within another couple of hours i could put it on a distribution camp and it will be on spotify tomorrow yeah it's unheard it was never like that so i think the times have changed generally on what it takes to be a successful dj now like back then it was way more music oriented way more like okay dirty bird at the time was like a hot record label and i knew i needed to be on a record label with artists that were full-time in music at that time i really enjoyed the music that dirty bird was releasing and they had a bunch of people that were full-time in music so i was like sweet what do i need to do to get on that first of all write good music that takes time second of all build a relationship up with a record label owner claude von stroke okay how am i going to get that i had like

40:22without being disrespectful kind of a manager then i the way managers work is they take percentages of incomes of course i wasn't earning anything in music so i was paying a retainer one of the guys that worked with him had toured with claude von stroke at some point we got we got into a conversation with it and then that kind of just died and then I literally just got to a point where I would just send everything to Claude and then eventually he's like yeah I'll take this one for the 50 for the 10 year anniversary of Dirty Bird and then from that from that one I was like now I'm in I have a lot more work to do to remain in so like I'd be like can we set can we do a Skype call like every month I and I he's like dude why hey, do you want to call me?

41:18I'm like, because I fucking need a relationship with you to like build a career. And he's like, nobody else is doing this with me. Nobody else is asking to have a conversation about music. Like nobody's asking for my advice. And I was like, deep down inside, I'm like, I know, but this is the only way I'm going to get in to here, if you know what I mean. Like my talents aren't unbelievably amazing. Like my music making isn't unbelievably amazing where you have to sign everything I do. like but what can i do is i know i can build a relationship up with you i can make you like me and then i know that my music is strong enough that you're signing it the year after that i was the biggest i was the most released artist on dirty bird at the time the year after i had the biggest record on dirty bird that year and i think for me that's that's working hard and working smart it it was i had one goal also claude put me in touch with his agent that was one of the biggest agents in the world at that time um i got onto that agent in america and that's where my career started growing in america and and and literally the rest is history in that sense that's how it started for me but if i didn't if i carried on going to ibiza i'd still be in ibiza today i'd be a 33 year old resident dj doing fuck all with my life and if if i didn't get that relationship with dirty bird i wouldn't be touring in america as much as i am i wouldn't have built a family don't get me wrong dirty bird helped me i did everything else like dirty bird gave me a platform but i did everything there was plenty of artists that came on dirty bird at the same time as me that don't have what i have what was the everything else what were those extra things you did the extra work i invested everything back into my business like at that time it was like i wouldn't say I'm the best at it now but like social media I was good at at the time um I'd invest back into marketing I'd invest I'd I made no money I still don't I like last year is the first time out of 10 years in a career where I can say I can make money I moved to Detroit because it's all I could afford at the time to live like Detroit's cheap as fuck at the time like five six six Six and a half years ago, I moved there and it was extremely affordable.

43:59And the reason why I moved there, one of the, one of the main reasons was because it was extremely affordable and I could, it could allow me to tour as much as I possibly needed to, to build a foundation of touring in America to then have something that I've is worth a while now. The, mate, the story is so inspiring. the the when you talked about because a lot of people could reach out to claude von stroke and say right i want to call with you mate every month how did you actually like build the relationship and what were you were you asking him advice were you just shooting shit like because in some instances if someone's super someone's like trying to make their way up and be like oh mate can we have a call every month it could be a bit like fucking hell it's a bit intrusive like how did you manage that art do you know what i mean because that's that's the skill in of itself we've got to work out who the person you're talking to is if when you work out like with Buckley and whatever I say here I'd say to his face but like he loves the fact that anything that's his idea then he's going to love it so you've got to kind of work that out oh if you somehow start a conversation you know what you want in your head right if you can somehow make it come around like it was his idea he's all in sick but like that's just getting to know people and being able to like build a relationship it's like anything and i don't mean that in a horrible way but it's like how do you build a friendship it's compromise that's all it is and it's the same in in business it's compromise it's like you have your goal they have their goal what's their goal what's your goal how do they work together the so so beautiful story then it goes so what is the moment you then kind of as you'd you're kind of in this hibernation period get claude von stroke on board release music on dirty bird what's the moment what's the set when you thought fuck me I've made it well not made it but like I'm here I've arrived and what's the feeling in here when that when that happens describe that I've never had that really yeah I've never had that because I haven't made it in my mind interesting like I I haven't I've yeah I'm very fortunate I've achieved amazing things but I'm nowhere near where I wanted to be so I haven't had that So you've never had the moment of Because this is another thing I find I listen to a lot I don't know if you know Chris Williamson's podcast The guy's Yeah I think he has this thing on like being versus becoming So becoming is like always The next thing the next thing Which is I'm typically like I'm at the next podcast Similar to you I need to be I'm nowhere near where I need to be basically But then it's like I need to kind of temper that down with actually being like it's like being here with you now talking to you it's so how do you how do you kind of it sounds again really wanky but like enjoy enjoy the sets enjoy the process versus thinking i know anywhere where i need to be do you understand yeah it's tough enjoying the process is the reason why i called my record label all we have is now right um the in learning to enjoy the journey is a battle that I have regularly and I've gotten way better at it.

47:40Way, way, way, way better at it. Covid helped to a certain extent because we were all booked back down to a level playing field and you realise, fuck, you're absolutely nobody in the grand scheme of things. Nobody gives a fuck.

48:00It's hard to enjoy it. There's been years that of grind where like let's say for instance 2018 i had a management team that i wasn't happy with i would i did i think i did 112 shows that year and i'm barely they made way more money than i did right and if we're talking finances on that sense it's like you're doing minimum two shows a week um and you're not making any money and the team that the team that you're working with don't understand the bigger goal and don't understand where you want to go and i think that was like a year that was it was just a shit year for me however on paper everyone had been like will you're absolutely killing it interesting so so it's like for me it's for me it was that was a realization year it was like okay well i need to just start doing these things that make me happy but also i need the support around me to help me realize my goals and dreams of of my career which is when i got fired my management and then started 2019 started working with ryan ryan king um he was at a point in his career where he was like literally one of the biggest agents in electronic music at that time but wanted to stop being an agent and wanted to work into management work in management so like him and i got introduced by chris lake and yeah he started his management company and i was his first client and we've kind of like gone through the ranks of where we're at today we went through covid together spoke every single day during covid like we were still working all year round during covid um we talk multiple times a day now if you know i mean he he's i would he's my manager but he's also a mate amazing um and and now i've we're building a team around me that gives that helps us support all the things that we want to achieve i enjoy it way more now way more um but i can't say that i'm where i'm at where i want to be um but i set i set goals every year of and this year especially has been extreme like specific goals achievable and specific goals and i think at the end of the year if i can tick off all of those or majority of them then i would be extremely happy that we're we're on the road to where we want to get to but i don't think the road ever stops i think the road always there's always the next mountain so yeah somebody's adding more more to that road it's wild it's wild because you know again i i see you playing all these amazing sets on socials you've interviewed moby like i'm like this guy's absolutely killing it what are some of the things you want to achieve kind of this year and onwards like where do you want to take the podcast where do you want to take the music so musically like people can read behind between the lines but i've done a long-term deal with amada which is a record label i've written an album yeah much yeah um so we've got an album coming out for me is to get that album release and to have some success with some of the records on the album that's a goal um grow the podcast and for me it's the guests are great on the podcast for me it's just growing it and getting more people more eyes on it um partly takes a lot of time up as you're fully aware um to add that into my schedule on top of producing for myself writing music for other people touring full-time trying to have a bit of a life as well um i do a lot of things so it's the podcast has to grow for me to for me to keep it going um and i said i mean grow a need i'd like a bigger audience there um for two reasons not necessarily part of it is a financial thing part of it needs to pay for itself like i'm starting to employ teams to kind of run certain things and it needs to pay for them but secondly i the whole point of the podcast for me two points one of them is to build a community where i can bring on a smaller artist and the podcast has an impact for the artist sick and and can release them to a bigger audience which it does to a certain extent already but the numbers are so minuscule in the grand scheme of podcasting in the grand scheme of life that it needs to be a lot bigger um and also secondly i want the podcast to reach an audience that don't know me as a dj producer they know me as a podcaster and then they want to come to my shows that worked with me i left found you via podcast then then food then music which is kind of perfect we're gonna get on to food as well in a sec the you've introduced and interviewed some amazing people like what's been the kind of the one one or two conversations that have really kind of if you could boil it down into like one principle that have really kind of changed the way you view things or approach things i don't know if there has been anything interesting um i think for me everybody's on their own journey um and what one person does isn't going to work for another person um yeah does that make sense yeah yeah completely completely like you and i could start a podcast on the same day talking about the same things and if we both marketed it the same way it doesn't mean the same outcome is going to happen and you just never know right um so i think the thing that i really enjoy is learning how people have built their careers it's really interesting and the common denominator is hard work realistically is sounds really fucking basic and everyone's like oh like i a lot of people hate this like hustle culture and talk shit on it but i'm like if you want something in life you gotta go get it like i don't know what if what sports you're into but like i'm i'm a big big fan of rugby i played rugby all my life growing up like to be a good rugby player yeah you need genetics on your side but also you need to fucking work hard yeah you need if you want to become an athlete you have to put the hours in like i'm pretty good friends with james haskell who was international rugby player like he you see how much work he put in to become who he was and he wasn't even the best in the world if you know i mean and and i'm not the best in the world like i've i've got a lot of work to do to get to become the best in the world and that's the goal is how do you become the best in the world so like that's that's another goal is the podcast um the third goal is financial it's a financial goal it's pure business um and the fourth goal is build teams around my social media for growth um how do we how do we that how do we i've got i've done the the social media myself for however since day one how do i now employ teams that can help me grow um and then fifth one is just adding teams into all those areas so that my management don't have to concentrate on everything yeah they can just oversee everything love it mate what what the what position do you play in rugby nine nine and And what, how, so music, rugby, what time when you started, you're playing rugby, when did music kind of come into your life and when did you have to drop rugby?

56:50Music came in around when I was like nine years old. Like I, I bought like some CD players when I was like nine and was like dabbling. I didn't have a fucking clue what mixing was. Yeah. At 13, at 12, 13, I did like a DJ course and that's when music was like, okay, cool. it was i still wanted to play rugby as a career up until 15 i think but i was playing district county club and school um but i'm like five foot three like my i'd been playing rugby since i was three years old by the time 15 16 i'd had a shoulder operation my ankles were fucked like i'm like at school i was playing two years above me so i was like a 15 year old playing against 18 year old men like at that time like you're getting absolutely battered yeah um and being small five foot three like you're getting destroyed which is fine i loved it and i was good like i would i'm not saying i was a good rugby player at that time but i i was like okay my shoulders buggered my ankles are fucked like this isn't gonna last so i need to it was even music of rugby and that was it it's like okay music is what are some of the lessons that other than hard works i one of my curiosity something of my curiosity always is kind of erupts is is that the learnings from two kind of completely separate things that the cross-section other than hard work like what did rugby teach you about kind of producing and djing it's just discipline discipline which again is hard work because you need the discipline to do it and i hate going back there and i'm not saying i'm the hardest worker in the world but i think for me is like when your talents aren't unbelievable like i've met some hugely talented people that should be extremely successful but they're just not fussed about putting the work in like there's some talented people like Adele wouldn't be Adele if she didn't put the hard work in she'd still be able to sing like Adele but she wouldn't be the superstar she is if she didn't go and put the hard work in to get to where she's at it's it's relating this to food and chefs and stuff because I think in terms of the creativity piece I interviewed a guy called Paul Ainsworth who's got a restaurant down in um in uh Cornwall really like oh yeah you know number have you been yeah number six yeah have you been been there was it um no i've wanted to go it's on the list mate the food is unreal i i went to the fact how that hasn't got two michelin stars is like beyond me because the actual the whole experience the way they do it they give you these goodie bags at the end the menu's got your name on it it's personalized like yeah but is that the number six restaurant yeah number six he's got a pub down padstow yeah um yeah i'm going down to cornwall actually to do like a podcast tour with a load of chefs i'm interviewing um uh rick stein's uh son which will be sick that's sick um yeah i love i love yeah food and um and the parallels but but paul was saying to me you know he got thrown down the fucking um he went went to london was like a bit like you with claude from stroke he's like i want to work for gordon ramsay he was getting his bus uh via victoria going past royal hospital roads uh Gordon Ramsey's restaurant and he got out of the car literally ran up to Gordon who was on the phone at a um like a uh you know a phone box and was like I want to come work with you but he wasn't the best but he worked 10 times harder than everyone else and now he's like on tv with Gordon he's like he's made it let's talk about the parallels of creativity music and food because as you say I know your um your food page is is is unreal and you've you've been to some super interesting um super interesting restaurants and countries and places like what would you say um what is kind of cooking yeah you cook a lot i've seen you like make some amazing ramens like what's that taught you about the creative process of music i don't know it's for me it's my it's my escape interesting to like get out of the head for me like there's like a few things that i try to do to get myself out of music um exercise like walking in nature film and cinema and cooking um cooking there's always a lot of djs a lot of musicians a lot of artists that love food because we're very fortunate that we travel the world we have very similar lifestyles to chefs so a lot of us make friends with chefs and we're very fortunate that sometimes promoters take us to great restaurants and if promoters don't we take ourselves to great restaurants it's very it's a very fortunate situation to be in and um yeah i've always loved food but for me it's just an escape of like it's part of my routine i wake up go to the gym come home get showered go to the butchers work out what i'm going to cook for that night go either do prep marinade whatever i need to do get in the studio write music record podcasts or if i'm in london doing studio sessions i'm like okay where am i where am i going to eat tonight wake up go to the gym go for a run if i can come come back to the hotel shower change work out what i'm going to do for dinner organize it with friends who i'm going with go to the studio work dinner so for me it's just routine that like like after this podcast i'm going to go to the butchers and work out what i'm going to cook for dinner sick like simple and that's that's the thing is it's there's a point it's really weird my life i'm not complaining but my life's really fucking hectic right now and because i'm in i i also live in america but i'm in the uk for the for the foreseeable um i sold my house in the states and having some other other things happen out there so i will eventually move back there for or have more time there but um because the time zone how the time zones work my team are in california so i'm finishing my work day and then they're starting their work day so i'm working two two work days because every so so like i was working till half 10 last night with meetings but i'd already recorded two podcasts in a day i'd done studio work i've done all of that and that's five days a week at this moment in time so the the 30 minutes of cooking the hour of cooking is like phone can go away don't need to look at social media I don't need to talk to my management team I don't need to talk to any friends in music I can sit down and cook food for my family, friends whoever's there or just me and it's just a relaxing time of my day that I love It's a sort of moment of bliss in the kind of treadmill of craziness What are some of your favourite restaurants in London?

1:04:40We'll start there Or even in the UK Gunpowder Is one of my favourite restaurants in London Oh is that the Indian place Indian place yeah I'm a huge Indian Lover like I'd eat Indian every day if I So good mate One of my other favourite Restaurants is a place called La Kanda on the Weir Which is in Porlock It's a friend's He's now a friend of mine um i've actually gone down and stayed with him like a couple of a couple of times to work in the kitchen with him and kind of cook with him um it's called lakanda on the weir it should be michelin star really like hands down should be should be michelin star it's so affordable i don't know how much it is per head i think like last year it was like 55 pounds a head and you'd get like five or six course menu of like just unbelievable food um i think it's probably gone up this year but like if you ever get the chance just go yeah if you ever want to go like just let me know i'll come down with you yeah yeah we'll go for dinner wait so where so this this is in whereabouts is this in which way is this well where where is this somerset somerset so it's in somerset but it's called porlock on the weir is the the area yeah um and it's like a it's like a it's like an old hotel right yeah and they took it on pio and cindy took it on and he was a stockbroker he used to buy bonds right pretty sick pretty successful had a crazy life and by living that crazy life got to enjoy a lot of great food and a lot of great restaurants once and was like i want to learn this is like you can make all the money in the world but it doesn't make you happy yeah so what does make him happy making food and like he went from opening the hotel to like making pizzas to start with he's italian so like making pizza and pasta to literally making michelin star level food like it's an amazing story what sort of is it italian Is it an Italian restaurant or what kind of...

1:07:00Let me send you this on... Let me send you like the level of... No, here it is. Copy link. I'll put it in the chat. Yeah, yeah, go for it. Yeah, yeah. Riverside. There we go.

1:07:29Got it Oh mate that looks unreal There's like another one here Like it's hands down Absolutely un-fucking-believable Like Yeah I love these places that like Not many people are still kind of Untouched do you know what I mean Yeah like look at Look at this like Sorry for anybody that's listening But if you go to at lakanda underscore on underscore the underscore where which is about w-e-i-r you'll see some of these some of these restaurants but like just look at this mushroom dish it's like

1:08:11like just unbelievable yeah mate i love this so i'm i'm going up i'm funny enough i've got another i've got i'm interviewing the founder of where else project next week and then um oh cool and then actually going up to a country um like a little pub same thing husband cooks the food wife is front of house it's called the cartford inn uh like off preston like further up from preston but i just it's been voted like one of the nice like best boutique hotels but i love those sort of places where it's like it hasn't got the razzle dazzle of say number six but it's it's got the um the there's just something raw when people like people are literally cooking what did um what was that like like describe what was that like cooking a service with um it's great it's very different because it's very it's very small right so it's just him it's just him cooking he doesn't have any stuff occasionally has like come it people come in for like just coming to stay for like a couple months to cook with him but like it's very different to what i can imagine a normal service because the covers are like five tables so it's very very small but it's more so again it's the prep people don't realize for 30 seconds of mouth pleasure yeah like we literally made this like this pea soup it wasn't it was like a pea broth okay and it took us a good seven hours to make and you literally like finished it in like three mouthfuls that's wild and you're just like it's but again it's very similar to music right apart from the fact is is music you can go back and listen to whereas food you just have the memory of yes but it's it's very similar like people don't realize it goes back people don't realize how long it takes to to have a finished product like even a t-shirt that i like i this is one of my merch t-shirts like the process of creating takes so long for somebody just to buy and we all can do this right we can all can look at things as very throw away but just the the detail of even shit clothing even like really bad quality Primark right like the time it's spent some poor kid that's been slave labored in their factory to make that right but it's not just them making it it's like the process of designing the garment the process of like finding the fabric even at the lowest levels there's levels of art that people don't and i'm the same and don't appreciate it to a certain extent and and until you know the process is yourself is when you can start appreciating it the linking this all together it's like that is all we have is now like that all we have is now is that like appreciation of the the bigger things um in terms of like yeah that that matter of prep i used to deliver cheese around london random as fuck but um i i went into well i delivered cheese to royal hospital rolled at like um 6 6 a.m but then and i was like oh my god these guys you have one guy just doing this the most intricate thing on a thousand little carrots then delivered to the ritz which was like selling out i was like this is this is the sickest thing like it's the underbelly of like one of the old most prodigious kind of prestigious hotels in london but it's like that it's just like um clockwork i yeah i just i i think the what you said there will about the it's almost the the the adage of of of the iceberg right you just don't people listen to the to your song in a club or the eat the p for lute or whatever the fuck it is but they have that one moment of thing have you been to sunny you're bristol aren't you have you been to sunny stores no oh my days what's that sunny stores will change your life mate i think that's some of the best food i've ever had so it started in lockdown as a pizza place um he worked i got it he worked at the river cafe in um in okay uh hammersmith and then moved to yeah so someone recommended i went about two three years ago but uh it's like in some neighborhood like off the back streets of bristol but the yes in southville yeah southville um highly recommend that place Have you been to Wilson's in Bristol No I've only ever been to Bristol twice actually Dude go to Wilson's Really what sort of Fucking ridiculous So they have their own farm So they grow everything themselves As in they grow All the vegetables themselves It's unbelievable I'm really bad at remembering the guy's name it's absolutely crazy but it's um his food is unbelievable talk tell me about your mate in um uh let's let's go to detroit because one of my favorite bourdain episodes is detroit and well this was when did he die 2018 was it 2018 or 2016 2018 i think but he goes when he goes to detroit he kind of talks about how detroit was obviously the where ford was based that it was where ford was based right have i said that right yeah yeah so that it was this huge kind of industrial powerhouse out of the industrial revolution house music started there right if i'm right yeah uh techno did sorry and um but in that in that bourdain episode he kind of shows a kind of has been so kind of dilapidated place that is becoming on the rise talk to me about what it felt like living in detroit as as a place how did that kind of um kind of not change the way you view things but like maybe slightly look at take the lenses off slightly or open the blinker sorry is a better way of saying it well i think realistically i what I am I grew up in the countryside in the UK I live in the countryside in the UK it's a very nice area right it's very safe it's I can walk around at any time of the day and not have to worry about anything everyone around here is very fortunate the education's amazing we have lots of great restaurants there's lots of money in just generally in England I know there's some bad places in england but on a level on a scale of things england we're very fortunate in in every way there's things that can be improved 100 however on the scale of in comparison to a lot of the world england has it very fucking good and for me moving to detroit like

1:15:29it's the only city in america that went bankrupt at one point like it was the wealthiest city in the world in the 60s and then it went from being the wealthiest city to bankrupt what happened like what actually happened with that so many things i and i also it's kind of wrong for me to say because I don't know fully but it was it was multiple things so

1:16:00the it was under like there's a documentary called Requiem of Detroit which I would advise everyone to go watch it's very interesting and it kind of talks about how Detroit became Detroit but a lot of it started with a lot of racism um so henry ford obviously started ford in detroit um you he relied on the black population to be his factory workers however that was when redlining started happening and what redlining means is there was only certain areas that was was blacks only and they were only allowed to live there and they weren't allowed to leave those areas unless it was to go for work so you create this huge divide between the haves and the have-nots realistically yet the have-nots were creating this massive industry or were the workers behind this massive industry that the have that the haves the white people in detroit were kind of winning you then also on top of that had motown that was a huge cultural revolution in music so you had so much music but there was still so much poverty because of the redlining and because of the like us and them if that's that so the redlining sorry for i asked some dumb questions mate sorry so so the no go for it the redlining i don't understand that bit so so so redlining was a point where you'd have a the map let's just say for instance the map of detroit literally somebody in the city would draw a red line and go this is where the blacks live fuck yeah and they're not allowed to leave that area and they have to stay in this area it happened all over america sure sure sure um and so so that's starts of it um you had the race the race riots in oh i've got actually google this race riots detroit i think it was 1960 67 um huge huge um race riots i think yeah there's 40 33 death before 43 deaths in total at that time which was like literally black v black v the police um but it was the police came in with tanks and just like destroyed neighborhoods that's wild really and yeah it was great if you watch the doc if you watch the film called detroit as well you'll get the whole view on the race riots at that time i don't know how real that is i think that it's kind of like a real connotation of of it but that was part of the reason you then had the economic crash where that people obviously in america at the time if you've seen the movie big short like people were buying houses and then couldn't afford their mortgages and then went down down the hill you then also had the car industry moved to asia because it was cheaper to build you had crack come into neighborhoods over the years um and you also had a bunch of really fucking corrupt mayors in detroit that was putting all the money in in their bank pockets in their back pockets one of them even went to prison before it so you have like an accumulation of multiple things and it turns a city to absolute shit however when things are absolutely shit you create amazing art oh mate and yes and that's where techno came from obviously you've got motown um and i guess going back to your initial initial question was like what was it like there like it was literally worlds apart like when i i bought ended up renting a place and then moving downtown rents what year is this mate sorry just for to get some context on time six six and a half years ago so 20 so 2018 2017 2018 cool cool cool yeah 17 i think i initially moved there i bought my house there in 2018 um but yeah i bought a house in a neighborhood i was the only white dude in the neighborhood like first of all that's something that i'm not used to if you know I mean, like I'm pretty multicultural in a sense that I visit a lot of places, a lot of countries in the world.

1:20:51I've been to situations where I'm, I'm the minority, if you know what I mean? Um, but yeah, you walk into a, into a town or into a street, into a neighborhood that you're the only white dude. And you're, you're, you're new to this neighborhood, if you know what I mean? Um, and it, it's different. it's very different that you you hear gunshots regularly like you hear like my next door neighbor's house got shot the first year i moved there like there's situations that you i didn't i luckily didn't see myself in but you witness situations you hear of situations like so it was a complete 360 flip or 180 flip of where i am from and but it it allowed it opened my eyes up massively and it made me extremely grateful for what i have um it it just it made me understand the city more and and kind of respects what the city's gone through more and kind of just want to be part of the community and want to be able to try and give back eventually to that community um because it's still suffering there's although you'll go to downtown detroit you'll go to midtown detroit and be like this is sick because it is it's a fucking cool city now but like you go out of downtown you go out of midtown and it's sadly there's kids that won't ever leave the block purely because there's no education there's the schools there's no finance for the schools if you know what i mean like there's no education like single parent families everywhere like there's just no hope for these kids sadly and the only way to have hope is is to give them an opportunity to create art which wajid a dj producer quite a predominant dj producer a guy called wajid who's from detroit born and bred and he's just started a school music school to kind of allow like kids to have the ability to create music that because the first thing that goes i was actually talking about this last night the first thing that goes in schools is art and sport because it costs money yeah so like yeah it's it's it's a very different lifestyle and i'm so happy i i did it so happy i did it oh my god i am so so so excited it feels like hungary is finally swimming in the big leagues i can't believe this is absolutely but delighted to announce that Big Fish, yes Big Fish, are part of the podcast.

1:23:52Perry's been on the podcast three times. Listeners absolutely love it. Some of my most downloaded and cherished episodes of all time. But Big Fish are behind literally so many brands in your cupboard, in your weekly shop. Charlie Bigham, Year Valley, Tyrells, Clipper T, Goo, Rana. I mean, make the list longer than the River Nile. but they also share risk and invest in brands that they really believe are a force for good brands that they believe are going to be the next big thing like how the snack that gives back but even more exciting news big fish want to speak to the next wave of small challenger food and drink brothers that are destined for big things the raconteurs the movers shakers buccaneering visionaries so look if you want to speak to big fish and just have a chat get your brand in front of them then drop me a message my mate louis from local beer amazing beer was in their office aka la fishbowl uh last week chatting to perry freddie and the big fish crew so drop me a message if you would like to speak to them bow e me our beloved sponsor by helping build the fastest growing challenger food and drink brands look if you're a small brand just starting out and you're your first indie stockist your first 100 stockists to wholesale bohemi are the platform to categorically speed that up but if you're a big brand wanting to get bigger bohemi are also insane they make field sales marble smooth silky slick they're just epic ollie's ollie's been on this podcast twice actually they saw a 29 uplift in sales when using bohemi to check major malt listings availability insane 29 uplift by downloading an Insane Lucky saying My boy Aaron Duff Who's come on this podcast In a couple of weeks He uses it To manage a team Of 30 people And they've Lucky saying They've unlocked 500 draft listings By using Bowie Me Look you've got to Get involved with this stuff It's absolutely insane And it will categorically Change your life It's just the sickest platform I use it all the time At Ireland What you said mate Is beautiful Is that when things Are absolute shit You create great art And I've been prepping For the Manchester Sorry not the Manchester The interview with sasha from warehouse project and one of the things he was saying is sort of before the hacienda in manchester is manchester was a was a fucking depressed shit hole yeah he was like it was absolute shit house and you know if not in terms of sort of house music and techno music but the bands from manchester is wild it's like stone roses um joy division oasis the smiths all from this kind of this kind of um depressed state um what else did you you know you talked about kind of gratitude what else did the city kind of give you um as like because you went there to base yourself so you could you could jet off to like yeah it's easy to travel from there really as well it's like you're in the middle of the country it's it makes it it made it very affordable for me to carry no investing in my business because i could luckily afford to buy a house when i was there right um and it just allowed me to live within my means and grow build invest into my business and how did how did the techno start from the moto motown like what was the journey to the genesis of techno like how did that i think so there was um you had juan atkins who was kind of like the start of electro techno um electrifying mojo and this was a dj that would like start playing like electro music back in i believe the 80s and then you had um kwan atkins who started making like electro techno and that then birthed into techno with kevin saunderson kyle craig dj bones um robert hood richie horton eventually came over from canada and kind of was doing the same and you've also got to think there were certain clubs that were that were being played that were kind of opening but you then also had all the abandoned warehouses from all the all the factories that there was it was lawless completely lawless there's no police there's still there's barely any police if you know what i mean in in detroit so they were downtown um and you just they would just throw parties if you know what i mean but they were also at the time they were creating a genre where the rest of the world wanted them so like talking to kevin saunderson on the podcast and dj bone like europe wanted them more than america wanted them because they were creating a new genre and europe wanted to kind of promote that genre and kind of take that genre on and that's why most of these artists were way more successful in europe than they were america um yeah it's it's an amazing culture this techno scene um and then you had like demph which is now movement festival um i'm really the wrong person to kind of talk about the history of tech no but it's just it's just fascinating i'm i'm i'm just this white dude from the uk that moved to detroit and like i'm i might i feel really like you need to get dj bone on you need to get kevin saunerson on you need to get uh kwan atkins on like all those cats like are the ones that the that will give you even like um stacy pullin i love stacy all these guys yeah all these guys were there at the beginning and and started it um yeah but i think my dj bone my dj bone episode on the podcast was really special i love that guy as a human being but he painted an amazing picture of of detroit that's why that's why i think what you're you're doing with your podcast is so amazing mate because it's like telling these stories which i think there'll be a lot of people who will be in ibiza this year who won't know how it started i mean i i didn't know until i spoke to you i mean i just go there and party do you mean what's um what's your relationship with ibiza like now then do you like talk to me about that you you were there kind of hustling as the kind of warm-up act you're now kind of headliner like How does that work?

1:30:32I wouldn't really say I'm a headliner in Ibiza at all. I have this love-hate relationship with Ibiza where it's very clicky. It's changed a lot, which is fine. We need evolution in this world of music. It's just very... What's the word? It's very... yeah i guess different different is the word um and i love ibiza but i i don't know if i'll even be there this summer um it's yeah i have a weird relationship with it i would love to be playing out there um but realistically i need to hit record to be a headliner to be able to get booked in certain situations there's a lot of people that that are huge that don't get booked there purely because it's like it's very much looked on on like what's big in spain what's big in england and then kind of like amalgamate the two um what's necessarily big in america isn't necessarily big in europe or the uk the uk and europe don't look at america so some of the biggest acts in the world that sell massive tickets in america but don't sell tickets in the uk or or europe won't necessarily get booked to play ibiza that's really that's wild and then when you say it's no one really looks at america in in electronic music yeah america is not the forefront although for me personally they have some of the most interesting artists touring um it's the least clicky of the of the industry is the clickiness like is that does that boil down to who's getting booked who's not getting booked is that ultimately kind of that part of it's like if you're in the clique it's like yeah that's fucking long because it doesn't it's not no it's it's a it's it's really long and it's like it's really sad because it's not about the art yeah yeah yeah yeah and and i understand why now even more so in america's turning more so like that that it's such a big business now when you speak to sasha they they'll explain it yeah yeah like it's like we need to sell tickets this this not our overheads of this night cost us a fortune we need to we need to book somebody that sells tickets like will clark doesn't sell tickets in manchester because he hasn't got a touring he hasn't got touring history here so why book him over somebody that does have touring in history that we know is going to sell a certain amount of tickets it's complete business it makes complete sense to me yeah but there's a part there's a part of it where because all these events are so big now there comes a point where you for me personally you take the culture out of it yeah and and there's there's no real community building around artists and around the art yeah it's it's almost like it's become we know what we talked about that that spectrum at the beginning it's almost like the money money talks doesn't it and money changes things it's it's become so far that way i think i've seen on youtube i think it was either dc10 or um it might I've been spaced back in the day, like an old video of people just fucking actually dancing.

1:34:03Do you know what I mean? And actually like, you know, all we have is now a couple more things, mate. And we'll wrap this up. Um, yeah, it's super interesting. Just understanding like how your brain kind of works and how you've got to where you are with also so much to kind of go after as well. What, um, like Rick Rubin says another Rick Rubin quote, a lot of which is which is you know i struggle with a lot of doubt with even with this podcast but i can actually use it as full fuel but rick rubin says you can doubt yourself to excellence like how important do you think is a is a smidge of self-doubt um in important in artists

1:34:48um i think it's about having a healthy balance which i don't think any artist has I don't have a healthy balance it's getting better but I feel like as long as you keep doing what you're doing in a sense of like you're working towards something whether that is to create a record whether that's to sell out a stadium whether that's to sign a record i think as long as you you have some sort of thing to achieve the self-doubt will always be there like it's always like for me it's like you you want to quit every single day i'm sure you're the same with the podcast right but i think it's also is like why i think it's about questioning why you want that why do you want to quit why does it make you want to quit you send 20 emails out you get one response but then the way i also look at it now is like of course nobody responds because i need them they don't need me so what do i need to do to make them need me okay i build something so that i will add value to their life when they add value it's it's really interesting that we do we've done it with the podcast now like my manager will go into meetings with with artists with artist managers and go oh look if you checked out will's podcast and it will be like well why haven't you asked us to do it now like because they've seen a bunch of other people do it and people were like well we should be on this because of course we're better than them and we're better than yes and we do we do lineups with them but of course we should be on it and it's like what value can you add somebody to stop that self-doubt again it's the same as music it's like okay your goal is to write an album go write an album then what are you what are you writing the album for is what you need to be honest with yourself about is the album to have extreme success well probably writing an album isn't going to be the best way the way music is released nowadays what are you having what are you recording a podcast for are you recording a podcast for you to have great conversations with people joe rogan didn't start a podcast to make money out of it joe rogan started a podcast because he loved talking to his comedian mates and there wasn't a platform for that right what is it and if the goal is to make money be honest with yourself and go i need to make money okay what do you need to do to make money do you are you willing to sell your soul to the devil to make that money and if the answer is yes then go fucking do it if but for me it's like the self-doubt is it's every single day but it's also are you working towards something and are you today are you one step closer to where than where you were yesterday the i love that because it's it's it's the self-doubt it's just blinking it's the rick rubin quote is you can self-doubt you can doubt your way to excellence it's almost like the doubt force it keeps the not the ego in well it does kind of keep the ego in in check when you said you're kind of out of balance is that like because you've clearly got this which i rate highly and i think it's good to have like this huge ambition and like single-mindedness i think that's like i think in the uk people temper it down like tall poppy syndrome but which is fucking wild but like um i think whereas in the us i've interviewed quite a lot of founders in the us from brands and it's like they're like dude i'm not doing american accent they're like dude you know you can go out and get after it whereas in the uk it's like mate don't try that so i rate that but where how when the doubt comes in like what is that is that what are those voices for you and how do you kind of immediately keep them at bay i think i think part of it is ego because a part of it is having true to a certain extent is feeling that you should be given something or you should have that opportunity or that should be you right like for me none of this is jealousy is it is more envy so it's like you see somebody being successful and i'm like i'm so happy for them but i would love that but it's it's the difference between envy and jealousy where jealousy you don't want them to have that success where envy is i wish i had that success right right and and i think um for me the bigger the ego

1:39:52is at the point where you think you should have something or you deserve something but if you can stop that we don't deserve fuck all none of us deserve anything and i think if you take that ego out of it and go okay like today i am i've done this right today i haven't written the best record in the world in my opinion today i've released a record and it's not done this well and everybody else's record has done well maybe my opinion on that record is completely different to everybody else's there's self-doubt every single day in this industry i'm sure it's the same for you i'm sure it's the same when you speak to chefs when you speak to brand people there's self-doubt in everything is this even going to work do people even want this am i giving value to anybody else at the end of the day that's all we're doing if we want success if we want something to do well it's because we're giving somebody else value and somebody's willing to pay for that same as your podcast are people listening to your podcast because they want to listen to dan pope absolutely not and i don't mean that no for sure do people want to listen to my podcast do people want to listen to my music because it's will clark no they want to listen to the will clark podcast because they like the will clark podcast and they like the guests on there and they like the interview they listen to my music because they like the music i think that's what a lot of people forget is that and even i do like i have to create value for other people yeah it's such a great reframe and also i think that reframe of like um they don't listen to they listen to the music and they listen to the podcast it demarcates you your ego from your art which i think is healthy because it allows you to kind of not take it so seriously but also not get i mean i don't even check downloads now because i was going fucking neurotic checking that but i think that has got to be one of the most toxic fucking things to like check it's it's really hard how do you how do you navigate that on the podcast and with your music like the podcast i don't even check now i stopped looking just completely stopped looking we're now putting some like marketing things involved so we're gonna have to start monitoring what are you putting in place um we're we're not 100 but we've got a podcast consultant in nice to kind of help grow um and we're potentially taking on a team to kind of help grow on that but i think i can talk musically where for many years like when i first i was very fortunate when i first released my record label i had some extremely successful records um and i launched it in 2020 when the covid happened so it was very fortunate that everyone was listening on spotify at that time streams went up generally my streams were doing great coming out of covid my records weren't doing so well and i personally still thought they were great records in my mind but whether the algorithm didn't whether the audience didn't i don't know what changed but for a long time my records weren't being successful on streaming and realistically like i released a record recently and on streaming it didn't do well on radio is doing great but again that's in my eyes in other people's eyes it's absolutely flying and and i think for me is i have an expectation of a record and i've grown to not stress about it because i'm very fortunate i'm still touring i'm still selling tickets i'm still doing all these things that a million people would give their left a hand to go and do is it where i'm at no but we're one step ahead forward we're one step closer to get into that and realistically you're a record away from being the biggest artist in the world yeah yeah i love that about how you like same as you you're one podcast away from being the biggest podcast in the world people don't realize that are you looking at to turbocharge your brand take it to another level save money save energy save stress save time well i've got the perfect thing for you i am delighted to announce that hc brands formerly hc consulting my boy harry clark has just launched a commercial growth accelerator program designed specifically for challenger food and drink brands and you can upskill your commercial team they've got so many modules you can hand pick them we can do the full shebang you're going to save hours of research you're going to get the tools to turbocharge your growth get better clarity on your brand's objectives and directions and look harry's worked with some amazing brands holy moly islands savile and rooted drinks he's really helped me with a strategy for hungry yeah if you're looking to turbocharge your brand link in the show notes and you're going to be able to do that easy peasy lemon squeezy yeah that's that's the thing i mean in terms of the the not like yeah i was going just fucking driving myself up the wall looking to the like almost like fucking wanking over the downloads mate i mean you just go you just go nuts and then now i don't even look at it um because then you can start doubting yourself it's like oh is it yeah i think well typical example is is this is when i stopped is during christmas they obviously obviously downloads go off a cliff because people are people are getting smashed eating food whatever um but yeah take taking a step back from it uh final two questions mate or final two things so so your friend who's got this restaurant right at the beginning we talked about the uh as you say it's the mission star one uh is it khan is that what you called it khan yeah yeah is uh what's what's your relationship with him like what's he taught you about um kind of creativity work etc Honestly We just both love each other's art We both respect each other As human beings We're just mates We don't really talk about But what do you like about his art And what do you think he likes about your art I think we just both appreciate He appreciates electronic music We have a relationship i appreciate his cooking he's actually never cooked for me and i give him shit every time i've eaten it too i've eaten it is two of his because he's he worked at a previous restaurant in in portland he was like exec chef um but he's never cooked for me so i always give him shit for that but like i've eaten at his restaurant we've gone out and eaten great food together um but for me it's it's just more of being around like-minded people the struggle the struggles of running a restaurant is exactly the same as as being a dj producer to a certain extent everyone everyone gets paid before you you have to be at the top of your game all the time you're only as successful as your last record or your last dish simple keep keep the consistency and discipline final question I ask this to all guests what is one truth you believe like hold on to wholeheartedly that most people and we'll apply this to the music industry that most people in the music industry would disagree with you on

1:47:42hmm

1:47:48ah that's a really interesting question

1:47:55do lots of things because i think it's

1:48:03we're not around forever we have um lots of opportunities i think it's very easy and especially in the music industry that people like oh you can only do this and you can only be that person and you can only be known for that one part one thing like i completely disagree i think you can become a dj producer you can have a podcast you can have a fashion label you can have a restaurant you can have whatever you want there's there's no one saying that you can't do everything yes it's hard and it might not mean everything's really successful but if you're passionate about something go fucking do it and and you can learn by it like fail failure is so so so good like last year i wanted to do like a i've always loved fashion fashion is like my goal and i've always had this battle where i want to start a fashion label but where i'm at in my career financially it's not worth it because it costs a fucking fortune i need to invest that money back into my music back into the podcast back into my record label um but i have this battle between merchandise and fashion and for me it's like i want to create garments for the merch that are like fashion pieces but then i also have to realize merch is completely different to fashion people want to buy a t-shirt with your record label logo on they don't want to buy a t-shirt that's a cool high-end t-shirt that costs 150 dollars or 150 pounds because it's you're making it if you know what I mean so it's like it's a battle that I I have and I literally had a conversation with my design team last night and they were like what are we doing about merch I'm like oh spending so much money on it and making no money on it and it's this creative battle that I have with myself is that like yeah it's it's it's tough but hey fucking do shit that you're bad at that you're really interested in like do bad shit do everything you want to do if you're into gaming become a gamer whilst being a dj like put as much time and effort into that as you do your music like do whatever makes you happy action bronson for me is like the icon absolutely like his he's an iconic hip-hop rapper he is iconic with food he now is like a bit of a fashion icon with new balance fitness um yeah he's i like his fitness i really respect what he's done but he's still i know that's why i rate that's why i rate me i was driving through uh i was driving through wandsworth and like they've got the big roundabout and i saw a photo of i was like i was like is that fucking action bronson he was like him running like that i was like new balance i was like mate we showed you can do whatever you want um and he's an animal and i really respect that like i've i've what i've followed him for for years and like yeah when i first started following he was unhealthy now he's reasonably healthy and he's reasonably well he's a fucking machine like he's he's a he's a strong guy way stronger than i'll ever be um yeah for me that's like the the the biggest the goal is to be able to have be a multifaceted artist i think i really struggle with artists that are just one thing it doesn't appeal to me and that is the one thing i would say that a lot of people disagree on and some of my team don't like it that i do so much right it mate what What a great start to the day.

1:51:53I really appreciate it. Yeah, I love that, mate. There's so much just creativity and just your graft and drive. And I think anyone listening to this who's into music should listen to Will's podcast. It's insane. The stories are great. So thank you so much, mate. I really appreciate it. Very grateful. Thanks for having me, man. I really, really enjoyed this episode. It was really, really good. Thank you. Sweet, mate. Thank you.

1:52:20thank you so so much for listening to the podcast i really really do appreciate it if you liked that episode only if you liked it please do give it five stars subscribe tell all your friends families foes next door but one cat dog whatever please tell everyone about this podcast it means the world to me and i really want to understand what your pain points are as the new wave of challenger food and drink brands please do hit me up on linkedin search Dan Pope and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands thank you so much