Elfried Samba | The Future of Marketing

30:48So this level of depth that I go into in this podcast or on the bottleneck podcast or wherever, or on stage, I don't do that with my content because I know that people just headline read. So I just meet you at headline level. I hit you at a quote level. I hit you with a one message level. You get your one key message, stops you scrolling. You get your insight. You feel smarter. you can take that insight to somebody else i'm a vehicle to make you feel smarter or to get you a new idea and you can take and do something with but it's only when you're given a platform where people are have a mindset to be able to sit with things and can actually understand things and get to the core of things that's when you go to like long form like youtube like the mindset you you go into a platform with actually dictates how you consume the information.

31:45If you're on TikTok, you're trying to get that short burst. When you're on LinkedIn, you're trying to get that short burst. So if you're interrupted with long form, very depth content, even though you did the job of creating the work, you just put it in the wrong audience. It's like trying to play rock and roll in a library, right? Like the context matters, right? So that is why I've been very comfortable in a podcast format or in a speaking format to really decode and be very, like, more truthful with my perspective on things, right? Because then you actually have people that are in a mindset to consume and understand and learn.

32:25Therefore, I give them the contents according to that. So I think this cultural relevance piece is, like, one of the most, like, important things, particularly kind of, like, in a more AI world. How do you, when you're hiring, how do you test for it? How do you try and sort of, because it seems a very difficult thing to sort of. So I'll tell you, I'll give you two frameworks, right? One is just like for hiring in general and the other is specifically for the space, right? So as I mentioned, I'm an Arsenal fan, right? And I think that the journey that Mikel Arteta, the Arsenal manager, has been on is a more truer reflection of how life actually works as opposed to what happened with Liverpool with Arne Schlott, right?

33:13So what happened with Liverpool is get a new manager and they win the league, right? And then the next year, they're tanking, right? That's what happens with most startups. Start well. So my co-founder, Michael, has this theory that, like, for however long you've been in business, you're likely to stay in business for the equivalent amount of time, right? So if you're in business for one year, you're likely to be there for two. If you're there for three, you're likely to be there for six, right? So the goal is to, if you want to be a 100-year brand, you have to get to 50 so that you can make it to 100, right?

33:50So you have to just go by go by go. So what Mikel Arteta taught me is that it took five years just to be stable enough to actually win the prem. And you get ever so close. And then this happens and the environment changes and this happens. But really it's a chapter building exercise. If we were lucky enough to win it early, it would have been a fluke. That's not how the world works. Right. So and he has a philosophy about the mindset of the players that he that he recruited. Right. Which I realized, oh, that's a really interesting framework. And I labeled it as a three A's. Right. You talked about skill.

34:33I call it ability. Right. So do you believe that the person has the ability to do the work at hand? Right. Now, doing it perfectly or not, that's that's that's you can evaluate that. you can work on that, et cetera. But then do you believe that that person is inclined to do the thing that you want them to do? The next is agency, right? Or autonomy. How much handholding do they need, right? Do they need complete handholding? Or once I tell them the problem, they can do it themselves. Can they even find the problem of what I do, right? The greater agency, the more proactive, the more senior, the less I get out, the more I get out the way, right?

35:14and then the last one is attitude right now i can deal with somebody that has less skill you can train that i can deal with somebody that is not doesn't have that much agency and you can build that over time your salary will determine that but but you can manage that but attitude is non-negotiable right if you don't have an attitude to learn an attitude to be a team player an attitude to obsess over like I'm a very obsessed individual like I like to work like I enjoy my work I was I was able to uh understand early on what Jay-Z says that everybody has a genius level talent everybody does you just have to quiet the noise and listen right and usually the answer's within and you probably just ignored it right and once I understood what I was good at I just went ferociously instead of trying to like going to staying at Gymshark and saying well here's what I want to do Gymshark should let me do more of that I'm just going to create my own canvas it's harder but if you want to have the audacity to create your own world you have to take that leap and then build it that way right but you need people that have the natural and you should always build a business that you can understand right with people that align with the energy that you're going to drive.

36:29But you should, like, people that are not naturally curious, that are not, I like to say that people that don't have an immigrant mentality will find it very difficult to work at butterfly effect, right? Because it requires you to start from a blank canvas, right? It requires you to be okay with not having all the information. It requires you with asking questions and looking dumb and wanting to learn and failing right it's not a where you're from thing it's just the attitude of having a blank canvas and being able to do a lot with very little if you need everything to be proper and i just know it's not going to work for you right because that's just not the way that we operate right me and my co-founder michael were both immigrants and we both like arsenal it's not saying that if you don't like also you can't work for us it's that there's a certain level in the style that we work.

37:25It's all about playing beautifully. We care about craftsmanship. We care about coherence. We care about passing the ball and making the other person look great. Our whole thing is to try to get our client promoted to make them look like the star. That's our whole ethos, right? And you have to align with that, right? And then that's just like in general how we hire. And then whatever that means to you, whatever attitudes mean to you. And that should be like, you can't train attitude. Somebody has, that's an internal work that somebody has to do. I can't teach somebody to be motivated. They have to be motivated, right?

38:01The other bit, sorry, when it comes to like social itself, there's almost like four levels to it, right? So when you talk about ability, right? Then that's skill, right? There's four levels. First is creativity. I think creativity is actually the bare minimum. A lot of people think that just because you create content, you can run a whole department. No, no, no. I think that creativity is the bare minimum, right? Because really anybody can be creative. It just depends on your reference points, right? So it's all about how many reference points can you apply from a different source and add it to another.

38:35That's basically what creativity is, right? And it's just like a life period of references that you're able to draw from one area and put it into another and then make something new. That's all it is, right? And then add a bit of flavor to it. The next level is all about platform mechanics, right? And the way these platforms are orchestrated and what they reward and what matters to them, how many platforms have you been exposed to, right? So, like, if you know anything about Chinese social platforms, they kind of mirror the same makeup as the ones on the West. So, like, you have Little Red Book that's kind of like Instagram.

39:17You have Weibo that's kind of like X, right? You have WeChat that's like WhatsApp but on steroids, right? But once you understand how the channels work, like Douyin and TikTok, you know what you need to do, right? So that's the second tier. Then you go to psychology. Do you understand people? And I often say that social and community is behavioral psychology at scale, right? That's what it is because you're saying, I'm going to do this. That's going to trigger this behavior. it's going to trigger this and it's going to trigger this perception. That's not creativity, that's psychology, right? And that's why whenever I would like, I could, it would take me like 30 seconds to know whether, or 20 seconds, probably even 10, to know when I'm looking at a CV, whether a junior person with no experience is likely to work really great for us, is whether they did psychology or not.

40:09If I go through and I see psychology, I'm like, okay, different pile, different pile. Because what we're doing is psychology. It's about understanding people, right? And then the next one is social dynamics, right? There's a reason why Ryanair can get away with things that British Airways can't, right? Because they understand the role that they play in culture. They understand the role that they play for the audience. They understand what the audience is. But then if you know all the different layers, but you can only apply that to one brand in one scenario, that's your cap. But then if you can method act, right, and say, okay, I am the Nando's account, and I can embody the Nando's audience.

40:50And then equally at the same time, I am McDonald's's account, and I know what the McDonald's audience is about. And equally the next time, I can do that. So when I'm speaking to one of our clients, I am them. I'm like, I can go into depth and understand exactly what it is that they need me to do. the feeling it just comes with time and how have you found that transition of going of you know being Gymshark Gymshark Gymshark to now working with all these different brands so do you know what the the idea I'm not like I'm probably one of the least like corporate CEOs around I've actually been battling with the idea of whether I should be the CEO for Butterfly Effect for very long and I don't think I will be because me and Michael are building a much bigger business and the butterfly effect is within that.

41:40But effectively, if it wasn't for Ben, I don't think I would have taken the leap to be a more EQ CEO, right? That's interesting. So he is one, right? And then he inspired me to believe that I can do it myself. I can have my own style. I'll just get the operators around me, right? So the reason why is because I always had ideas inspired from spaces outside of fitness that we were never going to use, right? That's why I started giving away an idea a day. But then also that's why we always had references from other places, right? So I would watch a flower company do something and I'll be like, oh, that's really cool.

42:21Let's bring it here. What's our version of it? How do we gymshark it, right? Yeah, yeah. So it's almost like a producer that samples music, right? Okay, yeah, yeah. So you're a hip hop producer, but you're taking music from like jazz, you're taking music from these spaces and you're fusing it all together, right? the canvas of bodybuilding and fitness, I wouldn't say that it was a limiter, but I felt that I could challenge myself to apply that to different canvases. And I watched Wu-Tang, right? I watched, there's a Wu-Tang film, and I was like, well, I want to be the RZA. I have a sound, right?

42:56Can I work with different artists? Like Pharrell Williams can work with Gwen Stefani and work with Snoop Dogg, right? And still produce a hit. I'm like, well, that's if you want to be the best at your craft, you can't be one dimensional. Yes, you have the essence that make you who you are. Community is the DNA. Right. But how you connect with communities and be the bridge between the brand and the individual, you have to listen to the person. You have to understand the brand and understand the individual and then figure out what those bridges are. And that's just like it's not really about being creative.

43:33It's more like being a scientist. right? Yeah. So I think the best way to describe it is how Pharrell Williams approaches music is how I approach this. I listen to the artist, I embody the artist, I listen to the audience, I hear what they need, and I become the bridge. It's really interesting. What did Ben say when you were like, I want to go? You may have noticed we've been doing something different recently. From our budget live stream to the episode where I sat down with the producers, we've been experimenting with new formats that you've been asking for. We want to do much more of that in 2026, but truthfully those episodes don't quite perform like some of our blockbuster ones with Prime Ministers or Business Titans.

44:20Even though amongst our core fans, they're often your favourite. So in early 2026, we're giving you the opportunity to be even more involved with the show. and we are launching Jimmy's Jobs backstage. The waitlist is now open and if you pledge your annual support, we'll etch your name into our brand new studio. We'll be able to bring you more into the show by listening to your guest suggestions and your questions that you have for them. And there'll also be more live shows next year which you'll get early access to. If you or someone you know are a fan of this new way of doing media, check out the show notes to see how to join us backstage.

44:59or give it as a Christmas gift. And hey, you might even be able to put it through your learning and development budget. See you backstage. Now back to the episode. What did Ben say when you were like, I wanna go? Because you've got this like, you know, almost dream job for lots of people. Head of socials at one of the biggest social brands in the world. So I think everybody in the company didn't understand but Ben, because he's a founder, right? if I had left Gymshark because I wanted to work at Nike or something like that he would be like you know I knew that I couldn't do that I spent the best part of like nearly 10 years building uh Nike up as a nemesis right like if you brought any references of any of our competitors to any brainstorm I was like fuck that right like it's us against everybody like We have the audacity to believe that we can be mentioned in the same breath as some of the biggest companies in the world.

46:04Name me any industry that's more competitive and harder to crack than the fitness world. If I ask people to name five sports brands, like five, it's always the same five. Nike, Adidas, Puma, Under Armour, and Reebok maybe. And then now you have Gymshock. To be able to even be in that mix, right, is so difficult because there's so many brands, right? So we picked the hardest place to go. So you had to really, like, be focused on, like, I couldn't work for any other brand. I said I couldn't work for another brand. So the only reason why I would leave was to build my own world, right? And he understood that.

46:47And I had the opportunity to do that, right? And that's why, even though our podcast has like 700 subscribers, right, Ben's like one of our first guests, right? Because we still have that connection and he knows that I did it for the right reason, right? And even till this day, I struggle. We haven't really worked with any fitness brands. Yeah, okay. We haven't worked because, and if we have, I'm not involved in it. I can't be, right? Like I've spent too much time. I'm too Gymshark, right? I'm too Gymshark. But the essence has been taught to the team so that they can still be able to do great work.

47:25But hey. That's interesting. Why do you call it Butterfly Effect? So I called it, I always often say that the answer to our destiny is always hiding in plain sight. And I seem to really like the song called Butterfly Effect by Travis Scott. It kept popping up in my Spotify wrapped for like four years. right but i didn't know what the hell it meant i know i love the song i love the vibe etc etc but i didn't actually know what butterfly effect as a theory actually meant and then i heard about like chaos theory right and also the fact that to be able to create chaos or the flap of a butterfly wing leads to a tornado so that means that small things become big things but then i realized that that's always been my philosophy of life, right?

48:19Like it all starts with the momentum, right? So it's like, you, everybody thinks about this grand, and Ben talked about the fact that if he had tried to build Gymshark to be a billion pound brand, he would never have done it. It all starts with the momentum, right? It's like, I'm gonna do this, and then I'm gonna do this, and then I'm gonna do that, and then I'm gonna do this, and then you compound, and then you compound, and then you compound, and then you create chaos, right? So really, when you ask people, with Butterfly Effect, the agency, what do we sell? We sell three things. We sell direction, execution, and amplification.

48:58But the reason why direction is super important is because it creates momentum. So we have a North Star of where we want to go. We align all the key decision makers on that. So we do not work unless we have all the key decision makers in the room. Because we're not an agency, we're a growth company. Marketing is a recipe of growth, but it's not the only factor. So Ellie Norman from Formula E, we work with them and she's phenomenal. And one of the things that she says is that a brand exists to do three things. Build fame, be easy to find and buy, and be hard to leave. right and that's not just the job of a marketing department that's a business yeah right so we try to understand first and foremost do you have a direction problem do you have a execution problem and or do you have an amplification problem and then based on the three questions that i just mentioned where do we start first right or how do we approach things and we align on that And then how do we build momentum?

50:15We usually tend to work on a three-year growth plan. It's like, we want to get here by year three. No, we want to get here forever. So what's the reason why everybody shows up every day? And what does that look like in three years' time? And then we work backwards from there. And then the first 90 days are crucial to momentum, right? Let's start to build momentum because we're offering an idea or solutions that are new. and from the moment you say yes, we're on the clock. So everything we suggest at the start is for you to get those wins, right? And to know that we're going in the right direction because the CFO just sees we've spent this, what do we get, right?

50:55So we need to, we're on the clock. But then once you get past the 90 days, everyone's like, we get it, right? Okay, now let's invest more. Let's do this, let's try this. So those periods are really, really crucial, right? because no everyone thinks that we're selling creativity no we're selling momentum right like we are there to give you momentum towards the right direction and we're there to help you we'll do it first and then we help you in-house it right yeah because i'm an in-house guy i don't i don't believe like like agencies are still in business because a lot of people need hand holding our goal is to do it but teach you along the way so that we can then just be your coach it's effectively how we work with people it's really interesting let's talk a bit about personal brand because I think it's like we've talked quite a lot about brands at the start but then we've obviously talked a lot about Ben and Noel as well like

51:56why and it's also interesting in terms of politics as well because actually politicians are some of the first people that ever really had to have like personal brands right But so what is the importance and why is personal brand growing? Like one of my favorite stats is that Tim Cook has more followers than Apple does. And he didn't even found the company, right? It's because of trust. Because people trust individuals. Well, I think the metric of trust changes over time, right? And first, so Michael, he's a low-key philosopher, my co-founder, and he basically says, in order to build trust, people must know you and then they must like you, and then you have the opportunity to earn trust, right?

52:45Yeah. So in a world where IQ is being democratized because of AI, people need a new compass of trust. First, you could hide behind ads because not everybody could afford to buy ads or to reach scale. And for you to be able to do that, you must be good. You must be quality because you have the money to do it. And then as that became, like people went to socials, the people that were first were very authentic and honest because they had no money. And that's why still till this day, the biggest creators are the originators, right? because they've understood that it's about honesty. It's about trust, right?

53:30And that's why I find it very weird that everybody sees AI as an opportunity to get rid of creators. I'm like, it's not. If anything, you're going to get people off of the social platforms. Because people talk about, for example, influencer marketing. It always existed. What's Michael Jackson with Pepsi? What's Michael Jordan with Nike? That's all influencer marketing. that everyone at market is we just like to coin things in ways that we understand to make us feel like we're fresh and original but it's always existed right it's it's a person of influence is there to demonstrate trust because you have an affiliation with a person not an affiliation with an object right and but first what people would do is they would have influences and use influencer faces to embody the perception and the values of the brand.

54:22But then when influencers just started taking the biggest cash check, people realized, well, that's flawed. We need something else to demonstrate. Well, a business is making statements that they believe in this. Who is the person running it? Yeah. Right? Why are you hiding? Because at the end of the day, the difference in quality is few and far between with modern day technology. You can't really tell me that one product is definitely better than the other. What's the difference? The reason why it exists. Who I'm buying from. What story do they represent? Can I relate to them? Do I trust them?

54:58Right? That is why it's happening. But again, people are doing it because we're being sheep. Because we're like, well, it's the flavor of the month. But when you have to understand the true essence of why it exists, right? It is there to build trust. Not to create content, but to build trust. and the content is a documentation of the actions that you embody as a business.

55:22Yeah. I mean, that is really good. How have you found, and being trusted and offensive, LinkedIn are powering this episode, but how have you found using LinkedIn as a platform for this stuff as well? Because it's kind of made this transition a little bit into a sort of, it wasn't sort of perhaps five or six years ago, so much of a social platform. but like now it is right yeah and the thing is so i always say that i wasn't attractive enough for instagram i wasn't creative enough for tiktok but i was nerdy enough for linkedin right it was where it's where my people are at right um people that want to speak in logic and ideas and depth uh so i i don't think that it being used as a creative platform was what they wanted I don't think that's what they wanted.

56:12I often say that I feel like I'm Stone Cold Steve Austin in the LinkedIn world. I feel like they love me, but they don't because I kind of ruined it, right? Like Steph Curry, right? Because I remember when, so what happened was I was making the transition from being an executor to a head of department, right? But I still wanted to get involved in the creative process because I love to create. But then I realized that I had to work through the team, right? But I had to get my creative release somewhere else. And I was talking to Ben about this, and he just started his YouTube. And he was like, well, I create on YouTube because I can still get involved with my own creativity.

56:53And it was like, well, you should find that for yourself. And I was like, well, LinkedIn, that's where you guys found me. I'll go on there. And then I looked at LinkedIn. I was like, okay, who's doing great stuff? And I realized that every piece of content was, I'm excited to announce this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My company's done that. And everyone's just talking about how good they are, right? No one's giving anything, right? So I was like, you know what? I want to give away an idea today, right? And also, I'm going to give a funny meme. No one posted memes on LinkedIn back in 2018 and 17. Like, everyone was too serious.

57:25Yeah, yeah. Everyone was just like, everyone was just like, took themselves way too seriously. Minds were memes about ideas that I had. was like that people said that my my return on word used on posts was phenomenal right it's like a word and a phrase and a meme right and we're getting crazy like my linkedin gets between two to 12 minute impressions a week like like it's like it was insane but what happened was when the pandemic happened people had more time and ai and started to come into play and what happened was now you started to have like just an influx of create like it was never i was never seen myself as a creator yeah because i didn't think that linkedin was a platform to create but then all of a sudden there's like favicon lists and there's like all these things happening and there's now a lot of noise on the platform but even though i say that only one percent of the people on the platform actually create yeah so it's still very early considering there's a billion people on the platform right it's because a lot of people haven't been able to crack that it's not tiktok right the reason why i say that is because who you are and your reputation and your background actually matters yeah you can't just yeah at the start you can put a few post that, get a few likes.

58:48But then if you're talking about building community and then you look at your job, your background and you've never built community, then your Vsauce is fundamentally flawed, right? It's the only platform where what you've done also matters because you can't announce yourself and say, I built a company for 5 million. No, we can see that. Now, what else have you got to tell me, right? So it's one of those platforms where you do and then you story tell and talk about what you've done. And people will trust your track record. It's like your visual CV. You have to actually have done the stuff that you're talking about.

59:27And people think that it's a content play. No, it's a lived experience play. And if you do have ideas, it has to be backed up by your credibility. So you have to do more stuff. How do you think? It's interesting. One of the things that I'm always sort of slightly pushing when I go into schools and universities and stuff is saying that people should be on LinkedIn, right? I think it's quite important. Like, you can be liking, commenting, you can be engaging. So, hey, did you get the job with Jim Sharp through LinkedIn, by the way? Yeah. Okay. I got every job that I've ever had through LinkedIn.

1:00:02That's interesting. Yeah. And every brand deal I've ever had was because of LinkedIn. Oh, right. So LinkedIn, when it comes to, like, every client we've ever got is usually because of LinkedIn. So LinkedIn has been a fundamental, the ROI on LinkedIn for me as an individual is probably the greatest for anybody on LinkedIn. But to that living experience point, right, if you're a student or early on in your career, what could you be doing on LinkedIn? Okay, so I think this whole fake it till you make it approach does not fly over there. Yeah. It just doesn't fly over there. It's like, I'm pretending to be this millionaire with this life.

1:00:44That doesn't work. Like, if you're a student and you're creative, your attitude is what will get you the role, right? And if you can demonstrate the learning experience that you're going through and you're sharing, you're being who you are. I'm a student and this is what I've learned. And this is what I'm going through. Here's who I spoke to. Here's what I've done. Here's what I've built. Here's how I failed, right? Your attitude shines through. you're not selling your content you're selling your attitude you're selling your curiosity, you're selling your fire you're selling your consistency, you're selling your ability to create you're giving your ideas away to the people that want to employ you because people tend to gravitate to people that remind them of themselves it's a dramatic demonstration the best form of marketing is a dramatic demonstration and you don't have to amass an audience of a million people to make an impact.

1:01:41Now, even more of a bigger opportunity, I think that even LinkedIn doesn't recognize the categorical and monumentous role that it plays in shaping the future of culture and the work way. Like, if you look at what Mark Zuckerberg did with spending a hundred million on an AI expert to lead that division, I foresee LinkedIn I don't think there's going to be so long until you see Salesforce finding the biggest sales creator that has 500 ,000 senior sales leaders and acquiring them for like 20 million I don't see that because that's your audience yeah if you have if you have influence over the C-suite of the people that you're trying to get in front of for your sales team Why don't you just get the best creator?

1:02:33Get them to become your chief community officer. And they storytell that perspective of the business. Yeah, the rise of the B2B influencer, I think, is like... But people think it's a content play. It's not a content play. It's an influence play. Like, it's like a... It's not a... LinkedIn is great at content, but that's just opening the door. That's depth. That's trust, right? Like to amass an audience on LinkedIn, you need trust. And what you're doing is you're basically buying IP and you're buying trust. And if you give the person a canvas in your brand, it changes the whole perspective of your brand.

1:03:13Yeah. Like we don't post anything on Butterfly Effect's LinkedIn right now. We're going to next year. We have 7 ,000 followers. Yeah. Just because it's attached to me. Right? Now, if you say we're going to Gymshark LinkedIn and create an ambassador program with the biggest creators on LinkedIn that are within a particular cohort, we're going to work with them as salaried employees over time. Why this is important is because, especially in the B2B space, a young person that can't get a job like Ben Francis, like in a corporate, will see the Gymshark player, but can apply it here. Yeah. How many clients does a B2B company, a high-tech B2B company, need to make a million pounds?

1:03:59Five? Ten? And you have 500 ,000 followers. Yeah. But I think socials has done that. It's kind of warped our brains on numbers a bit. Because I get people, you know, younger podcasters starting out and whatever, and they're like, oh, I've only got 40, 50 listeners or whatever. I'm like, if you think of that as a room above a pub, like, it's actually quite a full room. But the thing about those metrics is that a million views on TikTok is doom scrolling. Yeah. Right? LinkedIn, one view could be the CEO of Coca-Cola. Totally. And not only, because they could also be on the TikTok view, but the mindset they bring in to LinkedIn is that I am the CEO of Coca-Cola.

1:04:50So what I am looking for is to give me an edge as the CEO of Coca-Cola. So it's not just the person, it's the mindset they're bringing into consuming your content. Yeah. Right? That people do not take into consideration, right? Like even look at the clients we worked with. We worked with Netflix, Bumble, Cheesecake Factory, McDonald's, WeTransfer. We worked with Square. We have no right to be working with these businesses as a three-year-old business. Now, think about it. That's all digital. We don't go to conferences. Yeah. We don't go to networking events. How the hell are we getting in front of the leadership team of these businesses?

1:05:30Yeah. It's because of LinkedIn, because of trust, right? Because of being able to put our work out there and people see what we're doing. We're getting inbound, right? Somebody told me, if you never have to network again. I'm like, I know, but I choose to go and speak in places because I'm just a creator and I'm passionate about what I do. But if you think about it, once people start to realize that all I need to do is win the trust of three businesses, if I charge them two grand each, that's more than my take home. Yeah. Completely right. Right? It's like that's why I'm saying the fundamental role and the bridge that it's creating.

1:06:10and the role that it will have in society in the next five to ten years, people are massively under-restorating it. They think it's a content play. No, it will change organisations overnight once it clicks. What else do you see happening in the social space over the next five to ten years? I see that those that create a bridge between IRL and URL will win. So if you can create a bridge between in real life and digital and be that bridge, that will win. because at the end of the day, people don't trust anything anymore. Everything is like, is this AI? Is this not AI? Apple just did an ad about the process of creating the ad to demonstrate that it's not AI and that they're doing this in real life.

1:06:56That's become a marketing hook. So why does Gymshark have a store in Regent Street? Are they doing it to sell more products or are they doing it to demonstrate that they're real? yeah right like the Gymshark the Gymshark store is more of a competitor to Madame Tussauds than is it a competitor to the other store that sells the same thing as them it's a it's a place where people connect and also brands that win are those that are doing things that the government should be doing instead of picking fights with each other the brands that win are those that are saying how do we bring people together yeah that's why community works that is something that we should have a whole separate conversation because that is uh yeah that's super yeah we'll have to um we'll have to get you back we'll do it with rory um let's do um some quick fires yeah um what did your parents to so my dad was a doctor he's just recently retired my mom's an entrepreneur oh what was her business in no she's just had stores she had this hair salon she had sold clothes like my mom has never been a person to work like like for anybody she's just a out the box kind of person and um that's i thought i was going to be a doctor like my dad then i realized i was shit science and i realized that i'm actually a lot more like my mom but i do embody the structural thinking of my dad so I'm a hybrid um you play squash yeah why

1:08:43because I thought I was going to be the tiger woods of squash like like but because so I used to play football but football is very political right it's like I think at the time when I was younger the coach was like the new coach that came like knew my dad and I never wanted to be like the nepo person I was like oh no you're getting picked I was like I'm gonna pick a sport where I'm good everything I do is with other people every business I've built is with other people I was like I need to do something that's like me on my own right and I picked squash and I loved it right and uh and uh it was great and I would go when I moved to the UK like everybody that played it was like old and I was like 18 right and like i thought i was gonna that was the thing i was gonna do but then i actually started even coaching the university squash team and then i was like i never used to like i never touched alcohol until i was 19 right because i thought i was going to be a professional squash player and then uh creativity and community and steve jobs and all that took me a different direction um what did you study at university marketing management what did you learn from it That the four Ps no longer exist.

1:09:58What are the four Ps? Product, place, price, promotion. Ironically, I already understood that although that made sense in a 2D world, in the world that we're going into, it's not making sense because place doesn't have to be a physical space. It's a place where we occupy our time and attention, right? And that's why I much prefer the build fame, be easy to find, and buy from, be hard to leave. That's way more universal. That's way more timeless. And then it's borderless, right? So whilst the four Ps did form as a great foundation, when you break it apart, not everybody agrees on everything. Whereas with the build fame, easy to find and buy and hard to leave, that is just universal.

1:10:52That's just facts, right? But then it also doesn't put marketing as a separate department. Do you know what I mean? It unifies everybody because you can ask everybody, how do we build fame today? And your marketing can be done by, you can build fame by how you build your product, by where you source your products, by listening to your audience and doing something in reaction to that. by saying, well, we're not gonna do this when our competitors are doing this, by not opening on Sundays with Chick-fil-A, right? Like everything now becomes up for grabs because everything is marketing, because everything is perception, right?

1:11:31There's two camps of a business I like to think, because I like to simplify things. There's two departments, it's how you make money and the perceptions associated with the way that you make money, right? one allows you to make money today the other allows you to make money forever yeah it's what it is right like and once you realize that's all it is you realize you're all in the same team would you still go to university today do you think um i would so we were just talking about earlier about the fact that uh how do i feel about becoming a founder right i've now have the gear that if I feel like something is important but broken, I just build my own, right?

1:12:18Yeah. So I would have, if it worked within this confinement, because I believe that what universities, I think universities and their role should change, right? I think educational systems should change. I think that the role that they now play is one of connection, community, and just learning life skills, right? Because now what you see with young people is a lot of them are very smart, but they can't speak to somebody. They can't connect with somebody. They can't find rapport with people. I think you can get IQ on a computer. You can get an answer to everything on the computer, but you still have to experience life.

1:13:03And I think that universities that start to build people to be better at life are the ones that are going to do really well. How do you communicate with people? How do you connect with people? How do you use your creative gifts? How do you get people to follow your mission? Those are the intangibles that I think are still worth something. You can't teach somebody about knowledge recall. No one's going to pay 30, 40, 100 grand for learning how to recall. They're going to learn for life-changing experiences and making contacts and knowing how to be a better person and understanding how to navigate in that pressurized world that we're living in.

1:13:52Those are the things that are going to be really important. What was the first thing you did for money? Hand out flyers on Broad Street in Birmingham for the gatecrash of Birmingham. I was at the uni of Brum. So like, good chance you may have had to be one of those. That's my first ever chance. That's where I met my co-founder. Was it? Yeah, and then I went Gymshark route. He went Social Chain with Stephen Bartlett route. Ah. And then we reconnected. Yeah, yeah. Creating the powerhouse that is. Thierry Omri or Ian Wright? Thierry. I love Uncle Ian. So Uncle Ian. So my dad became an, because everyone's like, well, why do you support Arsenal?

1:14:37Why don't you support Aston Villa? First and foremost, I didn't even know Aston Villa was in Birmingham until I moved here, right? But secondly, like, Ian Wright made my dad fall in love with Arsenal. I was still up for keeps. Like, I'm like, cool, Ian's cool. But I was like, David Beckham's going about, Michael Owen. Thierry Henry just had too much sauce, man. And I loved the French team. I loved Zidane. I loved Zidane. I loved Henry. I loved Petit. I loved Vieira. And then most of them played for Arsenal. And then Arsene Wenger was French. And then I just loved the ethos. I think Arsenal was the first team to fill nine black players.

1:15:22I spoke French in an English-speaking... I just felt seen by what Ardenry represented. So what age were you when you got here then? 14. 14. honorary number. Symbolic. What car do you drive? I now don't drive. I'm a pedestrian. Oh, are you? Yeah, the last car I drove was a Range Rover, and then I realized that I don't need it. I think the story there was I lived all my life trying to attach myself worth to things that are outside of myself. Yeah. It was only when I felt connected to myself that I realized that I didn't need the external things that I realized that I can just walk as I am. And now it's just a practical thing.

1:16:12I'm just like, why do I need a car? Fair enough. Elf, thanks so much for coming on Jimmy's Job as a Feature. It's been an absolute masterclass, people. I can't wait to send it. I was thinking of all the people that need to listen to this as I was going, as you were saying some of that stuff. And I've been scribbling notes. I've never heard the IRL to URL before. And ability, agency, and attitude. I love that. That's brilliant. Thanks so much for coming on, man. I appreciate you, love. Thank you.

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