Vikkstar Opens Up About Money, Burnout & Building The Sidemen

0:00Hey, it's Paige from Giggly Squad and I want to let you know that if you want the newest and hottest beauty products, you have to go to Sephora. I'm obsessed with the One Size Liquid Blotting Paper Spray. It's the first of its kind blotting spray that mattifies for up to eight hours. It's unreal. There's also the Summer Friday Shade Drops SPF 50, which basically lives in my bag at this point. Oh, and the Kayali Eden Plush Pear smells so good. It's sweet, warm, and addictive. like people literally stop me and ask what perfume I'm wearing which you know I love so if you want the makeup skincare hair and fragrance products everyone's about to be obsessed with shop only at Sephora hey what's up people my name is Mo Gilligan and this is my podcast beginning middle and ends now my guest this week is a content creator an entrepreneur a youtuber and a dj with over 10 million followers he's one of the UK's most influential figures bridging online culture and live entertainment.

0:59And we get into what it's like for a 14-year-old making money from gaming. That's right, people, while his parents were fast asleep. From selling out Wembley Stadium and what it's like when your flatmate, known as KSI, parks his brand new purple Lamborghini outside your house. Please, welcome to the podcast, it's Sidemen's Vicstar. so what you you started uploading videos when you're what eight years old um how old was i 11 10 11 yeah when you started uploading videos i think oh no no no i was 14 sorry i'm lying i was 14 i think let me ask you what what made you start doing that as a hobby was it just like school's done and then i just want to upload some videos on youtube because i think you guys done it at a time where now like i speak to my nephew who's like 11 years old and he's like i want to be a youtuber yeah and that didn't you that i feel like that didn't exist when you lot was doing it do you know what i mean yeah so what was the was it like a childhood hobby was it your was it your relief was it your your escapism as such it was my friends from school were doing it and i wanted to share what i was doing on my games with them yeah yeah so i was like i'll record it myself put it on youtube send it to them yeah and then people who weren't my friends were watching it and i was like okay on the one side this is stranger danger this is what we've been told not to do but on the other side i'm like this is cool i don't know this guy's watched my video and that just sparked like a curiosity and a fascination so that was it was that simple so what what some of the games you were playing like was it like call of duty and it was called duty yeah it was modern warfare 2 was the first game I posted a video from.

2:43Is it? Simpler times, right? Did you play COD? Do you know what I used to? I remember going to a friend's house. Well, it's like a friend of a friend. I went to his house. He had a really cool bedroom at the top of his house. And this was at a time when, do you remember when HDTVs first came in? So some people had them and some people didn't. And he had it, and the TV must have been, I'm talking like 50 inches. And seeing him play like modern warfare 2 i said i need to play this game i said this looks so cold but i'll be honest the minute i went online online is a different it's a different animal because i'll be honest i think i grew up like just always playing missions so i always like love a mission like yeah like we're talking like metal gear solid like love the mission of a game you know grand fifth auto so like modern warfare i was like i'm kind of i'm kind of in with the mission do you know what i mean yeah some fun missions there and stuff but then when you gotta go online

3:54so i think online i kind of swayed away from online i tried to jump back and i've dibbled and dabbled but never like properly do you know what i mean um probably a pandemic because when And I was like, yeah, I'm going to probably play online. Like GTA. Yeah, GTA. GTA Online. Pandemic. It was fantastic. Living life in Los Santos. It was like, I started spending real, real money. You know, you're like, oh, I've got to do up the house. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I've got to do this. Custom car. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, man. So for you, when did you start getting paid from what you were doing in terms of YouTube and uploading clips?

4:32What age would you get paid from that? So probably like when I was like 14 or 15, you used to have this little, well, here's the thing. You used to have this little subscriber box on your channel where you could put other people's channels and like promote them on your channel. So, you know, I put like two or three of my friends and then there's a few more spaces and I'm like, you know what? I'm going to put a little message in my bio, sub box spots, one pound, one pound per month and other people would be like, I want to promote their channel. So they, I'd put them in there and I sat there and I was like, mom, dad, three pounds a month.

5:03this is the future, I've made it, I'm ready. And they're like, okay, okay, keep going. So you couldn't even put adverts on videos when we started. There was no YouTube monetization. So we were just doing it for fun. You could maybe, yeah, literally like promote other people's channels for a bit of pocket money. And then at one point you could upload to other channels. So there was this channel called Machinima. I don't know if you ever heard of it. But it was like one of these old school gaming networks where you could send their videos. they'd post your videos and give you a share of the ad revenue.

5:37So that was cool. It's like, hang on a second, I'm getting paid to play video games. So you were 11 years old at this time? No, I was like 14, 14. Yeah, 14, 15. But it was all starting to make a little bit of sense. So when you're making this bit of money, what was probably the most amount of money at that time where you was like, oh, this is a little bit lucrative? Or like your parents were a bit like, hang on a minute, he's making bank right now, do you know what I mean? I think it was probably like a year later when I first got adverts on my own channel. And then all of these views that I've been building up on my channel suddenly meant some money.

6:11And it was probably like, it might have been like 70 or 80 pounds or something for the month. But still to go from like, this was a hobby to hang on a second. Like, this is like, you know, a day or two of work. That was the first moment where it kind of clocked in my head. I was like, okay, well, I'm enjoying. I've been trying to get more views and more subscribers anyway. so if I just keep doing this there's more and more money in it yeah they're kind of the mindset changed a little bit then yeah um but school always had to come first yeah school first then the youtube videos yeah so your parents very much like listen is this is what you need to be doing is is school rather than like did your parents even know it was even a thing does that make sense yeah yeah they they didn't know it was a thing I didn't know it was a thing because it It only just started happening and almost it felt, at the time it felt illegal.

7:01Yeah. Hang on a second. You're earning like money from playing video games, recording it and putting it on the internet. This sounds like someone's going to come in soon and say, stop doing that. You can't be making a living from that. Yeah. So I would say that, yeah, they were always super apprehensive and it was good in a lot of ways because they also kind of taught me like, keep working at it, like commit yourself to it, be consistent with it. if you want to try and make it into something bigger and better. But also, we were sat saying, when is this bubble going to burst? Even when I was making, like, you know, probably, like, an average salary doing it by the time I was 18 and finished my A-levels, it wasn't even like, okay, well, this is where I'm going to go now because it's like, okay, you made good money this year, but next year you might make zero.

7:48Like, next year someone might come in and say, you can't do this anymore. And to be fair, it was almost tangible in a sense that we're posting our primary content is around these video games. So theoretically, it would have been stupid for them to do. But let's say EA or Activision, who make the games Call of Duty, could come in and say, OK, you're not making any money. We're taking all the money that you're making recording videos on our game. Fortunately, they realized that it's marketing their games on this big free platform. and the money wasn't enough for them, really, for them to care. But it was kind of seen as this bubble and I was like, when's this bubble going to burst?

8:26So I took a gap year. That was 2013. It's a perfect time. Did you go travelling in your gap year or anything? I did not travel out of my bedroom. I travelled around all these video games 16 hours a day from my bedroom. It was actually quite sad. I'd literally wake up, make a video, upload it make a video upload it turn off my computer and there would just be silence and they'd be like okay so my friends went to university my parents went to sleep five hours ago i'm just sat in my bedroom you're just online yeah and i was like my life doesn't exist outside this online yeah the little hustle but fortunately that's when i started to get to know who are now the sidemen and we would like be on skype calls together and we would all say we'd be like we're annoying our parents we're making noise the other boys are like in you know flats they're getting their neighbors complaining meet online yes yeah yeah like twitter effectively we started following each other we started meeting up at gaming events back in yeah like 2012 2013 and yeah we were we were digital friends and then we were like you know what we can all if we all move into a house together then we're not annoying anyone else and we can all lock in on what we're doing and it turned out to be the perfect time but it was it's changed all your lives as well do you know i mean big time yeah yeah massively a lot of us have grown up with you guys and i feel like when you think of like content creators you guys are like pioneers in that space do you know i mean yeah to just move it away from just gaming and youtube do you know i mean to the things that you're you're able to do wasn't you meant to go university though i was yeah yeah i took a gap year so that's what I was saying.

10:11I was like, I might go back. Yeah, yeah. And then for two, three years, they kept emailing me saying, hey, we've got your place. We're holding your place at UCL. Would you like to come back? And then after three years, I was like, I'm done. I'm going to keep, keep doing my thing. So yeah, I'm on my like 13th gap year. I still haven't found myself. I've been doing some traveling. I haven't found myself yet. But maybe I need to go somewhere else. Do you think you'd ever go back? Do you think you'd ever go to uni just to do it? You know what? That would be good content, man. Yeah, back then, sat there crying over a physics exam.

10:45I can't do this anymore. Yeah, it would be amazing. You finally go, you know what I mean? I would like to go and learn the things and do the learning process. But if I had to sit down and do an exam, I'm just going to scribble over the paper. It's mad because every now and then I might do a talk even at a school, a secondary school. And I'd be like, oh, you know, there might be 14-year-olds. I'm like, oh, what are you learning? Oh, we're learning about industrial sciences and the impact on the industrial revolution. I said, yeah, listen, can you help us, Mo? I said, listen, man, I'm here to visit.

11:24I've got nothing for you. All you can do is inspire. Yeah, jump on YouTube, man. So you rejected, and what was you going to study? Was it natural sciences, yeah? Yeah. What made you want to study that, natural sciences? I always liked science. Yeah. And I could never pick which one was really my favourite. So genius me thought, oh, I'll just do all of them. And you actually go and do different modules with. So it's almost like you're doing like bits of multiple different science degrees. Yeah. And I think I would have like enjoyed it, but it would have been super tough. And there's no way I could have done what I did now while doing that at the same time.

12:01It would have been completely different. Were your parents very on you to study something? Yeah. Like, that's going to, because, you know, I've got a lot of friends who are either Asian or, you know, African, especially West African. And they're like, it's a doctor, lawyer, engineer. Do you know what I mean? Like, even my own dad, like my dad's a Rastafarian. When I told him I want to do stand up, he was like, what do you mean clown? We're not even a clown business. And I'm like, no, like, it's very lucrative. Do you know what I mean? I'm getting paid here and there. Yeah, it's a little hundred pound and stuff.

12:33How were you, what did your parents want you to get into? Yeah, they wanted at least to have a degree. And, you know, it does make sense to me because my mum got a medicine degree as a, you know, she was a second generation immigrant. Her parents didn't have degrees. So she went and got a medicine degree. And that was like a huge, huge thing and allowed her to have this completely different life to the one her parents had. so I think having had that experience to to yeah to her and to my dad again he had his chemical engineering degree they were like you need to have this if you don't have this degree yeah that's that's it so they were very yeah in on me getting it and my oldest brother he's got a computer science degree my middle brother's got a medicine degree which degree are you gonna go and get I'm like yeah I'm gonna play video games and scream into a webcam that'll be fine right Are you the youngest of the family as well?

13:29You're the baby as well. I got away with a lot. Yeah, I'm the same as well. So when you're the baby of the family, it's almost like, it kind of makes sense now why you got to do what you got to do, because it's like, ah. They got some in the bank. They're like, we got two degrees. We don't need the third. If I was number one, best believe, my setup's getting thrown out the window.

13:54So then what was it like when you all moved in? because I feel like now it's very normal to see like content creators like live together. So what was it like when you guys moved in? Was it like how we kind of see it sometimes maybe on social media where it is a vibe and it is a laugh or is it like guys I've got to work or is it just like let's just get some Nerf guns and start murking each other? Do you know what I mean? It was overall it was like great. It was amazing. So much fun. Great place to work. Initially I remember it being scary. Yeah. because one it's like I was I'd moved up to Sheffield with the family then so it was like moving from Sheffield to London the other guys were like two three years older than me so they're all kind of like 21 so they some of them have been to uni or like moved into their own flats yeah I literally left home to move into this side man house and I remember I had to like get them on like a again a Skype call with my mum yeah be like mum these are the people I'm going to live with which is a crazy thought like i had to yeah explain to her that these people i mean honestly they could have turned out to be complete like weirdo he's like complete horrible people to live with it was this gamble that we all took they were like look we can all help each other out have a fun experience yeah kind of and it took it from more of uh like this hobby job that we did at home to this okay now it's like a real job we're in that work we have a workplace environment kind of thing yeah so it was scary i remember it was expensive i was thinking i've been like working hard to make all of this money that i'm that sat there thinking okay when when youtube gets deleted when the servers get deleted tomorrow at least i've saved up some money that was what was going on in my head i was like this can't keep going on and then it was like okay i'm gonna need to you know pay you know 800 pounds a month or something to go and live in this house yeah and i'm weighing up like is this gonna be worth the you know the money and is it all gonna work out again funnily enough it worked out a hundred times over and i learned a lot from the other guys with them being a bit older they were good role models to me of like this is how you live away from home this is how you this is how we do our work and i guess for them as well because they've been to uni and stuff they've been around like other people and other experiences so at least with you coming into that experience you're almost like oh like hey it's page from giggly squad and i want to let you know that if you want the newest and hottest beauty products you have to go to sephora i'm obsessed with the one size liquid blotting paper spray it's the first of its kind blotting spray that mattifies for up to eight hours it's unreal there's also the summer friday shade drops spf 50 which basically lives in my bag at this point oh and the kayali eden plush pear smells so good it's sweet warm and addictive like people literally stop me and ask what perfume i'm wearing which you know i love So if you want the makeup, skincare, hair, and fragrance products everyone's about to be obsessed with, shop only at Sephora.

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17:29I know to put my, I don't know, my underpants in the, do you know what I mean? And not leave them in the bathroom. Do you know what I mean? It's just small things like that. When you're at this place now and you are doing content and stuff, did you think it would be what it is now back then? And I guess it's almost like now I think, you know, you guys are like the blueprint in some ways of like, this is what you can do. Shows on television, you know, you can sell out arenas and travel the world. And, you know, for yourself, you've got like, was it like just close to eight million subscribers? subscribers, you know what I mean, on YouTube.

18:08But was that the vision, like, starting off early on? Or was it just like, hey, we've got this content house, we're going to create some content, this might last for three years, it might be a vibe, or actually want to grow it bigger. And the only reason why I asked that is because, as a team, was there anyone else to look up to? Because I always felt like the biggest creators were always quite individual so it was quite it wasn't as normal to see you know like almost like the avengers in a sense we'll take that we've all run with the avengers the avengers of youtube yeah so was it in that like in that first couple of years that oh this is actually a thing or is it just a like let's just see where it goes and just earn a bit of money and just just cut you know it's always been like let's just find out let's just let's just give it a go and like we've already made it this far so what have we got to lose kind of mindset yeah and even from the start again most of us started making videos before you could even really make money from it it was just like let's learn these skills let's try this is like a little side quest thing and i think every step of the way we've been like okay we made it to here how can we go a bit further and you're right there was really no one to look forward to but that was i think the nice thing about not being individualist like you say because we had each other to kind of constantly bounce off it allowed us to come up with these ideas that would, no one's done that before.

19:30It's like a charity football match. Why can't we do it? You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go to Southampton stadium. We're like, we want to sell the stadium. They're like, we'll give you one stand of seats. Cause we think that's all you guys can sell. And then 10 years later, we've sold out Wembley two years in a row. Sick man. Yeah. It was just, let's think of these crazy ideas. And also it was, yeah, constantly trying to find something new because we know that if we carried on doing the Call of Duty gaming videos that we were doing 12, 13 years ago, there's no way we would have even, you know, a tenth of the audience we have now.

20:02It's use the opportunities to learn, grow, try something new. Things don't work. Just try something else new. And with the group of us, we've always managed to find kind of new ways to level things up and move forward. And so, yeah, you're right. We've never really had anyone to follow, but that's helped because it helps us think of new ideas. We're not sat thinking, okay, this group are doing this, we're going to go and do that and try and do it as well as them. So actually, we're just going to think of something new. Okay, reality TV done in a YouTube way. Let's go and do that. And it's almost we set the bar and we learn and raise that bar ourselves rather than trying to chase what someone else does and that keeps it unique.

20:41So like, what were some of the struggles that you had at such a young age of one, you know, moving away from home and living with your friends, but also two, you know, like, I guess it's that if you're in this house, because and I only noticed through asking you know chunks and he was telling me that when him and his you know his friends moving to a house with a beta squad people was turning up to the house and stuff did you guys have similar experiences yeah yeah we we did struggle with that especially the first house we lived in didn't help that JJ parked his purple Tron Lamborghini in front of the house we're like come on KSI fly license flight purple Lamborghini in front of the house okay now people know where we live we're like you can park it up the road or something so we kind of we deserved it in a lot of senses and it was i mean we always saw it as transactional so this is just like another side of us getting to do what we wake up and do what we want every day is people are going to be excited about it there were occasions where i remember it being a nightmare it's like halloween our house got egged and we sat there the next morning like cleaning egg off our house because we didn't go and answer the door because if we answered the door oh yeah they're answering from the door and taking selfies, everyone comes to their house for Halloween.

21:52So we're in this like stuck position where they were like opening the letterbox and like shouting, we know you're in there. Can you come and get a selfie? And we're just like, what do we do? We're like crawling under the window to try and pretend we're not there. This is before a ring doorbell as well. Yeah. So like, was you ever like put in danger though ever in a sense of like, where you're like, oh right, we need to, like people are trying to climb over the walls and get in the house. Do you see what I'm saying? I would say that we didn't feel like it was in danger, but I do remember once we were like, what's going on outside?

22:26And there was like a kid jumping on our trampoline and like throwing a football out our like bedroom windows to try and get our attention. Sweet. And it was like some kid who'd gone out on a night out, got drunk and thought, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to climb the fence into their garden and just try and like get their attention. And then, yeah, like we did see like, came and tried the back door, which was fortunately locked. but imagine you get this drunk guy just pull up outside your bedroom like yeah so i mean it was more annoyances rather than like we actually were scared about anything yeah yeah um but again it was all kind of like and it's it was all just part of this crazy story of what was going on at the time so we never like sat down and thought to ourselves oh you know this is this is awful it was just like well that was a bit stupid but isn't everything we're doing every day stupid Yeah.

23:15Kind of thing. So would you say it kind of like, kind of attracts that attention from the stuff, I guess, that you're sometimes doing online where people are like, well, let's just turn up at the house and throw eggs or jump on a trampoline. Like within like where you are now in some ways within your middleware, you know, you, you and the guys are selling out, you know, Wembley stadium and you've got shows on Netflix and you've done shows on Amazon prime and stuff like this. You know, you kind of branched off and you started, you started DJing as well. Yeah. and how have you found your experience in that space because i know that you played tomorrowland and i i was at i was there the same year you was there at tomorrowland just last year no i think this was a couple years ago okay i think you might have visited tomorrow i don't know if you played it when i went being a bunch of times yeah i went like 2022 i only know because i remember i was i I was walking around and I was like, I swear, is that Cal Freezy?

24:12Like, you know, you just had to play, because I'll be honest, when I went to Tomorrowland, yeah, I didn't have a clue what was going on. Like, I went with my girlfriend, I went with my girlfriend and she was like, oh, this is festival, that Tomorrowland, boom, boom, boom. I was like, all right, cool, I'll go, see what the vibes is. I didn't know that was the music. It's so good. I didn't even know the stage or anything. And I listened to a lot of music, but I was like, okay this is very far removed from what i normally listen yeah okay and i remember just walking you know and one it was like okay everyone from around the world you know like it's crazy vibe when you go there but at one point i said to myself i swear that's california but you know you're like anyway carried on with the rest of the weekend and then i think i see it on his story i think you lot was all there yeah we've been a couple times yeah yeah yeah so like what made you get into that space of of djing because now you're djing at these bigger festivals all around the world yeah do you feel like there's more of a sense to prove because you're like well no i have i like this as a passion yeah and i i love doing this and i'm not just you know a quote-unquote content creator who's going into a space do you know i mean that someone like me wouldn't necessarily occupy i think it's yeah it's it's both sides of the coin i feel at the same time because there is this kind of expectation of okay so now all these people come to your shows yeah so we're expecting this crazy high level but then also like if i deliver a high level it's like oh like who else who else did that for you kind of kind of like yeah you can't win um either way but yeah it started completely by accident and i've been going to these festivals like tomorrow and like Miami Ultra for 10, 11 years.

26:00I actually used to, the record labels used to invite me to go out and vlog my experience. And they like give me access to all of these like cool parties and events. And I'd be there with my little one camera like this is the best. So I'd just been doing that, got to know a lot of people in the scene. And they've been pushing me to do it for ages because they said the kind of important thing is like, you've got to love the music, know the music and also have an audience of people that will get involved in it with you. Yeah. So it kind of, I had the perfect stuff to start doing it. And then it was at Tomorrowland in 2022 that Alan Walker took me up on the main stage as his guest with him in front of all these people.

26:39And I'd been in the crowd so many times. So suddenly I'm stood behind the decks watching like all these people just having a good time. It's amazing, man. It was like, the main set, main stage, right? Yeah, with the big bowl. Yeah, and the castle and all this stuff. Yeah, man. And once I was there, he was actually the one that pushed me to go and do it i i promise i would not have had the confidence to do it myself i would have had so much imposter syndrome but when someone is successful as him who started at 14 years old in his bedroom the same way we started making songs one of them went viral yeah then built from there when he's saying go and do it i was like okay i gotta go home and learn i played my first set that christmas at ministry of sound and like i dj to myself in my bedroom and then it was a sold out ministry of sound club i walked in and they're playing like some fatty wop and some drake and i'm like oh no i'm playing a different kind of music tomorrow night kind of music you know the difference so i was stressing i was like i've convinced myself that i can do this yeah and also i got used to this calm office environment at home i've got perfect sound everything's all like the light's good everything's organized and then i'm in this club the music's banging it's like there's people going crazy and I like struggled my way through it but then again it's that also made me realize that people are just out to have fun yeah yeah and it doesn't matter what way you bring that like I've got I had the shared experience with that audience they followed my YouTube journey I was playing music I like they liked it too so yeah yeah that gave me the confidence to kind of carry on but even at that point it was like okay this is going to be kind of like a fun thing that maybe you know every couple of months I'll just go into London and play a set i didn't see it going further than that but then just as i started doing it more and kind of learning more from people who are doing it it's become this thing and kind of circle it back to the sidemen thing i love it because it's very much me i get to be myself and kind of choose every step of that journey like i did in the early days of youtube where it was less kind of pressure environment yeah and we did with sidemen whereas now with sidemen we have kind of like 30 40 members of staff working on every shoot we have to really carefully plan things out it's not on us we're not setting up the cameras editing the footage planning everything out ourselves we couldn't do stuff on the scale we do if that was the case so for music it's this fun escape where i can bring in my fans but i can also just be myself and share what i like so what's some of the craziest places you've played like to this day apart from tomorrowland um have you done vegas I have done yeah I've done Vegas twice which is just did you do it with Stephen Aoki where he throws the cakes and all that yeah I've thrown one of Stephen Aoki's cakes in Spain yeah and they've got some weight on them you know they're about 8kg I tried to launch it from a festival stage across into the crowd they were sawn up on shoulders and I just I dropped it short I still hit someone but I also felt bad as well I was like you're not even getting caked by Stephen Aoki at this point this is mixed up pulled up and throwing a cake so yeah I've done that with him and I actually went to two festivals in one day with him so I went to a festival in Norway where I played a set back to back with Alan Walker there then I left the festival went to go and get my flight and my flight was cancelled and it was this small town in Norway called Kristiansand and there's one flight a day so I'm kind of sat there I'm like him and all of his team have left I'm just like okay so I'm just on my own and then I saw that Steve Aoki he was coming in the next day so i was like oh can i come and see your set and he was like yeah sure i turned up and i was like my flight's cancelled i can't get home he was like oh we're playing another festival tonight in spain we've got the jet waiting outside the festival do you want to do you want to come with us to that festival as well so and that was the most surreal experience it's like 6 p.m he's on this stage in norway everyone's having the best time jumping around going crazy finishes the set leave the festival go straight to the plane fly the plane to spain arrive at like midnight drive out to this like desert looking thing it's another festival and that was seeing the way these top guys operate is next level so yeah that that was a crazy experience just seeing like two different countries 50 000 people partying and running the show at both was uh crazy but yeah i've done vegas and again for me that was the weirdest experience because i was this guy back in the day with all the boys we've just made a bit of money we've gone to vegas this actually reminds me of your story from your stand up about the club experience where you lose your mind a little bit but you have to right that's clubbing in america so i've like done all that with the boys on the come up yeah had credit card bills that i've wanted to run away from we all know about those i know that one i know that feeling i related to that hard i was like there's probably not a lot of people who want to run away from a card machine.

31:39When they just go, oh yeah, the tip's 3000. Is that okay? And you're like, I poured my own drinks. You know what's really funny about that is because I think for me as an experience, that was where I fall in life. I was like, I think this might be, you know, when people say you've made it and me and my naive self was like, I think this is making it. The fact that you get the show and everyone is cramming and you think this might be it. When people talk about I've made it, I don't think it's the stuff. That's what we do it for. You know, there is the part of you, like the career stuff, which is like, oh, great, an achievement.

32:15You've done this, but you think, in that moment, you think, this is it. If I died today, I think I might have made it. I think this is what people talk about. It's until that bill comes and the reality never sets in. And don't get me wrong, I think even at a younger age when me and my friends will go to a bar and we get a little table like rubber when that bill comes and the nothing sobers you up than that bill and you know i don't know if you've had this yet but i've looked at the receipt and be like this isn't real but sometimes you don't know if it's real or not can i see the light what and then everything comes back into reality it's like it's like a everyone wears that and you say what am I doing man?

33:05I'll tell you what though they know what they're doing though that's it they've got you there they've got you drunk they've got you in the thing with the sparklers and like you'll point to like something like with the like two champagne bottles you'll get these two and they're like no you've got to get this one or maybe you didn't even point to it and they just said we'll get you this one and because you're drunk and you've not said no please don't it's happened and they turn up with a card machine and sometimes you're like I've been robbed because I can't drink 10 bottles of champagne. Why have you ordered that?

33:35It's absolute robbery. They should have like a, like you buy it and then you should have someone come after you and say, hey, I just want to let you know what you're actually doing. A councillor. Because yeah, because you don't, also what we didn't know when we're going out there is when I'm getting all this stuff, I'm not including the tax. Yeah, tax and tip. So when the tax comes and tip. And did you have this where when it comes to tipping, they go, yeah, you know, but Jose brought the water bowls, so can he get a tip? And I'm like, bro, you're just doing your job, bro. It'll be 500 for him, 500 for her, 500 for this guy.

34:07Oh my God, man. And one time, I think... It's a hustle. One time he went for New Year's Eve, went Vegas for New Year's Eve. Oh my God, man. They're surcharging everything on that night. Yeah, everything goes up at least 20%. But then almost... I don't know if you had this where you order whatever package you're getting first, but then they'll be like oh you've got to pay and when they've taken my card it's like I didn't go through so my heart is beating in my chest and I said what? it's not going through and they said can you come to the kitchen? so I was like okay cool I'll go to the kitchen and then I have to like I have to put the pin in like properly but I said if this didn't go through the embarrassment yeah everyone walk out out you go be the worst day so like where you are now where you're doing like the things like the dj and the stuff with sidemen does that still take you away from you know like what kind of got you here in some ways with like the content because i know you're doing different content now you know like you and the guys doing road trips and stuff like this and still doing stuff together is that still a conscious effort to still make content for like the core fans who've been there from day one yeah we have like our second channel which we still do gaming videos on like get together and we literally do the same videos we used to do in the living room of our old house where like there's no big setup it's like us playing a stupid quiz or like some little like guess the song game yeah and i think that's really important one we love it we enjoy it because it's just it's not that pressure environment of like the sunday sidemen sunday every week yeah we're like we got yeah road trip cars going here locations here this setup here is the drone following this car where's the fpv drone are we on schedule have we got the right forms signed for the American gun range, like, you know, things like this.

35:55So that's one side of the business, which lets it kind of level up and go to where it's been. But yeah, we do try and stay true to the other side, which is just us being us. And it's also a real challenge because we have this audience that grew up watching us and they don't want to see this big, fancy, you know, polished production. They just want to see us literally fucking around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then sometimes that lands great and we'll have something that's like a less planned shoot it's just kind of go and see what happens and it's great and then sometimes we're like okay nothing is happening like we have nothing to bounce off so the challenge of it being fully unscripted is that sometimes you get these gold moments that no one could ever script if they tried and our real reactions to these things happening yeah are just gold but then also you do get the other side of it where we're like if things were a bit more scripted we would know when we're coming in what we're walking out with so it's not happening in the moment i guess as well like when what what challenges do you think you guys have faced when it comes to making you know when you're doing these these you know these sideman matches in wembley stadium which by the way i think that is so fucking sick bro yeah that is so that is so amazing what you guys are doing but also for the fact that like my 11 year old nephew who's like you you you you follow KSI, you can get me some tickets.

37:17I said, bro, I ain't got that pool, you know? You might have to queue up online. Did he get a ticket? Hell no, did he get a ticket? I'm sure I can get you guys tickets if you want to go. Don't say this stuff, because he will call me up and be like, listen, my nephew will be like, I don't listen to your podcast, but I heard you're going to get me. Yeah, it's been clipped. And he will exaggerate. Heard you're going to get me like front row tickets. 12 to 12 tickets. but like I think that is one that is so amazing one what you guys are doing like I think sometimes people don't realise what it takes to go and put something like that on purely for the purely for entertainment but also for charity as well which that I think that I'll be honest that is one of the things that absolutely blows my mind because I know what it's like just booking a venue for when I'm touring let alone Wembley Stadium do you know what I mean the logistics that must go into that the planning the you know even down to like small things of just like okay cool well we need to you know are tickets gonna sell I don't know if you had this in the first when you first booked oh yeah are tickets gonna sell this is a big risk this could be monumental 10 ,000 people come do you know what I mean but I put I tip my hat off to you I think it's so inspiring the fact you guys you know you do it for charity you get you get all the content creators around the world and it's just become this thing now which is like oh raw like that's what we're able to do in the uk that puts us on the map in the sense of like all the biggest content creators in the world it happens here and playing in this game at 90 000 people i think it's so amazing but also you know when you've done shows with like amazon prime or now with like netflix and and stuff what are the challenges that comes with that because i guess for you guys it might seem quite easy on one side of like well you know like hey it's page from giggly squad and i want to let you know that if you want the newest and hottest beauty products you have to go to sephora i'm obsessed with the one size liquid blotting paper spray it's the first of its kind blotting spray that mattifies for up to eight hours it's unreal.

39:33There's also the Summer Friday Shade Drops SPF 50, which basically lives in my bag at this point. Oh, and the Kayali Eden Plush Pear smells so good. It's sweet, warm, and addictive. Like, people literally stop me and ask what perfume I'm wearing, which you know I love. So if you want the makeup, skincare, hair, and fragrance products everyone's about to be obsessed with, shop only at Sephora. While every other channel is fighting for your customer's attention, podcasts are where they've already given it. No one accidentally listens to a podcast for 45 minutes. They choose to be here. They trust the voice in their ears.

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40:34You know, look how many followers they got. But also there's a side of television which doesn't sometimes get this world. Do you know what I mean? What do you feel like some of those challenges like you guys have faced? And just for yourself as well, because it's your name, you know, on the product as well, you know. Yeah, you're right. And thank you for the kind words. It means a lot. It's amazing, bro. Again, we just kind of do something, then move on to the next. And, you know, a lot of the time it's almost like this expectation. It's like, oh, you guys are doing Wembley again, right? And it's like, one does not simply just do Wembley.

41:06They don't just like shoot me a text. Yo, yo, next year match again. Yeah, same time. See you there. So I've got the World Cup this year. They've got all the Premier League fixings to line up, different timing spots. And that's props to the other guys because I don't know about football. I'm like the one guy who's not the football guy. But also that's what makes it special. At least the guy who got picked last for football in PE every single week now gets to run around and kick the football on Wembley, sold out. So, you know, that's the fun and the beauty of it. And bringing everyone over, like you say, making something happen in the UK.

41:40But yeah, we've had constant barriers to kind of break through together. Like I said, the first time we tried to do Southampton, they thought we were crazy. They were like, there's no way we'll give you the full stadium. We had to do half the stadium, St Mary's. We had to do then the full stadium. we then had to do Charlton twice and then even to scale up from a bigger stadium than Charlton again these stadiums they're run by big teams big people and they just wouldn't take us seriously we were trying to get the next one and it took a long time to get so there was we tried to get Chelsea's stadium yeah we tried to get Stanford Bridge as the one after Charlton and again we would spend ages having conversations about how we're going to do it potential dates all this stuff and it would rise up through people at the organization and it would just reach a point where it's like okay it got to this level of board and they've said no they won't have it happen and it's like we've wasted all this time like physical time and like times we've lost all of these days spent trying to set it up we've lost all of these people's time sat on meetings trying to make it happen and it gets to one person they're like yeah youtubers won't play at our stadium it's like oh and then you get set back or or they'll come through with a price that's absurd they'll be like you know charging hundreds of thousands for the stadium it's like we're trying to run a profitable charity yeah event here so now we need to go and find more sponsors and there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes and it's like we don't want to run a charity football match where it's like okay you guys raised you know two million pounds but the event cost you one and a half million pounds to run yeah so okay so what you got two million and only a quarter of that went to charity that's inefficient that's not yeah yeah not us setting out to do what we want to do so you have like barriers like this all the way and that's why we've had to build it up over you know eight ten years yeah where it's like then we got london stadium and we sold out that stadium and then i think that's what allowed then wembley to realize okay these guys might be able to do it but then also we're english yeah so we're gonna we're all gonna sit there and go wembley nah you've lost your head we're like you're you're you're dumb if you think you can sell out Wembley.

43:51No, never even, like you say, never even go there. So there was that genuine conversation with the side men where we're thinking, are we dumb for thinking we can sell out Wembley? And then again, we did it. I think it was like three minutes. Everyone was in the queue to sell out the stadium. And that was, and then also we're thinking, okay, well, where do we go from Wembley? Yeah. There is nowhere else in the UK. We can. Wembley is the, is the biggest. That's it. So, yeah. And then it was like, okay, have we done Wembley? It's done. Good job. It's like, no, it was such a great event. We have to do it again.

44:23So it's like you say, there's these constant barriers. But when you get it done and you have that day and everyone's there and it's this real experience and you've got a whole crowd cheering for anyone who scores. I don't even know football like that, but I know hearing 90 ,000 people cheering for one person is crazy. That doesn't happen often. People are just happy to see goals to be at the event. Do you know what I love about it though? It's like when I took part in Soccer Raid, the fact that you're seeing kids who they don't know who, for example, like a Cafu is. Yeah. And I'm, the kid in me is like, oh my God, I'm playing with Cafu and Roberto Carlos.

45:00Yeah. This was the back four I was in. I don't even play centre-back. Like, and I'm like, I've got Cafu, Roberto Carlos, and then Berbatov is a holding midfielder. And I'm there at one point. Feel that out of your nap. Bro, at one point I'm there at Soccer Aid telling Cafu, hey Cafu, cut back a little bit, Don't go up too much, yeah? Just cut back because it's quite quick. I said, where do I think I am? Yeah. But like, I think what I really enjoyed the most was seeing all these like 10 year olds who, they don't know some of these older legends. It's just not their generation. But them seeing, you know, like, you know, Chunks and Noah Beck and wanting to get things signed and you sit there and you're like, oh, like the game and who wins ain't really the thing.

45:52It's just about like these cool memories that these 10, 11 year olds get that say, oh man, I got to meet the person that I get to watch, you know, online and like I seen them in the flesh. Do you know what I mean? I think that's the one takeaway I got from it. And also, you know, you raise a load of money for charity, which is like, it's not really about who wins, it's about the entertainment of whatever the thing is. Do you know what I mean? for where you are now you know you do a lot of stuff to give back you know whether it's charity games or even like you're saying later on you're going to go and help out at the youth club you were saying?

46:26Yeah in Bromley yeah what is it that makes you want to do some of that stuff because I don't feel like you publicly talk about things like this that much do you know what I mean? Yeah I think mostly it's because we can and we're in a kind of privileged position brought by a lot of people and a lot of those people end up in situations that are super unfortunate we've got you know uh the mental health charities we support um we've got mind we've got teenage cancer trust we've got um the uh the youth clubs that we support as well and i think it's all of these people are in our audience that's the nice thing about what we've done with our careers is we have this hugely diverse audience and it's just finding ways to give back to those people and those communities.

47:12Because, yeah, we're in this privileged position because of all of these people. So we try and do our best to do that. And it's also nice to create, like you say, these memories and this experience. It's like everything about it is positive. For where you are now in your life, where you're in that real sweet spot, I guess, in your life, where you're no longer the 18-year-old who's you know living in a house here with your friends and like realizing you're like okay cool like i i'm doing this thing i don't know where it's gonna go i guess it's like you know you guys are like proof in the pudding that you can go out there and say look we're gonna we're gonna work together create content travel the world but also we all have our little side projects that we do that we're all passionate about and i just like i like djing and yeah i want this to be the thing that I'm able to do and if you guys want to come that's cool but this is also what I want to do but you also do stuff together how do you start looking at like you know as you get older in some ways where you know you want to have kids and have a family well two of the two of the boys have got little ones yeah how do you start looking at that in some ways because you know you have a really thriving career as a DJ where you're able to travel and you know you're able to essentially be like I'm living I'm living my dream right yeah and but do you look at that part of life in some ways as you as your friends get older and they have children and get married and you've grown together but you also say yeah I kind of I want to do this forever but also I kind of just I guess like how do you also like find your peace in some ways do you know I mean yeah so it's like a constant balancing game like you say and we've kind of made a lot of changes we're not those same kids like you say that were in the house where like 2am you could come into my room and knock on the door and say Vic can you come and like set up a tripod for me you know you do that now it's a different different kind of conversation um so we've naturally like progressed and moved but like you say I think that's what makes it so special is that it can be adaptive and we all have our own things that we focus on outside of the big group project that kind of lets us have our own creative control and freedom or even if it's not a work thing outside of that it's you know some of the guys they're spending a lot of time with their with their you know with their kids and that's really important to them so i think we have a lot of flexibility to do it and also one thing that we've been lucky enough to do is we're really building our team building like-minded people like us within our team so that takes off some of the pressure and also again it's sometimes naive for us to sit there and say we are the best at all of these things it's like no sometimes i'm sure you've done it as well with your team you have to sometimes sit and say actually someone else is gonna have a better shot at this than me so it's just finding those people and that allows us to spend more time at the kind of creative level rather than a lot of the processes in the middle so um it's it's a constant challenge but that's what we like though secretly deep down we wouldn't none of us would be where we were if we didn't like a challenge and a problem to solve and a way to push and what do you think the the next thing for the sidemen will be in terms of like you know you've ticked off a lot of cool things on your bucket list you know whether it's you know setting out Wembley Stadium is it to go bigger than Wembley Stadium is it you know like what what what do you kind of envision as the thing of like we're gonna do that is as impossible as it impossible as it might sound but it's like yeah we've got this idea to do this and you're like oh okay yeah i said i want to play hide and seek on the moon yeah you may have lost the plot there i don't know i think spacex might get us there hey i don't know about that one brother hey honestly 10 years time who knows i don't think i got the other guys out there it might just be me on my own in a little movement guys i'm hiding um no my serious answer to that is that we've never really ever envisioned anything that we're gonna do we never thought that charity match would be bigger than you know the first match was 12 ,000 people there.

51:34We never thought that when we did a reality show and put it on our YouTube channel that we'd be three, four seasons in to producing it for Netflix. So I think that's the beauty of it. We just kind of, ideas come, we try them, we put our all into them and then sometimes they become bigger things. But yeah, we're, as you know, like things change so fast with the internet and the way culture shifts now. So I think we just kind of sit there and wait for things to happen. Yeah, yeah. That's it. And what's next for you, like, in the sense of, like, do you double down on, you know, DJing and touring more and doing more festivals, releasing, you know, your own music?

52:14Or is it, hey, you know, like, I want to set my own record label and I want to produce the next artist and give them a route that is very similar to my... I don't want to be a record label. Record labels aren't popular. Yeah. Because so many people just do it themselves now, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even myself, Like so much of my music distribution is just myself. Yeah. So I think that record label thing is very much. You could have your own one. I could. But then. Sidemen sounds. Sidemen sounds. Come on bro. Sidemen records. Yeah. You're feeling it already. I can see. I can see the question.

52:49Do you know what? The first thought that came up is. Do you know how long we spend licensing music for YouTube videos? The amount we pay the record labels. Can we use your song? Yeah, that'll be£12 ,000 for 10 seconds of this song. Is it? And it's just like, it's a crazy world. Oh, fair enough. Yeah, no. Them YouTube, them copyright strikes don't play. They're not a joke, especially at our level. It's like we've spent like three days shooting a video, eight seconds of a song. Yeah, we'll take all the revenue for that or pay us money. It's just like we have people's salaries to pay. Like we spent a hundred grand on this shoot.

53:23What do you mean we've lost all the revenue? It's not via the YouTube, man. give us a light of 10 seconds sometimes the music won't even be in the video it'll be in the background somewhere yeah and I'll be like listen they were playing it in the thing I didn't even want it we tried to take it out and some snitch there's always a snitch on like nope I'm gonna snitch oh man but listen man it's been such a pleasure to have you on on my podcast honestly it's been such a pleasure and I always have one last question I always ask people okay but for someone who started as young as you have and you've achieved a lot, what does the next chapter hold?

54:04You know, when you look at, if you kind of use the YouTube as such of, you know, when you look at those chapters and you skip, what's... Is this for me personally or in general? Yeah, yeah, just for yourself. Because, you know, you've come from, you know, a place of like, I'm going to upload these these videos and see where it goes and you know you've got successful family where your mom does medicine your dad you said is a civil engineer uh chemical engineer sorry and your you know your brother's got degrees and you know you being the youngest of like well i'm gonna try this thing and see where it goes and just follow it and just enjoy it as well i think i've always noticed with any of the content you guys make it really looks like you're enjoying yourself and you're all nice guys when I've all met you individually you're actually like all like really cool guys do you know what I mean like when I've met you you know JJ and I've met um Toby I always keep bumping into him in Dubai.

54:59Toby's everywhere. I've been in Dubai and I'm like what are you doing here bro? But like it's it's really inspiring to see but what do you see that next chapter for you know just for yourself in some ways you know? So I think from the sidemen front it's just to keep kind of trying to make these crazy fun videos and keep it fun i think that's the big challenge with that because the second it starts not being fun everything else doesn't kind of matter around it and i think also making the shows as well we really enjoy that it's like this different position to be in so we want to keep doing that on that side and then for me i think a lot of it's yeah using doing the music thing and actually using using it as an excuse to one challenge myself because it is like this imposter syndrome this like this panic that that's how you learn fast so keep kind of learning and developing that not to take it anywhere in particular but just to see what happens with it and the thing i really enjoy with it is going to all these new places so traveling to different places and having like a purpose of being there meeting people you know real people that live and work there and just getting to know them i really enjoy that and find that to be unique so it's to kind of my guess the next chapter is just balancing that with Sidemen having a little bit of a personal life and then the music stuff yeah just keeping it all going have fun oh bro thank you honestly Vic for for doing my podcast I really appreciate it man and I can't wait to see what unfolds next you know I mean whether it is hide and seek on the moon or whether it is one day I'll see you in Vegas and we're both like how much I got you covered if we're both in Vegas at the same time you message me you message me give me the same but honestly it's such a pleasure my friend and this has been your beginning middle and end thank you so much bro thank you really appreciate you man thanks for coming in man hey what's up thank you so much for listening to the podcast today now a lot goes in to making each episode I know you hear my voice but there's a team behind the scenes who helped make it and if you did enjoy it I'd really really appreciate if you could show the love to them by giving us five stars and if you also have the time please leave us a review It's always appreciated and we love reading the comments.

57:10And of course, we want to keep making it better. Thank you for listening and have a great day. Peace. Hey, it's Paige from Giggly Squad. And I want to let you know that if you want the newest and hottest beauty products, you have to go to Sephora. I'm obsessed with the One Size Liquid Blotting Paper Spray. It's the first of its kind blotting spray that mattifies for up to eight hours. It's unreal. There's also the Summer Friday Shade Drops SPF 50, which basically lives in my bag at this point. Oh, and the Kayali Eden Plush Pear smells so good. It's sweet, warm, and addictive. Like, people literally stop me and ask what perfume I'm wearing, which you know I love.

57:49So if you want the makeup, skincare, hair, and fragrance products everyone's about to be obsessed with, shop only at Sephora.