Managing Europe's biggest YouTubers The Sidemen - to succeed become dispensable | Jordan Schwarzenburger

0:25Welcome to Secret Leaders. Today I'm with Jordan Schwarzenberger, the co-founder of of Arcade Media, the management company for Europe's biggest creators, the Sidemen. Jordan and his partners helped the Sidemen launch three fast-growing businesses, including Sides, a fried chicken restaurant, a premium alcohol brand, XIX Vodka, and the official Sidemen membership club, Side Plus. Before co-founding Arcade Media, Jordan was a creative at Vice and Ladbible, and the chief creative officer at YMU Group, Europe's largest talent management agency. So Jordan, welcome to Secret Leaders. Thank you very much for having me, mate.

1:02Feels overdue. Looking forward to this. Let's get stuck in. Tell us a little bit about Arcade Media. What is the actual focus of your business? Yeah, so Arcade Media, as you said, is a management company. We're focused, and our point of difference really is it's exclusively with the sidemen. So rather than working with tons of creators or music artists or sports stars, whatever it might be, in the traditional sort of management game we have a scaled roster and that's your primary business for us it's all about the sidemen because they are just that big it's really you know the opportunity of a lifetime for us to work with creators who are operating at such a global level and well when we started you know working with them um even more so now their growth at the time we started when they were eight years in uh we're now in year 10 as we've been here two years is our third year working together with the guys and even at that point you know they are number one but where they've gone from then to now is just you know a huge difference already um and that's not because of us that's because of them hopefully we've just been able to give them some support and build around their incredible business and their content machine which is yeah it's a again a massive privilege um so yes that's our business is to manage them to build their brands to look after their commercial and their business world and then to represent them out there to help bridge the gap between those who don't know and them because ultimately those you know the majority of people in this country who are under 30 will know the side men they're probably the biggest celebrities, I would say four people under that age in that age demographic.

2:24But there is still a huge contingent who don't know them who don't aren't familiar and haven't grown up with them. So it's helping to educate the masses as well, which is a lot of fun. Yeah, it's interesting because hearing you describe it like that reminds me of a previous guest we've had James Vincent, who basically he was the guy running marketing at Apple when they were launching the iPhone. And they were like, you know, we want to launch the iPhone at this, you know, in the next 18 months what agency is going to have the capacity to do a global launch for something like this in one go and him and Steve Jobs were like well you know what let's just make our own agency and the only client will be Apple we're just that big obviously the business context is different right but you know the traditional way is you know these big agencies have multiple brands and Apple were like this iPhone launched globally we're big enough it's big enough actually makes no sense to have multiple clients in one agency we should just make our own agency and it's the only client ever and it still goes it's called media arts lab and i haven't really heard that approach taken to the creator space yet um you know maybe it exists maybe it doesn't as you know because i came on your podcast you know i'm getting to know this space a lot more personally through personal interest in becoming a creator but is this a common model or is this something that actually you've sort of uniquely discovered is a really smart way to go yeah i mean i think for me coming out of ymu for those who don't know why i used to be called james grant very traditional talent management for your Anton Dex of the world your Holly Willoughby's previously of the world your Frank Lampard's of the world and so on you know really established traditional talent right across music sport entertainment um you know my role there was great I had a lot of fun as their chief gore officer for like four years it was my real graduation my like master's degree in business was working at that sort of huge level at such a young age which was an immense privilege but coming out of that I learned very quickly that there were so many things wrong with that traditional model the biggest i think being that we were servicing too many clients i mean not just me we all we all we all knew and we all understood that we were servicing way too many people to really penetrate anything meaningfully from a creative perspective which as a chief creative officer of that business was difficult like how can i get under the hood of anything when you're always onto the next thing onto the next onto the next thing not onto the next thing with an individual or with a brand that's going well but onto the next talent onto the next you know strategy onto the next idea so to deliver those ideas was very challenging and then you're also dealing with a number of clients in that business you really probably shouldn't be there a whole kind of politic around that and so you're looking at a sort of scaled management company I think most have this challenge where you go you know our best performing people are this slice of of the full roster and yet we're focusing all of our time on the bigger slice of people who really shouldn't necessarily be here or deserve the service because of politics and history and legacy and so on rather than actually focusing on those who are killing it and you have the brand who can really you know do something meaningful with right and so when you're thinking about this next wave of talent and you're thinking about this next wave of ip and intellectual property and generation around audience like you need people who have connection who have scaled audiences and who can really deliver and the majority of traditional talent don't have that so it was a real learning for me around modeling and around making sure that from the get-go with this business and with the opportunity with the sidemen we recognize that they are number one it doesn't get any bigger than that therefore don't worry about anybody else focus and go deep with them rather than trying to scale something out and then that alongside the fact that you know there are a number of other management companies in this space and generally I think management companies they get too big and then they lose focus on the people who made them big in the first place often they have one marquee client that's their that's their big act if you will um and then they end up losing the way then you look at people like Adele's manager I can't remember his name but he's hugely successful and he is uh only with Adele like that's his one client because Adele is just that big who else do you need if you have Adele she's a billion dollar business in her own right right who else do you need so I think the focus is almost taking the approach from music where I think they've learned that right if you have your marquee your huge star just double triple down don't try and scale business out um that way or horizontally scale it out vertically with that individual act or brand or business and i think for the sidemen they warrant that opportunity so for us it was a no-brainer and it was a conversation we had with them early on and i think it's the best thing we ever did talking about chicken and egg how do you know them who came up with the idea who approached who why would they trust you they um you know sam who is our third co-founder and the story of arcade really is that you know aaron and sam had met each other both of them being accountants by trade Aaron had gone off to manage some tiktokers at the time and he ended up meeting sam sam has been the accountant for the cyber for the last eight years he has seen the ups and downs he's seen the opportunity the growth the scale I've grown up with them Aaron probably just missed them but I'd grown up with them so I knew how big they were and me and Aaron were friends at YMU before he left and I sort of helped him on the side with his business so when the opportunity came about from Sam's side to say look we've got an opportunity to speak to them and to put something forward probably only got the one shot but you know should we do something he said that to Aaron Aaron said yes but we need to bring in one more person he came to me and said look the opportunity is there to potentially go and speak to the Cybermen do you want to meet Sam do you want to talk about doing something would you leave your job for this you know and I said you uh with without any doubt in the world I would leave my job tomorrow to manage the Cybermen of course it's the biggest opportunity there is and he was like well okay and I think it validated for him as well who maybe wasn't as aware of just how big they were um invalidated why like this is the biggest thing and then yeah we spoke and we had a meeting with the guys that sam organized and he said look guys like i've seen you i've been with you from the beginning of this journey but there's so much more you could do you know my job at wine music was about strategy and creative i put together obviously with aaron sam we put together this great kind of strategy deck for them which we're still working from now like three years in basically or two and a bit years in which laid out a vision they never had that before like somebody just to say here's a strategy like why do you exist where wherever you come from where are you going what's the purpose what's the what's the substance beneath everything you're doing and then where can you penetrate as a result of that and from that deck like they were like yeah let's do it and we had a really good first meeting they bought the vision I put my notice in the next day and we started off together with Arcade I think a month later which was great.

8:29I guess the most common question you must get is you're very young to have had these amazing opportunities so so soon. Ageism is a fantastically interesting thing because I feel like ageism doesn't play out all the time in entrepreneurship so much because well sorry it does let me rephrase it does but usually the other end of the spectrum usually it's the 40 and 50 year olds that are having the harder time proving themselves ironically even though they're clearly much better equipped than the 20 year old is how do you think that you've actually managed to get noticed that's a totally different thing lots of talented people young people are brilliant and no matter how amazing the talent picker is in a big business you can let those people go unnoticed by mistake because you're busy so how do you think you actually got attention how did you attract the awareness what can other people do that you did so yeah so I think I think for me how I got noticed was by building up enough practice in terms of putting myself out there when I was at school launching various things like a clothing brand and you know a mixed like an album and I was doing school plays and performances and all sorts of stuff so I was comfortable putting myself out there which meant that there was a level of I guess fearlessness going out into the world of work and also I built up enough skills to be confident in myself I think so much of this comes down to confidence and knowing that I had value and I think for me when I was able to pinpoint that like the value and I was bringing into the world of work when I was you know trying to find a different pathway to university and we can maybe get into that at 18.

9:57The big thing was that I was young and I was able to provide like, you know, a cultural understanding that only somebody of my age can really get because I've grown up with all of this. I grew up in the first age of social media. I grew up with the first age of iPhones, like all of this stuff was in my demographic, like squarely. So for me, it was going into companies knowing that I had that value meant that there was a fearlessness, which allowed me to speak up and, you know, have a confidence in my opinion because they're trying to target young people. I am that target therefore I have a valid reason to be around the table and then when it came to like more more practically how did I do that I think it was you know for example when I when I was sat there in the in the library at my school thinking I really don't want to go to university I really want to go to university I need to find a way out I was looking at different companies and when I found vice and saw what they did and the business behind it I knew about them but I didn't know the business I emailed like 20 people in that company which I still have that email obviously and it said you know hey like you know i'm jordan these are all the things that i've launched i'm really passionate about building brands and doing this and that and actually kind of come in for some advice put myself out i sent that to like all the emails i could find probably about 25 people advice which would have got notice it now i know would have got notice in the office because people would have looked at each other but like hey how'd this guy get our emails be like who is this kid like can somebody deal somebody deal with him i'm not in take 15 minutes and thankfully two people said that they would and then when i was in those companies it's something i always try and tell people today who are younger when they come to me for advice it's always about making that first impression every single day i'm a big believer that the daily impact that you have is what builds cumulatively to you know getting noticed it's making sure that every piece of work you submit is amazing that every meeting that you're given the opportunity to present at you smash it making sure that you are inquisitive and you're asking questions you're you know you're diligent you're on time all these things you know somebody who's a friend of mine and an amazing expert in the field of trust is a woman called rachel botsman i don't know if you've met her or interviewed or anything but she's fantastic and one thing that she said is that trust is built on tiny micro transactions right like it makes sense you know trust is not necessarily about transparency it's about micro moments that build over time into cumulative trust and i really believe that that's the case both from a personal perspective but also from a work perspective like how you get trust how you find like real impact and the people you know we all work with people who we go yeah they're amazing i think it's about you know them proving themselves in the small things consistently where you go right They are trustworthy, they're diligent, they're exceptional.

12:18Being exceptional isn't just having flash in the pan moments. I think it's about having real consistency. And so something that I strive for from the beginning of when I was working was, you know, I'm young, I'm like the bottom of the rung here. I've been given a great opportunity to do work experience at a company like Vice. I need to make sure that every single thing that I deliver is to the best of my ability and really comes with a sense that I'm trying to make that impression and I'm trying to make it land. And I think over time that worked to the point where when Ian, who's the manager director of the agency there, was at the time, he asked me if I wanted to go with him over to Lab Bible.

12:50You know, the fact that I think he asked me was because I'd been able to make an impact and show that I was, I guess, taking it seriously and I really cared. And I think it's the attitude piece that I think is the bit that people notice. And I notice it now as a co-founder and somebody who's hiring a lot of people, people who have that spark, that attitude, that passion, that willingness to deliver on every single tiny little thing. that they're given those people you go yeah you're brilliant yeah thank you that's a great a great bit of insight um i think about hiring so much we're about to hire a couple more people at heights actually you heard it here first very good um and um you just you you don't need to hire for skills you've got to hire for attitude like skills will be learned quickly you get someone with the right attitude you look at most people's career the impressive people they're not doing the same job forever they're jumping around trying new things like taking on new roles like you know the whole point is you've grown past the role you were doing you're keen to try something else and you're showing you have the growth mindset and the attitude to give it a go 10 times over you'd rather give the person that role because they just show a demonstration of attitude and hunger to deliver results which is fundamentally all that can be expected from a human being in a corporate environment right you give someone a role something to do and they've got to show you how they can do it and how Daniel does it might be totally different to how Jordan does it but so long as Dan and Jordan both get the job done like happy boss who cares I have different approaches same outcome couldn't agree more and I think that's the bit which you can't teach which is why exceptional people are so hard to find and we find it all the time like you know having that attitude and that real like desire to smash it out the park whatever you're doing and that's the key right it's not so much because oh I'm passionate about x thing therefore I'm only going to give this thing I go it's no I really want to make you know whatever the job is at hand done to the best of my ability and I want to show that I care and I want to deliver on the small things it's always about the small things can people do the small things do they think they're too big for the small things you know Victor who's our managing director always has a thing so like never be never be no one is too big to put the bins out like and his whole thing is he's still going and doing that sometimes and I think that's the kind of attitude that you want where people are so willing to get stuck in they're never above anything and I think we always try and do that like at the charity match the other day i'm there and i meant this and it's just how i think but i went up to jazz who's our who's one of our lead producers and creator producers she's brilliant i said look i'm here to work for you like whatever you need today like i'm yours like if you need me to run around you need to go to westfield i'll do it if you need anything let me know and i didn't even think about it it wasn't a conscious thing but that's because i think my attitude is very much like you just need to get stuck in and get it done without having any sense of being above anything it's just about what's the task at hand and how can we make sure that it's done to the best of our abilities as a team and as individuals.

15:33All right. High humility, low ego, huge passion. It's hard to go wrong. For sure. For sure. All right. So talk to me, talk to me a little bit more about the business then. So one thing I read that I am super interested about, and look, for people that, like you said, you know, under 30, over 30, if you're under 30, you're going to know the sidemen, you're going to know, well, in general, you're going to know more YouTubers. If you're over 30, like you say, it's a generational thing, like, you know, not quite so much, not quite so much awareness and fair enough but for context you just just just literally last weekend ran a charity match hosted at West Ham Stadium and you raised three million pound for charity and sold out to a 60 ,000 person crowd right I think that in itself gives people who aren't familiar with YouTube and the space a sense of just how like ridiculously engaged it's not just about like the size of following but it's the engagement right it's depth it's the depth of care that people have that's it that's it how big is the audience in general sorry it's the biggest in europe but how big over overall yeah so the sidemen have i think combined 244 million followers across all the different pages um both individually and then collectively on the main channel they're close creeping up to 20 million um it's about 19.2 uh i think 19.2 or 19.3 when we started working with them they had just hit 10 or they were just under 10 so yeah it's nearly doubled in in the last sort of three years or two years really um and then yeah that sort of spreads around the world they have you know in america 200 million views a year you know billions of views every year on youtube um globally in the uk it's the dominant audience around 35 but then it spreads across the world so you go to any place where there's young people and you'll you will they'll know the sidemen right i mean we were recently i was recently in uh in malta and somehow they found out that the sidemen were there and you can see on tiktok the crowds i don't know how they found where everyone was but they found them the boys were like yeah we were in this in this japanese restaurant having dinner and we had like 100 people outside because they just managed to find out where they were and that's in malta it's like you go anywhere in the world it's the same story you know okay so back to business um there's three of you in rk there's seven people in the sidemen how is the business actually structured so business of rk just as a starting point do you do joint ventures into business and products you launch do you take commissions at flat fees like what are you able to share and how the actual relationship works for sure so three co-founders of arcade all split equally and then we are and then yeah so that's our own company completely independently and then obviously the sidemen have their business called sidemen entertainment limited and then we basically come in as the eighth member for every business and thing that we do so that's how we work commission-based i said some call as well that we you know when we went into this journey together um it was all about look let us we will put the work in for you and we will only commission what we deliver with you know we're not here to try and commission your adsense revenue or any money that you're only you're already making we're purely here to try and add value and if we succeed in adding value then we will commission and that obviously goes as their management for everything that we do together um but it's not to say right your channel revenue which you've been building and growing for a long time oh yeah we deserve of that or we should be coming in on that or there's no money that we were expecting and have ever expected from them to do what we do other than to go into this as partners together um which has always been the ethos i think it's worked really well for everyone a nothing gets you working more than having full accountability having your back against the wall um especially at the beginning right when you need to make it work like i had you know me and my wife had our first uh baby at that point i think it was in yeah when was when we moved july it would have in april 21 so she was pregnant with our second who was born in july that year so like you know intense time at home and then you're like right i'm leaving to leaving my very steady c-suite level position at a big talent management company to go and start something but you know i think that is because we knew it would work and nothing gets you working more than having your back against the wall i'm a big believer in that um and i think even today you should always have that feeling of pressure where you're like we need we need to make this work because if we don't make this work your bills don't get paid like that should be the mindset well maybe should for some people that's the right mindset for others obviously that's quite a risky one and again risk reward if you smash it you get a huge reward if you you know but also if it doesn't work out you have a huge risk there too so i think yeah that for me has always made me motivated having the back against rule type of mindset and that's how we sort of structure the business so it's all about being fair um you know delivering value to the guys and not expecting or or you know wanting them to pay for anything other than you know what is fair and what is right rather than being in a position where you're going and expecting to take what they've already already worked very hard for and area there is that we just don't have attitude and other management companies do that you know they try and take adsense they try and commission things from day one and so you haven't bought anything to the table so yeah that's that's our structure it's worked really well um it's very clean um and it helps us to to deliver everything we're doing so what's your pitch it's ultimately like we are going to create new revenue and like we're going to do that through new products new services new channels whatever the thing might be but the point is if we ideate it strategize it execute it and deliver it you guys bring the audience we'll bring everything else we take our commission that's basically the eight of us at the table delivering the goods on new revenue is that essentially it basically yeah new revenue and new so it's not and not everything we do is revenue uh focus yeah right the charity strategy yeah exactly so but it's basically that you know as your management we're here to help you build your brand grow your legacy drive your strategy and to execute on your team like i said you know we we operate as basically you know i would say i'm like the chief creative officer aaron's like the chief commercial officer and then sam is like the chief financial officer of sidemen inc and the sidemen is the board of that business seven chambers if you will seven presidents of that business and we sit as the c-suite um and then you know we hire for them we fire for them we structure their team for them we we invest their money for them on their team structure on their offices we do all of that we run their business effectively as as basically three c-suite level members of their team but the pitch to them was we'll come in and do it all for you um and we will build new opportunities new revenue but also new brands right new content opportunities will help you structure your content team will help you find great people so it's kind of all you know it's an all-encompassing full service management business structured and servicing solely one media company which is really what the side men are and our picture then was yeah it's risk-free for you guys and I think it's a good mindset for people to have where it's like make it so easy when people say how do I get hired make it so easy for somebody to say yes and that's why sometimes you know when you're young right when I was advice it was a thing of I will come and do work experience for you for free to begin with yes that's uncomfortable for a lot of people and not everyone has the opportunity to do that i was fortunate enough to have my parents living in london i could stay with them so that was easy enough to do not everyone has that for sure but you make it so risk-free it's a lot harder for people to go and chase budget to get things signed up if you just go no i'll come in i just want to learn from you you know can we start with a couple of weeks and see how it goes and i'll do everything i can to make it make it a success if you show the right attitude i don't know how i don't know many people who would say no to that um if you fit the right kind of mold or if you just show that you want to fit the mold So yeah, I think that's the same mindset that's been taken into this, make it so easy for them to say yes and then deliver and over deliver as much as possible.

22:53And, you know, I've got three people on my board making decision gets quite easy because 2v1 stuff just falls out. It's very obvious. Seven, what's the game? How do people play it? They play it the same way. So it's 4-3 majority, Supreme Court, the Sidemen. And that's that fills down like their decision making is solid and they need four of them to agree for it to be a yes. right so as long as we get four then we're good to go and that goes for most things that we try and do over everything right it always goes up to the board and the board make that call that goes to the supreme court right so for us again it's super easy it makes everything very clean and clear and you know that structure filters down into me sam and aaron we have our own decision making we always we always get to a conclusion together we never really allow for one of us to not be in agreement as very to be fair it very rarely happens because our attitude is always about what's the right outcome and you know all of us are searching for that rather than our own personal validation or or subjective idea what's right and wrong and we always wrestle it through until we were happy simon's harder with four with seven but they're always pretty much in agreement very rarely is there a massive disagreement and so yeah we we it works really well on both levels both at an executive level and a sort of board level where decision making is quick which is the most again one of the most important things i've found is just having quick decision making and not being overly precious about it just being like right sounds good let's go for it when we when we met I remember you talking to me about the businesses that you guys have started right you've got three businesses and particularly you were specifically talking to me about sides and some of the problems you've had with sides so fried chicken restaurant and you'd had some problems using ghost kitchens and we were talking about that and I do want to touch onto that because I thought it was really interesting wasn't the time and place but this is I want to know what went wrong what the lessons are what you're doing differently but as a consumer brand founder I'm also super interested in xix so let's start there like why did you decide to launch that specific product how much investment did it take to get that product off the ground knowing what i know in the fact that getting any product off the ground is is very expensive you need cash in the bank like how much risk appetite is there to invest in these where does that money come from as well does the money come from what's already in the bank account um at the sidemen entertainment you know talk me through a little bit the logistics of we've seen this market opportunity this is the strategy this is why we're launching it you guys the perfect people to do it let's go sounds great on paper in practice i personally know it's hard so talk to me about that yeah yeah for sure so the story of xx so i'll go back to the same sort of time actually that we started developing sides which would have been summer of 2021 so we got the mandate in the strategy to go off and build these things with the guys we then needed to go and work out how do we launch a vodka brand like we knew how do we launch an alcohol brand we knew that that was one of the priorities alongside building a food brand as well so how do we go and do both of those things we went down the line on both brands obviously trying to do ourselves trying to work out how do we get supplies how do we work out white labeling etc we didn't have really the network in in the space and i think in reality there weren't many partners out there who understood the creator space and who were really there i would have probably come across from a why me like there weren't many uh there were a few but not not many so we were like okay well let's try and work out at least what we need what's the investment going to be etc but they're you know learning on our feet as everyone is to try and make these things happen how many people have to just go and make an alcohol brand who has never done that before it's a very random thing to try and work out so but we did it and as we got down along with a few suppliers the conversation with sides kicked in and that conversation was with a company called hero brands who are based in glasgow who came in a you know we ended up meeting them around a german doner kebab brand deal like randomly that we were looking at with the guys it didn't actually happen because very quickly it was like well well okay you could do branded but actually we've got this whole infrastructure at Hero that we're looking to to sort of start working with creators and working with people like yourselves so that I was like okay cool they get it they're also a massive business I think they had that in that year German or look about was the fastest growing food brand in the country so huge growth tons of stores great success as a business um I think you know they turned over something like 300 million that year with their different brands with the wholesaler united like a big business based in Glasgow so So it was like, okay, cool.

26:56They've got money. They've clearly got the ability to help cash flow these things to help get these things off the ground. They have an operational facility with the United Wholesale. They have access to wholesalers, et cetera. But they've also got this great food business. So we actually looked at doing both brands with them and we did both brands with them. The agreement really being that Hero would be the sort of finances of this business and the operational partner behind it, given their expertise and their network, them being able to take it to the kind of zero to one stage and getting it off the ground and then helping to deliver on operations.

27:27We would obviously do the creative, the marketing, and do the things that we're good at, which is always the ethos. It's like, we are not experts. I have no idea how to run a fried chicken restaurant. Like, I still don't. I have a bit of an idea, but nowhere near as much as Robin, who's our CEO, for example. So that's always the mindset to kind of partner with people who are exceptional rather than try and do it ourselves. But it was a mindset that thankfully kicked in once that became our reality. We were going to go down the line of these ourselves. It would have been a disaster. I know that firsthand.

27:52hand um so with vodka yeah we went down the line with um with hero and then you know it took a while it took longer because that's not actually their area where they really knew you know how to knock it out the park as well aside so they were also learning but we got there in the end and obviously had they brought in a ceo at the time who used to manage used to be the i think he created jim beam in europe so he brought jim beam over to europe um had experience in the traditional alcohol space um and then we worked through the brand together and i think it was harder way harder than it was for sides because both parties were somewhat learning on their feet and as you find out very quickly when you get into alcohol it's an exceptionally expensive business you've got a huge amount of tax thankfully the spirit game is better than the low margin can game and so on which is just very difficult because you've got high amount of duty on every bottle for example i think it's something like eight pounds per bottle or something just straight up you just have to pay in tax you know like huge amount right you've then got bonding like to store the stuff you have to store it in special bonded warehouses that's another huge cost so there's all these costs that you don't realize even things like the regulatory process you know hmrc like managing them going into other territories managing the each of the individual states in america or each of the individual countries you know to deal with that regulation and that detail legal costs huge because you're dealing with you know the most highly regulated industry in the world which is alcohol and obviously for good reason so you're going through all of these hurdles so to do that to navigate that i mean it costs you know millions to get this off the ground like it does that's just the reality low millions we're still in the millions and i think for anybody trying one of these things that's the reality of it too like it's very difficult to get scale without um putting in a good amount of money i think we've probably done it for a bit less but for spirits especially which is why you don't have that many players entering the space that was a reason why we ended up going into it and then you obviously learn okay there's a reason why there's not many people in the space because it's very difficult to succeed especially with a big glass product like a vodka product that we have but i think thankfully now we're in such a good place for the brand i think we're you know we're about to hit um can't say who we're about to hit retail in a really exciting way in october we've got you know we launched our mixed berry product our first sort of canned uh ready to drink experience which we bought out at the charity match for the first time that's going to be hitting retail too we've got um you know mixed berry 70 cl a bigger version coming we've got other whole pipeline of flavors now great retail partners who which i think will make a really big splash and just a brand that is is like primed and ready after a long time you know with a team that wasn't quite right and people around it who weren't didn't quite get it like we've now got to a place where we have real expertise in-house that is just going to deliver and again that's the other big learning is you have to muddle through some of this stuff i'm sure speak to other people it's like okay thankfully it's not just us i think everyone has to muddle through teams that aren't quite right you know leadership that isn't quite there you know decision making that needs to be more in line like you need to just go through some of that hardship together as a team to come out now and be like right we've learned so many lessons how do we make sure that we just go and smash it and you know since we've made some of those changes now it's been it's been night and day and yeah we're really excited about where this brand's going to go i think it is it's all set now um to just kick off in it in a massive way so yeah it's exciting so a bit of a pr disaster that we talked about when we met was the mr beast burger and you know all fun and games when everything was going super well, of course, but, you know, he ended up suing his partner and they've ended up suing him.

31:13And it's just the kind of thing that just sounds like a nightmare. Now, I'm personally a big believer in the idea that a lot of, like a majority of the future entrepreneurs who build great businesses will be creators first because basically entrepreneurs have to create both a product and an audience. So why not, you know, if you've got half the game already sorted because you've got the audience, happy days. Now, of course, the thing that can still happen is the assumption that because you have an audience, you can do absolutely anything and you will pick the right partners and everything will be hunky dory.

31:50I guess that's why I want to talk to you about sides, because you mentioned that sides wasn't initially the slam dunk that you were hoping for and we didn't get into it too much but I want you to share a little bit you know you talked about what's gone so well what hasn't gone well sounds like size hasn't been complete smooth sailing yeah and vulgar definitely hasn't either I don't I think with um you know when you're first mover especially in a space like this and as we have been in the UK especially obviously Jimmy had Beast Burger before us in um in the states but we were the first mover here and you're working with UK partners and everything else you're trying to manage a very different uh you know very different business to anything that people have done before right it's like a scaled creator-led brand in a space like food which is a very difficult space you know it's a risky game and i think our fearlessness and maybe slight naivety around that risk led to some decisions that weren't quite right and one of them which i think we all we all would accept including you know robin who's an amazing friend and now the ceo of both brands incredible like one of the most talented people i've worked with as an entrepreneur he is you know up there right but he you know we all made that we all jumped in to ghost kitchens as everybody did in 2021 because at the time you know the industry was flying just come out of lockdown and you've got access hold on to hundreds of kitchens thousands of kitchens around the world oh and actually if it goes well you could be making hundreds of millions of pounds through the scale that can be achieved through smaller units um with a big network and a partner like in our case reef obviously you've got virtual dining concepts which is the company that jimmy is suing at the minute or going through that process within a minute for beast burger um but you've got the opportunity to go big like that is huge how else can you go big as anyone knows who enters the food space or enters the brick and mortar space property takes time we all know that to fit out to develop to get right in terms of leases solicitors etc it takes a long time for people to get a mortgage on a house it also takes a long time to lease a shop like these things just take time so you can expedite the process massively with ghost kitchens because there's none of the operational you know headache from your side it's all on the partner however the reality of that is you need a partner that is striving for excellent quality because the quality and the reputational damage that can happen to a brand is massive and jimmy had that very quickly actually with vdc where people were just you know slating the food and things weren't great and you know that's because they went so big very quickly and as we found on a smaller level once you do that you very quickly sacrifice quality because a deliver food sucks anyway no one really likes delivered food like yes we get delivering whatever else but you you put up with the stuff that you get with it things a bit cold chips that are soggy whatever it might be but when that's your whole brand that's the whole representation of your product and it's subpar because of a the problems with delivery that are just baked into that whole operation that whole system but b you've got a partner who's incentivized by scale not by the quality of your brand they don't have a stake in your business they are purely incentivized by how big this can get um you end up with a subpar product and a subpar delivery of that but not even a subpar product a subpar delivery of the product because the product is great and the food team we have internally the way the menu was worked out everything about it was amazing but the delivery from our third party was not good so it ended up for us anyway becoming like a real problem um that we had to wrestle with which is like hold on we get to 100 sites and you've got complaints complaints complaints thankfully because the product is so good it didn't kill the brand and actually people a lot of people did get a great experience with sides but still to this day you go oh yeah sides is a bit dead it's a bit dry as always you get it oh i delivered i got it delivered from in newcastle or in manchester and you go okay come to box park come to wembley our brick and mortar site come to gravity onesworth our brick and mortar site and see how it should be done and when you look at those sites the performance of those sites but also the response it's night and day people come back they flock to it they love it and that's the best thing we ever did was launch wembley box park the best thing we ever did because we did it thankfully actually through reef who are our partner on the ghost kitchens we did it at the perfect time because it gave us a gold standard where we could say right we've had all these problems historically with the ghost kitchens it hasn't been up to scratch but then you got wembley and so you can kind of go well okay the ghost kitchens yes all right you might have a few but chicken might be cold or might not be up to up to standard but in wembley you get the gold star that's where it's like the best it's going to be so it helped us to put up with the challenges that we were being offered by our partner over time as that gets you know better and better in the brick and mortar side we very quickly realized right we need to pivot and we've moved now to a stage where we're going to be shutting all of our ghost kitchens and just having physical locations what like it's an interesting one right because it i i totally get it the hype and excitement creates this desire to open these ghost kitchens all over the uk service everyone at the time reflecting back on that do you think that was greed naivety like excitement like hype some of all of the above do you know what i mean as in like what is the lesson here because our business school or common sense or whatever like reflecting back you'd probably be like oh you know obviously the play was you launch one and you you just smash one everyone that's going to work on this brand comes into the flagship store and learns this is this is how we do stuff like hum see the gold standard and yeah it all sounds good in hindsight right but um you can totally sympathize and understand why you'd be like ah it's fried chicken how hard can it be let's just fucking go for it we've got the brand so we've got the audience we know the demand is going to be there what's the problem so i guess i'm i'm looking for yeah how do you reflect on it i reflect on it in a number of ways i think the biggest thing is that we our main focus is how do we service as much of the audience as we can right how do we get the product to as many people as possible?

37:28Chain goes for vodka, which is harder. For the digital products, it's easy because there's no barriers. But I think it's a real, you know, we have a real desire to try and get it to as much of the fan base as possible. We don't want to have everything in London. We want to make sure things are nicely dispersed and that people can get the product because the demand was crazy as it was on the first day. People love the Sidemen. They also love fried chicken. And when we deliver a great fried chicken product, which we have, people love it. And the response is amazing. I think the reason why we did it was because it seemed like the quickest way to scale.

37:58Not so much financially, as anyone knows who's in food, you're not going to make that much money in food. Food is not a valuable business unless you hit scale. So yes, of course, with scale and time and the IP and with really baking it in, then yes, there's value there. But it's a long game. It's not a cash cow. No one has made a penny from sites. None of the Cybermen, none of us. No one's made a penny. What has gone into the business, yes, but yes. and obviously we hope one day of course that it that gets realized but the main thing is how do we provide as much value to fans in as many places as possible and it's a gift and a curse of having a big audience because you go right we don't want to leave people out of manchester we don't want to leave people out of newcastle we want to get to them quickly property it might take two years to get there especially because you need to get franchise partners on board get those agreements in place develop that and move that move move that as quick as you can it's still time so how do we get there as quickly as possible and with reef we sort of thought actually they might be a partner that could do that and keep quality because you know they again in hindsight is it possible for anyone to do that probably not but you know they kind of they had done well with the first nine kitchens they were in a decent shape like solid um i'd say probably about 4.45 out of five and they were really relatively consistent and we were able to get to nine on day one so for us again in this new exciting model you go wow we can scale it but then the minute you start really brought in that out the minute it fails and i think that was the that was the challenge also you know our partner we worked together on the idea and they were like no i think this is a good thing to do we kind of agreed and we went down the line together we share that responsibility thankfully though what it did was it did get the brand out there and for enough people they had a great experience and they still love sites they were just a portion of people who still you know you look back at some of those complaints in those comments you're like like if only we kept that more contained then you'd have no one having a bad experience because if you go to wembley box part it's 100 positive pretty much like everyone loves it and i think that now going into our pivot which is you know 10 stores by the end of the year over 200 over the next 10 years 100 over the next five with our master franchise partner quiz um you know we're going into shopping centers across the country it's gonna be amazing like and i know for a fact that with the quality control that we're able to put in and that we even did put it into the ghost kitchens the ones that we shut the ones that weren't great will absolutely knock out the park invisible and i think people will love it so i'm really excited again like xx they've both turned an amazing corner they've had their periods of struggle challenge trying to find their feet and they've now found their feet they're probably like you know they're two years old right they're toddlers and we're off for another sort of leg on both of those businesses which is really exciting yeah i mean it makes sense to me i guess like what i want to know so you've got these seven creators you've got three of you you've got lots of opinions and presumably lots more people in these businesses like none of you guys are like operationally doing these businesses because if you are I definitely did something wrong I think I read somewhere or I watched you somewhere can't quite remember talk about like the importance of being dispensable and I really liked that thought process and I wanted to dig into that like you know the Jordan School of Management right which is a lot of people say make yourself indispensable to businesses and certainly the start of this interview you know talking a lot about YMU and Vice and all that stuff it sounds like you were an indispensable member of the team but as a leader it sounds like you're taking a different approach which is to be dispensable so I want you to talk about that a little bit.

41:22Sure yeah so my big thing that I've especially over the last year or so been really thinking about is yeah how important it is and I think I maybe knew this earlier on but it's something that's really come home now it's just how important it is to make yourself dispensable as you're saying and to to make it to replace yourself in every area because that's the only way that you can do more and i'm really focused on the next thing the next thing in a way that can sometimes be too much but i love building and starting things and then finding great people to run those things and then going on to the next thing so setting things up getting great executives involved or great partners involved and then going on to something else because i think i just enjoy that i love the conceptualization process like getting things off the ground and then overseeing but not being stuck in the weeds and I think the best way to do that is by having the mindset of you know you know you don't need to be important you don't need to be the guy you can pull yourself out and have a much much better time by bringing better people than you into the process at every stage and I think that's something which we found has worked so well you know having someone like a victor in to be RMD.

42:26He's incredible. And he has replaced us all in one capacity, but in another, we're freed up to look up. And my thing is always need people who look down, people who look up and having the two is what makes a great business. My thing is always looking up. I like to look at the next thing, look at the bigger picture, look at the vision. You cannot do that if you're doing the work. And it was actually something that Neil, who was the former CEO of WMU actually said to me, so he was brilliant. And he gave me a lot of trust at such a young age, but he said to me, yeah, like if you're, if you're doing the work, you're not doing, you're not doing it right.

42:52like why are you making the decks and it was like why are you making the deck and i was like yeah because i was learning how to adapt to a central position in that company as well coming out of a division and then being in a leadership central spot it's hard because you have no anchor you're on your own from when you're kind of in a very clear set sort of frame and section of the company and now as a leader and as a founder co-founder it's the same thing it's like i understand what he meant you why are you doing the decks you should not be doing the decks you should not be doing the work you should be pulling yourself out bringing great people in to come under you you who can then deliver you can oversee otherwise there's no way you can sustain anything long term and certainly no way that you can do any more than you're doing right now I think you know I think it's super interesting just because it's one of those more challenging things you get often people I think get addicted to this idea of being needed and wanted and you personally can feel your ego enjoying those moments whether or not they're the right thing for you to be doing or not it's the idea that people think that you're needed for it and that can really trick your brain into thinking that what you're doing is actually valuable in the business so I think that humble approach not only good leadership practice but I think especially working around big personalities that will be in the limelight and famous for so long is super super useful as well it's almost like you know the humility mindset right getting the mindset right from the beginning is so important is that something that you feel like you've learned from the side men or is that something that you naturally feel like you you bring to them almost to demonstrate i think you know all of them have obviously everyone has their moments right they have their moments we have our moments but i think they as uh let's say talent goes they couldn't be better in terms of their mindset approach and their desire to find the right outcomes rather than just a personal opinion they're not they're not overly opinionated in an egotistical way which is refreshing because a lot of people are especially when you have a huge audience and you know you have money and you have success it's very easy to get carried away thinking you're a genius when in reality who is like my big thing is you know there are no geniuses maybe i'm wrong but i just think no one's special no one's that important success often comes from a number of factors outside of our control within our control to ascribe to ourselves any special gift or you know any genius or brilliance that uh you know as the reason for success for me i just think that's completely wrong and yes we always of course have an impact on things but you see the difference between people who really bring that and put that on themselves and those that put that to the other factors outside of their control which often are the reason for success paired with maybe mindset attitude and so on and I think for for me yes I think it's just a personal perspective on life that you know I really don't believe any of us are special and incredible and need to be put on a pedestal and I believe that about myself more than anyone right you know that I am really not special I'm really nothing nothing in any way other than hopefully coming every day with that mindset that you know I'm here there are many more brilliant people around um around me that deserve to have the opportunity and should have the opportunity to lead to make things happen and if I can bring those people together and give those people a platform then great and that for me is is more important than anything I think is having that mindset and then you can reduce yourself so that others can come up um and it makes working with talent so so to speak or creators a lot easier because you know who you serve you're not trying to be the guy you're doing everything for the bigger purpose like everything that i'm doing whether it's my podcast i'm box or whether it's you know um my personal brand on linkedin everything is to serve our our shared vision of building arcade and the sidemen into the both the business thought leaders and the you know the content and creator thought leaders on both sides of the spectrum it's all to serve that bigger purpose it's not about me i i have no intention of being famous i have no intention of growing anything for the sake of me, but for the sake of the bigger mission, I think it keeps everything in check with that mindset.

46:43Okay. Look, from a business perspective, if I'm looking at content creation as part of a business strategy, what key moves can creators actually make early on to set themselves up in the right way and avoid issues down the line? Like what advice do you have for people like that? People like me? Yeah, I would say have a clear purpose and a reason to exist and a value proposition that is distinct to what you truly are doing so i think one thing that i've been thinking about a lot and a lot i've been really enjoying all my personal brand stuff trying to evolve and do more stuff and launch like a newsletter and obviously i'll unbox everything else is like how do you find something and i'm in the process of doing this right now but i think it's really important like how do you find a positioning and a value proposition that people actually want from you like rather than thinking oh i want to talk about this or i'm really interested in this it's like yeah but what do people want from you and what you've done and what are the credibility points around you and your business and everything that you've achieved and you're achieving that others can take and others can can learn from and get value from because i think as a creator it's finding your thing and yes it might be your passion but actually i think it's how do you and your skill set and everything you've done create how does that pump out the positioning rather than you know being in a position where as as i think is for a lot of people um you know they think well i want to be this person or i want to i want to talk about this i want to be an expert in pick a field and actually are you though is that really what people want from you so i think having that clarity is super important and being i think you know humble enough and willing enough to accept what people want from you and serve the people give the people what they want rather than thinking well everyone wants this from me i think it's a really interesting and important thing and i think not many people from my experience have do that effectively and especially in the business space in the linkedin space i'm probably guilty of it too i'm definitely by no means like you know i i remember doing the thing i was like yeah this is this is what people want from me like i want to talk about this thing i want to give this thing out there and in reality it's like yeah but my credibility points don't actually match that i have not achieved like one thing i'm big on now is like i never want to seem like i'm talking about entrepreneurship as if i am the success we've not sold a business we've not done anything meaningful in entrepreneurship yet because the success is the out is the end result right it's the what you've done is you've sold multiple businesses you've done you've had incredible run you're building something else now there are people out there who are five four or five times founders of companies and they've exited and they've done amazing things okay great somebody like a i mean pick a person alex homozy or whoever oh you've sold a business for 100 million or you've done this okay great there's a credibility point there therefore you can talk to an expert but it's having the humility for me for me for example to be like right well we've not done anything yet we're on the journey so i'm sharing the journey of what i'm doing but i never want to seem like i'm the expert in business because i'm absolutely not and i would never claim to me so i think that's the bit for all of us is just having that real humility that realistic positioning piece where we go right who really are we and what do people want from me rather than trying to you know assume that people want something that they don't if that makes sense totally and how is what i'm saying not cringe right is i gotta go to sleep at night getting comfortable in my own skin feeling like I haven't lied about who I am or lying to everyone all day long you see so much of it on LinkedIn and Twitter so I think that's great right I think that's great that you have that like self-checkpoint let's talk about something that you do have far more credibility than me and right why you know why we're becoming friends I'm assuming like a lot of things right we're new pals uh there's a value exchange I can help you along the way with entrepreneurship you can help me along the way with understanding the world of creator ship uh don't know what we're calling that just being a creator but you know these are skills that we're both picking up from like a lot of things osmosis the people we spend time with right like that is the best way for so many people to learn so uh what is advice that you have for both young creators and ones in their 30s like me who are just starting out and are looking at content creation as an actual career in its own right yeah that's ridiculous i think for me my advice would always be make it sustainable like make it sustainable like not enough people make content sustainable I think we've all probably had experiences of you know overextending trying to spend too much money if you have the money to spend you know trying to be too ambitious and actually burning ourselves out you know if we're full-time creators or if one is a full-time creator making it so that you're you know you're you can live and that you're not struggling and you're not relying on brand deals all the time like find a way to make it sustainable and I think a lot of us neglect and a lot of people in the space managers etc neglect the you know the hard cost of making content both in terms of time and in terms of money um that i think people need to be a lot more realistic about um because it's hard if you want to go the distance you want to make something work long term you're going to really need to make it sustainable and you're going to need to make it able to go the distance and that's a business plan that's a right if i'm if i've got edit if you're doing it with yourself maybe slightly different but then there's a massive time costs so how are you doing that alongside your other business but let's say you want you're getting editors involved you're getting like crew i'm not crew necessarily but that's you're getting cameras you're getting sets whatever it might be there's a real need to make sure that that works for you obviously a lot of creators and the heart of youtube especially is about self-making content yeah that's very good for this great for people who have the time but for a lot of people they don't have the time if you're older you have kids when you're making content like that's a difficult game so then you're really gonna need to invest in it okay well how much and how can you make it go the distance and an extra 50 pounds a week really does add up an extra 100 pounds a week really does add up so it's finding a very sustainable model that's the bit i think a lot of people fall down on that goes for people it goes for publishers a lot of publishers lab bible i remember obviously being in that business um during the sort of peak facebook years and just the the kind of peak instagram years really and great business a lot of fun but their big struggle the bit that we kind of messed up was like the sustainability of of longer form content vice killed that business right documentaries are expensive making high production value is expensive and they have learned that lesson as a lot of other companies did Quibi great example as well they overextended that my family remembers that they overextended the amount they spent on short form high production value content and it's killed it whereas if you go to someone like TikTok why TikTok is so accessible and so loved right is because it's so easy to make it's so easy to produce and therefore it's sustainable for anybody to make a vlog a day if they wanted to so i would start on the most sustainable i would i think youtube is really difficult unless you have a lot of time um or you have a format that you can produce and shoot and make but again it's hard it's a hard game so you have to have time but measure up the opportunity cost and the sustainability of what you're doing and then once you've nailed that from a financial perspective and a time perspective then you can go for it it's great advice and definitely something that i personally resonate with because most of my time doing secret leaders or anything else in between is all managed around my priorities number one being a dad and number two running heights and so everything else gets filled in around that and it's super important I think as well with the sustainability side is to understand your priorities like manage your priorities don't kid yourself about your priorities and don't make everything a priority if everything's a priority nothing's a priority so I think there's also just times when you've got to say you know what these people are doing a much better job than me why they've made it their priority and that's okay like if you're not getting the results that you want out of this game because it's your third priority but you're getting somewhere with it and you're learning somewhat slowly that's also kind of a win that's certainly how I'm viewing it I'm like almost narrating to myself here but uh you know it's my third priority but I'm not doing nothing I'm just not doing it as as well as I could do but you said this to me when we talked and I completely agree it's like if it's you know if you've got full-time you're never going to compete with a full-time creator who's dedicating their whole life to making podcasts or making content like it's just never going to happen but i think the fun of the game is can you make something successful make something work while it being your third priority like can it still do well but you're making it you're not investing all your money into it you're not investing your time into it but you found a template a rhythm a structure and a concept that still can work because that's like it tends to be more impressive it's way more impressive if you can make something work while having other priorities it's a side hustle it's like when you see people's side hustles and because everyone's got a side hustle right on linkedin and twitter and whatnot it's really jarring but it's like let's say you have someone who's got it's like making a crazy amount of money and it's super successful or a little newsletter is blown up into a thing and that becomes their full-time project it's like that's those are things you go yeah that's really cool you've found a thing that resonates um so i think that's also key is yeah it's knowing being comfortable with the fact that it's not your priority and that's fine but it's how can you make it work in a sustainable way to go the distance because the bit that really marks those who succeed and those who don't is pumping out quality of course but doing it consistently for a long period of time all right final question jordan if we look at the sidemen as a complete package right seven influential creators all behind this one big brand now with multiple income streams how does that look if the group splits up they fall out or you know maybe they just decide they've had enough of youtube right like you know you just want to go and be a dad and chill out and like fucking sip martinis on the beach somewhere you know does the brand still exist or continue if one leaves i'm presuming that these are conversations that have had that have happened and that there are structures in place i'm just curious what does happen if they all just decide to stop making content yeah i mean i think the sidemen is is the seven of them it's not you know there's always suggestions oh would you have a sidemen v2 with the younger generation etc i don't think they would want that i think the sidemen is definitely the seven of them as friends um and the friendship is what unites them is what keeps them going it's the enjoyment of making content together which is the reason why they do what they do and they wouldn't do it if they didn't enjoy it i think our job is to make it fun for them by taking away all of the extra stuff that is boring and difficult and time consuming but also building out these brands and these are the legacy pieces that can hopefully outlive them i think because also again if you take a bob dylan bob dylan comparison or you know whoever led zeppelin whatever it might be you take a legacy band comparison and you say right like that's the kind of stature they have within this space relatively to the time frame they were the first big movers so they carry with them that way these brands won't die like the the power of the sidemen what the sidemen represent to so many people is is almost infinite in the same way that bob dunn's music is is timeless and i think it will have the same impact the videos will be timeless you look at the europe holiday holiday video that just recently got to 100 million views that's that's still going it's still growing and going strong um and there'll be more like that and for what for this whole generation who grew up with this it's a again a different level of connection a different level of of depth and that i think is is really powerful and yeah it means that even if the sidemen ended tomorrow they've still got a their incredible archive and library of content which will carry on but they've also got all of these brands and these touch points for fans which i believe would probably do do amazingly well too because they become remnants of of what the cybermen once was which sounds weird to say because obviously that you know they have no plans to start off anytime soon yeah and something tells me that jordan and arcade will be going strong either way find a way to hustle through dude been a massive pleasure having you on secret leaders thank you so much for sharing your time and your story amazing man thank you so much for having me if you enjoyed this episode and found it useful, please write us a review and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast.

58:02It makes a real difference and we genuinely love reading what you think. We read every single review. I've been your host, Dan Murray-Surter, and we'll be back next week with more lessons for entrepreneurs and leaders. This episode was produced by Alex Graham, Ruth Edwards, and all brought together by our head of podcast, Will Stollerman. See you next time.