Why creators risk losing their audience - Dom Smales

0:00So you've said that we're on the cusp of huge change in the creator space. Can you give us a bit of flavor as to what that change is going to be and how that's going to pan out? Yeah. So the reason I think that we are on the cusp of huge change in the creator economy that influence a space is because it's been going a while now in its whole evolution. I don't know, 12, 15 years or so. And it's got to a really large scale. and there are so many players in the market and there's so much money still flooding in and there's so little education and knowledge relative to the size of the market, I think it's due a bit of a jump in evolution in terms of its sophistication and how audiences are reached and entertained.

0:52And I think that word entertained is the key to all of this because that's why the creator economy grew to this point is because there was a generation of audiences that were over legacy entertainment and legacy entertainment channels and wanted something different, something they related to better, something that entertained them in their language on their platforms. And, you know, Digital First Talent was born around 2010-ish. but since then the word entertainment has been less and less important in the growth of the value of that economy so it's been more about selling rather than entertaining and i think that's uh once you start putting sales in to an entertainment medium too prevalently then it dilutes the entertainment and people lose interest and i think that's what we're seeing in the influencer space now people losing and audiences losing interest in what people are entertaining them with as a whole like broadly um so i think things have got to change if we're to you know continue this growth so you say that the influencer space in general is dying so what is going to replace it with what's in the rebuff i don't think the influencer space is dying i think that The analyst reports I read about huge growth in the marketplace over the next five years are probably accurate.

2:24I would imagine that playing out. But I think it's definitely got boring. And I think what is dying is like groups of people's engagement with influencers as a whole. so where we had i don't know um really simple algorithm where we had a thousand people who are 50 engaged with 10 000 creators we've now got a hundred million creators and we've got uh 500 million people who are engaged two percent kind of thing so that's the so the money's flooding in but it's being divided across many many more people so it's being dilute everything's being diluted as a whole basically and so what do we think that knock-on effect is like you know is that big creators and influencers who've previously been super engaged are now getting less engagement that they have to they have to transform who they are and what they do to to continue to be successful um yeah i think that the amount that so it's kind of like uh They're consolidating to the top.

3:35So you have these huge creators. You're Mr. Beast becoming incredibly successful and doing a brilliant job at entertaining. And see how Mr. Beast entertains people now as well as selling to them. But he's investing a lot of money into his production and entertainment. And it's paying back. And the Sidemen and the success that they have, they're like, without doubt, the most important thing in TV without being in TV. they're driving views that tv would dream of driving uh on their youtube channel uh and that's indicative of kind of like the type of talent that they are and their management and all of that kind of stuff um but i think it's harder than ever to be able to reach that those levels um not only because of the competition but because of the that people are kind of it's harder to get an audience engaged over it a bit do you know what I mean it's funny the power of like tv versus creators like I had over a billion views of my content in the last year which for like a business creator is ahead of a lot of views but when I looked at like tv channels like sky news and stuff like they struggle to get views like that over a period of time and so there is a bit of a shift where it does make a feel traditional media a bit obsolete a lot of the time yeah i mean traditional media also kind of like there's so many elements of traditional media that are far better than yeah digital first media the new media uh and i think we've got to start blending those two things so all of your billions of views for example how how if i were managing you then the next stage is how do we get real robust amazing production behind you reach audiences on platforms that are really trusted because what you're talking about is actually valid you've got experience you know what you're talking about but for every one of you there's a hundred people in the same sort of space without that kind of credibility yeah yeah what do you think is the harsh reality that most creator companies um and creators in general are not ready for over the next 18 months like what's going to hit them in the face and take them by surprise um good question it's a great question yeah i think the the thing that's going to hit creators in the face in terms of something they weren't prepped for is accountability for what they're saying and doing and producing and i think that as we've seen with very large creators over the last few months even a few months and years there are crisis points that come because of lack of compliance robust production experience all of those kind of things and i think that that needs to be added into if you're talking to audiences at a macro scale or even a micro scale really i think that we shouldn't be tolerant of people talking rubbish basically or doing unsafe things for people totally i love this i love you know i'm big into for example freedom of speech and i think that's great however i think own your words say what you like absolutely own your views they don't have to be the same as my views i can disagree with your views but then own them back them or back down from them and say i was wrong but at the end of the day if they leave your mouth you have a responsibility to say that wasn't my opinion at the time.

7:06I either stand by it or I've changed my mind. But one way or another, you are the owner of those words. And what I hate is people kind of weaseling out of that stuff. It's like, you know, I think in general, in the public discourse, people have less interest and tolerance as well. It's interesting for creators that don't have strong opinions, you know, that are like hiding behind things. You know, you see it in the elections, people get really wound up that, you know, Taylor Swift isn't having a political opinion. There's loads of value to her not having an opinion and just being like, I'm a musical artist.

7:35I'm just going to stay in my lane. And there's also lots of value in her being values led and saying, this is what I stand for. And whatever she does, she can't get it right. And that will be the case for all creators, right? There'll always be people on both sides of that debate. But if you are going to go and say something, at least do it from a values place and own your words and say, I stand behind this. Yeah, I 100 % agree. And I think what social media has done for a generation now is provide a mouthpiece to people that will say anything in order to elicit a reaction, be that a subscription or a follow or a like or a few quid.

8:09They'll say and do anything. And I think a generation are treating those people the same way they would treat a newscaster on BBC One, for example, which is a bit of a worry. um so you started gleam 2010 before influencer was a word um can you tell us what gleam was and what it did um but also how did you convince mainstream brands to pay you know before influencer was a thing pay youtubers in their bedrooms like how did you get them to do that um so So I started, it was called Gleam Digital initially because I left the job and I had a health crisis and I had a kind of like general life crisis and wanted to focus on something that I was truly interested and passionate about.

9:00and also ironically I wanted to spend more time in control of my diary and you know not kind of answering to anyone else and all of that kind of thing but it it tends to if something becomes successful you end up losing control of your diary and being answerable to lots of people and influences but and I started gleam it was consulting on social media so social media was beginning Facebook was getting very popular Google had bought YouTube a couple of years previously Twitter was popular Instagram it was around but it didn't really exist in people's conscious people were taking photos of coffees and filtering them yeah yeah basically and I was fascinated by it I was fascinated because I was working in a production company at the time so I was interested in audiences and entertainment and reaching people and and i saw um people entertaining audiences on youtube or educating audiences on youtube and getting an enormous amount of engagement connection feedback from the audiences um so gleam i started gleam at that point uh to help brands and creators connect for mutual benefit is how I coined it because I had experience in marketing and media and I knew the value of a pair of eyeballs on content or a brand and I I saw there was value in what was happening on on YouTube basically um I then consulted with some beauty brands initially my first client was Chanel which was well fortuitous yeah and And because that opens doors, not only kind of like as a calling card for other brands, but also with the community of bloggers, as they were known at the time, because everybody would love some free Chanel.

10:56And started building a business from there on in to connect these brands and online communities for mutual benefit. um during that time the first kind of six months i met two girls who were creating makeup tutorial videos on youtube as professional makeup they were really talented professional makeup artists uh i'd given them some free chanel transfer tattoos right i saw them creating content yeah but we met up and had a chat and just got on uh they were they inspired me uh i could tell them about the value of what they were creating. And without any management experience whatsoever, by the way, I'd never been a manager or an agent.

11:38There were agents and managers at the production company I was running by this time. We agreed that I would be their manager and started managing Sam and Nick Chapman, who had a channel called Pixie Woo. And this Pixie Woo channel on YouTube became the first consumer channel, as it were, in the UK to breach a million subscribers on YouTube. and there was a bit of a race at the beginning between Panacea81, Lauren Luke, who was doing makeup tutorial videos as well, and Sam and Nick with Pixie Woo and Pixie Woo went over the line first. So that's how the management business is going. We were the first channel to get a million subs in the UK.

12:19Yeah, yeah, huge. And they're still, both of them are still like creators now creating content, like working with top brands, making amazing things happen. That's incredible. What was the, like, can you give us a flavor of some of the names that you worked with at that time? Are they big names now? Yeah. See, this is the other thing about being a creator. It's a, in every case, if I think back, I can't think of a creator that's now, oh, I went into floristry or went into, they're all still creating. It's the thing that is in their blood. And that's why they were so successful, I think. So Sam and Nick Chapman were Pixie Woo.

12:58I worked with Ruth Crilly, who was at the time a model recommends. She's just published a bestselling book. I worked with Tanya Burr, Jim Chapman, Alfie Days, Zoe Sugg, Louise Pentland. I mean, there was a whole group, basically. And at the time, they all started at around the same time. The beauty and fashion side of things kind of grew simultaneously as the entertainment and lifestyle side of things, which was Zoe and Tanya and Louise and that gang. And then Sam and Nick and Ruth and makeup specialists grew as well. But on the entertainment side of things, we put them together and called them, they got this name as the Brit Crew.

13:55And so they went over the Atlantic as well. And it was a really big thing. It was at the time that One Direction was just exploding as well. And they shared audiences. And it all kind of like, you know, rolled up basically. Amazing. And is that, sorry, I'm so off script. Is that, was that your, were, because you obviously had them all as talent for your business, but they didn't necessarily know each other. Did you put them together? No. Not in the same way that Simon Cowell might put One Direction together, etc. And this is the organic thing about the way things grew in those days, is that they all were like-minded and a couple were friends in the space.

14:37And they recommended, I was the only manager in the space, and they recommended me to their friends. And we kind of like grew a little community together, basically. What did the deal look like? as in you take 15 20 20 20 20 like flat and that's just it or there's extra upside on other things if they hit certain targets there was nothing really very sophisticated about it all the way through in fact is that the man i as a manager and then gleam later on as a management company would partner with them to protect their rights protect their interests grow their career for 20 % of the upside, what they grew basically.

15:15And then when it came to individual companies, launching products, brands, et cetera, we would do those negotiations on a case-by-case basis depending on value offered, strategy envisioned, all of that kind of stuff. There's no hard and fast kind of like this is how it works. And there was a real relationship there. That's the thing. I cared about these people. everybody in the business cared about these people and these people cared about the business sounds like you were because i i do spend a lot of time in this space nowadays and it sounds like you were very strategic on behalf of your talent whereas i feel like a lot of talent management now is like we've got you a deal we'll take 20 it's just a deal do the deal you know whereas i feel like what you're describing is more like how do i make this person more credible how do i make this person go across the Atlantic?

16:06How do I make them grow faster, et cetera? Which feels like real management, you know? Yeah. And it was. Um, and that is one of the problems with the creator economy at the moment is it's become so commoditized that managers are almost just like, I don't know, algorithms, apps, like inboxes or whatever, not all managers, but when Gleam started, we were right from the very beginning. Again, we didn't have anything to compare to. So there was no kind of like set playbook but the idea right from the outset was how do we build diversity in terms of the income and ip for these people who are going to grow stratospherically in you know popular culture basically you discover zoella who is like the biggest influencer in the space pretty much um and her first book deal you negotiated five million so does that mean you pocketed one million from that as well when everyone was really happy with it or how does it work i've never heard that number before in my life by million yeah for her first book yeah oh we've never heard that well i'm telling you that's what happened uh no tell us tell us what happened so um girl online was zoe's first book uh and i think you might have to check me on these dates because i'm getting old and senile but it was around um november 2014 in october 2014 Alphie Zoe's partner released a book called The Pointless Book it was about literally a month apart I think they were so actually Alphie's book was the first influencer publishing deal in Europe for sure just in the world slightly preceded by Grace Helbeck I think in the States who brought a book out in October of 2014 as well they were the very first books in the influencer space we went on from Alphie's book all the way up to the point that I exited, we had at one point 16 consecutive Sunday Times number one bestsellers, one after the other.

18:12It was unreal. It completely reshaped the publishing industry at the time. And then it went on a complete journey. And it's still a really valid income stream for talent publishing. But Zoe's first book changed the game because it was so successful, it made front page national newspaper headlines. Wow. And that really put creators, influencers, whatever you want to call them, on main agenda for news outlets, publishing companies, brands, etc. Because there's Zoe on the front page of the Telegraph having just released the fastest selling debut novel in history globally. That's wild. It took about brand positioning.

19:00Yeah. And so a lot of attention then flooded into the space and Zoe and all the other talent. How did you help her manage that? So actually, you know, on the human side, you go from being a creator. It's an exciting space. It's growing. And now I'm famous, really famous with these incredible, incredible things that people would want to have in their career, like faster selling, bestseller of all types like that. That's just unbelievable. Yeah. But the pressures that come with that and not often is everyone ready for that kind of thing. So how do you as a manager and how do her manage the change in lifestyle and attention in moments like that?

19:38Carefully and difficultly. There's no, again, there's no playbook for these kind of things. And it's based on a human reaction experience and relationship with Zoe at the time. So one of the biggest challenges, I think, is that here's a group of young people who haven't set out to be entertainers, famous, stopped in the street, have a lot of attention on them. And that's a big difference between creators on social media and someone that has an aspiration to present on BBC One. You know, they haven't gone through stage school. They haven't, you know, I want to be a TV presenter. Not at all. They just more often than not, they're the people that have been marginalized up to that point and have found solace in creating content in their own bedrooms in their particular niche interests and so on.

20:30So they're the most ill prepared people possible for that kind of attention. So it's a big factor when dealing with things like the fastest selling debut novel in history on the front page of newspapers. and it's about I don't know just protection I guess I spent a lot of my early career trying to protect talent from the pitfalls that were ahead of them and it's sometimes you make the right call sometimes you make the wrong call but I always try to make it in with their best interests at heart like genuinely well suppose I get something like a billion views a year my channels are growing i'm fourth most viewed person on linkedin in the world wow which is pretty mad um and amazing and linkedin baffles me as well so yeah and you know linkedin's probably one of the most successful social channels there is that the audience is so affluent the audience is so business focused it's crazy and if you get to that level you can kind of push anything you want which obviously you don't want to if you're credible anyway i was approached by loads of management companies um due to due to that and other channels and i just felt like they were just shilling instagram posts and uh linkedin posts rather than being like strategically how do we think about like moving you up the chain of credibility and how do we think about releasing a book that has some sort of your philosophy or thesis to it rather than just being like i've got you seven thousand pounds for an instagram post to promote this drink and you're like yeah i don't care about the drink do it yeah yeah so like where's the do you think that management has has got worse because of the proliferation of it or what's your what's your take can i ask can i ask an addendum to that question how would you manage chris based on everything you've just heard uh management is a really big question about the future of creator economy and what influences its success or failure at the moment or you as a creator and i think that it's one of the fact the biggest factors on the whole creator economy at the moment because there's such a broad spectrum between the worst and the best um back in my day uh there were only a couple of them about kind of thing there were very few of us and it was a hundred percent people that were so passionate about the space and the talent there was no money in it so there wasn't that kind of like uh i don't know pollutant into people's uh um intentions uh so genuinely they're all good managers i still know they're all managing at the moment i still know them all and they've gone on to do amazing things get on to the part we slag people off please but um there is now an opportunity to you to be managed by an ai all the way up for you to be managed by the very best manager in the business one-on-one and he only has five people on his roster his or her roster and i think it's that kind of like spectrum that people will for you get the wrong talent with the wrong level of that spectrum which will derail their career or suppress it when it didn't deserve to be suppressed uh in the short term basically it's a pitfall And I think also there's lots of bad reputations made from bad or insufficient management, which are undeserved as well.

24:01If I were to be managing you, and this is the key to all management, and I'd like to point out as well, that there are some excellent managers out there in the space now. And they come from experience, great intentions, like wanting to build talent as their primary objective. there's less and less of those as part of the the whole uh management community as a percentage but they're still there um if i was managing you then it would it all be about looking at your one three five ten year strategy basically so we have to work out what it is that where it is that you want to get to career wise what channels you can use where your strengths are what you know about what you can deliver real authenticity about um and then how do we amplify that basically so you've got great platforms on linkedin instagram you deliver you know far-reaching high-viewed content how do we take that to the next level i think that would be really interesting in terms of broadcast so how do we introduce more people to your brand of experience and advice which is valuable then how do we also look at the kind of um smaller more niche more engaged audiences that you can deliver really high value content to and i know you're doing this to a certain extent but what does the publishing career look like what does you know how do we get you on a speaking circuit that delivers incredible value per minute for you and for the people that are listening to you.

25:37And then... So hyped up. And then there are a multitude of other things as well. There's like a huge, huge spectrum of tools now to earn a living and if you've got something worthwhile to say, which you have. Absolutely. The awkward part here is that I take a 20 % cut on introductions. Dom, what is your perspective on AI managers then? You've mentioned them a couple of times. So what's your view on them? I think there's a place in the marketplace in the market for them because I think there's such an enormous number of creators to starting out and some of them will go on to be brilliant creators as well then why not resource them as much as we can to start with and make sure that they get income to not have to give up and go back to their day job because there's that tipping point where you have if you're going to do anything worthwhile you're going to be dedicating you know 24 7 of your time to it.

26:32I think there's lots of things that an AI manager can't do and there are some things that an AI manager can do. I think the risks are that we're going to have some, there can be some terrible decisions made and awful contracts agreed on and all of those kind of things, but it'll be a means to an end as well. So I think they have their place. Did you see, obviously used to manage her um we're both you know investor in taller no okay so sorry different um obviously we both know her you used to manage her i'm an investor in her company did you see on in taller sorry did you see grace beverly's new business the ai manager yes i did what do you think about that one in relation to other ones you've seen or what is their like sort of unique selling point about that versus others?

27:22So I can't talk really knowledgeably about it because I haven't explored the platform or been, you know, I haven't explored the platform. Plus that is the only AI manager that I know of. Right, okay. Yeah. And so all of my comments are based on hearing that, watching Grosser's podcast, launching it, hearing the rest of the marketplace talk about it and giving me their opinions on it. And I've kind of taken, I've taken on board all of that to form my own opinion of it, which is it's got a place in the market. There's lots of things it won't be able to do. There's lots of things that it's going to help with as well.

27:56Yeah, I mean, it's going to sit at the, like, beginner through to, you know, early stage creators. It will give them tools and data, and it will be very useful. But it almost is like the antithesis of the commoditization of it. You know, like, there is no strategy to it. Yeah. which is fine you know for that level uh and so i think i think it's a very good idea personally i do too and i think back to your earlier point which is you know um don't do influencer stuff and create a stuff if you're in it to make money try and find something that you're passionate about etc but all of these people are looking to make some money and and source some deals and they don't have the awareness so doing the ai side of it bringing uh you know brand deals to a platform enabling you to basically select what you want to do and upload your content just simplifying that stuff for people in a self-service way with AI makes loads of sense.

28:48You know, there will be, like all things, there's a long tail in any platform. And the long tail in the creator space is millions of people in the microspace, right? With zero to 10 ,000 followers. So there's way more of those people. So the actual audience size, when you amalgamate them, it doesn't make much sense for human being managers to take 20 % cuts on those things. It's a nightmare. It's not possible but in the macro you know collecting these people together that's a huge slice of the pie it's a really smart business and ai is a much better solution for it than wasting your time as a human being agent manager on stuff like that it doesn't make any sense yeah it's like application of all ai if you can make it make your job more efficient so you can get to market quicker better more efficiently then that's the way to use the tool but you shouldn't you know to bet your house on AI delivering you the answer to your entire life, but it's not going to be that.

29:42The people that use AI to make them more effective are going to win. Yeah. I wanted to ask, what are the worst PR disasters you've had in the creator influence of space? Like, have you had any absolute PR disasters and how did you handle them? Yes, many. They're the worst part of a manager's career. Yeah, crisis is horrible, mainly because the human being is involved, basically. And we always forget that. Anybody reading a newspaper headline or seeing someone bullied by outlets on social media often doesn't think about the human being involved at the other end. And of course, the manager's business is all about the human being on the other end.

30:30and I've been through countless situations where we've had unexpected crisis off the back of quite genuinely trying to get involved, achieve great things, help someone's career, help audiences engage with talent, all of that kind of stuff and it gets incredibly stressful. So it's my least favorite bit or was my least favorite bit of the whole management game. Who's got the best personal brand in the world, do you think? What, in terms of creator? Well, just, I guess, more broadly, you know, if you could manage anyone, it doesn't matter their size, who do you think would be the most exciting personal brand to work on?

31:13I've not considered that, because I genuinely haven't considered management in so long, and it's not on my roadmap now at all. What would your answer be? Give Dom some minutes to think about it. I know who my answer is. Well, it's just interesting, because you get people who are kind of accidentally famous and you get people who are very intentionally famous. It's hard to say that I don't think Steve Bartlett is one of them because he made himself famous through hard work, grind, grit, and then he has now monetized, solidified his position and he is a celebrity that makes an enormous amount of money and is known for business.

31:48I mean, I'd say he's one of the best in the UK. Yeah, I'd go Donald Trump. Donald Trump. I think it'd be so much fun to try and work with him on personal brand because he's just a maverick. Do you know what I mean? As in, you know that he'd take none of your advice. He'd ignore it all. He says what he wants to say, like all of this kind of stuff. But I do reckon there are some advices that he has in his team that he does listen to. Like, so the things he says are so mental. And I reckon they're only half the mental things he wants to say. So I'd love to know what the half the mental things that he doesn't tweet.

32:22I'd love to know what those are and who on earth is the ability to stop him from saying things that are just too incendiary and too mental I think it'd be so much fun to work with him because it's just nuts I would love to come back in a year's time and you actually got the gig as Donald Trump's manager and just see what what it had done to you yeah I think you'd be you wouldn't you'd be half the man you are now do you think I think you'd have to have I think you'd just need to flow through life spiritually peaceful because you know that you can't have any impact you look at like you look at his last even if you look at his last government none of them lasted yeah no like unbelievable the proximity to him is obviously you get burned yeah for sure yeah crazy I would I'm fascinated by people like Robbie Williams for example who I think has got real legacy fame like properly famous globally famous he's got a new film coming out about him yeah where a CGI monkey plays the lead yeah I think that's fascinating totally and he's the star absolutely I think that's super interesting yeah And he's also, you know, his art is exhibited in, you know, Amsterdam Mokko Museum and London Mokko Museum and so on.

33:31He's a credited artist as well as a talented musician, an artist, as well as a fascinating character. A tortured soul. A tortured soul. But he lays all of that bare quite openly. And I just think he's a very interesting character and I would love to think about him as a managed personality and personal brand because I think there's lots of value there. Do you remember what is the biggest single check for a piece of work that you've ever worked across for a creator? I don't remember the biggest single check because at the time that those kind of checks that are memorable were being written, there were lots of them.

34:11Wow. Yeah. I'm more I'm more kind of like I remember better the very first very small checks that were written for people so I remember kind of like the very first deal between a brand and a creator in Europe which which I did for Sam and Nick Chapman and I remember it being 800 pounds wow felt amazing felt amazing 800 pounds for you or 800 pounds total total I made 20 % of that What numbers are you talking about though when you're talking about the bigger deals are they in the millions? Yes there are deals in the millions single deals but long reaching and I know that they're much more common now for very big talent when you think about touring and publishing and those kind of things but I think it's those and there are deals that started off not very big and then grew over multiple years because you find the right talent, you find the right platforms, it really works, and big brands that have people in their organizations that trust that type of outlet marketing-wise will reinvest and reinvest.

35:22What's a deal that you wish you had done? Did you ever turn down one that you were like, I shouldn't have done that, that was amazing? Shouldn't have done it. Well, as in one that you regret walking away from. Someone's huge now or massive creator now, very successful that you turned down oh uh yeah i don't think there is no wow you don't regret turning down robbie williams yeah i never he never came to my door unfortunately i wish he had i would have taken him on yeah would i now i would i don't know if i would have been i would have been not right for you rob wow yeah well because we were expert at what we what we did at that time And any talent, be it an artist or a TV presenter or whatever that came to us, wanting to focus in on the creative economy, growing their social media platforms, engaging niche audiences for high value, monetizing their brand online, etc.

36:22We take them on. But if they're like, I want to be playing Wembley Stadium this time next year, we can't do that. What do you think creators get wrong about building businesses beyond their personal brand? I think and this is an epidemic in the creator economy is that because I there's so much smoke blown up people's backsides through views you know vanity metrics basically on social media that you believe that because I have this many people following me I can do anything and try to do everything I always said to talent and I know the managers at Gleam were echoing the same thing is that just because you can do everything doesn't mean you have to do you should do everything pick your lane pick your expertise pick your thing and go deeper on it interesting i would say that's the biggest problem they they i almost feel like and that's why i quite like that you actually are getting a lot of business people moving into almost being creators now because the way they go about it is so deliberately strategic yeah whereas so many of the creators that I know have like 10 different products with 10 different outcomes, different markets, different segments.

37:31And so for me, it just feels confusing. Whereas if you're a brand and you're selling something, you become known for something really, really deeply. And so, yeah, I feel like there is an education that, again, I don't think they get from their management nowadays. You know, a lot of the creators that I speak to who are out and out, I suppose, more like influencers they'll be like oh how do you monetize and i'm like well there's products to make here there's like a funnel people must come in somewhere they must buy something and they're like why don't i do t-shirts and i mean everyone's done fucking t-shirts you know try and think of something more deliberate so it's an interesting space yeah an example of someone who did it really well then um it would be grace beverly yes right so um grace beverly started tala but you discovered Grace Beverley first, right?

38:19You've discovered her on Instagram. Can you share a little bit about that story and then how Tala came to be? Because by the time I met Grace, I met her because she was a customer of Heights and then I got in touch with her and we started talking. And then she invited me to invest in the first round of Tala. But that was like, and I started speaking to her after some management buyout stuff. And that is actually where you got involved originally, right? So what is that founding story? How did that happen? and what's the model, what's the lesson to be learned on both sides? Grace is a good example of the trajectory for a talent that starts on social media platforms and then ends up being hugely successful in terms of developing a personal brand and physical brands as well, that journey.

39:05Grace started as GraceFitUK on Instagram, making content about lifting weights in the gym rather than being, you know, like a matcha-drinking skinny girl on Instagram, etc. And she had a huge and growing following amongst young people, students, you know, girls that wanted to lift weights, get strong, etc. And really, in a really attainable way as well, Grace also, you know, she's got a great personality. She liked having fun as well. She's a student doing all the things that students do at the time. funny she's funny she's smart um and uh it was a really great foundation to build a talent from basically uh i spotted her on instagram reached out she uh arrived at gleam at a point where gleam had some scale as well we but we know we had a room full of top managers uh contacts to be able to do anything for talent in the space um and she came on board also as one of gym shark's top athletes i.e she was uh wearing gym shark providing an affiliate code and then selling gym shark gear and that relationship came to an end just after she joined us and at that point we we decided as a management team including grace that the strategy should be to launch her own athleisure wear brand because she was growing fast at this point and she had a real connection with her audience.

40:38At that point, Tala was born, put together literally piece by piece, factory supplier, e-commerce advisor, you know, build the Shopify site, et cetera, and design all the clothes, find someone to design all the clothes, all of those kind of things. And of course it had its unique selling points. The biggest one being Grace and her relationship with their audience and the other thing being that it's all completely um sustainable um and from the the thing took off i remember being in the boardroom at gleam with grace and her team and the e-commerce guys and the you know guys from the garment um supplier etc and turning the website on and watching the audience come in we have the big screen on in the boardroom with all the Shopify analytics and we just watched the audience flood in as Grace, you know, nipped out into one of the other meeting rooms and did a live, uh, announcement to her followers.

41:43And then with Instagram, we watched the thing just happening. And it was absolutely closely linked Instagram sales, Instagram sales, live sales. It all happened, uh, seamlessly. It was very exciting. Like we, we, we, I've got a video on my phone. We stood there and watched sales go through half a million pounds within under 10 minutes basically on the on the site that's the very beginning from there on in grace very smartly at the time um gleam didn't have an equity position in the um in the brand it was more about we wanted to drive revenue for grace and for gleam we wanted to grow as much as possible and also we were we were staying true to where's our value what part do we play in this journey for grace and try to be really kind of altruistic about it basically again there's no set deal that we do to our previous point with talent it's all done on a case-by-case basis and we decided right let's let's help grace power this brand she was really busy at college doing a doing a degree at oxford at the time let's resource her help her power this brand through the early stages and we'll see what happens and it went through kind of like after Grace had graduated, she began to focus more and more on being an entrepreneur rather than a fitness influencer.