The Sidemen Manager: How to Become A Successful Content Creator - Jordan Schwarzenberger

0:02I stood there with the creative director and the MD and they were saying look like if you did want to drop out we'd love to have you And I didn't even blink. I was like, yes, cool. Jordan Schwozenberger is the co-founder of Arcade Media and manager of YouTube sensation The Sidemen, including talents like KSI. When I heard and when I saw that the strategy was basically to put together a team of different talents, it looked like, I don't know, the Pablo Escobar idea that he had for the Medellin cartel, right? To date, the group have over 15 million subscribers and have built several seven-figure businesses, such as an alcohol brand, XIX Vodka, a fried chicken restaurant called Sides, as well as their membership platform, Side Plus.

0:48No one saw TikTok coming. No one saw how that was shifting. What's the lifespan of a content creator? So how is your relationship with your co-founder? We almost sometimes sit and just go like, wow, we're really lucky, guys. You're obviously a global expert in this domain. Have you found a recipe to success? So in the creator space, the one thing that they need to do is...

1:15Jordan, you knew what you wanted to do in life before most kids. You got accepted at King's College. You were 18 and you immediately dropped out to pursue your career. That sounds crazy from where I'm standing. what made you think this was a good idea at the time? Yeah, well I think I had an instinct from when I was at school that I didn't want to just do things because you were told that that's what you needed to do I was fortunate enough to go to a school where I could experiment with building little businesses and projects and making stuff so I had this understanding that it was easier than maybe people think to actually put something out there to make, I don't know, a music album or to make a clothing brand or, you know, a film magazine, a few of the things I did.

2:04And actually, especially growing up in the time when Facebook, social media was really in its sort of birthing stage and it was coming through, you know, to distribute and to reach people was pretty easy. And actually, if you have a good idea, you could take the idea from idea to execution more quicker than any other generation had the capability to do that, right? And I had that instinct. So then when it got to go into uni and I knew I didn't want to go, I'd started doing work experience advice in the summer before I just knew I just knew that it wasn't the one for me so when I got there and it was evidently true that it was just terrible and completely insane as a concept that you'd spend you know 40 pounds a session on somebody talking about like World of Warcraft it's a degree called digital culture may I just say right and it was so alien to the real digital culture run by people who bless them had no idea because they were clearly studying for however many years or teaching at King's.

2:57So I was working at Vice every Friday and I'd worked with them over the summer, learned more in a week than I did in a whole semester or whatever it was at King's. So it got to the point then when, you know, the opportunity arose at Vice to join them full time. I was at a Christmas party, everyone was a bit drunk and I was stood there with the creative director and the MD and they were saying, look, like, if you did want to drop out, we'd love to have you. And I didn't even blink. I was like, yes, cool. As soon as I got home, well, not as soon as I got home because it was very late. But the next day I woke up and as soon as they said that, I put in my stuff and dropped out and started with them after Christmas in 2016.

3:30And yeah, it was not even, no part of me thought for even half a second that it wasn't the right thing to do. It was probably the most confident decision I'd ever made in my life because it was just so obvious that it was a complete waste of time for me. You have this safe space that you could go to, right? So you got offered this job. Do you think you would have also been so determined to quit if you didn't have this opportunity? no I don't think so I think because that was there and it was there because I'd kind of prepared a bit of a backup well not the backup plan but what I thought was a backup in the work experience advice and then that materialized to them saying look like we don't want to annoy your parents but if you want to drop out that will have you I'm here full-time we'd love to sort of take you on obviously that gives you the confidence to go yeah right forget that I'm going I think in hindsight if I was doing it today the question would be should I even go in the first place because it puts you back it doesn't put you forward for so many people and I get in trouble sometimes for saying like how much I hate university and like going into schools and so on sometimes.

4:24And I'll be quite clear to the kids, like if you're doing anything that doesn't need it, just don't go, stay away. Because you'll get so much more value in the real world, especially today where, you know, everybody has a degree, you can get a degree pretty easily. There's hardly any competition really at most of the big universities. So they don't mean that much paired with the fact that they cost a fortune and you're years behind. And today time is of the essence you don't have time to wait and to waste and I think a lot of people waste it and then regret it and then end up in a worse position after they finish uni than when they started so I don't yeah I'm quite I'm quite strong on that and like a lot sometimes I do get in trouble but I don't know I think I think it's the truth these days there's character building that can take place in the real world rather than the sort of fake university bubble that often for most people is a fake reality that they then get used to and then they have to get unused to it when they have to come back and start working paying rent doing all the things you need to do as an adult

5:19Let's talk about your company. You're the co-founder of Arcade Media. What is it? Tell me, talk to me about it. Yeah, so Arcade Media is a management adventures company that has set itself up in a very different way because we have one client. So I previously came from the biggest management company in Europe, YMU, which is formerly known as James Grant. Looking after people in sport, music, entertainment, people in the UK, you might not know who's like an Anton Decker, but they're like the biggest sort of TV presenters here, take that, Steve Aoki, like talent across the spectrum. And I sat essentially in that business as the chief creative officer from the age of 20 to 24, 23, 24.

5:57And I loved it. Amazing time there. Really grew from a professional level. I treat that as my university period, really, because I was like C-suite in a big company, able to go through a sales process with that company and be the creative lead in that, you know, able to manage M &A and run P &Ls, all sorts of stuff. We did so much and it was great. And I learned so much more about business than I could ever hope for during that period. But then coming out of that, when a friend of mine who worked there with me, Aaron O 'Neill, he'd gone off to manage some TikTokers. He was on the business management accountancy side.

6:28He'd met Sam Ewans, who's our third co-founder. Sam has basically become the number one YouTuber accountant in the UK over the last 10 years. He represents everybody on their money. When you're in with the money, you're in with trust. When you're trusted, you can have those conversations that most people can't, right? You can get in the door with people. So he'd been looking after the Sidemen from an accountancy side for a while. And he had always seen that there was this opportunity for them to do more. That actually the guys at the time, I think, were maybe seven, eight million subs. Like massive relative to the time period.

6:58Doing incredibly well. Like the number one kind of group in the country. Absolutely smashing it in terms of relevance. Having people chasing them down the street wherever they go. Huge. However, they had two operations. Their content operation with the channels. And then their clothing brand, Sidemen Clothing. That was it. And we're a period in 2020 to 2021 where you can start to see the creator economy and the opportunity for creators to do more start to open up. See things like Beast Burger, right, at the time and other examples start to pop up where you go, wow, okay, creators are starting to do more here.

7:31And for the Sidemen at the time, there wasn't really any sight of that because they didn't have a team working on it. So Sam and Aaron had spoken and they then brought me in and we kind of came together and said, let's speak to them and propose to them a strategy as to how they can go from where they are to another level and for us to manage them. So we did that and they loved it. I had like 15 things in the deck, which was like, you know, the Sidemen 2021 strategy, which is still on my computer somewhere. And most of those things are the same as what we've now gone and done. So when they said, yes, we started and the setup was that we would basically manage them exclusively.

8:03We would only be working for them. They would only have us. That was part of the problem with the space in the UK as well. Massive kind of fragmentation of who represents who, who manages who. So we cleaned all of that up for the guys. There's clarity in the market and clarity in terms of us being their manager. And then we were able to get going. And in that time, we've launched a number of brands. We've helped build out their content operation, fried chicken restaurant called Sides, an alcohol brand called XX Vodka. Recently launched a breakfast brand into Tesco's called Best. We've done trading cards.

8:32We've done multiple charity matches, raised like three and a half million pounds, four million pounds for charity. We've launched a charity. We had a Christmas number one single. What else have we done? we're launching a VC fund. It's a long list. But what's funny is when we first sat with the guys and said, right, vote on these focus areas and ideas. If you look at the list today, it's pretty much all just tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. And that's the best thing that I learned at YME, right? If you think strategically with talent, you're able to plan something out for a client. And if you get it right, it should be the same in three years, five years as it is today.

9:07And that's what we did for the guys. And yeah, we've basically then been building out a structure beneath them as almost their C-suite with them as the board to then build a structure which is entirely focused on how did we take their business and take it to the next level continually. And so far, so good. First of all, it's very impressive. If I were to say something, so from where I'm standing, you gather all this knowledge from your corporate experience and then you see this opportunity in signing this obviously already back then, famous well-known talents. but from where i'm standing it sounds a little bit risky having only one client what happens if these people they just drop you because especially with artists right with talents you know they they can be very emotional and and impulsive so how can you balance this especially from a company right risk perspective yeah yeah so so i think it's interesting i mean that's obviously a question that we raised in the first day where we goes is it is it worth it and i think if you think about the way you'd approach a BBC and ITV channel for a big media institution, you wouldn't look at having four or five of them.

10:09But you think about that in relation to talent, when talent actually are media brands and IP at the biggest scale now. If you're working for Mr. Beast, you cannot have Mr. Beast and 10 others if you are to properly focus and build deeply. And this was the learning from YMU as well. YMU was great in so many ways, but the biggest flaw of that business is that it had so many clients across a big slate of rosters, entertainment, sport, music, you know, I think maybe a thousand clients, including the accountancy clients as well. You can never do anything meaningful or deeply with that group. And I think for us, it was coming into this going, right, that didn't really work because you can't extract true value.

10:47Yes, you make decent money on the 20 % who smash it, but the majority, you take up your time, don't really make that much money. And also creatively, there's no focus. So for us, it's a case of focus deeply in with them, make sure that our agreements and our ownership of the brands are aligned and are tight rather than sort of handshake agreements so that everything is, you know, backed up from a level of both, you know, waterfall arrangements. If, for example, they did fire us tomorrow alongside ownership of the brands with them and actually having real stakes rather than just kind of brev shares and so on.

11:20And then building out for them in the best possible way so that their futures and our futures are completely aligned. Because I think in that, you're protecting yourself against that possibility. Either commercially, you're fine because you've set yourself up in a way that is secure against that potential. But then in the short to medium to long term, you're building something with them as true partners. I think if you've got that partnership approach, you know, it works. And also I've seen, you know, if you look at America and this is one of the big learnings, a lot of the biggest artists out there have one manager.

11:50And this was the big thing. Why me is that, hold on, Drake has one manager. The Weeknd has one manager. And that's pretty much all they do. They maybe have one or two others. But really, they've been just focused on that one client for a long time. Think about Dre London and Post Malone, for example. There are many, many out there. And that's because when they're that big, when they are true media brands and IP, you can't be distracted. And I think it works for everyone's interest if you run it in as much of a focused way as you can. You mentioned that you also get equity in the businesses that you obviously open up with them.

12:21what are other revenue streams that arcade media has with with your client yeah so essentially it's side plus uh which is the paid membership club for the sidemen so that's a you know 6.99 or 6.99 a year 6.99 a month or 6.99 a year uh basically netflix for the sidemen if you will with membership sort of elements to it that's been very successful it's launched for three years so that's one of the biggest revenue drivers brand deals when they do happen although they are infrequent because we're launching brands to the boys that have to do brand deals and then obviously the brands themselves and then things like the charity match or any kind of big events where there's kind of work to be done on those um so basically anything that we do with them we are the eighth member of the side men that's our structure and we sort of we win as they win um and that's the best thing i think about the model is that everyone's incentivizing the line to kind of grow and scale together um and from a revenue perspective that's then reflected in what we what we take month by month but then also in terms of equity which is arguably far more valuable in the long run.

13:19Do you think that's the best way for anyone looking to be an agent in your space? So basically for the sideman you divide all the income that is coming in eight and then obviously you're one eighth of that income. I can see that that's a lot of transparency but how does that equate to for example there's a lot of overhead costs that you're going to have so how internally from an accounting perspective, this makes sense, right? Is this a formula? Yeah. Well, so it's interesting. So on the point of overheads, we can strip a lot of that away because we're just with them. So we manage their money to build their team because all we do is for them.

13:53So RK Media is really the side men's focus management company and ventures business. So in terms of staff, in terms of scaling the team, that's not us paying for it necessarily. That's them paying for it because it's for them. Again, you can't get that luxury if you're working for 10 clients. This is one of the challenges of why me and in most management companies, you charge your 15 % typically, maybe 20 % in music. And then if you've got 10 clients, you have to then hire your team as a manager. And it can be a trap where you go, all right, well, let's get a social manager and let's get this and this.

14:23And we soak that all into our 15%. This is what we did all the time. The talent doesn't pay for it because it's split across so many other people. Of course, I'm not going to pay for this person if they're also working for five other clients. So then you get into a position where your 15 % gets squeezed and squeezed and squeezed. The amount you make as management is tricky. While you were making, you know, nine figures in revenue at the top end, you break that down because of all these services, it was, you know, fractional, maybe 15 % margin or something, right? Which wasn't amazing based on the fact that it could have been so much simpler if you have less clients, you have your big talent, you have talent paying for their own teams, and you as management take your commission to orchestrate the spending of their money and the investing of their money into resource team studio structure and scale.

15:09And we found that with the Sidemen, that's absolutely been the best model because A, they've been building out a good amount of liquid capital for a long time. Obviously, what they do is pretty high margin. So they've got money to therefore invest in building a studio, launching side plus, launching brands. And that again is a luxury that they have. Would I say this is the best model for everybody in the space? Absolutely not. Because most people don't have a Sidemen to justify going all in with. So we're all in with them because they make sense to me. most people wouldn't justify it and don't even come close especially the way that the space is moving i would say the guys are like the kind of bob dylan of this space right they're like legacy nostalgia almost heritage in their their standing they're number one and they have crossed over into into generational talent they've been going now for a decade most people aren't anywhere close i think the way the space is moving is away from that type of superstardom the same way with music right?

16:00Bob Dylan's catalog is as popular as it ever was, right? But who now coming up has any real relevance or credibility? Not many people. I think we're seeing the same in every industry. Nostalgia wins. The segment have branched into nostalgia. So they have a different level of cut through and connection because they've been there for a decade. So it's interesting. So I wouldn't recommend it for everybody. If the opportunity is big enough though, and you've got the trust, the buy and the focus and the partnership there, focus is 100 % the way. so I've seen I've seen the documentary slash tv sorry movie on Netflix and I found the strategy very smart because I wasn't super uh knowledgeable on on the whole content creator space so when I when I heard and when I saw that the strategy was basically to put together a sort of team of different talents it looked like I don't know the Pablo Escobar idea that he had for the Medellin cartel right so individually you're all more vulnerable right but collectively we're more powerful so I found that I found that funny and interesting and then I started looking at different people doing this in your space and I found very few so they're like the Pablo Escobar of yeah I don't think they've had that comparison before but that's back on that's good that's good um all right so what are the revenues of of your clients yeah yeah i mean so yeah without obviously it's not my data to to share numbers but yeah it's like i guess if you take a youtube cpm of you know seven to ten pounds and you multiply that by the views that the guys get i mean the boys have said right for example which which video was it um the diss tracks they said that in the dog the distrap videos alone made them like half a million pounds right from the from just those videos um i think simon also has said about the cheap versus expensive holiday video making uh is it made a mil it's made a lot of money from basically youtube adsense can create huge revenues over time if the views are really big and because the sideband have been building and pumping and they're up to 20 plus million subscribers now revenues sort of match what you'd expect for that.

18:07I think what is interesting though, as we've said, is like, you know, building side plus has been a massive game changer in terms of them being able to control that revenue. Because the problem is with YouTube is that it's yours, but it's not right. You're basically a client for YouTube advertisers who will pay a CPM through YouTube for then the distribution on your inventory. If YouTube collapsed tomorrow, what would you do? What would you have? Not much. So So building SidePlus has been an amazing insurance plan, essentially from a commercial perspective, but also from an audience perspective, because you've got a huge base of people there, you know, paying$6.99 a month,$6.99 a year.

18:44There's money then to invest back into that, to build studios, to create new concepts, to create a team. A lot of the, you know, the team that we've built has been funded by SidePlus. But then ultimately it creates a lack of dependence on YouTube revenue, which gives the guys sort of a lifetime of security rather than being in a position where, all right if AdSense is down this month on YouTube well what happens to their income and that's the thing creators I think a lot of creators do struggle with is the dependence on the platform if my video doesn't perform well I lose half my money that's really hard so yeah that's partly why Starplus was made from a commercial standpoint is to create a lack of greater independence away from YouTube try to give me a rough figure because what I'm trying to do here is add some clarity for anyone that is looking to enter into that game right to that space how much money can you make so what how high is the ceiling yeah well i think i think again because it's because i'm not like allowed to say like specifics or i can try i'll kind of paint a picture if you have let's say um i mean this is also the thing to to say around the point of like can anybody go and do this the answer is no right i've seen this across across the board the cybermen are one of one in that they have such a scaled audience deep connection and a content operation that is able to pump out enough value to launch a membership club like SidePlus or to, you know, scale a very high volume content business.

20:07Most people don't have that luxury. But let's say you were, you know, getting, I don't know how to even describe, let's say you were making, you had a membership club like a Patreon, Shits and Gigs, good example, their podcasters. They have, I want to say about 30 ,000 people in their Patreon paying three to five pounds a month. that can be good revenue if your product is cheap um however if your product is more expensive like the sidemen's is then obviously whatever that let's say that number 30 000 times 699 a month good amount of money but you're still going to need to then invest into the big team of production so how do you keep the the team together because if you look at the space of artists in general it's normal that when a a band maybe one artist becomes more popular than another one, you know, they end up splitting, right?

20:56And you can see this in musicians and comedians and so on. So how do you keep them together? So we keep them together through taking away the headaches as much as we can. I think the one thing I would say that our job as management is to make their lives fun and enjoyable, both on a personal and a professional level. So what I mean by that, it's about respecting their time. It's about building out structures that take off all the heavy lifting so they can come in and do what they do amazingly well each and every week it's about building out you know various different things that can live and breathe without them so it's not more time pressure on their promotion on their you know they're making content around or whatever it might be so we're the aim for what we're trying to do is to build without taking up more time and more headache adding more headaches to their plate and if we do that and they enjoy it there's seven friends who've gone through so much before us it makes it a lot easier right They've worked out their dynamics, their politics.

21:52They've had their ups and downs. You saw it in the doc, right? They had their fallings out. They've had so many things happen to them over the last decade to the point where we're coming into a dynamic that they've already largely worked out. People are people. Complex things can happen, but they're not at the start of their journey. It's not like you're forming One Direction. You're trying to get them all to get along, right? Like these guys have been doing this for a while. So it makes our lives easy because they know how to work and operate. The other thing that's also really important, I think, for anybody working with sort of creative talent is to not ever try ever to control or push them or force them to do things that they don't want to do work for them not have them working for you and I think a lot of managers can fall into that trap there are some horror stories out there of managers who push their clients too hard right and then Avicii good example he ends up committing suicide so i think for us it's a case of give the boys as the board total freedom and work for them every single day to make their lives better to produce better products better value for their audience to help them to scale their business and grow but don't ever push them or act like they're working for you as management i think that's just a good rule for everybody this space has changed so much in the last 10 years right mainly because there's been an improvement the different platforms, right?

23:11So this allows for all the content creators to become more popular and reach their audiences better. You're obviously a global expert in this domain. Have you found a recipe to success? So if I were to give you an aspiring talent right now, this is the person, can you build them up to become successful? No, I think there isn't one that can be done by anybody other than that person. So in the creator space, if you as a creator are not all the way down the line, don't bother getting management, there's no point. And I really believe that I think the idea of sort of nurturing creators when they're kind of, you know, at the start of their career, and they have nothing, there's no point because so many of those factors of success are outside of our control outside of their control.

23:56The one thing that they need to do is get themselves up to a critical mass in terms of audience in terms of the thing that they do their voice, I think so much of being a creator is finding a voice, like finding the thing that people love about you and they come back for. And if you're not at that point and you're not already making money yourself, there's no point in getting a team. I think teams need to come in when you're at that critical mass of scale. You've already got a big audience. People know you that you've got the content operation down independently. And then, okay, cool. You can keep, you can then build that and work with that.

24:24So I'd say management should only come in when you're already kind of down the line. The idea of developing, and I think this goes for everything, right? goes for music, goes for maybe less in film, but still to a degree. Definitely in our space, but music and the kind of creative space are kind of the same in that regard. Artists now break independently without a label, without any management. And then when they hit critical mass and if they can sustain and build that, then they get teams across. It's a complete flip of what used to happen. So what used to happen is you'd have managers bringing a music artist up and trying to nurture them and help them to grow.

24:58And they'd find a kid on, I don't know, SoundCloud even before that they find someone in a performing in a local pub they'd sign them and then they grow they build them and kind of nurture their career kind of those days are gone really now now you've got to blow up on tiktok you've got to build an audience and then only once you're at scale then you can get signed by label if you want to only once you're at scale can you then get an agent or a manager um and i think that's a that's a much healthy way of of things working right because ultimately then if you're a kyson at a speed and aiden or so ever styben if they were doing it today, your fame and your success is on your shoulder.

25:30You put the time and you build yourself up. And then when you're there, cool, we can talk. There's a very interesting stat that says that there is right now 600 minutes worth of content uploaded on YouTube every minute. Obviously, that's a lot of content and producing content is very expensive. Do you have a rough figure of how much money do you need to start? yeah i mean i think i think content can be expensive but i think it can also be done now relatively cheap i think the barrier to entry is so low though right like tiktok is free anybody has a phone and they can make content on tiktok anybody can really make a podcast now you can distribute through things like riverside or you know whatever in or a cast what's the lifespan of a content creator can you do that 50 uh i think you can but i don't think today i think i think so what do I think?

26:19I think it's again a case of time how much you're willing to consistently put into these things. If you are willing to be consistent, somebody like a Mark Goldbridge, right? Good example. He was like a, I think it was a bin man or something, did a completely different job. Might be wrong on that. Yeah, but he was doing a completely different job. Let's just say he was a bin man. And then I think it was 45 when he was like, right, I want to start making videos. Big United fan started his channel and he's been hugely successful over the last few years. I don't think age is necessarily a sort of factor in terms of success, but it is in terms of time, right?

26:50I think it's partly why you see a lot of like, like much older people doing quite well. So if you look on TikTok, there's a whole category of, you know, over 60s retired. And like, I think they do quite well on TikTok because they have the time to actually put into it. And if they're willing to make videos, then again, they'll get the audience. So I think it's just the hardest part is when you have responsibilities, you have kids, you have families, you have big jobs that take up time. that's the bit where you know it's very difficult to commit the same levels as a kid who's 17 living at home and hasn't got any other responsibilities you're never going to compete with that so that's the difference in terms of how long you can do it for time will tell right no one saw tiktok coming no one saw how that would shift things a lot of tiktokers who were big in 2019 20 have fallen off a cliff um so the lifespan arguably is very short um for many creators unless you have something i think a bit deeper today or unless you're streaming or unless you're legacy so if you're like legacy, like a Sidemen, and I bet anybody who came up pre-COVID in that category, then you can continue Beta Squad, people like a Max Fosh, whoever, like who have done their thing for many years.

27:54They can sit in that category where I think people will be fans of them for a long time to come. If you're coming up today, unless you're really diving into something like a streaming, I don't see massive, massive success coming from Instagram alone, for example, or from even TikTok alone. TikTok streaming seems to be the kind of combination. But if you're not putting that big amount of time in i don't know if it pays off these days but one thing is starting at the age of 50 starting because then you're targeting an older audience right and your content is suited for that audience but something different and and this is really the question that i'm asking is let's say you're starting at the age of 20 or in your teenage years yeah so your audience is as young as you're right and perhaps they start they start with i don't know gaming content you grow older your audience grows older yeah i don't know i don't see someone at their 50s one thing i don't know to follow someone else you know playing a video game on youtube so how how do you transition do you say that i think yeah i mean i think you say that uh for the 50 year olds we see today right but actually the 50 year olds coming up we're going to be 50 when i'm 50 most of my friends and people who i know and even the generation below like gaming like the culture that's existing today will be the current, a lot of those habits and norms are going to continue till when they are 50 and over.

29:12A lot of adults today in their 40s, 50s, big gaming contingent, right? And they have more disposable income. Huge part of that market is actually slightly older, right? Because the people who were 30, 20 years ago still had gaming, right? Still had consoles. They were at the start of that period. So I think, yeah, for me though, time will tell on longevity. What I do know is that the people who develop connection in the pre-COVID, pre-TikTok era, like a Cyber, like a MrBeast and others, they have that longevity. It's proving out every day, right? They're not, they've transitioned into generational, institutional brands like a Bob Dylan or a Michael Jackson or something for this space.

29:49What isn't proven out yet is if the people coming up today through TikTok, through streaming, will have that long tail. I think the streamers will. I think Kaisenat, Speed, I think they'll have a long, long, long career. They'll be the unicorns in a way. But the TikTokers, A lot of them have fallen into irrelevance already. And TikTok's only been around for a few years. Even people like Charlie D 'Amelio or others who, you know, in the tens of millions of followers back in 2020, 2019, they've struggled to sustain at the same level because, you know, the content and the trends change so much and the connection to the individuals in that, even if you've got followers, doesn't really mean people are connecting with you.

30:24So it's an interesting time. And I think only time will tell.

30:30Jordan, you are an unusual character. At 26, you're married, you have kids, and you don't drink alcohol. So these are things that are not normal and particularly unusual for someone with your success. Why did you take these decisions at such an early stage in life? yeah i mean i think it's interesting when i think like you know i guess going back into them one by one the first one was being married kids and then and then drinking i think drinking came first so i sort of spent maybe between the ages of 17 to 19 and a bit before um going out partying going in a way living vicariously through my friends who were at uni uh when i wasn't or when i dropped out going up to all the different unis that I could going to as many festivals as I could just going kind of big on that whole lifestyle because in the UK that is pervasive it's the biggest lifestyle within people of that age demographic when they're at uni and I was right in that so I found myself kind of going too far into that whole world right of just partying constantly going out constantly and all the things that come with that and then I remember when I was at Labible you can kind of maybe get away with it when you're working at a company and that's the culture of the company as well but then when in media in the UK the culture of a company is to drink yeah and party join out yeah yeah as in like I mean it's called Lab Bible right but also when I was at Vice same thing it's called Vice I mean you don't stand a chance I think in media in London right the culture is you go to the pub you go out you drink like Thursday night beers whatever right that's the culture I think media companies after this episode are going to get I don't know a lot of different applications oh yeah yeah well yeah why is it so popular as an industry I don't know but that is the culture especially in short it's London anyway so you're a part of that But then all of your friends are in uni and that culture is amplified times 100.

32:25Like people just party constantly, drinking constantly, doing everything else you can imagine constantly. So for me, it was a case of being in that and getting to a stage when then I decided to start my own company. When I was 19, start my own agency called Roundabout. Off the back of being at Labible for a year and a half, loving it, learning a lot, but being young and thinking, actually there's an opportunity for me to take my age as a 19 year old my contacts in the industry and bring those to brands who want to basically reach people my age because I realized hold on the one thing that no one can take away from you in terms of experience or anything else is that me as an 18 19 year old in the industry can credibly say that I understand what 18 to 19 year olds of my demographic um want right and that there's value in that for brands we're trying to reach people of my age that's what I felt felt a lab I bought I learned so I started my own agency roundabout, which was great.

33:17And I did that for six months. And that led to me then going to YME, who were one of the clients then. I remember during that six month period, being in a spot of going, you know, still going out, still partying, still doing a lot of that stuff. And, you know, you have those nights, right? I remember also when I was working at James Grant, I always passed this book every day in the literary side we were doing. This is when I had my company roundabout, we were working with them as an agency. And so I'd pass in the literary division, there was a book called like The Joy of Being Soap. I'd always just walk past it.

33:43And I always just kind of, was that picking up? And I'd always just walk past this book. And sometimes, you know, these things subliminally, they kind of come in. And I always just felt myself getting more drawn and more sort of pulled towards sobriety. And to stopping because I realized that actually having my business and going out and almost having the lag of that lifestyle was just not compatible. And you have certain nights where I remember one night, like it was October 2017 it would have been ASAP Rocky of the rapper his birth this is like it's such a weird time but like his birthday party at this members club that's now shut down in uh in a shortage called the curtain and like we I went there we were me and a bunch of guys who I was friends with at the time were there and it was just hideously messy as you can imagine just grim on all fronts right and that's a fun you could argue but no um and then we end up going to like the box and doing whatever there and being incredibly out of everything right and I just remember waking up almost in the middle of Soho this is like on a Wednesday and just kind of like what I've lost my phone someone's probably taken my phone and then I'm completely it's like nine o 'clock my now wife was my girlfriend at the time was I knew she was like she would have been just texting my phone trying to call me trying to get in contact but she was probably panicking I had to get the bus back because I had nothing else on me I had to get the bus back from Soho all the way to where I live in Crouch End.

35:05And then I get home and then coincidentally, arguably, providentially, I would say, my computer then breaks at the same time. So I'm stuck without a computer or a phone, having my own business, having things to do and going like, what am I doing? And it was one of those nights that you'll remember for the rest of your life where you go, this can't run anymore. And then that was, I think, the biggest trigger point where it started to wind down. And then I remember getting to Christmas and going, you know what, actually, I'm just going to stop. And also, you know, me and my now wife, my girlfriend at the time Millie we've been going out for a few months at that time so we kind of had each other and then and so it was a lot easier than if you're you know a young boy going out trying to hit on girls everything else as young boys at that time but obviously of all time they've done drinking and all of that lifestyle is just a part of being that kind of age it feels at times shouldn't be but it is so I had that excuse to not and then yeah it was basically about winding that down and then I decided one day I was like that's it I'm not doing it anymore and I was never the sort of person who could go out and have like, you know, one pint and be happy.

36:04Do you know what I mean? A lot of people can, they can go out and be like, yeah, cool, one pint, go home, go to bed. For me, it was more like, if you're out, you're out. And that's quite dangerous because it means that on a Wednesday, if somebody's like, yeah, should we go out to ASAP Rocky's birthday party? Yeah, cool, okay. And then six o 'clock, seven o 'clock in the morning, you're in Soho without your phone, without your laptop, and life's kind of a mess. So yeah, it was an easy decision. I started 2018 not drinking and then didn't. So it's been however many years since then. And I think after the first couple of months, it becomes quite easy.

36:34Once you start telling people, once you stop seeing the sort of people you were hanging around with before. And then I felt like it was like a mist of lifestyle kind of goes. And then you can see things very clearly. And Millie stopped as well. She stopped drinking at the time. So we both stopped together. and then settling down, getting married, having kids, all these things just kind of felt like the natural progression of life because the mist of alcohol and drug-infused kind of party culture kind of goes, it just sort of fades out and you settle down, literally. And I think from there, it just became very easy and everything started to slot into place.

37:11So yeah, and from that point, it's kind of been onwards ever since. I'm very interested in how the synergies in between different co-founders have a direct impact into the success of a business or failure for that matter. So how is your relationship with your co-founder? It's the best. We have three of us. We say we almost sometimes sit and just go like, wow, we're really lucky guys. We don't ever argue. We have constructive criticisms and debates about things. I think you're the first co-founder ever that doesn't argue. I know. Do you want to be in business with me? oh man let's do it let's do it I'd love to but that's the thing it's like having three of us helps because there's also you know more of a committee in that and then we have Victor who's our sort of honorary fourth co-founder if you will who was our first big hire and the managing director he came into RunSide Plus but me, Sam and Aaron as the three have an amazing relationship because I think you know all of us are we don't bring our ego to the door with things right I know it's a bit of an ego thing to say that even oh yeah I'm humble it's like no but I think we all bring a sense of humility to the table.

38:15And we're aware that actually we're trying to find the best outcome, not our own personal feelings to triumph for any reason other than it's the right thing. And I think, you know, we've gone through a number of situations and stayed very calm and composed. It's been good things, bad things. We've had moments where things have felt really intense and so on. And we all have different things to bring to the table. The other thing, right, we all know our place. Like Sam and Aaron are both accountants. That's their trade, right? Aaron was an accountant for how many years at YMU. Sam has been an accountant for a decade.

38:43so me as a non-accountant who doesn't care about account life it's so boring just leave you guys do that stuff i'm creative strategic that's my background so it blends really well and i think it's allowed us to have a stable flow of of um you know healthy progress strong progress moving very quickly um but also peace right and that's kind of the best thing i think in um in a co-founder relationship is to have peace and in a peace defined um as the tranquility of order right when things are ordered, they're peaceful. We have order because we know our place. We don't have each other trampling. There's no tussling for status.

39:17And I think all of us bring each other down to sort of share always in the upside and in the downside rather than one of us being glorified and up there. And I think, yeah, it's worked incredibly well as a result. But again, I think it's quite rare. So I'm very fortunate.

39:36I'm very lucky because I get to have these conversations with incredible people like yourself from different industries. So I'm becoming like a small dictionary of different topics, which is great because for a lot of these different industries, I knew very little. But what I'm also very interested in is in knowing how all these people, including yourself, see themselves. In your case, would you define yourself as successful? I would say maybe relative to other people, maybe my age. materially from a job perspective, career perspective, yeah, on an objective spectrum of career progression, I would say relatively, yeah.

40:18Am I successful to myself? I think I don't define success in terms of material, financial, job, any of those things. I don't define it more interiorly. I mean, for me, I'm much more focused on basically spiritual success and having peace and contentment and doing what I'm supposed to do in terms of virtue and being a good person. I say success is based in those things for me more than in anything material and definitely more than anything in terms of my job. And it's about, I think, trying to have a positive impact, right? Like trying to have a positive impact, trying to do the right thing in the areas that I have control over and to, yeah, try and live a virtuous and good life.

41:05That's why I define success. Jordan, thank you so much for coming. Thank you. This has been very insightful and I appreciate your openness. You are at the forefront of an industry that is evolving and changing a lot of things of our world. And I'm looking forward to what you do next. Thank you. Yeah, it's been a great conversation. It's nice to be like giving some more challenging questions. You know what I mean? Often you do these things and it's like, yeah, more your story, but actually we got into it, which was great. so thank you for having me and yeah time to listen to the next one thank you