The state of D2C and nailing your personal brand; advice from serial entrepreneur Tash Courtenay-Smith

25:15It's a frontline revenue driving activity often for brands. And, you know, the reason that I invest in Space Goods is because, you know, for many years, Bolt Digital was a purely performance marketing agency. We had, I've employed a lot of performance marketers. You know, I still think I'm the most capable of everyone I've ever employed because I think, and I'd love to do a performance marketing competition with you and see if you are the best performance marketer in the world. Okay. Game on, ladies and gentlemen. You can't hear first. I don't know how we can do it, but I'd love to set that up.

25:44But anyway, Matt, the founder of Space Goods, is a brilliant performance marketer. And that is an incredible and very rare skill. And it's because of him. So there might be imperfections around the brand, but I'm like, if anybody can make this work, this person can because they've got that essential skill of performance marketing. And that's why I invested in Space Goods, for instance. The other feedback I got when I was working in private equity, actually, when they're looking at scale ups, this is sort of 10 million plus investments. I was surprised how simple the approach was because I kind of in my head, actually, a quick interesting story about how that came around.

26:18So I didn't know anybody in private equity because it is by definition private, isn't it? So no one advertises. There's no big advert down the street. Want investment? Phone me. You know what I mean? That doesn't happen, right? This is partly where I ask the question. How do you connect to it? Anyway, someone said to me, it's quite a funny story. Someone said to me, go to a reverse headhunter. I didn't even know this existed, right? But there are people that you brief to get you into a job, right? Rather than the other way around. So they're not working for the company, they're working for you.

26:47So you like pay them, it's like 10 grand or something. And then they go out and sort of plant you in a particular company. Anyway, so I went and met the person and I said, look, I want to get into private equity. I want to invest, the whole thing. And she gave me some advice, which meant I didn't need to commission her, which I thought was a bit unfortunate for her. But she said to me, I'll make you a bet, John. In your phone right now is somebody that knows exactly the person in private equity that you need to meet. And I'm like, oh, come on. I'm like, that's not going to happen. Anyway, so I left.

27:17I was walking down the stairs out the building and I thought, I'll give it a go. I got to see. And I went to see and went, oh, hang on a second. He's just sold a business. He must have had funding. Anyway, so I phoned him up. He said, I'd love to help you. And he said, and he texted me three contacts. He said, start with that one, then that one, then that one. But I'll go that one first. Tell him I sent you. Within two weeks, I was talking about a deal. In two weeks. That's incredible. Right. I mean, it's just insane. But I started that conversation thinking there's no way I'm going to ever know anybody and that sort of thing.

27:52So anyway, you'd be surprised. Anyway, sorry, that wasn't the point of what I was going to say. But when I met them thinking, you know, they were running hundreds of millions of pounds of a fund, they said their model was very simple. It was three things. They said the first thing they do whenever they buy a business is they employ the best design agency they can in the world. because what they say is if you get the proposition, the design, the idea, the packaging, you get that right from day one and chances are it will fly. The second thing, back to your point, is you handpick the very best people.

28:24They called it you hire two levels up. You basically get the best person in the industry. I mean, quite funnily enough, actually, when we got into IP disputes, they'd put the entire, the top five lawyers in London on retainer on this particular topic just to protect the IP. You know, there were certain things they were absolutely hot on. And then the third thing they did, which again makes sense, but feels quite bold, is they would invest in capacity. They'd invest in three or four times capacity because the only way you're going to get to fantastic growth is by making, well, efficiency actually, back to what you said.

28:57They built in efficiency into operation. They stripped as much cost out so that, you know, the margin would be made and cost would be covered and you can invest for growth. I mean, I'm a mad, yeah. And I think efficiency is so important. I'm a mad, and I think anyone who's operated an agency knows about efficiency and the importance of understanding your revenue, driving people, keeping costs down and knowing every cost per hour, et cetera. I'm a mad efficiency person to a sort of obsessive, crazy level. And I think it's so important because it again gives you protection. If I know that I can do for two grand a month, what other people will spend 30 on, then I've protected myself and I've given myself time because I know my goals are going to take time.

29:36And I haven't given myself the stress of like this overhead cost needs to be met. And that comes through efficiency. And that comes through the use of AI, the use of tech in our instance, right now, the way we work is with a lot of offshore, um, offshore employees that has been an absolute game changer for efficiency. And I've always used people offshore, but you know, this time last year, I had a very large UK based team in London and I actually made them more redundant for efficiencies purposes because, you know, margins get tighter and tighter. And I was like, no, I've got to turn this model on its head.

30:08Like you've got to push for efficiency. You have to, because it protects everything. Yeah, that makes lots of sense. We talked to her about the lack of businesses to invest in at the moment. One of the trends over the last few years, of course, being direct to consumer. And that's been a really challenging time, hasn't it? I mean, the amount of very high profile DTC businesses now that are worth nothing compared to just a year ago. And there was a big COVID, you know, the COVID obviously bounce that they got. And now that's reversed out and the funding and all that kind of thing and the overvaluations and the high gearing, all that's happened.

30:39You know, you're an expert in this area. What's your sort of take on the D2C market and what's going on at the moment? It's a bit crazy. I have a set of businesses and the main one is in the D2C market and has been since 2017. I think, I mean, I used to think it was crazy at the time, right? People used to show up and be like I'm a beauty tech brand I think hang on you sell mascara and you use Shopify like call me old fashion but I'm not sure that equals beauty tech but I mean people seem to be investing in this like you've got this prestigious fund involved and I was thinking I think I am a bit of a crashing bore at times so I was thinking oh I'm very literal so I was thinking this is not beauty tech this is just Shopify site like come on guys um so I think it's it's you know it's not just What's happened is, which people don't often talk about, is the democratization of product creation, which has meant the British consumer must be absolutely inundated with brands, options, possibilities.

31:35So there's all these forces, you know, an opportunity, the direct to consumer opportunity came out because of advertising arbitrage space between Facebook and the British public or any country's public. And that's cool. But then surprise, surprise, it gets more exciting. But at the same time, you had, it gets more competitive. At the same time, you had this democratization of product race. Anyone and their dog can create and launch a brand. And some people have done that exceptionally well. So you actually probably have more products in Britain than we've ever had before. I don't know if there's any studies on that, but I will guarantee that is the case.

32:09And then you have a cost of living crisis and the bubble burst. I think, I mean, my view on it is the direct consumer e-commerce channel is a really important channel and always will be. I am pleased to see some of this stuff go. I really am. I am sick to the back teeth of talking to people about their skincare brand that's exactly the same as everybody else's. They've got some wild ingredient. You know, we used to call it the herbs of the Atlas Mountain because they would think, well, the fact that they've sort of trekked the top of some mountain to collect a particular leaf means that this clean skincare brand is now going to fly.

32:42And it's like, my God, the underappreciation of the complexity of e-commerce success and it just got too OTT. It's got to calm down. But regardless of that, the e-commerce channel and the possibility for e-commerce brands to exist is going to continue to be viable. We need a clear out in it. We really do. We really do. I mean, the opportunity is amazing, isn't it? Yeah. The opportunity will still be growing. If you were someone somewhere can do a study, I'm sure, where they can remove the oversupply of products and they can remove some of the madness. And the channel, of course, is going to grow.

33:14There's still a load of retailers aren't even mastering e-commerce. There's still people who will have amazing products that should and must set up e-commerce brands 100%. So I try and just focus on the quality. And we just try and, you know, we've seen enough since 2017 to just say to people very bluntly, look, your unit economics aren't right. Clean beauty, like seriously, you want to take that on as a category? and we're very blunt with all the brands that come to our workshops and our conferences we do a big spreadsheet we can tell them straight away they're going to be successful or not and it's much better to tell someone your unit economics are off this doesn't mean you should shut down now but it means you are carrying a risk and you need to adjust all these metrics and here's what you need to do so at least they're empowered with the financial facts about their business so you see so as you're assessing them you start a unit economics right yeah and we always and actually we always have done in block digital which is because of me and my co-founder my partners, our background, where we both sold businesses, we always started, not with unit economics, because that phrase is quite a new phrase.

34:14We started with, what's the value? Are they trying to sell this business? What are they trying to do? Are they trying to sell it? And do they have a hope and hope of actually selling it for what they think are going to sell it? And that really is unit economics. Yeah. So whether it's profitable, I get that. How would you, given there are thousands, I guess, probably hundreds of thousands of different products out there that anyone's launching on any kind of day. How do you cut through all that? I mean, it's partly about the brand. You mentioned those private equity companies who will look for the brand.

34:43It's partly about being able to create a kind of standout brand. It's partly about the category, managing to pinpoint a category. And I still see people do it, you know, even now, who was it when I was like, wow, that's good. You've actually, you've properly gone into a category and you found a sub niche and that's good. I'm impressed. So that's still possible to do. And then I think it comes back to the capability. I read, this is why, you know, I'd invest in someone like a Matt at Space Goods, because it comes back to the capability of the founder and all the team to deal with the complexity that an e-commerce business faces, because they operate on shifting sands, the landscapes, I mean, you know, this is in Performance Marketer, you build processes and the platform changes.

35:22You have to start again. I've never known a business that's operating on shifting sands in the way these e-commerce businesses do so you've got to have somebody a team who are self-teachers who will get out and learn stuff who will just realize that any of these things any of the sass whatever it can all be taught to themselves they can teach all to themselves and they have that grit because then I think they're in with a chance that's that's the USP is we see so many brands very famous you know high street brands or brands that sold in lots of boots types of brands and you just think god guys you know in e-commerce like you just nobody here has even the start of the skills you need let alone the true performance marketing skills the self-teaching skills so who would you pick if you were to pick two or three brands today that you look at and go they are nailing it at the moment from a dc perspective well i mean the inky list but we train their in-house d2c team okay you're not allowed to pick from your own all right so you know let's pick from outside anyway i mean colette the founder's incredible she's done incredibly well um amazing at creating products well we've got our conference in a few weeks we always try and have the top brand so speaking at our conference we have our place which is the cookery brand which is has selena gomez as their main ambassador that and and tails.com the personalized dog food brand they're both 100 million pound dollar pound plus brands they're both huge when you talk to their team i mean it's full of capability you know it's like a team full of performance marketers and because i'm a performance marketer i love teams like that you know when they just like my god i'm in a room with 10 performance marketers.

36:51I love the fact that the episode after I win performance marketer of the year, I end up with an actual performance marketer on the podcast. This is the irony of ironies, ladies and gentlemen. Anyway, but this is good for my health. This is great. Yeah. So you've actually created like a D2C live event, which is slightly ironic, of course, having a live event to talk about D2C. But why did you set it up? Because it sounds like a fascinating thing. Oh, it's brilliant. D2C live is our conference. This This is our fifth conference. We run two a year. I mean, it started because we were obviously, I was running an e-commerce, a standard agency, a performance marketing agency, just to mention performance marketing again.

37:26Thank you. And, you know, we were working with doing performance marketing for lots of people. And now I just sort of felt, I know a lot of people in this. We'd had a lot of success. It made us very high profile, particularly in beauty, in a beauty vertical. And I was thinking, so weird. Lots of these people don't know each other. So the interesting thing about e-commerce is, unlike other careers where people might go through a, a career path and they arrive on the scene and they know Peter because they used to work together 20 years ago. In e-commerce, you have this mad mix of people. So you have all these retail people, they all know each other.

37:56They're all selling in boots and have shops and they're all very, they all used to work on makeup counters and et cetera. Then you have all these self-starters who've created products out of some pain they've discovered. Some of whom have become phenomenally successful, you know, huge, huge brands, but essentially starting out with some random person in some town somewhere who knows nobody. So that's how you have this massive fragmentation across e-commerce where actually outside of the retail set, people don't really know each other. And I sort of kept thinking it was so weird. Like, why don't these people know each other?

38:26To me, particularly the performance marketing types, because I was saying, you'll know when you meet performance marketers. You know you're in the company of one. You know when you know, right? You know when you know. We're amongst friends here, so this is good. Often they're young guys, like 26 to 32 years old. Very, very, very clever guys. Exactly like you, yeah. And I'm definitely not like the mother who's like looking after them all. But I used to think, my God, you've got this young guy in his bedroom over there who's really clever, doing amazing things. Another young guy in his bedroom over there, like, why don't they know each other?

38:55They're both like completely isolated. So we started bringing people together and thought, could we have an event, maybe get 12 of these types together and introduce them? That turned into our first conference. 120 people completely sold out, amazing speakers. and really that saw the business take a pivot away from standard agency into conferences, community, education, networking and introductions. And to be honest, because I'm a former journalist, that's sort of, I was never clear why I was doing, why, how, you know, I became a performance marketer and wasn't very good at it. But bearing in mind, I was originally a journalist.

39:27I wasn't really clear how that had happened. You know, one of those weird transitions. Most careers are like that, aren't they? Yeah, they are. You suddenly end up somewhere. So like me doing what I do now is never on in the plan at any point ever. And then you sort of have a modicum of success and it kind of surprises you. Yeah. Oh, I know. I didn't think I was cut out for this. It's a bit surprising. The weird one for me actually was I really, actually, I'm the opposite to you, right? Because I hated English at school and I was really bad at it. And I was, you know, writing is like my least favorite thing.

39:58And now I've started writing for Marketing Week doing columns. and it's like and whenever i get an email from russell the editor going oh yeah nice job on the on the column i just it's on those pinch me pinch me moments because i'm like oh if only he knew that i'd like i find writing sitting down and writing something quite scary you know you wouldn't believe it looking at my linkedin actually by the way but it's something i find really hard and i've had to i've had to almost teach myself i think writing is really hard it's not as easy as it looks because it looks great when it's finished yeah yeah and talking about writing i think i was a much better writer in the days where on the Daily Mail's production line where you just sat down and had to start writing than I am now.

40:38But I think it's also very hard to write in your own voice and or to find your own voice, this cliched phrase of finding your own voice. And I'm someone who wrote for many years, but only ever in the voice of the Daily Mail, Grazia, Marie Claire, or, you know, putting into the voice of these mass publications. It's extremely hard to find your own voice, I think, particularly when you're used to hiding behind the voice of the Daily Mail. That's very hard to then know what you actually think. Someone on LinkedIn, a really good copywriter, was doing kind of personas and different kind of, you know, styles.

41:08And she picked me as a particular kind of style of writer. I was like, oh, that was interesting. Well, you're obviously a very good writer. Well, yeah, apparently so. Anyway, but not on the list of things I ever thought was going to happen. But talking about all this kind of stuff, the other thing that's interesting about your career is how you've also built a personal brand. Yeah. Were you intending for that to be the case rather than building the brands that you've owned and managed? 100%. Was that a strategy for you? Yes, yes, it was. So it comes back to 2007 and me going to these American conferences for talk to the press.

41:40Personal branding was a thing then. And also don't forget, I'd been at a newspaper where it was clear that people who were, we used to call it visible experts. And really they were on TV, they were on This Morning. you know they were sort of sex commentators relationship commentators you know dr hillary what's his name you know they were we used to call them the visible experts or the talking heads so it was very clear even in the traditional media that there was a space of visible experts or talking heads and that's obviously been rebranded personal branding but yes 100 it was a strategy you know firstly i was flying to america you know i went to a gary venichuk conference i did stuff with derek halpern i was obsessed with the likes of marie fordia this is way back in sort of 2007 to 2014 and it was clear that the americans were embracing personal branding and i i knew it was important because i knew that being a visible expert and a talking head was important and i knew that lots of people in the uk weren't really prepared to do it so i mean it's i get compliments about my personal brand including from you but from my point of view it's been very it's very impressive it's been very chaotic i did do the website comparison between yours and mine i have to say that's an updated website which is a bit ott do check it ladies and gentlemen love to say it's impressive but it was and we've talked to the press it particularly came with strategy because essentially I create a website and it's like you know if you want to sell your story we're the trusted for we're the trusted people in this market obviously people are suspicious of journalists and I was a journalist but I was like well there's no reason to be suspicious of me to prove that I put myself all over that website I was we did videos you know I was very much like photos everywhere I had photo shoots in 2007 this was quite audacious you know my my former colleagues at the mail, I'm sure slagged me off a bit and thought I was getting a bit OTT, but it was imperative to me to get the trust.

43:24How else was I going to get story? First of all, I was worried about some of the ways the tabloids treated these story sellers, where they get the story once and the whole person's cast out. I did think there was a problem in the industry, but also if you are a person under huge pressure and you're trying to make a decision fast, you just need to see a friendly face. And I thought, well, I can be that friendly face and live it. So my personal brand really came in and talked to the press back in 2007. And actually I still, just this week, somebody emailed me a huge story. If it came out, it'd be massive headline news.

43:52And I'm like, Oh God, I haven't done story brokering for years. Like, but that's the power of the personal brand that out of the blue, I get an email from California, someone telling me, you know, it's a kiss and tell essentially somebody globally famous. And it's like, okay, firstly, I haven't done a kiss and tell story for years, but that's the power of the personal brand because I was a trusted force. You know, there was a lot of we did a lot of good representation of a lot of people in extremely vulnerable situations and sometimes they're still in touch so i the personal brand was a hundred percent a choice at that point past that point it just became increasingly normal i wrote a book about personal branding in 2016 which again was some nearly 10 years on that's quite a long time ago isn't it well it was 10 years on when i'd first used my personal brand i wrote a book about personal branding which again was only focused around the americans gary vayner truck by this point was huge grant cardone marie forleo those types were seth godin was one of the people i interviewed for the book and it was just and i kept thinking at any point it's got to hit the uk i still don't think it's properly landed i mean your hats off to you for doing a podcast and ranking so well outside of rare people like you and stephen bartler i still think it's an underutilized asset in the uk yeah And in all the brands we've worked with.

45:09There's something about the Brits, isn't it? We find it a bit uncomfortable. We find it. I find it uncomfortable. I find it uncomfortable. Now I. And everyone thinks you're just showing off or something. Yeah, I know. It's like, no. I literally, even now, after years of doing personal brand, I still feel paranoid posting on Instagram because I think my friends are going to be slagging me off and thinking, I think I'm up myself. That's the issue, isn't it? Yeah, that's the issue. But the Americans don't feel that, right? They don't feel that. So they haven't got that complex. No, they just don't feel that, no.

45:32Well, I mean, some of them might do, but speaking very generally, no, they don't. So having met some of the, I guess, most influential people in business that you just name check there, what's the secret to their personal brand? How have they built it up? Volume. I think they've done volume and continuous improvement is what I think they've done. I mean, some of them are quite well off, so they can put resource into it. You take the likes of Grant Cardone, you know, who was in our interview, hilarious, but incredibly like off the wall. Like, you know, you're doing an interview with someone, you're thinking, am I actually talking to someone who's a bit bonkers here?

46:03Like, this is crazy. I mean, he's obviously put a lot of resource into it because he has the money. The rest, I think, have just done volume and consistency and continuous improvement. So iterating, see what works. Iterating, yeah, because I think there's no taking away from the time you have to do it at the coalface. And I wrote about this. So I had another bit before called the Million Dollar Blog, which was about blogging to build a personal brand. That was a bestseller. In both books, every single person interviewed it was 50 how to do it and 50 interviews with some pretty famous people in both books every single one of those people talked about the time at the coalface I don't think there's any way to bypass it you know I think it's that whole cliche of getting comfortable in your own skin find your own voice I don't still don't feel I'm there at all um people like you who've committed a podcast for four years I think you've done absolutely brilliantly and I think it's very hard for people to do it's hard to divert time away from your actual work to do your personal brand it's hard to run a production it's hard to find your voice it's hard to feel okay about it and not think your friends are snagging you off you know all of that stuff you I find I have to almost override what I think people are thinking if you know what I mean you almost have to kind of and I'm sure some people are thinking yeah of course because Brits are cynical as well they are you know that some of them are thinking you know exactly what they're Yeah, exactly.

47:22And I think in America, you can reassure yourself that that probably isn't happening. But I think in the UK. Well, Americans tend to cheer that on, don't they? I think in the UK. You're a little bit snide. It probably is happening. In America, they're like, give you a round of applause and like, go for it, man. Yeah, and I think, to be honest, it is happening. Like, British, Brits are a bit snide. You're a bit like, I can imagine like, oh, you know, your friend's having dinner. Well, she's certainly doing a lot of videos. Yeah, exactly. Do you know my friend that starts with a C that was in my book that got me into private equity?

47:49Yeah, yeah, yeah. He moved to LA to start his next business, right? The only reason, he said, is because you go to LA and everyone wants you to be successful. Yeah. Everybody. And he just said, in the UK, they'll pick a hole in it. They'll be cynical. They'll talk it down. They'll talk behind your back. He said, LA, everyone wants you to be successful. And also, bear in mind, for me, a lot of my friends are journalists. You know, we are so, journalists are so cynical. You know, it's in your, it's in the way the stories work. You know, one of the funniest stories we all had to do all the time was like, what's wrong with it?

48:19Why can't so-and-so find love? And it was always the story of, you know, Kate Moss, right? Despite being the global supermodel, so perfect, a multimillionaire, why can't so-and-so find love? So I know that my friends are cynical as well. I have the evidence because I sat with them on a national newspaper for years. Now, you did tell me, you're talking about Gary Vee. Gary Vee's had some help, hasn't he? Gary Vee has had some help. Well, he's got a whole, I think he has a team of, at any one time, between six and 30 people on his brand. it's a team that's gone up and down over time but you know the main sort of creator or creative vision over the past 11 years has been a videographer called David Rock also known as D-Rock I need to meet D-Rock I think this needs to happen well D-Rock is uh get some advice from D-Rock yeah get some advice well I tell you what D-Rock's advice is and Gary and we and through so we we have an event with D-Rock this week he's coming to the UK he's left VaynerMedia he's looking at how he's going to build his personal brand, what work he's going to do and what he's going to do next.

49:16Having been in VaynerMedia as kind of the head creator for Gary Vaynerchuk's personal brand for many, many years, we have learned so much about their production process and everything from the time we spent with D-Rock so far. And it is incredible in terms of, I would say if I was to summarize what their advice is, first of all is formats. So Gary Vaynerchuk has a lot of Gary V, Trash Talks, Daily V, Tea with Gary V. The number of formats they've actually tested and ditched is about four or five times the formats that we all know. Interesting. Yeah. So this is very interesting. So they did, they've done a trash talk.

49:51Yeah, I said trash talk. So whatever we know, four or five key formats, there's probably been 20 tested, 15 of which have been ditched. Now when you say tested, do you mean they've actually gone live and then they've cancelled? Yeah. Or they've done a sort of controlled experiment? No, no, they've gone live. They've published. It hasn't really gone anywhere. So they've just like, you know, signed the X's station. That's a dilemma though, isn't it? because like you know i'd probably ditch my podcast after the first six months if i was being maybe that scale they're able to see pretty fast what's going to land because it's obviously vaynerchuk personal brand is huge yeah the next thing their main advice is is in and gary vaynerchuk gives this advice all the time all across the internet it's just publish more more more more more formats more repurposing more more so multi-channels so get across lots of channels you know i think they're publishing it's crazy something like 70 times a day wow i know and that will include you know the the channels that are not in mainstream use which the modern channel they've just gone from my mind but you know all the ones that everyone's using now the ones the kids are using all of that you know twitch like he is an unbelievable production that's interesting i actually had rob mayhew on the podcast recently and he's done an amazing job and uh so he's a tiktok influence and he's transitioned to linkedin and he said that what he's that he just when he went to LinkedIn, he committed for, I think, 100 days or so, and literally doing two posts a day.

51:06Now, if you read up on LinkedIn, you're not supposed to do that because it's like too much content. But he just repurposed content from one channel, put it on the other, and just went twice a day, like you say, volume, volume, volume, and went from 50 to 100 ,000 followers, I think, in that period of time. Wow, that's really impressive. Now, he hadn't established based on one channel, but they're quite different channels, right? I mean, you know, one's consumer and obviously one's business, but he was able to use the content from one pick the best repurpose it but he said he just he just went at it for i think it's 90 days or so just twice a day go go go i mean actually one of my projects has just gone viral in tiktok and i've been analyzing what it took to get to that and it's quite phenomenal what's gone into it it's something like 300 videos i mean it's not this is not i'm not about you've done 300 videos prior do you mean to this point i'm just doing the analysis now because it's just gone viral This is our not-for-profit Biz Kids, which teaches children entrepreneurship.

51:58And it will become a charity because it's gone viral and now it's all happening. But actually, when you look at what went in to get to that point, I've got three projects on TikTok, which are all about that. Like, how do you, how is this algorithm working? How do we make them go viral? And they've all done pretty well, to be honest, but this one's now taken off. And when you actually look at what we've done, it's a tremendous amount of, you've talked about your four years in this podcast. so we've done 300 this so the teachers kids entrepreneurship we've done 300 videos of lesson summaries we've done weekly live streams teaching kids we've really like pushed through that pain period of finding our voice or whatever it is i've had to overcome the hurdles of picking up the camera and just doing it without editing with the green screen and it's like and then it goes viral and which was it a particular video that went viral it was also the content topic but i think the content what i've noticed about because it's amazing when something goes viral if you're a performance marketer which i know you are what it then shows you about the algorithm because then you can start feeding stuff in you know like if you have um well like you would with a winning campaign you can start feeding stuff in and seeing how the algorithm responds so i'm at the moment in this like brilliant phase of being able to do that which i would have done on Facebook in 2017.

53:12So it's the same thing. The content, yeah, because it's actually the content that has gone viral is the kids actually going out, creating a jewellery stall and making£155. But what I've noticed is TikTok has given the entire feed an uplift. So as a result, you imagine a feed gets really, really long. You have a viral incident in one section of it, but the whole feed has been uplifted. I get the same on this podcast, actually. So last week's episode with Mark Ritson did particularly well and it's it just it's like a wave yeah it just sort of you get this wave across all the previous episodes kind of get a lift as well yeah yeah yeah you talk about biz kids that's interesting so what one of the um my oldest daughter actually is uh really into business and it's interesting just she's just chosen her a-levels and she um didn't choose business in the end she dropped out of business because she didn't think it was serious enough and I was I was like what you know I think there's nothing better than business right you know in terms of creating jobs creating value you know helping the economy and and i know i'm pretty sure she's going to be a successful businesswoman in her own right she's got so many so much ambition but but school doesn't really teach you business skills does it and i mean i know i was frustrated at like not getting the kind of skills that you need um it feels like a real opportunity doesn't it to teach kids about being entrepreneurial and setting them up for what they're going to spend a lot of their life doing you know once they leave education.

54:33Whether they're in a job or not, they need to understand that businesses kind of want to grow and drive money. Yeah, I mean, Biz Kids came about because of a business I had, which I'm still a shareholder in, called the Notting Hill Shopping Bag, which is a very simple souvenir tote bag that sells to tourists visiting Notting Hill. And I started it in 2008, so a long time ago. And I already had talked to the press at that point, which I couldn't really articulate because remember, I didn't have the vocabulary of business. Once I got the Notting Hill Shopping Bag and I went out and wholesaled, I went out on foot, rampled to better market and wholesale this bag into various shops and stalls.

55:04And it was obviously a painful process. You know, some people were very rude. Some people said no. Some people said yes. You know, it's like I found it traumatizing, to be honest. I spent three days procrastinating before I even did it. Once I'd done it, I then thought, why didn't anyone tell me like this is this simple? Why didn't anyone tell me about going out, putting yourself in a comfortable situation, having some face to face conversations and doing a simple trade? You know, you buy this for two and you sell it for four and I get one like type of thing and so that was one part of what started Biz Kids is I couldn't believe that I'd only learned this accidentally at the age of 30 that then helped me my business in the Notting Hill shopping bag then helped me understand that Talk to the Press was also selling a product it was just a variably priced product I couldn't have articulated that until I'd had this on the ground experience experience I just couldn't articulate it.

55:55Secondly, within Portobello market, there's a lot of children working on stores and they will be the children of the storeholders. A lot of the storeholders, by the way, are incredibly wealthy. They own half the property of Notting Hill and they've 300 years of storeholding in their family. But anyway, they bring their children onto these stores. And I remember seeing 12 year old kids like talking to people, you know, doing, doing cashing up, you know, doing negotiation on prices. The market environment is a brilliant environment. I learned a lot in it and I saw a lot of children learning a lot in it.

56:22And I just felt, wow, I wish I'd learned this earlier. So I wanted to have some sort of scheme that brought people into Portobello Market was the original idea that didn't come to pass. But during lockdown, I taught my own kids entrepreneurship instead of the national curriculum. And then next thing I knew within a few weeks, we had 300 children a day doing entrepreneurship during lockdown for seven weeks, every single day. I taught it with my daughter, then seven as my co-host. Really, I just needed someone to look after her. She had to stand next to me. And anyway, then we started it again this year.

56:53I always knew it was a great thing, but work life takes over, lockdown ends. You're like, my God, I can't just teach entrepreneurship. Like I've got business to run. Anyway, this year we started it again because, you know, some of the investments had done well, the way I was working changed. And I was like, no, I put a lot, we put a lot of time into this. So Annie and I started presenting it again. Plus I wanted to learn TikTok. And I was like, I'm going to take this out on TikTok and I'm going to understand this algorithm and how it's working and what's going on. So we teach it every Monday at 4.30 as an afterschool club.

57:21It's completely free and I just teach kind of simple business lessons I think they should know not because I think children should be working now at all but because I think they need to understand some broader things about the way the world is at working so we teach entrepreneurship opportunity spotting financial literacy and personal development just to help them realize that opportunities are all around them and they have a choice at any one point to get a job or do something on their own and even though they're in the job they should be thinking about contributing positively to the company and then that's just gone viral because the kids have started going out and selling stuff and made 155 pounds which obviously is a huge amount of money that's a lot of money and that has led to dozens of kids coming forward on tiktok all of whom are running businesses 10 year olds 11 year olds loads of parents reaching out saying we want our kids to learn this sort of thing we've just been donated i mean i i need it's going to have to become a charity we've just been donated um 20 free kits to give to disadvantaged children we have got messages you know please I want to earn some money you know my family can't afford this parents saying I'm a single mom but I'd love my child to learn this and that's just really happened in the past few weeks that viral activity which is great because the bracelet making business is a very simple one like the lemonade stand the eBay business the bracelet making business from which what I want to give kids is not to make them work as entrepreneurs when they're 10, but to help them have their first experience of making money because that will stay with them for life.

58:51It will. It totally will. Standing on a stall and coming away with£155 and illegally set up a stall in a park. It's amazing. My daughter just started A-level maths and she's just got permission from the teacher to do an afterschool maths club for the junior school, uh well the secondary school and uh she's like oh yeah so it's i'm going to charge the parents 10 pounds per child for an hour and i'll get 12 kids i'm like that's 120 quid for one hour you just teaching what you've just been taught i'm like that's genius you know she's really good at math and she's gonna help you help the kids in their gcse yeah i mean when we were when we were doing the stool my daughter's like we've just made 40 pounds in half an hour and i'm thinking i think that's quite a lot of money isn't it yeah like for anyone like i know i know my daughter Every time she says that, I said, well, when I was your age, I did a paper round for five pounds a week.

59:41So just telling you a bit of inflation. Just to finish on what I know, this is a question a lot of people ask. But if you were to give one bit of advice to someone else wanting to do what you're doing, what would it be? Keep your personal costs low. Don't get suckered into this. Don't get suckered into this world of having stuff and elevating your household or personal costs. because as soon as you do, you block your own ability to create and your ability to achieve what some of your goals are. And my experience has been, I've never been that into stuff anyway, particularly, but my experience has been is it definitely doesn't bring happiness.

1:00:19And I see people all around me having to keep up with private school fees, you know, lifestyles and, you know, all this stuff that they've put on themselves, they didn't have to do. and if you do do that then your business into some extent is skewed by the owner's sort of needs so my recommendation would be is that you know and I know I sound very boring none of this stuff brings happiness at all you actually what brings happiness is seeing your dreams come to light in one way or another or feeling as though you're working towards something you care about so don't block your ability to work towards what you care about with a load of stuff that is stupid like, you know, oh, my kids at this school, oh, we've got this car, we have these holidays.

1:01:06Oh, you know, I bought these clothes. We've got this, we've got that. Throughout my life, I've really only ever tried to spend money outside of like just a small allowance on things that I know will deliver a turn. So you can renovate your property, right? Because you know, that's going to, that's going to bring something and add value, but try and think of your life like that and don't allow your money to just roll into things that are no value because you might be able to show off to your friends for two minutes but you won't feel happy you won't get what you're looking for so that would be my main piece of advice that's brilliant advice if i look back at the pivot points where i've thought about doing my own thing and i've looked at my overheads and went oh i've got to cover that much uh and it's very often it's very often the reason i haven't you know or when i have done it and i've got it's been really stressful because i've been making a lot less money and i realize i can't cover my costs and and well then that can then lead to decisions that the wrong decisions you make the wrong decision because you're not making the right business you're making the how do i get through the next month and i think exactly and i think the next thing is if you keep your cost low then you can make decisions that are about the business not about you and i think that's also important to be able to do the business is an independent entity particularly when it's employing people it's not about you once it's employing people and you you want to be able to get a balance where you win and everyone wins but it's not just about you once you've got people who are looking to you to help them pay their rent or whatever.

1:02:27Well, that's a brilliant place to end. Tash, thank you so much for sharing. Thank you for having me. It's been brilliant. And I love the chat performance marketer to performance marketer. It's been brilliant. I can't wait for this to play out. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening and watching the Uncensored CMO. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Now, if you never want to miss an episode again, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to follow me, I'm over on LinkedIn at John Evans or on Twitter at the Uncensored CMO. See you next time.

1:02:56Thank you.