What Nobody Tells You About Building a Business in Entertainment | Rosie Skuse

0:00And the next day I was like, I'm waiting for the call that we've ruined their reputation and how dare we, you know, it got like rowdy. Best night they ever had.

0:16It was a big struggle for a long time. If shit hits the van on a Friday night, you work in entertainment, get on the phone and sort it out. For quite a while, we ran our business out of a penthouse, out of a suite, sorry. They gave us a suite to work from because the hotel was empty and we started running. The secret power that you have when you first start is your naivety. And we fell through every single crack you could fall through. Really? We hadn't been established long enough. However, I do think some people do just have it and some people don't. We tend to work with really lovely people and just you might be the most talented, but if you're a diva, I don't want to work with you.

0:57Olly Fawcett:rosie welcome to what it takes how are you i'm really well thank you thank you for having me no absolute pleasure i mean i think you're the first person from the music space on the show which is incredibly exciting so there's lots to talk about um at the start of summer it's very warm in the podcast studio today but how has the start of summer been for you guys it's been really great i think now everything wakes up with events and stuff so we're really kind of gearing up for for a busy period which is good it's what you want isn't it what you want hopefully hopefully the weather supports you in that uh in that endeavor um now you built a really interesting business and almost an agency within the music space um but before that you were actually an actor for about 10 years i would love to know a little bit more about that journey and that world um because i know it's not the easiest place to be here no it's not and i still am acting it's funny actually the company began because of the need to have another job so obviously being a creative you're always juggling multiple jobs with auditions dealing with unflexibility so the reason why one of the reasons for starting malto was so that i had kind of a secure steady flow of income whilst i could still have the flexibility to to take auditions to take jobs so my time i've still so i have a production company now as well which is quite a new thing um and i'm still acting but it's uh yeah it teaches you a lot it means you have a lot of uh a very very thick skin when you were younger was the was the ambition to always go into the acting world on the music world no i think as a lot of so i grew up in the countryside and i no one in my family is from any kind of performance background okay um so it was never it was always something that not that it was discouraged but it was like well it's not really a proper job you go at some point you're gonna have to get a proper job um but it i guess it started quite late I always loved film I loved the world of stories um but I guess I got into I did musical theater for a long time and I got into that world quite late and then got picked up and was encouraged to do it more and more and went to drama school and all of that stuff so it kind of snowballed from there was there other thought that it could be the kind of like full full-time thing yeah I think it will still there's still that kind of drive to make sure that I still fulfill that side of my life and it's funny that I think being creatives you're obviously you you do do lots of different things and you have lots of different lives um so it's it's something that although maybe in the past five years it's taken a bit of a backseat because the business has been so busy yeah but now we're becoming more established and things are a little bit more steady it means there's more space for me to to open that back up yeah But I still, yeah, I still do commercials and plays and all of that stuff.

3:45Olly Fawcett:Nice. Those, I mean, for like, so you were acting for about 10 years before you started the business in a way. That 10 years you were saying it's like a little bit of thick skin and resilience piece. Like how, how true is that when you're going through it? And is there anything you can share on that? It's, it's tough. It's very tough. And I think as a young girl, I, I came to London when I was 18 by myself, just basically. always intrigued by the big city um and the reality of it was very tough it was very i had no money i had no no london can be a very lonely place when you don't have a community and it was a big struggle for a long time um but you learn and i think as well coming from theater especially it's made me so disciplined um and i notice it with my with the musicians that we represent the ones that have been through have been in theater are like just so militant really yeah because where does that come from well it comes from the schools and training because when even when i was doing my a levels i was doing my a levels plus it's like 26 hours a week of training so i do i never had like the three periods i'd just go straight into a ballet class or acting class or singing um lesson and then going into training in london it was like if you if you were late you're sent home if you were if you forgot your ballet shoot you're sent home and because you're so desperate to be there you you really make sure that you're on time that you've got everything and it just makes you very yeah very disciplined which i don't think is a bad thing there's there's good like good and bad about it yeah do you think that that's like changing a little bit now like now you're entering the business world a little bit and like yeah i think that sense of structure and always kind of if you're going to do something you need to do it well it will always be in me um I went to university for a little bit um I went for a little bit for about a year I went to King's and to do psychology because I was I was a bit lost and I was like okay I want to be back in London I love psychology I was always very academic i'll go to university yeah and i always said to myself when i was younger you don't go to uni if you don't know what you're going to do like it's a waste of time it's a waste of money and i ended up at university and i was just like because i was surrounded by really intelligent people yeah but somewhat the the professor would ask a question and like everyone was silent i was like you guys know the answer like come on and i'd got like come from musical theater where everyone's like in your face yeah um and so yeah it was it was funny then going into a world where year one of university and everyone's like oh you can just piss about and I was like studying all the time like just like obsessively um but I actually left to to do Malto which is a good decision but yeah it's just interesting how those different environments uh they really shape you I think yes like i started my business started off in the theater world that's where we actually started for the first so our business sort of was founded in 2013 when i was still at college um wanted to basically do the theater game put on a show we had two shows which we sort of toured around for like two years two three years and we were like selling out the shows by running ads on twitter and making content and that was a kind of evolution of what my main business now is today which is really focused around you know marketing and digital and that sort of stuff but i did always find that there was this element when it came to like the arts and i find it really similar with a lot of the chefs i've spoken to on this show is that the kind of discipline comes out of a lot of respect for the art if that makes sense like that was like the cornerstone like with the chefs i've spoken to it's like it's the art form of cooking for them that they want to respect by having that level of discipline and my experience when we were you know putting on small shows and touring around the UK and going to the fringe and stuff like everyone was really like disciplined and even at like you know we were all like 18 19 we had like a couple of 20 year olds but like we were kids right having a fucking great time but we were all really like on it in terms of being disciplined and respectful it was kind of like always going back to this element of respect I guess for the work we're creating have you experienced that as well absolutely and I think that also comes from the fact that if you're in the arts whether that's theater music whatever it is you have worked so hard to be there and you feel I still feel very privileged and lucky that I'm able to make a sustainable career out of it but I know that the competition is like I grew up being like you know you know there's going to be thousands of young girls who look like you who want this part and I still as an actor now it's like okay cool I'm going up for a role I know that there's five other ginger girls who you know you're blaming me this time um so i just think that if you're there working in if you're at this point yeah as a creative you know how lucky you are to be there so you're gonna you're not gonna risk it you're not gonna and it's a choice because it's hard yeah it's interesting now you say that actually like how many um like even in the chef game in the arts game like the seriousness comes from knowing that you really want it but also like you're quite replaceable whereas i think like a lot of seriousness in more modern jobs not modern is the wrong word but like in in other industries whether it be like tech or marketing or whatever might be there is an element of like less seriousness and discipline to those jobs even if they really want them and they really love the company or they love the work they're doing i just find the dedication from the arts and i include food in that a little bit because i've spent a lot of time with those sorts of individuals like the the like pure passion to want to be good is so strong yeah like within it which is incredibly exciting there must be some tough moments being an actor for 10 years only you're still an actor but just being purely on that actor road yeah how did you get through those um i think it is just that un it's very conflicting actually because i'll say it's like this unwavering sense of belief in yourself but that is questioned every day and i think you know it you have to deal a lot with self-confidence but i just think that for me it was kind of get up brush yourself off keep going you know that it's gonna if you keep if you keep going in one direction for long enough it's gonna happen and so the rejections and stuff like that as an actor it was quite easy because it's like okay cool it's just the director is not doesn't see you right for that role and i see it now on the other side casting i guess musicians it's not about their talent it's not about you know it might just be one small thing that they're just not right for that project and that's fine so it's just coming to terms with that and separating your yourself from from those decisions and not taking it too personally yeah do you think most people are very good at accepting rejection yeah i think it is hard it's it is tough it can be very tough and i i think bringing it back to the musicians as well sometimes we do have to deal with difficult conversations yeah and because it is such a personal thing people can get very offended by it but i think it just makes for a stronger person and i i think that and maybe this is about actually but if you haven't had to to struggle for it then you don't know what you've got um yeah so yeah i i'm i think i'm just very resilient very like high pain threshold i guess do you ever struggle and like i definitely did this in my early career of like building a company and doing you know we were doing a lot of the creative work right so it's like we're paid to make creative so like we're in a world where being in commercial your opinions are a little bit less important because you're not we weren't always being paid for our opinions we're getting paid to execute the vision of someone else right that was kind of the balance for us but do you like listening to that level of feedback as an actor or in the arts for you do you think it's sometimes difficult to know who to listen to and why yes I think with being an actor it's different because you listen to the director or you listen to your mentor which yeah actually isn't maybe always the best idea um but definitely had difficult relationships with agents before or i think it it comes down to knowing yourself very well right um and then being able to take the feedback and see the bigger picture but also being able to then mold it in a way that's productive for you um but it can be tough it can be very tough to to have i think if you're in the right environment feedback should never be even if it's negative it's constructive yeah if someone's just like out to be horrible to you then maybe step away but i think that feedback is great like i'm always like like even with the guys who come in and work with us in our team i always say to them like in a first second an interview and when we progress i'm always saying come in and tell me what you disagree with come in and tell me how i can do it better because just because we're doing it one way that's just mine and my my co-founder's brains that when we first started for example it's just us doesn't mean it's right so i would like you to come in and disrupt and tell me say to me oh you know i actually think that's a really crap idea or whatever and then feedback to progress do you think there's like a perfect way to give feedback then like to to creative because it's something we've experienced a lot and i'm sure you have in your own way like from a interaction perspective like most i think most people are really bad at giving feedback creatively like they're like oh it's like you shoot a campaign and they're like just make it brighter or like make it more the worst one we always get well we haven't don't always get it but like when you know team or clients or you know heroes in the process like oh can we make this just a bit more designy it's like what the fuck does that even mean yeah but like it's that thing isn't it when it comes to it feels like for me and all the kind of like i guess watching and learning and educating i've done in the creative side of things especially like director levels or producer levels their ability to give feedback and direction funny enough is like what makes them so good but you must have had to experience a lot of that on both sides of the fence in many ways so do you think there is a way to look at creative feedback where it doesn't bring in too much productivity i think that and i don't know if i'm you know i probably have not been always great at giving feedback i'm sure that there's been times where it's been elusive or not or i'm being trying not to upset someone so I'm not quite getting to the point yeah but I think it is just trying to be super clear and leading with if you're saying something that is maybe a bit negative or could potentially upset someone it's kind of getting around it from a human point of view and saying look I know how you feel or I know that this might sound like this but I'm saying it with this intention and then just being super clear and direct yeah because I think when you get a bit fuzzy and i've definitely done this in the past where i kind of start and then i get a bit nervous about saying it so then i'll veer off and then it becomes a bit cloudy um but we do deal with it a lot uh with clients and that it's always fun isn't it it's like okay but that's that's the fun of it is trying to kind of work out and and now as we've gone developed very strong relationships with people over the years yeah i'm very good now at saying right okay he's saying that he means this but I definitely even what you just said um we did a recording the other day and I said to one of the girls in our team it was such bad feedback I was like can you make it just like it was almost like brighter like yeah the sound I was like you know I just don't want it to be so like this and she's like what and I'm like you know that like this feeling I think it's like the it's almost one of the skills like in leadership that I've always think that if you can find a way to get really good at creative feedback so not just feedback of like you know the black and white feedback this is the way it happens you've done it the wrong way you know what I mean it's like the feedback around if you're you know in the music space it's the sound feedback right it's like yeah you can obviously talk about you know musical feedback in like a level of detail yeah but in such creative spaces it's really hard to actually try and give feedback that's useful like information that's useful to make things better and I think that's one area where if it's a brand trying to develop out their brand and their identity and they're trying to be creative around that or they're trying to build like campaigns like we've dealt with so much where you're talking to brands about campaign ideas and they don't like it but they can't really tell you why and it's like actually that's such a limiting factor to great collaboration right does that make sense absolutely i think as well for for me and my role within malto is i do come from a point of like if we're on stage with musicians and i know what the client wants i will give them that feedback of like a feeling and that that comes from me being an actor of i'm like i want guests to walk in and feel this and this is what we're trying to achieve here and i'm going to paint this world and you're going to execute it with your talent yeah but then now we have people around us who then musically obviously i've learned over the because i'm not a musician i've learned over the years right it's in you're not musician at all no so i i can read music i can play the keys very basically i was a singer right a bad singer but good you know a character singer okay right basically just like you can act but you can't really sing which is fine i'm over it i could tell but but it means that when i'm speaking to musicians they there's a language then that i will some like it needs to be transcribed into to make sense to them but people we're all performers so people get it and actually i think it's better that i do come from that point of view because i'm sat in the guest point like guest seat all the time thinking how do i feel what am i achieving here what's the vibe that we need to get to okay tap like what's that sound what genre is that what style what what composition of music like what instruments do i need yeah what sound of a singer do i need what's the so a lot of my um knowledge and my instinct comes from my gut of like okay this is what feels right and yeah somehow that's served quite well pretty well so around 2019 2020 you decided to start malto yes where did this initial idea come from so i was thinking about a good way to answer this question so it came from going to a lot of bars and drinking a lot of cocktails and just realizing that the music was pretty poor in these spaces so i didn't know prior to working in this business that music and hospitality was such a massive industry as a performer as a musician you're either gonna go you you go through training or you grow up either gonna become an artist work in the theater or you know that's kind of how you see it i guess there's a whole world of of work available for session musicians that I had no idea about so I was I had an opportunity to work on a cocktail bar um which had live music and then I was going to these hotels quite a lot going to cocktail bars in in central London and just seeing what was around and seeing that actually it was almost like a just forgotten add-on like when you think about hotel music you think boring stale and that was true it was just shoved in the corner it was the same type of musician playing the same type of music and it just lost all the love but in most of these five-star places music is a core element of their offering especially in london and you could just sense that the the people running these hotels is almost like a bit of a burden like okay we've got to have a pianist at afternoon tea because that's what happens there was no love and we were seeing that in these spaces especially these high-end ones there was so much focus on the food the furnishing the cocktails the service but this element was just being completely neglected so and then on the flip side of going to all these grassroots venues and music everywhere and it was so amazing and i was like why what where's the disconnect here what why is that not there's all this free live music and why why does no one know about it um so that's kind of where it it started and then being from a theater background i wanted to bring in that sense of excitement and feeling within these spaces was it because i guess establishments weren't prioritizing the quality in terms of like how much they're paying who they're bringing in because I feel like if we go back 30 40 years hotel bars were the place where you were discovered a lot of music if that makes sense right and there was you know from especially in London there was many places where like it would be oh we're going there because that person's playing yeah the musician was the draw like in in a way as well as the booze and like the vibes and all that kind of stuff right but where do you think or why do you think sorry a lot of the establishments just deprioritize this i think it just become a little bit it was dominated by a certain like it was being dominated by a provider and i just think it was becoming it just become a bit tired and i also think that it was unfortunately there was no young voices from my side from speaking so i spent and i talk about it quite a lot but i spent a lot of years being and I still am like the only woman within these spaces and the only young person and so you'll have a hotel that want to draw in a young crowd but the decision makers not within the hotel but just as a collective were a little bit more out of touch with what the younger generation wanted so yeah I just think it it just needed a bit of a shake-up at that time so it was kind of like a combination of of of things of also a good time to really come in and have a moment where we could get make a bit of a mark how did you go about doing that and did you do it by yourself well um it was a terrible time to start a music business because obviously we i didn't do it by myself i have a co-founder um who is also a professional drummer right so that's also where like the two worlds collided um and we set up literally weeks before covid and i remember going to a few hotels we managed to like push and get some meetings and they were like there's this thing happening but we're not worried you know like this bit the hotel's a bit quiet but i think it'll be all right yeah you'll be fine and literally within a space of a week we must have had about five potential contracts and just day after day it was like hey sorry we're gonna have to review this hey we'll come back in a few weeks hey and we just lost everything is this is your first business right yeah and it's just the two of you yeah just and i guess you're not earning until you've got contracts oh no no and we fell through every single crack you could fall through like really we hadn't been established long enough i hadn't been like it was just it was really scary and i remember we would sit and like we'd watch the announcements we'd be like okay cool maybe we can furlough ourselves oh no we're not on payroll so it was like hideous however with that being said obviously so our industry completely collapsed hospitality music everything just literally wiped and however from that although it was a very turbulent and terrible time um it gave us the space to really define what we were doing so during covid period i then we we pivoted and we learned how to put websites and do social media just to stay afloat which was really interesting and i learned some skills were you doing that for people yeah yeah we managed to get a few clients like i built my sister's website and a friend of mine and you know it was just like anyone who would pick up phone to us we were like let us i'll run your social media honestly didn't know what i was doing but we tried we survived um but it meant then that every single day although i was doing that my whole head was just malto and we were so persistent on like what does it mean what are we what are we giving to the client because i think that's the kind of starting of a business is like what problem are we trying to solve and where's our value why why would a client come to us because we never felt like they needed us it was always well sorry that's the wrong way we never felt like we deserve to be there it was more so what can we give them yeah to give value because music's an add-on you don't need music so you and it's expensive so you have to be providing so much value to that client to justify the price that you charge and it gave us that space to really honed down we re we rebranded we we did all these things so then when the restrictions started to lift we were so hungry and we literally were like racehorses out of out of the gates we were we were gunning for it and i think our competitors who were a lot had a lot more money than us more more established than us maybe just weren't as quick at the start so we got in and and it's funny the our first client was um our first proper client was at the the Dorchester rooftop they basically converted their penthouse into a restaurant to to get around the restrictions of dining outside Tom that was on the show did that Tom was yeah I worked with Tom there which was very fun um so they had chefs doing pop-ups so Tom did one I remember him telling us about it yeah I think Cass had one so and I've made some lifelong friends through that because we were like all of us no one had worked in years and and it was very it was just me and my business partner nikki you know carrying the speakers setting up when it rained running and getting it and but going back when we we had sent our proposal off pre-covid to to um a lovely man called rich newell there who we've been working with for years and very i owe a lot to him and he called us and And I remember we were walking along Oxford Street and it was like a ghost town.

27:23There was no one there. And my business partner, Nicky, got off the phone. He was like, you never guess what. I was like, well, he's like, Richard's just called. He wants to have a meeting with us. I was like, yeah, you're kidding. I was like, you must have got the wrong number. Also, Nicky has a twin brother. And I was like, he probably thinks you're Lee. Like, you know. But turns out he did want to speak to us. And I remember going there. And I'd never been really in a meeting with a five-star hotel before. Like, I know I said I'd been for drinks there, but it was not my life. I'd never been to five-star hotels never stayed in one like growing up and I remember going to that meeting and I was just like oh my god like someone's gonna someone's gonna find out that I don't know what I'm doing they're gonna pull me out of here oh it's a little bit of imposter syndrome oh huge imposter syndrome because it was all made like and I probably shouldn't be saying this but it was all made up we we made we made up a company we made I made up numbers I made up an idea and it worked but when he was like i'll send through your budget i was thinking oh god how much do i charge what do we do because we'd been out of it but and we knew we we we knew how much you pay musicians yeah so that was the starting block but were you just like add a bit on i was like i'll chuck zero then i didn't i had a very good plan but it was it was a lot of and then i'm calling up all the musicians who i'd known previous and a lot of them had left london or they were like we don't we're not i'm an accountant now i was like what no you're not and for the first few weeks we were all really scared and everyone was really nervous because the guys that had been at the top of their game hadn't played in years you know like outside of their bedrooms so everyone was a little bit hesitant and it was it was a very interesting time actually and I'm very thankful for that first because we were there seven days twice a day and a massive music program like it was you know bands every night and and it was amazing and I remember I was walking one one um evening I was on Park Lane heading to heading to the rooftop and this was when you weren't allowed to dance so you could have a meal but you couldn't stand up like you'd have to go sit down and eat your food and I could hear our musician from from Park Lane and I could hear people like cheering and I was like oh god oh my god we're gonna get cancelled and I remember I came up and there was like a lift straight out and I could just see people like jumping up and down and one of the people from the daughter to grab and they were like you need to tell him to turn down I was like I can't I don't know what to do um so but it was a real camaraderie and the musicians that we worked with then I still work with them now and some of them are my best friends and so because we were all so young um yeah it was just this sense of like we're all in it together we're gonna push through we're gonna make this work and we were gonna give work to people which was great but yeah it was uh we actually and again this probably something i shouldn't say but we were for quite a while we ran our business out of a penthouse out of a suite sorry they gave us a suite to work from because the hotel was empty and we started running the company from from the bedroom like from a living room to to the dorchester suite

30:40Olly Fawcett:which is just hilarious it's uh it's a good upgrade that i know yeah it's great i know and then at some point i was like they're gonna find out we probably should get an office yeah yeah probably navigating not knowing what you're doing as you put it in your words like how what's your advice for someone who's maybe about to go through that with starting their own thing i think it's great i think it is the the the secret power that you have when you first start is your naivety because you don't you've got no responsibility there's no like now for example when I make decisions I'm thinking about a lot of other people and I'm thinking about the consequences I'm thinking about our brand I'm thinking about the position whereas back then you had nothing to lose so it was like I'm just going to go with this gut feeling and like chuck all this stuff against the wall and see what sticks and actually i think that having that naivety and not the self-consciousness for example that you might have as you get bigger on the responsibility is is so special yeah and i think that if you've got an idea that you think will work and if you can and you can and you follow your gut then you you can't you can't lose like you know things might go wrong and things have gone wrong you know i'm not gonna sit here and say that it's been lovely and easy it's been really really tough but at the start it was like well we've got nothing to lose we might as well try and i think that's a very special special period i think that first like 12 months of a business is like it i'm not saying i'd want to go back there but it is so special yeah it's just so hungry yeah i don't i don't think anyone would disagree with that yeah but it's in hindsight right oh yeah i can sit here now and be like when you're actually in yeah exactly yeah when you're dealing with like in that first year though for you as you just said there's lots of stuff that maybe wasn't going right was there ever an ounce of like this thing doesn't work no actually interesting because we were giving musicians work we were forming how we wanted it to be um and we were smart we we invited a lot of people down my company is based a lot on partnerships so we have partnerships with yamaha which give us instruments we have partnerships with d &b which give us a sound system we have partnerships with we we create content for the hotel so they then give us you know there's lots of moving parts so then we're we're inviting people and we're spreading the word and actually it probably snowballed quite quickly so there wasn't time to think this isn't working right i think that as we grew and you start again looking outwards and you look at what's going on you can start to get a little bit worried that there's competition and there's fragility in what you're doing but i think actually the best thing that I've learned along the way is that yes people will come and they will do the same thing you know everyone can go and book a musician yeah but they can't they're not the service and the the attention to detail it's all within myself and my team and that's what's special and although you might be able to book something similar I'm you don't know what I'm giving to that client um so yeah there's been times where I think god this is this is tough maybe I should have just gone and you know worked for someone but I wouldn't I wouldn't change that at all the element of building a team as you started to grow because you've got a team now how did you find that process for your first time it's very hard very hard and especially when you don't know what you're doing in terms of like I have no business degree I've never I've had jobs I've had jobs all my life since I was 14 I've been working so but nobody told me what to do and when you're a small business you are head of finance head of HR head of recruitment you're everything it's great isn't it it's great no it is and I'm a control freak so it's brilliant but it is really tough and you and you do make mistakes you do handle things badly or you know it's not perfect but if you can find people who align with your vision and your ethos then you're winning yeah and we've had you know one of our first few hires he's one of my best friends now and although he's now moved on to another job which i'm so happy for him he was he understood that you say it's like the malto way he really understood us and he was gunning for us and he he believed in us and and that loyalty was amazing yeah and i think if you're looking to start start sorry if you're looking to work with a startup and a small business you have to understand that it's not we we work well with people that come in either probably freelance or haven't worked for a big business because there isn't structure everyone asked me like oh what's my day gonna look like i'm like i don't know let's see what happens but there isn't there isn't departments there isn't it is just like everyone's pitching in and you might have this role but i might ask you to do to create a deck for this or this massive brand has just come in and asked us to create the entertainment for their summer party everyone switch get on it get on this do you think a lot of people think that they're gonna be good at that or want to do that but they're actually not yeah i think so i think that and now i'm a lot better when we are recruiting i do say to people like please don't think that this is a nine till five i will text you on the evenings like we will um and you know we have a good working culture that we're all i say i think we're all mates so we do we do have fun on our work chat and like we're you know we'll go out socialize but if shit hits the fan on a friday night you work in entertainment get on the phone and sort it out so i think yes some people come in and they love the idea of working in creative and they also think that they're just going to sit there and be creative but it's a lot of admin like we work really really hard and i expect people who are working with us to also work really hard um but it is not for the it yeah it's not for the faint-hearted and it's it can be tough yeah and it's emotional there's a lot of motion yeah i can imagine yeah especially when things go wrong yeah um it's it's an interesting one isn't it like obviously i've i've hired people for the last like 10 15 years in various different levels and skill sets and i've seen the work like the the job industry change so much job industry the job market yeah what people want younger people coming through what they want from work the old the old veterans who are now than like sort of 35 to 40 and they you think they're old but actually they're still really young but um yeah you're just like context now i'm 30 i'm like i'm old oh god i'm having the yeah yeah but um what people want from work has changed so much yeah what is your view maybe in your industry and also you must have so much exposure to different brands and people what is your view on what people's expectations are from work yeah versus actually what it takes to be great in work it's really tough actually and that's a great question because we also kind of came over the whole post-covid everyone's like yearning to be in the office and then then i was interviewing people and they'd be like so what's your hybrid policy i was like huh i've got an office coming and it's been really tough because i love working from home yeah but it doesn't always work no and we do now we're a bit more flexible but for a long time we weren't and that was because you know we when you're paying for an office as well you want people in there and although communication is so easy now it's still not quite the same as being sat in front of each other yeah it never will be no no i agree and i think that yeah it it's it is hard to find people that still want to are like yeah i'm just gonna like go all in i love my job i'm i'm here to like and work-life balance is important but i just don't think that you can really be it's very hard to achieve that i think straight away in in a in a small business yeah but as you grow yes as we've as we've grown we now have parameters in place where we're not expecting everyone to you know there isn't just one person dealing with all the entertainment in the evening we have people who work in the evenings we have people who work in the day we are more respectful of the boundaries etc so but it is i do think that it's you have to be very clear especially in entertainment is that you are it's an unsociable business we we do all this work in the daytime yes but none of that matters unless our musicians are great in the evening it was an evening gig so if you're gonna book if you're gonna be my artist booker you need to go and see the artist because how else are you going to do your job yeah um so i think i've got a lot better at kind of laying that out and obviously also receiving feedback of being like actually you know people don't love it as much as you know it's your business so you I'm always on I never stop working and that's because I choose not to like I I don't it's my kind of I don't see the difference between my personal and my work you know it's all very fluid but but it is also understanding that that's not for everyone and also you can you know have a mix of people that do just want to come in and do their job really really well and then actually switch off and it is important that i mean i'm probably like backtracking i was gonna say it's a real it's it's a hard it's one i'm still learning i guess yeah no i get it do you think it's easier or harder to be really good at what you do in your industry now just by working harder and longer no i don't necessarily think that just because you do all the hours means it's going to be great I think that you have to be smart and you have to preserve your time effectively, which is really tough.

41:25And I found it very tough because from working so much to get anything done because there's only two of you to having more time, you then have to refocus yourself and be like, right now I actually have time to think about the bigger picture of the business. yeah that means and i'm i'm a big advocate for you know i i need to exercise in the morning i need to like have i need to go outside i need fresh air i need sunlight like i'm like a plant and i need to be watered um and then you have the right environment to be like right i'm focused i'm gonna like focus in on what i'm doing right now and have the energy to create the pitch the creative work in the morning for example and then go and see the music in the evening whatever um so i don't think it's all about like uh all the hours in the in the in the day means that you're going to be successful i think it's about like projecting yourself into a focus point of that time yeah i guess like working like smartly well yeah it's a funny one like i personally think the work smarter not harder thing doesn't make any sense no to my head like my brain's like how does that

42:36Olly Fawcett:work yeah i think that smart work is hard work in in in many uh instances but i know what you're saying in terms of like if you are running something if you're trying to be good at your job if you're trying to build there's just an element of like you need to have a balance because no human being is better than a sort of duracell bunny right yeah there's that balance to it but equally at the same time it's interesting in your space because i think so many versus the the businesses i've worked in because it's one of the industries that seems to be left that is got the unsociable hours but also is highly competitive but it's kind of filled with like incredibly exciting beautiful crazy people that are willing just to do it for the passion of it and it kind of comes back to what i was saying at the start is that like i feel like you work so hard because you love what you do yeah but in your industries i guess the question i'm really asking is is it easy to win and be the best just by doing the hours other people won't i don't i think you still need there's still the talent that comes into it you need the artist side and it is unfair sometimes you know you i've we tend to work with really lovely people and just you might be the most talented but if you're a diva i don't want to work with you really yeah um how many of those i'm a diva quite a few um but i don't think that just because i think it's a whole package thing and you you need the the determination and kind of like i'm gonna get here and i'm gonna get here however that means like me pushing if it means i have to do all the hours i do all the hours if it means that i have to if it means for myself that i need to work in this morning and then i need that space creatively to like decompress fine yeah um but no i don't think it is just i think you you have to work hard baseline that doesn't mean you have to work for 16 hours a day just but i do think you have to be realistic and if you want a business yes you you know you you're gonna have to work all those hours because unless you've got the reef the resources to employ a massive team at the start which some people do like and that's amazing it does take a lot of commitment because it's not it's not easy no and as you guys have grown you've begun to work with some incredible brands um i mean i'm sure you would love to name a few like who have you worked with yes so we uh we work with the door to stay hotel the savoy we work with so her house hermes patek philippe american express we've just done an event with google how how do you five what five six years in how have you started to work with such amazing brands just don't take no for an answer tell me more about that it was pushing it was a lot of pushing a lot of pushing to kind of get in a room and shout about what we were doing and then i guess like i've mentioned a snowball effect if you're working for this brand then you'll you get you gain trust from other people uh and kind of reputation of working with the door just exactly we really we really lent into that um to kind of get us to to another space to another space and then it's also just about keeping those relationships as well so the people that i name we've been working with them for years it's not just like a one-off gig right um which i also am very proud of but again also that that we spoke about the naivety it never crossed my mind obviously now i sit back and i'm like wow that's that's amazing but it never crossed my mind of like i was like why not like if i can work out their email i'm gonna email them and i think i've got a pretty cool idea so I'm gonna I'm gonna tell them like about this and they're gonna listen to me so yeah why not and working for you with some of the I mean I know the door store is your first kind of set up in gig but as you started to work with brands did the imposter syndrome kind of come back in because these aren't small makeshift brands they're some of the leading luxury houses in the world yeah and where did that sit for you in terms of I guess the real question is your ability to deliver the creativity they were looking for i guess i just didn't really think about it like being honest it was only when you sit back and you look at it and you're like well okay cool yeah that's quite a lot so i think at the time it is just like project by project and you're and you're you're in that sphere of okay i'm ever gonna do a um a launch of their new collection in store and i'm working with a really great guy who's kind of got me in there yeah i'm going to focus with him and we're going to create like this world i know the musicians i know like i'm going to put this musician in because i think they're incredible and there's alignment there with the brand and this is how it should feel and you just go for it so it wasn't a case of the imposter syndrome doesn't come in because again i'm so i am very confident in what we do when it comes to the music yeah um so when i'm in that headspace i don't really think about it but those few when i'm going to meetings it's more so with the hotels actually when i go to those meetings i used to get very very nervous and but then once i'm talking i then realize i know what i'm talking about so it's it works out there is a beauty in that isn't there like especially with nervousness whether you're speaking on stage meeting with a client pitching the new thing trying to build your brand whatever it is as soon as you realize that you know what you're talking about yeah you're not noticed at all anymore like that's always been i think something for i'm i'm relatively like um extroverted individual as i'm sure you can tell with a fucking podcast um but like that element for me like having the confidence to speak to guests having the ability to pitch having the ability to hire people and run teams it all gets way easier when you start to realize oh actually you're generally interested in this stuff yeah you are obsessed with it yeah it becomes like second nature i think a lot of nerves come from actually realizing you don't have a clue what you're talking about and in the early stages that must be difficult yeah but then we were you know me and my business partner we would rehearse we would chat like we just spend all time all day talking about the same you know about malto and we had a very good like we we go into a meeting i knew exactly what i was going to be doing he knew what he'd be doing he'd make a joke you know and then we had this little act that worked proper performance aren't you yeah exactly it did pay off um so and and we got into a swing of it and and then that thing gets easier and you you do just become you know what you're talking about And then suddenly you, and this is what is strange for me, is you then become the expert in it.

49:48And that's a real funny thing now because as we've grown and people are now coming to us, because a lot of this, like for years it was us pushing, like breaking down those doors, trying to get in, trying to get in. And then people come to you and they actually want to listen. And you've got, then you've got all of that evidence behind you that goes, actually, no, I do know what I'm on about. and this does work and yeah i can stand here and say this and i do understand the dynamics of what's going to happen here and what you need um but you know you've got you've got to you've got to be a good salesperson which is something that i learned on the fly but turns out i was you know quite good

50:26Olly Fawcett:at it pretty decent how have you kept your creative brain going while building a brand and a business because like that must have been a bit of a brain shift from being pure creative for like 10 years to then going to the business side i've experienced that it's hard yeah it is hard i think for me i love numbers so i've been like in the company i'm like the the definitely the finance head and yeah and i quite enjoy that but to stay in creative it does come back to i still get so excited when we find an incredible musician and i get so we've that we've started working with this girl recently actually and she's just done we did a um influence of an event with a with a quite a big brand and straight away i we we saw her perform and i was like god i've got so many plans for this girl like you know this could be perfect for this and introduce her to this and and that's where you get your energy back from and it can be very tough because i spend a lot time in the office in the background and then and I can feel a bit disconnected but then as soon as I'm there and you know in one of our venues like seeing the music it then kind of hits me back of I'm like ah great okay I'm recharged and and that's how I stay creative but also as well staying creative means getting feeding off other things going to the theatre going to a big concert going to an art fair you have to keep yourself engaged with what's going on around you um to make sure that you keep staying inspired and go somewhere that's completely different to where you are yeah for example if i'm providing music for a luxury fashion brand i'm going to go down to a market and i'm going to sit and listen to a busker and then i'm going to see what's going on and i'm going to get get inspiration or you know i feel like there's a trend about to happen i'm gonna go pitch that to this this this client in this hotel because i think that could be really cool and so it is just about keeping your eyes up because you can get very bogged down like you said you mentioned there about like spotting that girl what is it you're always looking for in in musicians is there a thing that you can like pinpoint to in and like everyone listening to this is probably thinking like the Simon Cowell vibe right in terms of like the we've all seen talent shows so much we've all grown up with them I'm sure you did as well yeah I do have a buzz on my eye yeah but like there's that element of like I don't know when you're watching it as a on tv and stuff you you are judging someone straight away and you're like oh they're great they're not great etc but that's a personal perception piece right you're deciding if you like the talent and you're your version of simon cow for you are you looking at individuals and talent and going i would listen to it but this brand it works for this brand because you're not you're not doing in the reaction for yourself and what you like you're thinking about what people like and i'm just interested as to how you then go that's good you know and it's such an annoying thing to say because people use it to like in in formal land but it's like having that stage presence and no one can tell you what it is because it's it's very hard to define but it is that thing of i'm looking for somebody that if i'm having a conversation i want to be distracted and i want to like what's going on over there and and you can be a lot of our with what we're doing day to day is people singing covers right it's not their music but it can be yours if you have that connection to it and you can tell that story and there's a feat like i want you to make me feel something i don't want to just be like oh that was lovely i've forgotten about it and it's very difficult now because a lot of scouting is done from online we're looking at profiles online and we're all we're getting submissions via video and right but you so you're trying to pick up something that's going to be like oh now i'm listening and now you've got my attention and it is tough because you might be the best vocalist but if you're if you have zero stage presence it doesn't matter so i'm always oh you you would say stage presence is over everything i think yeah yeah for me because and that doesn't mean i want someone on the mic being like you know yeah it's not that it's when you walk through the room i want you to give me an energy that's like ah you know you you've got to give that like i'm on stage now you might you might not be at a western theater you might be you know in a cocktail bar but i want you to make me feel like you're still a stage yeah it's still a stage and and that level of and it's it's funny it's not showmanship like we just said it's not like flashy it's not but there has to be a connect between what you're singing and how you're feeling and what you're portraying so that's usually what i'm looking for like when we get videos through i can almost straight away be like you know first few seconds i'm like no or yeah and it sounds really brutal but it is that like little bit of sprinkle um can you teach that that is a very good question um i think if you have inspiring teachers yes you can because if i think back to my certain teachers that i've had along the way like my first ballet teacher or singing teachers if they can give you that that feeling and that passion and then i think it can be it can rub off however i do think some people do just have it and some people don't like some people doesn't matter if you're not the best singer or you're not the best perform um you know actor or whatever it is or dancer if you've got the fact that you know you've got that energy inside you that makes people turn around and look at you then yeah it's it's a funny question i'm not too sure if you can teach it really because i do think some people just have it and they're always going to be the ones that are better than people that have learned it yeah exactly yeah yeah because it's connected within your body.

56:57Olly Fawcett:What's the state of the hospitality and music industries at the moment? How are you guys getting on? It's not great. Tough out there? It's a tough one. Yeah, it's pretty tough out. I think that luxury hospitality is going through a really tough phase at the moment because, well, there's obviously a lot happening globally, which is impacting travel within, especially in London, for example. um but i think that repositioning these hotels for example to appeal to people that are going out and spending their money is tough and we're having a lot of conversations at the moment with our clients of like okay how do we why why um people who are maybe have a bit of disposable income why would they come to your hotel if they're not staying there why you need to create a destination how are you going to do that how are you going to compete with you know i i live in east london and and restaurants are packed all the time and people and you're spending quite a lot of money to have a meal you know on the small plates it all adds up yeah and the natural wine but the natural the natural fucking east london i know i love natural wine um so it is it's very tough to because also the hotels need a new generation of clientele unfortunately there's you know people as they're getting older they're not gonna um well this is what we're saying at the start right like in the 70s and 80s people would go to hotel bars for the evening drink exactly i love me a hotel bar but rather than pubs to be honest with you like i like the atmosphere and the vibe to them but like i'm always the youngest person in there with my mates that's it we are all 30 yeah and we are bringing the average age down yeah because our wider mates are like i'm gonna go to the pub yeah and spend the same amount of money you know essentially yeah but that's where the music comes in and that's what we're trying to achieve is that making it more accessible going into these places you don't want to feel like you know there's there's the for example at the savoy it's one of the most iconic hotels in the but you go in and you don't feel like oh stiff and you know we we we work with the bowfoot bar there and we did a activation with patron uh well we got yeah we work a lot with patron and they're really fun and we had jammer perform which was amazing and people were like on the tables it was chaos i thought oh my god we're gonna get sucked and then the next day i was i'm waiting for the that we've ruined their reputation and how dare we you know it got like rowdy best night they ever had and it's it's reframing people going you know come into these places hear amazing music have great cocktails have great service don't feel like you're not welcome it's so true like obviously with my main business 303 we we work with premium luxury brands and the one thing we're also always talking about on the luxury side is most the the wider market you know most marketing is about alienating 80 percent of the market and speaking to the 20 you want to speak to and all that sort of stuff yeah but within the hotel game the restaurant game the experience game people are willing to spend to have a luxury experience yeah yeah i think the one thing that luxury brands get wrong is that they haven't explained how how audiences can interact with them they don't know how to interact so like most people don't know you can walk into any restaurant in london and go to the bar yeah because they think you've got to be staying there you know they don't know you can go into some of the most beautiful bars the most fun bars the experiences that are there because it isn't necessarily written down whereas i think because especially covid as well must have caused a lot of problems for this because there's a whole generation that grew up in covid becoming an adult from 18 to 23 you know that age demographic where you start to enjoy luxury experiences you want to do more fun stuff that whole generation they're never going to walk into a hotel yeah like that's just not what they're thinking of which is really tough and i guess one of the things that you guys are doing to try and change that yeah and that's where we draw a lot of inspiration and are very lucky to be working with for example soho house or members clubs as well that are making big cultural steps and and different like they're they're forming the culture and it is about taking it's about challenging also the hotels and saying actually no you need this dj here or i'm going to give you this artist you've never had an artist like this before but you have to trust me and that's what we've been building over the years especially with places like the dorchester who had never had you know it was all it was probably just i don't think they would have done the rooftop thing without covid no they wouldn't they wouldn't they wouldn't have ever like there would be no reason to do it no and we had some really amazing artists up there but that wasn't they were nervous they didn't know how it was going to go down and how it would be received but they did trust us and and it is about blending those worlds together and making sure that you are being you you're being culturally relevant and and giving platforms to people in these spaces as well as you know in in the places that they might always perform in so and and making ties between the worlds like putting a grime artist at the daughter story you know those types of things it's like we've we've worked with yeah we've we've pitched a few things and we've done like lots of we've we've done we've had like a lot of djs that they weren't like maybe used to there um and we've shot you know got music videos in there we there's been lots of different we work a lot with um we did a lot of work with sbtv as well so that was really yeah um and jamal would perform up there a lot and that must have been insane yeah yeah um so that that was really interesting then like getting kind of the charity within these spaces uh jsb as well so there's been a lot of opportunities to to merge the worlds well did you work with jamal yeah so he um he was a good friend of ours and uh my my business partner has is works very closely with sbtv now yeah what was it like working with those guys because they are pioneers at the space right yeah it's amazing and um i have a lot of respect for for Brenda and Tanisha um and yeah we we've worked we worked very closely with them yeah um we did yeah a lot of work in the recent years um bringing back like the the uh F64s and yeah all of that yeah amazing yeah is there one experience that you've had in your head for a while that is never quite come to life yet that's a good question what's it like pitching the crazy stuff for you pitching those crazy ideas and what you think of one that you haven't yet put to life it's it it's just about conviction yeah we did um we did the uh pokemon christmas party they have a christmas committee it's insane it's like sorry oh yeah pokemon christmas party yeah all right okay it was hilarious but i was on the i was on the call like 10 people and i was like this is just your job at the moment to organize this party is it an internal party yeah so it happened at the dorchester in their ballroom and uh yeah it was for the their hq pokemon have their christmas party at the dorchester they did the one year i don't know where it's done wow though to be fair they've been making a fortune the last couple years so it was hilarious and you get down to the nitty-gritty and they're like we we must make sure that you can't see Pikachu out of this like it's like wild um but that was really fun and it started off oh I just want a band and then I mean what we ended up doing was in saying that we had I think we had like 50 performers over the whole evening and you had like apres ski and uh like bands roaming bands um frozen statues a dance troupe we did like a whole dancing oh my kind of stuff it's like it just once you once you get me talking about these things like i just then kind of get a bit crazy and i'm like right it's always just the energy the energy of it almost the performance of it right the performance of the pitch and it's like we we do have these great ideas and and what i always think and this was always a note as a performer it's like give me a hundred and we can bring it back down to 10 yeah so i'm always like give them the world and then we'll scale it back to like and the budget conversations last yeah and i'm like oh you should have said that yeah yeah literally so you don't want to dial fine okay so what does the future look like what do you what have you got planned for what you guys are doing so for us we are um we're really leaning into our event side yeah we're working a lot more with abroad with um hotels all over the world so i work a lot with in india but we are pushing out to more European brands as well, which is really exciting.

1:06:05We just did, I say just, I don't actually know when it was, but we did the 50 best hotels. We provided the entertainment for them. So that's been really great because within that world, it's quite prestigious. It's a very prestigious award. So we're kind of targeting all those hotels and we've had some really great response from them. But also as well, just leaning into the hotel chains around the world um and with the brands so it's just really expansion from from what we've been doing um i obviously have my production company which is focusing back in on film i'm working to produce some very exciting activations film clubs um panel talks and hopefully a feature film

1:06:49Olly Fawcett:as well down the pipeline so keeping busy yeah so rose my last question is what does it what does it take and what does it take from you to build the business you have today it takes a lot of grit a lot of determination and maybe a bit of madness nice i like that last bit look it's been a pleasure to meet and sit down and really understand more about your space it seems like it's been a crazy five six years for you guys and no slowing down as well pokemon parties and Patron like you guys are living the dream let me know yeah but thanks so much and appreciate you giving all the insight to the areas you did and um it's been lovely to have you and I'm sure we'll see you soon thank you so much see you soon