Ep. 73 The Blueprint For Building An 8 Figure Business On Social Media With Luxe Collective’s Ben Gallagher

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1:02Hi, friends. Grace from the Working Hard podcast here. When you're stretching every dollar, a little goes a long way and Walmart Business is here to help. They make it easy to order what you need from tech and cleaning supplies to everyday essentials, all at low prices and with helpful tools like spend tracking and tax exempt purchasing for eligible organisations. Because when your operations are smooth, your impact can be bigger. Visit business.warmart.com to get started. You can literally buy them for£7 ,000 and then you can sell them for£25 ,000,£30 ,000. Ben Gallagher has built a multi-million pound fashion business at the age of 23.

1:33We buy and sell pre-loved luxury items. Last year, we grew 950 ,000 followers across our three socials. That is insane. Your business has bigger social following than billion dollar businesses. What was your strategy? I'm so, so surprised that people haven't copied us. It's a strategy I like to call. You have disrupted in the true sense of the word. I was trying to grow this business any way I could and nothing was working. buying, selling, buying, selling, buying, selling. I haven't even spoken to anyone about this actually. For people listening to like in a rut if they want any advice and say that the best advice from my point of view is...

2:21Hello and welcome to a new and improved Working Hard Hardly Working. This year we are levelling up the podcast. So welcome to my new office where the podcast is going to be from. It's not just better surroundings, the guests we have this year are truly mind-blowing and I cannot wait and today is no exception. Ben Gallagher has built a multi-million pound fashion business at the age of 23. You might not have heard of his name but if you're on TikTok I can guarantee you'll have seen his encyclopedic videos on the fashion industry. Growing up in Formby near Liverpool, Ben talks about how he always wanted to keep up with his friends who had the latest designer pieces but he couldn't afford it and after seeing the discounts of pre-loved items, it's actually a really incredible story, he and his brother started a consignment shop in Liverpool.

3:12Now just five years later Lux Collectives turns over millions each year and has just received investment from Stephen Bartlett after they came out on top on Dragon's Den. I'm so delighted to be chatting to been today. I got so much from our conversation. Just a small hint and a spoiler alert. If you are a brand on social media or you are on social media and you like talking about social media strategy, you are going to absolutely love this episode. So I hope you really enjoy this conversation. I absolutely loved it and I learned so much.

3:45Thank you for joining me. No worries. Thanks for having me. I'm very excited to have you here today. always eager and keen to learn from people who've been there and done it but especially people we've looked up to for a very long time oh thanks I feel like I'm not someone who's been there done that that's like a huge compliment I want to talk straight away about your early life generally what were formative experiences for you so first of all you grew up in Liverpool can you like paint me a picture of what your childhood was like absolutely so Liverpool like as a city a beautiful amazing place to grow up like the people are the best so friendly whenever you speak to people and you say you're from Liverpool they're buzzing because they're like oh my god I get to speak to someone from Liverpool but we're from a place like just outside of Liverpool so it's about half an hour so it's called Formby.

4:27Formby's like a very wealthy area so growing up we were always surrounded by like richer kids like my mum was saying this to me the other day she was like did you really feel poor as a kid growing up and I was like it's not that we were poor like we weren't poor at all but like my friends had swimming pools the people you know they all had massive houses and swimming pools and jacuzzis and saunas and gyms and we just had like a small house between four kids of us so it was always very cramped and busy it's so interesting sorry to interrupt i feel like that is such a formative experience of so many people who i've spoken to that have like a very hustle based mindset it's it doesn't matter where the reality actually was like it doesn't matter whether like comparative to like an average you know your family was wealthy or like comparative to an average like it's all about the relativity it's so interesting that like everyone who has grown up to have this kind of like striving mentality seems to have that in common well you get you get used to your surroundings in it so that's why you get like depressed billionaires and millionaires is because as soon as you get accustomed to your lifestyle and your environment it becomes normal to you if anyone from inner city liverpool was to look at us growing up they would like be in awe of our upbringing right but because we were surrounded by like footballers and footballers kids and everything like that as kids we were like oh my god like how the hell do we fit in with this bunch because as kids all you want to do is like follow the crowd and fit in with everyone because you don't want to be like the black sheep you don't want to be an easy target for say like bullies and in high school you want to be as blended as possible so like me and joe always looked at it and being like how can we fit in and it was always about money right so it's same clothes as these guys to feel like these guys to to go to town shopping and not have to not have to come back with with nothing in our hands it was a motivator for sure as we were growing up it made things realistic and made things attainable and this is all life is and all our business has been so far it's like if there is evidence that it's been done before if someone who looks like you and has been in the same environment as you has done it then there's no reason why you can't do it like i saw someone the other day it's like he has this massive computer company Peter Jones from Dragon's Den he's like Matthew I saw this random guy the other day this guy in passing but I just saw he's called Peter Jones he was like Matthew Dale built a computer when he was a teenager and I looked at him and thought why can't I build a computer and then he started building computers and it's just that same thing like if someone who looks like you has done it then there's no reason why you can't do it as well and it's all about mindset right so like no matter like what what you're given what aids that you get from parents family mentors whatever if you don't have the right mindset of if you if you believe in yourself and you thinking that you can achieve these things there's like you could have everything being given everything in the world on a plate and you could not achieve it mindset cannot get you there alone like i think it is also true that there is huge disparity even in the uk and like mindset alone will not get you somewhere i think it's especially important that someone like me says that like i've had an incredibly privileged upbringing so me sitting here and being like it's all about mindset like never gonna be helpful it's kind of saying but you will not get there if you do not have the right mindset like regardless of what you have yeah did you always know that you wanted to be an entrepreneur yeah so I was really lost in high school so like 14 to 16 so it's like years 10 and 11 I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do when I went into sixth form I got even more down and they were like the worst years of my life because like people around me were so sure like i want to go to university they didn't know what they wanted to do after university but when you're that young all it is it's like what's the next thing what's what what am i doing tomorrow what am i doing what am i doing next month so like they all wanted to go to uni and i was just like i was like like not breakdown but like internally and mentally i was like i have i do not know what i want to do is it like i've grown up so like there was loads of things that i was doing like applying to the navy like most random really you can be made in the Royal Navy just like it was just just so random but like I don't think my mum wanted me to do it and I do have asthma so they were like my mum was like oh no you don't want to be doing that let's try and do that so I applied for the civil service I got a job in the civil service but then I never ended up taking it just because it was down in London and I was like oh I don't want to move to London I'm like I love living at home and like I'm being multicolored and stuff like that do you know what I mean because we were growing up and always trying to make make money we were selling candles caps air freshness literally everything really so that kind of entrepreneurial spirit in terms of like what you were doing well yeah yeah and I was working since I was like 14 so I would do football refereeing I used to work on the Christmas markets in Manchester every December for like four or five years up until I was like 17 18 so like my work ethic has always been there and stuff that I really like doing and stuff that made me money never thought it was realistic for me to be able to turn that into a business especially so young like I was 17 18 but then And because like I knew I didn't want to do that, I was like, I'm just going to have to try something.

9:31So I knocked on Joe's bedroom. I was like, I've got this business idea. It came from an inspiration from a Christmas present from a sister years ago. Do you want to do it with me? And let's see like that. Joe was like, yeah, let's do it. He just come back from uni and he didn't have any real path or like any real direction or any real goals. So like even on the most micro level, it was just something that we could do together. And like it would feel like we would accomplish something. And like, if you've got a sale, if we got a person selling to us, like everything we did on the smallest of levels, it felt achievable that we could scale it up.

10:03I've never looked back since and I genuinely can't at all imagine myself working for anyone ever anymore. So tell me about that story in terms of like the original inspiration. So there was always a budget for Christmas. It was£100. We would get given. So like my mum would say,£100, what do you want? And we'd go looking on JD, Foot Asylum. and I was always looking for my filter, like search low to high, see how many pairs of shoes we can get for 100 quid. Just like trying to squeeze this money as much as we could. And then my sister on Christmas Day, she opens these Isabel Morant Beckett trainers, which are the ones Beyonce wore in the Love On Top video.

10:41Right. And I knew they were expensive because all the rich girls around had them. And I was like to my mum, I was like, what? Like they're 400 pounds. Like we always only get 100 pounds. I was like, why has my sister got a pair of 400 pound trainers for Christmas? and then my mum introduced me to this website called vestia collective which obviously everyone knows now but back then it was no one really knew about it and because the stigma of of pre-love stuff and secondhand stuff was so like that's dirty that's disgusting and that was that was our biggest thing when we started the business it was we wanted to turn and joe really pushed this message of we wanted to break the stigma down around pre-love stuff like it is going to be cool it is going to be a trend and then three four years later everyone wants to be a part of we were in a real right place right time moment but like obviously you have to build your look yeah of course and then covid came and everything and it propelled it but anyway sorry getting off track back to the story um i went to my mom she was like they're from this website vestiaire and i became obsessed with it because it kind of opens my eyes up to be like how i can afford afford luxury goods to fit in with my friends right so i was looking at this site searching everything my friends had and they paid seven eight hundred pounds for a pair of trainers and they were like 200 300 pounds on this website and i was like oh my god i can i can i can afford luxury stuff now and then i don't know what happened but i kind of took an entrepreneurial twist of it of being like well if i'm interested in this stuff and i want to buy from this website and not a lot of people know about it especially in england because it's very european based yeah because they came from france they talk about three weeks to come they were bartering for weeks like the story like yeah like i i love vestia collective like have like i originally started using it in like 2017 or something like i have used it for a long long time but also there is that element of it where like i've sold on there before and i've been like what is going on like i'm actually not sure what's happening at any time and then some that come don't come through because they haven't been authenticated like you bought them and you're waiting for them well there's pros and cons to so many of the models of pre-loved and like vestia have so many pros and so many cons and same as us we have so many pros and so many cons and then ebay so many pros and so many cons it's just what are the pros that fit your needs in that moment of wanting to sell whether it's a quick payment whether it's the most money like there's so many different things that the customer the consumer is looking for when they're looking to sell and i went to joe i said you want to start this business yeah it just it just went like that and we started with a thousand pounds because joe took ten thousand pounds out for a loan for a car we had one thousand pounds of his remaining and then my life savings at the time yeah yeah spend more money on the car we'll use the leftovers to start a business and then but i was still in school so it was nothing we were going to be able to start serious straight away anyway obviously like hindsight is amazing like you're not going to be looking at it and being like and in a few years we're gonna have two million followers on tiktok and we're gonna have this enormous business exactly like we're gonna hire all these people it was like let's just try and make as much money like genuinely when we first started it was like let's try and make as much money as possible so when we go out on the weekends when we're partying with our friends we have we have more money to spend right it was just it was all about like how much the real definition of a lifestyle business yeah literally literally yeah one thing turned into another and then there's a story that i said on socials the other day and it like i say all the time it's like i was trying to grow this business any way i could and nothing was working and i typed into youtube how do i grow my business and a gary v video came up and it was like to grow your business you must grow yourself and I looked at it and thought no thank you I am perfectly fine the way I am like this 17 18 year old arrogant cocky kid and then I was like I'm gonna grow my business by doing email marketing by influencer marketing all this sort of stuff and nothing worked and I was like kept reverting back to this video and I was like I'm really gonna have to work on myself if I want to grow this business so then I started working on myself and honestly I would advise it to anyone out there who who's who's like thinking about improving their lifestyle and proving who they are as people because I was certainly not the best human being at all when I was a kid and I am pretty harsh on myself but because I knew the standard as soon as I started implementing these little things of of going to bed early of training in the gym of just being a nicer person like having more conversations with my family like honestly all these just positive things on a micro level my business like just started to like we got more customers we got more sales we got more people selling to us i got more ideas because my my my mind was more clear it was honestly like if anyone's struggling to grow their business the easiest thing is just to start growing yourself and even if your business doesn't grow you've grown yourself right so there's a net positive that comes out of it right i think that's so interesting i think because like people want to improve their lives like they want to be able to get better over time they want to be able to become a better person to to look better like all of these different things that people are so looking towards well I I did I heard the meeting when we came back and I asked everyone what everyone's new year's resolution is and everything that people said it was about themselves and improving themselves whether it be getting fitter breathing more uh do more exercise like it was all about how they could like everyone's resolution was how they can improve themselves so it's real it's a real real trend at the moment so you credit the growth and the explosion of your business with the improvement of yourself as a person if someone is listening to this right now who is thinking I'm a little bit stagnant I feel like I'm at a place in my life where like it's a bit static not much is moving in the right direction what would you recommend to them in terms of improving their life so that they can have like the results that you had in your life and your business?

16:21So one is what I always say in like talks that I do because someone asks that question all the time and I say like if there's this big mountain in front of you and like so the big mountain is I want to grow a massive business that's worth millions well like that is really hard to attain if it's just like a big block that you put in front of you. So if you break it down into the most microest of levels and take it step by step and making sure that you're writing these things down so they're measurable targets and every time you hit them you're ticking them off it feels like no matter how small the task is you're progressing so whether that be just to come up with a brand name come up with a brand pack open an instagram page and then like they're on the micro levels and then because you've got evidence that you're able to do this easy stuff then the harder stuff just gets easier so it's like finding a new manufacturer i'm not in the manufacturing game but i know it's so hard to do so like that's a big achievement uh finding a new supplier for a different type of material and then you can start taking them off and then by the time you know it you're a third of the way up this mount everest of building a multi-million pound company so it's about breaking those goals down taking them off and then you've supplied yourself with evidence that you can then attack the next goal so it's all about building skill level up But also the main thing is building evidence up that you're able to take on this action and be successful with it.

17:46There is such a clear reason why New Year's resolutions fail. And it is the fact that you are creating a plan for the next 365 days based on something that you haven't even yet proved to yourself you can do for a week. And I feel like that's such a big part of it is that you're, you know, the evidence that you're talking about. We're so used to setting these goals and sitting down at the beginning of the year and being like, I want to do these like 20 enormous things. rather than saying in the next three months I'm going to commit to these three things every day or I'm going to do this or I'm going to do this different things will let work for everyone but the one thing you can absolutely say is that if you start too big you are not going to be able to achieve it because it's not a one-step process you need to have like it's like being like I need to be on that next story like that next flight but there's no steps to even get there like you've just got to jump like that it doesn't make any sense at all and I feel like both in business in life in like there's a reason you measure goals in the way you do in a business you don't just look at say if you were doing some okrs so like objective and key results if you were like we need to get 10 000 more people to the site you don't just write that as a goal you write you know how much you're going to spend on that you're going to you write like how many i don't know it might be how many clicks you want from this thing or whatever it might be you don't just write we need two million more in sales it needs to be so specific and so measurable that you're ticking off all the things because that's a real good way of how you can achieve your goals and really like for people listening to this who are like in a rut like you said like before like if they want any advice and say that they're waking up at 10 11 o 'clock or like they're not going to they're not going to the gym and they set all these expectations at the beginning of the year that they want to do all these things like if you're that person who's getting up at 10 o 'clock like if to get up at seven o 'clock from 10 o 'clock that is so difficult to do so if you like although it's so easy it is so difficult because it's such a lifestyle change so if you can do that and just focus on that for two to three weeks and then tick that off your list and then if you want to get more like you want to get the six-pack you want to get the abs you want to get whatever like you want to get fitter do you know how hard it is if you don't exercise just to go on a walk of a night after work right it is so hard to do these simple things like how hard is it to if you're if you're so used to do like your mental is so like like like full up of clutter like so that means like your your room is probably dirty how how hard it is to clean your room like if you're and but then because they're they're easy things to do but they're actually they're hard at the same time if you're able to do them then you're gonna like if you're able to tick these things off your list you're able to progress so much further and even on the like I keep on saying on the most micro level the easiest things that look easy to do they're actually super hard so you should be so proud of yourself if you're able to do it and I think also you need to know the type of person you are because like I know that I'm the type of person I can do anything in sprints like I can give you the best eight week like workout program that I will do back to back to back I can get you know I can do very intense periods of almost anything like that is something that I hold as a real strength the weakness as a part of that is long-term consistency I don't face that issue when it comes to you know the businesses or whatever because they keep me very much occupied enough that that's not a problem but knowing what type of person you are means that you're able to reach goals that you need to reach so I'm the way I mean that is that at the moment I'm getting back into the gym it's been something that I've let slack for a very long time I just my career used to be so based on it that as soon as it became not so based on it I kind of just completely fell out of love with it because I didn't need to do it for the same reason.

21:16It wasn't your identity. Exactly. And so I was able to like divorce myself from that situation because I'm getting back into it at the moment. The temptation for me as a person who wants to overachieve and who wants to do things in sprints is to work out five times a week and to literally be like, you know, this morning not going to the gym, be like, okay, but then I'm going to fall off. If that's as little as it takes for you to fall off and that's your personality, you need to be able to work with that in in mind like I need to be able to say no you're going to do three sessions a week maximum and you're going to keep that consistent for however long you're not going to be doing five sessions a week for January that's pointless yeah all you're doing is proving to yourself that you can do something for a few weeks because what's better doing five sessions a week for a month or doing three sessions a week for the whole year right forever exactly but I think that knowing the type of person you are and knowing your weaknesses in that way is so incredibly important self-awareness is so key oh you cannot do anything without self-awareness but you can't it's really hard to to educate people on how to become self-aware because it's so personal to yourself but like the most the like the thing i would do like probably the best advice from my point of view it's just journal yeah because you get to understand and know yourself a lot better so that's so interesting that you say that because i was just thinking how do you develop self-awareness as you said that and then this is exactly why at the beginning of every single planner although the planners are made for daily planning like that's what they're made for that's why I refuse to remove the beginning part which is all around a life audit and it's essentially asking yourself the questions like what are my top five motivations what do I wish I had more time to do what are the three things that get in the way of my productivity the most all of these different things you cannot do the daily planning until you have done your life audit like you cannot I refuse to believe it and actually we need to all be asking ourselves those questions every three months I personally believe it's not it's not because it's not something you can ask someone else because no matter how honest you ask someone to be they're never going to be fully honest and the only person they don't know you exactly so the only person who can be fully honest with you is yourself and like if you have a journal you know that no one's ever going to read it and everything you put in that page like honestly I've journaled for about two three years now and I look back at some of the stuff that I wrote and it is so nice to look at because like I'm really sad I'm really angry I'm like like stuff been going on in my personal life that I'm just really not happy with and I look back and think I was like I was so silly to have those things because now it's like it's it's like a constant documentation of your own journey like Matthew McConaughey's book Greenlights he journaled for 20 years and it is all it's based his book Greenlights is based off all of his journals he got them all stacked up uh and he went off from his family to like a resort like 200 miles away in america he sat with his journals and wrote a book based off his experience from his journals i think it's an amazing thing yeah that's incredible that's something that like i i keep every single or i have them literally from way before even the beginning of university from when i was like 13 and i think that's one of the most like sometimes i open them and i'm like well that's what i mean this girl was sad that's what i mean if i would have done it from back then when I was 13 I would have been a much nicer kid in school I would have been a much more self-aware kid in school I would have probably understood myself a lot more and what I wanted to do so like what I'm saying is I always say this quote like the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago the second best time is now so like for all those people who think oh I'll start next week like just genuinely just start it now because you won't regret it especially with something like Jamie no I think it's so so so important I want to talk about right at the beginning of the business because I feel like a lot of people as you say like the biggest obstacle is like thinking of the end goal and realizing that you need to do that now like everyone looks at your business for example and thinks like well I could never do that because they haven't done the step one yeah let's talk about right at the beginning let's talk about like the first product you got up on your site even the creating of the site itself could you talk me through how that even came about yeah so just for say that me and Joe were actually at the train station yesterday and we just set our budget with our cfo for the year and like we're talking about profitability and all that sort of stuff and like we were saying like isn't it mad how we've never like all we've been doing so far is like we've we've had no budget we've had no cfo had no person in finance like we've just been literally doing business with a blindfold over our eyes stabbing in the dark seeing what works and seeing what doesn't and it's worked and i was thinking we were saying like why do you think it's worked and it's like well we've never done it to achieve something We just wanted to live a really meaningful and cool life between ourselves.

25:50We wake up, me and Joe wake up every day, go to an office with a team of people we've created and sell effectively, buy and sell pre-loved luxury products. Even though it's not worth 50, 100 million, whatever we do, it is such a dream that we're living. We feel so lucky to be able to do that every single day. and it's not about like when you're starting a business it's not about like what our end goal is it's like what do you actually want to what you want to be doing every single day like we're so lucky to be doing this every single day and like we had a we had like a reminisce about because the chain got cancelled so we were just chatting for a while and it's just like we just feel so grateful and so lucky to be able to do something like this you're completely right like isn't that such a privilege and such like an incredible I don't mean that in a kind of like wow you're so lucky I mean isn't that something so incredible that you've been able to build something that you feel that excited about like I having had like the beginning years of when I first started Treddy for example were amazing they were so easy comparative to how it's been since like they were I was so excited all the time because I had that feeling and then in the middle having like you know the restructuring of Tala like all of these different like really really like shit show years now I was just like coming back from the trip I've just been on and like raring to go and raring to go into the office and I just like I identify with what you've said so strongly and it feels so insane to me because I feel like for the past like this is the first time I felt like this after having been like burnt out for like a good few years and genuinely feeling like like I feel like I'm going every day when I go to work I feel like I'm going to this little like play acting thing that is like so fun like every time there's like a two-hour product meeting when we're talking about literally what does it look like for the next season it's so much fun like as in like I'm sitting there and be like I like that one and I like that one and it's like don't get me wrong that is not representative of like the whole of business but like that is representative of the moment and like that is the coolest thing ever to have been able to build something that you feel so like don't get me wrong there have been times where I've dreaded going to work like dreaded going into the office dreaded coming back from like a bank holiday or whatever it might be and it's so worth the times when you go in like for months now it's just felt like the team's so amazing the product's so amazing the opportunity's so amazing like just going in and being like it's like playing like play doctors it's just like I say this to Joe all the time even when something bad happens like we've got quite a humorous group of leadership team so when something bad happens like like we we are like honestly when we first hear about it we're like we're raging we're like oh and then we can like take a step back and change our perspective and then we just start laughing about it and we're like like it's just a game like like no one's died like no one's no one's not been paid this month like it's not the end of the world obviously yeah we're not saving lives yeah yeah literally like there's people out there who are who are putting their life at risk to save others like all we're doing is selling clothing yeah it's not it's not that big of a deal so our our achievements yeah they're great to us like no one really cares about them and that's a really another thing because like no one really cares about what you do so it's just liberating that you're able to just be free and do whatever you want like when I was first creating TikTok videos like before that I was so bothered about what people thought about me and then I realized no one's looking at me 24 7 no one actually cares and even if they do make fun of a video that I'm making it's only for three seconds or five seconds so like why would you stop the three seconds of that person's life really like for the scale we built our TikTok especially it's like like build a life-changing thing like why would you let someone like that stop you from building a life-changing thing so it's just wild but yeah like very lucky to have a humorous leadership group and then yeah it's just like you said it's just like playing doctor like it's just a game yeah but i think that's so inspiring and i feel like if i'd heard myself say this like two years ago when i was like in the pits yes i'd be like keep on going keep on going keep on going like when you say like when you say it's just a game i feel like that is the most exciting thing like when you start looking at your life as this game do you know why we say it's like a game because it's fun right but also more than that it's fun it's occupying it your your brain a game isn't relaxed like it's not like it's it's fulfilling it's stimulating like all of these different things like i am the type of person like i love organized fun like i've got a games night you know at least once a month with all of my friends like it's that's what i mean by game like it's when you start looking at your life as a game and you start looking at it in terms of the way of like how can I make this like how can I play this as best as possible whether that's about money whether that's about family whether that's about the amount of time off you can get and then spending as little time working as possible no matter what that game looks like to you I do feel like that becomes quite like an appealing like kind of proposition and And this is where it kind of links back to what I was saying previously about bettering yourself.

31:10And also like what I was talking to you about before, like with the law of accumulation. So like this is something I'm obsessed with, like really obsessed with at the moment. I keep watching the same video over and over again because when I, when I, so it's a, it's a video of this fella. He's a Canadian author and he's talking like just, just as a speech, just like a four minute video. Canadian author called Brian Tracy. So like Brian Tracy's off the Thunderbirds as well. So he's got the same name. Right. yeah not the thunderbird um so basically it's like everything you do in life counts so imagine you have this balance sheet you've got a plus side and you've got a negative side and everything you do that's beneficial to your goals it goes on the plus side and everything you do that isn't pushing you towards your goals it goes on the negative side and like the people who have had a successful life in the terms of law of accumulation is the ones that have far outweighed stuff on the positive sides.

32:11And the most important thing is, there's two things, is one, everything counts. So like nothing you do is neutral. So it's either pushing you away or pulling you back. And that's not to say that it's not okay to do stuff that pulls you back. But just to be aware of this law is super super important and then the other thing is that not everyone understands that everything counts they think that only the things they want to count counts but it's not it's everything counts so if you have if you understand that law of accumulation it's like everything I do matters so if you're trying to push on the push side plus sides more often you just become a lot more better of a person and it was something I was doing loads without understanding what the law of accumulation was it's only in recent months where I've saw the videos and I was like oh my god that's been my theory of how I've bettered myself so if anyone wants to listen to the law of accumulation yeah I just want to talk about like that first sale yes or like the first sales as a whole yeah like how did you get those first sales how did you get that first money to actually start getting the business off the ground yeah so we had 1200 pounds to start off with and then we would buy off eBay and Depop.

33:20We would get them in, we would clean them up and then we would sell them on Instagram. So you hold inventory? Yes, we hold a lot of inventory, yeah. Sure. We have also offered a service recently off the back of Dragon's Den because we knew there was a demand for it of like consignment. So like our USPs, you can sell your product directly to us and we'll give you cash. But for items that were like quite slow sellers for us, it made sense for us to just offer that consignment model for people who have tons of stuff that they want to get rid of but don't want to do any of the work and don't mind waiting for the payments go through to them so we can sign some items and we also um buy outright items but we do hold a lot of inventory like we hold it all because we need to clean it we need to picture it and then we need to ship it out because we want we want still that service if you're buying directly from a brand rather than directly from someone else who needs to send it and then because obviously that it takes a lot of time the customer service isn't great so we want it we want to make that all in-house.

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35:40only at Arena Stage. Performances start October 8th. Tickets at arenastage.org.

35:50So the first ones is, the story about the first product that we sold is actually pretty funny. So we bought a pair of Montclair sandals and then we actually sold them to Jo's now girlfriend. So she was our first ever customer. And did he know her? I think so. I didn't know they knew each other at the time he was like we've got a sale but he's paid her to buy the product yeah he was in charge of selling and he was like oh I'm getting these numbers up just selling them to all my friends and this girl who I just randomly know he was like she's got good taste that sounds like a future girlfriend of mine that's so funny yeah and so you just accumulated over time in terms of yeah so we've had no investment literally it has just been a hamster wheel of buying selling buying selling buying ain't selling and it don't get me wrong like it's a very slow way to grow your business but it's a very very sustainable way to grow your business no absolutely and I'm one of the biggest proponents for knowing the type of business you want to build and like as someone who owns very different types of businesses even if it might not appear so like externally like there is a very different type of life if I was just if I was just running shreddy there's a very different life I would live to if I was just running tala yeah like and that's one of the best examples I can give of like subscription tech like this type of business versus fashion business like very different types of businesses but also you can run different businesses in different ways so absolutely I completely agree like there's so much online around like I want to build a multi-million pound business I want to do this that and the other I want to do you know if you build an agency you're going to have a very different life yes if you build a d2c fashion business yes like I cannot even I cannot believe there's the same name of business owner for both of those things because it is a whole different life whole different skill set whole different profitability whole different like finances I've never thought of it like that but you're so right but but I think that there's this like when you look at the glorification of like entrepreneurship online and you look at like how it's sold how it's packaged and sold to everyone who's like consuming content there's this like I want to be a business owner and like the picture of the business owner is someone sitting with like a laptop by a pool in Dubai and like that's the like as in like there's this kind or someone who's just like exited a business and is on, you know, like got some house in LA or whatever it might be.

38:06There's very little of kind of like, okay, well, this one wasn't, this one actually still owns the business. And so that's how they're able to do that because they're an agency owner. So it's very profitable. They're just doing it like, but when they go on holiday, they don't make any money. Like all of these like different ones, it's so different. And actually for you to say, you were able to do it by accumulating and saying, okay, well, we've made 200 pounds more from this so we can invest that x amount of that into our next pan bag or whatever it might be and i think the the main thing of that what i was just thinking as you were saying it is like you need to understand what type of business owner you want to be if you want to be one and the only way you're going to know is by trying loads of different things and i say this to everyone it's like not even in entrepreneurship but like what career they want to do or like what sport what hobby they want to take and i was like well if you don't know the only way you're gonna know how to eventually is try so you just gotta try everything be prepared to fail be be prepared to be embarrassed because we've been embarrassed like like we still get embarrassed today like there was an instagram post that i had to take down the other day just because like it didn't sit right with people and i was like oh a bit embarrassed but yeah got that wrong but like the only way we're gonna know is if we tracked it was a new style of content we were trying and people hated it yeah and i was like brilliant well we'll try that now i know but that was that was literally two days ago so like what i'm saying is like Like just because you built something, it doesn't mean you're not prone to making these mistakes or making these failures.

39:29Like it always happens. And actually when no one's looking. So when you're first starting the business, that is when it's amazing to make all the mistakes because no one looks at them. It's only you who, and it's a great way to build resilience up because you're making all these mistakes. No one's looking except you. So you're internally embarrassed a little bit, but it's not like you're a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company and you've made a horrendous mistake and now it's now the stock's gone down so much yeah exactly no i completely agree and actually like one of my recent examples of that was like i only got on tiktok like a year ago and i remember you know what i know strange biggest bag fumble ever yeah i know because like i was looking uh obviously like when being so involved in the tiktok world i was like looking at all these creators like and i was like they're doing TikTok bad.

40:19They're doing TikTok bad. And then I looked for yours and I was like, she's not even on TikTok. She's fucking doing nothing at all. Genuinely, honestly. Yeah, what the fuck? I know, why not? What the fuck? Were you too cool for it, Grace? No, I was absolutely not too cool for it. Like the opposite, I was too busy bumbling the bag. No, but I was so burnt out. I was restructuring Tala. I literally was on the verge of something. I was honestly just, I cannot tell you how. I feel bad to say anything. No, no, yeah, yeah. Yeah, thanks. No, it was a really, really, really, really shit time. And also part of that was the fact that I'd, you know, I'd grown on social media for however many years and that was my job.

41:03And I was known as an influencer and a YouTuber and all of that. And that wasn't what I wanted to do with my career. And I decided that, you know, I basically felt like at 18, I'd made a decision for my career, which actually wasn't compatible with who I want to be or like how I want to do things and so I was a bit stuck and so I didn't want to create any content because I didn't want a single other person to find me as a you know as someone who was doing that like it just wasn't what I wanted to do and so I didn't even if you look at my Instagram during that time Christ was I giving people nothing like absolutely zero um so I only actually went on like what I was gonna say with like the the tiktok is that actually when i went on it because i was on it for the first time like a year ago i actually for the first time ever this is how i started realizing the reason i felt kind of like unable to do anything was or not unable to do anything but the reason i felt so like stunted was the fact that i'd built this audience over the past few years and then i had to i felt like i had to perform and actually as soon as i got on tiktok i was like oh my god no one's no one's even watching me and i'm irrelevant enough as a person that like if you unfollow me or don't follow me you don't know who I am I'm not on tv I'm not on you know like as in I can disappear very quickly from your life if you'd like me to and so I was like it felt so freeing to be able to like go on TikTok and be able to yeah and then I was like oh I just need to pretend that's the case for everything else and that's when I started switching in terms of my Instagram I was like I'm just gonna post what I want to post like half the people can unfollow me I don't care that's not my because why would I I was caring about that but actually I didn't need to because that's not what I knew that wasn't what I wanted to do.

42:38It's what everyone does. They set these unrealistic expectations that you've made up yourself. And like for you, you think you need to hit them to meet the expectations of people. And like even just saying that, meet the expectations of other people. It's just ridiculous. They should be doing stuff for while you want to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about your social strategy. Because actually like on the topic, I feel like that's one of the, like it's such an exciting part of your business. and I think it's so unique as well. Like your business has bigger social following than businesses probably like, I don't know, unicorns, like billion dollar businesses.

43:17And that's incredibly exciting. Like you've done so well. I want to get straight into the nuts and bolts of how you grew. Okay. What was your strategy? So like we were on TikTok so early. So we got on there about 2019. so like three years before you you were you were even on it which is wild like imagine three years worth of work that we've accumulated like i feel like as i said fumbled yeah like rob it in why don't you we um so that that meant like a lot of things but most importantly is that we were able to learn a lot quicker than a lot of people because we had years of experience in it so by the time lockdown came around i already knew what type of videos people wanted to consume so it was like i posted the first seven six seven videos and they were like rubbish like i i had no experience in content creation no experience in making a good engaging video like like nothing worked and then someone sent a dm saying please can you show me how to tie a pair of alexander mcqueen trainers and i was in the office doing nothing i was like oh i'll just instead of explaining it to her i'll video it and i'll send her it as a message and then i thought But, oh, instead of sending it to her as a message, I'll post it on TikTok and then post it on Instagram and then share it with her.

44:32And then be like, look, I've made this video for you. Like, come and buy some now. Like, as a value proposition to her. And then, like, I put my phone down. And then I must have checked my phone like 12 hours later the next day. And it was like 700 ,000 views. And, like, genuinely from that moment, I was like, oh, my God, I know what people want to consume. they just want to leave the video knowing something that they didn't when they entered the video so i was so i was like there's loads of people in my industry down south like there's no one really up north i think there's one up north there's loads of people down south that no one really knows about especially in the whole of the uk and like they're not that big businesses like they've had loads of investment but really they're not that big of a business so like how do we but the markets out there so how do we attract those people to come to our business and it's like well we need to create content on social media so i was like okay what works on social media so i was like okay giving value so instead of like looking at all our competitors and being like here's a picture of a birkin like right aspiration yeah like the most expensive bag in the world like here's a picture of a chanel that you can't get because chanel won't sew you want like i have it do you know what i mean like here's seven things you can do to get someone to give you a birkin or 30 ,000 pounds literally so I was like okay if I want to build an audience I'm gonna have to build a big audience and 80 % of those people aren't gonna care what we sell it's just the 80-20 rule like 80 % of them aren't gonna care but to to get to that 20 % I have to go through that 80 % so I'm gonna build I'm gonna take the angle I'm gonna use which I didn't know at the time My unfair advantage of being from Liverpool as a teenager, a boy talking about women's handbags and fashion.

46:17I was like, I'm going to do this. Because it just got people so curious when they first came across me. They were like, what the hell is this guy doing? What's going on? It's literally 100%. And when I bump into people who notice me off socials, that's the first thing they say. They're like, I just got so intrigued because I've never heard or seen someone like you talk about this industry. So the strategy has really evolved over time. but the main thing of it is just providing value and I know that's a very blanket term of like oh you have to provide value or to be like come and be my client I'll provide you value but it's really like in simple terms is giving something to someone that they didn't know they wanted that they never had when they first came on to your profile yeah I mean I think that is so powerful and you would be surprised at how much value that would add to literally every single traditional business out there so instead of talking about the product you sell instead of talking about how you can benefit this company talk about so it's a part it's a it's a strategy i like to call hosting the party talk about the industry talk like give people a reason why they come back onto your brand at 5 p.m every night when when your audience know you post give them a reason to come back so yeah the hosting the party strategy it's like talk about your industry talk about the news in there talk about history in there talk about your opinions on there because everyone loves an opinion everyone has an opinion um so yeah that was the strategy we took and i'm so so surprised that people haven't copied us i mean they have copied us but they see it not work for about two months and they're like oh it's only worked for him because he's a for a lad from liverpool he talked about fashion and he's been doing it for for for whatever it's like it's not that it's that you just have to do it for three years and you have to post three times a day and if you don't want to do it if you don't want to do it then then but like I've I've done the blueprint for everyone who wants to build social media three times a day for three years go and do it like there's there's the plan that there's how you can get millions of followers but people just don't want to do it because it takes so long to do yeah and similar to building the business like it was a very slow way of building it but it was very sustainable right but it takes long to do if you think of it only as the end goal like if you're thinking of like building two million followers is fine that takes long to do do you know what doesn't take long long though is the first 10 ,000 of those x amount of whom you know if we're talking about that two two 20 % rule then like 2 ,000 of those are actually interested that's 2 ,000 fucking people if you had 2 ,000 people far from your site yeah that would be a good day you know so actually looking at that and looking at like I always talk about the kind of like value add side as well you guys are a class act in how to value add on social media.

48:58And I think the biggest misconception is that like a brand's page, okay, it's a brand's page, but no one comes on social media to see how they can help someone else. Like you're not opening TikTok being like, how could I add to this business's bottom line today? Like that's categorically not what comes into people's heads. They want something to add to them. Like it's their TikTok. They want advice. They want, yeah, exactly. Like it's an inherent human trait that we are selfish selfish and we are self-serving so like I always because it's so funny because um we have different social strategies for you know the different brands but one of the it's easier I would say for fashion also to be able to talk about yourselves because people us the selfish side of that is that people want to also wear that stuff because they want to look good or they want to try something that's flattering or whatever so you can get away with talking about the product shreddy for example like is completely different because in the fitness industry like they don't want to hear like what equipment they need they don't want to hear like why they should be using your subscription yeah if you go on to shreddy's page i there will be one post out of every 15 probably that even mentions the product like it is about okay this customer what do they want they want education they want help they want to know where to put their feet on a leg press they want to know like how what their move is from beginner to an intermediate when going from this type of move to this type of move they want to be educated they don't want to be sold to like selling has no place on social media if it is not a byproduct of something else and it's so relieving when you understand that as a strategy because the content you can can create becomes so much easier to execute because like you know what people want to know you're just not telling them whereas if whereas if you understand the strategy of like oh people just want to be educated they're like people people find it hard to create content because they they think content in a different way whereas if you understand it as education then you can just create videos like that like so many videos so easily and even going back to what you said it's like two million followers if that's the end end goal then it becomes like a really big thing and then you said if you break it down it's a short thing to 10 000 if you break it down even more to that one video it takes half a day right do you know what i mean so like it's so easy to do just over a long period of time yeah no i think that is incredibly important how is your strategy different now from when you started last year we grew 950 000 followers across our three socials so instagram tiktok and youtube that is insane so really cool very proud of the team um so for the first three months up until april we were doing content that was like recycled content of old viral stuff we've already done and it was very scripted not very authentic didn't feel right but we grew like 300 ,000 followers, 400 ,000 followers.

51:45And then we switched to doing fashion history, fashion stories, picking a brand or a person in fashion and a Wintour Karl Lagerfeld and building a week's worth of content around them. The most views we've ever got, ever, like 120 million views month after month after month. We did it for three months. But what we noticed was engagement was massive, but we only grew 10 ,000 followers. So compared to 300 ,000, 400 ,000 in the three months before, we only grew 10 ,000 followers. And you could say, yeah, amazing. 10 ,000 followers who are interested in the brand. But on socials, our messaging wasn't that we bought and sold pre-loved stuff.

52:27So we did a pop-up shop. We got 800 ,000 people there in a queue on the first day. And 90 % of them, 95 % of them didn't know we bought and sold pre-loved luxury goods. So again, a massive error we made in our strategy. like we got like our egos got in the way of being like we're getting 100 ,000 200 ,000 likes yeah you're a content generator I said I see myself as a media company that happens to buy and sell and I was wrong completely with that so then we come back we were like we have to re-strategize we we went until September uh to finish our fashion month to cover it all and then we started again in October we reverted back to a strategy that was a mixture of all our strategies that had worked in the past so it's asking the office stuff building it building um a community that gets to know our office because like if you're in an office people know you work if people know you work they're curious about what you do is work we would then do product unboxings but with facts in the background as voiceovers really good content and then we would also do scripted stuff as well which i don't like too much but i'm just i'm still like now five years into working on social media i'm still trying to understand how we can build our strategy out to be the best that i want looks connected to be but anyway the last three months of the year we grew like 500 000 followers incredible you're amazing so easy to do though but like and i could give like a whole course on how to do it and but like now the strategy is like because we've got a bigger budget this year because we've got a cfo who can actually allocate us a bit more money we're going going to be doing a lot of like this year is about bringing looks collective alive like we've been very very big on socials the past three four years but this year is about bringing looks collective alive so we're going to be doing a lot more out of home stuff we're going to be doing activations like youtube styly videos but like with the community we're going to be inviting a lot of people to our hq so like we're trying to curate the community a lot more but if we grow 10 000 followers this year like i said the 10 000 wasn't a lot but no one knew what we did if we grew 10 thousand followers this year and every single person knew what we did then that's a very successful year so this year is all about bringing looks collective alive bringing it all like making community our number one priority and growing followers who are actually interested within the brand so we're going to be filming a lot of all the out of home stuff we're going to do so it's going to change again and it might not work it might work but that's the fun of the game isn't it but it's a lesson in social media agility and understanding algorithms and also understanding out like you can do something to grow but if growing is not your main kpi if sales is your main kpi then it's not the right thing to do or like it should be split or whatever and i think you guys are such a good example of how to activate based on what you based on that like based on your goals changing what is the best thing for you to do this year like as you said last year 10 000 would have been not a lot this year 10 000 is a lot if it's the right people but i think that's i think that's such an important lesson i just want to talk quickly about Dragon's Den.

55:22Yes, of course. So congratulations, you're hot off the Dragon's Den press having received some incredible investment. A week today. Well, isn't that a fun anniversary to celebrate with me? Did they approach you to come on the show? So they did. And then it went quiet. So then we applied because they reached out to us and we were really super busy. And we were like, yeah, yeah, let's just do it. Whatever. I can't remember what his name was, but he just emailed and then like we heard nothing of it for ages and then we got a bit of quiet time in the business like just a quiet period as most businesses do it's always quite and then the sales are slow and then we and then we i thought you know what i'm just going to apply so then i applied and like genuinely haven't looked back since i would recommend anyone who's got a business out when you're older like you'll look back and be like I'm so glad I did that like like just to be in front of those five people who are amazing entrepreneurs in the UK to come up with a deal if you get a deal is just amazing like just to be able to work alongside people like that and especially Stephen who's a big inspiration of mine is just something I thought I would never do ever so like 15 year old me would be very very proud of me yeah I mean you now should be very very proud of you I think it's a I think you guys are so you're really paving your own way and I think what I mean by that is like you know you're not the first people to go on Dragon's Den you're not the first people to do TikTok but I feel like you have such an open mind when it comes to what might be the next step for you as a business and I feel like that's such a lesson that's a lesson to me I think that's a lesson to anyone getting stuck in their ways keeping an open mind and saying yeah we're not the first people on Dragon's Den and you know it's not a big thing on social media at the moment what if we did it made a big thing on social media like that is such a refreshing and kind of exciting approach and you can see that your audience gets so excited about it but it's also so valuable to the business yeah I want to talk about the actual day yes um so you practice your pitch yeah it didn't get it right at all once so like genuinely we so we stayed in Manchester the night before we were we brought a camera guy with us because we did uh vlogs so like the the before den and then after the den and because we thought no one's done that on social media obviously as a social thinking company first we thought it's obvious to do and then um yeah we practiced it loads didn't get it right and then the producers come in and they say right we want to hear your pitch did it about three or four times in front of them didn't get it right so like pressure was so high just leading up to going into the den and um yeah got it like spot on when we into the den like the the we were me and the boys i went on with we were having like a little tiff about the strategy of doing it we were like i because obviously i'm a storyteller through the i was like we have to go on there and tell a story and they were like no we just need to say our figures they'll be impressed by them and i was like yeah but if we want to cure like curate a deal out of them we have to hit them emotionally and genuinely when i was saying the pitch all five of them you don't really see too much on tv but all five of them were on the edge of the seats It's just like open-eyed, like looking like captivated.

58:38But yeah, incredible. Like just genuinely, just I can't believe it. Like genuinely right now, like just thinking about it, it's like, it was just surreal, really surreal. And in there doing the pitch, how long did you actually spend in the room? Oh, like two hours. Really? Two and a half. And you properly go through, because that's longer than even a normal pitch for say like a VC. But usually then you would have a few follow-ups in terms of like, you'd go to investment committee, you do like a number of these different things which obviously they all do in the room because they don't need an investment committee because they are the investment committee yeah um like what what were you being what were you asked so we were asked about uh stock turnover which we got like ripped apart on because yeah just our just our numbers were wrong but what so our main aim of going in there was to come across as three nice relatable kids yeah that's all we wanted like whether we got a deal or not it wasn't the end of the world we just wanted to come across as that and we said the only way we can do that is by being ourselves and being accountable so if if they catch us out on anything straight away just say sorry we got it wrong you're right yeah and we did that three or four times and like as soon as you say that to someone no matter what walk of life like but this scenario in particular they can't say anything yeah you cannot bullshit investors like there is no reason to there is no game but they they applauded us yeah you didn't see it because it's a very normal part of a yeah yeah they were like i just love like they didn't put it in the tv their program but they were like i just love how open and honest and relatable you guys are and when as soon as they said that we were like yes delivered like we like yeah goal goal have been achieved and do they do the due diligence afterwards yeah so it takes about six months so we didn't actually meet steven until about six to eight months oh so they do the due diligence before so to go on the show you you give due diligence to the bbc just to show you're not a made-up business and then after you get the deal you then send due diligence off to their team and they check through it so it's like two steps of due diligence one to the bbc and then one to the investor you get and then after the due diligence been checked you then i don't know it could be different and they only air it after that point yeah so like we filmed it in may they aired it in gian so about is that 10 months after it's not but

1:01:02six seven you can tell why we had to hire a cfo i love that and so you've got the actual money now um so the deal we agreed wasn't the deal wasn't actually the deal that happened on the show okay just because of a lot of things that we wanted a lot of things that Stephen wanted but it's a deal that probably is better than the show and what we wanted more so from the show so having been on Dragon's Den having got the deal having achieved what you wanted to achieve what is next what's the plan for this year what can people be looking forward to yeah so loads and loads of out of home activations like I said before um we're going to build out a leadership team as well because me joe and ollie like we are our leadership team at the moment we like i used to push jollies and tesco joe used to work at fixing phones in a in a in like a in a place that fixed phones and then and then ollie had three businesses before i'm sure he won't mind me sharing because he did a big linkedin post about it but he tried three businesses and wasn't successful at them so like we've all come together is this bunch of misfits who's happened to build this thing because like we've got each other's backs we're we're all supportive of each other and because you're fucking great and and and like we've we're quite skilled like from failing so many times like we've failed forwards we've learned so much and we're open to learn as well so but what we really need is and me and joe and ollie are really like humble enough to admit this is that we don't know everything like there's so much out there that we can learn from so we need to hire a leadership team who've been there and done that and learn from them and then we to progress our careers as people and progress our knowledge and experience and perspective like we need to learn from them so leadership team and a lot of out of home marketing campaigns because the operations of the business ollie worked on it last year unbelievable probably the best operations of a pre-loved company that hold product in the uk in europe in the world like honestly unbelievable he's done a fantastic job so the operations is there we're ready to scale so it's just about getting getting the stocking it's about spreading the awareness of the brand a little bit more and building that leadership team love it sounds like a very good plan to me i want to ask you a few questions before we end yes because i feel like you have some great thoughts and insight in terms of general like the types of things we like to talk about um on this podcast around life improvement how you can get to the next level what is the best piece of advice that you have ever received so it was actually something Stephen said and it was just just it was so laissez-faire like he didn't know he said it but it struck a chord with me massively and like I haven't even spoken to anyone about this actually I walked into his room to meet him for the first time like after the den and he was like yeah so blah blah blah blah and I was like oh I'm thinking of doing this this year What do you reckon of it?

1:04:01And literally he just said, I don't know, try it. And like, no, like it wasn't a big thing at the time, but I couldn't stop thinking about it after it. And I was like, someone who has been so successful doesn't know the answer to something. Like I thought he knows all the answers. Like that's why we wanted him as a dragon because he knows everything. Like all the dragons know everything. Like surely they're going to give me a sane answer whether how much it's going to work, whether it's going to work or not. And he literally just said, I don't know, try it. It was such a relief to be like, he doesn't even know how the hell am I meant to know?

1:04:35It just meant everything I've approached from that moment. It's just been like, we don't know the answer until we do it. So just try everything. No, I think that's brilliant advice. And I do think the like trying aspect of it and like you really don't know until you try, especially like within business, within what, you know, your career, all of these things. You're never going to know it until you try it. There's a video ages ago that I seen from ASAP Rocky and it's brilliant. You have such a wide, wide, wide. of references genuinely gary b asap rocky honestly and like it but it's really relevant and it's like for those people who don't want to try because like they don't want to put in effort and he just he just looks at the camera and he's like since when is it not being cool to try like since when is it being like you're up here because you don't want to try like you're cool for not trying it's that's not a cool thing to do like the coolest thing is to be vulnerable is to expose yourself and just do as much as possible because if you are one of these people who want to achieve something you're going to have to try a lot of things because let me tell you a lot of things don't work so to find a thing that does work you have to go through all the failures of the thing that doesn't if someone was investing in one designer piece yeah what would you recommend from the piece and what would you recommend for them to like look out for in the process of yeah investing yeah brilliant okay so there's lots of different ways you can go down so the best investments Kelly's and Birkins but like you said before not everyone has 30 ,000 pounds to spend on a bag because you can literally buy them from the shop for seven to ten thousand pounds and then you can sell them for 25 30 ,000 pounds but getting in that situation in the first place where you can actually be accepted to buy one is extremely difficult then you can go down from that and invest in a Chanel bag, which isn't the best to resell.

1:06:23You couldn't buy it and resell it like a Birkin. But if you buy it and kept it, it would hold the value, probably go up a little bit. But then if you want to go on the smaller level, so like the average person can invest in, it has to be something pre-loved. Because exactly like a car, if you buy a new car, drive it off the forecourt, it loses 40, 50 % of its value. If you buy a handbag, no matter whether it's a really classic color black like gold hardware like if it's a these brands like gucci saint laurent like um louis vuitton like amazing classic handbags they still don't keep the value they lose the value as soon as you buy them so if you buy pre-loved you can buy it for 50 60 off retail wear it and sell it for pretty much what you bought it for so it's not like you're making money but you're not losing any but you could actually and what we've been diving into and looking into recently is whilst you're not wearing that bag you can rent it out so like you can if you wanted to make money i would suggest like buying those products if you when you're not using them rent them out and then when you don't want it anymore then eventually sell it but the best investments have to and i'm not just doing this as like a plug to pre-loved it genuinely has to be pre-loved it's similar to a car very similar to a car if you buy a used car you could sell it three or four more three or four years later for very similar price i sold my car a year later for the exact same price i bought it exactly you've got exactly you've got to look at buying and selling handbags and investing in handbags exactly the same as cars well i think that is a great place to end thank you so much for coming on you have been incredible i feel like this was a conversation that i learned a lot from and i feel like it's one of those ones that I'm going to want to like listen back to a number of times really like digest everything you said um but I think you guys have done so incredibly well thank you and you have disrupted in the true sense of the word you have taken nothing at face value in terms of like this is how you should do things or this is the way it should be or this is how fast you should grow or this is what you should prioritize you've done it truly your way and I just think that it is like it's so incredibly inspiring it's been so inspiring for me to watch um but i think so many other people too and i really hope you guys are incredibly proud of yourselves thank you so much that's like the longest splurge of someone complimenting me ever thank you so much i like people to leave the room feeling happy and good about themselves no it's been a it's been amazing thank you so much for having me on

1:09:38We'll be right back. Tickets at arenastage.org.