George Heaton (Represent Founder): From My Garden Shed To $100m Business Empire! "Work Life Balance Is Bullshit!", "That Letter Was The End Of Represent!"

From starting in a shed to aiming to be a billion dollar company, the road to success is a 24/7 mission. George Heaton is the owner and creative director of the British luxury streetwear brand, Represent In this conversation George and Steven discuss topics such as, why a work-life balance is bullshit, changing his life and writing his rules for success, how Represent was almost destroyed, and why he doesn’t believe in motivation. You can purchase all Represent products, here: https://bit.ly/3PyaKoX Follow George: Twitter - https://bit.ly/4cosMDP Instagram - https://bit.ly/3xh1crW Watch the episodes on Youtube - https://g2ul0.app.link/3kxINCANKsb My new book! 'The 33 Laws Of Business & Life' is out now - https://smarturl.it/DOACbook Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Shop the Conversation Cards: https://thediary.com/products/the-cards Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Steven Bartlett?

  You know when people talk about work-life balance, what's your honest opinion of that?

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Kobe Bryant wasn't doing three throws at 3am for no reason.

• 0:08Steven Bartlett?

  But there's a cost to that, right?

• 0:10Speaker 02

  George Hedem, the founder of global fashion brand Represent, owned by The Weeknd, Post Malone, Justin Bieber. One of the most popular luxury street brands in the world.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  When I was 18, starting this brand, it was just me and my brother in my dad's shed, figuring out products and where we could take the brand. But then we went from doing 10, 15 sales to like 1,000 every day of the week, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000. We weren't making money at that time, more than what we should have in our early twenties. So we're fucking around a lot. Alcohol, girls, cars. And we're doing like 35 million revenue. And we're like, we're gonna do 50 million next year, but we don't know what we're doing.

• 0:48Steven Bartlett?

  Now, the business is doing about $100 million.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  That's when the realisation came that you don't need to be good at business to own a business. Because there's people that are so much better at things than you. They can lay the foundations for it to become a billion dollar brand. And you can focus on what you're actually good at. That was the catalyst that just changed everything. We're building this, there's no ceiling to what it can be. That was until we got a letter from... That was the worst day in the business. It was rock bottom. But the best view of heaven is from hell, right? You've got to get to the bottom of that mountain to start reclining it. It became this driving force that I thought, we cannot stop now.

• 1:24Steven Bartlett?

  And then what happens?

• 1:36Steven Bartlett?

  George, what is the mission that you're on?

• 1:40Speaker 01

  It's just to be the best version of myself, really. Just to show up and do everything at the highest level I can.

• 1:46Steven Bartlett?

  What influence did your parents have? Because I've heard you talk about your mother and your father a lot. But let's start with your father. What kind of influence did he have on you?

• 1:54Speaker 01

  I guess when I was growing up, he had, he had a bit more than what everyone else had in my town. So like, he had a Range Rover and he dropped me off to school in that Range Rover and all the kids thought that was sick. So automatically I felt proud of that. So I was like, I wanna be like this. Like, what is it that my dad's got that other people don't have? Um, and the way he showed up with my family and how he would, he wouldn't, like, I would, I've never seen him drunk, even to this day, I've never seen him drunk. Like, he was a role model is like this stoic guy that would just work hard, show up, drop his kids off at school, come to football training every single night. Like, he would be there for me. And I think that was just like, even though it was never spoke about

• 2:37Speaker 01

  in the household, it just like created my own discipline, I guess.

• 2:41Steven Bartlett?

  Was he an emotional man?

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Not, no, no emotion. I've never seen him cry.

• 2:46Steven Bartlett?

  Has he ever said, I love you?

• 2:49Speaker 01

  To me? I don't know, maybe as a young kid, but not, not recently, no.

• 2:54Steven Bartlett?

  What about your mum?

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Very supportive. She used to sit on the end of my bed every night and be like, George, you've got to make it. You've got to carry your brother and sister. Like, you've got, you've got to carry this family on, which was quite a hard thing to take in when I was young. Um, but she just like affirmed that every single day and like, she loved the work I did and art that I did. And she would try and express that to all her friends and talk about me a lot. And it was always like something that was kind of, um, it kind of pushed me a bit, you know? Gave me like words of, words of affirmation, I guess, confidence.

• 3:29Steven Bartlett?

  Was that, was her saying that like a frequent thing? I'm just trying to figure out why she would say that to you versus your siblings is presumably because you're the oldest?

• 3:38Speaker 01

  No, I was the middle child. Um, but my kind of, he was very within himself as, as, as a younger kid and, um, didn't come out much and he just did his own thing. Whereas I would express myself a little bit more than him in, within the family. And I think my mum saw that as a way that I could be the, the carrier of whatever that boat was later down in life.

• 4:01Steven Bartlett?

  And your parents, what did they do? So your dad was?

• 4:04Speaker 01

  My dad sold minibuses. So him and his dad were in business. So that was kind of like me and my brother. And like me and my brother, they looked the same. They did the same thing, like had the same demeanor, same attitude to everything. And I think that's why me and my brother went into business because we saw that the family had been able to do that prior.

• 4:25Steven Bartlett?

  Did you have any idea when you were a young man, like 12, 13, 14, that you would be in this industry?

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did, to be fair. Looking back at it, I had sensitive skin as a kid. And anything that fit me wrong or like itched me or like, like a back neck label or the way a pant fit would irritate me so much that I'd take it to my grands. And she was a tailor, so she would taper things and take necks out of things. And she would make sure I knew what the composition was before buying garments. And when I look back at it now, I realize that that being that particular so young kind of stemmed into how I've built the brand and what it stands for and the quality and everything like that.

• 5:08Steven Bartlett?

  And Michael, I've I met Michael before. When the first time we had you on the podcast, I think you had eight employees and Michael was there as well.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:15Steven Bartlett?

  And he comes across as a bit of a genius, but a bit of an introverted genius. What was the difference in your skill set? Because you both went and studied like art, well, graphic design. What was the difference in your skill set?

• 5:30Speaker 01

  There wasn't really one. He was just better than me.

• 5:33Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  Better than me at art, definitely. And because he was my big brother, I looked up to him. So like through primary school, like he was into like heavy metal and rock and like California and surf and skate. And that wasn't really a particular thing in Bolton. Like everyone was in tracksuits and had shaved heads and T N's and smoked on the corner. We were skating down these cobbly roads with long hair and like big DC shoes on and skinny jeans. And I just wanted to be him, like until like early twenties, like he was, he was my idol, really.

• 6:05Steven Bartlett?

  And when did, um, when did you make the decision to apply your artistic skills to clothing?

• 6:11Speaker 01

  College. So we had a project where we had to make, we had to make something of our art that could sell. And Mike, Mike was two years ahead of me, so he'd already done the same course I was on. And he'd done like a little gallery where people would buy his drawings and. I looked at that and I looked at my dad and my dad wanted us to come into the business at the time and. The last thing I wanted to do was that, but also I didn't wanna. Sit and wait around all my life to sell a painting for forty grand. Um, and I remember going into the class and I remember the teacher telling me that. Average salary of a graphic designer was thirty K and I'd go home and I'd speak to my dad and be like. Hold on, if university is gonna cost me nine K a year and the average salary is forty K a year and like.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  I can't fucking buy myself a Range Rover with that. And I wanted to be like my dad. So I was like, what, what is it that I can make that I can make money from? Like, everyone wants to be successful, right? There's no denying that like money was such a big thing back then that I wanted and. I was so particular about the clothing, like I said, about my grand and taking things in and how we'd adjust all my garments that. There was this, there was this like upbringing of social media. Instagram was just starting and. YouTube was just starting and I, I managed to watch a few videos of like. Artists like Shepard Ferry who owned Obey and Nicky Diamonds who own Diamond Supply and Huff and. These guys over here on the West Coast that were just selling like T-shirts with graphics on.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  And I thought, why can't we do, we be the British version of that? What have we got to do to do that? And this college project came up and I just thought I'll give it a go.

• 7:44Steven Bartlett?

  You know, a second ago, you said being a graphic designer wasn't gonna allow you to buy the same car as your dad. Was that, how much? Was your dad a driving force behind your sort of um. Your decision making and like when I say that, like. Was there really a motivation to try and beat him or at least get to where he was?

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely, definitely.

• 8:07Steven Bartlett?

  A very conscious motivation.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:10Steven Bartlett?

  And because you thought that'd make him proud or make yourself proud?

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I thought it'd make the family proud, but as well, it was just like, no one thought in my family that, or even through my friends or through my mum and dad's friends, whoever was around us, no one thought that we'd ever be anything. No one thought that like our art could sell and we could make money that way and we could build careers that way. Everyone always expected us, especially my grandad, just expected us to go into the family business.

• 8:34Steven Bartlett?

  Having listened to some of your interviews and stuff and gotten to know you, it does feel like there's a bit of a chip on your shoulder. And I'm not necessarily sure who the chip on your shoulder has come from.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  I think a lot of it's self inflicted. I think I just like to have something there to prove something wrong or something right. Maybe prove myself right.

• 8:53Steven Bartlett?

  Comes at a cost though.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  It does come at a cost, yeah. But I'm willing to take that cost on.

• 8:57Steven Bartlett?

  Are you sure?

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. I've, I've been doing it now for 13 years. I'm not going to stop anytime soon. And like, I only feel now that we're just getting started with it, so.

• 9:08Steven Bartlett?

  I'm really curious about this early phase, which I kind of call the shedding phase, where an entrepreneur makes the decision that they're going to do something unusual in the context of their like current social group. And the shedding phase I define as like when your family start thinking you're a bit weird and you feel the resistance from your family. And then you're like, boys from school start thinking you think you're Richard Branson or whatever, and they start making little comments. Can you recount what your shedding phase was like?

• 9:35Speaker 01

  I think that was it. I think like a lot of people who was around just laughed at it. A lot of people just thought it was a joke. And it got to that stage where then it was like, oh, it's your dad's business. Your dad's, your dad buys the stock and like, like this is a family business. You guys aren't making this money and whatever. Until it gets to a point where it like just completely exceeds what people think that is. And then they seem to come back around and then they're buying your product and then they're congratulating you on the drops and then they're your biggest fans.

• 10:08Steven Bartlett?

  Do you remember any comments that you heard from certain people?

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. I remember there was one where I'd bought this R8 and it was like, I must have been 19 or 20.

• 10:20Steven Bartlett?

  Which is a car, right?

• 10:21Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. And an Audi. And I had it parked up in my town where I was and I remember getting a message on Facebook saying,

• 10:32Speaker 01

  That car your dad's bought you is parked up here. He's gonna get a ticket on them yellow lines. And I was thinking like, come on.

• 10:39Steven Bartlett?

  How did it make you feel?

• 10:40Speaker 01

  It made me wanna go to the next level with everything, over and over, till, so it drowned out that noise. So it was like, okay, maybe his dad was successful running a small business, had a nice house and whatever. I wanted to take that to like a hundred times that, to prove that it wasn't that, I guess.

• 11:04Steven Bartlett?

  And so after you leave college, well, it's during college, right? When you've sort of start the business. Is that two thousand and twelve?

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:13Steven Bartlett?

  When you first start the business and then Michael joins you a year later, after you've started selling T-shirts?

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was doing a bit of the graphics here and there and I would run them to the, run orders to the post office. And then at night we'd sit and draw together and then I'd speak to suppliers in China and stuff like that. And it just, it just rolled on for the three years that I was at university.

• 11:33Steven Bartlett?

  What was that first year like? That first year in business?

• 11:37Speaker 01

  From what I can remember, it wasn't really business. It was just going to the back garden where my dad's shed was, speak to some suppliers in China, go to university, complete my, whatever it was I was doing there, come back, pack orders, speak to customers, do it all again, every single day, for like the first three years.

• 11:57Steven Bartlett?

  How, how big was the business in the first year?

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Probably turned over about ten thousand.

• 12:01Steven Bartlett?

  Pounds?

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:02Steven Bartlett?

  What about the second year?

• 12:06Speaker 01

  Maybe like fifty K. I think the third year is when we decided to actually make it a limited company and get an accountant.

• 12:13Steven Bartlett?

  And how much did you do in the third year roughly?

• 12:15Speaker 01

  In terms of revenue, I can't remember. I think it was around half a mil.

• 12:18Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Cause I remember going to the accountants and we, we did all this.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  We literally like tore the business apart and rebuilt it. And he said to us at the end of this thing like, if you've got a hundred grand in the bank, you should carry on with it. If not, you've spent three years just like doing nothing and it's going nowhere. And luckily we had way more than that in the bank. And it was like, okay, let's, let's do this for real.

• 12:41Steven Bartlett?

  You spent two years, you know, in, by the end of the second year, you're generating 50K, which is like not enough really to pay yourself a salary whilst covering costs of the business.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  No, I didn't take a salary for seven or eight years.

• 12:54Steven Bartlett?

  So surely at that point, people around you are telling you that you're an idiot and they've got quite good evidence.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:59Steven Bartlett?

  To suggest that you're actually wasting your time.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  But I never had, never had a big doubt that it wouldn't work. I've had a lot of doubts, but never had a doubt that it wouldn't work. And I knew that I would do everything I could to make sure it worked.

• 13:11Steven Bartlett?

  What did work? How would you define worked at that, that moment? Like, what was success at that moment?

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Success was putting products online and it's selling and seeing that launch night and seeing 500 people login and buy something or a thousand people and seeing that incremental gain over time. That was what was like the driving force. More people following the brand, more people sending DMs. That, that was it really.

• 13:34Steven Bartlett?

  Why don't people start? And I say that because, you know, in hindsight now, you're going to understand looking back at your own work, the quality of it.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:44Steven Bartlett?

  What you went through and you probably have a pretty good idea on why people just don't start. You must get so many DMs from people that have an idea of

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:51Steven Bartlett?

  a fashion idea or anything. Why don't they start?

• 13:55Speaker 01

  I think it's that pressure of failure, the, the, the feeling of doubt, like the, and as well wasting time. If they've got a family or they've got a job where it's full time, then to start something else on the side, when they've got a seat to the family or the girlfriend or the wife or whatever it is, like you don't have much time to go and do something else that you then hope will eventually in the future take off or become successful. And it takes so long, like it does take, I know it's a lot of people say it takes 10 years to become an overnight success. And I think that's true.

• 14:28Steven Bartlett?

  You you spent almost four years um from two thousand and twelve till, I guess, no, it's two years, two thousand and twelve till about two thousand and fifteen ish, kind of just effectively messing around.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, messing around, really. Mess around. A lot of messing around.

• 14:46Steven Bartlett?

  Learning.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Learning, yeah.

• 14:47Steven Bartlett?

  It's probably a better, better use of words.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  And enjoying it as well. Like, me and my friends had sit in my dad's shed like all night, just figuring out products and things that we wanted to do and where we could take the brand. And I'd love to go back to them times because they were great. And we had nothing. And no one was really watching us, but we thought everyone was watching us. And we thought we was the next big fucking powerhouse of a brand. Um, so yeah, it was, it was fun. Like, I don't regret any of it.

• 15:14Steven Bartlett?

  You know what, putting these two questions together about like why people don't start, and also those three years where you weren't really making any, any money.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:22Steven Bartlett?

  Um, and you're in the shed in your, in your dad's house. Why didn't you quit? Because as I said a second ago, there must have been so much force telling you to go and get a real job.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:34Steven Bartlett?

  But why didn't you quit?

• 15:37Speaker 01

  I think it just leads back to, again, proving people wrong and proving myself right. And like, the only other option I had was to go and work for my dad. And I didn't want to do that because I'd done that all my teens and I hated it. I hated cleaning minibus and ripping stickers off the sides of windows and going to auctions and bidding on cars and stuff like that wasn't me. And that was the only other option I had. So it was like, this is it. It's all, all or nothing, really.

• 16:01Steven Bartlett?

  When you look back at the uh products that you made in that shed, how do you feel about them?

• 16:05Speaker 01

  There was a few great ones and a few absolutely terrible ones. I remember the first collection, I I moved to China because originally I would buy stock in from America, print it in the UK and like make zero profit on it. But it was great and it felt great. And then eventually we decided like, let's try and make some profit on a, on a collection. And I remember this collection coming back after a few months and like, all the fits were wrong and the fabrics were wrong. And I just cried on my mom's floor for like hours that night. Um. So there was, there was a lot of really rough times as well as a lot of fun. But it was all just like figuring out different things and like learning how to do every single job within that business.

• 16:46Steven Bartlett?

  Cause you know, if I'm a young fashion designer or a young creative and I look at your work now, I look at the product that represents putting out now. It's easy to see how one might be put off from starting.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:59Steven Bartlett?

  Because I look at your stuff, I go, Jesus Christ, like I.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  You can't compete with it.

• 17:03Steven Bartlett?

  You can't compete with that. Like that's more than 10 years of like mastery. So I'm just not going to bother starting. What, what'd you say to those people?

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Say, look, you gotta put the work in. It's gonna be 10 years. Like regardless of what industry it is or what product you're making, like I wouldn't even think about the next two to three years. I'd think about 10 years. Like that's the mindset you've got to have and it's not going to be easy and it's not going to be fun. But you've just got to do everything you can to make it work.

• 17:32Steven Bartlett?

  So the, the brand kind of scales up to what sort of revenue number from 2012 up to 2018?

• 17:40Speaker 01

  We built it up to like six to seven mil. So like 2015, 16, 17, it was just flat like six, seven mil.

• 17:48Steven Bartlett?

  Year of the year.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And we thought that was the ceiling in for at the, at the time. As our young selves with not much knowledge and no real foot in the industry, like we thought that we were at the ceiling of what represent was. And then that's when the realization came that like, if we carry on doing what we're doing, it's not going to work. And this brand will fail.

• 18:12Steven Bartlett?

  What was the advice you needed at that point that you didn't get?

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Definitely didn't get the advice, but it was to just completely restart, refocus, go again, build a new team and, and go into what we already knew that was there waiting for us. We knew what we were capable of. We just weren't doing it.

• 18:33Steven Bartlett?

  What weren't you doing?

• 18:35Speaker 01

  Focusing on our consumer, asking them what they wanted, speaking to them, being within the community of what represent was and giving them what they wanted.

• 18:44Steven Bartlett?

  When you say the, the, the point about team, um, you said rebuild a new team. When you started the brand, who, who were you hiring?

• 18:51Speaker 01

  All my friends.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  I hired all my friends, all my close friends, because I wanted to enjoy it. And I didn't know a thing about hiring people. I didn't want to interview people and bring them into my dad's garden shed. So up until we had a unit, like it was just me and my friends. And we were all just doing fifty jobs each. No one had a title, no one knew what was going on. Um, and it didn't work. But now we're at such a level where there's a hundred people in the business. Two of those friends that came in right at the start are still in the business and are very high up in the business and have amazing, successful lives. So half worked and half didn't.

• 19:30Steven Bartlett?

  When you say it didn't work, what does that mean in reality?

• 19:35Speaker 01

  It means that like, I guess it's all, not my fault as such, but it's all, it's. I I brought people into the brand that shouldn't have been in fashion or shouldn't have been doing what I'd asked them to do. Or like their career didn't go the the way that it should have gone. Because we were just plateauing at this base of like.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  A a quite a boring fashion brand at the time and like the, we had to split up and we had to regroup and start again. And the ones that stayed have now stayed forever, which is insane. And the ones that left, they've carried on with their lives.

• 20:13Steven Bartlett?

  What have you learned about um hiring? Again, when I say the advice that you you wish you'd gotten at the time, before you'd hired a single person that you might give if you could speak to George at eighteen years old? And you could give him hiring advice on how to pick people, what would you say?

• 20:28Speaker 01

  Hire fast, fire faster.

• 20:30Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  I spent a lot of years where.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  I didn't hire people because I didn't think they would fit into the brand. And even though they don't seem a certain way, or they're into the same brands that I'm into, or they follow this kind of. Um, industry that we're in, whether it's streetwear or luxury or high fashion, like there is still unbelievable people that can do amazing things way better than what I can do in all levels of business. That don't look like they should be or don't seem like they would. Um, so just like realising that back back then would have really helped the business grow.

• 21:07Steven Bartlett?

  Think sometimes like young founders, I remember just thinking back on my own experience, we're sometimes scared to hire people that are like more experienced than we are because how are we going to manage them? And all those kind of concerns. And also, why would they want to come here?

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Right. Why would they want to come here was a massive thing for me.

• 21:24Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Why would, why would someone want to come to a smaller brand than what they were at? And especially in that time when it wasn't growing, because it's not, you don't want to go into a company that's not growing. But like now it's completely different. The, the whole ecosystem that we've built and who wants to come into the brand and like the way the brand is growing, it's now like, we have the abundance of everyone wanting to join the brand. So it's, it's now like, it's hard to pick and choose who we bring into the brand rather than going out there and looking for them and trying to get them into the brand. You know what I mean?

• 21:56Steven Bartlett?

  It's so like catch 22. And I have a lot of Dragon's Den investments and these are typically early stage companies. They're often quite young and I sit with them all the time and I, I talk to them about this paradox of

• 22:10Steven Bartlett?

  there's, it's a kind of multifaceted thing. They are a very young team, very inexperienced. They have small budgets, relatively small budgets. So they're thinking, we can't pay an exceptional, really experienced person because a hundred thousand pound salary is so much for us. And because they don't, and also the stuff you said about like, why would anyone want to come work in this like shed?

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:32Steven Bartlett?

  Because of that, they never grow to be able to pay for those people, to, to be able to create an environment where exceptional people would come.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:40Steven Bartlett?

  So the only way like I see of kickstarting the process is to bring in exceptional people now.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:50Steven Bartlett?

  If that makes sense.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Pay for it now and you'll see the increased outcome later. Definitely.

• 22:56Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like bringing in exceptional people will never be a bad thing in the business.

• 23:02Steven Bartlett?

  But it feels like it because they, they

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Because it costs so much.

• 23:05Steven Bartlett?

  So much. Yeah.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. But you're also going to learn so much from them, just especially if you're a small team and you're bringing in people that have been in there for 10 years and done what you're trying to do. Like the, in the information and the value that they provide, just to open your mind up to what's actually possible can get you to the next level. Like I've brought a CEO in to represent that was handling a $500 million business. For him to come into my business that at the time it was only doing 20 mil. And to tell me what's possible and run me through different geographies and how products can have a lifetime and how you can maintain a constant like steady sale of one product for so many years when I, we were just thinking that you put something online, let it sell out and then you move on to the next thing. And there's so many different like factors that can come in and different

• 23:51Speaker 01

  areas of growth and sales and categories and all these different things that just make you realise, oh, you can turn the business from twenty to fifty mil by just doing this.

• 24:01Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  But you would never know that if you were just in your little group of people that you've grown up with and done it with forever.

• 24:07Steven Bartlett?

  And you don't even know that you don't know it, like it's an unknown.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  You don't even know, no, because there's no one teaching you. And that's why I'm trying to do this YouTube channel and trying to be so expressive, but also um like authentic on the YouTube and on Instagram by telling people this and showing them how, what we actually do and how we do it. Because when I was eighteen, starting this brand, I had nowhere to look. I had no mentors. I had, there was no one in fashion that would wanted to come and help us. And there was nothing like that I could just go online and find and, and buying a course to build a brand isn't going to work. That's, that's the biggest load of bullshit ever. Um, so like you're stuck in your own, in your own ways and you, you've got limited beliefs.

• 24:48Steven Bartlett?

  And you don't know what you don't know. So how do you go, how, again, if you could like go back, because there's so many young kids that are going to be looking up to you thinking, okay, George, I get it. There's lots of things that I don't know. Where do I go to find the answers? What's the best way to go to find these answers that are going to help me go to the next level?

• 25:07Speaker 01

  I think you've got to research now. I think everyone's very explicitly authentic online. Like if they want to be the next George Heaton, you can scroll down my Instagram for the last ten years and see exactly what I've done, where I've been and how I've done it, who we've done it with. Or you can go on the YouTube channel and backload a documentary that we did three years ago that shows the last ten years. And I know you do it with um the Diary of a CEO behind, behind the scenes as well. So the people are willing as well to like give you advice. I give people advice on social media all the time.

• 25:41Steven Bartlett?

  But that decision then to bring in that CEO.

• 25:45Steven Bartlett?

  Where did that information come from?

• 25:47Speaker 01

  I spent a good couple of years just really like rebuilding myself when that when that plateau happened. Um, there was like eighteen months to two years where it was just before Covid started and I wanted to just like really build myself up into someone that I wasn't at that time, but I wanted to be.

• 26:05Steven Bartlett?

  Why? What was going on in your world?

• 26:07Speaker 01

  I felt like I was stuck and like, like I said, we had limited beliefs. We didn't know where to go and what to do. It was like, how do I then figure that out? If I'm not got a mentor or someone telling me which way to go with it, I've got to do it myself. So it was like, read every single self-help book, look into every single fashion show, figure out like what it is we want to do and where we want to go with this brand and how we're going to build it up, but also with ourselves.

• 26:33Steven Bartlett?

  Was this the period in two thousand and eighteen where you said you lost the motivation for the business?

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, just before that.

• 26:38Steven Bartlett?

  Take me into tha- that period of your life. If I'm a, if I'm a fly on the wall, what do I see in, in your world at that time where you're like not excited about it?

• 26:48Speaker 01

  Not excited about it because we were getting a lot of pushback from press and like, we were trying to do runway shows and no stores wanted to buy us and our price points weren't right and the way we were taking the design wasn't right. And that was like painful because it was a passion for us. It was our love. So like that negative feedback was like kind of painful at the time, but we used it as like a reset button. And I looked at myself as well at the same time, like I wasn't putting everything into the brand. I wasn't going like full on with it. I was messing around and like enjoying my life as well because we weren't making money at that time, like more than what we should have been doing in

• 27:29Speaker 01

  our early twenties. So we're fucking around a lot and I'm not going to say here and lie like we would, we didn't know what we were doing. We're messing around. And it just got to a point where like that year became unprofitable. And for me to sit there and think, fuck, like I've done this for the past seven or eight years and now it's not making money. That was like, that was the thing that then just, that was a catalyst that just changed everything. I just took a real good hard look at what we are and who we were and just changed all.

• 28:02Steven Bartlett?

  What about you on a, on a personal level at that, at that time? You said you weren't happy with yourself.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Um. Didn't why, I hated the way I looked. I hated the way I came across on social media. I was very shy, very unconfident.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  And like terrible at hiring people and just didn't like had not anger issues, but was always angry, was always negative. Always had like this pessimistic view of everything, even the weather had pissed me off.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  For a while, for a long time. And I just remember reading a few books and thinking like, why am I this way? And how do I change myself? Even and like being the artist, I even redrew how I wanted to look. And it was like, every single day now I've got to work on being that guy. Who is, who is George Heaton that I want him to be, not who I am now.

• 28:48Steven Bartlett?

  You actually drew?

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:50Steven Bartlett?

  A, a picture?

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I used to look back at it all the time and just think this, this is, I wanted to recreate myself and recreate the brand.

• 28:57Steven Bartlett?

  What was the base you were starting from at that point? And how old were you at this point?

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Twenty six, I think I was twenty five, twenty six. I just like had, had a unhealthy relationship with the way I worked and even the food I ate and like, I wasn't, I wasn't healthy. I wasn't doing well. Didn't look great, like didn't, didn't feel myself. I didn't want to look at myself in the mirror.

• 29:22Steven Bartlett?

  You didn't want to look at yourself in the mirror?

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause I didn't like who I'd become and like the, I didn't like what the brand had become either. And the brand was my life. So it was like, this all needs to change.

• 29:33Steven Bartlett?

  When you say you didn't want to look at yourself in the mirror, do you actually mean that? Are you saying that as like a figure of speech?

• 29:39Speaker 01

  I guess a figure of speech, but as well like realising that, that I wanted to change a lot. So then when, when you do want to change, then you don't like the way you are.

• 29:48Steven Bartlett?

  How, how did you know you wanted to change? I mean, that sounds like an, like a slightly peculiar question, but. I always think about what it takes for someone to have one of those moments in their life where they go, do you know what, enough is enough.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:00Steven Bartlett?

  And sometimes I've always like pondered, I think I've said it a few times on the show, like, do people have to reach a certain rock bottom in their lives before they go, do you know what?

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. And I see this with people now that we inspire with two, four, seven, or who will send me a DM and say, look, you've changed my life through this or that. The, I think that like the best view of heaven is from hell, right? I think you've got to get to the bottom of that mountain to start re climbing it. I think if you just sit around in the middle somewhere and, and life's just is what it is. That was what I was going through.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  And like I had a girlfriend and we'd split up and that was terrible. And yeah, the brand wasn't doing well. I got told it was unprofitable and like, I was just in this fucking what for me was rock bottom. And I know it doesn't sound bad compared to a lot of other people's lives. I understand that. But for me, for where I'd been on the trajectory that I thought I was on, it was rock bottom. So that was like the reset.

• 30:53Steven Bartlett?

  So you drew a picture of yourself and how you wanted to look. Did you write anything about who you wanted to be in terms of values or?

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:59Steven Bartlett?

  I've got a best friend who's done a very similar transformation and they literally wrote down like a set of principles and it's in the notes of their phone. It's my friend Anthony. And he went from being in a place in his life where he also figuratively couldn't look himself in the mirror, dropped alcohol, hit the gym and has turned it around. And he, he has almost has this like 10 commandments in the notes of his phone.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:22Steven Bartlett?

  You did something similar.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Exactly the same. And I still have them that pop up every morning, like reminders on my phone. I found this guy called Andy Fritzello and he had a book called 75 Hard. And it was like a mental toughness challenge, but it also included a lot of working out in there. And it was like, no alcohol, drink this much water, read this much of a book and just do it every single day for 75 days. Write down five things you're going to do that day. And I did that and I started doing it and I started seeing like these crazy results in my life, just with everything, just the way I could structure my day and knowing that like I had to put two workouts into a day. One had to be outside, one had to be inside. So structure the rest of the day around that. And then started learning

• 32:07Speaker 01

  how to plan my day out better and where the time was where I could go and do these other things. And like every night I would read 10 pages of a book, whichever book that was from. All the Ryan Holiday books and Robert Greene and everything like that. So I was learning all these things whilst I was also doing this mental toughness challenge. And it was like a seventy five day thing. And I remember getting to getting to the end of it and just thinking, fuck, like, I'm, I looked at myself then and I was like, okay, I can see the change. And you know, when you can see change, that's when you like really go into it. You start getting obsessed when you see whether it's success or like your fitness levels go up or just the way you've,

• 32:45Speaker 01

  energy levels are every day and just figuring out that like these little indicators are changing the way I am. And then at the same time, we were really working on the business. So the business was starting to see a bit more success and that whole thing, the cadence of that just kept rolling and rolling and rolling. And I guess whether it's obsession or addiction, I got addicted to it. And like, there couldn't be a day go by where I wouldn't work out or I wouldn't eat the exact calories that I needed to eat. I wouldn't sleep the exact like, and I needed to get the exact amount of sleep that I wanted. And it just completely changed like the way I looked and the like my, my levels of fitness and cardiovascular and strength and everything like that. I just went through the roof.

• 33:27Steven Bartlett?

  Cause people will look at you now and think that, you know, they'll see you getting up at, I don't know, five AM in the morning and going for like a twenty mile run. And hitting the gym later that evening, running a business, doing all these things, being super productive. And they'll probably think, he was just born with something that I don't have.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:43Steven Bartlett?

  Like he's just got this level of motivation.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:45Steven Bartlett?

  Probably came in his DNA that I don't have.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And a lot of people do say that. A lot of people think that, think it's genetics or they think it's steroids and stuff like that.

• 33:54Steven Bartlett?

  Or they'll just think that you're like wired in a way.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:56Steven Bartlett?

  From birth.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  I used to think that as well, back when I was overweight and unhealthy and like I'd look at people on Instagram and be like, yep, genetics, whatever. Yep, he's on steroids. I can't look like that. I've got a business to run. Like you would, you'd dismiss everything, but it's not. And once you start doing it yourself and you see those little gains and you, you get into it, then you can, you can really change.

• 34:18Steven Bartlett?

  What is the starting point?

• 34:20Speaker 01

  One step at a time, whether it's ten thousand steps or doing even a twenty minute workout. That's all people need to do to change.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Because you'll start seeing results regardless of what position you're in right now. If you can just keep increasing incrementally what you're doing in terms of fitness or your business or however you like your sleep, whatever it is that you feel is not right. You'll see the change over time. It comes and it takes a long time. It takes a really long time, but it happens.

• 34:49Steven Bartlett?

  It's difficult to, it's difficult to believe, I guess, for some people because they, they kind of, they see the mountain in front of them and you're telling them, listen, it's just one step at a time up that mountain. But they're just looking at the top of the mountain going, Jesus Christ, that's a long way away. And the thought that the first steps to take are small ones doesn't, almost doesn't seem believable.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and same with me, like I would go head on into something thinking that you could just go out there and run a marathon within a week and people do that and it, and it crushes you and then you have to start again. But it's just about finding the rhythm of like what you enjoy and, and just go and just doing it and not, not really taking your foot off the gas once you start doing it.

• 35:28Steven Bartlett?

  So jumping back to 2018 then, so the business is stagnant during that period of time. And you go on this process of reinventing yourself.

• 35:37Steven Bartlett?

  You also go on the process of reinventing the business.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:41Steven Bartlett?

  What does that mean? How did you reinvent the business?

• 35:44Speaker 01

  We stripped back all the wholesale that we, that we were doing and we focused on the D to C. So we went into this weekly drop thing and it was just the right, it was just before like COVID happened. And James, who is the chief product officer, was like super keen on moving our production out to Portugal. It was currently in the UK and Italy and it was making no money. And I had so many arguments with him about it and like hated this, this way of thinking that he was doing and like, what he wanted to do with the business and it got to like, we, we had a massive heated argument about it. And it was so right for the business at the time and I just didn't know it. Cause I weren't acceptance, accepting of like changing, changing the way we were working.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  And I didn't understand that you could go and do this other thing and. Producing a different way than what we were doing. And like, full credit to him, he completely changed the whole like margin of what we were doing. Um. So James was doing that for like nine months straight. And Mike was doing all these new graphics that was gonna change the way the brand looked. And then I I came out to LA a few times and found these T shirts that I really loved and these cargo pants that I loved. And then we started putting all these three things together through through all of us. And then I have a guy called Stefan, who was doing all the website maintenance and everything like that. And we changed the way the website looked and the whole vision of the brand. And we deleted everything off social media and just like

• 37:09Speaker 01

  restarted and it just, it started working. And we put like three hundred T shirts online and we sold three hundred in a minute. And then the next week, Mike did another design and we'd sold six hundred in a minute and then nine hundred in a minute. And then it was like, fuck, we actually do have a following here. We've gone from doing ten fifteen sales through the day to like a thousand every single Wednesday, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand. And that gave us like the the liquid and also the confidence to then go and create more collections and go back to becoming a real brand again.

• 37:45Steven Bartlett?

  Whereas you were saying that made me think about how so many people aren't successful in their lives or aren't as successful as they could possibly be because they haven't gotten out of their own way.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  And that was me a million times over. And just like having that open mindedness and listening to other people and knowing that it's not, you're not right with everything is such a fucking huge thing.

• 38:09Steven Bartlett?

  It's difficult when you're, I think, especially if you're a young CEO, because you're probably already a bit insecure.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah.

• 38:18Steven Bartlett?

  Like, like you feel like you should know everything. So you're like overcompensating by.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  But then as well, like the business was growing so much that. I would have only just restricted it if I would have stayed in that CEO position. Even though I was learning a lot and listening to a lot of things and we had to bring people in because we were like busting at the seams, didn't have enough staff and like the revenue was going crazy and we didn't know what to do with ourselves. We're all running around like headless chicken. There's only like 20 people in the business and we're doing like thirty, thirty five million revenue and it was like, fuck, what are we gonna do? We're gonna do fifty million next year, but we don't know what we're doing. Just like so silly, but yeah, you.

• 38:56Steven Bartlett?

  It's funny, I was gonna say from the outside, it looks like you had it all together.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  Of course it does, yeah. For the whole thirteen years, it kind of looks like that. Um, and it still looks like that now and we definitely don't have it all together, but I do have an amazing like leadership team and everyone in the business is like so bought into it now and like now there's like a mission statement and some fundamentals behind the business and everyone's, everyone's really on the mission with me and like they fucking live for it and love it and like will die for it.

• 39:25Steven Bartlett?

  You've, you've created a pretty amazing um company culture. You were talking about it there.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:30Steven Bartlett?

  How have you done that?

• 39:31Speaker 01

  That's, it's not really, I'm, I'm not gonna sit here and take credit for that. Um, I'll take credit for like the gym that we have in there and, and the way we like, everyone works hard, but also like my, the CEO that came in, Spenny, just, he's all about people, people over profit. Every day of the week, whatever it is, it's people first. So we have such a good like group of like the leadership team he's brought in and like everyone who's involved with the business now is just constant like transparency and here's where we go in, here's what we're doing, here's what's wrong, here's what's right. We need to focus more on this, we need to do more of this and just giving them everything that they, they want. And like, even though it's, yeah, you gotta work hard, you gotta work fucking hard.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  We're still like, we're probably the best place to work for that I know of.

• 40:19Steven Bartlett?

  Self-awareness. I am, I've spoken to a lot of founders that have been very, very successful, especially out of Europe. And one of the things that they all seem to have in common is at some point in their journey, they develop such a high self-awareness that as we kind of said, they got out of the way of the business.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:35Steven Bartlett?

  And just focused on the thing that they're good at. And that's pretty much what it looks like you're doing now.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I hope that's right. And I've seen people do that and get it wrong. But for me, I think it is right. I'm not a businessman and like for me to be the CEO of this business that's growing rapidly and has all these people involved with it, like all I would do is stump the growth of it. Um. So like you said earlier today, like there's people that are so much better at things than you. And if you can bring them into your business, they can they can get on with that stuff and do ten times better job than you can. And lay the foundations for it to become five hundred million or a billion dollar brand or ten billion dollar brand. And you can focus on what you're actually good at.

• 41:18Steven Bartlett?

  How do you get them to come?

• 41:20Speaker 01

  I think like you said then, like company culture, like you see, if you see represent on LinkedIn or something, you you're gonna look at it and think, fuck, I wanna be in there. These guys and girls are getting after it, like doing gym sessions together at six AM and they're all out. And they're just they're just enjoying the workplace like, but that that comes from being being a successful brand. You can't just do that from the get go. Can't just build the gym with no money, right? So you've got to build that level of success and then you're able to reinvest into the brand rather than into your stock and and building the actual size of the company.

• 41:55Steven Bartlett?

  Because this is always the issue that I hear specifically like young founders or early stage entrepreneurs talking about is, okay, Steve, I get it. I know we need great people, but how do I persuade great people like Spencer? It's Spenny, right?

• 42:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, Paul Spencer, yeah.

• 42:08Steven Bartlett?

  Paul Spencer. Um. How do I get him to come work here?

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:12Steven Bartlett?

  When he's working at like Puma, he was at Puma, wasn't he?

• 42:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:15Steven Bartlett?

  How did you get him to come from Puma to represent?

• 42:18Speaker 01

  Built a relationship with him over many years. James was in contact with him for five years since we first met. And then as the business scaled, he saw what we had, like he saw what me and Mike had together as brothers. And he saw what me, Mike, James and Steph had as like a leadership team. And he wanted to be involved with it because he knows that there's no other options for us. It was like we're we're building this. There's no ceiling. Like what is what is representing ten years? Like what can it be? And he says it every day. It's like gives me fucking goosebumps walking in here because there's no, there's no limit to it. Like we can do everything. If we can spell sell sportswear, we can sell vintage T shirts and we can sell.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  We can sell salt, like it's insane. We can do anything. It's it's not really a brand anymore. It's like a lifestyle.

• 43:07Steven Bartlett?

  Of all the business decisions that you've made, where does hiring a CEO to run the business and you stepping out of the way rank?

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Number one.

• 43:16Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 43:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. My life's just so much better now that he's involved with the business and there's a lot of weight taken off my shoulders.

• 43:26Steven Bartlett?

  It's not the first time I've heard this. I think Ben Francis would have said the same.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I bet.

• 43:30Steven Bartlett?

  You know, and Julian at Huell said the same and that putting someone in in that CEO role where it's both like not enjoyable for you as a creative, but also it's not good for the business because it's not your skill set.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  And and that, yeah, it wasn't enjoyable for a for a long time and you do it because you had to do it. And if I spent six hours in that role of a CEO to then come out of my room and be like, Mike, let's go and design this thing. You didn't want to do it. There's no energy. That shit drains your energy. If you're a creative, the business side of the thing drains your energy. It absolutely kills you. Even to this day, I'll go into a board meeting and after fifteen minutes, I'm just like, oh, my God, I'm done. I'm asleep, but I could sit in Mike's room and design for twelve hours straight with him.

• 44:17Steven Bartlett?

  How much as a creative and a creative founder, do you have to stay in touch with the business side of things, though? Like you spoke about the board.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:25Steven Bartlett?

  Do you still kind of need to know what's going on?

• 44:27Speaker 01

  I like to, yeah.

• 44:28Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  I love to know as much as I can. Um, but as well, I think you should keep things away from yourself because it will

• 44:38Speaker 01

  inflict you with, even if it's like negative things, think especially if you're so focused on building this next collection or whatever it is, if you're hearing negative feedback about some kind of product that's not working or something in the business is not working, that affects what you're doing there. Um, so I think trying to divide them two things is crucial and I did that with Mike from the get go. Because I knew that like negativity and um like feedback loops on things that weren't great wasn't good for him when he's designing. So I kind of kept him just like strictly to design. But obviously we'd give him facts and figures and numbers and stuff like that, but try and keep him out of it as much as he can.

• 45:18Steven Bartlett?

  What was your hardest day?

• 45:20Speaker 01

  Oh, um, I remember we got a letter from a company also called Represent in Europe. Telling us that we were, we were basically done.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  And yeah, that was, that was the worst day in the business, you know?

• 45:38Steven Bartlett?

  What did the letter say?

• 45:40Speaker 01

  Just said like that they owned the trademark in Europe and.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  We were. They were just gonna take us for everything we had. We couldn't carry on trading.

• 45:54Steven Bartlett?

  They wanted all of your money?

• 45:55Speaker 01

  Eh, more than what we had. And that, that like, that was in that same period, that two thousand and eighteen to twenty. Where we were just like, every day we were waiting for responses and every day it was like. Waking up and thinking, fuck, like, is it all over today? Is it all over tomorrow? Can we do what we wanna do? Is this even our business anymore? Do we even own? What we're doing and like, there was, there was only really me, Mike and James that knew about this that was going on. Cause I didn't wanna put it out to anyone. Didn't want anyone in the business to know like this was happening or even my family. Um, and it really fucking like restricted us with everything we did, every decision we made, every garment we sold.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Um, so that, that, that was, that was included in that really dark period.

• 46:47Steven Bartlett?

  They presumably owned the trademark that you were using. So you had called yourself Represent. But someone else owned the trademark for Europe.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:57Steven Bartlett?

  And you didn't realise that at the time?

• 46:59Speaker 01

  We thought we owned it, um, because we had the UK IP and all over the rest of the world. There was this dormant, we thought it was dormant, but apparently it was selling clothing in section twenty five or whatever.

• 47:11Steven Bartlett?

  Section twenty five is like the clothing category for trademark.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. And at first we thought, all right, we can, we'll, we'll be able to figure this out. Let's get some lawyers and we'll go into it in a certain way and approach it like this. And it was just constantly like, no, no, no, when like.

• 47:27Steven Bartlett?

  They weren't willing to.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Nothing. And that was like, that was the devil that woke you up every night. Um, but I used that as like. I guess, again, it's that chip on the shoulder thing. I kind of used it as that. And I realised that like, we had to get, we had to do so much and make so much of the brand that we didn't want to give it up. And that when it, when the time came to it and he gave in and he wanted to take money, we had the money to be able to do it.

• 47:56Steven Bartlett?

  This sort of dark period between two thousand and eighteen and sort of two thousand and twenty was, did that cause it? Or was that just on top of it?

• 48:04Speaker 01

  That was like, that was the icing on the cake.

• 48:07Steven Bartlett?

  Right. So the business is stagnant and then you get this letter through. Someone wants to take everything you have.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  And we spent so many months, like, just sat in the back office, just figuring out what we're going to recall the brand, how we're going to rebrand it and like what it meant if it was not represented anymore. And we wouldn't, we couldn't post anything on social media. So it was like, we can't show this guy that the brand does well. Or we're making any money because then he'll want more and he'll start seeing all these other things. And we just, we were so in our own heads about it and like, all the advice from lawyers was just, just always bad news.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Um, but eventually we got him to come up, come up with a figure that he wanted for it. And I remember it was, I think it was March two thousand and twenty, we end up like signing and getting, getting our name back.

• 48:56Steven Bartlett?

  He wanted millions?

• 48:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:59Steven Bartlett?

  Um, you said the lawyers were giving you bad news. What were they saying?

• 49:02Speaker 01

  It just like, they wouldn't respond for three months.

• 49:04Steven Bartlett?

  The lawyers?

• 49:05Speaker 01

  No, no, no, not the lawyers, his lawyers.

• 49:06Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, his lawyers. Okay, so he was.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  And then they respond on the last day of like this three month period. But you'd be in the car going to like Portugal to find out if this production's ready and you'd get this long email and your heart would just drop. And you'd be like, oh, what's going to get said? And then we'd go back to the office and sit there again and try and rethink of another name. And then respond to him within a few days and then be another three months. So there was just this like, this dark cloud above our heads all the time.

• 49:33Steven Bartlett?

  When you say dark cloud, what does the dark cloud feel like?

• 49:38Steven Bartlett?

  Fly on the wall again.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, just you not being able to be yourself with everything you do. Every decision you make, whether it's buying a fucking sandwich from the shop. It's like, that's not your money to buy that sandwich because someone else owns the name where you're making that money.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  It'd like get you like that.

• 49:58Steven Bartlett?

  Did it interfere with your sleep, your mental health?

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Everything, um, but also, but like I said earlier, it also became this driving force. Well, like I'd use it as a thing where it was like, I know this probably sounds so stupid, but like, I'd just got started running in two thousand and twenty and I was like, I'm gonna go out and run fifteen K. And if I stop, that's like him coming for us, you know? It's like I have to do that, I have to win everything we do, whether it was just a run or it's a design selling or whatever it is like, you cannot stop now.

• 50:36Steven Bartlett?

  Can't be easy going through that with your brother as well, because you're gonna both be somewhat protective of each other, I imagine. And if there's that dark cloud hanging over both of you at the same time, it's.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it it it ruined both of us. It ruined his, the way he designed it. Yeah, everything.

• 50:51Steven Bartlett?

  And then so eventually you get a breakthrough and this guy agrees to a figure.

• 50:56Steven Bartlett?

  And at the time, uh, you know, millions and millions of pounds, if you're making six or seven million in the business and you're saying it's not really profitable, I'm guessing the money wasn't in the bank to send this guy millions of pounds.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  No, but the deal went through in two thousand and twenty when we were really like pushing forward and doing everything we could to the, when that thing happened, we had enough money for it.

• 51:14Steven Bartlett?

  How do you feel about him, this guy that sent you that letter?

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Up until then, just hate, just absolute hate, because we were a bunch of young guys that were trying to build this business and we had twenty employees at the time that we'd probably have to lay off and we'd lose all the money and we'd be in debt for the rest of our lives or whatever. Just because he decided that he wanted to use that name to sell nothing, basically wasn't selling anything.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  So yeah, up until that day, I was, I was really upset about it, but.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  After it, I kind of just realised that it is what it is and that's how things go. And and when I look back at it now, it really fucking catapulted the business because that's when we came out of our shell. And that's when we started really like building this brand into a lifestyle and not just T shirts on the floor on an Instagram page.

• 52:07Steven Bartlett?

  Did your parents know?

• 52:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:09Steven Bartlett?

  That you were going through that?

• 52:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit. I wouldn't tell them to full extent, but.

• 52:13Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 52:14Speaker 01

  Just because I didn't want, I don't like putting pressure on other people, especially when it's not going to affect their lives as such at the time. Um, but yeah, we would go to my mum and dad's every weekend and it'd always be a subject that came up. Has he replied yet? Has he responded? Like, have you heard anything? It's just like.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it fucked us.

• 52:34Steven Bartlett?

  How, how do you, how do you deal with that? Because you're a young, you're a young guy. I remember the first time in business where I experienced anxiety. Um, I, I thought anxiety was something that happens to other people.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:44Steven Bartlett?

  And then I remember the day very clearly where I had to let the managing director in our New York office go. I had to fire him.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:54Steven Bartlett?

  And I was sat in my apartment in Manchester, thinking about that flight tomorrow. Where I'd asked this person to come and meet me for a coffee. And I was just like riddled with anxiety for the first time ever. I was like, this is, this is what people talk about when they're talking about mental health. This is it. It's happening to me. I'm invincible, but it's, it's suddenly happening, happening to me. Um, obviously, as it always goes, it was never, it wasn't as bad as I imagined, but it's the imagination that.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, imagination is ninety five percent of it, isn't it?

• 53:25Steven Bartlett?

  Have you experienced that before?

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Um, mental health.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  I always struggle when people ask me about this because no, not really. Um, I've always been pretty solid on where I want to go, who I want to be, what I want to do and just stuck to a plan. Um, anxiety, that, that thing, that period, yeah, that caused me anxiety. But not, not to an extent where it was like crippling.

• 53:50Steven Bartlett?

  Mm hmm.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  But like, I kind of know, I kind of enjoy the bits of anxiety I get because you learn from it, right? Like you going into that meeting and telling him you're gonna get fired. Once that's done, you have that relief and then you know, next time you do it, this is how it goes. So you'll lose that ninety five percent of anxiety that happens before it, or you lose a little bit of it.

• 54:11Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  I guess I get really anxious going on to podcasts. Like, the past few days, I've been really anxious coming on here. And I've done a hundred of them before. So you never lose it, but.

• 54:24Steven Bartlett?

  How'd you cope with it?

• 54:25Speaker 01

  Just being prepared as much as you can for whatever that thing is. So whether, if that is you going to fire someone, you've got to know the reasons why you're firing them. Like where they can go, what's going to be best for them, what's going to be best for you? And just going into it like that. And then there's nothing really that can happen within that meeting then that that can go wrong, I think. And I think that kind of clears the anxiety.

• 54:50Steven Bartlett?

  On your, on the brand, you know, you've gone through a bit of a transition, as you said, you was, the brand was stagnant at one point. And then it took off again when you made a lot of sort of operational changes and sort of changes to the business model. But at the heart of the brand, there was always something special, you know? To even be at six million revenue. And I remember back when I first discovered Represent. And for anyone that doesn't know, it's basically the only thing I wear. So like, if you ever see me out or on stage or whatever, I'm wearing Represent head to toe. I mean, it's, it's, I wear this, I usually don't wear this on the podcast, but when I'm not on the podcast, it's the only thing I'm wearing. And the twenty four seven pants that you made are the only pants that I wear. Everyone knows that, like, you know, I don't actually have another pair of pants.

• 55:32Steven Bartlett?

  Because there's something, when I discovered the brand, there was always something special about it. And it's hard to explain, right? And when you observe the brand, it's clearly turned into a bit of a cult.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:43Steven Bartlett?

  A good cult, no one's getting murdered. It's a good cult. But what is that thing that the brand always had?

• 55:49Speaker 01

  Oh, that's hard. That's a hard question.

• 55:51Steven Bartlett?

  It's really hard.

• 55:52Speaker 01

  I think it's the fact that it's like two brothers that are from Manchester that don't really belong in fashion have come up and done this really cool thing where they're proving that. We don't need to just follow the rulebook and we can do whatever we wanna do and sell whatever we wanna sell and like. It's still, even though it's a huge brand now, it's still like a small thing where like the owners' club for existence like.

• 56:15Steven Bartlett?

  Which is like one range within it.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  One range within it where like you see someone else in an owners' club hoodie, like you see them two guys nod at each other and it's like, yeah, you're part of something like. We've kind of built this community that is, it stems from the people that are in the business, but it's so much bigger and it's on a global scale, but it's still like pretty small. And it's, it's like a, it's, it's a family business, right? It's run by two brothers and everyone within the business feels like family and. When you buy a piece of that product, we're giving them way more than what they expect. Like I, my, one of my main things is like quality and I want the customer to. Think, um, I follow these guys, kind of cool, I might try a hoodie and they get way more than they expect. And that's when like they become part of that cult.

• 56:59Steven Bartlett?

  You're exceeding their expectations.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  Exceeding their expectations way more than what they thought it would.

• 57:04Steven Bartlett?

  But for you to exceed my expectations, there must be something going on in the office.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:09Steven Bartlett?

  That isn't going on in the other fashion brands offices.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:13Steven Bartlett?

  And what is that thing that's happening at Represent that's probably not happening at your competitive place?

• 57:17Speaker 01

  I think it's my innate desire to just have, just be the best. However, we show up, whether it's a pop-up, whether it's a run club, whether it's the, the feel of a garment or the delivery saying it's gonna take three days and it takes one day. I think it's just my innate desire to just really be the best at how we show up as a brand.

• 57:38Steven Bartlett?

  Exhausting. Cause, cause the reason why people don't do that is because it's easier to cut the corner.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:45Steven Bartlett?

  It's easier to send it three days. It's easier to not really care about the quality.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  Of course, but like it's so personal to us and it's all we wear and it's all we obsess over every day. So it's gotta be good.

• 57:56Steven Bartlett?

  What do people not see in terms of the effort that goes into? The work between you and your brother, Michael, what is, what is it that people don't see?

• 58:06Speaker 01

  They don't see Mike enough. I'm trying to get him to come out more with how he does things and his process and stuff. But just like with him, you're seeing a guy that is in a room designing all day, every day with his graphics team. And it's not just him, it's the full scale of the business, the logistics, the production, the garment techs, the guys that are designing all the actual garments and like the content team, like all of them are so bought into it. And everyone we bring up to the office, whether it's a store or another brand or whatever, like they're fucking blown away. No one can believe what's going on in there.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  And it's this ecosystem that's been built by Spani and us as leaders and I'm really like bled this mission into everyone that's in there. That like we're creating something that's going to be like, like phenomenal and something that'll last way longer than what we lost ourselves.

• 59:02Steven Bartlett?

  When you've put so much of your heart into the designs and then you go on Instagram and someone's copied it.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:09Steven Bartlett?

  And it's your brother's design that they've copied. And I see, I see people copying your stuff all the time.

• 59:16Steven Bartlett?

  How's that?

• 59:16Speaker 01

  It's good. It means, it means the design's good, right?

• 59:20Steven Bartlett?

  That's not how you felt the first time.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  No, at first you fucking hate it and you think people are taking food off your table and in some cases that's right. And if, if it's a brand that's like very similar to us and they're trying to do the same, they're at the same price points as us and they're, they're in our market and they're taking market share, then yeah, it's like they shouldn't be doing that and it'll bite them in the ass when it comes to it. And at the end of the day, it's who's in it for the long run, right? Copying other people, we used to do it when we, we started, I'm not going to sit here and say everything was original. We've all been there and done that. I don't think, I don't think when you're at a larger scale, you do do it. But then you see brands, a huge, high luxury fashion brands go and do it to a small designer.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  So I think it's just, it's just what comes with life. I'm sure you'll get it with podcasts. It's the same thing, right? You just got to laugh at it.

• 1:00:13Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I've thought about how, you know, my journey with with people like copying what you do, whatever has been, it's been on a bit of a journey and it's difficult because especially when you care so much about something.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:23Steven Bartlett?

  If someone copies it, it really hits you in the heart to some degree.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:26Steven Bartlett?

  Especially if you can like remember why you came up with that idea and then, but I, but you're right, it's an inevitability. And it's also, I always think about how the most important stuff is actually the part of the iceberg under the water.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, and even with design, I try and get this across to my team that like, it's not even the design really that counts, it's the whole brand. They're not buying into this word.

• 1:00:50Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  They're not buying into that, they're buying into this essence of like them becoming part of this club and like, they're getting this prestige and they're getting the workouts and they're all part of this whole like lifestyle that we're portraying and doing and living and becoming.

• 1:01:04Steven Bartlett?

  The most important stuff they can't copy.

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  No one can copy that, they can copy a logo and you can't copy like what you stand for, right?

• 1:01:11Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm. So you've gone from being a business that was making sort of eight million in 2018 to as we sit here now, I think last year you did about about a hundred million dollars.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:23Steven Bartlett?

  Which is exceptional. Money is now large in your life. I'm sure you run the numbers and you go, shit, I'm worth this much money if I sold it for this fucking amount.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  Try not to.

• 1:01:37Steven Bartlett?

  But do you think, do you think about, how do you think about money now?

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  I'm not going to lie and sit here and say like, oh, money's not an issue, money's not a thing that drives me, because it is, and I think it is with everyone. And I'll speak to billionaires and they'll say on camera that they're doing it for this and doing it for that. And then they'll say off camera like, I want to get fucking rich, of course I want to be rich, everyone wants to be rich. There's, there's no negativity that comes with having a lot of money. And I think that society and the way it's perceived now is like, not a good thing that you're making a lot of money. Like, I want, I want represent to be doing billions, I want everyone in the business to be extremely wealthy, I want the leadership team to be able to have generational wealth, like, that, that's first and foremost, like, I, I, like, I love that, why not?

• 1:02:26Steven Bartlett?

  But if you had a billion pounds now, would you be any happier?

• 1:02:30Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't measure anything on happiness. Like, I'm, I'm happy to sit in design for six hours or I'm happy to go for a run and like absolutely ruin my legs. Like, that makes me happy. I also like doing hard things and rewarding myself. Um, and that's not, that's not really money, but like, like I said earlier, money never has a negative impact, I don't think.

• 1:02:54Steven Bartlett?

  On that point about giving you a billion dollars, if I give you a billion dollars and it's not gonna make you any, any happier, then what's the point in the, the money?

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  I think it will make me happier.

• 1:03:02Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course. Dude, I couldn't, my family would be set forever. All my team would be set forever. Like, that in itself makes me happy. Imagine me being able to turn up to my family and being like, okay, Dad, I know you've worked all your life, here's, here's this, enjoy it.

• 1:03:21Steven Bartlett?

  What's the exit strategy, per se?

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  I don't know anything else, so why would I wanna leave?

• 1:03:28Steven Bartlett?

  How are you gonna get the billion if you don't leave?

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  I'll do it in profits.

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  No, I don't, I don't wanna, I don't want a billion dollars in my bank account, that's not needed, but

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  when you say, what's the exit strategy? I'm, like, when I watched you leave your business, I was always thinking, like, you already had the, the podcast lined up and you're already ready to move into this other thing anyway. So it made sense for you. I don't have that and I also don't want that. Like, I love represent. I wake up and it's represent everything, everything I talk to about everyone is the brand. Everything I do is the brand, the word, like, even bringing my fitness into this thing is my brand and like, I've been able to then build two, four, seven into this brand, which is actually just like more of a passion project for me than, um, than building a business. And even all, all the athletes that are involved, like, I'm able to

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  suck so much, like, knowledge and worth out of these people personally for myself through the brand. So me then moving into something else or just selling the business doesn't make sense.

• 1:04:34Steven Bartlett?

  When your identity and your profession become so intrinsically linked,

• 1:04:41Steven Bartlett?

  there's a cost to that, right? Because it must feel, you know, you talked about back, back, backs being against the wall.

• 1:04:50Steven Bartlett?

  God, if the brand were to go down, if the revenue started to plummet and it went out of Vogue or whatever they call it, like it just was not popular anymore, that's linked to your like self-esteem and your like self-worth and your identity.

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. And look, there is days where it doesn't do well. There is still days now where we'll launch products and we'll have a nightmare with it.

• 1:05:11Steven Bartlett?

  How's that feel, honestly?

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  It fucks with you, fucks with your confidence. But it also gives you a realisation that you're not superhuman and you can't do everything and not everything you touch turns to gold. And then you've got to go back to the drawing board and do it again.

• 1:05:24Steven Bartlett?

  What does that look like? So that you think about the last time it happened. How did it feel and how long did that feeling last?

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  It lasts a few days and I'll speak to Svenny about it a lot over them few days and he'll reassure that something else is gonna take that feeling away from it and it usually does. And as well, like it's not all about small failures along the way. And there's so many exciting things that when something small trips you up a little bit, you've got to realise like, no, this is for the long term. Like the future is this. In 10 years, let's look back at this as like a learning curve.

• 1:05:59Steven Bartlett?

  Amongst all of this, you've still got to figure out how to have a life, like a personal life. Because regardless of how intrinsically connected you are to the brand Represent, you're still gonna need to have a life. You're still gonna need to be a George in there somewhere.

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I never really did for a long time. Past 10 years, I've not really had a life. Not much, nothing outside of Represent, but I've built Represent into my life.

• 1:06:23Steven Bartlett?

  In the moment, I think about, you know, times in my career where I was absolutely all in on something to the point that I was like seven days a week in this fucking office. And even the weekends, when there's nothing to do, I'm just in there because I've got my mates.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  That's when I realised, so them Sundays where you'd be sat at home on your own, no one would be messaging you. You can't do anything with people in the business because it's their time off with their families. That's when I realised like, fuck, I'm like, I'm probably too bought into this.

• 1:06:53Steven Bartlett?

  Were you lonely?

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  Alone, but never lonely, never, I never got to the point where I felt lonely. May- maybe a little bit, but like, I would, I would distract myself with going working out for five hours. You know, or, or just put my headphones in and listening to a book and just, just going and coming back. And then the Sunday's done anyway. Sundays were my worst days because I didn't have anyone to do anything with. Like I'd go and, I'd go and train at a local gym where there was a big community there for the, from six AM till nine AM. And I'd come home and I'd just sit there and think, Wednesday, Monday.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  Text my mum like, what are you up to? And she'd be like, oh, we're actually up in Scotland doing this trip. And I'd be like, fuck, I can't even go and see my mum. So yeah, I guess, I guess there is a little bit of loneliness in there. Yeah.

• 1:07:46Steven Bartlett?

  I was lonely, but I didn't know it at the time.

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:48Steven Bartlett?

  I only know it in hindsight, because I look back at the way I was living. And right, yeah, I was filling the gap, the Sunday, Saturday, some evenings, holidays, even Christmases, like.

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:01Steven Bartlett?

  Because I was in Manchester, my family are in the southwest. I was filling it with work, like often just like pointless work.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely unneeded stuff. A lot of the time it's, it's great and you can go out and you can spend a few hours on your own and write a load of things down that you need to do that next week or. But you need a team to do anything.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  Like, I can't get anything done without the team. And that's, that's one thing I would realise every weekend, like, I'm wasting my time pretending to work.

• 1:08:29Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm. That's exactly what I was doing.

• 1:08:33Steven Bartlett?

  Relationships, romantic relationships.

• 1:08:37Steven Bartlett?

  Let's start with non-romantic relationships. In fact, you talk about having to shed people. In terms of like negative influences in order to change your life.

• 1:08:48Steven Bartlett?

  People ask me about this all the time, which is,

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:50Steven Bartlett?

  You know, how important is the environment on personal and professional success?

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  I think it's everything. Think your ecosystem that you build around you is everything. Whether that's the distance it takes you to get to the gym or the people you follow on social media. If you're following Joe from school that's out every night drinking and you're watching them stories, even if it's 20 seconds of your day, you're wasting your time watching them stories. And you're also looking at things that are just absolutely pointless to your life. So why don't you go and follow someone who's done what you want to do? Or he's doing what you want to do, or who actually inspires you and just clear out all the bullshit. And you're gonna be so much more in the right headspace if you do something like that.

• 1:09:35Steven Bartlett?

  Did you do that? Did you clear out?

• 1:09:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did it a lot of times. Got a lot of bad messages from doing it.

• 1:09:43Steven Bartlett?

  Really, you unfollowed Joe?

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, why did you unfollow me?

• 1:09:47Steven Bartlett?

  Did you explain it to him?

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, just tell him how it is. Just say, look, man, I don't want to watch you shit anymore.

• 1:09:55Steven Bartlett?

  So romantic relationships then, how has that been? Cause it must be pretty tricky with the level of obsession that you have to maintain a healthy, happy, romantic relationship.

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  Non-existent. Didn't entertain it for so many years. Tried it once. Maybe like when I was 25, 26 and just didn't work.

• 1:10:17Steven Bartlett?

  Why didn't it work?

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  I was obsessed with work and I was also like, I didn't know who I was and what I wanted to be. And it was before that era, before that time of mine where I changed. So it's just, I didn't like who I was. And obviously that doesn't work when you're in a relationship. You gotta, you gotta love yourself first, right?

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  And then after that, I just kind of just said, no, I'm not doing it. And didn't up until recently, really didn't entertain it at all for so many years.

• 1:10:48Steven Bartlett?

  You got a girlfriend?

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  How about now? Not really, kind of.

• 1:10:52Steven Bartlett?

  Would she answer this question the same way? She's got a boyfriend.

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  She's got a boyfriend. Nah.

• 1:11:00Steven Bartlett?

  Are you a little bit, um, are you, you're an avoidant, aren't you? Do you know the, the attachment styles? Have you heard about the attachment styles?

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  No, what's that?

• 1:11:06Steven Bartlett?

  Three attachment styles. You've got the secures. They're the ones that just have a perfect relationships.

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11:10Steven Bartlett?

  You know, they're like, no problems. They're like, you know, and then you've got the anxious ones who clingy, like needy, like they need like.

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  Need attention.

• 1:11:17Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. And then you've got the avoidant who kind of run.

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11:21Steven Bartlett?

  You strike me as an avoidant.

• 1:11:22Speaker 01

  Hmm. I don't know what I am. I don't, I, I really don't know. I'm definitely not an attachment one, no. Um, and I just always thought it would be a pressure on myself to then, and I didn't want to let someone else down because of what I was doing with work. And I don't want to have to explain to someone like, this is my business, this is my life. I'm doing this all the time when they want to see you and they want to, you want your attention and stuff. But now like hiring Spenny and having more time and actually coming, moving out here, I've got time now. Like my day is done way before what it was at home. I would work from, or I'd train and then I would work from, I'd be in the office at half five in the morning. I'd leave at seven P M.

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  And I'd go to bed. So there was no time, but now I can wake up early, get all the stuff done with the guys at home. Work with the guys over here, building out represent in L A. And then I can be done by like two, three P M. A lot of days. So I have then time to like, I guess, date girls and things like that.

• 1:12:23Steven Bartlett?

  And how's that going?

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  Hate it.

• 1:12:26Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  No, I'm not hate it, I guess.

• 1:12:28Steven Bartlett?

  No, you do hate it because I was.

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  I have this fucking feeling where I'm not fulfilling what I should be doing. And I'm kind of giving myself a disservice if I'm out doing something else. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs and people who run businesses get that. Where like if you're not fully into the business, like with every minute of your time, you feel like you're not doing the right thing. And I'm, I'm starting to try and get out.

• 1:12:54Steven Bartlett?

  Like a guilt.

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  Yes, very guilty. Yeah. And that actually caused me a little bit of what we think is anxiety. I don't know if it is anxiety, but it would be, yeah. Yeah, I would wake up the next day and be like, fuck, I've like spent four hours with this person that I'm not interested in seeing. That's what I've wasted four hours where I could have been working, could have been building the brand, could have been doing other things.

• 1:13:16Steven Bartlett?

  Sounds like a lot. When I say a lot, I mean like a lot, a weight to carry.

• 1:13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:21Steven Bartlett?

  Like to not be able to go on a date with someone for four hours without waking up the next day, feeling anxious about how you spent your time. It feels like your passions have become a bit of a prison.

• 1:13:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, self inflicted prison. But I love it and, and it's a privilege to have it. But I'm, I'm starting learning. Like I said, I'm kind of got a girlfriend right now. Um.

• 1:13:42Steven Bartlett?

  Kind of got a girlfriend. You're in so much trouble. You have no idea.

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  Ah, it's fine.

• 1:13:49Steven Bartlett?

  She's like, oh, George is on a podcast. I'll have listened to this. She's gonna click it. We'll, we'll do a chapter on YouTube, which is called George's Girlfriend. We'll put it in the trailer. You're gonna be.

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  Nah, it's absolutely fine.

• 1:14:02Steven Bartlett?

  Valentine's Day yesterday and you're throwing under the bus.

• 1:14:06Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting. No, but it does. It sounds, it sounds like a little bit of a prison.

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:11Steven Bartlett?

  You know, um, not being able to take your foot off the pedal at all without feeling anxious. Are you happy?

• 1:14:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:20Steven Bartlett?

  And what does that mean?

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  That means I, I wake up, I'm fucking thankful for what I've got and what I've built and who I'm around. And like my brother and my family and like, I enjoy being able to just do what I wanna do. And that is the work, I guess, most of the time.

• 1:14:35Steven Bartlett?

  We, we know when people talk about work, life balance. What's your honest opinion of that?

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  Bullshit.

• 1:14:41Speaker 01

  If you actually wanna build something that's gonna stand the test of time and make you very successful and rich and happy and bring other people with you, it's gonna take everything. I fully believe that. I don't think you can half ass it. I don't think it can be a side project and I don't think it can be something that's just three hours a day. I think you've got to go fully into it to become like high level achiever. Like actually a winner.

• 1:15:08Steven Bartlett?

  What are you willing to sacrifice for that?

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  Everything, whatever it takes. Why not? I'm already into it now, so I've got to go full on. Kobe Bryant wasn't doing three throws at fucking 3am for no reason. You've got to be the best, you've got to do everything right.

• 1:15:24Steven Bartlett?

  I always talk about the cost that comes with that and the sacrifice. Are you willing to sacrifice you not having a family yourself?

• 1:15:31Speaker 01

  For the time being, yeah. Maybe later on in life when it becomes something that I can step aside from even more than, yeah.

• 1:15:40Steven Bartlett?

  You're going to want to step aside from it? Because you're getting anxiety doing four hour dates.

• 1:15:44Speaker 01

  I am, but I'm learning. I'm learning. I'm starting to do it. Like I said, yeah.

• 1:15:48Steven Bartlett?

  You've seen progress in that?

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  Definitely. Yeah, I think it's just about building that muscle of understanding you can do other things and realising it's not going to come crashing down if you take your foot off the brake for a second. But still knowing that you're giving it your all when you are in it.

• 1:16:05Steven Bartlett?

  Is there a point where? I always think about Burberry as an example. The Burberry story of how they kind of went out of fashion because they became too popular. What I'm trying to say is like Burberry was aspirational. So lots of people start wearing it. Some less aspirational people start wearing it. People start knocking it off and selling it for super cheap in markets. Then eventually it's no longer aspirational.

• 1:16:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:16:31Steven Bartlett?

  Because it got so popular that it becomes uncool. Do you worry about that as a risk factor for Represent?

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

  So that's like a life cycle, right? And that comes every couple of years or every seven years, whatever it may be in the industry. But there's always different markets to push and pull on. Also, like Represent is so small in terms of size compared to Burberry. At the moment, we have a very core customer base where we kind of can identify them and we know where they are and what they're doing. And until that goes mainstream, which I think usually happens probably at like 250, 300 million revenue.

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  It's not a worry as such at the moment. I used to worry about it a lot. But like when Spenny came in, who's handling a $500 million business, he's like, we're barely touching the sides. 20% of our revenue is in the US. That's only $20 million. They could sell $20 million out of LA and not see the product for the next six months. You wouldn't even see someone wearing it. So at this point, no, but it is something that we'll always think about and always you've always got to limit your distribution and make sure you're selling it in the right places. And look, we are still like a luxury brand with we're in the best stores in the world. Like, it's not like you can walk into a Paxton and pick us up. So it's it's still not a mainstream brand and it's expensive.

• 1:17:49Steven Bartlett?

  I was wondering if if that's less of a threat in on the 24 seven side of things where it's more about like utility and less about like fashion, because, you know, everyone wears Nike.

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:01Steven Bartlett?

  And no one's like, oh, my God, I'm not wearing Nike because they're wearing, you know.

• 1:18:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, biggest sports wear brand in the world. And how are they able to tier a Travis Scott or a Virgil Abloh Jordan one that's going for $5,000, but they're still selling tracksuits at $20? And you can still see everyone in Gold's Gym to everyone in fucking Equinox wearing it. So there's there's just tiers to everything, right? There's a trickle down system with everything.

• 1:18:26Steven Bartlett?

  I wonder if that's because is that because it's like more of a utility product than a fashion product?

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  I think so with Nike, yeah, definitely.

• 1:18:33Steven Bartlett?

  Because there's not really like a fashion brand that's able to sell like a $20 item and then like a.

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  Ralph Lauren.

• 1:18:39Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, really? Do they sell cheap and expensive stuff?

• 1:18:41Speaker 01

  Well, if you look at Ralph Lauren, most like it looks amazing from the outside and they have all these beautiful stores in like the best, the best spots in London and New York and LA and most of their revenue is done through Outlook at $20 polos or $15 polos. 60% of their sales is a polo top, which I'm not, I'm not exactly sure on, but that's what I hear. So there's ways you can, I guess, smoke and mirror it, disguise things and do other things. But for us, like, we're we're pretty solid on where we want to be in terms of the marketplace and the price points and we'll grow that way rather than having to tier things to an extent.

• 1:19:23Steven Bartlett?

  What are the most important? Because I think most people will be listening to this conversation in essence because they want to know how you've done what you've done. You know, they want to know like the transferable principles behind how it's possible to.

• 1:19:39Steven Bartlett?

  Scale a very successful business that also is unique because it's quite a cult business. You've got like an incredibly cultish brand, you know, you do like run clubs and almost a thousand people will show up on the street corner. Or you you drop something and you sell thousands in minutes.

• 1:19:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:55Steven Bartlett?

  What are those principles that you would maybe say to a eighteen year old George or to that kid in your DMs that's asking for the the principles? Principles that only you could have learned in hindsight.

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  I think it's about creating the DNA of what the brand is and sticking to that. Not veering off in different directions and changing everything up every so often based on trends. So I think it's about holding a DNA, whether that's through thick and thin. So whether it's not right for that time or it is right for that time, there'll always be life cycles in fashion and things will go out and in fashion. But if you can kind of cultivate the look that you want, that's that's first and foremost what it is. Like if you look at two four seven and represent two four seven looks like represent, but it's activewear. It's not like it's a whole different thing that looks like Lululemon, like it still looks like represent. So I think making sure the DNA in the brand is very like visible.

• 1:20:49Steven Bartlett?

  Where does the DNA come from?

• 1:20:51Speaker 01

  Just personal preference, what we like to wear, what I what I feel like I look good in, what Mike feels like he looks good in, what the team love. And just building that over time, step by step, just creating products that we feel like is either missing or we just want for ourselves to wear.

• 1:21:08Steven Bartlett?

  And what would you say about hard work as a principle?

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  I think it's everything. I really do think it's everything. I meet a lot of people, especially out here, that have their little hands in different businesses, lots of different pies, but don't work hard at any of them. And none of them really ever succeed, or they only own one percent when you find out they've sold the business.

• 1:21:29Speaker 01

  So I think it's all about just like going all in on something that you own.

• 1:21:36Speaker 01

  I think it's hard if you were just a small minority shareholder in something like that, then is not really your passion. It's someone else's or it's a big group of peoples.

• 1:21:45Steven Bartlett?

  But when people think about hard work, they, you know, and people advise someone and say, you have to work hard if you want to be successful. People say, oh, that's toxic.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, don't care.

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  What what's toxic? That word, that word is just makes no sense.

• 1:22:03Steven Bartlett?

  You're going to encourage people to be burnt out?

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you can come out the other side of burnt out like.

• 1:22:10Speaker 01

  You, the more you do right, the more you can do. So if you're working hard at something and you're starting to feel like it's getting a bit too much, the pressure's a bit too much. You carry on doing it, you're gonna come out of it. It's not like it, it's not like you're just gonna end. Nothing ends. You just figure out different ways to actually make it successful or you'll, something will work and you'll be like, oh, fuck. Then your energy goes back up and you start going down there and and it works. I don't think. I don't know. I think there's a lot of negativity around working hard and I don't like that.

• 1:22:41Steven Bartlett?

  There's, there's gonna be a kid listening right now that's like eighteen, sixteen. And they just can't find the motivation. Whatever that means. They can't find the motivation to get up and go to the gym. They've got some idea, but it's still on the sofa that they had it on. Like, what, what, what do you say to that young man or woman?

• 1:23:02Steven Bartlett?

  Is the first thing to get the, the wheels in motion?

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  Fuck motivation. I don't have motivation a lot of time. It's actually more about discipline. It's about just getting it done, get up and get it done. Like with anything with work, with working out, with creating a product, with building a brand, with. Relationships, whatever, it's discipline over motivation. Motivation's a small thing that can last two minutes or an hour. Motivation can come from listening to a, a song on your iPod.

• 1:23:33Speaker 01

  If you've got discipline, you're willing to do it every single day of your life. And knowing that it's gonna take so long to do it, you just get up and do it. You don't even think about motivation.

• 1:23:42Steven Bartlett?

  And, and what, and what is discipline then? Discipline is.

• 1:23:48Steven Bartlett?

  An instruction manual, like what is discipline to you?

• 1:23:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess it is an instruction manual. I guess it's a list of things that you must do for yourself to to become what you want to be. And it's, I guess it's the deciding factor on whether you're going to do something or not.

• 1:24:07Steven Bartlett?

  And it goes back to what you said about like, you drew a picture of yourself of what you wanted to look like, but you also wrote out like a set of principles or values that you wanted to embody.

• 1:24:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:15Steven Bartlett?

  And then you're living your life by that as opposed to how you feel every day.

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. When you put it that way, that's what it is.

• 1:24:25Steven Bartlett?

  And eventually.

• 1:24:27Speaker 01

  It becomes part of them. It becomes a muscle, right? And you grow that muscle and you constantly like breaking it down and regrowing it and then principles just become your life. You know, they say like habits, what is it? Thoughts become habits. And then habits become principles and that becomes you as a person.

• 1:24:49Steven Bartlett?

  A lot of people just don't think they're moldable. That goes back to what we were saying earlier about like, we just don't think that we can change ourselves.

• 1:24:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:54Steven Bartlett?

  But you, your evidence of that, really remarkable evidence of that.

• 1:24:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. And there's a lot of people that are, there's so many inspiring stories out there on social media and in books and podcasts and stuff that all these people that have completely changed their lives. It just takes a lot of time and a lot of effort.

• 1:25:12Steven Bartlett?

  Are you confident?

• 1:25:13Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm not going to lie. I still have like doubts about things a lot of the time, especially in business. But with myself, yeah, I'm, I'm confident.

• 1:25:21Steven Bartlett?

  What do you have doubts about in business?

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  Just like you said before, maybe one day the, the revenue stops. Maybe one day it gets too popular. Maybe one day something doesn't work out. Maybe one day a competitor comes up at the side of you and starts taking everything from you.

• 1:25:37Steven Bartlett?

  What if Michael turned around and said, do you know what? I'm done. He just said, I just can't do this anymore. I'm going to just, you know, I'm done.

• 1:25:44Speaker 01

  Um, I'd probably cry.

• 1:25:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. Um, and I'd just try and figure out why, what it is, and then try and get him back in.

• 1:25:55Steven Bartlett?

  He said, no, I'm done.

• 1:25:56Speaker 01

  So and just that was it forever. It'd suck. It'd suck a lot.

• 1:26:03Speaker 01

  Cause I've been, since school, we've been together doing this forever. So for him then not to be there. It'd be.

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  He'd be pretty shitty because like, who are you doing it for then? Like I'd fucking die for Mike.

• 1:26:20Speaker 01

  Do you know what I mean? Like if someone had, if someone said, I'm gonna, I've got to kick you out of the business. But Mike stays, I'd go. Like this, this isn't really for me. I guess it's for him.

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  And it's like, it's kind of at that point where that can't happen.

• 1:26:39Speaker 01

  He enjoys it too much. We love doing this, so.

• 1:26:42Steven Bartlett?

  It's interesting, that thought experiment though, kind of illuminates much of the reason why you're doing it in the first place, because the first thing you said was who you were doing it for then.

• 1:26:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:52Steven Bartlett?

  But if I'd asked you earlier, who are you doing this for? You would, I don't know if you would have said, I'm doing it for Mike.

• 1:26:57Speaker 01

  No, I am doing it for Mike. I'm doing it for the team. I'm doing it for my family. Definitely.

• 1:27:01Steven Bartlett?

  But if the team leaves, if the team leaves, you're still gonna crack on.

• 1:27:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just a new team.

• 1:27:06Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, but if Mike leaves.

• 1:27:08Speaker 01

  If Mike, if Mike leaves, I don't know if I carry on. That's so difficult to answer.

• 1:27:15Steven Bartlett?

  I had a business partner and the reason I asked that question is I thought the same. I thought one day I played out my scenario that they quit and I remember thinking to myself the exact same thing. Who am I doing this for then? Like we started this together, so the mission is actually me and you getting to the finish line.

• 1:27:29Speaker 01

  And you get excited when they get excited. Or like if, if Mike sends me a design that he's in love with and I'm like, fucking hell, yeah, this is insane. And you just have that energy between you. If that wasn't there anymore. Yeah, it would suck.

• 1:27:44Steven Bartlett?

  How important do you think having a co-founder is?

• 1:27:47Speaker 01

  I think massively. I know earlier when you said you get lonely, like I think that is a major block in loneliness. Cause he is always there. Um, and I have

• 1:27:58Speaker 01

  like I, I always have him to lean into and then I would never put pressure and stress on him in a personal way, but I know he's there if that happened.

• 1:28:10Speaker 01

  So I think it's it's a massive thing, but who you go into business with is another massive thing. And like, you've got to be completely different to each other. And even though we look the same and we seem the same, like we are very different people.

• 1:28:23Steven Bartlett?

  What have you learnt from the bad people that you've hired, the ones that didn't work? In terms of when I say that, I mean,

• 1:28:32Steven Bartlett?

  what have you learned is a bad quality in someone to work with, to build a business with, to employ?

• 1:28:39Speaker 01

  Um, stuck in old ways and not being open minded to change. I think a lot of people are very restrictive when, especially if you're bringing someone higher up from them, then some people will always like backfire against that. And that's a bad quality. And again, it's a human nature and I understand it. And you can always try and like, change the way they think about things, but if they're not willing to accept that change, especially when you're in a growing company, like there's some people and Svenny always tells me this, there's some people that'll take you to fifty mil. And there's some people that'll take you to two fifty mil and there's some people take you to a billion and it won't be the same people. And you've just got to accept that and you've got to do everything you can for them people at that time, however, however far they go with the brand.

• 1:29:23Steven Bartlett?

  I I actually had a conversation with a founder the other day, whose business I've just invested in. And it's the exact same conversation that nobody seems to talk about because in both your case and mine, we both did the same thing. We hired a bunch of young people.

• 1:29:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:36Steven Bartlett?

  That that were probably the ones that were willing to come and work for us, that were also um, the ones we could maybe manage.

• 1:29:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:44Steven Bartlett?

  And then the business grows. And the problem you have is the next set of talent you need um, to get you up to the next rung in this, in on the ladder. They need to come in above the people that were there from the beginning.

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:00Steven Bartlett?

  And the originals don't love that.

• 1:30:03Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:30:04Steven Bartlett?

  Because that that kind of blocks their progression.

• 1:30:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:06Steven Bartlett?

  Just that's what they think.

• 1:30:07Speaker 01

  That's what they think, but no, it's not true, is it? Because they can learn from them things and then they can step up. It just takes more time or they they'll get more knowledge out of it if that person does come in.

• 1:30:18Steven Bartlett?

  But egos get in the way.

• 1:30:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, egos get in the way. And like I said, some people are not open minded to that. And they're also very, people get comfortable. They get comfortable in that position that they're in and they don't want anyone to report into and they don't want to do this and do that. But that's that's life, right?

• 1:30:35Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 1:30:37Steven Bartlett?

  What is, um, what's next for you?

• 1:30:40Speaker 01

  This year?

• 1:30:41Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:41Speaker 01

  Start of the year, isn't it? I guess we're building out women's wear in the brand. We are opening three stores this year, which will be our first stores. We've not done a store yet. Um, and it's something that we've wanted to do for so many years, but just finding the right places and being in the right space for it.

• 1:30:57Steven Bartlett?

  Why, why stores?

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  Because.

• 1:30:59Steven Bartlett?

  People are thinking that's going against the way that the world's going. Everything's getting more digital.

• 1:31:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's what, that's, I think that's a major advantage. Like same thing happened in COVID. Everyone pulled away from their productions and stopped selling garments for a while. Whereas we were like, okay, we will take everyone's production space and we'll start selling online. And then we made huge relationships with factories that we usually couldn't get in. And now we're like the best in them factories and doing everything the right way with them because we supported them during them times. But for the, for the store aspect, it's like, we have these communities all over the globe where people want to be a part of the brand and they're showing up to run clubs and we'll go and do one in Dubai or we'll do one in LA. Like I want somewhere for them guys to be able to come into the brand and guys and girls to come into the brand and be able to smell it and feel it and touch it and have it way more professional than them

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  just walking into a store and seeing it on a rail or see it on a shoe set shelf. So it's about creating an area where the community can come in and feel more of the brand and who we are and what we do. And then hopefully roll that out globally. And then 247 has a lot of focus this year. Usually it's just like a couple of people in the building that are doing it. And now we've got a full team working on that. We're trying to expand that. Hopefully I'd like to open some gyms with it. Um, the concept for that is maybe next year, but not this year. And then I'm building another brand called Cadence, um, which is an electrolyte drink, high sodium, first ready to drink sodium in a can, um, in the market.

• 1:32:33Speaker 01

  And that's something that I've been working on for the past year and a half with a guy called Ross out here. And that that's because going back to two thousand and nineteen twenty, when I started getting into fitness and lifestyle and health, like electrolytes just became something that I was consistently taking and I've not been sick one day since then. And I've never had my energy levels drop and I've never had bad sleep and not I don't get headaches anymore and it just seems like this the salt that's in there is what is causing like this constant stream of energy and it's supporting my workouts and I love flavored drinks. So I thought, why can't I make my own version of that?

• 1:33:16Speaker 01

  And I tested it out with a collaboration we did earlier last year. Um, and it seemed our customer really wanted it. So I was like, we'll bu- build another brand and put it under that umbrella and see how it goes.

• 1:33:27Steven Bartlett?

  What is the goal here?

• 1:33:29Speaker 01

  I think the goal is.

• 1:33:30Steven Bartlett?

  Like, I mean, just generally, like with all of this stuff, like, what's the goal?

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  I I want rep- I want represent to be a lifestyle and not a brand. I want it to be unconventional. I want it to be more than just clothes. And I say that a lot recently, but I just want it to not just be about the clothes. I want the clothes to be a byproduct.

• 1:33:49Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 1:33:50Speaker 01

  Why not? No one's really done that yet. Everyone talks about brand.

• 1:33:54Steven Bartlett?

  But I mean, what's the point? Like, you know, you've got you've got the drinks, you've got the the two four seven range, you've got the the sort of original um represent range. What is the finish line here?

• 1:34:06Speaker 01

  That's the good thing. I don't think there is one. I don't think there is a I don't think there's a limit to what it can be. And what this thing that started off as twenty five screen printed T shirts can become over the next hundred years or so.

• 1:34:19Steven Bartlett?

  But do you not sit around with Michael and go, listen, we'll we'll get to two billion, we'll sell it there and we'll just get a couple of yachts?

• 1:34:26Speaker 01

  No, like, look at Ben Francis, they got valued at a billion, he's still in the business. It's not a big, doesn't become about the money, right? It's not about the money, it's about what you're actually able to do and do some things different and like, not be conventional and try and just, I, I just wanna do something that's, that no one's done. You know, why not?

• 1:34:47Steven Bartlett?

  And I ask these questions, you know, I'm playing devil's advocate here because I think some people think that this is all kind of like a means to an end with entrepreneurship generally is like a means to an end.

• 1:34:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:57Steven Bartlett?

  But when I speak to entrepreneurs like you, it's so clear that it's much more about the journey and the journey, you're like, it just seems like you probably wanna die on the journey at some point.

• 1:35:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you're speaking to like, a lot of successful people and people that have been in it for a long time, right? You're not speaking to those guys that are walking around on the street saying, I'm gonna build this and I'm gonna sell it in three years for six billion or yeah, yeah, yeah, this isn't, this my exit strategy and they've just started, they never work. No one ever, that never works for anybody. Like, that's a bullshit way of thinking. You're talking to the people that are really bought into their own fucking brand and they're living it and they're loving it and it's forever, I guess.

• 1:35:37Steven Bartlett?

  And it's a mission, isn't it there?

• 1:35:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's their mission.

• 1:35:40Steven Bartlett?

  You're on, that's kind of the tagline that I associate to you because you, you post that a lot.

• 1:35:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:44Steven Bartlett?

  Is it's, it's a mission and there's something difference between a business and a mission. That's clearly what you've encapsulated. What, what are you, what are you good at? Are you good at business?

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  I'm good at understanding business.

• 1:35:58Speaker 01

  But when you say good at business, what do you mean?

• 1:36:02Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, you can define it yourself, but I guess what people typically think of as business is like operations, finance, processes.

• 1:36:10Speaker 01

  No, I'm not, I'm not. Not at all.

• 1:36:13Steven Bartlett?

  I think that's actually will be really wonderful news to a lot of people because there's a lot of people out there that think you have to be.

• 1:36:19Speaker 01

  Good at business, to own a business.

• 1:36:20Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:21Speaker 01

  No, I think it's about starting off and just figuring things out along the way and putting people in place of them things that you're not good at, that are way better than you would it. As soon as we started doing that, that's when the business took off.

• 1:36:35Steven Bartlett?

  George, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're gonna be leaving it for. The question that's been left for you is

• 1:36:44Steven Bartlett?

  what is something in your life that you assume to be true? But you haven't yet deeply questioned?

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  This is quite funny because it's something that I'm really interested in, but like, don't, don't talk about a lot. Um, I guess whether like the aliens are amongst us.

• 1:37:07Steven Bartlett?

  Not what I was expecting you to say.

• 1:37:08Speaker 01

  No, not at all. And it's completely different to what we've just talked about for the past however long, but that really like interests me. Um, the fact that like, there's all these different stories and conspiracies and things that are going on constantly, especially now more than ever.

• 1:37:23Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 1:37:23Speaker 01

  Um, and I wonder if it would change the world if one of the governing bodies or whoever it was actually came out and said, yes, this is the, this is this. And these are with us. I think it's just amazing.

• 1:37:35Steven Bartlett?

  We're going into like the world of like simulations and AI and all that stuff now. So I saw that thing come out with chat G P T the other day, Sora. Where they can create, they can do text to video.

• 1:37:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:44Steven Bartlett?

  And that's what I, I saw the first reply to Sam Altman's tweet said, this is the technology that was used to create us. And, and it just wobbled my brain a little bit because I thought now we're getting to a point where we've got these Apple Vision Pro headsets. And we're able to make video with text. And I'm looking at this woman in H D that's like eighty five years old that was made by typing a couple of words and you just assume any rate of improvement. And eventually you get to something that is indistinguishable from.

• 1:38:15Speaker 01

  The world.

• 1:38:16Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, reality.

• 1:38:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it might even be a video game.

• 1:38:19Steven Bartlett?

  I think there's, I've heard Elon talk about this and he's like, he talks about it. He said so much that he's had to ban the conversation.

• 1:38:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:38:26Steven Bartlett?

  Because you fall into a little bit of a hole.

• 1:38:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, you, you literally have no idea who we are, what we're doing, why we're, why we're here.

• 1:38:33Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 1:38:34Speaker 01

  And yeah, is there an alternate universe or are we just living in someone else's head? I don't know. So interesting.

• 1:38:40Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you, George. Thank you for a number of reasons. Thank you for addressing me for the last three years because. I think your clothes are the best. No, thank you. And it's a very subjective thing, but but in terms of quality and consideration, sometimes you can tell when someone has gone the extra mile in a piece of work. Right. Pretty much always when they've thought about things from first principles. They've really thought about all the decisions and that's what Represent has always been to me. A brand that always thinks about the decisions and it's different in every way. As I said, from an end to end experience, it's different. And you can tell that the brand comes from somebody, somewhere's heart. Right. And you can you can tell the difference again with brands where, you know, someone didn't really care about the process and they are maybe copying something else.

• 1:39:23Steven Bartlett?

  And then there's this other brand called Represent where it's clearly coming from someone, somewhere's heart and their own unique vision. That's why I've always loved the brand. And that's why I think you've been able to cultivate this cult. Because there's something in humans where they can tell the real from the not so real. Yeah. They can just feel it, we can feel it. And that's what Represent has always been. And that's why I'm always been so fascinated by you and your brother. And a huge supporter of both of you. And on like a human level, you're just both just fucking great guys. I appreciate it. And I say that behind your back all the time. I go, that guy's a great guy. He's just like a really nice, humble human being. And on paper, you know, people might look and go, he has a lot of reasons not to be. Yeah. This guy looks like fucking something that was literally drawn on a piece of paper by an alien.

• 1:40:06Steven Bartlett?

  But but he's got this incredible business, but he's a really good human being and so is Michael. So thank you for the inspiration. Keep doing what you're doing because the mission that you're on is inspiring many other people to start missions of their own. Yeah. I think that's something that the world needs a lot more of, so. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. Loved it.