Girls Know Nothing - S1 Ep14: Dom Smales, founding father of influencers, former founder & CEO of gleam future & building Zoella!

Episode Date: November 3, 2022

Welcome back to Girls Know Nothing! 🧡  GKN is a female focused podcast hosted by  Girls Know Nothing's fourteenth guest is the Founder of Gleam Futures, Dom Smales! Gleam Futures is one of the worlds first talent management agencies, which helped build the careers of household names such as Zoella.   After experiencing a health scare, Dom decided he wanted to do something new. After spending many years in digital advertising, advising brands on marketing strategies, he noticed a gap in the market for 'bloggers' and 'content creators' to be part of that strategy.  And that is how the influencer was born! New episodes of Girls Know Nothing 🧡 will be released every Thursday, and will also be available on Spotify, Apple podcasts and wherever you get your podcast fixes!  GKN Social Channels:  Https://linktr.ee/girlsknownothing  Instagram: @girlsknownothingpod  TikTok: @girlsknownothing

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Just text water to 64,000. That's water to 64,000 for your two free gifts with purchase. W-A-T-E-R to 64,000. By texting 64,000, you agree to receive recurring automated marketing messages from Pocket Hose. Message and data rates may apply. No purchase required. Terms apply. Available at pockethose.com slash terms. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates,

so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get-K-A-T-Z 13. Just go to Indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z 13 right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Welcome back to another episode of Girls Know Nothing. Today, I have another man on the podcast. This is Dom. If you didn't recognize him,

he was the founder of the first, was it the first influencer agency in the world? Well, it was the first and biggest, I guess, certainly in UK and Europe, digital first talent management company. Yeah, that's much better word, digital first talent management company. Yeah, that's much better worded than I could put it. So Gleam Features, as it's now known. Futures.

Futures, which now manages the likes of like Mrs. Hinch. But it did manage when you were CEO Zoe Zugg, who was Zoella. So I'm kind of like really interested to have this conversation with you just based on, obviously we were saying off camera about how I feel like women kind of dominate the influencer industry and how a lot of school children nowadays want to become influencers when they leave school.

So just to kind of get your perspective now that you've, you know, kind of been in it from the beginning and then left and what you get up to now. So I did openly admit that I liked stalking you on LinkedIn earlier. Excellent. Excellent content on there. Yeah, to be fair, like I always like stalking people on LinkedIn, but it's very annoying because it tells them so I can't do it as often as I like. But you did start at university doing a performing arts degree?

I did, yeah. I did drama at A-level and then I went on and did it at university as well. Well, actually, it wasn't a university, it was a college. I wasn't smart enough to get into university, unfortunately. So I did get accepted at Nen College, as it was at the time in Northampton. And I did drama, media and popular culture. So what kind of spurred those choices on? I think because, and I always, I never really knew what I wanted to do.

But I did know that I wanted to elongate the fun that I was having in the education system. And I wanted to go to college. I wanted to have all the experiences that you get at leaving home for the first time living on your own in a different city all of that kind of stuff so I picked the course that looked like the most fun to be fair if I'm honest it wasn't really an academic or vocational decision was it was it fun it was so much fun I had the most fun over those three years yeah it was then college was one of those places that was, it wasn't, it was full of people that had slightly fucked up their A-levels and like we really, but really wanted to try hard

and carry on trying to educate and, you know, to have the college experience. So it meant for, I'm a, you know, a group of really good friends and we had amazing experiences. To be fair,

I always find the people that did fuck up their A-levels, that I fucked up my first year, don't, it doesn't really matter at the end of the day, like as long as you have some sort of direction or you kind of have the work ethic behind you to kind of go for it. Yeah, totally. I want to know what would be your like, if you were an actor now, dream role? Yeah. Oh God, that's a really good question. I've never been asked that. I had never thought about it because my acting ambition got stunted very quickly as soon as I'd left college. I did, for like about six months,

I thought, I'm going to give this a bash. I'm going to try and be an actor. And then I got cast in a movie about a detect, a bent copper, basically, a corrupt policeman. And I was the corrupt policeman. And it was like budget of pretty much zero. And it was grueling. I'm now like one of my best mates

is the guy that directed it. And we laugh about it still today. It's still not finished, by the way. But it kind of put paid to my acting ambitions. And during that time, I got into wanting to earn some money and I got interested in media and moved on fairly quickly. So I've never thought about my dream role.

Let's say, let's be cheesy about this, James Bond. I was going to say, when you were talking about being a bent copper, I literally thought Line of Duty in my head. Yeah. It's like H in Line of Duty. We found him sat on the sofa. Yeah, maybe i would love that yeah but um so yeah when we were talking when you were talking about how like you wanted to earn

some money and tried to move into a professional career i did say on your linkedin project manager but you obviously explained to me that it's not project management that you ended up going into yeah it was more of a fancy way to describe coming up with more interesting and creative ways to sell media on media platforms, basically. And this is in the days, remember, just as mobile phones were being invented and the internet was coming up the back straight. So there were interesting times. But I got addicted to that side of the media media entertainment industry in terms of the commercial part of media. So newspapers, radio stations, TV stations, networks. And of course, that gave rise to when the internet popped off and then social media. And that kind of gave me my grounding in

media to be able to recognize the value being created on social media platforms. So I guess that must have been like a really interesting time to kind of be around like advertising and media space. I see when you're saying that mobile phones and the internet was kind of starting to come in. Did you find it really hard to like adapt to all the new things that were coming in at such a fast pace? Honest answer, no, uh i was lucky enough to to be doing this job and kind of like trying

new things at a time when the pace was actually a bit slower so the internet was just beginning to be a proper platform for talent and brands it wasn't't anything when I started out. Same with mobile, it wasn't a platform really. And we take for granted now in 2022, 2023, like it's the be all and end all in terms of reaching engaged audiences and the future and growth and all of those kinds of things. But it really wasn't then. So I was lucky enough to have the space to kind of like get to know it try new things without too much kind of a competition and be scrutiny which gave rise to quite a lot of experimentation and it was it was a yeah it was a good time to be working in media for sure certainly digital media because if you say to a brand like if a good time to be working in media for sure. Certainly digital media. Yeah, because if you say to a brand,

like if a brand said to you now they weren't online, you'd think like, how do you do anything? Because you can't be a functioning or successful brand if you don't have some sort of online space or platform. Yeah. And I guess that's kind of like comes on to you finding Gleam Digital. So I have listened to other episodes of your, other podcast episodes you've done in the past

about how you founded Gleam. So how did that kind of come about? Like, where did you see there was a gap in the market for digital content creators? Yeah, I was working in a production company at the time and we had a department that managed talent and there were presenters on tv and radio mainly mainly in sports and I didn't get close to managing the talent I was running the production company at the time but we had a couple of agents

that did and actually what I mean it was it was a great business and i was happy there but i had a i had a big health episode i told this story a few times to stop me i'm repeating myself but i i got hydrocephalus which is water on the brain uh at the time when it when it struck i thought it's brain tumor and my days are numbered kind of thing uh So it was a real life-affirming moment, like one of those kind of epiphany moments where you think, wow, this is life or death. I've got to consider who I am, where I am, my family, like everything, basically.

And I went and I got rushed in for emergency brain surgery and all kinds of stuff. But when I popped out of the other side, I had a drive, I guess, to want to be in charge of my own destiny all of a sudden. And that's what stimulated the founding of Gleam Digital as it was at the time. I came out of the production company having seen social media begin to take root amongst a generation. So all the young guys in the office at the production company were obsessed with Facebook that was growing at the time.

YouTube had been around for a couple of years under its Google ownership, so that was beginning to take root. And I was fascinated by people that were building audiences on those platforms. Specifically, I don't know why, and this is kind of like why the medium was so successful. I was really interested in makeup artists doing makeup tutorials on YouTube and garnering enormous engagement and audiences at the time. When I say enormous, nothing compared to, you know, the millions, hundreds of millions that you can find on social media these days, it didn't have

that scale. But these guys were doing, you know, 20, 30,000 subscribers, and driving hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube, and more importantly, driving hundreds of comments underneath each video, asking for different looks, different takes on what they'd done, et cetera, et cetera. And as a media professional, my business was about driving entertainment and engagement

and then selling the commercial aspects of that. It fascinated me. This is a totally untapped stream of engagement. And that's what I got into. And that's when I left the production company, I founded a business that advised brands mainly on how to connect with audiences, communities online

and made up of these people that were creating content online. And I just wanted to do that on my own, kind of like sat in a coffee shop, like I had control of my diary. I could see my kids and wife whenever I wanted. In fact, I just, I walked out the front door and went down to the local coffee shop.

It was like a vision of, you know, post-pandemic life in a way. I wouldn't go back there now. It gave me that freedom and it gave me that mental freedom as well to start thinking about what could be in terms of media and engagement and entertainment. And what these guys were doing on YouTube

and Facebook and Twitter, Instagram didn't exist, it's worth saying, was like seismic shifts in the way that people engaged with information and entertainment. And that's what I wanted to be a part of. So after advising brands for a bit, meeting the community. So one of my first clients was Chanel, very luckily. And who doesn't want to get involved with Chanel when you phone them up and say,

hey, do you want to come to an event, like a Chanel event? I wish I got that phone call. involved with Chanel when you phone them up and say, do you want to come to an event? Then like a Chanel event or do you want some... Wish I got that phone call. Yeah. Here's some amazing, you know, beauty products or perfume or whatever. And do you want to come to a Chanel preview? Like the community, the beauty and fashion online community were keen to get involved. And I got to know them at that stage. I got to know those makeup artists and, you know, those fashion bloggers and people like that that were making waves from my perspective on social media and we became mates you know and at that point maybe six months into this consultancy I switched my attention into representing the talent that I

was finding on social media and nobody else was calling them talent. They were bloggers and they were an exponent for PR companies to get some free mentions for their products on Twitter and YouTube, it was really at the time. And because I had my media background, I understood the value of the clicks and the views and the impressions that these guys were creating and the engagement there.

And I tried to build value for those creators in their inventory, which was clicks and impressions and views. And then started doing deals on behalf of the creators rather than the brands, trying to get some free exposure, etc. I started trying to do deals on behalf of the creator, protecting their rights, protecting their value, making sure that they were recognized for the uniqueness of what they were doing. And that gave rise to the management company, Gleam Futures. Changed the name because everybody's digital this, that, and the other.

And also I thought digital was kind of pigeon-holey. These days, if you have a digital, what is not digital about what anybody does these days so changed it to gleam futures and uh off we went managing talent where no one else is managing talent how did you kind of like find your talent so obviously nowadays if you go onto instagram you can find lots of content creators and kind of do outreach and pictures then obviously if you were meeting people more face to face and i think in one somewhere i'd heard that when you founded zoella it was more organic than just seeing them online is that correct uh well zoe was um zoe was a

friend of a friend kind of thing and she was in the community she was making uh she was making real progress in the community engaging audiences of young people with her girl next fiancé of Jim Chapman, and Jim Chapman was the brother of Sam and Nick Chapman, Pixie Woo, who were the first talent that I signed, the makeup artists I was mentioning. And we kind of met because we were in the same circles. And it just made sense for, I could see what was happening with Zoe's channel.

And it just made sense to start protecting her rights, thinking about a career strategy for her, making sure that everybody was in the right place to positively affect their careers and their value, more importantly. And it kind of grew from there. So Zoya was a creator in her own right when we met. And it was really fortuitous that we met at the time

when her channel was beginning to blow up, just like everybody else's was on the roster. And we were able to start to put some guardrails around her value and her IP and all of those kind of things and grow the career that is still flourishing today. It's weird because when people think influence, they never think about like kind of those things you were talking about. But is there, was there ever a point where somebody said to you that your vision for what Gleam Futures would be would fail?

Yeah, in the first like four or five years, absolutely. I mean, they didn't explicitly say, Tom, you're going to fail. But when I was asked at, you know, middle class suburban dinner parties, etc. What is it you do? Oh, I manage YouTubers. There were sniggers at best, you know.

This is in a world that has legacy media completely on lock and people generally in my peer groups middle class Britain were accountants, lawyers, surveyors etc it was a really weird thing to start to focus on and they thought that i was basically taking my time up not doing grown-up things you know but that's kind of always been my what has excited me inspired me is not doing grown-up things basically making a business out of it

um so i had to there were there were there were always moments that that all my conversations were with naysayers. So don't get it, don't get it. But luckily, and this is key, I think, for everybody forging careers in leading-edge sectors and media and platforms and all that kind of stuff, is that it was the audience that spoke about the success. It was the audience that made the decision about it was the audience that made the the decision about who was successful and who wasn't and then that had to be matched by the dedication of the creator that work ethic all of those things uh that that spurred the careers the amazing careers that that

generation of creator have had and especially glean Futures creators of that generation as well like incredible but it's down to those two things and I like the fact that it's that creator and the audience that make the success rather than any outside factors that was the unique thing about the platforms. Is there anything that you would like knowing what you know now and like looking back on your time managing talent is there anything you wish you would have done differently? Oh, no, I don't think there is, to tell you the truth. There were huge learnings along the way because we invariably, our talent, were doing the big things first.

So publishing, licensing, all the big, big multi-platform brand deals, all the big big multi-platform brand deals all the big watershed moments were with gleam futures talent founding brands themselves all of the things you see now in the creator economy gleam futures pretty much did first we never did any boxing but but the other kind of stuff and it was um, occasionally, you know, it came unstuck. You know, we hadn't thought deeply enough about what, you know, one particular press outlet might think and what about this.

It's a really deeply complex space managing talent. You have to think about so many outcomes. But we worked, we always worked through it, got the best resources that we possibly could in place and uh you know worked as hard as we possibly could for a more positive outcome and came through those things having learned so much and i hope that the talent that went through those moments with us would say the same thing they're all still kind of like you know successful and active in the industry what was like what was, what would you say was like the biggest challenge in actually getting it started and, and kind of like growing it to as big as it is now?

So I think the most important thing and the most challenging thing about growing a business these days is getting the right team on board. People, especially in our sectors, make a business. Gleam would not have been the business that it was without the incredible people that worked at Gleam. They were the making of the business. But the people that worked at Gleam and then the talent on the roster. But people are obviously human beings

and every single person that worked for Gleam had their own needs, agenda, things that incentivized them, things that excited them or didn't excite them. And one of the hardest things about growing a business and being a manager and a leader is tapping into all of those people's kind of like, you know, motivations and getting them aligned with the business and servicing, you know, the employees as well as the business is a really fine art, I think. But getting the right team, getting a good team is really important and hard. Thinking back to like talent management, I've had Hannah Holland, who is my manager, But getting the right team, getting a good team is really important and hard. Thinking back to like talent management, I've had Hannah Holland, who is my manager, sit in that chair as well. And you are friends with her, so you do know her.

And she says that one of the biggest challenges of being a talent manager is feeling the pressure of having a person's everything rely on you. So like, you know, their personal life, their professional career, and like, you know, their income. Did you ever feel worried that you were like, you're basically responsible for someone's entire life? Every minute of every day. Yeah, totally. God, it was one of the hardest things about the job was that responsibility. And I think one of the things that Gleam managed to carve out differently, and I know that Hannah is doing an excellent job at the same sort of culture at HLD, is this is about a long-term end game strategy for an individual, for a person in their career, not the next brand deal paycheck or the next newspaper article or magazine feature. It's about someone's security, financial security,

and their kid's financial security, et cetera. And that was my motivation all the way through from the very start of Gleam. We can build careers for these people. I'm sure of it. I was so sure of it. And then everybody that came through as a manager at gleam and even in all of the teams that came off of that you know uh that management practice that we had you know podcast there's podcast department now at gleam but uh you know apps publishing brand deals deals, all the things that come around the digital creator.

It was all geared to furthering the creator's career and ultimately success and security. So as well, obviously Gleam was one of the first in this industry and when people started to catch on about how successful it was going to potentially become, thinking about competitors who had already operated in a similar market were you ever worried that they could upscale faster and quicker than you can get talent quicker than you totally yeah yeah all the time every day as well like if i'm like when i got to the when i got to the end of the Gleam journey and I exited,

I was absolutely exhausted, like exhausted, mainly for the reasons that you've asked the two last questions for. Responsibility for people and then competition kind of like becoming incredibly intense because the place we were operating in in the 2017 2018 2019 media and entertainment environment was the most competitive environment on the face of the planet when it came to the media and entertainment um every every business in that sector wanted a part of what was now termed as influencer marketing. They wanted a part of that because the dollars were so big and their coverage and excitement around it from both brands and platforms was so enormous that everybody was having a crack at it. I mean, we'll talk about it probably a bit later about the fact that everybody has a crack at it talent-wise as well now. And I constantly thought about the marauding hordes of competition coming over the headland.

We were lucky in that when I started Gleam in 2010, I had a good four years of zero competition, getting everything in place, building a reputation, doing a good job for talent in a place that wasn't under intense scrutiny of every minute of every day. We were quietly having it away whilst the rest of the world concentrated on other platforms and other areas of the entertainment business.

And that really helped. But by the time you get to 2018, 2019, then the competition is incredibly intense. And that's part of the reason that I did a deal with a big global media conglomerate in order to muscle up and become global faster, bigger, faster, command the type of attention and have access to the type

of budgets that nobody else could have access to for our talent, because they are the people that we need to keep delivering for. Um, the other areas of the business were exponents of that. Um, so yeah, I felt, you know, the competition intensely all the time. So obviously, you know, you said that by the time you'd finished, or by the time you'd left Gleam, you were exhausted. Is that like, was that the main motivation as to the reason why you stepped down as CEO?

A combination of that. I didn't realize how exhausted I was until I went actually, to tell you the truth, until I exited. And then it kind of like struck, we were in the depths of a pandemic and lockdown. I was in my little study at home and it was dark, you know,

and I was knackered. But there was a realization that the business, and this is always kind of like the way I think, the business had become so much better and bigger than me. And the business, we have such a great team of people in the business that were all champing at the bit to kind of like succeed and be part of the succession as well at Gleam. And it was always the

plan to provide platforms for those people's careers as well as the talent's careers. And I could see that in a world where I wasn't 100% in control of the business, there wasn't really a place for me. And it would be better that I stepped away and encouraged, cheering from the sidelines, the next generation of leadership and talent and all of the great things that Gleam did a good job at in the first place to step forward.

And that's what happened. Did you ever, like, obviously, if it was during the pandemic, did you ever think, oh, I made a mistake by stepping away? No, I didn't. I didn't because, you know, Gleam is still flourishing inside Dentsu Aegis and they're doing a great job. They've got a new leadership in there at the moment now. So we're on another generation of leadership at Gleam and new talent coming in all the time. And it still succeeds doing what it did back in the time that I was there running the business. But I think that any bit,

and this is a thing that I learned over the last 12 years or so, is that the really good businesses are all about the sum of their parts rather than one particular individual, be that a talent or the CEO or anyone. And any really accomplished CEO will generate success out of that team of people

and that business. You can't really pin it on anybody. And so me coming out of the business, I think should have been and I hope was a stimulus for the business to carry on and succeed and that's all I wanted for it really I mean it's obviously worked

because I feel like I'm very sheltered in this industry and I don't feel like I know very many people but I knew what Gleam was way before I knew who you were so obviously it worked out very well. And I am obsessed with some of the talent on their roster, I won't lie. But obviously, you know, going back to one of the things you mentioned earlier about

what influencer culture is like now, about how, you know, you can go online and there are so many people that refer to themselves as content creators, as influencers. And the market is, in my opinion, sometimes very oversaturated. Or when you speak to school-aged children, the first thing they say they want to be when they grow up is an influencer.

Does that worry you in any way, shape or form? Or do you ever think like, oh, you know, I wish that it wasn't like that? Yeah, it does. Yes, I do wish that it wasn't like that. Because I think that in a lot of cases, not all, people are driven for the wrong reasons to want to be an influencer. First of all, and I've always been fairly vocal about this, I hate the word influencer. I think that it vanilla rises what is a really kind of like skillful and rare talent that people have to be able to engage audiences on social media platforms at scale

and be dedicated and tenacious and reliable enough to create content at the levels you need to create content in order to be successful at that. And I think influencer just terms everybody as a marketing kind of export or platform or whatever. I need someone to influence a consumer for me. It's not just about that. Yes, that is part of what happens

when you gain engagement and scale on social media platforms. And it's a good part and a big part of the talent's income stream so that they can carry on making content because members are a completely independent job, you're not paid by a broadcaster or anybody else. But I think it belittles the broad range of skill sets that creators have. I think that kids coming out of school now and saying, I want to be an influencer, if you drill down and find out what their motivations are,

if they were enormously creative, wanted to find an uncluttered, uncensored sort of platform to realize their creative dreams, amazing. But if it's because they want some free shit and they want to, you know, earn a million dollars. Hi, I'm Richard Karn, and you may have seen me on TV talking about the world's number one expandable garden hose. Well, the brand new pocket hose copperhead with pocket pivot is here, and it's a total game changer. Old fashioned hoses get kinks and creases at the spigot, but the Copperhead's Pocket Pivot swivels 360 degrees for full water flow and freedom to water with ease all around your home.

When you're all done, this rust-proof anti-burst hose shrinks back down to pocket size for effortless handling and tidy storage. Plus, your super light and ultra-durable Pocket Hose Copperhead is backed with a 10-year warranty. What could be better than that? I'll tell you what, an exciting exclusive offer just for you. For a limited time, you can get a free Pocket Pivot and their 10-pattern sprayer with the purchase of any size Copperhead hose. Just text WATER to 64000. That's WATER to 64000 for your two free gifts with purchase.

W-A-T-E-R to 64000. By texting 64000, you agree to receive recurring automated marketing messages from Pocket Host. Message and data rates may apply. No purchase required. Terms apply. Available at pockethost.com slash terms. Then that's, or be famous, the third thing. Then I think that's the wrong reason.

And it can become quite toxic because of those things. Someone told me, actually, I say recently, but many times over the last couple of years, being an influencer is the number one career goal for the majority of school leavers now. So it ranks above pilot, doctor, professional athlete as being what people want to be. And like everything, I think when there's that amount of scale and attention on a career, then it tends to water down the quality somewhat because everybody wants to have a bit of it. And I think the buyers in the market as well, so now it's publishers, broadcasters,

marketing directors, et cetera, are still not got the knowledge and experience to be able to make informed and effective purchase decisions when it comes to that talent. So what you're getting is a complete impasse, massive volume of talent, not quite enough engagement on platforms

to service the volume of talent on the, or wannabe talent on the platform. So you're seeing engagement rates drop off a cliff. And then a lack of experience in the marketplace, the commercial marketplace, to make those buying decisions, to keep the reputation of what the creator does safe and elevated. And I think we're on a bit of a downward spiral. If I'm honest, I think that it might be an unpopular opinion in the influencer

world at the moment, my opinion. But I think we're on a bit of a downward spiral at the moment when it comes to digital first talent and quality i think it's mainly because so from my experience of going out and speaking to school-age children that say they want to be an influencer is because it's very glamorized i think on social media you know you you see all the holidays and the free share and like the nice clothes but what you don't see is the long hours you're up editing creating content obviously now with the oversaturation in market, how you find your niche, how you keep your audience engaged

and how you stick out from the massive crowd of people. And I think that's probably part of the problem because there are massive influencers out there or content creators out there that I think are, they're not the rule, they're like the minority. Yeah. That are like very uber successful in what they do.

But I think it's because it's more organic as opposed to just being like, I want to take pretty pictures for Instagram. Yeah. And I think that that's where the success potentially lies in the future. And like brands I've spoken to say that they don't want someone

who will just take a pretty picture. They need somebody with substance. Yeah. And I feel like, you know, if you put all your eggs into the influencer basket, you're probably going to miss that substance that's needed.

And do you, like, where do you, like, in the future, what do you see, like, the influencer platform becoming into or like, if it's even going to be a thing anymore?

I think it will be a thing for some time to come because i think that the scale is so huge now um i it depends on how powerful and influential the commoditization platforms for influencer become so the platforms whereby you stick a tenor in and it spits out five influencers that might want to take a portion of that tenor in order to feature your brand kind of thing without any human interaction or like procurement process that involves what you've just described like how does this content really fit with what I want to do and go beyond just taking a pretty picture. But I think that social media platforms will continue to be incredibly popular and powerful and be powerful at selling product to consumers. But I worry about the lack of safety control, the sheer volume of anonymity available

on social media platforms. So I'm hoping that there will be something else that happens and I have a kind of an idea of what I think it might be that allows the creator and the audience to feel safer and more accountable on a platform and get that quality content back again without it having to be driven primarily by a brand transaction. And I think that it will be,

if I were to pin my colors to any mast for a future gazing session, it would be subscription platforms. So how subscription platforms grow now as part of the ecosystem. I'm not saying that the likes of Twitch, Patreon or OnlyFans will become the be-all and end-all of where creators create,

but I think it will be a bigger proportion of where they create because I'm seeing on those platforms a level of engagement and quality go back to the old days, back to 2010, 11, when it was just what the audience asked for in the comments, that would be what the creators made rather than what's going to get me the most lucrative brand deal, what's going to get me that deal with such and such a fashion outlet, et cetera. And I think we're in a space now where the brands are becoming unwitting editors

to the content that comes out of social media talent, which is a bit weird. But on subscription platforms, so let's take OnlyFans as an example. It's two million creators on OnlyFans in the region of 200 million monthly uniques. It's a huge platform, multi, multi, multi-billion dollar platform.

But on there, you're talking about much more niche audiences. Yes, I know it's got a reputation for adult content, and there is a lot of adult content on there, but I would argue that it's still controlled adult content. There's also non-adult content on OnlyFans, which people don't really talk about that often.

And it's coming from creators that are wanting to engage with audiences in their hundreds or thousands, rather than hundreds of thousands or millions. And they have a relationship with those audiences that is 100% engaged instead of 0.2% engaged. And

the audiences that they engage with on those subscription platforms, like OnlyFans, is 100 percent accountable to them as well. Their IP addresses are logged. Their credit cards are attached to the platform. If they spread hate, they troll, they send unsolicited pics, all that kind of stuff is much more controllable and it creates a much safer environment for the creator and the audience than you can get on avon social media platforms so i think that that direction is a direction that creators and audience may head into audience that are awash with content on the on instagram and

and uh tiktok and youtube that they have to pick their way through to find the creators that they want to engage with. But then the antidote to that being, you know, I'm just going to subscribe to these four people here. It does cost me a few bob each month, but I know I'm watching every single piece of their content. It's not getting lost in the algorithm. And if I want to drop them a note, I know that they're more likely going to be responding to me because I'm one of a few hundred people that subscribe to them rather than hundreds of thousands. And it just becomes less anonymous. And I like that about the future of social media.

I also think, by the way, there might well be a place for brands in that mix a bit further down the line. There aren't any yet, but I think there will be. And I think brands will search out that pure uh like really authentic engagement again to use those cheesy industry catch words do you think that the stigma of adult content on only fans stop non-adult creating content you create as being on apps and platforms like that 100 yeah i mean. I mean, what would you say? Oh, yeah.

So I think like we were having a discussion briefly like off camera about like potential content that I wanted to create that's not adult based, but then what platform would I use? Because if I used OnlyFans, I would probably get trolled because men would subscribe to my channel and then not find the content they were looking for. But then like, you know,

lots of other content platforms are jumping on the subscription bandwagon, but not the same level or same way. So I don't know where you would actually, like if somebody wanted to create that kind of content, where would you put yourself? Well, I would encourage people to look at OnlyFans. Like it's disruptive, given, yeah? It is known as an adult platform. And if you don't want to do adult content,

then why would you go on OnlyFans? It's the predominant question at the moment, if it's ever brought up. But there are also kind of like, why not do it? You're not creating adult content if you don't want to. There's no reason. The platform's features reason the platform the platforms

and features are the same as a lot of other platforms but it's just much more commercial and narrow cast in terms of wanting to encourage subscribers and content's behind a paywall and in fact you can have a free channel on only fans as well you don't have to put it behind a paywall and then you distribute um you know distribute drops of content that are premium that you then charge for. So it can work both ways. But I would say to anybody that's like, I don't want to go on OnlyFans because people are going to think that I'm doing porn. Well, let them think that you're not doing porn. In fact, give them a free subscription to go and check out what it is that you're doing not there's anything wrong with doing porn on any fans i think it's a safer platform for adult performers than any you know platform out there and empowers them in ways that

previous platforms haven't managed to empower the adult creator industry but what what i'm interested in going forward is making a space on subscription platforms for talent that is compliant and growing and safe and helping creators level up their content, be brave enough to go onto platforms like OnlyFans and create content that isn't adult and be confident about the leveling up against the stigma and creating content in a

much more controlled, valuable environment versus Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. Do you think that, so we were talking about the way that OnlyFans is very hard to get on without providing ID. Do you think that's the way to go forward with online safety? That's a bit of a random question. Yeah, so I don't like the anonymity that is available on AVOD social media platforms. I know that there's a kind of like, you know, well, everybody deserves anonymity, etc., etc.

But I've seen the tsunami of negativity and hate that can come on Avon's social media platforms for creators. And they put up with it on a daily basis. In fact, just regular consumers, I'm surprised to learn, get trolled. If you're just a Joe Public or whatever, and you're creating content, people will just say whatever they like to you in the comments completely anonymously. And I think that's a negative thing about the space. So I like the fact that there's no anonymity available once you've got your credit card attached to a platform that you want to buy premium content.

Everybody's IP address is logged on OnlyFans as well. And you're held accountable to that. And why not? If you're held accountable to that. And why not? If you're not going to be, you know, trolling or hating or doing anything illegal, then you have nothing to worry about or to hide. So yeah, I think it's a good thing. I have young kids,

and I see them accessing entertainment all the time on various platforms. And I know because they're under 18, I know they're not on OnlyFans. So they're not seeing any of the content that's available on OnlyFans that isn't for their age group. I see them on other platforms looking at content that isn't for their age group as well. But they just easily access it by simply turning on the TV in their living room. And that, I think there should be some changes there. I would love to see, you know,

Instagram and YouTube and so on. I know YouTube has, like, you have to try and control the content that comes out there, but I'd love to see everybody be much more accountable on social media. I think it'd be nice to see if there was a platform out there

that was like OnlyFans, obviously for non-adult content, that was geared more towards younger users, like your daughter's ages, and that they could access content their parents know is safe for them to be looking at. Because I think one thing as well, that when I do outreach at schools,

is the age at certain, it's more, I've heard it more with boys than with girls that the content they're not watching, they're watching is not made for their demographic as of yet. Yeah, it's a tricky balance to make, isn't it? By making it, keeping it kind of like... You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed.

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and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Aspirational for a certain age groups and not uncool, but also keeping them safe and making it a platform that's geared towards that age group for sure. Maybe there's a gap in the market there, you know? I mean, if I, after this podcast goes out,

if somebody actually makes some of those platforms, I'm going to say that I said it first, but no. So I normally ask everybody that comes on this podcast the same question, but obviously I'm going to word it a little bit differently for you. So, you know, as somebody who is a father to young daughters who um is um somebody who managed women coming in an up-and-coming industry in an industry where women are mostly dominating um what would you say to people that doubt people's success just

based on the fact that they are women uh so i i'm uh i think that there we are entering an age where and i've got two daughters where i honestly think that the future is so exciting and bright for women i think anybody that doubts the velocity of someone's career or their uh their qualification for a particular job or a role or anything like that, based on their sex, based on them being a woman, even worse, is a thing of the past very soon, hopefully. I see an enormous amount of opportunity for women now in the media and entertainment business and that's what i know i see all the people all the women i know uh who are have ambitions in that sector doing brilliantly i think that um having worked closely with women all the way through my career, I think women are so much better equipped

in a lot of jobs in our sector than men to be able to kind of be successful. I think women team up brilliantly. You saw that kind of like, I think kind of a version of that. This summer just gone with the incredible success of the Lionessesesses the women's england football team and i watched that match and i thought oh they play so well as a team because there's a much uh there's a lack of ego when women want to get a job done do you know

what i mean they're not thinking about specifically how do how does this progress my uh you know profile this that and the other individually? And you sometimes get that in men's, top-level men's sports, athletics, et cetera, and in the workplace sometimes, I feel like, as well. And women just don't, they're not as susceptible as men to that. And they just work brilliantly together,

get the job done at a very high level. Yeah, I'm a big fan. So I would say to that. And they just work brilliantly together, get the job done at a very high level. Yeah, I'm a big fan. So I would say to that person, like, you carry on doubting women in the professional environment, both in entertainment and in the workplace, and you'll be left behind. Well, there you go. That's to any other CEO out there that doesn't want to hire as many women as they should. But honestly, thank you so much for having this conversation with me. I feel like I've sat here and I've learned a lot. I've just been sat listening,

but I'm really grateful for your time and thank you. Thank you for having me. It's been really nice to chat. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy, just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top

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