Transcript

Season 2, Let’s Go · GOOD CEOs

Ollie Scott: Hello, and welcome back to Good CEOs, season two. What is this season gonna be all about? So last season we met with different CEOs and founders that have been at different parts of the creative economy. We had people that are from social media giants like We Are Social through to new strategic consultancies like Fundamental Co. ⁓ through to more established, but I guess longer standing branding agencies and then smaller, fast growth social media companies like Fabric. And we learned a lot, but this is not about what we learned in season one. I've already done a podcast about that. If you are arriving for the first time at this podcast and you're thinking, what do you mean season one? Go back a previous podcast and I will summarize six episodes all in one. But this is season two. And I wanted to record an episode today to make it really clear as to why we're doing season two and what you can expect out of season two good CEOs. So the first thing I wanted to speak about is this title that we have come up with and that is creativity meeting capital or creativity meets capital. Those two worlds have never really existed too closely together. I always make this joke about how The capital side are wearing Patagonia gilets and the creative side are wearing beanies and those two worlds never really intersected until now. I say until now, capital has been quietly kind of investing in the creative industry without really people understanding it. And to be honest, for the first 15 years of me working in this industry, I didn't really understand it either. I didn't understand why money people would... need to get involved in creative companies. And I didn't really understand why creative companies needed money people to be involved in doing what they were doing. was only until I started to work with ⁓ you know, build these groups like good CEOs where I figured out, number one, capital isn't evil. ⁓ think there's this kind of creative view of money and creative view of commerciality, ⁓ which has always been like, ⁓ maybe people have presumed that when a company gets an injection of capital, things become less fun. I think there are so many cases to prove that correct. But at the same time, there are so many cases to prove that isn't true. And the companies that I've worked with, the founders that I've worked with, have told me honestly a variety of different stories about what happens when they bring capital into their business, what happens to them personally, it affects their lives, how it affects their businesses. ⁓ I think there are... a combination of good and bad stories to tell. I want to focus this season on the good stories. I want to focus this season speaking to founders that are either just about to accept private equity ⁓ some kind of capital into their business. Founders maybe have already done that and are on that journey. And then even founders that have done it, been on the journey and have exited since then ⁓ because I want this season to be for the creative entrepreneur or the creative leader that wants to become an entrepreneur I want this episode to be for those people, for the people that have made a career, a successful career in the creative community, and want to understand the part that capital plays in that and how that will affect them and the companies that they run and lead. So... That's what this episode, or sorry, this series is all about. It's about understanding the purpose of capital in the creative industry, and it's about understanding how it impacts the companies that it invests in. We are seeing a flood of private equity money coming into this industry, and creative companies using that capital, but at the same time, and maybe different to ever, we're seeing this ⁓ holding company fragmentation, we're seeing opportunities for brands, know, massive brands, mid-sized brands, using and working with smaller sized agencies who are then going, well, hold on, we could build something more meaningful, more important. How would it look? So in this season, I want to speak to founders that are creating different styles of creative companies, leveraging capital to perhaps acquire different creative companies and understanding why are they doing it and what are they expecting to get out of it? the same time, I want to be meeting people that have done it, and maybe they've got lessons for us along that way. What's bad capital? Who should you be saying no to when you're going out into the market looking to raise money? What should you be looking out for? There are so many of these PE firms. There are frigging tons of these PE companies who seem to look at the industry, from my experience, have looked at the creative economy and have quite a clinical view on what... growth looks like and what return on investment looks like. I want to know like who are the good guys, who are the good people in PE, who are the bad guys? What red thread does a bad investor have? Like, who do you want to stay away from and who do you want to be more, I guess, brought closer to? Because we know that there isn't a shortage of capital to be deployed. We know from speaking to PE companies, from speaking to companies like Goldman Sachs, There is a load of, think we saw a stat that said there's like $4 trillion worth of dry powder. Dry powder being money that hasn't yet been invested into any industry, $4 trillion worth of dry powder. Now you couple that with the fact that there is this stat that I have said over and over again, the creative economy contributes to 5 % of global GDP, and it is going to contribute to an estimated 10 % of GDP. by 2030. this is a fast growing industry, apparently faster growing than health tech and apparently outgrowing finance in itself. So if you're in a finance position, you're probably looking at the creative industry going, where are the high growth areas that I can invest in? Where are the founders that understand the bleeding edge of this industry who are going to be able to get ahead leverage? whatever they need to get ahead and produce these beautiful growing companies. So that's what I want to get into. I want to meet people in this series who are doing things differently, looking at different pricing models, looking at different ways of ⁓ funding businesses so they can go and acquire other companies. How does one approach acquiring another company? A lot of the creative companies that we know, ⁓ a of the founders that have ⁓ started a designer. cosplaying as Leland puts it, cosplaying as a CEO, but beginning as a designer. These are people that have never had to think about acquiring another company, they've just built their own. So how does a founder CEO move from being a designer into being a CEO, into then being an investor, where they're speaking to other founders and CEOs, and potentially considering acquiring those companies? There's so much to consider, and there's so much opportunity that I'm really, I want to... learn myself, obviously, unknown, we do lots of ⁓ &A advisory, we help other companies buy and sell companies. But I want to understand what makes a viable company, what makes a sellable company? When is the right time? When is the wrong time to consider doing a deal? There are so many different things that go into considering selling and buying a business. There are so many things that can go wrong. There are so many ways that you can get a bad deal, have a good deal. And I feel like That kind of information has been kept away it's to get that information. You can ask LLM, ChatGBT, Gemini or Claude, but it's hard to understand what is the true value of what I've built ⁓ and what should I do? Because there are so ways to do this thing. So that's what this season's all about. I'm gonna speak to people that bought, I also advised other companies to buy and sell well. I want to get somebody that's maybe done like over 50 deals, helping different creative companies get the most value out of their business, integrate their company into whoever has bought their business, also advised new buyers. Like there is this wave of new acquirers coming to the market that were once designers or creatives or account directors. And now they're running these companies and they want to expand their services and products. So I'm really excited to get into this. I think because we're seeing so much growth coming out of the US, it will probably have a leaning towards that market. we get asked this question, like how is the market doing? ⁓ And... ⁓ It's such a hard question to answer because every single time we're like, which part? Because design strategic consultancy right at that end is doing so well. Social influencer exploding, exploding, exploding. Creative, depending on the style of creative company that you have, you could be exploding to growth or you could be flatlining right now. And I want to speak to the people that are going experiencing that explosion of growth. What have they done? How have they positioned themselves? What partnerships have they leveraged? What have they done with their pricing models? What have they done with capital? Have they leveraged capital to acquire another business? Why do they do that? How are they thinking they're gonna get through to the next round? ⁓ So many questions, as you can tell. gonna call this series Creativity Meets Capital and it's gonna be Understanding. underpinning of capital and its point in this industry and how you, the listener, the CEO, the aspiring CEO, the leader that wants to become an entrepreneur, how can you get ahead? How can you make use of all of this wonderful growth and resources and this 10 % GDP and own a piece of that yourself? So without further ado, welcome to season two. Let's get into it.