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

You know when people talk about work life balance? What's your honest opinion about that? Kobe Bryant wasn't doing three throws at 3am for no reason. But there's a cost to that, right? George Heaton, the founder of Global Fashion Brand, Represent, or in by the weekend, Post Malone, Justin Bieber. One of the most popular luxury street brands in the world. When I was 18 starting this brand, it was just me and my brother. In my dad's shed, figuring out products and why 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 were making money at that time, more than what we should have in our early 20s. Still all fucking around a lot. Alcohol, girls, cars, and we're doing like 35 million revenue. We're going to do 50 million next year, but we don't know what we're doing. Now, the business is doing about $100m. That's when the realisation came that you don't need to be a good at business to own a business.

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 a car list 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 you. 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 marines to start recliming it. It could come this driving force that I fought. We cannot stop that. And then what happens? Quick one, quick favour to ask from you. There is one simple way that you can support our show. And that is by hitting that follow button on this app that you're listening to the show on right now. This year in 2024, we're trying really, really hard to level up everything we're doing.

And the only free thing I'll ever ask from you is to hit that follow button on this app. It helps the show more than I could probably articulate. And it allows us to keep doing what we're doing here. I appreciate it, Dealing. Onto the show. George. What is the mission that you're on? It's just to be the best version of myself, really. Just to show up and do everything at the highest level I can. 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? 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 felt that was sick. So automatically I felt proud of that. So I was like, I want to be like this.

Like, what is it that my dad's got that other people don't have? And the way he showed up with my family and how he would, he wouldn't, like, I've never seen him drunk. Even to this day, I've never seen him drunk. Like, he was, a role model is like a 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 in the household, it just like created my own discipline, I guess. Was he an emotional man? No, no. No emotion. I've never seen him cry. Has he ever said I love you? To me, I don't know. Maybe as a young kid, but not recently now. What about your mum? 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. 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, it kind of pushed me a bit, you know, gave me like words of words of affirmation, I guess, confidence.

Was that, was her saying that like a frequent thing? I'm trying to figure out why she would say that to you versus your siblings is presumably because you're the oldest. No, that was a middle child.

But Mike kind of, he was very within himself as a younger kid and didn't come out much and he just did his own thing, whereas I would express myself a little bit more than him within the family and I think my mum saw that as a way that I could be the carrier of whatever that boat was later down in life. And your parents, what did they do to your dad was? My dad sold mini buses, 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. Did you have any idea when you were a young man, like 12, 13, 14, that you would be in this industry?

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 a back and neck label all the way a pamphit would irritate me so much that I'd take it to my grounds. And she was a tailor, so she would tape her things and take next 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 being that particular so young, it kind of stemmed into how I've built the brand and what it stands for and the quality and everything like that. And Michael, I've 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. 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 into study like art, graphic design. What was the difference in your skill set? There wasn't really one. He was just better than me. Okay. 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 Bullton.

Like everyone was in tracksuits and had shaped heads and t-shirts 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 20s, like he was he was my idol, really. And when did you make the decision to apply your artistic skills to clothing? College. So we had a project where we had to make we had to make something of our art that could sell.

And 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 want to sit and wait around all my life to sell a painting for 40 grand.

And I remember going into the class and I remember the teacher telling me that average salary of a graphic designer was 30k. And I'd go home and I'd speak to my dad and be like hold on if university's going to cost me nine K a year and the average salary is 40k a year. And like I can't fucking buy myself a Range Rover with that. And I wanted to be like my dad. So I was like what is it that I can make that I can make money from like everyone wants to be successful.

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 did just all my garments that there was this. So this like upbringing of social media Instagram was just starting and YouTube was just starting and I managed to watch a few videos of like artists like Sheppard Fairy who owned obey and Nikki diamonds who owned diamonds applying and Huff.

And these guys over here on the West Coast that were just selling like t-shirts or graphics on. 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. So you know second ago you said being a graphic designer wasn't going to allow you to buy the same courage dad. Was that how much was your dad a driving force behind your sort of.

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. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. A very conscious motivation. And because you thought about making proud or make yourself. Yeah, I thought I'd make the family proud but as well as just like no one thought in my family that or even through my friends or through my mom and dad's friends who ever 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. 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.

I think a lot of itself inflicted think I just like to have something there to prove something wrong or something right maybe prove myself right comes at a cost though. It does come at a cost yeah. But I'm willing to take that cost on. Are you sure? Yeah. 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.

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 is 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? I think that was it 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 a 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 buy in your product and then they congratulate you on the drops and then the biggest fans. Do you remember any comments that you heard from certain people? Yeah, definitely. Remember those one word I bought this R8 and it was like I must have been 19 or 20. She's a car right? Yeah, and Audi. And I had it parked up in my town where I was and I remember getting a message on Facebook saying.

That car your dad's bought you's parked up here. He's going to get a ticket on them yellow lines. I was thinking like, come on. How did it make you feel? It made me want to go to the next level with everything over and over to so it drowned out that noise. So it was like, okay. Maybe his dad was successful. He's running a small business had a nice house or whatever. I wanted to take that to like a hundred times that to prove that it wasn't that I guess.

And so after you leave college, well, it's during college, right? When you sort of start the business. Is that 2012? Yeah. When you first start the business and then Michael joins you a year later. Yeah. You've started selling T-Shine? 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 supply. I'd speak to suppliers in China and stuff like that.

And it just rolled on for the three years that I was at university. What was that first year like? That first year in business? From what I can remember, it wasn't really business. It was just going to the back garden where my dad's shared 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. How big was the business in the first year?

I've probably turned over about 10,000 pounds. Yeah. What about the second year? Maybe like 50k. I think the third year is when we decided to actually make it a limited company and get an accountant. And how much did you do in the third year roughly? In terms of revenue, I can't remember, I think it was around half a mill because I remember going to the accountants and we did all this.

We literally like told 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 do this for real.

You spent two years, you know, and by the end of the second year, you're generating 50k, which is like not enough really to pay yourself a salary while covering costs of the business. No, I didn't take a salary for seven or eight years. So surely at that point, people around you are telling you that you're an idiot and they've got quite good evidence to suggest that you're actually wasting your time. 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. What did work? How would you define work to that moment? Like what was success at that moment? Success was putting products online in its selling and seeing that launch night and seeing 500 people log in 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 was it really. 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, 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 fashion idea or anything. Why don't they start? I think it's that pressure of failure.

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 to see 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 help will eventually in the future take off or become successful.

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. You spent almost four years from 2012 till, I guess, no, two years, 2012 till about 2015ish, kind of just effectively messing around. Yeah, messing around really. Mess around. A lot of messing around. Learning. Learning, yeah.

Probably better use of words. And enjoying it as well. Me and my friends had sitting my dad's shed all night just figuring out products and things that we wanted to do and why we could take the brand. I'd love to go back to them times because they were great. We had nothing. No one was really watching us but we thought everyone was watching us and we thought it was the next big fucking powerhouse of a brand. So yeah, it was fun. I don't regret any of it.

Putting these two questions together about why people don't start and also those three years where you weren't really making any money. And you're in the shed and you're 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. But why didn't you quit? 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 from 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 binobuses 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. This is all all on nothing really. When you look back at the products that you made in that shed, how do you feel about them?

There's a few great ones and a few absolutely terrible ones. I remember the first collection I moved to China because originally I'd buy stocking from America, printed 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 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.

I'm a mom's floor for like hours that night. So 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. Because 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 right because I look at yourself and get Jesus Christ like I can't compete with it. 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 would you say to those people? Say look you're going to put the work in it's going to 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 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 just got to do everything you can to make it work. So the brand scales up to what sort of revenue number from 2012 up to 2018. We built it up to like six to seven mill. So like 2015, 16, 17, it was just flat like six seven mill year over year. And we thought that was a ceiling in thought at the time.

As our young sales with not much knowledge and no real. In the industry like we thought that we were at the ceiling of what represent was. 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. What was the advice you needed? I definitely didn't get the advice but it was to just completely restart, refocus, go again, build a new team and go into what we already knew that was that we were waiting for us.

We knew what we were capable of. We just weren't doing it. What weren't you doing? 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. When you say the point about team, you said rebuild a new team. When you started the brand, who were you hiring? All my friends. I hired all my friends, all my close friends because I wanted to enjoy it.

I didn't want to interview people and bring them into my dad's garden shed. Up until we had a unit, it was just me and my friends. We were all doing 50 jobs each. No one had a title, no one knew what was going on. 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. Half worked and half didn't.

When you say it didn't work, what does that mean in reality? It means that I guess it's all not my fault as such but it's all it's... 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 way that it should have gone because we were just plateauing at this base of like a quite a boring fashion brand at the time and like we had to split up and we had to regroup and start again.

What are the ones that stayed of no stayed forever, which is insane and the ones that left have carried on with their lives? What have you learned about hiring? Again, when I say the advice that 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 18 years old and you could give him hiring advice on how to pick people, what would you say? Higher fast, fire faster.

Interesting. I think I've been working for years where 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 industry that were in, whether it's street war or luxury or high fashion,

I'm very still unbelievable people look and do amazing things way better than what I can do with all levels of business that don't look like they should be or don't seem like they would. So just like realizing that back then would have really helped the business grow.

I think sometimes like young founders, I'm 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 kinds of concerns and also why would they want to come here? Well, I don't want to come here. It was a massive thing for me. Yeah, 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 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 that there'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. It's so like catch 22 and I have a lot of dragons, then investments and these are typically early stage companies, they're often quite young. And I sit with them all the time and I talk to them about this paradox of there's a kind of multi-faceted 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 shed? Because of that, they never grow to be able to pay for those people to be able to create an environment where exceptional people would come.

The only way like I see of kick starting the process is to bring in exceptional people now. Yeah, that makes sense. Pay for it now and you'll see the increased outcome later, definitely. Yeah. Like bringing in exceptional people will never be a bad thing in the business. But it feels like it because they because it costs so much.

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 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. I have brought a CEO into represent that was handling a 500 million dollar 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 some 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 areas of growth and sales and categories and all these different things that just make you realize, oh, you can turn the business from 20 to 50 mil by just doing this. 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. And you don't even know that you don't know it like it's an unknown.

No, 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 like authentic on the YouTube and on Instagram by telling people less and showing them how what we actually do and how we do it because when I was 18 starting this brand, I had nowhere to look, I had no mentors, I had, there was no one in fashion that wanted to come and help us.

And there was nothing like that I could just go online and find and buying a course to build a brand isn't going to work. That's the biggest load of bullshit ever. So like you're stuck in your own in your own ways and you got limited beliefs. And you don't know what you don't know. So how do you get out 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, Georgia, 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? I think you got a research now, I think everyone's very explicitly authentic online. Like if they want to be the next George, you can scroll down my Instagram for the last 10 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 back load a documentary that we did three years ago that shows the last 10 years. And then I'll you do it with the diary to see all 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. But that decision then to bring in that CEO. Where did that information come from? I spent a good couple years just really like rebuild in myself when that when that plateau happened.

There was like 18 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. What was going on in your world? 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.

There's 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 health 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. Was this the period in 2018 where you said you lost the motivation for the business? Yeah, just before that.

Take me into that period of your life. If I'm a fly on the wall, what do I see in your world at that time where you're like not excited about it? Not excited about it because we were getting a lot of pushback from press and like we were trying to run my 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's a passion for us. I will 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 were making money at that time like more than what we should have been doing in our early 20s.

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 more messing about. 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. What about you on a personal level at that time? You said you weren't happy with yourself. Didn't I hated the way I looked to hate it the way I came across on social media. I was very shy, very unconfident.

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 it pissed me off. For a lot 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 re-drew 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 he and that I want him to be not who I am now. You actually drew. Yeah, yeah. And I picture. Yeah, I used to look back at it all the time and just think this is I wanted to recreate myself and recreate the brand. What was the base you were starting from at that point and how old are you at this point?

I was only 26, I think I was 25, 26. I just like had it had an unhealthy relationship with the way I worked and even the food I had and like I wasn't healthy, I wasn't doing well. Didn't look great, didn't feel myself, I didn't want to look at myself in the mirror. You didn't want to look at yourself in the mirror? Yeah. I didn't like who I'd become and like 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.

When you say didn't want to look at yourself in the mirror, do you actually mean that? Are you saying that as a like a figure of speech? I guess a figure of speech but as well like realizing that I wanted to change a lot so then when you do want to change then you don't like the way you are.

How did you know you wanted to change? That sounds 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 to you know what enough is enough. And sometimes I've always like pondered I think I've said it a few times on the show like the people have to reach a certain rock bottom in their lives before they go to you know what?

100% and I see this with people now that we inspire with 247 or who will send me a DM and say look you've changed my life through this or that. I think the like the best view of heaven is from hell right? I think you've got to get to the bottom of that mirror and to start reclimiting it. I think if you just sit around in the middle somewhere and life is just is what it is that was what I was going through.

And like I had a girlfriend and we 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 and the trajectory that I thought I was on it was rock bottom. So that was like the reset.

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 yeah 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.

Drocked alcohol hit the gym and his turn it around and he has almost as a slight ten commandment right the notes of his phone yeah you did something similar exactly the same and I still have them that pop up every morning like reminders on my phone. I found this guy called Andy Fritzseller and he had a book called 75 hard and it was like a mental toughness challenge but it also included a lot of work in 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 right 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 wanted to be outside wanted to be inside.

So structure the rest of the day around that and then started learning 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 around holiday books and Robert green 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 75 day thing and I remember getting to get into the end of it and just thinking fuck like I looked at myself then and I was like I was like I'm not going to do anything.

I was like I can see the change and you know when you can see change that's when you like really go into it start getting obsessed when you see whether it's success or like your fitness levels go up or just the way you energy levels are every day and just figuring out that like these little indicators are changing the way I'm 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 rolling 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 or I wouldn't sleep the exact like 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 levels of fitness and cardiovascular and strength and everything like that just went through the roof.

Because people will look you now and think that you know they'll see you getting up at I know five in the morning and going for like a 20 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 right like he's just got this level of motivation yeah probably came in his DNA that I don't have.

Yeah and a lot of people do say that a lot of people think that think it's genetics or they think it steroids and stuff like that. I used to think that as well back when I was overweight and unhealthy and like I'd look at people and say I'm like yeah genetics whatever yeah he's on steroids I can't look like that I've got business to run that you would you dismiss everything but it's not.

I want you start doing it yourself and you see those little gains and you get into it and you can you can really change what is the starting point one step at a time whether it's 10,000 steps or doing even a 20 minute work out that's all people need to do to change.

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 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 takes a really long time but it happens.

It's difficult to believe I guess for some people because 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 just look at the top of the mountain going Jesus Christ that's a long way away and the thought that the first steps to take a small ones doesn't almost doesn't seem believable.

Yeah and and look 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 it crushes you and and then you have to start again but it's just about finding that rhythm of like what you enjoy and just going and just doing it and not not really taking your father gas once you start doing it.

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. You also go on the process of reinventing the business. What does that mean? How did you reinvent the business?

We stripped back all the whole sale that we were doing and we focused on the D to see 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 a 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 hey 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 had a massive heated argument about it and it was so right for the business at time and I just didn't know it because I weren't acceptance accepting of like changing change in the way we were working and I didn't understand that you could go and do this other thing and

produce in a different way than what we were doing and like a full credit to him he completely changed the whole like margin of what we were doing. So James was doing that for like nine months straight and Mike was doing all these new graphics that was going to change the way the brand looked and then 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 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 restarted and it just it started working and we put like 300 t-shirts online and we sold 300 in a minute and then the next week might be another design and we sold 600 in a minute and then 900 in a minute and then it was like fuck we actually do have a following here we've gone from doing 10 15 sales through the day

to like a thousand every single Wednesday 2000 3000 4000 4000 and that gave us like the the liquid and also the confidence to then go and create more collections and go back to become a real brand again. Wait as 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 gone out of their own way.

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. It's difficult when you're I think especially if you're a young CEO because you're probably already a bit insecure. Right. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. But you feel like you should know everything so you're like overcompensating by.

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 35 million revenue and it's like fuck how what are we going to do we're going to do 50 million next year. But we don't know what we're doing. Just like so silly but yeah, you just going to say from the outside it looks like you had it all together. Of course it does. Yeah. For the whole 13 years it kind of looks like that.

And it still looks like that now and we definitely don't have it all together. But we're I don't 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 we'll die for it.

You've created a pretty amazing company culture. You were talking about it there. Yeah. How have you done that? That's it's not really I'm not going to say her and take credit for that. I'll take credit for like the gym that we have in there and the way we like everyone works hard but also like the CEO that came in spany 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 group like the leadership team he's brought in and like everyone who's involved with the business now it's 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 want.

Even though it's yeah you got to work hard you're a work fucking hard we're still like we're probably the best place to work for that I know of. 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 developed such a high self awareness that as we kind of said they got out of the way the business.

Yeah and just focused on the thing that they get out and that's pretty much what it looks like you're doing now 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 business man 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.

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 10 times better job than you can. And lay the foundations for it to become 500 million or a billion dollar brand or 10 billion dollar brand and you can focus on what you're actually good at. How'd you get them to come?

I think like you said then like company culture like you see if you see represent on LinkedIn or something you're going to look at it and think fuck I want to be in there. These guys and girls are getting after it like doing gym sessions together at 6 a.m. and they're all out and they're just enjoying the workplace like but that that comes from being a successful brand you can't just do that from the get go.

You can't just build a 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. Because this is always the issue that I hear specifically like young founders or early stage entrepreneurs talking about is a case if I get it I know we need great people but how do I persuade great people like Spencer is sped spending right.

Yeah, Paul Spencer, how do I get him to come work here right when he's working at like Puma he was a Puma or is any. Yeah, how did you get him to come from Puma to represent 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 is deaf 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 building this there's no ceiling like what is what is representing 10 years like what can it be and he says it every day as I 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 we can sell salt like it's insane we can do anything it's not really a brand anymore it's like a lifestyle 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 number one. Really yeah my life just so much better now that he's involved with the business and there's a lot of weight taking off my shoulders.

It's not the first time I've heard this think Ben Francis would have said the same yeah about you know and Julian it he said the same and that putting someone in in that CEO role where it's both like not enjoyable for you as a creative right also it's not good for the business because it's not your skill set.

And yeah it wasn't enjoyable 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

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 enough to 15 minutes I'm just like oh my arm done I'm asleep but I can sit in Mike's room and design for 12 hours straight with him. 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 yeah do you still kind of need to know what's going on.

I like to yeah I love to know as much as I can but as well I think you should keep things away from yourself because it will 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 the business

not working that affects what you're doing there. 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 like feedback loops on things that weren't great wasn't good for him when he's designing so kind of kept him just like strictly to design but obviously we're giving facts and figures and numbers and stuff like that but try and keep them out of it as much as they can what was your hardest day.

Oh I remember we got a letter from a company also called represent in Europe telling us that we were basically done. Yeah that was that was the worst day in the business. Yeah. What did the lights say just said like that they owned the trademark in Europe and we were they were just going to take us from a thing we had we couldn't carry on trading.

They wanted to leave your money more than what we had and that that like that was in that same period that 2018 to 20 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 want to 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 was just like

me Mike and James that knew about this that was going on because I didn't want to pull it out to anyone didn't want anyone in the business to know like this was happening or even my family. And it really fucking like restricted us with everything we did every decision we made every garment we sold. That that that was that was included in that really dark period they presumably owned the trademark that you were using so you would call yourself represent.

But someone else owned the trademark for Europe yeah and you didn't realize that at the time we thought we owned it because we had the UK IP and all over the rest of the world and there was this dormant we thought it was dormant but apparently was selling clothing section 25 or whatever.

Section 25 is like the clothing category of a trademark yeah and 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 they weren't willing to nothing and that was like that was the devil that were you will put every night.

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 realize 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 any gave in any wanted to take money we had the money to be able to do it.

This sort of dark period between 2018 and sort of 2020 was did that cause it or was that just on top of it that was like on that was the ice and on the cake right to the business of stagman and then you get the sledder through someone wants to take everything you have.

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 represent 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 it'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.

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 2020 we ended up like signing and getting getting our name back. He wanted millions. Yeah. You said the lawyers were giving you bad news what were they saying? It just like they wouldn't respond for three months.

But you'd be in the car going to like Portugal to find out if this production is ready and you'd get this long emailing your heart just dropping it like what's going to get said and then we 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 when you say dark cloud. What is the dark cloud feel like? Fly on the wall again.

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 a name where you're making that money. It would like get you like that. Did it interfere with your sleep your mental health? Everything. But like I said earlier it also became this driving force.

Well, like I use it as a thing where it was like I know this probably sounds so stupid but like I just got started running in 2020 and I was like I'm going to go out and run 15k. And if I stop that's like him coming for us you know. It's like a half to do that half to win everything we do whether he was just a run or it's a design selling all whatever it is like you cannot stop now.

Can't be easy going through that with your brother as well because you're going to both be somewhat protective of each other I imagine and it's that dark cloud hanging over both of you at the same time it's. Yeah, it ruined both of us. It ruined his the way he designed it. Yeah, everything and then so eventually you get a breakthrough and this guy agrees to a figure.

And at the time like you know millions of 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. No, but the deal went through in 2020 when we were really like pushing forward and doing everything we could so that when that thing happened we had enough money for it. How do you feel about him? This guy that sent you that letter.

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 20 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 basic and sell anything.

So yeah up until that day I was really upset about it but after it I kind of just realized that it is what it is and that's how things go and in 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. Did your parents know? Yeah, but you were going through that. Yeah a little bit.

I wouldn't tell them that for like a stand but just because I don't like putting pressure on other people especially when it's not going to affect their lives as such at the time. But yeah we would go to my mom and dad's every weekend and like it would always be a subject that came up as he replied yet as he responded like have you heard anything? It's just like. Yeah, it fucked us. How do you deal with that? Because you're a young guy.

I remember the first time in business where I experienced anxiety. I thought anxiety was something that happens to other people. 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. 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 talk about mental health. This is it. It's happening to me. I am invincible but it's it's suddenly happening to me. Obviously as it always goes it was never it wasn't as bad as I imagine it's the imagination that was. Yeah, imagination is 95% of it isn't it? Have you experienced that before? Mental health. I always struggle when people ask me about this because no not really.

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. Anxiety that that thing that period yeah that caused me anxiety but not not to an extent where I was like crippling. But like I kind of know I kind of enjoy the bits of anxiety I get because you learn from it right. You go into that meeting and telling him you're going to get fired once that's done you have that relief and then you know next time we do it this is how it goes.

So you lose that 95% of anxiety that happens before it or you lose a little bit of it. Yeah, 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 how did you cope with it?

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 clear as anxiety.

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 what I first discovered represent and for anyone that doesn't know it's basically the anything I were so like if you ever see me out or on stage or whatever I'm wearing represent head to toe I mean it's I wear this I usually don't

usually don't weigh this on the podcast but when I'm not on the podcast it's the only thing I'm wearing and the 24 seven pants that you made are the only pants that I wear everyone knows that like I don't actually have another pair. Because there's something there was why 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 right.

A good cult no one's getting murdered it's a good cult but what is that thing that the brand always had.

Oh that's hard that's a hard question really hard 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 proven that we don't need to just follow the rule book and we can do whatever we want to do and sell whatever we want to sell and like it's still even though it's a huge brand now it's still like a small thing where

like their owners club for existence like which is like one range within it long range within it where like you see someone else in an owners club hoodie like you see them two guys not at each other and it's like yeah you're part of something like we've kind of built this community that is 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 just it's like a it's a family business right is run by two brothers and everyone within the business feels like family and when you buy a piece of that product we're given them way more than what they expect like my one of my main things is like quality and I want the customer to think 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.

You're exceeding their expectations exceeding our expectations way more than what they thought it would but for you to exceed my expectations there must be something going on in the office yeah that isn't going on in the other fashion brands offices yeah and what is that thing that's happening represent that's probably not happening at your competitors place I think it's my innate desire to just how 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 going to 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 exhausting.

Because the reason why people don't do that is because it's easier to cut the corner right it's easier to send it three days it's easier to not really care about the quality 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 got to be good. What do people not see in terms of the effort that goes into the work look between you and your brother Michael what is what is that people don't see.

They don't seem like enough yeah I'm trying to get into come out more with like how he does things in these 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 text the guys are designing all the actual garments and like the content team like all of them are so bought into a lot of the work.

So bought into it and everyone we bring up to the office whether it's a store or another brand I would like the fucking blown away no one can believe what's going on in there and it's this ecosystem that's been built by Spenny and us as leaders and I'm really like blood 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 last way longer than what we last ourselves.

When you put so much of your heart into the designs and then you go on Instagram and someone's copied it yeah and it's your brother's design that they've copied and I see I see people copy in your stuff all the time. How's that good means it means the designs good right.

No, first you fucking hate it and you think people are taking food off your table and in some cases that's right and 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 point as in the 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 is who's in it for the long run right.

Copy another people used to do it when 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. 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 got laugh at it yeah I 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 it's because especially when you care so much about something yeah someone copies it fit really hits you in the heart to some degree it's like especially if you can remember where you came up with the idea and then.

But I bet 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 yeah and even with design as 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 the back they're not buying into this word yeah they're not buying into that the buying into this essence of like them become in part of this club and like they get in this prestige and they're getting the work outs and they're all right.

They get in the work outs and they're all part of this whole like lifestyle that we're portraying and doing and living and becoming the most important stuff they can't copy no one can copy that they can copy a logo and they can't copy like what you stand for right.

So you've gone from being a business that was making sort of 8 million in 2018 to as we sit here now I think last year you did about about a hundred million dollars yeah which is exceptional money is now large in your life you sure you run the numbers and you go shit that I'm worth this much money if I sold it for this.

But do you think about how do you think about money now 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 because I want to be rich everyone wants to be rich there's no negativity that comes with having a lot of money and I think that society is not going to be rich.

And I think that society and the way it's perceived now is like not a good thing that you making a lot of money like I want to 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 like I love that why not.

But if you had a billion pounds now would you be any happier. I don't measure anything on happiness like I'm happy to sit in design for six hours or on half a 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. 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.

And that point about giving you a billion dollars I give you billion dollars and it's not going to make you any any happier then what's the point in the money I think it will make me happier really yeah house did I could my family would be set forever all my team would be set forever like that in self makes me happy imagine me be able to turn up to my family and be like okay

Dad I know you've worked all your life here's here's this enjoy it what's the exit strategy per say I don't know anything else so why would I want to leave. How are you going to get the billion if you don't leave will do it in profits.

No I don't I don't want I don't want a billion dollars in my bank account that's that's not needed but when you say what's the exit strategy I 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 wood like even bringing my fitness into this thing is my brand and like I've been able to then build two for seven to this brand which is actually just like more of a passion project for me then

building a business and even all the athletes that are involved like I'm able to. 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 when your identity and your profession become so intrinsically linked.

There's a cost to that right because it must feel you know you talked about back back bit backs being against the wall it got if the brand were to go down if the revenue started to plummet and it went out of the world or whatever they call it like it just was no pop not popular anymore that's linked to your like self esteem and you're like self worth and your identity.

I think you're honestly yeah fucks with your fox with your confidence but it also gives you a realization that you're not super human and you can't do everything and not everything you touch turns the gold and then you got to go back to the drawing board and do it again. 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.

Last a few days and I'll speak to Spenny about it a lot over them few days and he'll reassure that something else is going to 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 realize like no this is for the long term like the future is this is in 10 years let's look back at this as like a learning curve.

And amongst all of this you've still got figure had have a life like a personal life because regardless of how ingeniously connected you are to the brand represent you're still going to need to have a life is still going to need to be a George in there somewhere. Yeah and I never really did for a long time past 10 years of not really had a life. Not much nothing outside of represent but I've built represent into my life.

And 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. Yeah even the weekends when there's nothing to do I'm just in there because I've got to make. That's when I realized so that's some days where you'd be sat at home on your own no one would be messaging you can't do anything with people in the business because it's their time off with the families.

That's when I realized like fuck I'm like I'm probably too bought into this. Were you lonely? Alone but never lonely never I never got to the point where I felt lonely maybe maybe a little bit but like I would I would distract myself with going working out five hours. You know I'll just point my headphones in and listening to a book and just just going and coming back and then the sundays done anyway. Sundays are one of my worst days because I didn't have anyone to do anything with.

Like I'd gone I'd gone train at a local gym where there's a big community there for the from six a.m. till nine a.m. And I come home and I just sit there and think when's it Monday? That's funny. Takes my home like what your upsurge about oh we're actually up in Scotland doing this trip and I'm like fuck I'm going to see my mom. So yeah I guess I guess there is a little bit of loneliness in there. Yeah I was lonely but I didn't know it at the time.

Yeah I didn't know it in hindsight because I look back at the way I was living and right yeah I was filling the gap. The sundays Saturday some evenings holidays even Christmases like yeah because I was in Manchester my family in the southwest.

I was filling it with work like right often just like pointless work 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 lot of things down that you need to do that next week or but you need a team to do anything. Like I can't get anything done without the team and that's that's one thing I would realize every weekend like I'm wasting my time pretending to work. It's exactly what I was doing.

Relationships romantic relationships. 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. People ask me about this all the time which is yeah you know how important is the environment on personal and professional success.

I think it's everything think it 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 Joel 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 always doing what you want to do or you actually inspires you and just clear out all the bullshit and you're going to be so much more in your in the right head space. Basically do something like that. Did you do that did you clear out? Yeah. Did it a lot of times. Got a lot of bad messages from doing it. Really in full time. Yeah why don't you follow me explain it to him.

Yeah just tell him how it is just say look man I don't want to watch you sit anymore. So romantic relationships then. How has that been because it must must be pretty tricky with the level of obsession that you have to maintain a healthy happy romantic relationship. 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. Why didn't it work?

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 were 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 got to you got to love yourself first right. And then after that I just kind of just said now I'm not doing it and didn't open till recently really didn't entertain it at all for so many years.

You got a girlfriend? How about now? No or not really kind of question the same way. She got a boyfriend. She's got a boyfriend. Are you a little bit you're an avoidant aren't you do you know the attachment styles have you had about the attachments? No, I saw three attachment styles you've got the secures they're the ones that just have a perfect relationships right you know they're like no problems they're like you know and then you've got the anxious ones who.

Klingy like maybe like they need like attention. Yeah exactly and then you've got the avoidant who kind of run right you strike me as an avoidant. I don't know what I am. I don't I really don't know I'm definitely not an attachment one now 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 is my life I'm doing this all the time when they want to see you and they want to want your attention and stuff but now like hiring Spaniard having more time and actually coming moving out here I've got time now like my days done way before what it was at home I would work from

or 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. and I got 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 an 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 goals and things like that and how's that going?

Hey, I guess I'm not having 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 well 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 starting to try and get a

like a guilt 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 really yeah yeah I would wake up the next day we like fuck up like spent four hours with this person that I'm not interested in seeing that's what I've wasted four hours what I could have been working could have been building the brand could have been doing other things sounds like a lot when I say a lot I mean like a lot I wait to carry yeah

like to not be able to go on a date with someone for four hours without waking up the next day feeling anxious yeah about how you spend your time it feels like your passions become a bit of a prison yeah self-inflicted prison but I love it and and it's a privilege to have it but I'm starting learning like I said I'm kind of got a girlfriend right now I'm kind of got a girlfriend you're in so much trouble you have no idea that's fine

she's like oh George on a podcast I have listened to this he's gonna click it we'll do a chapter on YouTube which is called George's girlfriend we'll put it in the trailer you're gonna be you're gonna be serious absolutely fine Valentine's Day yesterday and you're throwing under the bus

it sounds like a little bit of a prison yeah you know not being able to take your foot off the pedal at all without feeling anxious and are you happy yeah and what does that mean that means that I wake up I'm working thankful for what I've got on 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 want to do and that is the work I guess most of the time we know when people talk about world-class balance what's your honest opinion of that bullshit if you actually want to 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 have acid 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 what are you willing to sacrifice for that everything whatever it takes why not I'm already into it now so I've got to go fall on

look Kobe Bryant wasn't doing three throws at fucking three amp for no reason are you got you got to be the best you got to do everything right so we talk about the cost that comes with that and the sacrifice are you willing to sacrifice you not having a family yourself for the time being yeah maybe later on in life when it when it becomes something that I can step aside from even more than yeah

you're gonna want to step aside from it because you're getting anxiety doing four-hour dates I am but I'm learning I'm learning I'm starting to do it I guess yeah you've seen progress in that definitely yeah I think it's just about building that muscle of understanding you can do other things and realizing it's not going to come crashing down

if you take your foot off the break for a second but still knowing that you're giving it your all when you are in it 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 because because it got so popular that it becomes uncool do you worry about that as a risk factor for represent so that's like a life cycle right and that comes every couple years or every seven years 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 until that goes mainstream which I think usually happens probably at like two fifty three hundred million revenue I don't it's not a worry as such at the moment I used to worry about a lot but like when spenny came in who's handling a five hundred million dollar business is like

we barely touch in the sides 20% of our revenues in the US that's only twenty million dollars it could sell twenty million dollars out of L.A. and not see the product for the next six months you won't even see someone wearing it so at this point no but it is something that we will always think about and always you've always got a limited distribution and make sure you sell it in the right places and look we are still like a luxury brand we're in the best stores in the world

like it's not like you can walk into a pack sun and pick us up so it's still not a mainstream brand and it's expensive I was wondering if it if that's less of a threat on the twenty four seven side of things where it's more about utility and less about fashion

because you know everyone wears Nike and no one's like oh my god I'm not wearing Nike because they're right you know yeah biggest spots for brand in the world and how are they able to tear a Travis Scott or a virgin love Jordan one that's going for five thousand dollars but they're still selling tracks at twenty dollars and you can still see everyone in gold gym to everyone in putting equinox wearing it so there's just tears to everything right there's a trickle down system with everything

I wonder if that's big is that because it's like more of a utility product than a fashion product I think so with Nike yeah definitely because there's not really like a fashion brand that's able to sell like a twenty dollar item and then like a

Ralph Lauren really today's yeah keep an expensive stuff if you look at look 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 revenues done through

Outlook at twenty dollar pollos or fifteen dollar pollos 60% of their sales in a pollot up which I'm not exactly sure on but that's what I hear so there's ways you can I guess smoke and mirror it disguised things and do other things but for us like 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 tear things to an extent what are the most important because I think most people

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 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 yeah what are those principles that you would maybe say to a 18 year old George or to that killing your DMs that's asking for the principles principles that only you could have learned in hindsight I think it's about creating the DNA of what the brand is and stick into that not bearing 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 true 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 in 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 for seven and represent two for seven looks like represent but it's active what

it's not like it's a whole different thing that looks like Luda lemon like it is still looks like represent so I think making sure the DNA in the brand is very like visible where does the DNA come from?

just personal preference what we like to wear what I what I look 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 even missing or we just want for ourselves to work and what would you say about hard work as a principle?

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 so I think it's all about just like going all in on something that you own I think it's hard if you were just a small minority shareholder and something like that then is not really your passion it's someone else's or it's a big group of people

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 that's toxic yeah don't care what's toxic that word is just makes no sense you're going to encourage people to be burnt out

yeah I think you can come out the other side of burnt out like 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 is a bit too much you carry on doing it you're going to come out of it

it's not like it's not like you're just going to end nothing ends you just figure out different ways to actually make it successful or you'll something or work and you'll be like oh fuck then your energy goes back up and you start going down there 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 there's gonna be a kid listening right now that's like 18-16 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 is the first thing to get the the wheels in motion 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 we've working out with creating a product we've building a brand with relationships whatever it's discipline over motivation motivations are small thing that can last two minutes or an hour motivation can come from listening to a song on your iPod

if you've got discipline you're willing to do it every single day of your life and knowing that it's going to take so long to do it you just get up and do it you don't even think about motivation and what is discipline then discipline is an instruction manual like what is discipline to you?

yeah I guess it is an instruction manual I guess it's a list of things that you must do for yourself to become what you want to be and I guess it's a deciding factor on whether you're going to do something or not 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 and then you're living your life by that as opposed to how you feel every day yeah yeah when you put it that way that that's what it is and eventually it becomes part of it it becomes a muscle right and you grow that muscle and you constantly like breaking it down and re-growing 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 a lot of people just don't think they're moldable though because back to what we were saying earlier but we just don't think that we can change ourselves

yeah but your evidence of that really remarkable evidence of that yeah and there's a lot of people out there there's so many inspiring stories out there on social media and 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 are you confident?

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 confident would you have doubts about business? just like you said before maybe one day 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 the key to growing a business is making sure that it's scalable

and this comes with integrating into the right platforms early in the game to support your growth a platform that's helped me and my team to do this is Shopify who I'm sure you know by now because they do sponsor this podcast

Shopify is a commerce platform revolutionising millions of businesses worldwide we recently launched our second version of the Darivisio conversation cards on Shopify which would not have been possible without Shopify when I started podcasting an online store was the furthest thing from my mind

but now thanks to how simple it is to use the platform it's made this whole process so unbelievably easy it's actually the internet's best converting checkout 36% better on average compared to other leading commerce platforms if you guys haven't tried Shopify and your business owners go and try it now because you can sign up for a $1 per month trial period just by heading to Shopify.com slash Bartlett and you can get started for $1 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 gonna just you know I'm done I'll probably cry yeah definitely and I'll just try and figure out why what it is and then trying to get him back in said no I'm done and just that was it forever he had suck he had suck a lot

because since school we've been together doing this forever so for him then not to be there it'd be it'd be pretty shitty because like who are you doing it for then like I fucking die for Mike do you know what I mean if someone had someone said I'm gonna I've got to kick you out of the business

but Mike stays I'd go like this isn't really for me I guess it's for him and it's kind of at that point where that will can't happen he enjoys it too much we love doing this it's interesting that thought experiment that kind of illuminates much of the reason why you're doing it in the first place

the first thing you said was who you were doing it for then yeah but if I asked you earlier who you're doing this for you would I don't know if you would have said I'm doing it for Mike nah I am doing it for Mike I'm doing it for the team I'm doing it for my family definitely

but if the team leaves you're still gonna crack on yeah it's just a new team yeah but it might leave it might leave so I don't know if I carry on that's so difficult to answer I had a business partner and the reason I asked that question is I thought the same

but 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 get to finish mine and you get excited when they get excited or like if Mike sends me a design

that he's in love with and I'm like fuck and hell yeah this is insane and you just have that energy between you if that wasn't there anymore yeah yeah suck how important do you think having a co-founder is? I think massively I know earlier when you said you get lonely like I think that is a major block in loneliness because he is always there and I have like I always have him to lean into and I would never put pressure and stress on him in a personal way but I know he's there if that happened

so I think 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 what have you learnt from the bad people that you've hired? the ones that didn't work? in terms of what I say that I mean what have you learnt is a bad quality in someone to work with to build a business with to employ?

Stuck in old ways and not being open-minded to change I think a lot of people are very restrictive especially if you bring in someone higher up from them then some people will always like backfire against that and that's a bad quality and it's a human nature and 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 spani always tell us me this is some people that will take you to 50 mil

and there's some people that will take you to 250 mil and there's some people that will 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 fall in people at that time however far they go with the brand

I actually had a conversation with a founder the other day who's 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 that were probably

the ones that were willing to come and work for us that were also the ones we could maybe manage and then the business grows and the problem you have is the next set of talent you need to get you up to the next rung in the ladder they need to come in above

the people that were there from the beginning and the originals don't love that because that kind of blocks their progression that's what they think 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'll get more knowledge out of it if that person does come in but you guys getting away yeah you guys getting away and like I said some people are not open minded to that and people get comfortable they get comfortable in that position that they're in and they don't want anyone to repel into and they don't want to do this what is what's next for you? this year? yeah start of the air 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 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 why stores?

because people are doing that's going against the way that the world's going everything's getting more difficult that's what I think that's a major advantage like same thing happening covered everyone pulled away from their productions and stopped selling garments for a while

whereas 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 store aspect it's like we have these communities all over the globe where people want to be a part of the brand and the show and up to run clubs and we're going to do one in Dubai or 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 just walking into a store and seeing it on a rail I'll 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 out out globally and then 247 has a lot of focus this year usually it's just like a couple 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 the concept for that is maybe next year but not this year and then I'm building another brand called Cadence which is an electrolyte drink high sodium first ready to drink sodium in a can and the market

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's because going back to 2019-20 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 I don't get headaches anymore and it just seems like the salt that's in there is what is causing 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 and I tested it out with a collaboration we did earlier last year and it seemed our customer really wanted it and put it under that umbrella and see how it goes what is the goal here? I think the goal is like I mean just generally like with all of this stuff like what's the goal?

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 bad product and not yet everyone talks about brand you know you got drinks you got the 247 range you got the sort of original represent range what is the finish line here?

That's the good thing I don't think there is one I don't think there is a limit to what it can be and what this thing that started offers 25 screen printed t-shirts can become over the next a brand with Michael and go listen we'll get to two billion

we'll send it there and we'll just get a couple of yachts No, like look at Ben Francis he got valued at a billion he's still in the business it's not a big doesn't become about the money it's not about the money it's about what you actually able to do and do some things different

and like not be conventional and try and just I just want to do something that no one's done you know why not I'm playing demos advocate here because I think some people think that this is all kind of like a means to an end with entrepreneurship generally it's like a means to an end

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 want to die on the journey at some point Well you're speaking to like a lot of successful people and people that have been in it for a long time

you're not speaking to those guys walking around on the street saying I'm going to build this and I'm going to sell it in three years for six billion or yeah yeah yeah yeah this is it this may exit strategy and they've just started they never work no one ever that never works for anybody

like that's the bullshit way of thinking you're talking to the people that have really bought into their own fucking brand and they're living it and they're loving it and it's for forever I guess and it's a mission isn't it there yeah that's their mission a lot yeah is it's a mission

and there's something different between a business and a mission that's clearly what you've encapsulated what are you what are you good at are you good at business I'm good at understanding business but when you say good at business what do you mean I mean you can define it yourself

but I guess what people typically think of as businesses like operations, finance, processes no I'm not I'm not not at all 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 got a business to own a business

yeah 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 they're way better than you at it as soon as we started doing that that's when the business took off

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 going to be leaving it for no the question that's been left for you is what is something in your life that you assume to be true but you haven't yet deeply questioned

that's quite funny because it's something that I'm really interested in but like don't talk about a lot I guess whether like the aliens are amongst us not what I was expecting you to say 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 the fact that like there's all these different stories and conspiracies and things that are going on constantly especially no more than ever 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 this is this and these are with us think it's just amazing going into like the world of like simulations and AI and all that stuff now so I saw that think I'm out with Chatchy PT the other day where they can create they can do text to video yeah and that's what I

saw the first reply to Sam Alkman's tweet said this is the technology that was used to create us 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 HD that's like 85 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 the world yeah yeah yeah so it might even be a video game 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 because you fall into a little bit of a hole yeah you literally have no idea who we are what we're doing we're here and yeah is there an alternate universe or are we just living in someone else's head?

I don't know so interesting thank you Georgia thank you for a number of reasons thank you for dressing me for the last three years because I think you're close to the best thank you it's a very subjective thing but in terms of quality and consideration sometimes you can tell when someone has gone

the extra mile and a piece of work and you can tell the difference again with brands where you know someone didn't really care about the process and they were maybe copying something else and then there's this other brand called represent where it's clearly coming from someone somewhere's heart

and that own unique vision that's why I've always loved the brand and I've been thinking about it and I've been thinking about it and I've been thinking about it and I've been thinking about the 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 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 I'm a huge supporter of both of you and on like a human level you're just both just And on paper, you know, people might let them go. He has a lot of reasons not to be.

This guy looks like fucking something that was literally drawn on a piece of paper by an alien. But he's got this incredible business, but he's a really good human being. And so it's 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. I think that's something that the world needs a lot more of. So I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. I love that.