The 25 year old talks to Alice Audley about regrouping, rebranding and making his own rules
Photography: Kyle Galvin / Lighting: Sam Hern / Styling: Barbara Klekowska, Wolf and Badger Studios / Grooming: Louise Hall
A decade on from uploading his first YouTube video aged 15, Alfie Deyes is finally giving himself time to step back from the online world and take stock of his life.
First, he stopped uploading videos onto his main YouTube channel, PointlessBlog (5.5 million+ subscribers), and next, he took a break from daily vlogging on PointlessBlogVlogs (4 million+ subscribers).
“Turning 25 recently made a big difference,” Alfie says.
“I was looking at my content and thinking ‘is this what I – as a 25 year old – want to be making or am I just making it for the sake of it?’
“Because I have been making videos non-stop for so long, I have never given myself the time to step back and look at the bigger picture of ‘what else do I want to be making?’ or ‘what else do I want to be doing?’
“The only way I can describe it… and this might sound crazy… is: I’m on the train and I’m the driver and I’m shovelling coal to make it go – that’s views, that’s my job, that’s what I do, that’s all I’ve done and know. If I stop shovelling, the train is going to stop and I don’t know where I’m going to stop or what I’m going to do when it stops – and I love shovelling the coal, so do I stop and risk where I’m going to be or do I just carry on?
“This year I did decide to take a step back and have an overall look at every aspect of what I’m doing – whether that’s video content, personal life, who I’m hanging out with, whether I’m seeing my friends and family enough, what I want to do longer term and what business stuff I want to do – where I want to invest.”
Alfie’s break has given him a fresh perspective, and our interview ties neatly in with what will become his next chapter – a rebrand of both his image and his content. One that will see him as less of a tween magazine poster boy, and more of a 25-year-old multihyphenate – something that those who know him, see him as already. Indeed, over the past few years,
I’ve been intrigued by Alfie Deyes. He always seems to crop up during interviews with other influencers (of all ages) – he’s the one they watch, and praise for his entrepreneurial flair.
In issue 13, Caroline Hirons went as far as to describe him as ‘a genius’. On the shoot today, he’s warm and quizzical, and genuinely interested in everyone and everything that’s going on.
He also manages to navigate our interview cleverly – not that I’m trying to catch him out – but if there are questions that he doesn’t want to answer, such as ‘do you think Jake Paul is a sociopath?’, rather than say ‘I’m not comfortable answering that’, he laughs the question off.
And what a laugh he has. It brews deep in his chest, his lungs fill to the brim, and then he tilts his head back, slaps his hands on his thighs and emits a laugh that engulfs the room in its warmth – when you hear it, you can’t help but smile. Alfie really is extremely likeable. A clever and likeable entrepreneur.
“I’ve always said, since I was a tiny kid, that I was going to be my own boss one day. I’m not even any good at art, but I remember when I was young folding an A4 piece of paper out of my family printer, drawing a flower on it and writing ‘happy birthday’, and then putting it on a table outside of my house to sell it to people walking past,” Alfie remembers. His business portfolio looks a bit different today.
“I’ve got a few different companies,” he says.
“I’ve got my YouTube and social media, I’ve invested quite heavily in property and I’ve got a joint company with my girlfriend [Zoe Sugg].”
That company is A-Z creatives.
“A-Z is an umbrella company. It has all of my team in there, all of my girlfriend’s team in there – and then if there’s anything else bigger picture that we think would utilise the skills of both teams, we can do that too.
We’ve got legal, we’ve got finance, we’ve got photographers, designers, assistants, brand partnerships, office managers, social media managers – there are so many skill sets. It’s basically an office full of tonnes of creatives – and anything that we want to do, we’ve got the team to be able to do that.”
Creating, innovating and doing what hasn’t been done is what drives Alfie. He was the first YouTuber in the UK to release a book (The Pointless Book) and ended up shutting down London’s Piccadilly when 11,000 people turned up to his first signing event, he launched a pop-up merch store in London last year, which saw 38,000 people come over the course of a week and he has now got A-Z, too.
Although he’s experienced the highs of running businesses, he’s also had to experience the lows – including people stealing money from him.
“I’m in a legal case at the moment with someone who I employed for two years, who stole unbelievable amounts of money from me,” he says. Does this make it hard for him to trust people in business?
“I think you’ve got to trust somebody until they give you a reason not to trust them. The positive out of this is that it’s worth paying your head of finance – paying the right team because they’re watching over everything and making sure everything’s in shape.”
Learning to trust in others and delegate has been one of the biggest lessons for Alfie.
“Two years ago, I would have said ‘if you want something done, do it yourself’. I’ve learnt that quote couldn’t be more wrong for me.
Am I going to be doing my own tax return? Am I going to do my own legal if I have to do a court case or I’m being sued for something [Alfie was sued by businesses in Piccadilly for loss of footfall in the area after that fateful book signing]? Am I going to defend myself? I can’t be doing that, so I do have to let go of certain areas.”
That said, Alfie does deal with a lot himself – and he thinks that having direct relationships with people is incredibly important. Normally interviews, like the one I’m doing with Alfie, will be organised through an agent or assistant.
Alfie responded to the email enquiry direct and then followed up with a call to talk it through. He sorted out his own travel up from Brighton and arrived exactly when he said he would. The whole experience of working with Alfie was seamless.
“I’m all about relationships with people,” he says.
“I know it’s not always possible, but I try my best to be on top of everything that’s going on in any of my businesses – whether that’s dealing with people to get one of my flats fixed after it got flooded when the tenant was on holiday, or jumping on the phone with brands to discuss campaigns – what went well, what didn’t go so well, what we can improve, how we can work together better in the future etc.
I’m all about ‘just text me’ – like don’t bother texting my team, just text me. I love being that point of contact and seeing everything that comes into my inbox.”
Being hyper-aware and at the forefront of his business and brand means that Alfie is also quick to react when things go wrong and owns his mistakes. Case in point, his infamous ‘Living off £1 for the day’ video.
“I’m the first person to talk about the video and explain how that video happened, how I feel looking back on it and moving forward how I’m going to not make another piece of content like that again.
When you’re sharing stuff online and making it public, everybody is open to criticism. You’ve got to be able to either back yourself up, say why you did it and how you think it’s ok, or you have a wider view on a piece of content and you say ‘look, ok, I messed up’.
I’ve done my fair share of stupid things as well and I’m the first person to talk about that and say I’ve messed up.”
It’s only in the last year, since Alfie left his management company (Gleam), that being at the forefront and as the main point of contact has been possible.
“I’m not managed by anyone,” he says. “I find that a lot of management companies in this space are so busy answering the phone to potential deals coming through that it’s very reactive. Like ‘hey, it’s Apple, we’ve got a brand deal for this amount of money, we’re looking for talent’ and then it goes down to one of the talent.
What I want to do with our team is to sit down and plan the brands I’d love to work with, then we give them a call and sit down with them in a meeting and say ‘we could work together’.
It’s very proactive rather than reactive and it means that I’m very heavily aligned with the brands we’re working with.” The response to brand deals has changed in recent years, Alfie says.
“I think brand campaigns have become a lot more accepted, which is amazing.
“Back in the day if you did a brand deal it was like ‘you’ve sold out! Oh my god why are you pretending you like this product, that’s not cool!’, whereas now so many brands are getting on board and the scale is so big – almost every company now works with influencers – it means that the quality has stepped up.
“Now influencers, or whatever you want to call us, can work with brands that are truly aligned with them.”
When Alfie does sit down with a brand to discuss working together, he makes sure he knows exactly what they want to achieve and what their KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are.
“Say it’s a shoe company. The brand would say something like ‘Hey, I’ve got this pair of shoes that we want promoting and we’ve got X amount of money’.
I’d then say ‘you’ve got these shoes, what do you want? Do you want people to buy this pair? Do you want people to buy other shoes from your brand? Do you want people to know about this pair? Do you want people just to see them? Tell me, and I’ll tell you the best way you can get that’.
And I’ll tell them if that’s not me. I’m very straightforward.
“I’ve had campaigns recently that I’ve turned down because they’ve said ‘we really want this’ and I’m like ‘I’m not the person for that’. I’ll always recommend other people.”
Although brand deals contribute to Alfie’s business, they aren’t his sole income: “I’m very fortunate to be in a position where I don’t need to say yes to every brand deal to pay my mortgage.”
Moving forward, he says, he would like to continue to diversify and expand his businesses, “In the next 12 months, I would like to branch out into some new ventures – physical things – that people can go and experience.”
His decision to build up businesses outside of his personal brand is another clever move, but don’t panic – he’s not retiring from YouTube anytime soon. Think of it as a sabbatical.
Next year, Alfie says, is all about returning refreshed, rebranded and “making sure I’m creating better content than I ever have before”.