Building W.A.S. Entertainment from the Ground Up

Jakob Wredstrøm

In another episode of our Founder Series, we will talk with Jakob Lygegård Fries. He is a successful manager from Denmark and manages a lot of really interesting bands. I didn't believe in him the first time I met him. I have changed my mind. Full-on for his story. Jakob, welcome to Sound Connections, all the way from Denmark. We have known each other for a few years. You're based in Copenhagen? Yep. I met you the first time a few years ago when I was young and you were equally as young, I think we were around the same age where you were trying to start a management company you've been going on for a few years. And I've been following you for five years time and really figuring out that you actually do a really good job. You position yourself really well in the industry. And right now we're doing a series on the podcast about founders. So we're gonna have a talk about your company and your journey and being a bit personal and learn from that. If I remember the first time I met you I was actually working with an artist to the word name unnamed. That was really talented and I think there was a brief talk about maybe a management deal and I remember I had a meeting with you and I was like who is this guy and I was I was I was a bit maybe overly skeptic and that I believe maybe I on that artist behalf maybe regret a bit because I think maybe that could have been a really good match. Could you tell about yourself and your journey into what is now WOSS Entertainment? Yeah, well, I guess when we met around, that was 2018, 2019, I guess, I had just really started my own company called Suburban management and consulting, I think was the formal name. Yeah, and I have like a background playing as a musician myself, played in several very cool, unsuccessful indie rock bands, like between 2010 and yeah, up until like 2015, I guess. And yeah, I started out actually managing my own band, like perhaps many others have done before me.

Jakob Wredstrøm

We were signed to a Danish major label, was set to release our debut album and I thought like, this is going to be huge. Let's just like see you at the red carpet. But quite quickly I discovered that getting a quite big major label deal in Denmark wasn't necessarily enough for you to like just make it in the music industry, unfortunately. So I kind of found out that there was like a lot of more elements that you needed to be aware of to actually have a successful artist career. So I started managing my own band and then we had like a rehearsal space in the suburbs. That's why I called it suburban management. And some of my friends' bands were also there, recording, rehearsing. And I started managing them, a couple of bands from there. Very limited what I actually did, but we were hanging out a lot. And I was the only one who were able to use your calendar. So I got that. That was my job.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Had quite a small success. I think it was around 2017. And then I thought to myself, it would be fun for me to try managing bands and artists who were not friends of mine. Just to see if this was actually something that I could do. And I signed a couple of bands, like during, that was like 2017, 2018, maybe just before we met. Yeah, and then it's such a long journey, though it's only like five years, but there's happened so many things. I was doing management and one of the first managers playbook is to try to get your artist signed to a record label. I couldn't do that, maybe because some of the things I was working on back then was quite niche and alternative guitar driven. Certainly not what was like charting back then, still isn't. So I, and I needed to, we needed to release music. So I discovered a way how to just make a label imprint under like the management company. That company was called We Are Suburban. And that went on for yeah, also a couple of years until I became really busy and decided to team up actually with one of my very old friends, Matthias, who I went to high school with, and Hicham Maroon, who was just finishing his law degree back then, because I needed help really. I was like really stressed and had quite an amount of success, but it was like way too much work. So in order to maintain like my own stress levels, but also trying to build something that was sustainable. We joined forces and formed Watch Entertainment in the end of 2019. So just before the pandemic. Yeah. It makes sense. It's so interesting. What was your... How were you met by the industry about you trying to make this management? Did you get any reaction from people in general?

Jakob Wredstrøm

People didn't really give a fuck. No, not at all. I think as you also, like when you started, you told me that when you met me, yeah, around 2018 or something like that, you were overly skeptical. I think that's a very natural way of like acting in this industry, being a bit skeptical also because like people might like, you need to prove yourself or these stats, that's like the way other people sees it. And I think so many people start something up and call themselves, for instance, managers, artist managers, or publishers or what they call themselves. And things seem to like fizz out after like a year or something like that. So no, when I started, it was, I had not really any network in the industry besides musicians. So no, I had a really, really hard time of, yeah, creating a network for myself, like establishing my name. And that started to happen when some of my artists became, not commercially successful, but at least like getting recognition, then my name started to grow as well and the company's name started to grow as well. But yeah. There's not really that. Not that much help to get as a young startup in the music industry, at least not in Denmark. No, that's definitely also something I've met a lot and, you know, through my own journeys. But you decided to take in some partners. Did they have any, that's called a connection or respect in the music industry or were they equally, well, at that point you were established a bit, but were they also like totally new into the industry? Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, I was definitely like the most established, I think. Mathias, like my old friend, yeah, he was educated from the conservatory as a sound technician. And the reason why he joined me was that he was producing all the records that I was working on. Yeah. So at one point I became quite tired of paying him salary to produce records. And so I convinced him into like, because we didn't have any money. So like the initial business strategy was to like me finding the talent and like building the strategy, him producing and mixing and mastering. Yeah. With everything. Yeah. And then, yeah, it's just doing everything by ourselves because we didn't have any money. So that was a way of keeping the costs down and just trying to get artists' names out there. So, yeah, and Hicham, who was finishing his law degree, had absolutely no experience in the industry. He went to preschool, like school, with my wife, and he wrote me on Facebook the most When you read it back, like when you read it again, now it's really, it's really fun message but he had no idea at all about what he was doing. But I thought that because I consider, at least back then I considered myself as like more of a creative type. And Matthias is definitely also like the more creative type. So I thought it would make sense to have someone on board who I like the more like being like the administration. And I thought, well, yeah, a lawyer, that might be a good idea. So he joined as well. Yeah, and then, yeah. How did you guys survive? Did you have like side jobs or was this like your full on? The first, so the first.

Jakob Wredstrøm

The first year, we made no money, basically. So I think I had a job in an audio book recording studio where I was monitoring the computers whilst people were recording the books. So if anything happened with the computer, like if it went in shutdown mode, then I had to restart the computer. So that was a very nice job because I could just sit with my laptop and work like a company business. And then like once or twice a day I had to get up and like turn on a computer. So I, that was like part-time or something like that. Yeah. But we didn't, actually it was like, I think this, the 1st of January was the first time we actually got a... can you say a real grownup salary up until then we have we have we've paid we've had a lot of employers so they got paid obviously but the three founders we've just been yeah I think I think I think the last like year and a half like in 2022 we were like on 17,000 kroners a month wage but like by the end of the month then there was no money left when we had paid our employees, then we had to go off salary. So we did that for like one and a half years. So no, it's been very on off and it has definitely not been financially secure in any ways. No. That's a really interesting thing. And I think we'll come back to that later in the podcast about the finance side of it. And I don't know how much you're willing to share, but there's also been some, as far as I know, like some movements and like some other partners getting in. Yeah. But one of the things you mentioned is, you know, the lack of access to information or knowing what to do. Like, how did you learn what steps to take? Was it just trial and error or did you have people around you that helped you learn? Or like, what was the situation for you guys? I think it was a lot of trial and error, which I think it should be like when, like the only way to actually, especially in this industry where, you know, no,

Jakob Wredstrøm

artist career path is the same. So I think the only way to really get into it is just to try things out and learn from your mistakes. And no, I didn't really have any mentors, unfortunately. There were some other independent music companies which I kind of looked up to. And I tried to get involved in the... the independent record label, what you call it, DUP, I think it's called. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. And some of those organizations to try to get some knowledge. But no, I think because this is a kind of a competitive, it's a very competitive industry as well. People are not that willing to necessarily share their own... experience and like, because I don't know, it might just be because it's so highly competitive, but maybe I've just been bad at asking for help. But to be honest, I've thought we've been doing this quite in our own way, which I'm proud of and which I also believe is one of the reasons why it's been a good journey so far. That makes sense. Right. I have a, I think a relatively interesting question because as a manager, you, of course a lot of your focus is on money. And then you also said a few minutes ago, you know, that, you know, money has been very scarce and sometimes nothing. When you've been working with, you know, let's say clients or ask us whatever has, has there sometimes come up the, the opinion that, oh, you guys are just greedy in a way. Like, you know, you guys want money for yourself. What's the relationship with your clients and money been? And how has your own storytelling been with, I actually don't make any money. Has that been a story thing or what's the dynamic been there? I think when an artist becomes more successful, not necessarily in a, I make a lot of money, but like when things start to go well, they become more aware of like, you're the percentage of their money that you actually make.

Jakob Wredstrøm

The work that you do to earn them. But starting out, this was not an issue because nobody made any money. But because we've always been hiring more staff whilst growing, I think our artists could see that the money that we did earn were actually reinvested in some ways. In staff that could benefit their career. So I think that way we were kind of avoiding that issue, but yeah, as soon as an artist figures out that money is there to be made, they become more aware of the work that we do. Yeah. But has it been hard for you to talk about, has there been like a sore point in management or what you experienced with it? No. Not really because up until recently, we, like Matthias and Shamil, I didn't make really any money. So it was kind of easy for me to say, you know, yeah, I'm sorry to hear that you don't make any money, but you need to know that I don't either. We're just like trying to get this, yeah, like get your career forward because in that way we're all happy. So I think that was kind of like just being really honest. Yeah. But at the same time, I think, you know, when you're very honest about your own position, then it's just easier that way. And it just, so I've from the beginning been quite honest about our financial position as a company as well, just to avoid any, and you know, yeah. So I think being honest makes sense when you're doing this. Yeah. So you started growing a team, but what was the success that made that possible? Did you have a certain amount of artists that started like playing a lot of live? What was the turning point for finances there? Yeah, I think some of our artists gained, we had like one or two, yeah, like from 2020 onwards, we had quite some success on the radio, on songs that we had the masters for. So that's the money.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And also, yeah, those artists started playing live. Also in Denmark, like, because at that time we were doing all product management, all video, social media, everything, graphics in-house as well. So we had kind of a good, not a good, but a solid business foundation where we could like fundraise some of the money. And then some of it was very much like, 50% of our earnings came from fundraising and 50% came from like commercial revenue in some way. Yeah, so that was kind of how we made it work. This combined with Hicham, Matthias and I not paying out any salary, and also like being a very young company in the music industry, like you are able to get people to work in your company. for not that much money. And the fun thing is that like. Some of the staff that are still here has been there from the beginning almost. So people have stayed and have been growing also in salary up until now. So I think it's been quite sustainable in that way. Yeah. One of the things that's really maybe weird for outsiders to see is like you guys have had a lot of success with some of your really recent bands like Blazed. You know, I haven't been living in Denmark in the time they've blown up, but like I've been following from the sidelines. They've, you know, they're huge. So there's also the illusion from the outside, like the management representatives, you guys, you know, must be cashing in like crazy. No, no. But.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Do you meet that sort of misunderstanding through friends and family that's watching you guys grow? Yeah, I think people believe that as soon as you have a song on the radio, you must be earning big bucks. And that's obviously completely misunderstood. But yeah, I think when... Because we've had so, and that's kind of been one of the fun things for me to experience because we've had quite a lot of artists who have been played a lot on the radio, played like the tastemaker festivals, but not really making it like on real commercial terms before Blist. And it's been quite fun for me also to find out like how much it actually takes, like how big an artist needs to grow before. you and the artist as well makes real money. So yeah, right now, yeah, I think like my friends and family thinks that like we're just cashing in all the time. But to be honest, like we've had, I think BEST have had like success for like one and a half year. And we've had like, just finished the first big festival season, which was a huge investment year. So to be honest, like, yeah, we do make some money on this band now, but it's not that much. It's going to be a lot more in the future, hopefully. But it takes time. It really takes time and you really need to hit it on the big stage before it's actual money. Yeah. But what's your emotions towards that? The patience you need to possess and... you sacrifice, you need to sacrifice in order to build this. You know, you guys, as you say, now you have a band that's hugely successful and you're like five years in, and you're still not like, at least on own terms, like there yet. Are you okay? Like, how do you do it? Like, what's your mental approach to it? I think, I think like now,

Jakob Wredstrøm

Now I have a feeling that it's been worth it. And that's not to say that we've made it, but I think we've come a good way now where we're financially stable. And I think it's been worth it. But

Jakob Wredstrøm

It's been a lot of sacrifices, obviously, both on a personal level and also we've lost a lot of money. And I dropped out of my education with a plan to come back and finish it, which I've never done and I think I never will. So there's been a lot of sacrifices. Right now, I think it's been worth it. Also because I can see a future for the company, and I can see the future for myself in this company. Like my private life, my family life, and the balance between working here makes sense. And being independent. Being your own, like, the founder of your own company comes with a lot of privileges as well. Like especially when having a family, like I can pick up my kid when I want. I don't have to like ask anyone if I can do anything. So right now I'm at a place where I think it's totally worth it. But yeah, it's been a long journey and there's been many... many situations where I've been questioning myself, the company, my place in the industry. And I might, that might happen again at some point. But yeah, but right now I think I'm in a good place. How's your partner's role in the business? I know for myself, I'm married and I have kids the same way that you have. What's her opinion been around you guys, that you actually diving into this over time? Well, even though we've been together a long time, but she knew when she got to know me that music was just like my thing. And I think she quite liked the transition because we were also seeing each other when I was a musician.

Jakob Wredstrøm

So I think first and foremost, she appreciated the change, like from the kitchen to working on this side of the desktop. And she's just been part of the journey. And actually, what I forgot to mention was that she worked for Wash Entertainment like for a year, because she was like in between jobs and pregnant. So she had like, Yeah, so she worked for us like for nine months or something where she was handling all our communication. So she's been a part of this journey. But obviously like there has been times where, you know, I had to say to her like, sorry, but there's no money coming in this month. And she might have been a bit dissatisfied. But no. But I guess I think if you want to do this, you need the support. from your closest. And yeah, so that. Yeah, that's been very important to me. Yeah. That makes sense. As a company, you guys have also positioned yourself like quite interesting, let's call it politically, or you have taken a very strong stance against structural sexism in the industry. Can you just tell me a bit about that? What motivated you guys to be very vocal about this whole thing? I think that was around 2019, 2020, just in the beginning. We had signed a lot of non-male artists, not as a political project, but just that was the music that we thought was good. So we had a lot of non-male artists signed to our company and we could see that there was a misrepresentation. going on in the industry. It was clear and obvious like on the radio charts, on the streaming charts, on the festival rosters. So for us, it was kind of a way of supporting the artists that we worked with. We are three men founded this company. So it's not obviously I have my own opinion about how I would like society to look.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And I obviously believe, as many others, that equality should be everywhere also in the music industry. So I think it just started out as us trying to help our artists actually getting played on the radio. So how do you do that? I think we did a big, quite a big... That was just during the pandemic. So it was like a Zoom meeting, like a conference. where we invited the entire industry to talk about how we could improve the industry in regards to equality and structural sexism. And back then nobody knew about our company, but we invited everyone and a lot of people decided to show up. And I was on the radio in one of the bigger radio shows. discussing with some of the more established parts of the industry where like a David Goliath situation. Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

In reality, this was just something we did to help our artists, but it became kind of a marketing thing as well. I think people thought that as well, that was like a way for us like branding ourselves. That wasn't the initial thought, but it ended up quite good because when you're a new company and you're competing with so many established companies, you have to do something to like set yourself apart.

Jakob Wredstrøm

challenges in the industry just made our name like pop up on people's radar. Yeah. But you know, we're still continuing to work with these issues. So yeah, it's just a part of the DNA. Absolutely. And I think it was, even though it comes from a really real place, I also thought it was really smart. Like I think I've been to concerts of four of your artists before and... And they were all female artists in those cases. And they're amazing artists, but they also have, the sound is also a bit different. Like you guys don't do just normal mainstream pop. There's definitely an edge to it. So having this, let's call it political agenda or societal change agenda also resonates with the artists profiles you have. So for me, it was a really strong brand move. Yeah, and also just to say one thing, you know, I believe that the generation, like my generation and your generation and those younger than us are much more aware of these issues than the generations before us has been. So in order to create a company that's actually attractive to younger artists, songwriters, employees, I think you just need to be very... clear about your own values and how can we compete with a major label? We can't really because we don't have the finance at all. But if we have the values and we have a community feeling, then we can compete a bit. And that was what we did. So it was also a way for us just existing. And I think that's also in the industry at least. you know, me being away from Denmark, that's the sort of where I feel like you guys position yourself in the industry as like majorly important players because of that move. I think that's really interesting. You talked about you guys having the community aspect and stuff like that, but not necessarily the financial, financial availability to be, you know, working in that level.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Recently, you guys got some more money into the company. Can you tell a bit about what the reasoning was behind that and why you did that move? Yeah. Well, it started, it was kind of by accident, I think. At some point, we needed a new distributor or we were searching for a new distributor and we talked. to some of the majors just to hear what they're, how it could look working with them. And we had a meeting at Sony with their director and he was very open to working with us. He had been following our artists. This was like 2021, I think, 2022. And he was very keen to work with us. And then he suggested. How about something about you selling some of your company and getting some more money and then getting some more like some experience and some know-how. And I hadn't really thought about that, to be honest. I didn't create this company with any kind of exit strategy in mind. It was all very, yeah, just trying to create a job in the industry that you like. But, and at the beginning I was very much like, kuh, not gonna happen because this company was kind of formed in opposition to how the major part of the industry works. But we had talks and we could see how it could benefit our journey, our company, and our position. selling a minority part of the company. Yeah, so we did. And obviously, it's been, one of the very, very important reasons of why we did it as well was we were tired, like us founders of the company were tired of not knowing if we could pay salaries every month.

Jakob Wredstrøm

and that like, it was very stressful. So I thought that if we sell a minority part of the company and get some cash in, we can build the company, we can build it in a way where we only do things that we really want to do instead of trying to like, work with too many artists to try to get like, some kind of cash flow or. At some point, we started a booking department just to get some cash flow running, but we never really wanted to be booking agents. So this enabled us to just have financial stability and build the company in the way that we wanted to build it. You said at the start, you were very much in opposition to major labels. What was the change on a more emotional or value-based, your decisions on that, what changed? I think actually, because of all the talks that were going on regarding the whole Me Too and structural sexism in the industry, I think the entire industry more or less made it. are like in the process of making a change. So I thought that like working with majors now is way different than I think it was five years ago because I think every company now are way more considerate. And also I just think like I'm getting older and I'm maybe not that black and white anymore. I just think like, because when you are very young and you just like to be in opposition to everything. And also like my own experience of being an artist on a major label wasn't that good. So I had just like build this thing up in my head that like all things evil were majors. But to be honest, and this is kind of unfortunate, but the major...

Jakob Wredstrøm

Industry is so big. So it's like, it's like can't beat them, join them thing. Because I think like, if we, if we wanted to stay competitive and stay like growing and not just going bankrupt, we needed, we needed financial stability and we needed a partner who could advise us as well. Yeah. So it was really a decision based on business, but also like accepting that they might not be that evil in real life as I thought. That makes sense. And you know, yeah, I think that's really, really important that, you know, nuances, well, there's more nuances when you get older and you see more things. One of the things that I'm trying to work with is in general, like changing the relationship with the music industry and private capital. That's going to be a long journey. And what I'm working on is sort of providing opportunities for being competitive with the major companies, not necessarily through my company, but what I'm working with is large investors that are now venturing into the music space. So hopefully also in the future, if there's companies that also would like an alternative to the majors, because right now there's really no alternative. If you wanted to get money in the company, it was one of three companies, right? There wasn't really an alternative. No, no. Then it might be like people who just thinks it's cool to say that they own like part of a music company, but not really people with any know-how. So yeah, totally right. That's very limited. Your options are very limited. Yeah. Yeah, and that's a long journey. That's one of the things that I work on, but that's for another podcast, another time. This is really interesting. Like, okay, now you guys have a bit more money. You have some experience now, and then also you have some sort of advisory position from Sony that can help you on more stuff that you need help with. What is the next step in WAS Entertainment? What's gonna happen? Actually, it's quite... Well, the next step is quite hard to predict, but what we did actually when we sold...

Jakob Wredstrøm

A minority of the company, we changed everything. So we went from being more or less a 360 company, doing management, label, publishing, booking, to now mainly focusing on artist management and publishing. And we have downsized because back to the thing about like doing what you really want to do instead of what you've... need to do to keep something running, we decided to just downsize and focus on our core business, which is obviously management and also publishing because I think the dynamic between those two things are quite interesting. So right now we're five people working here, which is like, because like one year ago we were 10, maybe 12 with interns. So I had this, I really wanted to downsize and try to find out like what do we actually wanna do for the future. But right now we have a fine business running, we're five people working here, we have a very successful bands and some very interesting bands on the way. So it's a fine sustainable thing going on right now. But... What I want this company to turn into is actually in the future, trying to build like a management agency. Because artist management in Denmark at least, I don't know how it is in Norway or Sweden, but in Denmark it's very independent and it's very much like individual people managing their friend. And not necessarily.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Separated and not very organized. So I have this vision that it should be a possibility to actually make like you have big booking agencies, you have your record labels that you also could create a management company where you have like a lot of experience and also the financial position to hire younger talent and kind of develop them. Together with the artists and build a more streamlined professional management agency who can be actual market leaders. That's kind of my ambition right now, but still I also think it's important for a management company to have a publishing division because I think it's very important that you're have the elbow space to be deeply involved in the creation of the songs, especially when you're working with brand new artists. And I also think it's important to have a label set up where you can actually get things started before you sign artists over to a major label, especially if you're working with artists who are not singing in Danish, because then you have the entire world to work with. If you sign a deal to a Danish major, like your master's to a Danish major, they will only work in Denmark and you have pretty much no chance of growing your career outside. So trying to build a platform with like management as the spearhead, but have a publishing division, have a label division where you can get things started, get things going without needing to have like five options or stuff like that, but just... platform. That's what I'm trying to build right now. It's going to take time. But I know that I think it can be done because like in the UK, in the US, that's what people are doing. Yeah. So that's my ambition now. No, it's interesting. There's also the aspect of short-term income and long-term income. Obviously in publishing and on masters, there's a more like longer tail where management potentially that could end.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Fairly abruptly compared to the other rights. Is that a part of the equation when you think about these things? Definitely. Yeah. It's my pension, right? I need to consider that as well. But I also think that many artists today start off by signing a major label deal because it's become quite cheap to invest in masters. And I do not necessarily believe that the best first step for a brand new artist is to sign 20 songs to a major label because most often you have one or two shots, like one or two singles, and then you're in or out. So like creating a platform, like as an artist manager, I would like to have a platform where I could actually get the career started and, you know, higher the value of the project. So at some point you can go to one of the majors and say, well, if you want to do this, then the contract you get is way better. The advance or the sign-on fee, whatever, is way more significant. And you have the time as an artist to actually find out what do you want to do and have the time to develop. That's important because I've seen so many artists just like... Also, we've worked with so many artists where we've just, they've wrote one or two good songs and then we're like, we have to do it now and you have to like write an album and we have to get it out before November so we can... And I still, we still do that sometimes because you get caught up and you get excited. But I just think, I just think it would benefit all... parties actually in the long run, if we try to be a little more considerate and a little more like long-term in our way of thinking artists. You don't need to release as soon as you have one good song. If you have written one good song, then let's see if we can write 10 more and then the first one you wrote might be the worst of the bunch. And then we're, yeah, you're wrong. So

Jakob Wredstrøm

That's kind of the philosophy. That makes sense. Yeah. Well, it's been really interesting talking with you. And I think one of the things that I appreciate is that there was a bit of numbers on the table. There's a bit of insight into it because I think there's a lot of people who could learn from your journey so far and it's far from over. But now you're at least over the, let's call it the initial really tough hurdle. Yeah. And I really hope that you... You're gonna make it long-term, and I think you will, like just looking at what you guys do and the artists you work with, and then let's call it the, how people talk about you. It's just really, really positive. If you were to, I know I'm putting you on the spot, if you were to give an advice to a founder who wants to go in your footsteps, what would you say?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Join forces with other people that you think you would like to work with because I think so many people are in this industry because it's tough, burns out quickly because they put on way too much responsibility on their own shoulders and they don't have anyone to share the... the negative experiences, but also the positive ones. So for me, like having my two founding partners with me to share every experience and to discuss every business strategy has definitely, I wouldn't have been able to do this alone at all. And I think, yeah, so it's way better to like own a smaller part of the company, build something sustainable. That's the first advice. And then I think you have to accept that the plan you had in mind will definitely not be like the way things are gonna end up, things are gonna change. Like from, so we've been talking about like the past five years, I think, and we've changed strategy like 10 times, and we've. We've been 12 people here, we've been five people here now, and probably if we talk to each other again in half a year, then we're gonna be 12 people again. So things are just changing all the time, and I think you need to be very flexible and just accept that things are gonna go, yeah. Definitely not gonna be as you expect them to be. And the last thing. Which I wish that I had learned earlier, is that it's not the amount of hours that you work. It's how you work when you work. I've been working way too much during the last five years. I have been, because I thought as a founder of a startup, it's only myself that I'm cheating on.

Jakob Wredstrøm

when I'm not working. So I've just thought that I have to be at the office from eight to six or seven and then go home and then eat and then open up my laptop again at eight and work until 11. And that's, for me at least, has not been, it's not the way to do it, I think. Because you just, you burn out. the actual hours that you should be working as a normal person, like from eight to five, what it is, it becomes less effective when you work 80 hours a week. So for me, that learning experience of really, yeah, just being more effective. I think it came like when I had my son, I was like forced to it because he needs to get picked up from nursery and stuff like that. So it kind of forced me to just, it's not about the amount of hours that you work. I think you have to work a lot, but it's also about being very effective and being very like aware of why you're doing what you're doing. Not forcing yourself into something crazy because I think that's kind of one of the reasons why people get so stressed in this industry. It is a fast-paced industry, it is very competitive. And if you're a founder, a startup, then you also have the money issue. And you're like the only one in chat to solve all those problems. So you just, yeah. That's been quite of a learning curve. Yeah. That's great. Well, thank you for the advice and thank you so much for opening up. And I'm very thankful to you in the podcast. And if I do meet a narcissist that needs a manager in the future, I'm not gonna be as skeptic as I was the first time. That's for sure. Thank you very much. Good questions. Yeah, thank you, Jago. We'll talk probably at one point soon. We will. Have a good day.