How To Use Your Influence - Leon Scott - #052

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, hello, hello. My guest this week is Leon Scott. He's a semi-professional footballer, a care worker for people with mental health problems, an Instagram influencer and a model. He's also a practitioner of mindfulness. It's a non-typical set of attributes for especially someone who's quite young to have. And that's the reason that I wanted to get him on. His audience on Instagram is very big, and the message that he puts across is quite unique. Talks a lot about virtues within life, happiness and non-material goods, whilst also being flown to Las Vegas and LA to do photo shoots, and obviously operating on a platform which is usually quite transactional and surface deep. I wanted to give him an opportunity to put across an alternative point of view to the one of the typical Instagram influencer, footballer mindset, and he didn't disappoint. I'm hoping that this will open a lot of people's eyes to where genuine happiness can and should be found. Please welcome Leon Scott. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. Leon Scott is joining me.

**Leon Scott** (1:32)
Thank you for having me, mate. Thank you for having me.

**Chris Williamson** (1:34)
Thank you for coming up. It's making me feel incredibly pale. And I'm not used to, as the cohost to the show, Johnny and Youssef, one's a powerlifter and one's a gymnast. So I'm not used to being the not, not the leanest person on the couch either, but I think we're competing with each other today, which is totally fine. How are you? Are you good?

**Leon Scott** (1:52)
Yeah, I'm good, mate. Very good. Very good. Thank you.

**Chris Williamson** (1:54)
Brilliant. You recently moved football teams, right? You're a new team.

**Leon Scott** (1:57)
I did, mate, yeah. I'm at Whoopie Town at the minute, enjoying it. There's a few lads who I know that I've played there. I've played there before. So it's a returning club, very friendly family-ranked club. So yeah, I'm enjoying it, mate, and it's good to be back enjoying the football.

**Chris Williamson** (2:14)
Fantastic. So for the viewers and the listeners that don't know you, can you give us a little bit of background about what it is that you do? You've got an interesting eclectic mix of elements of your life, and I want to try and give a nice background.

**Leon Scott** (2:30)
A bit about my background. Well, in terms of social media wise, how that sort of all kicked off was, I think it must have been about seven, eight years ago now. I was quite lucky and fortunate. It was actually, funny or not, as you've mentioned, I was playing for Whippy Town, how it all started. I was playing for Whippy Town, just normal football, going about my normal thing. And there was a young guy with an idea of a clothing brand back then, seven, eight, seven, eight years ago. It wasn't really a big thing back then. Well, not many people done it. It was a, now you see every other person is making a clothing brand, but back then, it was one like, only your nikes, your adidas's and so on and so on. So yeah, he had an idea. He asked me, would I model his brand? Back then, I'd never done no modeling. I probably wasn't as confident in front of a camera. So I said, yeah, yeah, let's give it a go. He was from Scarborough, met up at Scarborough, and we just done a few shoots. Funny enough, the brand now is probably one of the biggest brands within the industry that I've worked in, which that being Sixilk.

**Chris Williamson** (3:39)
They were like the first mover.

**Leon Scott** (3:40)
Yeah. Back then, they were the first people to do it. I believe they were the first people to do it. It was a big thing to get it on a reality TV star back then. If you could get it on someone from Geordie Shaw, from Tommy, et cetera, et cetera, it was a big thing. Now, it's just the norm. So he managed to do that back then.

**Chris Williamson** (4:00)
That's all they wore. I remember, anyone who remembers like the proper hay day, Scotty T and Gaz and those guys, that was...

**Leon Scott** (4:09)
So that was it. And that was his big break. Because back then, they wanted to wear it.
It was okay to wear it. Now, it's... I'll only wear if... It's endorsements, etc. So, it's a lot harder now. So, yeah, so that's how it all started for me. I modeled for him. And then more brands approached me. Jim King being inspired, a lot of other big brands. I think my big break came from Photosilum. They approached me and asked me to do a campaign out in Ibiza. And for me, it was something where I've always been on holiday. So, to go there and actually be paid...