What does leadership look like when you’ve spent twenty years thinking about art before you ever tried to build something?

Tom Trevatt is a headshot and portrait photographer, a Goldsmiths PhD, a former DJ, and an accidental business leader.

In this episode, Tom talks about the sleepless night that changed his life — and his mum buying him his first camera. About spending twenty years on the outside of something before finally doing it. About building a business from values up, pricing from connection out, and refusing to scale in the way the industry expected. He talks about the panic attack in his mid-thirties that pricked open his self-awareness.

About what happens when a £200k contract arrives and you weren’t quite ready for it. About why he still teaches, why he caps his client list, and why the ROI he cares about is what he calls return on life.

Tom gives us the most original answer we’ve heard on what leadership actually is — drawn from art theory, from the concept of the avant-garde, and from the image of a sailor trusted to take an island nation to safety.

This is a different kind of leadership conversation. Part philosophy seminar, part studio session, part honest account of what it costs to build something that doesn’t compromise who you are.

Topics covered: creativity and leadership — values-based pricing — building a business from nothing — self-awareness and mental health — the relationship between art, commerce and responsibility — what AI can and can’t replace — why leaders are the first people to go first.

Find Tom here: www.tomtrevatt.com