Transcriber: Bob Prottas
Reviewer: Leonardo Silva ļ»æHello! My name is Magnus Walker.
I was born in 1967 in Sheffield, England. I left school at 15,
and I came to America at the age of 19. Well, 8 weeks ago,
I didnāt know what a TED talk was, and to be honest,
Iām not quite sure why Iām here today. But I do appreciate the opportunity
to be with you guys and share my story, my journey,
and my hopes, and my dreams. You know, having left school at 15,
for me, I didnāt really have any future. Well, I came to America 28 years ago, and that represented
the land of opportunity for me. And in those past 28 years,
Iāve been able to build three things: a successful clothing company,
a film location business, and also restored, raced, driven, and collected quite a lot
of classic Porsches. Porsche is a passion for me, and Iāll talk
about that in detail in a little bit. But all 3 of those things
share one common bond. I had no education in them. I didnāt really think I was
going to end up in that particular field. I didnāt really know where I was going. But all three of those things
have a common thread, common bond. And that common bond for me
really was freedom. Freedom to do whatever I wanted to do,
and a dream sort of to be able to -- I suppose, live my life to the fullest,
and do whatever I wanted to do. So coming to America really was a journey, and Iāll start my journey in 1977. 1977 in England was sort of a special year. We had this Punk Rock thing going on, and we also had
this Royal Jubilee thing going on. But for me it was a start
of a very memorable moment. My father took me to
the London Earls Court Motor Show in 1977. Back then I fell in love with this car.
It was a white martini Porsche. Now any kid growing up
anywhere āØin the world in the late '70s, early '80s,
chances are you probably had a choice of three cars on your wall:
Porsche Turbo, Ferrari Boxer, or Lamborghini Countach. For some reason I chose Porsche. I even wrote a letter to Porsche
when I was 10 years old, and essentially said to them,
"I want to design for Porsche." They wrote back to me, and said:
"Call us when youāre a little bit older," which I thought was pretty funny,
and they sent me a sales brochure, and 35 years later,
theyād end up writing me a letter back but Iāll get to that story
a little bit later on. So I am this young kid
growing up in Sheffield. Sheffieldās a grim northern steel town
as shown by this picture right here. There wasnāt necessarily
many Porsches on the road. So I filed that dream away;
I had the poster on the wall, and I was watching Motorsports
as kid, also in 1977. England had James Hunt.
He was a Formula One world champion. And we also had Barry Sheene. He was
a two-wheel motor GP champion back then. So even though I didnāt grow up
with any sort of fancy cars -- my father was a salesman,
I grew up in a working-class background -- I did have this dream early on, and somehow this dream involved Porsche. Back then, I was also a pretty competitive
middle-distance cross-country runner, sort of a solo sport guy, and I used
to love getting out there, and running. I became quite competitive. I joined this club called
the Hallamshire Harriers, and this guy called Sebastian Coe
set quite a few world records, and ran at the ā80, and ā84 Olympic Games,
and he was sort of inspirational to me. Around that same time,
I also fell in love with something called heavy metal music. Growing up in Sheffield,
there were a lot of rock bands. It may have been sort of a slightly
depressed, grim, northern city, but there was a lot of music,
and a lot of fun. So, I fell in love with Porsche, doing some middle distance
cross country running, fell in love with heavy metal music, and I had decided by the end
of the fifth year I would leave school. I left school in 1982, basically
with two O levels, and no real future. By that time, Iād also figured out
I could go drink in a pub. So for some reason that was great
for going to clubs and having fun, but wasnāt so good for a middle-distance
cross-country runner, and an athlete. So that sort of faded away. But a little thing
that stuck with me was the passion, and sort of the drive,
and I think to this day, those memorable moments
earlier on are still with me. Iām still running around.
Iām still chasing around. Iām still running after my goal. So I bummed around on the dole
for a little bit doing odd jobs, and stuff like that. And I started to hear
this comment quite a lot: "Cut your hair, and get a real job." Well, I was on the dole,
working construction, living at home, no car, taking the bus to places,
and for a year or two, that was okay. By the time I turned 17 that I decided,
"Okay Iām not going to cut my hair but maybe I should think about
getting a job." So I actually took a yearlong leisure
and recreation study course sports management at a college. I heard about this thing
called Camp America. What was camp America? I didnāt know, but found that Camp America sent kids to work on a summer camp
in the United States of America. Growing up as a kid, of course,
I watched a lot of American TV. Most of the shows I loved centered
around action and cars, Starsky and Hutch, Dukes of Hazzard, CHiPs.
So I had this American Dream. It involved Evel Knievel;
anyway, long story short, I took this leap of faith,
and I applied to Camp America. It was a little bit of a strange feeling. Iāve had these
strange feelings in the past, and somehow when my gut
tells me to do something, generally itās a good thing.
Hence go on your gut feeling. So by pure luck I supposed,
I was accepted into Camp America, got on a flight to New York,
took a Trailways bus from New York. Thatās the bus I took to Detroit.
Detroit was great. It was similar to Sheffield,
former industrial city. It also happened to be this sort
of automotive hub of the United States. But I wasnāt in Detroit.
I was 30 minutes north on a summer camp, working with inner-city underprivileged
kids that happened to be from Detroit. And that was a big culture shock for me,
because you know Iām this heavy metal guy from Sheffield, North of England.
Iām in the middle of nowhere. I had to adapt pretty quickly. So I adapted pretty quickly
on this summer camp, and when that camp was over,
I got back on that Trailways bus, and I took that bus out west,
landed in Los Angeles, 1986, Union Station 4 a.m. in the morning. Iāve watched all those TV shows, but I found myself being awakened
on a park bench at 6 am in the morning by a LAPD guy, who told me:
"You canāt sleep here." I was a little disappointed. Iād seen all these shows in LA
but where were all the beautiful people, where were all the rock stars
and movie stars? That wasnāt happening in downtown LA. But quickly I found my way to Hollywood,
and over the next couple of years, I sort of did a few odd jobs. But there was one pivotal moment
that happened within 3 days of being in Los Angeles. I found myself at this YMCA hotel,
right off Hollywood Boulevard. I went shopping on Hollywood Boulevard, and saw these great PVC alligator print
pants that were on sale for $9.99. So I bought myself a pair,
but they didnāt really fit good. So I went back to the youth hostel, bought
a sewing kit, and sewed them inside out, and decide Iām going to the street that
everyone was talking about called Melrose. So I ended up going down there to Melrose,
and walked into this shop that was called Retail Slut,
it was a punk rock shop and there was a guy working there
that was in a band called Faster Pussycat, and his name was Taimie.
Pivotal part to a story here. Taimie says to me --
he realized I was from England, started a conversation:
āWhere did you get those pants from?ā I said: āHey, you know,
I got them from England." I had to think quick on my feet.
I said: "Why? Do you want to buy them?" Just sort of jokingly, and he said,
āSure. Yeah, how much are they?ā At this point I hadnāt thought
about selling these pants but I said the first number
that came to mind, $25. He said, āOkay. Iāll take 8 pairs.ā So I ran right up to Hollywood Boulevard,
bought 8 pairs of pants, went back down,
and sold them to him $15 profit per pant. I realized in that one hour transaction,
Iād made more straight away -- literally within being in LA for 3 days,
than I'd made in a whole week working construction in England. So I thought, "Maybe LA is a place
for me, it seems pretty easy. They speak English,
a lot of rock and roll." It was Guns Nā Roses, Motley Crue, it was
a great time over the next few years. Fast-forward to 1989. Iām selling second-hand clothing
on the Boardwalk in Venice, going to yard sales, buying old Leviās, cowboy boots, western shirts.
Iām in the clothing industry now. Venice Beach back then was
a major tourist attraction, a lot of European people coming through. Little by little this grew into a business
which became known as Serious Clothing and we ended up outfitting
everyone from Alice Cooper to Madonna, and everyone in between. We started wholesaling
to a small chain called Hot Topic. Back then Hot Topic had five stores,
and would grow to over 500 stores. So we sort of went from making
a little amount of clothing to making thousands of pieces of clothing. Well, in 1994, we realized being in Venice
wasnāt so easy for a clothing company. We moved downtown, and rented a loft
in a warehouse for the next 6 years. Serious Clothing then started doing
a lot of music videos and also a lot of outfits for magazines,
and stylists who call in all the time. Serious Clothing had its own unique style. We took fabrics that were
not necessarily garment fabrics. We used some car seat fabrics, and made
them into jackets, and things like that, non-conventional materials,
thinking outside the box, and basically doing what we like to wear. Well, by 2000, we realized we'd paid
two peopleās mortgages and we needed -- Hey, letās buy our own building. So we ended up finding this building -- Oh, that was me back then,
forgot that little picture. So that was me pre-beard,
thatās sort of circa 1994. Serious was one of the top 10
clothing companies to watch. So anyway, 2000, my wife Karen
found this building in the Arts District. People said, "Youāre crazy,
no one wants to be there, former desolate industrial area." Long story short,
we took another leap of faith. Our gut feeling felt good. Why weāre paying two peopleās mortgages when we could own our own building.
So we bought that building. About a year later,
right after 9/11 in 2001, there was an article in the LA Times,
about loft gentrification. We got a phone call,
would we be interested in renting the building for a music video? Bang! Before you know it,
weāre in the film location business. Well, hey, weāve been filming scenes
since 2001, over 100 days a year, doing things from low-budget still shoots,
to big-budget movies, and over a dozen reality shows
like Americaās Next Top Model. We met a lot of interesting people, but we
didnāt plan to build a film location. We were building our dream,
live-work house, where we lived upstairs and operated our clothing company
out of the downstairs. So weād accidentally fallen into another
somewhat lucrative business. This is LA, itās movie town, weāve met
quite a lot of interesting people. They always say: "How did you get here?" Well, we tell them,
we followed our gut feeling. Remember that story, I was a 10-year-old
when I fell in love with Porsche. Fell in love with Porsche
as a 10-year-old. I didnāt buy my first Porsche till 1992. Serious Clothing had become
quite successful, and from ā92 to 2000, I was racing around getting
quite a lot of speeding tickets. 2001, I took my aggressive
street driving to the track, and joined the Porsche Owners Club.
I went through their program. I learned how to do club racing,
instructing, and for the next 5 years was doing 50 track days a year. Turn around to probably 2008-2009, I'd
spent a lot of money racing and decided, "Okay, my next passion: I love these cars. Why donāt I try and restore
a few of them?" Well, I didnāt have any
mechanical background, but I had passion. I often say that passion
goes a long, long way. You know, if youāve got the will,
and the desire, and put the motivation in, and focus, things tend to happen. Also a little bit of luck, and a leap
of faith really help out as well. But I asked a lot of questions,
and I started restoring a couple of cars. So I got a little bit of interest
in European car magazines, and I started this blog online. Well, there is a thread on this Porsche
forum called Pelican Parts. And I called my blog
Porsche Collection Out Of Control Hobby. And I was sort of like a catch-all
of what I was doing. And so this was sort of going
to become a pivotal point where it was like something I really
really enjoyed to do. And Iād start restoring these cars. Well, about 2 years ago, a pivotal moment
in our life happened again. About every 10 years these pivotal moments
seem to happen by accident, or theyāre just naturally evolving. We never had this five,
ten-year planned business model. We always go back to follow your gut,
do what you love to do. So having been in the film industry,
we got quite a lot of people interested in making little TV shows,
and stuff like that, but we werenāt quite ready
for the exposure, or the compatibility wasnāt quite right,
or it just didnāt click. So I got a call from this Canadian
called Tamir Moscovici. Well, heād seen a couple of articles,
and he was a film director, also a Porsche guy, and he was looking
for something edgy for his reel. He was sort of sick of doing Bud Light
commercials and figured, hey, maybe thereās more of the Magnusā story
than meets the eye. So we had a couple of conversations,
and Tamir ended up flying down to LA, little over two years ago, on his frequent
flyer miles, a complete leap of faith. His original idea was to make
a short YouTube documentary. Well, our thought was, "Whatās the worst
that could happen here? Weāll drive around, race around
in my favorite Porsches for 4 days, and maybe get
some good footage out of it." Well, what turned out to be a 32-minute
documentary was shot over 4 days. So we shot, I think, in February of 2012,
and we released a trailer in June of 2012. We didnāt know
what would happen with the trailer but somehow it got picked up
by Top Gear and within the first day it got over 50,000 views,
and all of a sudden Iād just found this thing called Facebook.
I figured I should get on that. I didnāt really know much about it. So I got on Facebook, and at this time
I donāt even have an iPhone. So Iām not really internet savvy,
but all of a sudden, I keep getting all these friend requests
from all these oddball places, you know, Spain and Indonesia,
and Iām thinking whatās going on. Well, this trailer for that 3-minute film,
Urban Outlaw, that Top Gear picked up, it got blogged, reblogged and reblogged.
Well, this was pretty exciting. So this was a leap of faith project,
everyone was sort of working on a shoestring budget,
bro down buddy favorite type of thing, and they were doing this
sort of on the side. So, little by little I started posting
the film was going to come out. Well, to me being sort
of a production type of guy, we shopped it around a few film festivals. Somehow it got into this thing
called the Raindance Film Festival which I described as the rainy version
of Sundance, thatās in England. Iām from England, what are the chances
that you get to premiere your film in front of an audience similar to this? So Karen and I flew to London, and we
premiered the film in Piccadilly Circus on a Saturday night
around 10 oāclock, and it sold out. There was a buzz about this film. Well, we decided, "Okay,
weāre going to release it online." So October 15, the film went online,
and probably 2 weeks after it came out, I got a phone call from Jay Leno. Jay Leno had seen the film,
and wanted it to be on his garage show. Well, that started the Avalanche of what
has happened for the past 18 months. All of a sudden, this is my life before
Urban Outlaw came out, and this is my life after. Now at this point, weāve been doing
Serious Clothing for 20 years, and we werenāt quite as motivated
as we once were. You know, we always said we design
what we personally like to wear, but over the past few years
weāve sort of been treading water. So we took this leap of faith,
and decided success really is the freedom
to do whatever you want to do. So we decided we were going
to close Serious down. This was the baby that had enabled us
to get to this point. Now it wasnāt like we gave up on Serious,
we still had all the patents and samples. But what it did was once we decided
to pull that band aid off, it allowed us some breathing room. We didnāt know what was coming next, but
we knew it was going to be something good. So once we closed that door,
probably in the past 18 months Iāve probably done a hundred
magazine video TV show interviews. I think by closing Seriousā door,
it opened up all this freedom to travel. Remember me telling about Porsche,
and that letter I wrote as a 10-year-old. About a month after the film came out,
I received a letter from Porsche. Basically theyād seen the film and was
sort of impressed with my Porsche passion, and realized theyād written me
a letter 35 years later. Ironically in the film, Tamir asked me: "What do you think Porsche would think
about you doing it?" I said: "I donāt know. I hope
theyād be smiling and be happy." So Porsche wrote me a second letter. I wish I had the first one,
but I do have the second one. They invited me to go visit
them in Stuttgart, and tour the museum which I went to do. Purely by coincidence,
I had been there on 9/11 2013. Well after that
there was at the LA Auto Show. We did a couple of events with Porsche. Hosted these events
in my garage in downtown LA. It was a worldwide dealer event,
it brought all their dealers over, and incorporated me into this workshop
where Porsche was talking about what Porsche does restoration,
and Porsche classic. I think they sensed I have this thing -- Porsche passion is what I said it was, and itās something that
you canāt really build, and you canāt market, and you can sell it.
Itās just sort of there. So from then Porsche integrated me into
this workshop, invited me out to an event in Essen, Germany, and basically started
to invite me out to places, and incorporate me into
their commercials coming up. The Porsche connection was quite simple,
but what we hadnāt expected but also came from the film,
was we got approached by Nike. We got approached by Oakley,
and then we had a visit from Bentley chief designer, and we
also had a visit from BMW, and Volvo. Itās almost like these people
were thinking I was some sort of focus group,
and they were asking my opinion on what did I think
about certain things. Iām scratching my head
a little bit thinking: "Iām just a guy doing my own thing,"
but you know people seem to have responded to it. Well, I get a lot of emails from people
who talk often about the video, and the greatest thing I suppose
separate from people liking the cars is the fact that people found the film,
and my story inspirational. So if thereās one message
I can leave you with, for me -- what Iāve done over the past 28 years
involved a lot of leaps of faith, always going on my gut feeling
when things sort of seemed awkward, that was often the case to know,
"Hey weāre on the right track here," and just stay motivated, stay dedicated.
We never asked anyoneās opinion. We just did what we like to do,
and it seems to have worked out quite nice for us.
We donāt know where weāre going. I often say Iām on this open road,
along for the ride. Weāll see what comes next,
but I really appreciate all your time, and allowing me to share my story.
Cheers and all the best. (Cheering) (Applause)
He ought to get an award fur curating such immense shagginess. He is impressively hirsute.