we love that that's our favorite type

when i was living in australia i grew up there and basically used to watch steve's podcast and see his socials and i always thought he was so motivating and inspiring and then i would like listen to the podcast when it first came out i used to work at um the gold coast airport in the company like the parent company there queensland airports and i used to send all of my colleagues episodes from the podcast being like i think you'd really like this And do you want to have a listen? Like out of kindness of wanting them to improve as well.

Yeah.

And I never thought I was like, I live on the other side of the world, never wanted to work in England, never would have expected to work for him, but I would always talk about him and, or talk about his work as well.

And then one, I had planned to move to England to start my own business and so was going to move.

And then they did a thing called like Twitter spaces or X spaces at the time where it was like this massive, live group chat room and Steve was doing it with his friends and I was like okay I'm gonna go and listen because I love to stay on top of all the new things that are happening and he was like we have one question left who wants to ask that question I was like me maybe I was like please and then I got to go on voice record or like and call with him and ask the question and I was like what would you I asked about starting a business and I said what would you tell someone who's starting out to do and I like still have the recording it's very weird to listen back to and so I did that never really thought anything of it then moved to England and I was like I'm gonna start my business it wasn't looking for any jobs and I saw not Steve but Grace Andrews one of his employees at the time and post on LinkedIn that they were looking for a social media manager.

And I was like, Oh, this is interesting.

and the

Yeah.

Um, and it goes through and, like, ranks different areas, so whether there's a market for that audience, whether is the market oversaturated already or is there a big area and gap missing in that, or how big is the audience around the world, is it all based in one place or is it based worldwide? Um, and that's just, like, two out of so many different criteria-

Mm.

"Here's what we're changing for next week," and, like, was naturally sharing, almost experimenting without realizing I was experimenting.

And so I was already doing it before I even changed roles.

Then the second side I think was the Australian almost personality of not really caring what people think.

What is it that we can communicate to those business owners that are perhaps hesitant to invest in their team's personal brands to get them across the line?

I think there's a few reasons.

The first one is I believe people talking about you is more powerful than you talking about yourself agreed and it's not to say that the founder or the ceo shouldn't have a personal brand but if you had 10 or 100 employees saying how amazing you are as a founder and a ceo you are going to look way better to the world and it doesn't dim your light and it makes me really sad when c-suite people or founders think the team is creating something for themselves dims their light or the brand's light.

Actually, it's basically word of mouth marketing, but within the company and you don't have to pay for it.

And so I understand the difference between paid and employees, but it's free marketing and your employees also realizing how much they love the company and what they've learned.

I think people feel more fulfilled when they're able to number one, share what they're learning, but also teach others and realize their skills develop as well.

By me going out and chatting to people, I'm learning so much that I can also take back to the team and help us grow.

If you had to pick a channel to launch a personal brand or business, which are you picking? Instagram, TikTok

i do i think that was probably the craziest thing i asked you i always i always think back to like what is the crazy thing i remember

exactly what you're about to tell me and it was very funny and there yeah we've communicated every day for three years correct i think just in general since the beginning i learned such a sense of urgency and professionalism from you and you know i think i understood the weight of what we were doing and everything You know, you always had such a good, healthy mindset of, you know, I think assistants are looked at in the industry very negatively a lot of the time and bosses yell and, you know, are angry.

And you have never once been like that.

And so you've set an incredible example.

And I just always really respected your communication style and your professionalism and your communication.

And so I've wanted to, you know, do my best to embody that myself.

What has been your favorite part of the job and what has been the most challenging part of the job?

Oh, that's a good question.

Yeah.

And I think it's just a human nature thing of we have created a society full of egotistical people that you have to show off and show whether it's a designer bag or what you're doing or your career or your kids.

Like it's everything from every single spectrum of life that has to be perfect or shiny or showing off.

And I think that's why people don't feel comfortable sharing failures because no one else does.

Like it's so rare.

And maybe the only people that share failure right now are the people like a Jeff Bezos or an Elon Musk where they were already at the top.

And so you're like, okay, but you're at the top.

But how do you encourage or how would you suggest somebody working in an organization starts to experiment a little bit more? But how do they sell it into their boss?

Yeah

...

I used to love testing who we were targeting and how it would differ between performance of the same asset.

So it could be like a trailer for our episode, and how do people in America versus Australia versus the UK interact with it? And do Australia convert at a way higher rate to watching the episode than the US? Or even, like, we used to get really granular and be like, how does a specific age group of, like, 20 to 30 year olds versus 40 to 50 year olds in just California convert-

Yeah

... whether it's things like as simple as a font, but more complex to things like do you test the way, um, a clip is structured, and how do you understand, like, the retention on that? Is it fast, like, cuts, slower cuts? Is it better storytelling with a story arc, or do you do something that's more viral that's gonna be audio? Um, or even things like how fast you zoom in versus not zoom in, and how does that keep the engagement up? So they're just, like, simple ones.