David Easton - Founder of REBORN

Lessons from Building Lego Cars to Award-winning Integrated Agencies

“Say yes, then figure it out after.”

These are the words in the back of David Easton ’s mind whenever he comes across any challenge or opportunity.

• Helping family friends fix their computers at 8 years old.
• Building UNSW’s Gerric Faculty website from scratch without attending university himself.
• Finding a creative solution to why “Australians should ban public holidays” for ABC’s Gruen Pitch.

As the Founder and CEO of REBORN , David has a 20 year track record of servicing the creative, digital and marketing needs of clients including Unilever, Nestle, L’oreal and North Stradbroke Island.?

He’s helped light up the streets of Sydney and Melbourne with the CSIRO Infinity Swing campaign.

Everything he’s built - it all started with a lego set he received when he was six.

No Q&A this week - enjoy David’s full story below.

Birth of a dream

1988 TECHNIC Test Car.

This was the Lego set that galvanised a lifelong love of building for David. At six years young, he relished the challenge to conquer a set titled “Ages 11-14”.?

He explained, “You could build it as a sports car or a Jeep. It had suspension, a working gearbox, an engine, and the pistons moved when you turned the steering wheel.”

Six year-old David hadn’t studied physics, but the gears of his mind certainly began turning. After a day of intense concentration, he had built it. Little did he know, he had also built the mindset that would stay with him throughout life.

“Say yes, and figure it out later.”

Now David’s mum worked for Commodore Computers (home of the famous 1980’s Commodore 64 and Amiga 500), so computers were always around the house. Just like the lego, David was fascinated by these devices. Tinkering with them everyday, he became a little expert by the time he turned eight. In fact, when family friends came over, they would ask him if he could fix the issues with their own computers, to which David replied, “YES!”... before figuring it out later.

“I think I always liked the idea of figuring things out before anyone else,” David chuckled in reflection.

As his love for technology grew, he started video editing. Now, there was no Premiere Pro when David was in Year 5, but he found a way through connecting a VHS to an Amiga 500. Whilst playing with technology took up his early mornings, wide-eyed David would watch his parents intently as they held “business meetings” with family, friends and family friends at night. He admired the hustle his parents had - even after their 9-5, they would spend their dark hours leading garage gatherings where they “held the entire room captive and helped other people develop their own businesses”. The restless hope and ambition housed in that little garage was infectious, and the formation of a dream brewed inside David.

As a kid, David didn’t realise the gatherings were some sort of multi-level marketing. So although MLM’s weren’t for him, David’s dream to start a business himself and “help others achieve what they wanted” was born.

A dream trapped

Year 1999. David had just graduated from High School.

Instead of attending university, David went straight to creating websites for them… the UNSW Gerric Faculty, to be exact.

It was the faculty’s first ever web page, which helped thousands of students access study materials more easily. David should’ve felt elated in his first dip into entrepreneurship, but? he observed himself taking far too long to complete menial tasks.?

“I had reversed sleep patterns and was working really hard at nighttime, but not really working smart”.

If he was to start his own business, he realised his current trajectory wasn’t the way. So what was the first thing he did the following year? Join a digital media agency - called BMC.?

A dream released

People were still adjusting to the .com world, recovering from Y2K, and David didn’t even know what digital media really was.?

“I didn’t know it was an industry, I was just hired because I had html and javascript skills”, he clarified.?

However, being one to always say yes, David’s love for technology blossomed after he began spending nights in the office, coding continuously with his boss and mentor, Damian. They clicked so much they even became housemates.?

“After wild weekends, a twenty year old me never had to tell the boss I’d be late on Monday morning.” laughed David.

Back at work, David explored all the possibilities of the relatively new language by the name of JavaScript, and was involved in launching campaigns for Mitsubishi, Telstra and the Sydney Olympics. In under a year, David was headhunted by another digital media agency called emitch, which had been created by Mitchell Communication Group.

In his new role, David honed his skills in digital traffic and creative strategy whilst learning the business principles that his previous website building venture didn’t provide.?

“I learnt about the people I needed to have in my circle, where clients put value and what they were trying to achieve with digital”.?

David built a small creative team within the media agency and started to provide new services for emitch’s clients. By introducing this new revenue stream, the opportunity to start his own creative digital agency couldn’t be ignored. He finally understood how to “show value to clients through the magic of solving problems with tech”.

So, after four years at emitch, David took the leap.

How REBORN was born

In 2003, David started his first digital production agency - Lighthouse Interactive, out of his very own bedroom. Unlike today, where “starting your own business” and “quick side hustles” are all over our TikTok and Instagram feeds, David only had one resource to build off.

“The book of that time was The E-Myth. It definitely gave me my structure of how to approach things, how to systemise things and how to break off work functions and train somebody else to do parts and pieces.”?

For most of the first year, he only trained a single employee - Lighthouse Interactive’s first digital account manager. In the next five years, he assembled a team that won huge clients including Fairfax Digital, Colgate, Tourism Fiji, and HSBC.?

However, the sliding doors moment arrived in 2005, when a mutual colleague had connected David with a man named Sabir Samtani to collaborate on a pitch. After weeks of phone calls, they met in-person for the first time outside of the Tourism Ireland office. Nerves were running high in both their chests, but the duo came out one hour later with the biggest account that either of them had ever won. This called for a celebratory beer. Cheers and laughter were shared between the two at Morrisons on George St, when suddenly Sabir announced, “You should come to my wedding. It’s in two weeks in Mumbai, India.”

David was astonished that a man he’d met just hours ago had extended such a precious invitation to him.?

“Mumbai… India…wedding… it all sounded so familiar - wait that’s right, my highschool buddy was going to one in two weeks as well! Could it be the same one? No way, right?”.

David instantly called his friend to ask, and sure enough, the name of the groom was Sabir.?

“This is crazy.” David thought to himself. This was a sign. This was serendipity. With that, he booked a flight to Mumbai right away.?

After a wedding far larger than David had ever experienced, he stayed close with Sabir. Mere weeks later, Sabir mentioned that he was going to move his team, the V Project, into a proper office.

“You should bring Lighthouse Interactive in too,” Sabir beckoned. “It’ll be great to both have our own space and be neighbours.”?

From the second that David had met Sabir, everything moved so fast. He decided to take another leap, and soon Lighthouse Interactive was living with The V Project at Foveaux St in Surry Hills.

Over the next two years, David and Sabir found more opportunities to collaborate and help the other out with their own agencies. After working with HSBC, Fairfax and Revlon together, it made sense to become one - officially this time. And so they merged, and a digital creative agency by the name of REBORN…was born.

A dream released

Last month marked sixteen years of REBORN’s existence. From Nestlé, L'Oréall to Needly, David has done everything from helping startups go to market, to bridging the most established brands with their customers more meaningfully.

What’s made the dream feel real to David? Finding the magic that exists in the intersection of technology and creativity. One project that stands out for him still was the Infinity Project, which lit up the streets of Australia in 2015. The challenge was to present Australia’s national science organisation - CSIRO, as a brand that the general public could appreciate and become excited about.

David explained, “So we built a swing set with a kinetic energy generator that enabled the public (four or five people at a time) to swing while generating enough electricity to light up the letter above each swing and the lights down the side.?They also wore headphones that provided an immersive audio experience matching the movement of the swing. The engineers built the swing in a way that it could be transported to different states across Australia. I remember seeing the joy on people's faces when they went and tried the swing set - adults who haven't swung for 50 years. There was a seventy year old man who kept coming back everyday. We were able to show Australians the idea that energy research is hard. One person swinging is just enough to light up one bulb, so what do we need to do to provide light for 26 million people around Australia?”.

Beyond the emotional experiences he was able to create for individuals through the vessel of REBORN, the culture he created within the agency from day one is one of his proudest achievements.

He explained, “We’ve had flexible working arrangements well before its benefits became more commonplace.? I think it starts from having empathy for your team. I always had empathy for employees who were parents…picking up the kids at 3pm, juggling sick kids at home, and coming back online at 9pm if they needed to - it was okay as long as you got the work done. Looking back now, as a new father of two under 2, I think to myself, “Thank goodness I did this? right thing from the beginning”... and that culture has stayed at REBORN to this day, when I’m needing it myself”.

Now perhaps the biggest indicator that David has made his childhood self proud - the one who eagerly watched his parents command a room - is how he’s been able to help his employees grow.

“Staff have come and gone, and returned multiple times. People who want to study for six months can go and come back and people who want part-time can have it. It's never been a question, as long as it suits us both and they’re genuine about what they want to do. I can't stand in the way of something that I want to support. The interns that have been with us for years, who have now gone on to create their own business, who I still work with - that's awesome. I think you make genuine contributions to people's lives through creating a business. I think that's the dream.”

As our call was coming to a close, I couldn’t help but wonder about how David managed to change hats from a developer to creative so often.?

Upon asking if he was more of an analytical or creative person, he replied, “I’m probably both left and right brained. I approach problems with the same thought, which is, “what are the tools to get me from the initial state to the end state?”. This could be making a consumer feel this now, and feel that afterwards. Then I think, “What’s the creative path to that?”. It probably comes back to my days of Lego as a kid just being absolutely in love with the possibilities of all of the bricks in front of me, thinking about what I want to create, and then just getting all the pieces that I think I need to start building in that direction. It might not be the same car that you thought you were going to build at the beginning, or even how you thought it was going to look like, but as you're building the pieces, it starts to come together and you refine it as you build it. And I think that's probably been my approach with everything - what's my outcome, where am I starting from, and what are the pieces I have to work with?”.

From building award-winning agencies, to building teams of wonderful people, David’s success all began from building the 1988 LEGO TECHNIC Test Car and the mindset that remained for life.

What will you build today?

Thanks for reading my Q&A with David.

You can connect with David here:?

• David’s LinkedIn

You can check out REBORN here:

• REBORN's LinkedIn Page
• REBORN’s Website
• REBORN’s Instagram

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And as always,

Keep dreamaking.