F*ck your Overnight Success

Firstly, not sure if I should be swearing in the headline, but it works for Mark Manson and the type - so why not give it a crack.

I suppose I just wanted to share a bit of my journey in the hope of inspiring those who might be feeling a little lost in their career and/or life at the moment.

I remember having a chat about 4 years ago with my co-host of the Funny Business podcast and best mate Robbie Hicks in the carpark of Moonee Valley Racecourse where I was slinging beers at. The conversation was around the feeling of being lost and not knowing what I wanted to do with my life.

I never really voiced how I truly felt about myself and career before that, but as soon as I started talking to Rob I could feel this rush of self awareness come over me.

I didn't have a clear picture of what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to get outside my comfort zone and take on big audacious projects to fast track my learning and experience. So together we launched Obie and Co - Australia's first (and best) slides company.

We sunk a bit of cash in early but both knew deep down that we weren't going to be shoe salesman for the rest of our lives. So after 2 solid years of influencer marketing campaigns and packing orders we sold the business on Facebook Marketplace to a Nigerian bouncer who was shipping them over to the kids back home (how good are happy endings).

I now see that first investment as an entry ticket into 'the game' of business where I got a crash course in communication, tech, product development, design and all that other good shit.

I suppose the lesson for me here was, it's not all about the 'right now' but setting yourself up to take opportunities in the future by having the confidence and skin in the game to compete and compete well.

After realising that a lot of small businesses were struggling with social media and content strategy, Rob and I started Seed Digital Media Agency where we helped these business owners come up with a content strategy on social media platforms.

We had experience talking to retailers and brands, knew how to manage influencers and expectations and knew which platforms were dominating at the time, so it seemed like a no brainer.

After a couple of years of balancing Seed while working at The Union Hotel in Ascot Vale and Mister Hoffman cafe in Niddrie I decided to pull the pin. The itch wasn't there and the nightshifts were killing me.

While sitting on the couch sad as fuck, sucking back a couple of Paddle Pop Cyclones I got a notification on LinkedIn from Robbie tagging me in a post about Just Digital People looking for a Talent Scout.

I quickly followed up and went in for an interview on my 28th birthday. I put together this pretty cheesy presentation and managed to get the gig.

I really didn't know what the fuck I was in for, I just kinda said yes and went from there.

Through that experience, I was exposed to all different types of technologies and people. Which definitely set the foundations of my knowledge to this day.

All of a sudden the pandemic hits and the world stops.

What the fuck am I going to do?

I can't really remember the exact details but Rob and I put our heads together mid April and decided to run a podcast experiment called 'Funny Business', where we gave ourselves a week to conceptualise what we wanted to do and put it out there for the world to see... and judge haha.

Being familiar with throwing ourselves into the unknown we went full steam ahead, trying to grab as many interesting guests as we could while also trying to figure out how to edit and distribute all of it.

We never had any intentions or hidden agendas when interviewing guests, we just genuinely wanted to pick their brain and get to know them on a deeper level.

This was the first time I've ever experienced this type of momentum with anything that I've done previously, so it almost made me possessed to deliver something awesome and keep the train rolling. Reflecting back now, I probably should have been a bit more balanced but it's easy to say that in hindsight and who knows where we'd be if it didn't play out like the way it did.

Side note: we don't have any fancy equipment, programs or tools - we record over Zoom, edit in iMovie and distribute through Acast.

After agreeing to take a week off over gooch week (Dec 25th-Jan 1st) to give ourselves a bit of a break, we decided to launch Wellbeings Group, a digital strategy, mentoring and coaching service with our best mate across the ditch in NZ - Tammy Martin.

Rob and Tam are the specialist coaches and run the workshops, where I head up the brand and content side of things. We use tools and techniques from Lean, Agile, Systems Thinking and Human Centred Design.

For the first time ever, I feel like I'm doing exactly what I'm meant to be doing.

Fuck your overnight success.