Speaker 1: Hi, my Boris, and this is straight talk. You mind
Speaker 1: if I just quickly sort of scratch around Eric Banner
Speaker 1: a little bit. Where were you born?
Speaker 2: I was born in Melbourne, YEP, in a place called Malvin.
Speaker 2: My mum was a hairdresser, so I grew up in
Speaker 2: the back of a hairdressing salon for the first few
Speaker 2: years of my life, and then we moved to Talamarin
Speaker 2: and I pretty much spent my childhood in Talla out
Speaker 2: near the airport.
Speaker 1: Both you folks from Croatia.
Speaker 3: Dad's from Croatian months from Germany.
Speaker 1: So your actual surname is not Banner.
Speaker 2: A lot of oos Is make it Banadanovitch. I don't
Speaker 2: know why, but there's an I in the it's bean Adinovich.
Speaker 1: I mean I look at it structurally, you look like
Speaker 1: someone from Croatia because like Croatians. I think Serbians a
Speaker 1: like on average of the Croatians similar sort of backgrounds
Speaker 1: are the tallest men in the world on average, and
Speaker 1: you're a tall guy. You've got that sort of build.
Speaker 1: How often does do the people who are casting for
Speaker 1: movies and shows that you might go in, how often
Speaker 1: do they look at your physique and actually cast you
Speaker 1: around your physic and your drawl on your face, the
Speaker 1: whole look.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll never know. I never asked a question. I
Speaker 3: think I've been quite lucky that.
Speaker 2: My look can kind of go both ways, you know,
Speaker 2: Like if you look at some of the films that
Speaker 2: I've been in, I've been able to go sort of
Speaker 2: European and I've been able to go non European. So
Speaker 2: I never overthought it, to be honest. But there's a
Speaker 2: certain physicality you can't get away from, you know, So
Speaker 2: there's always going to be a bent, you know, in
Speaker 2: terms of the stuff that you're offered. It would be
Speaker 2: very easy for me to have done nothing but very
Speaker 2: very physical films, which doesn't interest me. So you have
Speaker 2: to work consciously to not play against that, but to
Speaker 2: just kind of temper that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I mean, one thing that comes straight to
Speaker 1: my mind is Chopper, you put a lot of weight
Speaker 1: on relatively speaking whis of how you're sitting here today,
Speaker 1: But you put a lot of weight on for probably
Speaker 1: a lot younger too, when you were younger. Yeah, my god,
Speaker 1: you looked exactly like him though, thanks mate, I'm serious,
Speaker 1: And you actually came across like him too. Yeah, leg
Speaker 1: was amazing. How is that? I don't know only about acting,
Speaker 1: but is that called method acting?
Speaker 4: What is that?
Speaker 1: Did you spend time with the dude to find out
Speaker 1: how he was? I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't like to put the label method acting on
Speaker 2: it because then I'd find out that you know, it's
Speaker 2: not method actor or it is. So I just go
Speaker 2: with what works for me, and what works for me.
Speaker 2: First of all is having a lot of time to prep,
Speaker 2: Like you can't call me and say we're filming next month.
Speaker 2: I'm going to pass on that project, like I need
Speaker 2: things to marinate up here for as.
Speaker 3: Long as possible.
Speaker 2: Secondly, I have to respond immediately, like when I read
Speaker 2: something or someone approaches me for a job, I know
Speaker 2: straight away instinctively whether I feel as though I can
Speaker 2: become that person, and if it's if it's a no,
Speaker 2: it's a no. It doesn't matter what the project is,
Speaker 2: who's in a who's directing it, how much it is.
Speaker 2: If I don't get that response, I'm out with Chopper.
Speaker 2: I for some reason, just immediately felt like I could
Speaker 2: become him, even before I'd started doing any research, and
Speaker 2: there wasn't a lot of material on him available at
Speaker 2: the time. But I'd seen a couple of interviews, so
Speaker 2: it was just a lot of research, Mate.
Speaker 4: And we were ready.
Speaker 2: We were getting close to start filming. We were in
Speaker 2: early stages of pre production. The film got postponed because
Speaker 2: of the el mcfeast interview years ago when Chopper went
Speaker 2: on air slightly drunk and told stories. So I had
Speaker 2: that worked in my favor because it meant it gave
Speaker 2: me about another twelve months to prepare. So it was
Speaker 2: a combination of things, reading everything I could, watching everything
Speaker 2: I could, spending time with him, Andrew the director, and
Speaker 2: I went down to Tazzy and hang out with him
Speaker 2: for a few days, and then trying to come up
Speaker 2: with a version in my head that would work on screen,
Speaker 2: because you know, doing any impersonation is not enough, like
Speaker 2: it has to be believable, has to.
Speaker 3: Be something else.
Speaker 2: So a lot of it's just up here, and I
Speaker 2: can't explain everything that goes on up there impersonations.
Speaker 1: You're right, it's not enough. Otherwise it probably doesn't come
Speaker 1: across quite good enough in terms of excellence impersonation is
Speaker 1: It's quite interesting then that when I was reading somewhere
Speaker 1: that when you're a kid, a little kid, you did impersonations.
Speaker 1: Whether or not it's true or not, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but like just to get laugh paps or maybe get
Speaker 1: an audience. Like personation, is that something you know you're
Speaker 1: good at, Like in terms of personations, like how you
Speaker 1: physically stand, how you speak, the sound of your language,
Speaker 1: the accent and your language, you know, the intonations and
Speaker 1: all that sort of stuff. That's something that you love doing.
Speaker 3: It's something that comes naturally.
Speaker 2: And my son has it as well, which is really
Speaker 2: funny to see that being passed down. It's just it's
Speaker 2: not something I've taught him. It's just in him, like
Speaker 2: straight away. So I did it as a kid. I
Speaker 2: probably use it to get out of trouble mainly, you know,
Speaker 2: to get in trouble at school and then get out
Speaker 2: of trouble at school.
Speaker 3: Occasionally would have t just come.
Speaker 2: Up to me on the slide say could you do
Speaker 2: you do a good mister salence?
Speaker 5: Could you do it for me?
Speaker 1: Serious?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah wow.
Speaker 5: I love that.
Speaker 2: My grandfather was very encouraging of it. And then I
Speaker 2: grew up, you know, watching a lot of TV as
Speaker 2: a kid and watching a lot of American shows and
Speaker 2: British shows and just trying to do the different accents
Speaker 2: and stuff. So it was something I was doing without
Speaker 2: really being overly conscious of, without knowing that it was
Speaker 2: kind of good training for the future.
Speaker 1: So when you given that that's something you that's a
Speaker 1: skill you have, it's the thing you enjoy, it's something
Speaker 1: you grew up doing. When you've got to go and
Speaker 1: play a role like Hector, for example, in Troy, I've
Speaker 1: always been upset that Hector gets nailed, seriously, like he's
Speaker 1: like a fucking superhero, like you know, like he's the
Speaker 1: best fighter for Troy's God and he is not unfairly
Speaker 1: I thought anyway. But when you go to take that
Speaker 1: role on, does do you then sort of put yourself
Speaker 1: into the mindset of someone like that, how you would
Speaker 1: interpret how Hector is was because obviously you had to
Speaker 1: see a chop, a live is around, Hector hasn't been
Speaker 1: gone for a long long time. How do you get
Speaker 1: yourself into that role? Like how do you start to think,
Speaker 1: how am I going to impersonate what the audience would
Speaker 1: think Hector is like? Or are you saying I'm going
Speaker 1: to take to the audience who I think Hectors like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a combination of everything, so you know, talk
Speaker 2: with the director, go to the source material, look at
Speaker 2: the script. And then for Hector was really just just
Speaker 2: primarily for me about just pure leadership, like leadership like
Speaker 2: a man leading an army and the army loving him,
Speaker 2: you know, being being the ultimate you know, type a
Speaker 2: warrior who had a heart as well. He just seemed
Speaker 2: when I read the script, I thought, there's something about him.
Speaker 2: It's not just type a you know, rah rah rah.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 2: I read all kinds of like I remember reading in
Speaker 2: the Vander Holyfield book preparing for that, like a book
Speaker 2: on Romulus, all kinds of different things, just to try
Speaker 2: and get different perspectives on leadership and battle. And then
Speaker 2: you know, going to that place. And you had again,
Speaker 2: I had a really good amount of time to prepare
Speaker 2: for that for that film. Wolfgang Peters in our director
Speaker 2: cast quite early. Brad was on board first and then
Speaker 2: and then it was myself, and so I had a
Speaker 2: good amount of time to prepare, which I needed a
Speaker 2: lot of horse riding, a lot.
Speaker 1: Of fighting and are you doing that?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You had to learn how to how to bear back
Speaker 2: and all that sort of stuff. So I mean, and
Speaker 2: it's just the best part of the job, which is
Speaker 2: going back to before. Like if you said to me,
Speaker 2: the film starts next month, are you on. One of
Speaker 2: the reasons I say no is because, to me, someone
Speaker 2: who didn't study tertiary education, one of the highlights is
Speaker 2: that I get to go to school almost every time
Speaker 2: I get it, I get a job, you know, And
Speaker 2: that's that's my kind of favorite part of the job,
Speaker 2: is going away and learning and doing the research. So
Speaker 2: then when I walk on set, I feel like I'm
Speaker 2: prepared and I don't want to rush that because that's
Speaker 2: that's the gift. And if you don't have that period
Speaker 2: of time, you can feel underdone or paranoid or whatever.
Speaker 1: And that'll come across I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because at the end of the day, even if
Speaker 2: you don't like the film, he's the most important thing
Speaker 2: for me. What matters is that I believe in what
Speaker 2: I'm doing, because if I don't, I can't expect you
Speaker 2: to buy that for a second. And you won't buy
Speaker 2: that for a second. You'll see through that. So if
Speaker 2: I can just feel it myself and at least make
Speaker 2: what I'm doing convincing, I can't control a lot of
Speaker 2: the other elements. But I can at least hope that
Speaker 2: whilst I'm on screen, you at least believe what I'm doing.
Speaker 2: That's what's really important to me.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because I have actually read some reviews as
Speaker 1: other movies you've been in, and sometimes they might not
Speaker 1: have done as brilliantly as everybody expected them to do
Speaker 1: relative to cost and all that sort stuff. I'm talking financially,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the reviewers said, but Banner did
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. In other words, you shone in terms
Speaker 1: of your role and what's really into you just talked
Speaker 1: about leadership. I'm just wondering to myself, is acting out
Speaker 1: a role, for example, Hector, or even Choper for that matter,
Speaker 1: is acting out a role for say, someone like yourself.
Speaker 1: Is it about finding that one virtue or those two
Speaker 1: virtues in the case of Hector leadership, how can I
Speaker 1: express how can you express that particular virtue? Because virtue
Speaker 1: is what stick to us. I mean, I love seeing
Speaker 1: a virtue in somebody or something like actually over extended nearly,
Speaker 1: like glaringly. And now I'm thinking about Hector. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I never thought about a time, But that's what's stuck
Speaker 1: to me. Now you've explained it to me, do you
Speaker 1: actually go looking for the virtue and then try and
Speaker 1: express it really strongly and we will talk about how
Speaker 1: you've done it and dry, because there's virtues coming out
Speaker 1: of that as well. But just on Hector, is that
Speaker 1: something useful?
Speaker 3: It's got to be in the source material.
Speaker 2: It's hard to just construct it out of thin air.
Speaker 2: Has to be there on the page. But then you're
Speaker 2: trying to add to and then you're trying to work
Speaker 2: out a way of tapping into what's there and amplifying
Speaker 2: it all, you know, coming up with a different version
Speaker 2: of it. A lot of it comes from conversations with
Speaker 2: the director and you hope you're on the same page.
Speaker 2: And then just I think a lot of it's instinctual.
Speaker 2: I probably don't overthink it, to be honest, And then
Speaker 2: you know you've got to get there on the day
Speaker 2: and have a play and try different things and some
Speaker 2: things will work and some things won't, and you just
Speaker 2: got to experiment.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're just natural virtues for you. I mean maybe
Speaker 1: if you don't overthink it, So if you're not specifically
Speaker 1: looking for it, perhaps maybe am I just putting this
Speaker 1: to you? Perhaps these are just natural instincts for you.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe you saw a lot of leadership in
Speaker 1: your life. Could have been your dad, it could have
Speaker 1: been anybody's school teacher. Whatever. Do you think that virtues
Speaker 1: are important to you know all usually leadership, strength of character,
Speaker 1: you know, respect, blah blah blah, those sorts of things.
Speaker 1: A lot of these come out in your character. By
Speaker 1: the way, Aaron's he has a lot of these virtues.
Speaker 1: Are they natural things for you? Do you think today
Speaker 1: if we just talk about that for.
Speaker 2: A second, I'm definitely mindful of them one hundred percent,
Speaker 2: you know, as a as a parent, and I love them,
Speaker 2: and I love those virtues in my sporting heroes as well.
Speaker 2: It's not just enough for them to be really really
Speaker 2: good at what they do. I'm looking for something else
Speaker 2: and not just skilled, not just skilled, Yeah, I'm looking
Speaker 2: for something else that enables them to carry the team,
Speaker 2: you know, and lead by example and just have that
Speaker 2: little X factor that's a little bit different to the
Speaker 2: guy that's just being able to do whatever they can do.
Speaker 3: So yeah, maybe maybe a bit of it comes from
Speaker 3: my dad.
Speaker 2: Or you know, other people that I that I've noticed
Speaker 2: as I was, as I was growing up or so
Speaker 2: I guess subconsciously there's probably a connection between you know,
Speaker 2: that ideal and some of some of the characters.
Speaker 4: I've played some.
Speaker 2: Really awful characters too, like I've played I've played some
Speaker 2: absolute shockers who don't really have that side to them,
Speaker 2: and that that comes quite easily as well, which is
Speaker 2: a bit scary, right, So it's not always the case,
Speaker 2: but I guess there is a bit of a connection because.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get back to chop again, but
Speaker 1: some people considering to be not a nice person. But
Speaker 1: what's interesting about the way you play You made him likable.
Speaker 1: He's funny, He's.
Speaker 2: Not getting around that, like you can't hide from that.
Speaker 2: It's what made the film quite controversial at the time,
Speaker 2: you know, because people were uncomfortable with people laughing in
Speaker 2: the cinema at moments when they just technically shouldn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's holding a gun at someone, or you're getting
Speaker 1: stabbed or whatever.
Speaker 3: That was him like that.
Speaker 2: That was the easiest part to play because he was
Speaker 2: one of the funniest people you'd ever come across. And
Speaker 2: in terms of reading a room mate, forget it. In
Speaker 2: terms of like distilling a character in three seconds. To
Speaker 2: this day, I've never met anyone who could look at
Speaker 2: a bunch of people and just have their measure within seconds.
Speaker 2: You know exactly what you're thinking, know how to manipulate
Speaker 2: you mentally, just unbelievable. So that's there. So you just
Speaker 2: try and work out, well, how do I how do
Speaker 2: I capture that? I remember being so exhausted after I
Speaker 2: spent a couple of days with him, and I was like,
Speaker 2: how do I capture that? How do I capture that
Speaker 2: energy sucking persona someone you know? So again, it has
Speaker 2: to be on the page.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: If you don't have the words to do that, if
Speaker 2: you don't have the freedom to try and exude that,
Speaker 2: you're you're limited.
Speaker 1: What do you mean on the page? How do you mean?
Speaker 2: So you can have all the intentions in the world.
Speaker 2: But if the script doesn't have the basic elements of
Speaker 2: a good story, if there are holes in the scene,
Speaker 2: if there are things that don't work, they don't work
Speaker 2: and you can't fix them on the day. Usually I
Speaker 2: like to have a crack at it if a scene's
Speaker 2: not working on the data to say hey, this is
Speaker 2: a bit long, or this is a bit boring, or
Speaker 2: this just doesn't work, and that that comes with time,
Speaker 2: also comes from a stand up background, because when you're
Speaker 2: on stage, if your material shit, guess what you know
Speaker 2: about it really quickly and you better fix it before the.
Speaker 3: Next gig, you know.
Speaker 2: So you need that rigor sometimes in filmmaking as well,
Speaker 2: because I don't want to come back in six months
Speaker 2: and reshoot this scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's more of a practical outcome, So I.
Speaker 2: Can be a bit a bit pragmatic in that in
Speaker 2: that sense, but yeah, it has to be. It has
Speaker 2: to be right on the page, and so the script
Speaker 2: you hope is the best it can possibly be before
Speaker 2: you arrive, because you know, there's not a whole lot
Speaker 2: of time to be meddling with that stuff. Once you're
Speaker 2: up and running.
Speaker 1: You sound like you've got a really good family life,
Speaker 1: a really good family, and you've definitely got a great brother.
Speaker 1: Grace is a great mum. Your dad's of course passed away.
Speaker 1: You've got your family's got a really good reputation. Then
Speaker 1: there's Ben Fordham, though, who has to build his own position.
Speaker 1: You know, you're doing all the things early days. You know,
Speaker 1: we've got went to camber be a political correspondent, all
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. But there's Ben who comes along
Speaker 1: into Channel nine. Back to Channel nine many years later.
Speaker 1: It probably knew late thirties, I guess. And you started
Speaker 1: doing feelings for Carl and then you did the Today
Speaker 1: Show for a while. Then you did Ninja Yeah, Australian
Speaker 1: Nina Ninja Warrior. You weren't really doing what you're doing now.
Speaker 1: You were sort of, but it looked like someone was,
Speaker 1: someone from above was preparing you for all these things
Speaker 1: during that period, though. Did you ever feel unstable? Did
Speaker 1: you ever feel like I want my own gig, I
Speaker 1: want my own You were happy just because you're sort
Speaker 1: of like a feeling dude to me.
Speaker 4: I did. What happened is I was offered two great
Speaker 4: jobs at the same time, drivetime host on two GB
Speaker 4: that's in the afternoon yep, and being the sports guy
Speaker 4: on the Today Show on Channel nine alongside Carl and
Speaker 4: Lisa and Georgie and Richard Wilkins two at the same time,
Speaker 4: one in the morning, one in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: I said I'll do both yeah, which worked.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And I did it for four years. I said
Speaker 4: to Jodie, I only do it for a year. I
Speaker 4: did it for four years, and I loved it.
Speaker 1: Did you do that the time? You did that? Only
Speaker 1: for four years?
Speaker 4: Yeah? No, No, I did Did it for longer?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I thought so, but I but I did so. I
Speaker 4: was wake up in the morning doing three and a
Speaker 4: half hours of Today Show and then three hours of
Speaker 4: Drive Time in the afternoon, a lot of broadcasting. But
Speaker 4: I thought, no, I'd take every opportunity as it comes,
Speaker 4: and if there was someone above who was kind of
Speaker 4: looking out for me or there probably are a few
Speaker 4: of those people. David Ginjel is one of them. David Ginjel,
Speaker 4: who when he was running Channel nine was a great
Speaker 4: friend of mine and also a great boss. But he
Speaker 4: also knew that I loved radio. So one stage, I said.
Speaker 1: Mate, there's also a great fan of yours.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But I said to Ginge, look, I want to go
Speaker 4: and do this, and that means I'm going to leave
Speaker 4: the Today Show. And he goes, well, let's not make
Speaker 4: any drastic decisions. I said, no, I just want to
Speaker 4: focus full time on the whatever I did. He'd eventually,
Speaker 4: he tried and talk me out of it, but then
Speaker 4: he'd eventually he'd come on board and he'd support me.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: So Tom Malone is another one, who's my boss at
Speaker 4: nine Radio. He used to be the boss at the
Speaker 4: Today Show. A bit of a lesson there as well. Dad,
Speaker 4: you saw always say be good to work experience kids
Speaker 4: because one day one of them will become your boss.
Speaker 4: Tommy was my work experience kid. He was one, really yep,
Speaker 4: and he's now been my boss twice, once at the
Speaker 4: Today Show, once at nine Radio. So thankfully I was
Speaker 4: good to him when he was a work experience kid. Yeah,
Speaker 4: Ginge kind of was very good to me in allowing
Speaker 4: me to chase my dream in radio, and you know,
Speaker 4: I got my own show doing the drivetime thing. And
Speaker 4: then all of a sudden Tom said to me one day, mate,
Speaker 4: Alan Jones is retiring and we need you to step
Speaker 4: into breakfast And I said, no, I think six times.
Speaker 4: But Tom then basically he showed me a chart that
Speaker 4: showed me the success of my show in the afternoon
Speaker 4: on Drive and the revenue that came to it. And
Speaker 4: he said, and it was successful, and he said, we
Speaker 4: need that at the start of the day. And in
Speaker 4: the end I thought, I trust Tom, I trust my mum,
Speaker 4: I trust my brother, I trust my sister, I trust
Speaker 4: my wife. They all think it's a good idea. I
Speaker 4: think it's a shit idea. Maybe they're right and maybe
Speaker 4: I'm wrong. And it went against everything in my DNA
Speaker 4: because I trust my instinct Mark, but on this one
Speaker 4: I went hang on a moment, and this was a
Speaker 4: lesson for me as well. Why is my instinct any
Speaker 4: more accurate than theirs. There's five of them, there's one
Speaker 4: on me. Five of them think it's a good idea.
Speaker 4: One thinks it's a bad idea. So I thought, you
Speaker 4: know what, I'm going to throw caution of the wind.
Speaker 4: I'm going to go with them. So I said, okay,
Speaker 4: I'll do it. And then on the Sunday before my
Speaker 4: first show, mum and my brother and my sister came
Speaker 4: around for breakfast and I started crying my eyes out
Speaker 4: over breakfast, like balling my eyes out in front of
Speaker 4: my children, in front of my wife, in front of
Speaker 4: my mom.
Speaker 1: And with anxiety.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, And they said you're okay, and I said, no,
Speaker 4: I'm not okay because I didn't want to fucking do it.
Speaker 4: And I said I didn't want to do it, and
Speaker 4: now I'm doing this thing and I was.
Speaker 1: So pissed off about it with yourself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because I was like, I should have trusted myself
Speaker 4: and not caved into everyone else. And now I'm starting
Speaker 4: this thing, and I'm.
Speaker 1: You're leaving an award winning show and going into a
Speaker 1: show that.
Speaker 4: It Yeah, you know, and I'll tell you I mentioned
Speaker 4: David Ginjeel Right now. I'm going to make these numbers
Speaker 4: up because I'm not going to remembering ratings, radio ratings
Speaker 4: numbers and whatever. But say, Alan Jones finished on a
Speaker 4: sixteen sixteen percent share, which is pretty bloody good. Ginge
Speaker 4: was texting me the day before and he goes, good luck, mate,
Speaker 4: I'm with you, and I said, mate, hoping for the best,
Speaker 4: but expecting, you know, bracing for the worst. I thought,
Speaker 4: if I end up with an eight, you know, Alan
Speaker 4: was on sixteen, if I harve his audience, I mean,
Speaker 4: up on an eight, I'll be able to deal with
Speaker 4: that and then I'll climb from there. He wrote back.
Speaker 4: He goes, mate, I know you better than that, and
Speaker 4: he had like laughing face emojis. I said, man, I'm
Speaker 4: not joking. He goes, mate, I know you too well.
Speaker 4: I said, mate, I'm serious. I was bracing for that,
Speaker 4: and I think the first ratings came out and we
Speaker 4: rated seventy, we went up I think or either sixteen seven,
Speaker 4: and we stayed.
Speaker 1: I remember it was close, yeah, and I was like,
Speaker 1: and then.
Speaker 4: We went up and we certainly ended up going up
Speaker 4: above that sixteen. And now we've kind of stayed and
Speaker 4: no one.
Speaker 1: Left in turns of advertisers, advertisers, audience.
Speaker 4: And audience. No one left. More advertisers came because Alan
Speaker 4: had some advertising problems because there's some statements that he'd made.
Speaker 4: They got him in trouble. But now every ratings day
Speaker 4: or most ratings day, so I get a message from Ginge. So, mate,
Speaker 4: how's that eight going? You know?
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: But I one of the great communicators.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was. I was worried, you know why am
Speaker 4: I risking all of this? And occasionally I ring tom
Speaker 4: My Boss and I go, you know what, you made
Speaker 4: a good call put me in there, because I reckon,
Speaker 4: I'm actually pretty.
Speaker 5: Good at this.
Speaker 1: How long have you been doing the Morning Tree? Three
Speaker 1: years now?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So the Morning Show? I mean I listened to it.
Speaker 1: I'm unfortunately or fortunately I'm in the five thirty club,
Speaker 1: and in fact I'm at the four thirty club. But
Speaker 1: your five thirty club starts at five thirty club and
Speaker 1: I and I actually listened to Who's on before you know?
Speaker 1: It used to be Luke? Who's on before you Now?
Speaker 4: Who's on? Jeffreys? Jeffers used to be Luke Luke Great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you used to be. But Mike Jeffreys on there
Speaker 1: you're up nice and early. I know I am here.
Speaker 1: I'm in the car. So as soon as I get
Speaker 1: my car, I have the radio on in my house
Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day. And then now I get
Speaker 1: in the car in the morning, the first thing I
Speaker 1: was to turn the radio one. And because I just
Speaker 1: like the idea of company and you know, like you're
Speaker 1: you're one of the first people I hear talking. Was
Speaker 1: just comforting to me to know that there's someone that
Speaker 1: I know. I feel like you're talking to me. That's
Speaker 1: how it feels to me. Anyway, I do want to
Speaker 1: talk about some of the issues that we that you
Speaker 1: talk about. I want to and some of you get
Speaker 1: just still on that.
Speaker 4: I'm the same. Like when I go to sleep now
Speaker 4: I've become addicted. I need a voice in my ear.
Speaker 1: I need I need the noise. Yeah, I need something yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: And so I listened to podcasts, but they can't be
Speaker 4: podcasts that are too interesting. Yeah, they might need to
Speaker 4: listen to in daylight hours because they keep me awake.
Speaker 4: So I listened to podcasts that I've already heard before,
Speaker 4: and it's that comforting voice, a conversation I'm already familiar with.
Speaker 4: So it's a powerful thing. It's a great it's a
Speaker 4: great gift that I have to be in people's homes,
Speaker 4: in people's beds, because some people to text me and go,
Speaker 4: I'm laying here next to my missus. Well right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: But we're in a daily fight against Kyle and Jackie
Speaker 4: O in Sydney, and usually on the ratings day it's
Speaker 4: either me winning or then winning. And I'm number one
Speaker 4: at the moment, which means chances are by the time
Speaker 4: this podcast comes out, they'll be number one. Right, And
Speaker 4: we've just accepted that. Kyle and Jackie O accept that.
Speaker 4: I accept that, and we exchange nice messages amongst each other.
Speaker 4: But I reckon I work harder right, and this will
Speaker 4: get under skin. I reckon the reason what I work
Speaker 4: harder right, So I'm going to do. Kyle has got
Speaker 4: this Kyle extraordinary personality, right, he does, and he's captivating
Speaker 4: his controversial is everything. But guess what made I work harder?
Speaker 4: So hard work you can catch up to people around
Speaker 4: the edges?
Speaker 1: Did you have to catch up to him before we so?
Speaker 4: In other words, I don't know. I started at number one, yep.
Speaker 4: I stayed at number one for about a year, then
Speaker 4: they knocked me off. Then I came straight back up
Speaker 4: in the next survey, and then ever since it's a seesaw, right,
Speaker 4: and that's fine, number one, number two. There's lots of
Speaker 4: radio shows out there who never going to be number one,
Speaker 4: and saying the Sydney market where I work, some of
Speaker 4: these people and my friends who they might be number three,
Speaker 4: number four, they still do great shows. So I'm very
Speaker 4: lucky I started on the number one radio station in town.
Speaker 4: You know, I didn't build this thing. It's not like you.
Speaker 4: You've built this thing yourself, right. I turned up at
Speaker 4: a radio station that's got heaps of listeners.
Speaker 1: Can we talk about that, then, let's just talk about
Speaker 1: it's not it's a band for Botom show, got it,
Speaker 1: but it's not just Ben for them. So in your team,
Speaker 1: just explain to us how you go about building your
Speaker 1: show for tomorrow morning fragum and say what actually happened.
Speaker 4: What happens? Well, first of all, I have got the
Speaker 4: best team of producers, and I have consistently had the
Speaker 4: best team of producers in the country.
Speaker 1: What does a team of producers mean.
Speaker 4: Well, it means first of all, young talented people who
Speaker 4: helped me put a show together. But the way that
Speaker 4: I've done that is I've I created a work experience
Speaker 4: program when I started to GB because they didn't have one,
Speaker 4: Because I said, where are you going to find the
Speaker 4: superstars of tomorrow if you don't have a program. So
Speaker 4: we got rid of a couch and put a desk
Speaker 4: in there with a phone and a computer. And basically,
Speaker 4: anyone who wants to come and do one day of
Speaker 4: work experience on my radio show, they can come and
Speaker 4: do it one day. If they show promise, if we
Speaker 4: are interested in them, they can come back another day.
Speaker 4: And then from there it builds where we start giving
Speaker 4: them some paid work and then they go into a
Speaker 4: system of people who we know are there for when
Speaker 4: we need them. It's like a pathways.
Speaker 1: It's a discovery system for you.
Speaker 4: It's a discovery system, right because otherwise, what I noticed
Speaker 4: is that when I was working Channel nine, I was
Speaker 4: working at a Current Affair for years and years and years,
Speaker 4: and the boss there, David Hurley, who I love Hurls,
Speaker 4: used to walk out, Yah, Buris has quit, does anyone
Speaker 4: know anyone? And there'd be a thousand cvs sitting on
Speaker 4: his desk, but he didn't have time to go through them.
Speaker 4: I thought, I need a system. So I've got these
Speaker 4: brilliant producers, and you know, I've met some of them
Speaker 4: on street corners. I've met one of them was a
Speaker 4: talkback coller. He was a talkback caller who he turned
Speaker 4: into a producer. You never know where you're going to
Speaker 4: find them. And then we have a WhatsApp group, and
Speaker 4: I've got a rule which is if it's not in
Speaker 4: the WhatsApp group, it didn't happen. So it's like if
Speaker 4: you spot something. If you see something, you put it
Speaker 4: in the WhatsApp group. And then every night I then
Speaker 4: go through that WhatsApp group and I work out what
Speaker 4: all the options are and we put a show together.
Speaker 4: And then sometimes you wake up the next morning and
Speaker 4: the queen's died overnight. God rest his soul, and so
Speaker 4: you throw out the entire show and you start again
Speaker 4: on the morning. The Queen died. I think we managed
Speaker 4: to track down four prime ministers. So we had Scott Morrison,
Speaker 4: Tony Abbott, Kevin rud and another. I need to work
Speaker 4: out who the other one was. So easy, it's about chasing.
Speaker 4: Let's chase who can we get who can we sell
Speaker 4: a lot of it as dynamic and.
Speaker 1: So you go to a five point thirty. So just
Speaker 1: give us, by the way, give us an example of
Speaker 1: what happened so on that on that on the occasion.
Speaker 1: So the night before you probably got your show set,
Speaker 1: you had your talent set on you what's our group?
Speaker 1: And you know you've gone well and so go and
Speaker 1: chase this personality chase and you've started lining your talent
Speaker 1: up because you've got to fill up the hours for
Speaker 1: enough three and enough hours, Queen Dies, What time do
Speaker 1: you get to work that day?
Speaker 4: I woke up at normal time three ten yep and
Speaker 4: a young bo Spiro Chris, who works with me, one
Speaker 4: of your producers, teenager. He was doing the night shift
Speaker 4: for us. I also created a night role where someone
Speaker 4: works at night, so that if stuff happens at night,
Speaker 4: there across it. He put a note in the WhatsApp
Speaker 4: group saying all of the presenters on the BBC are
Speaker 4: wearing black right like us, Like us, that's a sign
Speaker 4: that the media is aware that the queen may have
Speaker 4: passed or is about to pass. So that was all
Speaker 4: I knew. All the BBC presenters are wearing bodies.
Speaker 1: So when you wake up a three time in the morning,
Speaker 1: is that the first thing you do is the first
Speaker 1: thing I see you pick up with your phone on my.
Speaker 4: Phone, I walk downstairs, have a look at what's going on,
Speaker 4: send a few messages back and then jump in the shower.
Speaker 4: So that morning I was like, okay, dump everything. We
Speaker 4: had to change everything, and then we need to we
Speaker 4: need people live out of London. I've just thought of
Speaker 4: the fourth Prime Minister. Was it's our current one album?
Speaker 4: So it was yeah, Albo, Scamo, Abbott Rad getting them
Speaker 4: on and sharing their reflections of.
Speaker 1: So what would happen though, So you would be would
Speaker 1: ring them all.
Speaker 4: I'd be on most of those guys. I'm texting them.
Speaker 1: You know them, So I.
Speaker 4: Text them and say sorry if you're just hearing this
Speaker 4: for the first time, but the Queen's passed away, I'd
Speaker 4: like to be able to talk to you about it
Speaker 4: on radio once you've gathered your thoughts or whatever, so
Speaker 4: my team will also be chasing. Like I'll give you
Speaker 4: another example of breaking news and the way it works.
Speaker 4: There was a girl in Western Australia called Cleo who
Speaker 4: went missing. She was taken out of a tent and
Speaker 4: I remember saying to my guys, listen, I want an
Speaker 4: update on this every day, and they'd say there's no
Speaker 4: update today. I'm like, I don't care. It's day fourteen.
Speaker 4: Where's Cleo. I still want to know, Like this little
Speaker 4: girl she's missing on the other side of the country,
Speaker 4: I want to know where she is. And then on
Speaker 4: about day eighteen, my producer at the time or executive
Speaker 4: producer at the time, wandered into the studio and just
Speaker 4: gave me a piece of paper. So I was in
Speaker 4: the middle of an interview about something else, say, I'm
Speaker 4: talking to Mark Blewis about interest rates, and they just
Speaker 4: come in to hand me a piece of paper and
Speaker 4: it's got West Australian Police and it's a statement about
Speaker 4: Cleo Smith. So I wrapped up the interview, said Mark,
Speaker 4: thanks for your time, appreciated. It's twenty five past seven.
Speaker 4: Now I've got this, and I just started reading it. Now.
Speaker 4: I don't know whether this is going to say that
Speaker 4: we've found her, we've discovered that something terrible has happened
Speaker 4: to you. I don't know. I haven't pre read it.
Speaker 4: And then I'm reading it and it gets to the
Speaker 4: part of the office is knocked on the went end
Speaker 4: of the room and I'll say, young lady, what's your name?
Speaker 4: And she didn't answer, and they said what's your name, sweetheart?
Speaker 4: And she said, my name is Cleo and that was
Speaker 4: written in this thing, and you go, holy moly, you know,
Speaker 4: like I just started to boreing my eyes out long
Speaker 4: on air because I've got little girls at home. You know.
Speaker 4: It was one of those moments of and then the
Speaker 4: whole show changes. Then I'm like, right, let's get Mick
Speaker 4: four on the South Wales's Police commissioner. Right, Mick, what
Speaker 4: with the WA? Because I thought I'm not going to
Speaker 4: get the bloke in WA. He's in the middle of this.
Speaker 4: Mick says, actually, I have contacted I've spoken to him.
Speaker 4: He's been bulling his eyes out, you know. Okay, we've
Speaker 4: got some new information. The WA police commissioner has been
Speaker 4: builing his eyes out. How do we know our mate
Speaker 4: Mick Fuller's told us he's jumped on the line, you know,
Speaker 4: so you just respond, You react, and you get as
Speaker 4: many different people and insights onto a story like that,
Speaker 4: and if you feel like you're there when it's all unfolding.
Speaker 4: And this goes back to the companionship thing. So many
Speaker 4: people wrote to me and said, mate, I couldn't get
Speaker 4: out of the car. I pull up a work twenty
Speaker 4: five past seven. I've got to be in there at
Speaker 4: seven third. Couldn't leave because you've got to listen to it.
Speaker 4: I want to listen to the radio is great like that.
Speaker 4: Radio is resilient like that that I can find something
Speaker 4: out at six twenty six and four seconds and I'm
Speaker 4: saying it at five seconds one second. It's as long
Speaker 4: as it takes it for you to open your mouth
Speaker 4: and you're saying it. The reason I moved more into
Speaker 4: radio because I'm a bit add and the reason I
Speaker 4: favored radio more than TV is in TV, you'd have
Speaker 4: to go, all right, we need to get the camera
Speaker 4: crew to go to Canarvon. Oh, we've got it there,
Speaker 4: have we got the link truck? How do we let it?
Speaker 4: You know, there's a lot of that stuff involved. In radio, Mate,
Speaker 4: there's something special like this, It just happens, just happens.
Speaker 6: Like you can go on to Rogan and pretty much
Speaker 6: talk about yourself for three hours and he'll just kind.
Speaker 1: Of let you yeah, which is sort of what yeah,
Speaker 1: both of us do.
Speaker 6: Yeah, for sure, exactly. We're not interested in having someone
Speaker 6: there to tell them what we think.
Speaker 1: That's a podcast.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's how podcasts work. And that's why podcasts are
Speaker 6: in dex so much higher for women than they do
Speaker 6: for men. And that's why for us at mum and MEA,
Speaker 6: so much of our business is built on audio and
Speaker 6: on our podcast network.
Speaker 1: Can I go back to momome then? Just Yeah kicked off.
Speaker 6: Early two thousands, two thousand and eight, actually yeah, seven sorry,
Speaker 6: two thousand of yet started as a blog, yeap.
Speaker 1: Just me blogs is a thing. Yeah.
Speaker 6: It was just someone writing on the internet, really and
Speaker 6: it wasn't a personal blog, so it was always going
Speaker 6: to be about, you know, just what I wanted to
Speaker 6: write about, really, what I thought might be interesting to people,
Speaker 6: because back in that time there were women's women's websites
Speaker 6: were like they were very net specific. They were about cooking,
Speaker 6: or they're about gossip, or they're about fashion, or they're
Speaker 6: about parenting, and I was interested in all of these things,
Speaker 6: but I was also interested in news and pop culture,
Speaker 6: and every other woman I know was not just interested
Speaker 6: in one of those things. So it made sense to
Speaker 6: me to have a blog and then a website and
Speaker 6: our media company that covers all of those things, because
Speaker 6: this idea of women's issues through a different looking at
Speaker 6: the world through a female lens versus women's issues. All
Speaker 6: issues are women's issues, but what we do at Mum
Speaker 6: and mea I guess, is look at it through a
Speaker 6: female lens, because most of the media tends to look
Speaker 6: at it through a mail lens, just by virtue of
Speaker 6: the fact that most media companies, in fact, pretty much
Speaker 6: all media companies are run by man. So I just saw,
Speaker 6: you know, a gap in the market, and then I
Speaker 6: established that there was a market in that gap. And
Speaker 6: then I'd been growing an audience. But I was a
Speaker 6: one woman operator, and I was completely exhausted, and my
Speaker 6: husband had sold his business. He'd been in the liquor
Speaker 6: industry and he was looking for something to invest his
Speaker 6: time in, and he'd sold his company, and so he
Speaker 6: came on board as a co founder. After about eighteen months,
Speaker 6: and he said, let's try and monetize this in the
Speaker 6: next twelve months, or because I hadn't earn a cent
Speaker 6: in two years, or it's time to you know, it's
Speaker 6: going to be time to get another job, because we've
Speaker 6: got a mortgage to pay. And so he came on
Speaker 6: board and we did. We monetized it. We were profitable,
Speaker 6: I think in that first year, which was not as
Speaker 6: impressive as it sounds, because it was just him and
Speaker 6: me and we weren't earning any money. There was no
Speaker 6: else to pay, so we were profitable. But then we
Speaker 6: just slowly moved into a little tiny office and slowly
Speaker 6: started hiring people. And of course nobody wanted to really
Speaker 6: come and do this thing. The internet was still a
Speaker 6: bit untested, and yeah, we we just grew from there
Speaker 6: and now we've got about one hundred and fifty people,
Speaker 6: and yeah, we're sort of a pretty big not a
Speaker 6: small business anymore.
Speaker 1: When two people husband and wife's yeah, at the coffee
Speaker 1: table or whatever, the kitchen table, and often wonder about
Speaker 1: let's say, at that stage, husband wasn't involved and you
Speaker 1: were doing your blogs. Often what it is a blog
Speaker 1: for some people therapy that's.
Speaker 6: A really interesting it was for some people. I think
Speaker 6: what was amazing about the rise of blogging, particularly the
Speaker 6: parenting bloggers of around that time, which I never was,
Speaker 6: but I was very influenced by them. It was this
Speaker 6: very flourishing way of women to communicate to other women
Speaker 6: in a way where there was no gatekeeper, so there
Speaker 6: wasn't no edit, and there was no one saying, well,
Speaker 6: that's interesting to people or that's not interesting to people,
Speaker 6: and there was no goal is that going to be
Speaker 6: interesting to enough people to be able to monetize it
Speaker 6: through advertising. It was just women expressing how they felt
Speaker 6: about things, and it was an amazing time. It was
Speaker 6: fairly short lived, but it was an amazing time. And
Speaker 6: for me, I wasn't interested in writing personally, particularly, but
Speaker 6: I was interested in being the one. I'd been an
Speaker 6: editor for so long and then an editor in chief
Speaker 6: with lots of magazines under me ACP, and I'd been
Speaker 6: sort of managing people and teaching other people and editing
Speaker 6: other people for so long. I've spent a lot of
Speaker 6: my career climbing up the ladder because I'm very ambitious,
Speaker 6: but then realizing I don't really like it up there,
Speaker 6: and climbing back down and wanting to get back to
Speaker 6: the cold face without anyone between me and an audience,
Speaker 6: and just wanting to communicate directly. And that's what I love,
Speaker 6: And ironically I'm in the process of that at the
Speaker 6: moment again, de escalating, coming back to the cold face
Speaker 6: where I can just create directly for an audience.
Speaker 1: And what are the signs that you and your husband
Speaker 1: saw that either encouraged him or you to think how
Speaker 1: I'm going to He's going to take on the co
Speaker 1: founder role and we're going to monetize this. What did
Speaker 1: you say exactly? What it was?
Speaker 6: No, there were probably about ten thousand or more people
Speaker 6: coming every day to read what I was writing. I
Speaker 6: was doing about six posts a day on my own
Speaker 6: per day. Per day I was there were thousands of comments.
Speaker 6: I was moderating every single comment. Like I had no
Speaker 6: one to work for me. It was literally me walking
Speaker 6: around with my laptop in my house and then I
Speaker 6: had another baby during that time. But the reason that
Speaker 6: he realized there was something there is because I kept
Speaker 6: getting approached by private equity who wanted to start things
Speaker 6: and get me to run them for them.
Speaker 1: And he would come with it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there was something. There was a big thing at
Speaker 6: the time called Daily Candy Out of the US, which
Speaker 6: was a daily email that would like do a roundup
Speaker 6: of the best kind of deals and fashion things and
Speaker 6: various things. And so everyone wanted to to get into
Speaker 6: this women's digital space. And so I'd get Jason to
Speaker 6: come to these meetings with me and Jason Levine being
Speaker 6: my husband, and and you know, we went to a
Speaker 6: couple and it was like, why on earth would we
Speaker 6: go and work for these clowns to make something for
Speaker 6: women when I know how to do this. Let's just
Speaker 6: we're doing it like so that that's where he was like, well,
Speaker 6: if they can see something in it. And he was
Speaker 6: starting at Harvard at the time, and he used Mama
Speaker 6: Mea as because he didn't have his business. He just
Speaker 6: sold his business before he'd started this three year Harvard course,
Speaker 6: and he used Mama Mea as A as a model
Speaker 6: because they had to sort of being their business. Yeah,
Speaker 6: not a case study, but they had to plug in
Speaker 6: their own businesses to these things they were learning. And
Speaker 6: he used Mama Maha at the time, and it just
Speaker 6: made him see the potential there. And I was getting
Speaker 6: all these approaches but I didn't have the bandwidth or
Speaker 6: the skills to be honest, to monetize any any of
Speaker 6: the approaches I was getting. So for a while, you know,
Speaker 6: he was managing me and people would get me to
Speaker 6: come and you know, they wanted me to be the
Speaker 6: brand ambassador for their whatever, and he would do those
Speaker 6: deals and then he's like, there's there's a business here potentially,
Speaker 6: and he could see that I was completely burning out
Speaker 6: and I didn't have a capacity to monetize it myself.
Speaker 6: And I also didn't I didn't have a business plan.
Speaker 6: I didn't know how to do a business plan. He
Speaker 6: was like, what's what's your exit? You're not and I'm like,
Speaker 6: I don't know. Rupert Merticle, come along and buy me
Speaker 6: and he's like, buy what it's You're on your laptop,
Speaker 6: there's nothing to buy. And I was like I couldn't.
Speaker 6: I couldn't see that because I was just so caught
Speaker 6: up in it. And he was the one that's always
Speaker 6: had the vision. I've always been really good at this,
Speaker 6: and he's always been the one that can see over
Speaker 6: the horizon and been like, nomma, men needs to be
Speaker 6: a website that you edit, And I'm like, oh no,
Speaker 6: that'll never work, or he's like, mum and me needs
Speaker 6: to and I'm like, oh no, that'll never work, and
Speaker 6: then he's right, and he's right, and he's right. So
Speaker 6: we've been a really good combination, whereas he's very much
Speaker 6: steered the business and the financial side of it and
Speaker 6: everything other than the content, and I've steered the content
Speaker 6: and it's worked, you know, really well for seventeen years
Speaker 6: and one of the most dangerous times for any startup.
Speaker 6: And I'm much more suited to start up culture, I've realized,
Speaker 6: but he always had much bigger ambitions and the most
Speaker 6: dangerous time for a business we learned was oh we
Speaker 6: knew was going from startup to scale up because culturally
Speaker 6: it's a big shift. The people that you hire as
Speaker 6: generalists you then move to needing specialists. It's a big
Speaker 6: risk moving up. And he managed us through that. Who
Speaker 6: was now he's been an outstanding CEO, managing through all
Speaker 6: of those rocky waters and through COVID and through we
Speaker 6: tried to you know, not everything we've done has worked.
Speaker 6: We tried to expand into the US, that didn't work,
Speaker 6: so we closed that down and decided to really focus
Speaker 6: here but probably the biggest thing for us was when
Speaker 6: Facebook told everybody to pivot to video. They told publishers
Speaker 6: to pivot to video, and everybody sacked their riders, invested
Speaker 6: all this money, started making video, pivoted, and then Facebook
Speaker 6: quent ah yeah nah yeah, And that was sort of
Speaker 6: the beginning of the end for the buzzfeeds, the vices,
Speaker 6: and they just ended up getting more and more investment,
Speaker 6: more and more, needing more and more, doing bigger and
Speaker 6: bigger cat raisers to fund this bigger and bigger expansion.
Speaker 6: And because we've never done that, we've always been in
Speaker 6: control of our own destiny. And that's a decision that
Speaker 6: Jason made because he knew that, you know, and I
Speaker 6: would say, come, they've got all this cup raising and
Speaker 6: we don't, and He's like, it means that we can
Speaker 6: make the best decisions for our business. So when everyone
Speaker 6: pivoted to video, we actually pivoted to audio, and that
Speaker 6: was before most people knew what a podcast was, and
Speaker 6: that ended up being a really, really good decision for us.
Speaker 1: So I just want the co founder thing because often
Speaker 1: people say to me, do I need to co founder?
Speaker 1: Or some people come to me and say I knew
Speaker 1: the co founder because they heard someone else say that
Speaker 1: you need a co founder.
Speaker 6: Well, I needed a co founder.
Speaker 1: Well is it better to say, though, mere that I'm
Speaker 1: really good at this, but I'm also good at those things.
Speaker 1: Those things are important in my business. In the business, therefore,
Speaker 1: I'll find a co founder can do those things. Because
Speaker 1: you know, my old man is my dad uses always
Speaker 1: say just always put up on a whiteboard what you're
Speaker 1: good at and what, but equally, you be honest what
Speaker 1: your crap at and you know, and I often say
Speaker 1: my various businesses, and I've always had my brother involved,
Speaker 1: my younger brother involved as a lawyer. I say, I cut,
Speaker 1: he shows and you know, nice and if because he's
Speaker 1: he's really good at stitching things up, making really nice
Speaker 1: and neat and tighty and relevant, et cetera. Not in
Speaker 1: terms of content, but just in terms of structure, finances.
Speaker 6: Car needs a break in an accelerator totally, they are.
Speaker 1: So did you did you me or sort of recognize
Speaker 1: that your husband had those qualities.
Speaker 6: Yes, I knew that I couldn't do because I was
Speaker 6: just all I knew I was really really good at
Speaker 6: this one thing, but I was not. There was this
Speaker 6: whole other thing that not only was I not good at,
Speaker 6: wasn't interested in coming to it, at it, I didn't
Speaker 6: enjoy it. It wasn't a good use of my time
Speaker 6: doing this thing that I didn't understand or wasn't good at.
Speaker 6: And so for me, not only did Jakes have skills
Speaker 6: that I didn't have in terms of business and finance,
Speaker 6: but he also had a different mindset because I have
Speaker 6: a high I have a low boredom threshold and a
Speaker 6: high appetite for risk. He is more cautious, and I
Speaker 6: think that has been in a business. If you just
Speaker 6: have unharnessed ambition or unharnessed risk appetite, that's really dangerous.
Speaker 1: Both of you're risky.
Speaker 6: Yeah you can't. And so I think you know the
Speaker 6: best partnerships. And I've always said, you know, I ran
Speaker 6: this whole course part of the business for many years
Speaker 6: called Lady Startup, which is about helping women start businesses
Speaker 6: and about the co founder thing. I would always say
Speaker 6: exactly what you've said, which is either partner with someone
Speaker 6: who has different strengths to you or higher if you
Speaker 6: can afford to. And the problem is that most people
Speaker 6: their co founders will be like a friend or a
Speaker 6: sister or something and I had you know, they'll say, oh,
Speaker 6: this is my co founder. We're really different, like I'm this,
Speaker 6: and it's like your differences are like this. You need
Speaker 6: differences that are like this, like whether you're really you know,
Speaker 6: you look at some of the most successful partnerships in
Speaker 6: Australian business, NICKI and Simone Zimmermann, you know, clothing zimmm
Speaker 6: and sisters Yeah, Nick creative, Nicole is I think a
Speaker 6: lawyer by trade or maybe an accountant and so you know,
Speaker 6: they're very clear about who does what. And I think
Speaker 6: that that's been that's been the key for me and Jason.
Speaker 6: There's no way I could have done this without him,
Speaker 6: and you know he would have done something else without me,
Speaker 6: but it wouldn't have been this.
Speaker 1: So an important point here though, and I've seen this
Speaker 1: happen with people, especially husband and wife or a boyfriend, girlfriend,
Speaker 1: or brother and sister, etc. Brothers and sisters. If you
Speaker 1: have somebody like you say, with your skills and things
Speaker 1: you like doing and with a high appetite for risk,
Speaker 1: you say, and this is sort of what you're explaining
Speaker 1: to me. You say, look, I want to do this,
Speaker 1: and he will come back and he'll say, well, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, let's just check this out and do a
Speaker 1: bit of analysis on and blah blah blah.
Speaker 6: Cut once.
Speaker 1: But would you ever get to the point where you'd say, well,
Speaker 1: hang on, don't you believe in me? Like this is
Speaker 1: what I believe in. Do you ever get to the
Speaker 1: point and say I just want you to believe in me,
Speaker 1: And he's going to say, well, hang on, I do
Speaker 1: believe in you, but my role is correct. Now how
Speaker 1: do you deal with that little a small conflict there?
Speaker 1: But what happened counseling.
Speaker 6: It's really interesting. We've come to really like I bristle
Speaker 6: at being held back, and he bristles at me running
Speaker 6: headlong into something passionately. But what we've learned over the
Speaker 6: years is that is to trust each other. Like it's
Speaker 6: been proven time and time again that my instincts when
Speaker 6: I want to run hard at something I can't often explain.
Speaker 6: Like with podcasts, there was no business model. I just
Speaker 6: knew that it was something we had to do. And
Speaker 6: I remember getting up in a leadership team meeting and
Speaker 6: explaining pot and they all kind of like laughed at
Speaker 6: me and whatever, and I'm like, no, guys like take
Speaker 6: this in. It's like, oh mea' Like we've got our
Speaker 6: business plan. We can't we do it. This is our strategy.
Speaker 1: We can't.
Speaker 6: And I'm like, and so I'll just go off and
Speaker 6: do it on my own. It's like Lady Startup. I
Speaker 6: just Jase walked past my office one day and I
Speaker 6: was on the floor and I was cutting things up,
Speaker 6: or maybe it was the Very Pery Summit and I
Speaker 6: was whatever, and he's like, oh, babe, you know what
Speaker 6: are you doing? What's and I said, and he goh,
Speaker 6: what's the business plan? I'm like, I'm not sure, Like
Speaker 6: what's the revenue attached to it? And I'm like, I'm
Speaker 6: not sure, but I'm sure I'll find it. And I
Speaker 6: always have. So, whether it's been podcasts, the Very Pery
Speaker 6: Summit that I did, or the Lady Startup course Verry Menopause. Yeah,
Speaker 6: so they've all been like multimillion dollar become multimillion dollar
Speaker 6: parts of our business. But they didn't start off going
Speaker 6: how can we make a lot of money. It's been
Speaker 6: I've gone what walking in her shoes? What do women want?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 6: And then we find a way to make it financially
Speaker 6: viable to actually do it because we're not a charity
Speaker 6: where where a purpose driven business, and our purpose is
Speaker 6: to make the world a better place for women and girls.
Speaker 6: So I'm always looking at what can I make that
Speaker 6: fulfills that purpose.
Speaker 1: So I need to know from you. I like, how
Speaker 1: do you do it? Like I mean, it's it's a
Speaker 1: big question to get it. But you know, you lost
Speaker 1: a couple of players last year, you lost a couple
Speaker 1: players before you just keep I don't know whether is
Speaker 1: it because you've got a good nursery of people out there?
Speaker 1: What's is there a secret?
Speaker 4: Not that.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't tell you that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, I think we we have a great club
Speaker 7: for starters. It's very well aligned from the very top
Speaker 7: through management on the board and all our coaching staff
Speaker 7: all the way through the players. And that's easy to say,
Speaker 7: but it's harder to do, you know. And that's probably
Speaker 7: our greatest strength as the club, so assistance we have
Speaker 7: in place respected by everyone, and then they followed. We
Speaker 7: do have a great nursery of players as well. We
Speaker 7: have a good pathway system. But some of the players
Speaker 7: we have lost, you will never be able to replace them.
Speaker 7: You know. If I've mentioned guys like Philly Army, Kick
Speaker 7: our Appy Cross, our Stephen Crichton, I'm special, Len you
Speaker 7: like and now Fish and Ray.
Speaker 5: You can't replace those guys.
Speaker 1: Like for like, you know, I've forgot to be a
Speaker 1: kid going and yeah, right, like.
Speaker 7: And there's burden before that it was yeah, like it's
Speaker 7: just been unbelievable any more.
Speaker 5: Like, but.
Speaker 7: You know what we do have is we have an
Speaker 7: incredible leaders in our team led by Nat and as
Speaker 7: a l and still have a lot of talent on
Speaker 7: our team. But we you know, each year these boys
Speaker 7: grow together, the chemistry the ones that stay become stronger,
Speaker 7: and it say as I said that we have good systems,
Speaker 7: you know, good chemistry and good staff and whoever comes
Speaker 7: in has seen you know, there's a legacy that those
Speaker 7: guys that leave leave and you know it's easier for
Speaker 7: them to transition into the role. So it's it's a
Speaker 7: never ending search to try and keep doing this and
Speaker 7: we've got to do it again next year and we
Speaker 7: haven't done it yet, So that's going to be the
Speaker 7: challenge that we I guess we just step into each
Speaker 7: and every day.
Speaker 5: We don't never live in the past.
Speaker 7: And so this point it's it's working for us, but
Speaker 7: we also know that you know it could you know,
Speaker 7: if you don't keep behind on the ball, it can
Speaker 7: change quickly.
Speaker 1: So but a bit of you but you always and
Speaker 1: you know you know the roster obviously, you know the roster,
Speaker 1: You know the salary cap, you know which you can
Speaker 1: and can't fit, you know who's kind of for renewal,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Are you do you do you actually sit
Speaker 1: back and plan with a team or is it ivan clear?
Speaker 1: He does it like a kid who's in seventeen. He's
Speaker 1: looking pretty good. He's in the New Soths Origin team
Speaker 1: or with Queens on Origins, wherever it is. He's coming through.
Speaker 1: The pro says he is a good marker for to
Speaker 1: replace Isaiah when he leaves, and yeah, tires.
Speaker 7: Yeah, there's definitely that sort of stuff going on. It
Speaker 7: just sometimes it depends because it comes a bit quicker
Speaker 7: than you think. You know, we never really wanted, you know,
Speaker 7: anticipated guys like you know, Stephen Cricht and Spencereni to leave.
Speaker 7: But once again, we've been fortunate enough to you know,
Speaker 7: we've basically had a year to at least try and
Speaker 7: plan for those guys, and they've all stayed that extra
Speaker 7: year and played really well. We're always, you know, in
Speaker 7: the background, just trying to bring players through. We got
Speaker 7: lucky this year Paul Alamonti from the from the Bulldogs,
Speaker 7: and I think he went over and above what we
Speaker 7: ever thought he was going to do and he ended
Speaker 7: up starting in the Grand Final for us. So sometimes
Speaker 7: you get a bit of luck and they just you know,
Speaker 7: they fit better than you think. Or the fact that
Speaker 7: we were able to sign him was a shock to
Speaker 7: me that he was even available. So that, yeah, I guess,
Speaker 7: And that's I guess. One thing about you know, success,
Speaker 7: All of a sudden, you get players you want to
Speaker 7: come to your club, you know whereas trust me, when
Speaker 7: I first got the panterth twelve years ago, that wasn't
Speaker 7: the case.
Speaker 1: He had one young fellow, something like Almoni, for example.
Speaker 1: Do you when he comes across, do you sort of
Speaker 1: look at him when he looked at his videos of
Speaker 1: his past previous games and sort of say, okay, I
Speaker 1: can improve you by doing these things or is it
Speaker 1: just improved by Birch or being in a side like this.
Speaker 5: Just it depends.
Speaker 7: I mean, for Paul Elmanic, Paul was He's only twenty now,
Speaker 7: so he's nineteen years older star as a junior. I
Speaker 7: was actually wondering what there must be something wrong with him,
Speaker 7: the fact that he's that we can actually sign him
Speaker 7: while the dogs are I let him go. But I
Speaker 7: guess they were just one a bit of a different track,
Speaker 7: looking for you quicker success, maybe i'd I don't know,
Speaker 7: but so I met him. You know, it's just one.
Speaker 7: He's got to fit, you know, he's got a fit characterise.
Speaker 7: That's really important.
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 7: I just want to get We want to get good
Speaker 7: characters of people who are going to fit our values.
Speaker 7: And not just good players, but good people who are
Speaker 7: going to train hard. They're going to be able to
Speaker 7: about to play the way we like to. They've got
Speaker 7: to be fit enough and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But do you actually set a set of values for
Speaker 1: the club for the.
Speaker 7: Well, I said, I originally set the culture, but the
Speaker 7: players have set the values.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they actually write them down some you know respect,
Speaker 1: you know, like series of virtues.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I got that was important. The players came up
Speaker 7: and we do it each and every year. We'll revisit
Speaker 7: them so if we have to adjust them or whatever.
Speaker 1: And then when someone comes in, like a new player
Speaker 1: comes into the club, would you sort of sit them
Speaker 1: down and say, meet the senior senior members of the team,
Speaker 1: the team and or and who takes us through these values? Dude,
Speaker 1: this is what we expect. How do you play the game?
Speaker 7: Like?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's It's not as formal as that, but it's definitely. Yeah.
Speaker 5: They find out pretty quick what's required.
Speaker 7: That's again, we have an amazing staff, but the players themselves,
Speaker 7: we have an incredible leadership group now in our team.
Speaker 7: You know, I've never seen anything like I've been lucky
Speaker 7: enough to be involved in anything like it. A lot
Speaker 7: of them have come through together, so that helps. And
Speaker 7: obviously the more experienced, the bigger the games. You know,
Speaker 7: all of a sudden, there's evidence that this stuff works.
Speaker 7: And I think that you know, that helps as well.
Speaker 1: When I'm obviously watching the game and the energy and
Speaker 1: the momentum that comes with energy, especially in the second
Speaker 1: part of the second half on the weekend, it just
Speaker 1: looked like Penrith was ten years younger. And I don't
Speaker 1: mean that in a a bad way. I just mean
Speaker 1: that you guys look like younger, keener, more enthusiastic. I
Speaker 1: guess when Melbourne's try was just deflated him a bit,
Speaker 1: but you just you knew how to take advantage of that.
Speaker 1: You knew how to sort of keep the momentum that's
Speaker 1: you on the field. I mean ivans up there in
Speaker 1: the box sort of sending in structures out, But do
Speaker 1: you know immediately it's time to get on top a bit,
Speaker 1: we better take advantage of this.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Usually I think it's more like your eyes just like
Speaker 7: a feel thing. It's probably not saying that we speak
Speaker 7: about too often on the field, but particularly people in
Speaker 7: the spine and the leaders sort of accelerate and go
Speaker 7: towards that. I think that's saying that we've been quite
Speaker 7: lucky to have over these last few years, as it
Speaker 7: sort of feels like we've got gears and.
Speaker 1: Us that we look like to me, you can go
Speaker 1: another year and probably had one or two in Yeah.
Speaker 4: And that's the thing.
Speaker 7: It's probably been a bit frustrated this year that like
Speaker 7: we've always sort of just been like hanging in games
Speaker 7: and then once we get pushed, then we retaliated. We're like,
Speaker 7: all right, now we'll go up a gear. We haven't
Speaker 7: really blown away teams this year.
Speaker 1: Y she did in the in the first preliminary semi
Speaker 1: against the r That was the best game you goys
Speaker 1: I had for a long time.
Speaker 4: We knew we need to get to.
Speaker 7: It.
Speaker 1: Last game of Blue Bet. I was out there and god,
Speaker 1: I just wish enjoy it. No, I didn't enjoy it all.
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure what to wear, so but someone said,
Speaker 1: don't wear your suit. But it was actually great. It
Speaker 1: was a great atmosphere. It was rugby league what it
Speaker 1: used to be when I was a kid growing up.
Speaker 1: That's what it feels like to me. It was just
Speaker 1: everyone's into it. I mean it's a pretty hostile crowd
Speaker 1: to be in front of. Yeah, they love playing the man.
Speaker 1: You know, Well, it's just like going down to Melbourne.
Speaker 1: I guess it's the same feeling. But you guys actually
Speaker 1: did kick into a big gear. That was a big
Speaker 1: gear change, and then I think every game you played
Speaker 1: after that was a new gear. It looked like that,
Speaker 1: and then even in the Grand Final you look like
Speaker 1: you just kept increasing the gear, kept saying Okay, well
Speaker 1: you're going to match me. I'll go this way. You're
Speaker 1: going to match me, I'm going to go this way.
Speaker 1: That's what it felt like to me. And I'm wondering
Speaker 1: about the leadership on the on the on the team,
Speaker 1: the boys. You guys, are you talking to which other
Speaker 1: you say, listen, let's just crack them again. Let's just
Speaker 1: put it into a harder Yeah.
Speaker 7: In a game like that, I think you fall back
Speaker 7: to your training and also experience. And I think all
Speaker 7: all of those as you're sort of talking about that
Speaker 7: all comes from our training. It's something we talk about
Speaker 7: our training constantly. The hard work we're put in. We
Speaker 7: know that it's going to pay us back when we
Speaker 7: need it. Because when you're actually in the moment, it's
Speaker 7: like everyone's pretty fatigued and just sort of trying to
Speaker 7: gel together, but everything's happening so fast, so you probably
Speaker 7: don't get time to say that in the moment, but
Speaker 7: he sort of get looks at each other and sort
Speaker 7: of know that it's time to step.
Speaker 5: It up a bit.
Speaker 1: And I think that's something that with us as.
Speaker 7: A group, through experience, that sort of feel of it
Speaker 7: has been that we just haven't even had to speak about.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 7: It's sort of sort of know that you need etcetera.
Speaker 7: And particularly in Grand Final, you know that well yeah, yeah,
Speaker 7: and it's something that's combinations experience, experiencing big games. I
Speaker 7: think that's probably when I felt at the most on
Speaker 7: Sunday night, where you didn't even really need to say
Speaker 7: stuff to each other, just knew what was required and
Speaker 7: what was going to happen.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you a big rep here and
Speaker 1: tell me if I'm wrong. The rep you deserve, but
Speaker 1: obviously you deserve it. But tell me if I was
Speaker 1: thinking is wrong. So someone said to me the other day, Ah,
Speaker 1: you know, just before the game, Bellamy's a genius, blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, and he is. He's a great coach. Billik
Speaker 1: is a great coach. And I said, well, you know
Speaker 1: what's interesting, I think Craig Greg Bellamy looks for weaknesses
Speaker 1: and teams and exploits weakness. He's very good exploiting weakness.
Speaker 1: He'll work out where's a weakness and he'll play it
Speaker 1: that all night until he gets through. And I said,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, Ivans, I don't know if Ivan's
Speaker 1: like that, but I think Ivan is really good at
Speaker 1: getting the best out of his team. And the question
Speaker 1: then becomes, is the coach who can identify weakness working
Speaker 1: out his strategies to go to the weakness better than
Speaker 1: the coach who can get the best out of every
Speaker 1: player on the team, and I sort of I felt
Speaker 1: like that's the way the game was played. And I
Speaker 1: think Bellamy was trying to find weaknesses. He's maybe your
Speaker 1: shoulder or whatever the case would be, but he couldn't
Speaker 1: find it, and seemed like to me that they got
Speaker 1: frustrated watching it on Telly. I'm talking about it, especially
Speaker 1: when I watched the second time. It looked like they
Speaker 1: were getting frustrated that they think we can't find a weakness.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, you guys are just getting
Speaker 1: the best out of each other. That's what it looked
Speaker 1: like to me. Is there any am I anywhere near
Speaker 1: that we're just making shit up? Because that's how I felt.
Speaker 4: I don't know it was deliberate, but what I will
Speaker 4: say is if you look at.
Speaker 7: The Melbourne style, there's not a lot of weakness, so
Speaker 7: I couldn't sort of find you find weakness in them,
Speaker 7: So yeah, you're probably right. You end up spending more time,
Speaker 7: you know, on your own team, which I think we
Speaker 7: do it most of the time. There'll be some games
Speaker 7: throughout the year there might be a team that's littered
Speaker 7: with injuries or down on form or whatever, where it's
Speaker 7: a bit easier to actually find a weakness. And you know,
Speaker 7: those types of games, you might zero went on that
Speaker 7: kind of stuff a bit more. But for this game
Speaker 7: against this type of opposition and the bigger the games
Speaker 7: is I think handling you know, basically your head space is.
Speaker 5: Something that we've worked a lot a lot on.
Speaker 7: And each and every player you know will tell you
Speaker 7: it's a bit the bigger the games and the bigger
Speaker 7: the pressure, it's different, you know, and and it becomes
Speaker 7: more than just playing football. You know, it's about playing yourself,
Speaker 7: you know, in a lot of ways. So spend a
Speaker 7: lot of time on that and and I guess that's
Speaker 7: that's that's one big way of trying to get the
Speaker 7: best out of everyone.
Speaker 1: But do do you sort of say to yourself, Papen
Speaker 1: Hourison's quick, we don't give him space.
Speaker 7: Do you go through those processes that were, yeah, well
Speaker 7: we'll we'll generally talk about, you know, the opposition, where
Speaker 7: they what their strengths are, how they like to play,
Speaker 7: you know, if they've got a certain style or whatever,
Speaker 7: and a lot of spend a lot of time on
Speaker 7: that each and every guy knows the players they're up
Speaker 7: against and their own nuances and that type of stuff.
Speaker 7: So there's a lot of work that goes in around
Speaker 7: you know, and knowing your enemy, but probably more work
Speaker 7: and more time built right throughout the season on making
Speaker 7: sure that on the biggest day you know we're going
Speaker 7: to we can play our best footing, so sort.
Speaker 1: Of getting you to peak at the right time too.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you did mention this is this is not really
Speaker 7: it wasn't really a plan. But we hit the finals
Speaker 7: in fairly average form. I'd say, we're actually just trying
Speaker 7: to give you, the roosters, a false sense of hopefully
Speaker 7: you did, but like, yeah, I just think the boys
Speaker 7: knew that. They just knew we had nothing come back,
Speaker 7: which is obviously fair help. But they just kind of
Speaker 7: they just went up a level. You could see their
Speaker 7: training and that gives me a great confidence how we
Speaker 7: prepare and it was just like that week of preparation
Speaker 7: was like that was completely different to what we've been doing,
Speaker 7: and it showed out in the field.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't to different preparations, just that they were ready.
Speaker 5: No, it wasn't.
Speaker 7: It wasn't really different, but they just went up a
Speaker 7: notch and just in terms of intensity it was different. Yeah,
Speaker 7: And that's where that's where it all comes from. The
Speaker 7: intensity which you train, I think is probably the biggest
Speaker 7: indicator of how you're going to play.
Speaker 1: Especially like Grand Final, that that Grand Final build and
Speaker 1: getting the intensity for the Grand vol because they've had
Speaker 1: experienced at it, so much experience at it. Now, how
Speaker 1: much effective do you think that plays in? Because it
Speaker 1: looks like you guys got so much patience, Like like
Speaker 1: you got you're not panicking at any stage, You're not
Speaker 1: starting to do crazy shit like oh shit, we better
Speaker 1: start throwing the board with you know, like you know,
Speaker 1: I mean like it looks like you've got patience.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Well, I think that that's sort of what you
Speaker 7: touched on, Like it's knowing that sort of our best
Speaker 7: is going to be anyone else and having that little
Speaker 7: bit of confidence in that.
Speaker 5: And I think we actual had a discussion earlier in
Speaker 5: the week.
Speaker 7: We were training and went up to that AFTERO and
Speaker 7: we sort of spoke and just felt like we'll maybe
Speaker 7: focusing a bit too much on Melbourne rather than just
Speaker 7: focusing on ourselves and getting our game one hundred percent
Speaker 7: right and for the rest of the week, we sort
Speaker 7: of zoned in on that and constantly telling each other that,
Speaker 7: you know, if we bring our best game, it's we're
Speaker 7: definitely going to be in the fight. But I believe
Speaker 7: that that we're going to win it. And I think
Speaker 7: that helps with knowing that if we train well. Again,
Speaker 7: it comes back to that preparation. If you train well,
Speaker 7: that's what gives you confidence for the game, and that
Speaker 7: feeling was definitely there with just the intensity and taking
Speaker 7: it to another level.
Speaker 1: Yeah, particularly Grand Final. I'm sitting here, I'm thinking himself.
Speaker 1: They're both good looking dudes. One four Grand Finals. They're
Speaker 1: like the father's got the perfect son and brother and
Speaker 1: your other children too as well, and perfect wife because
Speaker 1: he's got a great relationship with his wife. The son
Speaker 1: singing I got the perfect dad. Like what the hell? Like,
Speaker 1: what there must be? Is there a chink anyway? You
Speaker 1: but everything? It's like, do you ever think yourself? I
Speaker 1: know this is like I don't want anything to change.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well it was only last time we spoke as
Speaker 7: any of that was after with one our first ver
Speaker 7: then twenty twenty one, and I remember thinking on that night,
Speaker 7: I was just thinking, how can How can you be
Speaker 7: so lucky where so many things go so well for
Speaker 7: you in one night. Yeah, But I was also saying,
Speaker 7: just this morning I did an interview with someone, and
Speaker 7: twelve years of playing NRL and then my first four
Speaker 7: nine years of coaching ROW, so that's twenty six years
Speaker 7: it took me to be able to win a premiership
Speaker 7: get involved in one.
Speaker 5: So it's been a lot of it didn't happen all
Speaker 5: it's certainly not all been. It's not all beer and skittles.
Speaker 7: And I had to learn a lot along the way,
Speaker 7: and I still know that, you know, and in the
Speaker 7: future it can go the other way quickly. So just
Speaker 7: enjoying the enjoying the fruits of what we're doing at
Speaker 7: the moment, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Well you're only fifty two three three fifty three. I
Speaker 1: was going to give you a year. Thanks, but like
Speaker 1: you know, you got one way to go. Like Bennett's
Speaker 1: late seventies or something.
Speaker 5: I'm not going to be coaching.
Speaker 4: I'll be lucky.
Speaker 5: I'm alive of that.
Speaker 1: And I heard Bellamy say the other day that day
Speaker 1: he probably retired before he's seventy and and he's sixty seven.
Speaker 1: I think at the moment, so he said, I'm not
Speaker 1: I won't be there at seventy. That's there were his words.
Speaker 1: Do you see yourself coaching these blakes for a long
Speaker 1: time that I don't know.
Speaker 7: I'm contracted for another three years and at the moment,
Speaker 7: that's that's good enough.
Speaker 1: It's unlikely they're not under renew the contract.
Speaker 5: Can I tell you?
Speaker 7: I know, But I just don't know if I can.
Speaker 7: You know, like, I just can't see myself playing one
Speaker 7: of those guys. It's I'm in my sixties or late seventies,
Speaker 7: still still going through this rollcaster you I want to
Speaker 7: sitting back on a beer in the stand, mate, But
Speaker 7: is a rollercaster?
Speaker 1: It is? I mean, I often say I reckon one
Speaker 1: of the hardest jobs is coaching. Like, well, it's a
Speaker 1: lifestyle heavy like mate, this can be framatic and terrible.
Speaker 5: It's a lifestyle. It's more than a job.
Speaker 7: It's you live it, you know, and from week to week,
Speaker 7: depending on how the game goes, you know, con dictor
Speaker 7: how you like. It's not just you, it's your family,
Speaker 7: it's your wife, your kids. So it's that that's where
Speaker 7: you put your handle for and that's that's the addictive
Speaker 7: part of it as well. Every time you have a
Speaker 7: loss or you're not going well or you know, it's
Speaker 7: I think it's a coach, you always feel like there's
Speaker 7: something good around the next corner, you know.
Speaker 1: So yeah, but does that mean mean that you're by
Speaker 1: a definition have a positive mindset? Though, like generally speaking,
Speaker 1: you have a good positive outlook and stuff.
Speaker 7: I think so I'm a bit of a realist, But
Speaker 7: I also I just feel like, I guess I have
Speaker 7: enough confidence in myself and and the team and the
Speaker 7: people you know that work for you and whatever that
Speaker 7: that we will will. If we're not going to get
Speaker 7: right now, we will eventually get it right, you know.
Speaker 7: And I guess if yeah, that's I suppose it's just yeah,
Speaker 7: there's something good around the next corner. But there's been
Speaker 7: plenty of dark times, mane, that's for sure.
Speaker 8: We're going out for a rough ride. Let me see
Speaker 8: it again. Chinas and serious financial trouble. America is the
Speaker 8: biggest detonation in the world, printing one trillion every ninety days.
Speaker 8: Germany's in bankruptcy, so os is going to the lucky country.
Speaker 8: So you're sheltered a bit. But as you know, China's
Speaker 8: your largest trading partner. So it's it's an important imperative
Speaker 8: that every ASI educate themselves to protect themselves. But if
Speaker 8: you're hoping the government's going to save you, they are
Speaker 8: in trouble.
Speaker 1: It's funny. I had it in twenty sixteen, I said,
Speaker 1: opposite Trump and I interviewed him, and this is before
Speaker 1: any presidential aspirations. I think it was sixteen, might have
Speaker 1: been fifteen, whatever, And he said to me, one of
Speaker 1: the things he's concerned about is Australia's trading relationship with China.
Speaker 1: And he said to me, and I at the time
Speaker 1: naively said, we have there our biggest trading party. We
Speaker 1: should upset it sort of thing. He said. Let me
Speaker 1: tell you something. He said, Yeah, they'll take you all
Speaker 1: your iron ore and everything else. That's just selling Kyle
Speaker 1: et cetera. That you're selling to them, he said. But
Speaker 1: ultimately you'll end up owing them something, owing them something,
Speaker 1: he said, like we are in the United States. You've
Speaker 1: got to do something about that. That's what you've got
Speaker 1: to do something about. And it's interesting your words to
Speaker 1: me just then, because the biggest owner of the debt
Speaker 1: in the United States, it gets issued on all these
Speaker 1: months as you just talking about bonds. Is China?
Speaker 6: Ye?
Speaker 1: They and in Japan they hold the great amount of doubt,
Speaker 1: which Mary grows. It's funny when you say that to me.
Speaker 1: I just have a memory of what Trump told me,
Speaker 1: and it's I thought to myself at the time what
Speaker 1: he said was quite out there. Today I would say
Speaker 1: it's quite courageous, but sort of accurate. And what you're
Speaker 1: saying is effectively endorsing what he said back in twenty
Speaker 1: and sixteen. Now it's all come to roost. Now it's
Speaker 1: force four and for eight years later, it's all come
Speaker 1: to roost. We now have this problem and America's China's
Speaker 1: falling apart economically as well. So it sounds like we
Speaker 1: could be in globally in for some other crisis. Correct
Speaker 1: what it's called.
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It won't be a GFC, it won't be a financial
Speaker 1: well maybe a financial crisis, who knows. Because the value
Speaker 1: their paper, the Chinese paper that it holds in relation
Speaker 1: to American debt, correct, it's not worth anywhere near what
Speaker 1: it was issued at.
Speaker 4: Correct.
Speaker 1: And China needs as much as they can possibly get
Speaker 1: because they've got a bit of a few problems internally themselves.
Speaker 1: Are you sort of predicting or predicting but sort of
Speaker 1: suggesting there could be a crisis on its way?
Speaker 8: There is one word in it right now. Now you know,
Speaker 8: his mandate is going to take Taiwan back.
Speaker 1: So creat a war solve the problem, yeah.
Speaker 8: He says, before you know, that's that's like Trump says,
Speaker 8: I'm going to take Taiwan bag. That's war, you know.
Speaker 8: And so what's going on in Ukraine and all this,
Speaker 8: it's terrible. I mean, I hate war. I just hate it.
Speaker 8: I thought twice in Vietnam killed a lot of people.
Speaker 8: But it's about money, as you know, you know, like
Speaker 8: I said, it's a very dangerous time. So it's important
Speaker 8: thereby take responsibility for yourselves financially, not expect the government
Speaker 8: to take care of you. So I go around and saying,
Speaker 8: put yourself on your own gold standard, put yourself on
Speaker 8: the old silver standard, you know, save gold, silver or
Speaker 8: bitcoin and protect yourself now with it your brain, you know,
Speaker 8: but don't expect the government to take care of you.
Speaker 8: AUSI is the lucky country. But you sit behind these
Speaker 8: superpower is going to war and it's spooky.
Speaker 1: Do you think, do you think war is inevitable.
Speaker 8: Well, historically, yes, see, what brought Hitler to power was
Speaker 8: the why my Republic went World War One and they
Speaker 8: made they made Germany pay reparations, so Germany went bankrupt.
Speaker 8: Hitler came to power. So every time there's chaos, a
Speaker 8: dictator comes to power. So that was Fascist, that was
Speaker 8: Mussolini and Hitler. So it's these are not normal times.
Speaker 8: But I don't know, I mean I was just prepared.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean what you were saying economically prepared, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of suggesting be doomsday and go and
Speaker 1: build a hunker down and build a vault underneath the
Speaker 1: house and filled it with kansabak beans and water, et cetera.
Speaker 8: Just watch historically. I mean, you're in the banking business.
Speaker 8: Twenty nineteen, the repulp market collapsed, that's where the banks
Speaker 8: go to borrow money. It collapsed, and then suddenly COVID appeared.
Speaker 8: I went, oh, it is this an accident?
Speaker 1: It's interesting. I'm interesting thought about.
Speaker 8: That interesting because I got lost this stuff. Is there
Speaker 8: a coincidence?
Speaker 1: So just someone to explain to audience with the repair
Speaker 1: market means in terms of Australia, at least it means
Speaker 1: if if I'm a bank and I've got mortgage assets,
Speaker 1: I normally can go and if I got ye I'm lending.
Speaker 1: If I've got a pool of mortgages which are my assets,
Speaker 1: and I've got liabilities where I've borrowed money is from deposits.
Speaker 1: On the other side, if I'm a bank, repo means
Speaker 1: that I can go to the government. The government will
Speaker 1: buy my mortgages off me for the face value with
Speaker 1: the coraggage. So if I lend Robert one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars and there's ten thousand of Robots in my pool,
Speaker 1: and I need some cash to lend more money to
Speaker 1: more Roberts, but I'm running out of cash because I'm
Speaker 1: a bank, and I haven't because I'm not receiving the deposits.
Speaker 1: Then I can go to the government, and the government
Speaker 1: runs a repo program where they will take my mortgages
Speaker 1: off me. In your case, they put him into Fenny
Speaker 1: Maye Freddie Mack in the US. In Australia, we don't
Speaker 1: have the system, but they'll still buy them office and
Speaker 1: they'll give us cash for it downs the bank and
Speaker 1: then we're going to lend some more money. And the
Speaker 1: repo market. You're saying prior in twenty nineteen, prior to
Speaker 1: we collapsed, Well didn't collapse, but yes, went down. It
Speaker 1: wasn't so it wasn't as much liquidity in the system
Speaker 1: to liquidity being money available for the banking system. Because
Speaker 1: what you just said is really interesting because when when
Speaker 1: COVID hit in our country March, within four months, our
Speaker 1: central bank here cut a check one hundred and ninety
Speaker 1: billion dollars to a banking system. They said, banks, not
Speaker 1: non bank so many, but to banks. Here's one undred
Speaker 1: ninety billion dollars. We'll give you to a point one
Speaker 1: of to you add point one of a percent fixed
Speaker 1: for three years, go lend it. And of course that
Speaker 1: created inflation out of the bubble bubble, the property market bubble.
Speaker 1: It just went off. And then of course last year
Speaker 1: the government said, well we want that repay because the
Speaker 1: three years is up twenty twenty three. It does not
Speaker 1: exactly on that date, but from twenty twenty three due
Speaker 1: to based on drawdown dates. And now the banks are
Speaker 1: raising money six percent, so they're our interest rates are higher.
Speaker 1: So the you know who's suffering, the consumer. The guy
Speaker 1: borrowed money, that money he borrowed at two percent from
Speaker 1: one point nine to nine percent. It's a record low
Speaker 1: fixed rate for fixed for three years. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: he's gone from fixed one point nine now he's paying
Speaker 1: seven percent. Our consumers are paying for this. The banks
Speaker 1: are making the same amount of profit as they've always made,
Speaker 1: they're just charging the borrow more. And the way forward was, well,
Speaker 1: our central bank said, well, inflation is really high. It's
Speaker 1: really bad. We don't like high inflation. So and you, consumers,
Speaker 1: you cause it. You cause high inflation. So we're going
Speaker 1: to put in straights up, and the banks that we're
Speaker 1: not responsible, the Reserve Bank, the central banks put this rate.
Speaker 1: We just put the this trade up as they go long.
Speaker 1: And now the consumer's bearing the risk of this. You know,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting. I remember Milton Friedman. Not many people
Speaker 1: you were remembering, but not many people remembering. I remember
Speaker 1: watching him in the nineties and it's up on YouTube
Speaker 1: these days, Freedman, and he says, consumers never create inflation.
Speaker 1: Governments do, correct.
Speaker 4: They preyer money, they.
Speaker 1: Print money, and they make it available for for liquid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the only people make money out of that is
Speaker 1: the rich people.
Speaker 8: At the end of the day, and then if you
Speaker 8: can in trouble the bet they bail out the rich. Yeah,
Speaker 8: and the ASI block it's Penali rich.
Speaker 1: The rich people by and boil themselves out by influencing
Speaker 1: the government to do the bailot. So that is the
Speaker 1: premise of your book. Though, Yes, I think what you're
Speaker 1: sort of saying is below the rich guys.
Speaker 8: Yeah. I think like my rich dad, not my protect.
Speaker 1: Think like the rich guy, rich dad. They learn from
Speaker 1: the rich dad dad. And I think what you're sort
Speaker 1: of saying here, and this is it's quite compelling. But
Speaker 1: you're saying there's no point fighting against the machine. I
Speaker 1: mean you can, and you know, you can storm the
Speaker 1: White House or whatever you want to do, but that's
Speaker 1: not going to do any at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: The system will close you down, just like it might
Speaker 1: close Donald Trump down or make it really difficult for him.
Speaker 1: I mean, God bless the guy, like he's so tough
Speaker 1: on me. I wouldn't be able to handle that. I
Speaker 1: would I would have gone, I'm out. I would have
Speaker 1: hung my gloves up. But you can fight against the
Speaker 1: machine if you want to, and you can argue against it,
Speaker 1: and you can put a posts on Instagram and talk
Speaker 1: about the conspiracy and you know, you know, but at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, forget about just think like
Speaker 1: the other mob join you sort of join them, be
Speaker 1: quite thoughtful, educate yourself, educate yourself and probably would you say,
Speaker 1: act upon it as well? Yes, where do you get
Speaker 1: the car? Where do people get the courage to once
Speaker 1: educate themselves to actually go and do the things that
Speaker 1: you're talking about.
Speaker 8: Well, it's easier to do something for other people, like
Speaker 8: create the cash flow board game, learn it, play it
Speaker 8: ten times, and then teach other people. Even you shall
Speaker 8: receive when you do it for other people. Stuff comes in.
Speaker 8: But if you're just taken for yourself, who cares? You know,
Speaker 8: you're greedy. And that's a big, big difference, Sir, I
Speaker 8: was just the lucky country. Don't fuck it up totally.
Speaker 1: Well that's what Trump said to me.
Speaker 8: Yeah, don't fuck it up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought he's been a bit extreme into our
Speaker 1: sixteen but it's actually come to be true now. And
Speaker 1: then if you think about you know, COVID, you know Fauci,
Speaker 1: the whole COVID thing in Australia. I don't know if
Speaker 1: we were our Australian legislators and government were covertly involved
Speaker 1: in what was going on. Just I think we probably
Speaker 1: follow what was going on in the United States, and it's.
Speaker 8: Big pharmer, big pharmaceutical companies.
Speaker 1: They influenced the program.
Speaker 8: Of course, it's bankers pharmaceutical in all those cases.
Speaker 1: You guys have an inquiry in America as we are
Speaker 1: here in Australia about the vaccines, like the effects of
Speaker 1: the vaccines. Yeah, you want to get it, and it's
Speaker 1: because some of the findings are he's terribly horrendous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's not getting any airtime. I don't understand it.
Speaker 1: There's no airtime. No one's talking about I mean, we
Speaker 1: might see it on score and US on Ruby Murdocks
Speaker 1: channel here, but we don't see it anywhere else. Now,
Speaker 1: why do you think that is.
Speaker 8: Pharma big business? I remember I had to travel, I
Speaker 8: had to get a vaccine. I refused to so I
Speaker 8: just found a doctor. I paid them five hundred dollars,
Speaker 8: put the vaccine in a in this thing, thank you bye,
Speaker 8: and he goes it's divit got the certificate. I'm not
Speaker 8: that stupid, you know. I mean, I'll cheat, but I don't.
Speaker 8: It's my body they're putting stuff into just the schools,
Speaker 8: put ideas in your head. One more thing is when
Speaker 8: we talk about the repaw market, it's very simple. It's
Speaker 8: like the pawn shop for banks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, very.
Speaker 8: Very very simple. So when that went down COVID appeared,
Speaker 8: I went, oh my god, is that an accident or
Speaker 8: is it intentional? And I don't know. I don't have
Speaker 8: an answer to that. But there's too many coincidences. And
Speaker 8: so that's why I wrote Rich Dad Part Out in
Speaker 8: ninety seven. The cash flow board game kind of up
Speaker 8: in ninety six, and if we don't educate ourselves, and
Speaker 8: shame on us, but schools will not do it because
Speaker 8: schools are complicit with the banks.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that is? Why do you think Marxist?
Speaker 8: I mean, you know, that's.
Speaker 1: Where they start from.
Speaker 8: I read the Communist Manifesto in sixty five. I went
Speaker 8: to military school and went, oh my god. You know
Speaker 8: they made two predictions nineteen thirty they were going to
Speaker 8: take over the school system, which they did, and then
Speaker 8: they would take our elections.
Speaker 1: They did, and that would be Trump's position today. They've
Speaker 1: your last election that he lost.
Speaker 8: And I respect a freedom of choice. You can be
Speaker 8: a Marxist. You can be a capitalist, but without financial education,
Speaker 8: as you know in the banking industry. If you don't
Speaker 8: have any financial education, you can't be a.
Speaker 1: Capitalist and you can make a proper decision either correct,
Speaker 1: because you don't know what creature, because it means the
Speaker 1: Marxist position is very romantic.
Speaker 8: It's appolation or private property, labor unions, taxation.
Speaker 1: Fairness, fairness, quality, aggressive tax system, you know, will tax
Speaker 1: the rich to look after the poor. It's like robin Hood.
Speaker 1: It's sort of it's sort of very it's sort of
Speaker 1: like a romantic thing. It's a theme. But the reality
Speaker 1: is we're not all equal, and we don't all in
Speaker 1: the same animony. We don't none of us have prepared
Speaker 1: to work as hard as the next person, or or
Speaker 1: even as not as.
Speaker 8: Hard as the person's going to be equal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but nobody is equal.