Speaker 1: Him Mike Boris, and this is straight Talk. Can you
Speaker 1: just take you quickly inside a woman's world, the women's world,
Speaker 1: Go Me Freeman.
Speaker 2: Hello, Marke Worris, Hello Phaps, Well the straight Talk. Thanks
Speaker 2: for having me on straight Talk. I was fascinated always
Speaker 2: in the news and information and what we would now
Speaker 2: call content. I used to love magazines. There was no
Speaker 2: other medium that really at that time spoke to women.
Speaker 2: The old joke is that Dolly taught you what an
Speaker 2: orgasm was. Cleo taught you how to have one, Cosmo
Speaker 2: taught you had a fake one, and the W This
Speaker 2: Weekly taught you had to knit one, and then you died.
Speaker 2: And so it was like we built our communities around
Speaker 2: these brands. It was really powerful. Part of the reason
Speaker 2: I left magazines was because I got tired of trying
Speaker 2: to explain to my bosses that armageddon was coming in
Speaker 2: the form of the Internet and that we needed to move,
Speaker 2: we needed to evolve, and they were like, no, we're
Speaker 2: a magazine company. What we do at Mama MEA, I
Speaker 2: guess is cover all of those things. We've got sixty
Speaker 2: four different podcasts we speak to eight million Australian women
Speaker 2: every month. Is to make the world a better place
Speaker 2: for women and girls.
Speaker 1: Look, I'm just looking over it, tour producer me are
Speaker 1: starting to interview me, Yeah, as she can't help it
Speaker 1: MEA Freeman.
Speaker 2: Hello, Mark Werris, Hello, welcomes straight Talk. Thanks for having
Speaker 2: me on Straight Talk.
Speaker 1: I love the way you dressed like they're so cool.
Speaker 1: You need to get to a stage in your life
Speaker 1: that being cool as not what everyone else things being
Speaker 1: as called as you wear, what the hell you feel
Speaker 1: like wearing it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, just be comfortable, exactly be comfortable. But for me,
Speaker 2: it's also sparking joy. So I realized I don't dress
Speaker 2: for men. I don't dress for women either, because I
Speaker 2: often just dressed in a ridiculous way. But it just
Speaker 2: gives me joy. And if someone hates it, it doesn't
Speaker 2: honestly doesn't affect me, and it's not interesting to me
Speaker 2: what they think. It just sparks joy in me.
Speaker 1: Do you know I don't know if you know this,
Speaker 1: but I know, and I'm hoping you still that. But
Speaker 1: I knew your dad in the nineties, did you Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I also knew I knew Brian better. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: your dad and Brian Sherman were the equity known as
Speaker 1: equid Linked Twins in those days, they were, and they
Speaker 1: were one of the first group to ever go sort
Speaker 1: of one of the most prominent groups and first groups
Speaker 1: to work move into the funds management sort of sphere
Speaker 1: in Australia before it was even known. And I got
Speaker 1: to meet him through some people who are good mates
Speaker 1: of mine, who were friends there and actually they're a
Speaker 1: Jewish lawyer guy who used to work for back in
Speaker 1: the nineties. And that's where I first met Your Father's
Speaker 1: your father still alive? He is well, none perfect.
Speaker 2: I see him every week. He is he turned eighty
Speaker 2: last year.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's still great.
Speaker 1: Well, please give him my regards if he remembers me
Speaker 1: at all. But I was only a young fellow when
Speaker 1: I did meet him, and I was with it in
Speaker 1: a law fulm called Simon Zebowski, and that's where I
Speaker 1: meet him in those days, back in those days. Yeah, Mason,
Speaker 1: feel me feel really ancient. But I'm sitting here in
Speaker 1: front of someone who's the daughter of somebody I know,
Speaker 1: or the son of somebody I know.
Speaker 2: I feel the same way. I had dinner with a
Speaker 2: girlfriend last night and her daughter is an entrepreneur. You
Speaker 2: know her daughter, who I knew when she was a
Speaker 2: little kid, is an entrepreneur of the skin of the
Speaker 2: sunscreen band Ultraviolet. And I now interview the children of
Speaker 2: people I used to know. So I hear you totally.
Speaker 1: Well, what's for me is what's worse though, was you're
Speaker 1: a mature woman, have grown How old are kids?
Speaker 2: Twenty seven, eighteen and sixteen?
Speaker 1: So you've got grown kids? Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 2: I've got a grandchild.
Speaker 1: Do you have Wow?
Speaker 2: Yeah, my grandma, my eccentric grandmother era.
Speaker 1: I have a grand I have three grandsons.
Speaker 2: Isn't it the best?
Speaker 1: So good?
Speaker 2: Do you love it?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I do?
Speaker 1: I do, I really have it. I'm actually on a weekend.
Speaker 1: What's weird? It's amazing. I'm just looking over it. A
Speaker 1: producer me are starting to interview me as she can't
Speaker 1: help it. But I tell you why I love it
Speaker 1: is that on a weekend when I'm thinking what am
Speaker 1: I going to do? Like I'm trying to I try
Speaker 1: to chill on weekends. And I just sent them a
Speaker 1: text for all my sons and I say, semi photograph
Speaker 1: with the kids. Yeah, And they send me video with
Speaker 1: the kids doing something stupid or you know. I bought
Speaker 1: them all at punching ball the other day.
Speaker 2: And how old are their grandkids?
Speaker 1: The two of them are one two, one year old
Speaker 1: each one. There's two weeks between them and the other one.
Speaker 1: And George's six at seventh. Sorry, And I just love
Speaker 1: watching their antics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've got more patients as a grandmother than they
Speaker 2: probably did as a mum, Like you can enjoy it more.
Speaker 1: Well, also, you're not as exhausted because I mean, you
Speaker 1: ever think back, you've got three kids. Yeah, when you
Speaker 1: think back, I had four sons, and I think back,
Speaker 1: how the hell did I do it?
Speaker 2: Were your hands on dad?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well yes, with in my second marriage with the
Speaker 1: three boys, I was more so because my wife at
Speaker 1: the time, she was ill for a lot a lot
Speaker 1: of time, and unfortunately, so I had to do a lot.
Speaker 1: When I say hands on, did I go to everything
Speaker 1: like school, parent teaching me?
Speaker 2: Know?
Speaker 1: But I was always there. Yeah, And like in the
Speaker 1: morning I had to get them ready for school, and
Speaker 1: I feel someone ill. I would make sure that nanny
Speaker 1: or my grand my mother came over and the other
Speaker 1: grandmother came over, and I was always sort of organizing crap.
Speaker 1: But I was sort of pretty hands on relative to
Speaker 1: the fact that I was trying to run a business. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I was running the Wizard business in those days,
Speaker 1: so it was pretty full on, and I had a
Speaker 1: pretty full on partner who was sort of very demanding
Speaker 1: of me. So and that's not James, that's scary. So
Speaker 1: I had really but I wonder where I got the
Speaker 1: energy from, Like, like I couldn't do it.
Speaker 2: I just well, no, because you're older.
Speaker 1: I'm old. I just don't have that energy all the patients,
Speaker 1: I think, and I do you think you get into
Speaker 1: a fog when you're a mom or a dad and
Speaker 1: you've got and you're sort of just you're just doing Look, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not standing back thinking about it.
Speaker 2: No, I mean you have no choice. Whereas that's what's
Speaker 2: so lovely about being a grandparent is that you can
Speaker 2: actually enjoy it because it's for shorter periods of time.
Speaker 1: How old is your grand.
Speaker 2: She's one and a half. So even if she stays
Speaker 2: the night and she wakes up, I don't even care
Speaker 2: because it's one night, Like I don't I can sleep
Speaker 2: in the next day like no, you know, like I've
Speaker 2: got to get to work tomorrow and put the load
Speaker 2: of washing on and get dinner, and you know that
Speaker 2: it's like you feel quite beleagued.
Speaker 1: Does she get into bed.
Speaker 2: When your kids are little? No, she sleeps in a
Speaker 2: little sleeping bag. I'm very strict about why not strict,
Speaker 2: but I follow all the rules that my son puts
Speaker 2: down for This is what she did, This is her routine.
Speaker 2: And I wouldn't dare.
Speaker 1: Cross that you have one son.
Speaker 2: My eldest is twenty seven, my daughter is eighteen, and
Speaker 2: then I've got a younger son who's sixteen, still at school. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I've got a child at My husband's biggest fear is
Speaker 2: we still have kids at school while we had grown children.
Speaker 2: And hey, it's come to pass. But I'm stoked because
Speaker 2: I wanted more than three kids. So I feel like,
Speaker 2: you know, I've got a little bit of that.
Speaker 1: At eighteen months old, one and a half years, they're walking,
Speaker 1: they're actually that's total level. That's when they're a little
Speaker 1: bit mischievous.
Speaker 2: What do your personalities come out?
Speaker 1: But also like there, what do you do is your house?
Speaker 2: We play with my jewelry. I've got a room set
Speaker 2: up for her. She loves reading books. We go to
Speaker 2: the park. But I like we're a family of homebodies.
Speaker 2: I like hanging out at home and just mucking around.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, but do you job with your house? Like
Speaker 1: so do you you're running around making sure there's a Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to.
Speaker 2: Buy all the new stuff, like I have to buy
Speaker 2: a cot again. I have to buy pram again in
Speaker 2: a high chair and all that stuff I've just completely
Speaker 2: forgotten about, and nappies and you know, a lot of
Speaker 2: the stuff stay the same, but there's you know a
Speaker 2: few funky new inventions. I like a funky new pram.
Speaker 1: And are you one of those grandparents I try to
Speaker 1: be who tries to be constructive with the kid, for example,
Speaker 1: relatively the way I was with my kids growing up.
Speaker 1: I just happy for me to get up, beat their
Speaker 1: food and go back to sleep. Yeah, as opposed to
Speaker 1: now when George is there, he's a seven year old.
Speaker 1: I'm always trying to give in constructive things to do,
Speaker 1: like lego, let's make something, let's do something like I
Speaker 1: try to be like more educational.
Speaker 2: No, I just want to be fun.
Speaker 1: You want to be fun?
Speaker 2: Yes, I just want to be fun. And that's what
Speaker 2: one of the things I love. There's no pressure, like
Speaker 2: if she doesn't have all the food groups at my house.
Speaker 2: Oh well, like we just have fun. I feel no
Speaker 2: pressure to tick all the boxes and do all the things.
Speaker 1: On the Tiger are you Yeah, that's weird. I'm the
Speaker 1: Tiger grand dad. I'm going he's got to be able
Speaker 1: to you know, like bounce of basketball, hit the punch
Speaker 1: of pads.
Speaker 2: No, I forget all that stuff, like I forget like
Speaker 2: even with my third I've sort of forgot that I
Speaker 2: had to teach him things like how to tie shoelaces,
Speaker 2: how to answer the phone, like I sort of because
Speaker 2: there was such a big gap between my kids. It
Speaker 2: was like I've been a parent for so long and
Speaker 2: now I'm you know, I'm now being a grandparent. So
Speaker 2: I kind of I've never been very good. I'm good
Speaker 2: at the life lessons, like the teaching about you know, feminism,
Speaker 2: and I love nothing more than having my kids trapped
Speaker 2: in the car with me so I can deliver a lecture.
Speaker 1: Your kids will got about life.
Speaker 2: What about grandkids, Well, I don't talk to she's too
Speaker 2: little to absorbed my life lessons. But particularly I love
Speaker 2: a car of teenage boys on the way to sport,
Speaker 2: where I can just give them a little bit of
Speaker 2: coaching about life and about women and about consent and
Speaker 2: about how to be a good guy.
Speaker 1: That's interesting because they usually.
Speaker 2: Try to get out of the car while it's still
Speaker 2: moving to get away from me.
Speaker 1: Thanks missus, Frevean, Why, thank you? Thank you?
Speaker 2: Thanks?
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, sixteen year old is a pretty interesting age group.
Speaker 1: Fifteen sixteen is a pretty interesting age group.
Speaker 2: I love sixteen year old boys.
Speaker 1: They're pretty aware, they're so.
Speaker 2: Oh, they're so funny. My son's group of friends are
Speaker 2: just so funny and interesting and quirky, and they're just
Speaker 2: good kids. They're just really interesting, good kids. I love
Speaker 2: talking to, you know, younger people, my daughter's friends as.
Speaker 1: Well, But when they're that age me like, you can
Speaker 1: get the boys who are not not sulky, but it's
Speaker 1: not cool to talk to MoMA or be sin as
Speaker 1: talking to mom.
Speaker 2: In front of them. Yeah, they've come out of that.
Speaker 2: He's come out of that. Luckily. That always breaks my heart,
Speaker 2: that face. At least I was prepared for it because
Speaker 2: it happened with my eldest. But I find those years
Speaker 2: between about twelve and about sixteen really hard. I really
Speaker 2: missed them because they're just they don't even you know,
Speaker 2: you touch them.
Speaker 1: And they literally totally you were touched before.
Speaker 2: Like they recoil from you, and that breaks my heart.
Speaker 2: But then they come back around this age we.
Speaker 1: Were just talking about, because it's interesting you just said
Speaker 1: to me about you know, you might talk to about
Speaker 1: life lessons, things that you've learned and experienced and things
Speaker 1: that you're passionate about, and you know, and that is,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to see women's rights and
Speaker 1: feminism generally in the broader sense and all those things
Speaker 1: ago with it, and you know the position of women
Speaker 1: in society. I actually read most of my sons on
Speaker 1: my own, so it was me and before sons, and
Speaker 1: then we had a male dog as well. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that I noticed that when they all
Speaker 1: went out on their own, they left time at made
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty. They'd had very little experience with it
Speaker 1: other than my mother and that was more a grandmother.
Speaker 2: Did they go to boys schools as well?
Speaker 1: They were Cranbrooken Escot And.
Speaker 2: I think that's really really challenging, you know. I think
Speaker 2: that single sex education is yeah, is problematic, particularly if
Speaker 2: kids don't have siblings of the opposite sex at home.
Speaker 2: I think it can It can mean that, I mean,
Speaker 2: and I went to a girl's high school, but it
Speaker 2: can mean that weekends can just be about hooking up.
Speaker 2: Like you're so focused on the hook up, you almost
Speaker 2: don't have time to have girls as friends or boys
Speaker 2: as friends unless you're in a sort of a group,
Speaker 2: which I had growing up because my best friend had
Speaker 2: a twin brother, so we had this big group of
Speaker 2: girls and boys. And my son has that as well.
Speaker 2: They have a big group of girls and guys that
Speaker 2: are all mates. But yeah, I think that that's it's
Speaker 2: so important to have friends of the opposite sex.
Speaker 1: Well, given it that you're someone who's you operate in
Speaker 1: this environment, what would you have said to someone like
Speaker 1: me and during that period, because I was acutely unaware
Speaker 1: of what might be the consequences of not having them
Speaker 1: exposed to enough women in their life, influencial women I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. And they all relied on each other quite
Speaker 1: heavily because I was always flying overseas to work. So
Speaker 1: we had a nanny there, but she was Japanese, couldn't
Speaker 1: speak hardly in the English, and she would take over
Speaker 1: when I was away, and the boys had sort of
Speaker 1: pretty much run right. What don't mean by that? Not
Speaker 1: in a bad way. But they owned the house. They
Speaker 1: owned the place because it's four of them, and they
Speaker 1: range from nineteen down to nine and a probably a
Speaker 1: bit overwhelming for the poor girl when I think about
Speaker 1: it in hindsight. But I never used think about this stuff.
Speaker 1: But I didn't really have an alternative. I guess I've
Speaker 1: got a sold them to send them to, a sold them,
Speaker 1: could have sold them to, could have sent him to
Speaker 1: a co at school. But I wasn't aware of those things.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe I'm maybe I'm the problem. Maybe I
Speaker 1: was just totally unaware of having proper balance for them.
Speaker 1: I only become aware of when they got older. What
Speaker 1: would you say to someone like that? Because there must
Speaker 1: be other men in those situations.
Speaker 2: I just think they learn a lot by how the
Speaker 2: men in their life treat women and talk about women.
Speaker 2: I think that that's I think that you model that behavior,
Speaker 2: whether it's how the men in their life treat their
Speaker 2: mother or their grandmother, or their aunts or their you know, waitress,
Speaker 2: or you know someone that works in their house or
Speaker 2: that works for them, or their teacher. You know, it's
Speaker 2: how you talk about women. It's how you talk about
Speaker 2: women that you know, how you talk about women that
Speaker 2: you don't know, women that are in the news, women
Speaker 2: you know, And I think they learn a lot about
Speaker 2: how to be in the world just by osmosis. It's
Speaker 2: not though, it's not you know, for all of my
Speaker 2: life lessons in the car, it's not really that. It's
Speaker 2: the quantity exposure that they get. Because kids biggest role
Speaker 2: models are always their parents, and they have the most
Speaker 2: exposure to their parents in most cases. So I think
Speaker 2: that it's about that interesting.
Speaker 1: So probably what I should have been doing at that
Speaker 1: time is because I was very close to my mother
Speaker 1: and my sister, I probably should have been exposing them. Well,
Speaker 1: I did expose them a bit, but I should expose them.
Speaker 1: I should have exposed them more to those things. It's
Speaker 1: funny because I just never grew up aware of those things.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a generational thing too for my generation. You know,
Speaker 1: men and men women women. Men went to work, you know,
Speaker 1: provided the women stayed hound mind the kids. You know,
Speaker 1: if the husband and wife never sort of crossed paths
Speaker 1: because when he got home she was on a bed,
Speaker 1: or because she was too tight, and that was pretty normal.
Speaker 1: Certainly when I grew up and a firm believe monkey,
Speaker 1: see monkey, do exactly. It doesn't matter what you get told,
Speaker 1: you said Biasmosis. And as you said that, I'm thinking, well, observation.
Speaker 1: I observed I did, and my son's probably observed me.
Speaker 1: I wasn't disrespectful to women, but I just had no
Speaker 1: women in life. I didn't even have a girlfriend. Like.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to do that because I didn't want
Speaker 1: to challenge them with that, So I was just Dad
Speaker 1: went to work. Dad came home and looked and you know,
Speaker 1: marked around with the boys and told him do the
Speaker 1: home and go to bed, and then Dad would go
Speaker 1: on a work trip and come back ye later.
Speaker 2: I don't know how you would have constructed that, like
Speaker 2: without it, you know, it's not like, let's go and
Speaker 2: be around some women like I don't know if you
Speaker 2: can sort of do that, but it's you know, I
Speaker 2: think one of the toughest things for boys and girls
Speaker 2: is seeing the opposite sex is the other. And you know,
Speaker 2: one of the I remember saying to my son he
Speaker 2: really appreciated were on the way to school one day
Speaker 2: he had like an exam. He was in the middle
Speaker 2: of his exams and something had happened in the US.
Speaker 2: I think it was the Supreme Court Roe versus Weight
Speaker 2: or something, and I was trying to explain that the
Speaker 2: rights to reproductive right. It's like the abortion being legal
Speaker 2: is not just a women's issue. It's also a man's
Speaker 2: issue because if you accidentally get a goal pregnant, which
Speaker 2: you probably will in your lifetime at some stage, guess
Speaker 2: what that is half of your problem. And if she
Speaker 2: doesn't have access to abortion legally. And I was giving
Speaker 2: this whole copse, and it's like, can I please just
Speaker 2: study for my friends Inciente? And I was like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: but it's really important.
Speaker 1: So can I just do you mind if I just
Speaker 1: take a little bit. I don't know. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff in the bedro on Wikipedia, but
Speaker 1: I know half the stuff in Wikipedia, with the gross perspective,
Speaker 1: Wikipedia is incorrect. I know that my birthday is on
Speaker 1: there sometime in November, and it's like my birthday was
Speaker 1: in June. So what my team produced to me is
Speaker 1: probably incorrect. So can I go back? Mea Friedman as
Speaker 1: a young kid? Yeah, where'd you were up?
Speaker 2: I grew up in Sydney, brothers and sisters. An older
Speaker 2: brother seven years older.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and mum and dad divorce, married, married, still married,
Speaker 1: happily married. And your dad, my dad.
Speaker 2: Was started his own business when I was probably in
Speaker 2: late primary school. So it was like he had a
Speaker 2: business partner. He'd worked in you know, he'd been as
Speaker 2: sort of a stockbroker, went out on his own entrepreneur.
Speaker 2: It was very much the two families because it was
Speaker 2: his business partner was his cousin's husband, and they kind
Speaker 2: of literally from the kitchen table, like I have very
Speaker 2: strong memories of the two families sort of grew up together,
Speaker 2: and it was you know, we'd be putting things in
Speaker 2: envelopes and sending them out the kids, and it would
Speaker 2: be walking, you know, trying to think of names for
Speaker 2: the business. So we watched that happen. I wasn't you know.
Speaker 2: He was an immigrant from South Africa, so his whole
Speaker 2: family came over as a political protest to apartheid in
Speaker 2: the sixties because that's the only way you could protest
Speaker 2: apartheid is by leaving. And they had a great life there.
Speaker 2: His father was a doctor and his mother was an artist,
Speaker 2: and you know, white people had great lives in South
Speaker 2: Africa during apartheid, but they found it absolutely oborron and
Speaker 2: they left in protest and came to Australia with nothing
Speaker 2: and had to start again. So I did not grow
Speaker 2: up in a house with money. My mum, her father's
Speaker 2: a doctor, but you know, very working class and middle class,
Speaker 2: and she was Australian or yeah Australian, you know, back
Speaker 2: to the convicts. And so, yeah, I grew up in
Speaker 2: a house that was, you know, kind of typical seventies
Speaker 2: where the parents were doing their own thing. A parent
Speaker 2: was something you were, not something that you did, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of normal regular childhood. And my dad's business became
Speaker 2: really successful probably when when I was in my late
Speaker 2: years of primary school, but it kind of wasn't really overnight.
Speaker 2: And yeah, so I always had an entrepreneur in my world.
Speaker 2: You saw it since Yeah, I saw it. I saw
Speaker 2: what it looked.
Speaker 1: Like watching your dad starting a startup, doing a startup.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was very much a startup with business existed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, very much started and this is the this
Speaker 1: is the funds managed business.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that was pretty new. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you know that, but yeah, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: going on in the US. It got exported or imported
Speaker 1: from US to Australia. We didn't really have funds management,
Speaker 1: particularly definitely in the eighties. There was a few people
Speaker 1: talking about it. It was nowhere near as prevalent as
Speaker 1: was in the United States. And then a few people
Speaker 1: like your dad and his business partner started to have
Speaker 1: a crack of these things. But it wasn't easy to
Speaker 1: raise the money. It wasn't easy to get.
Speaker 2: And they traveled a lot and they raised money Australia,
Speaker 2: went overseas, got money to be invested in Australia. And
Speaker 2: you know, I remember any kid whose parents run a
Speaker 2: business and grows up in that family, there are really
Speaker 2: tough times, and there are scary times, and it's the
Speaker 2: stakes are high, and you know, there's there's highs, a
Speaker 2: lot of highs and lows.
Speaker 1: Could you see that, I mean, as a young girl,
Speaker 1: how would you been, like, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I remember the big I remember the stock market crash
Speaker 2: that was terrifying in the age seven yeah yeah, and
Speaker 2: I was what sixteen then, and that was like shockwaves
Speaker 2: through the world. But but I was not protected from that,
Speaker 2: like that was potentially ruinous.
Speaker 1: What happened. I mean, remember, what did you feel though,
Speaker 1: fear in the household.
Speaker 2: Absolute terror because like, is this the end.
Speaker 1: Stock marke rush was a big deal, Like it was huge, massive,
Speaker 1: and your dad's fund would have been investing in the
Speaker 1: stock market. So one in those days people do is
Speaker 1: maybe I'm a high net worth person. I put in,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe a million dollars into the fund, and
Speaker 1: the objective was your dad would invest mine and all
Speaker 1: my other friends' money. In those days, they would invest
Speaker 1: in the stock market. They didn't really startups and equity
Speaker 1: private equity stuff in those days, but the investment stock market,
Speaker 1: stock market crashes. Do you have any sense of as
Speaker 1: a teenager, have any sense of the devastation that you
Speaker 1: would the anxiety that your father would have been experiencing.
Speaker 2: Oh massive. I mean, my whole childhood was just anxiety.
Speaker 2: Before I realized that I actually had anxiety, which is
Speaker 2: only sort of much later in my life. I was
Speaker 2: an incredibly anxious child because there was also the threat
Speaker 2: of nuclear war because it was the Cold War with
Speaker 2: Russia and America, so I lived and then there was
Speaker 2: also AIDS, so that was the eighties. So the eighties
Speaker 2: was just the worst time to grow up because between
Speaker 2: the stock market Crash, AIDS and the Cold War. We
Speaker 2: were a generation that was just terrified, constantly terrified.
Speaker 1: Well, the ads major terrified AIDS.
Speaker 2: Absolutely because we became of age sexually when sex was
Speaker 2: connected with death and so that was our introduction to
Speaker 2: sex that it could kill you. And the Simon Reynolds,
Speaker 2: the Grim Reaper ads, and it was everything was scary.
Speaker 2: My memory of my childhood and adolescents was just terror,
Speaker 2: absolute terror.
Speaker 1: How did you become aware? Because aware of those things,
Speaker 1: because it's pretty unusual that, certainly in my household at
Speaker 1: that stage, I had a teenage son. Close enough to
Speaker 1: teenage son, I would not have brought home the newspaper
Speaker 1: to him. How is it that mer Freedman was aware
Speaker 1: of that? Did you? Was it from TV? I mean,
Speaker 1: the ads are on television, but was it? Did you watch?
Speaker 2: My parents were always very you know, my mother's always
Speaker 2: been heavily into social justice and used to take us
Speaker 2: on Palm Sunday anti nuclear marches. When all my friends
Speaker 2: at school were, you know, going to tennis days and stuff,
Speaker 2: we'd be in the city carrying placards going to know
Speaker 2: nuke's marches. So I grew up with a real understanding
Speaker 2: of the world and social justice and politics, and because
Speaker 2: my father had come from South Africa, all of those
Speaker 2: conversations would happen around our table, and I was fascinated
Speaker 2: always in the news and information and what we would
Speaker 2: now call content. But I used to love magazines. I would,
Speaker 2: you know, watch magazines were my thing as a kid
Speaker 2: growing up, because that was the only women's media, any
Speaker 2: magazines I could get my hand on. I mean, Cleo
Speaker 2: was my go to and favorite, and you know, gold Star,
Speaker 2: but everything from of course, I started with Dolly and
Speaker 2: followed Lisa Wilkinson through her career. But I would buy
Speaker 2: Women's Weekly, I'd Buyom's Day, I would buy a new
Speaker 2: Idea because there was no other medium that really at
Speaker 2: that time spoke to women and that covered issues that
Speaker 2: were relevant to women. And I don't just mean like
Speaker 2: lipstick and sex, but like relationships, career, you know, physical health,
Speaker 2: all of those kinds of things. They would all be
Speaker 2: in women's make. So that was when I really and
Speaker 2: I was a really lonely kid, so all I wanted
Speaker 2: to do was read magazines, and it just drove me
Speaker 2: crazy that they would only come out, most of them
Speaker 2: once a month.
Speaker 1: I had a mean lonely.
Speaker 2: Like in that year, my brother I was seven years older,
Speaker 2: so that was that was a big gap. And I well,
Speaker 2: you know, now I know that I had ADHD, So
Speaker 2: I was like bored. I needed a lot of stimulation
Speaker 2: and I didn't have it, Like I didn't you know,
Speaker 2: I didn't have anyone to play with on the weekends,
Speaker 2: and my parents were kind of busy with their own lives,
Speaker 2: and so I would love, you know, I would just
Speaker 2: go and buy magazines. I spent a lot of time
Speaker 2: with my dog, and I would just go out to
Speaker 2: the shops and save all my pocket money to buy
Speaker 2: magazines and lawleies.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm just sort of having an imagination of you
Speaker 1: sitting at home, sitting on your bed with magazine, reading magazine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and cutting things out and sticking them on my
Speaker 2: wall and sticking them in my school diary and on
Speaker 2: my school folder.
Speaker 1: More than that, more than just reading, you were participating
Speaker 1: in that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was as much as you could. And it's
Speaker 2: funny you say that, because one of the wonderful things
Speaker 2: about the Internet and that has been so revelatory for
Speaker 2: women is the two way that engagement. You couldn't really
Speaker 2: engage with magazines unless you wrote a letter to Dolly
Speaker 2: doctor or that was pretty much all you could do.
Speaker 2: But you know, I'd cut them out and I wanted
Speaker 2: to I wanted to become them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's very interesting because not too many people and
Speaker 1: officer those people like, if you want to be good
Speaker 1: at something, you've got to take the next step. Just
Speaker 1: don't read about it, cut it out even today, or
Speaker 1: if you're reading online's a bit different. But maybe you've
Speaker 1: photoshot it and you put it in record it somewhere.
Speaker 2: Which is so anyone can make content now, but.
Speaker 1: You've got to get the content and you've got to
Speaker 1: be part of it. You've got to be participatory as
Speaker 1: I was, just being an observations reading kind of the
Speaker 1: next thing because then because then it becomes part of
Speaker 1: your brain's DNA, you really get it inside your head.
Speaker 1: And Dolly magazine and Cleo. I remember because my girlfriend
Speaker 1: at the time, who became a she used to get
Speaker 1: all the magazines and she'd we still always want you
Speaker 1: do those quizzes and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, relationship quizes and that was interesting, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: And it was like in a media that didn't speak
Speaker 2: to women or care about women. And a culture that
Speaker 2: kind of didn't really rate women, and it was very
Speaker 2: focused on men. Women's magazines were where we built our
Speaker 2: communities around these brands. And you know, the old joke
Speaker 2: is that Dolly taught you what an orgasm was, Cleo
Speaker 2: taught you how to have one, Cosmo taught you had
Speaker 2: a fake one, and then this Weekly taught you had
Speaker 2: a knit one, and then you died. And so it
Speaker 2: was like, we built our communities around these brands, and
Speaker 2: we moved from brand to brand as we got older
Speaker 2: in our interests, in our life stage changed, and it
Speaker 2: was really powerful, which is why it's just such a
Speaker 2: travesty and yet an opportunity for me that, you know,
Speaker 2: when I went on to work for those magazines and
Speaker 2: edit some of them, that company didn't understand that what
Speaker 2: they had were incredible. They had the most amazing collateral
Speaker 2: in those brands that they just pissed into the wind.
Speaker 2: And it's so sad that there's no Cleo, there's no Dolly.
Speaker 2: You know, even brands like The Bulletin. There was these
Speaker 2: incredible brands that meant so much and that should have
Speaker 2: become these iconic digital brands across different platforms and they
Speaker 2: were just you know, part of the reason I left
Speaker 2: magazines was because I got tired of trying to explain
Speaker 2: to my bosses that armageddon was coming in the form
Speaker 2: of the Internet and that we needed to move, we
Speaker 2: needed to evolve, and they were like, no, we're a
Speaker 2: magazine company. Internet's are fad where a print company and
Speaker 2: magazines are a fad. And anything that we put on
Speaker 2: our website for the magazines is just to get people
Speaker 2: to buy the magazine, and we don't want to you know,
Speaker 2: if we put content online, then they won't buy the magazine,
Speaker 2: and that's our business model.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They didn't want to bussardize.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they thought it was going to be killing the
Speaker 2: golden goose, and in fact, he killed the golden goose
Speaker 2: by not seeing what was happening under their nose.
Speaker 1: Before we moved past that. What was your first introduction
Speaker 1: to working in magazines.
Speaker 2: Doing work experience at CLEO Lisa Wilkinson and Deborah Thomas. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, iconic, amazing. I had dinner with them both
Speaker 2: last night and some of my CLEO friends. So that
Speaker 2: was the most incredible education that I could have got.
Speaker 2: Like I to work at the knee of those women,
Speaker 2: and to be in that building in Park Street during
Speaker 2: that time of when the Packers owned it and it
Speaker 2: was Nannie King and it was it wasn't at a Buttros,
Speaker 2: but it was like Lisa and Pat Ingram and you know,
Speaker 2: absolute icons and Richard Walshon and then Nick Chan and
Speaker 2: even later John Alexander liked it. But yeah, Ja, to
Speaker 2: be around those people was an ab salute privilege and
Speaker 2: like that was my university because I dropped out of
Speaker 2: university almost immediately and that was my university.
Speaker 1: I just scored the job. How old you get?
Speaker 2: I just wrote a letter. I just wrote a letter,
Speaker 2: and it was like to Lisa and to just like,
Speaker 2: you know, can I please call I love mag It
Speaker 2: wasn't a very original letter. And you know, she came
Speaker 2: and said, I knew someone else who'd been a guy
Speaker 2: actually who'd been doing work experience like a day a week,
Speaker 2: and that was my dream. And you know, I think
Speaker 2: I sort of used his name to get in the door.
Speaker 2: And you know, in my naivity, I thought Lisa would
Speaker 2: offer me a job. But like I was a nineteen
Speaker 2: year old, eighteen year old, I had no experience, nothing,
Speaker 2: And she said, I remember exactly what she said in
Speaker 2: that conversation, she said, because she was no doubt useful.
Speaker 2: A lot of people going on magazines, it's glamorous. I
Speaker 2: didn't want to go to the photo shoots. I wanted
Speaker 2: like she was my hero, not the models on the cover.
Speaker 2: It was Lisa. I wanted to be in the office.
Speaker 2: I wanted with the disgusting carpet that was masking tape
Speaker 2: down and the shit falling from the ceiling and the little
Speaker 2: rabbit Warren. You know, Carrie didn't get rich by spending
Speaker 2: money on his officers. But that's where I wanted to be,
Speaker 2: learning at the knee of those incredible women, and that's
Speaker 2: where I spent the next pretty much fifteen years of
Speaker 2: my career.
Speaker 1: It's pretty full on though, as a nine year old
Speaker 1: thinking that way, especially as opposed to playing the ball
Speaker 1: the magazine, you played the man the woman. In this case,
Speaker 1: he played the player. So you actually wanted to be
Speaker 1: with Lisa Wilkinson. What did she what did she represent you?
Speaker 1: And how do you know Lisa was as important a
Speaker 1: person potentially into the characteristics as you did know about
Speaker 1: like most people. Was she the editor of She'd.
Speaker 2: Been the youngest ever editor in Australia twenty one because
Speaker 2: I'd read Dolly as an eight year old or nine
Speaker 2: year old whatever. And my favorite thing was Lisa's editor's
Speaker 2: letter at the front of the magazine. And it's so
Speaker 2: funny that editor's letters ended up becoming, you know, these
Speaker 2: airbrushed glamour shots. But Lisa was always very relatable. She
Speaker 2: had this long hair, and she had like glasses and
Speaker 2: she looked like a regular woman girl like she was
Speaker 2: my idol, absolutely, and then meeting her and just learning
Speaker 2: so much from her over the time that I was
Speaker 2: there before she you know, left and had a baby
Speaker 2: and whent a maternity leave and I can't remember if
Speaker 2: she came back before she had a second child, but
Speaker 2: you know, sitting with her and Deborah, and the most
Speaker 2: important thing Lisa ever taught me was something that's a
Speaker 2: core value at Mamma Mia now, which is walking her shoes.
Speaker 2: And she didn't use those exact words, but she always said, look,
Speaker 2: we're making this magazine not for ourselves, not to impress
Speaker 2: our peers or other people at other magazines or our friends.
Speaker 2: We're making it for our readers. And so every photoshoot
Speaker 2: that you're on, every cover line, you write every story
Speaker 2: you pitch. Don't think about what you want to put
Speaker 2: out to the audience, think about what it looks like
Speaker 2: from their point of view. And that has been something
Speaker 2: I've never forgotten, and that has informed every career decision
Speaker 2: I've ever made, and every content decision I've ever made
Speaker 2: is walking her shoes.
Speaker 1: That's funny because as well Kerry say to me, he
Speaker 1: used to say, I couldn't give a damn what you
Speaker 1: think borrowers want. I want you to work out what
Speaker 1: they want, and that's what you talk to them about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's the only reason we're in business.
Speaker 2: A lot of people make content for themselves or to
Speaker 2: impress other people, and that's one thing to do. But
Speaker 2: that's never been interesting to me. The way I've always edited,
Speaker 2: the way I've always thought about content is not through
Speaker 2: the eyes of me to them, but from through their
Speaker 2: eyes what they can see, what they can hear.
Speaker 1: And who's your consumer?
Speaker 2: Other words, Yeah, who's your consumer? And always be the
Speaker 2: eyes and ears of your consumer.
Speaker 1: That's that's And how would you find out what your
Speaker 1: consumer wanted? I mean, I mean, you're a survey of
Speaker 1: you're an end of one, you know, just one in
Speaker 1: the whole algorithm. So it's good to look at yourself
Speaker 1: what I think I would like to see as a consumer,
Speaker 1: But how do you find out what your consumers wanted?
Speaker 1: I mean, would you let's just elevation now from the
Speaker 1: nineteen year old just started. Yeah, and you became the editor.
Speaker 1: You became the editor of which magazine? Cosmo?
Speaker 2: Adam Cosmo?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you become the out of Cosmo. How would
Speaker 1: you say? What would you say to your team in
Speaker 1: terms of finding out at that point what your audience wants?
Speaker 1: Was it? Survey based.
Speaker 2: Surveys are always unreliable, so as market research because you'll
Speaker 2: often you know, those those market researchers. Back in the
Speaker 2: magazine days, people would say, like, numbers don't lie. So
Speaker 2: people would say, oh, you should have more interesting people
Speaker 2: on the cover, Like you know, I remember someone saying
Speaker 2: to me in the nineties, you should have like Natasha
Speaker 2: Stott to spoiler on the cover. She was the head
Speaker 2: of the Democrat Party back then. And it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: you should have this one on the cover or that
Speaker 2: one on the cover. But the covers that sold were
Speaker 2: very different. So what people say they want and what
Speaker 2: they actually want. The numbers don't lie, and same with
Speaker 2: digital even more so now. But in terms of how
Speaker 2: before we had this intense feedback loop that digital media
Speaker 2: gives you where you are not short of anyone's opinion
Speaker 2: in real time, and the analytics that you have can
Speaker 2: literally show you what works and what doesn't work. Back then,
Speaker 2: I've always had this real split in me because I'm
Speaker 2: such a consumer of women's media. I'm always able to
Speaker 2: split between me and the creator and me and the consumer,
Speaker 2: and I'm always just able to flip. I I can't
Speaker 2: even explain it. But sometimes when I'm talking to people,
Speaker 2: I'll say I don't understand that headline. I'm really confused
Speaker 2: by what And they're like, but you you know what
Speaker 2: that headline? I don't mean me? MEA, I mean me.
Speaker 2: I'll slip into first person as the voice of the
Speaker 2: audience in their shoes, yeah, walking in her shoes, and
Speaker 2: someone who comes to it without assumed knowledge, without having
Speaker 2: read the whole article. She's just reading the headline. That
Speaker 2: doesn't make sense. That headline only makes sense if you've
Speaker 2: read the whole article. And I'm just able to flip.
Speaker 2: I can't explain how I'm just always able to flip
Speaker 2: and put myself in the shoes of other women.
Speaker 1: Do you think it's fair to say, because I've noticed
Speaker 1: this sometimes that when experts on a topic have conversations,
Speaker 1: they're generally speaking when they're talking to an audience, having
Speaker 1: a conversation with themselves about what they know, as opposed
Speaker 1: to having conversation with the audience about what the audience
Speaker 1: is actually out there to find out about them. You know,
Speaker 1: we all can do it. We tend to. And I
Speaker 1: know what happens to him when it comes to the
Speaker 1: interest rates. I forget that I've got an audiences doesn't
Speaker 1: know maybe anything about interest rates and just wants me
Speaker 1: to break it down from a certain way. But I
Speaker 1: sometimes I slip into the same mistake all the time
Speaker 1: is start having a conversation with myself with Mark. It's
Speaker 1: Mark talking to Mark.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in your case, you've got experts who know where
Speaker 1: the topic is, and they therefore they put the headline
Speaker 1: up that reads well to themselves writing a speech and
Speaker 1: then getting up and speaking what you wrote, and it
Speaker 1: sounds completely this sound sounds really dull relative to what.
Speaker 2: You've always got to be a clean skin like you know,
Speaker 2: if I'm thinking about the first thing I asked you
Speaker 2: when we sat down was just tell me a bit
Speaker 2: about your audience, because I'm thinking about what's going to
Speaker 2: be interesting to your audience. Because I will, I will
Speaker 2: give different answers than if I was doing a podcast
Speaker 2: about fashion, or a podcast pitch to women in business,
Speaker 2: or a podcast pitch to you know, news or content creators.
Speaker 2: And it's not that the answers aren't authentic, but it's like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I need to thin, slice and package up the most
Speaker 2: interesting thing for this audience in a way that's most
Speaker 2: interesting to them, not what do I want to talk
Speaker 2: about today, because that's a whole other thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're not sitting down.
Speaker 2: We're not here to hear what I want to talk
Speaker 2: about y or.
Speaker 1: Me for that matter. And by the way, that's part
Speaker 1: of the skill of podcasting, isn't it. Like I mean,
Speaker 1: it's about my audience doesn't really give it down what
Speaker 1: I think anyway. They're more interested in hearing what me
Speaker 1: for even.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think podcasting is different. I think
Speaker 2: podcasting is different. I think that you know and you
Speaker 2: look at all you have to do is look at
Speaker 2: the US election. I think the difference between podcasting and
Speaker 2: traditional interviewing on news media like say seven thirty or
Speaker 2: sixty minutes.
Speaker 1: A three minute clip.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's that. And it's also that's about I get you,
Speaker 2: whereas a podcast is about getting to know you. And
Speaker 2: that's why Donald Trump went to Austin and sat down
Speaker 2: for Joe Rogan for three hours, and that was a
Speaker 2: really smart use of his time. And the other biggest
Speaker 2: cut through was Kamala Harris's interview with Alex Cooper from
Speaker 2: Call Her Daddy, which she paid for Alex to come
Speaker 2: to her, but still did it in Alex's format. So
Speaker 2: you know, it's interesting you look at we've just seen
Speaker 2: the first podcast election and we've got our election in
Speaker 2: Australia next year, and it will be really interesting to
Speaker 2: see what happens because at the last election, I remember
Speaker 2: so clearly. You know where the biggest women's media company
Speaker 2: in the world in Australia we speak to We have
Speaker 2: the biggest podcast network in the world. We speak to
Speaker 2: eight million Australian women every month. Anthony Albernezi straight away, Yes,
Speaker 2: I'll come talk to you, I'll sit down, do no filter.
Speaker 2: Scott Morrison wouldn't have a bar of us would not
Speaker 2: do it. And I remember, it's not like he wasn't here,
Speaker 2: because he came in and talk to you, And I
Speaker 2: remember that day. I'm like, he's literally up the road
Speaker 2: because we are one hundred meters down the road our office,
Speaker 2: and he wouldn't come to Mamma Mia.
Speaker 1: He didn't ask, he refused.
Speaker 2: Oh, we asked him for months. We asked as we said,
Speaker 2: it's not a gotcha, we just want to sit down.
Speaker 2: Anthony Aberneze has come on no filter. We want to
Speaker 2: give you the same opportunity. I mean, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: not Lee Sales. I'm not going to give him a grilling.
Speaker 2: It was just an open invitation with no.
Speaker 1: Probably should totally sales too, to be frank with him,
Speaker 1: and he did, Yeah, of course he did, but he should.
Speaker 2: But I'm not saying it's in instead of but the
Speaker 2: fact that he was always and Tony Abbott was the same.
Speaker 2: I've interviewed every Australian Prime minister since i've you know,
Speaker 2: over the last fifteen years, except for Tony Abbot and
Speaker 2: Scott Morrison, who would not sit down with me. And
Speaker 2: it's like, why why would you? And it's not about
Speaker 2: me anyone at Muma Mea. They would not engage with
Speaker 2: Muma Mea. They gave interviews to all kinds of people
Speaker 2: you twice, but they would not give an interview to
Speaker 2: the biggest women's media company in Australia. What does that say,
Speaker 2: you know, we're talking earlier about attitudes to women. What
Speaker 2: does that say about their understanding of fifty percent of
Speaker 2: their electorate fifty one percent of their electorate actually or
Speaker 2: they're disdained for and their understanding of the influence that
Speaker 2: women have. Like it's almost like these men have such
Speaker 2: old fashioned ideas about women. It's like, oh, they'll just
Speaker 2: vote the way their husband tells them, Like, I don't
Speaker 2: know what they would think. It didn't go well for
Speaker 2: either of them.
Speaker 1: That's sort of the assumption anyone could make, whether they
Speaker 1: think that way or not. It could be definitely different
Speaker 1: assumption century who.
Speaker 2: Could make the assumption that women will just vote the
Speaker 2: way their men tell them.
Speaker 1: To What's interesting as Peter Dutton reached out to you.
Speaker 2: No, but we've reached out to him, so we've opened
Speaker 2: up an invitation for you know, we know that the
Speaker 2: election is going to be sometime in the next nine months.
Speaker 2: The invitations there for Peter Dutton to come on mom
Speaker 2: a Mayor Out Loud, which is our flagship show and
Speaker 2: it's the third biggest podcast in Australia of any kind.
Speaker 2: And of course Anthony Albanezy now I hope, like it
Speaker 2: would be madness for him not to. We've seen what
Speaker 2: happened in America. Like I think one of the biggest
Speaker 2: mistakes come in and made not going to sit down
Speaker 2: with Joe Rogan. I think that was a real, really
Speaker 2: missed opportunity. I'm not saying it would have moved the election,
Speaker 2: but I just think that idea of is really old fashioned.
Speaker 2: Scott will only talk to you, and Abbott will only
Speaker 2: talk to you because you're a man, like we won't
Speaker 2: talk to It's like, come on, those days are over.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting. You should make that point because don't
Speaker 1: actually is coming on our show and they reach out
Speaker 1: to us. But of course that's the thing.
Speaker 2: I would reach out to you, but it won't occur
Speaker 2: to them. Even though women are responsible for it's I
Speaker 2: think it's eighty percent of purchasing decisions in Australia. This
Speaker 2: is why smart advertisers advertised to women because this idea
Speaker 2: that women and not Women aren't just responsible for like
Speaker 2: buying the breakfast cereal and the washing powder, finance, investment, insurance, banking, cars,
Speaker 2: real estate. Women are incredibly influential, if not entirely responsible
Speaker 2: for making those decisions.
Speaker 1: That's our experience in the lending business.
Speaker 2: The purchasing power of women is extraordinary. The voting power
Speaker 2: of women is extraordinary. And the thing about women is
Speaker 2: that women are kind of programmed to be viral. Like
Speaker 2: the word of mouth and the amplification of your message
Speaker 2: when you put it in the mouths of women or
Speaker 2: you can get women to engage with you is I'm told, look,
Speaker 2: men don't amplify.
Speaker 1: What would you say to Peter Dutton because I want
Speaker 1: to show him this clip when he comes on in
Speaker 1: the show, What would you say to Peter in this camera?
Speaker 2: I'm not going to look down the camera because, to
Speaker 2: be honest, I think Peter Dutton needs women more than
Speaker 2: women need Peter Dutton. I think it's I think it's
Speaker 2: his game to lose in that sense in winning the
Speaker 2: hearts and minds of women.
Speaker 1: Do you just need to win them or does he
Speaker 1: just need to introduce himself at least?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's that and I mean it used
Speaker 2: to be oh, they'd go and do an in view
Speaker 2: with the Women's Weekly, which Scott Morrison did last election
Speaker 2: campaign and he did sixty minutes and he played his ukoleli.
Speaker 2: But that part of the audience is absolutely dwindling. Like
Speaker 2: if you want to reach women over the age of
Speaker 2: eighteen up to about fifty five, you know, Mum and
Speaker 2: Maya is where they are. We've got sixty four different
Speaker 2: podcasts we've got, you know, between our social our written content.
Speaker 2: This idea that women are somehow a niche is just
Speaker 2: kind of well, it is laughable.
Speaker 1: We'll given the voting in this country's compulsory to It
Speaker 1: just doesn't make sense mathematic right. I mean it's funny
Speaker 1: you should say that about Morrison because I've invited Elbow
Speaker 1: in this show and Jim Charmers so many times.
Speaker 2: And they won't come.
Speaker 1: They won't come on my show, which is interesting he
Speaker 1: goes on your show. I don't know if it's in
Speaker 1: my case on an think it's necessarily my audience, and
Speaker 1: I don't think it's necessarily men versus women or their views.
Speaker 1: I think it's more about what they think my politics is.
Speaker 1: Because I've had Scott Morrison on and I'm not going
Speaker 1: to I'm not here to pull olbos pants and I
Speaker 1: just want to talk to about his story.
Speaker 2: Of course, that's what my shows, of course, And that's
Speaker 2: the thing it's getting to. It's not a gotcha anyone
Speaker 2: that political leaders and their advisors have not got that
Speaker 2: message that podcasts aren't a hostile environment. I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: not Lesa Ales, you're not Kerry O'Brien, like if only
Speaker 2: I bow down to those people. But that's not what
Speaker 2: a podcast is. It's just not and it actually is
Speaker 2: the best way for someone to introduce themselves and to yeah,
Speaker 2: tell people who they are. And it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be interested. I'm not the best person and
Speaker 2: out with Cooper said this when she interviewed Kamala to
Speaker 2: sit down and talk about fracking and talk about the
Speaker 2: economy necessarily, but she spoke to her about reproductive rights
Speaker 2: and about abortion because that is such a critical issue
Speaker 2: for women. As it turned out, it wasn't such a
Speaker 2: critical issue when it came to voting. But there's just
Speaker 2: not a lot of downside. There's not a lot of
Speaker 2: downside because I think what people expect now not just
Speaker 2: from politicians, but from public figures. Is not just a
Speaker 2: sound bite, you know, it's to understand or who are
Speaker 2: they really? Because if there's one thing people can always
Speaker 2: say about Donald Trump, you know who he is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what you're going to get.
Speaker 2: You know what you're going to get, and whether you
Speaker 2: think what you get is awful or spectacular, you know.
Speaker 2: And going into this election in the US, I think
Speaker 2: it was eighty five percent of people said they will
Speaker 2: not have their mind changed about Donald Trump, no matter
Speaker 2: what they thought about him, good or bad. Their mind
Speaker 2: was made up and nothing that could be said or
Speaker 2: done to change their mind. And I think that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: Do you think that in terms of Trump anyway? Do
Speaker 1: you think his propensity that I just don't care what
Speaker 1: people think. I'll go on any podcast.
Speaker 2: Do you think it's his sor But he didn't and
Speaker 2: go on Alex Cooper, So he only what goes on friendly,
Speaker 2: He only goes on friendlies. And I understand like politicians
Speaker 2: go on friendly want to do Rogan Rogan was Necessarilyrogan's
Speaker 2: very friendly. Rogan very friendly, and I think he would
Speaker 2: have been fine to cume Ala and I think he would
Speaker 2: have been awful. But to Donald Trump, he was very friendly,
Speaker 2: like very friendly.
Speaker 1: As opposed to not being unfriendly well.
Speaker 2: As opposed to like calling him out on his bullshit,
Speaker 2: Like he's not going to do that because that's just
Speaker 2: not the kind of podcast that he has. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: like you can go on to Rogan and pretty much
Speaker 2: talk about yourself for three hours and he'll just kind
Speaker 2: of let.
Speaker 1: You, Yeah, which is sort of what both of us do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, exactly. We're not interested in having someone
Speaker 2: there to tell them what we think.
Speaker 1: That's an podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's our podcast work. And that's why podcasts are
Speaker 2: in Dex so much higher for women than they do
Speaker 2: for men. And that's why for us at mum and MEA,
Speaker 2: so much of our business is built on audio and
Speaker 2: on our podcast network.
Speaker 1: Can I go back to momom me? Then just kicked
Speaker 1: off early two thousands.
Speaker 2: Two thousands, two thousand and eight, actually yeah, sorry, two
Speaker 2: thousand and yet started as a blog yeap.
Speaker 1: Just me blogs is a thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was just someone writing on the internet really,
Speaker 2: and it wasn't a personal blog, so it was always
Speaker 2: going to be about, you know, just what I wanted
Speaker 2: to write about, really, what I thought might be interesting
Speaker 2: to people because back in that time there were women's
Speaker 2: women's websites were like, they were very net specific. They
Speaker 2: were about cooking, or they're about gossip, or they're about fashion,
Speaker 2: or they're about parenting. And I was interested in all
Speaker 2: of these things, but I was also interested in news
Speaker 2: and pop culture, and every other woman I know was
Speaker 2: not just interested in one of those things. So it
Speaker 2: made sense to me to have a log and then
Speaker 2: a website and our media company that covers all of
Speaker 2: those things, because this idea of women's issues through a
Speaker 2: different looking at the world through a female lens versus
Speaker 2: women's issues. All issues are women's issues, but what we
Speaker 2: do at Mum and mea I guess, is look at
Speaker 2: it through a female lens, because most of the media
Speaker 2: tends to look at it through a male lens, just
Speaker 2: by virtue of the fact that most media companies, in fact,
Speaker 2: pretty much all media companies are run by men. So
Speaker 2: I just saw, you know, a gap in the market,
Speaker 2: and then I established that there was a market in
Speaker 2: that gap, and then I'd been growing an audience. But
Speaker 2: I was a one woman operator, and I was completely exhausted,
Speaker 2: and my husband had sold his business he'd been in
Speaker 2: the liquor industry and he was looking for something to
Speaker 2: invest his time in, and he'd sold his company and
Speaker 2: so he came on board as a co founder after
Speaker 2: about eighteen months, and he said, let's try and monetize
Speaker 2: this in the next twelve months, or because I hadn't
Speaker 2: earned it sent in two years, or it's time to
Speaker 2: you know, it's going to be time to get another job,
Speaker 2: because we've got a mortgage to pay. And so he
Speaker 2: came on board and we did. We monetized it. We
Speaker 2: were profitable, I think in that first year, which was
Speaker 2: not as impressive as it sounds, because it was just
Speaker 2: him and me and we weren't earning any money. There
Speaker 2: was no else to pay, so we were profitable. But
Speaker 2: then we just slowly moved into a little tiny office
Speaker 2: and slowly started hiring people. And of course nobody wanted
Speaker 2: to really come and do this thing. The internet was
Speaker 2: still a bit untested, and yeah, we we just grew
Speaker 2: from there, and now we've got about one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty people, and yeah, we're sort of a pretty big bill.
Speaker 2: Not not a small business anymore.
Speaker 1: When two people husband and wife, 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 of is a blog for some
Speaker 1: people therapy?
Speaker 2: That's a really interesting it was for some people. I
Speaker 2: think what was amazing about the rise of blogging, particularly
Speaker 2: the parenting bloggers of around that time, which I never was,
Speaker 2: but I was very influenced by them. It was this
Speaker 2: very flourishing way of women to communicate to other women
Speaker 2: in a way where there was no gatekeeper, so there
Speaker 2: wasn't no edit, and there was no one saying, well,
Speaker 2: that's interesting to people or that's not interesting to people,
Speaker 2: and there was no goal is that going to be
Speaker 2: interesting to enough people to be able to monetize it
Speaker 2: through advertising. It was just women expressing how they felt
Speaker 2: about things, and it was an amazing time. It was
Speaker 2: fairly short lived, but it was an amazing time. And
Speaker 2: for me, I wasn't interested in writing personally, particularly, but
Speaker 2: I was interested in being the one. I've been an
Speaker 2: editor for so long and then an editor in chief
Speaker 2: with lots of magazines under me ACP, and I'd been
Speaker 2: sort of managing people and teaching other people and editing
Speaker 2: other people for so long. I've spent a lot of
Speaker 2: my career climbing up the ladder because I'm very ambitious,
Speaker 2: but then realizing I don't really like it up there,
Speaker 2: and climbing back down and wanting to get back to
Speaker 2: the cold face without anyone between me and an audience,
Speaker 2: and just wanting to communicate directly, and that's what I love,
Speaker 2: And ironically I'm in the process of that at the
Speaker 2: moment again, de escalating, coming back to the cold face
Speaker 2: 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: he's going to take on the co founder role and
Speaker 1: we're going to monetize this. What did you say exactly?
Speaker 2: What it was? No, there were probably about ten thousand
Speaker 2: or more people coming every day to read what I
Speaker 2: was writing. I was doing about six posts a day
Speaker 2: on my own per day. Per day I was there
Speaker 2: were thousands of comments. I was moderating every single comment
Speaker 2: like I had no one to work for me. It
Speaker 2: was literally me walking around with my laptop in my house.
Speaker 2: And then I had another baby during that time. But
Speaker 2: the reason that he realized there was something there is,
Speaker 2: because I kept getting approached by private equity who wanted
Speaker 2: to start things and get me to run them for them, and.
Speaker 1: He would come with me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was. There was a big thing at the
Speaker 2: time called Daily Candy Out of the US, which was
Speaker 2: a daily email that would like do a roundup of
Speaker 2: the best kind of deals and fashion things and various things.
Speaker 2: And so everyone wanted to to get into this women's
Speaker 2: digital space. And so I'd get Jason to come to
Speaker 2: these meetings with me and Jason Levine being my husband,
Speaker 2: and and you know, we went to a couple and
Speaker 2: it was like, why on earth would we go and
Speaker 2: work for these clowns to make something for women when
Speaker 2: I know how to do this. Let's just we're doing
Speaker 2: it like so that that's where he was like, well,
Speaker 2: if they can see something in it. And he was
Speaker 2: starting at Harvard at the time, and he used Mama
Speaker 2: Maya as because he didn't have his business. He just
Speaker 2: sold his business before he'd started this three year Harvard course,
Speaker 2: and he used Mama Mea as A as a model
Speaker 2: because they had to sort of plug in their business. Yeah,
Speaker 2: not a case study, but they had to plug in
Speaker 2: their own businesses to these things they were learning, and
Speaker 2: he used Mama Maya at the time, and it just
Speaker 2: made him see the potential there. And I was getting
Speaker 2: all these approaches, but I didn't have the bandwidth or
Speaker 2: the skills, to be honest, to monetize any of the
Speaker 2: approaches I was getting. So for a while, you know,
Speaker 2: he was managing me and people would get me to
Speaker 2: come and you know, they wanted me to be the
Speaker 2: brand ambassador for their whatever, and he would do those
Speaker 2: deals and then he's like, there's a business here potentially,
Speaker 2: and he could see that I was completely burning out
Speaker 2: and I didn't have a capacity to monetize it myself.
Speaker 2: And I also didn't I didn't have a business plan.
Speaker 2: I didn't know how to do a business plan. He
Speaker 2: was like, what's what's your exit? You're not and I'm like,
Speaker 2: I don't know. Rupert Murticle, come along and buy me.
Speaker 2: And he's like, by what it's You're on your laptop,
Speaker 2: there's nothing to buy. And I was like, I couldn't.
Speaker 2: I couldn't see that because I was just so caught
Speaker 2: up in it. And he was the one that's always
Speaker 2: had the vision. I've always been really good at this,
Speaker 2: and he's always been the one that can see over
Speaker 2: the horizon and been like, no, Mom and man needs
Speaker 2: to be a website that you edit, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: oh no, that'll never work. Or he's like, Mum and
Speaker 2: me needs to and I'm like, oh no, that'll never work,
Speaker 2: and then he's right, and he's right, and he's right.
Speaker 2: So we've been a really good combination, whereas he's very
Speaker 2: much steered the business and the financial side of it
Speaker 2: and everything other than the content, and I've steered the
Speaker 2: content and it's worked, you know, really well for seventeen
Speaker 2: years and one of the most dangerous times for any startup.
Speaker 2: And I'm much more suited to start up culture, I've realized.
Speaker 2: But he always had much bigger ambitions and the most
Speaker 2: angous time for a business we learned was, oh we
Speaker 2: knew was going from startup to scale up because culturally
Speaker 2: it's a big shift. The people that you hire as
Speaker 2: generalists you then move to needing specialists. It's a big
Speaker 2: risk moving up. And he managed us through that. He
Speaker 2: was now that he's been an outstanding CEO, managing through
Speaker 2: all of those rocky waters and through COVID and through
Speaker 2: we tried to you know, not everything we've done has worked.
Speaker 2: We tried to expand into the US, that didn't work,
Speaker 2: so we closed that down and decided to really focus here.
Speaker 2: But probably the biggest thing for us was when Facebook
Speaker 2: told everybody to pivot to video. They told publishers to
Speaker 2: pivot to video, and everybody sacked their riders, invested all
Speaker 2: this money, started making video, pivoted, and then Facebook quent
Speaker 2: ah yeah nah, yeah, And that was sort of the
Speaker 2: beginning of the end for the buzzfeeds, the vices, and
Speaker 2: they just ended up getting more and more investment, more
Speaker 2: and more, needing more and more, doing bigger and bigger
Speaker 2: cat raisers to fund this bigger and bigger expansion. And
Speaker 2: because we've never done that, we've always been in control
Speaker 2: of our own destiny. And that's a decision that Jason
Speaker 2: made because he knew that, you know, and I would say,
Speaker 2: how come they've got all this cup raising and we don't,
Speaker 2: and He's like, it means that we can make the
Speaker 2: best decisions for our business. So when everyone pivoted to video,
Speaker 2: we actually pivoted to audio, and that was before most
Speaker 2: people knew what a podcast was, and that ended up
Speaker 2: being a really, really good decision.
Speaker 1: For us. So I just want the co found a thing,
Speaker 1: because often people say to me, do I need to
Speaker 1: co founder? Or some people come to me and say
Speaker 1: I knew the co founder because they heard someone else
Speaker 1: say that you need a co founder.
Speaker 2: 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 not so good at
Speaker 1: those things? Those things are important in my business. In
Speaker 1: the business, therefore, a co founder can do those things.
Speaker 1: Because you know, my old man is my dad, uses
Speaker 1: always say just always put up on a whiteboard what
Speaker 1: you're good at and what but equally, be honest, what's
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
Speaker 1: cut his sows, and you know, 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 2: It can't need to break in an accelerator totally.
Speaker 1: They are. So did you did you me or sort
Speaker 1: of recognize that your husband had those qualities?
Speaker 2: Yes, I knew that I couldn't do because I was
Speaker 2: just all I knew I was really really good at
Speaker 2: this one thing, but I was not. There was this
Speaker 2: whole other thing that not only was I not good at,
Speaker 2: wasn't interested in coming at it, I didn't enjoy it.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a good use of my time doing this
Speaker 2: thing that I didn't understand or wasn't good at. And
Speaker 2: so for me, not only did Jas have skills that
Speaker 2: I didn't have in terms of business and finance, but
Speaker 2: he also had a different mindset. Because I have a
Speaker 2: high I have a low boredom threshold and a high
Speaker 2: appetite for risk. He is more cautious, and I think
Speaker 2: that has been in a business. If you just have
Speaker 2: unharnessed ambition or unharnessed risk appetite, that's really dangerous, both
Speaker 2: of you risky. Yeah, you can't. And so I think
Speaker 2: you know the best partnerships. And I've always said, you know,
Speaker 2: I ran this whole course part of the business for
Speaker 2: many years called Lady Startup, which is about helping women
Speaker 2: start businesses and about the co founder thing. I would
Speaker 2: always say exactly what you've said, which is either partner
Speaker 2: with someone who has different strengths to you or higher
Speaker 2: if you can afford to. And the problem is that
Speaker 2: most people their co founders will be like a friend
Speaker 2: or a sister or something and I had you know,
Speaker 2: they'll say, oh, this is my co founder. We're really different,
Speaker 2: like I'm this, and it's like your differences are like this.
Speaker 2: You need differences that are like this, like whether you're
Speaker 2: really you know, you look at some of the most
Speaker 2: successful partnerships in Australian business, Nicki and Simone Zimmermann, you know,
Speaker 2: clothing zimmm and sisters Yeah, Nick creative, Nicole is I
Speaker 2: think a lawyer by trade or maybe an accountant and
Speaker 2: so you know, they're very clear about who does what.
Speaker 2: And I think that that's been that's been the key
Speaker 2: for me and Jason. There's no way I could have
Speaker 2: done this without him, and you know he would have
Speaker 2: done something else without me, but it wouldn't have been
Speaker 2: this So.
Speaker 1: An important point here though, and I've seen this happen
Speaker 1: 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 it. 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 2: Did you 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 would happened counseling?
Speaker 2: It was? It's really interesting we've come to really like
Speaker 2: I bristle at being held back and he bristles at
Speaker 2: me running headlong into something passionately. But what we've learned
Speaker 2: over the years is that is to trust each other.
Speaker 2: Like it's been proven time and time again that my
Speaker 2: instincts when I want to run hard at something I
Speaker 2: can't often explain. Like with podcasts, there was no business model.
Speaker 2: I just knew that it was something we had to do.
Speaker 2: And I remember getting up in a leadership team meeting
Speaker 2: and explaining podcasts and they all kind of like laughed
Speaker 2: at me and whatever, and I'm like, no, guys, like
Speaker 2: take this in. It's like, oh me, I' like we've
Speaker 2: got our business plan. We can't we do it. This
Speaker 2: is our strategy. We can't. And I'm like, and so
Speaker 2: I'll just go off and do it on my own.
Speaker 2: It's like Lady Startup. I just Jase walked past my
Speaker 2: office one day and I was on the floor and
Speaker 2: I was cutting things up, or maybe it was the
Speaker 2: Very Pery Summit and I was whatever, and he's like, oh, babe,
Speaker 2: you know what are you doing? What's and I said,
Speaker 2: and he goh, what's the business plan? I'm like, I'm
Speaker 2: not sure, Like what's the revenue attached to it? And
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm not sure, but I'm sure I'll find it.
Speaker 2: And I always have, so, whether it's been podcasts, the
Speaker 2: Very Pery Summit that I did, or the Lady Startup.
Speaker 1: Courseause Erry menopause.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So they've all been like multimillion dollar become multimillion
Speaker 2: dollar parts of our business, but they didn't start off
Speaker 2: going how can we make a lot of money. It's
Speaker 2: been I've gone what walking in her shoes? What do
Speaker 2: women want? Okay? And then we find a way to
Speaker 2: make it financially viable to actually do it because we're
Speaker 2: not a charity, where a purpose driven business, and our
Speaker 2: purpose is to make the world a better place for
Speaker 2: women and girls. So I'm always looking at what can
Speaker 2: I make that fulfills that purpose. So yeah, that's kind
Speaker 2: of how it works.
Speaker 1: So can you just list out? I know you've got
Speaker 1: fifty odd podcasts or something like that in your group,
Speaker 1: and I don't want you to list every one of
Speaker 1: those out, but I would imagine. But could you just
Speaker 1: explain your model, mum? And mean model? Is it sort
Speaker 1: of an umbrella model that sort of sits Lots of
Speaker 1: other podcasters sit inside your model.
Speaker 2: So we are pure We're a pure podcast network, so
Speaker 2: we're all owned and operated, all and operated.
Speaker 1: So you go and find the talent to do a
Speaker 1: particular podcast theme or has it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we will. You know, our first podcast was
Speaker 2: Muma mea Out Loud, which is about sort of what
Speaker 2: women are talking about, and that's a daily it's now
Speaker 2: daily show. It started as a weekly show. So we
Speaker 2: built that first and then I started doing an interview
Speaker 2: podcast called No Filter, and then we went, Okay, we
Speaker 2: want to do a parenting podcast. So we found two
Speaker 2: people and we did a weekly parenting podcast.
Speaker 1: Do people to run the podcast?
Speaker 2: Yeah? To host the podcast?
Speaker 1: Talent?
Speaker 2: Yep, yeap talent. And then you have advertisers who are like, oh,
Speaker 2: we want to advertise to parents, so we'll advertise on
Speaker 2: that podcast, or will sponsor that whole show. And then
Speaker 2: we're like, well, what else do women want? The news
Speaker 2: is pretty hectic, there's a lot of assume knowledge in
Speaker 2: the news. How about a quick daily news podcast. So
Speaker 2: that's when we started The Quickie, which is now twice
Speaker 2: daily news podcast. Then we did The Spill, which is
Speaker 2: a once daily entertainment podcast.
Speaker 1: And you're finding talent for these shows every time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that among our writers, among our editors, in house talent.
Speaker 2: A lot of the time. Now we also work with
Speaker 2: external talent, but they're our shows. We create them. We're
Speaker 2: about to launch a show called Diary of Birth with
Speaker 2: people tell their birth stories. We're launching a story about
Speaker 2: once upon a Once upon a Divorce, about stories about divorce.
Speaker 2: You know. We have podcasts about true crime, we have
Speaker 2: podcasts about comedy, pop culture, different aspects of pop culture,
Speaker 2: you know, all that we've done sport before, all our
Speaker 2: different aspects of women's lives and areas of interest.
Speaker 1: So the umbrella business sort of is really like you're
Speaker 1: a big publisher, one big published, a media company. You're
Speaker 1: a media company, correct, so you and underneath it you
Speaker 1: own all the various aspects. A bit it's a bit
Speaker 1: like the old you know, maybe it's a bit like
Speaker 1: news Corp. You know, you might back when it was
Speaker 1: you know, there's not only the early Telegraph and but
Speaker 1: there's a whole lot of magazines that might sit under there,
Speaker 1: and there might be a bit of tea, a bit
Speaker 1: of yeah.
Speaker 2: So some people say, are you a branded house or
Speaker 2: a house of brands? We're actually both. So we're a
Speaker 2: branded house in terms of Mumma Maya, but we're also
Speaker 2: a house of brands in terms of we've got the
Speaker 2: canceled podcast, we've got the Quickie podcast, we've got Mama
Speaker 2: Maya out Loud podcast. So we've got all these different brands.
Speaker 2: We've got a whole beauty podcast, we've got a fashion podcast,
Speaker 2: we've got a midlife podcast, we've got a mental health podcast,
Speaker 2: a wellness podcast. So we've got all these different you know, categories,
Speaker 2: and each of them have their own ecosystems. So around
Speaker 2: our wellness podcasts, for example, there's a newsletter, there is
Speaker 2: a you know, it might be a Facebook group. There
Speaker 2: might be written content on our website. There will be
Speaker 2: social accounts, so there'll be tiktoks, they'll be Instagram, so
Speaker 2: you know, there are these ecosystems that are built around
Speaker 2: these brands as well as the podcasts themselves.
Speaker 1: Given that you built that, how do you keep excited?
Speaker 1: I mean, what's exciting coming up? What are you thinking about?
Speaker 1: What's going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so at the moment, I'm super excited about it.
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got the vibe when you walked in. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you know why? Because I'm extracting myself from management
Speaker 2: after seventeen years, we've finally made some big hires. We've
Speaker 2: hired a CEO this year for the first time. We've
Speaker 2: hired a chief content officer for the first time.
Speaker 1: Roles sort of yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Well, Jason was CEO and I was Chief content officer essentially,
Speaker 2: and we've hired to replace ourselves and we've sort of
Speaker 2: got this whole big management team now senior leadership team.
Speaker 2: You know, we've got a chief operating, a product officer,
Speaker 2: We've got CFO, We've got all these people head of content.
Speaker 2: And I'm climbing back down the ladder and I'm back
Speaker 2: to making content. So I've got an audio documentary that
Speaker 2: I'm making. I'm still doing my maror out loud. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm really excited because the running the business part, I'm
Speaker 2: very tired. Like that's been seventeen years of Mum and
Speaker 2: Maya and before that, I was in management for another
Speaker 2: fifteen years.
Speaker 1: And you're both a long time you're both a podcast
Speaker 1: and in the business of podcasting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I run three hat. I have three hats
Speaker 2: in the business. I'm a co founder and co owner.
Speaker 2: I am a manager, and I am talent. I'm a
Speaker 2: creative and a content creator. And that's what I want
Speaker 2: to be. I mean, I of course I'm a co
Speaker 2: founder in that stays and a co owner, but I
Speaker 2: want to be a creator. I want to get back
Speaker 2: to actually making stuff.
Speaker 1: How important is for someone like yourself? And we're going
Speaker 1: to have to draw a close moment because our audience
Speaker 1: is done to last more than forty four minutes, not
Speaker 1: long me though I've trained them that way before.
Speaker 2: What if, I mean, it's quite a long time.
Speaker 1: It is a long time. But how important is it
Speaker 1: to some one I've never experienced this, But how important
Speaker 1: is it someone like you to be independently successful as
Speaker 1: a woman in the family, like your parents' family and
Speaker 1: your own sibling and you're and your mum and dad.
Speaker 1: How important is it for you to be successful in
Speaker 1: your own right without any help from a super successful father.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm really proud of that. I'm really proud of
Speaker 2: you know. I'm so proud. No, I'm so proud of
Speaker 2: my dad. And you know, let's be very clear about
Speaker 2: privilege and all of those things I grew up. You know,
Speaker 2: it's a huge privilege to even have that modeled in
Speaker 2: your family. And I also know that even though I
Speaker 2: didn't grow up you know, hugely, we didn't grow up
Speaker 2: wealthy or anything. My father became very successful when I
Speaker 2: was a teenager, and there is a degree of mental
Speaker 2: safety of that that can't be underscored, like the confidence
Speaker 2: of that. But Jason and I literally have built this
Speaker 2: from our lounge room together and it has been the
Speaker 2: hardest thing we have ever done. It has nearly brought
Speaker 2: us to the brink of divorce. Lucky we got the
Speaker 2: divorce out of the way earlier and got back together.
Speaker 2: But it has been so tough. It is still so tough,
Speaker 2: like business is still so tough. Like it is a
Speaker 2: great We're in a great place now and the business
Speaker 2: is doing really, really well. But you know, no one
Speaker 2: saw COVID coming, and you never know. When you're a
Speaker 2: business owner, it never stops being stressful.
Speaker 1: So I can ask a question. Jerry Harvey once said
Speaker 1: to me on a golf course. I said, mate, why
Speaker 1: are you collecting all these crappy old golf balls you're
Speaker 1: finding on the side that other people discarded and putting
Speaker 1: in a bag And though and we're playing golf up
Speaker 1: and New South Wales and this is some years ago,
Speaker 1: and he said to me, and at that stage you
Speaker 1: would have been a billionaire Forsial at that stage, And
Speaker 1: he said to me, Mark, he said, I never think,
Speaker 1: or I continually think that one I don't deserve it,
Speaker 1: and two someone could take it away from me at
Speaker 1: any time, because they could. And I think the same.
Speaker 2: I think the same too, And that drives you, of course,
Speaker 2: it does. No you're one hundred percent right. And sometimes
Speaker 2: people come into Mama meha, and we have a big
Speaker 2: office now down there, And if they don't, if they
Speaker 2: don't own a business, they'll come in and they go, wow,
Speaker 2: it's so big. It's amazing. And if they do own
Speaker 2: a business or have owned a business, they'll walk in
Speaker 2: and they go, wow, it's so big because they see
Speaker 2: what we know, which is the cost of paying the
Speaker 2: salary of every person and every computer and the tea
Speaker 2: bags in the kitchen, and the rent, the rent and
Speaker 2: the like. They don't. If you're a business owner, you
Speaker 2: see the duck paddling underneath, right, and you see the
Speaker 2: stress of it and the risk and the uncertainty and
Speaker 2: all of those things, and you know we've had to
Speaker 2: just metabolize that. So I think most business owners don't
Speaker 2: spend a lot of time patting themselves on the back
Speaker 2: and going, gee, look at what we've achieved. Like I
Speaker 2: literally never ever, ever do that. I always am like,
Speaker 2: what can we do better? What haven't we done well
Speaker 2: enough today? How can I make this better? What can
Speaker 2: we do next? I spend very little time going yeah, no,
Speaker 2: I never like never, never, never, never, never, never.
Speaker 1: Do you feel failure constantly in whose eyes, eyes, your eyes,
Speaker 1: your dad's eyes.
Speaker 2: Having been canceled a few times, that that always lives
Speaker 2: like a big, you know, weight over me, the specter
Speaker 2: of that, not just because of the personal damage that
Speaker 2: does me mentally everything, but the implications for the business,
Speaker 2: Like that's a lot of pressure to carry. But luckily
Speaker 2: the business exists kind of separate from me now and
Speaker 2: I've been backing out the door for seventeen years. Has
Speaker 2: been always our mission is to make ourselves redundant within
Speaker 2: the business, and I think we're closer than ever to
Speaker 2: doing that. But I always feel failure every I'm madly competitive,
Speaker 2: hugely competitive.
Speaker 1: File you fail, don't fail? Who wants to fail? So
Speaker 1: the obsession is not to fail all.
Speaker 2: The time, to be clear, Like, I fail and I
Speaker 2: fuck up, and I get things wrong, and I make
Speaker 2: mistakes like all the time, but I try like i'd
Speaker 2: prefer not to. But you own the mistakes too, Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: oh my god, Yes, I mean, I think our mistakes
Speaker 2: are the most interesting part of our stories. I don't
Speaker 2: think our successes are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally well for us.
Speaker 2: I learn a lot more about myself about my own
Speaker 2: diss from my failures.
Speaker 1: We learn about ourselves. Yeah, but others sort of are
Speaker 1: very interested in our successes because you know, failure is
Speaker 1: a great driver to be successful. It's a great drive
Speaker 1: to be competitive. So in order not to fail, I
Speaker 1: have to compete some people. Where do you think it
Speaker 1: comes from?
Speaker 2: Like, well, women aren't really women talk. Women have to
Speaker 2: talk a lot about our failures and our mistakes because
Speaker 2: we expected Yeah, because it's you know, by the world
Speaker 2: doesn't like a woman who is successful, and yeah, the
Speaker 2: world doesn't like that.
Speaker 1: Do you think other women like that too? Do you
Speaker 1: think other women also think, well, I don't like her
Speaker 1: because she's successful.
Speaker 2: When a woman calls another woman ambitious, that's very coded
Speaker 2: for what for usually bad mother. Someone goes, no, not
Speaker 2: it can be, but it's it often is she's very ambitious.
Speaker 2: It just is is. It's a real burn like it is.
Speaker 1: That's mad. Obviously live in that world, but that's mad.
Speaker 1: I've never thought about it.
Speaker 2: It shouldn't be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but when you just what about when you describe
Speaker 1: yourself as very.
Speaker 2: It's interesting I say cool by self competitive. See I've
Speaker 2: internalized that, and I'm like, I'm not going to say
Speaker 2: I'm ambitious because that doesn't feel like an okay thing
Speaker 2: for a woman to say. I say competitive is because
Speaker 2: for some somehow you're allowed to be competitive, But saying
Speaker 2: ambitious feels like you're a bit too full of yourself.
Speaker 2: I don't know, so I don't. Yeah, I think of
Speaker 2: myself as competitive.
Speaker 1: Can you just take me quickly inside a woman's world,
Speaker 1: the women's world, because you know obviously I'm not in there.
Speaker 1: But take me inside for a second, Okay. The level
Speaker 1: of envy that exists in that world for someone who's
Speaker 1: more successful than them, or the level of the level
Speaker 1: of competition. Maybe it's not necessarily it's probably Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: just speculating it's less so after certain age groups, but
Speaker 1: more intense in a coort. Maybe I'm just making it's
Speaker 1: up twenty to forty five. I mean, what's it like?
Speaker 1: Is it really competitive? Men? Men aren't like quite like that.
Speaker 1: We don't really give it damn.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's guys.
Speaker 1: I don't really give damn bout something else. Most of
Speaker 1: it's only interested in what we're doing, how we do.
Speaker 2: The culture kind of has always said there's only room
Speaker 2: for one woman, or like, you know, a couple of
Speaker 2: women and there's also that thing of generationally, you have
Speaker 2: to overthrow the generation above you to take your place. Right.
Speaker 2: It's like the you know, the line will attack the
Speaker 2: headline of the pride of that. And you know, I've
Speaker 2: noticed that the people who have the hardest go at
Speaker 2: me are usually younger feminists who were wanting to come
Speaker 2: up and make their name.
Speaker 1: And is that because they can take you out. They
Speaker 1: think they can take you out to make their name.
Speaker 1: They ought to take you out, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think, I think also to I think it's also like,
Speaker 2: I've got a daughter, and I know that it's really
Speaker 2: important for people to define themselves in opposition to what's
Speaker 2: gone before them. Yeah, yeah, which is interesting. I think
Speaker 2: father's sons and mother sorry father daughter and mother son
Speaker 2: relationships are a little bit different. But I think that
Speaker 2: generations of women, often in media, will feel and I
Speaker 2: know that I did it. When I came out of magazines,
Speaker 2: I said awful things about magazines. I think I was
Speaker 2: really angry about magazine. I was angry at magazines, and
Speaker 2: which is a funny thing to say, but I was
Speaker 2: really horrible about magazines for a while because I guess
Speaker 2: I had to establish what I was doing in opposition
Speaker 2: to magazines like Mom and Me or is everything magazines
Speaker 2: aren't in that we're not perfect, We're not about making
Speaker 2: women feel bad. We're not about being old fashioned and
Speaker 2: being st and being all photoshopped and all of those things.
Speaker 2: But now I'm sort of I'm very affectionate and Mum
Speaker 2: and MEA stands on the shoulders of women's magazines and
Speaker 2: those phenomenal editors, the actual women who ran them, who
Speaker 2: were absolute icons and who were not recognized for the
Speaker 2: incredible business women that they were, you know, Eita and
Speaker 2: Ninie and Lisa and Deborah and all of those phenomenal
Speaker 2: women women's media and even those bloggers now and years ago.
Speaker 2: We are stood on the shoulders of those giants.
Speaker 1: Do you feel as though me Friedman is now in
Speaker 1: the same role as deb and Lisa and that you
Speaker 1: should or you'd probably do it anyway? Do you do it?
Speaker 1: I should ask you encourage young women to come in
Speaker 1: if they write your letter, you know, do encourage young
Speaker 1: women to come and do what you did with.
Speaker 2: We employ Lisa, more than one hundred of them, probably
Speaker 2: have one hundred and fifty staff. Probably one hundred and
Speaker 2: forty of them are young women. So yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: what stoked. I love it. I mean it's I learned
Speaker 2: so much from them. They're delightful. Like, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: a big fan of cross generational friendships, Like I've got
Speaker 2: great friends who are in their twenties, thirties, sixties, seventies,
Speaker 2: you know, not just in my decade, in my fifties,
Speaker 2: and so yeah, I love it. I think young women
Speaker 2: are phenomenal. I think they're so exciting and interesting and
Speaker 2: different to us and energetic and energetic. But they've got
Speaker 2: very good boundaries. Mark, they've got very good boundaries.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the younger generally speaking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like I've got my work and then I'm
Speaker 2: switching off my work and you know, I have my
Speaker 2: right to disconnect and all of those things. And I
Speaker 2: think that's actually really healthy. After you get over the
Speaker 2: part where you go all back in my day, I
Speaker 2: didn't and that lane you go, oh my god, I
Speaker 2: sound like positively geriatric, and then you go, you know what,
Speaker 2: that's actually kind of cool.
Speaker 1: That's actually great. Well it also makes sense. And before
Speaker 1: I go, I mean, can you throw that over here? Sure?
Speaker 1: I really want it to be really good? Is this
Speaker 1: for ADHD?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and do you take it everywhere?
Speaker 2: Everywhere I drive with it. I hold it in my
Speaker 2: hand while I'm driving.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting. Like I was, I was wondering to myself,
Speaker 1: is this a little technique that helps you concentrate on
Speaker 1: the conversation or is it she's I know you're very clever,
Speaker 1: and is this is this a process to sort of
Speaker 1: send me distract me?
Speaker 2: Because oh, I didn't think about that. No. Do you
Speaker 2: know why this one's really good is because usually I'm
Speaker 2: used to doing a podcast interview, either it'll be on
Speaker 2: zoom or it'll be with a desk, right, So usually
Speaker 2: I do it under the desk sols, not to distract anyone,
Speaker 2: and also because you know, I don't know, some people
Speaker 2: might find this embarrassing and silly. I always you have
Speaker 2: little toys in meetings. But this is my special podcasting
Speaker 2: one because I've got a whole you know, a whole
Speaker 2: basket of fidgets on my on my desk and everywhere
Speaker 2: that I record. But I can't have noisy ones in podcasts. No,
Speaker 2: I'm the absolute arch enemy of producers and sound engineers.
Speaker 2: So this one someone gave to me because it's silent
Speaker 2: and I love it.
Speaker 1: I love it too. Yeah, yeah, I love it. And
Speaker 1: I'll just put on the camera what I love about
Speaker 1: this because it wouldn't have picked you up because you're
Speaker 1: shot from the waist up, So why I wanted to
Speaker 1: Was it distracting for you?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: No, no, I I love these things. There's something I
Speaker 1: don't know in a physic sense and a chemistry sense,
Speaker 1: so quite fascinating about how this thing doesn't fall apart
Speaker 1: and doesn't squeeze out, and it's a fascination to me.
Speaker 2: It is, yes, it is, and it's very It's I
Speaker 2: can't explain why. It helps me concentrate, and I've got
Speaker 2: various different ones. But otherwise I tend to pick my fingers,
Speaker 2: so this is that. Yeah, I'll pick the skin off
Speaker 2: my fingers because I won't even be where I'm doing it.
Speaker 2: I just need something physical while we're talking. It just
Speaker 2: helps me com.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's My mother was like that, and of course
Speaker 1: ADHD wasn't a diagnosed thing in those days, but she
Speaker 1: used to pick her fingers all the time and I
Speaker 1: used to say, Mum, what are you doing? And her
Speaker 1: fingers would be bleeding. She would even know same. I'm
Speaker 1: sure she had an ADHD, which is quite interesting, like
Speaker 1: in hindsight, because some of my kids have got it,
Speaker 1: some of my it's.
Speaker 2: As genetically inheritable as.
Speaker 1: High totally inheritable, and I probably have it or had it,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. But but I also, you know,
Speaker 1: I have other techniques.
Speaker 2: It's a very high incidence of ADHD and entrepreneurs, much
Speaker 2: higher than the general population because entrepreneurs have a high
Speaker 2: appetite for risk. Yeah, and people with ADHD aren't able
Speaker 2: to metabolize consequences very well and risky and they like
Speaker 2: they've got a high appetite for risk. That's why a
Speaker 2: lot of young men particularly at risk of being injured
Speaker 2: or killed in.
Speaker 1: Accidents and also in fidelity.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Interesting because yeah, you can't think about the consequence.
Speaker 2: It's like this in this moment. Impulse control is really tricky.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying an excuse for it, but like it
Speaker 1: depends on the relationship anyway. But I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: make an excuse for it, because there's all sorts of
Speaker 1: different types of relationships which tolerate, don't tolerate, tolerate some
Speaker 1: of it, et cetera. But I do know and I
Speaker 1: have read about this, but I've written in scientific magazines.
Speaker 1: But it is now correlated at least whether it's causation,
Speaker 1: it is correlated to infidelity in a lot of cases.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would say people like Trump, it probably
Speaker 1: has something going on there.
Speaker 2: A raft of.
Speaker 1: Everything else.
Speaker 2: The season would be probably at the top of the
Speaker 2: leader and.
Speaker 1: Perhaps perhaps I wouldn't say psychopathic or in a pathological way,
Speaker 1: but perhaps a little bit of psych psychopathic psychopathy.
Speaker 2: There's a lot going on there. Yeah, definitely, which is
Speaker 2: just great news for the next for all of us.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying Kmala doesn't have it, because she may
Speaker 1: have to. I don't know her well enough. I do
Speaker 1: know him, and I have met him and talked to
Speaker 1: him and interviewed him stuff like because he did during
Speaker 1: the Apprentice. But just my interaction with him, I could
Speaker 1: say that there is a bit of psychopathy there because
Speaker 1: that's something I've studied. And there is a book out there.
Speaker 2: It's it's David Gillespie's book.
Speaker 1: Yes, and it gives you the twenty one or seven
Speaker 1: and I can't remember it is now.
Speaker 2: That's his phenomenal. Yeah, that wasn't really I insured him too.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting. I walk among us paths.
Speaker 1: Well, someone asked told me they thought I was, and
Speaker 1: by that it was a female. So she's suggested by
Speaker 1: the book. So I thought a better again by the
Speaker 1: book as we're as we're parting company.
Speaker 2: Oh I see that's a great like farewell gift.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I thought I better read it me for
Speaker 1: even Thanks. This has been wonderful. Thanks for honestly I
Speaker 1: had got. I got so much out of it.
Speaker 2: Energies are I just enjoyed the conversation so much.
Speaker 1: Thanks,