Speaker 1: Today's podcast is brought to you by Employment Hero. To
Speaker 1: be honest, if we had had this when we were
Speaker 1: starting TDA, I know we would have just saved so
Speaker 1: much time. It's the Smarter way to hire. With over
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Speaker 1: is the Daily This is the Daily OS.
Speaker 2: Oh, now it makes sense.
Speaker 1: Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Sunday,
Speaker 1: the seventh of September. I'm Zara Sidler, I'm Sam Kazlowski.
Speaker 1: Last month we launched a new newsletter series called Building TDA. Now,
Speaker 1: I know that the name probably gives it away, but
Speaker 1: the elevator pitch for this series is that we wanted
Speaker 1: to draw the curtain back on what it's like to
Speaker 1: build a news company here in Australia and in turn
Speaker 1: to share our experiences with our audience. Turns out there
Speaker 1: are lots and lots of young people who are interested
Speaker 1: in how businesses are run or are even thinking of
Speaker 1: doing it themselves. Because we've got a heap of questions
Speaker 1: in response to our first newsletter. Now I'm going to
Speaker 1: check the link to the newsletter in today's show notes.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, in today's episode, we're going to
Speaker 1: be answering all of the questions that you asked us
Speaker 1: about building TDA.
Speaker 2: It's so awesome doing this, Sarah, because we get asked
Speaker 2: all the time how exactly this all kind of came
Speaker 2: to be originally, but also how things work today, and
Speaker 2: I think it's partly the kind of TikTok day in
Speaker 2: the life. Yeah, observing how things are built.
Speaker 3: I do a TikTok Day in the Life once a year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great. Well, one of my first podcast loves
Speaker 2: was how I built this yea.
Speaker 3: Even the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, super original of me. But yeah, No,
Speaker 2: it's amazing that we're doing this, and I love being
Speaker 2: here and doing this chat.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to ask you the questions. I've selfishly
Speaker 1: looked at all of them. Cool, you haven't, So I
Speaker 1: want to start off really easy with one that we've
Speaker 1: got a number of times. We get it quite often, Sam,
Speaker 1: Are you and I actually friends?
Speaker 2: Sometimes what day of the week I'm friends with you?
Speaker 2: And I think that that's all that matters to me. No,
Speaker 2: we are, We're very very very very close friends.
Speaker 1: We were something stopping you from saying best.
Speaker 2: We're best friend. We were the ring bearers at each
Speaker 2: other's weddings, yep. And it's been a really amazing part
Speaker 2: of this whole experience that we can do it as
Speaker 2: best mates.
Speaker 3: I know, but we didn't know each other before.
Speaker 2: We didn't know each other. I knew your ex boyfriend, ok,
Speaker 2: I played soccer against him.
Speaker 1: Excellent. Moving on from my ex boyfriend, how did we
Speaker 1: actually meet?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 2: I put up a post on LinkedIn saying I wanted
Speaker 2: to start a news company. Does anyone want to do
Speaker 2: it with me? And that came directly after I had
Speaker 2: just had an appointment with my therapist who said that
Speaker 2: I needed a project and needed something to sink my
Speaker 2: teeth into. I was twenty two and I got one
Speaker 2: reply yep, So I didn't have a huge man listening
Speaker 2: to her. And then we met in a cafe a
Speaker 2: couple of days later, and the dally Els was born.
Speaker 3: There you go, what a story.
Speaker 2: It was really cool because I think when we sat
Speaker 2: down for that coffee, we both immediately knew that we
Speaker 2: would be able to work together on this but also
Speaker 2: be best mates. Yeah, and that's pretty rare, pretty very special.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a funny thing sometimes. I know I've been
Speaker 1: off the pod for a little while, but my favorite
Speaker 1: comments that we get on a podcast sometimes are do
Speaker 1: you hate each other? Or like, are you having an
Speaker 1: off day? If the synergy between us isn't there, Well.
Speaker 2: It's sometimes hard to sound like you're best friends when
Speaker 2: you're talking about really really heavy news stories as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also like we talk about work all day
Speaker 1: every day and the news, so like, this bound to
Speaker 1: be some ups and downs. But thank you to our
Speaker 1: very observant audience for noticing that. Now going to change
Speaker 1: gears a bit, because the next question we got was
Speaker 1: how did you know it was the right time to raise? Now, Sam,
Speaker 1: you had to teach me everything about what raising actually is,
Speaker 1: So talk to me like I am Zara of twenty twenty. Okay,
Speaker 1: what does it actually mean? And how did we know
Speaker 1: what to do?
Speaker 2: So when you and I sat down for that coffee,
Speaker 2: we each owned fifty percent of the company.
Speaker 3: We split it down the middle, a company that didn't
Speaker 3: make this exactly.
Speaker 2: If you think about it as a puzzle with twenty pieces,
Speaker 2: you owned ten and I owned ten. And then to
Speaker 2: raise money or to raise capital is what they say
Speaker 2: in the big newspapers. It basically means that you say
Speaker 2: you're going to add some pieces to the puzzle, so
Speaker 2: you still have ten. I've still got ten, but now
Speaker 2: instead of a twenty piece puzzle, there's a twenty five
Speaker 2: piece puzzle. And in exchange for giving away those five pieces,
Speaker 2: you decide that this is how much a piece is worth.
Speaker 2: And then you and I don't own that fifty percent
Speaker 2: anymore because now we've diluted, which is think about it
Speaker 2: like cordial to include more people around the table, and
Speaker 2: that gives us the money then to do what we
Speaker 2: wanted to do, which was to quit our jobs to
Speaker 2: make sure that we could still pay rent and have
Speaker 2: some mackers and try and build this thing and work
Speaker 2: it out. Because when we quit and when we raised
Speaker 2: that first bit of money, we didn't actually know how
Speaker 2: we were going to make this a business to be
Speaker 2: able to keep hiring people. So the pitch to investors
Speaker 2: wasn't very attractive. It was basically back us, back us,
Speaker 2: and we think we can work it out, and it.
Speaker 1: Worked okay, So just to run through that once again,
Speaker 1: so raising was basically we owned half the company each
Speaker 1: we realized that we needed to get some money in
Speaker 1: order to make this a real thing. We went to investors,
Speaker 1: so people who part of either it is their job
Speaker 1: or it's their you know, passion project to fund startups
Speaker 1: in Australia, we went to them. They gave us money
Speaker 1: in exchange for owning a little bit of our company.
Speaker 1: And when did we know it was the right time
Speaker 1: to actually do that? Like, why did we do that?
Speaker 1: I didn't do it. You did because I had no
Speaker 1: idea what it was.
Speaker 3: Why.
Speaker 2: Well, I think Covid was the answer to that. So
Speaker 2: at the beginning of twenty twenty, we'd been doing it
Speaker 2: for three years, we had three thousand followers on Instagram
Speaker 2: and that was it. Yeah, and that is not that impressive.
Speaker 2: But then in twenty twenty, from about February to about December,
Speaker 2: we went from three thousand to forty thousand, and we
Speaker 2: could see that there was this real hunger for what
Speaker 2: we were doing. There was Covid updates every day that
Speaker 2: drove a lot of traffic to new people especially, and
Speaker 2: then I remember the breakthrough moment was really that one
Speaker 2: of the bigger newspapers, the Australian Financial Review, wrote a
Speaker 2: piece about us, and it was funny having that newspaper
Speaker 2: in hard copy at the kitchen bench at both of
Speaker 2: our workplaces, where you kind of have to play this
Speaker 2: game with our then bosses of I promise, I'm doing
Speaker 2: my work here. I just have this thing over.
Speaker 3: There that's just have this photo shoot actually.
Speaker 2: Growing really well, and so that kind of sped up
Speaker 2: the conversation, I think, And yeah, it was game of
Speaker 2: me trying to convince you that we should take the
Speaker 2: leap and just give it a shot.
Speaker 1: I think that that dynamic is interesting though, because you
Speaker 1: convincing me basically came down to our risk profiles, and
Speaker 1: so much of taking that leap into you know, turning
Speaker 1: a side hustle into a full time business is.
Speaker 3: Your I guess, appetite for that risk.
Speaker 2: And that's something that you've thought a lot about over
Speaker 2: the last couple of years, is the gendered aspects to
Speaker 2: risk and just how we define risk. Well, you've come
Speaker 2: on a bit of a journey, so how are you
Speaker 2: thinking about risks now?
Speaker 1: I just think that we only talk about risk in
Speaker 1: terms of like very strict financial risk or you know,
Speaker 1: behavior that is perhaps impulsive as risky, and there's so
Speaker 1: many things that are risky, and you know, we both
Speaker 1: quit our full time jobs, and it took a while
Speaker 1: for us both to get there, but we took that
Speaker 1: risk together. Even though I say I have a low
Speaker 1: risk appetite.
Speaker 2: It did not take me a lot of time to
Speaker 2: get yeah.
Speaker 1: To that point though we did, I guess, lessen the risk.
Speaker 1: By having that financial stability, we could pay ourselves a
Speaker 1: modest salary when we raised money. Some of that was
Speaker 1: or most of that was used to pay us a
Speaker 1: salary so that we could still, as you said, pay
Speaker 1: that rent and eat and whatever else. But then we
Speaker 1: had the task of having to figure out how to
Speaker 1: make money for the business, because raising capital shouldn't last forever.
Speaker 1: That capital, like the idea is that you're meant to
Speaker 1: invest it in the business and to grow the business
Speaker 1: and then to start making money, and that's how the
Speaker 1: business grows. We got asked a lot of questions about
Speaker 1: how we make money. It's like the number one question
Speaker 1: that people want to know, and specifically someone wanted to know,
Speaker 1: how did you get your first sponsor or your first advertiser.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we're going right back then to the middle
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty one. Then, so we quit our jobs
Speaker 2: January twenty twenty one, started full time February twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: Our first sponsor we sold I think in Instagram story
Speaker 2: in about May time, twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: And how much was that for, do you remember?
Speaker 2: I think it was about two hundred and fifty dollars,
Speaker 2: which is non knuck to sustain a business. Put it
Speaker 2: that way, how.
Speaker 3: Many two hundred and fifty dollars Instagram stories you have
Speaker 3: to sell?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a lot. So that came about because I
Speaker 2: think it was a friend of a friend, and often
Speaker 2: I hear stories from founders that are kind of similar
Speaker 2: to that that the first couple of breaks often come
Speaker 2: from somebody who might not be in your immediate network,
Speaker 2: but you might be one degree away from and having
Speaker 2: one advertiser and just being able to show another advertiser
Speaker 2: what an ad looks like made a huge difference. And
Speaker 2: the power of a case study is really important in
Speaker 2: the game that get that in the deck. So from
Speaker 2: there it moved, but it was very slow. Tara, who's
Speaker 2: ouhead of commercial here at to the A, she was
Speaker 2: employee number one. Her and I were actually.
Speaker 3: Doing out to Tara.
Speaker 2: Shout out to Tara. Her and I were actually doing
Speaker 2: our last four years of accounting a couple of months
Speaker 2: ago and kind of tidying everything up and laughing at
Speaker 2: how tiny the work that we won was in those
Speaker 2: early stages. But you got to start somewhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then I guess the follow up to that is,
Speaker 1: how do you grow from those very small partnerships because
Speaker 1: people were taking a risk to partner with us, we
Speaker 1: had never done it before. Yeah, how do we get
Speaker 1: from those small Instagram stories whatever they were, to the
Speaker 1: really big partnerships that sit across all of our platforms today.
Speaker 1: Someone specifically asked, do they, being the advertisers, reach out
Speaker 1: to you or do you reach out to them.
Speaker 2: It's a really unnglamorous story of how we got to
Speaker 2: where we are today, which is a really thriving news
Speaker 2: company that can bring lots of partners with us on
Speaker 2: this journey. It really is one, then two, than three,
Speaker 2: then four, than five minutes six. There was no viral moment.
Speaker 2: There was no moment where we suddenly grew exponentially overnight.
Speaker 2: I'm seeing a lot of that commentary around you AI
Speaker 2: companies of like it launched and then the next day
Speaker 2: it had billion hips. I know, So that is not
Speaker 2: the game that we're playing here. So it's been very
Speaker 2: incremental and boring, but very predictable, which is great in
Speaker 2: terms of how we think about our growth as a company.
Speaker 2: In terms of the split of who comes to us
Speaker 2: versus us going to them, say, it's about eighty percent
Speaker 2: of advertisers come to us and land in our inbox
Speaker 2: in the middle of the day saying we'd love to
Speaker 2: work with you. Have you thought about doing a partnership
Speaker 2: in this space? And twenty percent we go out and say,
Speaker 2: we think you'd be a really good fit and we
Speaker 2: think our audience would like you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's always a really fun task of trying to figure
Speaker 1: out who can we elevate the brand of and who
Speaker 1: can we be best suited to working with. It's really
Speaker 1: one of the joys of this business. Someone asked us,
Speaker 1: I guess in that vein how do you pay your
Speaker 1: team and invest in the business? And I guess that's
Speaker 1: exactly what we were talking about.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, we pay them with money, which is a
Speaker 2: good start, and we yeah, we really think about sustainable growth.
Speaker 2: So a big trap that youth media companies have fallen
Speaker 2: into over the past say, fifteen twenty years, all around
Speaker 2: the world world is that they raise a lot of money,
Speaker 2: they make that puzzle that we were talking about the
Speaker 2: beginning really really big, and they don't actually know how
Speaker 2: they're going to keep that going. And so when they
Speaker 2: go back to the investors and say, can we have
Speaker 2: more money for more puzzle pieces and the investors say no,
Speaker 2: they actually have to let employees go. And we never
Speaker 2: wanted to do that. So if you think about it
Speaker 2: with us, like when we think we have enough money
Speaker 2: for one more person, then we get one more person,
Speaker 2: and we keep reinvesting into the company, but making sure
Speaker 2: that we're doing so really responsible.
Speaker 1: I guess this is a good segue to the next question,
Speaker 1: which is what have been your biggest failures and lessons
Speaker 1: in scaling?
Speaker 3: Scaling being growing the business.
Speaker 2: I think the biggest failures have been when we thought
Speaker 2: we could do something that we couldn't do, such as
Speaker 2: true peoplewegh Taylor Swift tickets perhaps, and where we've kind
Speaker 2: of shot a bit too high and look, they're nothing
Speaker 2: has been critical. There's been no critical failures. But I
Speaker 2: think this is my personal answer to this, not the
Speaker 2: company answer, but I think my personal answer is when
Speaker 2: I thought we could do something that we weren't quite.
Speaker 3: Ready for, as in resource wise.
Speaker 2: Resource wise, knowledge wise, getting legal advice, all of that
Speaker 2: kind of stuff that can land us in trouble. I'd
Speaker 2: say that one of the other things that's been really
Speaker 2: tricky has been trying to figure out how to keep
Speaker 2: telling really original stories and keep working out how to
Speaker 2: have big investigations and all of that, because that's the
Speaker 2: most expensive part of journalism, and it's a really slow
Speaker 2: process in keeping on investing in that. But I think
Speaker 2: we're on the right path there, I.
Speaker 3: Agree, and I hope our audience does. Sam.
Speaker 1: There are lots of other questions about, I guess, scaling
Speaker 1: the business, how we make money, growing the newsletters, growing
Speaker 1: the Instagram, and maybe we'll do another episode on that,
Speaker 1: but I want to transition really quickly to some of
Speaker 1: the more personal questions. And perhaps these are questions coming
Speaker 1: from people who are thinking of founding.
Speaker 3: Their own company.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Were their moment, Sam, that you want to to give up?
Speaker 2: Not one?
Speaker 3: Wow?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And I was listening to an interview with that
Speaker 2: Stephen Bartlett, who does the director the CEO, did with
Speaker 2: Jimmy Fallon, and Stephen Butler said to Jimmy Fallon was
Speaker 2: there a moment where you thought you wouldn't be on SNL,
Speaker 2: And Jimmy Fallon was like, no, there's never been one moment.
Speaker 2: And then Stephen Butler said, well, what would you have
Speaker 2: done if you didn't get on the show, And Jimmy
Speaker 2: Fallon said, I don't understand your question, Like, I don't. Actually,
Speaker 2: I can't concede, I cannot compute. I can't compute what
Speaker 2: you're saying. And I kind of really resonated with that,
Speaker 2: where I never I can't even explain the idea of
Speaker 2: this not working working. Yeah, it doesn't. It does not
Speaker 2: even exist as a shadow. And I don't know whether
Speaker 2: we should do that confidence. Yeah, I don't know whether
Speaker 2: we should back this up with some cognitive behavior therapy
Speaker 2: or what. But that's where I'm at.
Speaker 1: You actually just took my next question, okay, which is
Speaker 1: how do you manage mental and physical health as a founder.
Speaker 3: Thing that you and I speak about very very often.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, I don't do a great job at that.
Speaker 2: I would describe myself as a workaholic. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 2: because of the last answer. You know, I get a
Speaker 2: lot of joy and I have an innate determination to
Speaker 2: do an amazing job with TDA. I think my happy
Speaker 2: place and I'm sorry for this answer, is actually watching AFL,
Speaker 2: Like I just find a sense of calm and peace
Speaker 2: and enjoyment. And it's the only thing, really, besides spending
Speaker 2: time with my beautiful wife that doesn't kind of make
Speaker 2: me feel like I want to go on two screens.
Speaker 2: Like if I'm watching a show on Netflix, I still
Speaker 2: want to go on my phone.
Speaker 3: And we love shows that can be watched while scolling to.
Speaker 2: Oh, subtitles if it's subtitled. But AFL just grabs me
Speaker 2: and I really love it, and that's where I find
Speaker 2: a lot of happiness. And music is where I find
Speaker 2: a lot of happiness as well. Okay, what about you?
Speaker 2: How do you kind of decompress?
Speaker 3: I think I do a better job than you do.
Speaker 1: You do, Yeah, I'm better at boundaries and therapy. Therapy
Speaker 1: is very helpful and physical. It's been a work in
Speaker 1: progress because I do pilates because I'm basic. But I
Speaker 1: was doing this thing where I was taking my phone
Speaker 1: into the pilarate studio and like trying to text or
Speaker 1: read a news alert while like doing my forty five
Speaker 1: minutes of six am. You know me time and That's
Speaker 1: been a big lesson and a big wake up call
Speaker 1: to me that that's actually the least sustainable thing. And
Speaker 1: I can put aside forty five minutes. I'm not saving
Speaker 1: anyone's life here. Yeah, So I'd say that it's just
Speaker 1: about prioritizing well being and knowing.
Speaker 3: When you need to.
Speaker 2: Can I share one analogy that I think about a lot.
Speaker 2: That's my latest mental health analogy. I'm trying to work
Speaker 2: out how to get out of this mindset where I
Speaker 2: feel like Simone Biles in the middle of the air
Speaker 2: and like, where do.
Speaker 3: You feel like, really greatest athlete of all time?
Speaker 2: Yeah, triple flips man. So we're doing a lot of
Speaker 2: complicated moves in the air and we're looking great and
Speaker 2: we're doing really well, but we need to kind of
Speaker 2: stick it. And that feeling of like constantly being in
Speaker 2: the air twisting and trying to figure out what does
Speaker 2: even stick it mean has been really interesting. So that's
Speaker 2: where I'm at.
Speaker 3: Okay, I love it, you know what, let's end the
Speaker 3: podcast there.
Speaker 1: I don't know how we can really compete with that,
Speaker 1: But Sam, thank you for being so transparent and so authentic.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to another episode of The Daily Ods.
Speaker 1: We will be back as normal tomorrow, but until then,
Speaker 1: please feel free to send us any questions you want
Speaker 1: answered in the next episode of Building TDA.
Speaker 3: Have a great day and chat to you tomorrow.
Speaker 4: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda
Speaker 4: Bungelung Chalcuttin woman from Gadigol Country. The Daily oz acknowledges
Speaker 4: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Speaker 4: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Speaker 4: Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the
Speaker 4: first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Speaker 2: Look, we got pretty lucky with our first hire, Tara,
Speaker 2: who's our head of commercial now. She actually messaged us
Speaker 2: and wouldn't take no for an answer.
Speaker 3: Well, she messaged you relentlessly.
Speaker 1: You met her for a coffee that I forgot about,
Speaker 1: that you forgot about, but you told her on the
Speaker 1: spot that she had a job.
Speaker 2: She just had the vibe of she could help.
Speaker 3: And then she met me for a coffee. She thought
Speaker 3: the job was sealed done.
Speaker 1: And I thought it was an interview, and there was
Speaker 1: a bit of mismatch, but hey, it worked out.
Speaker 2: It did work out, and it isn't always that easy
Speaker 2: to find your first hires.
Speaker 3: No, Sliding into DMS is not a perfect science.
Speaker 2: No, and it can kind of go unanswered six times
Speaker 2: before they respond. But that's where employment hero comes in.
Speaker 2: So they've got over one point five million ready to
Speaker 2: hire candidates in their marketplace.
Speaker 3: Hey, that makes a lot more sense.
Speaker 2: It's just more efficient and the best bit is that
Speaker 2: it's all there. So you've got hiring, onboarding and all
Speaker 2: in the one platform. Businesses have already made thousands of
Speaker 2: hires with zero cost and zero weight.
Speaker 1: That sounds like something we should have done back in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. But hey, you can't rewrite history, but
Speaker 1: you can be smarter in future, highre smarter, all in
Speaker 1: one place with employment Hero.