TRIBE In NYC With Jules Lund

Jules: The Daily Talk Show.

Josh: It's The Daily Talk Show, episode 312.

Tommy: What? Welcome, Jules Lund.

Jules: Hang on a second, 312? Have you done this nearly every day?

Josh: Every day?

Tommy: Yeah, every weekday, mate. You were on last time, episode 159.

Jules: God, that was only last week. How many are you squeezing these in?

Josh: We do 5 a week.

Tommy: I feel like I actually haven't had a conversation. I mean, the best thing about this podcast is that you can actually sit down with somebody.

Jules: Yeah.

Tommy: And go through a lot of stuff, a lot of content. It's not normal, it's not a normal friendship. I've seen you since that episode quite a few times, but we haven't actually had much of a chat.

Josh: Yeah, people will know Jules Lund is the founder of TRIBE, and you've been popping up in my LinkedIn newsfeed.

Jules: Good. Uh, based on Engagement Pod, the girls over there, there. So I've got, um, two of the TRIBE team here. I've got Lisa Target, who's a UK GM over from London, and Grace, who's one of our superstars from the London office as well. And they've been laughing because when I posted that on LinkedIn, I said to the whole team, get amongst it, engagement pod. So they're liking it and commenting so that the algorithm— you would know this, Joshie.

Tommy: Mate, I get text messages from Josh saying, can you please jump on LinkedIn to like my post?

Josh: Yeah, I have a— I have an account for my toe thumb, like an Instagram account, and toe thumb actually gets into engagement sometimes on my stuff and have a conversation.

Jules: Great, I forgot about your toe thumb. That is—

Josh: it's quite disgusting. It's quite grotesque.

Jules: What does Bri think about that?

Josh: It's not ideal, but it does sort of It works with my hands, sort of.

Tommy: Does it?

Jules: It works with a silverback's hands.

Tommy: No, the purpose is it works with a foot because it's got that.

Jules: Mate, how's these handstands though?

Josh: If I had the core strength. But no, so how long have you been back in Melbourne?

Jules: Uh, 2 days.

Tommy: Well, if it was going by your email signature, you've been away for the last 8 months.

Jules: Yeah, yeah, I've, I've now set that up. Email signature is a standard now. It says I'm away because it gets rid of all the nuffies.

Mason: How, how hard was it for you to get through it, mate.

Tommy: Well, I'd never know when you're here. That's what I'm texting you.

Jules: As I said, the nuffies.

Tommy: Yeah, yeah. And you text me back, I'm like, fuck, it's either I've punished you and woke you up in the middle of the night.

Jules: That's what I want. I want you to feel awkward. I want you to feel like you're annoying me, because guess what, Tommy?

Tommy: I am annoying you. I have been for the last 10 years.

Josh: Do you get any pushback from using the autoresponder?

Jules: Yeah, I've had a few people call me out, think that I think I'm a VIP. Yeah, it's a bit arrogant because it basically says 'Hey, I'm overseas working, basically I'll get back to you when I can.' Yeah. And I get back to everyone that I care about very quickly, but it buys me a few days, I think. And then on my voice message, I get hit up on this one as being pretty arrogant, which is I don't listen to voice messages, send me a text. How do you feel about that?

Josh: I think that's great.

Tommy: Yeah, Geoff Jowett, who's been on, he legitimately says, 'I will not listen to this email.' Well, he is from the '80s, Geoff, isn't he? He probably would say email. Yeah.

Josh: How long were you in New York?

Jules: Well, I did 3 weeks. I just— oh, you would love South by Southwest. I just went.

Josh: I went a few years ago.

Jules: Yeah, my lord.

Tommy: So see who else loves South by Southwest? Jason Dundas. Oh yeah, he's always there. Did you go?

Jules: Um, well, it was— I went to Austin for 6 nights there. I don't think I even scraped the surface of— so it's a creative festival for those who don't know. It's sort of— it's where marketing world, tech world, music, film all collide in Austin, Texas. And It takes over the whole town, but it's just great people. People like us, creative, innovative, excited, want to celebrate life. It's not like Cannes Lions, which is sort of like an advertising. It's the L'Art de Dîner in South of France. A lot of expensive money on yachts. This is the opposite.

Josh: Austin, Texas barbecue. Like I was having it breakfast and lunch and dinner and they would do like for breakfast I would have like a free brownie. They were doing free brownies.

Jules: I got to about the sixth day and went, "Jesus, I'd kill for some cutlery." Like I think I ate— everything was out of food trucks and there wasn't such a thing as a plate. I don't think I saw a plate and I just— everything's Mexican.

Josh: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tommy: You're looking good though. Thank you, kind of lean.

Jules: Can you get your hand off my leg?

Tommy: No, I will not. It's a nice dense leg. So I feel like, I feel like this ride for you with Tribe I've— you can see where it's at. I reckon I could tell what stage of the business you're at based on how you're just talking with me. And yeah, you seem really happy at the moment. You seem like shit's going well.

Jules: Yeah, Tommy, I tell you what, you have seen me. I think you've even recorded me. So I've had some bad days, right? Yeah. And, uh, just so happens that it coincides with Tommy wanting some really inspiring video, so he puts a camera on me and he goes, talk to me about entrepreneurship. I say, don't I don't fucking do it.

Tommy: And he still does. He still talks to me about it.

Jules: And then I just go into this diatribe of like, this is hell. And right, this is— so this is going back, what, about 14 months ago or something?

Tommy: Yeah, easily.

Jules: And I'm like, this is hell. And so then we just went, let's just do a video that's really raw and honest. And so if it all goes to shit, we can bring the video out. And if it doesn't, then it's an honest representation of, you know, the tough moments.

Josh: You could be the next Fyre Festival sort of documentary.

Tommy: So it's always in the back, always in the back of your mind, right?

Josh: Which is like— You've got Billy vibes. You could—

Jules: thanks.

Tommy: You're good at pulling people in.

Josh: Yeah, Billy's very— was very entrepreneurial, to be honest. He was a criminal.

Jules: Yeah, even though he's in jail. Yeah, I love, I love that because you're right, I am good like you guys enrolling people, right? You've got a new idea and you guys have— this is the, this is the most committed you've been to any one of your ideas ever, am I right?

Josh: Yeah, absolutely.

Jules: Like, you guys have an idea a month. And you're excitable and then you enrol everyone and then the next idea and they've just invested in the first.

Josh: Yeah, it's annoying. But I mean, you've done the exact same thing with Tribe.

Jules: Yep.

Josh: Is every time you go to a different market, I was reading that the UK office has outperformed the Australian office.

Jules: Oh yeah, that's, uh, Lisa and Grace over there. They can take credit for that. So there's about 10 or 11 of the team over there and it's super impressive.

Josh: Do you have to get people to subscribe? Does it feel like a new idea every time when it's doing the new market, or does it feel like—

Jules: Yeah, it does. I'll tell you something that's extraordinary. So we have just— the news has broken today through TechCrunch, which is the leading tech publication globally. So it's a really— it's even just a significant thing being on TechCrunch and having it announced. And so we're moving. We've just raised $10.5 million, and we've set up our offices in New York City. And we're about to, you know, we're about to have a crack at the US after the success of the UK. But what's extraordinary is I'm sending out these videos of our story, you know, what is our story? Because JJ, you're absolutely right, we have to start again. Okay, luckily I've been saying the same crap for 4 years, so much so that there's a video of me in 2017 that described Tribe, and it's the video I've put in the article because we haven't change. And I love that.

Tommy: Well, the pitch video we made to get the original funding, there's not much difference.

Josh: But the good thing too is if you create a lot of content, it's like Gary Vee. He produces enough content that you can say just about anything and then just pull on the one that works at the time. Yeah, the thing with Gary Vee, he's actually— there was a YouTube competitor back in the day called Vidler. Okay, and he was—

Jules: that sounds like someone you should keep 5 miles back from a primary school.

Josh: And the thing is He was very much like all in on Vidler, but it's amazing how he was able to change things.

Jules: Don't you love the December LinkedIn prediction posts? Yeah, because no one fucking goes back 12 months ago. You were clearly so far off. Yeah, like you can just say anything and by the next year you just predict the next big thing, and if it comes off you, you cheer, but if it doesn't, no one even knows.

Tommy: Yeah, so at that time we would doing that video and you were a bit morbid.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: What was, um, was America on the cards at that point? I think UK, you'd launched The Office.

Jules: No, surviving was on the cards. Look, the reality is, as I, as I've described to you guys before, it's, it's, you know, you're in survival mode as a startup. So you raise the money and then the money every day gets less. Yeah, right. And so you have to then use that money with enough impact that the, by the time the money runs out You've said to people, the last people that gave us this money, this is what we've done with it. It's so good that if you give us money for the next year or two, then this is what we're going to do to yours. So in that small window of that original amount of money, if you haven't grown, no one's going to give you any more.

Josh: Yeah.

Jules: And so we've just been— you just go in that cycle. And so at the moment we've raised some money. We're now excited because, you know, people give us that money to spend and we've got enormous amount of traction. So we're optimistic. That, that amount of money we can do something really significant with. And in this part of our journey, 4 years on, um, we have invested in technology, which means for 4 years we have strangely been fighting with one arm behind our back tied. Because when you build tech, the idea is you're not meant to go in there and help the tech, whereas if you're an agency that had an opportunity to make $100 grand with influencers, you'd just start emailing people, you get busy, everyone rolls their sleeves up and you just make it happen, you get the money. Whereas in tech, you're actually trying to allow the, the platform to do all of that work. And so sadly, it takes an enormous amount of investment, like, you know, probably, you know, $8 million we've spent on our development.

Tommy: Wow.

Jules: And, and it takes an enormous amount of time. And so What you want to be able to do is you want to be able to predict the future. So you need to be able to go, if I'm going to build this in concrete, because that's what it feels like, I'm going to invest all this money, by the time we've finished it, the market bet not— better not have moved, otherwise we're stuffed. And so when I say to you that video hasn't moved in 2 years or 3 years, that's such a great endorsement that we are able to think about the fundamentals of what we're building for and know that there's nuances that shift, but be ahead of the market and future-proof ourselves. And so At the moment, 4 years on, it looks like our technology is finally catching up. It's starting to overtake competitors, and it's super exciting. And so it sort of feels like it begins a little bit now. We've built this thing for scale that anyone can jump online and say, I want content from influencers that, you know, they can either publish to their followers, which is word-of-mouth marketing at scale, or actually I'm just using these influencers to create content for my social advertising or my billboards, which is sort of like you turning your customers into your creative department. And so that now at this point is really exciting globally, and brands have caught up to that concept even though we've been visualising it for a few years. And so hopefully it's the perfect storm.

Tommy: So what I used to— what, come and watch you, um, I'm just bored of seeing you say the same thing.

Jules: Yeah, fair enough.

Tommy: I just watched the videos that I've made previously for you. But you were— what I loved is you were almost making some of these predictions, or you were coining phrases, or trying to identifying areas. What has come off from what you were sort of projecting?

Jules: Yeah.

Tommy: And what hasn't?

Jules: Well, Josh, you'd agree that every time you have a prediction, you naturally go to GoDaddy and buy a domain.

Josh: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so it's very true.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: Do you know, Leon Shergren, who we had on the show the other day, shergs.com is available.

Tommy: It's pretty unique. I mean, it's—

Josh: what do you think about shergs? So Leon Shergren, yeah, he wears really colourful shirts.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: And so I thought of Sherg's Shirts.

Jules: It's a mouthful. I mean, look, you know, it's great until you get the, the, the, the free campaign at his radio station and no one can read it. Yeah, Sherg's Shirts.

Josh: It's, it, yeah, it's got some issues. But yes, absolutely, domain names. Yeah, Off the Gurd, I accidentally bought instead of Off the Grid, which cost me.

Tommy: Do you own toe thumb dot com?

Josh: Toe thumb dot com, I own. Yes. Yeah, Instagram, not sure.

Jules: I was with, I was at a cafe the other day and a guy was telling me just how he got, he got, um, the domains of this guy that he worked with. So say the guy's name's Matthew Shepard, he just got matthewshepard.com, and he can put whatever he wants on there, and it's going to get better SEO every time that guy's name is put in. So now he just fucks with him, right? Yeah, that's annoying, because it's gonna come up before his LinkedIn or anything, and, and someone else owns it, and it's this vulnerability. So now he's just going to extort money out of him. Imagine if I had joshjanson.com. Someone bought juleslund.com. Yeah.

Tommy: And then didn't he want to give it to you or something?

Jules: No, don't bring up the war. I got absolutely—

Josh: that guy went to jail for other shit, didn't he? Just quietly.

Jules: No, but I hope so.

Josh: I think it was done for like— I just remember it was like a huge black background and it had the— this is the— it was like a—

Jules: which guy?

Josh: There was, there was a guy who had a bunch, a bunch of domain names in sort of the sort of B-grade celebrity, and then it was a vibe. So, and then everyone, everyone down from that And, um, and so he— no, I remember that you would go to the website and there was like, oh yeah, there's something or for internet author— I think it was literally that, internet authority. But basically it was a dude, he was in Queensland, and, uh, he was buying all these.

Jules: I reckon I know the guy because I'll just say what a loser. Yeah, I got absolutely— I got ripped off. It's, it's one of the most embarrassing storeys within TRIBE over the last 4 years where I just got absolutely—

Josh: did you get jewelland.com?

Jules: No, it wasn't over that, it was over a TRIBE domain, but I just got absolutely stooged.

Mason: This guy just I just—

Tommy: what did he do?

Jules: I just, I want to hurt him.

Josh: I hope it was a .com.au as well.

Jules: It was some random, and to be honest, I can't talk about it. But in terms of the domain, and so Shergz has got Shergz Shirts, he's got the licence plate for Shergz.

Josh: Yeah, so I think it could be good, but I, I collect the following probably to start with. But also I've got Hamish's domain name, hamishblake.com. 'cause I will constantly be on GoDaddy and I'll just be like, I'll just write in people's names. And it came up and I texted him. I said like this, 'cause normally it doesn't go. I've had it before where I've got a good .co. I've got filmmaker.co and a few others. And I've had it before where I got an epic one and GoDaddy had just sort of been tweaked at the time and it didn't go through. And so I'm like, HamishBlake.com was available. And then I like, I straight away messaged him and said, you should completely own this. But the thing is Hamish has fucking Hamish Blake Shots on Instagram. He's the opposite of someone who cares about all that stuff.

Tommy: The domain doesn't equate to success. You can safely say that.

Jules: It just feels like it does. I know, exactly. So a friend of yours, Carly Schmidt. So Carly got, I won't mention it because of the person, but she had an idea, right? And like you and I, she just quickly got the domain and it feels like I've already started my company, doesn't it? Like you feel like you've done heaps.

Josh: BigMediaCompany.com we have. We've spoken about it. TheDailyTalkShow.com.

Jules: You've done really well. So she's got one and then she gets reached out to, and within literally a few weeks someone buys it for $5,500. She made $5,500 off like an $1,195. And so I then spent about $5,500 and I haven't even made $11,000. I haven't even made the reverse. But I then went, I went AR and VR. So I thought, I'm going to get ahead of this curve. And I did everything. I must have spent— don't tell Anna— when I had money before the startup, I must just honestly, I must have spent $5,000 on AR cinemas, VR skiing, AR driving lessons, VR porn, AR headset, VR glasses, or .coms.

Josh: Yes, it's—

Jules: I thought I was on a winner. Now I've run out of money and I have to get rid of them. I'm like, that was stupid.

Tommy: So these are your predictions that haven't come through?

Jules: Okay, there's plenty of those. Um, but in answer to your question, um, back, back, back when we talked about the domain Were there certain— were there certain things, um, that I've conceived that have come off? Generally speaking, from an industry point of view, absolutely. In fact, everything has, um, everything has. And, and, you know, different— it just comes at different times. And thankfully, our team is, um, over time has realised that some of the weird stuff that I talk about slowly comes off. And the stuff that doesn't come off, anyone I've spoken to about that is immediately—

Josh: No longer with the company. Do you feel like you have to evangelize? Or like, say, when you're so into an idea, how do you get people within the business into it? Is it just about— because it almost plays into the persona or the character, which is just like when you have— when you're strong on an idea, there's enthusiasm but there's also— I can go from enthusiasm to maybe Josh is slightly manic right now and it's not a great idea. How do you discern? How do you sort of—

Jules: Well, there's— look, I think Ant, I think anyone who's with me in the moment gets a bit of the manic stuff, but I think it drives everyone forward because the manic usually drives to, we've fucking got this. Like, this is— do you see if we do that plus this, what could happen? Like we've built the tech for this reason, but if we open this little portal now that we've already got all the technology, we can enter this whole different industry. And that in itself— so then I'll just go, and if I've had a coffee, you can imagine.

Josh: I've just started having black coffee. I got a mocha.

Jules: Talk about ADHD.

Josh: No, it's actually a nightmare. I've replaced water. I've, I've had water— instead of water, I have coffee now. I'm shaking because I had— I bought like a really nice— what is it called?

Tommy: Moka master? Thermos.

Josh: Thermos where I put the coffee in and so I'm drinking like fucking 800ml a day and then I'm not sleeping now too.

Jules: Do you ever shart?

Josh: Pardon?

Tommy: Shart?

Josh: No, absolutely not.

Jules: Because I reckon that's dangerous.

Josh: I eat too much meat.

Tommy: How do you, I think looking into what Josh you're saying, Josh and I are founders of our business and one of us has an idea And I know Josh doesn't like trying to sell in anything to me, but you, you are, you know, in a much bigger operation where you've— you're the founder. I'd say you're a visionary of that company. And are you selling into people this stuff, like, or are you coming in in your manic state and going, this is the way forward, get on the back of this horse?

Josh: Because part of my frustration is it's like, it's so fucking clear. And if you're asking these questions, you're so out of like like you don't understand. Like, I get it.

Tommy: But then there's a part that I could be wrong. You need to have people to be in support of that.

Mason: Absolutely.

Jules: Here's the key. For 4 years, everyone that's joined has heard the vision, and all that happens from there is that that vision gets validated. And that's what I talk about in those moments, and they see it for themselves. So, you know, in the early days when everyone, you know, we sat down, CEO and I, and said, right, get out your black book, and, you know, let's invite all the celebrities that you know to download Tribe. And it was so— look, we made this big list and I looked at it and I went, I don't reckon any of them could take a good photo to save themselves. Yeah, yeah, they've got 200,000 followers because they're on Home and Away or something, but I don't reckon they could take a good photo, branded content. And they're like, doesn't matter, it's about the followers. And it's like, no, I actually only care about the content. And so, so we, we've made huge, huge bold decisions based on my experience and it's been the exact same thing. So in answer to your question, TJ, I don't— it's not like a new thing every week. It's literally the exact same thing that we've been talking about. The world just hasn't caught up, and we're just building towards that. And the, the— what I discuss is, um, what I discuss is when things move, like Instagram shifts, I go, this is moving closer towards our need. And so like Lisa and Grace are over there, they'll you know, because they're in UK time, they'll be posting stuff. And the first thing I wake up in the morning, I'll see some, some huge shift in Instagram, and I'll just go, it's happening. And that's all I do. It's just, it's happening and it's moving. Um, the, the phones, the technology and smartphones are getting better. The, um, the consumer behaviour is shifting. It is all just moving towards what I believe is a multi-billion dollar category that doesn't even exist yet, and we want to own it.

Josh: When do you celebrate within your business?

Jules: Ah, look, to be honest, we celebrate today and we celebrate yesterday.

Tommy: So, and I used to celebrate every Friday with Nando's, but I no longer am invited.

Jules: Well, that's because they took the Nando's VIP card away from me.

Josh: Cut you off.

Jules: Yeah, they cut me off. Turns out they were expecting me to somehow add value to them.

Josh: Okay.

Jules: And by, in, in the way of B-grade celebrity.

Josh: Yeah, yeah.

Jules: But then the C-grade then they're just giving me chicken and occasionally social. Then when I got to D-grade, it just wasn't worth it.

Tommy: Yeah, I see you're so far away from any grade right now with your mic technique. Oh yeah, it's okay.

Jules: I just actually, to be honest, it's such a fucking stupid table because if this was a circle, I'd be looking— I don't want to cut you out, I don't want to cut you out, so I'm going to sit back. You guys haven't thought about this. We actually get free road stuff and then you've got this from IKEA.

Tommy: Your TV's yours, Lana. If there's anyone who can do it, it's you.

Jules: Okay, well, I'm gonna—

Tommy: I'm holding the mic. There's a chance it will disconnect everything.

Jules: I just picked up the microphone for those listening. You didn't even describe my visual motion.

Josh: Yeah, yeah, he picked up the microphone.

Tommy: He was being an asshole.

Josh: Was that worth it?

Tommy: Yeah, fuck.

Josh: What's this? Well, celebration.

Jules: See, you guys talk over each other because I'm blocking you with my head, so I just sit back celebrating those celebrations. I was exhausted last night. It was a— because I'm part of a marketing scholarship and they were congratulating me because of the press session.

Josh: What does that mean, by the way?

Jules: There's this fantastic, um, organisation called the Marketing Academy, and globally, uh, the UK, US, and Australia, there's people— 30 a year become part of this marketing boot camp, which you would think is about marketing, but it's really just this almost self-discovery, challenge yourself, support each other. Everyone at this time of our lives who are who are ambitious and trying their best get a bit lost in it. You know, it's pretty bloody tough.

Tommy: Is this the thing where you went away?

Jules: Yeah, I went away for a boot camp for a week, and then basically I spent the whole year— they, they get a pool of the greatest minds in the country, and I just go and have 90-minute sessions sitting down with them. It's amazing. I should loop you in so you could get some of those people on this show, but I probably won't.

Josh: Is it a desk? We'll email. What is it?

Jules: It's the fucking desk.

Josh: We're actually— we're upgrading.

Tommy: We're about to take on a new office.

Jules: Time I come back, which might be on Tuesday. So celebrating, I had a beer last night because they said, you know what, you should celebrate that. And it does remind you, so I went, I'm gonna have a beer. It was a mid-strength Corona, which actually exists. And I sat and watched Umbrella Academy. And, and then today we've got some fun stuff at the office where we get— where the morale is amazing because, you know, it's been a long time coming to raise this money.

Tommy: Yeah, the— just, just quickly on The discussion around followers and fake followers, how has that shifted over the years? I feel like it's dulled down a bit. Yeah, people are getting outed. Like I see, I saw in this Facebook page, the Shameless, a girl podcast by two girls who have this massive following.

Josh: Anyway, tagline is smart women who like dumb stuff.

Tommy: And so they've built this massive audience.

Jules: As opposed to this one, dumb blokes who like smart stuff.

Tommy: This girl went through and and did an audit on about 5 Melbourne-based, Australian-based influencers. And literally it broke down the audience. No, she just did it off her own back.

Jules: She did audit.

Tommy: She audited them, went in, looked at the screenshots. Yeah, exactly.

Jules: Lucky we've spent 3 years on technology that just does that by itself, thankfully.

Mason: Yeah.

Jules: Because we've got, you know, we have 50,000 content creators and they grow every day. So every time that someone connects their account to our system It scans their audience on probably, I think it's about 8 different metrics. So it cheques obviously historical spike in followers, but also spike in engagement. So if it goes 1 like, 2 likes, 3 likes, 1,004 likes, 1,005 likes, has ratio between comments and likes. If you have 1,000 likes and 2 comments, that's flagged by the system. And then, and even content, reverse image search. So if it appears online, so people ripping it from Pinterest, but then on entrance it scans you.

Josh: Is that how you do it?

Tommy: I was thinking about reverse image searching Josh's thumb and it comes back a foot.

Jules: I don't think it would, mate. I think you'd want to have SafeSearch on. I think if you image search that—

Josh: Real stumpy ones too.

Tommy: But is the noise around you, 'cause I remember when you first started it was like everyone was getting—

Jules: No, it was last year. I'll tell you when it peaked. So the greatest marketer on the planet, the most awarded, is a man by the name of Keith Weed. And Keith Weed is the CMO of Unilever, which is, you know, I think it's a, it's a, it would have to be the first or second biggest advertiser on the planet. So it owns everything from Lipton iced tea to Magnum ice creams all the way through to, um, Dove and hair care products, you name it. So it's, it's pretty huge. Last year at Cannes, uh, he stood up and said, right, we're never going to invest in influencers who buy fake followers. Right, which is lucky because, you know, we've done 60 campaigns with those guys by that stage and they've never worked with anyone with fake followers because we've protected them. But yeah, the world took that as, um, there's fraud in the industry, which of course there is. I mean, we hired you, JJ, remember?

Josh: Yeah, yeah.

Jules: Well, I think you scooged me. Well, I did a Melbourne Geek article in 2011, published the article after we hired him because of this stunt.

Josh: It worked worked out very well. No, but it was when it was like blowing up where, uh, they were saying these are the most influential people in Melbourne. And the thing that pissed me off is it was like purely 2011, it was the time where numbers were everything. I thought it was so stupid. So Fiverr, I got you onto Fiverr. Yeah, I remember in that time, I remember I spent $5, yeah, got 30,000 followers. But the amount of anxiety— I've actually deleted that Twitter account because the amount of anxiety associated with people thinking that I'm a victim.

Jules: You could block— you could block—

Josh: Osher Ginsberg did that. He put it into a system to try and do it.

Jules: No, the systems don't work. You've got to literally manually—

Josh: he blocked every follower accidentally, so he had to start a new account. Or I remember he did an Instagram—

Tommy: unblocking.

Jules: Yeah, there's no— so basically, because even when you come into our platform it scans you 4 times a day, every day. So everyone attracts ghost followers, right? So we all— if you go through, you'll see these accounts with, you know, 5 posts, it's got a lot of X's in the handle. But what you've got to do is just cleanse your account. And so in our platform, we've blocked tens of thousands of people that are not willing to cleanse it. But I'm not allowing a brand to pay a cent for something that isn't real. And so we protect them in that way. But I love yours, JJ, because it was during that process where I went online to see, could this 'Can this guy do social?' And I don't know whether I missed the blog or you published it afterwards, but you fucking got me.

Josh: Well, I buried the lead in some regards at the beginning.

Jules: Because I looked at it and he had like 30,000. I was like, 'This guy ain't no chump. This guy's unreal.' And we brought him in and then he charmed us for 12 months.

Josh: Yeah. When you get $10 million, how do you work out what you're going to spend it on?

Jules: Well, you know, the frightening part is when you have 70 staff in 5 cities You've got a month runway. Exactly. No, your burn rate, which is how much it costs you to run that every month— and obviously we're bringing in money, but we're certainly not profitable. We're not bringing in more money than we're spending because we're building a fast tech, um, a tech company. So, um, so how do we— it doesn't— it just gives you extra amount of time, but there's not an enormous amount of step-ups. So in other words, we can't go, we're just going to hire 5 more senior people from Facebook and Google, do you know what I mean?

Josh: An office in Manhattan, very expensive.

Tommy: Yeah, yeah.

Josh: So how do you work out? Because I guess you go in the biggest building in the whole town.

Jules: Well, we actually did. We've got one World Trade Center now.

Josh: All floors?

Jules: Yeah, the— all of them. No, we're on the 85th, and it is absolutely magic.

Josh: Only the 85th.

Tommy: How many floors are there?

Josh: 84.

Jules: And, um, have you seen King Kong? Yeah, we're freezing up on that pole. No, the, um, the, the reality of that is we had a budget and it was for a pretty— the budget allowed us a pretty modest place in Midtown in Manhattan. Turns out that the, the, the, the woman running this, um, uh, the, the, this floor went to primary school with me.

Tommy: No way.

Jules: And she's— she loves, you know, we, we connected back then, you know, I was in, in class with her sister. And then, um, and she reached out and she said, if you guys are coming over here, I want to do everything I can in my power to help you. And so she says, and I hope this doesn't get her in trouble, but she says, whatever you're looking at, we'll match that, but we'll give you this amazing place.

Tommy: And so you went to Chinatown, found a little shoebox and said, yeah, exactly, can you match this?

Jules: That was going to cost us $600. So you No, she's been super generous. So there's by no chance can we— and I have to explain that to our investors because we've raised the money, they don't want to see this view out there. But it just so happens that we've got generosity in there. The Aussie expat community in New York is so generous and it's such a special thing. In the UK, there's no Aussie expat community. They are just Aussies, everyone. In fact, there's less UK people in. And so in the US though, it's a minority and they sort of help each other out, which has really been great.

Tommy: Yeah, that's— that kind of stuff happens to you though, Jules.

Jules: Sometimes, but you guys too. Like, you caught up with Eddie Buckingham, didn't you?

Tommy: Yes, are you mates with Eddie?

Jules: Yeah, so I go to Chinese Tuxedo. That's where I took Celine, who helped us out with the office, as a thank you. Split the bill.

Tommy: And we bumped into Post Malone, who was just out.

Jules: Oh, that was awesome!

Tommy: I saw that picture. Josh is thinking, who the fuck's that guy?

Josh: I had no idea.

Tommy: He looks scary with all those face tats.

Josh: Why is Tommy taking a photo with the homeless man?

Tommy: With the biggest rap star in the world.

Josh: Yeah.

Jules: Yeah, that was a— that, that is— that's your win of life. So good things happen. I think in New York good things happen. Like, you, you've— you had a journey there, you know, probably 8 years ago. Um, shit name but a great adventure.

Josh: Yep, suck on that, Jules Lundgren.

Tommy: Yeah, we actually bought followers for that one.

Jules: Did you?

Josh: Well, we bought—

Tommy: because we had no profile, we bought them to try and just give us—

Jules: so this is how— this gives context of just how much we thought I had clout, that these guys had nothing. Two young blokes who were going over to the States doing some content. And we said, why don't we— what did you do? You built it on the basis that I was so gutted about my glory days being over that I had a wife and two kids.

Mason: Yes.

Jules: And you and Fitzie are going and travelling around the globe like I used to be able to do.

Tommy: Yes.

Josh: But using Jules's name in the show, I think you would have had more luck with Who the Fuck's Jules Lang as a title. It worked though.

Jules: It was at a time, it was like travel, because I was doing travel, so there was a bit of like, you know, this is the sort of travel you wish you could do.

Tommy: I think what more worked than your name was just two drongos from Australia, confident and cocky, just like, can we come into your nightclub? Sure, come through the kitchen.

Jules: What the fuck?

Tommy: That kind of stuff happened.

Josh: Tommy's told me storeys which makes me cringe. The idea of this—

Jules: imagine if that were true.

Josh: Yeah, no, but the, the idea that he's he said to a vineyard, they're like, hey, can we come and film? We're doing this online show. And the reality is that Tommy was rocking up with like a point-and-shoot.

Tommy: Yeah, but no one really knew, like, until you get there. Yeah, maybe, but I still think there's like—

Jules: but YouTube, like, people have built million-dollar empires on a point-and-shoot.

Tommy: Yeah, off an iPhone probably.

Jules: Well, that's— I mean, you look at, um, Casey Neistat, you know. Yeah, like It's— we know, like a big media company, we know more than anyone that content isn't restricted by equipment. Having said that, this RØDE panel is amazing.

Tommy: Yeah, right, there's sound effects and everything. Play off a sound effect.

Josh: Oh, so that's sort of—

Jules: yeah, when do you drop that?

Josh: I don't know.

Jules: Can I just do something?

Josh: Oh, here we go. You're gonna do a random one.

Jules: This one?

Josh: No, what happens?

Mason: Okay.

Josh: Here we go.

Jules: Is that your thumb or a toe?

Josh: Oh, we do have— we have laughter.

Tommy: That's, uh, for when you come back on and Tribe's gone.

Josh: It was a disappointing sound effect.

Tommy: There is— no, but there is some magic to New York City, do you think? As far as America? Yeah, choosing the location.

Jules: Yeah, and I think, I think New York's great. It's the epicentre for brands and marketing. But shit happens there and it happens fast.

Josh: How many leeches from the Australian office are already saying, hey Julesy, do you need anyone to go to the office?

Jules: Uh, you mean, uh, your employees? We don't have any leeches in my company.

Josh: Really? Thank you. Um, but I would 100— I know that like working at Envato, as soon as you find out, hang on, we've got a Mexican office.

Jules: Ironically, two of my great staff members members have gone to Envato. So they're working with Cyan and Colors and stuff.

Tommy: I said to Amy yesterday, literally reading that Mumbrella article, I was like, if this was 7, 8 years ago, I would have been pestering Jules to get into that New York office. Yeah, just, I'll do whatever.

Jules: And I would have, and then I was still naive enough to have hired you for that.

Josh: Would have had the point-and-shoot camera going.

Tommy: Don't worry, suck on this, Jules.

Josh: I mean, what's been the biggest takeaway? How long did you actually spend in New York to get it set up?

Jules: Well, I mean, the irony is we're already set up. We've been set up since the end of last year, and, and the reason we're going there is because we don't need— well, that's not the right answer.

Mason: 20%.

Josh: That's the first time Tommy's ever pressed the RODECaster.

Tommy: And I got it right.

Jules: How did he know? I got, I got it right.

Josh: We actually have an Audio Jungle watermark.

Jules: So the way the buttons work, it does look like a test you'd give monkeys, and if TJ can actually figure this out It's too, it's too easy for my—

Josh: it's way too easy. I'm actually going to turn that fader down.

Jules: Yeah. Um, so the 20%, so we're a self-serve platform, so 20% of all of our brands that jumped online to create a brief, an influencer marketing campaign, came from North America last year. And 25% of all of our creators that download the app came from North America last year, and we had no market presence. It's just that because we— you can start it on the website, everyone's just like, I want want this. So we were thinking possibly going to Asia or, you know, broader Europe, because Indonesia is fucking huge, right?

Josh: Like, you hear different parts of Asia, 330 million or so. It's some ridiculous—

Tommy: in terms of, say, is it annoying for the platform? I know it's good when there's business happening, but is it annoying in terms of like, had you set up your payment options for US?

Jules: It's not annoying. You feel responsible because, you know, the website says that they can have all this great experience, and then we don't even have anyone supporting them in the right time zones. And so it was just that. So literally just doing things like payments and taxes and actually getting some support there, none of that really requires us to be in the country.

Josh: Yeah.

Jules: And so we sort of just started, and we, you know, there's been— there was 30 campaigns in there at any one time. It's just that now we want campaigns, you know, we're there working with Gimlet. So you, you know, I was with the CMO last week, so they're putting some briefs in there for the North American. There's, um, there's Unilever brands, so things like there's Hershey's, PepsiCo, Abercrombie Fitch, um, there's, uh, Wonderboom, which is Logitech, those awesome speakers. There's, um, Schick and Gillette. And so all of those are really good for our creators because there's stuff that people already use.

Josh: I was just thinking I could do a Gillette one with my neckbeard. Really? Well, I've turned a little bit of an applause there. It doesn't deserve an applause. I'll take it. And so the—

Jules: so button that I pushed because, you know, people—

Tommy: yeah, monkey see, monkey do. You just—

Jules: we've got to articulate the visual stuff.

Josh: Yeah, we need to, don't we?

Jules: Well, yeah, we want to say, oh, Jules, you just pressed the yellow button, which is the wrong one on the panel with all the other colors.

Josh: You had to do a bit of learning in that regard when you went from— I mean, you had— you went radio, TV, radio. Was it a bit of reset time where you're like, people have no idea what's going on? Um, meaning, meaning when you went from— you were underselling the visuals, you weren't talking about the visuals.

Jules: Sorry. Yeah, yeah, sorry. Um, absolutely. Yeah, I went— yeah, I was, I was horrible. And the funny thing is, you know, like when you have a funny conversation, you go, I can do radio. And so when I went in there, I was like, I can do radio. And then there So Sammy Kav, as you know, and I hope you're getting him on the show, um, he, um, he would say like, we're just going to start with the basics, you and Fifi Box, we're going to start with the basics, and after about, you know, 18 months we reckon we'll be— and I'm like, 18 months? Like, in the pilot we just had the funniest conversation. You think you nail it, but there actually is huge amounts of nuances in doing radio well, and I've forgotten it all, which is annoying because I'm going to run out of money pretty soon, so I'm going to have to go another Yeah, need another gig.

Tommy: Is the—

Josh: have you actually spent any time looking at the media landscape in the States in regards to radio and TV?

Jules: No, not really. I don't even know what's happening here. I don't know if I described this last time. I think I might have, but I have completely and utterly retreated from all news and current affairs in a way that—

Mason: do we—

Tommy: did we talk a little bit?

Jules: Yeah. So what I do is in my category, in my niche, there's more than enough stuff I have to read or podcasts I have to listen to to, um, or favours like yours. Um, so there's enough of that that it's filtered, but I don't look at the news. And my dad hates hearing this, and probably people judge me on it, but I swear by it. And I think that I find— so I don't, I don't watch television. I don't— certainly not the News Channel. I don't have radio, news radio. I don't have apps. I don't obviously read the paper unless we're in it.

Josh: What apps do you have on your phone right now if you were to go on the home screen? Slack.

Tommy: Do you live in Slack?

Jules: Yeah, they're all communication, so I've got more, but I've sort of trimmed them back. So things like Facebook and Twitter, none of those are on there, even Instagram.

Tommy: South by Southwest Co. What's that?

Josh: That's like a South by Southwest app. Now Calm and Headspace. You're so fucked up, you need two.

Jules: Yep, it's weird when they're both playing at once and it's like two people yelling at me to calm the fuck down.

Tommy: Do you actually— are you an avid user of them?

Jules: Yeah, well, I, I'm a bit amped today and I actually feel it, um, because there's a lot going on, but I haven't meditated and I haven't been great the last few weeks. But what I love about— so Headspace is the one that I use, and Smiling Mind is another cracker that's, that's well— yep, Australian. But what I like about Calm is, um, and I, I— in South by Southwest, so Michael Acton, the founder of Calm, was talking with, uh, ironically with, um, Matthew McConaughey.

Josh: Oh really?

Jules: So Matthew McConaughey is doing bedtime storeys really for adults, and so he goes in there.

Tommy: I love his accent.

Jules: It is great. And he got up there and talked all about it, and he thought it was a weird idea, but he's really— I mean, he gives back to the community in unbelievable ways with his wife, but he believes that that being mindful is the key. He sleeps for— you're like, he sleeps for— he goes, I'm a 9.5-hour-a-night guy. I was like, yes! Because, you know, like, everyone judges me for sleeping, but that's what he needs.

Tommy: Because you sleep a lot.

Jules: Yeah, I could— I'm a 9.5 easy.

Tommy: There's many times I've come over to your house and you're actually upstairs napping.

Jules: Yeah, absolutely.

Josh: I only did 7 hours last night and I'm rattled.

Tommy: So, so you say you're amped, can you actually still get 9 hours? 9 and a half hours.

Jules: Well, I'm jet-lagged, so I'm waking up at 3 AM and I'm checking all the comms from Global, which is the worst thing you can do with your phone next to you. But the car map, what's ironic, Matthew McConaughey, when he talks about it, I mean, obviously it's been really well received, and this is a whole new trend that we'll start to see. So Moby is back doing ambient sounds. So you know how good Moby tracks were? He's now doing sort of like calm meditation thing with his style, but But Matthew McConaughey, there's been nothing but rave reviews, the founder was saying, Michael, except for husbands who are complaining. It's like, if I have to fucking hear, I'm trying to go to sleep and there's Matthew McConaughey whispering to my wife. And they were gonna market it as, you know, go to bed with Matthew McConaughey.

Josh: I'm more comfortable with Bree going to bed with Stephen Fry.

Jules: No, he's in there too.

Josh: Yeah, he's great. He did a whole thing. I learned a lot about, I think it's lavender.

Tommy: He's just talking about the plant.

Josh: He talks about like, do you know Victoria is a hot spot for the plant lavender?

Tommy: Well, it's growing everywhere.

Jules: That's specifically—

Tommy: yeah, well, that makes sense then.

Jules: So Stephen Fry's Lullaby, that's what it's called. So there's a whole movement towards that, and I actually think— I've been thinking, I haven't run it past my team yet, but I actually think reaching out to the guys because we're in contact with the founder and, and doing a a digital detox. And I know it's ironic for us, but it's really important. And I know these guys here on the couch, Lisa and Grace, believe in this as well, that there needs to be responsible usage of social. And we encourage people to use social a lot. And so what we have to do is almost do like a D-Day, a digital detox day once a year, or once a weekend a year, where we actually tell everyone There's no social posts through the platform that are going to be posted on those days, so get in before or after, and it's a big awareness. But I actually think that doing like a 6-part, um, series about helping people understand their addiction—

Tommy: well, at 26 minutes a day, that was the number of people using your app.

Jules: Yeah.

Tommy: And so, I mean, that's in terms of that metric, is that Is that good? Do you want more?

Jules: Well, we obviously want more, but Instagram's at about sort of 40 minutes. It just gives you an idea that our users are power users, but you're gonna love this, right? You will love this.

Josh: So I'm sure that you'll just— Opening, let's see what we're doing now.

Tommy: We're touching over, he's opening it up.

Josh: He's rocking an iPhone 7 Plus based on, still got the home button.

Jules: So this is a heat map of the globe showing everyone that's using our app right now.

Josh: Ladin, is that west of the US? No, it's Europe.

Jules: Europe is flying because obviously that's concentrated. But look at the US. So this is what I mean, the US, for those who can't see at home, we've even got a lot of activity in Canada, but it's, you know, you can see Austin, Texas.

Josh: There's been many apps that have been made through, uh, doing launching at South by Southwest.

Jules: So is that South by— so you would say that—

Josh: I think that's Texas there.

Tommy: It's pretty smack bang.

Jules: Awesome. So how exciting is that? So that in terms of engagement, that's what differentiates— different— and we've got to explain this to investors. People say, oh, everyone's doing influencer money. It's like, to actually have invested in an app that has that sort of engagement is, is really unique. But anyway, enough about that.

Josh: How do you, uh, ask for the amount of money? And do you have to put your ego aside around—

Jules: I wear knee pads.

Josh: Is it— is there a bit of begging involved? Does it feel like you've just Just gotta complete, like—

Jules: No, no, the good— look, the good news is even though it's exhausting, there's so much value in it. And the value is that you have to really sharpen your offering.

Josh: You, you—

Jules: when you go, because you know that they're asking you questions, and in each meeting they have a different lens on it. And so it's just fantastic. It just— I love pressure testing stuff. You know me, I'm analytical, so I'd prefer to obsess over something, get it right, and go out. Sadly, tech doesn't work that way. And so there's a sense of of tension in me going, oh, it's not ready. But they allow, they help the whole process. They're sharpening and refining and questioning and scrutinizing. So, but once you've had those conversations, you're hoping that you can then piece together, like this round of $10.5 million, we've wanted people in Australia, the UK, and America all getting involved. And so that's because they're all their networks. And that's what I mean by Yeah, that's what I mean by strategic, because with bases in there, they've all got powerful people around them, and, um, and it helps. And that— I know I didn't finish that storey about Keith Weed earlier in terms of, um, the fake followers, but even having him in the UK as a support at the moment— so he was the most critical, he was seen to be the most critical of influencer marketing on the planet because of that statement last year, and it completely transformed the entire category. So everyone heard he's not buying fake followers, that means there's fake followers. What they didn't hear was that Unilever believes in this so much that we're going to invest in it, but we're just not going to do it with fraudsters. And so what happened from there, TJ, is that the whole industry has been cleaned up because everyone's panicked and brands have gone, you know what? And luckily, you know, we've built this algorithm that does that. But since then, after being so critical of— or seen to be so critical of influencer marketing 2 weeks ago he was on stage at Marketing Week Live, which is a big event, talking about Tribe, you know, and it's huge. Like, that's sort of— and that's why I'm excited at this point, because after 4 years we slowly start to cut through and we get recognised for what we've been building and the vision.

Josh: When you're chatting to VCs, have there been any moments where you've completely missed the mark in regards to what they care about? And has it— did it change how you approached it?

Jules: Absolutely. So they— everyone—

Tommy: was it the knee pads? Yeah, it was like, dude, I mean, helmet, knee pads, the whole lot.

Jules: I was wearing Rollerblades.

Josh: Get out!

Jules: Yeah, everyone loves Rollerblades. If there's something they want to see in a founder, it's enough courage to wear Rollerblades.

Josh: Yeah, absolutely.

Jules: Publicly.

Tommy: It's actually something you would do.

Josh: It's a peacock.

Tommy: I could imagine.

Jules: It is a peacock. So all the So I, I'm— it's a dangerous territory for me with VCs because my passion and enthusiasm is really not what they want to hear. They want to hear what the CEO is talking about, which LTV and CAC and all of these metrics that I'm not necessarily the numbers.

Josh: What are those things? Sorry.

Jules: So long-term value of each customer within our platform, and so it measures that against the cost of acquiring them.

Tommy: Yeah, so Does it come across as you being naive? Is that what they— you think it's interpreted as?

Josh: Hype as well.

Jules: Like, hype and naive, because they want hard facts and I'm talking generally. So I can definitely come across as being a spin star. Like, if it was just me, luckily—

Josh: Billy.

Jules: Yeah, I'll do the sizzle, but luckily Ant's there delivering the steak. And so that partnership works really well, but everyone sees it from different lenses. So in Asia, they would they were really hell-bent on the metrics. In the States, they just love the marketing side and the possibilities 'cause they understand marketing better. And so you just have to know which strengths you feature more.

Tommy: So if you're a company starting out, you're a founder, you've got an idea, you don't have the years of experience on stage or in front of TV or on radio like Jules Lund has, or you don't have an aunt who's a CEO weapon, what do you do?

Jules: You play your strengths and you support yourself. So these people that you talk about will probably have greater strengths than I can ever imagine that we lack. And so like everything, you— it's a pie chart, you know.

Josh: He was doing a shape of a pie with his hands, a very big pie actually.

Jules: What kind of pie?

Tommy: JJ.

Jules: He's hungry. JJ did love a pie. You do, you love food, you do love food.

Josh: So you've got to have the right talent. Lisa is obviously heading up the UK efforts. It'd be good to have Lisa on just now. Yeah, bring her on. Can you give us a bit of an intro first?

Jules: Okay, I was going to sub out, so I'll give you—

Josh: Yeah, we will, and then we'll sub you out. What has her profile been?

Jules: I'll tell you this, Lisa Target, she's Australian, as you'll find out, even though she's running operations in the UK. So she worked for the Daily Mail here in Australia in sales capacity. And so when she went over to the UK, we were just launching over there. And ironically, because of the connection and she'd done something of success over here, she brought us in over there. But better yet, we were desperate to get some early traction, and she introduced us to some of her friends and got on Selfridges, which is, you know, like the Myer or the David Jones of the UK. And, you know, one of her best friends signed on and gave us a shot, and and we were able to knock it out of the park. And so she didn't even work for us and she literally started the office over there in many ways. And so when we started to look for a country manager, Lisa and I caught up and she said, "Ah, maybe I'm interested." I said, "Nah, you're not right." I pretty much said, "Nah." I didn't even know what the role entailed. 'Cause I'm once again naive. And it was the best thing. 'Cause if I said, "Yeah, would love you," she wouldn't have done it. So she's the sort of person that if you say, "Nah, not for you," she goes, we'll see about that. And so we did this massive sort of recruitment and was speaking to everyone from Google and Facebook and everything. And, you know, I think Lisa was 28 at the time, right? And it was a mad giving a whole, you know, to someone, but she's just so sharp and smart and passionate, and she'd already proven herself. So it was a real easy one, and she's sort of grown the whole place over there from strength to strength.

Josh: Awesome. Okay, well, let's get Lisa.

Jules: Is that for my intro, or is that for her?

Tommy: Definitely for Lisa.

Jules: I'm out of here. Can I heckle from afar because I'm a bit worried about this?

Josh: Yeah, well, we'll just have 5 mins with Lisa and then we'll get you finishing off.

Jules: Have you got any other headphones? Because these are a bit sweaty and I've got—

Josh: Oh no, that's— are they really that sweaty? Lisa doesn't even have to wear headphones.

Tommy: You don't have to wear them.

Josh: Yeah, that's fine.

Jules: Why are we listening to headphones? You're like half a foot away from my head.

Josh: I literally just— we just bought them.

Jules: Oh, and then we wouldn't have heard the sound effects.

Josh: We won't play any sound effects while Lisa's on, but Lisa, please Please come on in.

Tommy: Can they clap back up?

Josh: I can't remember which. Yellow. Yellow, there we go.

Tommy: There we go.

Mason: Thank you, gents.

Tommy: Welcome.

Mason: Thank you. I thought it was actually Stitch Up that you're going to have me on.

Josh: No, no, no, absolutely.

Mason: I've got some corrections that I would like to make.

Tommy: Oh, right, perfect. Just firstly, like we're talking about Jules's vision and, you know, him sort of being in there and sometimes you feel the full brunt of Jules Lund and his energy.

Mason: Yes.

Tommy: What has that been like in terms of the promises he's made or the explanation of the app and what it's capable of and then what you've seen happen over the couple of years?

Mason: Yeah, look, Jules is incredibly energetic and, you know, with all the work that we've done in the startup community and that the founders that you see, the ones that are successful do have a vision that they firmly believe in. And they realise it, you know, it's essentially what, what Jules does better than most is manifestation. Where he's seen an entire category, he's seen how it should play out and in the right way in making sure that it's transparent. We do things in a really ethical fashion. He's not about short-term wins and his, you know, resilience to essentially bear the brunt of an industry going through growing pains brand that's overcluttered and is very, very fast growing without pinching at any short-term wins for that long-term success is exactly why I work for the company and why we've been successful.

Josh: So those corrections that you wanted to make. Oh yeah.

Mason: Yes. I was 26 at the time. So I'm not 30 now. I didn't want some extra years put on me. Thanks, Jules. But no, that was it.

Josh: Okay.

Tommy: That's it. This is good.

Josh: So you've built new, Who have you had to, within the UK team in regards to support network and how have you tried to, is it your job to emulate culture, do you think, to create a new culture? How do you sort of see that piece?

Mason: Yeah, we were fortunate kind of being a step away from HQ so that there's pros and cons of it. Some of the big benefits were we had we didn't have a blueprint. We could test and learn, and we could almost create offshoot strategies from what was going on in Australia by justifying that the UK was a different market, which enabled us to then start to go, okay, what, what works for the country, what works for the region, and how much of that is true globally? And so we started to pull apart, you know, what are home truths for our product in every market? And what are these like local nuances. And we didn't have to do that with a lot of red tape. You know, we essentially could, you know, had a free rein. We didn't know how successful we would be.

Tommy: Were you surprised? Because it is now, is it more successful in terms of usage and revenue than Australia?

Mason: Yeah. And the UK market is, we've got a lot more competitors. So, you know, Jules often talks about this. They're essentially building and consistently validating our category. And for us, we see that as a massive strength. Anyone that uses a competitor platform or an agency in this really early stage, you know, they're gonna test and learn multiple partners. And every time that's an opportunity for us to go in and show them what could be done better, what challenges they had, and they're essentially educated for us. As opposed to probably what's happening in Australia, which is, is you're constantly having to explain what influencer marketing is.

Josh: Someone in the category.

Tommy: Mate, the amount of times my mum has asked, so what does Jules's thing do? I don't know.

Josh: What was the biggest difference between the Australian market and the UK market?

Mason: We thought the content would be a lot worse because of the daylight. There's not much sunlight for content creators in the UK.

Josh: It's nice and soft though. It's an overcast day.

Mason: They do say that for wedding photos. Yeah, yeah. So more if it rains.

Tommy: Is there a lot of rain in England? Oh, sorry, the UK, London. Yeah, I say it lightly because the amount of people that I've said that to that are from the UK, they're like, it's not as bad as you think.

Mason: They just got to justify living there, don't they?

Tommy: Yeah, I've never seen that many umbrellas in one street.

Josh: Tommy's gonna focus, yeah, more on just London and geography in general because Jules has actually renamed it London with a U.

Mason: Isn't that true, Jack?

Josh: London with a U. London.

Mason: Oh, Jack, he hasn't done that.

Tommy: No, that's—

Jules: I wanna just make some corrections.

Tommy: He'll be on to make corrections.

Mason: Can't spell tribe without an I, what do you always say? Can't spell America without me. It's all his Lundisms, he calls them.

Tommy: He's a narcissist.

Josh: What's the— what have you learned through all the process from a development point of view?

Mason: Well, not, so not being with our tech team and our marketing team, communication is everything for us. And so the culture that we did have to build in the UK was resilient, patient, and essentially over-communicative. And it's all about building relationships internally as well. You know, we can't just, in a startup, everyone is working at 150% all of the time. And not one agenda can be can really override someone else's. Like, we're all working over hours, we're all tired, we all maybe missed a Slack message or an email.

Tommy: To be honest, I don't think it's for Josh and I. I don't think it would be like that. Sounds, it sounds pretty full-on.

Josh: I think that there's probably, is there some, a competitive nature to it? I think there's, I've found when I've worked for businesses that have had different teams and siloed teams especially, there is the competition of fuck what they're doing, I think we can do it this way, I think we can go harder. Or do you think that that sort destructive to the overall dynamic of the company?

Mason: There's healthy competition, but it's us against the world. So I, you know, really I learn every single day from the Australian team and vice versa. You know, one day someone's up, someone's down, it flips, it reverses. And, you know, the UK is not gonna be the biggest revenue generator anymore just on sheer volume.

Tommy: Yeah.

Mason: Um, so we'll start to look at things like market share, I'm sure, and, um, you know, start to really, you know, re-look at success sort of in each market a little bit differently because we're at a more mature stage. But because of the differences in market, it is hard to compare internally, and you'd be wasting energy doing that.

Josh: Yeah.

Mason: You know, for us, we're a very unique product. It's even hard to compare ourselves to competitors a lot of the time. Um, so what we do when we can't work longer is, you know, we really share and leverage one another's work. And if something's being done in Australia that we can, you know, just flip and kind of re-engineer somehow to tweak for our market, we do it.

Tommy: Do you feel personally invested in Tribe?

Mason: I do.

Tommy: Do you think that's a result of the company in its, you know, I guess, culture?

Mason: I just signed something.

Josh: What's that foundational stuff as well? I guess you're getting to build this thing from scratch.

Tommy: Well, I'm trying to understand how you personally get to a point like that working within a business. 'Cause I think it's more important than ever to have complete buy-in 'cause they're not just jobs anymore where you're just showing up and ticking it off.

Mason: Yeah, it's true. I think one thing that we speak about a lot in the UK is—

Tommy: Going to the pub to have a beer.

Mason: Obviously, yeah, no. Is that— Lunchtime. Lunch. The whole idea of having being in a startup at all and having all the things that, you know, young people or people in, you know, in the industry at the moment want, like flexible working hours, etc., um, all the perks per se, um, we've got all of that in our control. Um, but really at the end of the day, even if you have flexible working and unlimited leave and all these sorts of things that people think are sort of the ticket for a certain company, none of that actually matters if you're not fulfilled by what you're doing. And so we have that and that's great, but you always find that when people have things like unlimited leave, they often don't take it all because their choice architecture has changed. You know, they get to choose what they do with their time, how invested they wanna get, and we spur each other on, you know. We see someone working really hard and kind of, doing extra work or thinking differently, it inspires you to do something. And we have that mutually inspirational relationship. And that's, I think, why as young people, and our team's average age in the UK is something like 25, 26, that's exactly what we want.

Tommy: Unless you're asking Jules, 'cause he'll say it's probably 2 years above.

Mason: He's just upset about his own age. But, you know, we have this thing of going, you know, I say it's like investing in your own MBA. We are learning and we are so fortunate to be able to get across tech, marketing, sales, strategy. And we know at the end of the day, we won't be successful unless we're the ones that have done it. And that level of accountability essentially gives you a blueprint to take into any business, any kind of career that you want as an individual. And it speaks to entrepreneurship in general. So I think everyone feels personally responsible and really driven by their own journey within Tribe. And Tribe is just an enabler for that kind of success, no matter what you want to do in your role. So that's how you get so invested, because you know exactly how this journey is going to translate into whatever. And fortunately, every year that we put into Tribe— and I've been with Tribe for 2 years now— um, you know, the equity that Tribe builds in Tribe's name is also built in my name. And the, the two those things aren't mutually exclusive. So, were you—

Tommy: it's exciting.

Josh: I mean, what are you actually excited about if you were to look ahead?

Jules: What—

Josh: because as millennials, we tend to job hop a lot. 2 years for anyone under 30 is a significant amount of time. What makes you think about staying 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 years? What does that look like for you, do you think?

Tommy: And is it the view from One World Trade Center in New York City?

Mason: It's actually not. Maybe I'm the only Tribe employee that didn't even consider going to New York. Because there's so much more to do in the UK. And we have built so much positive equity in that market. And there's just so much more to do. So I never even considered that. But looking ahead, when you talk about like job hopping, something I'm really, really passionate about because I think you have to look at the reason people do that. And a lot of it is wrapped up in ego, is wrapped up in people not understanding themselves, their own motivations and what drives them. And also people being really lazy and lacking resourcefulness to actually get what they want. You know, I've seen, you know, we've always talked about we're a flat structure, we're a startup, we don't know, you know, what's gonna be unravelled sort of around the next corner. So I can't hire someone and say, you're gonna lead a team of 5 in 12 months' time. We never make any promises because that's the value the quickest way to piss off an employee, to be honest.

Tommy: Yeah, you say, but it could be 50.

Mason: Exactly, if you create it.

Josh: Yeah, yeah.

Mason: If you create enough business in the UK that we are market leaders, go start Tribe Spain.

Josh: Yeah.

Mason: You know, like everything is just this, is this open world of possibility if you create it. And again, that accountability and that feeling of responsibility I can actually do this myself and no one else is gonna do it, means we don't see any problem with retention or churn. We've been very fortunate for anyone that is essentially entrepreneurial in their own right.

Tommy: I thought you would've seen a fair bit of drop-off after the Nando's card went.

Mason: Never had it in Australia.

Josh: In the UK they've got the peas, the mint and peas thing in Nando's.

Tommy: Oh, now we're specifically talking about what's on the menu.

Josh: JJ, it's icy, right?

Mason: Spice?

Tommy: Yeah, yeah, we got spice.

Josh: Do you ever buy the pea, you know, the peas you can get them separately as a side?

Mason: Not a fan of peas.

Josh: Really? When they add mint and stuff anyway.

Tommy: Floating pie.

Mason: But no one knows who Jules is in the UK outside of the industry. I think people, and now Jules, Jules's name is synonymous with influencer marketing, um, and marketing in the UK. But definitely no one, we often show some sizzle reels of your glory days.

Tommy: How good is this? Oh no, it doesn't get any better than this.

Josh: Very getaway. Very getaway. But to be clear, Jules is known in pockets in Australia. Anyway, we'll get Jules back on. Thank you, Lisa, for that. Man, Jules, you've managed to find a team that are highly engaged, invested into the business. Smart.

Jules: How impressive is Lisa? I sit back there and we've got We've got people like that all through the company. I think about our AU sales director, Sammy Major up in Sydney who's running a team. I think she—

Tommy: I met Sammy, she's switched on.

Jules: Yeah, so she'd be about, I think she's about—

Tommy: She's scary.

Jules: She's about 80.

Josh: I mean, what do you think it is that from a hiring point of view, what do you actually look at? What was it about Lisa where you like actually think that you could because I think it's a risk investing in young people at that leadership level. A lot of people aren't doing it.

Jules: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And to be honest, our CEO is exactly the same, Ant. You know, like, you actually can't afford the people that you want at the time. Like, that's the reality of it. And so what you're trying to do is find those that are just about to pop and that they can pop if given the opportunity through your company.

Josh: You're playing an investment game.

Mason: You're a VC in all these people.

Jules: Exactly. And so, and, and all that it comes down to is learning agility. So I just— all I— I'm very prejudiced around, like, I, I just love and fascinated by, um, smart, uh, innovative, um, irritated people. Yeah, people who are irritated with life, that, that get frustrated, that go, surely there's a better way, and that that irritant within their body just allows them to motivate and innovate. And I, so I just—

Tommy: are you looking for the things that you don't see in yourself, or are you looking—

Jules: piss off, mate, that was a real— where's that?

Josh: Or maybe we've turned down the— I don't know what that is, but I guess it's in some regards I see it as I actually see, uh, those qualities in what you're doing with the reach and all those sort of things.

Jules: It's just like, yeah, it's— and I say I don't want people the same skills as me, yes, but I definitely want people with the same thinking as me. And that is, um, yeah, as you say, it's just same thinking, different strength. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, it's that lens. But, you know, we've been really lucky. And, you know, and it's funny, you talk about millennials and job hopping, like, early on I'd get really gutted if someone left, but I just, I love it now. Like, if, you know, like, I, I would I would be so happy for these people to move on to a role that they felt was a step up. Like if we, if they felt they hit the ceiling within our company or they weren't growing, I'm now so proud of, but sadly a few of them do that and then they end up going, can we come back? Because so—

Josh: And you fucked up, is that what you say? Yeah, yeah.

Jules: Oh no, I don't respond.

Tommy: They think he's overseas. No, I know a couple of that have left. They were there from the very beginning, the early Nando's days, and, and they've personally told me that they came to you and were sort of upset and said, I've got this opportunity, and you're like, go.

Jules: Yeah, well, I'll say the same to you guys. I mean, we've always talked about this, and it's— look at my career, you know. I was studying graphic design, and then I was doing life coaching, graphic design, and then I was doing radio, then TV, and then radio, and then social, and I'll I'll probably do travel photography next, or do sketching, or, you know, like, I will continually move on those things that feel like they excite me. And if you don't have that, you really got nothing, because the money's in everything. If you're going to work your ass off, you get money doing whatever. The key is doing the things that doesn't feel as much like you're working.

Josh: What's the next milestone? Uh, more specifically, what are you anxious about? What's the— what's the thing you have to worry about next? We got Jules at the Good Yeah, we got you last time in the doldrums. Yeah, exactly.

Tommy: Yeah, you were in the train, you're in the tunnel, you're going so fast you can't go back.

Josh: And so when exciting things happen, you probably start to hedge your bets or think about where this could fuck up or where you're gonna—

Jules: Well, we've got, you know, we've got the next 12 to 18 months. It's a big swing and we're trying to take a bite out of the Big Apple. Like, it's a massive—

Josh: Did you put— That sounds very media trained. I like that. Bite out of the Big Apple.

Tommy: Does it get any better than this?

Jules: I was just throwing those down as LinkedIn captions.

Josh: He's A/B testing on the show. I think that's a good one. Bite out of the big apple.

Jules: Thanks, love.

Josh: Can we actually get a photo of you eating an apple?

Jules: In Times Square?

Josh: Yeah.

Jules: Suck on that, Jules Lundgren. So I think there's an enormous amount of Like, if we weren't scared shitless, we're actually— we're spending their money on the wrong thing. Like, we— our investors want us to be not terrified, debilitated with fear, but they— it's ambitious. Like, we've gone Australia, we'll take that, we'll try and do that in the UK. And now we're going, yeah, the biggest country on the planet for marketing, we'll take that one. And like, there must be 1,400 competitors over there. Like, they're not there going, God, we really need another influencer marketing place. So it's a, it's a very ballsy thing to do. So absolutely, as things don't work in the timeline that we need it to, it'll always look like things are going well. But if it's not happening in the timeline that we needed to, then yeah, we start to get towards the end of the runway and it just drops off like a cliff. So, um, that's nerve-wracking. But also just the balance of life, because if I go down that tunnel again, right, Like this time I'm now really with meditation and I got in the ballot for the New York Marathon. So the last marathon I did, JJ couldn't keep up.

Josh: Oh yeah, so what happened was we surprised Jules by making him run a marathon in London and I decided I was filming and the one moment Jules was like, if you're gonna fucking do this, I want to get a shot of me running along and the London Eye in the background. And unfortunately I had a rickshaw driver and I was 120 kilos at the time and he couldn't, he couldn't get up the hill.

Jules: I was running faster than this rickshaw. So it was, I mean, it was mean all round. My radio team go literally blindfolded, they lift the blindfold, there's a trainer on one side and a masseuse on the other. You're running 42 kilometers, right? You're on the London Olympic London Marathon circuit that in 12 days they're going to be running for real, but today it's just normal traffic and you're going to see how far you can run, right? And they're all laughing at me and I— and like the night before I had a green chicken curry and a bourbon. That morning, no breakfast. The furthest I'd run was 9K. So I'm sitting there and I'm going, fuck you guys. So I put my head down and I completed the entire marathon, no training, within under 5 hours.

Tommy: And the person that came out with an injury was Josh on that trip.

Josh: Well, yeah, so I actually— He's back. Well, the masseuse He was there for Jules. I just remember being at the—

Jules: How much was I hating you that trip?

Josh: The Mercure Hotel. There was a fight that we mentioned it last time.

Jules: Remember the photo? You've got a photo of me staring at you as you're taking photos and I—

Josh: the fuck?

Jules: Can you find that photo?

Josh: Well, absolutely. But the reason the big fight was in the tube and because I said we just need some candid photos of you guys. Like on the tube, and Jules wasn't smiling, and I said, can you smile a little bit? And he said, well, that's not candid. And then so we had this— we had, we had a fight in the tube for 5 minutes about what it meant to be candid. I said, well, it's not fucking— I want you to be— don't be candid, act candid, act candid.

Jules: That's like faking sincerity.

Josh: So, so what's the ballot with the New York, uh, New York?

Jules: So I'm I'm running the New York Marathon, so I'm really excited about that, which I don't know where I'll find the time this year, but you guys can imagine that outlet, you know, in thinking is great for my brain. And then I wouldn't mind, you know, doing some other projects off the bucket list, but they're the things that make me nervous. And obviously, you know, like to be a father and a husband and all those things is tricky with travel.

Tommy: So how do you balance it though? Because I could look at our friendship and go, the fun that we used to have, yeah, you were not having it as much.

Josh: Anymore.

Jules: I'm having it with other people now. JJ, how was Friday night? Hey, that is the mint piece.

Josh: Bit of a Nando's run.

Tommy: We should get Mr. 97. He's always got a question, or if he doesn't, we make him ask one.

Jules: I got a question. Um, Jules, what are you excited for in terms of, uh, user-generated content for the next 6 months? I think there's been like a massive shift towards like honesty and posting and stuff.

Josh: Yeah.

Jules: So what are you excited for? Well, to be honest, our marketplace hasn't been awesome for video content enough, and so there's a huge opportunity there. I don't think the creators— and these, you know, for us, our micro-influencers have between 3,000 and 100,000 followers, like the everyday people, right? And even so, I like the people with 0 to 3,000 followers. I think that content is valuable to brands as well, but It's not that they can't create amazing content, it's just the brands aren't asking for it.

Josh: Yeah.

Jules: And we're not helping the brands ask for the type of video content because when they ask for it, they can't necessarily upload example videos within our platform. So we're shifting all that at the moment. And it sounds, it sounds extraordinary to think that 4 years on, you know, you can't upload video, but this is how long it takes to create these things.

Tommy: What is it? Is it the heaviness of the, the video files?

Jules: Oh, look, mate, Don't ask me. I'm going to say yes because it sounds about right. It sounds about right.

Josh: What is the actual industry that you think is doing the best job on this sort of influencer space?

Jules: Well, I actually think the beauty industry is doing the best stuff for video content because— and also things like unboxing and also just how-to tutorials and makeup. I think the— where that's— I reckon that content is really engaging and people are getting better and better at it, and I think it can work really well on Instagram, but also things like drone footage all the way through to cinemagraphs and stop motion is amazing stuff. TJ's done a bit of— Tommy's done a bit of stop motion. He did a chupa chup thing for our platform that wasn't his account, so we actually had to block him. So he hasn't been invited back. It was Rian Johns' Instagram account.

Tommy: Amazingly, they got all the fake followers past them. Yeah, I'm joking.

Jules: Yeah, no, um, and so yeah, I'm excited about video content. And as you know, the smartphones are only getting better and better and better. So yeah, it's— and also taking that video content, Mr. 97, yeah, and putting it in digital out-of-home. So you think of it—

Josh: fuck, does that— would you say digital out-of-home?

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: What does that mean?

Jules: Well, out-of-home is outdoor media, so billboards and all of the stuff in Westfield shopping centres and and yeah, bus shelters, and now it's all digital. And so they've gone from printing one thing to now being able to have hundreds and hundreds of things in that screen, which means you now need sort of volumes of content. And so we did this Bacardi one where they got all this content and then they had 70 pieces of content, and they— where the photo featured a hotel or a bar, they put that content within a 5-mile radius of that bar going, go there. With the actual picture. And so they can do this now through digital out-of-home, which means it's all programmatic. And so as soon as it turned on to that, it's now like it needs huge amounts of volumes, and they can't go to a billboard, you know, a creative agency, um, and because they need so much of it. And now it's the first time in history, Mr. 97, that people like you can create awesome content that can sit on a billboard.

Tommy: It's so exciting seeing I think you talk in front of a group of people, you tell people to get out their phones, send through something that has a brand involved in the picture. Everyone's got one in their phones except he, Mr. 97, doesn't really take many photos. And then you put them up on billboards. You're— everyone has the capability.

Josh: Yeah, yeah. Is it a cost per minute thing? Just out of curiosity, how are they— how do they charge out that? When we see a digital billboard, yeah, what—

Jules: how's that actually at the media side? I'm not more, but when a content creator submits it, they get paid a flat fee and then the brand can use that in perpetuity for online or digital out of home. And so if it's being printed or it's in billboards, you get a lot more money. And so our content creators, keeping in mind that our content creators, because they're now not publishing all of that content on their social feed, yeah, we just have content campaigns as well, then they can get like 5 or 6 pieces of con— like they can do a photo shoot right on a sunny day and get 5 or 6 pieces of content purchased. Like, it's on, on their iPhone. Like, it's pretty extraordinary. And that's what is really exciting, because brands really need that. Customers can do it, but it requires an enormous amount of technology in between. And we've spent 4 years building for that, which both sides of the marketplace don't know yet exists.

Tommy: And it's been well received, the, the content creation from—

Jules: Absolutely. It can grow more. I mean, the reality is going to Cadbury and going, here's 300 pieces of content of your Cadbury Creme Eggs. Um, JJ's mouth's watering. I actually heard it.

Josh: We've done, we've done Creme Eggs on the show. Yeah, actually.

Tommy: So they're from the UK as well.

Josh: Yeah.

Jules: Okay. So giving them 300 pieces of content is exciting for them because they've never had it, but it's also giving them another problem. Now, how do I take those assets and turn them into like a, a 12-second Insta Stories video? So what we're now doing is playing with Actually, you can go and get all this branded content, and then we create the ads with graphics and logos and give them a whole swag bag full of these, um, uh, mobile-first social video ads that are designed to convert.

Josh: Are brands, uh, going on specific licensing? Like, say for instance, you find that they just want the licence that gives them across everything, or they focusing on digital?

Jules: Mostly digital. I mean, it should be disposable style of content. Like, it should be moving fast now that you can get it more and more. Um, have we missed our meeting?

Tommy: Yeah, we're getting a nod.

Jules: Yeah, but the day's going to be over by the time we finish.

Josh: Yeah, we're finishing now.

Tommy: I mean, you've got no stamina anymore, mate. We wanted 2 hours.

Jules: Last time we did 2 hours and then he sent it to me, have a listen. I said, I can't give you— like, I was there.

Josh: What am I listening? You know, it's good sometimes. I actually can't listen to it. Do you— can you watch yourself back on things?

Jules: Yeah, a lot.

Tommy: Yeah, yeah, you've got that vibe.

Jules: Oh yeah, you better believe it. It's the hardest part is getting the beta and VHS tapes copied over to a USB.

Josh: It gives you tingles.

Jules: You just, um, so I go back to my glory days.

Tommy: Can we please do this? Uh, we're gonna— so we can load in our own sound effects. Can we just get one of you?

Jules: Yeah, I know you're channeling. You don't even have to ask me.

Josh: Okay, quite a One sec.

Jules: Does it get any better than this?

Josh: Yeah, it's very good. I actually imagine though, I think you did a lot more yelling, but that's okay.

Jules: So usually it was a long shot. I'll do one more, do one more.

Josh: This is a way off, off mic.

Tommy: Yeah, great.

Jules: And it's— so I'm in snowboard gear and so the heli, the heli—

Josh: how would they let you know, by the way? How would the helicopter say, we're zooming out now? Would they have a walkie-talkie?

Jules: They'd probably page me. That's how long ago it was. No, I got it, I got it, I got it.

Josh: Right, 3, 3, 2—

Jules: Stick around because after the break, Katrina Roundtree heads to family-friendly Fiji.

Josh: That's so good. Are we allowed to bring up the river area thing or no? Absolutely not.

Jules: Okay, just dump.

Josh: It's just a stop button. It's a daily talk show. Um, yeah, it's a long— it's a very long story. It's a daily talk show. Jules, thanks for coming on the show. How long until you leave to go?

Jules: I'm stressed again. Me back with new content.

Josh: Are you in Melbourne now for a bit?

Tommy: Yeah, I am.

Josh: Okay, so you can turn off your email signature. He's in town. Probably won't, probably won't. It's The Daily Talk Show. Hi@thedailytalkshow.com if you want to send us an email. Otherwise, we'll see you tomorrow.

Tommy: See you guys.

Mason: Bye.