Jack:

You knock on the door until either someone answers or the door falls in.

Adam:

Welcome to the Youngpreneur Podcast brought to you by The Hunter Futurepreneurs Program.

The Hunter Futurepreneurs program has been designed to inspire, educate, mentor and connect future entrepreneurs to start or build a sustainable business.  

It’s a free program for young people supported by the Commonwealth Government, under the Entrepreneurship Program Initiative.

On the show, you’ll meet other young people, not unlike yourself. These young entrepreneurs had an idea for a business and decided to take action and just got to work creating an opportunity for themselves. If you enjoy these stories please join us by subscribing to the podcast and checking out the other ways you can get involved by visiting the show notes at hunterfuturepreneurs.com.au/jack.

I’m your host Adam Spencer and I’d like to introduce you to your mentor today. 

Jack:

Hi I’m Jack Antcliff, I’m the owner of Oasis media, a multifaceted production company based here in Newcastle. 

Adam:

We start off the conversation with Jack with me asking how he got his start.

Jack:

I was lucky enough from a young age that I was able to dabble in production and event management through just some of the doors that opened for me. And in 2013 there was a couple of us here and we had an idea, we should host a movie night at the pool, a Dive In Theater. And everyone at the time looked at us and went, “Yeah, good luck.” And we just went, “No, we’re going to make it happen.” We were a group of young people who were just determined to see things through. And we actually ended up turning that dream into a reality. And we hosted the event and it was really successful. And there were lots of challenges involved in it. Absolutely. We had some hurdles on the night around all sorts of different event management aspects people don’t realize. But after that we looked back, we went, “Look at what we were able to achieve and we were just a group of young people.” Think about the possibilities and that Dive In Theater concept is now being picked up by councils and by a lot of organizations all over the country and it’s to think that way back then we had an idea here and at that point no one had ever done it and all of a sudden now we lead the way.

Adam:

How old were you?

Jack:

Maybe 16 or just turned 17 and it was the December of 2013. And as I said, we pushed the boundaries and where we were told, “No,” the concept or the question I asked back was, “Okay, well I realize that you say no, but why can’t we do it? What do we have to overcome to actually make it happen?” It wasn’t just a matter of walking away and going, “Oh well they said it wouldn’t work.” It was about what do we have to change? We’ve got to change policy. Let’s change policy.

Adam:

Can you remember any of that specific challenges or hurdles that you had to overcome there?

Jack:

I think the biggest thing for us at first was actually gaining people’s trust and we were working with Lake Mac Council and was getting staff on board at first, because you know, the sheer concept of these 15, 16, 17 year old kids organizing this expensive event was a really strange concept and something that a lot of councils would have never in their wildest dreams even considered doing. And were able to overcome that and we had staff who backed us and on the night we had dramas with power and there’d been a miscalculation in the three phase power output. And one of the council departments had to jump in and hire a generator. But once again they believed in what we were doing and they were willing to back us the whole way and they wanted to see it happen. And that event went on. After that the International Children’s Games came to town 12 months later and we now run an event called Endless Summer, which is now in its sixth year, which is basically a kick on from the Dive In Theater, a live music event by the pool. And now that’s six years on.

Adam:

That’s really cool. How did you get involved with like Mac Council? Did you already have a relationship there or was that the first time that you got involved with them?

Jack:

So I got involved when I was 13 with the Lake Macquarie Youth Advisory Council. I was at 13 someone who refused to accept mediocrity. I was someone who wanted to challenge normal. I wanted to know how we could make the world a better place. And my way of doing that was at a local level. Some people go away and they might write letters to the paper or stuff like that. And I thought, “Well, we can get on the ground at an advocacy level.” And once again, I was 13 and I remember walking into my first ever youth council meeting and most of the membership group was probably 17 and over. And at that point it was like I could walk in here and be scared and say nothing, but that would be boring and that would be a waste of my time. I’m going to really challenge it. And I pushed the boundaries and we achieved a lot and a lot of people turned their heads and noticed.

Adam;

You’re so positive. Have you always been that way?

Jack:

I’ve always gone into things with that positive approach that I think the moment you go into something cool, you take on a project where you’re not fully sold, then you’re destined to not fail but not succeed to the level you could. I think you’ve got to go in with that approach of, imagine what we can achieve. It’s not a matter of we got to hit outcome A, B and C, it’s a matter of we got to hit these outcomes and then some. Imagine what the possibilities are.

Adam:

Where did this attitude come from? Was it your parents or how … I don’t know, because I want to deep dive into this because you mentioned being young and you wanting to change the world. I think a lot of young people, a lot of young kids are like that, but they don’t always do something about it. And what makes you different? Where did it come from?

Jack:

Where did it come from? A lot of people close to me say that my grandfather on my dad’s side was like that. He was a real hardworking man and he had that positivity and a lot of people say that’s where it came from.

Adam:

So it’s in the genes, is it?

Jack:

You can only hope so. You can only hope it’s in the genes. I once again, I think it’s been something that I’ve always, I’ve promised myself that I’d stick with. I’ve always been a believer that you can come to a situation where you get challenged and you can curl up into a ball and it doesn’t achieve anything. You put the positive face on and you go, “Okay, well how do we get there? There’s the result over there. I can see it. We just got to get there.”

Adam:

So after the pool, the Dive In Theater, which is an awesome name, is the next thing Bright Minds?

Jack:

Yeah. So the Bright Minds Project was born in 2014. So we started the Bright Minds Project. It was one of my, a good friend of mine, Gemma Morgan and I, and we kind of had this idea around we need a Headspace centre in Lake Macquarie. We need change for young people. There wasn’t the mental health facilities that existed in say, Newcastle or Maitland or on the Central Coast. And we saw a gap and we thought, “Well, once again we can keep talking about it or we can get out there and do something.” So we actually put together or were involved in putting together a bid for a Headspace centre here in Lake Macquarie. And unfortunately at the time it didn’t work and we were knocked back in the bid and that was 2014 and I think while you can walk away and go, “Well, we’re disappointed.” That was the natural response. But we went, “Well wait a second, we’ve done all this research, we’ve started the groundwork, what can we do now?” And we decided to start the Bright Minds Project and out of that became this little idea, and that’s all it was at the time. There was no money involved. There wasn’t a real framework around it. There was a bunch of passionate young people and it slowly built, we picked up a $10,000 grant and about 12 months after that we picked up funding from government to deliver projects. And that funding’s ongoing at the moment and it’s been really exciting to see it grow and see it scale up and to look back and think that it was just a couple of young people. I was in my HSC year, I was in year 12 and Gemma was in year 11 and we were just determined to see change.

Adam:

Where is it today? What have you been able to achieve with it today?

Jack:

So the Bright Minds Project is currently funded to a three stage suicide intervention program. So one step around that or one of those phases is around actually delivering in schools. So we go in and deliver in schools and it’s all around positive wellbeing. It’s around throwing out this concept of mental health being a negative thing. Someone’s mental health is just their ability to respond to a situation. Mental illness on the other fact is different, but often those lines get blurred. So a big thing there is around A, the school presentations, B, we also train people, so train first responders you would call them in what they call assist and another core is called safe talk, which all around identifying potential suicide and then staging a suicide intervention. And the final bit is around resource development. So we actually have these things called a resource youth support pack, which is a resource pack which go out to, there’s around 400 of them which have been printed and they’re all helpful guides for young people who are either struggling with their mental health or people who are working or looking after someone who’s struggling with their mental health.

Adam:

Are they just distributed around schools, or?

Jack:

They’re distributed around anywhere that young people are. So whether it’d be schools, youth centers, whether it be through programs that are engaging with young people who aren’t at school. One of the big things, one of the passionate things to me is it’s not just about engaging with those who are already engaged, it’s about finding those who are disengaged. Those who aren’t involved in school or those who aren’t involved in regular programming. How do we get help for them?

Adam:

Do you have a number of how many people you’ve impacted or been able to help?

Jack:

There wouldn’t be a number per se and it’s very difficult to mark success. Some of the stories though in terms of teachers who’ve done our training packages or done the training we deliver and have come back and said that they’ve used the training on countless occasions in only a short period of time. And it showed to us there was a need for it and that was I suppose the success. In terms of young people we presented to in schools it would be hundreds if not thousands. And we’ve only got more to go, which is really, really exciting. And the project is designed so irrespective of government funding it will go on, the namesake will live on. We will always, the Bright Minds Project always be there and it will always be youth driven and that’s what’s really important about it for me.

Adam:

Where in that little timeline does the International Children’s Games fit in and what was that like for you?

Jack:

Safe to say from December 2013 when we delivered the Dive In Theater through to the middle of 2015 when I kind of started, when I finished TAFE and started full-time employment was just a roller coaster. That’s the only way to explain it. 2013 as I said, the Dive In Theater, 2014 was my HSC year, was the buildup to the Children’s Games here. And our event director Jodi Tweed basically gave me an opportunity that not many young people will ever get. And I was able to shadow in part the event director on this huge, huge project and actually learn the ropes and see what was going on. And I was also then given the role of the screen producer, so I looked at for a lot of our opening ceremony of the games. A lot of the big screen production. A lot of other stuff during the games in terms of sort of the production kind of world. And was the floor manager and producer on Lake Mac Live, which was our little web TV show. So we did three episodes a day for three days, and was able to liaise with media, and the skills that I drew out of that were incredible. And the involvement that I was able to see, the stories I was able to hear, we had athletes from all across the world. And the beauty of the Children’s Games is it’s not a country by country thing. It’s a city by city thing. So there’d be different cities from all over the world where you’d start to hear the stories and you’d start to listen to these people and they got to the end of the games and there were tears because they had to leave their friends that they just made. And they’d only been in town for four or five days, but there was something about those games that was just awe inspiring. When the games finished up, my HSC finished about a month before the games. So it was sort of, there was no rest for the weary in terms of straight out of HSC and into the games. And when we wrapped those up in early January, I kind of was like, “I love this event management stuff, I want to chase it.” And I did some work experience on the Australian Boardriders Battle down at Cronulla and I stayed with family who I admittedly didn’t know that I had, we found in the book here that mom pointed me to and it was just, it was about making things happen. And that was the game. It was always been my little things, you knock on the door until either someone answers or the door falls in and I went to TAFE and finished my TAFE diploma and we delivered a bunch more events while I was at TAFE and we worked on some awesome little bits and pieces. And then all of a sudden I was working full-time in broadcast out of all places. And  was a roller coaster and sure was a whirlwind experience.

Adam:

So we’re up to NBN, right? That’s where you were working?

Jack:

BarTV Sports.

Adam:

Oh, BarTV Sports, that’s right.

Jack:

So 2015 I started working at BarTV Sports. My best mate was a guy named Ben Homer who was a commentator. He and I had worked on the International Children’s Games together and we started at BarTV at the same time. I was the soccer producer and he was the soccer commentator and we were a troublesome two some might say. Where once again we were trying to come up with new innovative ways. We were trying to mic our players. We were trying to push the boundaries and we were recording a midweek show talking about the game. And all this was just out of – we wanted to achieve this kind of stuff. We wanted to push the boundaries. We wanted to question normal and yeah, I was at BarTV for about 12 months. Had some amazing experiences. Got to work on a tour game, cricket tour game between the WA11, so Western Australia and India. And MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli were out of the crease at one point. And I was sitting there, directing this game and it was just this awesome experience. Another one was over here, over at Magic Park here in Newcastle and Aaron Mooy was playing for Melbourne City at the time, they were playing Edgeworth and it’s just in the 93rd minutes or three minutes in injury time. And Aaron Mooy had a free kick and put it in the back top right corner I think it was from memory. And I just remember that night thinking, “Wow, I love these guys,” and looking back now, I think he’s gone on to play in the EPL and to think that I was producing the night that he kicked them into the next round of the FFA Cup. So some awesome experience in there. And then towards the end of, or mid 2016 I actually had a stint in administration. Was the best thing I ever did. Some of the skills I learned in an office were incredible. How to properly send an email almost, how to file things in a digital system, how to use a scanner or a fax machine and things that you probably didn’t learn up until there, and that was a really awesome experience. I look back at it now and go, “Wow, I’m so grateful I did that.”

Adam:

Around the Children’s Games you mentioned the stories. You love the stories that were coming out. Was that where the seed was planted?

Jack:

I think it had been there for a long time. I don’t think it, up until there it probably hadn’t been around so much telling the story, but it was telling the story. A lot of the early stuff we’d done in production was around young people talking about the things they needed, rather than talking about their stories. And Jodi Tweed, who is our event director on the games, said to myself and a mate of mine at the time. She said, “I want you guys to create a piece for the opening ceremony which talks about the three words that went with the games.” And they were inspire, unite, and embrace. She said, “So you need to encapsulate the thoughts of the city into this video.” And so, okay, no dramas. There’s 206,000 people that live in the city at this point. We’ve got to try and cover them all off. And she goes, “And I need it finished in about a week and a half.” And I remember walking out of that meeting and the guy I was with goes, “Mate, there’s no way we can do it.” And my response was, “Absolutely we can do it, because we’re going to find a way to do it. Failure is not an option here.” And we went away and we went to schools, we went to men sheds, we went to all sorts of organizations and found and listened to the stories. And that was about what those words meant to people, what the word inspire meant, what embrace meant, what unite meant. And we sat here on the cutting room floor over a couple of long days and cut this thing together. And it was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had. And I remember presenting it to our team, our little internal team. And there were literally tears in the room of people who just went, “That’s what the games is about. That’s what this whole experience is about.” And something that was set out in the plan and something Jodi was really, really keen on was this whole concept of leaving a legacy. You can have these events, but if you don’t leave a legacy, what do you actually achieve? And part of the legacy was training and upskilling people and giving them experience. And she looks back and certainly I look back and as does Ben and we’re so grateful for that opportunity because we’re part of that legacy. We’re living part of that legacy.

Adam:

Where did the idea for Oasis kind of, where did that come from? Were you thinking about something as early as-

Jack:

The concept of a production company was something that from during the Children’s Games we started to toy with. And we started to toy with it as we probably started to play with more expensive equipment that at the time we couldn’t afford, but council had or others had that we were able to see the possibilities.

Jack:

And Oasis as a namesake came around a lot later on. So it came around in 2016 more or less was when we really started to push it. But production had always been something at that point going, “Oh, we could do this.” And even at TAFE, whenever there was an opportunity to do a video rather than just a boring PowerPoint, I was like, “Let’s do a video.” “Once again, let’s challenge normal. Everyone else is doing a PowerPoint. Great. Let’s do something different.”

Adam:

Yeah.

Jack:

So Oasis was born in around the February 2016. It became a transition to a company as an entity and as of the start of 2017, that was a natural progression. That was a recommendation or something that my accountant, who also became one of my good friends. He kind of made that recommendation. We had a lot of organizations who they wanted to work with us, but a lot of them wanted to work with companies.

Adam:

Oh right. Why is that, do you know?

Jack:

I think it was more a lot of their structures and a lot of their accounts payable in a sense were designed around dealing with companies rather than dealing with sole traders. And that was something, I think there was also, there’s a level of professionalism that probably comes with they’re a company. They’re not just a sole trader. It was in a sense one of our first big risks that we took because it’s like well, it’s an extra, it’s more money we’ve now got to spend in a sense. In terms of from a taxation point of view and different ways around different reporting things, around activity statements and also tax brackets and stuff like that. I look back now and I’m so grateful we did it, because the work that we were out of the pickup out of it was – I wouldn’t be able to put a number on it exactly, but to say the workload doubled would be fair. And that was just out of that decision.

Adam:

It’s hard to get my head around that. 

Jack:

I think it gives you a … It certainly gave us, and once again it’s every scenario is probably different. But it gave us that that extra bit of trust and that extra bit of, that extra level of reputation in a sense that we were the real deal. We’d gone to the effort to go through this. We were the real deal. We weren’t just someone who had an idea. I think something that’s really, really important and a lot of young people probably don’t realize or skip over is, make sure that you’ve got your insurances in line and everything is in order from that point of view. Because the big organizations, they’re looking for all those safeguards. They want to make sure that everything’s in line. And for us that was part of it. We wanted it to be incorporated so that we could be on that, we could be in that trust level and it worked.

Adam:

Yeah. Tell me about that first year, what was that like? How much business was coming in? And you were still working, you were working at the admin job during that time?

Jack:

Yeah, so I was lucky. Oasis Media was set up. I set it up more or less when I was working in admin. My boss at the time was a guy named Jason Pauling and Jason was a really great influence on me. He was one of those guys who, and still is to this day, but he was one of those guys who he believed, but he also was, he was willing to back me as much as well as I showed that I was willing to accept his support and I was committed. I think that’s something really important. No one, there’s lots of people out there who will support young people through their business journey, but the young people have got to be committed and show that they’re willing to put whatever it takes on the table.

Jack:

And basically for the majority of Oasis Media’s lifespan up until recent time, I’ve always worked sort of at a full-time job outside. In the early days that was probably around the need for maybe sort of ensuring the stability in income, but later on it kind of became a bit of an experience thing. I was gaining this great experience in the employment that I was in, didn’t really want to leave. I was in a rock and a hard place, it was great experience here. Business was growing over here, sitting on different boards and committees in between. A 90 hour week was pretty normal. There were weeks there certainly in recent times where you look back through the calendar and you’d go, “Wow, I cracked a hundred last week.”

Adam:

Wow.

Jack:

Something I think from a time management point of view, one of those great pieces of advice I’d give to young people is, make sure you learn how to manage your calendar. Everyone’s got different ways of doing it. I use coloured blocks in my calendar so I’ll set aside time that’ll be for one certain board or one certain community that I’m on and it’ll be like there’s an hour and it’s in yellow in the calendar and I’m going to … That’s what I’m going to do for that hour. And then make sure because it also allows you to go back and go, “How much time did I spend on that project?” And you can go back through your calendar and go, “Okay, well there was two hours there, there was an hour here, there was two hours here.” And work back and go, “Okay, well I did that project. It took longer than I expected it to, or it took less time,” sort of balance that.

Adam:

Yeah, I really love that. Now I do something similar. So working full-time while Oasis is also running, were you the one responsible for bringing the business in to Oasis Media and then you would delegate it, or how would you manage that?

Jack:

Yeah, so I would sort of go out, I was doing a lot of the … I was still doing a lot of client facing work in terms of I was going out and selling the product almost, if you could call it that. And then further to that I was out there shooting the content. I was editing the content-

Adam:

You were still doing it all-

Jack:

Still doing it all.

Adam:

… while working full-time?

Jack:

Yeah. There were plenty of late nights, there were plenty of early mornings to do shoots. We’d be starting a shoot at seven o’clock in the morning and I’d be leaving the shoot after a couple of hours to bolt into when I was working at NBN News in town. And then I’d leave there and I’d bolt to wherever I had to pick the equipment up from. Whoever I had on the shoot that day with me would have taken the equipment, I’d bolt there and come back and just sit it all into the computer and start editing it. And do that just to make things work. And the first year was really interesting. We probably picked up one or two clients and we thought, “Oh well this is great,” still sole trader at that point and just like, “Okay, well I’m happy with this.” And kind of it grew without us having to go out there and sell it. We would do work for people and they would then recommend us. So my phone would ring and it’d be someone new going, “I’ve had your recommended I need this shot tomorrow, can you be there?” And it was just a matter of making it work. And that was always, always that concept, just making it happen.

Adam:

And so word of mouth has been the main driver? Even to today, or?

Jack:

Word of mouth has been a big driver. I think word of mouth, but in particular in the networks that you’re in. And further to that we’ve established ourselves so that we do a lot of work with certain photographers in town and if they’re doing a wedding and they need a videographer, then they’re pointing it to us. So we’re driving work out of, while it’s technically word of mouth, it’s more direct referral. Certainly in this town though I still think word of mouth is so, so important. And I think also it’s about the people who are actually doing the work. I think where we’re a town where while it’s great to have a glossy brochure and a nice website and be the top of Google, it’s also you’ve got to have the passion. And when we’ve always found, when clients have met our team, they’ve often come back and said, “Oh we love how you guys love what we do. You love our product.” We might be experts in video and they might be experts at making underground mining equipment, but it’s our team taking interest in what they do rather than just going, “Oh well that’s just another number. It’s just another job.”

Adam:

Do you actively try to make the opportunity available for them to refer? Are there any mechanisms that you have in place to help move that, or is it just the quality of your work and the attitude of your team that drives that, those referrals?

Jack:

I think the biggest thing for us is the attitude of the team. I think that’s very much the quality of the work, the way in which technology has moved. And there’s so many skilled people out there, it’s really, there’s that much talent out there, which is great. I love seeing the region prosper with creative talent and, but certainly for us yes it’s, I think it’s our team who get it across the line. And from time to time we’ve had funnels in place, where there has been documentation that says they refer it this way and there’s different percentages that go here and there. But we’ve always just found that it’s a word of mouth thing on the ground and it’s our team, they’re the ones who get it across the line, rather than anything else.

Adam:

Mentorship has been a huge part for you. Did you know John Ferguson from Lake Macquarie Council? 

Jack:

John Ferguson was involved in the team during the Children’s Games. He’s very high up at Lake Macquarie City Council, one of the directors and he’s been a great mentor to me the whole way along. And I’ve always said it’s about … A lot of people have always said, oh, and I’ve had people say to me, “You got lucky.” And it’s like, “Well yeah, to an extent there is a level of luck.” But I replace the word luck with the word strategy because you can say, ” I was lucky to be in the right room.” Well I put myself in the room. I was lucky to talk to those people, to bump into them at the bar. Well I put myself, I went and introduced myself to people that I didn’t know because I thought, “Well I’ve got to do that.” And so I think you come back to what you said in the right room with the right people. And you know, John’s another example of someone who, he’s been a wonderful asset to us in terms of me personally with mentoring, just willing to back our ideas and willing to stick up for us in ideas when maybe others, others have thought, “Oh, that’s not such a great idea.” But I think there’s so many people like that who … There’s people out there who are willing to mentor and willing to provide advice and help. And often it’s about firstly finding them, but it’s making sure that you’re interested and committed and actually you want to grow. Because if they see that you want to grow, they’ll help you.

Adam:

How did you get your first customer? Was it the same kind of thing?

Jack:

We went along I should say to a couple of Hunter Business Chamber events and that’s where we started to drive some of our early work. But going right back to the beginning when we crafted this concept of Oasis Media, we had this moment where we’ve got it, we know what we’re going to do. And looking back, at that point we probably didn’t really know what we wanted to do. We just had an idea and we had the positivity and we went and bought a camera and we went down to a soccer game at Adamstown and filmed this game. Just, it was friends of ours playing in a girl’s game and filmed it. Just thinking, “Oh, we’ll see what comes of it.” And that afternoon we thought, “Oh, there was a really good goal in that game. We’ll put that goal up.” And it was Cassie Davis, who plays for the Jets in the W-league and it did really, really well on social media. And it was like, “Oh, okay, there’s a kickstart.” And yeah, we picked out little bits and pieces. Once again, we just got out there and talk to people. And that was really the big thing for me was, you get out and talk to people and you don’t get out there and talk to people about selling your product. There’s one thing that I probably don’t do well and that’s talk about what we actually do as a business. Because I just find that if people want to work with us that’s … It’s not that product details that they want to worry about it, it’s actually the people. They want to know me as a business owner, they want to know my videographers on the ground and who they are and their stories, and not just about what can you do? Because often they come to us and it’s not just a straight, you need a 30 second video, or you need a radio ad, or. It’s often some sort of complex thing where, “Oh, we’ve got this idea and we think it looks like this and it might need this and we’ve got this.” And for us it’s just making it work. And once again, I think it’s our people and our people’s passion which gets that across the line. I got asked a couple of years ago by someone, we were probably 12 months into the journey and someone said, “What do you consider the benchmark of success?” And I thought about it for a little while afterwards. And while shiny coins are nice, for me it’s the upskilling of our team, and it’s the opportunities that we present to our team. That’s what I benchmark success as. I want to develop people who work for me and then go out and climb to greater heights. Because they’ve been provided that opportunity, that experience. Because I wind back the clock and I was given that opportunity and I was provided opportunity when I was just a 15 year old kid in a sense. And just given these opportunities along the line and I want to provide that for other young people. And a great success story that of a young girl who was working for us, Rebecca MacKinnon, and Bec was one of those people. She had the passion. And I’ve always said, “You can’t instill passion.” And someone’s got to almost come with passion and Beck just had that passion and the drive. And she worked for us. And I remember she came to me and she goes, “Oh Jack, I can’t do any more work for you because I’ve just been offered a job at Channel 10 in Sydney.” And I was ecstatic. And I said, “That’s awesome.” And she goes, “Oh, I thought you’d be disappointed.” And I said, “No, that’s the stuff I want to achieve. I want people to come and actually learn the tools of the trade and then be able to go out and go to the big organizations and actually apply their trade there and look back.” And that’s what I benchmark success as being.

Adam:

That’s a great answer. Was there ever a moment where you realized, “I’m in business now. I’m a business owner.”?

Jack:

Yeah, there were definitely, there was one moment I remember there was … We were working on a project for the Lake Macquarie Business Chamber. It was called LMB TV. So being Lake Macquarie Business TV and it was the story of all these little businesses around the Lake. And during that project I had that moment of realization where it was like, “Okay, now we’re playing in the real game. we’re not just fiddling around with one little video to help someone out. We’re not just doing a friend a favour in a sense or your uncle passed on so and so’s number.” It was at this point it was like, “Okay, we’re now out there dealing with clients, people we’ve never ever met. We’re dealing with real business and we’ve got real tight deadlines and we’re going to make this work.” And that was probably the moment, there were some moments during that project where we just went, “I don’t know if this is going to work.” I remember getting the cinema. We had a launch at the cinema for this project and they turned around and they said, “You need to send it to us in this specific format for cinema.” And I just remember sitting there and going, “I’ve never heard of it. I’ve never ever heard of this containerized format.” And I remember ringing up a few people who I knew in the industry and going, “Have you ever heard of this?” And they’re going, “No, no idea.” And it was like, “Okay, how are we going to do this?” And literally, once again, it was just a matter of we just kept ringing people up until someone said, “Oh, I think I’ve heard of it once upon a time. And they did it this way,” and it was always that, just making it happen. And I think that’s what’s probably got us a lot of work over time is the fact that we’re resolved in our team. And we just go, “Okay, well we can make it work for you. We may not know how to do it now, but we can guarantee we’re going to figure out how to do it.” So I think that’s probably always been a real driver for us.

Adam:

That can do attitude and that positive attitude going out there talking to the people. You told me a story before we hit record about how you got one of your jobs. 

Jack:

So we’re at a Hunter Business mining luncheon, I think Rebecca was actually on the camera at the time. And I was just standing over on the other side of the room and this gentleman came up to me and he said, “Are you the video guy?” “Yeah, yeah, that’s me, I run Oasis Media” He goes “Have you got a card?” I hand him a card and he goes, “We’ve got some videos that we need done.” And I’m going, “Yeah, no worries. Are we … ” And he’s like, “Do you do editing, just editing, because we’ve already got the vision.” And I said, “Yeah, we do editing. We can sort of,” once again it’s that can do attitude and we can work with what you’ve got. And he said, “No worries, well my wife looks after all of that kind of stuff. She’ll give you a call.” He walked away and I thought, “Oh look, you never know.” You hand out plenty of business cards in your time and nothing could come of it. That afternoon the phone rings “Hi Jack, my name is Gillian. You met my husband Tony at the Hunter Business lunch.  I’m actually in need of a videographer.” And I’m going, “Yeah, no worries.” She goes, “It’s for Tony’s 60th birthday tomorrow night. Can you do that kind of stuff?” It’s like, “Of course we can. No doubt about it.” And that was, we went along and did this, shot this little highlights video for a 60th birthday party in Battlesticks in on the Harbor. And I just remember thinking afterwards, “Okay, that was a little bit of a strange one. But you know what, the job’s a job some days, isn’t it.” And about a week later, Gillian rang me up and say, “We love the video and all our friends from who couldn’t make it and we posted on social media, said how great it was.” And she said, “Can you come in? We need to have a chat and we need to do this video and this video,” and they’ve ended up being one of our biggest clients, so it’s incredible. Once again, it’s that organic kind of story. I don’t think anywhere in a book about sales would you find a example of the funnel where it’s like you shot a birthday party and it turned into a corporate client. But it’s that kind of stuff where in this town in particular, you deliver a high quality product, you’re personable, your people are buying into the story. Then all of a sudden you can go a long way.

Adam:

How’s Oasis Media today? 

Jack:

Oasis Media is probably, it’s certainly the strongest it’s ever been. There’s no doubt about that. We’ve made record investment in recent time in new equipment. I just bought a drone the other day. So I’ve been out playing with my new toy, which was lots of fun. Our team continues to grow. And we’ve probably worked with say more than a hundred businesses over the four years that we’ve been going. And 2020 is shaping up as another massive, massive year for us. For me it’s about ensuring we’ve got staff who they know how to fly the drone, they know how to operate the steady cams. And they can actually take that experience when they go somewhere else and go, “Well, I’ve had experience working with this equipment or with this edit suite,” and be able to apply that. We’re in the strongest position we’ve ever been, where it’s onwards and upwards from here, 2020, new decade, new opportunity is my, if it was short enough for a hashtag, that’s what it would be. We’ve done a lot of refining of the business late in 2019 and early in 2020. And we’ve got some exciting projects in the works. We’ve been doing some work with the New South Wales state government with the office of sport around some of the World Cups that are on at the moment, the Cricket World Cup that’s upcoming. And we’ve got a lot of opportunity in the pipeline. A lot of it. Yeah, it’s an exciting time and I’m loving being in the business in the full capacity. Often I felt that I was starving myself of time in the business to do other stuff. And it’s great to finally be able to embrace the business in full and sort of get in there and some will get my hands dirty, but also make sure that the staff are getting the opportunities and the training that helps value add for them. For me the stories of the people are always the number one on the list. I think it’s very much that you’ve got to … You’re capturing their stories and you’re telling their stories and it’s so engaging to hear some of them. For us it was some of those stories we’ve captured over time, they’ve been young people, they’ve been people from a indigenous background. We’ve been so fortunate in terms of the people we’ve been able to talk to. And I often had been asked in travels about the logo and our little green palm tree.  And many, many years ago we were in Western Australia in far Northwest WA up around the Kimberley and around Broome and we went out to a little place called the Willie Creek Pearl Farm. And Willie Creek is like, it’s like the concept of a desert island. You’re in red in the desert in a sense. And all of a sudden you come to the coast and the water is crystal blue and the sand is white and there’s these palm trees. You drove in and from a distance you could pick it. And all of a sudden it was like it stood out in the crowd. And also the Northwest for me is a place where the stories up there are incredible. You hear the stories and you only have to stand in the front bar or the pubs up there or in the cafes or, and hear the stories of people who … The paper in Broome doesn’t arrive till about 11 o’clock when the first flight from Perth arrives. So they told we’re at Broome time. It’s well and truly Broome time. And so this whole concept for us, it was this palm tree that stood out on this desert island. I remember leaving and just going, “That was the summer I’ll never ever forget.” And once again it stands out in my memory. And when we came up with Oasis, the concept of Oasis was that you found the Oasis in the desert, you found the watering hole, you found the desert island and the palm tree standing out on the island. And yeah, it was one of those things that it just stuck. For me that’s what it’s always been about. It’s their stories, which is what keeps me coming back. 

Adam:

Thank you for listening to the Youngpreneur Podcast brought to you by The Hunter Futurepreneurs program. What exactly is the Hunter Futurepreneurs Program? I’d like you to meet the Entrepreneurship Facilitator at Hunter Futurepreneurs…

Cheryl:

Cheryl Royle and I’m the entrepreneurship facilitator for the Hunter Region. The Hunter Futurepreneurs Program exists to support, inspire, educate and mentor young people who have an idea or a passion they want to explore. We show you step by step how to validate your idea and build a successful business.  

If you are…or know a young person with an idea,

Hunter Futurepreneurs are here for you.

Adam:

Do you have an idea for a business but have no idea where to start? I’ll tell you where to start, it’s simple, all you need to do is go to the show notes page for this episode, hunterfuturepreneurs.com.au/jack, and there you’ll be able to answer a couple of quick questions and then Cheryl will be in touch with you to schedule a free meeting to help you get started the right way. 

Cheryl:

So that’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. Two young guys coming in, knocking on my door, saying, “This is my idea. What do I do with it?” And we developed it to at least getting them a grant to make it happen. Proud. Proud, but I felt that the opportunity, the opportunities that were going to open up for these young boys were incredible, and the journey that they’ve been on has been incredible as well. So they’ve learnt so many things. They’ve learnt about finances. They’ve learnt about resilience on how … They’ve learnt about how to develop an app. They’ve learnt about things like contracts, working with other people. It’s just been amazing and it’s been an amazing journey. Whether that app is successful or not doesn’t matter now. These young boys have walked away with skills that will hold them very high throughout their lives.

Adam:

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts for more incredible stories from other Young Entrepreneurs to learn how they started and built their businesses. They started from scratch just like you, there is no better time to get started than right now, get in touch with the Hunter Futurepreneurs team today at hunterfuturepreneurs.com.au/jack.

Thank you for listening!